diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:44:43 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:44:43 -0700 |
| commit | cdb2b6443f80036263036028a68bd4bd9e85a522 (patch) | |
| tree | e8b2f1ba115d79b746b402a8dc79f6d252bbbbdd | |
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 14511-0.txt | 8953 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 14511-h/14511-h.htm | 9983 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/14511-8.txt | 9343 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/14511-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 205159 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/14511-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 220351 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/14511-h/14511-h.htm | 10402 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/14511.txt | 9343 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/14511.zip | bin | 0 -> 205055 bytes |
11 files changed, 48040 insertions, 0 deletions
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/14511-0.txt b/14511-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ae275be --- /dev/null +++ b/14511-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8953 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14511 *** + +IRELAND UNDER COERCION + +THE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN + + +BY + +WILLIAM HENRY HURLBERT + + +VOL. II. + +_SECOND EDITION._ + +1888 + + +"Upon the future of Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire." +CARDINAL MANNING TO EARL GREY, 1868 + + + + +CONTENTS OF VOL. II. + +CHAPTER VII. + Rossbehy, Feb. 21, 1 + The latest eviction at Glenbehy, 1 + Trafalgar Square, 1, 2 + Father Little, 3 + Mr. Frost, 3, 4 + Priest and landlord, 3 + Savings Banks' deposits at Six-mile Bridge, 5 + Drive through Limerick, 5 + Population and trade, 5, 6 + Boycotting and commerce, 6, 7 + Shores of the Atlantic, 7 + Tralee, 7 + Killorglin, 8 + Hostelry in the hills, 8 + Facts of the eviction, 9-13 + Glenbehy Eviction Fund (see Note G2), 12 + A walk on Washington's birthday, 13 + A tenant at Glenbehy offers £13 in two instalments + in full for £240 arrears, 13 + English and Irish members, 14 + "Winn's Folly," 15 + Acreage and rental of the Glenbehy estate, 16 + Work of eviction begun, 17 + Patience of officers, 17 + American and Irish evictions contrasted, 17 + "Oh, he's quite familiar," 18 + A modest Poor Law Guardian, 18, 19 + Moonlighters' swords, 20 + Father Quilter and the "poor slaves," his people, 21,22 + Beauty of Lough Caragh, 23 + Difficulty of getting evidence, 25 + Effects of terrorism in Kerry, 25 + Singular identification of a murderer, 26 + Local administration in Tralee, 28 + +CHAPTER VIII. + Cork, Feb. 23, 30 + Press accounts of Glenbehy evictions astonish an eye-witness, 30 + Castle Island, 31 + Mr. Roche and Mr. Gladstone, 31 + Opinions of a railway traveller, 31, 32 + Misrepresentations of evictions, 32 + Cork, past and present, 34 + Mr. Gladstone and the Dean, 35 + League Courts in Kerry, 36 + Local Law Lords, 36 + Mr. Colomb and the Fenian rising in 1867, 37 + Remarkable letter of an M.P., 38 + Irish Constabulary, _morale_ of the force, 40 + The clergy and the Plan of Campaign, 41 + Municipal history, 43 + Increase of public burdens, 44 + Tralee Board of Guardians, 46 + Labourers and tenants, 46 + Feb. 25, 47 + Boycotting, 47-49 + Land law and freedom of contract, 49 + Rivalry between Limerick and Cork, 50 + Henry VIII. and the Irish harp, 50 + Municipal Parliamentary franchise, 51 + Environs of Cork, 52 + Churches and chapels, 53 + Attractive home at Belmullet, 54 + Lord Carnarvon and the Priest, 55 + Feb. 26, 56 + Blarney Castle, 56, 57 + St. Anne's Hill, 56, 57 + An evicted woman on "the Plan," 59 + The Ponsonby estate, 59 + Feb. 27--A day at Youghal, 60 + Father Keller, 61-76 + On emigration and migration, 66 + Protestants and Catholics (see Note G3), 68 + Meath as a field for peasant proprietors, 69 + Ghost of British protection, 70 + A farmer evicted from a tenancy of 200 years, 71 + Sir Walter Raleigh's house and garden, 71-73 + Churches of St. Mary of Youghal and St. Nicholas of Galway, 73 + Monument and churchyard, 73, 74 + An Elizabethan candidate for canonisation, 75 + Drive to Lismore, 76 + Driver's opinions on the Ponsonby estates, 77 + Dromaneen Castle and the Countess of Desmond, 78 + Trappist Monastery at Cappoquin, 78 + Lismore, 78, 79 + Castle grounds and cathedral, 79, 80 + +CHAPTER IX. + Feb. 28, 82 + Portumna, Galway, 82 + Run through Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, + Queen's and King's County to Parsonstown, 82 + A Canadian priest on the situation, 83 + His reply to M. de Mandat Grancey, 83 + Relations of priests with the League, 83-85 + Parsonstown and Lord Rosse, 86 + Drive to Portumna, 87 + An abandoned railway, 88 + American storms, grain, and beasts, 88, 89 + Portumna Castle, 90, 91 + Lord Clanricarde's estate, 92 + Mr. Tener, 92-128 + Plan of Campaign, 94-99 + Ability of tenants to pay their rents, 95 + Mr. Dillon in 1886, 96 + Mr. Parnell in 1885, 97 + Tenants in greater danger than landlords and agents, 100 + Feb. 29, 100 + Conference between evicted tenants and agent, 100-106 + Castle and park, 107 + The League shopkeeper and tenant, 108 + Under police escort, 109 + Cost of 'knocking' a man, 109 + What constitutes a group, 110 + Favourite spots for administering a League oath, 110 + Disbursing treasurers, 111 + Change of venue, 111 + Bishop of Clonfert, 112-115 + Bector of Portumna, 115 + Father Coen, 116 + Coercion on the part of the League, 118-121 + Deposits in banks, 120 + Should landlords and shopkeepers be placed on one footing? 121 + New Castle of Portumna, 122 + Portumna Union, 123, 124 + Troubles of resident landlords, 125-127 + Effects of the agitation on the people, 124 + War against property and private rights, 127 + Mr. Tener's experiences in Cavan, 127-130 + Similar cases in Leitrim, 130-132 + Sale of rents and value of tenant-right, 133, 134 + +CHAPTER X. + Dublin, March 1, 135 + Portumna to Woodford, 135 + Evictions of October 1887, 135 + Capture of Cloondadauv Castle, 137-141 + A tenant and a priest, 141-144 + Workmen's wages in Massachusetts compared with + the profits of a tenant farmer in Ireland, 146 + Loughrea, 148, 149 + Murder of Finlay, 150, 151 + The chrysoprase Lake of Loughrea, 154 + Lord Clanricarde's estate office, acreage, and rental, 155 + Woodford acreage and rental, 155,156 + Drive from Loughrea to Woodlawn, 156-160 + A Galway "jarvey" on the situation, 156-159 + Woodlawn and the Ashtown property, 160 + +CHAPTER XI. + Borris, March 2, 161 + Mr. Kavanagh, 161-163 + Borris House, 163-167 + A living Banshee, 165, 166 + Land Corporation--its mode of working, 167 + Meeting in Dublin, 1885, 168 + Rev. Mr. Cantwell, 168 + Lord Lansdowne's property at Luggacurren, 169 + Mr. Kavanagh's career, 170 + Books and papers at Borris, 171 + Strongbow, 172 + "The five bloods," 172, 173 + Genealogy of M'Morroghs and Kavanaghs, 173 + March 4, 174 + Protestant service read every morning, 174 + A Catholic gentleman's views, 175 + Relation of tenants to village despots, 176 + Would America make a State of Ireland? 177 + Land Acts since 1870, 178 + The O'Grady of Kilballyowen and his rental, 179 + Dispute with his tenants: its cause and effect, 180 + His circular to his tenantry, 181-186 + +CHAPTER XII. + Grenane House, March 5, 187 + Visit to Mr. Seigne, 187 + Beautiful situation of Grenane, 189 + A lady of the country, 189 + Mr. Seigne's experience of the tenants, 191-194 + The beauty of Woodstock, 194-198 + The watch of Waterloo, 197-200 + Curious discovery of stolen property, 200 + Dublin, March 6, 200 + State of deposits in the Savings Banks, 200-201 + Interest on "Plan of Campaign" funds, 202 + +CHAPTER XIII. + Dublin, March 8, 203 + Inch and the Coolgreany evictions, 203 + Sweet vale of Avoca, 204 + Dr. Dillon of Arklow, 204 + Fathers O'Neill and Dunphy, 205, 206 + Mr. Davitt watching the evictions, 207 + Lazy and thriftless tenants better off than before, 209 + A self-made committee, 211 + The Brooke estate, 212 + Sir Thomas Esmonde's house, 213 + An Arklow dinner, 214 + Dr. Dillon in his study, 215-217 + Visit to Glenart Castle, 217 + +CHAPTER XIV. + Dublin, March 9, 219 + Athy, 219 + A political jarvey, 220-225 + "Who is Mr. Gilhooly?" 221 + Lord Lansdowne's offer refused through pressure of the League, 226 + Mr. Kilbride, M.P., and Mr. Dunne, 226-228 + Lord Lansdowne's estate in Kerry, 228-231 + Plan of Campaign at Luggacurren, 231-236 + Interview with Father Maher, 236-239 + A "jarvey" on a J.P., 240 + "Railway amenities," 241 + Dublin, March 10, 242 + Mr. Brooke, 242-248 + Unreasonable tenants, 243, 244 + Size and rental of estate, 246 + Sub-commissioner's reduction reversed, 246, 247 + +CHAPTER XV. + Maryborough, 249 + Archbishop Croke, 249 + Interviews with labourers, 251-253 + Views of a successful country teacher, 254, 255 + A veteran of the '48, 256-260 + Amount of wages to men, 261 + The farmers and labourers and lawyers, 264, 265 + Dublin, June 23, 268 + Mr. Hamilton Stubber and Mr. Robert Staples, 268-270 + From Attanagh to Ballyragget, 270 + Case of "a little-good-for tenant," 271, 272 + Mr. Kough and his tenants, 273-277 + Mr. Richardson of Castle Comer, 277 + Position of the tenants, 282 + £70 a year for whisky, 282 + Kilkenny Castle, 282 + Mr. Rolleston of Delgany, 283-292 + John O'Leary, 285-292 + Boycotting private opinion, 292 + The League as now conducted, 295 + Poems and Ballads of "Young Ireland," 296 + Law Courts and Trinity College, 297 + American Civil War, 299-302 + Dublin, June 24, 302 + A dinner with officials, 303-306 + A priest earns over £20,000, 305, 306 + "Crowner's Quest Law," 309-311 + +CHAPTER XVI. + Belfast, June 25, 313 + Ulster in Irish history, 313 + Moira, 315 + Views of an Ulsterman, 315, 316 + Beauty of Belfast, 317, 318 + Its buildings, 319-321 + Dr. Hanna, 322-324 + Dr. Kane, 325 + June 26, 326 + Sir John Preston, 326-328 + Mr. Cameron, of Royal Irish Constabulary, 328 + Police parade, 328 + Belfast steamers, 329 + Scotland and America at work on Ireland, 330 + +EPILOGUE, p. 333-349 + +APPENDIX. + + NOTES-- + + F. The Moonlighters and Home Rule (pp. 10, 38), 351 + G. The Ponsonby Property (pp. 59-66), 353 + G2 The Glenbehy Eviction Fund (p. 12), 360 + G3 Home Rule and Protestantism (p. 68), 362 + H. Tully and the Woodford Evictions (p. 149), 364 + H2. Boycotting the Dead (p. 151), 370 + I. The Savings Banks (P.O.) (vol. i. p. 39, vol. ii. pp. 5 and 200), 371 + K. The Coolgreany Evictions (p. 216), 372 + L. A Ducal Supper in 1711 (p. 283), 374 + M. Letter from Mr. O'Leary (p. 291), 375 + N. Boycotting Private Opinion (p. 293), 377 + O. Boycotting by Crowner's Quest Law (p. 312), 382 + + + + + CHAPTER VII. + + +ROSSBEHY,[1] _Feb. 21._--We are here on the eve of battle! An "eviction" +is to be made to-morrow on the Glenbehy[1] estate of Mr. Winn, an uncle +of Lord Headley, so upon the invitation of Colonel Turner, who has come +to see that all is done decently and in order, I left Ennis with him at +7.40 A.M. for Limerick; the "city of the Liberator" for "the city of the +Broken Treaty." There we breakfasted at the Artillery Barracks. + +The officers showed us there the new twelve-pounder gun with its +elaborately scientific machinery, its Scotch sight, and its four-mile +range. I compared notes about the Trafalgar Square riots of February +1886 with an Irish officer who happened to have been on the opposite +side of Pall Mall from me at the moment when the mob, getting out of the +hand of my socialistic friend Mr. Hyndman, and advancing towards St. +James' Street and Piccadilly was broken by a skilful and very spirited +charge of the police. He gave a most humorous account of his own +sensations when he first came into contact with the multitude after +emerging from St. Paul's, where, as he put it, he had left the people +"all singing away like devils." But I found he quite agreed with me in +thinking that there was a visible nucleus of something like military +organisation in the mob of that day, which was overborne and, as it +were, smothered by the mere mob element before it came to trying +conclusions with the police. + +On our way to Limerick, Colonel Turner caught sight, at a station, of +Father Little, the parish priest of Six Mile Bridge, in County Clare, +and jumping out of the carriage invited him to get in and pursue his +journey with us, which he very politely did. Father Little is a tall +fine-looking man of a Saxon rather than a Celtic type, and I daresay +comes of the Cromwellian stock. He is a staunch and outspoken +Nationalist, and has been made rather prominent of late by his +championship of certain of his parishioners in their contest with their +landlord, Mr. H.V. D'Esterre, who lives chiefly at Bournemouth in +England, but owns 2833 acres in County Clare at Rosmanagher, valued at +£1625 a year. More than a year ago one of Father Little's parishioners, +Mr. Frost, successfully resisted a large force of the constabulary bent +on executing a process of ejectment against him obtained by Mr. +D'Esterre. + +Frost's holding was of 33 Irish, or, in round numbers, about 50 English, +acres, at a rental of £117, 10s., on which he had asked but had not +obtained an abatement. The Poor-Law valuation of the holding was £78, +and Frost estimated the value of his and his father's improvements, +including the homestead and the offices, or in other words his +tenant-right, at £400. The authorities sent a stronger body of +constables and ejected Frost. But as soon as they had left the place +Frost came back with his family, on the 28th Jan. 1887, and reoccupied +it. Of course proceedings were taken against him immediately, and a +small war was waged over the Frost farm until the 5th of September last, +when an expedition was sent against it, and it was finally captured, and +Frost evicted with his family. Upon this last occasion Father Little +(who gave me a very temperate but vigorous account of the whole affair) +distinguished himself by a most ingenious and original attempt to "hold +the fort." He chained himself to the main doorway, and stretching the +chains right and left secured them to two other doors. It was of this +refreshing touch of humour that I heard the other day at Abbeyleix as +happening not in Clare but in Kerry. + +Since his eviction Frost has been living, Father Little tells me, in a +wooden hut put up for him on the lands of a kinsman of the same name, +who is also a tenant of Mr. D'Esterre, and who has since been served by +his landlord with a notice of ejectment for arrears, although he had +paid up six months' dues two months only before the service. Father +Little charged the landlord in this case with prevarication and other +evasive proceedings in the course of his negotiations with the tenants; +and Colonel Turner did not contest the statements made by him in support +of his contention that the Rosmanagher difficulty might have been +avoided had the tenants been more fairly and more considerately dealt +with. It is strong presumptive evidence against the landlord that a +kinsman, Mr. Robert D'Esterre, is one of the subscribers to a fund +raised by Father Little in aid of the evicted man Frost. On the other +hand, as illustrating the condition of the tenants, it is noteworthy +that the Post-Office Savings Bank's deposits at Six-Mile Bridge rose +from £382, 17s. 10d. in 1880 to £934, 13s. 4d. in 1887. + +After breakfast we took a car and drove rapidly about the city for an +hour. With its noble river flowing through the very heart of the place, +and broadening soon into an estuary of the Atlantic, Limerick ought long +ago to have taken its place in the front rank of British ports dealing +with the New World. In the seventeenth century it was the fourth city of +Ireland, Boate putting it then next after Dublin, Galway, and Waterford. +Belfast at that time, he describes as a place hardly comparable "to a +small market-town in England." To-day Limerick has a population of some +forty thousand, and Belfast a population of more than two hundred +thousand souls. This change cannot be attributed solely, if at all, to +the "Protestant ascendency," nor yet to the alleged superiority of the +Northern over the Southern Irish in energy and thrift, For in the +seventeenth century Limerick was more important than Cork, whereas it +had so far fallen behind its Southern competitor in the eighteenth +century that it contained in 1781 but 3859 houses, while Cork contained +5295. To-day its population is about half as large as that of Cork. It +is a very well built city, its main thoroughfare, George Street, being +at least a mile in length, and a picturesque city also, thanks to the +island site of its most ancient quarter, the English Town, and to the +hills of Clare and Killaloe, which close the prospect of the surrounding +country. But the streets, though many of them are handsome, have a +neglected look, as have also the quays and bridges. One of my +companions, to whom I spoke of this, replied, "if they look neglected, +it's because they are neglected. Politics are the death of the place, +and the life of its publics."[2] + +As we approached the shores of the Atlantic from Limerick, the scenery +became very grand and beautiful. On the right of the railway the country +rolled and undulated away towards the Stacks, amid the spurs and slopes +of which, in the wood of Clonlish, Sanders, the Nuncio sent over to +organise Catholic Ireland against Elizabeth, miserably perished of want +and disease six years before the advent of the great Armada. To the +south-west rose the grand outlines of the Macgillicuddy's Reeks, the +highest points, I believe, in the South of Ireland. We established +ourselves at the County Kerry Club on our arrival in Tralee, which I +found to be a brisk prosperous-looking town, and quite well built. A +Nationalist member once gave me a gloomy notion of Tralee, by telling +me, when I asked him whether he looked forward with longing to a seat in +the Parliament of Ireland, that "when he was in Dublin now he always +thought of London, just as when he used to be in Tralee he always +thought of Dublin." But he did less than justice to the town upon the +Lee. We left it at half-past four in the train for Killorglin. The +little station there was full of policemen and soldiers, and knots of +country people stood about the platform discussing the morrow. There had +been some notion that the car-drivers at Killorglin might "boycott" the +authorities. But they were only anxious to turn an honest penny by +bringing us on to this lonely but extremely neat and comfortable +hostelry in the hills. + +We left the Sheriff and the escort to find their way as best they could +after us. + +Mrs. Shee, the landlady here, ushered us into a very pretty room hung +with little landscapes of the country, and made cheery by a roaring +fire. Two or three officers of the soldiers sent on here to prevent any +serious uproar to-morrow dined with us. + +The constabulary are in force, but in great good humour. They have no +belief that there will be any trouble, though all sorts of wild tales +were flying about Tralee before we left, of English members of +Parliament coming down to denounce the "Coercion" law, and of risings in +the hills, and I know not what besides. The agent of the Winn property, +or of Mr. Head of Reigate in Surrey, the mortgagee of the estate, who +holds a power of attorney from Mr. Winn, is here, a quiet, intelligent +young man, who has given me the case in a nut-shell. + +The tenant to be evicted, James Griffin, is the son and heir of one Mrs. +Griffin, who on the 5th of April 1854 took a lease of the lands known as +West Lettur from the then Lord Headley and the Hon. R. Winn, at the +annual rent of £32, 10s. This rent has since been reduced by a judicial +process to £26. In 1883 James Griffin, who was then, as he is now, an +active member of the local branch of the National League, and who was +imprisoned under Mr. Gladstone's Act of 1881 as a "suspect," was +evicted, being then several years in arrears. He re-entered unlawfully +immediately afterwards, and has remained in West Lettur unlawfully ever +since, actively deterring and discouraging other tenants from paying +their rents. He took a great part in promoting the refusal to pay which +led to the famous evictions of last year. As to these, it seems the +tenants had agreed, in 1886, to accept a proposition from Mr. Head, +remitting four-fifths of all their arrears upon payment of one year's +rent and costs. Mr. Sheehan, M.P., a hotel-keeper in Killarney, +intervened, advising the tenants that the Dublin Parliament would soon +be established, and would abolish "landlordism," whereupon they refused +to keep their agreement.[3] Sir Redvers Buller, who then filled the post +now held by Sir West Ridgway, seeing this alarming deadlock, urged Mr. +Head to go further, and offer to take a half-year's rent and costs. If +the tenants refused this Sir Redvers advised Mr. Head to destroy all +houses occupied by mere trespassers, such as Griffin, who, if they could +hold a place for twelve years, would acquire a title under the Statute +of Limitations. A negotiation conducted by Sir Redvers and Father +Quilter, P.P., followed, and Father Quilter, for the tenants, finally, +in writing, accepted Mr. Head's offer, under which, by the payment of +£865, they would be rid of a legal liability for £6177. The League again +intervened with bribes and threats, and Father Quilter found himself +obliged to write to Colonel Turner a letter in which he said, "Only +seventeen of the seventy tenants have sent on their rents to Mr. Roe +(the agent). Though promising that they would accept the terms, they +have withdrawn at the last moment from fulfilment.... I shall never +again during my time in Glenbehy interfere between a landlord and his +tenants. I have poor slaves who will not keep their word. Now let Mr. +Roe or any other agent in future deal with Glenbeighans as he likes." +The farms lie at a distance even from this inn, and very far therefore +from Killorglin, and the agent, knowing that the tenants would be +encouraged by Griffin and by Mr. Harrington, M.P., and others, to come +back into their holdings as soon as the officers withdrew, ordered the +woodwork of several cottages to be burned in order to prevent this. This +burning of the cottages, which were the lawful property of the +mortgagee, made a great figure in the newspaper reports, and +"scandalised the civilised world." The present agent thinks it was +impolitic on that account, but he has no doubt it was a good thing +financially for the evicted tenants. "You will see the shells of the +cottages to-morrow," he said, "and you will judge for yourself what they +were worth." But the sympathy excited by the illustrations of the cruel +conflagration and the heartrending descriptions of the reporters, +resulted in a very handsome subscription for the benefit of the tenants +of Glenbehy. General Sir William Butler, whose name came so prominently +before the public in connection with his failure to appear and give +evidence in a recent _cause célèbre_, and whose brother is a Resident +Magistrate in Kerry, was one of the subscribers. The fund thus raised +has been since administered by two trustees, Father Quilter, P.P., and +Mr. Shee, a son of our brisk little landlady here, who maintain out of +it very comfortably the evicted tenants. Not long ago a man in Tralee +tried to bribe the agent into having him evicted, that he might make a +claim on this fund! At Killorglin the Post-Office Savings Bank deposits, +which stood at £282, 15s. 9d. in 1880, rose in 1887 to £1299, 2s. 6d. +James Griffin, despite, or because, of the two evictions through which +he has passed, is very well off. He owns a very good horse and cart, and +seven or eight head of cattle. His arrears now amount to about £240, and +on being urged yesterday to make a proposition which might avoid an +eviction, he gravely offered to pay £8 of the current half-year's rent +in cash, and the remaining £5 in June, the landlord taking on himself +all the costs and giving him a clean receipt! This liberal proposition +was declined. The zeal of her son in behalf of the evicted tenants does +not seem to affect the amiable anxiety of our trim and energetic hostess +to make things agreeable here to the minions of the alien despotism. The +officers both of the police and of the military appear to be on the best +of terms with the whole household, and everything is going as merrily as +marriage bells on this eve of an eviction. + +TRALEE, _Wednesday evening, Feb. 22._--We rose early at Mrs. Shee's, +made a good breakfast, and set out for the scene of the day's work. It +was a glorious morning for Washington's birthday, and I could not help +imagining the amazement with which that stern old Virginian landlord +would have regarded the elaborate preparations thought necessary here in +Ireland in the year of our Lord 1888, to eject a tenant who owes two +hundred and forty pounds of arrears on a holding at twenty-six pounds a +year, and offers to settle the little unpleasantness by paying thirteen +pounds in two instalments! + +We had a five miles' march of it through a singularly wild and +picturesque region, the hills which lead up to the Macgillicuddy's Reeks +on our left, and on the right the lower hills trending to the salt water +of Dingle Bay. Our start had been delayed by the non-appearance of the +Sheriff, in aid of whom all this parade of power was made; but it turned +out afterwards that he had gone on without stopping to let Colonel +Turner know it. + +The air was so bracing and the scenery so fine that we walked most of +the way. Two or three cars drove past us, the police and the troops +making way for them very civilly, though some of the officers thought +they were taking some Nationalist leaders and some English +"sympathisers" to Glenbehy. One of the officers, when I commented upon +this, told me they never had much trouble with the Irish members. "Some +of them," he said, "talk more than is necessary, and flourish about; but +they have sense enough to let us go about our work without foolishly +trying to bother us. The English are not always like that." And he then +told me a story of a scene in which an English M.P., we will call Mr. +Gargoyle, was a conspicuous actor. Mr. Gargoyle being present either at +an eviction or a prohibited meeting, I didn't note which, with two or +three Irish members, all of them were politely requested to step on one +side and let the police march past. The Irish members touched their hats +in return to the salute of the officer, and drew to one side of the +road. But Mr. Gargoyle defiantly planted himself in the middle of the +road. The police, marching four abreast, hesitated for a moment, and +then suddenly dividing into two columns marched on. The right-hand man +of the first double file, as he went by, just touched the M.P. with his +shoulder, and thereby sent him up against the left-hand man of the +corresponding double file, who promptly returned the attention. And in +this manner the distinguished visitor went gyrating through the whole +length of the column, to emerge at the end of it breathless, hatless, +and bewildered, to the intense and ill-suppressed delight of his Irish +colleagues. + +Our hostess's son, the trustee of the Eviction Fund, was on one of the +cars which passed us, with two or three companions, who proved to be +"gentlemen of the Press." We passed a number of cottages and some larger +houses on the way, the inmates of which seemed to be minding their own +business and taking but a slight interest in the great event of the day. +We made a little detour at one of the finest points on the road to visit +"Winn's Folly," a modern mediæval castle of considerable size, upon a +most enchanting site, with noble views on every side, quite impossible +to be seen through its narrow loopholed and latticed windows. The castle +is extremely well built, of a fine stone from the neighbourhood, and +with a very small expenditure might be made immediately habitable. But +no one has ever lived in it. It has only been occupied as a temporary +barrack by the police when sent here, and the largest rooms are now +littered with straw for the use of the force. At the beginning of the +century, and for many years afterwards, Lord and Lady Headley lived on +the estate, and kept a liberal house. Their residence was on a fine +point running out into the bay, but, I am told, the sea has now invaded +it, and eaten it away. In 1809 the acreage of this Glenbehy property was +8915 Irish acres or 14,442 English acres, set down under Bath's +valuation at £2299, 17s. 6d. Between 1830 and 1860 the rental averaged +£5000 a year, and between these years £17,898, 14s. 5d. were expended by +the landlord in improvements upon the property. This castle, which we +visited, must have involved since then an outlay of at least £10,000 in +the place. + +The present Lord Headley, only a year or two ago, went through the +Bankruptcy Court, and the Hon. Rowland Winn, his uncle, the titular +owner of Glenbehy, is set down among the Irish landlords as owning +13,932 Irish acres at a rental of £1382. + +After we passed the castle we began to hear the blowing of rude horns +from time to time on the distant hills. These were signals to the people +of our approach, and gave quite the air of an invasion to our +expedition. We passed the burned cottages of last year just before +reaching Mr. Griffin's house at West Lettur. They were certainly not +large cottages, and I saw but three of them. We found the Sheriff at +West Lettur. The police and the soldiers drew a cordon around the place, +within which no admittance was to be had except on business; and the +myrmidons of the law going into the house with the agent held a final +conference with the tenant, of which nothing came but a renewal of his +previous offer. Then the work of eviction began. There was no attempt at +a resistance, and but for the martial aspect of the forces, and an +occasional blast of a horn from the hills, or the curious noises made +from time to time by a small concourse of people, chiefly women, +assembled on the slope of an adjoining tenancy, the proceedings were as +dull as a parish meeting. What most struck me about the affair was the +patience and good-nature of the officers. In the two hours and a half +which we spent at West Lettur a New York Sheriff's deputies would have +put fifty tenants with all their bags and baggage out of as many houses +into the street. In fact it is very likely that at least that number of +New York tenants were actually so ousted from their houses during this +very time. + +The evicted Mr. Griffin was a stout, stalwart man of middle age, +comfortably dressed, with the air rather of a citizen than of a farmer, +who took the whole thing most coolly, as did also his women-kind. All of +them were well dressed, and they superintended the removal and piling up +of their household goods as composedly as if they were simply moving out +of one house into another. The house itself was a large comfortable +house of the country, and it was amply furnished. + +I commented on Griffin's indifference to the bailiff, a quiet, +good-natured man. + +"Oh, he's quite familiar," was the reply; "it's the third time he's been +evicted! I believe's going to America." + +"Oh! he will do very well," said a gentleman who had joined the +expedition like myself to see the scene. "He is a shrewd chap, and not +troubled by bashfulness. He sat on a Board of Guardians with a man I +knew four years ago, and one day he read out his own name, 'James +Griffin,' among a list of applicants for relief at Cahirciveen. The +chairman looked up, and said, 'Surely that is not your name you are +reading, is it?' 'It is, indeed,' replied Griffin, 'and I am as much in +need of relief as any one!' Perhaps you'll be surprised to hear he +didn't get it. This is a good holding he had, and he used to do pretty +well with it--not in his mother's time only of the flush prices, but in +his own. It was the going to Kilmainham that spoiled him." + +"How did that spoil him?" + +"Oh, it made a great man of him, being locked up. He was too well +treated there. He got a liking for sherry and bitters, and he's never +been able to make his dinner since without a nip of them. Mrs. Shee +knows that well." + +To make an eviction complete and legal here, everything belonging to the +tenant, and every live creature must be taken out of the house. A cat +may save a house as a cat may save a derelict ship. Then the Sheriff +must "walk" over the whole holding. All this takes time. There was an +unobtrusive search for arms too going on all the time. Three ramrods +were found hidden in a straw-bed--two of which showed signs of recent +use. But the guns had vanished. An officer told me that not long ago two +revolvers were found in a corner of the thatch of a house; but the +cartridges for them were only some time afterwards discovered neatly +packed away in the top of a bedroom wall. It is not the ownership of +these arms, it is the careful concealment of them which indicates +sinister intent. One of the constables brought out three "Moonlighters' +swords" found hidden away in the house. One of these Colonel Turner +showed me. It was a reversal of the Scriptural injunction, being a +ploughshare beaten into a weapon, and a very nasty weapon of offence, +one end of it sharpened for an ugly thrust, the other fashioned into +quite a fair grip. While I was examining this trophy there was a stir, +and presently two of the gentlemen who had passed us on Mr. Shee's car +came rather suddenly out of the house in company with two or three +constables. + +They were representatives, they said, of the Press, and as such desired +to be allowed to remain. Colonel Turner replied that this could not be, +and, in fact, no one had been suffered to enter the house except the +law-officers, the agent, and the constables. So the representatives of +the Press were obliged to pass outside of the lines, one of the +constables declaring that they had got into the house through a hole in +the back wall! + +Shortly after this incident there arose a considerable noise of groaning +and shouting from the hill-side beyond the highway, and presently a +number of people, women and children predominating, appeared coming down +towards the precincts of the house. They were following a person in a +clerical dress, who proved to be Father Quilter, the parish priest, who +had denounced his people to Colonel Turner as "poor slaves" of the +League! A colloquy followed between Father Quilter and the policemen of +the cordon. This was brought to a close by Mr. Roche, the resident +magistrate, who went forward, and finding that Father Quilter wished to +pass the cordon, politely but firmly informed him that this could not be +done. "Not if I am the bearer of a telegram for the lawyer?" asked +Father Quilter, in a loud and not entirely amiable tone. "Not on any +terms whatever," responded the magistrate. Father Quilter still +maintaining his ground, the women crowded in around and behind him, the +men bringing up the rear at a respectable distance, and the small boys +shouting loudly. For a moment faint hopes arose within me that I was +about to witness one of the .exciting scenes of which I have more than +once read. But only for a moment. The magistrate ordered the police to +advance. As they drew near the wall with an evident intention of going +over it into the highway, Father Quilter and the women fell back, the +boys and men retreated up the opposite hill, and the brief battle of +Glenbehy was over. + +A small messenger bearing a telegram then emerged from the crowd, and +showing his telegram, was permitted to pass. Father Quilter, in a loud +voice, commented upon this, crying out, "See now your consistency! You +said no one should pass, and you let the messenger come in!" To this +sally no reply was returned. After a little the priest, followed by most +of the people, went up the hill to the holding of another tenant, and +there, as the police came in and reported, held a meeting. From time to +time cries were heard in the distance, and ever and anon the blast of a +horn came from some outlying hill. + +But no notice was taken of these things by the police, and when the +tedious formalities of the law had all been gone through with, a squad +of men were put in charge of the house and the holding, the rest of the +army re-formed for the march back, our cars came up, and we left West +Lettur. Seeing a number of men come down the hill, as the column +prepared to move, Mr. Roche, making his voice tremendous, after the +fashion of a Greek chorus, commanded the police to arrest and handcuff +any riotous person making provocative noises. This had the desired +effect, and the march back began in silence. When the column was fairly +in the road, "boos" and groans went up from knots of men higher up the +hill, but no heed was taken of these, and no further incident occurred. +I shall be curious to see whether the story of this affair can possibly +be worked up into a thrilling narrative. + +We lunched at Mrs. Shee's, where no sort of curiosity was manifested +about the proceedings at West Lettur, and I came back here with Colonel +Turner by another road, which led us past one of the loveliest lakes I +have ever seen--Lough Caragh. Less known to fame than the much larger +Lake of Killarney, it is in its way quite worthy of comparison with any +of the lesser lakes of Europe. It is not indeed set in a coronal of +mountains like Orta, but its shores are well wooded, picturesque, and +enlivened by charming seats--now, for the most part, alas!--abandoned by +their owners. We had a pleasant club dinner here this evening, after +which came in to see me Mr. Hussey, to whom I had sent a letter from Mr. +Froude. Few men, I imagine, know this whole region better than Mr. +Hussey. Some gentlemen of the country joined in the conversation, and +curious stories were told of the difficulty of getting evidence in +criminal cases. What Froude says of the effect of the prohibitive and +protection policy in Ireland upon the morals of the people as to +smuggling must be said, I fear, of the effect of the Penal Laws against +Catholics upon their morals as to perjury. It is not surprising that the +peasants should have been educated into the state of mind of the +Irishman in the old American story, who, being solicited to promise his +vote when he landed in New York, asked whether the party which sought it +was for the Government or against it. Against it, he was told, "Then +begorra you shall have my vote, for I'm agin the Government whatever it +is." One shocking case was told of a notorious and terrible murder here +in Kerry. An old man and his son, so poor that they lay naked in their +beds, were taken out and shot by a party of Moonlighters for breaking a +boycott. They were left for dead, and their bodies thrown upon a +dunghill. The boy, however, was still alive when they were found, and it +was thought he might recover. The magistrates questioned him as to his +knowledge of the murderers. The boy's mother stood behind the +magistrate, and when the question was put, held up her finger in a +warning manner at the poor lad. She didn't wish him to "peach," as, if +he lived, the friends of the murderers would make it impossible for them +to keep their holding and live on it. The lad lied, and died with the +lie on his lips. Who shall sit in judgment on that wretched mother and +her son? But what rule can possibly be too stern to crush out the +terrorism which makes such things possible? + +And what right have Englishmen to expect their dominion to stand in +Ireland when their party leaders for party ends shake hands with men who +wink at and use this terrorism? It has so wrought upon the population +here, that in another case, in which the truth needed by justice and the +fears of a poor family trembling for their substance and their lives +came thus into collision, an Irish Judge did not hesitate to warn the +jury against allowing themselves to be influenced by "the usual family +lie"! + +A magistrate told us a curious story, which recalls a case noted by Sir +Walter Scott, about the detection of a murderer, who lay long in wait +for a certain police sergeant, obnoxious to the "Moonlighters," and +finally shot him dead in the public street of Loughrea, after dark on a +rainy night, as he was returning from the Post-Office on one side of the +street to the Police Barracks on the other. The town and the +neighbouring country were all agog about the matter, but no trace could +be got until the Dublin detectives came down three days after the +murder. It had rained more or less every one of these days, and the +pools of water were still standing in the street, as on the night of the +murder. One of the Dublin officers closely examining the highway saw a +heavy footprint in the coarse mud at the bottom of one of these pools. +He had the water drawn off, and made out clearly, from the print in the +mud, that the brogan worn by the foot which made it had a broken +sole-piece turned over under the foot. By this the murderer was +eventually traced, captured, tried, and found guilty. + +Mr. Morphy, I find, is coming down from Dublin to conduct the +prosecution in the case of the Crown against the murderers of +Fitzmaurice, the old man, so brutally slain the other day near Lixnaw, +in the presence of his daughter, for taking and farming a farm given up +by his thriftless brother. "He will find," said one of the company, +"the mischief done in this instance also by prematurely pressing for +evidence. The girl Honora, who saw her father murdered, never ought to +have been subjected to any inquiry at first by any one, least of all by +the local priest. Her first thought inevitably was that if she intimated +who the men were, they would be screened, and she would suffer. Now she +is recovering her self-possession and coming round, and she will tell +the truth." + +"Meanwhile," said a magistrate, "the girl and her family are all +'boycotted,' and that, mark you, by the priest, as well as by the +people. The girl's life would be in peril were not these scoundrels +cowards as well as bullies. Two staunch policemen--Irishmen and +Catholics both of them--are in constant attendance, with orders to +prevent any one from trying to intimidate or to tamper with her. A +police hut is putting up close to the Fitzmaurice house. The Nationalist +papers haven't a word to say for this poor girl or her murdered father. +But they are always putting in some sly word in behalf of Moriarty and +Hayes, the men accused of the murder." + +"Furthermore," said another guest, "these two men are regularly supplied +while in prison with special meals by Mrs. Tangney. Who foots the bills? +That is what she won't tell, nor has the Head-Constable so far been able +accurately to ascertain. All we know is that the friends of the +prisoners haven't the money to do it." + +Late in the evening came in a tall fine-looking Kerry squire, who told +us, _à propos_ of the Fitzmaurice murder, that only a day or two ago a +very decent tenant of his, who had taken over a holding from a +disreputable kinsman, intending to manage it for the benefit of this +kinsman's family, came to him and said he must give it up, as the +Moonlighters had threatened him if he continued to hold it. + +A man of substance in Tralee gave me some startling facts as to the +local administration here. In Tralee Union, he said, there were in 1879 +eighty-seven persons receiving outdoor relief, at a cost to the Union of +£30, 17s. 11d., being an average per head of 7s. 1d., and 1879 was a +very bad year, the worst since the great famine year, 1847. A +Nationalist Board was elected in 1880, and a Nationalist chairman in +1884. 1884 was a very good year, but in that year no fewer than 3434 +persons received outdoor relief, at a cost of £2534, 13s. 10d., making +an average per head of 14s. 9d.! And at the present time £5000 nominal +worth of dishonoured cheques of the authorities were flying all over the +county! + +"On whom," I asked, "does the burden fall of these levies and +extravagances?" + +"On the landlords, not on the tenants," he promptly replied. "The +landlord pays the whole of the rates on all holdings of less than £4 a +year, and on all land which is either really or technically in his own +possession. He also pays one-half of the rates on all the rest of his +property." + +"Then, in a case like that of Griffin's, evicted at Glenbehy, with +arrears going back to 1883, who would pay the rates?" + +"The landlord of course!"[4] + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +CORK, _Thursday, Feb. 23d._--We left Tralee this morning. It was +difficult to recognise the events yesterday witnessed by us at Glenbehy +in the accounts which we read of them to-day when we got the newspapers. + +As these accounts are obviously intended to be read, not in Ireland, +where nobody seems to take the least interest in Irish affairs beyond +his own bailiwick, but in England and America, it is only natural, I +suppose, that they should be coloured to suit the taste of the market +for which they are destined. It is astonishing how little interest the +people generally show in the newspapers. The Irish make good journalists +as they make good soldiers; but most of the journalists who now +represent Irish constituencies at Westminster find their chief field of +activity, I am told, not in Irish but in British or in American +journals. Mr. Roche, R.M., who travelled with us as far as Castle +Island, where we left him, was much less moved by the grotesque accounts +given in the local journals of his conduct yesterday than by Mr. +Gladstone's "retractation" of the extraordinary attack which he made the +other day upon Mr. Roche himself, and four other magistrates by name. + +"The retractation aggravates the attack," he said. + +When one sees what a magistrate now represents in Ireland, it certainly +is not easy to reconcile an inconsiderate attack upon the character and +conduct of such an officer with the most elementary ideas of good +citizenship. + +After Mr. Roche left us, a gentleman in the carriage, who is interested +in some Castle Island property, told us that nothing could be worse than +the state of that region. Open defiance of the moral authority of the +clergy is as rife there, he says, as open defiance of the civil +authorities. The church was not long ago broken into, and the sacred +vestments were defiled; and, but the other day, a young girl of the +place came to a magistrate and asked him to give her a summons against +the parish priest "for assaulting her." The magistrate, a Protestant, +but a personal friend of the priest, esteeming him for his fidelity to +his duties, asked the girl what on earth she meant. She proceeded with +perfect coolness to say that the priest had impertinently interfered +with her, "assaulted her," and told her to "go home," when he found her +sitting in a lonely part of the road with her young man, rather late at +night! For this, the girl, professing to be a Catholic, actually wanted +the Protestant magistrate to have her parish priest brought into his +court! He told the girl plainly what he thought of her conduct, +whereupon she went away, very angry, and vowing vengeance both against +the priest and against him. + +This same gentleman said that at the Bodyke evictions, of which so much +has been heard, the girls and women swarmed about the police using +language so revoltingly obscene that the policemen blushed--such +language, he said, as was never heard from decent Irishwomen in the days +of his youth. + +Of this business of evictions, he said, the greatest imaginable +misrepresentations are made in the press and by public speakers. "You +have just seen one eviction yourself," he said, "and you can judge for +yourself whether that can be truly described in Mr. Gladstone's language +as a 'sentence of death.' The people that were put out of these burned +houses you saw, houses that never would have needed to be burned, had +Harrington and the other Leaguers allowed the people to keep their +pledges given Sir Redvers Buller, those very people are better off now +than they were before they were evicted, in so far as this, that they +get their food and drink and shelter without working for it, and I'm +sorry to say that the Government and the League, between them, have been +soliciting half of Ireland for the last six or eight years to think that +sort of thing a heaven upon earth. An eviction in Ireland in these days +generally means just this, that the fight between a landlord and the +League has come to a head. If the tenant wants to be rid of his holding, +or if he is more afraid of the League than of the law, why, out he goes, +and then he is a victim of heartless oppression; but if he is +well-to-do, and if he thinks he will be protected, he takes the eviction +proceedings just for a notice to stop palavering and make a settlement, +and a settlement is made. The ordinary Irish tenant don't think anything +more of an eviction than Irish gentlemen used to think of a duel; but +you can never get English people to understand the one any more than the +other!" + +The fine broad streets which Cork owes to the filling up and bridging +over of the canals which in the last century made her a kind of Irish +Venice, give the city a comely and even stately aspect. But they are not +much better kept and looked after than the streets of New York. And they +are certainly less busy and animated than when I last was here, five +years ago. All the canals, however, are not filled up or bridged over. +From my windows, in a neat comfortable little private hotel on +Morrison's Quay, I look down upon the deck of a small barque, moored +well up among the houses. The hospitable and dignified County Club is +within two minutes' walk of my hostelry, and the equally hospitable and +more bustling City Club, but a little farther off, at the end of the +South Mall. At luncheon to-day a gentleman who was at Kilkenny with Mr. +Gladstone on the occasion of his visit to that city told me a story too +good to be lost. The party were eight in number, and on their return to +Abbeyleix they naturally looked out for an empty railway carriage. The +train was rather full, but in one compartment my informant descried a +dignitary, whom he knew, of the Protestant Church of Ireland, its only +occupant. He went up and saluted the Dean, and, pointing to his +companions, asked if he would object to changing his place in the train, +which would give them a compartment to themselves. The Dean courteously, +and indeed briskly, assented, when he saw that Mr. Gladstone was one of +the party. + +After the train moved off, Mr. Gladstone said, "Was not that gentleman +who so kindly vacated his place for us a clergyman?" + +"Yes." "I hope he won't think I have disestablished him again!" + +At the next station, my informant getting out for a moment to thank the +Dean again for his civility, and chat with him, repeated Mr. Gladstone's +remark. + +"Oh!" said the Dean; "you may tell him I don't mind his disestablishing +me again; for he didn't disendow me; he didn't confiscate my ticket!" + +With this gentleman was another from Kerry, who tells me there is a +distinct change for the better already visible in that county, which he +attributes to the steady action of the Dublin authorities in enforcing +the law. + +"The League Courts," he said, "are ceasing to be the terror they used to +be." + +I asked what he meant by the "League Courts," when he expressed his +astonishment at my not knowing that it was the practice of the League to +hold regular Courts, before which the tenants are summoned, as if by a +process of the law, to explain their conduct, when they are charged with +paying their rents without the permission of the Local League. In his +part of Kerry, he tells me, these Courts used not very long ago to sit +regularly every Sunday. The idea, he says, is as old as the time of the +United Irishmen, who used to terrorise the country just in the same way. +A man whom he named, a blacksmith, acted as a kind of "Law Lord," and to +him the chairmen of the different local "Courts" used to refer cases +heard before them![5] + +All this was testified to openly two years ago, before Lord Cowper's +Commission, but no decisive action has ever been taken by the Government +to put a stop to the scandal, and relieve the tenants from this open +tyranny. These Courts enforced, and still enforce, their decrees by +various forms of outrage, ranging "from the boycott," in its simplest +forms up to direct outrages upon property and the person. + +"This dual Government business," he said, "can only end in a duel +between the two Governments, and it must be a duel to the death of one +or the other." + +To-night at dinner I had a most interesting conversation with Mr. +Colomb, Assistant Inspector-General of the Constabulary, who is here +engaged with Mr. Cameron of Belfast, and Colonel Turner, in +investigating the affair at Mitchelstown. Mr. Colomb was at Killarney at +the time of the Fenian rising under "General O'Connor" in 1867--a rising +which was undoubtedly an indirect consequence of our own Civil War in +America. Warning came to two magistrates, of impending trouble from +Cahirciveen. Upon this Mr. Colomb immediately ordered the arrest of all +passengers to arrive that day at Killarney by the "stage-car" from that +place. When the car came in at night, it brought only one person--"an +awful-looking ruffian he was," said Mr. Colomb, "whom, by his +square-toed shoes, we knew to be just arrived from your side of the +water." + +He was examined, and said he was a commercial traveller, and that he had +only one letter about him, a business letter, addressed to "J. D. +Sheehan." + +"Have you any objection to show us that letter?" + +"Certainly not," he replied very coolly, and, taking it out of his +pocket, he walked toward a table on which stood a candle, as if to read +it. A gentleman who was closely watching him, caught him by the wrist, +just as he was putting the letter to the flame, and saved it. It was +addressed to J. D. Sheehan, Esq., Killarney [Present], and ran as +follows: + + "_Feb. 12th, Morning_. + + "MY DEAR SHEEHAN,--I have the honour to introduce to you Captain + Mortimer Moriarty. He will be of great assistance to you, and I + have told him all that is to be done until I get to your place. The + Private _Spys_ are very active this morning. Unless they smell a + rat all will be done without any trouble. + + "Success to you. Hoping to meet soon,--Yours as ever. + + "(Signed) JOHN J. O'CONNOR."[6] + +Despatches were at once sent off to the authorities at different points. +They were all transmitted, except to Cahirciveen, the wires to which +place were found to have been cut. Mr. Colomb--who had a force of but +seventeen men in the town of Killarney--saw the uselessness of trying to +communicate with the officer at Cahirciveen, but was so strongly urged +by the magistrates that he unwillingly consented to endeavour to do so, +and a mounted orderly was sent. Just after this unfortunate officer had +passed Glenbehy (the scene of the eviction I have just witnessed) he was +shot by some of O'Connor's party, whom he tried to pass in the dark, and +who were marching on Killarney, and fell from his horse, which galloped +off. He managed to crawl to a neighbouring cottage, where he was not +long after found by "General O'Connor" and some of his followers. The +wounded man was kindly treated by O'Connor, who had him examined for +despatches, but prevented one of his men from shooting him dead, as he +lay on the ground, and had his wounds as well attended to as was +possible. There was no response in the country to the Kerry rising, such +as it was, because the intended seizure of Chester Castle by the Fenians +failed, but O'Connor was not captured, though great efforts were made to +seize him. How he escaped is not known to this day. + +At that time, as always in emergencies, Mr. Colomh says the Constabulary +behaved with exemplary coolness, courage, and fidelity. His position +gives him a very thorough knowledge of the force, which is almost +entirely recruited from the body of the Irish people. Of late years not +a few men of family, reduced in fortune, have taken service in it. Among +these has been mentioned to me a young Irishman of title, and of an +ancient race, who is a sergeant in the force, and who recently declined +to accept a commission, as his increased expenses would make it harder +for him to support his two sisters. Another constable in the ranks +represents a family illustrious in the annals of England four centuries +ago. + +As to the _morale_ of the force, he cites one eloquent fact. Out of a +total of more than 13,000 men, the cases of drunkenness, proved or +admitted, average no more than fourteen a week! On many days absolutely +no such cases occur. This is really amazing when one thinks how many of +the men are isolated on lonely posts all over the island, exposed to all +sorts of weather, and cut off from the ordinary resources and amusements +of social life. + +CORK, _Friday, Feb. 24th._--This morning after breakfast I met in the +South Mall a charming ecclesiastic, whose acquaintance I made in Rome +while I was attending the great celebration there in 1867 of St. Peter's +Day. Father Burke introduced me to him after the Pontifical Mass at San +Paolo fuori le Mure; and we had a delightful symposium that afternoon. I +walked with him to his lodgings, talking over those "days long +vanished," and the friend whose genius made them, like the suppers of +Plato, "a joy for ever." He is sorely troubled now by the attitude of a +portion of the clergy in his part of Ireland, which is one almost of +open hostility, he says, to the moral authority of the Church, and +indicates the development of a class of priests moving in the direction +of the "conventional priests," by whom the Church was disgraced during +the darkest days of the French Revolution of 1793. + +Almost more mischievous than these men, he thinks, who must eventually +go the way of their kind in times past, are the timid priests, for the +most part parish priests, who go in fear of their violent curates, and +of the politicians who tyrannise their flocks. He showed me a letter +written to him last week by one of these, whose parish is just now in a +tempest over the Plan of Campaign. Certainly a most remarkable letter. +In it the writer frankly says, "There is no justification for the Plan +of Campaign on this property. + +"I assented to putting it in force here," he goes on, "because I did not +at the time know the facts of the case, and took them on trust from +persons who, I find, have practised upon my confidence. What am I to do? +I am made to appear as a consenting party now, and, indeed, an assisting +agent in action, which I certainly was led to believe right and +necessary, but which upon the facts I now see involves much injustice +to ---- (naming the landlord), and I fear positive ruin to worthy men and +families of my people. I shall be grateful and glad of your counsel in +these most distressing circumstances." + +"What can any one do to help such a man?" said my friend. "The +rebellious and unruly in the Church, be they priests or laymen, can only +in the end damage themselves. _Tu es Petrus_; and revolt, like schism, +is a devil which only carries away those of whom it gets possession out +of the Church and into the sea. But a weak sentinel on the wall or at +the gate who drops his musket to wipe his eyes, that is a thing for +tears!" + +He asked me to come and see him if possible in his own county, and he +has promised to send me letters to-day for priests who will he glad to +tell me what they know only too well of the pressure put upon the better +sort of the people by the organised idlers and mischief-makers in Clare +and Kerry. + +To-day at the City Club, I made the acquaintance of the Town-Clerk of +Cork, Mr. Alexander M'Carthy, a staunch Nationalist and Home Ruler, who +holds his office almost by a sort of hereditary tenure, having been +appointed to it in 1859 in succession to his father. He gave me many +interesting particulars as to the municipal history and administration +of Cork, and showed me some of the responses he is receiving to a kind +of circular letter sent by the municipality to the town governments of +England, touching the recent proceedings against the Mayor. So far these +responses have not been very sympathetic. He invited me to lunch here +with him to-morrow, and visit some of the most interesting points in and +around the city. Here, too, I met Colonel Spaight, Inspector of the +Local Government Board, who gives me a startling account of the increase +of the public burdens. Twenty years ago there were no persons whatever +seeking outdoor relief in Cork. This year, out of a total population of +145,216, there are 3775 persons here receiving indoor relief, and 4337 +receiving outdoor relief, making in all 8112, or nearly 6 per cent. of +the inhabitants. This proportion is swelled by the influx of people from +other regions seeking occupation here, which they do not find, or simply +coming here because they are sure of relief. This state of things +illustrates not so much the decay of industry in Cork as the development +of a spirit of mendicancy throughout Ireland. In the opinion of many +thoughtful people, this began with the Duchess of Marlborough's Fund, +and with the Mansion House Fund. Colonel Spaight remembers that in +Strokestown Union, Roscommon, when the guardians there received a supply +of one hundred tons of seed potatoes, they distributed eighty tons, and +were then completely at a loss what to do with the remaining twenty +tons. Mr. Parnell and Mr. O'Kelly, however, came to Roscommon, and the +latter made a speech out of the hotel window to the people, advising +them to apply for more, and take all they could get. "With a stroke of a +pen," he said, "we'll wipe out the seed rate!" Whereupon the +applications for seed rose to six hundred tons! + +The Labourers Act, passed by the British Parliament for the benefit of +the Irish labourers, who get but scant recognition of their wants and +wishes from the tenant farmers, is not producing the good results +expected from it, mainly because it is perverted to all sorts of +jobbery. Only last week Colonel Spaight had to hand in to the Local +Government Board a report on certain schemes of expenditure under this +Act, prepared by the Board of Guardians of Tralee. These schemes +contemplated the erection of 196 cottages in 135 electoral divisions of +the Union. This meant, of course, so much money of the ratepayers to be +turned over to local contractors. Colonel Spaight on inspection found +that of the 196 proposed cottages, the erection of 61 had been forbidden +by the sanitary authorities, the notices for the erection of 23 had been +wrongly served, 20 were proposed to be erected on sites not adjoining a +public road, and no necessity had been shown for erecting 40 of the +others. He accordingly recommended that only 32 be allowed to be +erected! For a small town like Tralee this proposition to put up 196 +buildings at the public expense where only 32 were needed is not bad. It +has the right old Tammany Ring smack, and would have commanded, I am +sure, the patronising approval of the late Mr. Tweed. + +I mentioned it to-night at the County Club, when a gentleman said that +this morning at Macroom a serious "row" had occurred between the local +Board of Guardians there and a great crowd of labourers. The labourers +thronged the Board-room, demanding the half-acre plots of land which had +been promised them. The Guardians put them off, promising to attend to +them when the regular business of the meeting was over. So the poor +fellows were kept waiting for three mortal hours, at the end of which +time they espied the elected Nationalist members of the Board subtly +filing out of the place. This angered them. They stopped the fugitives, +blockaded the Board-room, and forced the Guardians to appoint a +committee to act upon their demands. + +It is certainly a curious fact that, so far, in Ireland I have seen no +decent cottages for labourers, excepting those put up at their own +expense on their own property by landlords. + +I dined to-night at the County Club with Captain Plunkett, a most +energetic, spirited, and well-informed resident magistrate, a brother of +the late Lord Louth,--still remembered, I dare say, at the New York +Hotel as the only Briton who ever really mastered the mystery of +concocting a "cocktail,"--and an uncle of the present peer. We had a +very cheery dinner, and a very clever lawyer, Mr. Shannon, gave us an +irresistible reproduction of a charge delivered by an Irish judge famous +for shooting over the heads of juries, who sent twelve worthy citizens +of Galway out of their minds by bidding them remember, in a case of +larceny, that they could not find the prisoner guilty unless they were +quite sure "as to the _animus furandi_ and the _asportavit_." + +_Saturday, Feb. 25._--I had an interesting talk this morning at the +County Club with a gentleman from Limerick on the subject of +"boycotting." I told him what I had seen at Edenvale of the practice as +applied to a forlorn and helpless old woman, for the crime of standing +by her "boycotted" son. "You think this an extreme case," he said, "but +you are quite mistaken. It is a typical case certainly, but it gives you +only an inadequate idea of the scope given to this infernal machinery. +The 'boycott' is now used in Ireland as the Inquisition was used in +Spain,--to stifle freedom of thought and action. It is to-day the chief +reliance of the National League for keeping up its membership, and +squeezing subscriptions out of the people. If you want proof of this," +he added, "ask any Nationalist you know whether members of the League in +the country allow farmers who are not members to associate with them in +any way. I can cite you a case at Ballingarry, in my county, where last +summer a resolution of the League was published and put on the Chapel +door, that members of the National League were thenceforth to have no +dealings or communication with any person not a member. This I saw with +my own eyes, and it was matter of public notoriety." + +I lunched at the City Club with Mr. M'Carthy. Sir Daniel O'Sullivan, +formerly Mayor of Cork, whose views of Home Rule seem to differ widely +from those of his successor, now incarcerated here, was one of the +company. In the course of an animated but perfectly good-natured +discussion of the Land Law question between two other gentlemen present, +one of them, a strong Nationalist, smote his Unionist opponent very +neatly under the fifth rib. The latter contending that it was monstrous +to interfere by law with the principle of freedom of contract, the +Nationalist responded, "That cannot be; it must be right and legitimate +to do it, for the Imperial Parliament has done it four times within +seventeen years!" + +I walked with Mr. M'Carthy to his apartments, where he showed me many +curious papers and volumes bearing on municipal law and municipal +history in Ireland. Among these, two most elaborate and interesting +volumes, being the Council Books of Cork, Youghal, and Kinsale, from +1610 to 1659, 1666 to 1687, and 1690 to 1800. The records for the years +not enumerated have perished, that is, for the first five or six years +after the Restoration, and for the years just preceding and just +following the fall of James II. These volumes take one back to the +condition of Southern Ireland immediately after English greed and +intrigue had sapped the foundations of the peace which followed the +submission of the great Earl of Tyrone, and brought about the flight to +the Continent of that chieftain, and of his friend and ally, the Earl of +Tyrconnell. + +They give us no picture, unfortunately, of the closing years of +Elizabeth's long struggle to establish the English power, or of the +occupation of Kinsale by the Spanish in the name of the Pope. But there +is abundant evidence in them of the theological hatred which so +embittered the conflict of races in Ireland during the seventeenth +century. + +It was a relief to turn from these to a solemn controversy waged in our +own times between Cork and Limerick over a question of municipal +precedence, in which Mr. M'Carthy did battle for the City of the Galley +and the Towers[7] against the City of the Gateway and Cathedral dome. +The truth seems to be that King John gave charters to both cities, but +to Cork twelve years earlier than to Limerick. Speaking of this contest, +by the way, with a loyalist of Cork to-night, I observed that it was +almost as odd to find such a question hotly disputed between two +Nationalist cities as to see the champions of Irish independence +marching under the banner of the harp, which was invented for Ireland by +Henry VIII. + +"I don't know why you call Cork a Nationalist city," he replied, "for +Parnell and Maurice Healy were returned for it by a clear minority of +the voters. If all the voters had gone to the polls, they would both +have been beaten." + +A curious statement certainly, and worth looking into. Mr. M'Carthy gave +me also much information as to the working of the municipal system here, +and a copy of the rules which govern the debates of the Town Council. +One of these might be adopted with advantage in other assemblies, to +wit, "that no member be permitted to occupy the time of the Council for +more than ten minutes." + +There is an important difference between the parliamentary and the +municipal constituencies of Cork. The former constituency comprises all +residents within the borough boundaries occupying premises of the +rateable value of £10 a year. The municipal constituency consists of no +more than 1800 voters, divided among the seven wards which make up the +city under the "3d and 4th Victoria," and which contain about 13,000 of +the 15,116 Parliamentary voters of the borough. The same thing is true +in the main of nine out of the eleven municipal boroughs of Ireland +including Dublin. The 3d and 4th Victoria was amended for Dublin in +1849, so as to give that city the municipal franchise then existing in +England, but no move in that direction was made for Cork, Waterford, +Limerick, or any other municipal borough. The Nationalists have taken no +interest in the question. Perhaps they have good reason for this, as in +Belfast, where the municipal franchise has been widely extended since +the present Government came into power, the democratic electorate has +put the whole municipal government into the hands of the Unionists. The +day being cool, though fine, Mr. M'Carthy got an "inside car," and we +went off for a drive about the city. The environs of Cork are very +attractive. We visited the new cemetery grounds which are very neatly +and tastefully laid out. There was a conflict over them, the owners of +family vaults staunchly standing out against the "levelling" tendency of +a harmonious city of the dead. But all is well that ends well, and now +two handsome stone chapels, one Catholic and one Protestant, keep watch +and ward over the silent sleepers, standing face to face near the grand +entrance, and exactly alike in their architecture. A very pretty drive +took us to the water-works, which are extensive, well planned, and +exceedingly well kept. They are awaiting now the arrival from America of +some great turbine wheels, but the engines are of English make. In the +city we visited the new Protestant cathedral of St. Finbar, a very fine +church, which advantageously replaces a "spacious structure of the Doric +order," built here in the reign of George II., with the proceeds of a +parliamentary tax on coals. Despite his name, I imagine that admirable +prelate, Dr. England, the first Catholic bishop of my native city in +America, must have been a Corkonian, for he it was, I believe, who put +the cathedral of Charleston under the invocation of St. Finbar, the +first bishop of Cork. The church stands charmingly amid fine trees on a +southern branch of the river Lea. We visited also two fine Catholic +churches, one of St. Vincent de Paul, and the other the Church of St. +Peter and St. Paul, a grandly proportioned and imposing edifice. + +It was at vespers that we entered it, and found it filled with the +kneeling people. This noble church is rather ignobly hidden away behind +crowded houses and shops, and the contrast was very striking when we +emerged from its dim religious space and silence into the thronged and +rather noisy streets. There is a statue here of Father Mathew; but what +I have seen to-night makes me doubt whether the present generation of +Corkonians would have erected it. + +At dinner a gentleman gave us a most interesting account of the +picturesque home which a man of taste, and a lover of natural history, +has made for himself at the remote seaside village of Belmullet, in +Mayo, the seat of the Mayo quarries, in which Mr. Davitt takes so much +interest. The sea brings in there all sorts of wreckage, and the house +is beautifully finished with mahogany and other rare woods, just as I +remember finding in a noble mansion in South Wales, near a dangerous +head-land, some magnificent doors and wainscotings made of that most +beautiful of the Central American woods, nogarote, which I never saw in +the United States, excepting in a superb specimen of it sent home by +myself from Corinto. This colonist of Mayo employs all the people he can +get in the fisheries there, which are very rich; and the ducks and wild +geese are so numerous that he sometimes sends as far as to Wicklow for +men to capture and sell them for him. He was once fortunate enough to +trap a pair of the snow geese of the Arctic region, but Belmullet, in +other respects a primeval paradise, is cursed with the small boy of +civilisation; and one of these pests of society slew the goose with a +stone. The widowed gander consoled himself by contracting family ties +with the common domestic goose of the parish, and all his progeny, in +other particulars indistinguishable from that familiar bird, bear the +black marks distinctive of the Arctic tribe. + +Belmullet, this gentleman tells me, boasts a very good little inn, kept +by a Mrs. Deehan, which was honoured by a visit from Lord Carnarvon with +his wife and daughters during the Earl's Viceroyalty. This was in the +course of a private and personal, not official tour, during which, Lord +Carnarvon says, he was everywhere received with the greatest courtesy by +all sorts and conditions of the people. It is an interesting +illustration of the temper in which certain priests in Ireland deal with +matters of State, that when Lord Carnarvon politely invited the parish +priest of Belmullet to come to see him, that functionary declined to do +so. Upon this the placable Viceroy sent to know whether the priest would +receive the visit he refused to pay. The priest replied that he never +declined to receive any gentleman who wished to see him; and the Viceroy +accordingly called upon him, to the edification of the people, who +afterwards listened very respectfully to a little speech which His +Excellency made to them from a car. It is rather surprising that these +incidents have never been adduced in proof of Lord Carnarvon's +determination to take the Home Rule wind out of the sails of the +Liberals! + + +CORK, _Sunday, Feb. 26._--I went out to-day with Mr. Cameron to see +Blarney Castle and St. Anne's Hill. Nothing can be lovelier than the +country around Cork and the valley of the Lea. A "light railway," of the +sort authorised by the Act of 1883, takes you out quickly enough to +Blarney, and the train was well filled. The construction of these +railways is found fault with as aggravating instead of relieving those +defects in the organisation and management of the Irish railways, which +are so thoroughly and intelligently exposed in the Public Works Report +of Sir James Allport and his fellow-commissioners. A morning paper +to-day points this out sharply. + +In the days of King William III. Blarney Castle must have been a +magnificent stronghold. It stands very finely on a well-wooded height, +and dominates the land for miles around. But it held out against the +victor of the Boyne so long that, when he captured it, he thought it +best, in the expressive phrase of the Commonwealth, to "slight" it, +little now remaining of it but the gigantic keep, the walls of which are +some six yards thick, and a range of ruined outworks stretching along +and above a line of caverns, probably the work of the quarrymen who got +out the stone for the Castle ages ago. The legend of the Blarney Stone +does not seem to be a hundred years old, but the stone itself is one of +the front battlements of the grand old tower, which has more than once +fallen to the ground from the giddy height at which it was originally +set. It is now made fast there by iron clamps, in such a position that +to kiss it one should be a Japanese acrobat, or a volunteer rifleman +shooting for the championship of the world. There are many and very fine +trees in the grounds about the Castle, and there is a charming garden, +now closed against the casual tourist, as it has been leased with the +modern house to a tenant who lives here. In the leafy summer the place +must be a dream of beauty. An avenue of stately trees quite overarching +the highway leads from Blarney to St. Anne's Hill, the site of which, at +least, is that of an ideal sanatorium. We walked thither over hill and +dale. The panorama commanded by the buildings of the sanatorium is one +of the widest and finest imaginable, worthy to be compared with the +prospect from the Star and Garter at Richmond, or with that from the +terrace at St. Germain. + +Several handsome lodges or cottages have been built about the extensive +grounds. These are comfortably furnished and leased to people who prefer +to bring their households here rather than take up their abode in the +hotel, which, however, seems to be a very well kept and comfortable sort +of place, with billiard and music rooms, a small theatre, and all kinds +of contrivances for making the country almost as tedious as the town. +The establishment is directed now by a German resident physician, but +belongs to an Irish gentleman, Mr. Barter, who lives here himself, and +here manages what I am told is one of the finest dairy farms and dairies +in Ireland. Our return trip to Cork on the "light railway," with a warm +red sunset lighting up the river Lea, and throwing its glamour over the +varied and picturesque scenery through which we ran, was not the least +delightful part of a very delightful excursion. + +After we got back I spent half-an-hour with a gentleman who knows the +country about Youghal, which I propose to visit to-morrow, and who saw +something of the recent troubles there arising out of the Plan of +Campaign, as put into effect on the Ponsonby property. + +He is of the opinion that the Nationalists were misled into this contest +by bad information as to Mr. Ponsonby's resources and relations. They +expected to drive him to the wall, but they will fail to do this, and +failing to do this they will be left in the vocative. He showed me a +curious souvenir of the day of the evictions, in the shape of a +quatrain, written by the young wife of an evicted tenant. This young +woman, Mrs. Mahoney, was observed by one of the officers, as the +eviction went on, to go apart to a window, where she stood for a while +apparently writing something on a wooden panel of the shutter. After the +eviction was over the officer remembered this, and going up to the +window found these lines pencilled upon the panel:-- + + "We are evicted from this house, + Me and my loving man; + We're homeless now upon the world! + May the divil take 'the Plan'!" + +CORK, _Monday, Feb. 27._--A most interesting day. I left alone and early +by the train for Youghal, having sent before me a letter of introduction +to Canon Keller, the parish priest, who has recently become a +conspicuous person through his refusal to give evidence about matters, +his knowledge of which he conceives to be "privileged," as acquired in +his capacity as a priest. + +I had many fine views of the shore and the sea as we ran along, and the +site of Youghal itself is very fine. It is an old seaport town, and once +was a place of considerable trade, especially in wool. + +Oliver dwelt here for a while, and from Youghal he embarked on his +victorious return to England. He seems to have done his work while he +was here "not negligently," like Harrison at Naseby Field, for when he +departed he left Youghal a citadel of Protestant intolerance. Even under +Charles II they maintained an ordinance forbidding "any Papist to buy or +barter anything in the public markets," which may be taken as a piece of +cold-blooded and statutory "boycotting." Then there was no parish priest +in Youghal; now it may almost be said there is nobody in Youghal but the +parish priest! So does "the whirligig of time bring in his revenges"! + +At Youghal station a very civil young man came up, calling me by name, +and said Father Keller had sent him with a car to meet me. We drove up +past some beautiful grounds into the main street. A picturesque +waterside town, little lanes and narrow streets leading out of the main +artery down to the bay, and a savour of the sea in the place, grateful +doubtless to the souls of Raleigh and the west country folk he brought +over here when he became lord of the land, just three hundred years ago. +Edmund Spenser came here in those days to see him, and talk over the +events of that senseless rising of the Desmonds, which gave the poet of +the "Faerie Queen" his awful pictures of the desolation of Ireland, and +made the planter of Virginia master of more than forty thousand acres of +Irish land. + +We turned suddenly into a little narrow wynd, and pulled up, the driver +saying, "There is the Father, yer honour!" In a moment up came a tall, +very fine-looking ecclesiastic, quite the best dressed and most +distinguished-looking priest I have yet seen in Ireland, with features +of a fine Teutonic type, and the erect bearing of a soldier. I jumped +down to greet him, and he proposed that we should walk together to his +house near by. An extremely good house I found it to be, well placed in +the most interesting quarter of the town. Having it in my mind to drive +on from Youghal to Lismore, there to make an early dinner, see the +castle of the Duke of Devonshire, and return to Cork by an evening +train, I had to decline Father Keller's cordial hospitalities, but he +gave me a most interesting hour with him in his comfortable study. +Father Keller stands firmly by the position which earned for him a +sentence of imprisonment last year, when he refused to testify before a +court of justice in a bankruptcy case, on the ground that it might +"drift him into answers which would disclose secrets he was bound in +honour not to disclose." He does not accept the view taken of his +conduct, however, by Lord Selborne, that, in the circumstances, his +refusal is to be regarded as the act of his ecclesiastical superiors +rather than his own. He maintains it as his own view of the sworn duty +of a priest, and not unnaturally therefore he looks upon his sentence as +a blow levelled at the clergy; nor, as I understood him, has he +abandoned his original contention, that the Court had no right to summon +him as a witness. It was impossible to listen to him on this subject, +and doubt his entire good faith, nor do I see that he ought to be held +responsible for the interpretation put by Mr. Lane, M.P., and others +upon his attitude as a priest, in a sense going to make him merely a +"martyr" of Home Rule. I did not gather from what he said that, in his +mind, the question of his relations with the Nationalists or the Plan of +Campaign entered into that affair at all, but simply that he believed +the right and the duty of a priest to protect, no matter at what cost to +himself, secrets confided to him as a priest, was really involved in his +consent or refusal to answer, when he was asked whether he was or was +not on a certain day at the "Mall House" in Youghal. Of course from the +connection of this refusal in this particular case with the Nationalist +movement, Nationalists would easily glide into the idea that he refused +to testify in order to serve their cause. + +As to the troubles on the Ponsonby estate, Father Keller spoke very +freely. He divided the responsibility for them between the +untractableness of the agent, and the absenteeism of the owner. It was +only since the troubles began, he said, that he had ever seen Mr. +Ponsonby, who lived in Hampshire, and was therefore out of touch with +the condition and the feelings of the people here. In a personal +interview with him he had found Mr. Ponsonby a kindly disposed +Englishman, but the estate is heavily encumbered, and the agent who has +had complete control of it forced the tenants, by his hard and fast +refusal of a reasonable reduction more than two years ago, into an +initial combination to defend themselves by "clubbing" their rents. That +was before Mr. Dillon announced the Plan of Campaign at all. + +"It was not till the autumn of 1886," said Father Keller, "that any +question arose of the Plan of Campaign here,[8] and it was by the +tenants themselves that the determination was taken to adopt it. My part +has been that of a peace-maker throughout, and we should have had peace +if Mr. Ponsonby would have listened to me; we should have had peace, and +he would have received a reasonable rental for his property. Instead of +this, look at the law costs arising out of bankruptcy proceedings and +sheriff's sales and writs and processes, and the whole district thrown +into disorder and confusion, and the industrious people now put out of +their holdings, and forced into idleness." + +As to the recent evictions which had taken place, Father Keller said +they had taken him as well as the people by surprise, and had thus led +to greater agitation and excitement. "But the unfortunate incident of +the loss of Hanlon's life," he said, "would never have occurred had I +been duly apprised of what was going on in the town. I had come home +into my house, having quieted the people, and left all in order, as I +thought, when that charge of the police, for which there was no +occasion, and which led to the killing of Hanlon, was ordered. I made my +way rapidly to the people, and when I appeared they were brought to +patience and to good order with astonishing ease, despite all that had +occurred." + +As to the present outlook, it was his opinion that Mr. Ponsonby, even +with the Cork Defence Union behind him, could not hold out. "The Land +Corporation were taking over some parts of the estate, and putting +Emergency men on them--a set of desperate men, a kind of _enfants +perdus_," he said, "to work and manage the land;" but he did not believe +the operation could be successfully carried out. Meanwhile he +confidently counted upon seeing "the present Tory Government give way, +and go out, when it would become necessary for the landlords to do +justice to the rack-rented people. Pray understand," said Father Keller, +"that I do not say all landlords stand at all where Mr. Ponsonby has +been put by his agent, for that is not the case; but the action of many +landlords in the county Cork in sustaining Mr. Ponsonby, whose estate is +and has been as badly rack-rented an estate as can be found, is, in my +judgment, most unwise, and threatening to the peace and happiness of +Ireland."[9] + +I asked whether, in his opinion, it would be possible for the Ponsonby +tenants to live and prosper here on this estate, could they become +peasant proprietors of it under Lord Ashbourne's Act, provided they +increased in numbers, as in that event might be expected. This he +thought very doubtful so far as a few of the tenants are concerned. + +"Would you seek a remedy, then," I asked, "in emigration?" + +"No, not in emigration," he replied, "but in migration." + +I begged him to explain the difference. + +"What I mean," he said, "is, that the people should migrate, not out of +Ireland, but from those parts of Ireland which cannot support them into +parts of Ireland which can support them. There is room in Meath, for +example, for the people of many congested districts." + +"You would, then, turn the great cattle farms of Meath," I said, "into +peasant holdings?" + +"Certainly." + +"But would not that involve the expropriation of many people now +established in Meath, and the disturbance or destruction of a great +cattle industry for which Ireland has especial advantages?" + +To this Father Keller replied that he did not wish to see Ireland +exporting her cattle, any more than to see Ireland exporting her sons +and daughters. "I mean," he said, quite earnestly, "when they are forced +to export them to pay exorbitant rents, and thus deprive themselves of +their capital or of a fair share of the comforts of life. I should be +glad to see the Irish people sufficient to themselves by the domestic +exchange of their own industries and products." At the same time he +begged me to understand that he had no wish to see this development +attended by any estrangement or hostile feeling between Ireland and +Great Britain. "On the contrary," he said, "I have seen with the +greatest satisfaction the growth of such good feeling towards England as +I never expected to witness, as the result of the visits here of English +public men, sympathising with the Irish tenants. I believe their visits +are opening the way to a real union of the Democracies of the two +countries, and to an alliance between them against the aristocratic +classes which depress both peoples." This alliance Father Keller +believed would be a sufficient guarantee against any religious contest +between the Catholics of Ireland and the Protestants of Great Britain. + +"I was much astounded," he said, "the other day, to hear from an English +gentleman that he had met a Protestant clergyman who told him he really +believed that a persecution of the Protestants would follow the +establishment of Home Rule in Ireland. I begged him to consider that Mr. +Parnell was a Protestant, and I assured him Protestants would have +absolutely nothing to fear from Home Rule." + +Reverting to his idea of re-distributing the Irish population through +Ireland, under changed conditions, social and economical, I asked him +how in Meath, for example, he would meet the difficulty of stocking with +cattle the peasant holdings of a new set of proprietors not owning +stock. He thought it would be easily met by advances of money from the +Treasury to the peasant proprietors, these advances to be repaid, with +interest, as in the case of Lady Burdett Coutts, and the advances made +by her to the fishermen now under the direction of Father Davis at +Baltimore. + +I was struck by the resemblance of these views to the Irish policy +sketched for me by my Nationalist fellow-traveller of the other night +from London. "The evil that men do lives after them"--and when one +remembers how only a hundred years ago, and just after the establishment +of American Independence ought to have taught England a lesson, the +Irish House of Commons had to deal with the persistent determination of +the English manufacturers to fight the bogey of Irish competition by +protective duties in England against imports from Ireland, it is not +surprising that Irishmen who allow sentiment to get the upper hand of +sense should now think of playing a return game. England went in fear +then not only of Irish beasts and Irish butter, but of Irish woollens, +Irish cottons, Irish leather, Irish glass. Nay, absurd as it may now +seem, English ironmasters no longer ago than in 1785 testified before a +Parliamentary Committee that unless a duty was clapped on Irish +manufactures of iron, the Irish ironmasters had such advantages through +cheaper labour and through the discrimination in their favour under the +then existing relations with the new Republic of the United States that +they would "ruin the ironmasters of England." + +In Ireland, as in America, the benign spirit of Free Trade is thwarted +and intercepted at every turn by the abominable ghost of British +Protection. What a blessing it would have been if the meddlesome +palaverers of the Cobden Club, American as well as English, could ever +have been made to understand the essentially insular character of +Protection and the essentially continental character of Free Trade! + +It should never be forgotten, and it is almost never remembered, that +when the Treaty of Versailles was making in 1783 the American +Commissioners offered complete free trade between the United States and +all parts of the British Dominions save the territories of the East +India Company. The British Commissioner, David Hartley, saw the value of +this proposition, and submitted it at London. But King George III. would +not entertain it. + +When I rose to leave him Father Keller courteously insisted on showing +me the "lions" of Youghal. A most accomplished cicerone he proved to be. +As we left his house we met in the street two or three of the "evicted" +tenants, whom he introduced to me. One of these, Mr. Loughlin, was the +holder of farms representing a rental of £94. A stalwart, hearty, +rotund, and rubicund farmer he was, and in reply to my query how long +the holdings he had lost had been in his family, he answered, "not far +from two hundred years." Certainly some one must have blundered as badly +as at Balaklava to make it necessary for a tenant with such a past +behind him to go out of his holdings on arrears of a twelvemonth. Father +Keller gave me, as we left Mr. Loughlin and his friend, a leaflet in +which he has printed the story of "the struggle for life on the Ponsonby +estate," as he understands it. + +A minute's walk brought us to Sir Walter Raleigh's house, now the +property of Sir John Pope Hennessey. It was probably built by Sir Walter +while he lived here in 1588-89, during the time of the great Armada; for +it is a typical Elizabethan house, quaintly gabled, with charming Tudor +windows, and delightfully wainscoted with richly carved black oak. A +chimney-piece in the library where Sir John's aged mother received us +most kindly and hospitably is a marvel of Elizabethan woodwork. The +shelves are filled with a quaint and miscellaneous collection of old and +rare books. I opened at random one fine old quarto, and found it to +contain, among other curious tracts, models of typography, a Latin +critical disquisition by Raphael Regini on the first edition of +Plutarch's Life of Cicero, "_nuper inventâ diu desideraiâ _"--a +disquisition quite aglow with the cinquecento delight in discovery and +adventure. In the grounds of this charming house stand four very fine +Irish yews forming a little hollow square, within which, according to a +local legend, Sir Walter sat enjoying the first pipe of tobacco ever +lighted in Ireland, when his terrified serving-maid espying the smoke +that curled about her master's head hastily ran up and emptied a pail of +water over him. In the garden here, too, we are told, was first planted +the esculent which better deserves to be called the Curse of Ireland +than does the Nine of Diamonds to be known as the Curse of Scotland. The +Irish yew must have been indigenous here, for the name of Youghal, +Father Keller tells me, in Irish signifies "the wood of yew-trees." A +subterranean passage is said to lead from Sir Walter's dining-room into +the church, but we preferred the light of day. + +The precincts of the church adjoin the grounds and garden, and with +these make up a most fascinating poem in architecture. The churches of +St. Mary of Youghal and St. Nicholas of Galway have always been cited to +me as the two most interesting churches in Ireland. Certainly this +church of St. Mary, as now restored, is worth a journey to see. Its +massive tower, with walls eight feet thick, its battlemented chancel, +the pointed arches of its nave and aisles, a curious and, so far as I +know, unique arch in the north transept, drawn at an obtuse angle and +demarcating a quaint little side-chapel, and the interesting monuments +it contains, all were pointed out to me with as much zest and +intelligent delight by Father Keller as if the edifice were still +dedicated to the faith which originally called it into existence. It +contains a fine Jacobean tomb of Richard, the "great Earl of Cork," who +died here in September 1643. On this monument, which is in admirable +condition, the effigy of the earl appears between those of his two +wives, while below them kneel his five sons and seven daughters, their +names and those of their partners in marriage inscribed upon the marble. +It was of this earl that Oliver said: "Had there been an Earl of Cork in +every province, there had been no rebellion in Ireland." Several Earls +of Desmond are also buried here, including the founder of the church, +and under a monumental effigy in one of the transepts lies the wonderful +old Countess of Desmond, who having danced in her youth with Richard +III. lived through the Tudor dynasty "to the age of a hundred and ten," +and, as the old distich tells us, "died by a fall from a cherry-tree +then." + +In the churchyard is a hillock, bare of grass, about a tomb. There lies +buried, according to tradition, a public functionary who attested a +statement by exclaiming, "If I speak falsely, may grass never grow on my +grave." One of his descendants is doubtless now an M.P. Mr. Cameron had +kindly written from Cork to the officer in charge of the constabulary +here asking him to get me a good car for Lismore. So Father Keller very +kindly walked with me through the town to the "Devonshire Arms," a very +neat and considerable hotel, in quest of him. On the way he pointed out +to me what remains of a house which is supposed to have served as the +headquarters of Cromwell while he was here, and a small chapel also in +which the Protector worshipped after his sort. Off the main street is a +lane called Windmill Lane, where probably stood the windmill from which +in 1580 a Franciscan friar, Father David O'Neilan, was hung by the feet +and shot to death by the soldiers of Elizabeth because he refused to +acknowledge the spiritual supremacy of the Queen. He had been dragged +through the main street at the tail of a horse to the place of +execution. His name is one of many names of confessors of that time +about to be submitted at Rome for canonisation. We could not find the +officer I sought at the hotel, but Father Keller took me to a livery-man +in the main street, who very promptly got out a car with "his best +horse," and a jarvey who would "surely take me over to Lismore inside of +two hours and a half." He was as good as his master's word, and a +delightful drive it was, following the course of Spenser's river, the +Awniduffe, "which by the Englishman is called Blackwater." Nobody now +calls it anything else. The view of Youghal Harbour, as we made a great +circuit by the bridge on leaving the town, was exceedingly fine. Lying +as it does within easy reach of Cork, this might be made a very pleasant +summer halting-place for Americans landing at Queenstown, who now go +further and probably fare worse. One Western wanderer, with his family, +Father Keller told me, did last year establish himself here, a Catholic +from Boston, to whom a son was born, and who begged the Father to give +the lad a local name in baptism, "the oldest he could think of." + +I should have thought St. Declan would have been "old" enough, or St. +Nessan of "Ireland's Eye," or Saint Cartagh, who made Lismore a holy +city, "into the half of which no woman durst enter," sufficiently +"local," but Father Keller found in the Calendar a more satisfactory +saint still in St. Goran or "Curran," known also as St. Mochicaroen _de +Nona_, from a change he made in the recitation of that part of the Holy +Office. + +The drive from Youghal to Lismore along the Blackwater, begins, +continues, and ends in beauty. In the summer a steamer makes the trip by +the river, and it must be as charming in its way as the ascent of the +Dart from Dartmouth to Totness, or of the Eance from Dinard to St. +Suliac. My jarvey was rather a taciturn fellow, but by no means +insensible to the charms of his native region. About the Ponsonby estate +and its troubles he said very little, but that little was not entirely +in keeping with what I had heard at Youghal. "It was an old place, and +there was no grand house on it. But the landlord was a kind-man." +"Father Keller was a good man too. It was a great pity the people +couldn't be on their farms; and there was land that was taken on the +hills. It was a great pity. The people came from all parts to see the +Blackwater and Lismore; and there was money going." "Yes, he would be +glad to see it all quiet again. Ah yes! that was a most beautiful place +there just running out into the Blackwater. It was a gentleman owned it; +he lived there a good deal, and he fished. Ah! there's no such river in +the whole world for salmon as the Blackwater; indeed, there is not! +Everything was better when he was a lad. There was more money going, and +less talking. Father Keller was a very good man; but he was a new man, +and came to Youghal from Queenstown." + +We passed on our way the ruins of Dromaneen Castle, the birthplace of +the lively old Countess of Desmond, who lies buried at Youghal. Here, +too, according to a local tradition, she met her death, having climbed +too high into a famous cherry-tree at Affane, near Dromaneen, planted +there by Sir Walter Raleigh, who first introduced this fruit, as well as +the tobacco plant and the potato, into Ireland. At Cappoquin, which +stands beautifully on the river, I should have been glad to halt for the +night, in order to visit the Trappist Monastery there, an offshoot of La +Meilleraye, planted, I think, by some monks from Santa Susanna, of +Lulworth, after Charles X. took refuge in the secluded and beautiful +home of the Welds. The schools of this monastery have been a benediction +to all this part of Ireland for more than half a century. + +Lismore has nothing now to show of its ancient importance save its +castle and its cathedral, both of them absolutely modern! A hundred +years ago the castle was simply a ruin overhanging the river. It then +belonged to the fifth Duke of Devonshire, who had inherited it from his +mother, the only child and heiress of the friend of Pope, Richard, +fourth Earl of Cork, and third Earl of Burlington. It had come into the +hands of the Boyles by purchase from Sir Walter Ealeigh, to whom +Elizabeth had granted it, with all its appendages and appurtenances. The +fifth Duke of Devonshire, who was the husband of Coleridge's "lady +nursed in pomp and pleasure," did little or nothing, I believe, to +restore the vanished glories of Lismore; and the castle, as it now +exists, is the creation of his son, the artistic bachelor Duke, to whom +England owes the Crystal Palace and all the other outcomes of Sir Joseph +Paxton's industry and enterprise. His kinsman and successor, the present +Duke, used to visit Lismore regularly down to the time of the atrocious +murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish, and many of the beautiful walks and +groves which make the place lovely are due, I believe, to his taste and +his appreciation of the natural charms of Lismore. I dismissed my car at +the "Devonshire Arms," an admirable little hotel near the river, and +having ordered my dinner there, walked down to the castle, almost within +the grounds of which the hotel stands. It is impossible to imagine a +more picturesque site for a great inland mansion. The views up and down +the Blackwater from the drawing-room windows are simply the perfection +of river landscape. The grounds are beautifully laid out, one secluded +garden-walk, in particular, taking you back to the inimitable Italian +garden-walks of the seventeenth century. In the vestibule is the sword +of state of the Corporation of Youghal, a carved wooden cradle for which +still stands in the church at that place, and over the great gateway are +the arms of the great Earl of Cork, but these are almost the only +outward and visible signs of the historic past about the castle. Seen +from the graceful stone bridge which spans the river, its grey towers +and turrets quite excuse the youthful enthusiasm with which the Duke of +Connaught, who made a visit here when he was Prince Arthur, is said to +have written to his mother, that Lismore was "a beautiful place, very +like Windsor Castle, only much finer." + +Lismore Cathedral was almost entirely rebuilt by the second Earl of Cork +three or four years after the Restoration, and has a handsome marble +spire, but there is little in it to recall the Catholic times in which +Lismore was a city of churches and a centre of Irish devotion. + +The hostess of the "Devonshire Arms" gave me some excellent salmon, +fresh from the river, and a very good dinner. She bewailed the evil days +on which she has fallen, and the loss to Lismore of all that the Castle +used to mean to the people. Lady Edward Cavendish had spent a short time +here some little time ago, she said, and the people were delighted to +have her come there. "It would be a great thing for the country if all +the uproar and quarrelling could be put an end to. It did nobody any +good, least of all the poor people." + +From Lismore I came back by the railway through Fermoy. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +PORTUMNA, GALWAY, _Feb. 28._--I left Cork by an early train to-day, and +passing through the counties of Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Queen's, and +King's, reached this place after dark on a car from Parsonstown. The day +was delightfully cool and bright. I had the carriage to myself almost +all the way, and gave up all the time I could snatch from the constantly +varying and often very beautiful scenery to reading a curious pamphlet +which I picked up in Dublin entitled _Pour I'Irlande._ It purports to +have been written by a "Canadian priest" living at Lurgan in Ireland, +and to be a reply to M. de Mandat Grancey's volume, _Chez Paddy._ It is +adorned with a frontispiece representing a monster of the Cerberus type +on a monument, with three heads and three collars labelled respectively +"Flattery," "Famine," and "Coercion." On the pedestal is the +inscription--"1800 to 1887. Erected by the grateful Irish to the English +Government." The text is in keeping with the frontispiece. In a passage +devoted to the "atrocious evictions" of Glenbehy in 1887, the agent of +the property is represented as "setting fire with petroleum" to the +houses of two helpless men, and turning out "eighteen human beings into +the highway in the depth of winter." Not a word is said of the agent's +flat denial of these charges, nor a word of the advice given to the +agent by Sir Redvers Buller that the mortgagee ought to level the +cottages occupied by trespassers, nor a word about Father Quilter's +letter to Colonel Turner, branding his flock as "poor slaves" of the +League, and turning them over to "Mr. Roe or any other agent" to do as +he liked with them, since they could not, or would not, keep their +plighted faith given through their own priest. + +This sort of ostrich fury is common enough among the regular drumbeaters +of the Irish agitation. But it is not creditable to a "Canadian priest." +Still less creditable is his direct arraignment of M. de Mandat +Grancey's good faith and veracity upon the strength of what he describes +as M. de Mandat Grancey's amplification and distortion of a story told +by himself. This was a tale of a priest called out to confess one of his +parishioners. The penitent accused himself of killing one man, and +trying to kill several others. The priest, as the dreadful tale went on, +made a tally on his sleeve, with chalk, of the crimes recited. "Good +heavens! my son," he cried at last, "what had all these men done to you +that you tried to send them all into eternity? Who were they?" + +"Oh, Father, they were all bailiffs or tax-collectors!" + +"You idiot!" exclaimed the confessor, angrily rubbing at his sleeve, +"why didn't ye tell me that before instead of letting me spoil my best +cassock?" + +As I happened to have the book of M. de Mandat Grancey in my +despatch-box, I compared it with the attack made upon it. The results +were edifying. In the first place, M. de Mandat Grancey does not +indicate the Canadian priest as his authority. He says that he heard the +story, apparently at a dinner-table in France, from a _curé Irlandais_, +who was endeavouring to impress upon his hearers "the sympathy of the +clergy with the Land League." The "Canadian priest" now comes forward +and makes it a count in his indictment against M. de Mandat Grancey that +he is described as an "Irish curate," when he is in fact neither an +Irishman nor a curate. What was more natural than that an ecclesiastic, +claiming to live in Ireland, and telling stories in France about the +sympathy of the Irish clergy with the Land League, should be taken by +one of his auditors to be an Irish _curé_, particularly as the French +_curé_ is, I believe, the equivalent of the Irish "parish priest"? + +In the next place, the "Canadian priest" declares that the story "is as +old as the Round Towers of Ireland," and that M. de Mandat Grancey +represents him as making himself the hero of the tale. As a matter of +fact, M. de Mandat Grancey does nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he +expressly says that the _curé Irlandais_, who told the story, gave it to +his hearers as having occurred not to himself at all, but "to one of his +colleagues." Furthermore he is at the pains to add (_Chez Paddy_, p. 43) +that the story, which was not to the taste of some of the French +ecclesiastics who heard it, was related "as a simple pleasantry." +"But," he adds, and this I suspect is the sting which has so exasperated +the "Canadian priest," "he gave us to understand at the same time that +this pleasantry struck the keynote of the state of mind of many Irish +priests, and, he said, that he was himself the President of the League +in his district." + +In connection with Colonel Turner's statements as to the conduct of +Father White at Milltown Malbay, and with the accounts given me of the +conduct of Father Sheehan at Lixnaw, this side-light upon the relations +of a certain class of the Irish clergy with the most violent henchmen of +the League, is certainly noteworthy. I happen to have had some +correspondence with friends of mine in Paris, who are friends also of M. +de Mandat Grarncey, about his visit to Ireland before he made it, and I +am quite certain that he went there, to put the case mildly, with no +prejudices in favour of the English Government or against the +Nationalists. Perhaps the extreme bitterness shown in the pamphlet of +the "Canadian priest" may have been born of his disgust at finding that +the sympathy of French Catholics with Catholic Ireland draws the line at +priests who regard the assassination of "bailiffs and tax-collectors" as +a pardonable, if not positively amusing, excess of patriotic zeal. + +It was late when I reached Parsonstown, known of old in Irish story as +Birr, from St. Brendan's Abbey of Biorra, and now a clean prosperous +place, carefully looked after by the chief landlord of the region, the +Earl of Rosse, who, while he inherits the astronomical tastes and the +mathematical ability of his father, is not so absorbed in star-gazing as +to be indifferent to his terrestrial duties and obligations. I have +heard nothing but good of him, and of his management of his estates, +from men of the most diverse political views. But I think it more +important to get a look at the Clanricarde property, about which I have +heard little but evil from anybody. The strongest point I have heard +made in favour of the owner is, that he is habitually described by that +dumb organ of a down-trodden people, _United Ireland_, as "the most vile +Clanricarde." + +I found a good car at the railway station, and set off at once for +Portumna. Parsonstown was called by Sir William Petty, in his _Survey of +Ireland_, the _umbilicus Hiberniæ_. It is the centre of Ireland, as a +point near Newnham Paddox is of England, and the famous or infamous "Bog +of Allan" stretches hence to Athlone. Our way fortunately took us +westward. A light railway was laid down some years ago from Parsonstown +to Portumna, but it did not pay, and it has now been abandoned. + +"What has become of the road?" I asked my jarvey. + +"Oh! they just take up the rails when they like, the people do." + +"And what do they do with them?" + +"Is it what they do with them? Oh; they make fences of them for the +beasts." + +He was a dry, shrewd old fellow, not very amiably disposed, I was sorry +to find, towards my own country. + +"Ah! it's America, sorr, that's been the ruin of us entirely." + +"Pray, how is that?" + +"It's the storms they send; and then the grain; and now they tell me +it's the American beasts that's spoiling the market altogether for +Ireland." + +"Is that what your member tells you?" + +"The member, sorr? which member?" + +"The member of Parliament for your district, I mean. What is his name?" + +"His name? Well, I'm not sure; and I don't know that I know the man at +all. But I believe his name is Mulloy." + +"Does he live in Portumna?" + +"Oh no, not at all. I don't know at all where he lives, but I believe +it's in Tullamore. But what would he know about America? Sure, any one +can see it's the storms and the grain that is the death of us in +Ireland." + +"But I thought it was the landlords and the rents?" + +"Oh, that's in Woodford and Loughrea; not here at all. There'll be no +good till we get a war." + +"Get a war? with whom? What do you want a war for?" + +"Ah! it was the good time when we had the Crimean war--with the wheat +all about Portumna. I'll show you the great store there was built. It's +no use now. But we'll have a war. My son, he's a soldier now. He went +out to America. But he didn't like it." + +"Why not?" I asked. + +"Oh, he didn't like it. He could get no work, but to be a porter, and it +was too hard. So he came back in three months' time, and then he 'listed +for a soldier. He's over in England now. He likes it very well. He's +getting very good pay. They pay the soldiers well. There's a troop of +Hussars here now. They bring a power of money to the place." + +"What do they do with the wheat lands now?" + +"Oh, they're for sheep; they do very well. Were you ever in Australia, +sorr?" pointing to a place we were passing. "There was a man came here +from Australia with a pot of money, and he bought that place; but he +thought he was a bigger man than he was, and now he's found himself out. +I think he would have done as well to stay in Australia where he was." + +In quite a different vein he spoke of the landlord of another large +seat, and of the way in which the people, some of them, had +misbehaved--breaking open the graves of the family on the place, "and +tossing the coffins and the bones about, and all for what?" + +The view as we crossed the long and very fine bridge over the Shannon +after dusk was very striking. It was not too dark to make out the course +of the broad gleaming river, and the lights of the town made it seem +larger, I daresay, than it really is. As we drove up the main street I +told my jarvey to take me to the Castle. + +"To the Castle, is it?" he replied, looking around at me with an +astonished air. + +"Yes," I said, "I am going to see Mr. Tener, the agent, who lives there, +doesn't he?" + +"Oh, the new agent? Oh yes; I believe he's a very good man." + +"You don't expect to be 'boycotted' for going to the Castle, do you?" + +"And why should I be? But I haven't been inside of the Castle gates for +twenty years. And--here they are!" he cried out suddenly, pulling up his +horse just in time to avoid driving him up against a pair of iron gates +inhospitably closed. It was by this time pitch dark. Not a light could +we see within the enclosure. But presently a couple of shadowy forms +appeared behind the iron gates; the iron gates creaked on their hinges, +a masculine voice bade us drive in, and a policeman with a lantern +advanced from a thicket of trees. All this had a fine martial and +adventurous aspect, and my jarvey seemed to enjoy it as much as I. + +We got directions from the friendly policeman as to the roads and the +landmarks, and after once nearly running into a clump of trees found +ourselves at last in an open courtyard, where men appeared and took +charge of the car, the horse, and my luggage. We were in a quadrangle of +the out-buildings attached to the old residence of the Clanricardes, +which had escaped the fire of 1826. The late Marquis for a long time +hesitated whether to reconstruct the castle on the old site (the walls +are still standing), or to build an entirely new house on another site. +He finally chose the latter alternative, chiefly, I am told, under the +advice of his oldest son, the late Lord Dunkellin, one of the most +charming and deservedly popular men of his time. He was a great friend +and admirer of Father Burke, whom he used to claim as a Galway cousin, +and with whom I met him in Rome not long before his death in the summer +of 1867. His brother, the present Marquis, I have never met, but Mr. +Tener, his present agent here, who passed some time in America several +years ago, learning from him that I wished to see this place, very +courteously wrote to me asking me to make his house my headquarters. I +found my way through queer passages to a cheery little hall where my +host met me, and taking me into a pleasant little parlour, enlivened by +flowers, and a merrily blazing fire, presented me to Mrs. Tener. + +Mr. Tener is an Ulster man from the County Cavan. He went with his wife +on their bridal trip to America, and what he there saw of the peremptory +fashion in which the authorities deal with conspiracies to resist the +law seems not unnaturally to have made him a little impatient of the +dilatory, not to say dawdling, processes of the law in his own country. +He gave me a very interesting account after dinner this evening of the +situation in which he found affairs on this property, an account very +different from those which I have seen in print. He is himself the owner +of a small landed property in Cavan, and he has had a good deal of +experience as an agent for other properties. "I have a very simple +rule," he said to me, "in dealing with Irish tenants, and that is +neither to do an injustice nor to submit to one." It was only, he said, +after convincing himself that the Clanricarde tenants had no legitimate +ground of complaint against the management of the estate, not removable +upon a fair and candid discussion of all the issues involved between +them and himself, that he consented to take charge of the property. That +to do this was to run a certain personal risk, in the present state of +the country, he was quite aware. + +But he takes this part of the contract very coolly, telling me that the +only real danger, he thinks, is incurred when he makes a journey of +which he has to send a notice by telegraph--a remark which recalled to +me the curious advice given me in Dublin to seal my letters, as a +protection against "the Nationalist clerks in the post-offices." The +park of Portumua Castle, which is very extensive, is patrolled by armed +policemen, and whenever Mr. Tener drives out he is followed by a police +car carrying two armed men. + +"Against whom are all these precautions necessary?" I asked. "Against +the evicted tenants, or against the local agents of the League?" + +"Not at all against the tenants," he replied, "as you can satisfy +yourself by talking with them. The trouble comes not from the tenants at +all, nor from the people here at Portumna, but from mischievous and +dangerous persons at Loughrea and Woodford. Woodford, mind you, not +being Lord Clanricarde's place at all, though all the country has been +roused about the cruel Clanricarde and his wicked Woodford evictions. +Woodford was simply the headquarters of the agitation against Lord +Clanricarde and my predecessor, Mr. Joyce, and it has got the name of +the 'cockpit of Ireland,' because it was there that Mr. Dillon, in +October 1886, opened the 'war against the landlords' with the 'Plan of +Campaign.' It is an odd circumstance, by the way, worth noting, that +when these apostles of Irish agitation went to Lord Clanricarde's +property nearer the city of Gralway, and tried to stir the people up, +they failed dismally, because the people there could understand no +English, and the Irish agitators could speak no Irish! Nobody has ever +had the face to pretend that the Clanricarde estates were 'rack-rented.' +There have been many personal attacks made upon Mr. Joyce and upon Lord +Clanricarde, and Mr. Joyce has brought that well-known action against +the Marquis for libel, and all this answers with the general public as +an argument to show that the tenants on the Clanricarde property must +have had great grievances, and must have been cruelly ground down and +unable to pay their way. I will introduce you, if you will allow me, to +the Catholic Bishop here, and to the resident Protestant clergyman, and +to the manager of the bank, and they can help you to form your own +judgment as to the state of the tenants. You will find that whatever +quarrels they may have had with their landlord or his agent, they are +now, and always have been, quite able to pay their rents, and I need not +tell you that it is no longer in the power of a landlord or an agent to +say what these rents shall be."[10] + +"Mr. Dillon in that speech of his at Woodford (I have it here as +published in _United Ireland_), you will see, openly advised, or rather +ordered, the tenants here to club their rents, or, in plain English, the +money due to their landlord, with the deliberate intent to confiscate to +their own use, or, in their own jargon, 'grab,' the money of any one of +their number who, after going into this dishonest combination, might +find it working badly and wish to get out of it. Here is his own +language:"-- + +I took the speech as reported in the _United Ireland_ of October 23rd, +1886, and therein found Mr. Dillon, M.P., using these words:--"If you +mean to fight really, you must put the money aside for two +reasons--first of all because you want the means to support the men who +are hit first; and, secondly, because you want to prohibit traitors +going behind your back. There is no way to deal with a traitor except to +get his money under lock and key, and if you find that he pays his rent, +and betrays the organisation, what will you do with him? I will tell you +what to do with him. _Close upon his money, and use it for the +organisation_. I have always opposed outrages. _This is a legal plan, +and it is ten times more effective_." + +Not a word here as to the morality of the proceeding thus recommended; +but almost in the same breath in which he bade his ignorant hearers +regard his plan as "legal," Mr. Dillon said to them, "_this must be done +privately, and you must not inform the public where the money is +placed_!" + +Why not, if the plan was "legal"? Mr. Dillon, I believe, is not a +lawyer, but he can hardly have deluded himself into thinking his plan of +campaign "legal" in the face of the particular pains taken by his +leader, Mr. Parnell, to disclaim all participation in any such plans. A +year before Mr. Dillon made this curious speech, Mr. Parnell, I +remember, on the 11th of October 1885, speaking at Kildare, declared +that he had "in no case during the last few years advised any +combination among tenants against even rack-rents," and insisted that +any combination of the sort which might exist should be regarded as an +"isolated" combination, "confined to the tenants of individual estates, +who, of their own accord, without any incitement from us, on the +contrary, kept back by us, without any urging on our part, without any +advice on our part, but stung by necessity, and the terrible realities +of their position, may have formed such a combination among themselves +to secure such a reduction of rent as will enable them to live in their +own homes." From this language of Mr. Parnell in October 1885 to Mr. +Dillon's speech in October 1886, urging and advising the tenants to +organise, exact contributions from every member of the organisation, and +put these contributions under the control of third parties determined to +confiscate the money subscribed by any member who might not find the +organisation working to his advantage, is a rather long step! It covers +all the distance between a cunning defensive evasion of the law, and an +open aggressive violation of the law--not of the land only, but of +common honesty. One of two things is clear: either these combinations +are voluntary and "isolated," and intended, as Mr. Parnell asserts, to +secure such a reduction of rents as will enable the tenants, and each of +them, to live peacefully and comfortably at home, and in that case any +member of the combination who finds that he can attain his object better +by leaving it has an absolute right to do this, and to demand the return +of his money; or they are part of a system imposed upon the tenants by a +moral coercion inconsistent with the most elementary ideas of private +right and personal freedom. This makes the importance of Mr. Dillon's +speech, that by his denunciation of any member who wishes to withdraw +from this "voluntary" combination as a "traitor," and by his order to +"close upon the money" of any such member, "and use it for the +organisation," he brands the "organisation" as a subterranean despotism +of a very cheap and nasty kind. The Government which tolerates the +creation of such a Houndsditch tyranny as this within its dominions +richly deserves to be overthrown. As for the people who submit +themselves to it, I do not wonder that in his more lucid moments a +Catholic priest like Father Quilter feels himself moved to denounce them +as "poor slaves." Of course with a benevolent neutral like myself, the +question always recurs, Who trained them to submit to this sort of +thing? But I really am at a loss to see why a parcel of conspirators +should be encouraged in the nineteenth century to bully Irish farmers +out of their manhood and their money, because in the seventeenth century +it pleased the stupid rulers of England, as the great Duke of Ormond +indignantly said, to "put so general a discountenance upon the +improvement of Ireland, as if it were resolved that to keep it low is to +keep it safe." + +On going back to the little drawing-room after dinner we found Mrs. +Tener among her flowers, busy with some literary work. It is not a gay +life here, she admits, her nearest visiting acquaintance living some +seven or eight miles away--but she takes long walks with a couple of +stalwart dogs in her company, and has little fear of being molested. +"The tenants are in more danger," she thinks, "than the landlords or the +agents"--nor do I see any reason to doubt this, remembering the Connells +whom I saw at Edenvale, and the story of the "boycotted" Fitzmaurice +brutally murdered in the presence of his daughter at Lixnaw on the 31st +of January, as if by way of welcome to Lord Ripon and Mr. Morley on +their arrival at Dublin. + + +PORTUMNA, _Feb. 29th._--Early this morning two of the "evicted" tenants, +and an ex-bailiff of the property here, came by appointment to discuss +the situation with Mr. Tener. He asked me to attend the conference, and +upon learning that I was an American, they expressed their perfect +willingness that I should do so. The tenants were quiet, sturdy, +intelligent-looking men. I asked one of them if he objected to telling +me whether he thought the rent he had refused to pay excessive, or +whether he was simply unable to pay it. + +"I had the money, sir, to pay the rent," he replied, "and I wanted to +pay the rent--only I wouldn't be let." + +"Who wouldn't let you?" I asked. + +"The people that were in with the League." + +"Was your holding worth anything to you?" I asked. + +"It was indeed. Two or three years ago I could have sold my right for a +matter of three hundred pounds." + +"Yes!" interrupted the other tenant, "and a bit before that for six +hundred pounds." + +"Is it not worth three hundred pounds to you now?" + +"No," said Mr. Tener, "for he has lost it by refusing the settlement I +offered to make, and driving us into proceedings against him, and +allowing his six months' equity of redemption to lapse." + +"And sure, if we had it, no one would be let to buy it now, sir," said +the tenant. "But it's we that hope Mr. Tener here will let us come back +on the holdings--that is, if we'd be protected coming back." + +"Now, do you see," said Mr. Tener, "what it is you ask me to do? You ask +me to make you a present outright of the property you chose foolishly to +throw away, and to do this after you have put the estate to endless +trouble and expense; don't you think that is asking me to do a good +deal?" + +The tenants looked at one another, at Mr. Tener, and at me, and the +ex-bailiff smiled. + +"You must see this," said Mr. Tener, "but I am perfectly willing now to +say to you, in the presence of this gentleman, that in spite of all, I +am quite willing to do what you ask, and to let you come back into the +titles you have forfeited, for I would rather have you back on the +property than strangers--" + +"And, indeed, we're sure you would." + +"But understand, you must pay down a year's rent and the costs you have +put us to." + +"Ah! sure you wouldn't have us to pay the costs?" + +"But indeed I will," responded Mr. Tener; "you mustn't for a moment +suppose I will have any question about that. You brought all this +trouble on yourselves, and on us; and while I am ready and willing to +deal more than fairly, to deal liberally with you about the arrears--and +to give you time--the costs you must pay." + +"And what would they be, the costs?" queried one of the tenants +anxiously. + +"Oh, that I can't tell you, for I don't know," said Mr. Tener, "but they +shall not be anything beyond the strict necessary costs." + +"And if we come back would we be protected?" + +"Of course you will have protection. But why do you want protection? +Here you are, a couple of strong grown men, with men-folk of your +families. See here! why don't you go to such an one, and such an one," +naming other tenants; "you know them well. Go to them quietly and sound +them to see if they will come back on the same terms with you; form a +combination to be honest and to stand by your rights, and defy and break +up the other dishonest combination you go in fear of! Is it not a shame +for men like you to lie down and let those fellows walk over you, and +drive you out of your livelihood and your homes?" + +The tenants looked at each other, and at the rest of us. "I think," said +one of them at last, "I think ---- and ----," naming two men, "would come +with us. Of course," turning to Mr. Tener, "you wouldn't discover on us, +sir." + +"Discover on you! Certainly not," said Mr. Tener. "But why don't you +make up your minds to be men, and 'discover' on yourselves, and defy +these fellows?" + +"And the cattle, sir? would we get protection for the cattle? They'd be +murdered else entirely." + +"Of course," said Mr. Tener, "the police would endeavour to protect the +cattle." + +Then, turning to me, he said, "That is a very reasonable question. These +scoundrels, when they are afraid to tackle the men put under their ban, +go about at night, and mutilate and torture and kill the poor beasts. I +remember a case," he went on, "in Roscommon, where several head of +cattle mysteriously disappeared. They could be found nowhere. No trace +of them could be got. But long weeks after they vanished, some lads in a +field several miles away saw numbers of crows hovering over a particular +point. They went there, and there at the bottom of an abandoned +coal-shaft lay the shattered remains of these lost cattle. The poor +beasts had been driven blindfold over the fields and down into this pit, +where, with broken limbs, and maimed, they all miserably died of +hunger." + +"Yes," said one of the tenants, "and our cattle'd be driven into the +Shannon, and drownded, and washed away." + +"You must understand," interposed Mr. Tener "that when cattle are thus +maliciously destroyed the owners can recover nothing unless the remains +of the poor beasts are found and identified within three days." + +The disgust which I felt and expressed at these revelations seemed to +encourage the tenants. One of them said that before the evictions came +off certain of the National Leaguers visited him, and told him he must +resist the officers. "I consulted my sister," he said, "and she said, +'Don't you be such a fool as to be doing that; we'll all be ruined +entirely by those rascals and rogues of the League.' And I didn't +resist. But only the other day I went to a priest in the trouble we are +in, and what do you think he said to me? He said, 'Why didn't you do as +you were bid? then you would be helped,' and he would do nothing for us! +Would you think that right, sir, in your country?" + +"I should think in my country," I replied, "that a priest who behaved in +that way ought to be unfrocked." + +"Did you pay over all your rent into the hands of the trustees of the +League?" I asked of one of these tenants. + +"I paid over money to them, sir," he replied. + +"Yes," I said, "but did you pay over all the amount of the rent, or how +much of it?" + +"Oh! I paid as much as I thought they would think I ought to pay!" he +responded, with that sly twinkle of the peasant's eye one sees so often +in rural France. + +"Oh! I understand," I said, laughing. "But if you come to terms now with +Mr. Tener here, will you get that money back again?" + +"Divil a penny of it!" he replied, with much emphasis. + +Finally they got up together to take their leave, after a long whispered +conversation together. + +"And if we made it half the costs?" + +"No!" said Mr. Tener good-naturedly but firmly; "not a penny off the +costs." + +"Well, we'll see the men, sir, just quietly, and we'll let you know what +can be done"; and with that they wished us, most civilly, good-morning, +and went their way. + +We walked in the park for some time, and a wild, beautiful park it is, +not the less beautiful for being given up, as it is, very much to the +Dryads to deal with it as they list. It is as unlike a trim English park +as possible; but it contains many very fine trees, and grand open sweeps +of landscape. In a tangled copse are the ruins of an ancient Franciscan +abbey, in one corner of which lie buried together, under a monumental +mound of brickwork, the late Marquis of Clanricarde and his wife. The +walls of the Castle, burned in 1826, are still standing, and so perfect +that the building might easily enough have been restored. A keen-eyed, +wiry old household servant, still here, told us the house was burned in +the afternoon of January 6, 1826. There were three women-servants in the +house--"Anna and Mary Meehan, and Mrs. Underwood, the housekeeper"; and +they were getting the Castle ready for his Lordship's arrival, so little +of an "absentee" was the late Lord Clanricarde, then only one year +married to the daughter of George Canning. The fires were laid on in the +upper rooms, and Mrs. Underwood went off upon an errand. When she came +back all was in flames. + +The deer-park is full of deer, now become quite wild. We heard them +crashing through the undergrowth on all sides. There must be capital +fishing, too, in the lake, and in the river of which it is an expansion. + +While they were getting the cars ready for a drive, came up another son +of the soil. This man I found had only a small interest in the battle on +the Clanricarde estates, holding his homestead of another landlord. But +he admitted he had gone in a manner into the "combination," in that he +had paid a certain, not very large, sum, which he named, to the +trustees, "just for peace and quiet." He considered it gone, past +recovery; and he named another man with a small holding, but doing a +considerable business in other ways, who had "paid £10 or more just not +to be bothered." Upon this Mr. Tener told me of a shopkeeper at Loughrea +in a large way of business, a man with seven or eight thousand pounds, +who, finding his goods about to be seized after the agent had turned a +sharp strategic corner on him, and unexpectedly got into his shop, was +about to own up to his defeat, and make a fair settlement, when the +secretary of the League appeared, and requested a private talk with him. +In a quarter of an hour the tradesman reappeared looking rather sullen +and crestfallen. He said he couldn't pay, and must let the goods be +taken. So taken they were, and duly put up under the process and sold. +He bought them in himself, paying all the costs. + +Presently two cars appeared. We got upon one, Mr. Tener driving a +spirited nag, and taking on the seat with him a loaded carbine-rifle. +Two armed policeman followed us upon the other, keeping at such a +distance as would enable them easily to cover any one approaching from +either side of the roadway. It quite took me back to the delightful days +of 1866 in Mexico, when we used to ride out to picnics at the Rincon at +Orizaba armed to the teeth, and ready at a moment's notice to throw the +four-in-hand mule-wagons into a hollow square, and prepare to receive +cavalry. As it seems to be perfectly well understood that the regular +price paid for shooting a designated person (they call it "knocking" him +in these parts) is the ridiculously small sum of four pounds, and that +two persons who divide this sum are always detailed by the organisers of +outrage to "knock" an objectionable individual, it is obvious that too +much care can hardly be taken by prudent people in coming and going +through such a country. Fortunately for the people most directly +concerned to avoid these unpleasantnesses a systematic leakage seems to +exist in the machinery of mischief. The places where the oaths of this +local "Mafia" are administered, for instance, are well known. A roadside +near a chapel is frequently selected--and this for two or three obvious +reasons. The sanctity of the spot may be supposed to impress the +neophyte; and if the police or any other undesirable people should +suddenly come upon the officiating adepts and the expectant acolyte, a +group on the roadside is not necessarily a criminal gathering--though I +do not see why, in such times, our old American college definition of a +"group" as a gathering of "three or more persons" should not be adopted +by the authorities, and held to make such a gathering liable to +dispersion by the police, as our "groups" used to be subject to +proctorial punishment. Mills are another favourite resort of the +law-breakers. Mr. Tener tells me that a large mill between this place +and Loughrea is a great centre of trouble, not wholly to the +disadvantage of the astute miller, who finds it not only brings grist to +his mill, but takes away grist from another mill belonging to a couple +of worthy ladies, and once quite prosperous. It is no uncommon thing, it +appears, for the same person to be put through the ceremony of swearing +fidelity more than once, and at more than one place, with the not +unnatural result, however, of diminishing the pressure of the oath upon +his conscience or his fears, and also of alienating his affections, as +he is expected to pay down two shillings on each occasion. Once a +member, he contributes a penny a week to the general fund. It seems also +to be an open secret who the disbursing treasurers are of this fund, +from whom the members, detailed to do the dark bidding of the +"organisation," receive their wage. "A stout gentleman with sandy hair +and wearing glasses" was the description given to me of one such +functionary. When so much is known of the methods and the men, why is it +that so many crimes are committed with virtual impunity? For two +sufficient reasons. Witnesses cannot be got to testify, or trusted, if +they do testify, to speak the truth; and it is idle to expect juries of +the vicinage in nine cases out of ten will do their duty. Political +cowardice having made it impossible to transfer the venue in cases of +Irish crime, as to which all the authorities were agreed about these +points, from Ireland into Great Britain, it is found that even to +transfer the trial of "Moonlighters" from Clare or Kerry into Wicklow, +for example, has a most instructive effect, opening the eyes of the +people of Wicklow to a state of things in their own island, of which +happily for themselves they were previously as ignorant as the people of +Surrey or of Middlesex. This explains the indignant wish expressed to me +some time ago in a letter from a priest in another part of Ireland, that +"martial law" might be proclaimed in Clare and Kerry to "stamp out the +Moonlighters, those pests of society." That in Clare and Kerry priests +should be found not only disposed to wink at and condone the proceedings +of these "pests of society," but openly to co-operate with them under +the pretext of a "national" movement, is surely a thing equally +intolerable by the Church and dangerous to the cause of Irish autonomy. +This I am glad to say is strongly felt, and has been on more than one +occasion very vigorously stated by one of the most eminent and estimable +of Irish ecclesiastics, the Bishop-Coadjutor of Clonfert, upon whom I +called this morning. Dr. Healy, who is a senator of the Royal University +of Ireland, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, presides over that +part of the diocese of Clonfort which includes Portumna and Woodford. He +lives in a handsome and commodious, but simple and unpretentious house, +set in ample grounds well-planted, and commanding a wide view of a most +agreeable country. We were ushered into a well-furnished study, and the +bishop came in at once to greet us with the most cordial courtesy. He is +a frank, dignified, unaffected man, and in his becoming episcopal +purple, with the gold chain and cross, looked every inch a bishop. I was +particularly anxious to see Dr. Healy, as a type of the high-minded and +courageous ecclesiastics who, in Ireland, have resolutely refused to +subordinate their duties and their authority as ecclesiastics to the +convenience and the policy of an organisation absolutely controlled by +Mr. Parnell, who not only is not a Catholic, but who is an open ally and +associate of the bitterest enemies of the Catholic Church in France and +in England. Protestant historians affirm that Pope Innocent was one of +the financial backers of William of Orange when he set sail from Holland +to crush the Catholic faith in Great Britain and Ireland, and drive the +Catholic house of Stuart into exile. But it was reserved for the +nineteenth century to witness the strange spectacle of men, calling +themselves Irishmen and Catholics, deliberately slandering and assailing +in concord with a non-Catholic political leader the consecrated pastors +and masters of the Church in Ireland. When in order to explain what they +themselves concede to be "the absence from the popular ranks of the best +of the priesthood," Nationalist writers find it necessary to denounce +Cardinal Cullen and Cardinal M'Cabe as "anti-Irish "; and to sneer at +men like Dr. Healy as "Castle Bishops," it is impossible not to be +reminded of the three "patriotic" tailors of Tooley Street. + +Bishop Healy looks upon the systematic development of a substantial +peasant proprietary throughout Ireland as the economic hope of the +country, and he regards therefore the actual "campaigning" of the +self-styled "Nationalists" as essentially anti-national, inasmuch as its +methods are demoralising the people of Ireland, and destroying that +respect for law and for private rights which lies at the foundation of +civil order and of property. In his opinion, "Home Rule," to the people +in general, means simply ownership of the land which they are to live +on, and to live by. How that ownership shall be brought about peaceably, +fairly, and without wrong or outrage to any man or class of men is a +problem of politics to be worked out by politicians, and by public men. +That men, calling themselves Catholics, should be led on to attempt to +bring this or any other object about by immoral and criminal means is +quite another matter, and a matter falling within the domain, not of the +State primarily, but of the Church. + +As to this, Bishop Healy, who was in Rome not very long ago, and who, +while in Rome, had more than one audience of His Holiness by command, +has no doubt whatever that the Vatican will insist upon the abandonment +and repudiation by Catholics of boycotting, and "plans of campaign," and +all such devices of evil. Nor has the Bishop any doubt that whenever the +Holy Father speaks the priests and the people of Ireland will obey. + +To say this, of course, is only to say that the Bishop believes the +priests of Ireland to be honest priests, and the people of Ireland to be +good Catholics. + +If he is mistaken in this it will be a doleful thing, not for the +Church, but for the Irish priests, and for the Irish people. No Irishman +who witnessed the magnificent display made at Rome this year, of the +scope and power of the Catholic Church, can labour under any delusions +on that point. + +From the Bishop's residence we went to call upon the Protestant rector +of Portumna, Mr. Crawford. The handsome Anglican church stands within an +angle of the park, and the parsonage is a very substantial mansion. Mr. +Crawford, the present rector, who is a man of substance, holds a fine +farm of the Clanricarde estate, at a peppercorn rent, and he is tenant +also of another holding at £118 a year, as to which he has brought the +agent into Court, with the object, as he avers, of setting an example to +the other tenants, and inducing them, like himself, to fight under the +law instead of against it. He is not, however, in arrears, and in that +respect sets a better example, I am sorry to say, than the Catholic +priest, Father Coen, who made himself so conspicuous here on the +occasion of the much bewritten Woodford evictions. The case of Father +Coen is most instructive, and most unpleasant. He occupies an excellent +house on a holding of twenty-three acres of good laud, with a garden--in +short, a handsome country residence, which was provided by the late Lord +Clanricarde, expressly for the accommodation of whoever might be the +Catholic priest in that part of his estate. For all this the rent is +fixed at the absurd and nominal sum of two guineas a year! Yet Father +Coen, who now enjoys the mansion, and has a substantial income from the +parish, is actually two years and a half in arrears with this rent! This +fact Mr. Tener mentioned to the Bishop, whose countenance naturally +darkened. "What am I to do in such a case, my lord?" asked Mr. Tener. +"Do?" said the Bishop, "do your plain duty, and proceed against him +according to law." But suppose he were proceeded against and evicted, as +in America he certainly would be, who can doubt that he would instantly +be paraded, before the world, on both sides of the Atlantic as a +"martyr," suffering for the holy cause of an oppressed and down-trodden +people, at the hands of a "most vile" Marquis, and of a remorse-less and +blood-thirsty agent?[11] Mr. Crawford, a tall, fine-looking man, talked +very fully and freely about the situation here. He came to Portumna +about eight years ago; one of his reasons for accepting the position +here offered him being that he wished to take over a piece of property +near Woodford from his brother-in-law, who found he could not manage it. +As a practical farmer, and a straightforward capable man of business, he +has gradually acquired the general confidence of the tenants here. That +they are, as a rule, quite able to pay the rents which they have been +"coerced" into refusing to pay, he fully believes. He told me of cases +in which Catholic tenants of Lord Clanricarde came to him when the +agitation began about the Plan of Campaign, and begged him privately to +take the money for their rents, and hold it for them till the time +should come for a settlement. + +The reason for this was that they did not wish to be obliged to give +over the money into the "Trust" created by the Campaigners, and wanted +it to be safely put beyond the reach of these obliging "friends." One +very shrewd tenant came to him and begged him to buy some beasts, in +order that he might pay his rent out of the proceeds. The man owed £15 +to the Clanricarde property. Mr. Crawford did not particularly want to +buy his beasts, but eventually agreed to do so, and gave him £50 for +them. The man went off with the money, but he never paid the rent! Mr. +Crawford discovering this called him to account, and refused to grant +him some further favour which he asked. The result is that the +"distressed tenant" now cuts Mr. Crawford when he meets him, and is the +prosperous owner of quite a small herd of cattle. + +Mr. Crawford's opinion of the mischief done by the methods and spirit of +the National League in this place is quite in accord with the opinions +of the Bishop-Coadjutor. Power without responsibility, which made the +Cæesars madmen, easily turns the heads of village tyrants, and there is +something positively grotesque in the excesses of this subterranean +"Home Rule." Mr. Crawford told me of a case here, in which a tenant +farmer, whom he named, came to him in great wrath, not unmingled with +terror, to say that the League had ordered him, on pain of being +boycotted, to give up his holding to the heirs of a woman from whom, +twenty years ago, he had bought, for £100 in cash, the tenant-right of +her deceased husband! There was no question of refunding the £100. He +was merely to consider himself a "land-grabber," and evict himself for +the benefit of those heirs who had never done a stroke of work on the +property for twenty years, and who had no shadow of a legal or moral +claim on it, except that the oldest of them was an active member of the +local League! + +Nor was this unique. + +In another case, the children of a tenant, who died forty years ago, +came forward and called upon the League to boycott an old man who had +been in possession of the holding during nearly half a century. In a +third case, a tenant-farmer, some ten years ago, had in his employ as +herd a man who fell ill and died. He put into the vacant place an +honest, capable young fellow, who still holds it, and has faithfully and +efficiently served him. Only the other day this tenant-farmer was warned +by the League to expect trouble, unless he dismissed this herd, and put +into his place the son, now grown to man's estate, of the herd who died +ten years ago! + +It is amusing, if not instructive, to find the hereditary principle, +just now threatened in its application to the British Senate, cropping +out afresh as an element in the regeneration of Irish agriculture and +the land tenure of Ireland! + +On our way back to the Castle we called on Mr. Place, the manager of the +Portumna Branch of the Hibernian Bank, who lives in the town. He was +amusing himself, after the labour of the day in the bank, with some +amateur work as a carpenter, but received us very cordially. He said +there was no doubt that the deposits in the bank had increased +considerably since the adoption of the Plan of Campaign on the +Clanricarde property. Money was paid into the bank continually by +persons who wished the fact of their payments kept secret; and he knew +of more than one case in which tenants, whose stock had been seized by +the agent for the rents, were much delighted at the seizure, since it +had paid off their rents, and so enabled them to retain their holdings +and keep out of the grasp of the League, even though to do this they had +undergone a forced sale and been muleted in costs. + +It was his opinion that the tenants on the Clanricarde property, who are +not in arrears, would gladly accept a twenty-five per cent. reduction, +and do very well by accepting it. But they are constrained into a +hostile attitude by the tenants who are in arrears, some of them for +several years (as, for example, Father Coen), although I find, to my +astonishment, that in Ireland the landlord has no power to distrain for +more than a twelvemonth's rent, no matter how far back the arrears may +run. + +Mr. Place seems to think it would be well to put all the creditors of +the tenants on one footing with the landlords. The shopkeepers and other +creditors, he thinks, in that event would see many things in quite a new +light. + +What is called the new Castle of Portumna is a large and handsome +building of the Mansard type, standing on an eminence in the park, at +some distance from the original seat. The building was finished not long +before the death of his father, the late Marquis. It has never been +occupied, save by a large force of police quartered in it not very long +ago by Mr. Tener in readiness for an expedition against the Castle of +Cloondadauv, to the scene of which he promises to drive me to-morrow on +my way back to Dublin. It is thoroughly well built, and might easily be +made a most delightful residence. The views which it commands of the +Shannon are magnificent, and there are many fine trees about it. + +The old man who has charge of it is a typical Galway retainer of the old +school. The "boys," he says, once tried to "boycott" him because he was +the pound-master; but he showed fight, and they let him alone. He +pointed out to me from the top of the house, in the distance, the +residences of Colonel Hickie, and of the young Lord Avonmore, who lately +succeeded on the death of his brother in the recent Egyptian expedition. +The place is now shut up, and the owners live in France. + +We visited too the Portumna Union before driving home. The buildings of +this Union are extensive for the place, and well built, and it seems to +be well-ordered and neatly kept--thanks, in no small degree, I suspect, +to the influence of the Sisters who have charge of the hospital, but +whose benign spirit shows itself not only in the flower-garden which +they have called into being, but in many details of the administration +beyond their special control. + +The contrast was very striking between the atmosphere of this +unpretending refuge of the helpless and that of certain of the +"laicised" hospitals of France, which I not long ago visited, from which +the devoted nuns have been expelled to make way for hired nurses. I made +a remark to this effect to the clerk of the Union, Mr. Lavan, whom we +found in his office. + +"Oh, yes," he said, "I have no doubt of that. We owe more than I can say +to the Sisters, but I don't know how long we should have them here if +the local guardians could have their way." + +In explanation of this, he went on to tell me that these local +guardians, who are elected, are hostile to the whole administration, +because of its relations with the Local Government Board at Dublin, +which controls their generous tendency to expend the money of the +ratepayers. By way of expressing their feelings, therefore, they have +been trying to cut down, not only the salary of the clerk, but that of +the Catholic chaplain of the Union; and as there is a good deal of +irreligious feeling among the agitators here, it is his impression that +they would make things disagreeable for the Sisters also were they in +any way to get the management into their own hands. That there cannot be +much real distress in this neighbourhood appears from two facts. There +are now but 130 inmates of this Union, out of a population of 12,900, +and the outlay for out-of-door relief averages between eight and ten +pounds a week. + +In the quiet, neat chapel two or three of the inmates were kneeling at +prayers; and others whom we saw in the kitchen and about the offices had +nothing of the "workhouse" look which is so painful in the ordinary +inmates of an English or American almshouse. + +"The trouble with the place," said Mr. Lavan, "is that they like it too +well. It takes an eviction almost to get them out of it." + +We sat down with Mr. Lavan in his office, and had an interesting talk +with him. + +He is the agent of Mr. Mathews, who lives between Woodford and Portumna. +Mr. Mathews is a resident landlord, he says, who has constantly employed +and has lived on friendly terms with his tenants, numbering twenty, who +hold now under judicial rents. On these judicial rents two years ago +they were allowed a further reduction of 15 per cent. Last year they +were allowed 20 per cent. This year he offered them a reduction of 25 +per cent., which they rejected, demanding 35 per cent. + +This demand Mr. Lavan considers to be unreasonable in the extreme, and +he attributes it to the influence of the National Leaguers here, whose +representatives among the local guardians constantly vote away the money +of the ratepayers in "relief to evicted tenants who have ample means and +can in no respect be called destitute." In his opinion the effect of the +Nationalist agitation here has been to upset all ideas of right and +wrong in the minds of the people where any question arises between +tenants and landlords. He told a story, confirmed by Mr. Tener, of a +bailiff, whom he named, on the Clanricarde property here, who was +compelled two years ago to resign his place in order to prevent the +"boycotting" of his mother who keeps a shop on the farm. He was +familiar, too, with the details of a story told me by one of the +Clanricarde tenants, a farmer near Loughrea who holds a farm at £90 a +year. This man was forced to subscribe to the Plan of Campaign. The +agent proceeded against him for the rent due, and he incurred costs of +£10. His sheep and crop were then seized. + +He begged the local leaders to "permit" him to pay his rent, as he was +able to do it _without drawing out the funds in their hands_! They +refused, and so compelled him to allow his property to be publicly sold, +and to incur further costs of £10. "His farm lies so near the town that +he did not dare to risk the vengeance of the local ruffians." + +Mr. Lavan gave me the name also of another man who is now actually under +a "boycott," because he has ventured to resist the modest demand made by +the son of a man whose tenant-right he bought, paying him £100 for it, +twenty years ago, that he shall give up his farm without being +reimbursed for his outlay made to purchase it! In other words, after +twenty years' peaceable possession of a piece of property, bought and +paid for, this tenant-farmer is treated as a "land-grabber" by the +self-installed "Nationalist" government of Ireland, because he will not +submit to be robbed both of the money which he paid for his +tenant-right, and of his tenant-right! + +Obviously in such a case as this the "war against landlordism" is simply +a war against property and against private rights. Priests of the +Catholic Church who not only countenance but aid and abet such +proceedings certainly go even beyond Dr. M'Glynn. Dr. M'Glynn, so far as +I know, stops at the confiscation of all private property in rent by the +State for the State. But here is simply a confiscation of the property +of A for the benefit of B, such as might happen if B, being armed and +meeting A unarmed in a forest, should confiscate the watch and chain of +A, bought by A of B's lamented but unthrifty father twenty years before! + +After dinner to-night Mr. Tener gave me some interesting and edifying +accounts of his experience in other parts of Ireland. + +Some time ago, before the Plan of Campaign was adopted, one of his +tenants in Cavan came to him with a doleful story of the bad times and +the low prices, and wound up by saying he could pay no more than half a +year's rent. + +"Now his rent had been reduced under the Land Act," said Mr, Tener, "and +I had voluntarily thrown off a lot of arrears, so I looked at him +quietly and said, 'Mickey, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You have +been very well treated, and you can perfectly well pay your rent. Your +wife would be ashamed of you if she knew you were trying to get out of +it.'" + +"Ah no, your honour!" he briskly replied; "indade she would approve it. +If you won't discover on me, I'll tell you the truth. It was the wife +herself, she's a great schollard, and reads the papers, that tould me +not to pay you more than half the rent--for she says there's a new Act +coming to wipe it all out. Will you take the half-year?" + +"No, I will not. Don't be afraid of your wife, but pay what you owe, +like a man. You've got the money there in your pocket." + +This was a good shot. Mickey couldn't resist it, and his countenance +broke into a broad smile. + +"Ah no! I've got it in two pockets. Begorra, it was the wife herself +made up the money in two parcels, and she put one into each pocket, to +be sure--and I wasn't to give your honour but one, if you would take it. +But there's the money, and I daresay it's all for the best." + +On another occasion, when he was collecting the rents of a property in +the county of Longford, one tenant came forward as the spokesman of the +rest, admitted that the rents had been accepted fairly after a reduction +under the Land Act, expressed the general wish of the tenants to meet +their obligations, and wound up by asking a further abatement, "the +times were so bad, and the money couldn't be got, it couldn't indeed!" + +Mr. Tener listened patiently--to listen patiently is the most essential +quality of an agent in Ireland--and finally said:-- + +"Very well, if you haven't got the money to pay in full, pay +three-quarters of it, and I'll give you time for the rest." + +"Thank your honour!" said Pat, "and that'll be thirty pounds--and here +it is in one pound notes, and hard enough to get they are, these times!" + +So Mr. Tener took the money, counted the notes twice over, and then, +writing out a receipt, handed it to the tenant. + +"All right, Pat, there's your receipt for thirty-nine pounds, and I'm +glad to see ten-pound notes going about the country in these hard +times!" + +By mistake the "distressful" orator had put one ten-pound note into his +parcel! He took his receipt, and went off without a word. But the +combination to get an "abatement" broke down then and there, and the +other tenants came forward and put down their money. + +These incidents occurred to Mr. Tener himself. Not less amusing and +instructive was a similar mistake on a larger scale made by an +over-crafty tenant in dealing with one of Mr. Tener's friends a few +years ago in the county of Leitrim. This tenant, whom we will call +Denis, was the fugleman also of a combination. He was a cattle dealer as +well as a farmer, and having spent a couple of hours in idly eloquent +attempts to bring about a general abatement of the rents, he lost his +patience. + +"Ah, well, your honour!" he said, "I can't stay here all day talking +like these men, I must go to the fair at Boyle. Will you take a +deposit-receipt of the bank for ten pounds and give me the pound change? +that'll just be the nine pounds for the half-year's rent. But all the +same, yer honour, those men are all farmers, and it's not out of the +farm at all I made the ten pounds, it's out of the dealing!" + +"But you couldn't deal without a farm, Denis, for the stock," said the +agent, as he glanced at the receipt. He hastily turned it over, and went +on, "Just indorse the receipt, and I'll consider your proposition." + +The receipt was indorsed, and at once taken off by the agent's clerk to +the bank to bring back pound-notes for it, while the agent quietly +proceeded to fill out the regular form of receipt for a full year's +rent, eighteen pounds. Denis noted what he supposed of course to be the +agent's blunder, but like an astute person held his peace. The clerk +came back with the notes. Denis took up his receipt, and the agent +quietly began handing him note after note across the table. + +"But, your honour!" exclaimed Denis, "what on earth are ye giving me all +this money for?" + +"It's your change," said the agent, quite imperturbably. "You gave me a +bank receipt for one hundred pounds. I have given you a receipt for your +full year's rent, and here are eighty-two pounds in notes, and with it +eighteen shillings in silver--that's five per cent. reduction. I would +have made it ten per cent., only you were so very sharp, first about not +having the money, and then about the full receipt!" + +In an instant all eyes were fastened upon Denis. Ichabod! the glory had +departed. The chorus went up from his disenchanted followers:-- + +"Ah, glory be to God, you were not bright enough for the agent, Denis!" + +And so that day the agent made a very full and handsome collection--and +there was a slight reduction in the deposit-accounts of the local bank! + +In the evening Mr. Tener gave me the details of some cases of direct +intimidation with the names of the tenants concerned. One man, whose +farm he visited, told him he had paid his rent not long before to the +previous agent. "Well," said Mr. Tener, "show me your receipt!" On this +the tenant said that he dare not keep the receipt about him, nor even in +the house, lest it should be demanded by the emissaries of the League, +who went round to keep the tenants up to the "Plan of Campaign," and +that it was hidden in his stable. And he went out to the stable and +brought it in. + +This, he had reason to believe, was not an uncommon case.[12] The same +man, wishing to take a grass farm which the people hoped the agent would +consent to have "cut up" was asked to give two names on a +promissory-note to pay the rent. He demurred to this, and after a parley +said, "Would a certificate do?" upon which he pulled out an old +tobacco-box, and carefully unfolded from it a bank certificate of +deposit for a hundred pounds sterling! This tenant held eleven Irish, or +more than seventeen English, acres, and his yearly rent was £11, 16s. +6d. + +The people before this agitation began were generally quiet, thrifty, +and industrious. They were great sheep-raisers. An old law of the Irish +Parliament had exempted sheep, but not cattle or crops, from distraint, +with an eye to encouraging the woollen interest in Ireland. + +As to the sale of tenant-right in Ireland, he told me a curious story. +One woman, a widow, whom he named, owed two year' rent on a holding in +Ulster at £4 a year. She was abundantly able to pay, but for her own +reasons preferred to be evicted, and, finally, by an understanding with +him, offered her tenant-right for sale. A man who had made money in +iron-mines in the County of Durham was a bidder, and finally offered +£240 for the holding. It was knocked down to him. He then saw the agent, +who told him he had paid too much. The woman was then appealed to, and +she admitted that the agent was right. But it was shown that others had +offered £200, and the woman finally agreed to take, and received, that +amount in gold, being fifty years' purchase! + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +DUBLIN, _Thursday, March 1._--This has been a crowded day. I left +Portumna very early on a car with Mr. Tener, intending to visit the +scene of his latest collision with the "National" government of Ireland, +on my way to Loughrea. It was a bright spring morning, more like April +in Italy than like March in America, and the country is full of natural +beauty. We made our first halt at the derelict house of Martin Kenny, +one of the "victims" of the famous "Woodford evictions," so called, as I +have said, because Woodford is the nearest town.[13] The eviction here +took place October 21st, 1887. The house has been dismantled by the +neighbours since that time, each man carrying off a door, or a shutter, +or whatever best suited him. One of the constables who followed us as +Mr. Tener's body-guard had been present at the eviction. He came into +the house with us, and very graphically described the performance. The +house was still full of heavy stones taken into it, partly to block the +entrances, and partly as ammunition; and trunks of trees used as +_chevaux defrise_ still protruded through the door and the window. These +trees had been cut down by the garrison in the woodlands here and there +all over the property. I asked if the law in Ireland punished +depredations of this sort, and was informed that trees planted by +tenants, if registered by them within a certain time, are the property +of the tenants. This would astonish our landlords in America, where the +tenant who sticks so much as a sunflower into his garden-patch makes a +present of it to his landlord.[14] + +I asked if the place made a long defence. Mr. Tener and the constable +both laughed, and the former told me that when the storming party +arrived shortly after daybreak, they found the house garrisoned only by +some small boys, who had been left there to keep watch. The men were +fast asleep at some other place. The small boys ran away as fast as +possible to give the alarm, but the police went in, and in a jiffey +pulled to pieces the elaborate defences prepared to repel them. Father +Coen, the constable said, got to Kenny's house an hour after it was all +over, with a mob of people howling and groaning. But the work had been +done, and other work also at the Castle of Cloondadauv, to which we next +drove. + +This place takes its truly awe-inspiring name from a ruined Norman tower +standing on a picturesque promontory of no great height, which juts out +into the lovely lake here made by the Shannon. At no great expense this +tower might be so restored as to make an ideal fishing-box. It now +simply adorns the holding formerly occupied by Mr. John Stanislaus +Burke, a former tenant of Lord Clanricarde. The story of its capture on +the 17th of September is worth telling. + +Some days before the evictions were to come off, a meeting was held at +Woodford or Loughrea, at which one of the speakers, the patriotic Dr. +Tully, rather incautiously and exultingly told his hearers that the +defence in 1886 of the tenant's house known as "Fort Saunders" had been +a grand and gallant affair indeed, but that next time "the exterminators +would have to storm a castle"! + +This put Mr. Tener at once on the alert, and as Mr. Burke of Cloondadauv +was set down for eviction, it didn't require much cogitation to fix upon +the fortress destined to be "stormed." So he set about the campaign. The +County Inspector of the constabulary, who had made a secret +reconnaissance, reported that he found the place too strong to be taken +if defended, except "by artillery." So it was determined to take it by +surprise. + +When the previous evictions were made, the agent and the public forces +had marched from Portumna by the highway to Woodford, so that, of +course, their advent was announced by the scouts and sentinels of the +League from hill to hill long before they reached the scene of action, +and abundant time was given to the agitators for organising a +"reception." Mr. Tener profited by the experience of his predecessors. +He contrived to get his force of constabulary through the town of +Portumna without attracting any popular attention. And as early rising +is not a popular virtue here, he resolved to steal a march on the +defenders of Cloondadauv. + +He had brought up certain large boats to Portumna, and put them on the +lake. Rousing his men before dawn, he soon had them all embarked, and on +their way swiftly and silently by the river and the lake to Cloondadauv. +They reached the promontory by daybreak, and as soon as the hour of +legal action had arrived they were landed, and surrounded the "castle." +The ancient portal was found to be blocked with heavy stones and trunks +of trees, nor did any adit appear to be available, till a young +gentleman who had accompanied the party as a volunteer, discovered in +one wall of the tower, at some little height from the ground, the vent +of one of those conduits not infrequently found running down through the +walls of old castles, which were used sometimes as waste-ways for +rubbish from above, and sometimes to receive water-pipes from below. +Looking up into this vent, he saw a rope hanging free within it. Upon +this he hauled resolutely, and finding it firmly attached above, came to +the conclusion that it must have been fixed there by the garrison as a +means of access to the interior. + +Like an adventurous young tar, he bade his comrades stand by, and nimbly +"swarmed" up the rope, without thought or care of what might await him +at the top. In a few moments his shouts from above proclaimed the +capture of the stronghold. It was absolutely deserted; the garrison, +confident that no attack would that day be made, had gone off to the +nearest village. The interior of the castle was found filled with +munitions of war, in the shape of huge beams and piles of stones +laboriously carried up the winding stairs, and heaped on all the +landing-places in readiness for use. On the flat roof of the castle was +established a sort of furnace for heating water or oil, to be poured +down upon the besiegers; and crowbars lay there in readiness to loosen +out and dislodge the battlements, and topple them over upon the +assailants. + +The officers soon made their way all over the building, and thence +proceeded to the residence of Mr. Burke near by, a large and very +commodious house. All the formalities were gone through with, a +detachment of policemen was put in charge, and the rest of the forces +set out on their return to Portumna, before the organised "defenders" of +Cloondadauv, hastily called out of their comfortable beds or from their +breakfast-tables had realised the situation, and got the populace into +motion. A mass meeting was held in the neighbourhood, and many speeches +were made. But the castle and the farm-house and the holding all remain +in the hands of a cool, quiet, determined-looking young Ulsterman, who +tells me that he is getting on very well, and feels quite able with his +police-guard to protect himself. "Once in a while," he said, "they come +here from Loughrea with English Parliament-men, and stand outside of the +gate, and call me 'Clanricarde's dog,' and make like speeches at me; but +I don't mind them, and they see it, and go away again." + +Of Mr. Burke, the evicted tenant here, Mr. Crawford, the Protestant +clergyman at Portumna, told me that he was abundantly able to pay his +rent. The whole debt for which Burke was evicted was £115; and Mr. +Crawford said he had himself offered Burke £300 for the holding. Burke +would have gladly taken this, but "the League wouldn't let him." When +his right was put up for sale at Galway for £5, he did not dare to buy +it in, and he is now living with his wife and children on the League +funds. Lord Clanricarde's agent offered to take him back and restore his +right if he would pay what he owed; but he dared not accept. This farm +comprises over one hundred and ten English acres, which Burke held at a +rent--fixed by the Land Court--of £77, the valuation for taxes being +£83. + +To call the eviction of such a tenant in such circumstances from such a +holding a "sentence of death," is making ducks and drakes of the English +language. Mr. Crawford's opinion, founded upon a thorough personal +knowledge of the region, is that there is no exceptional distress in +this part of Ireland, and that over-renting has nothing to do with such +distress as does exist here. The case of a man named Egan, one of the +"victims" of the Woodford evictions of 1886, certainly bears out this +view of the matter. Egan, who was a tenant, not at all of Lord +Clanricarde, but of a certain Mrs. Lewis, had occupied for twenty years +a holding of about sixteen Irish acres, or more than twenty English +acres. This he held at a yearly rental of £8, 15s., being 9d. over the +valuation. + +In August 1886 he was evicted for refusing to pay one year's rent then +due. At that time the crops standing on the land were valued by him at +£60, 13s. He also owned six beasts. In other words, this man, when he +was called upon to pay a debt of £8, 15s. had in his own possession, +beside the valuable tenant-right of his holding, more than a hundred +pounds sterling of merchantable assets. He refused to pay, and he was +evicted. + +This was in August 1886. But such are the ideas now current in Ireland +as to the relations of landlord and tenant, that immediately after his +eviction Egan sent his daughter to gather some cabbages off the farm as +if nothing had happened. The Emergency men in charge actually objected, +and sent the damsel away. Thereupon Egan, on the 6th of September, +served a legal notice on Mrs. Lewis, his landlady, requiring her either +to let him take all the crops on the farm, or to pay him their value, +estimated by him, as I have said, at £60, 13s. Two days after this, on +the 8th of September, more than a hundred men came to the place by night +and removed the greater portion of the crops. Not wishing a return of +these visitors, Mrs. Lewis, on the 16th of September, sent word to Egan +to come and take away what was left of the crops; one of the horses +employed in the nocturnal harvest of September 8th having been seized by +the police and identified as belonging to Egan. Egan did not respond; +but in July 1887 he brought an action against his landlady to recover +£100 sterling for her "detention of his goods," and her "conversion of +the same to her own use "! + +The case was heard by the Recorder at Kilmainham, and the facts which I +have briefly recited were established by the evidence. The daughter of +this extraordinary "victim" Egan appeared as a witness, so "fashionably +dressed" as to attract a remark on the subject from the defendant's +counsel. To this she replied that "her brothers in America sent her +money." + +"If your brothers in America sent you money for such purposes," not +unnaturally observed the Recorder, "why did they allow your father to +sacrifice crops worth £60 for the non-payment of £8, 15s.?" + +"They were tired of that," said the young lady airily; "the land wasn't +worth the rent!" + +That is to say, a farm which yielded a crop of £60, and pastured several +head of cattle, was not worth £8, 15s. a year. Certainly it was not +worth £8, 15s. a year if the tenant under the operation of the existing +or the impending laws of Great Britain in Ireland could get, or hope to +get it for the half of that rent, or for no rent at all. + +But this being thus, on what grounds are the rest of mankind invited to +regard this excellent man as a "victim" worthy of sympathy and of +material aid? How had he come to be in arrears of a year in August 1886? +The proceedings at Kilmainham tell us this. + +In November 1885 he had demanded, with other tenants of Mrs. Lewis, a +reduction of 50 per cent. This would have given him his holding at a +rental of £4, 7s. 6d. Mrs. Lewis refused the concession, and a month +afterwards an attempt was made to blow up her son's house with dynamite. +Between that time and August 1886, all the efforts of her son, who was +also her agent, to collect her dues by seizing beasts, were defeated by +the driving away of the cattle, so that no remedy but an eviction was +left to her. I take it for granted that Mrs. Lewis had a family to +maintain, and debts of one sort and another to pay, as well as Mr. +Egan--but I observe this material difference between her position and +his during the whole of this period of "strained relations" between +herself and her tenant, that whereas she lay completely out of the +enjoyment of the rent due her, being the interest on her capital, +represented in her title to the land, Mr. Egan remained in the complete +enjoyment and use of the land. Clearly the tenant was in a better +position than the landlord, and as we are dealing not with the history +of Ireland in the past, but with the condition of Ireland at present, it +appears to me to be quite beside the purpose to ask my sympathies for +Mr. Egan on the ground that a century or half a century ago the +ancestors of Mr. Egan may have been at the mercy of the ancestors of +Mrs. Lewis. However that may have been, Mr. Egan seems to me now to have +had legally much the advantage of Mrs. Lewis. Not only this. Both +legally and materially Mr. Egan, the tenant-farmer at Woodford, seems to +me to have had much the advantage of thousands of his countrymen living +and earning their livelihood by their daily labour in such a typical +American commonwealth, for example, as Massachusetts. I have here with +me the Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics of +Massachusetts. From this I learn that in 1876 the average yearly wages +earned by workmen in Massachusetts were $482.72, or in round numbers +something over £96. Out of this amount the Massachusetts workman had to +feed, clothe, and house himself, and those dependent on him. + +His outlay for rent alone was on the average $109.07, or in round +numbers rather less than £22, making 22-1/2 per cent, of his earnings. + +How was it with Mr. Egan? Out of his labour on his holding he got +merchantable crops worth £60 sterling, or in round numbers $300, besides +producing in the shape of vegetables and dairy stuff, pigs and poultry, +certainly a very large proportion of the food necessary for his +household, and raising and fattening beasts, worth at a low estimate £20 +or $100 more. And while thus engaged, his outlay for rent, which +included not only the house in which he lived, but the land out of which +he got the returns of his labour expended upon it, was £8, 15s., or +considerably less than one-half the outlay of the Massachusetts workman +upon the rent of nothing more than a roof to shelter himself and his +family. Furthermore, the money thus paid out by the Massachusetts +workman for rent was simply a tribute paid for accommodation had and +enjoyed, while out of every pound sterling paid as rent by the Irish +tenant there reverted to his credit, so long as he continued to fulfil +his legal obligations, a certain proportion, calculable, valuable, and +saleable, in the form of his tenant-right. + +I am not surprised to learn that the Recorder dismissed the suit brought +by Mr. Egan, and gave costs against him. But the mere fact that in such +circumstances it was possible for Egan to bring such a suit, and get a +hearing for it, makes it quite clear that Americans of a sympathetic +turn of mind can very easily find much more meritorious objects of +sympathy than the Irish tenant-farmers of Galway without crossing the +Atlantic in quest of them. + +From Cloondadauv to Loughrea we had a long but very interesting drive, +passing on the way, and at no great distance from each other, Father +Coen's neat, prosperous-looking presbytery of Ballinakill, and the shop +and house of a local boat-builder named Tully, who is pleasantly known +in the neighbourhood as "Dr. Tully," by reason of his recommendation of +a very particular sort of "pills for landlords." The presbytery is now +occupied by Father Coen, who finds it becoming his position as the moral +teacher and guide of his people to be in arrears of two and a half years +with the rent of his holding, and who is said to have entertained Mr. +Blunt and other sympathising statesmen very handsomely on their visit to +Loughrea and Woodford,[15] "Dr." Tully being one of the guests invited +to meet them.[16] Not far from this presbytery, Mr. Tener showed me the +scene of one of the most cowardly murders which have disgraced this +region. Of Loughrea, the objective of our drive this morning, Sir George +Trevelyan, I am told, during his brief rule in Ireland, found it +necessary to say that murder had there become an institution. Woodford, +previously a dull and law-abiding spot, was illuminated by a lurid light +of modern progress about three years ago, upon the transfer thither in +the summer of 1885 of a priest from Loughrea, familiarly known as "the +firebrand priest." + +In November of that year, as I have already related, Mr. Egan and other +tenants of Mrs. Lewis of Woodford made their demand for a 50 per cent. +reduction of their rents, upon the refusal of which an attempt was made +with dynamite on the 18th December to blow up the house of Mrs. Lewis's +son and agent. All the bailiffs in the region round about were warned to +give up serving processes, and many of them were cowed into doing so. +One man, however, was not cowed. This was a gallant Irish soldier, +discharged with honour after the Crimean war, and known in the country +as "Balaklava," because he was one of the "noble six hundred," who there +rode "into the jaws of death, into the valley of hell." His name was +Finlay, and he was a Catholic. At a meeting in Woodford, Father Coen +(the priest now in arrears), it is said, looked significantly at Finlay, +and said, "no process-server will be got to serve processes for Sir +Henry Burke of Marble Hill." The words and the look were thrown away on +the veteran who had faced the roar and the crash of the Russian guns, +and later on, in December 1885, Finlay did his duty, and served the +processes given to him. From that moment he and his wife were +"boycotted." His own kinsfolk dared not speak to him. His house was +attacked by night. He was a doomed man. On the 3d March 1886, about 2 +o'clock P.M., he left his house--which Mr. Tener pointed out to me--to +cut fuel in a wood belonging to Sir Henry Burke, at no great distance. +Twice he made the journey between his house and the wood. The third time +he went and returned no more. His wife growing uneasy at his prolonged +absence went out to look for him. She found his body riddled with +bullets lying lifeless in the highway. The police who went into Woodford +with the tale report the people as laughing and jeering at the agony of +the widowed woman. She was with them, and, maddened by the savage +conduct of these wretched creatures, she knelt down over-against the +house of Father Egan, and called down the curse of God upon him. + +On the next day things were worse. No one could be found to supply a +coffin for the murdered man.[17] When the police called upon the priests +to exert their influence and enforce some semblance at least of +Christian and Catholic decency upon the people confided to their charge, +the priests not only refused to do their duty, but floutingly referred +the police to Lady Mary Burke. "He did her work," they said, "let her +send a hearse now to bury him." The lady thus insolently spoken of is +one of the best of the Catholic women of Ireland. At her summons Father +Burke, a few years only before his death, I remember, made a long winter +journey, though in very bad health, from Dublin to Marble Hill to soothe +the last hours and attend the death-bed of her husband. + +No one who knew and loved him can wish him to have lived to hear from +her lips such a tale of the degradation of Catholic priests in his own +land of Galway. + +Mr. Tener pointed out to me, at another place on the road, near +Ballinagar, the deserted burying-ground in which, after much trouble, a +grave was found for the brave old soldier who had escaped the Russian +cannon-balls to be so foully done to death by felons of his own race. +There the last rites were performed by Father Callaghy, a priest who was +himself "boycotted" for resigning the presidency of the League in his +parish, and for the still graver offence of paying his rent. For weeks +it was necessary to guard the grave![18] + +From that day to this no one has been brought to justice for this crime, +committed in broad daylight, and within sight of the highway. Mr. Place, +whom I saw at Portumna, told me that he believed the police had no moral +doubt as to the murderer of Finlay, but that it was useless to think of +getting legal evidence to convict him. + +Mr. Tener tells me that when Mr. Wilfrid Blunt came to Woodford he went +with Father Egan, and accompanied by the police, to see the widow of +this murdered man, heard from her own lips the sickening story, and took +notes of it. But when Mr. Rowlands, M.P., an English "friend of Home +Rule," was examined the other day during the trial of Mr. Blunt, he was +obliged to confess that though he had visited Woodford more than once, +and conversed freely with Mr. Blunt about it, he had "never heard of the +murder of Finlay." + +Such an incident is apparently of little interest to politicians at +Westminster. Fortunately for Ireland, it is of a nature to command more +attention at the Vatican. + +Nature has sketched the scenery of this part of Ireland with a free, +bold hand. It is not so grand or so wild as the scenery of Western +Donegal, but it has both a wildness and a grandeur of its own. Sir Henry +Burke's seat of Marble Hill, as seen in the distance from the road, +stands superbly, high up on a lofty range of wooded hills, from which it +commands the country for miles. And no town I have seen in Ireland is +more picturesquely placed than Loughrea. It has an almost Italian aspect +as you approach it from Woodford. But no lake in Lombardy or Piedmont is +so peculiarly and exquisitely tinted as the lough on which it stands. +The delicate grey-green of the sparkling waters reminded me of the +singular and well-defined belts and stretches of chrysoprase upon which +you sometimes come in sailing through the dark azure of the Southern +Seas. I have never before seen precisely such a hue in any body of fresh +water. The lake is incorrectly described, Mr. Tener tells me, in the +guide-books, as being one of the many curious developments of the Lower +Shannon. It is fed by springs, but if, like the river-lakes, it was +formed by a solution of the limestone, this fact may have some chemical +relation with its very peculiar colour. It contains three picturesque +islands. No stream flows into it, but two streams issue from it. The +town of Loughrea is an ancient holding of the De Burghs, and the +estate-office of Lord Clanricarde is here in one wing of a great +barrack, standing, as I understood Mr. Tener to say, on the site of a +former fortress of the family. Lord Clanricarde's property here is put +down by Mr. Hussey de Burgh at 49,025 acres in County Galway, valued at +£19,634, and at 3576 acres in the county of the City of Galway, valued +at £1202. These, I believe, are statute acres, and in estimating the +relation of Irish rentals to Irish land this fact must be always +ascertained. Of the so-called "Woodford" property the present rental is +no more than £1900, payable by 260 tenants. The Poor-Law valuation for +taxes is £2400. There was a revision of the whole Galway property made +by the father of the present Marquis. Of the 260 Woodford holdings only +twelve were increased, in no case more than 6-1/4 per cent, over the +valuation. In 1882 six of these twelve tenants applied to the Land +Court. The rents were in no case restored to the figures before 1872, +but about 7 per cent. was taken off the increased rental. The assertion +repeatedly made that in 1882 rents were reduced by the Land Court 50 per +cent. on the Clanricarde estates, Mr. Tener tells me, is absolutely +false. In the first year of the Court no reduction went beyond 10 per +cent., and in later years, even under the panic of low prices, the +average has not exceeded 20 per cent. + +After making arrangements for a car to take me on to Woodlawn, where I +was to catch the Dublin train, I went out with Mr. Tener to look at the +town. + +My drive from Loughrea to Woodlawn was delightful. It took me over a +long stretch of the best hunting country of Galway, and my jarvey was a +Galwegian of the type dear to the heart of Lever. He was a "Nationalist" +after his fashion, but he did not hesitate to come rattling up through +the town to the Estate Office to take me up; and after we got fairly off +upon the highway, he spoke with more freedom than respect of all sorts +and conditions of men in and about Loughrea. + +"He's a sharp little man, that Mr. Tener," he said, "and he gave the +boys a most beautiful beating at Burke's place." + +This was said with genuine gusto, and not at all in the querulous spirit +of the delightful member of Parliament who complained at Westminster +with unconscious humour that the agent and the police in that case had +"dishonourably" stolen a march on the defenders of Cloondadauv! + +"But we've beaten them entirely," he said, with equal zest, "at Marble +Hill. Sir Henry has agreed to pay all the costs, and the living expenses +too, of the poor men that were put out.[19] I didn't ever think we'd get +that; but ye see the truth is," he added confidentially, "he must have +the money, Sir Henry--he's lying out of a deal, and then there's heavy +charges on the property. A fine property it is indeed!" + +"In fact," I said, "you put Sir Henry to the wall. Is that it?" + +"Well, it's like that. But we shan't get that out of Clanricarde, I'm +thinking. He's got a power o' money they tell me; and he's that of the +ould Burke blood, he won't mind fighting just as long as you like!" + +As we drove along, he pointed out to me several fine stretches of +hunting country, and, to my surprise, informed me that only the other +day "there was as fine a meet as ever you saw, more than a hundred +ladies and gentlemen--a grand sight it was." + +I asked if the hunting had not been "put down by the League." + +"Oh, now then, sir, who'd be wanting to put down the hunting here in +Galway?--and Ballinasloe? Were you ever at Ballinasloe? just the +grandest horse fair there is in the whole wide world!" + +I insisted that I had always heard a great deal about the opposition of +the League to hunting. + +"Oh, that'll be some little lawyer fellow," he replied, "like that +Healy, that can't sit on a horse! It's the grandest country in all the +world for riding over. What for wouldn't they ride over it?" + +"Were there many went out to America from about Loughrea?" + +"Oh, yes; they were always coming and going. But as many came back." + +"Why?" + +"Oh, they didn't like the country. It wasn't as good a country, was it, +as old Ireland? And they had to work too hard; and then some of them got +money, and they'd like to spend it in the old place." + +The country about Woodlawn is very picturesque and well wooded, and for +a long distance we followed the neatly-kept stone walls of the large and +handsome park of Lord Ashtown. + +"The most beautiful and biggest trees in all Ireland, sorr," said the +jarvey, "and it's a great pity, it is, ye can't stay to let me drive you +all over it, for the finest part of the park is just what you can't see +from this road. Oh, her ladyship would never object to any gentleman +driving about to see the beauties of the place. She is a very good +woman, is her ladyship. She gave work the last Christmas to thirty-two +men, and there wasn't another house in the country there that had work +for more than ten or twelve. A very good woman she is, indeed." + +"Yes, that is a very handsome church, it is indeed. It is the Protestant +Church. Lord Ashtown built it; he was a very good man too, and did a +power of good--building and making roads, and giving work to the people. +He was buried there in that Castle, over the station--Trench's Castle, +they called it." + +"All that lumber there by the station?" + +"That came out of the Ashtown woods. They were always cutting down the +trees; there was so many of them you might be cutting for years--you +would never get to the end of them." + +Woodlawn Station is one of the neatest and prettiest railway stations I +have seen in Ireland--more like a picturesque stone cottage, green and +gay with flowers, than like a station. The station-master's family of +cheery well-dressed lads and lasses went and came about the bright fire +in the waiting-room in a friendly unobtrusive fashion, chatting with the +policeman and the porter and the passengers. It was hard to believe +one's-self within an easy drive of the "cockpit of Ireland." + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + +BORRIS, _Friday, March 2d._--This is the land of the Kavanaghs, and a +lovely, picturesque, richly-wooded land it is. I left Dublin with Mr. +Gyles by an afternoon train; the weather almost like June. We ran from +the County of Dublin into Kildare, and from Kildare into Carlow, through +hills; rural scenery quite unlike anything I have hitherto seen in +Ireland. At Bagnalstown, a very pretty place, with a spire which takes +the eye, our host joined us, and came on with us to this still more +attractive spot. Borris has been the seat of his family for many +centuries. The MacMorroghs of Leinster, whom the Kavanaghs lineally +represent, dwelt here long before Dermot MacMorrogh, finding his +elective throne in Leinster too hot to hold him, went off into +Aquitaine, to get that famous "letter of marque" from Henry II. of +England, with the help of which this king without a kingdom induced +Richard de Clare, an earl without an earldom, to lend him a hand and +bring the Normans into Ireland. Many of this race lie buried in the +ruins of St. Mullen's Abbey, on the Barrow, in this county. But none of +them, I opine, ever did such credit to the name as its present +representative, Arthur MacMorrogh Kavanagh. + +I had some correspondence with Mr. Kavanagh several years ago, when he +sent me, through my correspondent for publication in New York, a very +striking statement of his views on the then condition of Irish +affairs--views since abundantly vindicated; and like most people who +have paid any attention to the recent history of Ireland, I knew how +wonderful an illustration his whole career has been of what philosophers +call the superiority of man to his accidents, and plain people the power +of the will. But I knew this only imperfectly. His servant brought him +up to the carriage and placed him in it. This it was impossible not to +see. But I had not talked with him for five minutes before it quite +passed out of my mind. Never was there such a justification of the +paradoxical title which Wilkinson gave to his once famous book, _The +Human Body, and its Connexion with Man_,--never such a living refutation +of the theory that it is the thumb which differentiates man from the +lower animals. Twenty times this evening I have been reminded of the +retort I heard made the other day at Cork by a lawyer, who knows Mr. +Kavanagh well, to a priest of "Nationalist" proclivities, who knows him +not at all. Some allusion having been made to Borris, the lawyer said to +me, "You will see at Borris the best and ablest Irishman alive." On this +the priest testily and tartly broke in, "Do you mean the man without +hands or feet?" + +"I mean," replied the lawyer, very quietly, "the man in whom all that +has gone in you or me to arms and legs has gone to heart and head!" + +Borris House stands high in the heart of an extensive and nobly wooded +park, and commands one of the finest landscapes I have seen in Ireland. +As we stood and gazed upon it from the hall door, the distant hills were +touched with a soft purple light such as transfigures the Apennines at +sunset. + +"You should see this view in June," said Mrs, Kavanagh, "we are all +brown and bare now." + +Brown and bare, like most other terms, are relative. To the eye of an +American this whole region now seems a sea of verdure, less clear and +fresh, I can easily suppose, than it may be in the early summer, but +verdure still. And one must get into the Adirondacks, or up among the +mountains of Western Virginia, to find on our Atlantic slope such trees +as I have this evening seen. One grand ilex near the house could hardly +be matched in the Villa d'Este. + +The house is stately and commodious, and more ancient than it appears to +be,--so many additions have been made to it at different times. It has +passed through more than one siege, and in the '98 Mr. Kavanagh tells me +the townspeople of Borris came up here and sought refuge. There are vast +caverns under the house and grounds, doubtless made by taking out from +the hill the stone used in building this house, and the fortresses which +stood here before it. In these all sorts of stores were kept, and many +of the people found shelter. + +I need not say that there is a banshee at Borris--though no living +witness, I believe, has heard its warning wail. But as we sat in the +beautiful library, and watched the dying light of day, a lady present +told us a tale more gruesome than many of those in which the "psychical" +inquirers delight. She was sitting, she said, in an upper room of an +ancient mansion here in Carlow, in which she lives, when, from the lawn +below, there came up to her a low, sad, shrill cry--the croon of a +woman, such as one hears from the mourners sitting among the turbaned +tombstones of the hill of Eyoub at Constantinople. It startled her, and +she held her breath and listened. She was alone, as she knew, in that +part of the house, and the hall door below was unlocked, as is the +fashion still in Ireland, despite all the troubles and turmoils. Again +the sound came, and this time nearer to the house. Could it be the +banshee? Again and again it rose and died away, each time nearer and +nearer. Then, as she listened, all her nerves strung to the keenest +sensibility, it came again, and now, beyond a doubt, within the hall +below. + +With an effort she rose from her chair, opened a door leading into a +corridor running aside from the main stairway, and fled at full speed +towards the wing in which she knew that she would find some of the +maids. As she sped along she heard the cry again and again far behind +her, as from a creature slowly and steadily mounting the grand stairway +towards the room which she had just quitted. + +She found the maids, who fell into a terrible fright when she told her +story and dared not budge. So the bells were violently rung till the +butler and footman appeared. To the first she said simply, "There is a +mad woman in this house--go and find her!" + +"The man looked at me," she said, "as I spoke with a curious expression +in his face as of one who thought, 'yes, there is a mad woman in the +house, and she is not far to seek!'" + +But the lady insisted, and the men finally went off on their quest. In +the course of half an hour it was rewarded. The mad woman--a dangerous +creature--who had wandered away from an asylum in the neighbourhood, was +found curled up and fast asleep in the lady's own bed! + +Fancy a delicate woman going alone into her bedroom at midnight to be +suddenly confronted by an apparition of that sort! + + +BORRIS, _March 3d._--After a stroll on the lawn this morning, the wide +and glorious prospect bathed in the light of a really soft spring day, I +had a conversation with Mr. Kavanagh about the Land Corporation, of +which he is the guiding spirit. This is a defensive organisation of the +Irish landlords against the Land League. When a landlord has been driven +into evicting his tenants, the next step, in the "war against +landlordism," is to prevent other tenants from taking the vacated lands +and cultivating them. This is accomplished by "boycotting" any man who +does this as a "land-grabber." + +The ultimate sanction of the "boycott" being "murder," derelict farms +increased under this system very rapidly; and the Eleventh Commandment +of the League, "Thou shalt not pay the rent which thy neighbour hath +refused to pay," was in a fair way to dethrone the Ten Commandments of +Sinai throughout Ireland, even before the formal adoption in 1886 of the +"Plan of Campaign." + +Mr. Gladstone would perhaps have hit the facts more accurately, if, +instead of calling an eviction in Ireland a "sentence of death," he had +called the taking of a tenancy a sentence of death. Mr. Hussey at Lixnaw +had two tenants, Edmond and James Fitzmaurice. Edmond Fitzmaurice was +"evicted" in May 1887; but he was taken into the house of a neighbour, +made very comfortable, and still lives. James Fitzmaurice took, for the +sake of the family, the land from which Edmond was evicted, and for this +he was denounced as a "land-grabber," boycotted, and finally shot dead +in the presence of his daughter. + +At a meeting in Dublin in the autumn of 1885, a parish priest, the Rev. +Mr. Cantwell, described it as a "cardinal virtue" that "no one should +take a farm from which another had been evicted," and called upon the +people who heard him to "pass any such man by unnoticed, and treat him +as an enemy in their midst." Public opinion and the law, if not the +authorities of his church would make short work of any priest who talked +in this fashion in New York. But in Ireland, and under the British +Government, it seems they order things differently. So it occurred one +day to the landlords thus assailed, as it did to the sea-lions of the +Cape of Good Hope when the French sailors attacked them, that they might +defend themselves. + +To this end the Land Corporation was instituted, with a considerable +capital at its back, and Mr. Kavanagh at its head. The "plan of +campaign" of this Corporation is to take over from the landlords +derelict lands and cultivate them, stocking them where that is +necessary. + +It is in this way that the derelict lands on the Ponsonby property at +Youghal are now worked. But Mr. Kavanagh tells me that the men employed +by the Corporation, of whom Father Keller spoke as a set of desperadoes +or "_enfants perdus_," are really a body of resolute and capable working +men farmers. Many, but by no means all of them, are Protestants and +Ulstermen; and that they are up to their work would seem to be shown by +the fact stated to me, that in no case so far have any of them been +deterred and driven off from the holdings confided to them. A great part +of the Luggacurren property of Lord Lansdowne is now worked by the +Corporation; and Mr. Kavanagh was kind enough to let me see the +accounts, which indicate a good business result for the current year on +that property. This is all very interesting. But what a picture it +presents of social demoralisation! And what is to be the end of it all? +Can a country be called civilised in which a farmer with a family to +maintain, having the capital and the experience necessary to manage +successfully a small farm, is absolutely forbidden, on pain of social +ostracism, and eventually on pain of death, by a conspiracy of his +neighbours, to take that farm of its lawful owner at what he considers +to be a fair rent? And how long can any civilisation of our complex +modern type endure in a country in which such a state of things +tolerated by the alleged Government of that country has to be met, and +more or less partially mitigated, by deviating to the cultivation of +farms rendered in this way derelict large amounts of capital which might +be, and ought to be, far more profitably employed in other ways? + +Mr. Kavanagh, after serving the office of High Sheriff thirty years ago, +first for Kilkenny, and then for Carlow, sat in Parliament for fourteen +years, from 1866 to 1880, as an Irish county member. He has a very large +property here in Carlow, and property also in Wexford, and in Kilkenny, +and was sworn into the Privy Council two years ago. If the personal +interests and the family traditions of any man alive can be said to be +rooted in the Irish soil, this is certainly true of his interests and +his traditions. How can the peace and prosperity of Ireland be served by +a state of things which condemns an Irishman of such ties and such +training to expend his energies and his ability in defending the +elementary right of Paddy O'Rourke to take stock and work a ten-acre +farm on terms that suit himself and his landlord? + +In the afternoon we took a delightful walk through the woods, Mr. +Kavanagh going with us on horseback. Every hill and clump of trees on +this large domain he knows, and he led us like a master of woodcraft +through all manner of leafy byways to the finest points of view. The +Barrow flows past Borris, making pictures at every turn, and the banks +on both sides are densely and beautifully wooded. We came in one place +upon a sawmill at work in the forest, and Mr. Kavanagh showed us with +pride the piles of excellent timber which he turns out here. But he took +a greater pride in a group, sacred from the axe, of really magnificent +Scotch firs, such as I had certainly not expected to find in Ireland. +Nearer the mansion are some remarkable Irish yews. The gardens are of +all sorts and very extensive, but we found the head-gardener bitterly +lamenting the destruction by a fire in one of the conservatories of more +than six thousand plants just prepared for setting out. + +There are many curious old books and papers here, and a student of early +Irish history might find matter to keep him well employed for a long +time in this region. It was from this region and the race which ruled +it, of which race Mr. Kavanagh is the actual representative, that the +initiative came of the first Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. Strongbow +made what, from the Anglo-Norman point of view, was a perfectly +legitimate bargain, with a dispossessed prince to help him to the +recovery of his rights on the understanding that these rights, when +recovered, should pass in succession to himself through the only +daughter of the prince, whom he proposed to marry. It does not appear +that Strongbow knew, or that Dermot MacMorrogh cared to tell him, how +utterly unlike the rights of an Anglo-Norman prince were those of the +elective life-tenant of an Irish principality. FitzStephen, the son by +her second marriage of Nesta, the Welsh royal mistress of Henry +Beauclerk, and his cousin, Maurice Fitzgerald, the leaders into Ireland +of the Geraldines, were no more clear in their minds about this than +Strongbow, and it is to the original muddle thus created that Professor +Richey doubtless rightly refers the worst and most troublesome +complications of the land question in Ireland. The distinction between +the King's lieges and the "mere Irish," for example, is unquestionably a +legal distinction, though it is continually and most mischievously used +as if it were a proof of the race-hatred borne by the Normans and Saxons +in Ireland from the first against the Celts. The O'Briens, the O'Neills, +the O'Mullaghlins, the O'Connors, and the M'Morroghs, "the five bloods," +as they are called, were certainly Celts, but whether in virtue of their +being, or claiming to be, the royal races respectively of Minister, of +Ulster, of Meath, of Connaught, and of Leinster, or from whatever other +reason, these races were "within the king's law," and were never "mere +Irish" from the first planting of the Anglo-Norman power in Ireland. The +case of a priest, Shan O'Kerry, "an Irish enemy of the king," presented +"contrary to the form of statute" to the vicarage of Lusk, in the reign +of Edward IV. (1465), illustrates this. An Act of Parliament was passed +to declare the aforesaid "Shan O'Kerry," or "John of Kevernon," to be +"English born, and of English nation," and that he might "hold and enjoy +the said benefice." + +There is a genealogy here of the M'Morroghs and Kavanaghs, most +gorgeously and elaborately gotten up many years ago for Mr. Kavanagh's +grandfather, which shows how soon the Norman and the native strains of +blood become commingled. When one remembers how much Norman blood must +have gone even into far-off Connaught when King John, in the early part +of the thirteenth century, coolly gave away that realm of the O'Connors +to the De Burgos, and how continually the English of the Pale fled from +the exactions inflicted upon them by their own people, and sought refuge +"among the savage and mere Irish," one cannot help thinking that the" +Race Question" has been "worked for at least all it is worth" by +philosophers bent on unravelling the 'snarl' of Irish affairs. If this +genealogy may be trusted, there was little to choose between the ages +which immediately preceded and the ages which followed the Anglo-Norman +invasion in the matter of respect for human life. Celtic chiefs and +Norman knights "died in their boots" as regularly as frontiersmen in +Texas. One personage is designated in the genealogy as "the murderer," +for the truly Hibernian reason, so far as appears, that he was himself +murdered while quite a youth, and before he had had a chance to murder +more than three or four of his immediate relatives. It was as if the son +of Geoffrey Plantagenet and the Lady Constance should be branded in +history as "Arthur, the Assassin." + + +BORRIS, _March 4th._--This is a staunch Protestant house, and Mr. +Kavanagh himself reads a Protestant service every morning. But there is +little or nothing apparently in this part of Ireland of the bitter +feeling about and against the Catholics which exists in the North. A +very lively and pleasant Catholic gentleman came in to-day informally +and joined the house party at luncheon. We all walked out over the +property afterwards, visiting quite a different region from that which +we saw yesterday--different but equally beautiful and striking, and this +Catholic gentleman cited several cases which had fallen within his own +knowledge of priests who begin to feel their moral control of the people +slipping away from them through the operation of the "Plan of Campaign." +I told him what I had heard in regard to one such priest from my +ecclesiastical friend in Cork. "It does not surprise me at all," he +said, "and, indeed, I not very long ago read precisely such another +letter from a priest in a somewhat similar position. I read it with pain +and shame as a Catholic," he continued, "for it was simply a complete +admission that the priest, although entirely convinced that his +parishioners were making most unfair demands upon their landlord to whom +the letter was addressed, felt himself entirely powerless to bring them +to a sense of their misconduct." "Had this priest given in his adhesion +to the Plan of Campaign?" I asked. "Yes," was the reply, "and it was +this fact which had broken his hold on the people when he tried to bring +them to abandon their attitude under the Plan. His letter was really +nothing more nor less than an appeal to the landlord, and that landlord +a Protestant, to help him to get out of the hole into which he had put +himself." + +Of the tenants and their relation to the village despots who administer +the Plan of Campaign, this gentleman had many stories also to tell of +the same tenor with all that I have hitherto heard on this subject. +Everywhere it is the same thing. The well-to-do and well-disposed +tenants are coerced by the thriftless and shiftless. "I have the +agencies of several properties," he said, "and in some of the best parts +of Ireland. I have had little or no trouble on any of them, for I have +one uniform method. I treat every tenant as if he were the only man I +had to deal with, study his personal ways and character, humour him, and +get him on my side against himself. You can always do this with an +Irishman if you will take the trouble to do it. Within the past years I +have had tenants come and tell me they were in fear the Plan of Campaign +would be brought upon them, just as if it were a kind of potato disease, +and beg me to agree to take the rent from them in that case, and just +not discover on them that they had paid it before it was due!" + +This gentleman is a pessimist as to the future. "I am a youngish man +still," he said, "and a single man, and I am glad of it. I don't believe +the English will ever learn how to govern this country, and I am sure it +can never govern itself. Would your people make a State of it?" + +To this I replied that with Cuba and Canada and Mexico, all still to be +digested and assimilated, I thought the deglutition of Ireland by the +great Republic must be remitted to a future much too remote to interest +either of us. + +"I suppose so," he said in a humorously despondent tone; "and so I see +nothing for people who think as I do, but Australia or New Zealand!" + +Mr. Kavanagh sees the future, I think, in colouring not quite so dark. +As a public man, familiar for years with the method and ways of British +Parliaments, he seems to regard the possible future legislation of +Westminster with more anxiety and alarm than the past or present +agitations in Ireland. The business of banishing political economy to +Jupiter and Saturn, however delightful it may be to the people who make +laws, is a dangerous one to the people for whom the laws are made. While +he has very positive opinions as to the wisdom of the concession made in +the successive Land Acts for Ireland, which have been passed since 1870, +he is much less disquieted, I think, by those concessions, than by the +spirit by which the legislation granting them has been guided. He thinks +great good has been already done by Mr. Balfour, and that much more good +will be done by him if the Irish people are made to feel that clamorous +resistance to the law will no longer be regarded at Westminster as a +sufficient reason for changing the law. That is as much as to say that +party spirit in Great Britain is the chief peril of Ireland to-day. And +how can any Irishman, no matter what his state in his own country may +be, or his knowledge of Irish affairs, or his patriotic earnestness and +desire for Irish prosperity, hope to control the tides of party spirit +in England or Scotland? + +Of the influence upon the people in Ireland of the spirit of recent +legislation for Ireland, the story of the troubles on the O'Grady +estate, as Mr. Kavanagh tells it to me, is a most striking illustration. +"The O'Grady of Kilballyowen," as his title shows, is the direct +representative, not of any Norman invader, but of an ancient Irish race. +The O'Gradys were the heads of a sept of the "mere Irish"; and if there +be such a thing--past, present, or future--as an "Irish nation," the +place of the O'Gradys in that nation ought to be assumed. Mr. Thomas De +Courcy O'Grady, who now wears the historic designation, owns and lives +on an estate of a little more than 1000 acres, in the Golden Vein of +Ireland, at Killmallock, in the county of Limerick. The land is +excellent, and for the last half-century certainly it has been let to +the tenants at rents which must be considered fair, since they have +never been raised. In 1845, two years before the great famine, the +rental was £2142. This rental was paid throughout the famine years +without difficulty; and in 1881 the rental stood at £2108. + +There has never been an eviction on the estate until last year, when six +tenants were evicted. All of these lived in good comfortable houses, and +were prosperous dairy-farmers. Why were they evicted? + +In October 1886, during the candidacy at New York of the Land Reformer, +Mr. George, Mr. Dillon, M.P., propounded the "Plan of Campaign" at +Portumna in Galway. The March rents being then due on the estate of The +O'Grady in Limerick, his agent, Mr. Shine, was directed to continue the +abatements of 15 per cent, on the judicial rents, and of 25 per cent, on +all other rents, which had been cheerfully accepted in 1885. But there +was a priest at Kilballyowen, Father Ryan, who wrought upon the tenants +until they demanded a general abatement of 40 per cent. This being +refused, they asked for 30 per cent. on the judicial rents, and 40 per +cent. on the others. This also being refused, Father Ryan had his way, +and the "Plan of Campaign" was adopted. The O'Grady's writs issued +against several of the tenants were met by a "Plan of Campaign" auction +of cattle at Herbertstown in December 1886, the returns of which were +paid into "the Fund." For this, one of the tenants, Thomas Moroney, who +held, besides a a farm of 37 Irish acres, a "public," and five small +houses, at Herbertstown, and the right to the tolls on cattle at the +Herbertstown farm, valued at from £50 to £60 a year, and who held all +these at a yearly rent of £85, was proceeded against. Judge Boyd +pronounced him a bankrupt. + +In the spring of 1887, after The O'Grady had been put to great costs and +trouble, the tenants made a move. They offered to accept a general +abatement of 17-1/2 per cent., "The O'Grady to pay all the costs." + +Here is the same story again of the small solicitors behind the "Plan of +Campaign" promoting the strife, and counting on the landlords to defray +the charges of battle! + +The O'Grady responded with the following circular:-- + + KlLLBALLYOWEN, BRUFF, CO. LlMERICK, + + _13th August 1877_. + + To my Tenants on Kilballyowen and Herbertstown Estate, Co. + Limerick. + + MY FRIENDS,--Pending the evictions by the Sheriff on my estate, + caused by your refusal to pay judicial rents on offers of liberal + abatements, I desire to remind you of the following facts:-- + + I am a resident landlord; my ancestors have dwelt amongst you for + over 400 years; every tenant is personally known to me, and the + most friendly relations have always existed between us. + + I am not aware of there ever having been an eviction by the Sheriff + on my estate. + + Farming myself over 400 acres, and my late agent (Mr. Shine), a + tenant farmer living within four miles of my property, I have every + opportunity of realising and knowing your wants. + + On the passing of the Land Act of 1881, I desired you to have any + benefit it could afford you, and as you nearly all held under + lease--which precluded you from going into court--I intimated to + you my wish, and offered you to allow your lands to be valued at my + expense, or to let you go into court and get your rents fixed by + the sub-commissioners. + + You elected to have a valuation made, and Mr. Edmond Moroney was + agreed on as a land-valuer, possessing the confidence of tenants + and landlord. + + I may mention, up to then I had not known Mr. Moroney personally. + + In 1883 Mr. Moroney valued your holdings, and, as a result, his + valuation was accepted (except in three or four cases), and + judicial agreements signed by you, at rents ascertained by Mr. + Moroney's valuation. + + The late Patrick Hogan objected to Mr. Moroney's valuation of his + farm, and went into court, and had his rent fixed by the County + Court Judge. + + Thomas Moroney would not allow Mr. Edmond Moroney to value his + holding, nor would he go into court, his reason no doubt being he + should disclose the receipts of the amount of the tolls of the + fairs. + + The rents were subsequently paid on Mr. Moroney's valuation with + punctuality. + + In 1885, recognising the fall in prices of stock and produce, and + at the request of my late agent, Mr. Shine, I directed him to allow + you 15 per cent. on all judicial rents, or rents abated on Mr. + Moroney's valuation, and 25 per cent. on all other rents, when you + paid punctually and with thanks. + + In October last, when calling in the March 1886 rents, at the + instance of Mr. Shine, I agreed to continue the abatement of 15 per + cent, and 25 per cent., which, when intimated to you, were refused, + and a meeting held, demanding an all-round abatement of 40 per + cent. + + This I considered unreasonable and unjust, and I refused to give + it. + + The Plan of Campaign was then most unjustly adopted on the estate, + and you refused to pay your rents. + + Thomas Moroney was elected as a test case to try the legality of + the sale and removal of your property to avoid payment of your + rent. His tenancy was a mixed holding of house property in the + village of Herbertstown, the tolls of the fairs, and 37 acres of + land, at a rent of £85, and a Poor-Law valuation of £73, 5s., made + as follows:-- + + Land valued at £42 5 0 + Tolls of fair at 17 0 0 + Public house and yard at 11 0 0 + Five small houses and forge at 3 0 0 + -------- + £73 5 0 + + I always was led to believe the tolls of the fair averaged from £50 + to £60 a year, there being four fairs in the year; and I believe + his reason for refusing to allow Mr. E. Moroney to value his + holding, or to go into court, was that he should disclose the + amount of the tolls, and in consequence I never considered he was + entitled to any abatement; but still I gave it to him, and was + prepared to do so. The result of his case was that his conduct in + making away with his property was unjustifiable, and his farm and + holding was sold out for the benefit of his creditors, and he is no + longer a tenant on the estate. + + I subsequently took proceedings against six other tenants, who + refused payment of rent, and removed their cattle off the land to + avoid payment, and having got judgment against them, the Sheriff + sold out four of their farms, and writs of possession on the title + were taken out against them, and are now lodged with the Sheriff + for execution. I have also got judgments for possession against two + other tenants for non-payment of rent, also lodged with the + Sheriff. One the widow of Patrick Hogan, who got his rent fixed in + the County Court, and the other Mrs. Denis Ryan, whose farm on her + marriage I assented to be put in settlement for her protection, Mr. + Shine, my agent, consenting to act as one of her trustees, whose + name, with his co-trustee, Mr. Thomas FitzGerald, appear as + defendants, they having signed her judicial agreement. + + The following are the names of the above tenants, the extent of + their holdings, the rent, the Poor-Law valuation, and the average + rent per Irish acre:-- + + +------------------+------------+-------------+---------+-----------+ + | | Acreage in | Judicial | Rent | | + | TENANT. | Irish | Rent Less 20| per | Poor Law | + | | Measure. | per cent. | acre[A]| Valuation | + +------------------+------------+-------------+---------+-----------+ + | | A. R. P. | £ s. d. | | £ s. d. | + |John Carroll, | 87 3 38 | 132 4 0 | 30/- | 127 10 0 | + |Honora Crimmins, | 35 0 27 | 64 5 6 | 36/6 | 52 15 0 | + |James Baggott, | 18 0 0 | 37 16 10 | 42/- | 22 5 0 | + |Margaret Moloney, | 23 2 9 | 46 2 8 | 39/2 | 44 15 0 | + |Mrs. Denis Ryan, | 66 2 3 | 93 2 5 | 28/- | 96 0 0 | + |Maryanne Hogan, | 53 2 33 | 112 0 0 | 41/8 | 117 15 0 | + | +------------+-------------+---------+-----------+ + | | 294 3 30 | 485 11 5 | ... | 461 0 0 | + +------------------+------------+-------------+---------+-----------+ + + [A] Rent per Irish acre after abatement of 20 per cent. + + This represents an average of 34s. the Irish acre, for some of the + best land in Ireland, and shows a difference of only £24, 11s. 5d. + between the rent, less 20 per cent. now offered, and Poor-Law + valuation. + + After putting me to the cost of these proceedings, and giving me + every opposition and annoyance, amongst such, compelling my agent + (by threats of boycotting) to resign, boycotting myself and + household, preventing my servants from attending chapel, and + driving my labourers away, negotiations for a settlement were + opened, and you offered to accept an all-round abatement of 17-1/2 + per cent. and to pay up one year's rent, provided I paid all costs, + including the costs in Moroney's case; this of course I refused, + but with a desire to aid you in coming to a settlement, and to + prevent the loss to the tenants of the farms under eviction on the + Title, I offered to allow the 17-1/2 per cent. all round on payment + of one year's rent and costs, and to give time for payment of the + costs as stated in my Solicitor's letter of the 2d June 1887 to + Canon Scully. + + This offer was refused, and the writs for possession have been + lodged with the Sheriff. + + I never commenced these proceedings in a vindictive spirit, or with + any desire to punish any of you for your ungracious conduct, but + simply to protect my property from unjust and unreasonable demands. + + You will owe two years' rent next month (September), and I now + write you this circular letter to point out to each, individually, + the position of the tenants under eviction, and even at this late + hour to give them an opportunity of saving their holdings, to + enable them to do so, and with a view to settlement, I am now + prepared to allow 20 per cent. all round, on payment of a year's + rent and costs. + + Under no circumstance will I forego payment of costs, as they must + be paid in full. + + If this money be paid forthwith, I will arrange with my brother, + the purchaser, to restore the four holdings purchased by him at + sheriff's sale to the late tenants. + + After this offer I disclaim any responsibility for the result of + the evictions, and the loss attendant thereon, as it now remains + with you to avert same. + + +All the evictions have since been carried out, and the Land Corporation +men are at work upon the estate! Whom has all this advantaged? The +tenants?--Certainly not. The O'Grady?--Certainly not. The peace and +order of Ireland?--Certainly not. But it has given the National League +another appeal to the intelligent "sympathies" of England and America. +It has strengthened the revolutionary element in Irish society. It has +"driven another nail into the coffin" of Irish landlordism and of the +private ownership of land throughout Great Britain. + + +Such at least is the opinion of Mr. Kavanagh. If I were an Englishman or +a Scotchman, I should be strongly inclined to take very serious account +of this opinion in forecasting the future of landed property in England +or Scotland. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + + +GREENANE HOUSE, THOMASTOWN, _March 5th._--The breakfast-room at Borris +this morning was gay with pink coats. A meet was to come off at a place +between Borris and Thomastown, and bidding fare-well to my cordial host +and hostess, I set out at 11 o'clock for a flying visit to this quaint +and charming house of Mr. Seigne, one of the best known and most highly +esteemed agents in this part of Ireland. + +My jarvey from Borris had an unusually neat and well-balanced car. When +I praised it he told me it was "built by an American," not an Irish +American, I understood him to say, but a genuine Yankee, who, for some +mysterious reason, has established himself in this region, where he has +prospered as a cart and car builder ever since. "Just the best cars in +all Ireland he builds, your honour!" Why don't he naturalise them in +America? + +All the way was charming, the day very bright, and even warm, and the +hill scenery picturesque at every turn. We looked out sharply for the +hunt, but in vain. My jarvey, who knew the whole country, said they must +have broken cover somewhere on the upper road, and we should miss them +entirely. And so we did. + +The silting up of the river Nore has reduced Thomastown or +Ballymacanton, which was its Irish name, from its former importance as +an emporium for the country about Kilkenny. The river now is not +navigable above Inistiogue. But two martial square towers, one at either +end of a fine bridge which spans the stream here, speak of the good old +times when the masters of Thomastown took toll and tribute of traders +and travellers. The lands about the place then belonged to the great +monastery of Jerpoint, the ruins of which are still the most interesting +of their kind in this part of Ireland. They have long made a part of the +estate of the Butlers. We rattled rapidly through the quiet little town, +and whisking out of a small public square into a sort of wynd between +two houses, suddenly found ourselves in the precincts of Grenane House. +The house takes its name from the old castle of Grenane, an Irish +fortress established here by some native despot long before Thomas +Fitz-Anthony the Norman came into the land. The ruins of this castle +still stand some half a mile away. "We call the place Candahar," said +Mr. Seigne, as he came up with two ladies from the meadows below the +house, "because you come into it so suddenly, just as you do into that +Oriental town." But what a charming occidental place it is! It stands +well above the river, the slope adorned with many fine old trees, some +of which grow, and grow prosperously, in the queerest and most +improbable forms, bent double, twisted, but still most green and +vigorous. They have no business under any known theory of arboriculture +to be beautiful, but beautiful they are. The views of the bridge, of the +towers, and of the river, from this slope would make the fortune of the +place in a land of peace and order. + +A most original and delightful lady of the country lunched with +us,--such a character as Miss Edgeworth or Miss Austen might have drawn. +Shrewd, humorous, sensible, fearless, and ready with impartial hand to +box the ears alike of Trojan and of Tyrian. She not only sees both sides +of the question in Ireland as between the landlords and the tenants, but +takes both sides of the question. She holds lands by inheritance, which +make her keenly alive to the wrongs of the landlords, and she holds +farms as a tenant, which make her implacably critical as to their +claims. She mercilessly demolished in one capacity whatever she advanced +in the other, and all with the most perfect nonchalance and good faith. +This curiously dual attitude reminded me of the confederate General, +Braxton Bragg, of whom his comrades in the old army of the United States +used to say that he once had a very sharp official correspondence with +himself. He happened to hold a staff appointment, being also a line +officer. So in his quality of a staff officer, he found fault with +himself in his capacity as a line officer, reprimanded himself sharply, +replied defiantly to the reprimand, and eventually reported himself to +himself for discipline at head-quarters. She told an excellent story of +a near kinsman of hers who, holding a very good living in the Protestant +Irish Church, came rather unexpectedly by inheritance into a baronetcy, +upon which his women-folk insisted that it would be derogatory to a +baronet to be a parson. "Would you believe it, the poor man was silly +enough to listen to their cackle, and resign seven hundred a year!" + +"That didn't clear him," I said, "of the cloth, did it?" + +"Not a bit, of course, poor foolish man. He was just as much a parson as +ever, only without a parsonage. Men are fools enough of themselves, +don't you think, without needing to listen to women?" + +Mr. Seigne comes of a French Protestant stock long ago planted in +Ireland, and his Gallic blood doubtless helps him to handle the +practical problems daily submitted in these days to an Irish +land-agent--problems very different, as he thinks, from those with which +an Irish agent had to deal in the days before 1870. The Irish tenant has +a vantage-ground now in his relations with his landlord which he never +had in the olden time, and this makes it more important than it ever was +that the agent should have what may be called a diplomatic taste for +treating with individuals, finding out the bent of mind of this man and +of that, and negotiating over particulars, instead of insisting, in the +English fashion, on general rules, without regard to special cases. I +have met no one who has seemed to me so cool and precise as Mr. Seigne +in his study of the phenomena of the present situation. I asked him +whether he could now say, as Mr. Senior did a quarter of century ago, +that the Irish tenants were less improvident, and more averse from +running into debt than the English. + +"I think not," he replied; "on the contrary, in some parts of Ireland +now the shopkeepers are kept on the verge of bankruptcy by the +recklessness with which the tenants incurred debts immediately after the +passing of the Land Act of 1870--a time when shopkeepers, and bankers +also, almost forced credit upon the farmers, and made thereby 'bad +debts' innumerable. Farmers rarely keep anything like an account of +their receipts and expenses. I know only one tenant-farmer in this +neighbourhood who keeps what can be called an account, showing what he +takes from his labour and spends on his living."[20] "They save a great +deal of money often," he says, "but almost never in any systematic way. +They spend much less on clothes and furniture, and the outward show of +things, than English people of the same condition do, and they do not +stint themselves in meat and drink as the French peasants do. In fact, +under the operation of existing circumstances, they are getting into the +way of improving their condition, not so much by sacrifices and savings, +as by an insistence on rent being fixed low enough to leave full margin +for improved living." + +"I had a very frank statement on this point," said Mr. Seigne, "not long +ago from a Tipperary man. When I tried to show him that his father had +paid a good many years ago the very same rent which he declares himself +unable to pay now, he admitted this at once. But it was a confession and +avoidance. 'My father could pay the rent, and did pay the rent,' he +said, 'because he was content to live so that he could pay it. He sat on +a boss of straw, and ate out of a bowl. He lived in a way in which I +don't intend to live, and so he could pay the rent. Now, I must have, +and I mean to have, out of the land, before I pay the rent, the means of +living as I wish to live; and if I can't have it, I'll sell out and go +away; but I'll be--if I don't fight before I do that same!'" + +"What could you reply to that?" I asked. + +"Oh," I said, "'that's square and straightforward. Only just let me know +the point at which you mean to fight, and then we'll see if we can agree +about something.'" + +"The truth is," said Mr. Seigne, "that there is a pressure upward now +from below. The labourers don't want to live any longer as the farmers +have always made them live; and so the farmers, having to consider the +growing demands of the labourers, and meaning to live better themselves, +push up against the landlord, and insist that the means of the +improvement shall come out of him." + +He then told me an instructive story of his calling upon a +tenant-farmer, at whose place he found the labourers sitting about their +meal of pork and green vegetables. The farmer asked him into another +room, where he saw the farmer's family making their meal of stirabout +and milk and potatoes. + +"I asked you in here," said the farmer, "because we keep in here to +ourselves. I don't want those fellows to see that we can't afford to +give ourselves what we have to give them,"--this with strong language +indicating that he must himself be given a way to advance equally with +the progressive labourer, or he would know the reason why! + +This afternoon Mr. Seigne drove me over through a beautiful country to +Woodstock, near Inistiogue, the seat of the late Colonel Tighe, the head +of the family of which the authoress of "Psyche" was an ornament. + +It is the finest place in this part of Ireland, and one of the finest I +have seen in the three kingdoms, a much more picturesque and more nobly +planted place indeed than its namesake in England. The mansion has no +architectural pretensions, being simply a very large and, I should +think, extremely comfortable house of the beginning of this century. The +library is very rich, and there are some good pictures, as well as +certain statues in the vestibule, which would have no interest for the +Weissnichtwo professor of _Sartor Resartus_, but are regarded with some +awe by the good people of Inistiogue. + +The park would do no discredit to a palace, and if the vague project of +establishing a royal residence in Ireland for one of the British Princes +should ever take shape, it would not be easy, I should say, to find a +demesne more befitting the home of a prince than this of the Tighes. At +present it serves the State at least as usefully, being the "pleasaunce" +of the people for miles around, who come here freely to walk and drive. + +It stretches for miles along the Nore, and is crowned by a gloriously +wooded hill nearly a thousand feet in height. The late Colonel Tighe, a +most accomplished man, and a passionate lover of trees, made it a kind +of private Kew Gardens. He planted long avenues of the rarest and finest +trees, araucarias, Scotch firs, oaks, beeches, cedars of Lebanon; laid +out miles of the most varied and delightful drives, and built the most +extensive conservatories in Ireland. + +The turfed and terraced walks among those conservatories are +indescribably lovely, and the whole place to-day was vocal with +innumerable birds. Picturesque little cottages and arbours are to be +found in unexpected nooks all through the woodlands, each commanding +some green vista of forest aisles, or some wide view of hill and +champaign, enlivened by the winding river. From one of those to-day we +looked out over a landscape to which Turner alone or Claude could have +done justice, the river, spanned by a fine bridge, in the middle +distance, and all the region wooded as in the days of which Edmund +Spenser sings, when Ireland + + "Flourished in fame, + Of wealth and goodnesse far above the rest + Of all that bears the British Islands' name." + +Over the whole place broods an indefinable charm. You feel that this was +the home at once and the work of a refined and thoughtful spirit. And so +indeed it was. Here for the greater part of the current century the +owner lived, making the development of the estate and of this demesne +his constant care and chief pleasure. And here still lives his widow, +with whom we took tea in a stately quiet drawing-room. Lady Louisa Tighe +was in Brussels with her mother, the Duchess of Richmond, on the eve of +Waterloo. She was a child then of ten years old, and her mother bade +them bring her down into the historic ball-room before the Duke of +Wellington left it. The duke took up his sword. "Let Louisa buckle it +for you," said her mother, and when the little girl had girded it on, +the great captain stooped, took her up in his arms, and kissed her. "One +never knows what may happen, child," he said good-naturedly; and taking +his small gold watch out of his fob, he bade her keep it for him. + +She keeps it still. For more than sixty years it has measured out in +this beautiful Irish home the hours of a life given to good works and +gracious usefulness. To-day, with all the vivacity of interest in the +people and the place which one might look for in a woman of twenty, this +charming old lady of eighty-three, showing barely threescore years in +her carriage, her countenance, and her voice, entertained us with minute +and most interesting accounts of the local industries which flourish +here mainly through her sympathetic and intelligent supervision. We +seemed to be in another world from the Ireland of Chicago or +Westminster! + +Mr. Seigne drove me back here by a most picturesque road leading along +the banks of the Nore, quite overhung with trees, which in places dip +their branches almost into the swift deep stream. "This is the favourite +drive of all the lovers hereabouts," he said, "and there is a spice of +danger in it which makes it more romantic. Once, not very long ago, a +couple of young people, too absorbed in their love-making to watch their +horse, drove off the bank. Luckily for them they fell into the branches +of one of these overhanging trees, while the horse and car went plunging +into the water. There they swung, holding each other hand in hand, +making a pretty and pathetic tableau, till their cries brought some +anglers in a boat on the river to the rescue." + +We spoke of Lady Louisa, and of the watch of Waterloo. "That watch had a +wonderful escape a few years ago," said Mr. Seigne. + +Lady Louisa, it seems, had a confidential butler whom she most +implicitly trusted. One day it was found that a burglary had apparently +been committed at Woodstock, and that with a quantity of jewelry the +priceless watch had vanished. The butler was very active about the +matter, and as no trace could be found leading out of the house, he +intimated a suspicion that the affair might possibly have some +connection with a guest not long before at the house. This angered Lady +Louisa, who thereupon consulted the agent, who employed a capable +detective from Dublin. The detective came down to Inistiogue as a +commercial traveller, wandered about, made the acquaintance of Lady +Louisa's maid, of the butler, and of other people about the house, and +formed his own conclusions. Two or three days after his arrival he +walked into the shop of a small jeweller in a neighbouring town, and +affecting a confidential manner, told the jeweller he wanted to buy +"some of those things from Woodstock." The man was taken by surprise, +and going into a backshop produced one very fine diamond, and a number +of pieces of silver plate, of the disappearance of which the butler had +said nothing to his mistress. This led to the arrest of the butler, and +to the discovery that for a long time he had been purloining property +from the house and selling it. Many cases of excellent claret had found +their way in this fashion to a public-house which had acquired quite a +reputation for its Bordeaux with the officers quartered in its +neighbourhood. The wine-bins at Woodstock were found full of bottles of +water. Much of the capital port left by Colonel Tighe had gone--but the +hock was untouched. "Probably the butler didn't care for hock," said Mr. +Seigne. The Waterloo watch was recovered from a very decent fellow, a +travelling dealer, to whom it had been sold: and many pieces of jewelry +were traced up to London. But Lady Louisa could not be induced to go up +to London to identify them or testify. + + +DUBLIN, _Tuesday, March 6._--It is a curious fact, which I learned +to-day from the Registrar-General, that the deposits in the Post-office +Savings Banks have never diminished in Ireland since these banks were +established.[21] These deposits are chiefly made, I understand, by the +small tenants, who are less represented by the deposits in the General +Savings Banks than are the shopkeepers and the cattle-drovers. In the +General Savings Banks the deposit line fluctuates more; though on the +whole there has been a steady increase in these deposits also throughout +Ireland. + +Of the details of the dealings of the private banks it is very hard to +get an accurate account. One gentleman, the manager of a branch of one +important bank, tells me that a great deal of money is made by usurers +out of the tenants, by backing their small bills. This practice goes +back to the first establishment of banks in Ireland. Formerly it was not +an uncommon thing for a landlord to offer his tenants a reduction, say, +of twenty per cent., on condition of their paying the rent when it fell +due. Such were the relations then between landlord and tenants, and so +little was punctuality expected in such payments that this might be +regarded as a sort of discount arrangement. The tenant who wished to +avail himself of such an offer would go to some friendly local usurer +and ask for a loan that he might avail himself of it. "One of these +usurers, whom I knew very well," said the manager, "told me long ago +that he found these operations very profitable. His method of procedure +was to agree to advance the rent to the tenant at ten per cent., payable +at a near and certain date. This would reduce the landlord's reduction +at once, of course, for the tenant, to ten per cent., but that was not +to be disdained; and so the bargain would be struck. If the money was +repaid at the fixed date, it was not a bad thing for the usurer. But it +was almost never so repaid; and with repeated renewals the usurer, by +his own showing, used to receive eventually twenty, fifty, and, in some +cases, nearly a hundred per cent, for his loan." + +It is the opinion of this gentleman that, under the "Plan of Campaign," +a good deal of money-making is done in a quiet way by some of the +"trustees," who turn over at good interest, with the help of friendly +financiers, the funds lodged with them, being held to account to the +tenants only for the principal. "Of course," he said, "all this is +doubtless at least as legitimate as any other part of the 'Plan,' and I +daresay it all goes for 'the good of the cause.' But neither the tenants +nor the landlords get much by it!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + + +DUBLIN, _Thursday, March 8._--At eight o'clock this morning I left the +Harcourt Street station for Inch, to take a look at the scene of the +Coolgreany evictions of last summer. These evictions came of the +adoption of the Plan of Campaign, under the direction of Mr. Dillon, +M.P., on the Wexford property of Mr. George Brooke of Dublin. The agent +of Mr. Brooke's estate, Captain Hamilton, is the honorary director of +the Property Defence Association, so that we have here obviously a +grapple between the National League doing the work, consciously or +unconsciously, of the agrarian revolutionists, and a combination of +landed proprietors fighting for the rights of property as they +understand them. + +We ran through a beautiful country for the greater part of the way. At +Bray, which is a favourite Irish watering-place, the sea broke upon us +bright and full of life; and the station itself was more like a +considerable English station than any I have seen. Thence we passed into +a richly-wooded region, with neat, well-kept hedges, as far as Rathdrum +and the "Sweet Vale of Avoca." The hills about Shillelagh are +particularly well forested, though, as the name suggests, they must have +been cut for cudgels pretty extensively for now a great many years. We +came again on the sea at the fishing port of Arklow, where the stone +walls about the station were populous with small ragamuffins, and at the +station of Inch I found a car waiting for me with Mr. Holmes, a young +English Catholic officer, who had most obligingly offered to show me the +place and the people. We had hardly got into the roadway when we +overtook a most intelligent-looking, energetic young priest, walking +briskly on in the direction of our course. This was Dr. Dillon, the +curate of Arklow. We pulled up at once, and Mr. Holmes, introducing me +to him, we begged him to take a seat with us. He excused himself as +having to join another priest with whom he was going to a function at +Inch; but he was good enough to walk a little way with us, and gave me +an appointment for 2 P.M. at his own town of Arklow, where I could catch +the train back to Dublin. We drove on rapidly and called on Father +O'Neill, the parish priest. We found him in full canonicals, as he was +to officiate at the function this morning, and with him were Father +Dunphy, the parish priest of Arklow, and two or three more robed +priests. + +Father O'Neill, whose face and manner are those of the higher order of +the continental clergy, briefly set forth to me his view of the +transactions at Coolgreany. He said that before the Plan of Campaign was +adopted by the tenants, Mr. William O'Brien, M.P., had written to him +explaining what the effect of the Plan would be, and urging him to take +whatever steps he could to obviate the necessity of adopting it, as it +might eventually result to the disadvantage of the tenants. "To that +end," said Father O'Neill, "I called upon Captain Hamilton, the agent, +with Dr. Dillon of Arklow, but he positively refused to listen to us, +and in fact ordered us, not very civilly, to leave his office." + +It was after this he said that he felt bound to let the tenants take +their own way. Eighty of them joined in the "Plan of Campaign" and paid +the amount of the rent due, less a reduction of 30 per cent., which they +demanded of the agent, into the hands of Sir Thomas Esmonde, M.P., Sir +Thomas being a resident in the country, and Mr. Mayne, M.P. Writs of +ejectment were obtained against them afterwards, and in July last +sixty-seven of them were evicted, who are now living in "Laud League +huts," put up on the holdings of three small tenants who were exempted +from the Plan of Campaign, and allowed to pay their rents subject to a +smaller reduction made by the agent, in order that they might retain +their land as a refuge for the rest. + +All this Father O'Neill told us very quietly, in a gentle, +undemonstrative way, but he was much interested when I told him I had +recently come from Rome, where these proceedings, I was sure, were +exciting a good deal of serious attention. "Yes," he said, "and Father +Dunphy who is here in the other room, has just got back from Rome, where +he had two audiences of the Holy Father." + +"Doubtless, then," I said, "he will have given his Holiness full +particulars of all that took place here." + +"No doubt," responded Father O'Neill, "and he tells me the Holy Father +listened with great attention to all he had to say--though of course, he +expressed no opinion about it to Father Dunphy." + +As the time fixed for the function was at hand, we were obliged to leave +without seeing Father Dunphy. + +From the Presbytery we drove to the scene of the evictions. These +evictions were in July. Mr. Holmes witnessed them, and gave me a lively +account of the affair. The "battle" was not a very tough one. Mr. +Davitt, who was present, stood under a tree very quietly watching it +all. "He looked very picturesque," said Mr. Holmes, "in a light grey +suit, with a broad white beaver shading his dark Spanish face; and +smoked his cigar very composedly." After it was over, Dr. Dillon brought +up one of the tenants, and presented him to Mr. Davitt as "the man who +had resisted this unjust eviction." Mr. Davitt took his cigar from his +lips, and in the hearing of all who stood about sarcastically said, +"Well, if he couldn't make a better resistance than that he ought to go +up for six months!" The first house we came upon was derelict--all +battered and despoiled, the people in the neighbourhood here, as +elsewhere, regarding such houses as free spoil, and carrying off from +time to time whatever they happen to fancy. Near this house we met an +emergency man, named Bolton, an alert, energetic-looking native of +Wicklow. He has four brothers; and is now at work on one of the +"evicted" holdings. + +I asked if he was "boycotted," and what his relations were with the +people. + +He laughed in a shrewd, good-natured way. "Oh, I'm boycotted, of +course," he said; "but I don't care a button for any of these people, +and I'd rather they wouldn't speak to me. They know I can take care of +myself, and they give me a good wide berth. All I have to object to is +that they set fire to an outhouse of mine, and cut the ears of one of my +heifers, and for that I want damages. Otherwise I'm getting on very +well; and I think this will be a good year, if the law is enforced, and +these fellows are made to behave themselves." + +Near Bolton's farm we passed the holding of a tenant named Kavanagh, one +of the three who were "allowed" to pay their rents. Several Land League +huts are on his place, and the evicted people who occupy them put their +cattle with his. He is a quiet, cautious man, and very reticent. But it +seemed to me that he was not entirely satisfied with the "squatters" who +have been quartered upon him. And it appears that he has taken another +holding in Carlow. From his place we drove to Ballyfad, where a large +house, at the end of a good avenue of trees, once the mansion of a +squire, but now much dilapidated, is occupied as headquarters by the +police. Here we found Mr. George Freeman, the bailiff of the Coolgreany +property, a strong, sturdy man, much disgusted at finding it necessary +to go about protected by two policemen. That this was necessary, +however, he admitted, pointing out to us the place where one Kinsella +was killed not very long ago. The son of this man Kinsella was formerly +one of Mr. Brooke's gamekeepers, and is now, Mr. Freeman thinks, in +concert with another man named Ryan, the chief stay of the League in +keeping up its dominion over the evicted tenants. + +Many of these tenants, he believes, would gladly pay their rents now, +and come back if they dared. + +"Every man, sir," he said, "that has anything to lose, would be glad to +come back next Monday if he thought his life would be safe. But all the +lazy and thriftless ones are better off now than they ever were; they +get from £4 to £6 a month, with nothing to do, and so they're in clover, +and they naturally don't like to have the industrious, well-to-do +tenants spoil their fun by making a general settlement." + +"Besides that," he added, "that man Kinsella and his comrade Ryan are +the terror of the whole of them. Kinsella always was a curious, silent, +moody fellow. He knows every inch of the country, going over it all the +time by night and day as a gamekeeper, and I am quite sure the +Parnellite men and the Land Leaguers are just as much afraid of him and +Ryan as the tenants are. He don't care a bit for them; and they've no +control of him at all." + +Mr. Freeman said he remembered very well the occasion referred to by +Father O'Neill, when Captain Hamilton refused to confer with Dr. Dillon +and himself. + +"Did Father O'Neill tell you, sir," he said, "that Captain Hamilton was +quite willing to talk with him and Father O'Donel, the parish priests, +and with the Coolgreany people, but he would have nothing to say to any +one who was not their priest, and had no business to be meddling with +the matter at all?" + +"No; he did not tell me that." + +"Ah! well, sir, that made all the difference. Father Dunphy, who was +there, is a high-tempered man, and he said he had just as much right to +represent the tenants as Captain Hamilton to represent the landlord, and +that Captain Hamilton wouldn't allow. It was the outside people made all +the trouble. In June of last year there was a conference at my house, +and all that time there was a Committee sitting at Coolgreany, and the +tenants would not be allowed to do anything without the Committee." + +"And who made the Committee?" + +"Oh, they made themselves, I suppose, sir. There was Sir Thomas +Esmonde--he was a convert, you know, of Father O'Neill--and Mr. Mayne +and Mr. John Dillon. And Dr. Dillon of Arklow, he was as busy as he +could be till the evictions were made in July. And then he was in +retreat. And I believe, sir, it is quite true that he wanted the Bishop +to let him come out of the retreat just to have a hand in the business." + +The police sergeant, a very cool, sensible man, quite agreed with the +bailiff as to the influence upon the present situation of the +ex-gamekeeper Kinsella, and his friend Eyan. "If they were two +Invincibles, sir," he said, "these member fellows of the League couldn't +be in greater fear of them than they are. They say nothing, and do just +as they please. That Kinsella, when Mr. John Dillon was down here, just +told him before a lot of people that he 'wanted no words and no advice +from him,' and he's just in that surly way with all the people about." + +As to the Brooke estate, I am told here it was bought more than twenty +years ago with a Landed Estates Court title from Colonel Forde, by the +grandfather of Mr. Brooke. He paid about £75,000 sterling for it. His +son died young, and the present owner came into it as a child, Mr. Vesey +being then the agent, who, during the minority, spent a great deal on +improving the property. Captain Hamilton came in as agent only a few +years ago. While the Act of 1881 was impending, an abatement was granted +of more than twenty per cent. In 1882 the tenants all paid except +eleven, who went into Court and got their rents cut down by the +Sub-Commissioners. There were appeals; and in 1885, after Court +valuations, the rents cut down by the Sub-Commissioners were restored in +several cases. There never was any rack-renting on the estate at all. +There are upon it in all more than a hundred tenants, twelve of whom are +Protestants, holding a little less in all than one-fourth of the +property. + +There are fifteen judicial tenants, twenty-one lease-holders, and +seventy-seven hold from year to year. + +The gross rental is a little over £2000 a year of which one-half goes to +Mr. Brooke's mother. Mr. Brooke himself is a wealthy man, at the head of +the most important firm of wine-merchants in Ireland, and he has +repeatedly spent on the property more than he took out of it. + +The house of Sir Thomas Esmonde, M.P., was pointed out to me from the +road. "Sir Thomas is to marry an heiress, sir, isn't he, in America?" +asked an ingenuous inquirer. I avowed my ignorance on this point. "Oh, +well, they say so, for anyway the old house is being put in order for +now the first time in forty years." + +We reached Arklow in time for luncheon, and drove to the large police +barracks there. These were formerly the quarters of the troops. Arklow +was one of the earliest settlements of the Anglo-Normans in Ireland +under Henry II., and once rejoiced in a castle and a monastery both now +obliterated; though a bit of an old tower here is said to have been +erected in his time. The town lives by fishing, and by shipping copper +and lead ore to South Wales. The houses are rather neat and well kept; +but the street was full of little ragged, merry mendicants. + +We went into a small branch of the Bank of Ireland, and asked where we +should find the hotel. We were very civilly directed to "The Register's +Office over the way." This seemed odd enough. But reaching it we were +further puzzled to see the sign over the doorway of a "coach-builder"! +However, we rang the bell, and presently a maid-servant appeared, who +assured us that this was really the hotel, and that we could have +"whatever we liked" for luncheon. We liked what we found we could +get--chops, potatoes, and parsnips; and without too much delay these +were neatly served to us in a most remarkable room, ablaze with mural +ornaments and decorations, upon which every imaginable pigment of the +modern palette seemed to have been lavished, from a Nile-water-green +dado to a scarlet and silver frieze. There were five times as many +potatoes served to us as two men could possibly eat, and not one of them +was half-boiled. But otherwise the meal was well enough, and the service +excellent. Beer could be got for us, but the house had no licence, Lord +Carysfort, the owner of the property, thinking, so our hostess said, +that "there were too many licences in the town already." Lord Carysfort +is probably right; but it is not every owner of a house, or even of a +lease in Ireland, I fear, who would take such a view and act on it to +the detriment of his own property. + +Dr. Dillon lives in the main square of Arklow in a very neat house. He +was absent at a funeral in the handsome Catholic church near by when we +called, but we were shown into his study, and he presently came in. + +His study was that of a man of letters and of politics. Blue-books and +statistical works lay about in all directions, and on the table were the +March numbers of the _Nineteenth Century_, and the _Contemporary +Review_. + +"You are abreast of the times, I see," I said to him, pointing to these +periodicals. + +"Yes," he replied, "they have just come in; and there is a capital paper +by Mr. John Morley in this _Nineteenth Century_." + +Nothing could be livelier than Dr. Dillon's interest in all that is +going on on both sides of the Atlantic, more positive than his opinions, +or more terse and clear than his way of putting them. He agreed entirely +with Father O'Neill as to the pressure put upon the Coolgreany tenants, +not so much by Mr. Brooke as by the agent, Captain Hamilton; but he +thought Mr. Brooke also to blame for his treatment of them. + +"Two of the most respectable of them," said Dr. Dillon, "went to see Mr. +Brooke in Dublin, and he wouldn't listen to them. On the contrary, he +absolutely put them out of his office without hearing a word they had to +say."[22] + +I found Dr. Dillon a strong disciple of Mr. Henry George, and a firm +believer in the doctrine of the "nationalisation of the land." "It is +certain to come," he said, "as certain to come in Great Britain as in +Ireland, and the sooner the better. The movement about the sewerage +rates in London," he added, "is the first symptom of the land war in +London. It is the thin edge of the wedge to break down landlordism in +the British metropolis." + +He is watching American politics, too, very closely, and inclines to +sympathise with President Cleveland. Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia, he +tells me, in his passage through Ireland the other day, did not hesitate +to express his conviction that President Cleveland would be re-elected. + +Dr. Dillon was so earnest and so interesting that the time slipped by +very fast, until a casual glance at my watch showed me that we must make +great haste to catch the Dublin train. + +We left therefore rather hurriedly, but before reaching the station we +saw the Dublin train go careering by, its white pennon of smoke and +vapour curling away along the valley. + +I made the best of it, however, and letting Mr. Holmes depart by a train +which took him home, I found a smart jarvey with a car, and drove out to +Glenart Castle, the beautiful house of the Earl of Carysfort. This is a +very handsome modern house, built in a castellated style of a very good +whitish grey marble, with extensive and extremely well-kept terraced +gardens and conservatories. + +It stands very well on one high bank of the river, a residence of the +Earl of Wicklow occupying the other bank. My jarvey called my attention +to the excellence of the roads, on which he said Lord Carysfort has +spent "a deal of money," as well as upon the gardens of the new Castle. +The head-gardener, an Englishman, told me he found the native labourers +very intelligent and willing both to learn and to work. Evidently here +is another centre of useful and civilising influences, not managed by an +"absentee."[23] + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + + +DUBLIN, _Friday, March 9th._--At 7.40 this morning I took the train for +Athy to visit the Luggacurren estates of Lord Lansdowne. Mr. Lynch, a +resident magistrate here, some time ago kindly offered to show me over +the place, but I thought it as well to take my chance with the people of +Athy who are reported to have been very hot over the whole matter here, +and so wrote to Mr. Lynch that I would find him at the Lodge, which is +the headquarters of the property. + +Athy is a neat, well-built little town, famous of old as a frontier +fortress of Kildare. An embattled tower, flanked by small square +turrets, guards a picturesque old bridge here over the Barrow, the +bridge being known in the country as "Crom-a-boo," from the old war-cry +of the Fitz-Geralds. It is a busy place now; and there was quite a +bustle at the very pretty little station. I asked a friendly old porter +which was the best hotel in the town. "The best? Ah! there's only one, +and it's not the best--but there are worse--and it's Kavanagh's." I +found it easily enough, and was ushered by a civil man, who emerged from +the shop which occupies part of it, into a sort of reading-room with a +green table. A rather slatternly but very active girl soon converted +this into a neat breakfast-table, and gave me an excellent breakfast. +The landlord found me a good car, and off I set for the residence of +Father Maher, the curate of whom I had heard as one of the most fiery +and intractable of the National League priests in this part of Ireland. + + +My jarvey was rather taciturn at first, but turned out to be something +of a politician. He wanted Home Rule, one of his reasons being that then +they "wouldn't let the Americans come and ruin them altogether, driving +out the grain from the markets." About this he was very clear and +positive. "Oh, it doesn't matter now whether the land is good or bad, +America has just ruined the farmers entirely." + +I told him I had always heard this achievement attributed to England. +"Oh! that was quite a mistake! What the English did was to punish the +men that stood up for Ireland. There was Mr. O'Brien. But for him there +wasn't a man of Lord Lansdowne's people would have had the heart to +stand up. He did it all; and now, what were they doing to him? They were +putting him on a cold plank-bed on a stone floor in a damp cell!" + +"But the English put all their prisoners in those cells, don't they?" I +asked. + +"And what of it, sir?" he retorted. "They're good enough for most of +them, but not for a gentleman like Mr. O'Brien, that would spill the +last drop of his heart's blood for Ireland!" + +"But," I said, "they're doing just the same thing with Mr. Gilhooly, I +hear." + +"And who is Mr. Gilhooly, now? And it's not for the likes of him to +complain and be putting on airs as if he was Mr. O'Brien!" + +"Yes, it is a fine country for hunting!" + +"Was it ever put down here, the hunting?" + +"No, indeed! Sure, the people wouldn't let it be!" + +"Not if Mr. O'Brien told them they must?" I queried. + +"Mr. O'Brien; ah, he wouldn't think of such a thing! It brings money all +the time to Athy, and sells the horses." + +As to the troubles at Luggacurren, he was not very clear. "It was a +beautiful place, Mr. Dunne's; we'd see it presently. And Mr. Dunne, he +was a good one for sport. It was that, your honour, that got him into +the trouble"-- + +"And Mr. Kilbride?" + +"Oh, Mr. Kilbride's place was a very good place too, but not like Mr. +Dunne's. And he was doing very well, Mr. Kilbride. He was getting a good +living from the League, and he was a Member of Parliament. Oh, yes, he +wasn't the only one of the tenants that was doing good to himself. There +was more of them that was getting more than ever they made out of the +land."[24] + +"Was the land so bad, then?" I asked. + +"No, there was as good land at Luggacurren as any there was in all +Ireland; but," and here he pointed off to the crests of the hills in the +distance, "there was a deal of land there of the estate on the hills, +and it was very poor land, but the tenants had to pay as much for that +as for the good property of Dunne and Kilbride." + +"Do you know Mr. Lynch, the magistrate?" I asked. "If you do, look out +for him, as he has promised to join me and show me the place." + +"Oh no, sorr!" the jarvey exclaimed at once; "don't mind about him. Hell +have his own car, and your honour won't want to take him on ours." + +"Why not?" I persisted, "there's plenty of room." + +"Oh! but indeed, sir, if it wasn't that you were going to the priest's, +Father Maher, you wouldn't get a car at Athy--no, not under ten pounds!" + +"Not under ten pounds," I replied. "Would I get one then for ten +pounds?" + +"It's a deal of money, ten pounds, sorr, and you wouldn't have a poor +man throw away ten pounds?" + +"Certainly not, nor ten shillings either. Is it a question of principle, +or a question of price?" + +The man looked around at me with a droll glimmer in his eye: "Ah, to be +sure, your honour's a great lawyer; but he'll come pounding along with +his big horse in his own car, Mr. Lynch; and sure it'll be quicker for +your honour just driving to Father Maher's." + +There was no resisting this, so I laughed and bade him drive on. + +"Whose house is that?" I asked, as we passed a house surrounded with +trees. + +"Oh! that's the priest, Father Keogh--a very good man, but not so much +for the people as Father Maher, who has everything to look after about +them." + +We came presently within sight of a handsome residence, Lansdowne Lodge, +the headquarters of the estate. Many fine cattle were grazing in the +fields about it. + +"They are Lord Lansdowne's beasts," said my jarvey; "and it's the +emergency men are looking after them." + +Nearly opposite were the Land League huts erected on the holding of an +unevicted tenant--a small village of neat wooden "shanties." On the +roadway in front of these half-a-dozen men were lounging about. They +watched us with much curiosity as we drove up, and whispered eagerly +together. + +"They're some of the evicted men, your honour," said my jarvey, with a +twinkle in his eye; and then under his breath, "They'll be thinking your +honour's came down to arrange it all. They think everybody that comes is +come about an arrangement." + +"Oh, then, they all want it arranged!" + +"No; not all, but many of them do. Some of them like it well enough +going about like gentlemen with nothing to do, only their hands in their +pockets." + +We turned out of the highway here and passed some very pretty cottages. + +"No, they're not for labourers, your honour," said my jarvey; "the +estate built them for mechanics. It's the tenants look after the +labourers, and little it is they do for them." + +Then, pointing to a ridge of hills beyond us, he said: "It was +Kilbride's father, sir, evicted seventeen tenants on these hills--poor +labouring men, with their families, many years ago,--and now he's +evicted himself, and a Member of Parliament!" + +Father Maher's house stands well off from the highway. He was not at +home, being "away at a service in the hills," but would be back before +two o'clock. I left my name for him, with a memorandum of my purpose in +calling, and we drove on to see the bailiff of the estate, Mr. Hind. On +the way we met Father Norris, a curate of the parish, in a smart trap +with a good horse, and had a brief colloquy with him. Mr. Hind we found +busy afield; a quiet, staunch sort of man. He spoke of the situation +very coolly and dispassionately. "The tenants in the main were a good +set of men--as they had reason to be, Lord Lansdowne having been not +only a fair landlord, but a liberal and enterprising promoter of local +improvements." I had been told in Dublin that Lord Lansdowne had offered +a subscription of £200 towards establishing creameries, and providing +high-class bulls for this estate. Similar offers had been cordially met +by Lord Lansdowne's tenants in Kerry, and with excellent results. But +here they were rejected almost scornfully, though accompanied by offers +of abatement on the rents, which, in the case of Mr. Kilbride, for +example, amounted to 20 per cent. + +"How did this happen, the tenants being good men as you say?" I asked of +Mr. Hind. + +"Because they were unable to resist the pressure put on them by the two +chief tenants, Kilbride and Dunne, with the help of the League. Kilbride +and Dunne both lived very well." My information at Dublin was that Mr. +Kilbride had a fine house built by Lord Lansdowne, and a farm of seven +hundred acres, at a rent of £760, 10s. Mr. Dunne, who co-operated with +him, held four town lands comprising 1304 acres, at a yearly rent of +£1348, 15s. Upon this property Lord Lansdowne had expended in drainage +and works £1993, 11s. 9d., and in buildings £631, 15s. 4d., or in all +very nearly two years' rental. On Mr. Kilbride's holdings Lord Lansdowne +had expended in drainage works £1931, 6s. 3d., and in buildings £1247, +19s. 5d., or in all more than four years' rental. Mr. Kilbride held his +lands on life leases. Mr. Dunne held his smallest holding of 84 acres on +a yearly tenure; his two largest holdings, one on a lease for 31 years +from 1874, and the other on a life lease, and his fourth holding of 172 +acres on a life lease. + +Where does the hardship appear in all this to Mr. Dunne or Mr. Kilbride? + +On Mr. Kilbride's holdings, for instance, Lord Lansdowne expended over +£3000, for which he added to the rent £130 a year, or about 4 per cent., +while he himself stood to pay 6-1/2 per cent, on the loans he made from +the Board of Works for the expenditure. In the same way it was with Mr. +Dunne's farms. They were mostly in grass, and Lord Lansdowne laid out +more than £2500 on them, borrowed at the same rate from the Board, for +which he added to the rent only £66 a year, or about 2-1/2 per cent. Mr. +Kilbride was a Poor-Law Guardian, and Mr. Dunne a Justice of the Peace. +The leases in both of these cases, and in those of other large tenants, +seem to have been made at the instance of the tenants themselves, and +afforded security against any advance in the rental during a time of +high agricultural prices. And it would appear that for the last quarter +of a century there has been no important advance in the rental. In 1887 +the rental was only £300 higher than in 1862, though during the interval +the landlord had laid out £20,000 on improvements in the shape of +drainage, roads, labourers' cottages, and other permanent works. +Moreover, in fifteen years only one tenant has been evicted for +non-payment of rent. + +"Was there any ill-feeling towards the Marquis among the tenants?" I +asked of Mr. Hind. + +"Certainly not, and no reason for any. They were a good set of men, and +they would never have gone into this fight, only for a few who were in +trouble, and I'm sure that to-day most of them would be thankful if they +could settle and get back. The best of them had money enough, and didn't +like the fight at all." + +All the trouble here seems to have originated with the adoption of the +Plan of Campaign. + +Lord Lansdowne, besides this estate in Queen's County, owns property in +a wild, mountainous part of the county of Kerry. On this property the +tenants occupy, for the most part, small holdings, the average rental +being about £10, and many of the rentals much lower. They are not +capitalist farmers at all, and few of them are able to average the +profits of their industry, setting the gains of a good, against the +losses of a bad, season. In October 1886, while Mr. Dillon was +organising his Plan of Campaign, Lord Lansdowne visited his Kerry +property to look into the condition of the people. The local Bank had +just failed, and the shopkeepers and money-lenders were refusing credit +and calling in loans. The pressure they put upon these small farmers, +together with the fall in the price of dairy produce and of young stock +at that time, caused real distress, and Lord Lansdowne, after looking +into the situation, offered, of his own motion, abatements varying from +25 to 35 per cent, to all of them whose rents had not been judicially +fixed under the Act of 1881, for a term of fifteen years. + +As to these, Lord Lansdowne wrote a letter on the 21st of October 1886 +(four days after the promulgation of the Plan of Campaign at Portumna on +the Clanricarde property), to his agent, Mr. Townsend Trench. This +letter was published. I have a copy of it given to me in Dublin, and it +states the case as between the landlords and the tenants under judicial +rents most clearly and temperately. + +"It might, I think," says the Marquis, "be very fairly argued, that the +State having imposed the terms of a contract on landlord and tenant, +that contract should not be interfered with except by the State. + +"The punctual payment of the 'judicial rent' was the one advantage to +which the landlords were desired to look when, in 1881, they were +deprived of many of the most valuable attributes of ownership. + +"It was distinctly stipulated that the enormous privileges which were +suddenly and unexpectedly conferred upon the tenants were to be enjoyed +by them conditionally upon the fulfilment on their part of the statutory +obligations specified in the Act. Of those, by far the most important +was the punctual payment of the rent fixed by the Court for the judicial +term. + +"This obligation being unfulfilled, the landlord might reasonably claim +that he should be free to exercise his own discretion in determining +whether any given tenancy should or should not be perpetuated. + +"In many cases [such cases are probably not so numerous on my estate as +upon many others] the resumption of the holding, and the consolidation +of adjoining farms, would be clearly advantageous to the whole +community. In the congested districts the consolidation of farms is the +only solution that I have seen suggested for meeting a chronic +difficulty. + +"I have no reason to believe that the Judicial Rents in force on my +estate are such that, upon an average of the yield and prices of +agricultural produce, my tenants would find it difficult to pay them." + +In spite of all these considerations Lord Lansdowne instructed Mr. +Trench to grant to these tenants under judicial leases an abatement of +20 per cent. on the November gale of 1886. This abatement, freely +offered, was gladly accepted. There had been no outrages or disturbances +on the Kerry properties, and the relations of the landlord with his +tenants, before and after this visit of Lord Lansdowne to Kerry, and +these reductions which followed it, had been, and continued to be, +excellent. + +But the tale of Kerry reached Luggacurren; and certain of the tenants on +the latter estate were moved by it to demand for the Queen's County +property identical treatment with that accorded to the very differently +situated property in Kerry. + +The leaders of the Luggacurren movement, I gather from Mr. Hind, never +pretended inability to pay their rents. They simply demanded abatements +of 35 per cent. on non-judicial, and 25 per cent. on judicial, rents as +their due, on the ground that they should be treated like the tenants in +Kerry: and the Plan of Campaign being by this time in full operation in +more than one part of Ireland, they threatened to resort to it if their +demand was refused. Lord Lansdowne at once declared that he would not +repeat at Luggacurren his concession made in Kerry as to the rents +judicially fixed; but he offered on a fair consideration of the +non-judicial rents to make abatements on them ranging from 15 to 25 per +cent. + +The offer was refused, and the war began. On the 23d of March 1887 Mr. +Kilbride was evicted. One week afterwards, on the 29th of March, he got +up in the rooms of the National League in Dublin, and openly declared +that "the Luggacurren evictions differed from most other evictions in +this, that they were able to pay the rent. It was a fight," he +exultingly exclaimed, "of intelligence against intelligence; it was +diamond cut diamond!" In other words, it was a struggle, not for +justice, but for victory. + +On all these points, and others furnished to me at Dublin touching this +estate, much light was thrown by the bailiff, who had not been concerned +in the evictions. He told me what he knew, and then very obligingly +offered to conduct me to the lodge, where we should find Mr. Hutchins, +who has charge now of the properties taken up by Mr. Kavanagh's Land +Corporation. My patriotic jarvey from Athy made no objection to my +giving the bailiff a lift, and we drove off to the lodge. On the way the +jarvey good-naturedly exclaimed, "Ah! there comes Mr. Lynch," and even +offered to pull up that the magistrate might overtake us. + +We found Mr. Hutchins at home, a cool, quiet, energetic, northern man, +who seems to be handling the difficult situation here with great +firmness and prudence. Mrs. Hutchins, who has lived here now for nearly +a year--a life not unlike that of the wife of an American officer on the +Far Western frontier--very amicably asked me to lunch, and Mr. Hutchins +offered to show me the holdings of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Kilbride. Mr. Lynch +proposed that we should all go on my car, but I remembered the protest +of the jarvey, and sending him to await me at Father Maher's, I drove +off with Mr. Hutchins. As we drove along, he confirmed the jarvey's hint +as to the difference between the views and conduct of the parish priest +and the views and conduct of his more fiery curate. This is a very +common state of affairs, I find, all over Ireland. + +The house of Mr. Dunne is that of a large gentleman farmer. It is very +well fitted up, but it was plain that the tenants had done little or +nothing to make or keep it a "house beautiful." The walls had never been +papered, and the wood-work showed no recent traces of the brush. "He +spent more money on horse-racing than on housekeeping," said a shrewd +old man who was in the house. In fact, Mr. Dunne, I am told, entered a +horse for the races at the Curragh after he had undergone what Mr. +Gladstone calls "the sentence of death" of an eviction! + +Some of the doors bore marks of the crowbar but no great mischief had +been done to them or to the large fine windows. The only serious damage +done during the eviction was the cutting of a hole through the roof. An +upper room had been provisioned to stand a siege, and so scientifically +barricaded with logs and trunks of trees that after several vain +attempts to break through the door the assailants climbed to the roof, +and in twenty minutes cut their way in from without. The dining and +drawing rooms were those of a gentleman's residence, and one of the +party remembered attending here a social festivity got up with much +display. + +A large cattle-yard has been established on this place, with an +original, and, as I was assured, most successful weighing-machine by the +Land Corporation. We found it full of very fine-looking cattle, and Mr. +Hutchins seems to think the operation of managing the estate as a kind +of "ranch" decidedly promising. "I am not a bit sorry for Mr. Dunne," he +said, "but I am very sorry for other quiet, good tenants who have been +deluded or driven into giving up valuable holdings to keep him and Mr. +Kilbride company, and give colour to the vapourings of Mr. William +O'Brien." + +The cases of some of these tenants were instructive. One poor man, +Knowles, had gone out to America, and regularly sent home money to his +family to pay the rent. They found other uses for it, and when the storm +came he was two years and a half in arrears. In another instance, two +brothers held contiguous holdings, and were in a manner partners. One +was fonder of Athy than of agriculture; the other a steady husbandman. +Four years' arrears had grown up against the one; only a half-year's +gale against the other. Clearly this difference originated outside of +the fall of prices! In a third case, a tenant wrote to Mr. Trench +begging to have something done, as he had the money to pay, and wanted +to pay, but "didn't dare." + +From Mr. Dunne's we drove to Mr. Kilbride's, another ample, very +comfortable house--not so thoroughly well fitted up with bathroom and +other modern appurtenances as Mr. Dunne's perhaps--but still a very good +house. It stands on a large green knoll, rather bare of trees, and +commands a fine sweep of landscape. + +Mr. Hutchins drove me to the little road which leads up past the "Land +League village" to the house of Father Maher, and there set me down. + +I walked up and found the curate at home--a tall, slender, well-made +young priest, with a keen, intelligent face. He received me very +politely, and, when I showed him the card of an eminent dignitary of the +Church, with cordiality. + +I found him full of sympathy with the people of his parish, but neither +vehement nor unfair. He did not deny that there were tenants on Lord +Lansdowne's estate who were amply able to pay their rents; but he did +most emphatically assert that there were not a few of them who really +could not pay their rents. + +"I assure you," he said, "there are some of them who cannot even pay +their dues to their priest, and when I say that, you will know how +pinched and driven they must indeed be." It was in view of these tenants +that he seemed to justify the course of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Kilbride. +"They must all stand or fall together." He had nothing to say to the +discredit of Lord Lansdowne; but he spoke with some bitterness of the +agent, Mr. Townsend Trench, as having protested against Lord Lansdowne's +making reductions here while he had himself made the same reductions on +the neighbouring estate of Mrs. Adair. + +"In truth," he said, "Mr. Trench has made all this trouble worse all +along. He is too much of a Napoleon"--and with a humorous twinkle in his +eye as he spoke--"too much of a Napoleon the Third. + +"I was just reading his father's book when you came in. Here it is," and +he handed me a copy of Trench's _Realities of Irish Life_. + +"Did you ever read it? This Mr. Trench, the father, was a kind of +Napoleon among agents in his own time, and the son, you see, thinks it +ought to be understood that he is quite as great a man as his father. +Did you never hear how he found a lot of his father's manuscripts once, +and threw them all in the fire, calling out as he did so, 'There goes +some more of my father's vanity?'" + +About his people, and with his people, Father Maher said he "felt most +strongly." How could he help it? He was himself the son of an evicted +father. + +"Of course, Father Maher," I said, "you will understand that I wish to +get at both sides of this question and of all questions here. Pray tell +me then, where I shall find the story of the Luggacurren property most +fully and fairly set forth in print?" + +Without a moment's hesitation he replied, "By far the best and fairest +account of the whole matter you will get in the Irish correspondence of +the London _Times_." + +How the conflict would end he could not say. But he was at a loss to see +how it could pay Lord Lansdowne to maintain it. + +He very civilly pressed me to stay and lunch with him, but when I told +him I had already accepted an invitation from Mr. Hutchins, he very +kindly bestirred himself to find my jarvey. + +I hastened back to the lodge, where I found a very pleasant little +company. They were all rather astonished, I thought, by the few words I +had to say of Father Maher, and especially by his frank and sensible +recommendation of the reports in the London _Times_ as the best account +I could find of the Luggacurren difficulty. To this they could not +demur, but things have got, or are getting, in Ireland, I fear, to a +point at which candour, on one side or the other of the burning +questions here debated, is regarded with at least as much suspicion as +the most deliberate misrepresentation. As to Mr. Town send Trench, what +Father Maher failed to tell me, I was here told: That down to the time +of the actual evictions he offered to take six months' rent from the +tenants, give them a clean book, and pay all the costs. To refuse this +certainly looks like a "war measure." + +But for the loneliness of her life here, Mrs. Hutchins tells me she +would find it delightful. The country is exceedingly lovely in the +summer and autumn months. + +When my car came out to take me back to Athy, I found my jarvey in +excellent spirits, and quite friendly even with Mr. Hutchins himself. He +kept up a running fire of lively commentaries upon the residents whose +estates we passed. + +"Would you think now, your honour," he said, pointing with his whip to +one large mansion standing well among good trees, "that that's the +snuggest man there is about Athy? But he is; and it's no wonder! Would +you believe it, he never buys a newspaper, but he walks all the way into +Athy, and goes about from the bank to the shops till he finds one, and +picks it up and reads it. He's mighty fond of the news, but he's fonder, +you see, of a penny! + +"There now, your honour, just look at that house! It's a magistrate he +is that lives there; and why? Why, just to be called 'your honour,' and +have the people tip their hats to him. Oh! he delights in that, he does. +Why, you might knock a man, or put him in the water, you might, indeed, +but if you came before Mr.----, and you just called him 'your honour' +often enough, and made up to him, you'd be all right! You've just to go +up to him with your hat in your hand, looking up at him, and to say, +'Ah! now, your honour'" (imitating the wheedling tone to perfection), +"and indeed you'd get anything out of him--barring a sixpence, that is, +or a penny! + +"Ah! he's a snug one, too!" And with that he launched a sharp thwack of +the whip at the grey mare, and we went rattling on apace. + +At the very pretty station of Athy we parted the best of friends. "Wish +you safe home, your honour." The kindly railway porter, also, who had +recommended Kavanagh's Hotel, was anxious to know how I found it, and so +busied himself to get me a good carriage when the train came in, that I +feel bound to exempt Athy from the judgment passed by Sir James +Allport's committee against the "amenities of railway travelling in +Ireland." + + +DUBLIN, _Saturday, March 10._--I called by appointment to-day upon Mr. +Brooke, the owner of the Coolgreany estate, at his counting-house in +Gardiner's Row. It is one of the spacious old last-century houses of +Dublin; the counting-room is installed with dark, old-fashioned mahogany +fittings, in what once was, and might easily again be made, a +drawing-room. Pictures hang on the walls, and the atmosphere of the +whole place is one of courtesy and culture rather than of mere modern +commerce. One of the portraits here is that of Mr. Brooke's +granduncle--a handsome, full-blooded, rather testy-looking old warrior, +in the close-fitting scarlet uniform of the Prince Regent's time. + +"He ought to have been called Lord Baltimore," said Mr. Brooke +good-naturedly; "for he fought against your people for that city at +Bladensburg with Ross." + +"That was the battle," I said, "in which, according to a popular +tradition in my country, the Americans took so little interest that they +left the field almost as soon as it began." + +Another portrait is of a kinsman who was murdered in the highway here in +Ireland many years ago, under peculiarly atrocious circumstances, and +with no sort of provocation or excuse. + +Mr. Brooke confirmed Dr. Dillon's statement that he had ordered out of +his counting-house two tenants who came into it with a peculiarly brazen +proposition, of which I must presume Dr. Dillon was ignorant when he +cited the fact as a count against the landlord of Coolgreany. I give the +story as Mr Brooke tells it. "The Rent Audit," he says, "at which my +tenants were idiots enough to join the Plan of Campaign occurred about +the 12th December 1886, when, as you know, I refused to accept the terms +which they proposed to me. I heard nothing more from them till about the +middle of February 1887, when coming to my office one day I found two +tenants waiting for me. One was Stephen Maher, a mountain man, and the +other Patrick Kehoe. 'What do you want?' I asked. Whereupon they both +arose, and Pat Kehoe pointed to Maher. Maher fumbled at his clothes, and +rubbed himself softly for a bit, and then produced a scrap of paper. +'It's a bit of paper from the tenants, sir,' he said. A queer bit of +paper it was to look at--ruled paper, with a composition written upon it +which might have been the work of a village schoolmaster. It was neither +signed nor addressed! The pith of it was in these words,--'in +consequence of the manner in which we have been harassed, our cattle +driven throughout the country, and our crops not sown, we shall be +unable to pay the half-year's rent due in March, in addition to the +reduction already claimed!' I own I rather lost my temper at this! +Remember I had already plainly refused to give 'the reduction already +claimed,' and had told them not once, but twenty times, that I would +never surrender to the 'Plan of Campaign'! I am afraid my language was +Pagan rather than Parliamentary--but I told them plainly, at least, that +if they did not break from the Plan of Campaign, and pay their debts, +they might be sure I would turn the whole of them out! I gave them back +their precious bit of paper and sent them packing. + +"One of them, I have told you, was a mountain man, Stephen Maher. He is +commonly known among the people as 'the old fox of the mountain,' and he +is very proud of it! + +"This old Stephen Maher," said Mr. Brooke, "is renowned in connection +with a trial for murder, at which he was summoned as a witness. When he +was cross-examined by Mr. Molloy, Q.C., he fenced and dodged about with +that distinguished counsellor for a long time, until getting vexed by +the lawyer's persistency, he exclaimed, 'Now thin, Mr. Molloy, I'd have +ye to know that I had a cliverer man nor iver you was, Mr. Molloy, at +me, and I had to shtan' up to him for three hours before the Crowner, +an' he was onable to git the throoth out of me, so he was! so he was!'" + + +Neither did Dr. Dillon mention the fact that one of the demands made of +Captain Hamilton, Mr. Brooke's agent, in December 1886, was that a +Protestant tenant named Webster should be evicted by Mr. Brooke from a +farm for which he had paid his rent, to make room for the return thither +of a Roman Catholic tenant named Lenahan, previously evicted for +non-payment of his rent. + +When Mr. Brooke's grandfather bought the Coolgreany property in 1864, he +adopted a system of betterments, which has been ever since kept up on +the estate. Nearly every tenant's house on the property has been slated, +and otherwise repaired by the landlord, nor has one penny ever been +added on that account to the rents. + +In the village of Coolgreany all the houses on one side of the main +street were built in this way by the landlord, and the same thing was +done in the village of Croghan, where twenty tenants have a grazing +right of three sheep for every acre held on the Croghan Mountain, +pronounced by the valuers of the Land Court to be one of the best +grazing mountains in Ireland. + +Captain Hamilton became the agent of the property in 1879, on the death +of Mr. Vesey. One of his earliest acts was to advise Mr. Brooke to grant +an abatement of 25 per cent. in June 1881, while the Land Act was +passing. At the same time, he cautioned the tenants that this was only a +temporary reduction, and advised them to get judicial rents fixed. + +The League advised them not to do this, but to demand 25 per cent. +reduction again in December 1881. This demand was rejected, and forty +writs were issued. The tenants thereupon in January 1882 came in and +paid the full rent, with the costs. + +Eleven tenants after this went into Court, and in 1883 the +Sub-Commissioners cut down their rents. In five cases Mr. Brooke +appealed. What was the result before the Chief Commissioner? The rent of +Mary Green, which had been £43, and had been cut down by the +Sub-Commissioners to £39, was restored to £43; the rent of Mr. Kavanagh, +cut down from £57 to £52, was restored to £55; the rent of Pat Kehoe +(one of the two tenants "ejected" from Mr. Brooke's office as already +stated), cut down from £81 to £70, was restored to £81; the rent of +Graham, cut down from £38 to £32, 10s., was restored to £38. Other +reductions were maintained. + +This appears to be the record of "rack-renting" on the Coolgreany +property. + +There are 114 tenants, of whom 15 hold under judicial rents; 22 are +leaseholders, and 77 are non-judicial yearly tenants. There are 12 +Protestants holding in all a little more than 1200 acres. All the rest +are Catholics, 14 of these being cottier tenants. The estate consists of +5165 acres. The average is about £24, and the average rental about £26, +10s. The gross rental is £2614, of which £1000 go to the jointure of Mr. +Brooke's mother, and £800 are absorbed by the tithe charges, half +poor-rates and other taxes. During the year 1886, in which this war was +declared against him, Mr. Brooke spent £714 in improvements upon the +property: so in that year his income from Coolgreany was practically +_nil_. + +What in these circumstances would have been the position of this +landlord had he not possessed ample means not invested in this +particular estate? And what has been the result to the tenants of this +conflict into which it seems clear that they were led, less to protect +any direct interest of their own than to jeopardise their homes and +their livelihood for the promotion of a general agrarian agitation? It +is not clear that they are absolutely so far out of pocket, for I find +that the Post-Office Savings Bank deposits at Inch and Gorey rose from +£3699, 5s. 4d. in 1880 to £5308, 13s. in 1887, showing an increase of +£1609, 7s. 8d. But they are out of house and home and work, entered +pupils in that school of idleness and iniquity which has been kept by +one Preceptor from the beginning of time. + + + + +CHAPTER XV.[25] + + +* * * *--Mrs. Kavanagh was quite right when she told me at Borris in +March that this country should be seen in June! The drive to this lovely +place this morning was one long enchantment of verdure and hawthorn +blossoms and fragrance. + +I came over from London to bring to a head some inquiries which have too +long delayed the publication of this diary. My intention had been to go +directly to Thurles, but a telegram which I received from the Archbishop +of Cashel just before I left telling me that he could not be at home for +the last three days of the week, I came directly here. Nothing can be +more utterly unlike the popular notions of Ireland and of Irish life +than the aspect of this most smiling and beautiful region: nothing more +thoroughly Irish than its people. + +* * * who is one of the most active and energetic of Irish landlords, +lives part of the year abroad, but keeps up his Irish property with +care, at the expense, I suspect, of his estates elsewhere. + +From a noble avenue of trees, making the highway like the main road of a +private park, we turned into a literal paradise of gardens. The air was +balmy with their wealth of odours. "Oh! yes, sir," said the coachman, +with an air of sympathetic pride, "our lady is just the greatest lady in +all this land for flowers!" + +And for ivy, he might have added. We drove between green walls of ivy up +to a house which seemed itself to be built of ivy, like that wonderful +old mansion of Castle Leod in Scotland. Here, plainly, is another centre +of "sweetness and light," the abolition of which must make, not this +region alone, but Ireland poorer in that precise form of wealth, which, +as Laboulaye has shown in one of the best of his lectures, is absolutely +identical with civilisation. It is such places as this, which, in the +interest of the people, justify the exemption from redistribution and +resettlement, made in one of a series of remarkable articles on Ireland +recently published in the _Birmingham Post_, of lands, the "breaking up +of which would interfere with the amenity of a residence." + +* * * relations with all classes of the people here are so cordial and +straightforward that he has been easily able to give me to-day, what I +have sought in vain elsewhere in Ireland, an opportunity of conversing +frankly and freely with several labouring men. For obvious reasons these +men, as a rule, shrink from any expression of their real feelings. Their +position is apparently one of absolute dependence either upon the +farmers or the landlords, there being no other local market for their +labour, which is their only stock-in-trade. As one of them said to me +to-day, "The farmers will work a man just as long as they can't help it, +and then they throw him away." + +I asked if there were no regular farm-labourers hired at fixed rates by +the year? + +"Oh! very few--less now than ever; and there'll be fewer before there'll +be more. The farmers don't want to pay the labourers or to pay the +landlords; they want the land and the work for nothing, sir,--they do +indeed!" + +"What does a farm-hand get," I asked, "if he is hired for a long time?" + +"Well, permanent men, they'll get 6s. a week with breakfast and dinner, +or 7s. maybe, with one meal; and a servant-boy, sir, he'll get 2s. a +week or may be 3s. with his board; but it's seldom he gets it." + +"And what has he for his board?" + +"Oh, stirabout; and then twice a week coorse Russian or American meat, +what they call the 'kitchen,' and they like it better than good meat, +sir, because it feeds the pot more." + +By this I found he meant that the "coorse meat" gave out more +"unctuosity" in the boiling--the meat being always served up boiled in a +pot with vegetables, like the "bacon and greens" of the "crackers" in +the South. + +"And nothing else?" + +"Yes; buttermilk and potatoes." + +"And these wages are the highest?" + +"Oh, I know a boy got 5s., but by living in his father's house, and +working out it was he got it. And then they go over to England to work." + +"What wages do they get there?" + +"Oh, it differs, but they do well; 9s. a week, I think, and their board, +and straw to sleep on in the stables." + +"But doesn't it cost them a good deal to go and come?" + +"Oh no; they get cheap rates. They send them from Galway to Dublin like +cattle, at £2, 5s. a car, and that makes about 1s. 6d. a head; and then +they are taken over on the steamers very cheap. Often the graziers that +do large business with the companies, will have a right to send over a +number of men free; and they stowaway too; and then on the railways in +England they get passes free often from cattle-dealers, specially when +they are coming back, and the dealers don't want their passes. They do +very well. They'll bring back £7 and £10. I was on a boat once, and +there was a man; he was drunk; he was from Galway somewhere, and they +took away and kept for him £18, all in good golden sovereigns; that was +the most I ever saw. And he was drunk, or who'd ever have known he had +it?" + +"Do the farmers build houses for the labourers?" + +"Build houses, is it! Glory be to God! who ever heard of such a thing? +The farmers are a poor proud lot. They'd let a labourer die in the +ditch!" + +All that this poor man said was corroborated by another man of a higher +class, very familiar with the conditions of life and labour here, and +indeed one of the most interesting men I have met in Ireland. Born the +son of a labouring man, he was educated by a priest and educated +himself, till he fitted himself for the charge of a small school, which +he kept to such good purpose that in eighteen years he saved £1100, with +which capital he resolved to begin life as a small farmer and +shopkeeper. He had studied all the agricultural works he could get, and +before he went fairly into the business, he travelled on the Continent, +looking carefully into the methods of culture and manner of life of the +people, especially in Italy and in Belgium. The Belgian farming gave him +new ideas of what might be done in Ireland, and those ideas he has put +into practice, with the best results. + +"On the same land with my neighbours," he said, "I double their +production. Where they get two tons of hay I get four or four and a +half, where they get forty-five barrels of potatoes I get a hundred. +Only the other day I got £20 for a bullock I had taken pains with to +fatten him up scientifically. Of course I had a small capital to start +with: but where did I get that? Not from the Government. I earned and +saved it myself; and then I wasn't above learning how best to use it." + +He thinks the people here--though by no means what they might be with +more thrift and knowledge--much better off than the same class in many +other parts of Ireland. There are no "Gombeen men" here, he says, and no +usurious shopkeepers. "The people back each other in a friendly way when +they need help." Many of the labourers, he says, are in debt to him, but +he never presses them, and they are very patient with each other. They +would do much better if any pains were taken to teach them. It is his +belief that agricultural schools and model farms would do more than +almost any measure that could be devised for bringing up the standard of +comfort and prosperity here, and making the country quiet. + +It is the opinion of this man that the people of this place have been +led to regard the Papal Decree as a kind of attack on their liberties, +and that they are quite as likely to resist as to obey it. For his own +part, he thinks Ireland ought to have her own parliament, and make her +own laws. He is not satisfied with the laws actually made, though he +admits they are better than the older laws were. "The tenants get their +own improvements now," he said, "and in old times the more a man +improved the worse it was for him, the agent all the while putting up +the rents." + +But he does not want Irish independence. "The people that talk that +way," he said, "have never travelled. They don't see how idle it is for +Ireland to talk about supporting herself. She just can't do it." + +Not less interesting was my talk to-day with quite a different person. +This was a keen-eyed, hawk-billed, wiry veteran of the '48. As a youth +he had been out with "Meagher of the Sword," and his eyes glowed when he +found that I had known that champion of Erin. "I was out at Ballinagar," +he said; "there were five hundred men with guns, and five hundred +pikemen." It struck me he would like to be going "out" again in the same +fashion, but he had little respect for the "Nationalists." + +"There's too many lawyers among them," he said, "too many lawyers and +too many dealers. The lawyers are doing well, thanks to the League. Oh +yes!" with a knowing chuckle, and a light of mischief in his eye; "the +lawyers are doing very well! There's one little bit of a solicitor not +far from here was of no good at all four years ago, and now they tell me +he's made four thousand pounds in three years' time, good money, and got +it all in hand! And there's another, I hear, has made six thousand. The +lawyers that call themselves Nationalists, they just keep mischief +agoing to further themselves. What do they care for the labourers? Why, +no more than the farmers do--and what would become of the poor men! * * +* * here, he is making * * * * * * * and he keeps more poor men going +than all the lawyers and all the farmers in the place a good part of the +year." + +"Are the labourers," I asked, "Nationalists?" + +"They don't know what they are," he answered. "They hate the farmers, +but they love Ireland, and they all stand together for the counthry!" + +"How is it with the Plan of Campaign and the Boycotting?" + +"Now what use have the labourers got for the Plan of Campaign? No more +than for the moon! And for the Boycotting, I never liked it--but I was +never afraid of it--and there's not been much of it here." + +"Will the Papal Decree put a stop to what there is of it?" + +"I wouldn't mind the Pope's Decree no more than that door!" he exclaimed +indignantly. "Hasn't he enough, sure, to mind in Rome? Why didn't he +defend his own country, not bothering about Ireland!" + +"Are you not a Catholic, then?" I asked. + +"Oh yes, I'm a Catholic, but I wouldn't mind the Decree. Only remember," +he added, after a pause, "just this: it don't trouble me, for I've +nothing to do with the Plan of Campaign--only I don't want the Pope to +be meddlin' in matters that don't concern him." + +"It's out of respect, then, for the Pope that you wouldn't mind the +Decree?" + +"Just that, intirely! It was some of them Englishmen wheedled it out of +him, you may be sure, sir." + +"I am told you went out to America once." + +"Yes, I went there in '48, and I came back in '51." + +"What made you go?" I asked. + +"Is it what made me go?" he replied, with a sudden fierceness in his +voice. "It was the evictions made me go; that we was put out of the good +holding my father had, and his father before him; and I can never +forgive it, never! But I came back; and it was * * * father that was the +good man to me and to mine, else where would I be?" + +I afterwards learned from * * * * that the evictions of which the old +man spoke with so much bitterness were made in carrying out important +improvements, and that it was quite true that his father had greatly +befriended the emigrant when he got enough of the New World and came +home. + +It was curious to see the old grudge fresh and fierce in the old man's +heart, but side by side with it the lion lying down with the lamb--a +warm and genuine recognition of the kindness and help bestowed on +himself. His resentment against the landlord's action in one generation +did not in the least interfere with his recognition of the landlord's +usefulness and liberality in the next generation. + +"You didn't like America?" I said. "Where did you live there?" + +"I lived at North Brookfield in Massachusetts, a year or two," he +replied, "with Governor Amasa Walker. Did you know him? He was a good +man; he was fond of the people, but he thought too much of the nagurs." + +"Yes," I answered; "I know all about him, and he was, as you say, a very +good man, even if he was an abolitionist. But why didn't you stay in +North Brookfield?" + +"Oh, it was a poor country indeed! A blast of wind would blow all the +ground away there was! It does no good to the people, going to America," +he said; "they come back worse than they went!" + +He is at work now in some quarries here. + +"The quarrymen get six shillings a week," he said, "with bread and tea +and butter and meat three times a week. With nine shillings a week and +board, a man'll make himself bigger than * * *!" + +"Was the country quiet now?" + +"This country here? Oh! it's very quiet; with potatoes at 3s. 6d. a +barrel, it's a good year for the people. They're a very quiet +people,"--in corroboration apparently of which statement he told me a +story of a coroner's jury called to sit on the body of a man found on +the highway shot through the head, which returned an unanimous verdict +of "Died by the visitation of God." + +This country is dominated by the Rocky Hills climbing up to Cullenagh, +which divides the Barrow valley from the Nore. We drove this afternoon +to * a most lovely place. The mansion there is now shut up and +dismantled, but the park and the grounds are very beautiful, with a +beauty rather enhanced than diminished by the somewhat unkempt +luxuriance of the vegetation. We passed a now well-grown tree planted by +the Prince of Wales * * * * * * and drove over many miles of excellent +road made by * * * * * * * * employs * * * * * * * * regularly, * * * +men as labourers, cartmen and masons, to whom he pays out annually the +sum of * * Mr. * * who, by the way, rather resented my asking him if he +came of one of the Cromwellian English families so numerous here, and +informed me that his people came over with Strongbow--assures me that +but for these works of * * * * these men under him would be literally +without occupation. In addition to these there are about a dozen more +men employed * * as gamekeepers and plantation-men. At the * * places +belonging to * * * * * * * * * * above eighty men find constant +employment, and receive regular wages amounting to over £4000. Were * * +* * dispossessed or driven out of Ireland, all this outlay would come to +an end, and with what result to these working-men? As things now are, +while * * * working-men receive a regular wage of five shillings, the +same men, as farmers' labourers, would receive, now and then, five +shillings a week, and that without food! I saw enough in the course of +our afternoon's drive to satisfy me that my informant of the morning had +probably not overstated matters when he told me that for at least +seventy per cent. of the work done by the labourers here, from November +to May, they have to look to the landlords. On the property of * * as +well as on the neighbouring properties * * * * * * * the houses have +been generally put up by the landlords. We called in the course of the +afternoon upon a labouring man who lives with his wife in a very neat, +cozy, and quite new house, built recently for him by * *. These good +people have been living on this property for now nearly half a century. +Their new house having been built for them, * * has had an agreement +prepared, under which it may be secured to them. The terms have all been +discussed and found satisfactory, but the old labourer now hesitates +about signing the agreement. He gives, and can be got to give, no reason +for this; but when we drove up he came out to greet us in the most +friendly manner. We went in and found his wife, a shrewd, sharp-eyed, +little old dame, with whom * * * * fell into a confabulation, while I +went into the next room with the labourer himself. The house was neatly +furnished--with little ornaments and photographs on the mantel-shelf, +and nothing of the happy-go-lucky look so common about the houses of the +working people in Ireland, as well as about the houses of the lesser +squires. + +I paid him a compliment on the appearance of his house and grounds. +"Yes, sir!" he answered: "it's a very good place it is, and * * * * has +built it just to please us." + +"But I am told you want to leave it?" + +"Ah, no, that is not so, sir, indeed at all! We've three children you +see, sir, in America--two girls and a boy we have." + +"And where are they?" + +"Ah, the girls they're not in any factory at all. They're like leddies, +living out in a place they call * * in Massachusetts; and the lad, he +was on a farm there. But we don't know where he is nor his sisters any +more just now. And the wife, she thinks she would like to go out to +America and see the children." + +"Do you hear from them regularly?" + +"Well, it's only a few pounds they send, but they're doing very well. +Domestics they are, quite like leddies; there's their pictures on the +shelf." + +"But what would you do there?" + +"Ah! we'd have lodgings, the wife says, sir. But I like the ould place +myself." + +"I think you are quite right there," I replied. "And do you get work +here from the farmers as the labourers do in my country?" + +"Work from the farmers, sir?" he answered, rather sharply. "What they +can't help we get, but no more! If the farmers in America is like them, +it's not I would be going there! The farmers! For the farmers, a +labourer, sir, is not of the race of Adam! They think any place good +enough for a labourer--any place and any food! Is the farmers that way +in America?" + +"Well, I don't know that they are so very much more liberal than your +farmers are," I replied; "but I think they'd have to treat you as being +of the race of Adam! But are not the farmers here, or the Guardians, +obliged to build houses for the labourers? I thought there was an Act of +Parliament about that?" + +"And so there is but what's the good of it? It's just to get the +labourers' votes, and then they fool the labourers, just making them +quarrel about where the cottages shall be, what they call the 'sites'; +and then there's no cottages built at all, at all. It's the lawyers, you +see, sir, gets in with the farmers--the strongest farmers--and then they +just make fools of the labourers as if there was no Act of Parliament at +all." + +"But if the labourers want to go away, to emigrate," I said, "as you +want to do, to America, don't the farmers, or the Government, or the +landlords, help them to get away and make a start?" + +"Not a bit of it, sir," he replied; "not a bit of it. I believe, +though," he added after a moment; "I believe they do get some help to go +to Australia. But they're mostly no good that goes that way. The best is +them that go for themselves, or their friends help them. But there's not +so many going this year." + +When we drove away I asked * * if he had made any progress towards a +signature of the agreement with the labourer's wife. + +"No; she couldn't be got to say yes or no. I asked her," said * * "what +reason they had for imagining that after all these years I would try to +do them an injury? She protested they never thought of such a thing; but +she couldn't be brought to say she wished her husband to sign the paper. +It's very odd, indeed." + +I couldn't help suspecting that the _materfamilias_ was at the bottom of +it all, and that she was bent upon going out to America to participate +in the prosperity of her two daughters, who were living "like leddies" +at * * in Massachusetts. + +The incident recalled to me something which happened years ago when I +was returning with the Storys from Rome to Boston. Our Cunarder, in the +middle of the night, off the Irish coast, ran down and instantly sank a +small schooner. + +In a wonderfully short time we had come-to, and a boat's crew had +succeeded in picking up and bringing all the poor people on board. Among +them was a wizened old woman, upon whom all sorts of kind attentions +were naturally lavished by the ship's company. She could not be +persuaded to go into a cabin after she had recovered from the shock and +the fright of the accident, but, comforted and clothed with new and dry +garments, she took refuge under one of the companion-ways, and there, +sitting huddled up, with her arms about her knees, she crooned and +moaned to herself, "I was near being in a wetter and a warmer place; I +was near being in a wetter and a warmer place!" by the half hour +together. We found that the poor old soul had been to Liverpool to see +her son off on a sailing ship as an emigrant to America. So a +subscription was soon made up to send her on our arrival to New York +there to await her son. We had some trouble in making her understand +what was to be done with her, but when she finally got it fairly into +her head, gleams of mingled surprise and delight came over her withered +face, and she finally broke out, "Oh, then, glory be to God! it's a +mercy that I was drownded! glory be to God! and it's the proud boy +Terence will be when he gets out to America to find his poor ould mother +waiting for him there that he left behind him in Liverpool, and quite +the leddy with all this good gold money in her hand, glory be to God!" + +On our way back to * * we passed through * * a very neat +prosperous-looking town, which * * tells me is growing up on the heels +of * *. * * * was one of the few places at which the "no rent" +manifesto, issued by Mr. Parnell and his colleagues from their prison in +Kilmainham, during the confinement of Mr. Davitt at Portland, and +without concert with him, was taken up by a village curate and commended +to the people. He was arrested for it by Mr. Gladstone's Government, and +locked up for six weeks. + + +DUBLIN, _Saturday, June 23d._--I left * * * yesterday morning early on +an "outside car," with one of my fellow-guests in that "bower of +beauty," who was bent on killing a salmon somewhere in the Nore * * We +drove through a most varied and picturesque country, viewing on the way +the seats of Mr. Hamilton Stubber and Mr. Robert Staples, both finely +situated in well-wooded parks. Mr. Stubber was formerly master of the +Queen's County hounds, a famous pack, which, as our jarvey put it, +"brought a power of money into the county, and made it aisy for a poor +man." But the local agitations wore out his patience, and he put the +pack down some years ago. Not far from his house is an astonishing +modern "tumulus," or mound of hewn and squared stones. These it seems +were quarried and brought here by him, with the intention of building a +new and handsome residence. This intention he abandoned under the same +annoyance. + +"They call it Mr. Stubber's Cairn," said the jarvey; "and a sorrowful +sight it is, to think of the work it would have given the people, +building the big house that'll never be built now, I'm thinking." If Mr. +Stubber should become an "absentee," he can hardly, I think, be blamed +for it. + +His property marches with that of Mr. Robert Staples, who comes of a +Gloucestershire family planted in Ireland under Charles I. + +"Mr. Staples is farming his own lands," said our jarvey, when I +commented on the fine appearance of some fields as we drove by; "and +he'll be doing very well this year. Ah! he comes and goes, but he's here +a great deal, and he looks after everything himself; that's the reason +the fields is good." + +This is a property of some 1500 statute acres. Only last March the +landlord took over from one tenant, who was in arrears of two years and +a half and owed him some £300, a farm of 90 acres, giving the man fifty +pounds to boot, and bidding him go in peace. I wonder whether this +proceeding would make the landlord a "land-grabber," and expose him to +the pains and penalties of "boycotting"? + +On this place, too, it seems that Mr. Staples's grandfather put up many +houses for the tenants; a thing worth noting, as one of not a few +instances I have come upon to show that it will not do to accept without +examination the sweeping statements so familiar to us in America, that +improvements have never been made by the landlord upon Irish estates. + +My companion had meant to put me down at the railway station of +Attanagh, there to catch a good train to Kilkenny. + +But we had a capital nag, and reached Attanagh so early that we +determined to drive on to Ballyragget. + +From Attanagh to Ballyragget the road ran along a plateau which +commanded the most beautiful views of the valley of the Nore and of the +finely wooded country beyond. Ballyragget itself is a brisk little +market town, the American influence showing itself here, as in so many +other places, in such trifles as the signs on the shops which describe +them as "stores." My salmon-fishing companion put me down at the station +and went off to the river, which flows through the town, and is here a +swift and not inconsiderable stream. + +An hour in the train took me to Kilkenny, where I met by appointment +several persons whom I had been unable to see during my previous visit +in March. + +These gentlemen, experienced agents, gave me a good deal of information +as to the effect of the present state of things upon the "_moral_" of +the tenantry in different parts of Ireland. On one estate, for example, +in the county of Longford, a tenant has been doing battle for the cause +of Ireland in the following extraordinary fashion. + +He held certain lands at a rental of £23, 4s. Being, to use the +picturesque language of the agent, a "little good for tenant," he fell +into arrears, and on the 1st of May 1885 owed nearly three years' rent, +or £63, 12s., in addition to a sum of £150 which he had borrowed of his +amiable landlord three or four years before to enable him to work his +farm. Of this total sum of £213, 12s. he positively refused to pay one +penny. Proceedings were accordingly taken against him, and he was +evicted. By this eviction his title to the tenancy was broken. The +landlord nevertheless, for the sake of peace and quiet, offered to allow +him to sell, to a man who wished to take the place, any interest he +might have had in the holding, and to forgive both the arrears of the +rent and the £150 which had been borrowed by him. The ex-tenant flatly +refused to accept this offer, became a weekly pensioner upon the +National League, and declared war. The landlord was forced to get a +caretaker for the place from the Property Defence Association at a cost +of £1 per week, to provide a house for a police protection party, and to +defray the expenses of that party upon fuel and lights. Nor was this +all. The landlord found himself further obliged to employ men from the +same Property Defence Association to cut and save the hay-crop on the +land, and when this had been done no one could be found to buy the crop. +The crop and the lands were "boycotted." It was only in May last that a +purchaser could be found for the hay cut and saved two years ago--this +purchaser being himself a "boycotted" man on an adjoining property. He +bought the hay, paying for it a price which did not quite cover one-half +the cost of sowing it! + +"No one denies for a moment," said the agent, "that the tenant in all +this business has been more than fairly, even generously, treated by the +estate; yet no one seems to think it anything but natural and reasonable +that he should demand, as he now demands, to be put back into the +possession of his forfeited tenancy at a certain rent fixed by himself," +which he will obligingly agree to pay, "provided that the hay cut and +saved on the property two years ago is accounted for to him by the +estate!" + +In another case an agent, Mr. Ivough, had to deal with a body of five +hundred tenants on a considerable estate. Of these tenants, two hundred +settled their rents with the landlord before the passing of the Land Act +of 1881, and valuations made by the landlord's valuer, with their full +assent. There was no business for the lawyers, so far as they were +concerned, and no compulsion of any sort was put on them. Among them was +a man who had married the daughter of an old tenant on the estate, and +so came into a holding of 12 Irish, or more than 20 statute, acres, at a +rental of £18 a year. The valuer reduced this to £14, 10s., which +satisfied the tenant, and as the agent agreed to make this reduced +valuation retroactive, all went as smoothly as possible for two years, +when the tenant began to fall into arrears. When the Sub-Commissioners, +between 1885 and 1887, took to making sweeping reductions, the tenants +who had settled freely under the recent valuation grumbled bitterly. As +one of them tersely put it to the agent, "We were a parcel of bloody +fools, and you ought to have told us these Sub-Commissioners were +coming!" Mr. Sweeney, the tenant by marriage already mentioned, was not +content to express his particular dissatisfaction in idle words, but +kept on going into arrears. In May 1888 things came to a crisis. The +agent refused to accept a settlement which included the payment by him +of the costs of the proceedings forced upon him by his tenant. "You have +had a good holding," said the agent, "with plenty of water and good +land. In this current year two acres of your wheat will pay the whole +rent. You have broken up and sold bit by bit a mill that was on the +place; and above all, when Mr. Gladstone made us accept the judicial +rents, he told us we might be sure, if we did this, of punctual payment. +That was the one consideration held out to us. And we are entitled to +that!" + +The tenant being out of his holding, the agent wishes to put another +tenant into it. But the holding is "boycotted." Several tenants are +anxious for it, and would gladly take it, but they dare not The great +evicted will neither sell any tenant-right he may have, nor pay his +arrears and costs, nor give up the place to another tenant. To put +Property Defence men on the holding would cost the landlord £2, 10s. a +week, and do him no great good, as the evicted man "holds the fort," +being established in a house which he occupies on an adjoining property, +and for which presumably he pays his rent. It seems as if Mr. Sweeney +were inspired by the example of another tenant, named Barry, who, before +the passing of the Land Act of 1881, gave up freely a holding of 20 +acres, on a property managed by Mr. Kough; but as he was on such good +terms with the agent that he could borrow money of him, he begged the +agent to let him retain at a low rent a piece of this surrendered land +directly adjoining his house. He asked this in the name of his eight or +nine children, and it was granted him. The agent afterwards found that +the piece of land in question was by far the best of the surrendered +holding. But that is a mere detail. This ingenious tenant Barry, living +now on another estate just outside the grasp of the agent, has +systematically "boycotted" for the last nine years the land which he +gave up, feeding his own cattle upon it freely meanwhile, and keeping +all would-be tenants at a distance! "He is now," said the agent, "quite +a wealthy man in his way, jobbing cattle at all the great markets!" + +"When the eviction of Sweeney took place," said the agent, "I was +present in person, as I thought I ought to be, and the result is that I +have been held up to the execration of mankind as a monster for putting +out a child in a cradle into a storm. As a matter of fact," he said, +"there was a cradle in the way, which the sheriff-Officer gently took +up, and by direction of the tenant's wife removed. I made no remark +about it at all, but a local paper published a lying story, which the +publisher had to retract, that I had said 'Throw out the child!'" + +"Two priests," he said, "came quite uninvited and certainly without +provocation, to see me, and one of them shouted out, 'Ah! we know you'll +be making another Coolgreany,' which was as much as to say there 'would +be bloodshed.' This was the more intolerable," he added, "that, as I +afterwards found, I had already done for the sake of the tenants +precisely what these ecclesiastics professed that they had come to ask +me to do! + +"For thirty years," said this gentleman, "I have lived in the midst of +these people--and in all that time I have never had so much as a +threatening letter. But after this story was published of my throwing +out a cradle with a child in it, I was insulted in the street by a woman +whom I had never seen before. Two girls, too, called out at the +eviction, 'You've bad pluck; why didn't you tell us you were coming down +the day?' and another woman made me laugh by crying after me, 'You've +two good-looking daughters, but you're a bad man yourself.'" + +Quite as instructive is the story given me on this occasion of the +Tyaquin estate in the county of Galway. This estate is managed by an +agent, Mr. Eichardson of Castle Coiner, in this county of Kilkenny. + +The rents on this Galway estate, as Mr. Richardson assures me, have been +unaltered for between thirty and forty years, and some of them for even +a longer period. For the last twenty-five years certainty, during which +Mr. Richardson has been the agent of the estate, and probably, he +thinks, for many years previous, there has never been a case of the +non-payment of rent, except in recent years when rents were withheld for +a time for political reasons. + +Large sums of money have been laid out in various useful improvements. +Constant occupation was given to those requiring it, until the agrarian +agitation became fully developed. On the demesne and the home farms the +best systems of reclaiming waste lands and the best systems of +agriculture were practically exhibited, so that the estate was an +agricultural free school for all who cared to learn. + +When the Land Act of 1881 was passed, almost all the tenants applied, +and had judicial rents fixed, many of them by consent of the agent. + +In 1887 the tenants were called on as usual to pay these judicial rents. +A large minority refused to do so except on certain terms, which were +refused. The dispute continued for many months, but as the charges on +the estate had to be met, the agent was obliged to give way, and allow +an abatement of four shillings in the pound on these judicial rents. +Some of these charges, to meet which the agent gave way, were for money +borrowed from the Commissioners of Public Works to _improve the holdings +of the tenants_. For these improvements thus thrown entirely upon the +funds of the estate no increase of rent or charge of any kind had been +laid upon the tenants. + +When a settlement was agreed on, those of the tenants who had adopted +the Plan came in a body to pay their rents on 3d January 1888. They +stated that they were unable to pay more than the rent due up to +November 1886, and that they would never have adopted the Plan had they +not been driven into it by _sheer distress_. After which they handed Mr. +Richardson a cheque drawn by John T. Dillon, Esq., M.P., for the amount +banked with the National League. + +An article appeared shortly afterwards in a League newspaper, loudly +boasting of the great victory won by Mr. Dillon, M.P., for the starving +and poverty-stricken tenants. Two of these tenants (brothers) were under +a yearly rent of £7, 10s. They declared they could only pay £3, 15s., or +a half-year's rent, and this only if they got an abatement of 15s. Yet +these same tenants were then paying Mr. Richardson £50 a year for a +grass farm, and about £12 for meadows, as well as £30 a year more for a +grass farm to an adjoining landlord. + +Another tenant who held a farm at £13, 5s. a year declared he could only +pay £6, 12s. 6d., or a half-year's rent, if he got an abatement of £1, +6s. 6d. A very short time before, this tenant had taken a grass farm +from an adjoining landlord, and he was so anxious to get it that he +showed the landlord a bundle of large notes, amounting to rather more +than £300 sterling, in order to prove his solvency! The same tenant has +since written a letter to Mr. Richardson offering £50 a year for a grass +farm! + +All these campaigners, Mr. Richardson says, "with one noble exception, +the wife of a tenant who was ill, declined to pay a penny of rent beyond +November 1st, 1886," stating that they were "absolutely unable" to do +more. So they all left the May 1887 rent unpaid, and the hanging gale to +November 1887, which, however, they were not even asked to pay. + +The morning after the settlement many of the tenants who, when they were +all present in a body on the previous evening, had declared their +"inability" to pay the half-year's rent due down to May 1887, +individually came to Mr. Richardson unasked, and paid it, some saying +they had "borrowed the money that night," but others frankly declaring +that they dared not break the rule publicly, having been ordered by the +League only to pay to November 1886, for fear of the consequences. These +would have been injury to their cattle, or the burning of their hay, or +possibly murder. + +Of the country about Kilkenny, I am told, as of the country about +Carlow, that nearly or quite seventy per cent, of the labourers are +dependent upon the landlords from November to May for such employment as +they get. + +The shopkeepers, too, are in a bad way, being in many cases reduced to +the condition of mere agents of the great wholesale houses elsewhere, +and kept going by these houses mainly in the hope of recovering old +debts. There is a severe pressure of usury, too, upon the farmers. "If a +farmer," said one resident to me, "wants to borrow a small sum of the +Loan Fund Bank, he must have two securities--one of them a substantial +man good for the debt. These two indorsers must be 'treated' by the +borrower whom they back; and he must pay them a weekly sum for the +countenance they have given him, which not seldom amounts, before he +gets through with the matter, to a hundred per cent, on the original +loan." + +I am assured too that the consumption of spirits all through this region +has greatly increased of late years. "The official reports will show +you," said one gentleman, "that the annual outlay upon whisky in Ireland +equals the sum saved to the tenants by the reductions in rent." This is +a proposition so remarkable that I simply record it for future +verification, as having been made by a very quiet, cool, and methodical +person, whose information on other points I have found to be correct. He +tells me too, as of his own knowledge, that in going over some financial +matters with a small farmer in his neighbourhood, he ascertained, beyond +a peradventure, that this farmer annually spent in whisky, for the use +of his family, consisting of himself, his wife and three adult children, +nearly, or quite, _seventy pounds a year_! "You won't believe this," he +said to me; "and if you print the statement nobody else will believe it; +but for all that it is the simple unexaggerated truth." + +Falstaff's reckoning at Dame Quickly's becomes a moderate score in +comparison with this! + +I spent half an hour again in the muniment-room at Kilkenny Castle, +where, in the Expense-Book of the second Duke of Ormond, I found a +supper _menu_ worthy of record, as illustrating what people meant by +"keeping open house" in the great families of the time of Queen +Anne.[Note L.] + +Taking a train early in the afternoon, I came on here in time to dine +last night with Mr. Rolleston of Delgany, an uncompromising Protestant +"Home Ruler"--as Protestant and as uncompromising as John Mitchel--whose +recent pamphlet on "Boycotting" has deservedly attracted so much +attention on both sides of the Irish Sea. + +I was first led into a correspondence with Mr. Rolleston by a remarkable +article of his published in the _Dublin University Review_ for February +1886, on "The Archbishop in Politics." In that article, Mr. Rolleston, +while avowing himself to be robust enough to digest without much +difficulty the _ex officio_ franchise conferred upon the Catholic clergy +by Mr. Parnell to secure the acceptance of his candidates at +Parliamentary conventions, made a very firm and fearless protest against +the attempt of the Archbishops of Dublin and Cashel to "boycott" +Catholic criticism of the National League and its methods, by declaring +such criticism to be "a public insult" offered, not to the Archbishops +of Cashel and Dublin personally, or as political supporters of the +National League, but to the Archbishops as dignitaries of the Catholic +Church, and to their Archiepiscopal office. The "boycotting," by +clerical machinery, of independent lay opinion in civil matters, is to +the body politic of a Catholic country what the germ of cancer is to the +physical body. And though Mr. Rolleston, in this article, avowed himself +to be a hearty supporter of the "political programme of the National +League," and went so far even as to maintain that the social boycotting, +"which makes the League technically an illegal conspiracy against law +and individual liberty," might be "in many cases justified by the +magnitude of the legalised crime against which it was directed," it was +obvious to me that he could not long remain blind to the true drift of +things in an organisation condemned, by the conditions it has created +for itself, to deal with the thinkers of Ireland as it deals with the +tenants of Ireland. His recent pamphlet on "Boycotting" proves that I +was right. What he said to me the other day in a letter about the +pamphlet may be said as truly of the article. It was "a shaft sunk into +the obscure depths of Irish opinion, to bring to light and turn to +service whatever there may be in those depths of sound and healthy;" and +one of my special objects in this present visit to Ireland was to get a +personal touch of the intellectual movement which is throwing such +thinkers as Mr. Rolleston to the front. + +We were five at table, Mr. Rolleston's other guests being Mr. John +O'Leary, whose name is held in honour for his courage and honesty by all +who know anything of the story of Ireland in our times, and who was sent +a quarter of a century ago as a Fenian patriot--not into seclusion with +sherry and bitters, at Kilmainham, like Mr. Gladstone's "suspects" of +1881--but like Michael Davitt, into the stern reality of penal +servitude; Dr. Sigerson, Dean of the Faculty of Science of the Boyal +University, and an authority upon the complicated question of Irish Land +Tenures; and Mr. John F. Taylor, a leading barrister of Dublin, an ally +on the Land Question of Mr. Davitt, and an outspoken Repealer of the +Union of 1800. + +I have long wished to meet Mr. O'Leary, who sent me, through a +correspondent of mine, two years ago, one of the most thoughtful and +well-considered papers I have ever read on the possibilities and +impossibilities of Home Rule for Ireland; and it was a great pleasure to +find in the man the elevation of tone, the breadth of view, and the +refined philosophic perception of the strong and weak points in the +Irish case, which had charmed me in. the paper. Now that "Conservative" +Englishmen have come to treat the main points of Chartism almost as +commonplaces in politics, it is surely time for them to recognise the +honesty and integrity of the spirit which revolted in the Ireland of +1848 against the then seemingly hopeless condition of that country. Of +that spirit Mr. O'Leary is a living, earnest, and most interesting +incarnation. He strikes one at once as a much younger man in all that +makes the youth of the intellect and the emotions than any Nationalist +M.P. of half his years whom I have ever met. No Irishman living has +dealt stronger or more open blows than he against the English dominion +in Ireland. Born in Tipperary, where he inherited a small property in +houses, he was sent to Trinity College in Dublin, and while a student +there was drawn into the "Young Ireland" party mainly by the poems of +Thomas Davis. Late in the electrical year of the "battle summer," 1848, +he was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in a plot to rescue +Smith O'Brien and other state prisoners. The suspicion was well founded, +but could not be established, and after a day or two he was liberated. +From Trinity, after this, he went to the Queen's College in Cork, where +he took his degree, and studied medicine. When the Fenian movement +became serious, after the close of our American Civil War, O'Leary threw +himself into it with Stephens, Luby, and Charles Kickham. Stephens +appointed him one of the chief organisers of the I.E.B. with Luby and +Kickham, and he took charge of the _Irish People_--the organ of the +Fenians of 1865. It was as a subordinate contributor to this journal +that Sir William Harcourt's familiar Irish bogy, O'Donovan Rossa[26], +was arrested together with his chief, Mr. O'Leary, and with Kickham in +1865, and found guilty, with them, after a trial before Mr. Justice +Keogh, of treason-felony. The speech then delivered by Mr. O'Leary in +the dock made a profound impression upon the public mind in America. It +was the speech, not of a conspirator, but of a patriot. The indignation +with which he repelled for himself and for his associate Luby the +charges levelled at them both, without a particle of supporting +evidence, by the prosecuting counsel, of aiming at massacre and plunder, +was its most salient feature. The terrible sentence passed upon him, of +penal servitude for twenty years, Mr. O'Leary accepted with a calm +dignity, which I am glad, for the sake of Irish manhood, to find that +his friends here now recall with pride, when their ears are vexed by the +shrill and clamorous complaints of more recent "patriots," under the +comparatively trivial punishments which they invite. + +In 1870, Mr. O'Leary and his companions were released and pardoned on +condition of remaining beyond the British dominions until the expiration +of their sentences. Mr. O'Leary fixed his residence for a time in Paris, +and thence went to America, where he and Kickham were regarded as the +leaders of the American branch of the I. R. B. He returned to Ireland in +1885, his term of sentence having then expired, and it was shortly after +his return that he gave to my correspondent the letter upon Irish +affairs to which I have already referred. He had been chosen President +of the "Young Ireland Society" of Dublin before he returned, and in that +capacity delivered at the Rotunda, in the Irish capital, before a vast +crowd assembled to welcome him back, an address which showed how +thoughtfully and calmly he had devoted himself during his long years of +imprisonment and exile to the cause of Ireland. Mr. William O'Brien, +M.P., and Mr. Redmond, M.P., took part in this reception, but their +subsequent course shows that they can hardly have relished Mr. O'Leary's +fearless and outspoken protests against the intolerance and injustice of +the agrarian organisation which controls their action. In England, as +well as well as in Ireland, Mr. O'Leary spoke to great multitudes of his +countrymen, and always in the same sense. Mr. Rolleston tells me that +Mr. O'Leary's denunciations of "the dynamite section of the Irish +people," to use the euphemism of an American journal, "are the only ones +ever uttered by an Irish leader, lay or clerical." The day must come, if +it be not already close at hand, when the Irish leader of whom this can +be truly said, must be felt by his own people to be the one man worthy +of their trust. The thing that has been shall be, and there is nothing +new under the sun. The Marats and the Robespierres, the Barères and the +Collots, are the pallbearers, not the standard-bearers of liberty. + +Towards the National League, as at present administered on the lines of +the agrarian agitation, Mr. O'Leary has so far preserved an attitude of +neutrality, though he has never for a moment hesitated either in public +or in private most vehemently to condemn such sworn Fenians as have +accepted seats in the British Parliament, speaking his mind freely and +firmly of them as "double-oathed men" playing a constitutional part with +one hand, and a treasonable part with the other. + +Yet he is not at one with the extreme and fanatical Fenians who oppose +constitutional agitation simply because it is constitutional. His +objection to the existing Nationalism was exactly put, Mr. Rolleston +tells me, by a clever writer in the Dublin _Mail_, who said that +O'Connell having tried "moral force" and failed, and the Fenians having +tried "physical force" and failed, the Leaguers were now trying to +succeed by the use of "immoral force." + +Dr. Sigerson, who, as a man of science, must necessarily revolt from the +coarse and clumsy methods of the blunderers who have done so much since +1885 to discredit the cause of Ireland, evidently clings to the hope +that something may still be saved from the visible wreck of what has +come, even in Ireland, to be called "Parnellism," and he good-naturedly +persisted in speaking of our host last night and of his friends as +"mugwumps." For the "mugwumps" of my own country I have no particular +admiration, being rather inclined, with my friend Senator Conkling (now +gone to his rest from the racket of American politics), to regard them +as "Madonnas who wish it to be distinctly understood that they might +have been Magdalens." But these Irish "mugwumps" seem to me to earn +their title by simply refusing to believe that two and two, which make +four in France or China, can be bullied into making five in Ireland. +"What certain 'Parnellites' object to," said one of the company, "is +that we can't be made to go out gathering grapes of thorns or figs of +thistles. Some of them expect to found an Irish republic on robbery, and +to administer it by falsehood. We don't."[27] This is precisely the +spirit in which Mr. Rolleston wrote to me not long before I left England +this week. "I have been slowly forced," he wrote, "to the conclusion +that the National League is a body which deserves nothing but +reprobation from all who wish well to Ireland. It has plunged this +country into a state of moral degradation, from which it will take us at +least a generation to recover. It is teaching the people that no law of +justice, of candour, of honour, or of humanity can be allowed to +interfere with the political ends of the moment. It is, in fact, +absolutely divorcing morality from politics. The mendacity of some of +its leaders is shameless and sickening, and still more sickening is the +complete indifference with which this mendacity is regarded in Ireland." + + +It is the spirit, too, of a letter which I received not long ago from +the west of Ireland, in which my correspondent quoted the bearer of one +of the most distinguished of Irish names, and a strong "Home Ruler," as +saying to him, "These Nationalists are stripping Irishmen as bare of +moral sense as the Bushmen of South Africa." + +This very day I find in one of the leading Nationalist journals here +letters from Mr. Davitt, Mr. O'Leary, and Mr. Taylor himself, which +convict that journal of making last week a statement about Mr. Taylor +absolutely untrue, and, so far as appears, absolutely without the shadow +of a foundation. These letters throw such a curious light on passing +events here at this moment that I shall preserve them.[28] The statement +to which they refer was thus put in the journal which made it: "We have +absolute reason to know that when the last Coercion Act was in full +swing this pure-souled and disinterested patriot (Mr. John F. Taylor) +begged for, received, and accepted a very petty Crown Prosecutorship +under a Coercion Government. As was wittily said at the time, He sold +his principles, not for a mess of pottage, but for the stick that +stirred the mess." This is no assertion "upon hearsay"--no publication of +a rumour or report. It is an assertion made, not upon belief even, but +upon a claim of "absolute knowledge." + +Yet to-day, in the same journal, I find Mr. Taylor declaring this +statement, made upon a claim of "absolute knowledge," to be "absolutely +untrue," and appealing in support of this declaration to Mr. Walker, the +host of Lord Riand Mr. Morley, and to The M'Dermot, Q.C., a conspicuous +Home Ruler; to which Mr. Davitt adds: "Mr. Taylor, on my advice, +declined the Crown Prosecutorship for King's County, a post afterwards +applied for by, and granted to, a near relative of one of the most +prominent members of the Irish Party,"--meaning Mr. Luke Dillon, a +cousin of Mr. John Dillon, M.P.! + +We had much interesting conversation last night about the relations of +the Irish leaders here with public and party questions in America, as to +which I find Mr. O'Leary unusually well and accurately informed. + +I am sorry that I must get off to-morrow into Mayo to see Lord Lucan's +country there, for I should have been particularly pleased to look more +closely with Mr. Rolleston into the intellectual revolt against +"Parnellism" and its methods, of which his attitude and that of his +friends here is an unmistakable symptom. As he tersely puts it, he sees +"no hope in Irish politics, except a reformation of the League, a return +to the principles of Thomas Davis." + +The lines for a reformation or transformation of the League, as it now +exists, appear to have been laid down in the original constitution of +the body. Under that constitution, it seems, the League was meant to be +controlled by a representative committee chosen annually, open to public +criticism, and liable to removal by a new election. As things now are, +the officers of this alleged democratic organisation are absolutely +self-elected, and wield the wide and indefinite power they possess over +the people of Ireland in a perfectly unauthorised, irresponsible way. It +is a curious illustration of the autocratic or bureaucratic system under +which the Irish movement is now conducted, that Mr. Davitt, who does not +pretend to be a Parliamentarian, and owes indeed much of his authority +to his refusal to enter Parliament and take oaths of allegiance, does +not hesitate for a moment to discipline any Irish member of Parliament +who incurs his disapprobation. Sir Thomas Esmonde, for example, was +severely taken to task by him the other day in the public prints for +venturing to put a question, in his place at Westminster, to the +Government about a man-of-war stationed in Kingstown harbour. Mr. Davitt +very peremptorily ordered Sir Thomas to remember that he is not sent to +Westminster to recognise the British Government, or concern himself +about British regiments or ships, and Sir Thomas accepts the rebuke in +silence. Whom does such a member of Parliament represent--the +constituents who nominally elect him, or the leader who cracks the whip +over him so sharply? + +I have to-day been looking through a small and beautifully-printed +volume of poems just issued here by Gill and Son, Nationalist +publishers, I take it, who have the courage of their convictions, since +their books bear the imprint of "O'Connell," and not of Sackville +Street. This little book of the _Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland _is +a symptom too. It is dedicated in a few brief but vigorous stanzas to +John O'Leary, as one who + + "Hated all things base, + And held his country's honour high." + +And the spirit of all the poems it contains is the spirit of '48, or of +that earlier Ireland of Robert Emmet, celebrated in some charming verses +by "Rose Kavanagh" on "St. Michan's Churchyard," where the + + "sunbeam went and came + Above the stone which waits the name + His land must write with freedom's flame." + +It interests an American to find among these poems and ballads a +striking threnody called "The Exile's Return," signed with the name of +"Patrick Henry"; and it is noteworthy, for more reasons than one, that +the volume winds up with a "Marching Song of the Gaelic Athletes," +signed "An Chraoibhin Aoibbinn." These Athletes are numbered now, I am +assured, not by thousands, but by myriads, and their organisation covers +all parts of Ireland. If the spirit of '48 and of '98 is really moving +among them, I should say they are likely to be at least as troublesome +in the end to the "uncrowned king" as to the crowned Queen of Ireland. + +As for the literary merit of these _Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland_, +it strikes one key with their political quality. One exquisite ballad of +"The Stolen Child," by W. B. Yeats, might have been sung in the +moonlight on a sylvan lake by the spirit of Heinrich Heine. + +I spent an hour or two this morning most agreeably in the libraries of +the Law Courts and of Trinity College: the latter one of the stateliest +most academic "halls of peace" I have ever seen; and this afternoon I +called upon Dr. Sigerson, a most patriotic Irishman, of obviously Danish +blood, who has his own ideas as to Clontarf and Brian Boru; and who gave +me very kindly a copy of his valuable report on that Irish Crisis of +1879-80, out of which Michael Davitt so skilfully developed the agrarian +movement whereof "Parnellism" down to this time has been the not very +well adjusted instrument. The report was drawn up after a thorough +inspection by Dr. Sigerson and his associate, Dr. Kenny, visiting +physicians to the North Dublin Union, of some of the most distressed +districts of Mayo, Sligo, and Galway; and a more interesting, +intelligent, and impressive picture of the worst phases of the social +conditions of Ireland ten years ago is not to be found. I have just been +reading it over carefully in conjunction with my memoranda made from the +Emigration and Seed Potato Fund Reports, which Mr. Tuke gave me some +time ago, and it strongly reinforces the evidence imbedded in those +reports, which goes to show that agitation for political objects in +Ireland has perhaps done as much as all other causes put together to +depress the condition of the poor in Ireland, by driving and keeping +capital out of the country. The worst districts visited in 1879 by Dr. +Sigerson and Dr. Kenny do not appear to have been so completely cut off +from civilisation as was the region about Gweedore before the purchase +of his property there by Lord George Hill, and the remedies suggested by +Dr. Sigerson for the suffering in these districts are all in the +direction of the remedies applied by Lord George Hill to the condition +in which he found Gweedore. After giving full value to the stock +explanations of Irish distress in the congested districts, such as +excessive rents, penal laws, born of religious or "racial" animosity, +and a defective system of land tenure, it seems to be clear that the +main difficulties have arisen from the isolation of these districts, and +from the lack of varied industries. Political agitation has checked any +flow of capital into these districts, and a flow of capital into them +would surely have given them better communications and more varied +industries. Dr. Sigerson states that some of the worst of these regions +in the west of Ireland are as well adapted to flax-culture as Ulster, +and Napoleon III. showed what could be done for such wastes as La +Sologne and the desert of the Landes by the intelligent study of a +country and the judicious development of such values as are inherent in +it. The loss of population in Ireland is not unprecedented. The State of +New Hampshire, in America, one of the original thirteen colonies which +established the American Union, has twice shown an actual loss in +population during the past century. The population of the State declined +during the decade between 1810 and 1820, and again during the decade +between 1860 and 1870. This phenomenon, unique in American history, is +to be explained only by three causes, all active in the case of +congested Ireland,--a decaying agriculture, lack of communications, and +the absence of varied industries. During the decade from 1860 to 1870 +the great Civil War was fought out. Yet, despite the terrible waste of +life and capital in that war, especially at the South, the Northern +State of New Hampshire, peopled by the energetic English adventurers who +founded New England, was actually the only State which came out of the +contest with a positive decline in population. Virginia (including West +Virginia, which seceded from that Commonwealth in 1861) rose from +1,596,318 inhabitants in 1860 to 1,667,177 in 1870. South Carolina, +which was ravaged by the war more severely than any State except +Virginia, and upon which the Republican majority at Washington pressed +with such revengeful hostility after the downfall of the Confederacy, +showed in 1870 a positive increase in population, as compared with 1860, +from 703,708 to 705,606. But New Hampshire, lying hundreds of miles +beyond the area of the conflict, showed a positive decrease from 326,073 +to 318,300. During my college days at Cambridge the mountain regions of +New Hampshire were favourite "stamping grounds" in the vacations, and I +exaggerate nothing when I say that in the secluded nooks and corners of +the State, the people cut off from communication with the rest of New +England, and scratching out of a rocky land an inadequate subsistence, +were not much, if at all, in advance of the least prosperous dwellers in +the most remote parts of Ireland which I have visited. They furnished +their full contingent to that strange American exodus, which, about a +quarter of a century ago, was led out of New England by one Adams to the +Holy Land, in anticipation of the Second Advent, a real modern crusade +of superstitious land speculators, there to perish, for the most part, +miserably about Jaffa--leaving houses and allotments to pass into the +control of a more practical colony of Teutons, which I found +establishing itself there in 1869. + +Since 1870 a change has come over New Hampshire. The population has +risen to 346,984. In places waste and fallen twenty years ago brisk and +smiling villages have sprung up along lines of communication established +to carry on the business of thriving factories. + +What reason can there be in the nature of things to prevent the +development of analogous results, through the application of analogous +forces, in the case of "congested" Ireland? A Nationalist friend, to +whom I put this question this afternoon, answers it by alleging that so +long as fiscal laws for Ireland are made at Westminster, British capital +invested in Great Britain will prevent the application of these +analogous forces to "congested" Ireland. His notion is that were Ireland +as independent of Great Britain, for example, in fiscal matters as is +Canada, Ireland might seek and secure a fiscal union with the United +States, such as was partially secured to Canada under the Reciprocity +Treaty denounced by Mr. Seward. + +"Give us this," he said, "and take us into your system of American +free-trade as between the different States of your American Union, and +no end of capital will soon be coming into Ireland, not only from your +enormously rich and growing Republic, but from Great Britain too. Give +us the American market, putting Great Britain on a less-favoured +footing, just as Mr. Blake and his party wish to do in the case of +Canada, and between India doing her own manufacturing on the one side, +and Ireland becoming a manufacturing centre on the other, and a mart in +Europe for American goods, we'll get our revenge on Elizabeth and +Cromwell in a fashion John Bull has never dreamt of in these times, +though he used to be in a mortal funk of it a hundred years ago, when +there wasn't nearly as much danger of it!" + + +DUBLIN, _Sunday, June 24._--"Put not your faith in porters!" I had +expected to pass this day at Castlebar, on the estate of Lord Lucan, and +I exchanged telegrams to that effect yesterday with Mr. Harding, the +Earl's grandson, who, in the absence of his wonderfully energetic +grandsire, is administering there what Lord Lucan, with pardonable +pride, declares to be the finest and most successful dairy-farm in all +Ireland. I asked the porter to find the earliest morning train; and +after a careful search he assured me that by leaving Dublin just after 7 +A.M. I could reach Castlebar a little after noon. + +Upon this I determined to dine with Mr. Colomb, and spend the night in +Dublin. But when I reached the station a couple of hours ago, it was to +discover that my excellent porter had confounded 7 A.M. with 7 P.M. + +There is no morning train to Castlebar! So here I am with no recourse, +my time being short, but to give up the glimpse I had promised myself of +Mayo, and go on this afternoon to Belfast on my way back to London. + +At dinner last night Mr. Colomb gave me further and very interesting +light upon the events of 1867, of which he had already spoken with me at +Cork, as well as upon the critical period of Mr. Gladstone's experiments +of 1881-82 at "Coercion" in Ireland. + +Mr. Colomb lives in a remarkably bright and pleasant suburb of Dublin, +which not only is called a "park," as suburbs are apt to be, but really +is a park, as suburbs are less apt to be. His house is set near some +very fine old trees, shading a beautiful expanse of turf. He is an +amateur artist of much more than ordinary skill. His walls are gay, and +his portfolios filled, with charming water-colours, sketches, and +studies made from Nature all over the United Kingdom. The grand +coast-scenery of Cornwall and of Western Ireland, the lovely lake +landscapes of Killarney, sylvan homes and storied towers, all have been +laid under contribution by an eye quick to seize and a hand prompt to +reproduce these most subtle and transient atmospheric effects of light +and colour which are the legitimate domain of the true water-colourist. +With all these pictures about us--and with Mr. Colomb's workshop fitted +up with Armstrong lathes and all manner of tools wherein he varies the +routine of official life by making all manner of instruments, and +wreaking his ingenuity upon all kinds of inventions--and with the +pleasant company of Mr. Davies, the agreeable and accomplished official +secretary of Sir West Ridgway, the evening wore quickly away. In the +course of conversation the question of the average income of the Irish +priests arose, and I mentioned the fact that Lord Lucan, whose knowledge +of the smallest details of Irish life is amazingly thorough, puts it +down at about ten shillings a year per house in the average Irish +parish. + +He rated Father M'Fadden and his curate of Gweedore, for example, +without a moment's hesitation, at a thousand pounds a year in the whole, +or very nearly the amount stated to me by Sergeant Mahony at Baron's +Court. This brought from Mr. Davies a curious account of the proceedings +in a recent case of a contested will before Judge Warren here in Dublin. +The will in question was made by the late Father M'Garvey of Milford, a +little village near Mulroy Bay in Donegal, notable chiefly as the scene +of the murder of the late Earl of Leitrim. Father M'Garvey, who died in +March last, left by this will to religious and charitable uses the whole +of his property, save £800 bequeathed in it to his niece, Mrs. O'Connor. +It was found that he died possessed not only of a farm at Ardara, but of +cash on deposit in the Northern Bank to the very respectable amount of +£23,711. Mrs. O'Connor contested the will. The Archbishop of Armagh, and +Father Sheridan, C.C. of Letterkenny, instituted an action against her +to establish the will. Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, lying in Londonderry +jail as a first-class misdemeanant, was brought from Londonderry as a +witness for the niece. But on the trial of the case it appeared that +there was actually no evidence to sustain the plea of the niece that +"undue influence" had been exerted upon her uncle by the Archbishop, who +at the time of the making of the will was Bishop of Raphoe, or by +anybody else; so the judge instructed the jury to find on all the issues +for the plaintiffs, which was done. The judge declared the conduct of +the defendant in advancing a charge of "undue influence" in such +circumstances against ecclesiastics to be most reprehensible; but the +Archbishop very graciously intimated through his lawyer his intention of +paying the costs of the niece who had given him all this trouble, +because she was a poor woman who had been led into her course by +disappointment at receiving so small a part of so large an inheritance. +Had the priest's property come to him in any other way than through his +office as a priest her claim might have been more worthy of +consideration, but Mr. M'Dermot, Q.C., who represented the Archbishop, +took pains to make it clear that as an ecclesiastic his client, who had +nothing to do with the making of the will, was bound to regard it "as +proper and in accordance with the fitness of things that what had been +received from the poor should be given back to the poor." + +I see no adequate answer to this contention of the Archbishop. But it +certainly goes to confirm the estimates given me by Sergeant Mahony of +Father M'Fadden's receipts at Gweedore, and the opinion expressed to me +by Lord Lucan as to the average returns of an average Catholic parish, +that the priest of Milford, a place hardly so considerable as Gweedore, +should have acquired so handsome a property in the exercise there of his +parochial functions. + +One form in which the priests in many parts of Ireland collect dues is +certainly unknown to the practice of the Church elsewhere, I believe, +and it must tend to swell the incomes of the priests at the expense, +perhaps, of their legitimate influence. This is the custom of personal +collections by the priests. In many parishes the priest stands by the +church-door, or walks about the church--not with a bag in his hand, as +is sometimes done in France on great occasions when a _quéle_ is made by +the _curé_ for some special object,--but with an open plate in which the +people put their offerings. I have heard of parishes in which the priest +sits by a table near the church-door, takes the offerings from the +parishioners as they pass, and comments freely upon the ratio of the +gift to the known or presumed financial ability of the giver. + +We had some curious stories, too, from a gentleman present of the +relation of the priests in wild, out-of-the-way corners of Ireland to +the people, stories which take one back to days long before Lever. One, +for example, of a delightful and stalwart old parish priest of eighty, +upon whom an airy young patriot called to propose that he should accept +the presidency of a local Land League. The veteran, whose only idea of +the Land League was that it had used bad language about Cardinal Cullen, +no sooner caught the drift of the youth than he snatched up a huge +blackthorn, fell upon him, and "boycotted" him head-foremost out of a +window. Luckily it was on the ground floor. + +Another strenuous spiritual shepherd came down during the distribution +of potato-seed to the little port in which it was going on, and took up +his station on board of the distributing ship. One of his parishioners, +having received his due quota, made his way back again unobserved on +board of the ship. As he came up to receive a second dole, the good +father spied him, and staying not "to parley or dissemble," simply +fetched him a whack over the sconce with a stick, which tumbled him out +of the ship, head-foremost, into the hooker riding beside her! Quite of +another drift was a much more astonishing tale of certain proceedings +had here in February last before the Lord Chief-Justice. These took +place in connection with a motion to quash the verdict of a coroner's +jury, held in August 1887, on the body of a child named Ellen Gaffney, +at Philipstown, in King's County, which preserves the memory of the +Spanish sovereign of England, as Maryborough in Queen's preserves the +memory of his Tudor consort. Cervantes never imagined an Alcalde of the +quality of the "Crowner"' who figures in this story. Were it not that +his antics cost a poor woman her liberty from August 1887 till December +of that year, when the happy chance of a winter assizes set her free, +and might have cost her her life, the story of this ideal magistrate +would be extremely diverting. + +A child was born to Mrs. Gaffney at Philipstown on the 23d of July, and +died there on the 25th of August 1887, Mrs. Gaffney being the wife of a +"boycotted" man. + +A local doctor named Clarke came to the police and asked the Sergeant to +inspect the body of the child, and call for an inquest. The sergeant +inspected the body, and saw no reason to doubt that the child had died a +natural death. This did not please the doctor, so the Coroner was sent +for. He came to Philipstown the next day, conferred there with the +doctor, and with a priest, Father Bergin, and proceeded to hold an +inquest on the child in a public-house, "a most appropriate place," said +Sir Michael Morris from the bench, "for the transactions which +subsequently occurred." Strong depositions were afterwards made by the +woman Mrs. Gaffney, by her husband, and by the police authorities, as to +the conduct of this "inquest." She and her husband were arrested on a +verbal order of the Coroner on the day when the inquest was held, August +27th, and the woman was kept in prison from that time till the assizes +in December. The "inquest" was not completed on the 27th of August, and +after the Coroner adjourned it, two priests drove away on a car from the +"public-house" in which it had been held. That night, or the next day, a +man came to a magistrate with a bundle of papers which he had found in +the road near Philipstown. The magistrate examined them, and finding +them to be the depositions taken before the Coroner in the case of Ellen +Gaffney, handed them to the police. How did they come to be in the road? +On the 1st of September the Coroner resumed his inquest, this time in +the Court-House at Philipstown, and one of the police, with the +depositions in his pocket, went to hear the proceedings. Great was his +amazement to see certain papers produced, and calmly read, as being the +very original depositions which at that moment were in his own custody! +He held his peace, and let the inquest go on. A letter was read from the +Coroner, to the effect that he saw no ground for detaining the husband, +Gaffney--but the woman was taken before a justice of the peace, and +committed to prison on this finding by the Coroner's jury: "That Mary +Anne Gaffney came by her death; and that the mother of the child, Ellen +Gaffney, is guilty of wilful neglect by not supplying the necessary food +and care to sustain the life of this child "! + +It is scarcely credible, but it is true, that upon this extraordinary +finding the Coroner issued a warrant for "murder" against this poor +woman, on which she was actually locked up for more than three months! +The jury which made this unique finding consisted of nineteen persons, +and it was in evidence that their foreman reported thirteen of the jury +to be for finding one way and six for finding another, whereupon a +certain Mr. Whyte, who came into the case as the representative of +Father Bergin, President of the local branch of the National +League--nobody can quite see on what colourable pretext--was allowed by +the Coroner to write down the finding I have quoted, and hand it to the +Coroner. The Coroner read it over. He and Mr. Whyte then put six of the +jury in one place, and thirteen in another; the Coroner read the finding +aloud to the thirteen, and said to them, "Is that what you agree to?" +and so the inquest was closed, and the warrant issued--for murder--and +the woman, this poor peasant mother sent off to jail with the brand upon +her of infanticide.[29] + +Where would that poor woman be now were there no "Coercion" in Ireland +to protect her against "Crowner's quest law" thus administered? And what +is to be thought of educated and responsible public men in England who, +as recent events have shown, are not ashamed to go to "Crowner's quest +Courts" of this sort for weapons of attack, not upon the administration +only of their own Government, but upon the character and the motives of +their political opponents? + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + + +BELFAST, _Monday, June 25._--I left Dublin yesterday at 4 P.M., in a +train which went off at high pressure as an "express," but came into +Belfast panting and dilatory as an "excursion." The day was fine, and +the line passes through what is reputed to be the most prosperous part +of Ireland. In this part of Ireland, too, the fate of the island has +been more than once settled by the arbitrament of arms; and if +Parliamentary England throws up the sponge in the wrestle with the +League, it is probable enough that the old story will come to be told +over again here. + +At Dundalk the Irish monarchy of the Braces was made and unmade. The +plantation of Ulster under James I. clinched the grasp not so much of +England as of Scotland upon Ireland, and determined the course of events +here through the Great Rebellion. The landing of the Duke of Schomberg +at Carrickfergus opened the way for the subjugation of Jacobite Ireland +by William of Orange. The successful descent of the French upon the same +place in February 1760, after the close of "the Great Year," in which +Walpole tells us he came to expect a new victory every morning with the +rolls for breakfast, and after Hawke had broken the strength of the +great French Armada off Belleisle, and done for England the service +which Nelson did for her again off Trafalgar in 1805, shows what might +have happened had Thurot commanded the fleet of Conflans. In this same +region, too, the rout of Munro by Nugent at Ballinahinch practically +ended the insurrection of 1798. + +There are good reasons in the physical geography of the British Islands +for this controlling influence of Ulster over the affairs of Ireland, +which it seems to me a serious mistake to overlook. + +The author of a brief but very hard-headed and practical letter on the +pacification of Ireland, which appeared in the _Times_ newspaper in +1886, while the air was thrilling with rumours of Mr. Gladstone's +impending appearance as the champion of "Home Rule," carried, I +remember, to the account of St. George's Channel "nine-tenths of the +troubles, religious, political, and social, under which Ireland has +laboured for seven centuries." I cannot help thinking he hit the nail on +the head; and St. George's Channel does not divide Ulster from Scotland. +From Donaghadee, which has an excellent harbour, the houses on the +Scottish coast can easily be made out in clear weather. A chain is no +stronger than its weakest link, and it is as hard to see how, even with +the consent of Ulster, the independence of Ireland could be maintained +against the interests and the will of Scotland, as it is easy to see why +Leinster, Munster, and Connaught have been so difficult of control and +assimilation by England. To dream of establishing the independence of +Ireland against the will of Ulster appears to me to be little short of +madness. + +At Moira, which stands very prettily above the Ulster Canal, a small +army of people returning from a day in the country to Belfast came upon +us and trebled the length of our train. We picked up more at Lisburn, +where stands the Cathedral Church of Jeremy Taylor, the "Shakespeare of +divines." Here my only companion in the compartment from Dublin left me, +a most kindly, intelligent Ulster man, who had very positive views as to +the political situation. He much commended the recent discourse in +Scotland of a Presbyterian minister, who spoke of the Papal Decree as +"pouring water on a drowned mouse," a remark which led me to elicit the +fact that he had never seen either Clare or Kerry; and he was very warm +in his admiration of Mr. Chamberlain. He told me, what I had heard from +many other men of Ulster, that the North had armed itself thoroughly +when the Home Rule business began with Mr. Gladstone. "I am a Unionist," +he said, "but I think the Union is worth as much to England as it is to +Ireland, and if England means to break it up it is not the part of +Irishmen who think and feel as I do to let her choose her own time for +doing it, and stand still while she robs us of our property and turns us +out defenceless to be trampled under foot by the most worthless +vagabonds in our own island." He thinks the National League has had its +death-blow. "What I fear now," he said, "is that we are running straight +into a social war, and that will never be a war against the landlords in +Ireland; it'll be a war against the Protestants and all the decent +people there are among the Catholics." + +He was very cordial when he found I was an American, and with that +offhand hospitality which seems to know no distinctions of race or +religion in Ireland urged me to come and make him a visit at a place he +has nearer the sea-coast. "I'll show you Downpatrick," he said, "where +the tombs of St. Patrick and St. Bridget and St. Columb are, the saints +sleeping quite at their ease, with a fine prosperous Presbyterian town +all about them. And I'll drive you to Tullymore, where you'll see the +most beautiful park, and the finest views from it all the way to the +Isle of Man, that are to be seen in all Ireland." He was very much +interested in the curious story of the sequestration of the remains of +Mr. Stewart of New York, who was born, he tells me, at Lisburn, where +the wildest fabrications on the subject seem to have got currency. That +this feat of body-snatching is supposed to have been performed by a +little syndicate of Italians, afterwards broken up by the firmness of +Lady Crawford in resisting the ghastly pressure to which the widow and +the executors of Mr. Stewart are believed to have succumbed, was quite a +new idea to him. + +From Moira to Belfast the scenery along the line grows in beauty +steadily. If Belfast were not the busiest and most thriving city in +Ireland, it would still be well worth a visit for the picturesque charms +of its situation and of the scenery which surrounds it. At some future +day I hope to get a better notion both of its activity and of its +attractions than it would be possible for me to attempt to get in this +flying visit, made solely to take the touch of the atmosphere of the +place at this season of the year; for we are on the very eve of the +battle month of the Boyne. + +Mr. Cameron, the Town Inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary, met me +at the station, in accordance with a promise which he kindly made when I +saw him several weeks ago at Cork; and this morning he took me all over +the city. It is very well laid out, in the new quarters especially, with +broad avenues and spacious squares. In fact, as a local wag said to me +to-day at the Ulster Club, "You can drive through Belfast without once +going into a street"--most of the thoroughfares which are not called +"avenues" or "places" being known as "roads." It is, of course, an +essentially modern city. When Boate made his survey of Ireland two +centuries ago, Belfast was so small a place that he took small note of +it, though it had been incorporated by James I. in 1613 in favour of the +Chichester family, still represented here. In a very careful _Tour in +Ireland_, published at Dublin in 1780, the author says of Belfast, "I +could not help remarking the great number of Scots who reside in this +place, and who carry on a good trade with Scotland." It seems then to +have had a population of less than 20,000 souls, as it only touched that +number at the beginning of this century. It has since then advanced by +"leaps and bounds," after an almost American fashion, till it has now +become the second, and bids fair at no distant day to become the first, +city in Ireland. Few of the American cities which are its true +contemporaries can be compared with Belfast in beauty. The quarter in +which my host lives was reclaimed from the sea marshes not quite so long +ago, I believe, as was the Commonwealth Avenue quarter of Boston, and +though it does not show so many costly private houses perhaps as that +quarter of the New England capital, its "roads" and "avenues" are on the +whole better built, and there is no public building in Boston so +imposing as the Queen's College, with its Tudor front six hundred feet +in length, and its graceful central tower. The Botanic Gardens near by +are much prettier and much better equipped for the pleasure and +instruction of the people than any public gardens in either Boston or +New York. These American comparisons make themselves, all the conditions +of Belfast being rather of the New World than of the Old. The oldest +building pointed out to me to-day is the whilom mansion of the Marquis +of Donegal, now used as offices, and still called the Castle. + +This stands near Donegal Square, a fine site, disfigured by a quadrangle +of commonplace brick buildings, occupied as a sort of Linen Exchange, +concerning which a controversy rages, I am told. They are erected on +land granted by Lord Donegal to encourage the linen trade, and the +buildings used to be leased at a rental of £1 per window. The present +holders receive £10 per window, and are naturally loath to part with so +good a thing, though there is an earnest desire in the city to see these +unsightly structures removed, and their place taken by stately municipal +buildings more in key with the really remarkable and monumental private +warehouses which already adorn this Square. Mr. Robinson, one of the +partners of a firm which has just completed one of these warehouses, was +good enough to show us over it. It is built of a warm grey stone, which +lends itself easily to the chisel, and it is decorated with a wealth of +carving and of architectural ornaments such as the great burghers of +Flanders lavished on their public buildings. The interior arrangements +are worthy of the external stateliness of the warehouse. Pneumatic tubes +for the delivery of cash--a Scottish invention--electric lights, steam +lifts, a kitchen at the top of the lofty edifice heated by steam from +the great engine-room in the cellars, and furnishing meals to the +employees, attest the energy and enterprise of the firm. The most +delicate of the linen fabrics sold here are made, I was informed, all +over the north country. The looms, three or four of which are kept going +here in a great room to show the intricacy and perfection of the +processes, are supplied by the firm to the hand-workers on a system +which enables them, while earning good wages from week to week, to +acquire the eventual ownership of the machines. The building is crowned +by a sort of observatory, from which we enjoyed a noble prospect +overlooking the whole city and miles of the beautiful country around. A +haze on the horizon hid the coast of Scotland, which is quite visible +under a clear sky. The Queen's Bridge over the Lagan, built in 1842 +between Antrim and Down, was a conspicuous feature in the panorama. Its +five great arches of hewn granite span the distance formerly traversed +by an older bridge of twenty-one arches 840 feet in length, which was +begun in 1682, and finished just in time to welcome Schomberg and King +William. + +The not less imposing warehouse of Richardson and Co., built of a +singularly beautiful brown stone, and decorated with equal taste and +liberality, adjoins that of Robinson and Cleaver. The banks, the public +offices, the clubs, the city library, the museum, the Presbyterian +college, the principal churches, all of them modern, all alike bear +witness to the public spirit and pride in their town of the good people +of Belfast. With more time at my disposal I would have been very glad to +visit some of the flax-mills called into being by the great impulse +which the cotton famine resulting from our Civil War gave to the linen +manufactures of Northern Ireland, and the famous shipyards of the Woolfs +on Queen's Island, As things are, it was more to my purpose to see some +of the representative men of this great Protestant stronghold. + +I passed a very interesting hour with the Rev. Dr. Hanna, who is reputed +to be a sort of clerical "Lion of the North," and whom I found to be in +almost all respects a complete antitype of Father M'Fadden of Gweedore. + + +Dr. Hanna is not unjustly proud of being at the head of the most +extensive Sunday-school organisation in Ireland, if not in the world; +and I find that the anniversary parade of his pupils, appointed for +Saturday, June 30th, is looked forward to with some anxiety by the +authorities here. He tells me that he expects to put two thousand +children that day into motion for a grand excursion to Moira; but +although he speaks very plainly as to the ill-will with which a certain +class of the Catholics here regard both himself and his organisation, he +does not anticipate any attack from them. With what seems to me very +commendable prudence, he has resolved this year to put this procession +into the streets without banners and bands, so that no charge of +provocation may be even colourably advanced against it. This is no +slight concession from a man so determined and so outspoken, not to say +aggressive, in his Protestantism as Dr. Hanna; and the Nationalist +Catholics will be very ill-advised, it strikes me, if they misinterpret +it. + +He spoke respectfully of the Papal decree against Boycotting and the +Plan of Campaign; but he seems to think it will not command the respect +of the masses of the Catholic population, nor be really enforced by the +clergy. Like most of the Ulstermen I have met, he has a firm faith, not +only in the power of the Protestant North to protect itself, but in its +determination to protect itself against the consequences which the +northern Protestants believe must inevitably follow any attempt to +establish an Irish nationality. Dr. Hanna is neither an Orangeman nor a +Tory. He says there are but three known Orangemen among the clerical +members of the General Assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church, which +unanimously pronounced against Mr. Gladstone's scheme of Home Rule, and +not more than a dozen Tories. Of the 550 members of the Assembly, 538, +he says, were followers of Mr. Gladstone before he adopted the politics +of Mr. Parnell; and only three out of the whole number have given him +their support. In the country at large, Dr. Hanna puts down the +Unionists at two millions, of whom 1,200,000 are Protestants, and +800,000 Catholics; and he maintains that if the Parliamentary +representatives were chosen by a general vote, the Parnellite 80 would +be cut down to 62; while the Unionists would number 44. He regards the +Parnellite policy as "an organised imposture," and firmly believes that +an Irish Parliament in Dublin would now mean civil war in Ireland. He +had a visit here last week, he says, from an American Presbyterian +minister, who came out to Ireland a month ago a "Home Ruler"; but, as +the result of a trip through North-Western Ireland, is going back to +denounce the Home Rule movement as a mischievous fraud. + +When I asked him what remedy he would propose for the discontent stirred +up by the agitation of Home Rule, this Presbyterian clergyman replied +emphatically, "Balfour, Balfour, and more Balfour!" + +This on the ground, as I understood, that Mr. Balfour's administration +of the law has been the firmest, least wavering, and most equitable +known in Ireland for many a day. + +Later in the day I had the pleasure of a conversation with the Rev. Dr. +Kane, the Grand Master of the Orangemen at Belfast. Dr. Kane is a tall, +fine-looking, frank, and resolute man, who obviously has the courage of +his opinions. He thinks there will be no disturbances this year on the +12th of July, but that the Orange demonstrations will be on a greater +scale and more imposing than ever. He derides the notion that +"Parnellism" is making any progress in Ulster. On the contrary, the +concurrence this year of the anniversary of the defeat of the Great +Armada with the anniversary of the Revolution of 1688 has aroused the +strongest feelings of enthusiasm among the Protestants of the North, and +they were never so determined as they now are not to tolerate anything +remotely looking to the constitution of a separate and separatist +Government at Dublin. + +BELFAST, _Tuesday, June 26._--Sir John Preston, the head of one of the +great Belfast houses, and a former Mayor of the city, dined with us last +night, and in the evening Sir James Haslett, the actual Mayor, came in. + +I find that in Belfast the office of Mayor is served without a salary, +and is consequently filled as a rule by citizens of "weight and +instance." In Dublin the Lord Mayor receives £3000 a year, with a +contingent fund of £1500, and the office is becoming a distinctly +political post. The face of Belfast is so firmly set against the +tendency to subordinate municipal interests to general party exigencies, +that the Corporation compelled Mr. Cobain, M.P., who sits at Westminster +now for this constituency, to resign the post which he held as treasurer +and cashier of the Corporation when he became a candidate for a seat in +Parliament. I am not surprised, therefore, to learn that the city rates +and taxes are much lower in the commercial than they are in the +political capital of Ireland. + +Both Sir John Preston and Sir James Haslett have visited America. Sir +John went there to represent the linen industries of Ireland, and to +urge upon Congress the propriety of reducing our import duties upon +fabrics which the American climate makes it practically imposssible to +manufacture on our side of the water. Senator Sherman, who twenty years +ago had the candour to admit that the wit of man could not devise a +tariff so adjusted as to raise the revenue necessary for the Government +which should not afford adequate incidental protection to all legitimate +American industries, gave Sir John reason to hope that something might +be done in the direction of a more liberal treatment of the linen +industries. But nothing practical came of it. Sir John ought to have +known that our typical American Protectionist, the late Horace Greeley, +really persuaded himself, and tried to persuade other people, that with +duties enough clapped on the Asiatic production, excellent tea might be +grown on the uplands of South Carolina! + +In former years Sir John Preston used to visit Gweedore every year for +sport and recreation. He knew Lord George Hill very well, "as true and +noble a man as ever lived, who stinted himself to improve the state of +his tenants." He threw an odd light on the dreamy desire which had so +much amused me of the "beauty of Gweedore" to become "a dressmaker at +Derry," by telling me that long ago the gossips there used to tell +wonderful stories of a Gweedore girl who had made her fortune as a +milliner in the "Maiden City." + +This morning Mr. Cameron, who as Town Inspector of the Royal Irish +Constabulary will be responsible for public peace and order here during +the next critical fortnight, held a review of his men on a common beyond +the Theological College. About two hundred and fifty of the force were +paraded, with about twenty mounted policemen, and for an hour and a +half, under a tolerably warm sun, they were put through a regular +military drill. A finer body of men cannot be seen, and in point of +discipline and training they can hold their own, I should say, with the +best of her Majesty's regiments. Without such discipline and training it +would not be easy for any such body of men to pass with composure +through the ordeal of insults and abuse to which the testimony of +trustworthy eye-witnesses compels me to believe they are habitually +subjected in the more disturbed districts of Ireland. As to the +immediate outlook here, Mr. Cameron seems quite at his ease. Even if +ill-disposed persons should set about provoking a collision between "the +victors and the vanquished of the Boyne" his arrangements are so made, +he says, as to prevent the development of anything like the outbreaks of +former years. + +On the advice of Sir John Preston I shall take the Fleetwood route on my +return to London to-night. + +This secures one a comfortable night on board of a very good and +well-equipped boat, from which you go ashore, he tells me, into an +excellent station of the London and North-Western Railway at Fleetwood, +on the mouth of the Wyre on the Lancashire coast. Twenty years ago this +was a small bathing resort called into existence chiefly by the +enterprise of a local baronet whose name it bears. Its present +prosperity and prospective importance are another illustration of the +vigour and vitality of the North of Ireland, which is connected through +Fleetwood with the great manufacturing regions of middle and northern +England, as it is through Larne with the heart of Scotland. + +While it is as true now of the predominantly Catholic south of Ireland +as it was when Sir Robert Peel made the remark forty years ago, that it +stands "with its back to England and its face to the West," this +Protestant Ireland of the North faces both ways, drawing Canada and the +United States to itself through Moville and Derry and Belfast, and +holding fast at the same time upon the resources of Great Britain +through Glasgow and Liverpool. One of the best informed bankers in +London told me not long ago, that pretty nearly all the securities of +the great company which has recently taken over the business of the +Guinnesses have already found their way into the North of Ireland and +are held here. With such resources in its wealth and industry, better +educated, better equipped, and holding a practically impregnable +position in the North of Ireland, with Scotland and the sea at its back, +Ulster is very much stronger relatively to the rest of Ireland than La +Vendée was relatively to the rest of the French Republic in the last +century. In a struggle for independence against the rest of Ireland it +would have nothing to fear from the United States, where any attempt to +organise hostilities against it would put the Irish-American population +in serious peril, not only from the American Government, but from +popular feeling, and force home upon the attention of the +quickest-witted people in the world the significant fact that while the +chief contributions, so far, of America to Southern Ireland, have been +alms and agitation, the chief contributions of Scotland to Northern +Ireland have been skilled agriculture and successful activity. It is +surely not without meaning that the only steamers of Irish build which +now traverse the Atlantic come from the dockyards, not of Galway nor of +Cork, the natural gateways of Ireland to the west, but of Belfast, the +natural gateway of Ireland to the north. + + + + +EPILOGUE. + + +Not once, but a hundred times, during the visits to Ireland recorded in +this book, I have been reminded of the state of feeling and opinion +which existed in the Border States, as they were called, of the American +Union, after the invasion of Virginia by a piratical band under John +Brown, and before the long-pending issues between the South, insisting +upon its constitutional rights, and the North, restive under its +constitutional obligations, were brought to a head by the election of +President Lincoln. + +All analogies, I know, are deceptive, and I do not insist upon this +analogy. But it has a certain value here. For to-day in Ireland, as then +in America, we find a grave question of politics, in itself not +unmanageable, perhaps, by a race trained to self-government, seriously +complicated and aggravated, not only by considerations of moral right +and moral wrong, but by a profound perturbation of the material +interests of the community. + +I well remember that after a careful study of the situation in America +at the time of which I speak, Mr. Nassau Senior, a most careful and +competent observer, frankly told me that he saw no possible way in which +the problem could be worked out peacefully. The event justified this +gloomy forecast. + +It would be presumptuous in me to say as much of the actual situation in +Ireland; but it would be uncandid not to say that the optimists of +Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee had greater +apparent odds in their favour in 1861 than the optimists of Ireland seem +to me to have in 1888. + +Ireland stands to-day between Great Britain and the millions of the +Irish race in America and Australia very much as the Border States of +the American Union stood in 1861 between the North and the South. There +was little either in the Tariff question or in the Slavery question to +shake the foundations of law and order in the Border States, could they +have been left to themselves; and the Border States enjoyed all the +advantages and immunities of "Home Rule" to an extent and under +guarantees never yet openly demanded for Ireland by any responsible +legislator within the walls of the British Parliament. But so powerful +was the leverage upon them of conflicting passions and interests beyond +their own borders that these sovereign states, well organised, +homogeneous, prosperous communities, much more populous and richer in +the aggregate in 1861 than Ireland is to-day, practically lost the +control of their own affairs, and were swept helplessly into a terrific +conflict, which they had the greatest imaginable interest in avoiding, +and no interest whatever in promoting. + +I have seen and heard nothing in Ireland to warrant the very common +impression that the country, as a whole, is either misgoverned or +ungovernable; nothing to justify me in regarding the difficulties which +there impede the maintenance of law and order as really indigenous and +spontaneous. The "agitated" Ireland of 1888 appears to me to be almost +as clearly and demonstrably the creation of forces not generated in, but +acting upon, a country, as was the "bleeding Kansas" of 1856. But the +"bleeding Kansas" of 1856 brought the great American Union to the verge +of disruption, and the "agitated Ireland" of 1888 may do as much, or +worse, for the British Empire. There is, no doubt, a great deal of +distress in one or another part of Ireland, though it has not been my +fortune to come upon any outward and visible signs of such grinding +misery as forces itself upon you in certain of the richest provinces of +that independent, busy, prosperous, Roman Catholic kingdom of Belgium, +which on a territory little more than one-third as large as the +territory of Ireland, maintains nearly a million more inhabitants, and +adds to its population, on an average, in round numbers, as many people +in four years as Ireland loses in five. + +I have seen peasant proprietors in Flanders and Brabant who could give +the ideal Irish agent of the Nationalist newspapers lessons in +rack-renting, though I am not at all sure that they might not get a hint +or two themselves from some of the small farmers who came in my way in +Ireland. + +Like all countries, mainly agricultural, too, Ireland has suffered a +great deal of late years from the fall in prices following upon a period +of intoxicating prosperity. Whether she has suffered more relatively +than we should have suffered from the same cause in America, had we been +foolish enough to imitate the monometallic policy of Germany in 1873, is +however open to question; and I have an impression, which it will +require evidence to remove, that the actual organisation known as the +National Land League could never have been called into being had the +British Government devoted to action upon the Currency Question, before +1879, the time and energy which it has expended before and since that +date in unsettling the principles of free contract, and tinkering at the +relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland. + +But I am trenching upon inquiries here beyond the province of this book. + +Fortunately it is not necessary to my object in printing these volumes +that I should either form or formulate any positive opinions as to the +origin of the existing crisis in Ireland. Nor need I volunteer any +suggestions of my own as to the methods by which order may best be +maintained and civil government carried on in Ireland. It suffices for +me that I close this self-imposed survey of men and things in that +country with a conviction, as positive as it is melancholy, that the +work which Mr. Redmond, M.P., informed us at Chicago that he and his +Nationalist colleagues had undertaken, of "making the government of +Ireland by England impossible," has been so far achieved, and by such +methods as to make it extremely doubtful whether Ireland can be governed +by anybody at all in accordance with any of the systems of government +hitherto recognised in or adopted for that country. I certainly can see +nothing in the organisation and conduct, down to this time, of the party +known as the party of the Irish Nationalists, I will not say to +encourage, but even to excuse, a belief that Ireland could be governed +as a civilised country were it turned over to-morrow to their control. A +great deal has been done by them to propagate throughout Christendom a +general impression that England has dismally failed to govern Ireland in +the past, and is unlikely hereafter to succeed in governing Ireland. But +even granting this impression to be absolutely well founded, it by no +means follows that Ireland is any more capable of governing herself than +England is of governing her. The Russians have not made a brilliant +success of their administration in Poland, but the Poles certainly +administered Poland no better than the Russians have done. With an Irish +representation in an Imperial British Parliament at Westminster, +Ireland, under Mr. Gladstone's "base and blackguard" Union of 1800, has +at least succeeded in shaking off some of the weightiest of the burdens +by which, in the days of Swift, of Grattan, and of O'Connell, she most +loudly declared herself to be oppressed. Whether with a Parliament at +Dublin she would have fared as well in this respect since 1800 must be a +matter of conjecture merely--and it must be equally a matter of +conjecture also whether she would fare any better in this respect with a +Parliament at Dublin hereafter. I am in no position to pronounce upon +this--but it is quite certain that nothing is more uncommon than to find +an educated and intelligent man, not an active partisan, in Ireland +to-day, who looks forward to the reestablishment, in existing +circumstances, of a Parliament at Dublin with confidence or hope. + +How the establishment of such a Parliament would affect the position of +Great Britain as a power in Europe, and how it would affect the fiscal +policy, and with the fiscal policy the well-being of the British people, +are questions for British subjects to consider, not for me. + +That the processes employed during the past decade, and now employed to +bring about the establishment of such a Parliament, have been, and are +in their nature, essentially revolutionary, subversive of all sound and +healthy relations between man and man, inconsistent with social +stability, and therefore with social progress and with social peace, +what I have seen and heard in Ireland during the past six months compels +me to feel. Of the "Coercion," under which the Nationalist speakers and +writers ask us in America to believe that the island groans and +travails, I have seen literally nothing. + +Nowhere in the world is the press more absolutely free than to-day in +Ireland. Nowhere in the world are the actions of men in authority more +bitterly and unsparingly criticised. If public men or private citizens +are sent to prison in Ireland, they are sent there, not as they were in +America during the civil war, or in Ireland under the "Coercion Act" of +1881, on suspicion of something they may have done, or may have intended +to do, but after being tried for doing, and convicted of having done, +certain things made offences against the law by a Parliament in which +they are represented, and of which, in some cases, they are members. + +To call this "Coercion" is, from the American point of view, simply +ludicrous. What it may be from the British or the Irish point of view is +another affair, and does not concern me. I may be permitted, however, I +hope without incivility, to say that if this be "Coercion" from the +British or the Irish point of view, I am well content to be an American +citizen. Ours is essentially a government not of emotions, but of +statutes, and most Americans, I think, will agree with me that the sage +was right who declared it to be better to live where nothing is lawful +than where all things are lawful. + +The "Coercion" which I have found established in Ireland, and which I +recognise in the title of this book, is the "Coercion," not of a +government, but of a combination to make a particular government +impossible. It is a "Coercion" applied not to men who break a public +law, or offend against any recognised code of morals, but to men who +refuse to be bound in their personal relations and their business +transactions by the will of other men, their equals only, clothed with +no legal authority over them. It is a "Coercion" administered not by +public and responsible functionaries, but by secret tribunals. Its +sanctions are not the law and honest public opinion, but the base +instinct of personal cowardice, and the instinct, not less base, of +personal greed. Whether anything more than a steady, firm administration +of the law is needed to abolish this "Coercion" is a matter as to which +authorities differ. I should be glad to believe with Colonel Saunderson +that "the Leaguers would not hold up the 'land-grabber' to execration, +and denounce him as they do, unless they knew in fact that the moment +the law is made supreme in Ireland the tenants would become just as +amenable to it as any other subjects of the Queen." But some recent +events suggest a doubt whether these "other subjects of the Queen" are +as amenable to the law as my own countrymen are. + +That the Church to which the great majority of the Irish people have for +so many ages, and through so many tribulations, borne steadfast +allegiance, has been shaken in its hold upon the conscience of Ireland +by the machinery of this odious and ignoble "Coercion," appears to me to +be unquestionable. That the head of that Church, being compelled by +evidence to believe this, has found it necessary to intervene for the +restoration of the just spiritual authority of the Church over the Irish +people all the world now knows--nor can I think that his intervention +has come a day or an hour too soon, to arrest the progress in Ireland of +a social disease which threatens, not the political interests of the +empire of which Ireland is a part alone, but the character of the Irish +people themselves, and the very existence among them of the elementary +conditions of a Christian civilisation. + +It would be unjust to the Irish people to forget that this demoralising +"Coercion" against which the Head of the Catholic Church has declared +war, seems to me to have been seriously reinforced by the Land +Legislation of the Imperial Parliament. + +No one denies that great reforms and readjustments of the Land Tenure in +Ireland needed to be made long before any serious attempt was made to +make them. + +But that such reforms and readjustments might have been made without +cutting completely loose from the moorings of political economy, appears +pretty clearly, not only from examples on the continent of Europe, and +in my own country, but from the Rent and Tenancy Acts carried out in +India under the viceroyalty of Lord Dufferin since 1885. The conditions +of these measures were different, of course, in each of the cases of +Oudh, Bengal, and the Punjab, and in none of these cases were they +nearly identical with the conditions of any practicable land measure for +Ireland. But two great characteristics seem to me to mark the Indian +legislation, which are not conspicuous in the legislation for Ireland. + +These are a spirit of equity as between the landlords and the tenants, +and finality. I do not see how it can be questioned that the landlords +of Ireland have been dealt with by recent British legislation as if they +were offenders to be mulcted, and that the tenants in Ireland have been +encouraged by recent British legislation to anticipate an eventual +transfer to them, on steadily improving terms, of the land-ownership of +the island. Mr. Davitt is perhaps the most popular Irishman living, and +I believe him to be sincerely convinced that the ownership of the land +of Ireland (and of all other countries) ought to be vested in the State. +But if the independence of Ireland were acknowledged by Great Britain +to-morrow, and all the actual landlords of Ireland were compelled +to-morrow to part with their ownership, such as it is, of the land, I +believe Mr. Davitt would be further from the recognition and triumph of +his principle of State-ownership than he is to-day with a British +Parliament hostile to "Home Rule," but apparently not altogether +unwilling to make the landlords of Ireland an acceptable burnt-offering +upon the altar of imperial unity. Probably he sees this himself, and the +existing state of things may not be wholly displeasing to him, as +holding out a hope that the flame which he has been helped by British +legislation to kindle in Ireland may already be taking hold upon the +substructions and outworks of the edifice of property in Great Britain +also. + +One thing at least is clear. + +The two antagonistic principles which confront each other in Ireland +to-day are the principles of the Agrarian Revolution represented by Mr. +Davitt, and the principle of Authority, represented in the domain of +politics by the British Government, and in the domain of morals by the +Vatican. With one or the other of these principles the victory must +rest. If the Irish people of all classes who live in Ireland could be +polled to-day, it is likely enough that a decisive majority of them +would declare for the principle of Authority in the State and in the +Church, could that over-riding issue be made perfectly plain and +intelligible to them. But how is that possible? In what country of the +world, and in what age of the world, has it ever been possible to get +such an issue made perfectly plain and intelligible to any people? + +In the domain of morals the principle of Authority, so far as concerns +Catholic Ireland, rests with a power which is not likely to waver or +give way. The Papal Decree has gone forth. Those who profess to accept +it will be compelled to obey it. Those who reject it, whatever their +place in the hierarchy of the Church may be, must sooner or later find +themselves where Dr. M'Glynn of New York now is. Catholic Ireland can +only continue to be Catholic on the condition of obedience, not formal +but real, not in matters indifferent, but in matters vital and +important, to the Head of the Catholic Church. + +In the domain of politics the principle of Authority rests with an +Administration which is at the mercy of the intelligence or the +ignorance, the constancy or the fickleness, the weakness or the +strength, of constituencies in Great Britain, not necessarily familiar +with the facts of the situation in Ireland, not necessarily enlightened +as to the real interests either of Great Britain or of Ireland, nor even +necessarily awake, with Cardinal Manning, to the truth that upon the +future of Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire. + +With two, three, four, or five years of a steady and cool administration +of the laws in Ireland, by an executive officer such as Mr. Balfour +seems to me to have shown himself to be--with a judicious abstinence of +the British Legislature from feverish and fussy legislation about +Ireland, with a prudent and persistent development of the material +resources of Ireland, and with a genuine co-operation of the people who +own land in Ireland with the people who wish to own land in Ireland, for +the readjustment of land-ownership, the principle of Authority in the +domain of politics may doubtless win in the conflict with the principle +of the Agrarian revolution. + +But how many contingencies are here involved! Meanwhile the influences +which imperil in Ireland the principle of Authority, in the domains +alike of politics and of morals, are at work incessantly, to undermine +and deteriorate the character of the Irish people, to take the vigour +and the manhood out of them, to unfit them day by day, not only for good +citizenship in the British Empire or the United States, but for good +citizenship in any possible Ireland under any possible form of +government. To arrest these influences before they bring on in Ireland a +social crash, the effects of which must be felt far beyond the +boundaries of that country, is a matter of primary importance, +doubtless, to the British people. It is a matter, too, of hardly less +than primary importance to the people of my own country. Unfortunately +it does not rest with us to devise or to apply an efficient check to +these influences. + +That rests with the people of Great Britain, so long as they insist that +Ireland shall remain an integral portion of the British dominions. I do +not see how they can acquit themselves of this responsibility, or escape +the consequences of evading it, solely by devising the most ingenious +machinery of local administration for Ireland, or the most liberal +schemes for fostering the material interests of the Irish people. Such +things, of course, must in due time be attended to. But the first duty +of a government is to govern; and I believe that Earl Grey has summed up +the situation in Ireland more concisely and more courageously than any +other British statesman in his outspoken declaration, that "in order to +avert the wreck of the nation, it is absolutely necessary that some +means or other should be found for securing to Ireland during the +present crisis a wiser and more stable administration of its affairs +than can be looked for under its existing institutions." + +I have heard and read a good deal in the past of the "Three F's" thought +a panacea for Irish discontent. Three other F's seem to me quite as +important to the future of Irish content and public order. These are, +Fair Dealing towards Landlords as well as Tenants; Finality of Agrarian +Legislation at Westminster; and last and most essential of all, Fixity +of Executive Tenure. + +The words I have just quoted of Earl Grey, show it to be the conviction +of the oldest living leader of English Liberalism that this last is the +vital point, the key of the situation. Let me bracket with his words, +and leave to the consideration of my readers, the following pregnant +passage from a letter written to me by an Irish correspondent who is as +devoted to Irish independence as is Earl Grey to imperial unity:-- + +"If the present Nationalist movement succeeds, it will have the effect +of putting the worst elements of the Irish nation in power, and keeping +them there irremoveably. We are to have an Executive at the mercy of a +House of Representatives, and the result will be a government, or series +of governments, as weak and vicious as those of France, with this +difference, that here all purifying changes such as seem imminent in +France will be absolutely prevented by the irresistible power of +England. The true model for us would be a constitution like yours in the +United States, with an Executive responsible to the nation at large, and +irremoveable for a term of years. But this we shall never get from +England. Shall we make use of Home Rule to take it for ourselves? + +"Many earnest and active Irish Unionists now say that if any bill +resembling Mr. Gladstone's passes, they will make separation, their +definite policy. If Home Rule comes without the landlords having been +bought out on reasonable terms, a class will be created in Ireland full +of bitter and most just hatred of England--a class which may very likely +one day play the part here which the persecuted Irish Presbyterians who +fled from the tyranny of the English Church in Ireland played in your +own Revolution beyond the Atlantic." + + +<p><hr /></p> + + +APPENDIX. + +NOTE F. + +THE "MOONLIGHTERS" AND "HOME RULE." + +(Vol. ii. p. 38.) + + +On Monday, the 1st of February 1886, the _Irish Times_ published the +following story from Tralee, near the scene of the "boycotting," +temporal and spiritual, of the unfortunate daughters of Mr. Jeremiah +Curtin, murdered in his own house by "moonlighters":-- + + "TRALEE, _Sunday_. + + "It was stated that the bishop had ordered Mass to be celebrated + for them--the Curtins--but this did not take place. At the village + of Firies a number of people had assembled. They stopped loitering + about the place in the forenoon, waiting for a meeting of the + National League, which was subsequently held. A threatening notice + was discovered posted up on the door of a house formerly used as a + forge. It ran as follows:-- + + "'NOTICE.--If we are honoured by the presence of the bloodthirsty + perjurers at Mass on any of the forthcoming Sundays, take good care + you'll stand up very politely and walk out. Don't be under the + impression that all the Moonlighters are dead, and that this notice + is a child's play, as Shawn Nelleen titled the last one. I'll be + sure to keep my word, as you will see before long, so have no + welcome for the Curtins, and, above all, let no one work for them + in any way. As you respect the Captain, and as you value your own + life, abide by this notice.'--Signed, 'A MOONLIGHTER.' + + "The above notice was written on tea paper in large legible style, + and evidently by an intelligent person. Groups were perusing it + during the day. A force of police marched through the village and + back, but did not observe this document, as it is still posted on + the door of the house." + +The "bloodthirsty perjurers" here mentioned were the daughters who had +dared to demand and to promote the punishment of the assassins of their +father! For this crime these daughters were to be excommunicated by the +people of Firies, and denied the consolations of religion in their deep +sorrow, even in defiance of the order of the Catholic bishop. + +As the advent of Mr. Gladstone to power in alliance with Mr. Parnell was +then imminent, Mr. Sheehan, M.P., wrote a letter to the parish priest of +Firies, the Rev. Mr. O'Connor, begging him in substance to put the +brakes--for a time--upon the wheels of the local rack, lest the outcries +of the young women subjected to this moral torture should interfere with +the success of the new alliance. This, in plain English, is the only +possible meaning of the letter which I here reprint from a leaflet +issued by an Irish society:-- + + "The Rev. Father O'Connor, P.P., has received the following letter + from Mr. Sheehau, M.P., in reference to this matter, under date + + "'House of Commons, _January 26th._ + + "'REV. DEAR SIR,--At this important juncture in our history, I am + sorry to see reports of the Firies display. Nothing that has taken + place yet in the South of Ireland has done so much harm to the + National cause. If they persist they will ruin us. To-morrow + evening will be most important in Parliamentary history. Our party + expect the defeat of the Government and resumption of power by Mr. + Gladstone. If we succeed in this, which we are confident of, the + future of our country will be great, and, although an appeal to the + constituencies must be made, the Irish party in those few days have + made an impression in future that no Government can withstand. The + Salisbury Government want to appeal to the country on the integrity + of the empire, and, of course, for the last few days have tried all + means to lead to this by raking up the Curtin case and all judicial + cases, which _must be avoided for a short time_, as our stoppage to + the Eviction Act will cover all this.--Yours faithfully, J.D. + SHEEHAN.'" + +This letter was read, the leaflet informs us, by the Rev. Mr. O'Connor, +at the National Schools and other places. + + + +NOTE G. + +THE PONSONBY PROPERTY. + +(Vol. ii. pp. 59-66.) + + +The account which the Rev. Canon Keller gave me of "The Struggle for +Life on the Ponsonby Estate," in a tract bearing that title, and +authorised by him to be published by the National League, is so +circumstantial and elaborate that, after reading it carefully, I took +unusual pains to obtain some reply to it from the representatives of the +landlord implicated. These finally led to a visit from Mr. Ponsonby +himself, who was so kind as to call upon me in London on the 15th of +May, with papers and documents. I give in the following colloquy the +results of this interview, putting together with the allegations of +Canon Keller the answers of Mr. Ponsonby, and leave the matter in this +form to the judgment of my readers. + +_Q_. Canon Keller, I see, describes you, Mr. Ponsonby, as "a retired +navy officer, and an absentee Irish landlord." He says your estate is +now "universally known as the famous Ponsonby Estate," and that it is +occupied "by from 300 to 400 tenants, holding farms varying in extent +from an acre and a half to over two hundred acres." Are these statements +correct? + +_A_. I am a retired navy officer certainly, and perhaps I may be called +an "absentee Irish landlord." I lived on my property for some time, and +I have always attended to it. I succeeded to the estate in 1868, and +almost my first act was to borrow £2000 of the Board of Works for +drainage purposes--the tenants agreeing to pay half the interest. As a +matter of fact some never paid at all, and I afterwards wiped out the +claims against them. There are about 300 tenants on the property, and +the average holdings are of about 36 acres, at an average rental of £30 +a holding. There are, however, not a few large farms. + +_Q_. Canon Keller says that "in the memory of living witnesses, and far +beyond it, the Ponsonby tenants have been notoriously rack-rented and +oppressed"; and that they have been committed to the "tender mercies of +agents, seeing little or nothing of their landlord, and experiencing no +practical sympathy from that quarter." How is this? + +_A_. I wish to believe Canon Keller truthful when he knows the truth. He +certainly does not know the truth here. He is a newcomer at Youghal, +having come there in November 1885, and hardly so much of an authority +about "the memory of living witnesses and far beyond it" as the tenants +on the estate, who, when I went there first with my wife, presented to +me, May 25, 1868, an address of welcome, referring in very different +terms to the history of the estate and of my family connection with it. +Here is the original address, and a copy of it--the latter being quite +at your service. + +This original address is very handsomely engrossed, and is signed by +fifty tenants. Among the names I observed those of Martin Loughlin, +Peter McDonough, Michael Gould, William Forrest, and John Heaphey, all +of whom are cited by Canon Keller in his tract as conspicuous victims of +the oppression and rack-renting which he says have prevailed upon the +Ponsonby estates time out of mind. It was rather surprising, therefore, +to find them joining with more than forty other tenants to sign an +address, of which I here print the text:-- + + To C.W. TALBOT PONSONBY, Esq. + + Honoured Sir,--The Tenantry of your Estates near Youghal have heard + with extreme pleasure of the arrival of yourself and lady in the + neighbourhood, and have deputed us to address you on their behalf. + + Through us they bid you and Mrs. Ponsonby welcome, and respectfully + congratulate you on your accession to the Estates. + + The name of Ponsonby is traditionally revered in this part of the + country, being associated in the recollections and impressions of + the people with all that is exalted, honourable, and generous. It + has been matter of regret that the heads of the family have not + (probably from uncontrollable causes) visited these Estates for + many years, but the tenantry have never wavered in their sentiments + of respect towards them. + + We will not disguise from you the conviction generally entertained + that the improvement of landed property, and the condition of its + occupiers, is best promoted under the personal observation and + supervision of the proprietor, and your tenantry on that account + hail with satisfaction the promise your presence affords of future + intercourse between you and them. + + Again, on the part of your Tenants and all connected with your + Estates, tendering you and your lady a most hearty welcome, and + sincerely wishing you and her a long and happy career--We subscribe + ourselves, Honoured Sir, Respectfully yours, + + YOUGHAL, _May_ 1868. + +_Q_. Did Canon Keller ever see this address, may I ask, Mr. Ponsonby? + +_A_. I believe not; and I may as well say at once that I suppose he has +taken for gospel all the stories which any of the tenants under the +terrorism which has been established on the place think it best to pour +into his listening ear. As I have said, he is quite a new man at +Youghal, and when he first came there he was a quiet and not at all +revolutionary priest. You saw him, and saw how good his manners are, and +that he is a well-educated man. But on Sunday, November 7, 1886, a great +meeting was held at Youghal. It was a queer meeting for a Sunday, being +openly a political meeting, with banners and bands, to hear speeches +from Mr. Lane, M.P., Mr. Flynn, M.P., and others. The Rev. Mr. Keller +presided, and a priest from America, Father Hayes of Georgetown, Iowa, +in the United States, was present. It was ostensibly a Home Rule +meeting, but the burden of the speeches was agrarian. Mr. Lane, M.P., +made a bitter personal attack on another Nationalist member, Sir Joseph +M'Kenna of Killeagh, calling him a "heartless and inhuman landlord;" and +my property was also attended to by Mr. Lane, who advised my tenants +openly not to accept my offer of 20 per cent. reduction, but to demand +40 per cent. Father Hayes in his speech bade "every man stand to his +guns," and wound up by declaring that if England and the landlords +behaved in America as they behaved in Ireland, the Americans "would pelt +them not only with dynamite, but with the lightnings of Heaven and the +fires of hell, till every British bull-dog, whelp, and cur would be +pulverised and made top-dressing for the soil." Canon Keller afterwards +expressed disapproval of this speech of Hayes, and this coming to the +knowledge of Hayes in America, Hayes denounced Keller for not daring to +do this at the time in his presence. Since then Canon Keller has been +much more violent in tone. + +_Q_. I don't want to carry you through a long examination, Mr. Ponsonby, +but I see typical cases here, about which I should like to ask a +question or two. Here, is Callaghan Flavin, for instance, described by +Canon Keller as one of eight tenants who "had to retreat before the +crowbar brigade," and who "deserved a better fate." Canon Keller says he +is assured by a competent judge that Flavin's improvements, "full value +for £341, 10s.," are now "the landlord's property." What are the facts +about Mr. Flavin? + +_A_. Mr. Flavin's farm was held by his cousin, Ellen Flavin of Gilmore, +who, on the 7th of February 1872, surrendered it to the landlord on +receiving from me a sum of £172, 10s. 6d. I obtained a charging order +under section 27 of the Land Act, entitling me to an annuity of £8, 12s. +6d. for thirty-five years from July 3, 1872. It was let to Callaghan +Flavin in preference to other applicants, July 3, 1872; and in 1873, at +his request, I obtained a loan from the Board of Works for the thorough +draining of a portion of the farm. Thirteen acres were drained at a cost +of £84, 6s. 3d., for which the tenant promised to pay 5 per cent. +interest, which I eventually forgave him. There was no house on the +farm. He took it without one, and I did not want one there. He built a +house himself without consulting my agent, and then wanted me to make +him an allowance for it. I told him he had thirty-one years to enjoy it +in, and must be content with that. About the same time he took another +farm of mine at a rent of £35. Since I came into my property in 1868 I +have laid out upon it in drainage, buildings, and planting--here are the +accounts, which you may look at--over £15,000, including about £8000 of +loans from the Board of Works. In the drainage the tenants got work for +which they were paid. I gave them slates for the buildings, with timber +and stone from the estate, and they supplied the labour. There is no +case in which the outlays for improvements came from the tenants--not a +single one. I repeat it, Canon Keller's tract is a tissue of fictions. + +What nonsense it is to talk about the "traditional rack-renting" of a +property held by the Ponsonbys for two hundred years, the tenants on +which could welcome me when I came into it with the language of the +address you have here seen! + +I never evicted tenants for less than three years' arrears, till what +Canon Keller calls the "crowbar brigade," by which he means the officers +of the law, had to be put into action to meet the "Plan of Campaign" in +May last. I did not proceed against the tenants because they could not +pay. I selected the tenants who could pay, and who were led, or, I +believe in most cases, "coerced," into refusing to pay by agitators with +Mr. Lane, M.P., to inspire them, and Canon Keller, P.P., to glorify them +in a tract. + +_Q_. What were your personal relations with the tenants when you were at +Inchiquin? + +_A_. Always most friendly; and even the other day when I was there, +while none of them would speak to me when they were all together, those +I met individually touched their hats, and were as civil as ever. I +believe they would all be thankful to have things as they were, and I +have never refused to meet and treat with them on fair individual terms. + +In November 1885 my offer of an abatement of 15 per cent. being refused, +a few tenants, I believe, clubbed their rents, and for the sake of peace +I then offered 20 per cent., which they accepted and paid. In October +1886 I hoped to prevent trouble by making the same offer of 20 per cent. +abatement on non-judicial and 10 per cent. on judicial rents. One man +took the latter abatement and paid. Then another tenant demanded 40 per +cent. My agent said he would give them time, and also take money on +account, the effect of which would be to put me out of court, and +prevent my getting an order of ejectment if I wanted to for the balance. +I thought this fair, and approved it, but I refused to make a 40 per +cent. all-round abatement, authorising my agent, however, to make what +abatements he liked in special cases. My words were, "I don't limit you +on the amount of abatement you give, or as to the number of tenants you +may choose so to treat." If this was not a fair free hand, what would +be? My agent afterwards told me he had no chance to make this known. The +fact is they meant to force the Plan on the tenants and me, and to +prevent any settlement but a "victory for the League!" + +In my original notes of my conversation with Father Keller at Youghal, I +found the name of one tenant whom he introduced to me, and who certainly +told me that his holdings amounted to some £300 a year, and that they +had been in his family for "two hundred years," set down as Doyle--I so +printed it with the statements made. But Father Keller, to whom I +submitted my proofs, and who was so good as to revise them, struck out +the name of Doyle, and inserted that of Loughlin, putting the rental +down at £94 (vol. ii. p. 71). Of course I accept this correction. But on +my mentioning the matter to Mr. Ponsonby by letter, he replies to me +(July 27th) as follows:-- + + "Maurice Doyle is a son of Richard Doyle, who died in 1876, leaving + his widow to carry on his farm of 74 acres 1 rood, in the townland + of Ballykitty, which he held in 1858 at a rental of £50, 11s. In + 1868 this was reduced to £48, 11s. In September 1871 he took in + addition a farm of 159 acres 2 roods at £130, in Burgen and + Ballykitty. He afterwards got a lease for thirty-one years of this + larger farm, with a portion of his earlier holding, for £155. This + left him to pay £21, 11s. for the residue of the earlier holding as + in 1858. But at his request, in 1876, the year of his death, I + reduced this to £17. + + "In March 1879, by the death of Mr. Henry Hall, in whose family it + had been for certainly a century, the Inchiquin farm of 213 acres, + valued at £258, 10s., came on my hands. This farm was valued in + 1873 by one valuer at £384, 10s., and by another at £390, 10s. In + an old lease I find that this farm was let at £3 an acre. Mr. Henry + Hall to the day of his death held it at £306, 7s. 6d., under a + lease which I made a lease for life. For this farm Mrs. Richard + Doyle applied, agreeing to take it on a 31 years' lease, at £370 a + year. I let it to her, and she became the lease-holder, putting in + her son Maurice Doyle to take charge of it, though not as the + tenant. He was an active Land Leaguer from the moment he got into + the place, and in 1886 he was a leader in promoting the Plan of + Campaign. Proceedings had to be taken against his mother in order + to eject him, as she was the tenant, not he. I objected to this, + for I always have had the greatest regard for her. Had she been let + alone she would have paid her rent as she had always done. But Mr. + Lane and his allies saw it would never do to let Maurice Doyle + retain his place on his mother's holding. All this will show you + that Maurice Doyle did not inherit the Inchiquin farm. The only + inherited holding of his mother is the farm of 74 acres 1 rood in + the townland of Ballykitty, held by his father in 1858. I have no + doubt you saw Doyle at Youghal, by the description you gave me, and + you remembered his name at once. He was a thickset heavy-looking + man, florid, with a military moustache, the last time I saw him. + His mother is one of the 'rack-rented' tenants you hear of, having + been able in ten years to increase her acreage from 74 acres to 376 + acres, and her rental from £48, 11s. to £542!" + + +As to the general effect of all this business upon the tenants, and upon +himself, Mr. Ponsonby spoke most feelingly. "The tenants are ruined +where they might have been thriving. My means of being useful to them or +to myself are taken away. My charges, though, all remain. I have to pay +tithes for Protestant Church service, of which I can't have the benefit, +the churches being closed; and the other day I had a notice that any +property I had in England would be held liable for quit-rents to the +Crown on my property in Ireland, of which the Government denies me +practically any control or use!" + + + +NOTE G2. + +THE GLENBEHY EVICTION FUND. + +(Vol. ii. p. 12.) + + +In the _London Times_ of September 15 appears the following letter from +the Land Agent whom I saw at Glenbehy, setting forth the effect of this +"Glenbehy Eviction Fund" upon the morals of the tenants and the peace of +the place:-- + + _To the Editor of the Times._ + + "Sir,--Although nearly eighteen months have elapsed since the + evictions on the Glenbehy estate, after which the above-named fund + was started and largely subscribed to by the sympathetic British + public, I think it only fair to throw a little light on the manner + in which this fund has been expended, and the effects which are + still felt in consequence of the money not yet being exhausted. + + "It was generally supposed that the tenants then evicted were in + such poor circumstances as to be unable to settle, whereas, as a + matter of fact, they were, and are, with a few exceptions, the most + well-to-do on the estate, having, for the most part, from five to + fifteen head of cattle, in addition to sheep, pigs, etc. + + "Among the tenants evicted at that time many had not paid rents + since 1879, and had been in illegal occupation since 1884, from + which latter date the landlord was responsible for taxes, provided + it is proved that sufficient distress cannot be made of the lands. + These tenants were offered a clear receipt to May 1, 1886, if they + paid half a year's rent, which would scarcely have paid the cost of + proceedings, and the landlord would therefore have been put to + actual loss. These people, though well able to settle, are given to + understand that as soon as they do so their participation in the + eviction fund will cease, and thus it will be seen that a direct + premium is being paid to dishonesty. + + "In one case a widow woman was summoned for being on the farm from + which she was at that time evicted. Finding out that one of her + children was ill, I applied to the magistrate at the hearing of the + case only to impose a nominal fine. In consequence she was fined + one penny, but sooner than pay this she went to gaol, though she + had several head of cattle and, prior to her eviction, a very nice + farm. The case of this woman fairly illustrates the combination + which has existed to avoid the fulfilment of obligations. + + "The amount of fines paid for similar offences comes, in several + instances, to nearly what I require to effect a settlement. Some of + the tenants actually wrote to the late agent on this estate begging + him to evict them in order that they might come in for a share of + the money raised for the relief of distress, and this clearly shows + beyond dispute that the well-meaning subscribers to the fund will + be more or less responsible for any further evictions to which it + may be necessary to resort. I may mention that the parish priest is + one of the trustees for the money which is thus being used for the + purpose of preventing settlements and keeping the place in a + continual state of turmoil. + + "Judge Currane, at the January sessions held at Killarney this + year, ruled in about fifty ejectment cases on this estate that + tenants owing one and a half to nine years' rent should pay half a + year's rent and costs within a week, a quarter of a year's rent by + June 1, and a quarter of a year's rent by October 1; arrears to be + cancelled. Some of these, owing to non-compliance with the Judge's + ruling, may have to be evicted, and their eviction will be what is + termed the unrooting of peasants' houses and the ejectment of + overburdened tenants for not paying impossible rents. + + "I confess I am at a loss to understand how Mr. Parnell's Arrears + Act would have improved matters or have averted what one of your + contemporaries calls a "painful scandal."--I am, Sirs, yours, &c., + + "D. TODD-THORNTON, J.P., Land Agent. + + "Glenbehy, Killarney." + + + +NOTE G. + +HOME RULE AND PROTESTANTISM. + +(Vol. ii. p. 68.) + + +I fear that all the "Nationalist" clergy in Ireland are not as careful +as Father Keller to avoid giving occasion for this impression that Irish +autonomy would be followed by a persecution of the Protestants. But a +little more than three years ago, for example, the following circular +was issued by the Bishop of Ossory, and affixed to the door of the +churches in his diocese. Who can wonder that it should have been +regarded by Protestants in that diocese as a direct stirring up of +bitter religious animosities against them? Or that, emanating directly +as it did from a bishop of the Church, it should be represented as +emanating indirectly from the Head of the Church himself at Rome? + + "_Kilkenny, April 16th, 1885._ + + "REV. DEAR SIR,--May I ask you to read the following circular for + the people at each of the Masses on Sunday, 19th April? + + "The course to be adopted for the future by the Priest of the Parish + to whom notice of a Mixed Marriage is given by the Minister, or the + Registrar, is as follows:--he makes the following entry on the book + of Parochial announcements, and reads it three consecutive Sundays + from the Altar:-- + + "'The Priests of the Parish have received the following notice of a + marriage to be celebrated between a Catholic and a Protestant. [Here + read Registrar's notice in full.] We have now to inform you that the + law of the Catholic Church regarding such marriages is: that the + Catholic party contracting marriage before a Registrar or other + unauthorised person is, by the very fact of so doing, + Excommunicated; and the witnesses to such marriage are also + Excommunicated.' + + "I should be very much obliged if, as occasion may require, you + would explain the effects of this Excommunication from the Altar. + + "You will please take notice that the Registrar or Minister is bound + legally to send the notice of marriage referred to above, and also, + that in reading it out _in the form, and with the accompanying + remarks above_, you incur no legal penalty. + + "I feel sure that with your accustomed zeal you will do everything + in your power to prevent abuses in regard to the Sacrament of + Matrimony, which is great in Christ and the Church, and to induce + the faithful to prepare for receiving it by Prayer, by works of + Charity, and by approaching the Sacrament of Penance to purify their + souls.--Yours faithfully in Christ, + + [Image: Cross] A. BROWNRIGG." + + + "MY DEAR BRETHREN,--We have been very much pained to learn, within + the past month, that marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics + have increased very much in this city of Kilkenny. Many + _evil-disposed_ persons, utterly unmindful of the prohibitions of + the Church, and regardless of the dreadful consequences they bring + on themselves, have not hesitated to enter into those _unholy + matrimonial alliances_ called "Mixed Marriages," which the Catholic + Church has always _hated and detested_. Those misguided Catholics, + who do not deserve the name, have not blushed to go, in some + instances, before the Protestant Minister, in other instances, + before the Public Registrar, to ask them to assist at their marriage + with a Protestant. By contracting marriage in this way, they run a + great risk of bringing on themselves and on their children, should + they have any, the _maledictions_ of Heaven instead of the blessings + of religion. In order to put a stop to this growing abuse, and to + prevent it from spreading like a contagion to other parts of the + Diocese, we beg to remind the faithful of certain regulations which, + for the future, shall have force in the Diocese of Ossory in + reference to the Catholics, who so far forget themselves as to + contract such marriages. + + "1. In the first place, any one who contracts a "Mixed Marriage" + without a dispensation from the Holy See and before a Protestant + Minister or a Registrar is, by the very fact, guilty of a most + grievous mortal sin by violating a solemn law of the Church in a + most grave matter. + + "2. The Catholic who assists as witness at such marriage also + commits a most grievous sin by co-operating in an unlawful act. + + "3. Both the Catholic party contracting the marriage and the + Catholic witnesses to it cannot be absolved by any priest in the + Diocese of Ossory, unless by the Bishop or by those to whom he + grants special faculties. + + "4. In order more effectually to deter people from entering into + _those detestable marriages_, the penalty of _Excommunication_ + is hereby attached to that sin both for the Catholic _contracting_ + party as also for the Catholic _witnesses_ to such marriage. + + "5. The notice which the Protestant Rector or the Registrar is + legally bound in such cases to send to the Parish Priest of the + Catholic party, will be read from the Altar for three consecutive + Sundays, and thus the _crime_ of the offending party brought out + into open light before his or her fellow-parishioners. + + "6. For the rest, we hope the sense of decency and religion of the + Catholic people and their Pastors shall be no more hurt by any + Catholic entering into those marriages, so full of, misery and evil + of every kind for themselves, their children, and society at + large.--Yours faithfully in Christ, + + [Image: Cross] ABRAHAM, Bishop of Ossory. + + + +NOTE H. + +TULLY AND THE WOODFORD EVICTIONS. + +(Vol. ii. p. 149.) + + +Since the first edition of this book was published certain "evictions" +mentioned in it as impending on the Clanricarde estates have been +carried out. I have no reason to suppose that there was more or less +reason for carrying out these evictions than there usually is, not in +Ireland only, but all over the civilised world, for a resort by the +legal owners of property to legal means of recovering the possession of +it from persons who fail to comply with the terms on which it was put +into their keeping. Whether this failure results from dishonesty or from +misfortune is a consideration not often allowed, I think, to affect the +right of the legal owner of the property concerned to his legal remedy +in any other country but Ireland, nor even in Ireland in the case of any +property other than property in land. But as what I learned on the spot +touching the general condition of the Clanricarde tenants, and touching +the conduct and character of Lord Clanricarde's agent, Mr. Tener, led me +to take a special interest in these evictions, I asked him to send me +some account of them. In reply he gave me a number of interesting +details. + +The only serious attempt at resisting the execution of the law was made +by "Dr." Tully, one of the leading local "agitators," to the tendency of +whose harangues judicial reference was made during the investigation +into the case of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt. Tully had a holding of seventeen +acres at a rent of £2, 10s., the Government valuation being £4. He +earned a good livelihood as a boat-builder, and he had put up a slated +house on his holding. But in November 1884 he chose to stop paying the +very low rent at which he held his place, and he has paid no rent since +that time. As is stated in a footnote on page 153, vol. ii. of this +book, a decree was granted against Tully by Judge Henn for three years' +rent due in May 1887, and his equity of redemption having expired July +9, 1888, this recourse was had to the law against him. + +As the leading spirit of the agitation, Tully had put a garrison into +his house of twelve men and two women. He had dug a ditch around it, +taken out the window-sashes, filled up the casements and the doorways +with stones and trunks of trees. Portholes had been pierced under the +roof, through which the defenders might thrust red-hot pikes, +pitchforks, and other weapons, and empty pails of boiling water upon the +assailants. A brief parley took place. Tully refused to make any offer +of a settlement unless the agent would agree to reinstate all the +evicted tenants, to which Mr. Tener replied that he would recognise no +"combination," but was ready to deal with every tenant fairly and +individually. Finally the Sheriff ordered his men to take the place. +Ladders were planted, and while some of the constables, under the +protection of a shield covered with zinc, a sort of Roman _testudo_, +worked at removing the earthern ramparts, others nimbly climbed to the +roof and began to break in from above. In their excitement the garrison +helped this forward by breaking holes through the roof themselves to get +at the attacking party, and in about twenty minutes the fortress was +captured, and the inmates were prisoners. Two constables were burned by +the red-hot pikes, the gun of another was broken to pieces by a huge +stone, and a fourth was slightly wounded by a fork. One of the defenders +got a sword-cut; and Tully was brought forth as one too severely wounded +to walk. Upon investigation, however, the surgeon refused to certify +that he was unable to undergo the ordinary imprisonment in such cases +made and provided. + +The collapse of the resistance at this central point was followed by a +general surrender. + +After the capture of Tully's house, Mr. Tener writes to me, "I found it +being gutted by his family, who would have carried it away piecemeal. +They had already taken away the flooring of one of the rooms." Thereupon +Mr. Tener had the house pulled down, with the result of seeing a +statement made in a leading Nationalist paper that he was "evicting the +tenants and pulling down their houses." + +"Yesterday," Mr. Tener writes to me on the 9th of September, "I walked +twenty-five miles, visiting thirty farms about Portumna. Except in two +or three cases, the tenants have ample means, and part of the live stock +alone on the farms, exclusive of the crops, would suffice to pay all the +rents I had demanded. On the farms recently 'evicted,' I found treble +the amount of the rent due in live stock alone." + +As to one case of these recent evictions, I found it stated in an Irish +journal that a young man, who had been ill of consumption for two years, +the son of a tenant, was removed from the house, the local physician +refusing to certify that he was unfit for removal, and that he died a +few days afterwards. The implication was obvious, and I asked Mr. Tener +for the facts. + +He replied, "This young man, John Fahey, was in consumption, but did not +appear to be in any danger. Dr. Carte, an Army surgeon, examined him, +and said there was no immediate danger. The day was fine and he walked +about wrapped in a comfortable coat, and talked with me and others. His +father, a respectable man, made no attempt to defend his house; and at +his request, after the crowd had gone away, my man in charge permitted +the invalid and the family to reoccupy the house temporarily because of +his illness. There was no inquest, and no need of any, after his death. +His father, Patrick Fahey, had means to pay, but told me he 'could not,' +which meant he 'dared not.' I went to him personally twice, and sent him +many messages. But the terror of the League was upon the poor man. + +"An interesting case is that of Michael Fahey, of Dooras. In 1883 his +rent was judicially reduced about 5 per cent., from £33 to £31, 5s. His +house and all about it is substantial and comfortable. His father, about +thirty years ago, fought for a whole night and bravely beat off a party +of 'Terry-Alts,' the 'Moonlighters' of that day. For his courage the +Government presented him with a gun, of which the son is very proud. +Pity he did not inherit the pluck with the gun of his parent! + +"I had been privately told that this tenant would pay; but that he would +first produce a doctor's certificate that his old mother could not be +moved. He did give the Sheriff a carefully worded document to show this, +but it was so vague that I objected to its being received by the +Sheriff. Upon this (not before! mark the craft of even a well-disposed +Irish tenant in those evil days), I was asked to go into the house. I +went in and entered the parlour. There the tenant told me he would pay +the year's rent and the costs, amounting to £50. He had risen from his +seat to fetch the money, when, lo! Father Egan (the priest upon whose +head the widow of the murdered Finlay called down the curse of God in +the open street of Woodford) appeared in the doorway. He had come in on +a pretence of seeing the old mother of the tenant, who had (for that +occasion) taken to her bed. The bedroom lay beyond the parlour, and was +entered from it. The tenant actually shook with fear as Father Egan +passed through, and I thought all hope of a settlement gone, when +suddenly the officer of the police came in, passed into the bedroom, and +told Father Egan he must withdraw. This Father Egan refused to do, +whereupon the officer said very quietly, 'I shall remove you forthwith +if you do not go out quietly.' Upon this Father Egan hastily left. The +tenant then went into the bedroom and soon reappeared with the £50 in +bank-notes, which he paid me. All this was dramatic enough. But the +comedy was next performed in front of the house, where all could see it, +of handing to the Sheriff the alleged doctor's certificate, and of my +saying aloud that 'in the circumstances' I had no objection to his +receiving it! After this all the forces proceeded to take their luncheon +on the green bank sloping down to the Shannon in front of the +farm-house. There is a fine orchard on the place, and it recalled to me +some of the farms I saw in Virginia. + +"I had gone into the house again, and was standing near the fire in the +kitchen, where some of my escort were taking their luncheon. It is a +large kitchen, and perhaps a dozen people were in it, when in came +Father Egan again and called to the tenant Fahey, 'Put out those +policemen, and do not suffer one of them to remain.' + +"The sergeant instantly said, 'We are here on duty, Father Egan, and if +you dare to try to intimidate this tenant, I shall either put you out or +arrest you.' + +"'Yes,' I interposed, looking at the sergeant, 'you are certainly here +on duty, and in the name of the law, and it is sad to see a clergyman +here in the interest of an illegal, criminal, and rebellious movement, +and of the immoral Plan of Campaign.' + +"'Oh!' exclaimed Father Egan, 'the opinion of the agent of the Marquis +of Clanricarde is valuable, truly!' + +"'I give you,' I said, 'not my opinion, but the opinion of Dr. Healy and +Dr. O'Dwyer, bishops of your Church, and men worthy of all respect and +reverence. And I am sorry to know that some ecclesiastics deserve no +respect, but that at their doors lies the main responsibility for the +misery and the crime which afflict our unhappy country. I feel sure a +just God will punish them in due time.' + +"Father Egan made no reply, but paused a moment, and then walked out of +the house. + +"At the next house, that of Dennis Fahey, we found a still better +dwelling. Here we had another mock certificate, but we received the rent +with the costs." + + + +NOTE H2. + +BOYCOTTING THE DEAD. + +(Vol. ii. p. 151.) + + +The following official account sent to me (July 24) of an affair in +Donegal, the result of the gospel of "Boycotting" taught in that region, +needs and will bear no comment. + +Patrick Cavanagh came to reside at Clonmany, County Donegal, about two +months ago, as caretaker on some evicted farms. He died on Wednesday +evening, June 20th, having received the full rites of the Roman Catholic +Church. The people had displayed no ill-will towards him during his +brief residence at Clonmany, and on the evening of his death his body +was washed and laid out by some women. On Thursday two townsmen dug his +grave, where pointed out by Father Doherty, P.P. + +The first symptom of change of feeling was that on Thursday every +carpenter applied to had some excuse for not making a coffin for the +body of deceased. On Friday morning the grave was found to be filled +with stones, and a deputation waited on Father Doherty to protest +against Cavanagh's burial in the chapel graveyard. He told them to go +home and mind their business. About 10.30 A.M. on Friday the chapel bell +was rung--not tolled or rung as for service, but faster. The local +sergeant of police went to the cemetery; when he arrived there the +tolling ceased. He then went to Father Doherty, who told those present +that their conduct was such as to render them unfit for residence +anywhere but in a savage country. He told them to go to their homes, and +advised them to allow the corpse to be buried in the grave he had marked +out. After Father Doherty had left, the people condemned his +interference, and said they would not allow any stranger to be buried in +the graveyard. When Constable Brady put it to those present that their +real objection did not lie in the fact that Cavanagh had been a +stranger, he was not contradicted. + +The body was ultimately buried at Carndonagh on Saturday, several people +remaining in the graveyard at Clonmany all through the night (Friday) +till the body was taken to Carndonagh for burial. + +At Carndonagh Petty Sessions, on the 18th July 1888, Con. Doherty and +Owen Doherty, with five others, were prosecuted for unlawful assembly on +the occasion above referred to. The first two named, who were the +ringleaders, were convicted, and sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment +each with hard labour; the charges against the remainder were dismissed. + + + +NOTE I. + +POST-OFFICE SAVINGS BANKS. + +(Vol. i. p. 117; vol. ii. pp. 5, 12, 66, 95, 200, 248.) + + +As the Post-Office Savings Banks represent the smaller depositors, and +command special confidence among them even in the disturbed districts, I +print here an official statement showing the balances due to depositors +in the undermentioned offices, situated in certain of the most disturbed +regions I visited, on the 31st December of the years 1880 and 1887 +respectively:-- + + +-----------------+-----------------+---------------+ + | OFFICE. | 1880. | 1887. | + +-----------------+-----------------+---------------+ + | | £ s. d. | £ s. d. | + | Bunbeg, | 1,270 6 7 | 1,206 18 2 | + | Falcarragh, | 62 15 10 | 494 10 8 | + | Gorey, | 3,690 14 4 | 5,099 5 7 | + | Inch, |[A] 8 11 0 | 209 7 5 | + | Killorglin, | 282 15 9 | 1,299 2 6 | + | Loughrea, | 5,500 19 9 | 6,311 4 11 | + | Mitchelstown, | 1,387 13 2 | 2,846 9 3 | + | Portumna, | 2,539 10 11 | 3,376 5 4 | + | Sixmilebridge, | 382 17 10 | 934 13 4 | + | Stradbally, | 1,812 14 8 | 2,178 18 2 | + | Woodford, | 259 14 6 | 1,350 17 11 | + | Youghal, | 3,031 0 7 | 7,038 7 2 | + +-----------------+-----------------+---------------+ + [A] This Office was not opened for Savings Bank + business until the year 1881, the amount shown + being balance due on the 31st December 1882. + +It appears from this table that the deposits in these Savings Banks +increased in the aggregate from £20,329, 15s. 11d. in 1880 to £32,347, +9s. 7d. in 1887, or almost 60 per cent, in seven years. They fell off in +only one case, at Bunbeg, and there only to a nominal amount. At Youghal +they much more than doubled, increasing about 133 per cent. Yet in all +these places the Plan of Campaign has been invoked "because the people +were penniless and could not pay their debts!" + + + +NOTE K. + +THE COOLGREANY EVICTIONS. + +(Vol. ii. p. 216.) + + +Captain Hamilton sends me the following graphic account of this affair +at Coolgreany:-- + +In the _Freeman's Journal_ of the 16th December 1886, it is reported +that a meeting of the Brooke tenantry, the Rev. P. O'Neill in the chair, +was held at Coolgreany on the Sunday previous to the 15th December 1886, +the date on which the "Plan of Campaign" was adopted on the estate, at +which it was resolved that if I refused the terms offered they would +join the "Plan." + +I had no conference at Freeman's house or anywhere else at any time with +two parish priests. On the 15th December 1886, when seated in Freeman's +house waiting to receive the rents, four priests, a reporter of the +_Freeman's Journal_, some local reporters, and four of the tenants +rushed into the room; and the priests in the rudest possible manner (the +Rev. P. Farrelly, one of them, calling me "Francy Hyne's hangman," and +other terms of abuse) informed me that unless I re-instated a former +Roman Catholic tenant in a farm which he had previously held, and which +was then let to a Protestant, and gave an abatement of 30 per cent., no +rent would be paid _me_ that day. Dr. Dillon, C.C., was not present on +this occasion, or, if so, I do not remember seeing him. + +On my asking if I had no alternative but to concede to their demand, the +Rev. Mr. Dunphy, parish priest, replied, "None other; do not think, sir, +we have come here to-day to do honour to you." + +The Rev. P. O'Neill spoke as he always does, in a more gentlemanly and +conciliatory manner, and I therefore, as the confusion in the room was +great, offered to discuss the matter with him, the Rev. O'Donel, C.C., +and the tenants, if the other priests, who were strangers to me, and the +reporters would leave the room. This the Rev. Mr. Dunphy declared they +would not do, and I accordingly refused further to discuss the matter. + +After they left the house, one of the tenants, Mick Darcy, stepped +forward and said, "Settle with us, Captain." I replied, "Certainly, if +you come back with me into the house." The Rev. Mr. Dunphy took him by +the collar of his coat and threw him against the wall of the house, then +turning to me with his hand raised said, "You shall not do so; we, who +claim the temporal as well as spiritual power over _you_ as well as +these poor creatures, will settle this matter with you." + +The tenants were then taken down to the League rooms, where two M.P.s, +Sir Thomas Esmonde and Mr. Mayne, were waiting to receive the rents, +which, one by one, they were ordered in to pay into the war-chest of the +"Plan of Campaign." + +I have I fear written too much of this commencement of the war on the +estate which has since led to over seventy of the tenants and their +families being ejected, and has brought ruin on nearly all who joined +it. I have considerable experience as a land agent, but I know of no +estate where the tenants were more respectable, better housed, or, as a +body, in better circumstances than on the Brooke estate. They had a +kind, indulgent landlord, and they knew it; and nothing but the belief +that, led by their clergy, they were foremost in a battle fighting for +their country and religion, would have induced them to put up with the +great hardships and loss they have undoubtedly had to suffer. + + + +NOTE L. + +A DUCAL SUPPER IN IRELAND IN 1711. + +(Vol. ii. p. 283.) + + +The following entry I take from the Expense-Book of the Duke of Ormond, +under date of August 23, 1711:-- + +His Grace came to Kilkenny, half an hour after 10 at night. + +HIS GRACE'S TABLE. + +Pottage. Sautee Veal. +5 Pullets, Bacon and Collyflowers. +Pottage Meagre. +Pikes with White Sauce. +A Turbot with Lobster Sauce. +Umbles. +A Hare Hasht. +Buttered Chickens, G. +Hasht Veal and New Laid Eggs. +Removes. +A Shoulder and Neck of Mutton. +Haunch of Venison. + +_Second Course._ + +Lobsters. +Tarts, an Oval Dish. +Crabbs Buttered. +4 Pheasants, 4 Partridges, 4 Turkeys. +Ragoo Mushrooms. +Kidney Beans. Ragoo Oysters. +Fritters. +Two Sallets. + + + +NOTE M. + +LETTER FROM MR. O'LEARY. + +(Vol. ii. p. 291.) + + +In the first edition of this book I credited Mr. O'Leary with making +this pungent remark about figs and grapes, because I found it jotted +down in my original memoranda as coming from him. In a private note he +assures me that he does not think it was made by him, and though this +does not agree with my own recollection, I defer, of course, to his +impression. And this I do the more readily that it affords me an +opportunity for printing the following very characteristic and +interesting letter sent to me by him for publication should I think fit +to use it. + +As the most important support given by the Irish in America to the +Nationalists is solicited by their agents on the express ground that +they are really labouring to establish an Irish Republic, this outspoken +declaration of Mr. O'Leary, that he does not believe they "expect or +desire" the establishment of an Irish Republic, will be of interest on +my side of the water:-- + + "DUBLIN, _Sept._ 9, '88. + + "My Dear Sir,--I am giving more bother about what you make me say + in your book than the thing is probably worth, especially seeing + that what you say about me and my present attitude towards men and + things here is almost entirely correct. + + "It is proverbially hard to prove a negative, and my main reason + for believing I did not say the thing about figs and grapes is that + I never could remember the whole of any proverb in conversation; + but I am absolutely certain I never said that 'some of them (the + National Leaguers) expect to found an Irish republic on robbery, + and to administer it by falsehood. We don't.' Most certainly I do + not expect to found anything on robbery, or administer anything by + falsehood, but I do not in the least believe that the National + League either expects or desires to found an Irish republic at all! + Neither do I believe that the Leaguers will long retain the + administration of such small measure of Home Rule, as I now (since + the late utterances of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Gladstone) believe we + are going to get. My fault with the present people is not that they + are looking, or mean to look, for too much, but that they may be + induced, by pressure from their English Radical allies, to be + content with too little. It is only a large and liberal measure of + Home Rule which will ever satisfy the Irish people, and I fear + that, if the smaller fry of Radical M.P.'s are allowed to have a + strong voice in a matter of which they know next to nothing, the + settlement of the Irish question will be indefinitely postponed.--I + remain, faithfully yours, + + "JOHN O'LEARY." + + + +NOTE N + +BOYCOTTING PRIVATE OPINION. + +(Vol. ii. p. 293.) + + +This case of Mr. Taylor is worth preserving _in extenso_ as an +illustration of that spirit in the Irish journalism of the day, against +which Mr. Rolleston and his friends protest as fatal to independence, +manliness, and truth. I simply cite the original attack made upon Mr. +Taylor, the replies made by himself and his friends, and the comments +made upon those replies by the journal which assailed him. They all tell +their own story. + + (_UNITED IRELAND_, JUNE 16.) + + Mr. John F. Taylor owes everything he has or is to the Irish + National Party; nor is he slow to confess it where the + acknowledgment will serve his personal interests. His sneers are + all anonymous, and, like Mr. Fagg, the grateful and deferential + valet in _The Rivals_, "it hurts his conscience to be found out." + There is no honesty or sincerity in the man. His covert gibes are + the spiteful emanation of personal disappointment; his lofty + morality is a cloak for unscrupulous self-seeking. He has always + shown himself ready to say anything or do anything that may serve + his own interests. In the general election of 1885 he made frantic + efforts to get into Parliament as a member of the Irish Party. He + ghosted every member of the party whose influence he thought might + help him--notably the two men, Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien, at whom + he now sneers, as he fondly believes, in the safe seclusion of an + anonymous letter of an English newspaper. During the period of + probation his hand was incessant on Mr. Dillon's door-knocker. The + most earnest supplications were not spared. All in vain. Either his + character or his ability failed to satisfy the Irish leader, and + his claim was summarily rejected. Since then his wounded vanity has + found vent in spiteful calumny of almost every member of the Irish + Party--whenever he found malice a luxury that could be safely + indulged in. + + "His next step was a startling one. We have absolute reason to + know, when the last Coercion Act was in full swing, this + pure-souled and disinterested patriot begged for, received, and + accepted a very petty Crown Prosecutorship under a Coercion + Government. As was wittily said at the time, he sold his + principles, not for a mess of pottage, but for the stick that + stirred the mess. Strong pressure was brought to bear on him, and + he was induced for his own sake, after many protests and with much + reluctance, to publicly refuse the office he had already privately + accepted. Mr. Taylor professes to model himself on Robert Emmet and + Thomas Davis; it is hard to realise Thomas Davis or Robert Emmet as + a Coercion Crown Prosecutor in the pay of Dublin Castle. Since then + there has been no more persistent caviller at the Irish policy and + the Irish Party in company where he believed such cavilling paid. + When Home Rule was proposed by Mr. Gladstone, he had a thousand + foolish sneers for the measure and its author. When the Bill was + defeated, he elected Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Goschen, and Mr. T.W. + Russell as the gods of his idolatry. Such a nature needs a patron, + and Mr. Webb, Q.C., the Tory County Court Judge who doubled the + sentence on Father M'Fadden, was the patron to be selected. It is + shrewdly suspected that he supplied most of the misguiding + information for Dr. Webb's coercion pamphlet, and it is probable + that Dr. Webb gives him a lift with his weekly letter to the + _Manchester Guardian._ + + + (_UNITED IRELAND_, JUNE 23.) + + MR. JOHN F. TAYLOR. + + _To the Editor of "United Ireland."_ + + Sir,--You would not, I am sure, allow intentional misstatements to + appear in your columns, and I ask you to allow me space to correct + three erroneous observations made about myself in your current + issue-- + + 1. The first statement is to the effect that I owe everything I + have, or that I am, to the Irish National Party. I owe absolutely + nothing to the Irish Party, except an attempt to boycott me on my + circuit, which, fortunately for me, has failed. + + 2. The second is to the effect that I made "frantic efforts" (these + are the words, I think) to enter Parliament, and besieged Mr. + Dillon's house during the time when candidates were being chosen. I + saw Mr. Dillon exactly twice, both occasions at Mr. Davitt's + request. Mr. Davitt urged me to allow my name to go forward as a + candidate, and it was at his wish and solicitation that I saw Mr. + Dillon. + + 3. It is further said that I begged a Crown Prosecutorship. + Fortunately, Mr. Walker and The M'Dermot are living men, and they + know this to be absolutely untrue. I was offered such an + appointment, and, contrary to my own judgment, I allowed myself to + be guided by Mr. Davitt, who thought the matter would be + misunderstood in the state of things then existing. I believe I am + the only person that ever declined such an offer. + + As to general statements, these are of no importance, and I shall + not trouble you about them.--Yours very truly, + + JOHN F. TAYLOR. + + _P.S._--The introduction of Dr. Webb's name was a gratuitous + outrage, Dr. Webb and I never assisted each other in anything + except in the defence of P.N. Fitzgerald. J.F.T. + + + _To the Editor of "United Ireland."_ + + Dear Sir,--As my name has been introduced into the controversy + between yourself and Mr. Taylor, I feel called upon to substantiate + the two statements wherein my name occurs in Mr. Taylor's letter of + last week. It was at my request that he called upon Mr. John + Dillon, M.P. I think I accompanied him on the occasion, and unless + my memory is very much at fault, Mr. Dillon was not unfriendly to + Mr. Taylor's proposed candidature. This visit occurred some three + months after Mr. Taylor had, on my advice, declined the Crown + Prosecutorship for King's County, a post afterwards applied for by + and granted to a near relative of one of the most prominent members + of the Irish Party. With Mr. Taylor's general views on the present + situation, or opinions upon parties or men, I have no concern. But, + in so far as the circumstances related above are dealt with in your + issue of last week, I think an unjust imputation has been made + against him, and in the interests of truth and fair play I feel + called upon to adduce the testimony of facts as they + occurred.--Yours truly, + + MICHAEL DAVITT. + + Ballybrack, Co. Dublin, + + June 19, 1888. + + + _To the Editor of "United Ireland."_ + + Sir,--As this is, I believe, the first time I have sought to + intrude upon your columns, I hope you will allow me some slight + space in the interests of fair-play and freedom of speech. Those + interests seem to me to have been quite set at naught in the + attack, or rather series of attacks, upon Mr. Taylor in your last + issue. Mr. Taylor's views upon many matters are not mine. He is far + more democratic in his opinions than I see any sufficient reason + for being, and he is very much more of what is called a land + reformer than I am; but on an acquaintance of some years I have + ever found him an honourable and high-minded gentleman, and as good + a Nationalist, from my point of view, as most of the members of the + Irish Parliamentary Party whom I either know or know of. Of some of + the charges made against Mr. Taylor, such as the seeking for Crown + Prosecutorships and the like, I am in no position to speak, save + from my knowledge of his character, but I understand Mr. Davitt + knows all about these things, and I suppose he will tell what he + knows. But of the main matter, and I think the chief cause of your + ire, I am quite in a position to speak. I have read at least a + score of Mr. Taylor's letters to the _Manchester Guardian_, and I + have always found them very intelligently written, and invariably + characterised by a spirit of fairness and moderation; indeed, the + chief fault I found with them was that they took too favourable a + view of the motives, if not the acts, of many of our public men, + but notably of Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien. You may, of course, + fairly say that I am not the best judge of either the acts or the + motives of these gentlemen, and I freely grant you that I may not, + for my way of looking upon the Irish question is quite other than + theirs; but what I must be excused for holding is that both I and + Mr. Taylor have quite as good a right to our opinions as either of + these gentlemen, or as any other member of the Irish Parliamentary + Party. But this is the very last right that people are inclined to + grant to each other in Ireland just now. Personally I care very + little for this, but for Ireland's sake I care much. Some twenty + years ago or so I was sent into penal servitude with the almost + entire approval, expressed or implied, of the Irish Press. Some + short time after the same Press found out that I and my friends had + not sinned so grievously in striving to free Ireland. But men and + times and things may change again, and, though I am growing old, I + hope still to live long enough to be forgiven for my imperfect + appreciation of the blessings of Boycotting, and the Plan of + Campaign, and many similar blessings. It matters little indeed how + or when I die, so that Ireland lives, but her life can only be a + living death if Irishmen are not free to say what they believe, and + to act as they deem right.--Your obedient servant, + + JOHN O'LEARY. + + June 18, 1888. + + + _To the Editor of "United Ireland."_ + + Dear Sir,--I observe that in your last issue, amongst other things, + you state that Mr. Taylor accepted a Crown Prosecutorship in 1885. + I happen to know the precise facts. Mr. Taylor was offered the + Crown Prosecutorship of the King's County, and some of us strongly + advised him to accept it. There were no political prosecutions + impending at the time, and it seemed to me that a Nationalist who + would do his work honestly in prosecuting offenders against the + ordinary law might strike a blow against tyranny by refusing to + accept a brief, if offered, against men accused of political + offences or prosecuted under a Coercion Act. I know that a similar + view was entertained by the late Very Rev. Dr. Kavanagh of Kildare, + and many others. However, we failed to influence Mr. Taylor further + than to make him say that he would do nothing in the matter until + Mr. Davitt was consulted. I, for one, called on Mr. Davitt, and + pressed my views upon him; but he was decided that no Nationalist + could identify himself in the smallest way with Castle rule in + Ireland. This settled the question, and Mr. Taylor declined the + post, which was subsequently applied for by Mr. Luke Dillon, who + now holds it.--Faithfully yours, + + JAMES A. POOLE. + + 29 Harcourt Street. + + + + EDITORIAL NOTE. + + _"United Ireland," June 23._ + + We devote a large portion of our space to-day to the apparently + organised defence of Mr. J.F. Taylor and his friends, and we are + quite content to rest upon their letters the justification for our + comments. When a gentleman who avows himself a disappointed + aspirant for Parliamentary honours, and who owns his regret that he + did not become a petty Castle placeman, is discovered writing in an + important English Liberal paper, venomous little innuendos at the + expense of sorely attacked Irish leaders which excite the + enthusiasm of the _Liarish Times_, it was high time to intimate to + the _Manchester Guardian_ the source from which its Irish + information is derived. The case against Mr. Taylor as a + criticaster is clinched by the fact that his cause is espoused by + Mr. John O'Leary. The Irish public are a little weary of Mr. + O'Leary's querulous complaints as an _homme incompris_. So far as + we are aware, the only ground he himself has for complaining of + want of toleration is that he possibly considers the good-humoured + toleration for years invariably extended to his opinions on men and + things savours of neglect. His idea of toleration with respect to + others seems to be toleration for everybody except the unhappy + wretches who may happen to be for the moment doing any practicable + service in the Irish cause. + + + + +NOTE O. + +BOYCOTTING BY "CROWNER'S QUEST LAW." + +(Vol. ii. p. 312.) + + +The following circumstantial account of this deplorable case of Ellen +Gaffney preserved here, as I find it printed in the _Irish Times_ of +February 27, 1888. + +"In the Court of Queen's Bench, on Saturday, the Lord Chief-Justice (Sir +Michael Morris, Bart.), Mr. Justice O'Brien, Mr. Justice Murphy, and Mr. +Justice Gibson presiding, judgment was delivered in the case of Ellen +Gaffney. The original motion was to quash the verdict of a coroner's +jury held at Philipstown on August 27th and September 1st last, on the +body of a child named Mary Anne Gaffney. + +"The Lord Chief-Justice said it appeared that Mary Anne Gaffney, the +child on whose body the inquest was held, was born on the 23d July, and +that she died on the 25th August, 1887. A Dr. Clarke, who had been very +much referred to in the course of the proceedings, called upon the local +sergeant of the police, and directed his attention to the body, but the +sergeant having inspected the body, came to the conclusion that there +was no need for an inquest. The doctor considered differently, and the +sergeant communicated with the Coroner on the 26th August, and on the +next day that gentleman arrived in Philipstown. He had a conference +there with Dr. Clarke and with a reverend gentleman named Father Bergin, +and subsequently proceeded to hold an inquest upon the child in a +public-house--a most appropriate place apparently for the transactions +which afterwards occurred there. The investigation, if it might be so +called, was proceeded with upon that 27th of August. Very strong +affidavits had been made on the part of Mrs. Gaffney--who applied to +have the inquisition quashed--her husband, and some of the constabulary +authorities as to the line of conduct pursued upon that occasion. Ellen +Gaffney and her husband were taken into custody on the day the inquest +opened by the verbal direction of the Coroner, who refused to complete +the depositions given by the former on the ground that she was not +sworn. That did not take him out of the difficulty, for if she was not +sworn she had a right to be sworn, and the Coroner had no right to +prevent her. The inquest was resumed on the 1st September in the +court-house at Philipstown--the proper place--and a curious letter was +read from the Coroner, the effect of which was that he did not consider +that there was any ground for detaining the man Gaffney in custody, but +the woman was brought before a justice of the peace and committed for +trial. She was in prison from August 27th until the month of December, +when the lucky accident of a winter assize occurred, else she might be +there still. At the adjourned inquest the Coroner proceeded to read over +the depositions taken on the former day, and it was sworn by four +witnesses, whom he (the Lord Chief-Justice) entirely credited, that the +Coroner read these depositions as if they were originals, whereas an +unprecedented transaction had occurred. The Coroner had given the +original depositions out of his own custody, and given them to a +reverend gentleman who was rather careless of them, as was shown by the +evidence of a witness named Greene, who deposed that he saw a car on the +road upon which sat two clergymen, and he found on the road the original +depositions which, presumably, one of the clergymen had dropped. The +depositions were handed to a magistrate and afterwards returned to the +police at Philipstown, who had possession of them on the resumption of +the inquest. If the case stood alone there it was difficult to +understand how a Coroner could come into court and appear by counsel to +resist the quashing of an inquisition in regard to which at the very +door such gross personal misconduct was demonstrated. No doubt, he said, +he did not read them as originals but as copies, and it was strange, +that being so, that he did not inform the jury of what had become of +them, and he complained now of not being told by the police of their +recovery--not told of his own misconduct. On the 1st September, Ellen +Gaffney applied by a solicitor--Mr. Disdall, and as a set-off the +Coroner permitted a gentleman named O'Kearney Whyte to appear--for whom? +Was it for the constituted authorities or for the next-of-kin? No, but +for the Rev. Father Bergin, who was described as president of the local +branch of the National League, and the Coroner (Mr. Gowing) alleged as +the reason why he allowed him to appear and cross-examine the witnesses +and address the jury and give him the right of reply like Crown counsel +was, that Ellen Gaffney stated that she had been so much annoyed by +Father Bergin that she attributed the loss of her child to him--that it +was he who had murdered the child. It was asserted that Father Bergin +sat on the bench with the Coroner and interfered during the conduct of +the inquest, and having to give some explanation of that Mr. Gowing's +version was certainly a most amusing one. He said it was the habit to +invite to a seat on the bench people of a respectable position in +life--which, of course, a clergyman should be in--and that he asked +Father Bergin to sit beside him in that capacity. But see the dilemma +the Coroner put himself in. According to his own statement he had +previously allowed this reverend gentleman to interfere, and to be +represented by a solicitor because he was incriminated, inculpated, or +accused, and it certainly was not customary to invite any one so +situated to occupy a seat on the bench. He (the Lord Chief Baron) did +not believe that Father Bergin was incriminated in any way, but that was +the Coroner's allegation, and such was his peculiar action thereafter. +The Coroner further stated that no matter whether he read the originals +or the copies of the first day's depositions, it was on the evidence of +September 1st that the jury acted. If that was so he placed himself in a +further dilemma, for there was no evidence before the jury at all on the +second day upon which they could bring a verdict against Ellen Gaffney. +In regard to the recording and announcing of the verdict it appeared +that the jury were 19 in number, and after their deliberations the +foreman declared that 13 were for finding a verdict one way and 6 for +another; that Mr. Whyte dictated the verdict to the Coroner, and the +Coroner asked the 13 men if that was what they agreed to. Mr. Whyte's +statement was that the jury, through the foreman, stated what their +verdict was; that he wrote it down, and that the Coroner asked him for +what he had written, and used it himself. But in addition to that, when +the jury came in the Coroner and Mr. Whyte divided them--placed them +apart while the verdict was being written--and then said to the 13 men, +"Is that what you agree to?" Such apparent misconduct it was hardly +possible to conceive in anybody occupying a judicial position as did the +Coroner, and especially a Coroner who had an inquisition quashed before. +What he had mentioned was sufficient to call forth the emphatic decision +of the court quashing the proceedings, which, however, were also +impeached on the grounds of its insufficiency and irregularity, and of +the character of the finding itself. It was not until the Coroner had +been threatened with the consequences of his contempt that he made a +return to the visit of _certiorari_, and it was then found that out of +ten so-called depositions only one contained any signature--that of Dr. +Clarke's, which was one of those lost by the clergyman, and not before +the jury on the 1st September. He (the Lord Chief-Justice) had tried to +read the documents, but in vain--they were of such a scrawling and +scribbling character, but, as he had said, all were incomplete and +utterly worthless except the one which was not properly before the jury. +Then, what was the finding on this inquisition, which should have been +substantially as perfect as an indictment? "That Mary Anne Gaffney came +by her death, and that the mother of this child, Ellen Gaffney, is +guilty of wilful neglect by not supplying the necessary food and care to +sustain the life of this child." Upon what charge could the woman have +been implicated on that vague finding? He (his Lordship) could +understand its being contended that that amounted argumentatively to a +verdict of manslaughter; but the Coroner issued his warrant and sent +this woman to prison as being guilty of murder, and she remained in +custody, as he had already remarked, until discharged by the learned +judge who went the Winter Assizes in December. Upon all of these grounds +they were clearly of opinion that this inquisition should be quashed, +and Mr. Coroner Gowing having had the self-possession to come there to +show cause against the conditional order, under such circumstances, must +bear the costs of that argument. + +Mr. Fred. Moorhead, who, instructed by Mr. O'Kearney Whyte, appeared for +the Coroner, asked whether the Court would require, as was usual when +costs were awarded against a magistrate, an undertaking from the other +side-- + +The Lord Chief-Justice.--That is not to bring an action against the +Coroner, you mean? + +Mr. Moorhead.--Yes, my Lord. I think it is a usual undertaking when +costs are awarded in such a case. I think you ought-- + +The Lord Chief-Justice.--Well, I don't know that we ought, but we most +certainly will not. (Laughter.) + +Mr. David Sherlock, who (instructed by Mr. Archibald W. Disdall) +appeared for Ellen Gaffney.--Rest assured, we certainly will bring an +action. + + +THE END. + + * * * * * + + + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] I have the authority of Mr. Hennessey, "the best living +Irish scholar, and a Kerryman to boot," for this spelling. I am quite +right, he says, in stating that the people there pronounce the names of +Glenbeigh and Rossbeigh as Glenbéhy and Rossbéhy in three syllables. +"Bethe," pronounced "behy," is the genitive of "beith," the birch, of +which there were formerly large woods in Ireland. Glenbehy and Rossbehy +mean the "Glen," and the "Ross" or "wooded point" of the birch. + +[2] A letter received by me from a Protestant Irish gentleman, +long an ardent Nationalist, seems to confirm this. He writes to me (June +15), + + "There is a noble river here, with a convenient line of quays for + unloading merchandise. But every sack that is landed must be carried + out of the ship on men's backs. The quay labourers won't allow a + steam crane to be set up. If it is tried there is a riot and a + tumult, and no Limerick tradesman can purchase anything from a + vessel that uses it, on pain of being boycotted. The result is that + the labourers are masters of the situation, and when they catch a + vessel with a cargo which it is imperative to land quickly, they + wait till the work is half done, and then strike for 8s. a day! If + other labourers are imported, they are boycotted for 'grabbing + work,' and any one who sells provisions to them is boycotted." + +[3] An interesting account of this gentleman, and of his +connection with the earlier developments of the Irish agitation, given +to me by Mr. Colomb of the R.I.C., will be found at p.38, and in the +Appendix, Note F. + +[4] See Appendix, Note F. + +[5] The name of this blacksmith's son learned in the Law of the +League is given in Lord Cowper's Report (2. 18,370) as Michael Healy. +While these pages are in the printer's hands the London papers chronicle +(May 25, 1888) the arrest of a person described to me as this +magistrate's brother, Jeremiah Healy, on a charge of robbing and setting +fire to the Protestant church at Killarney! + +[6] Mr. Colomb sends me, June 30, the following interesting +note:--The letter of which I gave you a copy was produced in evidence at +Kerry Summer Assizes, 1867. J. D. Sheehan, Esq., M.P., is the same man +who was arrested on the 12th February 1867, and to whom the foregoing +letter, ordering the rising in Killarney, is addressed. He was kept in +custody for some time, and eventually released, it is believed, on the +understanding that he was to keep out of Ireland. He came back in 1873 +or 1874 and married the proprietress of a Hotel at Killarney. His +connection with the Glenbehy evictions is referred to on page 10, and in +Note F of the Appendix I give an interesting account, furnished me by +Mr. Colomb, of his activity in connection with the case of the Misses +Curtin at Firies. + +[7] In the time of Henry VIII. these cities waged actual war +with each other, like Florence and Pisa, by sea and land. Limerick was +then called "Little London." + +[8] It was on the 17th October 1886 that Mr. Dillon first +promulgated the Plan of Campaign at all at Portumna. + +[9] Mr. Ponsonby's account of this affair will be found in the +Appendix, Note G. The Post-Office Savings Bank deposits at Youghal, +which were £3031, 0s. 7d. in 1880, rose to £7038, 7s. 2d. in 1887. + +[10] As to the ability of these tenants to pay their way, one +fact which I have since ascertained sufficiently supports Mr. Tener's +contention. The deposits in the Postal Savings Banks of the three purely +agricultural towns of Portumna, Woodford, and Loughrea, which in 1880, +throwing off the shillings and pence, were respectively, £2539, £259, +and £5500, rose in 1887 to £3376, £1350, and £6311, an increase of +nearly £3000. + +[11] Mr. Tener, to whom I sent proofs of these pages, writes to +me (July 18): "I shall soon execute the decree of the County-Court Judge +Henn against Father Coen for £5, 5s., being two and a half year's +rent." + +[12] At a hearing of cases before Judge Henn some time after I +left Portumna, the Judge was reported in the papers as "severely" +commenting upon the carelessness with which the estate-books were kept, +tenants who were proceeded against for arrears producing "receipts" in +court. I wrote to Mr. Tener on this subject. Under date of June 5th he +replied to me: "Judge Henn did not use the severe language reported. +There was no reporter present but a local man, and I have reason to +believe the report in the _Freeman's Journal_ came from the lawyer of +the tenants, who is on the staff of that journal. But the tenants are +drilled not to show the receipts they hold, and to take advantage of +every little error which they might at once get corrected by calling at +the estate office. In no case, however, did any wrong occur to any +tenant." + +[13] The town and estate proper of Woodford belong to Sir Henry +Burke, Bart. The nearest point to Woodford of Lord Clamicarde's property +is distant one mile from the town. And on the so-called Woodford estate +there are not "316 tenants," as stated in publications I have seen, but +260. + +[14] Martin Kenny, the "victim" of this eviction, is the tenant +to whom the Rev. Mr. Crawford (_vide_ page 118) gave £50 for certain +cattle, in order that he (Kenny) might pay his rent But, although he got +the £50, he nevertheless suffered himself to be evicted; no doubt +fearing the vengeance of the League should he pay. + +[15] The valuation for taxes of this holding is £7, 15s. for +the land, and £5 for the presbytery house. The church is exempt. + +[16] Of "Dr." Tully Mr. Tener wrote to me (July 18): + + "Tully has the holding at £2, 10s. a year, being 50 per cent, under + the valuation of the land for taxes, which is £3, 15s. As the total + valuation with the house (built by him) is only £4, he pays no + poor-rates. He was in arrears May 1, 1887, of three years for £7, + 10s. Lord Clanricarde offered him, with others, 20 per cent, + abatement, making for him 70 per cent, under the valuation--and he + refused!" + +Since then (on Saturday Sept. 1), Tully has been evicted after a +dramatic "resistance," of which, with instructive incidents attending +it, Mr. Tener sends me an account, to be found in the Appendix, Note H. + +[17] Note H2. + +[18] Mr. Tener writes to me (July 18): + + "At Allendarragh, near the scene of Finlay's murder, Thomas Noonan, + who lately was brave enough to accept the post of process-server + vacated by that murder, was shot at on the 13th instant. It was on + the highway. He heard a heavy stone fall from a wall on the road and + turned to see what caused it. He distinctly saw two men behind the + wall with guns, and saw them fire. One shot struck a stone in the + road very near him--the other went wide. His idea is that one gun + dislodged the stone on which it had been laid for an aim, and that + its fall disturbed the aim and saved him. He fully identifies one of + the men as Henry Bowles, a nephew of 'Dr.' Tully, who lives with + Tully, and Bowles, after being arrested and examined at Woodford, + has been remanded, bail being refused, to Galway Jail. Before this + shooting Noonan had served a notice from me upon Tully, against whom + I have Judge Henn's decree for three years' rent, and whose equity + of redemption expired July 9th." + +[19] I have since learned that my jarvey was well informed. Sir +Henry Burke actually paid Mr. Dillon £160 for the maintenance of his +tenants while out of their farms. This, two other landlords, Lords +Dunsandle and Westmeath, refused to do, but, like Sir Henry, they both +paid all the costs, and accepted a "League" reduction of 5s. 6d. and 6s. +in the pound (June 9, 1888). + +[20] Down to the date at which I write this note (June 9), Mr. +Seigne has kindly, but without results, endeavoured to get for me some +authentic return made by a small tenant-farmer of his incomings and +outgoings. + +[21] Note I. + +[22] Note K. + +[23] While these pages are going through the press a Scottish +friend sends me the following extract from a letter published in the +_Scotsman_ of July 25:-- + + "In the same way I, in August last, when in Wicklow, ascertained as + carefully as I could the facts as to the Bodyke evictions; and being + desirous to learn now if that estate was still out of cultivation, + as I had found it in August, I wrote the gentleman I have referred + to above. His reply is as follows:-- + + "'I can answer your question as far as the Brooke estate is + concerned. None of the tenants are back in their farms, nor + are they likely to be. The landlord has the land partly + stocked with cattle; but I may say the land is nearly waste; + the gates, fences, and farmsteads partly destroyed. I was at + the fair of Coolgreany about three weeks ago, and the country + looked quite changed; the weeds predominating in the land + that the tenantry had under cultivation when they were + evicted from their farms. The landlord has done nothing to + lay the land down with grass seed, consequently the land is + waste. The village of Coolgreany is on the property, and + there was a good monthly fair held there, but it is very much + gone down since the disagreement between the landlord and + tenant. The tenants, speaking generally, in allowing + themselves to be evicted and not redeeming before six months, + are giving up all their improvements to the landlord, no + matter what they may be worth. I have got quite tired of the + vexed question, and may say I have given up reading about + evictions, and pity the tenant who is foolish enough to allow + any party to advise him so badly as to allow himself to be + evicted.' + + "Those who read this testimony of a candid witness, and remember the + cordial footing on which Mr. Brooke stood with his tenantry in + Bodyke before Mr. Billon appeared amongst them, may well ask what + good his interference did to the now impoverished tenantry of + Bodyke, or to the district now deserted or laid waste.--I am, etc., + + A RADICAL UNIONIST." + +[24] In curious confirmation of this opinion expressed to me by +a man of the country in March, I find in the _Dublin Express_ of July +19th this official news from the Athy Vice-Guardians: + + "At the meeting of the Vice-Guardians of the Athy Union yesterday, a + letter was read from Mr. G. Finlay, Auditor, in which he stated that + the two sureties of Collector Kealy, of the Luggacurren district, + had been evicted from their holdings by Lord Lansdowne, and were not + now in possession of any lands there. They were allowed outdoor + relief to the extent of £1 a week each on the ground of destitution. + The Auditor continued: 'The Collector tells me that they both + possess other lands, and have money in bank. The Collector is + satisfied that they are as good, if not better, securities for the + amount of his bond now than at the time they became sureties for + him. The Clerk of the Union concurs in this opinion.' + + "It was ordered to bring the matter under the notice of the Board." + +[25] _Explanatory Note attached to First Edition._--After this +chapter had actually gone to press, I received a letter from the friend +who had put me into communication with the labourers referred to in it, +begging me to strike out all direct indications of their whereabouts, on +the ground that these might lead to grave annoyance and trouble for +these poor men from the local tyrants. + +I do not know that I ought to regret the annoyance thus caused to my +publisher and to me, as no words of mine could emphasise so clearly the +nature and the scope of the odious, illegal, or anti-legal "coercion" +established in certain parts of Ireland as the asterisks which mark my +compliance with my friend's request. What can be said for the freedom of +a country in which a man of character and position honestly believes it +to be "dangerous" for poor men to say the things recorded in the text of +this chapter about their own feelings, wishes, opinions, and interests? + +[26] It may be well to say here that whatever prominence Mr. +O'Donovan Rossa has had among the Irish in America has been largely, if +not chiefly, due to the curious persistency of Sir William Harcourt, +when a Minister, in making him the ideal Irish-American leader. In and +out of Parliament, Sir William Harcourt continually spoke of Mr. Rossa +as of a kind of Irish Jupiter Tonans, wielding all the terrors of +dynamite from beyond the Atlantic. This was a source of equal amusement +to the Irish-American organisers in America and satisfaction to Mr. +Rossa himself. I remember that when a question arose of excluding Mr. +Rossa from an important Irish-American convention at Philadelphia, as +not being the delegate of any recognised Irish-American body, Mr. +Sullivan told me that he should recommend the admission of Mr. Rossa to +the floor without a right to deliberative action, expressly because his +presence, when reported, would be a cause of terror to Sir William +Harcourt. + +[27] See Appendix, Note M. + +[28] Note N. + +[29] Note O. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of +2) (1888), by William Henry Hurlbert + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14511 *** diff --git a/14511-h/14511-h.htm b/14511-h/14511-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f613de7 --- /dev/null +++ b/14511-h/14511-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,9983 @@ +<!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 (v2) 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; } + .signed {text-align: right; margin-right: 5%;} + .dateline {text-align: right; margin-top: 2em; margin-right: 5%;} + .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} + .i6 {text-indent: 0px; margin-left: 6em} + + .poem { text-indent: 0px; margin-left: 4em} + .red {color: red} + + .placard {padding: 2em; border: thin solid} + + .TOC { list-style-type: none; position: relative;} + .TOCSub { margin-right: 5%; list-style-type: none; position: relative;} + + span.diary { font-weight: bold;} + p.diary {margin-top:4em} + div.center{align: center} + li { margin-top: 0.53em; line-height: 1.2em } + + table {border-collapse: collapse; text-align: center;} + td {text-align:center; padding: 3px; border: 1px solid black} + thead {font-weight: bold; text-align: center} + --> + /*]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14511 ***</div> + +<h1>IRELAND UNDER COERCION</h1> + +<h2>THE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN</h2> + +<h1>BY<br />WILLIAM HENRY HURLBERT</h1> + +<h2>VOL. II.</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> + + + +<h2>CONTENTS OF VOL. II.</h2> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER VII.</p> +<ul class="TOC"> +<li>Rossbehy, Feb. 21, <a href="#page1">1</a></li> +<li>The latest eviction at Glenbehy, <a href="#page1">1</a></li> +<li>Trafalgar Square, <a href="#page1">1</a>, <a href="#page2">2</a></li> +<li>Father Little, <a href="#page3">3</a></li> +<li>Mr. Frost, <a href="#page3">3</a>, <a href="#page4">4</a></li> +<li>Priest and landlord, <a href="#page3">3</a></li> +<li>Savings Banks’ deposits at Six-mile Bridge, <a href="#page5">5</a></li> +<li>Drive through Limerick, <a href="#page5">5</a></li> +<li>Population and trade, <a href="#page5">5</a>, <a href="#page6">6</a></li> +<li>Boycotting and commerce, <a href="#page6">6</a>, <a href="#page7">7</a></li> +<li>Shores of the Atlantic, <a href="#page7">7</a></li> +<li>Tralee, <a href="#page7">7</a></li> +<li>Killorglin, <a href="#page8">8</a></li> +<li>Hostelry in the hills, <a href="#page8">8</a></li> +<li>Facts of the eviction, <a href="#page9">9</a>-<a href="#page13">13</a></li> +<li>Glenbehy Eviction Fund (see Note <a href="#noteG2">G2</a>), <a href="#page12">12</a></li> +<li>A walk on Washington’s birthday, <a href="#page13">13</a></li> +<li>A tenant at Glenbehy offers £13 in two instalments in full for £240 arrears, <a href="#page13">13</a></li> +<li>English and Irish members, <a href="#page14">14</a></li> +<li>“Winn’s Folly,” <a href="#page15">15</a></li> +<li>Acreage and rental of the Glenbehy estate, <a href="#page16">16</a></li> +<li>Work of eviction begun, <a href="#page17">17</a></li> +<li>Patience of officers, <a href="#page17">17</a></li> +<li>American and Irish evictions contrasted, <a href="#page17">17</a></li> +<li>“Oh, he’s quite familiar,” <a href="#page18">18</a></li> +<li>A modest Poor Law Guardian, <a href="#page18">18</a>, <a href="#page19">19</a></li> +<li>Moonlighters’ swords, <a href="#page20">20</a></li> +<li>Father Quilter and the “poor slaves,” his people, <a href="#page21">21</a>,<a href="#page22">22</a></li> +<li>Beauty of Lough Caragh, <a href="#page23">23</a></li> +<li>Difficulty of getting evidence, <a href="#page25">25</a></li> +<li>Effects of terrorism in Kerry, <a href="#page25">25</a></li> +<li>Singular identification of a murderer, <a href="#page26">26</a></li> +<li>Local administration in Tralee, <a href="#page28">28</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0"> +CHAPTER VIII.</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Cork, Feb. 23, <a href="#page30">30</a></li> +<li>Press accounts of Glenbehy evictions astonish an eye-witness, <a href="#page30">30</a></li> +<li>Castle Island, <a href="#page31">31</a></li> +<li>Mr. Roche and Mr. Gladstone, <a href="#page31">31</a></li> +<li>Opinions of a railway traveller, <a href="#page31">31</a>, <a href="#page32">32</a></li> +<li>Misrepresentations of evictions, <a href="#page32">32</a></li> +<li>Cork, past and present, <a href="#page34">34</a></li> +<li>Mr. Gladstone and the Dean, <a href="#page35">35</a></li> +<li>League Courts in Kerry, <a href="#page36">36</a></li> +<li>Local Law Lords, <a href="#page36">36</a></li> +<li>Mr. Colomb and the Fenian rising in 1867, <a href="#page37">37</a></li> +<li>Remarkable letter of an M.P., <a href="#page38">38</a></li> +<li>Irish Constabulary, <i>morale</i> of the force, <a href="#page40">40</a></li> +<li>The clergy and the Plan of Campaign, <a href="#page41">41</a></li> +<li>Municipal history, <a href="#page43">43</a></li> +<li>Increase of public burdens, <a href="#page44">44</a></li> +<li>Tralee Board of Guardians, <a href="#page46">46</a></li> +<li>Labourers and tenants, <a href="#page46">46</a></li> +<li>Feb. 25, <a href="#page47">47</a></li> +<li>Boycotting, <a href="#page47">47</a>-<a href="#page49">49</a></li> +<li>Land law and freedom of contract, <a href="#page49">49</a></li> +<li>Rivalry between Limerick and Cork, <a href="#page50">50</a></li> +<li>Henry VIII. and the Irish harp, <a href="#page50">50</a></li> +<li>Municipal Parliamentary franchise, <a href="#page51">51</a></li> +<li>Environs of Cork, <a href="#page52">52</a></li> +<li>Churches and chapels, <a href="#page53">53</a></li> +<li>Attractive home at Belmullet, <a href="#page54">54</a></li> +<li>Lord Carnarvon and the Priest, <a href="#page55">55</a></li> +<li>Feb. 26, <a href="#page56">56</a></li> +<li>Blarney Castle, 56, <a href="#page57">57</a></li> +<li>St. Anne’s Hill, <a href="#page56">56</a>, <a href="#page57">57</a></li> +<li>An evicted woman on “the Plan,” <a href="#page59">59</a></li> +<li>The Ponsonby estate, <a href="#page59">59</a></li> +<li>Feb. 27—A day at Youghal, <a href="#page60">60</a></li> +<li>Father Keller, <a href="#page61">61</a>-<a href="#page76">76</a></li> +<li>On emigration and migration, <a href="#page66">66</a></li> +<li>Protestants and Catholics (see Note <a href="#noteG3">G3</a>), <a href="#page68">68</a></li> +<li>Meath as a field for peasant proprietors, <a href="#page69">69</a></li> +<li>Ghost of British protection, <a href="#page70">70</a></li> +<li>A farmer evicted from a tenancy of <a href="#page200">200</a> years, <a href="#page71">71</a></li> +<li>Sir Walter Raleigh’s house and garden, <a href="#page71">71</a>-<a href="#page73">73</a></li> +<li>Churches of St. Mary of Youghal and St. Nicholas of Galway, <a href="#page73">73</a></li> +<li>Monument and churchyard, <a href="#page73">73</a>, <a href="#page74">74</a></li> +<li>An Elizabethan candidate for canonisation, <a href="#page75">75</a></li> +<li>Drive to Lismore, <a href="#page76">76</a></li> +<li>Driver’s opinions on the Ponsonby estates, <a href="#page77">77</a></li> +<li>Dromaneen Castle and the Countess of Desmond, <a href="#page78">78</a></li> +<li>Trappist Monastery at Cappoquin, <a href="#page78">78</a></li> +<li>Lismore, <a href="#page78">78</a>, <a href="#page79">79</a></li> +<li>Castle grounds and cathedral, <a href="#page79">79</a>, <a href="#page80">80</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER IX. +</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Feb. 28, <a href="#page82">82</a></li> +<li>Portumna, Galway, <a href="#page82">82</a></li> +<li>Run through Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Queen’s and King’s County to Parsonstown, <a href="#page82">82</a></li> +<li>A Canadian priest on the situation, <a href="#page83">83</a></li> +<li>His reply to M. de Mandat Grancey, <a href="#page83">83</a></li> +<li>Relations of priests with the League, <a href="#page83">83</a>-<a href="#page85">85</a></li> +<li>Parsonstown and Lord Rosse, <a href="#page86">86</a></li> +<li>Drive to Portumna, <a href="#page87">87</a></li> +<li>An abandoned railway, <a href="#page88">88</a></li> +<li>American storms, grain, and beasts, <a href="#page88">88</a>, <a href="#page89">89</a></li> +<li>Portumna Castle, <a href="#page90">90</a>, <a href="#page91">91</a></li> +<li>Lord Clanricarde’s estate, <a href="#page92">92</a></li> +<li>Mr. Tener, <a href="#page92">92</a>-<a href="#page128">128</a></li> +<li>Plan of Campaign, <a href="#page94">94</a>-<a href="#page99">99</a></li> +<li>Ability of tenants to pay their rents, <a href="#page95">95</a></li> +<li>Mr. Dillon in 1886, <a href="#page96">96</a></li> +<li>Mr. Parnell in 1885, <a href="#page97">97</a></li> +<li>Tenants in greater danger than landlords and agents, <a href="#page100">100</a></li> +<li>Feb. 29, <a href="#page100">100</a></li> +<li>Conference between evicted tenants and agent, <a href="#page100">100</a>-<a href="#page106">106</a></li> +<li>Castle and park, <a href="#page107">107</a></li> +<li>The League shopkeeper and tenant, <a href="#page108">108</a></li> +<li>Under police escort, <a href="#page109">109</a></li> +<li>Cost of ‘knocking’ a man, <a href="#page109">109</a></li> +<li>What constitutes a group, <a href="#page110">110</a></li> +<li>Favourite spots for administering a League oath, <a href="#page110">110</a></li> +<li>Disbursing treasurers, <a href="#page111">111</a></li> +<li>Change of venue, <a href="#page111">111</a></li> +<li>Bishop of Clonfert, <a href="#page112">112</a>-<a href="#page115">115</a></li> +<li>Bector of Portumna, <a href="#page115">115</a></li> +<li>Father Coen, <a href="#page116">116</a></li> +<li>Coercion on the part of the League, <a href="#page118">118</a>-<a href="#page121">121</a></li> +<li>Deposits in banks, <a href="#page120">120</a></li> +<li>Should landlords and shopkeepers be placed on one footing? <a href="#page121">121</a></li> +<li>New Castle of Portumna, <a href="#page122">122</a></li> +<li>Portumna Union, <a href="#page123">123</a>, <a href="#page124">124</a></li> +<li>Troubles of resident landlords, <a href="#page125">125</a>-<a href="#page127">127</a></li> +<li>Effects of the agitation on the people, <a href="#page124">124</a></li> +<li>War against property and private rights, <a href="#page127">127</a></li> +<li>Mr. Tener’s experiences in Cavan, <a href="#page127">127</a>-<a href="#page130">130</a></li> +<li>Similar cases in Leitrim, <a href="#page130">130</a>-<a href="#page132">132</a></li> +<li>Sale of rents and value of tenant-right, <a href="#page133">133</a>, <a href="#page134">134</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER X. +</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Dublin, March 1, <a href="#page135">135</a></li> +<li>Portumna to Woodford, <a href="#page135">135</a></li> +<li>Evictions of October 1887, <a href="#page135">135</a></li> +<li>Capture of Cloondadauv Castle, <a href="#page137">137</a>-<a href="#page141">141</a></li> +<li>A tenant and a priest, <a href="#page141">141</a>-<a href="#page144">144</a></li> +<li>Workmen’s wages in Massachusetts compared with the profits of a tenant farmer in Ireland, <a href="#page146">146</a></li> +<li>Loughrea, <a href="#page148">148</a>, <a href="#page149">149</a></li> +<li>Murder of Finlay, <a href="#page150">150</a>, <a href="#page151">151</a></li> +<li>The chrysoprase Lake of Loughrea, <a href="#page154">154</a></li> +<li>Lord Clanricarde’s estate office, acreage, and rental, <a href="#page155">155</a></li> +<li>Woodford acreage and rental, <a href="#page155">155</a>,<a href="#page156">156</a></li> +<li>Drive from Loughrea to Woodlawn, <a href="#page156">156</a>-<a href="#page160">160</a></li> +<li>A Galway “jarvey” on the situation, <a href="#page156">156</a>-<a href="#page159">159</a></li> +<li>Woodlawn and the Ashtown property, <a href="#page160">160</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER XI. +</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Borris, March 2, <a href="#page161">161</a></li> +<li>Mr. Kavanagh, <a href="#page161">161</a>-<a href="#page163">163</a></li> +<li>Borris House, <a href="#page163">163</a>-<a href="#page167">167</a></li> +<li>A living Banshee, <a href="#page165">165</a>, <a href="#page166">166</a></li> +<li>Land Corporation—its mode of working, <a href="#page167">167</a></li> +<li>Meeting in Dublin, 1885, <a href="#page168">168</a></li> +<li>Rev. Mr. Cantwell, <a href="#page168">168</a></li> +<li>Lord Lansdowne’s property at Luggacurren, <a href="#page169">169</a></li> +<li>Mr. Kavanagh’s career, <a href="#page170">170</a></li> +<li>Books and papers at Borris, <a href="#page171">171</a></li> +<li>Strongbow, <a href="#page172">172</a></li> +<li>“The five bloods,” <a href="#page172">172</a>, <a href="#page173">173</a></li> +<li>Genealogy of M‘Morroghs and Kavanaghs, <a href="#page173">173</a></li> +<li>March 4, <a href="#page174">174</a></li> +<li>Protestant service read every morning, <a href="#page174">174</a></li> +<li>A Catholic gentleman’s views, <a href="#page175">175</a></li> +<li>Relation of tenants to village despots, <a href="#page176">176</a></li> +<li>Would America make a State of Ireland? <a href="#page177">177</a></li> +<li>Land Acts since 1870, <a href="#page178">178</a></li> +<li>The O’Grady of Kilballyowen and his rental, <a href="#page179">179</a></li> +<li>Dispute with his tenants: its cause and effect, <a href="#page180">180</a></li> +<li>His circular to his tenantry, <a href="#page181">181</a>-<a href="#page186">186</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER XII. +</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Grenane House, March 5, <a href="#page187">187</a></li> +<li>Visit to Mr. Seigne, <a href="#page187">187</a></li> +<li>Beautiful situation of Grenane, <a href="#page189">189</a></li> +<li>A lady of the country, <a href="#page189">189</a></li> +<li>Mr. Seigne’s experience of the tenants, <a href="#page191">191</a>-<a href="#page194">194</a></li> +<li>The beauty of Woodstock, <a href="#page194">194</a>-<a href="#page198">198</a></li> +<li>The watch of Waterloo, <a href="#page197">197</a>-<a href="#page200">200</a></li> +<li>Curious discovery of stolen property, <a href="#page200">200</a></li> +<li>Dublin, March 6, <a href="#page200">200</a></li> +<li>State of deposits in the Savings Banks, <a href="#page200">200</a>-<a href="#page201">201</a></li> +<li>Interest on “Plan of Campaign” funds, <a href="#page202">202</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER XIII. +</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Dublin, March 8, <a href="#page203">203</a></li> +<li>Inch and the Coolgreany evictions, <a href="#page203">203</a></li> +<li>Sweet vale of Avoca, <a href="#page204">204</a></li> +<li>Dr. Dillon of Arklow, <a href="#page204">204</a></li> +<li>Fathers O’Neill and Dunphy, <a href="#page205">205</a>, <a href="#page206">206</a></li> +<li>Mr. Davitt watching the evictions, <a href="#page207">207</a></li> +<li>Lazy and thriftless tenants better off than before, <a href="#page209">209</a></li> +<li>A self-made committee, <a href="#page211">211</a></li> +<li>The Brooke estate, <a href="#page212">212</a></li> +<li>Sir Thomas Esmonde’s house, <a href="#page213">213</a></li> +<li>An Arklow dinner, <a href="#page214">214</a></li> +<li>Dr. Dillon in his study, <a href="#page215">215</a>-<a href="#page217">217</a></li> +<li>Visit to Glenart Castle, <a href="#page217">217</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER XIV. +</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Dublin, March 9, <a href="#page219">219</a></li> +<li>Athy, <a href="#page219">219</a></li> +<li>A political jarvey, <a href="#page220">220</a>-<a href="#page225">225</a></li> +<li>“Who is Mr. Gilhooly?” <a href="#page221">221</a></li> +<li>Lord Lansdowne’s offer refused through pressure of the League, <a href="#page226">226</a></li> +<li>Mr. Kilbride, M.P., and Mr. Dunne, <a href="#page226">226</a>-<a href="#page228">228</a></li> +<li>Lord Lansdowne’s estate in Kerry, <a href="#page228">228</a>-<a href="#page231">231</a></li> +<li>Plan of Campaign at Luggacurren, <a href="#page231">231</a>-<a href="#page236">236</a></li> +<li>Interview with Father Maher, <a href="#page236">236</a>-<a href="#page239">239</a></li> +<li>A “jarvey” on a J.P., <a href="#page240">240</a></li> +<li>“Railway amenities,” <a href="#page241">241</a></li> +<li>Dublin, March 10, <a href="#page242">242</a></li> +<li>Mr. Brooke, <a href="#page242">242</a>-<a href="#page248">248</a></li> +<li>Unreasonable tenants, <a href="#page243">243</a>, <a href="#page244">244</a></li> +<li>Size and rental of estate, <a href="#page246">246</a></li> +<li>Sub-commissioner’s reduction reversed, <a href="#page246">246</a>, <a href="#page247">247</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER XV. +</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Maryborough, <a href="#page249">249</a></li> +<li>Archbishop Croke, <a href="#page249">249</a></li> +<li>Interviews with labourers, <a href="#page251">251</a>-<a href="#page253">253</a></li> +<li>Views of a successful country teacher, <a href="#page254">254</a>, <a href="#page255">255</a></li> +<li>A veteran of the ’48, <a href="#page256">256</a>-<a href="#page260">260</a></li> +<li>Amount of wages to men, <a href="#page261">261</a></li> +<li>The farmers and labourers and lawyers, <a href="#page264">264</a>, <a href="#page265">265</a></li> +<li>Dublin, June 23, <a href="#page268">268</a></li> +<li>Mr. Hamilton Stubber and Mr. Robert Staples, <a href="#page268">268</a>-<a href="#page270">270</a></li> +<li>From Attanagh to Ballyragget, <a href="#page270">270</a></li> +<li>Case of “a little-good-for tenant,” <a href="#page271">271</a>, <a href="#page272">272</a></li> +<li>Mr. Kough and his tenants, <a href="#page273">273</a>-<a href="#page277">277</a></li> +<li>Mr. Richardson of Castle Comer, <a href="#page277">277</a></li> +<li>Position of the tenants, <a href="#page282">282</a></li> +<li>£70 a year for whisky, <a href="#page282">282</a></li> +<li>Kilkenny Castle, <a href="#page282">282</a></li> +<li>Mr. Rolleston of Delgany, <a href="#page283">283</a>-<a href="#page292">292</a></li> +<li>John O’Leary, <a href="#page285">285</a>-<a href="#page292">292</a></li> +<li>Boycotting private opinion, <a href="#page292">292</a></li> +<li>The League as now conducted, <a href="#page295">295</a></li> +<li>Poems and Ballads of “Young Ireland,” <a href="#page296">296</a></li> +<li>Law Courts and Trinity College, <a href="#page297">297</a></li> +<li>American Civil War, <a href="#page299">299</a>-<a href="#page302">302</a></li> +<li>Dublin, June 24, <a href="#page302">302</a></li> +<li>A dinner with officials, <a href="#page303">303</a>-<a href="#page306">306</a></li> +<li>A priest earns over £20,000, <a href="#page305">305</a>, <a href="#page306">306</a></li> +<li>“Crowner’s Quest Law,” <a href="#page309">309</a>-<a href="#page311">311</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER XVI. +</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Belfast, June 25, <a href="#page313">313</a></li> +<li>Ulster in Irish history, <a href="#page313">313</a></li> +<li>Moira, <a href="#page315">315</a></li> +<li>Views of an Ulsterman, <a href="#page315">315</a>, <a href="#page316">316</a></li> +<li>Beauty of Belfast, <a href="#page317">317</a>, <a href="#page318">318</a></li> +<li>Its buildings, <a href="#page319">319</a>-<a href="#page321">321</a></li> +<li>Dr. Hanna, <a href="#page322">322</a>-<a href="#page324">324</a></li> +<li>Dr. Kane, <a href="#page325">325</a></li> +<li>June 26, <a href="#page326">326</a></li> +<li>Sir John Preston, <a href="#page326">326</a>-<a href="#page328">328</a></li> +<li>Mr. Cameron, of Royal Irish Constabulary, <a href="#page328">328</a></li> +<li>Police parade, <a href="#page328">328</a></li> +<li>Belfast steamers, <a href="#page329">329</a></li> +<li>Scotland and America at work on Ireland, <a href="#page330">330</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">EPILOGUE, p. <a href="#page333">333</a>-<a href="#page349">349</a></p> + +<p class="i0"> +APPENDIX.<br /><br />NOTES— +</p><ul class="TOC"> + +<li><a href="#noteF">F.</a> The Moonlighters and Home Rule (pp. <a href="#page10">10</a>, <a href="#page38">38</a>), <a href="#page351">351</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteG">G.</a> The Ponsonby Property (pp. <a href="#page59">59</a>-<a href="#page66">66</a>), <a href="#page353">353</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteG2">G2.</a> The Glenbehy Eviction Fund (p. <a href="#page12">12</a>), <a href="#page360">360</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteG3">G3.</a> Home Rule and Protestantism (p. <a href="#page68">68</a>), <a href="#page362">362</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteH">H.</a> Tully and the Woodford Evictions (p. <a href="#page149">149</a>), <a href="#page364">364</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteH2">H2.</a> Boycotting the Dead (p. <a href="#page151">151</a>), <a href="#page370">370</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteI">I.</a> The Savings Banks (P.O.) (vol. i. p. <a href="#page39">39</a>, vol. ii. pp. <a href="#page5">5</a> and <a href="#page200">200</a>), <a href="#page371">371</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteK">K.</a> The Coolgreany Evictions (p. <a href="#page216">216</a>), <a href="#page372">372</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteL">L.</a> A Ducal Supper in 1711 (p. <a href="#page283">283</a>), <a href="#page374">374</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteM">M.</a> Letter from Mr. O’Leary (p. <a href="#page291">291</a>), <a href="#page375">375</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteN">N.</a> Boycotting Private Opinion (p. <a href="#page293">293</a>), <a href="#page377">377</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteO">O.</a> Boycotting by Crowner’s Quest Law (p. <a href="#page312">312</a>), <a href="#page382">382</a></li> +</ul> + + + +<h2><a name="page1" id="page1"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 1] +</span>CHAPTER VII.</h2> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">ROSSBEHY,<a id="footnotetag1" + name="footnotetag1"></a><a href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a> <i>Feb. 21.</i>—</span>We are here on the eve of battle! An “eviction” +is to be made to-morrow on the Glenbehy +<a href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a> estate of Mr. Winn, an uncle +of Lord Headley, so upon the invitation of Colonel Turner, who has come +to see that all is done decently and in order, I left Ennis with him at +7.40 A.M. for Limerick; the “city of the Liberator” for “the city of the +Broken Treaty.” There we breakfasted at the Artillery Barracks.</p> + +<p>The officers showed us there the new twelve-pounder gun with its +elaborately scientific machinery, its Scotch sight, and its four-mile +range. I compared notes about the Trafalgar Square riots of February +1886 with an Irish officer who happened to have <a name="page2" id="page2"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 2] +</span>been on the opposite +side of Pall Mall from me at the moment when the mob, getting out of the +hand of my socialistic friend Mr. Hyndman, and advancing towards St. +James’ Street and Piccadilly was broken by a skilful and very spirited +charge of the police. He gave a most humorous account of his own +sensations when he first came into contact with the multitude after +emerging from St. Paul’s, where, as he put it, he had left the people +“all singing away like devils.” But I found he quite agreed with me in +thinking that there was a visible nucleus of something like military +organisation in the mob of that day, which was overborne and, as it +were, smothered by the mere mob element before it came to trying +conclusions with the police.</p> + +<p>On our way to Limerick, Colonel Turner caught sight, at a station, of +Father Little, the parish priest of Six Mile Bridge, in County Clare, +and jumping out of the carriage invited him to get in and pursue his +journey with us, which he very politely did. Father Little is a tall +fine-looking man of a Saxon rather than a Celtic type, and I daresay +comes of the Cromwellian stock. He is a staunch and outspoken +Nationalist, and has been made rather prominent of late by his +championship of certain of his <a name="page3" id="page3"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 3] +</span>parishioners in their contest with their +landlord, Mr. H.V. D’Esterre, who lives chiefly at Bournemouth in +England, but owns 2833 acres in County Clare at Rosmanagher, valued at +£1625 a year. More than a year ago one of Father Little’s parishioners, +Mr. Frost, successfully resisted a large force of the constabulary bent +on executing a process of ejectment against him obtained by Mr. +D’Esterre.</p> + +<p>Frost’s holding was of 33 Irish, or, in round numbers, about 50 English, +acres, at a rental of £117, 10s., on which he had asked but had not +obtained an abatement. The Poor-Law valuation of the holding was £78, +and Frost estimated the value of his and his father’s improvements, +including the homestead and the offices, or in other words his +tenant-right, at £400. The authorities sent a stronger body of +constables and ejected Frost. But as soon as they had left the place +Frost came back with his family, on the 28th Jan. 1887, and reoccupied +it. Of course proceedings were taken against him immediately, and a +small war was waged over the Frost farm until the 5th of September last, +when an expedition was sent against it, and it was finally captured, and +Frost evicted with <a name="page4" id="page4"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 4] +</span>his family. Upon this last occasion Father Little +(who gave me a very temperate but vigorous account of the whole affair) +distinguished himself by a most ingenious and original attempt to “hold +the fort.” He chained himself to the main doorway, and stretching the +chains right and left secured them to two other doors. It was of this +refreshing touch of humour that I heard the other day at Abbeyleix as +happening not in Clare but in Kerry.</p> + +<p>Since his eviction Frost has been living, Father Little tells me, in a +wooden hut put up for him on the lands of a kinsman of the same name, +who is also a tenant of Mr. D’Esterre, and who has since been served by +his landlord with a notice of ejectment for arrears, although he had +paid up six months’ dues two months only before the service. Father +Little charged the landlord in this case with prevarication and other +evasive proceedings in the course of his negotiations with the tenants; +and Colonel Turner did not contest the statements made by him in support +of his contention that the Rosmanagher difficulty might have been +avoided had the tenants been more fairly and more considerately dealt +with. It is strong presumptive evidence against the landlord that a +kinsman, Mr. Robert <a name="page5" id="page5"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 5] +</span>D’Esterre, is one of the subscribers to a fund +raised by Father Little in aid of the evicted man Frost. On the other +hand, as illustrating the condition of the tenants, it is noteworthy +that the Post-Office Savings Bank’s deposits at Six-Mile Bridge rose +from £382, 17s. 10d. in 1880 to £934, 13s. 4d. in 1887. + +After breakfast we took a car and drove rapidly about the city for an +hour. With its noble river flowing through the very heart of the place, +and broadening soon into an estuary of the Atlantic, Limerick ought long +ago to have taken its place in the front rank of British ports dealing +with the New World. In the seventeenth century it was the fourth city of +Ireland, Boate putting it then next after Dublin, Galway, and Waterford. +Belfast at that time, he describes as a place hardly comparable “to a +small market-town in England.” To-day Limerick has a population of some +forty thousand, and Belfast a population of more than two hundred +thousand souls. This change cannot be attributed solely, if at all, to +the “Protestant ascendency,” nor yet to the alleged superiority of the +Northern over the Southern Irish in energy and thrift, For in the +seventeenth century Limerick <a name="page6" id="page6"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 6] +</span>was more important than Cork, whereas it +had so far fallen behind its Southern competitor in the eighteenth +century that it contained in 1781 but 3859 houses, while Cork contained +5295. To-day its population is about half as large as that of Cork. It +is a very well built city, its main thoroughfare, George Street, being +at least a mile in length, and a picturesque city also, thanks to the +island site of its most ancient quarter, the English Town, and to the +hills of Clare and Killaloe, which close the prospect of the surrounding +country. But the streets, though many of them are handsome, have a +neglected look, as have also the quays and bridges. One of my +companions, to whom I spoke of this, replied, “if they look neglected, +it’s because they are neglected. Politics are the death of the place, +and the life of its publics.”<a id="footnotetag2" + name="footnotetag2"></a><a href="#footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a></p> + +<p>As we approached the shores of the Atlantic from Limerick, the scenery +became very grand and <a name="page7" id="page7"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 7] +</span>beautiful. On the right of the railway the country +rolled and undulated away towards the Stacks, amid the spurs and slopes +of which, in the wood of Clonlish, Sanders, the Nuncio sent over to +organise Catholic Ireland against Elizabeth, miserably perished of want +and disease six years before the advent of the great Armada. To the +south-west rose the grand outlines of the Macgillicuddy’s Reeks, the +highest points, I believe, in the South of Ireland. We established +ourselves at the County Kerry Club on our arrival in Tralee, which I +found to be a brisk prosperous-looking town, and quite well built. A +Nationalist member once gave me a gloomy notion of Tralee, by telling +me, when I asked him whether he looked forward with longing to a seat in +the Parliament of Ireland, that “when he was in Dublin now he always +thought of London, just as when he used to be in Tralee he always +thought of Dublin.” But he did less than justice to the town upon the +Lee. We left it at half-past <a name="page8" id="page8"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 8] +</span>four in the train for Killorglin. The +little station there was full of policemen and soldiers, and knots of +country people stood about the platform discussing the morrow. There had +been some notion that the car-drivers at Killorglin might “boycott” the +authorities. But they were only anxious to turn an honest penny by +bringing us on to this lonely but extremely neat and comfortable +hostelry in the hills.</p> + +<p>We left the Sheriff and the escort to find their way as best they could +after us.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Shee, the landlady here, ushered us into a very pretty room hung +with little landscapes of the country, and made cheery by a roaring +fire. Two or three officers of the soldiers sent on here to prevent any +serious uproar to-morrow dined with us.</p> + +<p>The constabulary are in force, but in great good humour. They have no +belief that there will be any trouble, though all sorts of wild tales +were flying about Tralee before we left, of English members of +Parliament coming down to denounce the “Coercion” law, and of risings in +the hills, and I know not what besides. The agent of the Winn property, +or of Mr. Head of Reigate in Surrey, the mortgagee of the estate, who +holds a power of attorney from Mr. Winn, is here, a quiet, intelligent +<a name="page9" id="page9"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 9] +</span>young man, who has given me the case in a nut-shell.</p> + +<p>The tenant to be evicted, James Griffin, is the son and heir of one Mrs. +Griffin, who on the 5th of April 1854 took a lease of the lands known as +West Lettur from the then Lord Headley and the Hon. R. Winn, at the +annual rent of £32, 10s. This rent has since been reduced by a judicial +process to £26. In 1883 James Griffin, who was then, as he is now, an +active member of the local branch of the National League, and who was +imprisoned under Mr. Gladstone’s Act of 1881 as a “suspect,” was +evicted, being then several years in arrears. He re-entered unlawfully +immediately afterwards, and has remained in West Lettur unlawfully ever +since, actively deterring and discouraging other tenants from paying +their rents. He took a great part in promoting the refusal to pay which +led to the famous evictions of last year. As to these, it seems the +tenants had agreed, in 1886, to accept a proposition from Mr. Head, +remitting four-fifths of all their arrears upon payment of one year’s +rent and costs. Mr. Sheehan, M.P., a hotel-keeper in Killarney, +intervened, advising the tenants that the Dublin Parliament would soon +be established, and would abolish “landlordism,” whereupon they <a name="page10" id="page10"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 10]</span>refused +to keep their agreement.<a id="footnotetag3" + name="footnotetag3"></a><a href="#footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a> Sir Redvers Buller, who then filled the post +now held by Sir West Ridgway, seeing this alarming deadlock, urged Mr. +Head to go further, and offer to take a half-year’s rent and costs. If +the tenants refused this Sir Redvers advised Mr. Head to destroy all +houses occupied by mere trespassers, such as Griffin, who, if they could +hold a place for twelve years, would acquire a title under the Statute +of Limitations. A negotiation conducted by Sir Redvers and Father +Quilter, P.P., followed, and Father Quilter, for the tenants, finally, +in writing, accepted Mr. Head’s offer, under which, by the payment of +£865, they would be rid of a legal liability for £6177. The League again +intervened with bribes and threats, and Father Quilter found himself +obliged to write to Colonel Turner a letter in which he said, “Only +seventeen of the seventy tenants have sent on their rents to Mr. Roe +(the agent). Though promising that they would accept the terms, they +have withdrawn at the last moment from fulfilment.... I shall never +again during my time in Glenbehy <a name="page11" id="page11"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 11] +</span>interfere between a landlord and his +tenants. I have poor slaves who will not keep their word. Now let Mr. +Roe or any other agent in future deal with Glenbeighans as he likes.” +The farms lie at a distance even from this inn, and very far therefore +from Killorglin, and the agent, knowing that the tenants would be +encouraged by Griffin and by Mr. Harrington, M.P., and others, to come +back into their holdings as soon as the officers withdrew, ordered the +woodwork of several cottages to be burned in order to prevent this. This +burning of the cottages, which were the lawful property of the +mortgagee, made a great figure in the newspaper reports, and +“scandalised the civilised world.” The present agent thinks it was +impolitic on that account, but he has no doubt it was a good thing +financially for the evicted tenants. “You will see the shells of the +cottages to-morrow,” he said, “and you will judge for yourself what they +were worth.” But the sympathy excited by the illustrations of the cruel +conflagration and the heartrending descriptions of the reporters, +resulted in a very handsome subscription for the benefit of the tenants +of Glenbehy. General Sir William Butler, whose name came so prominently +before the public in connection with <a name="page12" id="page12"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 12] +</span>his failure to appear and give +evidence in a recent <i>cause célèbre</i>, and whose brother is a Resident +Magistrate in Kerry, was one of the subscribers. The fund thus raised +has been since administered by two trustees, Father Quilter, P.P., and +Mr. Shee, a son of our brisk little landlady here, who maintain out of +it very comfortably the evicted tenants. Not long ago a man in Tralee +tried to bribe the agent into having him evicted, that he might make a +claim on this fund! At Killorglin the Post-Office Savings Bank deposits, +which stood at £282, 15s. 9d. in 1880, rose in 1887 to £1299, 2s. 6d. +James Griffin, despite, or because, of the two evictions through which +he has passed, is very well off. He owns a very good horse and cart, and +seven or eight head of cattle. His arrears now amount to about £240, and +on being urged yesterday to make a proposition which might avoid an +eviction, he gravely offered to pay £8 of the current half-year’s rent +in cash, and the remaining £5 in June, the landlord taking on himself +all the costs and giving him a clean receipt! This liberal proposition +was declined. The zeal of her son in behalf of the evicted tenants does +not seem to affect the amiable anxiety of our trim and energetic hostess +to make things agreeable here to the minions of the alien <a name="page13" id="page13"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 13] +</span>despotism. The +officers both of the police and of the military appear to be on the best +of terms with the whole household, and everything is going as merrily as +marriage bells on this eve of an eviction.</p> + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">TRALEE, <i>Wednesday evening, Feb. 22.</i>—</span>We rose early at Mrs. Shee’s, +made a good breakfast, and set out for the scene of the day’s work. It +was a glorious morning for Washington’s birthday, and I could not help +imagining the amazement with which that stern old Virginian landlord +would have regarded the elaborate preparations thought necessary here in +Ireland in the year of our Lord 1888, to eject a tenant who owes two +hundred and forty pounds of arrears on a holding at twenty-six pounds a +year, and offers to settle the little unpleasantness by paying thirteen +pounds in two instalments!</p> + +<p>We had a five miles’ march of it through a singularly wild and +picturesque region, the hills which lead up to the Macgillicuddy’s Reeks +on our left, and on the right the lower hills trending to the salt water +of Dingle Bay. Our start had been delayed by the non-appearance of the +Sheriff, in aid of whom all this parade of power was made; but it turned +out afterwards that he had gone on without stopping to let Colonel +Turner know it.</p> + +<p><a name="page14" id="page14"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 14] +</span>The air was so bracing and the scenery so fine that we walked most of +the way. Two or three cars drove past us, the police and the troops +making way for them very civilly, though some of the officers thought +they were taking some Nationalist leaders and some English +“sympathisers” to Glenbehy. One of the officers, when I commented upon +this, told me they never had much trouble with the Irish members. “Some +of them,” he said, “talk more than is necessary, and flourish about; but +they have sense enough to let us go about our work without foolishly +trying to bother us. The English are not always like that.” And he then +told me a story of a scene in which an English M.P., we will call Mr. +Gargoyle, was a conspicuous actor. Mr. Gargoyle being present either at +an eviction or a prohibited meeting, I didn’t note which, with two or +three Irish members, all of them were politely requested to step on one +side and let the police march past. The Irish members touched their hats +in return to the salute of the officer, and drew to one side of the +road. But Mr. Gargoyle defiantly planted himself in the middle of the +road. The police, marching four abreast, hesitated for a moment, and +then suddenly dividing into two columns <a name="page15" id="page15"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 15] +</span>marched on. The right-hand man +of the first double file, as he went by, just touched the M.P. with his +shoulder, and thereby sent him up against the left-hand man of the +corresponding double file, who promptly returned the attention. And in +this manner the distinguished visitor went gyrating through the whole +length of the column, to emerge at the end of it breathless, hatless, +and bewildered, to the intense and ill-suppressed delight of his Irish +colleagues.</p> + +<p>Our hostess’s son, the trustee of the Eviction Fund, was on one of the +cars which passed us, with two or three companions, who proved to be +“gentlemen of the Press.” We passed a number of cottages and some larger +houses on the way, the inmates of which seemed to be minding their own +business and taking but a slight interest in the great event of the day. +We made a little detour at one of the finest points on the road to visit +“Winn’s Folly,” a modern mediæval castle of considerable size, upon a +most enchanting site, with noble views on every side, quite impossible +to be seen through its narrow loopholed and latticed windows. The castle +is extremely well built, of a fine stone from the neighbourhood, and +with a very small expenditure might <a name="page16" id="page16"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 16] +</span>be made immediately habitable. But +no one has ever lived in it. It has only been occupied as a temporary +barrack by the police when sent here, and the largest rooms are now +littered with straw for the use of the force. At the beginning of the +century, and for many years afterwards, Lord and Lady Headley lived on +the estate, and kept a liberal house. Their residence was on a fine +point running out into the bay, but, I am told, the sea has now invaded +it, and eaten it away. In 1809 the acreage of this Glenbehy property was +8915 Irish acres or 14,442 English acres, set down under Bath’s +valuation at £2299, 17s. 6d. Between 1830 and 1860 the rental averaged +£5000 a year, and between these years £17,898, 14s. 5d. were expended by +the landlord in improvements upon the property. This castle, which we +visited, must have involved since then an outlay of at least £10,000 in +the place.</p> + +<p>The present Lord Headley, only a year or two ago, went through the +Bankruptcy Court, and the Hon. Rowland Winn, his uncle, the titular +owner of Glenbehy, is set down among the Irish landlords as owning +13,932 Irish acres at a rental of £1382.</p> + +<p>After we passed the castle we began to hear the blowing of rude horns +from time to time on the <a name="page17" id="page17"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 17] +</span>distant hills. These were signals to the people +of our approach, and gave quite the air of an invasion to our +expedition. We passed the burned cottages of last year just before +reaching Mr. Griffin’s house at West Lettur. They were certainly not +large cottages, and I saw but three of them. We found the Sheriff at +West Lettur. The police and the soldiers drew a cordon around the place, +within which no admittance was to be had except on business; and the +myrmidons of the law going into the house with the agent held a final +conference with the tenant, of which nothing came but a renewal of his +previous offer. Then the work of eviction began. There was no attempt at +a resistance, and but for the martial aspect of the forces, and an +occasional blast of a horn from the hills, or the curious noises made +from time to time by a small concourse of people, chiefly women, +assembled on the slope of an adjoining tenancy, the proceedings were as +dull as a parish meeting. What most struck me about the affair was the +patience and good-nature of the officers. In the two hours and a half +which we spent at West Lettur a New York Sheriff’s deputies would have +put fifty tenants with all their bags and baggage out of as many houses <a name="page18" id="page18"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 18] +</span> +into the street. In fact it is very likely that at least that number of +New York tenants were actually so ousted from their houses during this +very time.</p> + +<p>The evicted Mr. Griffin was a stout, stalwart man of middle age, +comfortably dressed, with the air rather of a citizen than of a farmer, +who took the whole thing most coolly, as did also his women-kind. All of +them were well dressed, and they superintended the removal and piling up +of their household goods as composedly as if they were simply moving out +of one house into another. The house itself was a large comfortable +house of the country, and it was amply furnished.</p> + +<p>I commented on Griffin’s indifference to the bailiff, a quiet, +good-natured man.</p> + +<p>“Oh, he’s quite familiar,” was the reply; “it’s the third time he’s been +evicted! I believe’s going to America.”</p> + +<p>“Oh! he will do very well,” said a gentleman who had joined the +expedition like myself to see the scene. “He is a shrewd chap, and not +troubled by bashfulness. He sat on a Board of Guardians with a man I +knew four years ago, and one day he read out his own name, ‘James +Griffin,’ among a list of applicants for relief at Cahirciveen. The <a name="page19" id="page19"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 19] +</span> +chairman looked up, and said, ‘Surely that is not your name you are +reading, is it?’ ‘It is, indeed,’ replied Griffin, ‘and I am as much in +need of relief as any one!’ Perhaps you’ll be surprised to hear he +didn’t get it. This is a good holding he had, and he used to do pretty +well with it—not in his mother’s time only of the flush prices, but in +his own. It was the going to Kilmainham that spoiled him.”</p> + +<p>“How did that spoil him?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, it made a great man of him, being locked up. He was too well +treated there. He got a liking for sherry and bitters, and he’s never +been able to make his dinner since without a nip of them. Mrs. Shee +knows that well.”</p> + +<p>To make an eviction complete and legal here, everything belonging to the +tenant, and every live creature must be taken out of the house. A cat +may save a house as a cat may save a derelict ship. Then the Sheriff +must “walk” over the whole holding. All this takes time. There was an +unobtrusive search for arms too going on all the time. Three ramrods +were found hidden in a straw-bed—two of which showed signs of recent +use. But the guns had vanished. An officer told me that not long ago two +revolvers were found in a corner of the <a name="page20" id="page20"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 20] +</span>thatch of a house; but the +cartridges for them were only some time afterwards discovered neatly +packed away in the top of a bedroom wall. It is not the ownership of +these arms, it is the careful concealment of them which indicates +sinister intent. One of the constables brought out three “Moonlighters’ +swords” found hidden away in the house. One of these Colonel Turner +showed me. It was a reversal of the Scriptural injunction, being a +ploughshare beaten into a weapon, and a very nasty weapon of offence, +one end of it sharpened for an ugly thrust, the other fashioned into +quite a fair grip. While I was examining this trophy there was a stir, +and presently two of the gentlemen who had passed us on Mr. Shee’s car +came rather suddenly out of the house in company with two or three +constables.</p> + +<p>They were representatives, they said, of the Press, and as such desired +to be allowed to remain. Colonel Turner replied that this could not be, +and, in fact, no one had been suffered to enter the house except the +law-officers, the agent, and the constables. So the representatives of +the Press were obliged to pass outside of the lines, one of the +constables declaring that they had got into the house through a hole in +the back wall!</p> + +<p><a name="page21" id="page21"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 21] +</span>Shortly after this incident there arose a considerable noise of groaning +and shouting from the hill-side beyond the highway, and presently a +number of people, women and children predominating, appeared coming down +towards the precincts of the house. They were following a person in a +clerical dress, who proved to be Father Quilter, the parish priest, who +had denounced his people to Colonel Turner as “poor slaves” of the +League! A colloquy followed between Father Quilter and the policemen of +the cordon. This was brought to a close by Mr. Roche, the resident +magistrate, who went forward, and finding that Father Quilter wished to +pass the cordon, politely but firmly informed him that this could not be +done. “Not if I am the bearer of a telegram for the lawyer?” asked +Father Quilter, in a loud and not entirely amiable tone. “Not on any +terms whatever,” responded the magistrate. Father Quilter still +maintaining his ground, the women crowded in around and behind him, the +men bringing up the rear at a respectable distance, and the small boys +shouting loudly. For a moment faint hopes arose within me that I was +about to witness one of the .exciting scenes of which I have more than +once <a name="page22" id="page22"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 22] +</span>read. But only for a moment. The magistrate ordered the police to +advance. As they drew near the wall with an evident intention of going +over it into the highway, Father Quilter and the women fell back, the +boys and men retreated up the opposite hill, and the brief battle of +Glenbehy was over.</p> + +<p>A small messenger bearing a telegram then emerged from the crowd, and +showing his telegram, was permitted to pass. Father Quilter, in a loud +voice, commented upon this, crying out, “See now your consistency! You +said no one should pass, and you let the messenger come in!” To this +sally no reply was returned. After a little the priest, followed by most +of the people, went up the hill to the holding of another tenant, and +there, as the police came in and reported, held a meeting. From time to +time cries were heard in the distance, and ever and anon the blast of a +horn came from some outlying hill.</p> + +<p>But no notice was taken of these things by the police, and when the +tedious formalities of the law had all been gone through with, a squad +of men were put in charge of the house and the holding, the rest of the +army re-formed for the march back, our cars came up, and we left West +Lettur. <a name="page23" id="page23"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 23] +</span>Seeing a number of men come down the hill, as the column +prepared to move, Mr. Roche, making his voice tremendous, after the +fashion of a Greek chorus, commanded the police to arrest and handcuff +any riotous person making provocative noises. This had the desired +effect, and the march back began in silence. When the column was fairly +in the road, “boos” and groans went up from knots of men higher up the +hill, but no heed was taken of these, and no further incident occurred. +I shall be curious to see whether the story of this affair can possibly +be worked up into a thrilling narrative.</p> + +<p>We lunched at Mrs. Shee’s, where no sort of curiosity was manifested +about the proceedings at West Lettur, and I came back here with Colonel +Turner by another road, which led us past one of the loveliest lakes I +have ever seen—Lough Caragh. Less known to fame than the much larger +Lake of Killarney, it is in its way quite worthy of comparison with any +of the lesser lakes of Europe. It is not indeed set in a coronal of +mountains like Orta, but its shores are well wooded, picturesque, and +enlivened by charming seats—now, for the most part, alas!--abandoned by +their owners. We had a pleasant club dinner here this evening, after +which <a name="page24" id="page24"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 24] +</span>came in to see me Mr. Hussey, to whom I had sent a letter from Mr. +Froude. Few men, I imagine, know this whole region better than Mr. +Hussey. Some gentlemen of the country joined in the conversation, and +curious stories were told of the difficulty of getting evidence in +criminal cases. What Froude says of the effect of the prohibitive and +protection policy in Ireland upon the morals of the people as to +smuggling must be said, I fear, of the effect of the Penal Laws against +Catholics upon their morals as to perjury. It is not surprising that the +peasants should have been educated into the state of mind of the +Irishman in the old American story, who, being solicited to promise his +vote when he landed in New York, asked whether the party which sought it +was for the Government or against it. Against it, he was told, “Then +begorra you shall have my vote, for I’m agin the Government whatever it +is.” One shocking case was told of a notorious and terrible murder here +in Kerry. An old man and his son, so poor that they lay naked in their +beds, were taken out and shot by a party of Moonlighters for breaking a +boycott. They were left for dead, and their bodies thrown upon a +dunghill. The boy, however, was <a name="page25" id="page25"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 25] +</span>still alive when they were found, and it +was thought he might recover. The magistrates questioned him as to his +knowledge of the murderers. The boy’s mother stood behind the +magistrate, and when the question was put, held up her finger in a +warning manner at the poor lad. She didn’t wish him to “peach,” as, if +he lived, the friends of the murderers would make it impossible for them +to keep their holding and live on it. The lad lied, and died with the +lie on his lips. Who shall sit in judgment on that wretched mother and +her son? But what rule can possibly be too stern to crush out the +terrorism which makes such things possible?</p> + +<p>And what right have Englishmen to expect their dominion to stand in +Ireland when their party leaders for party ends shake hands with men who +wink at and use this terrorism? It has so wrought upon the population +here, that in another case, in which the truth needed by justice and the +fears of a poor family trembling for their substance and their lives +came thus into collision, an Irish Judge did not hesitate to warn the +jury against allowing themselves to be influenced by “the usual family +lie”!</p> + +<p>A magistrate told us a curious story, which <a name="page26" id="page26"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 26] +</span>recalls a case noted by Sir +Walter Scott, about the detection of a murderer, who lay long in wait +for a certain police sergeant, obnoxious to the “Moonlighters,” and +finally shot him dead in the public street of Loughrea, after dark on a +rainy night, as he was returning from the Post-Office on one side of the +street to the Police Barracks on the other. The town and the +neighbouring country were all agog about the matter, but no trace could +be got until the Dublin detectives came down three days after the +murder. It had rained more or less every one of these days, and the +pools of water were still standing in the street, as on the night of the +murder. One of the Dublin officers closely examining the highway saw a +heavy footprint in the coarse mud at the bottom of one of these pools. +He had the water drawn off, and made out clearly, from the print in the +mud, that the brogan worn by the foot which made it had a broken +sole-piece turned over under the foot. By this the murderer was +eventually traced, captured, tried, and found guilty.</p> + +<p>Mr. Morphy, I find, is coming down from Dublin to conduct the +prosecution in the case of the Crown against the murderers of +Fitzmaurice, the old man, <a name="page27" id="page27"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 27] +</span>so brutally slain the other day near Lixnaw, +in the presence of his daughter, for taking and farming a farm given up +by his thriftless brother. “He will find,” said one of the company, +“the mischief done in this instance also by prematurely pressing for +evidence. The girl Honora, who saw her father murdered, never ought to +have been subjected to any inquiry at first by any one, least of all by +the local priest. Her first thought inevitably was that if she intimated +who the men were, they would be screened, and she would suffer. Now she +is recovering her self-possession and coming round, and she will tell +the truth.”</p> + +<p>“Meanwhile,” said a magistrate, “the girl and her family are all +‘boycotted,’ and that, mark you, by the priest, as well as by the +people. The girl’s life would be in peril were not these scoundrels +cowards as well as bullies. Two staunch policemen—Irishmen and +Catholics both of them—are in constant attendance, with orders to +prevent any one from trying to intimidate or to tamper with her. A +police hut is putting up close to the Fitzmaurice house. The Nationalist +papers haven’t a word to say for this poor girl or her murdered father. +But they are always putting in some sly word in behalf <a name="page28" id="page28"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 28] +</span>of Moriarty and +Hayes, the men accused of the murder.”</p> + +<p>“Furthermore,” said another guest, “these two men are regularly supplied +while in prison with special meals by Mrs. Tangney. Who foots the bills? +That is what she won’t tell, nor has the Head-Constable so far been able +accurately to ascertain. All we know is that the friends of the +prisoners haven’t the money to do it.”</p> + +<p>Late in the evening came in a tall fine-looking Kerry squire, who told +us, <i>à propos</i> of the Fitzmaurice murder, that only a day or two ago a +very decent tenant of his, who had taken over a holding from a +disreputable kinsman, intending to manage it for the benefit of this +kinsman’s family, came to him and said he must give it up, as the +Moonlighters had threatened him if he continued to hold it.</p> + +<p>A man of substance in Tralee gave me some startling facts as to the +local administration here. In Tralee Union, he said, there were in 1879 +eighty-seven persons receiving outdoor relief, at a cost to the Union of +£30, 17s. 11d., being an average per head of 7s. 1d., and 1879 was a +very bad year, the worst since the great famine year, 1847. A +Nationalist Board was elected in 1880, <a name="page29" id="page29"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 29] +</span>and a Nationalist chairman in +1884. 1884 was a very good year, but in that year no fewer than 3434 +persons received outdoor relief, at a cost of £2534, 13s. 10d., making +an average per head of 14s. 9d.! And at the present time £5000 nominal +worth of dishonoured cheques of the authorities were flying all over the +county!</p> + +<p>“On whom,” I asked, “does the burden fall of these levies and +extravagances?”</p> + +<p>“On the landlords, not on the tenants,” he promptly replied. “The +landlord pays the whole of the rates on all holdings of less than £4 a +year, and on all land which is either really or technically in his own +possession. He also pays one-half of the rates on all the rest of his +property.”</p> + +<p>“Then, in a case like that of Griffin’s, evicted at Glenbehy, with +arrears going back to 1883, who would pay the rates?”</p> + +<p>“The landlord of course!”<a id="footnotetag4" + name="footnotetag4"></a><a href="#footnote4"><sup>4</sup></a></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page30" id="page30"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 30] +</span>CHAPTER VIII.</h2> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">CORK, <i>Thursday, Feb. 23d.</i>—</span>We left Tralee this morning. It was +difficult to recognise the events yesterday witnessed by us at Glenbehy +in the accounts which we read of them to-day when we got the newspapers.</p> + +<p>As these accounts are obviously intended to be read, not in Ireland, +where nobody seems to take the least interest in Irish affairs beyond +his own bailiwick, but in England and America, it is only natural, I +suppose, that they should be coloured to suit the taste of the market +for which they are destined. It is astonishing how little interest the +people generally show in the newspapers. The Irish make good journalists +as they make good soldiers; but most of the journalists who now +represent Irish constituencies at Westminster find their chief field of +activity, I am told, not in Irish but in British or in American +journals. Mr. Roche, R.M., who travelled with us as far as Castle +Island, where we <a name="page31" id="page31"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 31] +</span>left him, was much less moved by the grotesque accounts +given in the local journals of his conduct yesterday than by Mr. +Gladstone’s “retractation” of the extraordinary attack which he made the +other day upon Mr. Roche himself, and four other magistrates by name.</p> + +<p>“The retractation aggravates the attack,” he said.</p> + +<p>When one sees what a magistrate now represents in Ireland, it certainly +is not easy to reconcile an inconsiderate attack upon the character and +conduct of such an officer with the most elementary ideas of good +citizenship.</p> + +<p>After Mr. Roche left us, a gentleman in the carriage, who is interested +in some Castle Island property, told us that nothing could be worse than +the state of that region. Open defiance of the moral authority of the +clergy is as rife there, he says, as open defiance of the civil +authorities. The church was not long ago broken into, and the sacred +vestments were defiled; and, but the other day, a young girl of the +place came to a magistrate and asked him to give her a summons against +the parish priest “for assaulting her.” The magistrate, a Protestant, +but a personal friend of the priest, esteeming him for his fidelity to +his duties, asked the girl what <a name="page32" id="page32"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 32] +</span>on earth she meant. She proceeded with +perfect coolness to say that the priest had impertinently interfered +with her, “assaulted her,” and told her to “go home,” when he found her +sitting in a lonely part of the road with her young man, rather late at +night! For this, the girl, professing to be a Catholic, actually wanted +the Protestant magistrate to have her parish priest brought into his +court! He told the girl plainly what he thought of her conduct, +whereupon she went away, very angry, and vowing vengeance both against +the priest and against him.</p> + +<p>This same gentleman said that at the Bodyke evictions, of which so much +has been heard, the girls and women swarmed about the police using +language so revoltingly obscene that the policemen blushed—such +language, he said, as was never heard from decent Irishwomen in the days +of his youth.</p> + +<p>Of this business of evictions, he said, the greatest imaginable +misrepresentations are made in the press and by public speakers. “You +have just seen one eviction yourself,” he said, “and you can judge for +yourself whether that can be truly described in Mr. Gladstone’s language +as a ‘sentence of death.’ The people that were put out of these burned +houses <a name="page33" id="page33"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 33] +</span>you saw, houses that never would have needed to be burned, had +Harrington and the other Leaguers allowed the people to keep their +pledges given Sir Redvers Buller, those very people are better off now +than they were before they were evicted, in so far as this, that they +get their food and drink and shelter without working for it, and I’m +sorry to say that the Government and the League, between them, have been +soliciting half of Ireland for the last six or eight years to think that +sort of thing a heaven upon earth. An eviction in Ireland in these days +generally means just this, that the fight between a landlord and the +League has come to a head. If the tenant wants to be rid of his holding, +or if he is more afraid of the League than of the law, why, out he goes, +and then he is a victim of heartless oppression; but if he is +well-to-do, and if he thinks he will be protected, he takes the eviction +proceedings just for a notice to stop palavering and make a settlement, +and a settlement is made. The ordinary Irish tenant don’t think anything +more of an eviction than Irish gentlemen used to think of a duel; but +you can never get English people to understand the one any more than the +other!”</p> + +<p><a name="page34" id="page34"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 34] +</span>The fine broad streets which Cork owes to the filling up and bridging +over of the canals which in the last century made her a kind of Irish +Venice, give the city a comely and even stately aspect. But they are not +much better kept and looked after than the streets of New York. And they +are certainly less busy and animated than when I last was here, five +years ago. All the canals, however, are not filled up or bridged over. +From my windows, in a neat comfortable little private hotel on +Morrison’s Quay, I look down upon the deck of a small barque, moored +well up among the houses. The hospitable and dignified County Club is +within two minutes’ walk of my hostelry, and the equally hospitable and +more bustling City Club, but a little farther off, at the end of the +South Mall. At luncheon to-day a gentleman who was at Kilkenny with Mr. +Gladstone on the occasion of his visit to that city told me a story too +good to be lost. The party were eight in number, and on their return to +Abbeyleix they naturally looked out for an empty railway carriage. The +train was rather full, but in one compartment my informant descried a +dignitary, whom he knew, of the Protestant Church of Ireland, its only +occupant. <a name="page35" id="page35"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 35] +</span>He went up and saluted the Dean, and, pointing to his +companions, asked if he would object to changing his place in the train, +which would give them a compartment to themselves. The Dean courteously, +and indeed briskly, assented, when he saw that Mr. Gladstone was one of +the party.</p> + +<p>After the train moved off, Mr. Gladstone said, “Was not that gentleman +who so kindly vacated his place for us a clergyman?”</p> + +<p>“Yes.” “I hope he won’t think I have disestablished him again!”</p> + +<p>At the next station, my informant getting out for a moment to thank the +Dean again for his civility, and chat with him, repeated Mr. Gladstone’s +remark.</p> + +<p>“Oh!” said the Dean; “you may tell him I don’t mind his disestablishing +me again; for he didn’t disendow me; he didn’t confiscate my ticket!”</p> + +<p>With this gentleman was another from Kerry, who tells me there is a +distinct change for the better already visible in that county, which he +attributes to the steady action of the Dublin authorities in enforcing +the law.</p> + +<p>“The League Courts,” he said, “are ceasing to be the terror they used to +be.”</p> + +<p>I asked what he meant by the “League Courts,” <a name="page36" id="page36"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 36] +</span>when he expressed his +astonishment at my not knowing that it was the practice of the League to +hold regular Courts, before which the tenants are summoned, as if by a +process of the law, to explain their conduct, when they are charged with +paying their rents without the permission of the Local League. In his +part of Kerry, he tells me, these Courts used not very long ago to sit +regularly every Sunday. The idea, he says, is as old as the time of the +United Irishmen, who used to terrorise the country just in the same way. +A man whom he named, a blacksmith, acted as a kind of “Law Lord,” and to +him the chairmen of the different local “Courts” used to refer cases +heard before them!<a id="footnotetag5" + name="footnotetag5"></a><a href="#footnote5"><sup>5</sup></a></p> + +<p>All this was testified to openly two years ago, before Lord Cowper’s +Commission, but no decisive action has ever been taken by the Government +to put a stop to the scandal, and relieve the tenants from this open +tyranny. These Courts enforced, and still enforce, their decrees by +various forms of outrage, <a name="page37" id="page37"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 37] +</span>ranging “from the boycott,” in its simplest +forms up to direct outrages upon property and the person.</p> + +<p>“This dual Government business,” he said, “can only end in a duel +between the two Governments, and it must be a duel to the death of one +or the other.”</p> + +<p>To-night at dinner I had a most interesting conversation with Mr. +Colomb, Assistant Inspector-General of the Constabulary, who is here +engaged with Mr. Cameron of Belfast, and Colonel Turner, in +investigating the affair at Mitchelstown. Mr. Colomb was at Killarney at +the time of the Fenian rising under “General O’Connor” in 1867—a rising +which was undoubtedly an indirect consequence of our own Civil War in +America. Warning came to two magistrates, of impending trouble from +Cahirciveen. Upon this Mr. Colomb immediately ordered the arrest of all +passengers to arrive that day at Killarney by the “stage-car” from that +place. When the car came in at night, it brought only one person—“an +awful-looking ruffian he was,” said Mr. Colomb, “whom, by his +square-toed shoes, we knew to be just arrived from your side of the +water.”</p> + +<p>He was examined, and said he was a commercial traveller, and that he had +only one letter about him, a business letter, addressed to “J. D. +Sheehan.”</p> + +<p><a name="page38" id="page38"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 38] +</span>“Have you any objection to show us that letter?”</p> + +<p>“Certainly not,” he replied very coolly, and, taking it out of his +pocket, he walked toward a table on which stood a candle, as if to read +it. A gentleman who was closely watching him, caught him by the wrist, +just as he was putting the letter to the flame, and saved it. It was +addressed to J. D. Sheehan, Esq., Killarney [Present], and ran as +follows:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p class="dateline"> “<i>Feb. 12th, Morning</i>.</p> + +<p> “MY DEAR SHEEHAN,—I have the honour to introduce to you Captain + Mortimer Moriarty. He will be of great assistance to you, and I + have told him all that is to be done until I get to your place. The + Private <i>Spys</i> are very active this morning. Unless they smell a + rat all will be done without any trouble.</p> + +<p> “Success to you. Hoping to meet soon,—Yours as ever.</p> + +<p class="signed"> “(Signed) JOHN J. O’CONNOR.”<a id="footnotetag6" + name="footnotetag6"></a><a href="#footnote6"><sup>6</sup></a></p> +</blockquote> +<p><a name="page39" id="page39"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 39] +</span>Despatches were at once sent off to the authorities at different points. +They were all transmitted, except to Cahirciveen, the wires to which +place were found to have been cut. Mr. Colomb—who had a force of but +seventeen men in the town of Killarney—saw the uselessness of trying to +communicate with the officer at Cahirciveen, but was so strongly urged +by the magistrates that he unwillingly consented to endeavour to do so, +and a mounted orderly was sent. Just after this unfortunate officer had +passed Glenbehy (the scene of the eviction I have just witnessed) he was +shot by some of O’Connor’s party, whom he tried to pass in the dark, and +who were marching on Killarney, and fell from his horse, which galloped +off. He managed to crawl to a neighbouring cottage, where he was not +long after found by ”General O’Connor“ and some of his followers. The +wounded man was kindly treated by O’Connor, who had him examined for +despatches, but prevented one of his men from shooting him dead, as he +lay on the ground, and had his wounds as well attended to as was +possible. There was no response in the country to the Kerry rising, such +as it was, because the intended seizure of Chester Castle by the Fenians +failed, but O’Connor <a name="page40" id="page40"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 40] +</span>was not captured, though great efforts were made to +seize him. How he escaped is not known to this day.</p> + +<p>At that time, as always in emergencies, Mr. Colomh says the Constabulary +behaved with exemplary coolness, courage, and fidelity. His position +gives him a very thorough knowledge of the force, which is almost +entirely recruited from the body of the Irish people. Of late years not +a few men of family, reduced in fortune, have taken service in it. Among +these has been mentioned to me a young Irishman of title, and of an +ancient race, who is a sergeant in the force, and who recently declined +to accept a commission, as his increased expenses would make it harder +for him to support his two sisters. Another constable in the ranks +represents a family illustrious in the annals of England four centuries +ago.</p> + +<p>As to the <i>morale</i> of the force, he cites one eloquent fact. Out of a +total of more than 13,000 men, the cases of drunkenness, proved or +admitted, average no more than fourteen a week! On many days absolutely +no such cases occur. This is really amazing when one thinks how many of +the men are isolated on lonely posts all over the island, exposed to all +sorts of weather, and cut off from the ordinary resources and amusements +of social life.</p> + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">CORK, <i>Friday, Feb. 24th.</i>—</span>This morning after breakfast I met in the +South Mall a charming ecclesiastic, whose acquaintance I made in Rome +while I was attending the great celebration there in 1867 of St. Peter’s +Day. Father Burke introduced me to him after the Pontifical Mass at San +Paolo fuori le Mure; and we had a delightful symposium that afternoon. I +walked with him to his lodgings, talking over those ”days long +vanished,“ and the friend whose genius made them, like the suppers of +Plato, ”a joy for ever.“ He is sorely troubled now by the attitude of a +portion of the clergy in his part of Ireland, which is one almost of +open hostility, he says, to the moral authority of the Church, and +indicates the development of a class of priests moving in the direction +of the ”conventional priests,“ by whom the Church was disgraced during +the darkest days of the French Revolution of 1793.</p> + +<p>Almost more mischievous than these men, he thinks, who must eventually +go the way of their kind in times past, are the timid priests, for the +most part parish priests, who go in fear of their violent curates, and +of the politicians who tyrannise their <a name="page41" id="page41"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 41] +</span>flocks. He showed me a letter +written to him last week by one of these, whose parish is just now in a +tempest over the Plan of Campaign. Certainly a most remarkable letter. +In it the writer frankly says, ”There is no justification for the Plan +of Campaign on this property.</p> + +<p>“I assented to putting it in force here,” he goes on, “because I did not +at the time know the facts of the case, and took them on trust from +persons who, I find, have practised upon my confidence. What am I to do? +I am made to appear as a consenting party now, and, indeed, an assisting +agent in action, which I certainly was led to believe right and +necessary, but which upon the facts I now see involves much injustice +to —— (naming the landlord), and I fear positive ruin to worthy men and +families of my people. I shall be grateful and glad of your counsel in +these most distressing circumstances.”</p> + +<p>“What can any one do to help such a man?” said my friend. “The +rebellious and unruly in the Church, be they priests or laymen, can only +in the end damage themselves. <i>Tu es Petrus</i>; and revolt, like schism, +is a devil which only carries away those of whom it gets possession out +of the Church and <a name="page42" id="page42"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 42] +</span>into the sea. But a weak sentinel on the wall or at +the gate who drops his musket to wipe his eyes, that is a thing for +tears!”</p> + +<p>He asked me to come and see him if possible in his own county, and he +has promised to send me letters to-day for priests who will he glad to +tell me what they know only too well of the pressure put upon the better +sort of the people by the organised idlers and mischief-makers in Clare +and Kerry.</p> + +<p>To-day at the City Club, I made the acquaintance of the Town-Clerk of +Cork, Mr. Alexander M‘Carthy, a staunch Nationalist and Home Ruler, who +holds his office almost by a sort of hereditary tenure, having been +appointed to it in 1859 in succession to his father. He gave me many +interesting particulars as to the municipal history and administration +of Cork, and showed me some of the responses he is receiving to a kind +of circular letter sent by the municipality to the town governments of +England, touching the recent proceedings against the Mayor. So far these +responses have not been very sympathetic. He invited me to lunch here +with him to-morrow, and visit some of the most interesting points in and +around the city. Here, too, I met Colonel Spaight, Inspector <a name="page43" id="page43"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 43] +</span>of the +Local Government Board, who gives me a startling account of the increase +of the public burdens. Twenty years ago there were no persons whatever +seeking outdoor relief in Cork. This year, out of a total population of +145,216, there are 3775 persons here receiving indoor relief, and 4337 +receiving outdoor relief, making in all 8112, or nearly 6 per cent. of +the inhabitants. This proportion is swelled by the influx of people from +other regions seeking occupation here, which they do not find, or simply +coming here because they are sure of relief. This state of things +illustrates not so much the decay of industry in Cork as the development +of a spirit of mendicancy throughout Ireland. In the opinion of many +thoughtful people, this began with the Duchess of Marlborough’s Fund, +and with the Mansion House Fund. Colonel Spaight remembers that in +Strokestown Union, Roscommon, when the guardians there received a supply +of one hundred tons of seed potatoes, they distributed eighty tons, and +were then completely at a loss what to do with the remaining twenty +tons. Mr. Parnell and Mr. O’Kelly, however, came to Roscommon, and the +latter made a speech out of the hotel window to the people, advising +them to apply for more, and <a name="page44" id="page44"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 44] +</span>take all they could get. “With a stroke of a +pen,” he said, “we’ll wipe out the seed rate!” Whereupon the +applications for seed rose to six hundred tons!</p> + +<p>The Labourers Act, passed by the British Parliament for the benefit of +the Irish labourers, who get but scant recognition of their wants and +wishes from the tenant farmers, is not producing the good results +expected from it, mainly because it is perverted <a name="page45" id="page45"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 45] +</span>to all sorts of +jobbery. Only last week Colonel Spaight had to hand in to the Local +Government Board a report on certain schemes of expenditure under this +Act, prepared by the Board of Guardians of Tralee. These schemes +contemplated the erection of 196 cottages in 135 electoral divisions of +the Union. This meant, of course, so much money of the ratepayers to be +turned over to local contractors. Colonel Spaight on inspection found +that of the 196 proposed cottages, the erection of 61 had been forbidden +by the sanitary authorities, the notices for the erection of 23 had been +wrongly served, 20 were proposed to be erected on sites not adjoining a +public road, and no necessity had been shown for erecting 40 of the +others. He accordingly recommended that only 32 be allowed to be +erected! For a small town like Tralee this proposition to put <a name="page46" id="page46"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 46] +</span>up 196 +buildings at the public expense where only 32 were needed is not bad. It +has the right old Tammany Ring smack, and would have commanded, I am +sure, the patronising approval of the late Mr. Tweed.</p> + +<p>I mentioned it to-night at the County Club, when a gentleman said that +this morning at Macroom a serious “row” had occurred between the local +Board of Guardians there and a great crowd of labourers. The labourers +thronged the Board-room, demanding the half-acre plots of land which had +been promised them. The Guardians put them off, promising to attend to +them when the regular business of the meeting was over. So the poor +fellows were kept waiting for three mortal hours, at the end of which +time they espied the elected Nationalist members of the Board subtly +filing out of the place. This angered them. They stopped the fugitives, +blockaded the Board-room, and forced the Guardians to appoint a +committee to act upon their demands.</p> + +<p>It is certainly a curious fact that, so far, in Ireland I have seen no +decent cottages for labourers, excepting those put up at their own +expense on their own property by landlords.</p> + +<p><a name="page47" id="page47"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 47] +</span>I dined to-night at the County Club with Captain Plunkett, a most +energetic, spirited, and well-informed resident magistrate, a brother of +the late Lord Louth,—still remembered, I dare say, at the New York +Hotel as the only Briton who ever really mastered the mystery of +concocting a “cocktail,”—and an uncle of the present peer. We had a +very cheery dinner, and a very clever lawyer, Mr. Shannon, gave us an +irresistible reproduction of a charge delivered by an Irish judge famous +for shooting over the heads of juries, who sent twelve worthy citizens +of Galway out of their minds by bidding them remember, in a case of +larceny, that they could not find the prisoner guilty unless they were +quite sure “as to the <i>animus furandi</i> and the <i>asportavit</i>.”</p> + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary"><i>Saturday, Feb. 25.</i>—</span>I had an interesting talk this morning at the +County Club with a gentleman from Limerick on the subject of +“boycotting.” I told him what I had seen at Edenvale of the practice as +applied to a forlorn and helpless old woman, for the crime of standing +by her “boycotted” son. “You think this an extreme case,” he said, “but +you are quite mistaken. It is a typical case certainly, but it gives you +only an inadequate idea of <a name="page48" id="page48"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 48] +</span>the scope given to this infernal machinery. +The ‘boycott’ is now used in Ireland as the Inquisition was used in +Spain,—to stifle freedom of thought and action. It is to-day the chief +reliance of the National League for keeping up its membership, and +squeezing subscriptions out of the people. If you want proof of this,” +he added, “ask any Nationalist you know whether members of the League in +the country allow farmers who are not members to associate with them in +any way. I can cite you a case at Ballingarry, in my county, where last +summer a resolution of the League was published and put on the Chapel +door, that members of the National League were thenceforth to have no +dealings or communication with any person not a member. This I saw with +my own eyes, and it was matter of public notoriety.”</p> + +<p>I lunched at the City Club with Mr. M‘Carthy. Sir Daniel O’Sullivan, +formerly Mayor of Cork, whose views of Home Rule seem to differ widely +from those of his successor, now incarcerated here, was one of the +company. In the course of an animated but perfectly good-natured +discussion of the Land Law question between two other gentlemen present, +one of them, a strong Nationalist, <a name="page49" id="page49"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 49] +</span>smote his Unionist opponent very +neatly under the fifth rib. The latter contending that it was monstrous +to interfere by law with the principle of freedom of contract, the +Nationalist responded, “That cannot be; it must be right and legitimate +to do it, for the Imperial Parliament has done it four times within +seventeen years!”</p> + +<p>I walked with Mr. M‘Carthy to his apartments, where he showed me many +curious papers and volumes bearing on municipal law and municipal +history in Ireland. Among these, two most elaborate and interesting +volumes, being the Council Books of Cork, Youghal, and Kinsale, from +1610 to 1659, 1666 to 1687, and 1690 to 1800. The records for the years +not enumerated have perished, that is, for the first five or six years +after the Restoration, and for the years just preceding and just +following the fall of James II. These volumes take one back to the +condition of Southern Ireland immediately after English greed and +intrigue had sapped the foundations of the peace which followed the +submission of the great Earl of Tyrone, and brought about the flight to +the Continent of that chieftain, and of his friend and ally, the Earl of +Tyrconnell.</p> + +<p>They give us no picture, unfortunately, of the <a name="page50" id="page50"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 50] +</span>closing years of +Elizabeth’s long struggle to establish the English power, or of the +occupation of Kinsale by the Spanish in the name of the Pope. But there +is abundant evidence in them of the theological hatred which so +embittered the conflict of races in Ireland during the seventeenth +century.</p> + +<p>It was a relief to turn from these to a solemn controversy waged in our +own times between Cork and Limerick over a question of municipal +precedence, in which Mr. M‘Carthy did battle for the City of the Galley +and the Towers<a id="footnotetag7" + name="footnotetag7"></a><a href="#footnote7"><sup>7</sup></a> against the City of the Gateway and Cathedral dome. +The truth seems to be that King John gave charters to both cities, but +to Cork twelve years earlier than to Limerick. Speaking of this contest, +by the way, with a loyalist of Cork to-night, I observed that it was +almost as odd to find such a question hotly disputed between two +Nationalist cities as to see the champions of Irish independence +marching under the banner of the harp, which was invented for Ireland by +Henry VIII.</p> + +<p>“I don’t know why you call Cork a Nationalist <a name="page51" id="page51"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 51] +</span>city,” he replied, “for +Parnell and Maurice Healy were returned for it by a clear minority of +the voters. If all the voters had gone to the polls, they would both +have been beaten.”</p> + +<p>A curious statement certainly, and worth looking into. Mr. M‘Carthy gave +me also much information as to the working of the municipal system here, +and a copy of the rules which govern the debates of the Town Council. +One of these might be adopted with advantage in other assemblies, to +wit, “that no member be permitted to occupy the time of the Council for +more than ten minutes.”</p> + +<p>There is an important difference between the parliamentary and the +municipal constituencies of Cork. The former constituency comprises all +residents within the borough boundaries occupying premises of the +rateable value of £10 a year. The municipal constituency consists of no +more than 1800 voters, divided among the seven wards which make up the +city under the “3d and 4th Victoria,” and which contain about 13,000 of +the 15,116 Parliamentary voters of the borough. The same thing is true +in the main of nine out of the eleven municipal boroughs of Ireland +including Dublin. The 3d and 4th Victoria was amended for Dublin in +<a name="page52" id="page52"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 52] +</span>1849, so as to give that city the municipal franchise then existing in +England, but no move in that direction was made for Cork, Waterford, +Limerick, or any other municipal borough. The Nationalists have taken no +interest in the question. Perhaps they have good reason for this, as in +Belfast, where the municipal franchise has been widely extended since +the present Government came into power, the democratic electorate has +put the whole municipal government into the hands of the Unionists. The +day being cool, though fine, Mr. M‘Carthy got an “inside car,” and we +went off for a drive about the city. The environs of Cork are very +attractive. We visited the new cemetery grounds which are very neatly +and tastefully laid out. There was a conflict over them, the owners of +family vaults staunchly standing out against the “levelling” tendency of +a harmonious city of the dead. But all is well that ends well, and now +two handsome stone chapels, one Catholic and one Protestant, keep watch +and ward over the silent sleepers, standing face to face near the grand +entrance, and exactly alike in their architecture. A very pretty drive +took us to the water-works, which are extensive, well planned, and +exceedingly well <a name="page53" id="page53"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 53] +</span>kept. They are awaiting now the arrival from America of +some great turbine wheels, but the engines are of English make. In the +city we visited the new Protestant cathedral of St. Finbar, a very fine +church, which advantageously replaces a “spacious structure of the Doric +order,” built here in the reign of George II., with the proceeds of a +parliamentary tax on coals. Despite his name, I imagine that admirable +prelate, Dr. England, the first Catholic bishop of my native city in +America, must have been a Corkonian, for he it was, I believe, who put +the cathedral of Charleston under the invocation of St. Finbar, the +first bishop of Cork. The church stands charmingly amid fine trees on a +southern branch of the river Lea. We visited also two fine Catholic +churches, one of St. Vincent de Paul, and the other the Church of St. +Peter and St. Paul, a grandly proportioned and imposing edifice.</p> + +<p>It was at vespers that we entered it, and found it filled with the +kneeling people. This noble church is rather ignobly hidden away behind +crowded houses and shops, and the contrast was very striking when we +emerged from its dim religious space and silence into the thronged and +rather noisy streets. There is a statue here of Father Mathew; but what +<a name="page54" id="page54"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 54] +</span>I have seen to-night makes me doubt whether the present generation of +Corkonians would have erected it.</p> + +<p>At dinner a gentleman gave us a most interesting account of the +picturesque home which a man of taste, and a lover of natural history, +has made for himself at the remote seaside village of Belmullet, in +Mayo, the seat of the Mayo quarries, in which Mr. Davitt takes so much +interest. The sea brings in there all sorts of wreckage, and the house +is beautifully finished with mahogany and other rare woods, just as I +remember finding in a noble mansion in South Wales, near a dangerous +head-land, some magnificent doors and wainscotings made of that most +beautiful of the Central American woods, nogarote, which I never saw in +the United States, excepting in a superb specimen of it sent home by +myself from Corinto. This colonist of Mayo employs all the people he can +get in the fisheries there, which are very rich; and the ducks and wild +geese are so numerous that he sometimes sends as far as to Wicklow for +men to capture and sell them for him. He was once fortunate enough to +trap a pair of the snow geese of the Arctic region, but Belmullet, in +other respects a <a name="page55" id="page55"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 55] +</span>primeval paradise, is cursed with the small boy of +civilisation; and one of these pests of society slew the goose with a +stone. The widowed gander consoled himself by contracting family ties +with the common domestic goose of the parish, and all his progeny, in +other particulars indistinguishable from that familiar bird, bear the +black marks distinctive of the Arctic tribe.</p> + +<p>Belmullet, this gentleman tells me, boasts a very good little inn, kept +by a Mrs. Deehan, which was honoured by a visit from Lord Carnarvon with +his wife and daughters during the Earl’s Viceroyalty. This was in the +course of a private and personal, not official tour, during which, Lord +Carnarvon says, he was everywhere received with the greatest courtesy by +all sorts and conditions of the people. It is an interesting +illustration of the temper in which certain priests in Ireland deal with +matters of State, that when Lord Carnarvon politely invited the parish +priest of Belmullet to come to see him, that functionary declined to do +so. Upon this the placable Viceroy sent to know whether the priest would +receive the visit he refused to pay. The priest replied that he never +declined to receive any gentleman who wished to see him; and the Vice<a name="page56" id="page56"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 56] +</span>roy +accordingly called upon him, to the edification of the people, who +afterwards listened very respectfully to a little speech which His +Excellency made to them from a car. It is rather surprising that these +incidents have never been adduced in proof of Lord Carnarvon’s +determination to take the Home Rule wind out of the sails of the +Liberals!</p> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">CORK, <i>Sunday, Feb. 26.</i>—</span>I went out to-day with Mr. Cameron to see +Blarney Castle and St. Anne’s Hill. Nothing can be lovelier than the +country around Cork and the valley of the Lea. A “light railway,” of the +sort authorised by the Act of 1883, takes you out quickly enough to +Blarney, and the train was well filled. The construction of these +railways is found fault with as aggravating instead of relieving those +defects in the organisation and management of the Irish railways, which +are so thoroughly and intelligently exposed in the Public Works Report +of Sir James Allport and his fellow-commissioners. A morning paper +to-day points this out sharply.</p> + +<p>In the days of King William III. Blarney Castle must have been a +magnificent stronghold. It stands very finely on a well-wooded height, +and <a name="page57" id="page57"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 57] +</span>dominates the land for miles around. But it held out against the +victor of the Boyne so long that, when he captured it, he thought it +best, in the expressive phrase of the Commonwealth, to “slight” it, +little now remaining of it but the gigantic keep, the walls of which are +some six yards thick, and a range of ruined outworks stretching along +and above a line of caverns, probably the work of the quarrymen who got +out the stone for the Castle ages ago. The legend of the Blarney Stone +does not seem to be a hundred years old, but the stone itself is one of +the front battlements of the grand old tower, which has more than once +fallen to the ground from the giddy height at which it was originally +set. It is now made fast there by iron clamps, in such a position that +to kiss it one should be a Japanese acrobat, or a volunteer rifleman +shooting for the championship of the world. There are many and very fine +trees in the grounds about the Castle, and there is a charming garden, +now closed against the casual tourist, as it has been leased with the +modern house to a tenant who lives here. In the leafy summer the place +must be a dream of beauty. An avenue of stately trees quite overarching +the highway leads from Blarney to St. Anne’s Hill, the <a name="page58" id="page58"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 58] +</span>site of which, at +least, is that of an ideal sanatorium. We walked thither over hill and +dale. The panorama commanded by the buildings of the sanatorium is one +of the widest and finest imaginable, worthy to be compared with the +prospect from the Star and Garter at Richmond, or with that from the +terrace at St. Germain.</p> + +<p>Several handsome lodges or cottages have been built about the extensive +grounds. These are comfortably furnished and leased to people who prefer +to bring their households here rather than take up their abode in the +hotel, which, however, seems to be a very well kept and comfortable sort +of place, with billiard and music rooms, a small theatre, and all kinds +of contrivances for making the country almost as tedious as the town. +The establishment is directed now by a German resident physician, but +belongs to an Irish gentleman, Mr. Barter, who lives here himself, and +here manages what I am told is one of the finest dairy farms and dairies +in Ireland. Our return trip to Cork on the “light railway,” with a warm +red sunset lighting up the river Lea, and throwing its glamour over the +varied and picturesque scenery through which we ran, was not the least +delightful part of a very delightful excursion.</p> + +<p><a name="page59" id="page59"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 59] +</span>After we got back I spent half-an-hour with a gentleman who knows the +country about Youghal, which I propose to visit to-morrow, and who saw +something of the recent troubles there arising out of the Plan of +Campaign, as put into effect on the Ponsonby property.</p> + +<p>He is of the opinion that the Nationalists were misled into this contest +by bad information as to Mr. Ponsonby’s resources and relations. They +expected to drive him to the wall, but they will fail to do this, and +failing to do this they will be left in the vocative. He showed me a +curious souvenir of the day of the evictions, in the shape of a +quatrain, written by the young wife of an evicted tenant. This young +woman, Mrs. Mahoney, was observed by one of the officers, as the +eviction went on, to go apart to a window, where she stood for a while +apparently writing something on a wooden panel of the shutter. After the +eviction was over the officer remembered this, and going up to the +window found these lines pencilled upon the panel:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“We are evicted from this house,<br /> +<span class="i2">Me and my loving man;</span><br /> +We’re homeless now upon the world!<br /> +<span class="i2">May the divil take ‘the Plan’!”</span> +</p> +<p class="diary"><a name="page60" id="page60"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 60] +</span><span class="diary">CORK, <i>Monday, Feb. 27.</i>—</span>A most interesting day. I left alone and early +by the train for Youghal, having sent before me a letter of introduction +to Canon Keller, the parish priest, who has recently become a +conspicuous person through his refusal to give evidence about matters, +his knowledge of which he conceives to be “privileged,” as acquired in +his capacity as a priest.</p> + +<p>I had many fine views of the shore and the sea as we ran along, and the +site of Youghal itself is very fine. It is an old seaport town, and once +was a place of considerable trade, especially in wool.</p> + +<p>Oliver dwelt here for a while, and from Youghal he embarked on his +victorious return to England. He seems to have done his work while he +was here “not negligently,” like Harrison at Naseby Field, for when he +departed he left Youghal a citadel of Protestant intolerance. Even under +Charles II they maintained an ordinance forbidding “any Papist to buy or +barter anything in the public markets,” which may be taken as a piece of +cold-blooded and statutory “boycotting.” Then there was no parish priest +in Youghal; now it may almost be said there is nobody in Youghal but the +<a name="page61" id="page61"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 61] +</span>parish priest! So does “the whirligig of time bring in his revenges”!</p> + +<p>At Youghal station a very civil young man came up, calling me by name, +and said Father Keller had sent him with a car to meet me. We drove up +past some beautiful grounds into the main street. A picturesque +waterside town, little lanes and narrow streets leading out of the main +artery down to the bay, and a savour of the sea in the place, grateful +doubtless to the souls of Raleigh and the west country folk he brought +over here when he became lord of the land, just three hundred years ago. +Edmund Spenser came here in those days to see him, and talk over the +events of that senseless rising of the Desmonds, which gave the poet of +the “Faerie Queen” his awful pictures of the desolation of Ireland, and +made the planter of Virginia master of more than forty thousand acres of +Irish land.</p> + +<p>We turned suddenly into a little narrow wynd, and pulled up, the driver +saying, “There is the Father, yer honour!” In a moment up came a tall, +very fine-looking ecclesiastic, quite the best dressed and most +distinguished-looking priest I have yet seen in Ireland, with features +of a fine Teutonic <a name="page62" id="page62"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 62] +</span>type, and the erect bearing of a soldier. I jumped +down to greet him, and he proposed that we should walk together to his +house near by. An extremely good house I found it to be, well placed in +the most interesting quarter of the town. Having it in my mind to drive +on from Youghal to Lismore, there to make an early dinner, see the +castle of the Duke of Devonshire, and return to Cork by an evening +train, I had to decline Father Keller’s cordial hospitalities, but he +gave me a most interesting hour with him in his comfortable study. +Father Keller stands firmly by the position which earned for him a +sentence of imprisonment last year, when he refused to testify before a +court of justice in a bankruptcy case, on the ground that it might +“drift him into answers which would disclose secrets he was bound in +honour not to disclose.” He does not accept the view taken of his +conduct, however, by Lord Selborne, that, in the circumstances, his +refusal is to be regarded as the act of his ecclesiastical superiors +rather than his own. He maintains it as his own view of the sworn duty +of a priest, and not unnaturally therefore he looks upon his sentence as +a blow levelled at the clergy; nor, as I understood him, has he +abandoned his original contention, that the Court had no right to <a name="page63" id="page63"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 63] +</span>summon +him as a witness. It was impossible to listen to him on this subject, +and doubt his entire good faith, nor do I see that he ought to be held +responsible for the interpretation put by Mr. Lane, M.P., and others +upon his attitude as a priest, in a sense going to make him merely a +“martyr” of Home Rule. I did not gather from what he said that, in his +mind, the question of his relations with the Nationalists or the Plan of +Campaign entered into that affair at all, but simply that he believed +the right and the duty of a priest to protect, no matter at what cost to +himself, secrets confided to him as a priest, was really involved in his +consent or refusal to answer, when he was asked whether he was or was +not on a certain day at the “Mall House” in Youghal. Of course from the +connection of this refusal in this particular case with the Nationalist +movement, Nationalists would easily glide into the idea that he refused +to testify in order to serve their cause.</p> + +<p>As to the troubles on the Ponsonby estate, Father Keller spoke very +freely. He divided the responsibility for them between the +untractableness of the agent, and the absenteeism of the owner. It was +only since the troubles began, he said, that he <a name="page64" id="page64"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 64] +</span>had ever seen Mr. +Ponsonby, who lived in Hampshire, and was therefore out of touch with +the condition and the feelings of the people here. In a personal +interview with him he had found Mr. Ponsonby a kindly disposed +Englishman, but the estate is heavily encumbered, and the agent who has +had complete control of it forced the tenants, by his hard and fast +refusal of a reasonable reduction more than two years ago, into an +initial combination to defend themselves by “clubbing” their rents. That +was before Mr. Dillon announced the Plan of Campaign at all.</p> + +<p>“It was not till the autumn of 1886,” said Father Keller, “that any +question arose of the Plan of Campaign here,<a id="footnotetag8" + name="footnotetag8"></a><a href="#footnote8"><sup>8</sup></a> and it was by the +tenants themselves that the determination was taken to adopt it. My part +has been that of a peace-maker throughout, and we should have had peace +if Mr. Ponsonby would have listened to me; we should have had peace, and +he would have received a reasonable rental for his property. Instead of +this, look at the law costs arising out of bankruptcy proceedings and +sheriff’s sales and writs and <a name="page65" id="page65"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 65] +</span>processes, and the whole district thrown +into disorder and confusion, and the industrious people now put out of +their holdings, and forced into idleness.”</p> + +<p>As to the recent evictions which had taken place, Father Keller said +they had taken him as well as the people by surprise, and had thus led +to greater agitation and excitement. “But the unfortunate incident of +the loss of Hanlon’s life,” he said, “would never have occurred had I +been duly apprised of what was going on in the town. I had come home +into my house, having quieted the people, and left all in order, as I +thought, when that charge of the police, for which there was no +occasion, and which led to the killing of Hanlon, was ordered. I made my +way rapidly to the people, and when I appeared they were brought to +patience and to good order with astonishing ease, despite all that had +occurred.”</p> + +<p>As to the present outlook, it was his opinion that Mr. Ponsonby, even +with the Cork Defence Union behind him, could not hold out. “The Land +Corporation were taking over some parts of the estate, and putting +Emergency men on them—a set of desperate men, a kind of <i>enfants +perdus</i>,” he said, “to work and manage the land;” but he did not believe +the operation could be successfully <a name="page66" id="page66"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 66] +</span>carried out. Meanwhile he +confidently counted upon seeing “the present Tory Government give way, +and go out, when it would become necessary for the landlords to do +justice to the rack-rented people. Pray understand,” said Father Keller, +“that I do not say all landlords stand at all where Mr. Ponsonby has +been put by his agent, for that is not the case; but the action of many +landlords in the county Cork in sustaining Mr. Ponsonby, whose estate is +and has been as badly rack-rented an estate as can be found, is, in my +judgment, most unwise, and threatening to the peace and happiness of +Ireland.”<a id="footnotetag9" + name="footnotetag9"></a><a href="#footnote9"><sup>9</sup></a></p> + +<p>I asked whether, in his opinion, it would be possible for the Ponsonby +tenants to live and prosper here on this estate, could they become +peasant proprietors of it under Lord Ashbourne’s Act, provided they +increased in numbers, as in that event might be expected. This he +thought very doubtful so far as a few of the tenants are concerned.</p> + +<p>“Would you seek a remedy, then,” I asked, “in emigration?”</p> + +<p><a name="page67" id="page67"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 67] +</span>“No, not in emigration,” he replied, “but in migration.”</p> + +<p>I begged him to explain the difference.</p> + +<p>“What I mean,” he said, “is, that the people should migrate, not out of +Ireland, but from those parts of Ireland which cannot support them into +parts of Ireland which can support them. There is room in Meath, for +example, for the people of many congested districts.”</p> + +<p>“You would, then, turn the great cattle farms of Meath,” I said, “into +peasant holdings?”</p> + +<p>“Certainly.”</p> + +<p>“But would not that involve the expropriation of many people now +established in Meath, and the disturbance or destruction of a great +cattle industry for which Ireland has especial advantages?”</p> + +<p>To this Father Keller replied that he did not wish to see Ireland +exporting her cattle, any more than to see Ireland exporting her sons +and daughters. “I mean,” he said, quite earnestly, “when they are forced +to export them to pay exorbitant rents, and thus deprive themselves of +their capital or of a fair share of the comforts of life. I should be +glad to see the Irish people sufficient to themselves by the domestic +exchange of their own industries and <a name="page68" id="page68"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 68] +</span>products.” At the same time he +begged me to understand that he had no wish to see this development +attended by any estrangement or hostile feeling between Ireland and +Great Britain. “On the contrary,” he said, “I have seen with the +greatest satisfaction the growth of such good feeling towards England as +I never expected to witness, as the result of the visits here of English +public men, sympathising with the Irish tenants. I believe their visits +are opening the way to a real union of the Democracies of the two +countries, and to an alliance between them against the aristocratic +classes which depress both peoples.” This alliance Father Keller +believed would be a sufficient guarantee against any religious contest +between the Catholics of Ireland and the Protestants of Great Britain.</p> + +<p>“I was much astounded,” he said, “the other day, to hear from an English +gentleman that he had met a Protestant clergyman who told him he really +believed that a persecution of the Protestants would follow the +establishment of Home Rule in Ireland. I begged him to consider that Mr. +Parnell was a Protestant, and I assured him Protestants would have +absolutely nothing to fear from Home Rule.”</p> + +<p>Reverting to his idea of re-distributing the Irish <a name="page69" id="page69"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 69] +</span>population through +Ireland, under changed conditions, social and economical, I asked him +how in Meath, for example, he would meet the difficulty of stocking with +cattle the peasant holdings of a new set of proprietors not owning +stock. He thought it would be easily met by advances of money from the +Treasury to the peasant proprietors, these advances to be repaid, with +interest, as in the case of Lady Burdett Coutts, and the advances made +by her to the fishermen now under the direction of Father Davis at +Baltimore.</p> + +<p>I was struck by the resemblance of these views to the Irish policy +sketched for me by my Nationalist fellow-traveller of the other night +from London. “The evil that men do lives after them”—and when one +remembers how only a hundred years ago, and just after the establishment +of American Independence ought to have taught England a lesson, the +Irish House of Commons had to deal with the persistent determination of +the English manufacturers to fight the bogey of Irish competition by +protective duties in England against imports from Ireland, it is not +surprising that Irishmen who allow sentiment to get the upper hand of +sense should now think of playing a return game. England <a name="page70" id="page70"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 70] +</span>went in fear +then not only of Irish beasts and Irish butter, but of Irish woollens, +Irish cottons, Irish leather, Irish glass. Nay, absurd as it may now +seem, English ironmasters no longer ago than in 1785 testified before a +Parliamentary Committee that unless a duty was clapped on Irish +manufactures of iron, the Irish ironmasters had such advantages through +cheaper labour and through the discrimination in their favour under the +then existing relations with the new Republic of the United States that +they would “ruin the ironmasters of England.”</p> + +<p>In Ireland, as in America, the benign spirit of Free Trade is thwarted +and intercepted at every turn by the abominable ghost of British +Protection. What a blessing it would have been if the meddlesome +palaverers of the Cobden Club, American as well as English, could ever +have been made to understand the essentially insular character of +Protection and the essentially continental character of Free Trade!</p> + +<p>It should never be forgotten, and it is almost never remembered, that +when the Treaty of Versailles was making in 1783 the American +Commissioners offered complete free trade between the United States and +all parts of the British Dominions <a name="page71" id="page71"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 71] +</span>save the territories of the East +India Company. The British Commissioner, David Hartley, saw the value of +this proposition, and submitted it at London. But King George III. would +not entertain it.</p> + +<p>When I rose to leave him Father Keller courteously insisted on showing +me the “lions” of Youghal. A most accomplished cicerone he proved to be. +As we left his house we met in the street two or three of the “evicted” +tenants, whom he introduced to me. One of these, Mr. Loughlin, was the +holder of farms representing a rental of £94. A stalwart, hearty, +rotund, and rubicund farmer he was, and in reply to my query how long +the holdings he had lost had been in his family, he answered, “not far +from two hundred years.” Certainly some one must have blundered as badly +as at Balaklava to make it necessary for a tenant with such a past +behind him to go out of his holdings on arrears of a twelvemonth. Father +Keller gave me, as we left Mr. Loughlin and his friend, a leaflet in +which he has printed the story of “the struggle for life on the Ponsonby +estate,” as he understands it.</p> + +<p>A minute’s walk brought us to Sir Walter Raleigh’s house, now the +property of Sir John Pope Hennessey. <a name="page72" id="page72"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 72] +</span>It was probably built by Sir Walter +while he lived here in 1588-89, during the time of the great Armada; for +it is a typical Elizabethan house, quaintly gabled, with charming Tudor +windows, and delightfully wainscoted with richly carved black oak. A +chimney-piece in the library where Sir John’s aged mother received us +most kindly and hospitably is a marvel of Elizabethan woodwork. The +shelves are filled with a quaint and miscellaneous collection of old and +rare books. I opened at random one fine old quarto, and found it to +contain, among other curious tracts, models of typography, a Latin +critical disquisition by Raphael Regini on the first edition of +Plutarch’s Life of Cicero, “<i>nuper inventâ diu desideraiâ </i>”—a +disquisition quite aglow with the cinquecento delight in discovery and +adventure. In the grounds of this charming house stand four very fine +Irish yews forming a little hollow square, within which, according to a +local legend, Sir Walter sat enjoying the first pipe of tobacco ever +lighted in Ireland, when his terrified serving-maid espying the smoke +that curled about her master’s head hastily ran up and emptied a pail of +water over him. In the garden here, too, we are told, was first planted +the esculent which better deserves to be called the <a name="page73" id="page73"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 73] +</span>Curse of Ireland +than does the Nine of Diamonds to be known as the Curse of Scotland. The +Irish yew must have been indigenous here, for the name of Youghal, +Father Keller tells me, in Irish signifies “the wood of yew-trees.” A +subterranean passage is said to lead from Sir Walter’s dining-room into +the church, but we preferred the light of day.</p> + +<p>The precincts of the church adjoin the grounds and garden, and with +these make up a most fascinating poem in architecture. The churches of +St. Mary of Youghal and St. Nicholas of Galway have always been cited to +me as the two most interesting churches in Ireland. Certainly this +church of St. Mary, as now restored, is worth a journey to see. Its +massive tower, with walls eight feet thick, its battlemented chancel, +the pointed arches of its nave and aisles, a curious and, so far as I +know, unique arch in the north transept, drawn at an obtuse angle and +demarcating a quaint little side-chapel, and the interesting monuments +it contains, all were pointed out to me with as much zest and +intelligent delight by Father Keller as if the edifice were still +dedicated to the faith which originally called it into existence. It +contains a fine Jacobean tomb of Richard, the “great Earl of Cork,” who +died here in <a name="page74" id="page74"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 74] +</span>September 1643. On this monument, which is in admirable +condition, the effigy of the earl appears between those of his two +wives, while below them kneel his five sons and seven daughters, their +names and those of their partners in marriage inscribed upon the marble. +It was of this earl that Oliver said: “Had there been an Earl of Cork in +every province, there had been no rebellion in Ireland.” Several Earls +of Desmond are also buried here, including the founder of the church, +and under a monumental effigy in one of the transepts lies the wonderful +old Countess of Desmond, who having danced in her youth with Richard +III. lived through the Tudor dynasty “to the age of a hundred and ten,” +and, as the old distich tells us, “died by a fall from a cherry-tree +then.”</p> + +<p>In the churchyard is a hillock, bare of grass, about a tomb. There lies +buried, according to tradition, a public functionary who attested a +statement by exclaiming, “If I speak falsely, may grass never grow on my +grave.” One of his descendants is doubtless now an M.P. Mr. Cameron had +kindly written from Cork to the officer in charge of the constabulary +here asking him to get me a good car for Lismore. So Father Keller very +kindly walked with <a name="page75" id="page75"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 75] +</span>me through the town to the “Devonshire Arms,” a very +neat and considerable hotel, in quest of him. On the way he pointed out +to me what remains of a house which is supposed to have served as the +headquarters of Cromwell while he was here, and a small chapel also in +which the Protector worshipped after his sort. Off the main street is a +lane called Windmill Lane, where probably stood the windmill from which +in 1580 a Franciscan friar, Father David O’Neilan, was hung by the feet +and shot to death by the soldiers of Elizabeth because he refused to +acknowledge the spiritual supremacy of the Queen. He had been dragged +through the main street at the tail of a horse to the place of +execution. His name is one of many names of confessors of that time +about to be submitted at Rome for canonisation. We could not find the +officer I sought at the hotel, but Father Keller took me to a livery-man +in the main street, who very promptly got out a car with “his best +horse,” and a jarvey who would “surely take me over to Lismore inside of +two hours and a half.” He was as good as his master’s word, and a +delightful drive it was, following the course of Spenser’s river, the +Awniduffe, “which by the Englishman is called Blackwater.” <a name="page76" id="page76"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 76] +</span>Nobody now +calls it anything else. The view of Youghal Harbour, as we made a great +circuit by the bridge on leaving the town, was exceedingly fine. Lying +as it does within easy reach of Cork, this might be made a very pleasant +summer halting-place for Americans landing at Queenstown, who now go +further and probably fare worse. One Western wanderer, with his family, +Father Keller told me, did last year establish himself here, a Catholic +from Boston, to whom a son was born, and who begged the Father to give +the lad a local name in baptism, “the oldest he could think of.”</p> + +<p>I should have thought St. Declan would have been “old” enough, or St. +Nessan of “Ireland’s Eye,” or Saint Cartagh, who made Lismore a holy +city, “into the half of which no woman durst enter,” sufficiently +“local,” but Father Keller found in the Calendar a more satisfactory +saint still in St. Goran or “Curran,” known also as St. Mochicaroen <i>de +Nona</i>, from a change he made in the recitation of that part of the Holy +Office.</p> + +<p>The drive from Youghal to Lismore along the Blackwater, begins, +continues, and ends in beauty. In the summer a steamer makes the trip by +the river, and it must be as charming in its way <a name="page77" id="page77"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 77] +</span>as the ascent of the +Dart from Dartmouth to Totness, or of the Eance from Dinard to St. +Suliac. My jarvey was rather a taciturn fellow, but by no means +insensible to the charms of his native region. About the Ponsonby estate +and its troubles he said very little, but that little was not entirely +in keeping with what I had heard at Youghal. “It was an old place, and +there was no grand house on it. But the landlord was a kind-man.” +“Father Keller was a good man too. It was a great pity the people +couldn’t be on their farms; and there was land that was taken on the +hills. It was a great pity. The people came from all parts to see the +Blackwater and Lismore; and there was money going.” “Yes, he would be +glad to see it all quiet again. Ah yes! that was a most beautiful place +there just running out into the Blackwater. It was a gentleman owned it; +he lived there a good deal, and he fished. Ah! there’s no such river in +the whole world for salmon as the Blackwater; indeed, there is not! +Everything was better when he was a lad. There was more money going, and +less talking. Father Keller was a very good man; but he was a new man, +and came to Youghal from Queenstown.”</p> + +<p><a name="page78" id="page78"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 78] +</span>We passed on our way the ruins of Dromaneen Castle, the birthplace of +the lively old Countess of Desmond, who lies buried at Youghal. Here, +too, according to a local tradition, she met her death, having climbed +too high into a famous cherry-tree at Affane, near Dromaneen, planted +there by Sir Walter Raleigh, who first introduced this fruit, as well as +the tobacco plant and the potato, into Ireland. At Cappoquin, which +stands beautifully on the river, I should have been glad to halt for the +night, in order to visit the Trappist Monastery there, an offshoot of La +Meilleraye, planted, I think, by some monks from Santa Susanna, of +Lulworth, after Charles X. took refuge in the secluded and beautiful +home of the Welds. The schools of this monastery have been a benediction +to all this part of Ireland for more than half a century.</p> + +<p>Lismore has nothing now to show of its ancient importance save its +castle and its cathedral, both of them absolutely modern! A hundred +years ago the castle was simply a ruin overhanging the river. It then +belonged to the fifth Duke of Devonshire, who had inherited it from his +mother, the only child and heiress of the friend of Pope, Richard, +fourth Earl of Cork, and third Earl of Burlington. <a name="page79" id="page79"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 79] +</span>It had come into the +hands of the Boyles by purchase from Sir Walter Ealeigh, to whom +Elizabeth had granted it, with all its appendages and appurtenances. The +fifth Duke of Devonshire, who was the husband of Coleridge’s “lady +nursed in pomp and pleasure,” did little or nothing, I believe, to +restore the vanished glories of Lismore; and the castle, as it now +exists, is the creation of his son, the artistic bachelor Duke, to whom +England owes the Crystal Palace and all the other outcomes of Sir Joseph +Paxton’s industry and enterprise. His kinsman and successor, the present +Duke, used to visit Lismore regularly down to the time of the atrocious +murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish, and many of the beautiful walks and +groves which make the place lovely are due, I believe, to his taste and +his appreciation of the natural charms of Lismore. I dismissed my car at +the “Devonshire Arms,” an admirable little hotel near the river, and +having ordered my dinner there, walked down to the castle, almost within +the grounds of which the hotel stands. It is impossible to imagine a +more picturesque site for a great inland mansion. The views up and down +the Blackwater from the drawing-room windows are simply the perfection +of <a name="page80" id="page80"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 80] +</span>river landscape. The grounds are beautifully laid out, one secluded +garden-walk, in particular, taking you back to the inimitable Italian +garden-walks of the seventeenth century. In the vestibule is the sword +of state of the Corporation of Youghal, a carved wooden cradle for which +still stands in the church at that place, and over the great gateway are +the arms of the great Earl of Cork, but these are almost the only +outward and visible signs of the historic past about the castle. Seen +from the graceful stone bridge which spans the river, its grey towers +and turrets quite excuse the youthful enthusiasm with which the Duke of +Connaught, who made a visit here when he was Prince Arthur, is said to +have written to his mother, that Lismore was “a beautiful place, very +like Windsor Castle, only much finer.”</p> + +<p>Lismore Cathedral was almost entirely rebuilt by the second Earl of Cork +three or four years after the Restoration, and has a handsome marble +spire, but there is little in it to recall the Catholic times in which +Lismore was a city of churches and a centre of Irish devotion.</p> + +<p>The hostess of the “Devonshire Arms” gave me some excellent salmon, +fresh from the river, and a <a name="page81" id="page81"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 81] +</span>very good dinner. She bewailed the evil days +on which she has fallen, and the loss to Lismore of all that the Castle +used to mean to the people. Lady Edward Cavendish had spent a short time +here some little time ago, she said, and the people were delighted to +have her come there. “It would be a great thing for the country if all +the uproar and quarrelling could be put an end to. It did nobody any +good, least of all the poor people.”</p> + +<p>From Lismore I came back by the railway through Fermoy.</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page82" id="page82"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 82] +</span>CHAPTER IX.</h2> + + +<p class="diay"><span class="diary">PORTUMNA, GALWAY, <i>Feb. 28.</i>—</span>I left Cork by an early train to-day, and +passing through the counties of Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Queen’s, and +King’s, reached this place after dark on a car from Parsonstown. The day +was delightfully cool and bright. I had the carriage to myself almost +all the way, and gave up all the time I could snatch from the constantly +varying and often very beautiful scenery to reading a curious pamphlet +which I picked up in Dublin entitled <i>Pour I’Irlande.</i> It purports to +have been written by a “Canadian priest” living at Lurgan in Ireland, +and to be a reply to M. de Mandat Grancey’s volume, <i>Chez Paddy.</i> It is +adorned with a frontispiece representing a monster of the Cerberus type +on a monument, with three heads and three collars labelled respectively +“Flattery,” “Famine,” and “Coercion.” On the pedestal is the +inscription—“1800 to 1887. Erected by the grateful Irish to the English +<a name="page83" id="page83"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 83] +</span>Government.” The text is in keeping with the frontispiece. In a passage +devoted to the “atrocious evictions” of Glenbehy in 1887, the agent of +the property is represented as “setting fire with petroleum” to the +houses of two helpless men, and turning out “eighteen human beings into +the highway in the depth of winter.” Not a word is said of the agent’s +flat denial of these charges, nor a word of the advice given to the +agent by Sir Redvers Buller that the mortgagee ought to level the +cottages occupied by trespassers, nor a word about Father Quilter’s +letter to Colonel Turner, branding his flock as “poor slaves” of the +League, and turning them over to “Mr. Roe or any other agent” to do as +he liked with them, since they could not, or would not, keep their +plighted faith given through their own priest.</p> + +<p>This sort of ostrich fury is common enough among the regular drumbeaters +of the Irish agitation. But it is not creditable to a “Canadian priest.” +Still less creditable is his direct arraignment of M. de Mandat +Grancey’s good faith and veracity upon the strength of what he describes +as M. de Mandat Grancey’s amplification and distortion of a story told +by himself. This was a tale of a <a name="page84" id="page84"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 84] +</span>priest called out to confess one of his +parishioners. The penitent accused himself of killing one man, and +trying to kill several others. The priest, as the dreadful tale went on, +made a tally on his sleeve, with chalk, of the crimes recited. “Good +heavens! my son,” he cried at last, “what had all these men done to you +that you tried to send them all into eternity? Who were they?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, Father, they were all bailiffs or tax-collectors!”</p> + +<p>“You idiot!” exclaimed the confessor, angrily rubbing at his sleeve, +“why didn’t ye tell me that before instead of letting me spoil my best +cassock?”</p> + +<p>As I happened to have the book of M. de Mandat Grancey in my +despatch-box, I compared it with the attack made upon it. The results +were edifying. In the first place, M. de Mandat Grancey does not +indicate the Canadian priest as his authority. He says that he heard the +story, apparently at a dinner-table in France, from a <i>curé Irlandais</i>, +who was endeavouring to impress upon his hearers “the sympathy of the +clergy with the Land League.” The “Canadian priest” now comes forward +and makes it a count in his indictment against M. de Mandat Grancey that +he is described as an “Irish <a name="page85" id="page85"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 85] +</span>curate,” when he is in fact neither an +Irishman nor a curate. What was more natural than that an ecclesiastic, +claiming to live in Ireland, and telling stories in France about the +sympathy of the Irish clergy with the Land League, should be taken by +one of his auditors to be an Irish <i>curé</i>, particularly as the French +<i>curé</i> is, I believe, the equivalent of the Irish “parish priest”?</p> + +<p>In the next place, the “Canadian priest” declares that the story “is as +old as the Round Towers of Ireland,” and that M. de Mandat Grancey +represents him as making himself the hero of the tale. As a matter of +fact, M. de Mandat Grancey does nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he +expressly says that the <i>curé Irlandais</i>, who told the story, gave it to +his hearers as having occurred not to himself at all, but “to one of his +colleagues.” Furthermore he is at the pains to add (<i>Chez Paddy</i>, p. <a href="#page43">43</a>) +that the story, which was not to the taste of some of the French +ecclesiastics who heard it, was related “as a simple pleasantry.” +“But,” he adds, and this I suspect is the sting which has so exasperated +the “Canadian priest,” “he gave us to understand at the same time that +this pleasantry struck the keynote of the state of mind of many Irish +priests, and, he <a name="page86" id="page86"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 86] +</span>said, that he was himself the President of the League +in his district.”</p> + +<p>In connection with Colonel Turner’s statements as to the conduct of +Father White at Milltown Malbay, and with the accounts given me of the +conduct of Father Sheehan at Lixnaw, this side-light upon the relations +of a certain class of the Irish clergy with the most violent henchmen of +the League, is certainly noteworthy. I happen to have had some +correspondence with friends of mine in Paris, who are friends also of M. +de Mandat Grarncey, about his visit to Ireland before he made it, and I +am quite certain that he went there, to put the case mildly, with no +prejudices in favour of the English Government or against the +Nationalists. Perhaps the extreme bitterness shown in the pamphlet of +the “Canadian priest” may have been born of his disgust at finding that +the sympathy of French Catholics with Catholic Ireland draws the line at +priests who regard the assassination of “bailiffs and tax-collectors” as +a pardonable, if not positively amusing, excess of patriotic zeal.</p> + +<p>It was late when I reached Parsonstown, known of old in Irish story as +Birr, from St. Brendan’s Abbey of Biorra, and now a clean prosperous +place, <a name="page87" id="page87"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 87] +</span>carefully looked after by the chief landlord of the region, the +Earl of Rosse, who, while he inherits the astronomical tastes and the +mathematical ability of his father, is not so absorbed in star-gazing as +to be indifferent to his terrestrial duties and obligations. I have +heard nothing but good of him, and of his management of his estates, +from men of the most diverse political views. But I think it more +important to get a look at the Clanricarde property, about which I have +heard little but evil from anybody. The strongest point I have heard +made in favour of the owner is, that he is habitually described by that +dumb organ of a down-trodden people, <i>United Ireland</i>, as “the most vile +Clanricarde.”</p> + +<p>I found a good car at the railway station, and set off at once for +Portumna. Parsonstown was called by Sir William Petty, in his <i>Survey of +Ireland</i>, the <i>umbilicus Hiberniæ</i>. It is the centre of Ireland, as a +point near Newnham Paddox is of England, and the famous or infamous “Bog +of Allan” stretches hence to Athlone. Our way fortunately took us +westward. A light railway was laid down some years ago from Parsonstown +to Portumna, but it did not pay, and it has now been abandoned.</p> + +<p>“What has become of the road?” I asked my jarvey.</p> + +<p><a name="page88" id="page88"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 88] +</span>“Oh! they just take up the rails when they like, the people do.”</p> + +<p>“And what do they do with them?”</p> + +<p>“Is it what they do with them? Oh; they make fences of them for the +beasts.”</p> + +<p>He was a dry, shrewd old fellow, not very amiably disposed, I was sorry +to find, towards my own country.</p> + +<p>“Ah! it’s America, sorr, that’s been the ruin of us entirely.”</p> + +<p>“Pray, how is that?”</p> + +<p>“It’s the storms they send; and then the grain; and now they tell me +it’s the American beasts that’s spoiling the market altogether for +Ireland.”</p> + +<p>“Is that what your member tells you?”</p> + +<p>“The member, sorr? which member?”</p> + +<p>“The member of Parliament for your district, I mean. What is his name?”</p> + +<p>“His name? Well, I’m not sure; and I don’t know that I know the man at +all. But I believe his name is Mulloy.”</p> + +<p>“Does he live in Portumna?”</p> + +<p>“Oh no, not at all. I don’t know at all where he lives, but I believe +it’s in Tullamore. But what would he know about America? Sure, any one +can <a name="page89" id="page89"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 89] +</span>see it’s the storms and the grain that is the death of us in +Ireland.”</p> + +<p>“But I thought it was the landlords and the rents?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, that’s in Woodford and Loughrea; not here at all. There’ll be no +good till we get a war.”</p> + +<p>“Get a war? with whom? What do you want a war for?”</p> + +<p>“Ah! it was the good time when we had the Crimean war—with the wheat +all about Portumna. I’ll show you the great store there was built. It’s +no use now. But we’ll have a war. My son, he’s a soldier now. He went +out to America. But he didn’t like it.”</p> + +<p>“Why not?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“Oh, he didn’t like it. He could get no work, but to be a porter, and it +was too hard. So he came back in three months’ time, and then he ’listed +for a soldier. He’s over in England now. He likes it very well. He’s +getting very good pay. They pay the soldiers well. There’s a troop of +Hussars here now. They bring a power of money to the place.”</p> + +<p>“What do they do with the wheat lands now?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, they’re for sheep; they do very well. Were you ever in Australia, +sorr?” pointing to a <a name="page90" id="page90"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 90] +</span>place we were passing. “There was a man came here +from Australia with a pot of money, and he bought that place; but he +thought he was a bigger man than he was, and now he’s found himself out. +I think he would have done as well to stay in Australia where he was.”</p> + +<p>In quite a different vein he spoke of the landlord of another large +seat, and of the way in which the people, some of them, had +misbehaved—breaking open the graves of the family on the place, “and +tossing the coffins and the bones about, and all for what?”</p> + +<p>The view as we crossed the long and very fine bridge over the Shannon +after dusk was very striking. It was not too dark to make out the course +of the broad gleaming river, and the lights of the town made it seem +larger, I daresay, than it really is. As we drove up the main street I +told my jarvey to take me to the Castle.</p> + +<p>“To the Castle, is it?” he replied, looking around at me with an +astonished air.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” I said, “I am going to see Mr. Tener, the agent, who lives there, +doesn’t he?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, the new agent? Oh yes; I believe he’s a very good man.”</p> + +<p>“<a name="page91" id="page91"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 91] +</span>You don’t expect to be ‘boycotted’ for going to the Castle, do you?”</p> + +<p>“And why should I be? But I haven’t been inside of the Castle gates for +twenty years. And—here they are!” he cried out suddenly, pulling up his +horse just in time to avoid driving him up against a pair of iron gates +inhospitably closed. It was by this time pitch dark. Not a light could +we see within the enclosure. But presently a couple of shadowy forms +appeared behind the iron gates; the iron gates creaked on their hinges, +a masculine voice bade us drive in, and a policeman with a lantern +advanced from a thicket of trees. All this had a fine martial and +adventurous aspect, and my jarvey seemed to enjoy it as much as I.</p> + +<p>We got directions from the friendly policeman as to the roads and the +landmarks, and after once nearly running into a clump of trees found +ourselves at last in an open courtyard, where men appeared and took +charge of the car, the horse, and my luggage. We were in a quadrangle of +the out-buildings attached to the old residence of the Clanricardes, +which had escaped the fire of 1826. The late Marquis for a long time +hesitated whether to reconstruct the castle on the old site (the walls +are <a name="page92" id="page92"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 92] +</span>still standing), or to build an entirely new house on another site. +He finally chose the latter alternative, chiefly, I am told, under the +advice of his oldest son, the late Lord Dunkellin, one of the most +charming and deservedly popular men of his time. He was a great friend +and admirer of Father Burke, whom he used to claim as a Galway cousin, +and with whom I met him in Rome not long before his death in the summer +of 1867. His brother, the present Marquis, I have never met, but Mr. +Tener, his present agent here, who passed some time in America several +years ago, learning from him that I wished to see this place, very +courteously wrote to me asking me to make his house my headquarters. I +found my way through queer passages to a cheery little hall where my +host met me, and taking me into a pleasant little parlour, enlivened by +flowers, and a merrily blazing fire, presented me to Mrs. Tener.</p> + +<p>Mr. Tener is an Ulster man from the County Cavan. He went with his wife +on their bridal trip to America, and what he there saw of the peremptory +fashion in which the authorities deal with conspiracies to resist the +law seems not unnaturally to have made him a little impatient of the +dilatory, not to say dawdling, processes of the law in his <a name="page93" id="page93"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 93] +</span>own country. +He gave me a very interesting account after dinner this evening of the +situation in which he found affairs on this property, an account very +different from those which I have seen in print. He is himself the owner +of a small landed property in Cavan, and he has had a good deal of +experience as an agent for other properties. “I have a very simple +rule,” he said to me, “in dealing with Irish tenants, and that is +neither to do an injustice nor to submit to one.” It was only, he said, +after convincing himself that the Clanricarde tenants had no legitimate +ground of complaint against the management of the estate, not removable +upon a fair and candid discussion of all the issues involved between +them and himself, that he consented to take charge of the property. That +to do this was to run a certain personal risk, in the present state of +the country, he was quite aware.</p> + +<p>But he takes this part of the contract very coolly, telling me that the +only real danger, he thinks, is incurred when he makes a journey of +which he has to send a notice by telegraph—a remark which recalled to +me the curious advice given me in Dublin to seal my letters, as a +protection against “the Nationalist clerks in the post-offices.” The +park of Portumua Castle, which is very extensive, is patrolled <a name="page94" id="page94"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 94] +</span>by armed +policemen, and whenever Mr. Tener drives out he is followed by a police +car carrying two armed men.</p> + +<p>“Against whom are all these precautions necessary?” I asked. “Against +the evicted tenants, or against the local agents of the League?”</p> + +<p>“Not at all against the tenants,” he replied, “as you can satisfy +yourself by talking with them. The trouble comes not from the tenants at +all, nor from the people here at Portumna, but from mischievous and +dangerous persons at Loughrea and Woodford. Woodford, mind you, not +being Lord Clanricarde’s place at all, though all the country has been +roused about the cruel Clanricarde and his wicked Woodford evictions. +Woodford was simply the headquarters of the agitation against Lord +Clanricarde and my predecessor, Mr. Joyce, and it has got the name of +the ‘cockpit of Ireland,’ because it was there that Mr. Dillon, in +October 1886, opened the ‘war against the landlords’ with the ‘Plan of +Campaign.’ It is an odd circumstance, by the way, worth noting, that +when these apostles of Irish agitation went to Lord Clanricarde’s +property nearer the city of Gralway, and tried to stir the people up, +they failed dismally, because the people there could understand no +English, and the Irish agitators could <a name="page95" id="page95"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 95] +</span>speak no Irish! Nobody has ever +had the face to pretend that the Clanricarde estates were ‘rack-rented.’ +There have been many personal attacks made upon Mr. Joyce and upon Lord +Clanricarde, and Mr. Joyce has brought that well-known action against +the Marquis for libel, and all this answers with the general public as +an argument to show that the tenants on the Clanricarde property must +have had great grievances, and must have been cruelly ground down and +unable to pay their way. I will introduce you, if you will allow me, to +the Catholic Bishop here, and to the resident Protestant clergyman, and +to the manager of the bank, and they can help you to form your own +judgment as to the state of the tenants. You will find that whatever +quarrels they may have had with their landlord or his agent, they are +now, and always have been, quite able to pay their rents, and I need not +tell you that it is no longer in the power of a landlord or an agent to +say what these rents shall be.”<a id="footnotetag10" + name="footnotetag10"></a><a href="#footnote10"><sup>10</sup></a></p> + +<p>“Mr. Dillon in that speech of his at Woodford <a name="page96" id="page96"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 96] +</span>(I have it here as +published in <i>United Ireland</i>), you will see, openly advised, or rather +ordered, the tenants here to club their rents, or, in plain English, the +money due to their landlord, with the deliberate intent to confiscate to +their own use, or, in their own jargon, ‘grab,’ the money of any one of +their number who, after going into this dishonest combination, might +find it working badly and wish to get out of it. Here is his own +language:”—</p> + +<p>I took the speech as reported in the <i>United Ireland</i> of October 23rd, +1886, and therein found Mr. Dillon, M.P., using these words:—“If you +mean to fight really, you must put the money aside for two +reasons—first of all because you want the means to support the men who +are hit first; and, secondly, because you want to prohibit traitors +going behind your back. There is no way to deal with a traitor except to +get his money under lock and key, and if you find that he pays his rent, +and betrays the organisation, what will you do with him? I will tell you +what to do with him. <i>Close upon his money, and use it for the +organisation</i>. I have always opposed outrages. <i>This is a legal plan, +and it is ten times more effective</i>.”</p> + +<p>Not a word here as to the morality of the proceeding thus recommended; +but almost in the <a name="page97" id="page97"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 97] +</span>same breath in which he bade his ignorant hearers +regard his plan as “legal,” Mr. Dillon said to them, “<i>this must be done +privately, and you must not inform the public where the money is +placed</i>!”</p> + +<p>Why not, if the plan was “legal”? Mr. Dillon, I believe, is not a +lawyer, but he can hardly have deluded himself into thinking his plan of +campaign “legal” in the face of the particular pains taken by his +leader, Mr. Parnell, to disclaim all participation in any such plans. A +year before Mr. Dillon made this curious speech, Mr. Parnell, I +remember, on the 11th of October 1885, speaking at Kildare, declared +that he had “in no case during the last few years advised any +combination among tenants against even rack-rents,” and insisted that +any combination of the sort which might exist should be regarded as an +“isolated” combination, “confined to the tenants of individual estates, +who, of their own accord, without any incitement from us, on the +contrary, kept back by us, without any urging on our part, without any +advice on our part, but stung by necessity, and the terrible realities +of their position, may have formed such a combination among themselves +to secure such a reduction of rent as will enable them to live in their +own homes.” From this language of Mr. Parnell in October 1885 to <a name="page98" id="page98"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 98] +</span>Mr. +Dillon’s speech in October 1886, urging and advising the tenants to +organise, exact contributions from every member of the organisation, and +put these contributions under the control of third parties determined to +confiscate the money subscribed by any member who might not find the +organisation working to his advantage, is a rather long step! It covers +all the distance between a cunning defensive evasion of the law, and an +open aggressive violation of the law—not of the land only, but of +common honesty. One of two things is clear: either these combinations +are voluntary and “isolated,” and intended, as Mr. Parnell asserts, to +secure such a reduction of rents as will enable the tenants, and each of +them, to live peacefully and comfortably at home, and in that case any +member of the combination who finds that he can attain his object better +by leaving it has an absolute right to do this, and to demand the return +of his money; or they are part of a system imposed upon the tenants by a +moral coercion inconsistent with the most elementary ideas of private +right and personal freedom. This makes the importance of Mr. Dillon’s +speech, that by his denunciation of any member who wishes to withdraw +from this “voluntary” combination as a “traitor,” and by his order to +“close upon the <a name="page99" id="page99"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 99] +</span>money” of any such member, “and use it for the +organisation,” he brands the “organisation” as a subterranean despotism +of a very cheap and nasty kind. The Government which tolerates the +creation of such a Houndsditch tyranny as this within its dominions +richly deserves to be overthrown. As for the people who submit +themselves to it, I do not wonder that in his more lucid moments a +Catholic priest like Father Quilter feels himself moved to denounce them +as “poor slaves.” Of course with a benevolent neutral like myself, the +question always recurs, Who trained them to submit to this sort of +thing? But I really am at a loss to see why a parcel of conspirators +should be encouraged in the nineteenth century to bully Irish farmers +out of their manhood and their money, because in the seventeenth century +it pleased the stupid rulers of England, as the great Duke of Ormond +indignantly said, to “put so general a discountenance upon the +improvement of Ireland, as if it were resolved that to keep it low is to +keep it safe.”</p> + +<p>On going back to the little drawing-room after dinner we found Mrs. +Tener among her flowers, busy with some literary work. It is not a gay +life here, she admits, her nearest visiting acquaintance living <a name="page100" id="page100"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 100] +</span>some +seven or eight miles away—but she takes long walks with a couple of +stalwart dogs in her company, and has little fear of being molested. +“The tenants are in more danger,” she thinks, “than the landlords or the +agents”—nor do I see any reason to doubt this, remembering the Connells +whom I saw at Edenvale, and the story of the “boycotted” Fitzmaurice +brutally murdered in the presence of his daughter at Lixnaw on the 31st +of January, as if by way of welcome to Lord Ripon and Mr. Morley on +their arrival at Dublin.</p> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">PORTUMNA, <i>Feb. 29th.</i>—</span>Early this morning two of the “evicted” tenants, +and an ex-bailiff of the property here, came by appointment to discuss +the situation with Mr. Tener. He asked me to attend the conference, and +upon learning that I was an American, they expressed their perfect +willingness that I should do so. The tenants were quiet, sturdy, +intelligent-looking men. I asked one of them if he objected to telling +me whether he thought the rent he had refused to pay excessive, or +whether he was simply unable to pay it.</p> + +<p>“I had the money, sir, to pay the rent,” he <a name="page101" id="page101"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 101] +</span>replied, “and I wanted to +pay the rent—only I wouldn’t be let.”</p> + +<p>“Who wouldn’t let you?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“The people that were in with the League.”</p> + +<p>“Was your holding worth anything to you?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“It was indeed. Two or three years ago I could have sold my right for a +matter of three hundred pounds.”</p> + +<p>“Yes!” interrupted the other tenant, “and a bit before that for six +hundred pounds.”</p> + +<p>“Is it not worth three hundred pounds to you now?”</p> + +<p>“No,” said Mr. Tener, “for he has lost it by refusing the settlement I +offered to make, and driving us into proceedings against him, and +allowing his six months’ equity of redemption to lapse.”</p> + +<p>“And sure, if we had it, no one would be let to buy it now, sir,” said +the tenant. “But it’s we that hope Mr. Tener here will let us come back +on the holdings—that is, if we’d be protected coming back.”</p> + +<p>“Now, do you see,” said Mr. Tener, “what it is you ask me to do? You ask +me to make you a present outright of the property you chose foolishly to +throw away, and to do this after you have put <a name="page102" id="page102"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 102] +</span>the estate to endless +trouble and expense; don’t you think that is asking me to do a good +deal?”</p> + +<p>The tenants looked at one another, at Mr. Tener, and at me, and the +ex-bailiff smiled.</p> + +<p>“You must see this,” said Mr. Tener, “but I am perfectly willing now to +say to you, in the presence of this gentleman, that in spite of all, I +am quite willing to do what you ask, and to let you come back into the +titles you have forfeited, for I would rather have you back on the +property than strangers—”</p> + +<p>“And, indeed, we’re sure you would.”</p> + +<p>“But understand, you must pay down a year’s rent and the costs you have +put us to.”</p> + +<p>“Ah! sure you wouldn’t have us to pay the costs?”</p> + +<p>“But indeed I will,” responded Mr. Tener; “you mustn’t for a moment +suppose I will have any question about that. You brought all this +trouble on yourselves, and on us; and while I am ready and willing to +deal more than fairly, to deal liberally with you about the arrears—and +to give you time—the costs you must pay.”</p> + +<p>“And what would they be, the costs?” queried one of the tenants +anxiously.</p> + +<p>“Oh, that I can’t tell you, for I don’t know,” said <a name="page103" id="page103"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 103] +</span>Mr. Tener, “but they +shall not be anything beyond the strict necessary costs.”</p> + +<p>“And if we come back would we be protected?”</p> + +<p>“Of course you will have protection. But why do you want protection? +Here you are, a couple of strong grown men, with men-folk of your +families. See here! why don’t you go to such an one, and such an one,” +naming other tenants; “you know them well. Go to them quietly and sound +them to see if they will come back on the same terms with you; form a +combination to be honest and to stand by your rights, and defy and break +up the other dishonest combination you go in fear of! Is it not a shame +for men like you to lie down and let those fellows walk over you, and +drive you out of your livelihood and your homes?”</p> + +<p>The tenants looked at each other, and at the rest of us. “I think,” said +one of them at last, “I think —— and ——,” naming two men, “would come +with us. Of course,” turning to Mr. Tener, “you wouldn’t discover on us, +sir.”</p> + +<p>“Discover on you! Certainly not,” said Mr. Tener. “But why don’t you +make up your minds to be men, and ‘discover’ on yourselves, and defy +these fellows?”</p> + +<p><a name="page104" id="page104"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 104] +</span>“And the cattle, sir? would we get protection for the cattle? They’d be +murdered else entirely.”</p> + +<p>“Of course,” said Mr. Tener, “the police would endeavour to protect the +cattle.”</p> + +<p>Then, turning to me, he said, “That is a very reasonable question. These +scoundrels, when they are afraid to tackle the men put under their ban, +go about at night, and mutilate and torture and kill the poor beasts. I +remember a case,” he went on, “in Roscommon, where several head of +cattle mysteriously disappeared. They could be found nowhere. No trace +of them could be got. But long weeks after they vanished, some lads in a +field several miles away saw numbers of crows hovering over a particular +point. They went there, and there at the bottom of an abandoned +coal-shaft lay the shattered remains of these lost cattle. The poor +beasts had been driven blindfold over the fields and down into this pit, +where, with broken limbs, and maimed, they all miserably died of +hunger.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said one of the tenants, “and our cattle’d be driven into the +Shannon, and drownded, and washed away.”</p> + +<p>“You must understand,” interposed Mr. Tener <a name="page105" id="page105"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 105] +</span>“that when cattle are thus +maliciously destroyed the owners can recover nothing unless the remains +of the poor beasts are found and identified within three days.”</p> + +<p>The disgust which I felt and expressed at these revelations seemed to +encourage the tenants. One of them said that before the evictions came +off certain of the National Leaguers visited him, and told him he must +resist the officers. “I consulted my sister,” he said, “and she said, +‘Don’t you be such a fool as to be doing that; we’ll all be ruined +entirely by those rascals and rogues of the League.’ And I didn’t +resist. But only the other day I went to a priest in the trouble we are +in, and what do you think he said to me? He said, ‘Why didn’t you do as +you were bid? then you would be helped,’ and he would do nothing for us! +Would you think that right, sir, in your country?”</p> + +<p>“I should think in my country,” I replied, “that a priest who behaved in +that way ought to be unfrocked.”</p> + +<p>“Did you pay over all your rent into the hands of the trustees of the +League?” I asked of one of these tenants.</p> + +<p>“I paid over money to them, sir,” he replied.</p> + +<p><a name="page106" id="page106"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 106] +</span>“Yes,” I said, “but did you pay over all the amount of the rent, or how +much of it?”</p> + +<p>“Oh! I paid as much as I thought they would think I ought to pay!” he +responded, with that sly twinkle of the peasant’s eye one sees so often +in rural France.</p> + +<p>“Oh! I understand,” I said, laughing. “But if you come to terms now with +Mr. Tener here, will you get that money back again?”</p> + +<p>“Divil a penny of it!” he replied, with much emphasis.</p> + +<p>Finally they got up together to take their leave, after a long whispered +conversation together.</p> + +<p>“And if we made it half the costs?”</p> + +<p>“No!” said Mr. Tener good-naturedly but firmly; “not a penny off the +costs.”</p> + +<p>“Well, we’ll see the men, sir, just quietly, and we’ll let you know what +can be done”; and with that they wished us, most civilly, good-morning, +and went their way.</p> + +<p>We walked in the park for some time, and a wild, beautiful park it is, +not the less beautiful for being given up, as it is, very much to the +Dryads to deal with it as they list. It is as unlike a trim English park +as possible; but it contains many <a name="page107" id="page107"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 107] +</span>very fine trees, and grand open sweeps +of landscape. In a tangled copse are the ruins of an ancient Franciscan +abbey, in one corner of which lie buried together, under a monumental +mound of brickwork, the late Marquis of Clanricarde and his wife. The +walls of the Castle, burned in 1826, are still standing, and so perfect +that the building might easily enough have been restored. A keen-eyed, +wiry old household servant, still here, told us the house was burned in +the afternoon of January 6, 1826. There were three women-servants in the +house—“Anna and Mary Meehan, and Mrs. Underwood, the housekeeper”; and +they were getting the Castle ready for his Lordship’s arrival, so little +of an “absentee” was the late Lord Clanricarde, then only one year +married to the daughter of George Canning. The fires were laid on in the +upper rooms, and Mrs. Underwood went off upon an errand. When she came +back all was in flames.</p> + +<p>The deer-park is full of deer, now become quite wild. We heard them +crashing through the undergrowth on all sides. There must be capital +fishing, too, in the lake, and in the river of which it is an expansion.</p> + +<p>While they were getting the cars ready for a <a name="page108" id="page108"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 108] +</span>drive, came up another son +of the soil. This man I found had only a small interest in the battle on +the Clanricarde estates, holding his homestead of another landlord. But +he admitted he had gone in a manner into the “combination,” in that he +had paid a certain, not very large, sum, which he named, to the +trustees, “just for peace and quiet.” He considered it gone, past +recovery; and he named another man with a small holding, but doing a +considerable business in other ways, who had “paid £10 or more just not +to be bothered.” Upon this Mr. Tener told me of a shopkeeper at Loughrea +in a large way of business, a man with seven or eight thousand pounds, +who, finding his goods about to be seized after the agent had turned a +sharp strategic corner on him, and unexpectedly got into his shop, was +about to own up to his defeat, and make a fair settlement, when the +secretary of the League appeared, and requested a private talk with him. +In a quarter of an hour the tradesman reappeared looking rather sullen +and crestfallen. He said he couldn’t pay, and must let the goods be +taken. So taken they were, and duly put up under the process and sold. +He bought them in himself, paying all the costs.</p> + +<p><a name="page109" id="page109"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 109] +</span>Presently two cars appeared. We got upon one, Mr. Tener driving a +spirited nag, and taking on the seat with him a loaded carbine-rifle. +Two armed policeman followed us upon the other, keeping at such a +distance as would enable them easily to cover any one approaching from +either side of the roadway. It quite took me back to the delightful days +of 1866 in Mexico, when we used to ride out to picnics at the Rincon at +Orizaba armed to the teeth, and ready at a moment’s notice to throw the +four-in-hand mule-wagons into a hollow square, and prepare to receive +cavalry. As it seems to be perfectly well understood that the regular +price paid for shooting a designated person (they call it “knocking” him +in these parts) is the ridiculously small sum of four pounds, and that +two persons who divide this sum are always detailed by the organisers of +outrage to “knock” an objectionable individual, it is obvious that too +much care can hardly be taken by prudent people in coming and going +through such a country. Fortunately for the people most directly +concerned to avoid these unpleasantnesses a systematic leakage seems to +exist in the machinery of mischief. The places where the oaths of this +local “Mafia” are admin<a name="page110" id="page110"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 110] +</span>istered, for instance, are well known. A roadside +near a chapel is frequently selected—and this for two or three obvious +reasons. The sanctity of the spot may be supposed to impress the +neophyte; and if the police or any other undesirable people should +suddenly come upon the officiating adepts and the expectant acolyte, a +group on the roadside is not necessarily a criminal gathering—though I +do not see why, in such times, our old American college definition of a +“group” as a gathering of “three or more persons” should not be adopted +by the authorities, and held to make such a gathering liable to +dispersion by the police, as our “groups” used to be subject to +proctorial punishment. Mills are another favourite resort of the +law-breakers. Mr. Tener tells me that a large mill between this place +and Loughrea is a great centre of trouble, not wholly to the +disadvantage of the astute miller, who finds it not only brings grist to +his mill, but takes away grist from another mill belonging to a couple +of worthy ladies, and once quite prosperous. It is no uncommon thing, it +appears, for the same person to be put through the ceremony of swearing +fidelity more than once, and at more than one place, with the not +unnatural result, however, of <a name="page111" id="page111"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 111] +</span>diminishing the pressure of the oath upon +his conscience or his fears, and also of alienating his affections, as +he is expected to pay down two shillings on each occasion. Once a +member, he contributes a penny a week to the general fund. It seems also +to be an open secret who the disbursing treasurers are of this fund, +from whom the members, detailed to do the dark bidding of the +“organisation,” receive their wage. “A stout gentleman with sandy hair +and wearing glasses” was the description given to me of one such +functionary. When so much is known of the methods and the men, why is it +that so many crimes are committed with virtual impunity? For two +sufficient reasons. Witnesses cannot be got to testify, or trusted, if +they do testify, to speak the truth; and it is idle to expect juries of +the vicinage in nine cases out of ten will do their duty. Political +cowardice having made it impossible to transfer the venue in cases of +Irish crime, as to which all the authorities were agreed about these +points, from Ireland into Great Britain, it is found that even to +transfer the trial of “Moonlighters” from Clare or Kerry into Wicklow, +for example, has a most instructive effect, opening the eyes of the +people of Wicklow to a state of things <a name="page112" id="page112"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 112] +</span>in their own island, of which +happily for themselves they were previously as ignorant as the people of +Surrey or of Middlesex. This explains the indignant wish expressed to me +some time ago in a letter from a priest in another part of Ireland, that +“martial law” might be proclaimed in Clare and Kerry to “stamp out the +Moonlighters, those pests of society.” That in Clare and Kerry priests +should be found not only disposed to wink at and condone the proceedings +of these “pests of society,” but openly to co-operate with them under +the pretext of a “national” movement, is surely a thing equally +intolerable by the Church and dangerous to the cause of Irish autonomy. +This I am glad to say is strongly felt, and has been on more than one +occasion very vigorously stated by one of the most eminent and estimable +of Irish ecclesiastics, the Bishop-Coadjutor of Clonfert, upon whom I +called this morning. Dr. Healy, who is a senator of the Royal University +of Ireland, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, presides over that +part of the diocese of Clonfort which includes Portumna and Woodford. He +lives in a handsome and commodious, but simple and unpretentious house, +set in ample grounds well-planted, and commanding a wide view <a name="page113" id="page113"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 113] +</span>of a most +agreeable country. We were ushered into a well-furnished study, and the +bishop came in at once to greet us with the most cordial courtesy. He is +a frank, dignified, unaffected man, and in his becoming episcopal +purple, with the gold chain and cross, looked every inch a bishop. I was +particularly anxious to see Dr. Healy, as a type of the high-minded and +courageous ecclesiastics who, in Ireland, have resolutely refused to +subordinate their duties and their authority as ecclesiastics to the +convenience and the policy of an organisation absolutely controlled by +Mr. Parnell, who not only is not a Catholic, but who is an open ally and +associate of the bitterest enemies of the Catholic Church in France and +in England. Protestant historians affirm that Pope Innocent was one of +the financial backers of William of Orange when he set sail from Holland +to crush the Catholic faith in Great Britain and Ireland, and drive the +Catholic house of Stuart into exile. But it was reserved for the +nineteenth century to witness the strange spectacle of men, calling +themselves Irishmen and Catholics, deliberately slandering and assailing +in concord with a non-Catholic political leader the consecrated pastors +and masters of the Church in Ireland. When in <a name="page114" id="page114"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 114] +</span>order to explain what they +themselves concede to be “the absence from the popular ranks of the best +of the priesthood,” Nationalist writers find it necessary to denounce +Cardinal Cullen and Cardinal M‘Cabe as “anti-Irish ”; and to sneer at +men like Dr. Healy as “Castle Bishops,” it is impossible not to be +reminded of the three “patriotic” tailors of Tooley Street.</p> + +<p>Bishop Healy looks upon the systematic development of a substantial +peasant proprietary throughout Ireland as the economic hope of the +country, and he regards therefore the actual “campaigning” of the +self-styled “Nationalists” as essentially anti-national, inasmuch as its +methods are demoralising the people of Ireland, and destroying that +respect for law and for private rights which lies at the foundation of +civil order and of property. In his opinion, “Home Rule,” to the people +in general, means simply ownership of the land which they are to live +on, and to live by. How that ownership shall be brought about peaceably, +fairly, and without wrong or outrage to any man or class of men is a +problem of politics to be worked out by politicians, and by public men. +That men, calling themselves Catholics, should be led on to attempt <a name="page115" id="page115"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 115] +</span>to +bring this or any other object about by immoral and criminal means is +quite another matter, and a matter falling within the domain, not of the +State primarily, but of the Church.</p> + +<p>As to this, Bishop Healy, who was in Rome not very long ago, and who, +while in Rome, had more than one audience of His Holiness by command, +has no doubt whatever that the Vatican will insist upon the abandonment +and repudiation by Catholics of boycotting, and “plans of campaign,” and +all such devices of evil. Nor has the Bishop any doubt that whenever the +Holy Father speaks the priests and the people of Ireland will obey.</p> + +<p>To say this, of course, is only to say that the Bishop believes the +priests of Ireland to be honest priests, and the people of Ireland to be +good Catholics.</p> + +<p>If he is mistaken in this it will be a doleful thing, not for the +Church, but for the Irish priests, and for the Irish people. No Irishman +who witnessed the magnificent display made at Rome this year, of the +scope and power of the Catholic Church, can labour under any delusions +on that point.</p> + +<p>From the Bishop’s residence we went to call upon the Protestant rector +of Portumna, Mr. Crawford. <a name="page116" id="page116"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 116] +</span>The handsome Anglican church stands within an +angle of the park, and the parsonage is a very substantial mansion. Mr. +Crawford, the present rector, who is a man of substance, holds a fine +farm of the Clanricarde estate, at a peppercorn rent, and he is tenant +also of another holding at £118 a year, as to which he has brought the +agent into Court, with the object, as he avers, of setting an example to +the other tenants, and inducing them, like himself, to fight under the +law instead of against it. He is not, however, in arrears, and in that +respect sets a better example, I am sorry to say, than the Catholic +priest, Father Coen, who made himself so conspicuous here on the +occasion of the much bewritten Woodford evictions. The case of Father +Coen is most instructive, and most unpleasant. He occupies an excellent +house on a holding of twenty-three acres of good laud, with a garden—in +short, a handsome country residence, which was provided by the late Lord +Clanricarde, expressly for the accommodation of whoever might be the +Catholic priest in that part of his estate. For all this the rent is +fixed at the absurd and nominal sum of two guineas a year! Yet Father +Coen, who now enjoys the mansion, and has a substantial income from the +parish, is actually two <a name="page117" id="page117"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 117] +</span>years and a half in arrears with this rent! This +fact Mr. Tener mentioned to the Bishop, whose countenance naturally +darkened. “What am I to do in such a case, my lord?” asked Mr. Tener. +“Do?” said the Bishop, “do your plain duty, and proceed against him +according to law.” But suppose he were proceeded against and evicted, as +in America he certainly would be, who can doubt that he would instantly +be paraded, before the world, on both sides of the Atlantic as a +“martyr,” suffering for the holy cause of an oppressed and down-trodden +people, at the hands of a “most vile” Marquis, and of a remorse-less and +blood-thirsty agent?<a id="footnotetag11" + name="footnotetag11"></a><a href="#footnote11"><sup>11</sup></a> Mr. Crawford, a tall, fine-looking man, talked +very fully and freely about the situation here. He came to Portumna +about eight years ago; one of his reasons for accepting the position +here offered him being that he wished to take over a piece of property +near Woodford from his brother-in-law, who found he could not manage it. +As a practical farmer, and a straightforward capable man of business, he +has gradually acquired the general confidence of the tenants here. That +<a name="page118" id="page118"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 118] +</span>they are, as a rule, quite able to pay the rents which they have been +“coerced” into refusing to pay, he fully believes. He told me of cases +in which Catholic tenants of Lord Clanricarde came to him when the +agitation began about the Plan of Campaign, and begged him privately to +take the money for their rents, and hold it for them till the time +should come for a settlement.</p> + +<p>The reason for this was that they did not wish to be obliged to give +over the money into the “Trust” created by the Campaigners, and wanted +it to be safely put beyond the reach of these obliging “friends.” One +very shrewd tenant came to him and begged him to buy some beasts, in +order that he might pay his rent out of the proceeds. The man owed £15 +to the Clanricarde property. Mr. Crawford did not particularly want to +buy his beasts, but eventually agreed to do so, and gave him £50 for +them. The man went off with the money, but he never paid the rent! Mr. +Crawford discovering this called him to account, and refused to grant +him some further favour which he asked. The result is that the +“distressed tenant” now cuts Mr. Crawford when he meets him, and is the +prosperous owner of quite a small herd of cattle.</p> + +<p><a name="page119" id="page119"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 119] +</span>Mr. Crawford’s opinion of the mischief done by the methods and spirit of +the National League in this place is quite in accord with the opinions +of the Bishop-Coadjutor. Power without responsibility, which made the +Cæesars madmen, easily turns the heads of village tyrants, and there is +something positively grotesque in the excesses of this subterranean +“Home Rule.” Mr. Crawford told me of a case here, in which a tenant +farmer, whom he named, came to him in great wrath, not unmingled with +terror, to say that the League had ordered him, on pain of being +boycotted, to give up his holding to the heirs of a woman from whom, +twenty years ago, he had bought, for £100 in cash, the tenant-right of +her deceased husband! There was no question of refunding the £100. He +was merely to consider himself a “land-grabber,” and evict himself for +the benefit of those heirs who had never done a stroke of work on the +property for twenty years, and who had no shadow of a legal or moral +claim on it, except that the oldest of them was an active member of the +local League!</p> + +<p>Nor was this unique.</p> + +<p>In another case, the children of a tenant, who died forty years ago, +came forward and called upon the <a name="page120" id="page120"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 120] +</span>League to boycott an old man who had +been in possession of the holding during nearly half a century. In a +third case, a tenant-farmer, some ten years ago, had in his employ as +herd a man who fell ill and died. He put into the vacant place an +honest, capable young fellow, who still holds it, and has faithfully and +efficiently served him. Only the other day this tenant-farmer was warned +by the League to expect trouble, unless he dismissed this herd, and put +into his place the son, now grown to man’s estate, of the herd who died +ten years ago!</p> + +<p>It is amusing, if not instructive, to find the hereditary principle, +just now threatened in its application to the British Senate, cropping +out afresh as an element in the regeneration of Irish agriculture and +the land tenure of Ireland!</p> + +<p>On our way back to the Castle we called on Mr. Place, the manager of the +Portumna Branch of the Hibernian Bank, who lives in the town. He was +amusing himself, after the labour of the day in the bank, with some +amateur work as a carpenter, but received us very cordially. He said +there was no doubt that the deposits in the bank had increased +considerably since the adoption of the Plan of Campaign on the +Clanricarde property. <a name="page121" id="page121"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 121] +</span>Money was paid into the bank continually by +persons who wished the fact of their payments kept secret; and he knew +of more than one case in which tenants, whose stock had been seized by +the agent for the rents, were much delighted at the seizure, since it +had paid off their rents, and so enabled them to retain their holdings +and keep out of the grasp of the League, even though to do this they had +undergone a forced sale and been muleted in costs.</p> + +<p>It was his opinion that the tenants on the Clanricarde property, who are +not in arrears, would gladly accept a twenty-five per cent. reduction, +and do very well by accepting it. But they are constrained into a +hostile attitude by the tenants who are in arrears, some of them for +several years (as, for example, Father Coen), although I find, to my +astonishment, that in Ireland the landlord has no power to distrain for +more than a twelvemonth’s rent, no matter how far back the arrears may +run.</p> + +<p>Mr. Place seems to think it would be well to put all the creditors of +the tenants on one footing with the landlords. The shopkeepers and other +creditors, he thinks, in that event would see many things in quite a new +light.</p> + +<p><a name="page122" id="page122"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 122] +</span>What is called the new Castle of Portumna is a large and handsome +building of the Mansard type, standing on an eminence in the park, at +some distance from the original seat. The building was finished not long +before the death of his father, the late Marquis. It has never been +occupied, save by a large force of police quartered in it not very long +ago by Mr. Tener in readiness for an expedition against the Castle of +Cloondadauv, to the scene of which he promises to drive me to-morrow on +my way back to Dublin. It is thoroughly well built, and might easily be +made a most delightful residence. The views which it commands of the +Shannon are magnificent, and there are many fine trees about it.</p> + +<p>The old man who has charge of it is a typical Galway retainer of the old +school. The “boys,” he says, once tried to “boycott” him because he was +the pound-master; but he showed fight, and they let him alone. He +pointed out to me from the top of the house, in the distance, the +residences of Colonel Hickie, and of the young Lord Avonmore, who lately +succeeded on the death of his brother in the recent Egyptian expedition. +The place is now shut up, and the owners live in France.</p> + +<p><a name="page123" id="page123"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 123] +</span>We visited too the Portumna Union before driving home. The buildings of +this Union are extensive for the place, and well built, and it seems to +be well-ordered and neatly kept—thanks, in no small degree, I suspect, +to the influence of the Sisters who have charge of the hospital, but +whose benign spirit shows itself not only in the flower-garden which +they have called into being, but in many details of the administration +beyond their special control.</p> + +<p>The contrast was very striking between the atmosphere of this +unpretending refuge of the helpless and that of certain of the +“laicised” hospitals of France, which I not long ago visited, from which +the devoted nuns have been expelled to make way for hired nurses. I made +a remark to this effect to the clerk of the Union, Mr. Lavan, whom we +found in his office.</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes,” he said, “I have no doubt of that. We owe more than I can say +to the Sisters, but I don’t know how long we should have them here if +the local guardians could have their way.”</p> + +<p>In explanation of this, he went on to tell me that these local +guardians, who are elected, are hostile to the whole administration, +because of its <a name="page124" id="page124"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 124] +</span>relations with the Local Government Board at Dublin, +which controls their generous tendency to expend the money of the +ratepayers. By way of expressing their feelings, therefore, they have +been trying to cut down, not only the salary of the clerk, but that of +the Catholic chaplain of the Union; and as there is a good deal of +irreligious feeling among the agitators here, it is his impression that +they would make things disagreeable for the Sisters also were they in +any way to get the management into their own hands. That there cannot be +much real distress in this neighbourhood appears from two facts. There +are now but 130 inmates of this Union, out of a population of 12,900, +and the outlay for out-of-door relief averages between eight and ten +pounds a week.</p> + +<p>In the quiet, neat chapel two or three of the inmates were kneeling at +prayers; and others whom we saw in the kitchen and about the offices had +nothing of the “workhouse” look which is so painful in the ordinary +inmates of an English or American almshouse.</p> + +<p>“The trouble with the place,” said Mr. Lavan, “is that they like it too +well. It takes an eviction almost to get them out of it.”</p> + +<p><a name="page125" id="page125"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 125] +</span>We sat down with Mr. Lavan in his office, and had an interesting talk +with him.</p> + +<p>He is the agent of Mr. Mathews, who lives between Woodford and Portumna. +Mr. Mathews is a resident landlord, he says, who has constantly employed +and has lived on friendly terms with his tenants, numbering twenty, who +hold now under judicial rents. On these judicial rents two years ago +they were allowed a further reduction of 15 per cent. Last year they +were allowed 20 per cent. This year he offered them a reduction of 25 +per cent., which they rejected, demanding 35 per cent.</p> + +<p>This demand Mr. Lavan considers to be unreasonable in the extreme, and +he attributes it to the influence of the National Leaguers here, whose +representatives among the local guardians constantly vote away the money +of the ratepayers in “relief to evicted tenants who have ample means and +can in no respect be called destitute.” In his opinion the effect of the +Nationalist agitation here has been to upset all ideas of right and +wrong in the minds of the people where any question arises between +tenants and landlords. He told a story, confirmed by Mr. Tener, of a +bailiff, whom he named, on the <a name="page126" id="page126"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 126] +</span>Clanricarde property here, who was +compelled two years ago to resign his place in order to prevent the +“boycotting” of his mother who keeps a shop on the farm. He was +familiar, too, with the details of a story told me by one of the +Clanricarde tenants, a farmer near Loughrea who holds a farm at £90 a +year. This man was forced to subscribe to the Plan of Campaign. The +agent proceeded against him for the rent due, and he incurred costs of +£10. His sheep and crop were then seized.</p> + +<p>He begged the local leaders to “permit” him to pay his rent, as he was +able to do it <i>without drawing out the funds in their hands</i>! They +refused, and so compelled him to allow his property to be publicly sold, +and to incur further costs of £10. “His farm lies so near the town that +he did not dare to risk the vengeance of the local ruffians.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Lavan gave me the name also of another man who is now actually under +a “boycott,” because he has ventured to resist the modest demand made by +the son of a man whose tenant-right he bought, paying him £100 for it, +twenty years ago, that he shall give up his farm without being +reimbursed for his outlay made to purchase it! In other words, after +twenty years’ peaceable <a name="page127" id="page127"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 127] +</span>possession of a piece of property, bought and +paid for, this tenant-farmer is treated as a “land-grabber” by the +self-installed “Nationalist” government of Ireland, because he will not +submit to be robbed both of the money which he paid for his +tenant-right, and of his tenant-right!</p> + +<p>Obviously in such a case as this the “war against landlordism” is simply +a war against property and against private rights. Priests of the +Catholic Church who not only countenance but aid and abet such +proceedings certainly go even beyond Dr. M‘Glynn. Dr. M‘Glynn, so far as +I know, stops at the confiscation of all private property in rent by the +State for the State. But here is simply a confiscation of the property +of A for the benefit of B, such as might happen if B, being armed and +meeting A unarmed in a forest, should confiscate the watch and chain of +A, bought by A of B’s lamented but unthrifty father twenty years before!</p> + +<p>After dinner to-night Mr. Tener gave me some interesting and edifying +accounts of his experience in other parts of Ireland.</p> + +<p>Some time ago, before the Plan of Campaign was adopted, one of his +tenants in Cavan came to him with a doleful story of the bad times and +the low <a name="page128" id="page128"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 128] +</span>prices, and wound up by saying he could pay no more than half a +year’s rent.</p> + +<p>“Now his rent had been reduced under the Land Act,” said Mr, Tener, “and +I had voluntarily thrown off a lot of arrears, so I looked at him +quietly and said, ‘Mickey, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You have +been very well treated, and you can perfectly well pay your rent. Your +wife would be ashamed of you if she knew you were trying to get out of +it.’”</p> + +<p>“Ah no, your honour!” he briskly replied; “indade she would approve it. +If you won’t discover on me, I’ll tell you the truth. It was the wife +herself, she’s a great schollard, and reads the papers, that tould me +not to pay you more than half the rent—for she says there’s a new Act +coming to wipe it all out. Will you take the half-year?”</p> + +<p>“No, I will not. Don’t be afraid of your wife, but pay what you owe, +like a man. You’ve got the money there in your pocket.”</p> + +<p>This was a good shot. Mickey couldn’t resist it, and his countenance +broke into a broad smile.</p> + +<p>“Ah no! I’ve got it in two pockets. Begorra, it was the wife herself +made up the money in two <a name="page129" id="page129"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 129] +</span>parcels, and she put one into each pocket, to +be sure—and I wasn’t to give your honour but one, if you would take it. +But there’s the money, and I daresay it’s all for the best.”</p> + +<p>On another occasion, when he was collecting the rents of a property in +the county of Longford, one tenant came forward as the spokesman of the +rest, admitted that the rents had been accepted fairly after a reduction +under the Land Act, expressed the general wish of the tenants to meet +their obligations, and wound up by asking a further abatement, “the +times were so bad, and the money couldn’t be got, it couldn’t indeed!”</p> + +<p>Mr. Tener listened patiently—to listen patiently is the most essential +quality of an agent in Ireland—and finally said:—</p> + +<p>“Very well, if you haven’t got the money to pay in full, pay +three-quarters of it, and I’ll give you time for the rest.”</p> + +<p>“Thank your honour!” said Pat, “and that’ll be thirty pounds—and here +it is in one pound notes, and hard enough to get they are, these times!”</p> + +<p>So Mr. Tener took the money, counted the notes twice over, and then, +writing out a receipt, handed it to the tenant.</p> + +<p><a name="page130" id="page130"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 130] +</span>“All right, Pat, there’s your receipt for thirty-nine pounds, and I’m +glad to see ten-pound notes going about the country in these hard +times!”</p> + +<p>By mistake the “distressful” orator had put one ten-pound note into his +parcel! He took his receipt, and went off without a word. But the +combination to get an “abatement” broke down then and there, and the +other tenants came forward and put down their money.</p> + +<p>These incidents occurred to Mr. Tener himself. Not less amusing and +instructive was a similar mistake on a larger scale made by an +over-crafty tenant in dealing with one of Mr. Tener’s friends a few +years ago in the county of Leitrim. This tenant, whom we will call +Denis, was the fugleman also of a combination. He was a cattle dealer as +well as a farmer, and having spent a couple of hours in idly eloquent +attempts to bring about a general abatement of the rents, he lost his +patience.</p> + +<p>“Ah, well, your honour!” he said, “I can’t stay here all day talking +like these men, I must go to the fair at Boyle. Will you take a +deposit-receipt of the bank for ten pounds and give me the pound change? +that’ll just be the nine pounds for the half-year’s rent. But all the +same, yer honour, <a name="page131" id="page131"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 131] +</span>those men are all farmers, and it’s not out of the +farm at all I made the ten pounds, it’s out of the dealing!”</p> + +<p>“But you couldn’t deal without a farm, Denis, for the stock,” said the +agent, as he glanced at the receipt. He hastily turned it over, and went +on, “Just indorse the receipt, and I’ll consider your proposition.”</p> + +<p>The receipt was indorsed, and at once taken off by the agent’s clerk to +the bank to bring back pound-notes for it, while the agent quietly +proceeded to fill out the regular form of receipt for a full year’s +rent, eighteen pounds. Denis noted what he supposed of course to be the +agent’s blunder, but like an astute person held his peace. The clerk +came back with the notes. Denis took up his receipt, and the agent +quietly began handing him note after note across the table.</p> + +<p>“But, your honour!” exclaimed Denis, “what on earth are ye giving me all +this money for?”</p> + +<p>“It’s your change,” said the agent, quite imperturbably. “You gave me a +bank receipt for one hundred pounds. I have given you a receipt for your +full year’s rent, and here are eighty-two pounds in notes, and with it +eighteen shillings in <a name="page132" id="page132"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 132] +</span>silver—that’s five per cent. reduction. I would +have made it ten per cent., only you were so very sharp, first about not +having the money, and then about the full receipt!”</p> + +<p>In an instant all eyes were fastened upon Denis. Ichabod! the glory had +departed. The chorus went up from his disenchanted followers:—</p> + +<p>“Ah, glory be to God, you were not bright enough for the agent, Denis!”</p> + +<p>And so that day the agent made a very full and handsome collection—and +there was a slight reduction in the deposit-accounts of the local bank!</p> + +<p>In the evening Mr. Tener gave me the details of some cases of direct +intimidation with the names of the tenants concerned. One man, whose +farm he visited, told him he had paid his rent not long before to the +previous agent. “Well,” said Mr. Tener, “show me your receipt!” On this +the tenant said that he dare not keep the receipt about him, nor even in +the house, lest it should be demanded by the emissaries of the League, +who went round to keep the tenants up to the “Plan of Campaign,” and +that it was hidden in his stable. And he went out to the stable and +brought it in.</p> + +<p>This, he had reason to believe, was not an uncom<a name="page133" id="page133"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 133] +</span>mon case.<a id="footnotetag12" + name="footnotetag12"></a><a href="#footnote12"><sup>12</sup></a> The same +man, wishing to take a grass farm which the people hoped the agent would +consent to have “cut up” was asked to give two names on a +promissory-note to pay the rent. He demurred to this, and after a parley +said, “Would a certificate do?” upon which he pulled out an old +tobacco-box, and carefully unfolded from it a bank certificate of +deposit for a hundred pounds sterling! This tenant held eleven Irish, or +more than seventeen English, acres, and his yearly rent was £11, 16s. +6d.</p> + +<p>The people before this agitation began were generally quiet, thrifty, +and industrious. They were great sheep-raisers. An old law of the Irish +Parliament had exempted sheep, but not cattle or <a name="page134" id="page134"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 134] +</span>crops, from distraint, +with an eye to encouraging the woollen interest in Ireland.</p> + +<p>As to the sale of tenant-right in Ireland, he told me a curious story. +One woman, a widow, whom he named, owed two year’ rent on a holding in +Ulster at £4 a year. She was abundantly able to pay, but for her own +reasons preferred to be evicted, and, finally, by an understanding with +him, offered her tenant-right for sale. A man who had made money in +iron-mines in the County of Durham was a bidder, and finally offered +£240 for the holding. It was knocked down to him. He then saw the agent, +who told him he had paid too much. The woman was then appealed to, and +she admitted that the agent was right. But it was shown that others had +offered £200, and the woman finally agreed to take, and received, that +amount in gold, being fifty years’ purchase!</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page135" id="page135"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 135] +</span>CHAPTER X.</h2> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">DUBLIN, <i>Thursday, March 1.</i>—</span>This has been a crowded day. I left +Portumna very early on a car with Mr. Tener, intending to visit the +scene of his latest collision with the “National” government of Ireland, +on my way to Loughrea. It was a bright spring morning, more like April +in Italy than like March in America, and the country is full of natural +beauty. We made our first halt at the derelict house of Martin Kenny, +one of the “victims” of the famous “Woodford evictions,” so called, as I +have said, because Woodford is the nearest town.<a id="footnotetag13" + name="footnotetag13"></a><a href="#footnote13"><sup>13</sup></a> The eviction here +took place October 21st, 1887. The house has been dismantled by the +neighbours since that time, each man carrying off a door, or a shutter, +<a name="page136" id="page136"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 136] +</span>or whatever best suited him. One of the constables who followed us as +Mr. Tener’s body-guard had been present at the eviction. He came into +the house with us, and very graphically described the performance. The +house was still full of heavy stones taken into it, partly to block the +entrances, and partly as ammunition; and trunks of trees used as +<i>chevaux defrise</i> still protruded through the door and the window. These +trees had been cut down by the garrison in the woodlands here and there +all over the property. I asked if the law in Ireland punished +depredations of this sort, and was informed that trees planted by +tenants, if registered by them within a certain time, are the property +of the tenants. This would astonish our landlords in America, where the +tenant who sticks so much as a sunflower into his garden-patch makes a +present of it to his landlord.<a id="footnotetag14" + name="footnotetag14"></a><a href="#footnote14"><sup>14</sup></a></p> + +<p>I asked if the place made a long defence. Mr. Tener and the constable +both laughed, and the <a name="page137" id="page137"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 137] +</span>former told me that when the storming party +arrived shortly after daybreak, they found the house garrisoned only by +some small boys, who had been left there to keep watch. The men were +fast asleep at some other place. The small boys ran away as fast as +possible to give the alarm, but the police went in, and in a jiffey +pulled to pieces the elaborate defences prepared to repel them. Father +Coen, the constable said, got to Kenny’s house an hour after it was all +over, with a mob of people howling and groaning. But the work had been +done, and other work also at the Castle of Cloondadauv, to which we next +drove.</p> + +<p>This place takes its truly awe-inspiring name from a ruined Norman tower +standing on a picturesque promontory of no great height, which juts out +into the lovely lake here made by the Shannon. At no great expense this +tower might be so restored as to make an ideal fishing-box. It now +simply adorns the holding formerly occupied by Mr. John Stanislaus +Burke, a former tenant of Lord Clanricarde. The story of its capture on +the 17th of September is worth telling.</p> + +<p>Some days before the evictions were to come off, a meeting was held at +Woodford or Loughrea, at <a name="page138" id="page138"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 138] +</span>which one of the speakers, the patriotic Dr. +Tully, rather incautiously and exultingly told his hearers that the +defence in 1886 of the tenant’s house known as “Fort Saunders” had been +a grand and gallant affair indeed, but that next time “the exterminators +would have to storm a castle”!</p> + +<p>This put Mr. Tener at once on the alert, and as Mr. Burke of Cloondadauv +was set down for eviction, it didn’t require much cogitation to fix upon +the fortress destined to be “stormed.” So he set about the campaign. The +County Inspector of the constabulary, who had made a secret +reconnaissance, reported that he found the place too strong to be taken +if defended, except “by artillery.” So it was determined to take it by +surprise.</p> + +<p>When the previous evictions were made, the agent and the public forces +had marched from Portumna by the highway to Woodford, so that, of +course, their advent was announced by the scouts and sentinels of the +League from hill to hill long before they reached the scene of action, +and abundant time was given to the agitators for organising a +“reception.” Mr. Tener profited by the experience of his predecessors. +He contrived to get his force of constabulary through the town of +Portumna <a name="page139" id="page139"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 139] +</span>without attracting any popular attention. And as early rising +is not a popular virtue here, he resolved to steal a march on the +defenders of Cloondadauv.</p> + +<p>He had brought up certain large boats to Portumna, and put them on the +lake. Rousing his men before dawn, he soon had them all embarked, and on +their way swiftly and silently by the river and the lake to Cloondadauv. +They reached the promontory by daybreak, and as soon as the hour of +legal action had arrived they were landed, and surrounded the “castle.” +The ancient portal was found to be blocked with heavy stones and trunks +of trees, nor did any adit appear to be available, till a young +gentleman who had accompanied the party as a volunteer, discovered in +one wall of the tower, at some little height from the ground, the vent +of one of those conduits not infrequently found running down through the +walls of old castles, which were used sometimes as waste-ways for +rubbish from above, and sometimes to receive water-pipes from below. +Looking up into this vent, he saw a rope hanging free within it. Upon +this he hauled resolutely, and finding it firmly attached above, came to +the <a name="page140" id="page140"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 140] +</span>conclusion that it must have been fixed there by the garrison as a +means of access to the interior.</p> + +<p>Like an adventurous young tar, he bade his comrades stand by, and nimbly +“swarmed” up the rope, without thought or care of what might await him +at the top. In a few moments his shouts from above proclaimed the +capture of the stronghold. It was absolutely deserted; the garrison, +confident that no attack would that day be made, had gone off to the +nearest village. The interior of the castle was found filled with +munitions of war, in the shape of huge beams and piles of stones +laboriously carried up the winding stairs, and heaped on all the +landing-places in readiness for use. On the flat roof of the castle was +established a sort of furnace for heating water or oil, to be poured +down upon the besiegers; and crowbars lay there in readiness to loosen +out and dislodge the battlements, and topple them over upon the +assailants.</p> + +<p>The officers soon made their way all over the building, and thence +proceeded to the residence of Mr. Burke near by, a large and very +commodious house. All the formalities were gone through with, a +detachment of policemen was put in charge, and the rest of the forces +set out on their return to <a name="page141" id="page141"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 141] +</span>Portumna, before the organised “defenders” of +Cloondadauv, hastily called out of their comfortable beds or from their +breakfast-tables had realised the situation, and got the populace into +motion. A mass meeting was held in the neighbourhood, and many speeches +were made. But the castle and the farm-house and the holding all remain +in the hands of a cool, quiet, determined-looking young Ulsterman, who +tells me that he is getting on very well, and feels quite able with his +police-guard to protect himself. “Once in a while,” he said, “they come +here from Loughrea with English Parliament-men, and stand outside of the +gate, and call me ‘Clanricarde’s dog,’ and make like speeches at me; but +I don’t mind them, and they see it, and go away again.”</p> + +<p>Of Mr. Burke, the evicted tenant here, Mr. Crawford, the Protestant +clergyman at Portumna, told me that he was abundantly able to pay his +rent. The whole debt for which Burke was evicted was £115; and Mr. +Crawford said he had himself offered Burke £300 for the holding. Burke +would have gladly taken this, but “the League wouldn’t let him.” When +his right was put up for sale at Galway for £5, he did not dare to buy +it in, <a name="page142" id="page142"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 142] +</span>and he is now living with his wife and children on the League +funds. Lord Clanricarde’s agent offered to take him back and restore his +right if he would pay what he owed; but he dared not accept. This farm +comprises over one hundred and ten English acres, which Burke held at a +rent—fixed by the Land Court—of £77, the valuation for taxes being +£83.</p> + +<p>To call the eviction of such a tenant in such circumstances from such a +holding a “sentence of death,” is making ducks and drakes of the English +language. Mr. Crawford’s opinion, founded upon a thorough personal +knowledge of the region, is that there is no exceptional distress in +this part of Ireland, and that over-renting has nothing to do with such +distress as does exist here. The case of a man named Egan, one of the +“victims” of the Woodford evictions of 1886, certainly bears out this +view of the matter. Egan, who was a tenant, not at all of Lord +Clanricarde, but of a certain Mrs. Lewis, had occupied for twenty years +a holding of about sixteen Irish acres, or more than twenty English +acres. This he held at a yearly rental of £8, 15s., being 9d. over the +valuation.</p> + +<p>In August 1886 he was evicted for refusing to <a name="page143" id="page143"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 143] +</span>pay one year’s rent then +due. At that time the crops standing on the land were valued by him at +£60, 13s. He also owned six beasts. In other words, this man, when he +was called upon to pay a debt of £8, 15s. had in his own possession, +beside the valuable tenant-right of his holding, more than a hundred +pounds sterling of merchantable assets. He refused to pay, and he was +evicted.</p> + +<p>This was in August 1886. But such are the ideas now current in Ireland +as to the relations of landlord and tenant, that immediately after his +eviction Egan sent his daughter to gather some cabbages off the farm as +if nothing had happened. The Emergency men in charge actually objected, +and sent the damsel away. Thereupon Egan, on the 6th of September, +served a legal notice on Mrs. Lewis, his landlady, requiring her either +to let him take all the crops on the farm, or to pay him their value, +estimated by him, as I have said, at £60, 13s. Two days after this, on +the 8th of September, more than a hundred men came to the place by night +and removed the greater portion of the crops. Not wishing a return of +these visitors, Mrs. Lewis, on the 16th of September, sent word to Egan +to come and take away what was left of the crops; one of <a name="page144" id="page144"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 144] +</span>the horses +employed in the nocturnal harvest of September 8th having been seized by +the police and identified as belonging to Egan. Egan did not respond; +but in July 1887 he brought an action against his landlady to recover +£100 sterling for her “detention of his goods,” and her “conversion of +the same to her own use ”!</p> + +<p>The case was heard by the Recorder at Kilmainham, and the facts which I +have briefly recited were established by the evidence. The daughter of +this extraordinary “victim” Egan appeared as a witness, so “fashionably +dressed” as to attract a remark on the subject from the defendant’s +counsel. To this she replied that “her brothers in America sent her +money.”</p> + +<p>“If your brothers in America sent you money for such purposes,” not +unnaturally observed the Recorder, “why did they allow your father to +sacrifice crops worth £60 for the non-payment of <a name="page145" id="page145"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 145] +</span>£8, 15s.?”</p> + +<p>“They were tired of that,” said the young lady airily; “the land wasn’t +worth the rent!”</p> + +<p>That is to say, a farm which yielded a crop of £60, and pastured several +head of cattle, was not worth £8, 15s. a year. Certainly it was not +worth £8, 15s. a year if the tenant under the operation of the existing +or the impending laws of Great Britain in Ireland could get, or hope to +get it for the half of that rent, or for no rent at all.</p> + +<p>But this being thus, on what grounds are the rest of mankind invited to +regard this excellent man as a “victim” worthy of sympathy and of +material aid? How had he come to be in arrears of a year in August 1886? +The proceedings at Kilmainham tell us this.</p> + +<p>In November 1885 he had demanded, with other tenants of Mrs. Lewis, a +reduction of 50 per cent. This would have given him his holding at a +rental of £4, 7s. 6d. Mrs. Lewis refused the concession, and a month +afterwards an attempt was made to blow up her son’s house with dynamite. +Between that time and August 1886, all the efforts of her son, who was +also her agent, to collect her dues by seizing beasts, were defeated by +the driving away of the cattle, so that no remedy but an eviction was +left to her. I take it for granted that Mrs. Lewis had a family to +maintain, and debts of one sort and another to pay, as well as Mr. +Egan—but I observe this material difference between her position and +his during the whole of this period of “strained <a name="page146" id="page146"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 146] +</span>relations” between +herself and her tenant, that whereas she lay completely out of the +enjoyment of the rent due her, being the interest on her capital, +represented in her title to the land, Mr. Egan remained in the complete +enjoyment and use of the land. Clearly the tenant was in a better +position than the landlord, and as we are dealing not with the history +of Ireland in the past, but with the condition of Ireland at present, it +appears to me to be quite beside the purpose to ask my sympathies for +Mr. Egan on the ground that a century or half a century ago the +ancestors of Mr. Egan may have been at the mercy of the ancestors of +Mrs. Lewis. However that may have been, Mr. Egan seems to me now to have +had legally much the advantage of Mrs. Lewis. Not only this. Both +legally and materially Mr. Egan, the tenant-farmer at Woodford, seems to +me to have had much the advantage of thousands of his countrymen living +and earning their livelihood by their daily labour in such a typical +American commonwealth, for example, as Massachusetts. I have here with +me the Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics of +Massachusetts. From this I learn that in 1876 the average yearly wages +earned by workmen in Massachusetts were <a name="page147" id="page147"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 147] +</span>$482.72, or in round numbers +something over £96. Out of this amount the Massachusetts workman had to +feed, clothe, and house himself, and those dependent on him.</p> + +<p>His outlay for rent alone was on the average $109.07, or in round +numbers rather less than £22, making 22-1/2 per cent, of his earnings.</p> + +<p>How was it with Mr. Egan? Out of his labour on his holding he got +merchantable crops worth £60 sterling, or in round numbers $300, besides +producing in the shape of vegetables and dairy stuff, pigs and poultry, +certainly a very large proportion of the food necessary for his +household, and raising and fattening beasts, worth at a low estimate £20 +or $100 more. And while thus engaged, his outlay for rent, which +included not only the house in which he lived, but the land out of which +he got the returns of his labour expended upon it, was £8, 15s., or +considerably less than one-half the outlay of the Massachusetts workman +upon the rent of nothing more than a roof to shelter himself and his +family. Furthermore, the money thus paid out by the Massachusetts +workman for rent was simply a tribute paid for accommodation had and +enjoyed, while out of every pound sterling paid as rent by <a name="page148" id="page148"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 148] +</span>the Irish +tenant there reverted to his credit, so long as he continued to fulfil +his legal obligations, a certain proportion, calculable, valuable, and +saleable, in the form of his tenant-right.</p> + +<p>I am not surprised to learn that the Recorder dismissed the suit brought +by Mr. Egan, and gave costs against him. But the mere fact that in such +circumstances it was possible for Egan to bring such a suit, and get a +hearing for it, makes it quite clear that Americans of a sympathetic +turn of mind can very easily find much more meritorious objects of +sympathy than the Irish tenant-farmers of Galway without crossing the +Atlantic in quest of them.</p> + +<p>From Cloondadauv to Loughrea we had a long but very interesting drive, +passing on the way, and at no great distance from each other, Father +Coen’s neat, prosperous-looking presbytery of Ballinakill, and the shop +and house of a local boat-builder named Tully, who is pleasantly known +in the neighbourhood as “Dr. Tully,” by reason of his recommendation of +a very particular sort of “pills for landlords.” The presbytery is now +occupied by Father Coen, who finds it becoming his position as the moral +teacher and guide of his people to be in arrears of two and a half years +with the rent of his holding, and who is said to <a name="page149" id="page149"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 149] +</span>have entertained Mr. +Blunt and other sympathising statesmen very handsomely on their visit to +Loughrea and Woodford,<a id="footnotetag15" + name="footnotetag15"></a><a href="#footnote15"><sup>15</sup></a> “Dr.” Tully being one of the guests invited +to meet them.<a id="footnotetag16" + name="footnotetag16"></a><a href="#footnote16"><sup>16</sup></a> Not far from this presbytery, Mr. Tener showed me the +scene of one of the most cowardly murders which have disgraced this +region. Of Loughrea, the objective of our drive this morning, Sir George +Trevelyan, I am told, during his brief rule in Ireland, found it +necessary to say that murder had there become an institution. Woodford, +previously a dull and law-abiding spot, was illuminated by a lurid light +of modern progress about three years ago, upon the transfer thither in +the summer of 1885 of a priest from Loughrea, familiarly known as “the +firebrand priest.”</p> + +<p>In November of that year, as I have already related, Mr. Egan and other +tenants of Mrs. Lewis of <a name="page150" id="page150"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 150] +</span>Woodford made their demand for a 50 per cent. +reduction of their rents, upon the refusal of which an attempt was made +with dynamite on the 18th December to blow up the house of Mrs. Lewis’s +son and agent. All the bailiffs in the region round about were warned to +give up serving processes, and many of them were cowed into doing so. +One man, however, was not cowed. This was a gallant Irish soldier, +discharged with honour after the Crimean war, and known in the country +as “Balaklava,” because he was one of the “noble six hundred,” who there +rode “into the jaws of death, into the valley of hell.” His name was +Finlay, and he was a Catholic. At a meeting in Woodford, Father Coen +(the priest now in arrears), it is said, looked significantly at Finlay, +and said, “no process-server will be got to serve processes for Sir +Henry Burke of Marble Hill.” The words and the look were thrown away on +the veteran who had faced the roar and the crash of the Russian guns, +and later on, in December 1885, Finlay did his duty, and served the +processes given to him. From that moment he and his wife were +“boycotted.” His own kinsfolk dared not speak to him. His house was +attacked by night. He was a doomed man. On the 3d March 1886, about 2 +o’clock P.M., <a name="page151" id="page151"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 151] +</span>he left his house—which Mr. Tener pointed out to me—to +cut fuel in a wood belonging to Sir Henry Burke, at no great distance. +Twice he made the journey between his house and the wood. The third time +he went and returned no more. His wife growing uneasy at his prolonged +absence went out to look for him. She found his body riddled with +bullets lying lifeless in the highway. The police who went into Woodford +with the tale report the people as laughing and jeering at the agony of +the widowed woman. She was with them, and, maddened by the savage +conduct of these wretched creatures, she knelt down over-against the +house of Father Egan, and called down the curse of God upon him.</p> + +<p>On the next day things were worse. No one could be found to supply a +coffin for the murdered man.<a id="footnotetag17" + name="footnotetag17"></a><a href="#footnote17"><sup>17</sup></a> When the police called upon the priests +to exert their influence and enforce some semblance at least of +Christian and Catholic decency upon the people confided to their charge, +the priests not only refused to do their duty, but floutingly referred +the police to Lady Mary Burke. “He did her work,” they said, “let her +send a hearse now to bury him.” <a name="page152" id="page152"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 152] +</span>The lady thus insolently spoken of is +one of the best of the Catholic women of Ireland. At her summons Father +Burke, a few years only before his death, I remember, made a long winter +journey, though in very bad health, from Dublin to Marble Hill to soothe +the last hours and attend the death-bed of her husband.</p> + +<p>No one who knew and loved him can wish him to have lived to hear from +her lips such a tale of the degradation of Catholic priests in his own +land of Galway.</p> + +<p>Mr. Tener pointed out to me, at another place on the road, near +Ballinagar, the deserted burying-ground in which, after much trouble, a +grave was found for the brave old soldier who had escaped the Russian +cannon-balls to be so foully done to death by felons of his own race. +There the last rites were performed by Father Callaghy, a priest who was +himself “boycotted” for resigning the presidency of the League in his +parish, and for the still graver offence of paying his rent. For weeks +it was necessary to guard the grave!<a id="footnotetag18" + name="footnotetag18"></a><a href="#footnote18"><sup>18</sup></a></p> + +<p><a name="page153" id="page153"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 153] +</span>From that day to this no one has been brought to justice for this crime, +committed in broad daylight, and within sight of the highway. Mr. Place, +whom I saw at Portumna, told me that he believed the police had no moral +doubt as to the murderer of Finlay, but that it was useless to think of +getting legal evidence to convict him.</p> + +<p>Mr. Tener tells me that when Mr. Wilfrid Blunt came to Woodford he went +with Father Egan, and accompanied by the police, to see the widow of +this murdered man, heard from her own lips the sickening story, and took +notes of it. But when Mr. Rowlands, M.P., an English “friend of Home +Rule,” was examined the other day during the trial of Mr. Blunt, he was +obliged to confess that though he had visited Woodford more than once, +and conversed <a name="page154" id="page154"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 154] +</span>freely with Mr. Blunt about it, he had “never heard of the +murder of Finlay.”</p> + +<p>Such an incident is apparently of little interest to politicians at +Westminster. Fortunately for Ireland, it is of a nature to command more +attention at the Vatican.</p> + +<p>Nature has sketched the scenery of this part of Ireland with a free, +bold hand. It is not so grand or so wild as the scenery of Western +Donegal, but it has both a wildness and a grandeur of its own. Sir Henry +Burke’s seat of Marble Hill, as seen in the distance from the road, +stands superbly, high up on a lofty range of wooded hills, from which it +commands the country for miles. And no town I have seen in Ireland is +more picturesquely placed than Loughrea. It has an almost Italian aspect +as you approach it from Woodford. But no lake in Lombardy or Piedmont is +so peculiarly and exquisitely tinted as the lough on which it stands. +The delicate grey-green of the sparkling waters reminded me of the +singular and well-defined belts and stretches of chrysoprase upon which +you sometimes come in sailing through the dark azure of the Southern +Seas. I have never before seen precisely such a hue in any body of fresh +water. The lake <a name="page155" id="page155"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 155] +</span>is incorrectly described, Mr. Tener tells me, in the +guide-books, as being one of the many curious developments of the Lower +Shannon. It is fed by springs, but if, like the river-lakes, it was +formed by a solution of the limestone, this fact may have some chemical +relation with its very peculiar colour. It contains three picturesque +islands. No stream flows into it, but two streams issue from it. The +town of Loughrea is an ancient holding of the De Burghs, and the +estate-office of Lord Clanricarde is here in one wing of a great +barrack, standing, as I understood Mr. Tener to say, on the site of a +former fortress of the family. Lord Clanricarde’s property here is put +down by Mr. Hussey de Burgh at 49,025 acres in County Galway, valued at +£19,634, and at 3576 acres in the county of the City of Galway, valued +at £1202. These, I believe, are statute acres, and in estimating the +relation of Irish rentals to Irish land this fact must be always +ascertained. Of the so-called “Woodford” property the present rental is +no more than £1900, payable by 260 tenants. The Poor-Law valuation for +taxes is £2400. There was a revision of the whole Galway property made +by the father of the present Marquis. Of the 260 Woodford holdings <a name="page156" id="page156"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 156] +</span>only +twelve were increased, in no case more than 6-1/4 per cent, over the +valuation. In 1882 six of these twelve tenants applied to the Land +Court. The rents were in no case restored to the figures before 1872, +but about 7 per cent. was taken off the increased rental. The assertion +repeatedly made that in 1882 rents were reduced by the Land Court 50 per +cent. on the Clanricarde estates, Mr. Tener tells me, is absolutely +false. In the first year of the Court no reduction went beyond 10 per +cent., and in later years, even under the panic of low prices, the +average has not exceeded 20 per cent.</p> + +<p>After making arrangements for a car to take me on to Woodlawn, where I +was to catch the Dublin train, I went out with Mr. Tener to look at the +town.</p> + +<p>My drive from Loughrea to Woodlawn was delightful. It took me over a +long stretch of the best hunting country of Galway, and my jarvey was a +Galwegian of the type dear to the heart of Lever. He was a “Nationalist” +after his fashion, but he did not hesitate to come rattling up through +the town to the Estate Office to take me up; and after we got fairly off +upon the highway, he spoke with more freedom than respect of all sorts +and conditions of men in and about Loughrea.</p> + +<p><a name="page157" id="page157"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 157] +</span>“He’s a sharp little man, that Mr. Tener,” he said, “and he gave the +boys a most beautiful beating at Burke’s place.”</p> + +<p>This was said with genuine gusto, and not at all in the querulous spirit +of the delightful member of Parliament who complained at Westminster +with unconscious humour that the agent and the police in that case had +“dishonourably” stolen a march on the defenders of Cloondadauv!</p> + +<p>“But we’ve beaten them entirely,” he said, with equal zest, “at Marble +Hill. Sir Henry has agreed to pay all the costs, and the living expenses +too, of the poor men that were put out.<a id="footnotetag19" + name="footnotetag19"></a><a href="#footnote19"><sup>19</sup></a> I didn’t ever think we’d get +that; but ye see the truth is,” he added confidentially, “he must have +the money, Sir Henry—he’s lying out of a deal, and then there’s heavy +charges on the property. A fine property it is indeed!”</p> + +<p>“In fact,” I said, “you put Sir Henry to the wall. Is that it?”</p> + +<p>“Well, it’s like that. But we shan’t get that out <a name="page158" id="page158"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 158] +</span>of Clanricarde, I’m +thinking. He’s got a power o’ money they tell me; and he’s that of the +ould Burke blood, he won’t mind fighting just as long as you like!”</p> + +<p>As we drove along, he pointed out to me several fine stretches of +hunting country, and, to my surprise, informed me that only the other +day “there was as fine a meet as ever you saw, more than a hundred +ladies and gentlemen—a grand sight it was.”</p> + +<p>I asked if the hunting had not been “put down by the League.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, now then, sir, who’d be wanting to put down the hunting here in +Galway?—and Ballinasloe? Were you ever at Ballinasloe? just the +grandest horse fair there is in the whole wide world!”</p> + +<p>I insisted that I had always heard a great deal about the opposition of +the League to hunting.</p> + +<p>“Oh, that’ll be some little lawyer fellow,” he replied, “like that +Healy, that can’t sit on a horse! It’s the grandest country in all the +world for riding over. What for wouldn’t they ride over it?”</p> + +<p>“Were there many went out to America from about Loughrea?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes; they were always coming and going. But as many came back.”</p> + +<p><a name="page159" id="page159"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 159] +</span>“Why?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, they didn’t like the country. It wasn’t as good a country, was it, +as old Ireland? And they had to work too hard; and then some of them got +money, and they’d like to spend it in the old place.”</p> + +<p>The country about Woodlawn is very picturesque and well wooded, and for +a long distance we followed the neatly-kept stone walls of the large and +handsome park of Lord Ashtown.</p> + +<p>“The most beautiful and biggest trees in all Ireland, sorr,” said the +jarvey, “and it’s a great pity, it is, ye can’t stay to let me drive you +all over it, for the finest part of the park is just what you can’t see +from this road. Oh, her ladyship would never object to any gentleman +driving about to see the beauties of the place. She is a very good +woman, is her ladyship. She gave work the last Christmas to thirty-two +men, and there wasn’t another house in the country there that had work +for more than ten or twelve. A very good woman she is, indeed.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, that is a very handsome church, it is indeed. It is the Protestant +Church. Lord Ashtown built it; he was a very good man too, and did a +power of good—building and making roads, and giving work to the people. +He was buried there in <a name="page160" id="page160"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 160] +</span>that Castle, over the station—Trench’s Castle, +they called it.”</p> + +<p>“All that lumber there by the station?”</p> + +<p>“That came out of the Ashtown woods. They were always cutting down the +trees; there was so many of them you might be cutting for years—you +would never get to the end of them.”</p> + +<p>Woodlawn Station is one of the neatest and prettiest railway stations I +have seen in Ireland—more like a picturesque stone cottage, green and +gay with flowers, than like a station. The station-master’s family of +cheery well-dressed lads and lasses went and came about the bright fire +in the waiting-room in a friendly unobtrusive fashion, chatting with the +policeman and the porter and the passengers. It was hard to believe +one’s-self within an easy drive of the “cockpit of Ireland.”</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page161" id="page161"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 161] +</span>CHAPTER XI.</h2> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">BORRIS, <i>Friday, March 2d.</i>—</span>This is the land of the Kavanaghs, and a +lovely, picturesque, richly-wooded land it is. I left Dublin with Mr. +Gyles by an afternoon train; the weather almost like June. We ran from +the County of Dublin into Kildare, and from Kildare into Carlow, through +hills; rural scenery quite unlike anything I have hitherto seen in +Ireland. At Bagnalstown, a very pretty place, with a spire which takes +the eye, our host joined us, and came on with us to this still more +attractive spot. Borris has been the seat of his family for many +centuries. The MacMorroghs of Leinster, whom the Kavanaghs lineally +represent, dwelt here long before Dermot MacMorrogh, finding his +elective throne in Leinster too hot to hold him, went off into +Aquitaine, to get that famous “letter of marque” from Henry II. of +England, with the help of which this king without a kingdom induced +Richard de Clare, an earl without an earldom, to lend him a <a name="page162" id="page162"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 162] +</span>hand and +bring the Normans into Ireland. Many of this race lie buried in the +ruins of St. Mullen’s Abbey, on the Barrow, in this county. But none of +them, I opine, ever did such credit to the name as its present +representative, Arthur MacMorrogh Kavanagh.</p> + +<p>I had some correspondence with Mr. Kavanagh several years ago, when he +sent me, through my correspondent for publication in New York, a very +striking statement of his views on the then condition of Irish +affairs—views since abundantly vindicated; and like most people who +have paid any attention to the recent history of Ireland, I knew how +wonderful an illustration his whole career has been of what philosophers +call the superiority of man to his accidents, and plain people the power +of the will. But I knew this only imperfectly. His servant brought him +up to the carriage and placed him in it. This it was impossible not to +see. But I had not talked with him for five minutes before it quite +passed out of my mind. Never was there such a justification of the +paradoxical title which Wilkinson gave to his once famous book, <i>The +Human Body, and its Connexion with Man</i>,—never such a living refutation +of the theory that it is the <a name="page163" id="page163"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 163] +</span>thumb which differentiates man from the +lower animals. Twenty times this evening I have been reminded of the +retort I heard made the other day at Cork by a lawyer, who knows Mr. +Kavanagh well, to a priest of “Nationalist” proclivities, who knows him +not at all. Some allusion having been made to Borris, the lawyer said to +me, “You will see at Borris the best and ablest Irishman alive.” On this +the priest testily and tartly broke in, “Do you mean the man without +hands or feet?”</p> + +<p>“I mean,” replied the lawyer, very quietly, “the man in whom all that +has gone in you or me to arms and legs has gone to heart and head!”</p> + +<p>Borris House stands high in the heart of an extensive and nobly wooded +park, and commands one of the finest landscapes I have seen in Ireland. +As we stood and gazed upon it from the hall door, the distant hills were +touched with a soft purple light such as transfigures the Apennines at +sunset.</p> + +<p>“You should see this view in June,” said Mrs, Kavanagh, “we are all +brown and bare now.”</p> + +<p>Brown and bare, like most other terms, are relative. To the eye of an +American this whole region now seems a sea of verdure, less clear and +fresh, I can easily suppose, than it may be in the early <a name="page164" id="page164"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 164] +</span>summer, but +verdure still. And one must get into the Adirondacks, or up among the +mountains of Western Virginia, to find on our Atlantic slope such trees +as I have this evening seen. One grand ilex near the house could hardly +be matched in the Villa d’Este.</p> + +<p>The house is stately and commodious, and more ancient than it appears to +be,—so many additions have been made to it at different times. It has +passed through more than one siege, and in the ’98 Mr. Kavanagh tells me +the townspeople of Borris came up here and sought refuge. There are vast +caverns under the house and grounds, doubtless made by taking out from +the hill the stone used in building this house, and the fortresses which +stood here before it. In these all sorts of stores were kept, and many +of the people found shelter.</p> + +<p>I need not say that there is a banshee at Borris—though no living +witness, I believe, has heard its warning wail. But as we sat in the +beautiful library, and watched the dying light of day, a lady present +told us a tale more gruesome than many of those in which the “psychical” +inquirers delight. She was sitting, she said, in an upper room of an +ancient mansion here in Carlow, in which she <a name="page165" id="page165"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 165] +</span>lives, when, from the lawn +below, there came up to her a low, sad, shrill cry—the croon of a +woman, such as one hears from the mourners sitting among the turbaned +tombstones of the hill of Eyoub at Constantinople. It startled her, and +she held her breath and listened. She was alone, as she knew, in that +part of the house, and the hall door below was unlocked, as is the +fashion still in Ireland, despite all the troubles and turmoils. Again +the sound came, and this time nearer to the house. Could it be the +banshee? Again and again it rose and died away, each time nearer and +nearer. Then, as she listened, all her nerves strung to the keenest +sensibility, it came again, and now, beyond a doubt, within the hall +below.</p> + +<p>With an effort she rose from her chair, opened a door leading into a +corridor running aside from the main stairway, and fled at full speed +towards the wing in which she knew that she would find some of the +maids. As she sped along she heard the cry again and again far behind +her, as from a creature slowly and steadily mounting the grand stairway +towards the room which she had just quitted.</p> + +<p>She found the maids, who fell into a terrible fright when she told her +story and dared not budge. <a name="page166" id="page166"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 166] +</span>So the bells were violently rung till the +butler and footman appeared. To the first she said simply, “There is a +mad woman in this house—go and find her!”</p> + +<p>“The man looked at me,” she said, “as I spoke with a curious expression +in his face as of one who thought, ‘yes, there is a mad woman in the +house, and she is not far to seek!’”</p> + +<p>But the lady insisted, and the men finally went off on their quest. In +the course of half an hour it was rewarded. The mad woman—a dangerous +creature—who had wandered away from an asylum in the neighbourhood, was +found curled up and fast asleep in the lady’s own bed!</p> + +<p>Fancy a delicate woman going alone into her bedroom at midnight to be +suddenly confronted by an apparition of that sort!</p> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">BORRIS, <i>March 3d.</i>—</span>After a stroll on the lawn this morning, the wide +and glorious prospect bathed in the light of a really soft spring day, I +had a conversation with Mr. Kavanagh about the Land Corporation, of +which he is the guiding spirit. This is a defensive organisation of the +Irish landlords against the Land League. When a landlord has been driven +into <a name="page167" id="page167"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 167] +</span>evicting his tenants, the next step, in the “war against +landlordism,” is to prevent other tenants from taking the vacated lands +and cultivating them. This is accomplished by “boycotting” any man who +does this as a “land-grabber.”</p> + +<p>The ultimate sanction of the “boycott” being “murder,” derelict farms +increased under this system very rapidly; and the Eleventh Commandment +of the League, “Thou shalt not pay the rent which thy neighbour hath +refused to pay,” was in a fair way to dethrone the Ten Commandments of +Sinai throughout Ireland, even before the formal adoption in 1886 of the +“Plan of Campaign.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone would perhaps have hit the facts more accurately, if, +instead of calling an eviction in Ireland a “sentence of death,” he had +called the taking of a tenancy a sentence of death. Mr. Hussey at Lixnaw +had two tenants, Edmond and James Fitzmaurice. Edmond Fitzmaurice was +“evicted” in May 1887; but he was taken into the house of a neighbour, +made very comfortable, and still lives. James Fitzmaurice took, for the +sake of the family, the land from which Edmond was evicted, and for this +he was denounced as a “land-grabber,” boycotted, and finally shot dead +in the presence of his daughter.</p> + +<p><a name="page168" id="page168"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 168] +</span>At a meeting in Dublin in the autumn of 1885, a parish priest, the Rev. +Mr. Cantwell, described it as a “cardinal virtue” that “no one should +take a farm from which another had been evicted,” and called upon the +people who heard him to “pass any such man by unnoticed, and treat him +as an enemy in their midst.” Public opinion and the law, if not the +authorities of his church would make short work of any priest who talked +in this fashion in New York. But in Ireland, and under the British +Government, it seems they order things differently. So it occurred one +day to the landlords thus assailed, as it did to the sea-lions of the +Cape of Good Hope when the French sailors attacked them, that they might +defend themselves.</p> + +<p>To this end the Land Corporation was instituted, with a considerable +capital at its back, and Mr. Kavanagh at its head. The “plan of +campaign” of this Corporation is to take over from the landlords +derelict lands and cultivate them, stocking them where that is +necessary.</p> + +<p>It is in this way that the derelict lands on the Ponsonby property at +Youghal are now worked. But Mr. Kavanagh tells me that the men employed +by the Corporation, of whom Father Keller spoke <a name="page169" id="page169"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 169] +</span>as a set of desperadoes +or “<i>enfants perdus</i>,” are really a body of resolute and capable working +men farmers. Many, but by no means all of them, are Protestants and +Ulstermen; and that they are up to their work would seem to be shown by +the fact stated to me, that in no case so far have any of them been +deterred and driven off from the holdings confided to them. A great part +of the Luggacurren property of Lord Lansdowne is now worked by the +Corporation; and Mr. Kavanagh was kind enough to let me see the +accounts, which indicate a good business result for the current year on +that property. This is all very interesting. But what a picture it +presents of social demoralisation! And what is to be the end of it all? +Can a country be called civilised in which a farmer with a family to +maintain, having the capital and the experience necessary to manage +successfully a small farm, is absolutely forbidden, on pain of social +ostracism, and eventually on pain of death, by a conspiracy of his +neighbours, to take that farm of its lawful owner at what he considers +to be a fair rent? And how long can any civilisation of our complex +modern type endure in a country in which such a state of things +tolerated by the alleged Government of that country <a name="page170" id="page170"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 170] +</span>has to be met, and +more or less partially mitigated, by deviating to the cultivation of +farms rendered in this way derelict large amounts of capital which might +be, and ought to be, far more profitably employed in other ways?</p> + +<p>Mr. Kavanagh, after serving the office of High Sheriff thirty years ago, +first for Kilkenny, and then for Carlow, sat in Parliament for fourteen +years, from 1866 to 1880, as an Irish county member. He has a very large +property here in Carlow, and property also in Wexford, and in Kilkenny, +and was sworn into the Privy Council two years ago. If the personal +interests and the family traditions of any man alive can be said to be +rooted in the Irish soil, this is certainly true of his interests and +his traditions. How can the peace and prosperity of Ireland be served by +a state of things which condemns an Irishman of such ties and such +training to expend his energies and his ability in defending the +elementary right of Paddy O’Rourke to take stock and work a ten-acre +farm on terms that suit himself and his landlord?</p> + +<p>In the afternoon we took a delightful walk through the woods, Mr. +Kavanagh going with us on horseback. Every hill and clump of trees on +this <a name="page171" id="page171"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 171] +</span>large domain he knows, and he led us like a master of woodcraft +through all manner of leafy byways to the finest points of view. The +Barrow flows past Borris, making pictures at every turn, and the banks +on both sides are densely and beautifully wooded. We came in one place +upon a sawmill at work in the forest, and Mr. Kavanagh showed us with +pride the piles of excellent timber which he turns out here. But he took +a greater pride in a group, sacred from the axe, of really magnificent +Scotch firs, such as I had certainly not expected to find in Ireland. +Nearer the mansion are some remarkable Irish yews. The gardens are of +all sorts and very extensive, but we found the head-gardener bitterly +lamenting the destruction by a fire in one of the conservatories of more +than six thousand plants just prepared for setting out.</p> + +<p>There are many curious old books and papers here, and a student of early +Irish history might find matter to keep him well employed for a long +time in this region. It was from this region and the race which ruled +it, of which race Mr. Kavanagh is the actual representative, that the +initiative came of the first Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. Strongbow +made what, from the Anglo-Norman point of view, <a name="page172" id="page172"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 172] +</span>was a perfectly +legitimate bargain, with a dispossessed prince to help him to the +recovery of his rights on the understanding that these rights, when +recovered, should pass in succession to himself through the only +daughter of the prince, whom he proposed to marry. It does not appear +that Strongbow knew, or that Dermot MacMorrogh cared to tell him, how +utterly unlike the rights of an Anglo-Norman prince were those of the +elective life-tenant of an Irish principality. FitzStephen, the son by +her second marriage of Nesta, the Welsh royal mistress of Henry +Beauclerk, and his cousin, Maurice Fitzgerald, the leaders into Ireland +of the Geraldines, were no more clear in their minds about this than +Strongbow, and it is to the original muddle thus created that Professor +Richey doubtless rightly refers the worst and most troublesome +complications of the land question in Ireland. The distinction between +the King’s lieges and the “mere Irish,” for example, is unquestionably a +legal distinction, though it is continually and most mischievously used +as if it were a proof of the race-hatred borne by the Normans and Saxons +in Ireland from the first against the Celts. The O’Briens, the O’Neills, +the O’Mullaghlins, the O’Connors, and the M‘Morroghs, <a name="page173" id="page173"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 173] +</span>“the five bloods,” +as they are called, were certainly Celts, but whether in virtue of their +being, or claiming to be, the royal races respectively of Minister, of +Ulster, of Meath, of Connaught, and of Leinster, or from whatever other +reason, these races were “within the king’s law,” and were never “mere +Irish” from the first planting of the Anglo-Norman power in Ireland. The +case of a priest, Shan O’Kerry, “an Irish enemy of the king,” presented +“contrary to the form of statute” to the vicarage of Lusk, in the reign +of Edward IV. (1465), illustrates this. An Act of Parliament was passed +to declare the aforesaid “Shan O’Kerry,” or “John of Kevernon,” to be +“English born, and of English nation,” and that he might “hold and enjoy +the said benefice.”</p> + +<p>There is a genealogy here of the M‘Morroghs and Kavanaghs, most +gorgeously and elaborately gotten up many years ago for Mr. Kavanagh’s +grandfather, which shows how soon the Norman and the native strains of +blood become commingled. When one remembers how much Norman blood must +have gone even into far-off Connaught when King John, in the early part +of the thirteenth century, coolly gave away that realm of the O’Connors +to the <a name="page174" id="page174"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 174] +</span>De Burgos, and how continually the English of the Pale fled from +the exactions inflicted upon them by their own people, and sought refuge +“among the savage and mere Irish,” one cannot help thinking that the“ +Race Question” has been “worked for at least all it is worth” by +philosophers bent on unravelling the ‘snarl’ of Irish affairs. If this +genealogy may be trusted, there was little to choose between the ages +which immediately preceded and the ages which followed the Anglo-Norman +invasion in the matter of respect for human life. Celtic chiefs and +Norman knights “died in their boots” as regularly as frontiersmen in +Texas. One personage is designated in the genealogy as “the murderer,” +for the truly Hibernian reason, so far as appears, that he was himself +murdered while quite a youth, and before he had had a chance to murder +more than three or four of his immediate relatives. It was as if the son +of Geoffrey Plantagenet and the Lady Constance should be branded in +history as “Arthur, the Assassin.”</p> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">BORRIS, <i>March 4th.</i>—</span>This is a staunch Protestant house, and Mr. +Kavanagh himself reads a Protestant service every morning. But there is +little or <a name="page175" id="page175"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 175] +</span>nothing apparently in this part of Ireland of the bitter +feeling about and against the Catholics which exists in the North. A +very lively and pleasant Catholic gentleman came in to-day informally +and joined the house party at luncheon. We all walked out over the +property afterwards, visiting quite a different region from that which +we saw yesterday—different but equally beautiful and striking, and this +Catholic gentleman cited several cases which had fallen within his own +knowledge of priests who begin to feel their moral control of the people +slipping away from them through the operation of the “Plan of Campaign.” +I told him what I had heard in regard to one such priest from my +ecclesiastical friend in Cork. “It does not surprise me at all,” he +said, “and, indeed, I not very long ago read precisely such another +letter from a priest in a somewhat similar position. I read it with pain +and shame as a Catholic,” he continued, “for it was simply a complete +admission that the priest, although entirely convinced that his +parishioners were making most unfair demands upon their landlord to whom +the letter was addressed, felt himself entirely powerless to bring them +to a sense of their misconduct.” “Had this priest given in his ad<a name="page176" id="page176"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 176] +</span>hesion +to the Plan of Campaign?” I asked. “Yes,” was the reply, “and it was +this fact which had broken his hold on the people when he tried to bring +them to abandon their attitude under the Plan. His letter was really +nothing more nor less than an appeal to the landlord, and that landlord +a Protestant, to help him to get out of the hole into which he had put +himself.”</p> + +<p>Of the tenants and their relation to the village despots who administer +the Plan of Campaign, this gentleman had many stories also to tell of +the same tenor with all that I have hitherto heard on this subject. +Everywhere it is the same thing. The well-to-do and well-disposed +tenants are coerced by the thriftless and shiftless. “I have the +agencies of several properties,” he said, “and in some of the best parts +of Ireland. I have had little or no trouble on any of them, for I have +one uniform method. I treat every tenant as if he were the only man I +had to deal with, study his personal ways and character, humour him, and +get him on my side against himself. You can always do this with an +Irishman if you will take the trouble to do it. Within the past years I +have had tenants come and tell me they were in fear the Plan of Campaign +<a name="page177" id="page177"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 177] +</span>would be brought upon them, just as if it were a kind of potato disease, +and beg me to agree to take the rent from them in that case, and just +not discover on them that they had paid it before it was due!”</p> + +<p>This gentleman is a pessimist as to the future. “I am a youngish man +still,” he said, “and a single man, and I am glad of it. I don’t believe +the English will ever learn how to govern this country, and I am sure it +can never govern itself. Would your people make a State of it?”</p> + +<p>To this I replied that with Cuba and Canada and Mexico, all still to be +digested and assimilated, I thought the deglutition of Ireland by the +great Republic must be remitted to a future much too remote to interest +either of us.</p> + +<p>“I suppose so,” he said in a humorously despondent tone; “and so I see +nothing for people who think as I do, but Australia or New Zealand!”</p> + +<p>Mr. Kavanagh sees the future, I think, in colouring not quite so dark. +As a public man, familiar for years with the method and ways of British +Parliaments, he seems to regard the possible future legislation of +Westminster with more anxiety and alarm than the past or present +agitations in Ireland. <a name="page178" id="page178"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 178] +</span>The business of banishing political economy to +Jupiter and Saturn, however delightful it may be to the people who make +laws, is a dangerous one to the people for whom the laws are made. While +he has very positive opinions as to the wisdom of the concession made in +the successive Land Acts for Ireland, which have been passed since 1870, +he is much less disquieted, I think, by those concessions, than by the +spirit by which the legislation granting them has been guided. He thinks +great good has been already done by Mr. Balfour, and that much more good +will be done by him if the Irish people are made to feel that clamorous +resistance to the law will no longer be regarded at Westminster as a +sufficient reason for changing the law. That is as much as to say that +party spirit in Great Britain is the chief peril of Ireland to-day. And +how can any Irishman, no matter what his state in his own country may +be, or his knowledge of Irish affairs, or his patriotic earnestness and +desire for Irish prosperity, hope to control the tides of party spirit +in England or Scotland?</p> + +<p>Of the influence upon the people in Ireland of the spirit of recent +legislation for Ireland, the story of the troubles on the O’Grady +estate, as Mr. <a name="page179" id="page179"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 179] +</span>Kavanagh tells it to me, is a most striking illustration. +“The O’Grady of Kilballyowen,” as his title shows, is the direct +representative, not of any Norman invader, but of an ancient Irish race. +The O’Gradys were the heads of a sept of the “mere Irish”; and if there +be such a thing—past, present, or future—as an “Irish nation,” the +place of the O’Gradys in that nation ought to be assumed. Mr. Thomas De +Courcy O’Grady, who now wears the historic designation, owns and lives +on an estate of a little more than 1000 acres, in the Golden Vein of +Ireland, at Killmallock, in the county of Limerick. The land is +excellent, and for the last half-century certainly it has been let to +the tenants at rents which must be considered fair, since they have +never been raised. In 1845, two years before the great famine, the +rental was £2142. This rental was paid throughout the famine years +without difficulty; and in 1881 the rental stood at £2108.</p> + +<p>There has never been an eviction on the estate until last year, when six +tenants were evicted. All of these lived in good comfortable houses, and +were prosperous dairy-farmers. Why were they evicted?</p> + +<p><a name="page180" id="page180"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 180] +</span>In October 1886, during the candidacy at New York of the Land Reformer, +Mr. George, Mr. Dillon, M.P., propounded the “Plan of Campaign” at +Portumna in Galway. The March rents being then due on the estate of The +O’Grady in Limerick, his agent, Mr. Shine, was directed to continue the +abatements of 15 per cent, on the judicial rents, and of 25 per cent, on +all other rents, which had been cheerfully accepted in 1885. But there +was a priest at Kilballyowen, Father Ryan, who wrought upon the tenants +until they demanded a general abatement of 40 per cent. This being +refused, they asked for 30 per cent. on the judicial rents, and 40 per +cent. on the others. This also being refused, Father Ryan had his way, +and the “Plan of Campaign” was adopted. The O’Grady’s writs issued +against several of the tenants were met by a “Plan of Campaign” auction +of cattle at Herbertstown in December 1886, the returns of which were +paid into “the Fund.” For this, one of the tenants, Thomas Moroney, who +held, besides a a farm of 37 Irish acres, a “public,” and five small +houses, at Herbertstown, and the right to the tolls on cattle at the +Herbertstown farm, valued at from £50 to £60 a year, and who held all +these at a <a name="page181" id="page181"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 181] +</span>yearly rent of £85, was proceeded against. Judge Boyd +pronounced him a bankrupt.</p> + +<p>In the spring of 1887, after The O’Grady had been put to great costs and +trouble, the tenants made a move. They offered to accept a general +abatement of 17-1/2 per cent., “The O’Grady to pay all the costs.”</p> + +<p>Here is the same story again of the small solicitors behind the “Plan of +Campaign” promoting the strife, and counting on the landlords to defray +the charges of battle!</p> + +<p>The O’Grady responded with the following circular:—</p> +<blockquote> +<p class="dateline"> KlLLBALLYOWEN, BRUFF, CO. LlMERICK,<br /> +<i>13th August 1877</i>.</p> + +<p class="center">To my Tenants on Kilballyowen and Herbertstown Estate, Co. + Limerick.</p> + +<p> MY FRIENDS,—Pending the evictions by the Sheriff on my estate, + caused by your refusal to pay judicial rents on offers of liberal + abatements, I desire to remind you of the following facts:—</p> + +<p> I am a resident landlord; my ancestors have dwelt amongst you for + over 400 years; every tenant is personally known to me, and the + most friendly relations have always existed between us.</p> + +<p> I am not aware of there ever having been an eviction by the Sheriff + on my estate.</p> + +<p> Farming myself over 400 acres, and my late agent (Mr. Shine), a + tenant farmer living within four miles <a name="page182" id="page182"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 182] +</span>of my property, I have every + opportunity of realising and knowing your wants.</p> + +<p> On the passing of the Land Act of 1881, I desired you to have any + benefit it could afford you, and as you nearly all held under + lease—which precluded you from going into court—I intimated to + you my wish, and offered you to allow your lands to be valued at my + expense, or to let you go into court and get your rents fixed by + the sub-commissioners.</p> + +<p> You elected to have a valuation made, and Mr. Edmond Moroney was + agreed on as a land-valuer, possessing the confidence of tenants + and landlord.</p> + +<p> I may mention, up to then I had not known Mr. Moroney personally.</p> + +<p> In 1883 Mr. Moroney valued your holdings, and, as a result, his + valuation was accepted (except in three or four cases), and + judicial agreements signed by you, at rents ascertained by Mr. + Moroney’s valuation.</p> + +<p> The late Patrick Hogan objected to Mr. Moroney’s valuation of his + farm, and went into court, and had his rent fixed by the County + Court Judge.</p> + +<p> Thomas Moroney would not allow Mr. Edmond Moroney to value his + holding, nor would he go into court, his reason no doubt being he + should disclose the receipts of the amount of the tolls of the + fairs.</p> + +<p> The rents were subsequently paid on Mr. Moroney’s valuation with + punctuality.</p> + +<p> In 1885, recognising the fall in prices of stock and produce, and + at the request of my late agent, Mr. Shine, I directed him to allow + you 15 per cent. on all judicial rents, or rents abated on Mr. + Moroney’s valuation, and 25 per cent. on all other rents, when you + paid punctually and with thanks.</p> + +<p> In October last, when calling in the March 1886 rents, at the + instance of Mr. Shine, I agreed to con<a name="page183" id="page183"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 183] +</span>tinue the abatement of 15 per + cent, and 25 per cent., which, when intimated to you, were refused, + and a meeting held, demanding an all-round abatement of 40 per + cent.</p> + +<p> This I considered unreasonable and unjust, and I refused to give + it.</p> + +<p> The Plan of Campaign was then most unjustly adopted on the estate, + and you refused to pay your rents.</p> + +<p> Thomas Moroney was elected as a test case to try the legality of + the sale and removal of your property to avoid payment of your + rent. His tenancy was a mixed holding of house property in the + village of Herbertstown, the tolls of the fairs, and 37 acres of + land, at a rent of £85, and a Poor-Law valuation of £73, 5s., made + as follows:—</p> + +<div class="center"> <table><tr><td> Land valued</td><td>at £42 5 0</td></tr> + <tr><td> Tolls of fair </td><td>at 17 0 0</td></tr> + <tr><td> Public house and yard </td><td>at 11 0 0</td></tr> + <tr><td> Five small houses and forge </td><td>at 3 0 0</td></tr> + <tr><td></td><td>£73 5 0</td></tr> +</table></div> +<p> I always was led to believe the tolls of the fair averaged from £50 + to £60 a year, there being four fairs in the year; and I believe + his reason for refusing to allow Mr. E. Moroney to value his + holding, or to go into court, was that he should disclose the + amount of the tolls, and in consequence I never considered he was + entitled to any abatement; but still I gave it to him, and was + prepared to do so. The result of his case was that his conduct in + making away with his property was unjustifiable, and his farm and + holding was sold out for the benefit of his creditors, and he is no + longer a tenant on the estate.</p> + +<p> <a name="page184" id="page184"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 184] +</span>I subsequently took proceedings against six other tenants, who + refused payment of rent, and removed their cattle off the land to + avoid payment, and having got judgment against them, the Sheriff + sold out four of their farms, and writs of possession on the title + were taken out against them, and are now lodged with the Sheriff + for execution. I have also got judgments for possession against two + other tenants for non-payment of rent, also lodged with the + Sheriff. One the widow of Patrick Hogan, who got his rent fixed in + the County Court, and the other Mrs. Denis Ryan, whose farm on her + marriage I assented to be put in settlement for her protection, Mr. + Shine, my agent, consenting to act as one of her trustees, whose + name, with his co-trustee, Mr. Thomas FitzGerald, appear as + defendants, they having signed her judicial agreement.</p> + +<p> The following are the names of the above tenants, the extent of + their holdings, the rent, the Poor-Law valuation, and the average + rent per Irish acre:—</p> + +<div class="center"><table> +<thead><tr> +<td> TENANT. </td> +<td> Acreage in Irish Measure.</td> +<td> Judicial Rent Less 20 per cent</td> +<td> Rent per acre [A] </td> +<td> Poor Law Valuation </td></tr> +</thead><tbody> + <tr><td> </td><td> A. R. P. </td><td> £ s. d. </td><td> </td><td> £ s. d. </td></tr> + <tr><td>John Carroll </td><td> 87 3 38 </td><td> 132 4 0 </td><td> 30/- </td><td> 127 10 0 </td></tr> + <tr><td>Honora Crimmins </td><td> 35 0 27 </td><td> 64 5 6 </td><td> 36/6 </td><td> 52 15 0 </td></tr> + <tr><td>James Baggott </td><td> 18 0 0 </td><td> 37 16 10 </td><td> 42/- </td><td> 22 5 0 </td></tr> + <tr><td>Margaret Moloney </td><td> 23 2 9 </td><td> 46 2 8 </td><td> 39/2 </td><td> 44 15 0 </td></tr> + <tr><td>Mrs. Denis Ryan </td><td> 66 2 3 </td><td> 93 2 5 </td><td> 28/- </td><td> 96 0 0 </td></tr> + <tr><td>Maryanne Hogan </td><td> 53 2 33 </td><td> 112 0 0 </td><td> 41/8 </td><td> 117 15 0 </td></tr> + <tr><td> </td><td> 294 3 30 </td><td> 485 11 5 </td><td> ... </td><td> 461 0 0 </td></tr> +</tbody></table> +</div> +<p>[A] Rent per Irish acre after abatement of 20 per cent.</p> + +<p> This represents an average of 34s. the Irish acre, for some of the + best land in Ireland, and shows a difference of only £24, 11s. 5d. + between the rent, less 20 per cent. now offered, and Poor-Law + valuation.</p> + +<p> <a name="page185" id="page185"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 185] +</span>After putting me to the cost of these proceedings, and giving me + every opposition and annoyance, amongst such, compelling my agent + (by threats of boycotting) to resign, boycotting myself and + household, preventing my servants from attending chapel, and + driving my labourers away, negotiations for a settlement were + opened, and you offered to accept an all-round abatement of 17-1/2 + per cent. and to pay up one year’s rent, provided I paid all costs, + including the costs in Moroney’s case; this of course I refused, + but with a desire to aid you in coming to a settlement, and to + prevent the loss to the tenants of the farms under eviction on the + Title, I offered to allow the 17-1/2 per cent. all round on payment + of one year’s rent and costs, and to give time for payment of the + costs as stated in my Solicitor’s letter of the 2d June 1887 to + Canon Scully.</p> + +<p> This offer was refused, and the writs for possession have been + lodged with the Sheriff.</p> + +<p> I never commenced these proceedings in a vindictive spirit, or with + any desire to punish any of you for your ungracious conduct, but + simply to protect my property from unjust and unreasonable demands.</p> + +<p> You will owe two years’ rent next month (September), and I now + write you this circular letter to point out to each, individually, + the position of the tenants under eviction, and even at this late + hour to give them an opportunity of saving their holdings, to + enable them to do so, and with a view to settlement, I am now + prepared to allow 20 per cent. all round, on payment of a year’s + rent and costs.</p> + +<p> Under no circumstance will I forego payment of costs, as they must + be paid in full.</p> + +<p> If this money be paid forthwith, I will arrange with my brother, + the purchaser, to restore the four holdings purchased by him at + sheriff’s sale to the late tenants.</p> + +<p> <a name="page186" id="page186"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 186] +</span>After this offer I disclaim any responsibility for the result of + the evictions, and the loss attendant thereon, as it now remains + with you to avert same.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>All the evictions have since been carried out, and the Land Corporation +men are at work upon the estate! Whom has all this advantaged? The +tenants?—Certainly not. The O’Grady?—Certainly not. The peace and +order of Ireland?—Certainly not. But it has given the National League +another appeal to the intelligent “sympathies” of England and America. +It has strengthened the revolutionary element in Irish society. It has +“driven another nail into the coffin” of Irish landlordism and of the +private ownership of land throughout Great Britain.</p> + + +<p>Such at least is the opinion of Mr. Kavanagh. If I were an Englishman or +a Scotchman, I should be strongly inclined to take very serious account +of this opinion in forecasting the future of landed property in England +or Scotland.</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page187" id="page187"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 187] +</span>CHAPTER XII.</h2> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">GREENANE HOUSE, THOMASTOWN, <i>March 5th.</i>—</span>The breakfast-room at Borris +this morning was gay with pink coats. A meet was to come off at a place +between Borris and Thomastown, and bidding fare-well to my cordial host +and hostess, I set out at 11 o’clock for a flying visit to this quaint +and charming house of Mr. Seigne, one of the best known and most highly +esteemed agents in this part of Ireland.</p> + +<p>My jarvey from Borris had an unusually neat and well-balanced car. When +I praised it he told me it was “built by an American,” not an Irish +American, I understood him to say, but a genuine Yankee, who, for some +mysterious reason, has established himself in this region, where he has +prospered as a cart and car builder ever since. “Just the best cars in +all Ireland he builds, your honour!” Why don’t he naturalise them in +America?</p> + +<p>All the way was charming, the day very bright, and even warm, and the +hill scenery picturesque at every turn. We looked out sharply for the +hunt, <a name="page188" id="page188"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 188] +</span>but in vain. My jarvey, who knew the whole country, said they must +have broken cover somewhere on the upper road, and we should miss them +entirely. And so we did.</p> + +<p>The silting up of the river Nore has reduced Thomastown or +Ballymacanton, which was its Irish name, from its former importance as +an emporium for the country about Kilkenny. The river now is not +navigable above Inistiogue. But two martial square towers, one at either +end of a fine bridge which spans the stream here, speak of the good old +times when the masters of Thomastown took toll and tribute of traders +and travellers. The lands about the place then belonged to the great +monastery of Jerpoint, the ruins of which are still the most interesting +of their kind in this part of Ireland. They have long made a part of the +estate of the Butlers. We rattled rapidly through the quiet little town, +and whisking out of a small public square into a sort of wynd between +two houses, suddenly found ourselves in the precincts of Grenane House. +The house takes its name from the old castle of Grenane, an Irish +fortress established here by some native despot long before Thomas +Fitz-Anthony the Norman came into the <a name="page189" id="page189"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 189] +</span>land. The ruins of this castle +still stand some half a mile away. “We call the place Candahar,” said +Mr. Seigne, as he came up with two ladies from the meadows below the +house, “because you come into it so suddenly, just as you do into that +Oriental town.” But what a charming occidental place it is! It stands +well above the river, the slope adorned with many fine old trees, some +of which grow, and grow prosperously, in the queerest and most +improbable forms, bent double, twisted, but still most green and +vigorous. They have no business under any known theory of arboriculture +to be beautiful, but beautiful they are. The views of the bridge, of the +towers, and of the river, from this slope would make the fortune of the +place in a land of peace and order.</p> + +<p>A most original and delightful lady of the country lunched with +us,—such a character as Miss Edgeworth or Miss Austen might have drawn. +Shrewd, humorous, sensible, fearless, and ready with impartial hand to +box the ears alike of Trojan and of Tyrian. She not only sees both sides +of the question in Ireland as between the landlords and the tenants, but +takes both sides of the question. She holds lands by inheritance, which +make her keenly <a name="page190" id="page190"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 190] +</span>alive to the wrongs of the landlords, and she holds +farms as a tenant, which make her implacably critical as to their +claims. She mercilessly demolished in one capacity whatever she advanced +in the other, and all with the most perfect nonchalance and good faith. +This curiously dual attitude reminded me of the confederate General, +Braxton Bragg, of whom his comrades in the old army of the United States +used to say that he once had a very sharp official correspondence with +himself. He happened to hold a staff appointment, being also a line +officer. So in his quality of a staff officer, he found fault with +himself in his capacity as a line officer, reprimanded himself sharply, +replied defiantly to the reprimand, and eventually reported himself to +himself for discipline at head-quarters. She told an excellent story of +a near kinsman of hers who, holding a very good living in the Protestant +Irish Church, came rather unexpectedly by inheritance into a baronetcy, +upon which his women-folk insisted that it would be derogatory to a +baronet to be a parson. “Would you believe it, the poor man was silly +enough to listen to their cackle, and resign seven hundred a year!”</p> + +<p>“That didn’t clear him,” I said, “of the cloth, did it?”</p> + +<p>“<a name="page191" id="page191"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 191] +</span>Not a bit, of course, poor foolish man. He was just as much a parson as +ever, only without a parsonage. Men are fools enough of themselves, +don’t you think, without needing to listen to women?”</p> + +<p>Mr. Seigne comes of a French Protestant stock long ago planted in +Ireland, and his Gallic blood doubtless helps him to handle the +practical problems daily submitted in these days to an Irish +land-agent—problems very different, as he thinks, from those with which +an Irish agent had to deal in the days before 1870. The Irish tenant has +a vantage-ground now in his relations with his landlord which he never +had in the olden time, and this makes it more important than it ever was +that the agent should have what may be called a diplomatic taste for +treating with individuals, finding out the bent of mind of this man and +of that, and negotiating over particulars, instead of insisting, in the +English fashion, on general rules, without regard to special cases. I +have met no one who has seemed to me so cool and precise as Mr. Seigne +in his study of the phenomena of the present situation. I asked him +whether he could now say, as Mr. Senior did a quarter of century ago, +that the Irish tenants were <a name="page192" id="page192"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 192] +</span>less improvident, and more averse from +running into debt than the English.</p> + +<p>“I think not,” he replied; “on the contrary, in some parts of Ireland +now the shopkeepers are kept on the verge of bankruptcy by the +recklessness with which the tenants incurred debts immediately after the +passing of the Land Act of 1870—a time when shopkeepers, and bankers +also, almost forced credit upon the farmers, and made thereby ‘bad +debts’ innumerable. Farmers rarely keep anything like an account of +their receipts and expenses. I know only one tenant-farmer in this +neighbourhood who keeps what can be called an account, showing what he +takes from his labour and spends on his living.”<a id="footnotetag20" + name="footnotetag20"></a><a href="#footnote20"><sup>20</sup></a> “They save a great +deal of money often,” he says, “but almost never in any systematic way. +They spend much less on clothes and furniture, and the outward show of +things, than English people of the same condition do, and they do not +stint themselves in meat and drink as the French peasants do. In fact, +under the operation of existing circumstances, they are getting into the +way of improving <a name="page193" id="page193"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 193] +</span>their condition, not so much by sacrifices and savings, +as by an insistence on rent being fixed low enough to leave full margin +for improved living.”</p> + +<p>“I had a very frank statement on this point,” said Mr. Seigne, “not long +ago from a Tipperary man. When I tried to show him that his father had +paid a good many years ago the very same rent which he declares himself +unable to pay now, he admitted this at once. But it was a confession and +avoidance. ‘My father could pay the rent, and did pay the rent,’ he +said, ‘because he was content to live so that he could pay it. He sat on +a boss of straw, and ate out of a bowl. He lived in a way in which I +don’t intend to live, and so he could pay the rent. Now, I must have, +and I mean to have, out of the land, before I pay the rent, the means of +living as I wish to live; and if I can’t have it, I’ll sell out and go +away; but I’ll be—if I don’t fight before I do that same!’”</p> + +<p>“What could you reply to that?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“Oh,” I said, “‘that’s square and straightforward. Only just let me know +the point at which you mean to fight, and then we’ll see if we can agree +about something.’”</p> + +<p>“The truth is,” said Mr. Seigne, “that there is a <a name="page194" id="page194"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 194] +</span>pressure upward now +from below. The labourers don’t want to live any longer as the farmers +have always made them live; and so the farmers, having to consider the +growing demands of the labourers, and meaning to live better themselves, +push up against the landlord, and insist that the means of the +improvement shall come out of him.”</p> + +<p>He then told me an instructive story of his calling upon a +tenant-farmer, at whose place he found the labourers sitting about their +meal of pork and green vegetables. The farmer asked him into another +room, where he saw the farmer’s family making their meal of stirabout +and milk and potatoes.</p> + +<p>“I asked you in here,” said the farmer, “because we keep in here to +ourselves. I don’t want those fellows to see that we can’t afford to +give ourselves what we have to give them,”—this with strong language +indicating that he must himself be given a way to advance equally with +the progressive labourer, or he would know the reason why!</p> + +<p>This afternoon Mr. Seigne drove me over through a beautiful country to +Woodstock, near Inistiogue, the seat of the late Colonel Tighe, the head +of the family of which the authoress of “Psyche” was an ornament.</p> + +<p><a name="page195" id="page195"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 195] +</span>It is the finest place in this part of Ireland, and one of the finest I +have seen in the three kingdoms, a much more picturesque and more nobly +planted place indeed than its namesake in England. The mansion has no +architectural pretensions, being simply a very large and, I should +think, extremely comfortable house of the beginning of this century. The +library is very rich, and there are some good pictures, as well as +certain statues in the vestibule, which would have no interest for the +Weissnichtwo professor of <i>Sartor Resartus</i>, but are regarded with some +awe by the good people of Inistiogue.</p> + +<p>The park would do no discredit to a palace, and if the vague project of +establishing a royal residence in Ireland for one of the British Princes +should ever take shape, it would not be easy, I should say, to find a +demesne more befitting the home of a prince than this of the Tighes. At +present it serves the State at least as usefully, being the “pleasaunce” +of the people for miles around, who come here freely to walk and drive.</p> + +<p>It stretches for miles along the Nore, and is crowned by a gloriously +wooded hill nearly a thousand feet in height. The late Colonel Tighe, a +most accomplished man, and a passionate lover of trees, <a name="page196" id="page196"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 196] +</span>made it a kind +of private Kew Gardens. He planted long avenues of the rarest and finest +trees, araucarias, Scotch firs, oaks, beeches, cedars of Lebanon; laid +out miles of the most varied and delightful drives, and built the most +extensive conservatories in Ireland.</p> + +<p>The turfed and terraced walks among those conservatories are +indescribably lovely, and the whole place to-day was vocal with +innumerable birds. Picturesque little cottages and arbours are to be +found in unexpected nooks all through the woodlands, each commanding +some green vista of forest aisles, or some wide view of hill and +champaign, enlivened by the winding river. From one of those to-day we +looked out over a landscape to which Turner alone or Claude could have +done justice, the river, spanned by a fine bridge, in the middle +distance, and all the region wooded as in the days of which Edmund +Spenser sings, when Ireland</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i6">“Flourished in fame,</span><br /> + Of wealth and goodnesse far above the rest<br /> + Of all that bears the British Islands’ name.”<br /> +</p> + +<p>Over the whole place broods an indefinable charm. You feel that this was +the home at once and the work of a refined and thoughtful spirit. And so +<a name="page197" id="page197"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 197] +</span>indeed it was. Here for the greater part of the current century the +owner lived, making the development of the estate and of this demesne +his constant care and chief pleasure. And here still lives his widow, +with whom we took tea in a stately quiet drawing-room. Lady Louisa Tighe +was in Brussels with her mother, the Duchess of Richmond, on the eve of +Waterloo. She was a child then of ten years old, and her mother bade +them bring her down into the historic ball-room before the Duke of +Wellington left it. The duke took up his sword. “Let Louisa buckle it +for you,” said her mother, and when the little girl had girded it on, +the great captain stooped, took her up in his arms, and kissed her. “One +never knows what may happen, child,” he said good-naturedly; and taking +his small gold watch out of his fob, he bade her keep it for him.</p> + +<p>She keeps it still. For more than sixty years it has measured out in +this beautiful Irish home the hours of a life given to good works and +gracious usefulness. To-day, with all the vivacity of interest in the +people and the place which one might look for in a woman of twenty, this +charming old lady of eighty-three, showing barely threescore years in +her carriage, her countenance, and her voice, entertained <a name="page198" id="page198"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 198] +</span>us with minute +and most interesting accounts of the local industries which flourish +here mainly through her sympathetic and intelligent supervision. We +seemed to be in another world from the Ireland of Chicago or +Westminster!</p> + +<p>Mr. Seigne drove me back here by a most picturesque road leading along +the banks of the Nore, quite overhung with trees, which in places dip +their branches almost into the swift deep stream. “This is the favourite +drive of all the lovers hereabouts,” he said, “and there is a spice of +danger in it which makes it more romantic. Once, not very long ago, a +couple of young people, too absorbed in their love-making to watch their +horse, drove off the bank. Luckily for them they fell into the branches +of one of these overhanging trees, while the horse and car went plunging +into the water. There they swung, holding each other hand in hand, +making a pretty and pathetic tableau, till their cries brought some +anglers in a boat on the river to the rescue.”</p> + +<p>We spoke of Lady Louisa, and of the watch of Waterloo. “That watch had a +wonderful escape a few years ago,” said Mr. Seigne.</p> + +<p>Lady Louisa, it seems, had a confidential butler <a name="page199" id="page199"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 199] +</span>whom she most +implicitly trusted. One day it was found that a burglary had apparently +been committed at Woodstock, and that with a quantity of jewelry the +priceless watch had vanished. The butler was very active about the +matter, and as no trace could be found leading out of the house, he +intimated a suspicion that the affair might possibly have some +connection with a guest not long before at the house. This angered Lady +Louisa, who thereupon consulted the agent, who employed a capable +detective from Dublin. The detective came down to Inistiogue as a +commercial traveller, wandered about, made the acquaintance of Lady +Louisa’s maid, of the butler, and of other people about the house, and +formed his own conclusions. Two or three days after his arrival he +walked into the shop of a small jeweller in a neighbouring town, and +affecting a confidential manner, told the jeweller he wanted to buy +“some of those things from Woodstock.” The man was taken by surprise, +and going into a backshop produced one very fine diamond, and a number +of pieces of silver plate, of the disappearance of which the butler had +said nothing to his mistress. This led to the arrest of the butler, and +to the discovery that for a long time <a name="page200" id="page200"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 200] +</span>he had been purloining property +from the house and selling it. Many cases of excellent claret had found +their way in this fashion to a public-house which had acquired quite a +reputation for its Bordeaux with the officers quartered in its +neighbourhood. The wine-bins at Woodstock were found full of bottles of +water. Much of the capital port left by Colonel Tighe had gone—but the +hock was untouched. “Probably the butler didn’t care for hock,” said Mr. +Seigne. The Waterloo watch was recovered from a very decent fellow, a +travelling dealer, to whom it had been sold: and many pieces of jewelry +were traced up to London. But Lady Louisa could not be induced to go up +to London to identify them or testify.</p> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">DUBLIN, <i>Tuesday, March 6.</i>—</span>It is a curious fact, which I learned +to-day from the Registrar-General, that the deposits in the Post-office +Savings Banks have never diminished in Ireland since these banks were +established.<a id="footnotetag21" + name="footnotetag21"></a><a href="#footnote21"><sup>21</sup></a> These deposits are chiefly made, I understand, by the +small tenants, who are less represented by the deposits in the General +Savings Banks than are the shopkeepers <a name="page201" id="page201"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 201] +</span>and the cattle-drovers. In the +General Savings Banks the deposit line fluctuates more; though on the +whole there has been a steady increase in these deposits also throughout +Ireland.</p> + +<p>Of the details of the dealings of the private banks it is very hard to +get an accurate account. One gentleman, the manager of a branch of one +important bank, tells me that a great deal of money is made by usurers +out of the tenants, by backing their small bills. This practice goes +back to the first establishment of banks in Ireland. Formerly it was not +an uncommon thing for a landlord to offer his tenants a reduction, say, +of twenty per cent., on condition of their paying the rent when it fell +due. Such were the relations then between landlord and tenants, and so +little was punctuality expected in such payments that this might be +regarded as a sort of discount arrangement. The tenant who wished to +avail himself of such an offer would go to some friendly local usurer +and ask for a loan that he might avail himself of it. “One of these +usurers, whom I knew very well,” said the manager, “told me long ago +that he found these operations very profitable. His method of procedure +was to agree to advance the rent to the tenant at ten per <a name="page202" id="page202"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 202] +</span>cent., payable +at a near and certain date. This would reduce the landlord’s reduction +at once, of course, for the tenant, to ten per cent., but that was not +to be disdained; and so the bargain would be struck. If the money was +repaid at the fixed date, it was not a bad thing for the usurer. But it +was almost never so repaid; and with repeated renewals the usurer, by +his own showing, used to receive eventually twenty, fifty, and, in some +cases, nearly a hundred per cent, for his loan.”</p> + +<p>It is the opinion of this gentleman that, under the “Plan of Campaign,” +a good deal of money-making is done in a quiet way by some of the +“trustees,” who turn over at good interest, with the help of friendly +financiers, the funds lodged with them, being held to account to the +tenants only for the principal. “Of course,” he said, “all this is +doubtless at least as legitimate as any other part of the ‘Plan,’ and I +daresay it all goes for ‘the good of the cause.’ But neither the tenants +nor the landlords get much by it!”</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page203" id="page203"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 203] +</span>CHAPTER XIII.</h2> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">DUBLIN, <i>Thursday, March 8.</i>—</span>At eight o’clock this morning I left the +Harcourt Street station for Inch, to take a look at the scene of the +Coolgreany evictions of last summer. These evictions came of the +adoption of the Plan of Campaign, under the direction of Mr. Dillon, +M.P., on the Wexford property of Mr. George Brooke of Dublin. The agent +of Mr. Brooke’s estate, Captain Hamilton, is the honorary director of +the Property Defence Association, so that we have here obviously a +grapple between the National League doing the work, consciously or +unconsciously, of the agrarian revolutionists, and a combination of +landed proprietors fighting for the rights of property as they +understand them.</p> + +<p>We ran through a beautiful country for the greater part of the way. At +Bray, which is a favourite Irish watering-place, the sea broke upon us +bright and full of life; and the station itself was more like a +considerable English station than any <a name="page204" id="page204"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 204] +</span>I have seen. Thence we passed into +a richly-wooded region, with neat, well-kept hedges, as far as Rathdrum +and the “Sweet Vale of Avoca.” The hills about Shillelagh are +particularly well forested, though, as the name suggests, they must have +been cut for cudgels pretty extensively for now a great many years. We +came again on the sea at the fishing port of Arklow, where the stone +walls about the station were populous with small ragamuffins, and at the +station of Inch I found a car waiting for me with Mr. Holmes, a young +English Catholic officer, who had most obligingly offered to show me the +place and the people. We had hardly got into the roadway when we +overtook a most intelligent-looking, energetic young priest, walking +briskly on in the direction of our course. This was Dr. Dillon, the +curate of Arklow. We pulled up at once, and Mr. Holmes, introducing me +to him, we begged him to take a seat with us. He excused himself as +having to join another priest with whom he was going to a function at +Inch; but he was good enough to walk a little way with us, and gave me +an appointment for 2 P.M. at his own town of Arklow, where I could catch +the train back to Dublin. We drove on rapidly and called on <a name="page205" id="page205"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 205] +</span>Father +O’Neill, the parish priest. We found him in full canonicals, as he was +to officiate at the function this morning, and with him were Father +Dunphy, the parish priest of Arklow, and two or three more robed +priests.</p> + +<p>Father O’Neill, whose face and manner are those of the higher order of +the continental clergy, briefly set forth to me his view of the +transactions at Coolgreany. He said that before the Plan of Campaign was +adopted by the tenants, Mr. William O’Brien, M.P., had written to him +explaining what the effect of the Plan would be, and urging him to take +whatever steps he could to obviate the necessity of adopting it, as it +might eventually result to the disadvantage of the tenants. “To that +end,” said Father O’Neill, “I called upon Captain Hamilton, the agent, +with Dr. Dillon of Arklow, but he positively refused to listen to us, +and in fact ordered us, not very civilly, to leave his office.”</p> + +<p>It was after this he said that he felt bound to let the tenants take +their own way. Eighty of them joined in the “Plan of Campaign” and paid +the amount of the rent due, less a reduction of 30 per cent., which they +demanded of the agent, into the hands of Sir Thomas Esmonde, M.P., Sir +Thomas <a name="page206" id="page206"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 206] +</span>being a resident in the country, and Mr. Mayne, M.P. Writs of +ejectment were obtained against them afterwards, and in July last +sixty-seven of them were evicted, who are now living in “Laud League +huts,” put up on the holdings of three small tenants who were exempted +from the Plan of Campaign, and allowed to pay their rents subject to a +smaller reduction made by the agent, in order that they might retain +their land as a refuge for the rest.</p> + +<p>All this Father O’Neill told us very quietly, in a gentle, +undemonstrative way, but he was much interested when I told him I had +recently come from Rome, where these proceedings, I was sure, were +exciting a good deal of serious attention. “Yes,” he said, “and Father +Dunphy who is here in the other room, has just got back from Rome, where +he had two audiences of the Holy Father.”</p> + +<p>“Doubtless, then,” I said, “he will have given his Holiness full +particulars of all that took place here.”</p> + +<p>“No doubt,” responded Father O’Neill, “and he tells me the Holy Father +listened with great attention to all he had to say—though of course, he +expressed no opinion about it to Father Dunphy.”</p> + +<p><a name="page207" id="page207"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 207] +</span>As the time fixed for the function was at hand, we were obliged to leave +without seeing Father Dunphy.</p> + +<p>From the Presbytery we drove to the scene of the evictions. These +evictions were in July. Mr. Holmes witnessed them, and gave me a lively +account of the affair. The “battle” was not a very tough one. Mr. +Davitt, who was present, stood under a tree very quietly watching it +all. “He looked very picturesque,” said Mr. Holmes, “in a light grey +suit, with a broad white beaver shading his dark Spanish face; and +smoked his cigar very composedly.” After it was over, Dr. Dillon brought +up one of the tenants, and presented him to Mr. Davitt as “the man who +had resisted this unjust eviction.” Mr. Davitt took his cigar from his +lips, and in the hearing of all who stood about sarcastically said, +“Well, if he couldn’t make a better resistance than that he ought to go +up for six months!” The first house we came upon was derelict—all +battered and despoiled, the people in the neighbourhood here, as +elsewhere, regarding such houses as free spoil, and carrying off from +time to time whatever they happen to fancy. Near this house we met an +emergency man, named <a name="page208" id="page208"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 208] +</span>Bolton, an alert, energetic-looking native of +Wicklow. He has four brothers; and is now at work on one of the +“evicted” holdings.</p> + +<p>I asked if he was “boycotted,” and what his relations were with the +people.</p> + +<p>He laughed in a shrewd, good-natured way. “Oh, I’m boycotted, of +course,” he said; “but I don’t care a button for any of these people, +and I’d rather they wouldn’t speak to me. They know I can take care of +myself, and they give me a good wide berth. All I have to object to is +that they set fire to an outhouse of mine, and cut the ears of one of my +heifers, and for that I want damages. Otherwise I’m getting on very +well; and I think this will be a good year, if the law is enforced, and +these fellows are made to behave themselves.”</p> + +<p>Near Bolton’s farm we passed the holding of a tenant named Kavanagh, one +of the three who were “allowed” to pay their rents. Several Land League +huts are on his place, and the evicted people who occupy them put their +cattle with his. He is a quiet, cautious man, and very reticent. But it +seemed to me that he was not entirely satisfied with the “squatters” who +have been quartered upon him. And it appears that he has taken another +holding <a name="page209" id="page209"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 209] +</span>in Carlow. From his place we drove to Ballyfad, where a large +house, at the end of a good avenue of trees, once the mansion of a +squire, but now much dilapidated, is occupied as headquarters by the +police. Here we found Mr. George Freeman, the bailiff of the Coolgreany +property, a strong, sturdy man, much disgusted at finding it necessary +to go about protected by two policemen. That this was necessary, +however, he admitted, pointing out to us the place where one Kinsella +was killed not very long ago. The son of this man Kinsella was formerly +one of Mr. Brooke’s gamekeepers, and is now, Mr. Freeman thinks, in +concert with another man named Ryan, the chief stay of the League in +keeping up its dominion over the evicted tenants.</p> + +<p>Many of these tenants, he believes, would gladly pay their rents now, +and come back if they dared.</p> + +<p>“Every man, sir,” he said, “that has anything to lose, would be glad to +come back next Monday if he thought his life would be safe. But all the +lazy and thriftless ones are better off now than they ever were; they +get from £4 to £6 a month, with nothing to do, and so they’re in clover, +and they naturally don’t like to have the industrious, well-<a name="page210" id="page210"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 210] +</span>to-do +tenants spoil their fun by making a general settlement.”</p> + +<p>“Besides that,” he added, “that man Kinsella and his comrade Ryan are +the terror of the whole of them. Kinsella always was a curious, silent, +moody fellow. He knows every inch of the country, going over it all the +time by night and day as a gamekeeper, and I am quite sure the +Parnellite men and the Land Leaguers are just as much afraid of him and +Ryan as the tenants are. He don’t care a bit for them; and they’ve no +control of him at all.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Freeman said he remembered very well the occasion referred to by +Father O’Neill, when Captain Hamilton refused to confer with Dr. Dillon +and himself.</p> + +<p>“Did Father O’Neill tell you, sir,” he said, “that Captain Hamilton was +quite willing to talk with him and Father O’Donel, the parish priests, +and with the Coolgreany people, but he would have nothing to say to any +one who was not their priest, and had no business to be meddling with +the matter at all?”</p> + +<p>“No; he did not tell me that.”</p> + +<p>“Ah! well, sir, that made all the difference. Father Dunphy, who was +there, is a high-tempered <a name="page211" id="page211"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 211] +</span>man, and he said he had just as much right to +represent the tenants as Captain Hamilton to represent the landlord, and +that Captain Hamilton wouldn’t allow. It was the outside people made all +the trouble. In June of last year there was a conference at my house, +and all that time there was a Committee sitting at Coolgreany, and the +tenants would not be allowed to do anything without the Committee.”</p> + +<p>“And who made the Committee?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, they made themselves, I suppose, sir. There was Sir Thomas +Esmonde—he was a convert, you know, of Father O’Neill—and Mr. Mayne +and Mr. John Dillon. And Dr. Dillon of Arklow, he was as busy as he +could be till the evictions were made in July. And then he was in +retreat. And I believe, sir, it is quite true that he wanted the Bishop +to let him come out of the retreat just to have a hand in the business.”</p> + +<p>The police sergeant, a very cool, sensible man, quite agreed with the +bailiff as to the influence upon the present situation of the +ex-gamekeeper Kinsella, and his friend Eyan. “If they were two +Invincibles, sir,” he said, “these member fellows of the League couldn’t +be in greater fear of them than they are. <a name="page212" id="page212"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 212] +</span>They say nothing, and do just +as they please. That Kinsella, when Mr. John Dillon was down here, just +told him before a lot of people that he ‘wanted no words and no advice +from him,’ and he’s just in that surly way with all the people about.”</p> + +<p>As to the Brooke estate, I am told here it was bought more than twenty +years ago with a Landed Estates Court title from Colonel Forde, by the +grandfather of Mr. Brooke. He paid about £75,000 sterling for it. His +son died young, and the present owner came into it as a child, Mr. Vesey +being then the agent, who, during the minority, spent a great deal on +improving the property. Captain Hamilton came in as agent only a few +years ago. While the Act of 1881 was impending, an abatement was granted +of more than twenty per cent. In 1882 the tenants all paid except +eleven, who went into Court and got their rents cut down by the +Sub-Commissioners. There were appeals; and in 1885, after Court +valuations, the rents cut down by the Sub-Commissioners were restored in +several cases. There never was any rack-renting on the estate at all. +There are upon it in all more than a hundred tenants, twelve of whom are +Protestants, holding a little less in all than one-fourth of the +property.</p> + +<p><a name="page213" id="page213"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 213] +</span>There are fifteen judicial tenants, twenty-one lease-holders, and +seventy-seven hold from year to year.</p> + +<p>The gross rental is a little over £2000 a year of which one-half goes to +Mr. Brooke’s mother. Mr. Brooke himself is a wealthy man, at the head of +the most important firm of wine-merchants in Ireland, and he has +repeatedly spent on the property more than he took out of it.</p> + +<p>The house of Sir Thomas Esmonde, M.P., was pointed out to me from the +road. “Sir Thomas is to marry an heiress, sir, isn’t he, in America?” +asked an ingenuous inquirer. I avowed my ignorance on this point. “Oh, +well, they say so, for anyway the old house is being put in order for +now the first time in forty years.”</p> + +<p>We reached Arklow in time for luncheon, and drove to the large police +barracks there. These were formerly the quarters of the troops. Arklow +was one of the earliest settlements of the Anglo-Normans in Ireland +under Henry II., and once rejoiced in a castle and a monastery both now +obliterated; though a bit of an old tower here is said to have been +erected in his time. The town lives by fishing, and by shipping copper +and lead ore to <a name="page214" id="page214"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 214] +</span>South Wales. The houses are rather neat and well kept; +but the street was full of little ragged, merry mendicants.</p> + +<p>We went into a small branch of the Bank of Ireland, and asked where we +should find the hotel. We were very civilly directed to “The Register’s +Office over the way.” This seemed odd enough. But reaching it we were +further puzzled to see the sign over the doorway of a “coach-builder”! +However, we rang the bell, and presently a maid-servant appeared, who +assured us that this was really the hotel, and that we could have +“whatever we liked” for luncheon. We liked what we found we could +get—chops, potatoes, and parsnips; and without too much delay these +were neatly served to us in a most remarkable room, ablaze with mural +ornaments and decorations, upon which every imaginable pigment of the +modern palette seemed to have been lavished, from a Nile-water-green +dado to a scarlet and silver frieze. There were five times as many +potatoes served to us as two men could possibly eat, and not one of them +was half-boiled. But otherwise the meal was well enough, and the service +excellent. Beer could be got for us, but the house had no licence, Lord +Carysfort, the owner of the <a name="page215" id="page215"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 215] +</span>property, thinking, so our hostess said, +that “there were too many licences in the town already.” Lord Carysfort +is probably right; but it is not every owner of a house, or even of a +lease in Ireland, I fear, who would take such a view and act on it to +the detriment of his own property.</p> + +<p>Dr. Dillon lives in the main square of Arklow in a very neat house. He +was absent at a funeral in the handsome Catholic church near by when we +called, but we were shown into his study, and he presently came in.</p> + +<p>His study was that of a man of letters and of politics. Blue-books and +statistical works lay about in all directions, and on the table were the +March numbers of the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, and the <i>Contemporary +Review</i>.</p> + +<p>“You are abreast of the times, I see,” I said to him, pointing to these +periodicals.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” he replied, “they have just come in; and there is a capital paper +by Mr. John Morley in this <i>Nineteenth Century</i>.”</p> + +<p>Nothing could be livelier than Dr. Dillon’s interest in all that is +going on on both sides of the Atlantic, more positive than his opinions, +or more terse and clear than his way of putting them. He <a name="page216" id="page216"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 216] +</span>agreed entirely +with Father O’Neill as to the pressure put upon the Coolgreany tenants, +not so much by Mr. Brooke as by the agent, Captain Hamilton; but he +thought Mr. Brooke also to blame for his treatment of them.</p> + +<p>“Two of the most respectable of them,” said Dr. Dillon, “went to see Mr. +Brooke in Dublin, and he wouldn’t listen to them. On the contrary, he +absolutely put them out of his office without hearing a word they had to +say.”<a id="footnotetag22" + name="footnotetag22"></a><a href="#footnote22"><sup>22</sup></a></p> + +<p>I found Dr. Dillon a strong disciple of Mr. Henry George, and a firm +believer in the doctrine of the “nationalisation of the land.” “It is +certain to come,” he said, “as certain to come in Great Britain as in +Ireland, and the sooner the better. The movement about the sewerage +rates in London,” he added, “is the first symptom of the land war in +London. It is the thin edge of the wedge to break down landlordism in +the British metropolis.”</p> + +<p>He is watching American politics, too, very closely, and inclines to +sympathise with President Cleveland. Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia, he +tells me, in his passage through Ireland the other day, did not hesitate +to express his conviction that President Cleveland would be re-elected.</p> + +<p><a name="page217" id="page217"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 217] +</span>Dr. Dillon was so earnest and so interesting that the time slipped by +very fast, until a casual glance at my watch showed me that we must make +great haste to catch the Dublin train.</p> + +<p>We left therefore rather hurriedly, but before reaching the station we +saw the Dublin train go careering by, its white pennon of smoke and +vapour curling away along the valley.</p> + +<p>I made the best of it, however, and letting Mr. Holmes depart by a train +which took him home, I found a smart jarvey with a car, and drove out to +Glenart Castle, the beautiful house of the Earl of Carysfort. This is a +very handsome modern house, built in a castellated style of a very good +whitish grey marble, with extensive and extremely well-kept terraced +gardens and conservatories.</p> + +<p>It stands very well on one high bank of the river, a residence of the +Earl of Wicklow occupying the other bank. My jarvey called my attention +to the excellence of the roads, on which he said Lord Carysfort has +spent “a deal of money,” as well as upon the gardens of the new Castle. +The head-gardener, an Englishman, told me he found the native labourers +very intelligent and willing both to learn and to work. Evidently here +is another centre of useful <a name="page218" id="page218"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 218] +</span>and civilising influences, not managed by an +“absentee.”<a id="footnotetag23" + name="footnotetag23"></a><a href="#footnote23"><sup>23</sup></a></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page219" id="page219"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 219] +</span>CHAPTER XIV.</h2> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">DUBLIN, <i>Friday, March 9th.</i>—</span>At 7.40 this morning I took the train for +Athy to visit the Luggacurren estates of Lord Lansdowne. Mr. Lynch, a +resident magistrate here, some time ago kindly offered to show me over +the place, but I thought it as well to take my chance with the people of +Athy who are reported to have been very hot over the whole matter here, +and so wrote to Mr. Lynch that I would find him at the Lodge, which is +the headquarters of the property.</p> + +<p>Athy is a neat, well-built little town, famous of old as a frontier +fortress of Kildare. An embattled tower, flanked by small square +turrets, guards a picturesque old bridge here over the Barrow, the +bridge being known in the country as “Crom-a-boo,” from the old war-cry +of the Fitz-Geralds. It is a busy place now; and there was quite a +bustle at the very pretty little station. I asked a friendly old porter +which was the best hotel in the town. “The <a name="page220" id="page220"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 220] +</span>best? Ah! there’s only one, +and it’s not the best—but there are worse—and it’s Kavanagh’s.” I +found it easily enough, and was ushered by a civil man, who emerged from +the shop which occupies part of it, into a sort of reading-room with a +green table. A rather slatternly but very active girl soon converted +this into a neat breakfast-table, and gave me an excellent breakfast. +The landlord found me a good car, and off I set for the residence of +Father Maher, the curate of whom I had heard as one of the most fiery +and intractable of the National League priests in this part of Ireland.</p> + + +<p>My jarvey was rather taciturn at first, but turned out to be something +of a politician. He wanted Home Rule, one of his reasons being that then +they “wouldn’t let the Americans come and ruin them altogether, driving +out the grain from the markets.” About this he was very clear and +positive. “Oh, it doesn’t matter now whether the land is good or bad, +America has just ruined the farmers entirely.”</p> + +<p>I told him I had always heard this achievement attributed to England. +“Oh! that was quite a mistake! What the English did was to punish the +men that stood up for Ireland. There was Mr. O’Brien. But for him there +wasn’t a man of Lord Lansdowne’s <a name="page221" id="page221"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 221] +</span>people would have had the heart to +stand up. He did it all; and now, what were they doing to him? They were +putting him on a cold plank-bed on a stone floor in a damp cell!”</p> + +<p>“But the English put all their prisoners in those cells, don’t they?” I +asked.</p> + +<p>“And what of it, sir?” he retorted. “They’re good enough for most of +them, but not for a gentleman like Mr. O’Brien, that would spill the +last drop of his heart’s blood for Ireland!”</p> + +<p>“But,” I said, “they’re doing just the same thing with Mr. Gilhooly, I +hear.”</p> + +<p>“And who is Mr. Gilhooly, now? And it’s not for the likes of him to +complain and be putting on airs as if he was Mr. O’Brien!”</p> + +<p>“Yes, it is a fine country for hunting!”</p> + +<p>“Was it ever put down here, the hunting?”</p> + +<p>“No, indeed! Sure, the people wouldn’t let it be!”</p> + +<p>“Not if Mr. O’Brien told them they must?” I queried.</p> + +<p>“Mr. O’Brien; ah, he wouldn’t think of such a thing! It brings money all +the time to Athy, and sells the horses.”</p> + +<p>As to the troubles at Luggacurren, he was not very clear. “It was a +beautiful place, Mr. Dunne’s; we’d <a name="page222" id="page222"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 222] +</span>see it presently. And Mr. Dunne, he +was a good one for sport. It was that, your honour, that got him into +the trouble”—</p> + +<p>“And Mr. Kilbride?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, Mr. Kilbride’s place was a very good place too, but not like Mr. +Dunne’s. And he was doing very well, Mr. Kilbride. He was getting a good +living from the League, and he was a Member of Parliament. Oh, yes, he +wasn’t the only one of the tenants that was doing good to himself. There +was more of them that was getting more than ever they made out of the +land.”<a id="footnotetag24" + name="footnotetag24"></a><a href="#footnote24"><sup>24</sup></a></p> + +<p>“Was the land so bad, then?” I asked.</p> + +<p><a name="page223" id="page223"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 223] +</span>“No, there was as good land at Luggacurren as any there was in all +Ireland; but,” and here he pointed off to the crests of the hills in the +distance, “there was a deal of land there of the estate on the hills, +and it was very poor land, but the tenants had to pay as much for that +as for the good property of Dunne and Kilbride.”</p> + +<p>“Do you know Mr. Lynch, the magistrate?” I asked. “If you do, look out +for him, as he has promised to join me and show me the place.”</p> + +<p>“Oh no, sorr!” the jarvey exclaimed at once; “don’t mind about him. Hell +have his own car, and your honour won’t want to take him on ours.”</p> + +<p>“Why not?” I persisted, “there’s plenty of room.”</p> + +<p>“Oh! but indeed, sir, if it wasn’t that you were going to the priest’s, +Father Maher, you wouldn’t get a car at Athy—no, not under ten pounds!”</p> + +<p>“Not under ten pounds,” I replied. “Would I get one then for ten +pounds?”</p> + +<p>“It’s a deal of money, ten pounds, sorr, and you wouldn’t have a poor +man throw away ten pounds?”</p> + +<p>“Certainly not, nor ten shillings either. Is it a question of principle, +or a question of price?”</p> + +<p>The man looked around at me with a droll <a name="page224" id="page224"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 224] +</span>glimmer in his eye: “Ah, to be +sure, your honour’s a great lawyer; but he’ll come pounding along with +his big horse in his own car, Mr. Lynch; and sure it’ll be quicker for +your honour just driving to Father Maher’s.”</p> + +<p>There was no resisting this, so I laughed and bade him drive on.</p> + +<p>“Whose house is that?” I asked, as we passed a house surrounded with +trees.</p> + +<p>“Oh! that’s the priest, Father Keogh—a very good man, but not so much +for the people as Father Maher, who has everything to look after about +them.”</p> + +<p>We came presently within sight of a handsome residence, Lansdowne Lodge, +the headquarters of the estate. Many fine cattle were grazing in the +fields about it.</p> + +<p>“They are Lord Lansdowne’s beasts,” said my jarvey; “and it’s the +emergency men are looking after them.”</p> + +<p>Nearly opposite were the Land League huts erected on the holding of an +unevicted tenant—a small village of neat wooden “shanties.” On the +roadway in front of these half-a-dozen men were lounging about. They +watched us with much curiosity as we drove up, and whispered eagerly +together.</p> + +<p><a name="page225" id="page225"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 225] +</span>“They’re some of the evicted men, your honour,” said my jarvey, with a +twinkle in his eye; and then under his breath, “They’ll be thinking your +honour’s came down to arrange it all. They think everybody that comes is +come about an arrangement.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, then, they all want it arranged!”</p> + +<p>“No; not all, but many of them do. Some of them like it well enough +going about like gentlemen with nothing to do, only their hands in their +pockets.”</p> + +<p>We turned out of the highway here and passed some very pretty cottages.</p> + +<p>“No, they’re not for labourers, your honour,” said my jarvey; “the +estate built them for mechanics. It’s the tenants look after the +labourers, and little it is they do for them.”</p> + +<p>Then, pointing to a ridge of hills beyond us, he said: “It was +Kilbride’s father, sir, evicted seventeen tenants on these hills—poor +labouring men, with their families, many years ago,—and now he’s +evicted himself, and a Member of Parliament!”</p> + +<p>Father Maher’s house stands well off from the highway. He was not at +home, being “away at a service in the hills,” but would be back before +two o’clock. I left my name for him, with a memo<a name="page226" id="page226"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 226] +</span>randum of my purpose in +calling, and we drove on to see the bailiff of the estate, Mr. Hind. On +the way we met Father Norris, a curate of the parish, in a smart trap +with a good horse, and had a brief colloquy with him. Mr. Hind we found +busy afield; a quiet, staunch sort of man. He spoke of the situation +very coolly and dispassionately. “The tenants in the main were a good +set of men—as they had reason to be, Lord Lansdowne having been not +only a fair landlord, but a liberal and enterprising promoter of local +improvements.” I had been told in Dublin that Lord Lansdowne had offered +a subscription of £200 towards establishing creameries, and providing +high-class bulls for this estate. Similar offers had been cordially met +by Lord Lansdowne’s tenants in Kerry, and with excellent results. But +here they were rejected almost scornfully, though accompanied by offers +of abatement on the rents, which, in the case of Mr. Kilbride, for +example, amounted to 20 per cent.</p> + +<p>“How did this happen, the tenants being good men as you say?” I asked of +Mr. Hind.</p> + +<p>“Because they were unable to resist the pressure put on them by the two +chief tenants, Kilbride and Dunne, with the help of the League. Kilbride +and <a name="page227" id="page227"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 227] +</span>Dunne both lived very well.” My information at Dublin was that Mr. +Kilbride had a fine house built by Lord Lansdowne, and a farm of seven +hundred acres, at a rent of £760, 10s. Mr. Dunne, who co-operated with +him, held four town lands comprising 1304 acres, at a yearly rent of +£1348, 15s. Upon this property Lord Lansdowne had expended in drainage +and works £1993, 11s. 9d., and in buildings £631, 15s. 4d., or in all +very nearly two years’ rental. On Mr. Kilbride’s holdings Lord Lansdowne +had expended in drainage works £1931, 6s. 3d., and in buildings £1247, +19s. 5d., or in all more than four years’ rental. Mr. Kilbride held his +lands on life leases. Mr. Dunne held his smallest holding of 84 acres on +a yearly tenure; his two largest holdings, one on a lease for 31 years +from 1874, and the other on a life lease, and his fourth holding of 172 +acres on a life lease.</p> + +<p>Where does the hardship appear in all this to Mr. Dunne or Mr. Kilbride?</p> + +<p>On Mr. Kilbride’s holdings, for instance, Lord Lansdowne expended over +£3000, for which he added to the rent £130 a year, or about 4 per cent., +while he himself stood to pay 6-1/2 per cent, on the loans he made from +the Board of Works <a name="page228" id="page228"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 228] +</span>for the expenditure. In the same way it was with Mr. +Dunne’s farms. They were mostly in grass, and Lord Lansdowne laid out +more than £2500 on them, borrowed at the same rate from the Board, for +which he added to the rent only £66 a year, or about 2-1/2 per cent. Mr. +Kilbride was a Poor-Law Guardian, and Mr. Dunne a Justice of the Peace. +The leases in both of these cases, and in those of other large tenants, +seem to have been made at the instance of the tenants themselves, and +afforded security against any advance in the rental during a time of +high agricultural prices. And it would appear that for the last quarter +of a century there has been no important advance in the rental. In 1887 +the rental was only £300 higher than in 1862, though during the interval +the landlord had laid out £20,000 on improvements in the shape of +drainage, roads, labourers’ cottages, and other permanent works. +Moreover, in fifteen years only one tenant has been evicted for +non-payment of rent.</p> + +<p>“Was there any ill-feeling towards the Marquis among the tenants?” I +asked of Mr. Hind.</p> + +<p>“Certainly not, and no reason for any. They were a good set of men, and +they would never have gone into this fight, only for a few who were in +<a name="page229" id="page229"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 229] +</span>trouble, and I’m sure that to-day most of them would be thankful if they +could settle and get back. The best of them had money enough, and didn’t +like the fight at all.”</p> + +<p>All the trouble here seems to have originated with the adoption of the +Plan of Campaign.</p> + +<p>Lord Lansdowne, besides this estate in Queen’s County, owns property in +a wild, mountainous part of the county of Kerry. On this property the +tenants occupy, for the most part, small holdings, the average rental +being about £10, and many of the rentals much lower. They are not +capitalist farmers at all, and few of them are able to average the +profits of their industry, setting the gains of a good, against the +losses of a bad, season. In October 1886, while Mr. Dillon was +organising his Plan of Campaign, Lord Lansdowne visited his Kerry +property to look into the condition of the people. The local Bank had +just failed, and the shopkeepers and money-lenders were refusing credit +and calling in loans. The pressure they put upon these small farmers, +together with the fall in the price of dairy produce and of young stock +at that time, caused real distress, and Lord Lansdowne, after looking +into the situation, offered, of his own motion, abatements <a name="page230" id="page230"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 230] +</span>varying from +25 to 35 per cent, to all of them whose rents had not been judicially +fixed under the Act of 1881, for a term of fifteen years.</p> + +<p>As to these, Lord Lansdowne wrote a letter on the 21st of October 1886 +(four days after the promulgation of the Plan of Campaign at Portumna on +the Clanricarde property), to his agent, Mr. Townsend Trench. This +letter was published. I have a copy of it given to me in Dublin, and it +states the case as between the landlords and the tenants under judicial +rents most clearly and temperately.</p> + +<p>“It might, I think,” says the Marquis, “be very fairly argued, that the +State having imposed the terms of a contract on landlord and tenant, +that contract should not be interfered with except by the State.</p> + +<p>The punctual payment of the ‘judicial rent’ was the one advantage to +which the landlords were desired to look when, in 1881, they were +deprived of many of the most valuable attributes of ownership.</p> + +<p>“It was distinctly stipulated that the enormous privileges which were +suddenly and unexpectedly conferred upon the tenants were to be enjoyed +by them conditionally upon the fulfilment on their part of the statutory +obligations specified in the Act. <a name="page231" id="page231"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 231] +</span>Of those, by far the most important +was the punctual payment of the rent fixed by the Court for the judicial +term.</p> + +<p>“This obligation being unfulfilled, the landlord might reasonably claim +that he should be free to exercise his own discretion in determining +whether any given tenancy should or should not be perpetuated.</p> + +<p>“In many cases [such cases are probably not so numerous on my estate as +upon many others] the resumption of the holding, and the consolidation +of adjoining farms, would be clearly advantageous to the whole +community. In the congested districts the consolidation of farms is the +only solution that I have seen suggested for meeting a chronic +difficulty.</p> + +<p>“I have no reason to believe that the Judicial Rents in force on my +estate are such that, upon an average of the yield and prices of +agricultural produce, my tenants would find it difficult to pay them.”</p> + +<p>In spite of all these considerations Lord Lansdowne instructed Mr. +Trench to grant to these tenants under judicial leases an abatement of +20 per cent. on the November gale of 1886. This abatement, freely +offered, was gladly accepted. There <a name="page232" id="page232"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 232] +</span>had been no outrages or disturbances +on the Kerry properties, and the relations of the landlord with his +tenants, before and after this visit of Lord Lansdowne to Kerry, and +these reductions which followed it, had been, and continued to be, +excellent.</p> + +<p>But the tale of Kerry reached Luggacurren; and certain of the tenants on +the latter estate were moved by it to demand for the Queen’s County +property identical treatment with that accorded to the very differently +situated property in Kerry.</p> + +<p>The leaders of the Luggacurren movement, I gather from Mr. Hind, never +pretended inability to pay their rents. They simply demanded abatements +of 35 per cent. on non-judicial, and 25 per cent. on judicial, rents as +their due, on the ground that they should be treated like the tenants in +Kerry: and the Plan of Campaign being by this time in full operation in +more than one part of Ireland, they threatened to resort to it if their +demand was refused. Lord Lansdowne at once declared that he would not +repeat at Luggacurren his concession made in Kerry as to the rents +judicially fixed; but he offered on a fair consideration of the +non-judicial rents to make abatements on them ranging from 15 to 25 per +cent.</p> + +<p><a name="page233" id="page233"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 233] +</span>The offer was refused, and the war began. On the 23d of March 1887 Mr. +Kilbride was evicted. One week afterwards, on the 29th of March, he got +up in the rooms of the National League in Dublin, and openly declared +that “the Luggacurren evictions differed from most other evictions in +this, that they were able to pay the rent. It was a fight,” he +exultingly exclaimed, “of intelligence against intelligence; it was +diamond cut diamond!” In other words, it was a struggle, not for +justice, but for victory.</p> + +<p>On all these points, and others furnished to me at Dublin touching this +estate, much light was thrown by the bailiff, who had not been concerned +in the evictions. He told me what he knew, and then very obligingly +offered to conduct me to the lodge, where we should find Mr. Hutchins, +who has charge now of the properties taken up by Mr. Kavanagh’s Land +Corporation. My patriotic jarvey from Athy made no objection to my +giving the bailiff a lift, and we drove off to the lodge. On the way the +jarvey good-naturedly exclaimed, “Ah! there comes Mr. Lynch,” and even +offered to pull up that the magistrate might overtake us.</p> + +<p>We found Mr. Hutchins at home, a cool, quiet, <a name="page234" id="page234"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 234] +</span>energetic, northern man, +who seems to be handling the difficult situation here with great +firmness and prudence. Mrs. Hutchins, who has lived here now for nearly +a year—a life not unlike that of the wife of an American officer on the +Far Western frontier—very amicably asked me to lunch, and Mr. Hutchins +offered to show me the holdings of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Kilbride. Mr. Lynch +proposed that we should all go on my car, but I remembered the protest +of the jarvey, and sending him to await me at Father Maher’s, I drove +off with Mr. Hutchins. As we drove along, he confirmed the jarvey’s hint +as to the difference between the views and conduct of the parish priest +and the views and conduct of his more fiery curate. This is a very +common state of affairs, I find, all over Ireland.</p> + +<p>The house of Mr. Dunne is that of a large gentleman farmer. It is very +well fitted up, but it was plain that the tenants had done little or +nothing to make or keep it a “house beautiful.” The walls had never been +papered, and the wood-work showed no recent traces of the brush. “He +spent more money on horse-racing than on housekeeping,” said a shrewd +old man who was in the house. In fact, Mr. Dunne, I am told, entered a +horse for the <a name="page235" id="page235"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 235] +</span>races at the Curragh after he had undergone what Mr. +Gladstone calls “the sentence of death” of an eviction!</p> + +<p>Some of the doors bore marks of the crowbar but no great mischief had +been done to them or to the large fine windows. The only serious damage +done during the eviction was the cutting of a hole through the roof. An +upper room had been provisioned to stand a siege, and so scientifically +barricaded with logs and trunks of trees that after several vain +attempts to break through the door the assailants climbed to the roof, +and in twenty minutes cut their way in from without. The dining and +drawing rooms were those of a gentleman’s residence, and one of the +party remembered attending here a social festivity got up with much +display.</p> + +<p>A large cattle-yard has been established on this place, with an +original, and, as I was assured, most successful weighing-machine by the +Land Corporation. We found it full of very fine-looking cattle, and Mr. +Hutchins seems to think the operation of managing the estate as a kind +of “ranch” decidedly promising. “I am not a bit sorry for Mr. Dunne,” he +said, “but I am very sorry for other quiet, good tenants who have been +deluded or driven into giving <a name="page236" id="page236"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 236] +</span>up valuable holdings to keep him and Mr. +Kilbride company, and give colour to the vapourings of Mr. William +O’Brien.”</p> + +<p>The cases of some of these tenants were instructive. One poor man, +Knowles, had gone out to America, and regularly sent home money to his +family to pay the rent. They found other uses for it, and when the storm +came he was two years and a half in arrears. In another instance, two +brothers held contiguous holdings, and were in a manner partners. One +was fonder of Athy than of agriculture; the other a steady husbandman. +Four years’ arrears had grown up against the one; only a half-year’s +gale against the other. Clearly this difference originated outside of +the fall of prices! In a third case, a tenant wrote to Mr. Trench +begging to have something done, as he had the money to pay, and wanted +to pay, but “didn’t dare.”</p> + +<p>From Mr. Dunne’s we drove to Mr. Kilbride’s, another ample, very +comfortable house—not so thoroughly well fitted up with bathroom and +other modern appurtenances as Mr. Dunne’s perhaps—but still a very good +house. It stands on a large green knoll, rather bare of trees, and +commands a fine sweep of landscape.</p> + +<p><a name="page237" id="page237"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 237] +</span>Mr. Hutchins drove me to the little road which leads up past the “Land +League village” to the house of Father Maher, and there set me down.</p> + +<p>I walked up and found the curate at home—a tall, slender, well-made +young priest, with a keen, intelligent face. He received me very +politely, and, when I showed him the card of an eminent dignitary of the +Church, with cordiality.</p> + +<p>I found him full of sympathy with the people of his parish, but neither +vehement nor unfair. He did not deny that there were tenants on Lord +Lansdowne’s estate who were amply able to pay their rents; but he did +most emphatically assert that there were not a few of them who really +could not pay their rents.</p> + +<p>“I assure you,” he said, “there are some of them who cannot even pay +their dues to their priest, and when I say that, you will know how +pinched and driven they must indeed be.” It was in view of these tenants +that he seemed to justify the course of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Kilbride. +“They must all stand or fall together.” He had nothing to say to the +discredit of Lord Lansdowne; but he spoke with some bitterness of the +agent, Mr. Townsend Trench, as having protested against Lord Lansdowne’s +mak<a name="page238" id="page238"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 238] +</span>ing reductions here while he had himself made the same reductions on +the neighbouring estate of Mrs. Adair.</p> + +<p>“In truth,” he said, “Mr. Trench has made all this trouble worse all +along. He is too much of a Napoleon”—and with a humorous twinkle in his +eye as he spoke—“too much of a Napoleon the Third.</p> + +<p>“I was just reading his father’s book when you came in. Here it is,” and +he handed me a copy of Trench’s <i>Realities of Irish Life</i>.</p> + +<p>“Did you ever read it? This Mr. Trench, the father, was a kind of +Napoleon among agents in his own time, and the son, you see, thinks it +ought to be understood that he is quite as great a man as his father. +Did you never hear how he found a lot of his father’s manuscripts once, +and threw them all in the fire, calling out as he did so, ‘There goes +some more of my father’s vanity?’”</p> + +<p>About his people, and with his people, Father Maher said he “felt most +strongly.” How could he help it? He was himself the son of an evicted +father.</p> + +<p>“Of course, Father Maher,” I said, “you will understand that I wish to +get at both sides of this <a name="page239" id="page239"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 239] +</span>question and of all questions here. Pray tell +me then, where I shall find the story of the Luggacurren property most +fully and fairly set forth in print?”</p> + +<p>Without a moment’s hesitation he replied, “By far the best and fairest +account of the whole matter you will get in the Irish correspondence of +the London <i>Times</i>.”</p> + +<p>How the conflict would end he could not say. But he was at a loss to see +how it could pay Lord Lansdowne to maintain it.</p> + +<p>He very civilly pressed me to stay and lunch with him, but when I told +him I had already accepted an invitation from Mr. Hutchins, he very +kindly bestirred himself to find my jarvey.</p> + +<p>I hastened back to the lodge, where I found a very pleasant little +company. They were all rather astonished, I thought, by the few words I +had to say of Father Maher, and especially by his frank and sensible +recommendation of the reports in the London <i>Times</i> as the best account +I could find of the Luggacurren difficulty. To this they could not +demur, but things have got, or are getting, in Ireland, I fear, to a +point at which candour, on one side or the other of the burning +questions here <a name="page240" id="page240"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 240] +</span>debated, is regarded with at least as much suspicion as +the most deliberate misrepresentation. As to Mr. Town send Trench, what +Father Maher failed to tell me, I was here told: That down to the time +of the actual evictions he offered to take six months’ rent from the +tenants, give them a clean book, and pay all the costs. To refuse this +certainly looks like a “war measure.”</p> + +<p>But for the loneliness of her life here, Mrs. Hutchins tells me she +would find it delightful. The country is exceedingly lovely in the +summer and autumn months.</p> + +<p>When my car came out to take me back to Athy, I found my jarvey in +excellent spirits, and quite friendly even with Mr. Hutchins himself. He +kept up a running fire of lively commentaries upon the residents whose +estates we passed.</p> + +<p>“Would you think now, your honour,” he said, pointing with his whip to +one large mansion standing well among good trees, “that that’s the +snuggest man there is about Athy? But he is; and it’s no wonder! Would +you believe it, he never buys a newspaper, but he walks all the way into +Athy, and goes about from the bank to the shops till he finds one, and +picks it up and reads it. He’s <a name="page241" id="page241"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 241] +</span>mighty fond of the news, but he’s fonder, +you see, of a penny!</p> + +<p>“There now, your honour, just look at that house! It’s a magistrate he +is that lives there; and why? Why, just to be called ‘your honour,’ and +have the people tip their hats to him. Oh! he delights in that, he does. +Why, you might knock a man, or put him in the water, you might, indeed, +but if you came before Mr.——, and you just called him ‘your honour’ +often enough, and made up to him, you’d be all right! You’ve just to go +up to him with your hat in your hand, looking up at him, and to say, +‘Ah! now, your honour’“ (imitating the wheedling tone to perfection), +”and indeed you’d get anything out of him—barring a sixpence, that is, +or a penny!</p> + +<p>“Ah! he’s a snug one, too!” And with that he launched a sharp thwack of +the whip at the grey mare, and we went rattling on apace.</p> + +<p>At the very pretty station of Athy we parted the best of friends. “Wish +you safe home, your honour.” The kindly railway porter, also, who had +recommended Kavanagh’s Hotel, was anxious to know how I found it, and so +busied himself to get me a good carriage when the train came in, that I +feel bound to exempt Athy from the judgment <a name="page242" id="page242"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 242] +</span>passed by Sir James +Allport’s committee against the “amenities of railway travelling in +Ireland.”</p> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">DUBLIN, <i>Saturday, March 10.</i>—</span>I called by appointment to-day upon Mr. +Brooke, the owner of the Coolgreany estate, at his counting-house in +Gardiner’s Row. It is one of the spacious old last-century houses of +Dublin; the counting-room is installed with dark, old-fashioned mahogany +fittings, in what once was, and might easily again be made, a +drawing-room. Pictures hang on the walls, and the atmosphere of the +whole place is one of courtesy and culture rather than of mere modern +commerce. One of the portraits here is that of Mr. Brooke’s +granduncle—a handsome, full-blooded, rather testy-looking old warrior, +in the close-fitting scarlet uniform of the Prince Regent’s time.</p> + +<p>“He ought to have been called Lord Baltimore,” said Mr. Brooke +good-naturedly; “for he fought against your people for that city at +Bladensburg with Ross.”</p> + +<p>“That was the battle,” I said, “in which, according to a popular +tradition in my country, the Americans took so little interest that they +left the field almost as soon as it began.”</p> + +<p>Another portrait is of a kinsman who was mur<a name="page243" id="page243"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 243] +</span>dered in the highway here in +Ireland many years ago, under peculiarly atrocious circumstances, and +with no sort of provocation or excuse.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brooke confirmed Dr. Dillon’s statement that he had ordered out of +his counting-house two tenants who came into it with a peculiarly brazen +proposition, of which I must presume Dr. Dillon was ignorant when he +cited the fact as a count against the landlord of Coolgreany. I give the +story as Mr Brooke tells it. “The Rent Audit,” he says, “at which my +tenants were idiots enough to join the Plan of Campaign occurred about +the 12th December 1886, when, as you know, I refused to accept the terms +which they proposed to me. I heard nothing more from them till about the +middle of February 1887, when coming to my office one day I found two +tenants waiting for me. One was Stephen Maher, a mountain man, and the +other Patrick Kehoe. ‘What do you want?’ I asked. Whereupon they both +arose, and Pat Kehoe pointed to Maher. Maher fumbled at his clothes, and +rubbed himself softly for a bit, and then produced a scrap of paper. +‘It’s a bit of paper from the tenants, sir,’ he said. A queer bit of +paper it was to look at—ruled paper, with a composition written <a name="page244" id="page244"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 244] +</span>upon it +which might have been the work of a village schoolmaster. It was neither +signed nor addressed! The pith of it was in these words,—‘in +consequence of the manner in which we have been harassed, our cattle +driven throughout the country, and our crops not sown, we shall be +unable to pay the half-year’s rent due in March, in addition to the +reduction already claimed!’ I own I rather lost my temper at this! +Remember I had already plainly refused to give ‘the reduction already +claimed,’ and had told them not once, but twenty times, that I would +never surrender to the ‘Plan of Campaign’! I am afraid my language was +Pagan rather than Parliamentary—but I told them plainly, at least, that +if they did not break from the Plan of Campaign, and pay their debts, +they might be sure I would turn the whole of them out! I gave them back +their precious bit of paper and sent them packing.</p> + +<p>“One of them, I have told you, was a mountain man, Stephen Maher. He is +commonly known among the people as ‘the old fox of the mountain,’ and he +is very proud of it!</p> + +<p>“This old Stephen Maher,” said Mr. Brooke, “is renowned in connection +with a trial for murder, at <a name="page245" id="page245"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 245] +</span>which he was summoned as a witness. When he +was cross-examined by Mr. Molloy, Q.C., he fenced and dodged about with +that distinguished counsellor for a long time, until getting vexed by +the lawyer’s persistency, he exclaimed, ‘Now thin, Mr. Molloy, I’d have +ye to know that I had a cliverer man nor iver you was, Mr. Molloy, at +me, and I had to shtan’ up to him for three hours before the Crowner, +an’ he was onable to git the throoth out of me, so he was! so he was!’”</p> + + +<p>Neither did Dr. Dillon mention the fact that one of the demands made of +Captain Hamilton, Mr. Brooke’s agent, in December 1886, was that a +Protestant tenant named Webster should be evicted by Mr. Brooke from a +farm for which he had paid his rent, to make room for the return thither +of a Roman Catholic tenant named Lenahan, previously evicted for +non-payment of his rent.</p> + +<p>When Mr. Brooke’s grandfather bought the Coolgreany property in 1864, he +adopted a system of betterments, which has been ever since kept up on +the estate. Nearly every tenant’s house on the property has been slated, +and otherwise repaired by the landlord, nor has one penny ever been +added on that account to the rents.</p> + +<p><a name="page246" id="page246"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 246] +</span>In the village of Coolgreany all the houses on one side of the main +street were built in this way by the landlord, and the same thing was +done in the village of Croghan, where twenty tenants have a grazing +right of three sheep for every acre held on the Croghan Mountain, +pronounced by the valuers of the Land Court to be one of the best +grazing mountains in Ireland.</p> + +<p>Captain Hamilton became the agent of the property in 1879, on the death +of Mr. Vesey. One of his earliest acts was to advise Mr. Brooke to grant +an abatement of 25 per cent. in June 1881, while the Land Act was +passing. At the same time, he cautioned the tenants that this was only a +temporary reduction, and advised them to get judicial rents fixed.</p> + +<p>The League advised them not to do this, but to demand 25 per cent. +reduction again in December 1881. This demand was rejected, and forty +writs were issued. The tenants thereupon in January 1882 came in and +paid the full rent, with the costs.</p> + +<p>Eleven tenants after this went into Court, and in 1883 the +Sub-Commissioners cut down their rents. In five cases Mr. Brooke +appealed. What was the result before the Chief Commissioner? The rent <a name="page247" id="page247"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 247] +</span>of +Mary Green, which had been £43, and had been cut down by the +Sub-Commissioners to £39, was restored to £43; the rent of Mr. Kavanagh, +cut down from £57 to £52, was restored to £55; the rent of Pat Kehoe +(one of the two tenants “ejected” from Mr. Brooke’s office as already +stated), cut down from £81 to £70, was restored to £81; the rent of +Graham, cut down from £38 to £32, 10s., was restored to £38. Other +reductions were maintained.</p> + +<p>This appears to be the record of “rack-renting” on the Coolgreany +property.</p> + +<p>There are 114 tenants, of whom 15 hold under judicial rents; 22 are +leaseholders, and 77 are non-judicial yearly tenants. There are 12 +Protestants holding in all a little more than 1200 acres. All the rest +are Catholics, 14 of these being cottier tenants. The estate consists of +5165 acres. The average is about £24, and the average rental about £26, +10s. The gross rental is £2614, of which £1000 go to the jointure of Mr. +Brooke’s mother, and £800 are absorbed by the tithe charges, half +poor-rates and other taxes. During the year 1886, in which this war was +declared against him, Mr. Brooke spent £714 in improvements upon the +property: so in <a name="page248" id="page248"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 248] +</span>that year his income from Coolgreany was practically +<i>nil</i>.</p> + +<p>What in these circumstances would have been the position of this +landlord had he not possessed ample means not invested in this +particular estate? And what has been the result to the tenants of this +conflict into which it seems clear that they were led, less to protect +any direct interest of their own than to jeopardise their homes and +their livelihood for the promotion of a general agrarian agitation? It +is not clear that they are absolutely so far out of pocket, for I find +that the Post-Office Savings Bank deposits at Inch and Gorey rose from +£3699, 5s. 4d. in 1880 to £5308, 13s. in 1887, showing an increase of +£1609, 7s. 8d. But they are out of house and home and work, entered +pupils in that school of idleness and iniquity which has been kept by +one Preceptor from the beginning of time.</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page249" id="page249"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 249] +</span>CHAPTER XV.<a id="footnotetag25" + name="footnotetag25"></a><a href="#footnote25"><sup>25</sup></a></h2> + + +<p>* * * *—Mrs. Kavanagh was quite right when she told me at Borris in +March that this country should be seen in June! The drive to this lovely +place this morning was one long enchantment of verdure and hawthorn +blossoms and fragrance.</p> + +<p>I came over from London to bring to a head some inquiries which have too +long delayed the publication of this diary. My intention had been to go +directly to Thurles, but a telegram which I received from the Archbishop +of Cashel just before <a name="page250" id="page250"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 250] +</span>I left telling me that he could not be at home for +the last three days of the week, I came directly here. Nothing can be +more utterly unlike the popular notions of Ireland and of Irish life +than the aspect of this most smiling and beautiful region: nothing more +thoroughly Irish than its people.</p> + +<p>* * * who is one of the most active and energetic of Irish landlords, +lives part of the year abroad, but keeps up his Irish property with +care, at the expense, I suspect, of his estates elsewhere.</p> + +<p>From a noble avenue of trees, making the highway like the main road of a +private park, we turned into a literal paradise of gardens. The air was +balmy with their wealth of odours. “Oh! yes, sir,” said the coachman, +with an air of sympathetic pride, “our lady is just the greatest lady in +all this land for flowers!”</p> + +<p>And for ivy, he might have added. We drove between green walls of ivy up +to a house which seemed itself to be built of ivy, like that wonderful +old mansion of Castle Leod in Scotland. Here, plainly, is another centre +of “sweetness and light,” the abolition of which must make, not this +region alone, but Ireland poorer in that precise form of wealth, which, +as Laboulaye has shown in one of the best of his lectures, is absolutely +identical with <a name="page251" id="page251"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 251] +</span>civilisation. It is such places as this, which, in the +interest of the people, justify the exemption from redistribution and +resettlement, made in one of a series of remarkable articles on Ireland +recently published in the <i>Birmingham Post</i>, of lands, the “breaking up +of which would interfere with the amenity of a residence.”</p> + +<p>* * * relations with all classes of the people here are so cordial and +straightforward that he has been easily able to give me to-day, what I +have sought in vain elsewhere in Ireland, an opportunity of conversing +frankly and freely with several labouring men. For obvious reasons these +men, as a rule, shrink from any expression of their real feelings. Their +position is apparently one of absolute dependence either upon the +farmers or the landlords, there being no other local market for their +labour, which is their only stock-in-trade. As one of them said to me +to-day, “The farmers will work a man just as long as they can’t help it, +and then they throw him away.”</p> + +<p>I asked if there were no regular farm-labourers hired at fixed rates by +the year?</p> + +<p>“Oh! very few—less now than ever; and there’ll be fewer before there’ll +be more. The farmers don’t want to pay the labourers or to pay the +landlords; <a name="page252" id="page252"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 252] +</span>they want the land and the work for nothing, sir,—they do +indeed!”</p> + +<p>“What does a farm-hand get,” I asked, “if he is hired for a long time?”</p> + +<p>“Well, permanent men, they’ll get 6s. a week with breakfast and dinner, +or 7s. maybe, with one meal; and a servant-boy, sir, he’ll get 2s. a +week or may be 3s. with his board; but it’s seldom he gets it.”</p> + +<p>“And what has he for his board?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, stirabout; and then twice a week coorse Russian or American meat, +what they call the ‘kitchen,’ and they like it better than good meat, +sir, because it feeds the pot more.”</p> + +<p>By this I found he meant that the “coorse meat” gave out more +“unctuosity” in the boiling—the meat being always served up boiled in a +pot with vegetables, like the “bacon and greens” of the “crackers” in +the South.</p> + +<p>“And nothing else?”</p> + +<p>“Yes; buttermilk and potatoes.”</p> + +<p>“And these wages are the highest?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I know a boy got 5s., but by living in his father’s house, and +working out it was he got it. And then they go over to England to work.”</p> + +<p>“What wages do they get there?”</p> + +<p><a name="page253" id="page253"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 253] +</span>“Oh, it differs, but they do well; 9s. a week, I think, and their board, +and straw to sleep on in the stables.”</p> + +<p>“But doesn’t it cost them a good deal to go and come?”</p> + +<p>“Oh no; they get cheap rates. They send them from Galway to Dublin like +cattle, at £2, 5s. a car, and that makes about 1s. 6d. a head; and then +they are taken over on the steamers very cheap. Often the graziers that +do large business with the companies, will have a right to send over a +number of men free; and they stowaway too; and then on the railways in +England they get passes free often from cattle-dealers, specially when +they are coming back, and the dealers don’t want their passes. They do +very well. They’ll bring back £7 and £10. I was on a boat once, and +there was a man; he was drunk; he was from Galway somewhere, and they +took away and kept for him £18, all in good golden sovereigns; that was +the most I ever saw. And he was drunk, or who’d ever have known he had +it?”</p> + +<p>“Do the farmers build houses for the labourers?”</p> + +<p>“Build houses, is it! Glory be to God! who ever heard of such a thing? +The farmers are a poor proud lot. They’d let a labourer die in the +ditch!”</p> + +<p><a name="page254" id="page254"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 254] +</span>All that this poor man said was corroborated by another man of a higher +class, very familiar with the conditions of life and labour here, and +indeed one of the most interesting men I have met in Ireland. Born the +son of a labouring man, he was educated by a priest and educated +himself, till he fitted himself for the charge of a small school, which +he kept to such good purpose that in eighteen years he saved £1100, with +which capital he resolved to begin life as a small farmer and +shopkeeper. He had studied all the agricultural works he could get, and +before he went fairly into the business, he travelled on the Continent, +looking carefully into the methods of culture and manner of life of the +people, especially in Italy and in Belgium. The Belgian farming gave him +new ideas of what might be done in Ireland, and those ideas he has put +into practice, with the best results.</p> + +<p>“On the same land with my neighbours,” he said, “I double their +production. Where they get two tons of hay I get four or four and a +half, where they get forty-five barrels of potatoes I get a hundred. +Only the other day I got £20 for a bullock I had taken pains with to +fatten him up scientifically. Of course I had a small capital to start +with: but where did I get that? Not from <a name="page255" id="page255"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 255] +</span>the Government. I earned and +saved it myself; and then I wasn’t above learning how best to use it.”</p> + +<p>He thinks the people here—though by no means what they might be with +more thrift and knowledge—much better off than the same class in many +other parts of Ireland. There are no “Gombeen men” here, he says, and no +usurious shopkeepers. “The people back each other in a friendly way when +they need help.” Many of the labourers, he says, are in debt to him, but +he never presses them, and they are very patient with each other. They +would do much better if any pains were taken to teach them. It is his +belief that agricultural schools and model farms would do more than +almost any measure that could be devised for bringing up the standard of +comfort and prosperity here, and making the country quiet.</p> + +<p>It is the opinion of this man that the people of this place have been +led to regard the Papal Decree as a kind of attack on their liberties, +and that they are quite as likely to resist as to obey it. For his own +part, he thinks Ireland ought to have her own parliament, and make her +own laws. He is not satisfied with the laws actually made, though he +admits they are better than the older laws were. “The tenants get their +own improvements now,” he said, “and in <a name="page256" id="page256"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 256] +</span>old times the more a man +improved the worse it was for him, the agent all the while putting up +the rents.”</p> + +<p>But he does not want Irish independence. “The people that talk that +way,” he said, “have never travelled. They don’t see how idle it is for +Ireland to talk about supporting herself. She just can’t do it.”</p> + +<p>Not less interesting was my talk to-day with quite a different person. +This was a keen-eyed, hawk-billed, wiry veteran of the ’48. As a youth +he had been out with “Meagher of the Sword,” and his eyes glowed when he +found that I had known that champion of Erin. “I was out at Ballinagar,” +he said; “there were five hundred men with guns, and five hundred +pikemen.” It struck me he would like to be going “out” again in the same +fashion, but he had little respect for the “Nationalists.”</p> + +<p>“There’s too many lawyers among them,” he said, “too many lawyers and +too many dealers. The lawyers are doing well, thanks to the League. Oh +yes!” with a knowing chuckle, and a light of mischief in his eye; “the +lawyers are doing very well! There’s one little bit of a solicitor not +far from here was of no good at all four years ago, and now they tell me +he’s made four thousand pounds in three years’ time, <a name="page257" id="page257"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 257] +</span>good money, and got +it all in hand! And there’s another, I hear, has made six thousand. The +lawyers that call themselves Nationalists, they just keep mischief +agoing to further themselves. What do they care for the labourers? Why, +no more than the farmers do—and what would become of the poor men! * * +* * here, he is making * * * * * * * and he keeps more poor men going +than all the lawyers and all the farmers in the place a good part of the +year.”</p> + +<p>“Are the labourers,” I asked, “Nationalists?”</p> + +<p>“They don’t know what they are,” he answered. “They hate the farmers, +but they love Ireland, and they all stand together for the counthry!”</p> + +<p>“How is it with the Plan of Campaign and the Boycotting?”</p> + +<p>“Now what use have the labourers got for the Plan of Campaign? No more +than for the moon! And for the Boycotting, I never liked it—but I was +never afraid of it—and there’s not been much of it here.”</p> + +<p>“Will the Papal Decree put a stop to what there is of it?”</p> + +<p>“I wouldn’t mind the Pope’s Decree no more than that door!” he exclaimed +indignantly. “Hasn’t <a name="page258" id="page258"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 258] +</span>he enough, sure, to mind in Rome? Why didn’t he +defend his own country, not bothering about Ireland!”</p> + +<p>“Are you not a Catholic, then?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“Oh yes, I’m a Catholic, but I wouldn’t mind the Decree. Only remember,” +he added, after a pause, “just this: it don’t trouble me, for I’ve +nothing to do with the Plan of Campaign—only I don’t want the Pope to +be meddlin’ in matters that don’t concern him.”</p> + +<p>“It’s out of respect, then, for the Pope that you wouldn’t mind the +Decree?”</p> + +<p>“Just that, intirely! It was some of them Englishmen wheedled it out of +him, you may be sure, sir.”</p> + +<p>“I am told you went out to America once.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, I went there in ’48, and I came back in ’51.”</p> + +<p>“What made you go?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“Is it what made me go?” he replied, with a sudden fierceness in his +voice. “It was the evictions made me go; that we was put out of the good +holding my father had, and his father before him; and I can never +forgive it, never! But I came back; and it was * * * father that was <a name="page259" id="page259"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 259] +</span>the +good man to me and to mine, else where would I be?”</p> + +<p>I afterwards learned from * * * * that the evictions of which the old +man spoke with so much bitterness were made in carrying out important +improvements, and that it was quite true that his father had greatly +befriended the emigrant when he got enough of the New World and came +home.</p> + +<p>It was curious to see the old grudge fresh and fierce in the old man’s +heart, but side by side with it the lion lying down with the lamb—a +warm and genuine recognition of the kindness and help bestowed on +himself. His resentment against the landlord’s action in one generation +did not in the least interfere with his recognition of the landlord’s +usefulness and liberality in the next generation.</p> + +<p>“You didn’t like America?” I said. “Where did you live there?”</p> + +<p>“I lived at North Brookfield in Massachusetts, a year or two,” he +replied, “with Governor Amasa Walker. Did you know him? He was a good +man; he was fond of the people, but he thought too much of the nagurs.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” I answered; “I know all about him, and he was, as you say, a very +good man, even if he was <a name="page260" id="page260"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 260] +</span>an abolitionist. But why didn’t you stay in +North Brookfield?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, it was a poor country indeed! A blast of wind would blow all the +ground away there was! It does no good to the people, going to America,” +he said; “they come back worse than they went!”</p> + +<p>He is at work now in some quarries here.</p> + +<p>“The quarrymen get six shillings a week,” he said, “with bread and tea +and butter and meat three times a week. With nine shillings a week and +board, a man’ll make himself bigger than * * *!”</p> + +<p>“Was the country quiet now?”</p> + +<p>“This country here? Oh! it’s very quiet; with potatoes at 3s. 6d. a +barrel, it’s a good year for the people. They’re a very quiet +people,”—in corroboration apparently of which statement he told me a +story of a coroner’s jury called to sit on the body of a man found on +the highway shot through the head, which returned an unanimous verdict +of “Died by the visitation of God.”</p> + +<p>This country is dominated by the Rocky Hills climbing up to Cullenagh, +which divides the Barrow valley from the Nore. We drove this afternoon +to * a most lovely place. The mansion there is now shut <a name="page261" id="page261"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 261] +</span>up and +dismantled, but the park and the grounds are very beautiful, with a +beauty rather enhanced than diminished by the somewhat unkempt +luxuriance of the vegetation. We passed a now well-grown tree planted by +the Prince of Wales * * * * * * and drove over many miles of excellent +road made by * * * * * * * * employs * * * * * * * * regularly, * * * +men as labourers, cartmen and masons, to whom he pays out annually the +sum of * * Mr. * * who, by the way, rather resented my asking him if he +came of one of the Cromwellian English families so numerous here, and +informed me that his people came over with Strongbow—assures me that +but for these works of * * * * these men under him would be literally +without occupation. In addition to these there are about a dozen more +men employed * * as gamekeepers and plantation-men. At the * * places +belonging to * * * * * * * * * * above eighty men find constant +employment, and receive regular wages amounting to over £4000. Were * * +* * dispossessed or driven out of Ireland, all <a name="page262" id="page262"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 262] +</span>this outlay would come to +an end, and with what result to these working-men? As things now are, +while * * * working-men receive a regular wage of five shillings, the +same men, as farmers’ labourers, would receive, now and then, five +shillings a week, and that without food! I saw enough in the course of +our afternoon’s drive to satisfy me that my informant of the morning had +probably not overstated matters when he told me that for at least +seventy per cent. of the work done by the labourers here, from November +to May, they have to look to the landlords. On the property of * * as +well as on the neighbouring properties * * * * * * * the houses have +been generally put up by the landlords. We called in the course of the +afternoon upon a labouring man who lives with his wife in a very neat, +cozy, and quite new house, built recently for him by * *. These good +people have been living on this property for now nearly half a century. +Their new house having been built for them, * * has had an agreement +prepared, under which it may be secured to them. The terms have all been +discussed and found satisfactory, but the old labourer now hesitates +<a name="page263" id="page263"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 263] +</span>about signing the agreement. He gives, and can be got to give, no reason +for this; but when we drove up he came out to greet us in the most +friendly manner. We went in and found his wife, a shrewd, sharp-eyed, +little old dame, with whom * * * * fell into a confabulation, while I +went into the next room with the labourer himself. The house was neatly +furnished—with little ornaments and photographs on the mantel-shelf, +and nothing of the happy-go-lucky look so common about the houses of the +working people in Ireland, as well as about the houses of the lesser +squires.</p> + +<p>I paid him a compliment on the appearance of his house and grounds. +“Yes, sir!” he answered: “it’s a very good place it is, and * * * * has +built it just to please us.”</p> + +<p>“But I am told you want to leave it?”</p> + +<p>“Ah, no, that is not so, sir, indeed at all! We’ve three children you +see, sir, in America—two girls and a boy we have.”</p> + +<p>“And where are they?”</p> + +<p>“Ah, the girls they’re not in any factory at all. They’re like leddies, +living out in a place they call * * in Massachusetts; and the lad, he +was on a farm there. But we don’t know where he is nor <a name="page264" id="page264"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 264] +</span>his sisters any +more just now. And the wife, she thinks she would like to go out to +America and see the children.”</p> + +<p>“Do you hear from them regularly?”</p> + +<p>“Well, it’s only a few pounds they send, but they’re doing very well. +Domestics they are, quite like leddies; there’s their pictures on the +shelf.”</p> + +<p>“But what would you do there?”</p> + +<p>“Ah! we’d have lodgings, the wife says, sir. But I like the ould place +myself.”</p> + +<p>“I think you are quite right there,” I replied. “And do you get work +here from the farmers as the labourers do in my country?”</p> + +<p>“Work from the farmers, sir?” he answered, rather sharply. “What they +can’t help we get, but no more! If the farmers in America is like them, +it’s not I would be going there! The farmers! For the farmers, a +labourer, sir, is not of the race of Adam! They think any place good +enough for a labourer—any place and any food! Is the farmers that way +in America?”</p> + +<p>“Well, I don’t know that they are so very much more liberal than your +farmers are,” I replied; “but I think they’d have to treat you as being +of the race of Adam! But are not the farmers here, or <a name="page265" id="page265"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 265] +</span>the Guardians, +obliged to build houses for the labourers? I thought there was an Act of +Parliament about that?”</p> + +<p>“And so there is but what’s the good of it? It’s just to get the +labourers’ votes, and then they fool the labourers, just making them +quarrel about where the cottages shall be, what they call the ‘sites’; +and then there’s no cottages built at all, at all. It’s the lawyers, you +see, sir, gets in with the farmers—the strongest farmers—and then they +just make fools of the labourers as if there was no Act of Parliament at +all.”</p> + +<p>“But if the labourers want to go away, to emigrate,” I said, “as you +want to do, to America, don’t the farmers, or the Government, or the +landlords, help them to get away and make a start?”</p> + +<p>“Not a bit of it, sir,” he replied; “not a bit of it. I believe, +though,” he added after a moment; “I believe they do get some help to go +to Australia. But they’re mostly no good that goes that way. The best is +them that go for themselves, or their friends help them. But there’s not +so many going this year.”</p> + +<p>When we drove away I asked * * if he had made any progress towards a +signature of the agreement with the labourer’s wife.</p> + +<p><a name="page266" id="page266"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 266] +</span>“No; she couldn’t be got to say yes or no. I asked her,” said * * “what +reason they had for imagining that after all these years I would try to +do them an injury? She protested they never thought of such a thing; but +she couldn’t be brought to say she wished her husband to sign the paper. +It’s very odd, indeed.”</p> + +<p>I couldn’t help suspecting that the <i>materfamilias</i> was at the bottom of +it all, and that she was bent upon going out to America to participate +in the prosperity of her two daughters, who were living “like leddies” +at * * in Massachusetts.</p> + +<p>The incident recalled to me something which happened years ago when I +was returning with the Storys from Rome to Boston. Our Cunarder, in the +middle of the night, off the Irish coast, ran down and instantly sank a +small schooner.</p> + +<p>In a wonderfully short time we had come-to, and a boat’s crew had +succeeded in picking up and bringing all the poor people on board. Among +them was a wizened old woman, upon whom all sorts of kind attentions +were naturally lavished by the ship’s company. She could not be +persuaded to go into a cabin after she had recovered from the shock and +the fright of the accident, but, comforted <a name="page267" id="page267"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 267] +</span>and clothed with new and dry +garments, she took refuge under one of the companion-ways, and there, +sitting huddled up, with her arms about her knees, she crooned and +moaned to herself, “I was near being in a wetter and a warmer place; I +was near being in a wetter and a warmer place!” by the half hour +together. We found that the poor old soul had been to Liverpool to see +her son off on a sailing ship as an emigrant to America. So a +subscription was soon made up to send her on our arrival to New York +there to await her son. We had some trouble in making her understand +what was to be done with her, but when she finally got it fairly into +her head, gleams of mingled surprise and delight came over her withered +face, and she finally broke out, “Oh, then, glory be to God! it’s a +mercy that I was drownded! glory be to God! and it’s the proud boy +Terence will be when he gets out to America to find his poor ould mother +waiting for him there that he left behind him in Liverpool, and quite +the leddy with all this good gold money in her hand, glory be to God!”</p> + +<p>On our way back to * * we passed through * * a very neat +prosperous-looking town, which * * tells me is growing up on <a name="page268" id="page268"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 268] +</span>the heels +of * *. * * * was one of the few places at which the “no rent” +manifesto, issued by Mr. Parnell and his colleagues from their prison in +Kilmainham, during the confinement of Mr. Davitt at Portland, and +without concert with him, was taken up by a village curate and commended +to the people. He was arrested for it by Mr. Gladstone’s Government, and +locked up for six weeks.</p> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">DUBLIN, <i>Saturday, June 23d.</i>—</span>I left * * * yesterday morning early on +an “outside car,” with one of my fellow-guests in that “bower of +beauty,” who was bent on killing a salmon somewhere in the Nore * * We +drove through a most varied and picturesque country, viewing on the way +the seats of Mr. Hamilton Stubber and Mr. Robert Staples, both finely +situated in well-wooded parks. Mr. Stubber was formerly master of the +Queen’s County hounds, a famous pack, which, as our jarvey put it, +“brought a power of money into the county, and made it aisy for a poor +man.” But the local agitations wore out his patience, and he put the +pack down some years ago. Not far from his house is an astonishing +modern “tumulus,” or mound of hewn <a name="page269" id="page269"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 269] +</span>and squared stones. These it seems +were quarried and brought here by him, with the intention of building a +new and handsome residence. This intention he abandoned under the same +annoyance.</p> + +<p>“They call it Mr. Stubber’s Cairn,” said the jarvey; “and a sorrowful +sight it is, to think of the work it would have given the people, +building the big house that’ll never be built now, I’m thinking.” If Mr. +Stubber should become an “absentee,” he can hardly, I think, be blamed +for it.</p> + +<p>His property marches with that of Mr. Robert Staples, who comes of a +Gloucestershire family planted in Ireland under Charles I.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Staples is farming his own lands,” said our jarvey, when I +commented on the fine appearance of some fields as we drove by; “and +he’ll be doing very well this year. Ah! he comes and goes, but he’s here +a great deal, and he looks after everything himself; that’s the reason +the fields is good.”</p> + +<p>This is a property of some 1500 statute acres. Only last March the +landlord took over from one tenant, who was in arrears of two years and +a half and owed him some £300, a farm of 90 acres, giving the man fifty +pounds to boot, and bidding him go in peace. I wonder whether this +proceeding would <a name="page270" id="page270"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 270] +</span>make the landlord a “land-grabber,” and expose him to +the pains and penalties of “boycotting”?</p> + +<p>On this place, too, it seems that Mr. Staples’s grandfather put up many +houses for the tenants; a thing worth noting, as one of not a few +instances I have come upon to show that it will not do to accept without +examination the sweeping statements so familiar to us in America, that +improvements have never been made by the landlord upon Irish estates.</p> + +<p>My companion had meant to put me down at the railway station of +Attanagh, there to catch a good train to Kilkenny.</p> + +<p>But we had a capital nag, and reached Attanagh so early that we +determined to drive on to Ballyragget.</p> + +<p>From Attanagh to Ballyragget the road ran along a plateau which +commanded the most beautiful views of the valley of the Nore and of the +finely wooded country beyond. Ballyragget itself is a brisk little +market town, the American influence showing itself here, as in so many +other places, in such trifles as the signs on the shops which describe +them as “stores.” My salmon-fishing companion put me down at the station +and went off to the <a name="page271" id="page271"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 271] +</span>river, which flows through the town, and is here a +swift and not inconsiderable stream.</p> + +<p>An hour in the train took me to Kilkenny, where I met by appointment +several persons whom I had been unable to see during my previous visit +in March.</p> + +<p>These gentlemen, experienced agents, gave me a good deal of information +as to the effect of the present state of things upon the “<i>moral</i>” of +the tenantry in different parts of Ireland. On one estate, for example, +in the county of Longford, a tenant has been doing battle for the cause +of Ireland in the following extraordinary fashion.</p> + +<p>He held certain lands at a rental of £23, 4s. Being, to use the +picturesque language of the agent, a “little good for tenant,” he fell +into arrears, and on the 1st of May 1885 owed nearly three years’ rent, +or £63, 12s., in addition to a sum of £150 which he had borrowed of his +amiable landlord three or four years before to enable him to work his +farm. Of this total sum of £213, 12s. he positively refused to pay one +penny. Proceedings were accordingly taken against him, and he was +evicted. By this eviction his title to the tenancy was broken. The +landlord nevertheless, for the sake of peace and quiet, offered <a name="page272" id="page272"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 272] +</span>to allow +him to sell, to a man who wished to take the place, any interest he +might have had in the holding, and to forgive both the arrears of the +rent and the £150 which had been borrowed by him. The ex-tenant flatly +refused to accept this offer, became a weekly pensioner upon the +National League, and declared war. The landlord was forced to get a +caretaker for the place from the Property Defence Association at a cost +of £1 per week, to provide a house for a police protection party, and to +defray the expenses of that party upon fuel and lights. Nor was this +all. The landlord found himself further obliged to employ men from the +same Property Defence Association to cut and save the hay-crop on the +land, and when this had been done no one could be found to buy the crop. +The crop and the lands were “boycotted.” It was only in May last that a +purchaser could be found for the hay cut and saved two years ago—this +purchaser being himself a “boycotted” man on an adjoining property. He +bought the hay, paying for it a price which did not quite cover one-half +the cost of sowing it!</p> + +<p>“No one denies for a moment,” said the agent, “that the tenant in all +this business has been more than fairly, even generously, treated by the +estate; <a name="page273" id="page273"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 273] +</span>yet no one seems to think it anything but natural and reasonable +that he should demand, as he now demands, to be put back into the +possession of his forfeited tenancy at a certain rent fixed by himself,” +which he will obligingly agree to pay, “provided that the hay cut and +saved on the property two years ago is accounted for to him by the +estate!”</p> + +<p>In another case an agent, Mr. Ivough, had to deal with a body of five +hundred tenants on a considerable estate. Of these tenants, two hundred +settled their rents with the landlord before the passing of the Land Act +of 1881, and valuations made by the landlord’s valuer, with their full +assent. There was no business for the lawyers, so far as they were +concerned, and no compulsion of any sort was put on them. Among them was +a man who had married the daughter of an old tenant on the estate, and +so came into a holding of 12 Irish, or more than 20 statute, acres, at a +rental of £18 a year. The valuer reduced this to £14, 10s., which +satisfied the tenant, and as the agent agreed to make this reduced +valuation retroactive, all went as smoothly as possible for two years, +when the tenant began to fall into arrears. When the Sub-Commissioners, +between 1885 and 1887, took to <a name="page274" id="page274"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 274] +</span>making sweeping reductions, the tenants +who had settled freely under the recent valuation grumbled bitterly. As +one of them tersely put it to the agent, “We were a parcel of bloody +fools, and you ought to have told us these Sub-Commissioners were +coming!” Mr. Sweeney, the tenant by marriage already mentioned, was not +content to express his particular dissatisfaction in idle words, but +kept on going into arrears. In May 1888 things came to a crisis. The +agent refused to accept a settlement which included the payment by him +of the costs of the proceedings forced upon him by his tenant. “You have +had a good holding,” said the agent, “with plenty of water and good +land. In this current year two acres of your wheat will pay the whole +rent. You have broken up and sold bit by bit a mill that was on the +place; and above all, when Mr. Gladstone made us accept the judicial +rents, he told us we might be sure, if we did this, of punctual payment. +That was the one consideration held out to us. And we are entitled to +that!”</p> + +<p>The tenant being out of his holding, the agent wishes to put another +tenant into it. But the holding is “boycotted.” Several tenants are +anxious <a name="page275" id="page275"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 275] +</span>for it, and would gladly take it, but they dare not The great +evicted will neither sell any tenant-right he may have, nor pay his +arrears and costs, nor give up the place to another tenant. To put +Property Defence men on the holding would cost the landlord £2, 10s. a +week, and do him no great good, as the evicted man “holds the fort,” +being established in a house which he occupies on an adjoining property, +and for which presumably he pays his rent. It seems as if Mr. Sweeney +were inspired by the example of another tenant, named Barry, who, before +the passing of the Land Act of 1881, gave up freely a holding of 20 +acres, on a property managed by Mr. Kough; but as he was on such good +terms with the agent that he could borrow money of him, he begged the +agent to let him retain at a low rent a piece of this surrendered land +directly adjoining his house. He asked this in the name of his eight or +nine children, and it was granted him. The agent afterwards found that +the piece of land in question was by far the best of the surrendered +holding. But that is a mere detail. This ingenious tenant Barry, living +now on another estate just outside the grasp of the agent, has +systematically “boycotted” for the last nine years <a name="page276" id="page276"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 276] +</span>the land which he +gave up, feeding his own cattle upon it freely meanwhile, and keeping +all would-be tenants at a distance! “He is now,” said the agent, “quite +a wealthy man in his way, jobbing cattle at all the great markets!”</p> + +<p>“When the eviction of Sweeney took place,” said the agent, “I was +present in person, as I thought I ought to be, and the result is that I +have been held up to the execration of mankind as a monster for putting +out a child in a cradle into a storm. As a matter of fact,” he said, +“there was a cradle in the way, which the sheriff-Officer gently took +up, and by direction of the tenant’s wife removed. I made no remark +about it at all, but a local paper published a lying story, which the +publisher had to retract, that I had said ‘Throw out the child!’”</p> + +<p>“Two priests,” he said, “came quite uninvited and certainly without +provocation, to see me, and one of them shouted out, ‘Ah! we know you’ll +be making another Coolgreany,’ which was as much as to say there ‘would +be bloodshed.’ This was the more intolerable,” he added, “that, as I +afterwards found, I had already done for the sake of the tenants +precisely what these ecclesiastics professed that they had come to ask +me to do!</p> + +<p><a name="page277" id="page277"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 277] +</span>“For thirty years,” said this gentleman, “I have lived in the midst of +these people—and in all that time I have never had so much as a +threatening letter. But after this story was published of my throwing +out a cradle with a child in it, I was insulted in the street by a woman +whom I had never seen before. Two girls, too, called out at the +eviction, ‘You’ve bad pluck; why didn’t you tell us you were coming down +the day?’ and another woman made me laugh by crying after me, ‘You’ve +two good-looking daughters, but you’re a bad man yourself.’”</p> + +<p>Quite as instructive is the story given me on this occasion of the +Tyaquin estate in the county of Galway. This estate is managed by an +agent, Mr. Eichardson of Castle Coiner, in this county of Kilkenny.</p> + +<p>The rents on this Galway estate, as Mr. Richardson assures me, have been +unaltered for between thirty and forty years, and some of them for even +a longer period. For the last twenty-five years certainty, during which +Mr. Richardson has been the agent of the estate, and probably, he +thinks, for many years previous, there has never been a case of the +non-payment of rent, except in recent years <a name="page278" id="page278"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 278] +</span>when rents were withheld for +a time for political reasons.</p> + +<p>Large sums of money have been laid out in various useful improvements. +Constant occupation was given to those requiring it, until the agrarian +agitation became fully developed. On the demesne and the home farms the +best systems of reclaiming waste lands and the best systems of +agriculture were practically exhibited, so that the estate was an +agricultural free school for all who cared to learn.</p> + +<p>When the Land Act of 1881 was passed, almost all the tenants applied, +and had judicial rents fixed, many of them by consent of the agent.</p> + +<p>In 1887 the tenants were called on as usual to pay these judicial rents. +A large minority refused to do so except on certain terms, which were +refused. The dispute continued for many months, but as the charges on +the estate had to be met, the agent was obliged to give way, and allow +an abatement of four shillings in the pound on these judicial rents. +Some of these charges, to meet which the agent gave way, were for money +borrowed from the Commissioners of Public Works to <i>improve the holdings +of the tenants</i>. For these improvements thus thrown entirely upon the +funds of the estate no increase of <a name="page279" id="page279"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 279] +</span>rent or charge of any kind had been +laid upon the tenants.</p> + +<p>When a settlement was agreed on, those of the tenants who had adopted +the Plan came in a body to pay their rents on 3d January 1888. They +stated that they were unable to pay more than the rent due up to +November 1886, and that they would never have adopted the Plan had they +not been driven into it by <i>sheer distress</i>. After which they handed Mr. +Richardson a cheque drawn by John T. Dillon, Esq., M.P., for the amount +banked with the National League.</p> + +<p>An article appeared shortly afterwards in a League newspaper, loudly +boasting of the great victory won by Mr. Dillon, M.P., for the starving +and poverty-stricken tenants. Two of these tenants (brothers) were under +a yearly rent of £7, 10s. They declared they could only pay £3, 15s., or +a <a name="page280" id="page280"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 280] +</span>half-year’s rent, and this only if they got an abatement of 15s. Yet +these same tenants were then paying Mr. Richardson £50 a year for a +grass farm, and about £12 for meadows, as well as £30 a year more for a +grass farm to an adjoining landlord.</p> + +<p>Another tenant who held a farm at £13, 5s. a year declared he could only +pay £6, 12s. 6d., or a half-year’s rent, if he got an abatement of £1, +6s. 6d. A very short time before, this tenant had taken a grass farm +from an adjoining landlord, and he was so anxious to get it that he +showed the landlord a bundle of large notes, amounting to rather more +than £300 sterling, in order to prove his solvency! The same tenant has +since written a letter to Mr. Richardson offering £50 a year for a grass +farm!</p> + +<p>All these campaigners, Mr. Richardson says, “with one noble exception, +the wife of a tenant who was ill, declined to pay a penny of rent beyond +November 1st, 1886,” stating that they were “absolutely unable” to do +more. So they all left the May 1887 rent unpaid, and the hanging gale to +November 1887, which, however, they were not even asked to pay.</p> + +<p>The morning after the settlement many of the tenants who, when they were +all present in a body on the previous evening, had declared their +“inability” to pay the half-year’s rent due down to May 1887, +individually came to Mr. Richardson unasked, and paid it, some saying +they had “borrowed the money that night,” but others frankly declaring +that they dared not break the rule publicly, having been ordered by the +League only <a name="page281" id="page281"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 281] +</span>to pay to November 1886, for fear of the consequences. These +would have been injury to their cattle, or the burning of their hay, or +possibly murder.</p> + +<p>Of the country about Kilkenny, I am told, as of the country about +Carlow, that nearly or quite seventy per cent, of the labourers are +dependent upon the landlords from November to May for such employment as +they get.</p> + +<p>The shopkeepers, too, are in a bad way, being in many cases reduced to +the condition of mere agents of the great wholesale houses elsewhere, +and kept going by these houses mainly in the hope of recovering old +debts. There is a severe pressure of usury, too, upon the farmers. “If a +farmer,” said one resident to me, “wants to borrow a small sum of the +Loan Fund Bank, he must have two securities—one of them a substantial +man good for the debt. These two indorsers must be ‘treated’ by the +borrower whom they back; and he must pay them a weekly sum for the +countenance they have given him, which not seldom amounts, before he +gets through with the matter, to a hundred per cent, on the original +loan.”</p> + +<p>I am assured too that the consumption of spirits <a name="page282" id="page282"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 282] +</span>all through this region +has greatly increased of late years. “The official reports will show +you,” said one gentleman, “that the annual outlay upon whisky in Ireland +equals the sum saved to the tenants by the reductions in rent.” This is +a proposition so remarkable that I simply record it for future +verification, as having been made by a very quiet, cool, and methodical +person, whose information on other points I have found to be correct. He +tells me too, as of his own knowledge, that in going over some financial +matters with a small farmer in his neighbourhood, he ascertained, beyond +a peradventure, that this farmer annually spent in whisky, for the use +of his family, consisting of himself, his wife and three adult children, +nearly, or quite, <i>seventy pounds a year</i>! “You won’t believe this,” he +said to me; “and if you print the statement nobody else will believe it; +but for all that it is the simple unexaggerated truth.”</p> + +<p>Falstaff’s reckoning at Dame Quickly’s becomes a moderate score in +comparison with this!</p> + +<p>I spent half an hour again in the muniment-room at Kilkenny Castle, +where, in the Expense-Book of the second Duke of Ormond, I found a +supper <i>menu</i> worthy of record, as illustrating what people meant <a name="page283" id="page283"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 283] +</span>by +“keeping open house” in the great families of the time of Queen +Anne.[Note <a href="#noteL">L.</a>]</p> + +<p>Taking a train early in the afternoon, I came on here in time to dine +last night with Mr. Rolleston of Delgany, an uncompromising Protestant +“Home Ruler”—as Protestant and as uncompromising as John Mitchel—whose +recent pamphlet on “Boycotting” has deservedly attracted so much +attention on both sides of the Irish Sea.</p> + +<p>I was first led into a correspondence with Mr. Rolleston by a remarkable +article of his published in the <i>Dublin University Review</i> for February +1886, on “The Archbishop in Politics.” In that article, Mr. Rolleston, +while avowing himself to be robust enough to digest without much +difficulty the <i>ex officio</i> franchise conferred upon the Catholic clergy +by Mr. Parnell to secure the acceptance of his candidates at +Parliamentary conventions, made a very firm and fearless protest against +the attempt of the Archbishops of Dublin and Cashel to “boycott” +Catholic criticism of the National League and its methods, by declaring +such criticism to be “a public insult” offered, not to the Archbishops +of Cashel and Dublin personally, or as political sup<a name="page284" id="page284"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 284] +</span>porters of the +National League, but to the Archbishops as dignitaries of the Catholic +Church, and to their Archiepiscopal office. The “boycotting,” by +clerical machinery, of independent lay opinion in civil matters, is to +the body politic of a Catholic country what the germ of cancer is to the +physical body. And though Mr. Rolleston, in this article, avowed himself +to be a hearty supporter of the “political programme of the National +League,” and went so far even as to maintain that the social boycotting, +“which makes the League technically an illegal conspiracy against law +and individual liberty,” might be “in many cases justified by the +magnitude of the legalised crime against which it was directed,” it was +obvious to me that he could not long remain blind to the true drift of +things in an organisation condemned, by the conditions it has created +for itself, to deal with the thinkers of Ireland as it deals with the +tenants of Ireland. His recent pamphlet on “Boycotting” proves that I +was right. What he said to me the other day in a letter about the +pamphlet may be said as truly of the article. It was “a shaft sunk into +the obscure depths of Irish opinion, to bring to light and turn to +service whatever there may be in those depths of <a name="page285" id="page285"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 285] +</span>sound and healthy;” and +one of my special objects in this present visit to Ireland was to get a +personal touch of the intellectual movement which is throwing such +thinkers as Mr. Rolleston to the front.</p> + +<p>We were five at table, Mr. Rolleston’s other guests being Mr. John +O’Leary, whose name is held in honour for his courage and honesty by all +who know anything of the story of Ireland in our times, and who was sent +a quarter of a century ago as a Fenian patriot—not into seclusion with +sherry and bitters, at Kilmainham, like Mr. Gladstone’s “suspects” of +1881—but like Michael Davitt, into the stern reality of penal +servitude; Dr. Sigerson, Dean of the Faculty of Science of the Boyal +University, and an authority upon the complicated question of Irish Land +Tenures; and Mr. John F. Taylor, a leading barrister of Dublin, an ally +on the Land Question of Mr. Davitt, and an outspoken Repealer of the +Union of 1800.</p> + +<p>I have long wished to meet Mr. O’Leary, who sent me, through a +correspondent of mine, two years ago, one of the most thoughtful and +well-considered papers I have ever read on the possibilities and +impossibilities of Home Rule for Ireland; and it was a great pleasure to +find in the man the eleva<a name="page286" id="page286"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 286] +</span>tion of tone, the breadth of view, and the +refined philosophic perception of the strong and weak points in the +Irish case, which had charmed me in. the paper. Now that “Conservative” +Englishmen have come to treat the main points of Chartism almost as +commonplaces in politics, it is surely time for them to recognise the +honesty and integrity of the spirit which revolted in the Ireland of +1848 against the then seemingly hopeless condition of that country. Of +that spirit Mr. O’Leary is a living, earnest, and most interesting +incarnation. He strikes one at once as a much younger man in all that +makes the youth of the intellect and the emotions than any Nationalist +M.P. of half his years whom I have ever met. No Irishman living has +dealt stronger or more open blows than he against the English dominion +in Ireland. Born in Tipperary, where he inherited a small property in +houses, he was sent to Trinity College in Dublin, and while a student +there was drawn into the “Young Ireland” party mainly by the poems of +Thomas Davis. Late in the electrical year of the “battle summer,” 1848, +he was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in a plot to rescue +Smith O’Brien and other state prisoners. The suspicion was well founded, +but could not be estab<a name="page287" id="page287"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 287] +</span>lished, and after a day or two he was liberated. +From Trinity, after this, he went to the Queen’s College in Cork, where +he took his degree, and studied medicine. When the Fenian movement +became serious, after the close of our American Civil War, O’Leary threw +himself into it with Stephens, Luby, and Charles Kickham. Stephens +appointed him one of the chief organisers of the I.E.B. with Luby and +Kickham, and he took charge of the <i>Irish People</i>—the organ of the +Fenians of 1865. It was as a subordinate contributor to this journal +that Sir William Harcourt’s familiar Irish bogy, O’Donovan Rossa<a id="footnotetag26" + name="footnotetag26"></a><a href="#footnote26"><sup>26</sup></a>, +was arrested together with his chief, Mr. O’Leary, and with Kickham in +1865, and found guilty, <a name="page288" id="page288"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 288] +</span>with them, after a trial before Mr. Justice +Keogh, of treason-felony. The speech then delivered by Mr. O’Leary in +the dock made a profound impression upon the public mind in America. It +was the speech, not of a conspirator, but of a patriot. The indignation +with which he repelled for himself and for his associate Luby the +charges levelled at them both, without a particle of supporting +evidence, by the prosecuting counsel, of aiming at massacre and plunder, +was its most salient feature. The terrible sentence passed upon him, of +penal servitude for twenty years, Mr. O’Leary accepted with a calm +dignity, which I am glad, for the sake of Irish manhood, to find that +his friends here now recall with pride, when their ears are vexed by the +shrill and clamorous complaints of more recent “patriots,” under the +comparatively trivial punishments which they invite.</p> + +<p>In 1870, Mr. O’Leary and his companions were released and pardoned on +condition of remaining beyond the British dominions until the expiration +of their sentences. Mr. O’Leary fixed his residence for a time in Paris, +and thence went to America, where he and Kickham were regarded as the +leaders of the American branch of the I. R. B. He returned to <a name="page289" id="page289"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 289] +</span>Ireland in +1885, his term of sentence having then expired, and it was shortly after +his return that he gave to my correspondent the letter upon Irish +affairs to which I have already referred. He had been chosen President +of the “Young Ireland Society” of Dublin before he returned, and in that +capacity delivered at the Rotunda, in the Irish capital, before a vast +crowd assembled to welcome him back, an address which showed how +thoughtfully and calmly he had devoted himself during his long years of +imprisonment and exile to the cause of Ireland. Mr. William O’Brien, +M.P., and Mr. Redmond, M.P., took part in this reception, but their +subsequent course shows that they can hardly have relished Mr. O’Leary’s +fearless and outspoken protests against the intolerance and injustice of +the agrarian organisation which controls their action. In England, as +well as well as in Ireland, Mr. O’Leary spoke to great multitudes of his +countrymen, and always in the same sense. Mr. Rolleston tells me that +Mr. O’Leary’s denunciations of “the dynamite section of the Irish +people,” to use the euphemism of an American journal, “are the only ones +ever uttered by an Irish leader, lay or clerical.” The day must come, if +it be not already close at hand, when the Irish leader of <a name="page290" id="page290"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 290] +</span>whom this can +be truly said, must be felt by his own people to be the one man worthy +of their trust. The thing that has been shall be, and there is nothing +new under the sun. The Marats and the Robespierres, the Barères and the +Collots, are the pallbearers, not the standard-bearers of liberty.</p> + +<p>Towards the National League, as at present administered on the lines of +the agrarian agitation, Mr. O’Leary has so far preserved an attitude of +neutrality, though he has never for a moment hesitated either in public +or in private most vehemently to condemn such sworn Fenians as have +accepted seats in the British Parliament, speaking his mind freely and +firmly of them as “double-oathed men” playing a constitutional part with +one hand, and a treasonable part with the other.</p> + +<p>Yet he is not at one with the extreme and fanatical Fenians who oppose +constitutional agitation simply because it is constitutional. His +objection to the existing Nationalism was exactly put, Mr. Rolleston +tells me, by a clever writer in the Dublin <i>Mail</i>, who said that +O’Connell having tried “moral force” and failed, and the Fenians having +tried “physical force” and failed, the Leaguers were now trying to +succeed by the use of “immoral force.”</p> + +<p><a name="page291" id="page291"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 291] +</span>Dr. Sigerson, who, as a man of science, must necessarily revolt from the +coarse and clumsy methods of the blunderers who have done so much since +1885 to discredit the cause of Ireland, evidently clings to the hope +that something may still be saved from the visible wreck of what has +come, even in Ireland, to be called “Parnellism,” and he good-naturedly +persisted in speaking of our host last night and of his friends as +“mugwumps.” For the “mugwumps” of my own country I have no particular +admiration, being rather inclined, with my friend Senator Conkling (now +gone to his rest from the racket of American politics), to regard them +as “Madonnas who wish it to be distinctly understood that they might +have been Magdalens.” But these Irish “mugwumps” seem to me to earn +their title by simply refusing to believe that two and two, which make +four in France or China, can be bullied into making five in Ireland. +“What certain ‘Parnellites’ object to,” said one of the company, “is +that we can’t be made to go out gathering grapes of thorns or figs of +thistles. Some of them expect to found an Irish republic on robbery, and +to administer it by falsehood. We don’t.”<a id="footnotetag27" + name="footnotetag27"></a><a href="#footnote27"><sup>27</sup></a> This is precisely the +<a name="page292" id="page292"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 292] +</span>spirit in which Mr. Rolleston wrote to me not long before I left England +this week. “I have been slowly forced,” he wrote, “to the conclusion +that the National League is a body which deserves nothing but +reprobation from all who wish well to Ireland. It has plunged this +country into a state of moral degradation, from which it will take us at +least a generation to recover. It is teaching the people that no law of +justice, of candour, of honour, or of humanity can be allowed to +interfere with the political ends of the moment. It is, in fact, +absolutely divorcing morality from politics. The mendacity of some of +its leaders is shameless and sickening, and still more sickening is the +complete indifference with which this mendacity is regarded in Ireland.”</p> + + +<p>It is the spirit, too, of a letter which I received not long ago from +the west of Ireland, in which my correspondent quoted the bearer of one +of the most distinguished of Irish names, and a strong “Home Ruler,” as +saying to him, “These Nationalists are stripping Irishmen as bare of +moral sense as the Bushmen of South Africa.”</p> + +<p>This very day I find in one of the leading Nationalist journals here +letters from Mr. Davitt, Mr. O’Leary, and Mr. Taylor himself, which +convict <a name="page293" id="page293"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 293] +</span>that journal of making last week a statement about Mr. Taylor +absolutely untrue, and, so far as appears, absolutely without the shadow +of a foundation. These letters throw such a curious light on passing +events here at this moment that I shall preserve them.<a id="footnotetag28" + name="footnotetag28"></a><a href="#footnote28"><sup>28</sup></a> The statement +to which they refer was thus put in the journal which made it: “We have +absolute reason to know that when the last Coercion Act was in full +swing this pure-souled and disinterested patriot (Mr. John F. Taylor) +begged for, received, and accepted a very petty Crown Prosecutorship +under a Coercion Government. As was wittily said at the time, He sold +his principles, not for a mess of pottage, but for the stick that +stirred the mess.” This is no assertion “upon hearsay”—no publication of +a rumour or report. It is an assertion made, not upon belief even, but +upon a claim of “absolute knowledge.”</p> + +<p>Yet to-day, in the same journal, I find Mr. Taylor declaring this +statement, made upon a claim of “absolute knowledge,” to be “absolutely +untrue,” and appealing in support of this declaration to Mr. Walker, the +host of Lord Riand Mr. Morley, and to The M‘Dermot, Q.C., a conspicuous +Home Ruler; to which Mr. Davitt adds: “Mr. Taylor, on my <a name="page294" id="page294"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 294] +</span>advice, +declined the Crown Prosecutorship for King’s County, a post afterwards +applied for by, and granted to, a near relative of one of the most +prominent members of the Irish Party,”—meaning Mr. Luke Dillon, a +cousin of Mr. John Dillon, M.P.!</p> + +<p>We had much interesting conversation last night about the relations of +the Irish leaders here with public and party questions in America, as to +which I find Mr. O’Leary unusually well and accurately informed.</p> + +<p>I am sorry that I must get off to-morrow into Mayo to see Lord Lucan’s +country there, for I should have been particularly pleased to look more +closely with Mr. Rolleston into the intellectual revolt against +“Parnellism” and its methods, of which his attitude and that of his +friends here is an unmistakable symptom. As he tersely puts it, he sees +“no hope in Irish politics, except a reformation of the League, a return +to the principles of Thomas Davis.”</p> + +<p>The lines for a reformation or transformation of the League, as it now +exists, appear to have been laid down in the original constitution of +the body. Under that constitution, it seems, the League was meant to be +controlled by a representative committee chosen annually, open to public +criticism, <a name="page295" id="page295"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 295] +</span>and liable to removal by a new election. As things now are, +the officers of this alleged democratic organisation are absolutely +self-elected, and wield the wide and indefinite power they possess over +the people of Ireland in a perfectly unauthorised, irresponsible way. It +is a curious illustration of the autocratic or bureaucratic system under +which the Irish movement is now conducted, that Mr. Davitt, who does not +pretend to be a Parliamentarian, and owes indeed much of his authority +to his refusal to enter Parliament and take oaths of allegiance, does +not hesitate for a moment to discipline any Irish member of Parliament +who incurs his disapprobation. Sir Thomas Esmonde, for example, was +severely taken to task by him the other day in the public prints for +venturing to put a question, in his place at Westminster, to the +Government about a man-of-war stationed in Kingstown harbour. Mr. Davitt +very peremptorily ordered Sir Thomas to remember that he is not sent to +Westminster to recognise the British Government, or concern himself +about British regiments or ships, and Sir Thomas accepts the rebuke in +silence. Whom does such a member of Parliament represent—the +constituents who nominally elect him, or the leader who cracks the whip +over him so sharply?</p> + +<p><a name="page296" id="page296"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 296] +</span>I have to-day been looking through a small and beautifully-printed +volume of poems just issued here by Gill and Son, Nationalist +publishers, I take it, who have the courage of their convictions, since +their books bear the imprint of “O’Connell,” and not of Sackville +Street. This little book of the <i>Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland </i>is +a symptom too. It is dedicated in a few brief but vigorous stanzas to +John O’Leary, as one who</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i4">“Hated all things base,</span><br /> + And held his country’s honour high.”</p> + +<p>And the spirit of all the poems it contains is the spirit of ’48, or of +that earlier Ireland of Robert Emmet, celebrated in some charming verses +by “Rose Kavanagh” on “St. Michan’s Churchyard,” where the</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="i4"> “sunbeam went and came</span><br /> + Above the stone which waits the name<br /> + His land must write with freedom‘s flame.” +</p> + +<p>It interests an American to find among these poems and ballads a +striking threnody called “The Exile’s Return,” signed with the name of +“Patrick Henry”; and it is noteworthy, for more reasons than one, that +the volume winds up with a “Marching Song of the Gaelic Athletes,” +signed “An Chraoibhin Aoibbinn.” These Athletes are <a name="page297" id="page297"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 297] +</span>numbered now, I am +assured, not by thousands, but by myriads, and their organisation covers +all parts of Ireland. If the spirit of ’48 and of ’98 is really moving +among them, I should say they are likely to be at least as troublesome +in the end to the “uncrowned king” as to the crowned Queen of Ireland.</p> + +<p>As for the literary merit of these <i>Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland</i>, +it strikes one key with their political quality. One exquisite ballad of +“The Stolen Child,” by W. B. Yeats, might have been sung in the +moonlight on a sylvan lake by the spirit of Heinrich Heine.</p> + +<p>I spent an hour or two this morning most agreeably in the libraries of +the Law Courts and of Trinity College: the latter one of the stateliest +most academic “halls of peace” I have ever seen; and this afternoon I +called upon Dr. Sigerson, a most patriotic Irishman, of obviously Danish +blood, who has his own ideas as to Clontarf and Brian Boru; and who gave +me very kindly a copy of his valuable report on that Irish Crisis of +1879-80, out of which Michael Davitt so skilfully developed the agrarian +movement whereof “Parnellism” down to this time has been the not very +well adjusted instrument. The report was drawn up after a thorough +inspection by Dr. Siger<a name="page298" id="page298"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 298] +</span>son and his associate, Dr. Kenny, visiting +physicians to the North Dublin Union, of some of the most distressed +districts of Mayo, Sligo, and Galway; and a more interesting, +intelligent, and impressive picture of the worst phases of the social +conditions of Ireland ten years ago is not to be found. I have just been +reading it over carefully in conjunction with my memoranda made from the +Emigration and Seed Potato Fund Reports, which Mr. Tuke gave me some +time ago, and it strongly reinforces the evidence imbedded in those +reports, which goes to show that agitation for political objects in +Ireland has perhaps done as much as all other causes put together to +depress the condition of the poor in Ireland, by driving and keeping +capital out of the country. The worst districts visited in 1879 by Dr. +Sigerson and Dr. Kenny do not appear to have been so completely cut off +from civilisation as was the region about Gweedore before the purchase +of his property there by Lord George Hill, and the remedies suggested by +Dr. Sigerson for the suffering in these districts are all in the +direction of the remedies applied by Lord George Hill to the condition +in which he found Gweedore. After giving full value to the stock +explanations of Irish distress in the congested districts, such as +excessive rents, <a name="page299" id="page299"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 299] +</span>penal laws, born of religious or “racial” animosity, +and a defective system of land tenure, it seems to be clear that the +main difficulties have arisen from the isolation of these districts, and +from the lack of varied industries. Political agitation has checked any +flow of capital into these districts, and a flow of capital into them +would surely have given them better communications and more varied +industries. Dr. Sigerson states that some of the worst of these regions +in the west of Ireland are as well adapted to flax-culture as Ulster, +and Napoleon III. showed what could be done for such wastes as La +Sologne and the desert of the Landes by the intelligent study of a +country and the judicious development of such values as are inherent in +it. The loss of population in Ireland is not unprecedented. The State of +New Hampshire, in America, one of the original thirteen colonies which +established the American Union, has twice shown an actual loss in +population during the past century. The population of the State declined +during the decade between 1810 and 1820, and again during the decade +between 1860 and 1870. This phenomenon, unique in American history, is +to be explained only by three causes, all active in the case of +congested Ireland,—a decaying agriculture, lack of communications, and +the absence of varied <a name="page300" id="page300"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 300] +</span>industries. During the decade from 1860 to 1870 +the great Civil War was fought out. Yet, despite the terrible waste of +life and capital in that war, especially at the South, the Northern +State of New Hampshire, peopled by the energetic English adventurers who +founded New England, was actually the only State which came out of the +contest with a positive decline in population. Virginia (including West +Virginia, which seceded from that Commonwealth in 1861) rose from +1,596,318 inhabitants in 1860 to 1,667,177 in 1870. South Carolina, +which was ravaged by the war more severely than any State except +Virginia, and upon which the Republican majority at Washington pressed +with such revengeful hostility after the downfall of the Confederacy, +showed in 1870 a positive increase in population, as compared with 1860, +from 703,708 to 705,606. But New Hampshire, lying hundreds of miles +beyond the area of the conflict, showed a positive decrease from 326,073 +to 318,300. During my college days at Cambridge the mountain regions of +New Hampshire were favourite “stamping grounds” in the vacations, and I +exaggerate nothing when I say that in the secluded nooks and corners of +the State, the people cut off from communication with the rest of New +England, and scratching out <a name="page301" id="page301"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 301] +</span>of a rocky land an inadequate subsistence, +were not much, if at all, in advance of the least prosperous dwellers in +the most remote parts of Ireland which I have visited. They furnished +their full contingent to that strange American exodus, which, about a +quarter of a century ago, was led out of New England by one Adams to the +Holy Land, in anticipation of the Second Advent, a real modern crusade +of superstitious land speculators, there to perish, for the most part, +miserably about Jaffa—leaving houses and allotments to pass into the +control of a more practical colony of Teutons, which I found +establishing itself there in 1869.</p> + +<p>Since 1870 a change has come over New Hampshire. The population has +risen to 346,984. In places waste and fallen twenty years ago brisk and +smiling villages have sprung up along lines of communication established +to carry on the business of thriving factories.</p> + +<p>What reason can there be in the nature of things to prevent the +development of analogous results, through the application of analogous +forces, in the case of “congested” Ireland? A Nationalist friend, to +whom I put this question this afternoon, answers it by alleging that so +long as fiscal laws for Ireland are made at Westminster, British capital +invested <a name="page302" id="page302"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 302] +</span>in Great Britain will prevent the application of these +analogous forces to “congested” Ireland. His notion is that were Ireland +as independent of Great Britain, for example, in fiscal matters as is +Canada, Ireland might seek and secure a fiscal union with the United +States, such as was partially secured to Canada under the Reciprocity +Treaty denounced by Mr. Seward.</p> + +<p>“Give us this,” he said, “and take us into your system of American +free-trade as between the different States of your American Union, and +no end of capital will soon be coming into Ireland, not only from your +enormously rich and growing Republic, but from Great Britain too. Give +us the American market, putting Great Britain on a less-favoured +footing, just as Mr. Blake and his party wish to do in the case of +Canada, and between India doing her own manufacturing on the one side, +and Ireland becoming a manufacturing centre on the other, and a mart in +Europe for American goods, we’ll get our revenge on Elizabeth and +Cromwell in a fashion John Bull has never dreamt of in these times, +though he used to be in a mortal funk of it a hundred years ago, when +there wasn’t nearly as much danger of it!”</p> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">DUBLIN, <i>Sunday, June 24.</i>—</span>“Put not your faith in <a name="page303" id="page303"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 303] +</span>porters!” I had +expected to pass this day at Castlebar, on the estate of Lord Lucan, and +I exchanged telegrams to that effect yesterday with Mr. Harding, the +Earl’s grandson, who, in the absence of his wonderfully energetic +grandsire, is administering there what Lord Lucan, with pardonable +pride, declares to be the finest and most successful dairy-farm in all +Ireland. I asked the porter to find the earliest morning train; and +after a careful search he assured me that by leaving Dublin just after 7 +A.M. I could reach Castlebar a little after noon.</p> + +<p>Upon this I determined to dine with Mr. Colomb, and spend the night in +Dublin. But when I reached the station a couple of hours ago, it was to +discover that my excellent porter had confounded 7 A.M. with 7 P.M.</p> + +<p>There is no morning train to Castlebar! So here I am with no recourse, +my time being short, but to give up the glimpse I had promised myself of +Mayo, and go on this afternoon to Belfast on my way back to London.</p> + +<p>At dinner last night Mr. Colomb gave me further and very interesting +light upon the events of 1867, of which he had already spoken with me at +Cork, as well as upon the critical period of Mr. Gladstone’s experiments +of 1881-82 at “Coercion” in Ireland.</p> + +<p><a name="page304" id="page304"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 304] +</span>Mr. Colomb lives in a remarkably bright and pleasant suburb of Dublin, +which not only is called a “park,” as suburbs are apt to be, but really +is a park, as suburbs are less apt to be. His house is set near some +very fine old trees, shading a beautiful expanse of turf. He is an +amateur artist of much more than ordinary skill. His walls are gay, and +his portfolios filled, with charming water-colours, sketches, and +studies made from Nature all over the United Kingdom. The grand +coast-scenery of Cornwall and of Western Ireland, the lovely lake +landscapes of Killarney, sylvan homes and storied towers, all have been +laid under contribution by an eye quick to seize and a hand prompt to +reproduce these most subtle and transient atmospheric effects of light +and colour which are the legitimate domain of the true water-colourist. +With all these pictures about us—and with Mr. Colomb’s workshop fitted +up with Armstrong lathes and all manner of tools wherein he varies the +routine of official life by making all manner of instruments, and +wreaking his ingenuity upon all kinds of inventions—and with the +pleasant company of Mr. Davies, the agreeable and accomplished official +secretary of Sir West Ridgway, the evening wore quickly away. In the +course of conversation the question of the average income of the <a name="page305" id="page305"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 305] +</span>Irish +priests arose, and I mentioned the fact that Lord Lucan, whose knowledge +of the smallest details of Irish life is amazingly thorough, puts it +down at about ten shillings a year per house in the average Irish +parish.</p> + +<p>He rated Father M‘Fadden and his curate of Gweedore, for example, +without a moment’s hesitation, at a thousand pounds a year in the whole, +or very nearly the amount stated to me by Sergeant Mahony at Baron’s +Court. This brought from Mr. Davies a curious account of the proceedings +in a recent case of a contested will before Judge Warren here in Dublin. +The will in question was made by the late Father M‘Garvey of Milford, a +little village near Mulroy Bay in Donegal, notable chiefly as the scene +of the murder of the late Earl of Leitrim. Father M‘Garvey, who died in +March last, left by this will to religious and charitable uses the whole +of his property, save £800 bequeathed in it to his niece, Mrs. O’Connor. +It was found that he died possessed not only of a farm at Ardara, but of +cash on deposit in the Northern Bank to the very respectable amount of +£23,711. Mrs. O’Connor contested the will. The Archbishop of Armagh, and +Father Sheridan, C.C. of Letterkenny, instituted an action against her +to establish the will. Father M‘Fadden of Gweedore, <a name="page306" id="page306"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 306] +</span>lying in Londonderry +jail as a first-class misdemeanant, was brought from Londonderry as a +witness for the niece. But on the trial of the case it appeared that +there was actually no evidence to sustain the plea of the niece that +“undue influence” had been exerted upon her uncle by the Archbishop, who +at the time of the making of the will was Bishop of Raphoe, or by +anybody else; so the judge instructed the jury to find on all the issues +for the plaintiffs, which was done. The judge declared the conduct of +the defendant in advancing a charge of “undue influence” in such +circumstances against ecclesiastics to be most reprehensible; but the +Archbishop very graciously intimated through his lawyer his intention of +paying the costs of the niece who had given him all this trouble, +because she was a poor woman who had been led into her course by +disappointment at receiving so small a part of so large an inheritance. +Had the priest’s property come to him in any other way than through his +office as a priest her claim might have been more worthy of +consideration, but Mr. M‘Dermot, Q.C., who represented the Archbishop, +took pains to make it clear that as an ecclesiastic his client, who had +nothing to do with the making of the will, was bound to regard it “as +proper and in accordance <a name="page307" id="page307"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 307] +</span>with the fitness of things that what had been +received from the poor should be given back to the poor.”</p> + +<p>I see no adequate answer to this contention of the Archbishop. But it +certainly goes to confirm the estimates given me by Sergeant Mahony of +Father M‘Fadden’s receipts at Gweedore, and the opinion expressed to me +by Lord Lucan as to the average returns of an average Catholic parish, +that the priest of Milford, a place hardly so considerable as Gweedore, +should have acquired so handsome a property in the exercise there of his +parochial functions.</p> + +<p>One form in which the priests in many parts of Ireland collect dues is +certainly unknown to the practice of the Church elsewhere, I believe, +and it must tend to swell the incomes of the priests at the expense, +perhaps, of their legitimate influence. This is the custom of personal +collections by the priests. In many parishes the priest stands by the +church-door, or walks about the church—not with a bag in his hand, as +is sometimes done in France on great occasions when a <i>quéle</i> is made by +the <i>curé</i> for some special object,—but with an open plate in which the +people put their offerings. I have heard of parishes in which the priest +sits by a table near the church-door, takes the offerings <a name="page308" id="page308"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 308] +</span>from the +parishioners as they pass, and comments freely upon the ratio of the +gift to the known or presumed financial ability of the giver.</p> + +<p>We had some curious stories, too, from a gentleman present of the +relation of the priests in wild, out-of-the-way corners of Ireland to +the people, stories which take one back to days long before Lever. One, +for example, of a delightful and stalwart old parish priest of eighty, +upon whom an airy young patriot called to propose that he should accept +the presidency of a local Land League. The veteran, whose only idea of +the Land League was that it had used bad language about Cardinal Cullen, +no sooner caught the drift of the youth than he snatched up a huge +blackthorn, fell upon him, and “boycotted” him head-foremost out of a +window. Luckily it was on the ground floor.</p> + +<p>Another strenuous spiritual shepherd came down during the distribution +of potato-seed to the little port in which it was going on, and took up +his station on board of the distributing ship. One of his parishioners, +having received his due quota, made his way back again unobserved on +board of the ship. As he came up to receive a second dole, the good +father spied him, and staying not “to parley or dissemble,” <a name="page309" id="page309"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 309] +</span>simply +fetched him a whack over the sconce with a stick, which tumbled him out +of the ship, head-foremost, into the hooker riding beside her! Quite of +another drift was a much more astonishing tale of certain proceedings +had here in February last before the Lord Chief-Justice. These took +place in connection with a motion to quash the verdict of a coroner’s +jury, held in August 1887, on the body of a child named Ellen Gaffney, +at Philipstown, in King’s County, which preserves the memory of the +Spanish sovereign of England, as Maryborough in Queen’s preserves the +memory of his Tudor consort. Cervantes never imagined an Alcalde of the +quality of the “Crowner”’ who figures in this story. Were it not that +his antics cost a poor woman her liberty from August 1887 till December +of that year, when the happy chance of a winter assizes set her free, +and might have cost her her life, the story of this ideal magistrate +would be extremely diverting.</p> + +<p>A child was born to Mrs. Gaffney at Philipstown on the 23d of July, and +died there on the 25th of August 1887, Mrs. Gaffney being the wife of a +“boycotted” man.</p> + +<p>A local doctor named Clarke came to the police and asked the Sergeant to +inspect the body of the <a name="page310" id="page310"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 310] +</span>child, and call for an inquest. The sergeant +inspected the body, and saw no reason to doubt that the child had died a +natural death. This did not please the doctor, so the Coroner was sent +for. He came to Philipstown the next day, conferred there with the +doctor, and with a priest, Father Bergin, and proceeded to hold an +inquest on the child in a public-house, “a most appropriate place,” said +Sir Michael Morris from the bench, “for the transactions which +subsequently occurred.” Strong depositions were afterwards made by the +woman Mrs. Gaffney, by her husband, and by the police authorities, as to +the conduct of this “inquest.” She and her husband were arrested on a +verbal order of the Coroner on the day when the inquest was held, August +27th, and the woman was kept in prison from that time till the assizes +in December. The “inquest” was not completed on the 27th of August, and +after the Coroner adjourned it, two priests drove away on a car from the +“public-house” in which it had been held. That night, or the next day, a +man came to a magistrate with a bundle of papers which he had found in +the road near Philipstown. The magistrate examined them, and finding +them to be the depositions taken before the Coroner in the case of Ellen +Gaffney, handed them <a name="page311" id="page311"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 311] +</span>to the police. How did they come to be in the road? +On the 1st of September the Coroner resumed his inquest, this time in +the Court-House at Philipstown, and one of the police, with the +depositions in his pocket, went to hear the proceedings. Great was his +amazement to see certain papers produced, and calmly read, as being the +very original depositions which at that moment were in his own custody! +He held his peace, and let the inquest go on. A letter was read from the +Coroner, to the effect that he saw no ground for detaining the husband, +Gaffney—but the woman was taken before a justice of the peace, and +committed to prison on this finding by the Coroner’s jury: “That Mary +Anne Gaffney came by her death; and that the mother of the child, Ellen +Gaffney, is guilty of wilful neglect by not supplying the necessary food +and care to sustain the life of this child ”!</p> + +<p>It is scarcely credible, but it is true, that upon this extraordinary +finding the Coroner issued a warrant for “murder” against this poor +woman, on which she was actually locked up for more than three months! +The jury which made this unique finding consisted of nineteen persons, +and it was in evidence that their foreman reported thirteen of the jury +to be for finding one way and six for finding <a name="page312" id="page312"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 312] +</span>another, whereupon a +certain Mr. Whyte, who came into the case as the representative of +Father Bergin, President of the local branch of the National +League—nobody can quite see on what colourable pretext—was allowed by +the Coroner to write down the finding I have quoted, and hand it to the +Coroner. The Coroner read it over. He and Mr. Whyte then put six of the +jury in one place, and thirteen in another; the Coroner read the finding +aloud to the thirteen, and said to them, “Is that what you agree to?” +and so the inquest was closed, and the warrant issued—for murder—and +the woman, this poor peasant mother sent off to jail with the brand upon +her of infanticide.<a id="footnotetag29" + name="footnotetag29"></a><a href="#footnote29"><sup>29</sup></a></p> + +<p>Where would that poor woman be now were there no “Coercion” in Ireland +to protect her against “Crowner’s quest law” thus administered? And what +is to be thought of educated and responsible public men in England who, +as recent events have shown, are not ashamed to go to “Crowner’s quest +Courts” of this sort for weapons of attack, not upon the administration +only of their own Government, but upon the character and the motives of +their political opponents?</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page313" id="page313"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 313] +</span>CHAPTER XVI.</h2> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">BELFAST, <i>Monday, June 25.</i>—</span>I left Dublin yesterday at 4 P.M., in a +train which went off at high pressure as an “express,” but came into +Belfast panting and dilatory as an “excursion.” The day was fine, and +the line passes through what is reputed to be the most prosperous part +of Ireland. In this part of Ireland, too, the fate of the island has +been more than once settled by the arbitrament of arms; and if +Parliamentary England throws up the sponge in the wrestle with the +League, it is probable enough that the old story will come to be told +over again here.</p> + +<p>At Dundalk the Irish monarchy of the Braces was made and unmade. The +plantation of Ulster under James I. clinched the grasp not so much of +England as of Scotland upon Ireland, and determined the course of events +here through the Great Rebellion. The landing of the Duke of Schomberg +at Carrickfergus opened the way for the subjugation of Jacobite <a name="page314" id="page314"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 314] +</span>Ireland +by William of Orange. The successful descent of the French upon the same +place in February 1760, after the close of “the Great Year,” in which +Walpole tells us he came to expect a new victory every morning with the +rolls for breakfast, and after Hawke had broken the strength of the +great French Armada off Belleisle, and done for England the service +which Nelson did for her again off Trafalgar in 1805, shows what might +have happened had Thurot commanded the fleet of Conflans. In this same +region, too, the rout of Munro by Nugent at Ballinahinch practically +ended the insurrection of 1798.</p> + +<p>There are good reasons in the physical geography of the British Islands +for this controlling influence of Ulster over the affairs of Ireland, +which it seems to me a serious mistake to overlook.</p> + +<p>The author of a brief but very hard-headed and practical letter on the +pacification of Ireland, which appeared in the <i>Times</i> newspaper in +1886, while the air was thrilling with rumours of Mr. Gladstone’s +impending appearance as the champion of “Home Rule,” carried, I +remember, to the account of St. George’s Channel “nine-tenths of the +troubles, religious, political, and social, under which Ireland has +<a name="page315" id="page315"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 315] +</span>laboured for seven centuries.” I cannot help thinking he hit the nail on +the head; and St. George’s Channel does not divide Ulster from Scotland. +From Donaghadee, which has an excellent harbour, the houses on the +Scottish coast can easily be made out in clear weather. A chain is no +stronger than its weakest link, and it is as hard to see how, even with +the consent of Ulster, the independence of Ireland could be maintained +against the interests and the will of Scotland, as it is easy to see why +Leinster, Munster, and Connaught have been so difficult of control and +assimilation by England. To dream of establishing the independence of +Ireland against the will of Ulster appears to me to be little short of +madness.</p> + +<p>At Moira, which stands very prettily above the Ulster Canal, a small +army of people returning from a day in the country to Belfast came upon +us and trebled the length of our train. We picked up more at Lisburn, +where stands the Cathedral Church of Jeremy Taylor, the “Shakespeare of +divines.” Here my only companion in the compartment from Dublin left me, +a most kindly, intelligent Ulster man, who had very positive views as to +the political situation. He much commended the recent dis<a name="page316" id="page316"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 316] +</span>course in +Scotland of a Presbyterian minister, who spoke of the Papal Decree as +“pouring water on a drowned mouse,” a remark which led me to elicit the +fact that he had never seen either Clare or Kerry; and he was very warm +in his admiration of Mr. Chamberlain. He told me, what I had heard from +many other men of Ulster, that the North had armed itself thoroughly +when the Home Rule business began with Mr. Gladstone. “I am a Unionist,” +he said, “but I think the Union is worth as much to England as it is to +Ireland, and if England means to break it up it is not the part of +Irishmen who think and feel as I do to let her choose her own time for +doing it, and stand still while she robs us of our property and turns us +out defenceless to be trampled under foot by the most worthless +vagabonds in our own island.” He thinks the National League has had its +death-blow. “What I fear now,” he said, “is that we are running straight +into a social war, and that will never be a war against the landlords in +Ireland; it’ll be a war against the Protestants and all the decent +people there are among the Catholics.”</p> + +<p>He was very cordial when he found I was an <a name="page317" id="page317"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 317] +</span>American, and with that +offhand hospitality which seems to know no distinctions of race or +religion in Ireland urged me to come and make him a visit at a place he +has nearer the sea-coast. “I’ll show you Downpatrick,” he said, “where +the tombs of St. Patrick and St. Bridget and St. Columb are, the saints +sleeping quite at their ease, with a fine prosperous Presbyterian town +all about them. And I’ll drive you to Tullymore, where you’ll see the +most beautiful park, and the finest views from it all the way to the +Isle of Man, that are to be seen in all Ireland.” He was very much +interested in the curious story of the sequestration of the remains of +Mr. Stewart of New York, who was born, he tells me, at Lisburn, where +the wildest fabrications on the subject seem to have got currency. That +this feat of body-snatching is supposed to have been performed by a +little syndicate of Italians, afterwards broken up by the firmness of +Lady Crawford in resisting the ghastly pressure to which the widow and +the executors of Mr. Stewart are believed to have succumbed, was quite a +new idea to him.</p> + +<p>From Moira to Belfast the scenery along the line grows in beauty +steadily. If Belfast were not the busiest and most thriving city in +Ireland, it would <a name="page318" id="page318"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 318] +</span>still be well worth a visit for the picturesque charms +of its situation and of the scenery which surrounds it. At some future +day I hope to get a better notion both of its activity and of its +attractions than it would be possible for me to attempt to get in this +flying visit, made solely to take the touch of the atmosphere of the +place at this season of the year; for we are on the very eve of the +battle month of the Boyne.</p> + +<p>Mr. Cameron, the Town Inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary, met me +at the station, in accordance with a promise which he kindly made when I +saw him several weeks ago at Cork; and this morning he took me all over +the city. It is very well laid out, in the new quarters especially, with +broad avenues and spacious squares. In fact, as a local wag said to me +to-day at the Ulster Club, “You can drive through Belfast without once +going into a street”—most of the thoroughfares which are not called +“avenues” or “places” being known as “roads.” It is, of course, an +essentially modern city. When Boate made his survey of Ireland two +centuries ago, Belfast was so small a place that he took small note of +it, though it had been incorporated by James I. in 1613 in favour of the +Chichester <a name="page319" id="page319"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 319] +</span>family, still represented here. In a very careful <i>Tour in +Ireland</i>, published at Dublin in 1780, the author says of Belfast, “I +could not help remarking the great number of Scots who reside in this +place, and who carry on a good trade with Scotland.” It seems then to +have had a population of less than 20,000 souls, as it only touched that +number at the beginning of this century. It has since then advanced by +“leaps and bounds,” after an almost American fashion, till it has now +become the second, and bids fair at no distant day to become the first, +city in Ireland. Few of the American cities which are its true +contemporaries can be compared with Belfast in beauty. The quarter in +which my host lives was reclaimed from the sea marshes not quite so long +ago, I believe, as was the Commonwealth Avenue quarter of Boston, and +though it does not show so many costly private houses perhaps as that +quarter of the New England capital, its “roads” and “avenues” are on the +whole better built, and there is no public building in Boston so +imposing as the Queen’s College, with its Tudor front six hundred feet +in length, and its graceful central tower. The Botanic Gardens near by +are much prettier and much better equipped for the pleasure and +instruction of the <a name="page320" id="page320"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 320] +</span>people than any public gardens in either Boston or +New York. These American comparisons make themselves, all the conditions +of Belfast being rather of the New World than of the Old. The oldest +building pointed out to me to-day is the whilom mansion of the Marquis +of Donegal, now used as offices, and still called the Castle.</p> + +<p>This stands near Donegal Square, a fine site, disfigured by a quadrangle +of commonplace brick buildings, occupied as a sort of Linen Exchange, +concerning which a controversy rages, I am told. They are erected on +land granted by Lord Donegal to encourage the linen trade, and the +buildings used to be leased at a rental of £1 per window. The present +holders receive £10 per window, and are naturally loath to part with so +good a thing, though there is an earnest desire in the city to see these +unsightly structures removed, and their place taken by stately municipal +buildings more in key with the really remarkable and monumental private +warehouses which already adorn this Square. Mr. Robinson, one of the +partners of a firm which has just completed one of these warehouses, was +good enough to show us over it. It is built of a warm grey stone, which +lends itself easily to the chisel, <a name="page321" id="page321"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 321] +</span>and it is decorated with a wealth of +carving and of architectural ornaments such as the great burghers of +Flanders lavished on their public buildings. The interior arrangements +are worthy of the external stateliness of the warehouse. Pneumatic tubes +for the delivery of cash—a Scottish invention—electric lights, steam +lifts, a kitchen at the top of the lofty edifice heated by steam from +the great engine-room in the cellars, and furnishing meals to the +employees, attest the energy and enterprise of the firm. The most +delicate of the linen fabrics sold here are made, I was informed, all +over the north country. The looms, three or four of which are kept going +here in a great room to show the intricacy and perfection of the +processes, are supplied by the firm to the hand-workers on a system +which enables them, while earning good wages from week to week, to +acquire the eventual ownership of the machines. The building is crowned +by a sort of observatory, from which we enjoyed a noble prospect +overlooking the whole city and miles of the beautiful country around. A +haze on the horizon hid the coast of Scotland, which is quite visible +under a clear sky. The Queen’s Bridge over the Lagan, built in 1842 +between Antrim and Down, was a conspicuous <a name="page322" id="page322"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 322] +</span>feature in the panorama. Its +five great arches of hewn granite span the distance formerly traversed +by an older bridge of twenty-one arches 840 feet in length, which was +begun in 1682, and finished just in time to welcome Schomberg and King +William.</p> + +<p>The not less imposing warehouse of Richardson and Co., built of a +singularly beautiful brown stone, and decorated with equal taste and +liberality, adjoins that of Robinson and Cleaver. The banks, the public +offices, the clubs, the city library, the museum, the Presbyterian +college, the principal churches, all of them modern, all alike bear +witness to the public spirit and pride in their town of the good people +of Belfast. With more time at my disposal I would have been very glad to +visit some of the flax-mills called into being by the great impulse +which the cotton famine resulting from our Civil War gave to the linen +manufactures of Northern Ireland, and the famous shipyards of the Woolfs +on Queen’s Island, As things are, it was more to my purpose to see some +of the representative men of this great Protestant stronghold.</p> + +<p>I passed a very interesting hour with the Rev. Dr. Hanna, who is reputed +to be a sort of clerical <a name="page323" id="page323"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 323] +</span>“Lion of the North,” and whom I found to be in +almost all respects a complete antitype of Father M‘Fadden of Gweedore.</p> + + +<p>Dr. Hanna is not unjustly proud of being at the head of the most +extensive Sunday-school organisation in Ireland, if not in the world; +and I find that the anniversary parade of his pupils, appointed for +Saturday, June 30th, is looked forward to with some anxiety by the +authorities here. He tells me that he expects to put two thousand +children that day into motion for a grand excursion to Moira; but +although he speaks very plainly as to the ill-will with which a certain +class of the Catholics here regard both himself and his organisation, he +does not anticipate any attack from them. With what seems to me very +commendable prudence, he has resolved this year to put this procession +into the streets without banners and bands, so that no charge of +provocation may be even colourably advanced against it. This is no +slight concession from a man so determined and so outspoken, not to say +aggressive, in his Protestantism as Dr. Hanna; and the Nationalist +Catholics will be very ill-advised, it strikes me, if they misinterpret +it.</p> + +<p><a name="page324" id="page324"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 324] +</span>He spoke respectfully of the Papal decree against Boycotting and the +Plan of Campaign; but he seems to think it will not command the respect +of the masses of the Catholic population, nor be really enforced by the +clergy. Like most of the Ulstermen I have met, he has a firm faith, not +only in the power of the Protestant North to protect itself, but in its +determination to protect itself against the consequences which the +northern Protestants believe must inevitably follow any attempt to +establish an Irish nationality. Dr. Hanna is neither an Orangeman nor a +Tory. He says there are but three known Orangemen among the clerical +members of the General Assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church, which +unanimously pronounced against Mr. Gladstone’s scheme of Home Rule, and +not more than a dozen Tories. Of the 550 members of the Assembly, 538, +he says, were followers of Mr. Gladstone before he adopted the politics +of Mr. Parnell; and only three out of the whole number have given him +their support. In the country at large, Dr. Hanna puts down the +Unionists at two millions, of whom 1,200,000 are Protestants, and +800,000 Catholics; and he maintains that if the Parliamentary +representatives were <a name="page325" id="page325"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 325] +</span>chosen by a general vote, the Parnellite 80 would +be cut down to 62; while the Unionists would number 44. He regards the +Parnellite policy as “an organised imposture,” and firmly believes that +an Irish Parliament in Dublin would now mean civil war in Ireland. He +had a visit here last week, he says, from an American Presbyterian +minister, who came out to Ireland a month ago a “Home Ruler”; but, as +the result of a trip through North-Western Ireland, is going back to +denounce the Home Rule movement as a mischievous fraud.</p> + +<p>When I asked him what remedy he would propose for the discontent stirred +up by the agitation of Home Rule, this Presbyterian clergyman replied +emphatically, “Balfour, Balfour, and more Balfour!”</p> + +<p>This on the ground, as I understood, that Mr. Balfour’s administration +of the law has been the firmest, least wavering, and most equitable +known in Ireland for many a day.</p> + +<p>Later in the day I had the pleasure of a conversation with the Rev. Dr. +Kane, the Grand Master of the Orangemen at Belfast. Dr. Kane is a tall, +fine-looking, frank, and resolute man, who obviously has the courage of +his opinions. He thinks there will be no disturbances this year on the +12th of <a name="page326" id="page326"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 326] +</span>July, but that the Orange demonstrations will be on a greater +scale and more imposing than ever. He derides the notion that +“Parnellism” is making any progress in Ulster. On the contrary, the +concurrence this year of the anniversary of the defeat of the Great +Armada with the anniversary of the Revolution of 1688 has aroused the +strongest feelings of enthusiasm among the Protestants of the North, and +they were never so determined as they now are not to tolerate anything +remotely looking to the constitution of a separate and separatist +Government at Dublin.</p> + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">BELFAST, <i>Tuesday, June 26.</i>—</span>Sir John Preston, the head of one of the +great Belfast houses, and a former Mayor of the city, dined with us last +night, and in the evening Sir James Haslett, the actual Mayor, came in.</p> + +<p>I find that in Belfast the office of Mayor is served without a salary, +and is consequently filled as a rule by citizens of “weight and +instance.” In Dublin the Lord Mayor receives £3000 a year, with a +contingent fund of £1500, and the office is becoming a distinctly +political post. The face of Belfast is so firmly set against the +tendency to <a name="page327" id="page327"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 327] +</span>subordinate municipal interests to general party exigencies, +that the Corporation compelled Mr. Cobain, M.P., who sits at Westminster +now for this constituency, to resign the post which he held as treasurer +and cashier of the Corporation when he became a candidate for a seat in +Parliament. I am not surprised, therefore, to learn that the city rates +and taxes are much lower in the commercial than they are in the +political capital of Ireland.</p> + +<p>Both Sir John Preston and Sir James Haslett have visited America. Sir +John went there to represent the linen industries of Ireland, and to +urge upon Congress the propriety of reducing our import duties upon +fabrics which the American climate makes it practically imposssible to +manufacture on our side of the water. Senator Sherman, who twenty years +ago had the candour to admit that the wit of man could not devise a +tariff so adjusted as to raise the revenue necessary for the Government +which should not afford adequate incidental protection to all legitimate +American industries, gave Sir John reason to hope that something might +be done in the direction of a more liberal treatment of the linen +industries. But nothing practical came of it. Sir John ought to <a name="page328" id="page328"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 328] +</span>have +known that our typical American Protectionist, the late Horace Greeley, +really persuaded himself, and tried to persuade other people, that with +duties enough clapped on the Asiatic production, excellent tea might be +grown on the uplands of South Carolina!</p> + +<p>In former years Sir John Preston used to visit Gweedore every year for +sport and recreation. He knew Lord George Hill very well, “as true and +noble a man as ever lived, who stinted himself to improve the state of +his tenants.” He threw an odd light on the dreamy desire which had so +much amused me of the “beauty of Gweedore” to become “a dressmaker at +Derry,” by telling me that long ago the gossips there used to tell +wonderful stories of a Gweedore girl who had made her fortune as a +milliner in the “Maiden City.”</p> + +<p>This morning Mr. Cameron, who as Town Inspector of the Royal Irish +Constabulary will be responsible for public peace and order here during +the next critical fortnight, held a review of his men on a common beyond +the Theological College. About two hundred and fifty of the force were +paraded, with about twenty mounted policemen, and for an hour and a +half, under a tolerably warm <a name="page329" id="page329"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 329] +</span>sun, they were put through a regular +military drill. A finer body of men cannot be seen, and in point of +discipline and training they can hold their own, I should say, with the +best of her Majesty’s regiments. Without such discipline and training it +would not be easy for any such body of men to pass with composure +through the ordeal of insults and abuse to which the testimony of +trustworthy eye-witnesses compels me to believe they are habitually +subjected in the more disturbed districts of Ireland. As to the +immediate outlook here, Mr. Cameron seems quite at his ease. Even if +ill-disposed persons should set about provoking a collision between “the +victors and the vanquished of the Boyne” his arrangements are so made, +he says, as to prevent the development of anything like the outbreaks of +former years.</p> + +<p>On the advice of Sir John Preston I shall take the Fleetwood route on my +return to London to-night.</p> + +<p>This secures one a comfortable night on board of a very good and +well-equipped boat, from which you go ashore, he tells me, into an +excellent station of the London and North-Western Railway at Fleetwood, +on the mouth of the Wyre on the <a name="page330" id="page330"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 330] +</span>Lancashire coast. Twenty years ago this +was a small bathing resort called into existence chiefly by the +enterprise of a local baronet whose name it bears. Its present +prosperity and prospective importance are another illustration of the +vigour and vitality of the North of Ireland, which is connected through +Fleetwood with the great manufacturing regions of middle and northern +England, as it is through Larne with the heart of Scotland.</p> + +<p>While it is as true now of the predominantly Catholic south of Ireland +as it was when Sir Robert Peel made the remark forty years ago, that it +stands “with its back to England and its face to the West,” this +Protestant Ireland of the North faces both ways, drawing Canada and the +United States to itself through Moville and Derry and Belfast, and +holding fast at the same time upon the resources of Great Britain +through Glasgow and Liverpool. One of the best informed bankers in +London told me not long ago, that pretty nearly all the securities of +the great company which has recently taken over the business of the +Guinnesses have already found their way into the North of Ireland and +are held here. With such resources in its wealth and industry, better +educated, better <a name="page331" id="page331"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 331] +</span>equipped, and holding a practically impregnable +position in the North of Ireland, with Scotland and the sea at its back, +Ulster is very much stronger relatively to the rest of Ireland than La +Vendée was relatively to the rest of the French Republic in the last +century. In a struggle for independence against the rest of Ireland it +would have nothing to fear from the United States, where any attempt to +organise hostilities against it would put the Irish-American population +in serious peril, not only from the American Government, but from +popular feeling, and force home upon the attention of the +quickest-witted people in the world the significant fact that while the +chief contributions, so far, of America to Southern Ireland, have been +alms and agitation, the chief contributions of Scotland to Northern +Ireland have been skilled agriculture and successful activity. It is +surely not without meaning that the only steamers of Irish build which +now traverse the Atlantic come from the dockyards, not of Galway nor of +Cork, the natural gateways of Ireland to the west, but of Belfast, the +natural gateway of Ireland to the north<a name="page332" id="page332"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 332] +</span>.</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page333" id="page333"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 333] +</span>EPILOGUE.</h2> + + +<p>Not once, but a hundred times, during the visits to Ireland recorded in +this book, I have been reminded of the state of feeling and opinion +which existed in the Border States, as they were called, of the American +Union, after the invasion of Virginia by a piratical band under John +Brown, and before the long-pending issues between the South, insisting +upon its constitutional rights, and the North, restive under its +constitutional obligations, were brought to a head by the election of +President Lincoln.</p> + +<p>All analogies, I know, are deceptive, and I do not insist upon this +analogy. But it has a certain value here. For to-day in Ireland, as then +in America, we find a grave question of politics, in itself not +unmanageable, perhaps, by a race trained to self-government, seriously +complicated and aggravated, not only by considerations of moral right +and moral wrong, but by a profound perturbation of the material +interests of the community.</p> + +<p>I well remember that after a careful study of the <a name="page334" id="page334"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 334] +</span>situation in America +at the time of which I speak, Mr. Nassau Senior, a most careful and +competent observer, frankly told me that he saw no possible way in which +the problem could be worked out peacefully. The event justified this +gloomy forecast.</p> + +<p>It would be presumptuous in me to say as much of the actual situation in +Ireland; but it would be uncandid not to say that the optimists of +Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee had greater +apparent odds in their favour in 1861 than the optimists of Ireland seem +to me to have in 1888.</p> + +<p>Ireland stands to-day between Great Britain and the millions of the +Irish race in America and Australia very much as the Border States of +the American Union stood in 1861 between the North and the South. There +was little either in the Tariff question or in the Slavery question to +shake the foundations of law and order in the Border States, could they +have been left to themselves; and the Border States enjoyed all the +advantages and immunities of “Home Rule” to an extent and under +guarantees never yet openly demanded for Ireland by any responsible +legislator within the walls of the British Parliament. But so powerful +was the leverage upon them of conflicting passions and interests beyond +their own borders that these sovereign states, well organised, +homogeneous, pros<a name="page335" id="page335"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 335] +</span>perous communities, much more populous and richer in +the aggregate in 1861 than Ireland is to-day, practically lost the +control of their own affairs, and were swept helplessly into a terrific +conflict, which they had the greatest imaginable interest in avoiding, +and no interest whatever in promoting.</p> + +<p>I have seen and heard nothing in Ireland to warrant the very common +impression that the country, as a whole, is either misgoverned or +ungovernable; nothing to justify me in regarding the difficulties which +there impede the maintenance of law and order as really indigenous and +spontaneous. The “agitated” Ireland of 1888 appears to me to be almost +as clearly and demonstrably the creation of forces not generated in, but +acting upon, a country, as was the “bleeding Kansas” of 1856. But the +“bleeding Kansas” of 1856 brought the great American Union to the verge +of disruption, and the “agitated Ireland” of 1888 may do as much, or +worse, for the British Empire. There is, no doubt, a great deal of +distress in one or another part of Ireland, though it has not been my +fortune to come upon any outward and visible signs of such grinding +misery as forces itself upon you in certain of the richest provinces of +that independent, busy, prosperous, Roman Catholic kingdom of Belgium, +which on a territory little more than one-third as large as the +territory of Ireland, maintains nearly a <a name="page336" id="page336"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 336] +</span>million more inhabitants, and +adds to its population, on an average, in round numbers, as many people +in four years as Ireland loses in five.</p> + +<p>I have seen peasant proprietors in Flanders and Brabant who could give +the ideal Irish agent of the Nationalist newspapers lessons in +rack-renting, though I am not at all sure that they might not get a hint +or two themselves from some of the small farmers who came in my way in +Ireland.</p> + +<p>Like all countries, mainly agricultural, too, Ireland has suffered a +great deal of late years from the fall in prices following upon a period +of intoxicating prosperity. Whether she has suffered more relatively +than we should have suffered from the same cause in America, had we been +foolish enough to imitate the monometallic policy of Germany in 1873, is +however open to question; and I have an impression, which it will +require evidence to remove, that the actual organisation known as the +National Land League could never have been called into being had the +British Government devoted to action upon the Currency Question, before +1879, the time and energy which it has expended before and since that +date in unsettling the principles of free contract, and tinkering at the +relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland.</p> + +<p>But I am trenching upon inquiries here beyond the province of this book.</p> + +<p><a name="page337" id="page337"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 337] +</span>Fortunately it is not necessary to my object in printing these volumes +that I should either form or formulate any positive opinions as to the +origin of the existing crisis in Ireland. Nor need I volunteer any +suggestions of my own as to the methods by which order may best be +maintained and civil government carried on in Ireland. It suffices for +me that I close this self-imposed survey of men and things in that +country with a conviction, as positive as it is melancholy, that the +work which Mr. Redmond, M.P., informed us at Chicago that he and his +Nationalist colleagues had undertaken, of “making the government of +Ireland by England impossible,” has been so far achieved, and by such +methods as to make it extremely doubtful whether Ireland can be governed +by anybody at all in accordance with any of the systems of government +hitherto recognised in or adopted for that country. I certainly can see +nothing in the organisation and conduct, down to this time, of the party +known as the party of the Irish Nationalists, I will not say to +encourage, but even to excuse, a belief that Ireland could be governed +as a civilised country were it turned over to-morrow to their control. A +great deal has been done by them to propagate throughout Christendom a +general impression that England has dismally failed to govern Ireland in +the past, and is unlikely hereafter to succeed in <a name="page338" id="page338"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 338] +</span>governing Ireland. But +even granting this impression to be absolutely well founded, it by no +means follows that Ireland is any more capable of governing herself than +England is of governing her. The Russians have not made a brilliant +success of their administration in Poland, but the Poles certainly +administered Poland no better than the Russians have done. With an Irish +representation in an Imperial British Parliament at Westminster, +Ireland, under Mr. Gladstone’s “base and blackguard” Union of 1800, has +at least succeeded in shaking off some of the weightiest of the burdens +by which, in the days of Swift, of Grattan, and of O’Connell, she most +loudly declared herself to be oppressed. Whether with a Parliament at +Dublin she would have fared as well in this respect since 1800 must be a +matter of conjecture merely—and it must be equally a matter of +conjecture also whether she would fare any better in this respect with a +Parliament at Dublin hereafter. I am in no position to pronounce upon +this—but it is quite certain that nothing is more uncommon than to find +an educated and intelligent man, not an active partisan, in Ireland +to-day, who looks forward to the reestablishment, in existing +circumstances, of a Parliament at Dublin with confidence or hope.</p> + +<p>How the establishment of such a Parliament would affect the position of +Great Britain as a power <a name="page339" id="page339"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 339] +</span>in Europe, and how it would affect the fiscal +policy, and with the fiscal policy the well-being of the British people, +are questions for British subjects to consider, not for me.</p> + +<p>That the processes employed during the past decade, and now employed to +bring about the establishment of such a Parliament, have been, and are +in their nature, essentially revolutionary, subversive of all sound and +healthy relations between man and man, inconsistent with social +stability, and therefore with social progress and with social peace, +what I have seen and heard in Ireland during the past six months compels +me to feel. Of the “Coercion,” under which the Nationalist speakers and +writers ask us in America to believe that the island groans and +travails, I have seen literally nothing.</p> + +<p>Nowhere in the world is the press more absolutely free than to-day in +Ireland. Nowhere in the world are the actions of men in authority more +bitterly and unsparingly criticised. If public men or private citizens +are sent to prison in Ireland, they are sent there, not as they were in +America during the civil war, or in Ireland under the “Coercion Act” of +1881, on suspicion of something they may have done, or may have intended +to do, but after being tried for doing, and convicted of having done, +certain things made offences against the law by a <a name="page340" id="page340"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 340] +</span>Parliament in which +they are represented, and of which, in some cases, they are members.</p> + +<p>To call this “Coercion” is, from the American point of view, simply +ludicrous. What it may be from the British or the Irish point of view is +another affair, and does not concern me. I may be permitted, however, I +hope without incivility, to say that if this be “Coercion” from the +British or the Irish point of view, I am well content to be an American +citizen. Ours is essentially a government not of emotions, but of +statutes, and most Americans, I think, will agree with me that the sage +was right who declared it to be better to live where nothing is lawful +than where all things are lawful.</p> + +<p>The “Coercion” which I have found established in Ireland, and which I +recognise in the title of this book, is the “Coercion,” not of a +government, but of a combination to make a particular government +impossible. It is a “Coercion” applied not to men who break a public +law, or offend against any recognised code of morals, but to men who +refuse to be bound in their personal relations and their business +transactions by the will of other men, their equals only, clothed with +no legal authority over them. It is a “Coercion” administered not by +public and responsible functionaries, but by secret tribunals. Its +sanctions are not the law and honest public opinion, but the base +instinct of personal <a name="page341" id="page341"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 341] +</span>cowardice, and the instinct, not less base, of +personal greed. Whether anything more than a steady, firm administration +of the law is needed to abolish this “Coercion” is a matter as to which +authorities differ. I should be glad to believe with Colonel Saunderson +that “the Leaguers would not hold up the ‘land-grabber’ to execration, +and denounce him as they do, unless they knew in fact that the moment +the law is made supreme in Ireland the tenants would become just as +amenable to it as any other subjects of the Queen.” But some recent +events suggest a doubt whether these “other subjects of the Queen” are +as amenable to the law as my own countrymen are.</p> + +<p>That the Church to which the great majority of the Irish people have for +so many ages, and through so many tribulations, borne steadfast +allegiance, has been shaken in its hold upon the conscience of Ireland +by the machinery of this odious and ignoble “Coercion,” appears to me to +be unquestionable. That the head of that Church, being compelled by +evidence to believe this, has found it necessary to intervene for the +restoration of the just spiritual authority of the Church over the Irish +people all the world now knows—nor can I think that his intervention +has come a day or an hour too soon, to arrest the progress in Ireland of +a social disease which threatens, not the political interests of the +<a name="page342" id="page342"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 342] +</span>empire of which Ireland is a part alone, but the character of the Irish +people themselves, and the very existence among them of the elementary +conditions of a Christian civilisation.</p> + +<p>It would be unjust to the Irish people to forget that this demoralising +“Coercion” against which the Head of the Catholic Church has declared +war, seems to me to have been seriously reinforced by the Land +Legislation of the Imperial Parliament.</p> + +<p>No one denies that great reforms and readjustments of the Land Tenure in +Ireland needed to be made long before any serious attempt was made to +make them.</p> + +<p>But that such reforms and readjustments might have been made without +cutting completely loose from the moorings of political economy, appears +pretty clearly, not only from examples on the continent of Europe, and +in my own country, but from the Rent and Tenancy Acts carried out in +India under the viceroyalty of Lord Dufferin since 1885. The conditions +of these measures were different, of course, in each of the cases of +Oudh, Bengal, and the Punjab, and in none of these cases were they +nearly identical with the conditions of any practicable land measure for +Ireland. But two great characteristics seem to me to mark the Indian +legislation, which are not conspicuous in the legislation for Ireland.</p> + +<p><a name="page343" id="page343"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 343] +</span>These are a spirit of equity as between the landlords and the tenants, +and finality. I do not see how it can be questioned that the landlords +of Ireland have been dealt with by recent British legislation as if they +were offenders to be mulcted, and that the tenants in Ireland have been +encouraged by recent British legislation to anticipate an eventual +transfer to them, on steadily improving terms, of the land-ownership of +the island. Mr. Davitt is perhaps the most popular Irishman living, and +I believe him to be sincerely convinced that the ownership of the land +of Ireland (and of all other countries) ought to be vested in the State. +But if the independence of Ireland were acknowledged by Great Britain +to-morrow, and all the actual landlords of Ireland were compelled +to-morrow to part with their ownership, such as it is, of the land, I +believe Mr. Davitt would be further from the recognition and triumph of +his principle of State-ownership than he is to-day with a British +Parliament hostile to “Home Rule,” but apparently not altogether +unwilling to make the landlords of Ireland an acceptable burnt-offering +upon the altar of imperial unity. Probably he sees this himself, and the +existing state of things may not be wholly displeasing to him, as +holding out a hope that the flame which he has been helped by British +legislation to kindle in Ireland may already be taking hold upon the +substructions <a name="page344" id="page344"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 344] +</span>and outworks of the edifice of property in Great Britain +also.</p> + +<p>One thing at least is clear.</p> + +<p>The two antagonistic principles which confront each other in Ireland +to-day are the principles of the Agrarian Revolution represented by Mr. +Davitt, and the principle of Authority, represented in the domain of +politics by the British Government, and in the domain of morals by the +Vatican. With one or the other of these principles the victory must +rest. If the Irish people of all classes who live in Ireland could be +polled to-day, it is likely enough that a decisive majority of them +would declare for the principle of Authority in the State and in the +Church, could that over-riding issue be made perfectly plain and +intelligible to them. But how is that possible? In what country of the +world, and in what age of the world, has it ever been possible to get +such an issue made perfectly plain and intelligible to any people?</p> + +<p>In the domain of morals the principle of Authority, so far as concerns +<a name="page345" id="page345"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 345] +</span>Catholic Ireland, rests with a power which is not likely to waver or +give way. The Papal Decree has gone forth. Those who profess to accept +it will be compelled to obey it. Those who reject it, whatever their +place in the hierarchy of the Church may be, must sooner or later find +themselves where Dr. M‘Glynn of New York now is. Catholic Ireland can +only continue to be Catholic on the condition of obedience, not formal +but real, not in matters indifferent, but in matters vital and +important, to the Head of the Catholic Church.</p> + +<p>In the domain of politics the principle of Authority rests with an +Administration which is at the mercy of the intelligence or the +ignorance, the constancy or the fickleness, the weakness or the +strength, of constituencies in Great Britain, not necessarily familiar +with the facts of the situation in Ireland, not necessarily enlightened +as to the real interests either of Great Britain or of Ireland, nor even +necessarily awake, with Cardinal Manning, to the truth that upon the +future of Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire.</p> + +<p>With two, three, four, or five years of a steady and cool administration +of the laws in Ireland, by an executive officer such as Mr. Balfour +seems to me to have shown himself to be—with a judicious abstinence of +the British Legislature from feverish and fussy legislation about +Ireland, with a prudent and persistent development of the material +resources of Ireland, and with a genuine co-operation of the people who +own land in Ireland with the people who wish to own land in Ireland, for +the readjustment of land-ownership, the principle of Authority in the +domain of politics may doubtless win in the conflict with the principle +of the Agrarian revolution.</p> + +<p><a name="page346" id="page346"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 346] +</span>But how many contingencies are here involved! Meanwhile the influences +which imperil in Ireland the principle of Authority, in the domains +alike of politics and of morals, are at work incessantly, to undermine +and deteriorate the character of the Irish people, to take the vigour +and the manhood out of them, to unfit them day by day, not only for good +citizenship in the British Empire or the United States, but for good +citizenship in any possible Ireland under any possible form of +government. To arrest these influences before they bring on in Ireland a +social crash, the effects of which must be felt far beyond the +boundaries of that country, is a matter of primary importance, +doubtless, to the British people. It is a matter, too, of hardly less +than primary importance to the people of my own country. Unfortunately +it does not rest with us to devise or to apply an efficient check to +these influences.</p> + +<p>That rests with the people of Great Britain, so long as they insist that +Ireland shall remain an integral portion of the British dominions. I do +not see how they can acquit themselves of this responsibility, or escape +the consequences of evading it, solely by devising the most ingenious +machinery of local administration for Ireland, or the most liberal +schemes for fostering the material interests of the Irish people. Such +things, of course, must <a name="page347" id="page347"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 347] +</span>in due time be attended to. But the first duty +of a government is to govern; and I believe that Earl Grey has summed up +the situation in Ireland more concisely and more courageously than any +other British statesman in his outspoken declaration, that “in order to +avert the wreck of the nation, it is absolutely necessary that some +means or other should be found for securing to Ireland during the +present crisis a wiser and more stable administration of its affairs +than can be looked for under its existing institutions.”</p> + +<p>I have heard and read a good deal in the past of the “Three F’s” thought +a panacea for Irish discontent. Three other F’s seem to me quite as +important to the future of Irish content and public order. These are, +Fair Dealing towards Landlords as well as Tenants; Finality of Agrarian +Legislation at Westminster; and last and most essential of all, Fixity +of Executive Tenure.</p> + +<p>The words I have just quoted of Earl Grey, show it to be the conviction +of the oldest living leader of English Liberalism that this last is the +vital point, the key of the situation. Let me bracket with his words, +and leave to the consideration of my readers, the following pregnant +passage from a letter written to me by an Irish correspondent who is as +devoted to Irish independence as is Earl Grey to imperial unity:—</p> + +<p><a name="page348" id="page348"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 348] +</span>If the present Nationalist movement succeeds, it will have the effect +of putting the worst elements of the Irish nation in power, and keeping +them there irremoveably. We are to have an Executive at the mercy of a +House of Representatives, and the result will be a government, or series +of governments, as weak and vicious as those of France, with this +difference, that here all purifying changes such as seem imminent in +France will be absolutely prevented by the irresistible power of +England. The true model for us would be a constitution like yours in the +United States, with an Executive responsible to the nation at large, and +irremoveable for a term of years. But this we shall never get from +England. Shall we make use of Home Rule to take it for ourselves?</p> + +<p>“Many earnest and active Irish Unionists now say that if any bill +resembling Mr. Gladstone’s passes, they will make separation, their +definite policy. If Home Rule comes without the landlords having been +bought out on reasonable terms, a class will be created in Ireland full +of bitter and most just hatred of England—a class which may very likely +one day play the part here which the persecuted Irish Presbyterians who +fled from the tyranny of the English Church in Ireland played in your +own Revolution beyond the Atlantic.”</p> + +<hr /> +<p><a name="page349" id="page349"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 349] +</span></p> + +<h2><a name="page350" id="page350"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 350] +</span>APPENDIX.</h2> + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="page351" id="page351"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 351] +</span><a name="noteF" id="noteF" />NOTE F.<br /> + +THE “MOONLIGHTERS” AND “HOME RULE.”<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. 38.)</h3> + + +<p>On Monday, the 1st of February 1886, the <i>Irish Times</i> published the +following story from Tralee, near the scene of the “boycotting,” +temporal and spiritual, of the unfortunate daughters of Mr. Jeremiah +Curtin, murdered in his own house by “moonlighters”:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<p class="dateline"> “TRALEE, <i>Sunday</i>.</p> + +<p> “It was stated that the bishop had ordered Mass to be celebrated + for them—the Curtins—but this did not take place. At the village + of Firies a number of people had assembled. They stopped loitering + about the place in the forenoon, waiting for a meeting of the + National League, which was subsequently held. A threatening notice + was discovered posted up on the door of a house formerly used as a + forge. It ran as follows:—</p> + +<blockquote> “‘NOTICE.—If we are honoured by the presence of the bloodthirsty + perjurers at Mass on any of the forthcoming Sundays, take good care + you’ll stand up very politely and walk out. Don’t be under the + impression that all the Moonlighters are dead, and that this notice + is a child’s play, as Shawn Nelleen titled the last one. I’ll be + sure to keep my word, as you will see before long, so have no + welcome for the Curtins, and, above all, let no one work for them + in any way. As you respect the Captain, and as you value your own + life, abide by this notice.’—Signed, + <p class="signed">‘A MOONLIGHTER.’</p></blockquote> + +<p> “The above notice was written on tea paper in large legible style, + and evidently by an intelligent person. Groups were perusing it + during the day. A force of police marched through the village and + back, but did not observe this document, as it is still posted on + the door of the house.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The “bloodthirsty perjurers” here mentioned were the daughters who had +dared to demand and to pro<a name="page352" id="page352"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 352] +</span>mote the punishment of the assassins of their +father! For this crime these daughters were to be excommunicated by the +people of Firies, and denied the consolations of religion in their deep +sorrow, even in defiance of the order of the Catholic bishop.</p> + +<p>As the advent of Mr. Gladstone to power in alliance with Mr. Parnell was +then imminent, Mr. Sheehan, M.P., wrote a letter to the parish priest of +Firies, the Rev. Mr. O’Connor, begging him in substance to put the +brakes—for a time—upon the wheels of the local rack, lest the outcries +of the young women subjected to this moral torture should interfere with +the success of the new alliance. This, in plain English, is the only +possible meaning of the letter which I here reprint from a leaflet +issued by an Irish society:—</p> +<blockquote> +<p> “The Rev. Father O’Connor, P.P., has received the following letter + from Mr. Sheehau, M.P., in reference to this matter, under date</p> + +<p class="dateline"> “‘House of Commons, <i>January 26th.</i></p> + +<p> “‘REV. DEAR SIR,—At this important juncture in our history, I am + sorry to see reports of the Firies display. Nothing that has taken + place yet in the South of Ireland has done so much harm to the + National cause. If they persist they will ruin us. To-morrow + evening will be most important in Parliamentary history. Our party + expect the defeat of the Government and resumption of power by Mr. + Gladstone. If we succeed in this, which we are confident of, the + future of our country will be great, and, although an appeal to the + constituencies must be made, the Irish party in those few days have + made an impression in future that no Government can withstand. The + Salisbury Government want to appeal to the country on the integrity + of the empire, and, of course, for the last few days have tried all + means to lead to this by raking up the Curtin case and all judicial + cases, which <i>must be avoided for a short time</i>, as our stoppage to + the Eviction Act will cover all this.—</p> +<p class='signed'>Yours faithfully, J.D. SHEEHAN.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p class="i0">This letter was read, the leaflet informs us, by the Rev. Mr. O’Connor, +at the National Schools and other places.</p> + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="page353" id="page353"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 353] +</span><a name="noteG" id="noteG" />NOTE G.<br /> + +THE PONSONBY PROPERTY.<br /> + +(Vol. ii. pp. <a href="#page59">59</a>-<a href="#page66">66</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>The account which the Rev. Canon Keller gave me of “The Struggle for +Life on the Ponsonby Estate,” in a tract bearing that title, and +authorised by him to be published by the National League, is so +circumstantial and elaborate that, after reading it carefully, I took +unusual pains to obtain some reply to it from the representatives of the +landlord implicated. These finally led to a visit from Mr. Ponsonby +himself, who was so kind as to call upon me in London on the 15th of +May, with papers and documents. I give in the following colloquy the +results of this interview, putting together with the allegations of +Canon Keller the answers of Mr. Ponsonby, and leave the matter in this +form to the judgment of my readers.</p> + +<p><i>Q</i>. Canon Keller, I see, describes you, Mr. Ponsonby, as “a retired +navy officer, and an absentee Irish landlord.” He says your estate is +now “universally known as the famous Ponsonby Estate,” and that it is +occupied “by from 300 to 400 tenants, holding farms varying in extent +from an acre and a half to over two hundred acres.” Are these statements +correct?</p> + +<p><i>A</i>. I am a retired navy officer certainly, and perhaps I may be called +an “absentee Irish landlord.” I lived on my property for some time, and +I have always attended to it. I succeeded to the estate in 1868, and +almost my first act was to borrow £2000 of the Board of Works for +drainage purposes—the tenants agreeing to pay half the interest. As a +matter of fact some never paid at all, and I afterwards wiped out the +claims against them. There are about 300 tenants on the property, and +the average holdings are of about 36 <a name="page354" id="page354"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 354] +</span>acres, at an average rental of £30 +a holding. There are, however, not a few large farms.</p> + +<p><i>Q</i>. Canon Keller says that “in the memory of living witnesses, and far +beyond it, the Ponsonby tenants have been notoriously rack-rented and +oppressed”; and that they have been committed to the “tender mercies of +agents, seeing little or nothing of their landlord, and experiencing no +practical sympathy from that quarter.” How is this?</p> + +<p><i>A</i>. I wish to believe Canon Keller truthful when he knows the truth. He +certainly does not know the truth here. He is a newcomer at Youghal, +having come there in November 1885, and hardly so much of an authority +about “the memory of living witnesses and far beyond it” as the tenants +on the estate, who, when I went there first with my wife, presented to +me, May 25, 1868, an address of welcome, referring in very different +terms to the history of the estate and of my family connection with it. +Here is the original address, and a copy of it—the latter being quite +at your service.</p> + +<p>This original address is very handsomely engrossed, and is signed by +fifty tenants. Among the names I observed those of Martin Loughlin, +Peter McDonough, Michael Gould, William Forrest, and John Heaphey, all +of whom are cited by Canon Keller in his tract as conspicuous victims of +the oppression and rack-renting which he says have prevailed upon the +Ponsonby estates time out of mind. It was rather surprising, therefore, +to find them joining with more than forty other tenants to sign an +address, of which I here print the text:—</p> +<blockquote> +<p class="center"> To C.W. TALBOT PONSONBY, Esq.</p> + +<p> Honoured Sir,—The Tenantry of your Estates near Youghal have heard + with extreme pleasure of the arrival of yourself and lady in the + neighbourhood, and have deputed us to address you on their behalf.</p> + +<p> <a name="page355" id="page355"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 355] +</span>Through us they bid you and Mrs. Ponsonby welcome, and respectfully + congratulate you on your accession to the Estates.</p> + +<p> The name of Ponsonby is traditionally revered in this part of the + country, being associated in the recollections and impressions of + the people with all that is exalted, honourable, and generous. It + has been matter of regret that the heads of the family have not + (probably from uncontrollable causes) visited these Estates for + many years, but the tenantry have never wavered in their sentiments + of respect towards them.</p> + +<p> We will not disguise from you the conviction generally entertained + that the improvement of landed property, and the condition of its + occupiers, is best promoted under the personal observation and + supervision of the proprietor, and your tenantry on that account + hail with satisfaction the promise your presence affords of future + intercourse between you and them.</p> + +<p> Again, on the part of your Tenants and all connected with your + Estates, tendering you and your lady a most hearty welcome, and + sincerely wishing you and her a long and happy career—We subscribe + ourselves, Honoured Sir, Respectfully yours,</p> + +<p class="signed"> YOUGHAL, <i>May</i> 1868.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Q</i>. Did Canon Keller ever see this address, may I ask, Mr. Ponsonby?</p> + +<p><i>A</i>. I believe not; and I may as well say at once that I suppose he has +taken for gospel all the stories which any of the tenants under the +terrorism which has been established on the place think it best to pour +into his listening ear. As I have said, he is quite a new man at +Youghal, and when he first came there he was a quiet and not at all +revolutionary priest. You saw him, and saw how good his manners are, and +that he is a well-educated man. But on Sunday, November 7, 1886, a great +meeting was held at Youghal. It was a queer meeting for a Sunday, being +openly a political meeting, with banners and bands, to hear speeches +from Mr. Lane, M.P., Mr. Flynn, M.P., and others. The Rev. Mr. Keller +presided, and a priest from America, Father Hayes of Georgetown, Iowa, +in the United States, was present. It was ostensibly a <a name="page356" id="page356"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 356] +</span>Home Rule +meeting, but the burden of the speeches was agrarian. Mr. Lane, M.P., +made a bitter personal attack on another Nationalist member, Sir Joseph +M‘Kenna of Killeagh, calling him a “heartless and inhuman landlord;” and +my property was also attended to by Mr. Lane, who advised my tenants +openly not to accept my offer of 20 per cent. reduction, but to demand +40 per cent. Father Hayes in his speech bade “every man stand to his +guns,” and wound up by declaring that if England and the landlords +behaved in America as they behaved in Ireland, the Americans “would pelt +them not only with dynamite, but with the lightnings of Heaven and the +fires of hell, till every British bull-dog, whelp, and cur would be +pulverised and made top-dressing for the soil.” Canon Keller afterwards +expressed disapproval of this speech of Hayes, and this coming to the +knowledge of Hayes in America, Hayes denounced Keller for not daring to +do this at the time in his presence. Since then Canon Keller has been +much more violent in tone.</p> + +<p><i>Q</i>. I don’t want to carry you through a long examination, Mr. Ponsonby, +but I see typical cases here, about which I should like to ask a +question or two. Here, is Callaghan Flavin, for instance, described by +Canon Keller as one of eight tenants who “had to retreat before the +crowbar brigade,” and who “deserved a better fate.” Canon Keller says he +is assured by a competent judge that Flavin’s improvements, “full value +for £341, 10s.,” are now “the landlord’s property.” What are the facts +about Mr. Flavin?</p> + +<p><i>A</i>. Mr. Flavin’s farm was held by his cousin, Ellen Flavin of Gilmore, +who, on the 7th of February 1872, surrendered it to the landlord on +receiving from me a sum of £172, 10s. 6d. I obtained a charging order +under section 27 of the Land Act, entitling me to an annuity of £8, 12s. +6d. for thirty-five years from <a name="page357" id="page357"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 357] +</span>July 3, 1872. It was let to Callaghan +Flavin in preference to other applicants, July 3, 1872; and in 1873, at +his request, I obtained a loan from the Board of Works for the thorough +draining of a portion of the farm. Thirteen acres were drained at a cost +of £84, 6s. 3d., for which the tenant promised to pay 5 per cent. +interest, which I eventually forgave him. There was no house on the +farm. He took it without one, and I did not want one there. He built a +house himself without consulting my agent, and then wanted me to make +him an allowance for it. I told him he had thirty-one years to enjoy it +in, and must be content with that. About the same time he took another +farm of mine at a rent of £35. Since I came into my property in 1868 I +have laid out upon it in drainage, buildings, and planting—here are the +accounts, which you may look at—over £15,000, including about £8000 of +loans from the Board of Works. In the drainage the tenants got work for +which they were paid. I gave them slates for the buildings, with timber +and stone from the estate, and they supplied the labour. There is no +case in which the outlays for improvements came from the tenants—not a +single one. I repeat it, Canon Keller’s tract is a tissue of fictions.</p> + +<p>What nonsense it is to talk about the “traditional rack-renting” of a +property held by the Ponsonbys for two hundred years, the tenants on +which could welcome me when I came into it with the language of the +address you have here seen!</p> + +<p>I never evicted tenants for less than three years’ arrears, till what +Canon Keller calls the “crowbar brigade,” by which he means the officers +of the law, had to be put into action to meet the “Plan of Campaign” in +May last. I did not proceed against the tenants because they could not +pay. I selected the tenants who could pay, and who were led, or, I +believe <a name="page358" id="page358"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 358] +</span>in most cases, “coerced,” into refusing to pay by agitators with +Mr. Lane, M.P., to inspire them, and Canon Keller, P.P., to glorify them +in a tract.</p> + +<p><i>Q</i>. What were your personal relations with the tenants when you were at +Inchiquin?</p> + +<p><i>A</i>. Always most friendly; and even the other day when I was there, +while none of them would speak to me when they were all together, those +I met individually touched their hats, and were as civil as ever. I +believe they would all be thankful to have things as they were, and I +have never refused to meet and treat with them on fair individual terms.</p> + +<p>In November 1885 my offer of an abatement of 15 per cent. being refused, +a few tenants, I believe, clubbed their rents, and for the sake of peace +I then offered 20 per cent., which they accepted and paid. In October +1886 I hoped to prevent trouble by making the same offer of 20 per cent. +abatement on non-judicial and 10 per cent. on judicial rents. One man +took the latter abatement and paid. Then another tenant demanded 40 per +cent. My agent said he would give them time, and also take money on +account, the effect of which would be to put me out of court, and +prevent my getting an order of ejectment if I wanted to for the balance. +I thought this fair, and approved it, but I refused to make a 40 per +cent. all-round abatement, authorising my agent, however, to make what +abatements he liked in special cases. My words were, “I don’t limit you +on the amount of abatement you give, or as to the number of tenants you +may choose so to treat.” If this was not a fair free hand, what would +be? My agent afterwards told me he had no chance to make this known. The +fact is they meant to force the Plan on the tenants and me, and to +prevent any settlement but a “victory for the League!”</p> + +<p>In my original notes of my conversation with Father <a name="page359" id="page359"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 359] +</span>Keller at Youghal, I +found the name of one tenant whom he introduced to me, and who certainly +told me that his holdings amounted to some £300 a year, and that they +had been in his family for “two hundred years,” set down as Doyle—I so +printed it with the statements made. But Father Keller, to whom I +submitted my proofs, and who was so good as to revise them, struck out +the name of Doyle, and inserted that of Loughlin, putting the rental +down at £94 (vol. ii. p. <a href="#page71">71</a>). Of course I accept this correction. But on +my mentioning the matter to Mr. Ponsonby by letter, he replies to me +(July 27th) as follows:—</p> +<blockquote> +<p> “Maurice Doyle is a son of Richard Doyle, who died in 1876, leaving + his widow to carry on his farm of 74 acres 1 rood, in the townland + of Ballykitty, which he held in 1858 at a rental of £50, 11s. In + 1868 this was reduced to £48, 11s. In September 1871 he took in + addition a farm of 159 acres 2 roods at £130, in Burgen and + Ballykitty. He afterwards got a lease for thirty-one years of this + larger farm, with a portion of his earlier holding, for £155. This + left him to pay £21, 11s. for the residue of the earlier holding as + in 1858. But at his request, in 1876, the year of his death, I + reduced this to £17.</p> + +<p> “In March 1879, by the death of Mr. Henry Hall, in whose family it + had been for certainly a century, the Inchiquin farm of 213 acres, + valued at £258, 10s., came on my hands. This farm was valued in + 1873 by one valuer at £384, 10s., and by another at £390, 10s. In + an old lease I find that this farm was let at £3 an acre. Mr. Henry + Hall to the day of his death held it at £306, 7s. 6d., under a + lease which I made a lease for life. For this farm Mrs. Richard + Doyle applied, agreeing to take it on a 31 years’ lease, at £370 a + year. I let it to her, and she became the lease-holder, putting in + her son Maurice Doyle to take charge of it, though not as the + tenant. He was an active Land Leaguer from the moment he got into + the place, and in 1886 he was a leader in promoting the Plan of + Campaign. Proceedings had to be taken against his mother in order + to eject him, as she was the tenant, not he. I objected to this, + for I always have had the greatest regard for her. Had she been let + alone she would have paid her rent as she had always done. But Mr. + Lane and his allies saw it would <a name="page360" id="page360"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 360] +</span>never do to let Maurice Doyle + retain his place on his mother’s holding. All this will show you + that Maurice Doyle did not inherit the Inchiquin farm. The only + inherited holding of his mother is the farm of 74 acres 1 rood in + the townland of Ballykitty, held by his father in 1858. I have no + doubt you saw Doyle at Youghal, by the description you gave me, and + you remembered his name at once. He was a thickset heavy-looking + man, florid, with a military moustache, the last time I saw him. + His mother is one of the ‘rack-rented’ tenants you hear of, having + been able in ten years to increase her acreage from 74 acres to 376 + acres, and her rental from £48, 11s. to £542!”</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>As to the general effect of all this business upon the tenants, and upon +himself, Mr. Ponsonby spoke most feelingly. “The tenants are ruined +where they might have been thriving. My means of being useful to them or +to myself are taken away. My charges, though, all remain. I have to pay +tithes for Protestant Church service, of which I can’t have the benefit, +the churches being closed; and the other day I had a notice that any +property I had in England would be held liable for quit-rents to the +Crown on my property in Ireland, of which the Government denies me +practically any control or use!”</p> + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="noteG2" id="noteG2" />NOTE G2.<br /> + +THE GLENBEHY EVICTION FUND.<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. <a href="#page12">12</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>In the <i>London Times</i> of September 15 appears the following letter from +the Land Agent whom I saw at Glenbehy, setting forth the effect of this +“Glenbehy Eviction Fund” upon the morals of the tenants and the peace of +the place:—</p> +<blockquote> +<p class="center"> <i>To the Editor of the Times.</i></p> + +<p> “Sir,—Although nearly eighteen months have elapsed since the + evictions on the Glenbehy estate, after which the above-<a name="page361" id="page361"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 361] +</span>named fund + was started and largely subscribed to by the sympathetic British + public, I think it only fair to throw a little light on the manner + in which this fund has been expended, and the effects which are + still felt in consequence of the money not yet being exhausted.</p> + +<p> “It was generally supposed that the tenants then evicted were in + such poor circumstances as to be unable to settle, whereas, as a + matter of fact, they were, and are, with a few exceptions, the most + well-to-do on the estate, having, for the most part, from five to + fifteen head of cattle, in addition to sheep, pigs, etc.</p> + +<p> “Among the tenants evicted at that time many had not paid rents + since 1879, and had been in illegal occupation since 1884, from + which latter date the landlord was responsible for taxes, provided + it is proved that sufficient distress cannot be made of the lands. + These tenants were offered a clear receipt to May 1, 1886, if they + paid half a year’s rent, which would scarcely have paid the cost of + proceedings, and the landlord would therefore have been put to + actual loss. These people, though well able to settle, are given to + understand that as soon as they do so their participation in the + eviction fund will cease, and thus it will be seen that a direct + premium is being paid to dishonesty.</p> + +<p> “In one case a widow woman was summoned for being on the farm from + which she was at that time evicted. Finding out that one of her + children was ill, I applied to the magistrate at the hearing of the + case only to impose a nominal fine. In consequence she was fined + one penny, but sooner than pay this she went to gaol, though she + had several head of cattle and, prior to her eviction, a very nice + farm. The case of this woman fairly illustrates the combination + which has existed to avoid the fulfilment of obligations.</p> + +<p> “The amount of fines paid for similar offences comes, in several + instances, to nearly what I require to effect a settlement. Some of + the tenants actually wrote to the late agent on this estate begging + him to evict them in order that they might come in for a share of + the money raised for the relief of distress, and this clearly shows + beyond dispute that the well-meaning subscribers to the fund will + be more or less responsible for any further evictions to which it + may be necessary to resort. I may mention that the parish priest is + one of the trustees for the money which is thus being used for the + purpose of preventing settlements and keeping the place in a + continual state of turmoil.</p> + +<p> “Judge Currane, at the January sessions held at Killarney <a name="page362" id="page362"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 362] +</span>this + year, ruled in about fifty ejectment cases on this estate that + tenants owing one and a half to nine years’ rent should pay half a + year’s rent and costs within a week, a quarter of a year’s rent by + June 1, and a quarter of a year’s rent by October 1; arrears to be + cancelled. Some of these, owing to non-compliance with the Judge’s + ruling, may have to be evicted, and their eviction will be what is + termed the unrooting of peasants’ houses and the ejectment of + overburdened tenants for not paying impossible rents.</p> + +<p> “I confess I am at a loss to understand how Mr. Parnell’s Arrears + Act would have improved matters or have averted what one of your + contemporaries calls a “painful scandal.”—I am, Sirs, yours, &c.,</p> + +<p class="signed"> “D. TODD-THORNTON, J.P., Land Agent.</p> + +<p class="i0"> “Glenbehy, Killarney.”</p> +</blockquote> + + +<hr /><h3><a name="noteG3" id="noteG3" />NOTE G3.<br /> + +HOME RULE AND PROTESTANTISM.<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. <a href="#page68">68</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>I fear that all the “Nationalist” clergy in Ireland are not as careful +as Father Keller to avoid giving occasion for this impression that Irish +autonomy would be followed by a persecution of the Protestants. But a +little more than three years ago, for example, the following circular +was issued by the Bishop of Ossory, and affixed to the door of the +churches in his diocese. Who can wonder that it should have been +regarded by Protestants in that diocese as a direct stirring up of +bitter religious animosities against them? Or that, emanating directly +as it did from a bishop of the Church, it should be represented as +emanating indirectly from the Head of the Church himself at Rome?</p> + +<p> “<i>Kilkenny, April 16th, 1885.</i></p> + +<p> “REV. DEAR SIR,—May I ask you to read the following circular for + the people at each of the Masses on Sunday, 19th April?</p> + +<p> “The course to be adopted for the future by the Priest of the Parish + to whom notice of a Mixed Marriage is given by the <a name="page363" id="page363"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 363] +</span>Minister, or the + Registrar, is as follows:—he makes the following entry on the book + of Parochial announcements, and reads it three consecutive Sundays + from the Altar:—</p> + +<p> “‘The Priests of the Parish have received the following notice of a + marriage to be celebrated between a Catholic and a Protestant. [Here + read Registrar’s notice in full.] We have now to inform you that the + law of the Catholic Church regarding such marriages is: that the + Catholic party contracting marriage before a Registrar or other + unauthorised person is, by the very fact of so doing, + Excommunicated; and the witnesses to such marriage are also + Excommunicated.’</p> + +<p> “I should be very much obliged if, as occasion may require, you + would explain the effects of this Excommunication from the Altar.</p> + +<p> “You will please take notice that the Registrar or Minister is bound + legally to send the notice of marriage referred to above, and also, + that in reading it out <i>in the form, and with the accompanying + remarks above</i>, you incur no legal penalty.</p> + +<p> “I feel sure that with your accustomed zeal you will do everything + in your power to prevent abuses in regard to the Sacrament of + Matrimony, which is great in Christ and the Church, and to induce + the faithful to prepare for receiving it by Prayer, by works of + Charity, and by approaching the Sacrament of Penance to purify their + souls.—Yours faithfully in Christ,</p> + +<p class="signed"> [Image: Cross] A. BROWNRIGG.”</p> + + +<p> “MY DEAR BRETHREN,—We have been very much pained to learn, within + the past month, that marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics + have increased very much in this city of Kilkenny. Many + <i>evil-disposed</i> persons, utterly unmindful of the prohibitions of + the Church, and regardless of the dreadful consequences they bring + on themselves, have not hesitated to enter into those <i>unholy + matrimonial alliances</i> called “Mixed Marriages,” which the Catholic + Church has always <i>hated and detested</i>. Those misguided Catholics, + who do not deserve the name, have not blushed to go, in some + instances, before the Protestant Minister, in other instances, + before the Public Registrar, to ask them to assist at their marriage + with a Protestant. By contracting marriage in this way, they run a + great risk of bringing on themselves and on their children, should + they have any, the <i>maledictions</i> of Heaven instead of the blessings + of religion. In order to put a stop to this growing abuse, and to + prevent it from spreading like a contagion to other parts of the + Diocese, we beg to remind the faithful of certain regulations which, + for the future, shall have force in the Diocese of <a name="page364" id="page364"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 364] +</span>Ossory in + reference to the Catholics, who so far forget themselves as to + contract such marriages.</p> + +<p> “1. In the first place, any one who contracts a “Mixed Marriage” + without a dispensation from the Holy See and before a Protestant + Minister or a Registrar is, by the very fact, guilty of a most + grievous mortal sin by violating a solemn law of the Church in a + most grave matter.</p> + +<p> “2. The Catholic who assists as witness at such marriage also + commits a most grievous sin by co-operating in an unlawful act.</p> + +<p> “3. Both the Catholic party contracting the marriage and the + Catholic witnesses to it cannot be absolved by any priest in the + Diocese of Ossory, unless by the Bishop or by those to whom he + grants special faculties.</p> + +<p> “4. In order more effectually to deter people from entering into + <i>those detestable marriages</i>, the penalty of <i>Excommunication</i> + is hereby attached to that sin both for the Catholic <i>contracting</i> + party as also for the Catholic <i>witnesses</i> to such marriage.</p> + +<p> “5. The notice which the Protestant Rector or the Registrar is + legally bound in such cases to send to the Parish Priest of the + Catholic party, will be read from the Altar for three consecutive + Sundays, and thus the <i>crime</i> of the offending party brought out + into open light before his or her fellow-parishioners.</p> + +<p> “6. For the rest, we hope the sense of decency and religion of the + Catholic people and their Pastors shall be no more hurt by any + Catholic entering into those marriages, so full of, misery and evil + of every kind for themselves, their children, and society at + large.—Yours faithfully in Christ,</p> + +<p class="signed"> [Image: Cross] ABRAHAM, Bishop of Ossory.</p> + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="noteH" id="noteH" />NOTE H.<br /> + +TULLY AND THE WOODFORD EVICTIONS.<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. <a href="#page149">149</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>Since the first edition of this book was published certain “evictions” +mentioned in it as impending on the Clanricarde estates have been +carried out. I have <a name="page365" id="page365"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 365] +</span>no reason to suppose that there was more or less +reason for carrying out these evictions than there usually is, not in +Ireland only, but all over the civilised world, for a resort by the +legal owners of property to legal means of recovering the possession of +it from persons who fail to comply with the terms on which it was put +into their keeping. Whether this failure results from dishonesty or from +misfortune is a consideration not often allowed, I think, to affect the +right of the legal owner of the property concerned to his legal remedy +in any other country but Ireland, nor even in Ireland in the case of any +property other than property in land. But as what I learned on the spot +touching the general condition of the Clanricarde tenants, and touching +the conduct and character of Lord Clanricarde’s agent, Mr. Tener, led me +to take a special interest in these evictions, I asked him to send me +some account of them. In reply he gave me a number of interesting +details.</p> + +<p>The only serious attempt at resisting the execution of the law was made +by “Dr.” Tully, one of the leading local “agitators,” to the tendency of +whose harangues judicial reference was made during the investigation +into the case of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt. Tully had a holding of seventeen +acres at a rent of £2, 10s., the Government valuation being £4. He +earned a good livelihood as a boat-builder, and he had put up a slated +house on his holding. But in November 1884 he chose to stop paying the +very low rent at which he held his place, and he has paid no rent since +that time. As is stated in a footnote on page <a href="#page153">153</a>, vol. ii. of this +book, a decree was granted against Tully by Judge Henn for three years’ +rent due in May 1887, and his equity of redemption having expired July +9, 1888, this recourse was had to the law against him.</p> + +<p>As the leading spirit of the agitation, Tully had put <a name="page366" id="page366"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 366] +</span>a garrison into +his house of twelve men and two women. He had dug a ditch around it, +taken out the window-sashes, filled up the casements and the doorways +with stones and trunks of trees. Portholes had been pierced under the +roof, through which the defenders might thrust red-hot pikes, +pitchforks, and other weapons, and empty pails of boiling water upon the +assailants. A brief parley took place. Tully refused to make any offer +of a settlement unless the agent would agree to reinstate all the +evicted tenants, to which Mr. Tener replied that he would recognise no +“combination,” but was ready to deal with every tenant fairly and +individually. Finally the Sheriff ordered his men to take the place. +Ladders were planted, and while some of the constables, under the +protection of a shield covered with zinc, a sort of Roman <i>testudo</i>, +worked at removing the earthern ramparts, others nimbly climbed to the +roof and began to break in from above. In their excitement the garrison +helped this forward by breaking holes through the roof themselves to get +at the attacking party, and in about twenty minutes the fortress was +captured, and the inmates were prisoners. Two constables were burned by +the red-hot pikes, the gun of another was broken to pieces by a huge +stone, and a fourth was slightly wounded by a fork. One of the defenders +got a sword-cut; and Tully was brought forth as one too severely wounded +to walk. Upon investigation, however, the surgeon refused to certify +that he was unable to undergo the ordinary imprisonment in such cases +made and provided.</p> + +<p>The collapse of the resistance at this central point was followed by a +general surrender.</p> + +<p>After the capture of Tully’s house, Mr. Tener writes to me, “I found it +being gutted by his family, who would have carried it away piecemeal. +They had <a name="page367" id="page367"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 367] +</span>already taken away the flooring of one of the rooms.” Thereupon +Mr. Tener had the house pulled down, with the result of seeing a +statement made in a leading Nationalist paper that he was “evicting the +tenants and pulling down their houses.”</p> + +<p>“Yesterday,” Mr. Tener writes to me on the 9th of September, “I walked +twenty-five miles, visiting thirty farms about Portumna. Except in two +or three cases, the tenants have ample means, and part of the live stock +alone on the farms, exclusive of the crops, would suffice to pay all the +rents I had demanded. On the farms recently ‘evicted,’ I found treble +the amount of the rent due in live stock alone.”</p> + +<p>As to one case of these recent evictions, I found it stated in an Irish +journal that a young man, who had been ill of consumption for two years, +the son of a tenant, was removed from the house, the local physician +refusing to certify that he was unfit for removal, and that he died a +few days afterwards. The implication was obvious, and I asked Mr. Tener +for the facts.</p> + +<p>He replied, “This young man, John Fahey, was in consumption, but did not +appear to be in any danger. Dr. Carte, an Army surgeon, examined him, +and said there was no immediate danger. The day was fine and he walked +about wrapped in a comfortable coat, and talked with me and others. His +father, a respectable man, made no attempt to defend his house; and at +his request, after the crowd had gone away, my man in charge permitted +the invalid and the family to reoccupy the house temporarily because of +his illness. There was no inquest, and no need of any, after his death. +His father, Patrick Fahey, had means to pay, but told me he ‘could not,’ +which meant he ‘dared not.’ I went to him personally twice, and sent him +many messages. But the terror of the League was upon the poor man.</p> + +<p><a name="page368" id="page368"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 368] +</span>“An interesting case is that of Michael Fahey, of Dooras. In 1883 his +rent was judicially reduced about 5 per cent., from £33 to £31, 5s. His +house and all about it is substantial and comfortable. His father, about +thirty years ago, fought for a whole night and bravely beat off a party +of ‘Terry-Alts,’ the ‘Moonlighters’ of that day. For his courage the +Government presented him with a gun, of which the son is very proud. +Pity he did not inherit the pluck with the gun of his parent!</p> + +<p>“I had been privately told that this tenant would pay; but that he would +first produce a doctor’s certificate that his old mother could not be +moved. He did give the Sheriff a carefully worded document to show this, +but it was so vague that I objected to its being received by the +Sheriff. Upon this (not before! mark the craft of even a well-disposed +Irish tenant in those evil days), I was asked to go into the house. I +went in and entered the parlour. There the tenant told me he would pay +the year’s rent and the costs, amounting to £50. He had risen from his +seat to fetch the money, when, lo! Father Egan (the priest upon whose +head the widow of the murdered Finlay called down the curse of God in +the open street of Woodford) appeared in the doorway. He had come in on +a pretence of seeing the old mother of the tenant, who had (for that +occasion) taken to her bed. The bedroom lay beyond the parlour, and was +entered from it. The tenant actually shook with fear as Father Egan +passed through, and I thought all hope of a settlement gone, when +suddenly the officer of the police came in, passed into the bedroom, and +told Father Egan he must withdraw. This Father Egan refused to do, +whereupon the officer said very quietly, ‘I shall remove you forthwith +if you do not go out quietly.’ Upon this Father Egan hastily left. The +tenant then went into the bedroom and soon <a name="page369" id="page369"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 369] +</span>reappeared with the £50 in +bank-notes, which he paid me. All this was dramatic enough. But the +comedy was next performed in front of the house, where all could see it, +of handing to the Sheriff the alleged doctor’s certificate, and of my +saying aloud that ‘in the circumstances’ I had no objection to his +receiving it! After this all the forces proceeded to take their luncheon +on the green bank sloping down to the Shannon in front of the +farm-house. There is a fine orchard on the place, and it recalled to me +some of the farms I saw in Virginia.</p> + +<p>“I had gone into the house again, and was standing near the fire in the +kitchen, where some of my escort were taking their luncheon. It is a +large kitchen, and perhaps a dozen people were in it, when in came +Father Egan again and called to the tenant Fahey, ‘Put out those +policemen, and do not suffer one of them to remain.’</p> + +<p>“The sergeant instantly said, ‘We are here on duty, Father Egan, and if +you dare to try to intimidate this tenant, I shall either put you out or +arrest you.’</p> + +<p>“‘Yes,’ I interposed, looking at the sergeant, ‘you are certainly here +on duty, and in the name of the law, and it is sad to see a clergyman +here in the interest of an illegal, criminal, and rebellious movement, +and of the immoral Plan of Campaign.’</p> + +<p>“‘Oh!’ exclaimed Father Egan, ‘the opinion of the agent of the Marquis +of Clanricarde is valuable, truly!’</p> + +<p>“‘I give you,’ I said, ‘not my opinion, but the opinion of Dr. Healy and +Dr. O’Dwyer, bishops of your Church, and men worthy of all respect and +reverence. And I am sorry to know that some ecclesiastics deserve no +respect, but that at their doors lies the main responsibility for the +misery and the crime which afflict our unhappy country. I feel sure a +just God will punish them in due time.’</p> + +<p><a name="page370" id="page370"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 370] +</span>“Father Egan made no reply, but paused a moment, and then walked out of +the house.</p> + +<p>“At the next house, that of Dennis Fahey, we found a still better +dwelling. Here we had another mock certificate, but we received the rent +with the costs.”</p> + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="noteH2" id="noteH2" />NOTE H2.<br /> + +BOYCOTTING THE DEAD.<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. <a href="#page151">151</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>The following official account sent to me (July 24) of an affair in +Donegal, the result of the gospel of “Boycotting” taught in that region, +needs and will bear no comment.</p> + +<p>Patrick Cavanagh came to reside at Clonmany, County Donegal, about two +months ago, as caretaker on some evicted farms. He died on Wednesday +evening, June 20th, having received the full rites of the Roman Catholic +Church. The people had displayed no ill-will towards him during his +brief residence at Clonmany, and on the evening of his death his body +was washed and laid out by some women. On Thursday two townsmen dug his +grave, where pointed out by Father Doherty, P.P.</p> + +<p>The first symptom of change of feeling was that on Thursday every +carpenter applied to had some excuse for not making a coffin for the +body of deceased. On Friday morning the grave was found to be filled +with stones, and a deputation waited on Father Doherty to protest +against Cavanagh’s burial in the chapel graveyard. He told them to go +home and mind their business. About 10.30 A.M. on Friday the chapel bell +was rung—not tolled or rung as for service, but faster. The local +sergeant of police went to the cemetery; when he <a name="page371" id="page371"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 371] +</span>arrived there the +tolling ceased. He then went to Father Doherty, who told those present +that their conduct was such as to render them unfit for residence +anywhere but in a savage country. He told them to go to their homes, and +advised them to allow the corpse to be buried in the grave he had marked +out. After Father Doherty had left, the people condemned his +interference, and said they would not allow any stranger to be buried in +the graveyard. When Constable Brady put it to those present that their +real objection did not lie in the fact that Cavanagh had been a +stranger, he was not contradicted.</p> + +<p>The body was ultimately buried at Carndonagh on Saturday, several people +remaining in the graveyard at Clonmany all through the night (Friday) +till the body was taken to Carndonagh for burial.</p> + +<p>At Carndonagh Petty Sessions, on the 18th July 1888, Con. Doherty and +Owen Doherty, with five others, were prosecuted for unlawful assembly on +the occasion above referred to. The first two named, who were the +ringleaders, were convicted, and sentenced to six weeks’ imprisonment +each with hard labour; the charges against the remainder were dismissed.</p> + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="noteI" id="noteI" />NOTE I.<br /> + +POST-OFFICE SAVINGS BANKS.<br /> + +(Vol. i. p. 117; vol. ii. pp. <a href="#page5">5</a>, <a href="#page12">12</a>, <a href="#page66">66</a>, <a href="#page95">95</a>, <a href="#page200">200</a>, <a href="#page248">248</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>As the Post-Office Savings Banks represent the smaller depositors, and +command special confidence among them even in the disturbed districts, I +print here an official statement showing the balances due to depositors +in the undermentioned offices, situated in certain of the most disturbed +regions I visited, on the <a name="page372" id="page372"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 372] +</span>31st December of the years 1880 and 1887 +respectively:—</p> + +<div class="center"><table> +<thead><tr><td> OFFICE </td><td> 1880 </td><td> 1887 </td></tr></thead><tbody> +<tr><td> </td><td> £ s. d. </td><td> £ s. d. </td></tr> +<tr><td> Bunbeg </td><td> 1,270 6 7 </td><td> 1,206 18 2 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Falcarragh </td><td> 62 15 10 </td><td> 494 10 8 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Gorey </td><td> 3,690 14 4 </td><td> 5,099 5 7 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Inch </td><td>[A] 8 11 0 </td><td> 209 7 5 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Killorglin </td><td> 282 15 9 </td><td> 1,299 2 6 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Loughrea </td><td> 5,500 19 9 </td><td> 6,311 4 11 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Mitchelstown </td><td> 1,387 13 2 </td><td> 2,846 9 3 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Portumna </td><td> 2,539 10 11 </td><td> 3,376 5 4 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Sixmilebridge </td><td> 382 17 10 </td><td> 934 13 4 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Stradbally </td><td> 1,812 14 8 </td><td> 2,178 18 2 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Woodford </td><td> 259 14 6 </td><td> 1,350 17 11 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Youghal </td><td> 3,031 0 7 </td><td> 7,038 7 2 </td></tr></tbody> +</table></div> +<p> + [A] This Office was not opened for Savings Bank + business until the year 1881, the amount shown + being balance due on the 31st December 1882.</p> + +<p>It appears from this table that the deposits in these Savings Banks +increased in the aggregate from £20,329, 15s. 11d. in 1880 to £32,347, +9s. 7d. in 1887, or almost 60 per cent, in seven years. They fell off in +only one case, at Bunbeg, and there only to a nominal amount. At Youghal +they much more than doubled, increasing about 133 per cent. Yet in all +these places the Plan of Campaign has been invoked “because the people +were penniless and could not pay their debts!”</p> + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="noteK" id="noteK" />NOTE K.<br /> + +THE COOLGREANY EVICTIONS.<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. <a href="#page216">216</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>Captain Hamilton sends me the following graphic account of this affair +at Coolgreany:—</p> + +<p><a name="page373" id="page373"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 373] +</span>In the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i> of the 16th December 1886, it is reported +that a meeting of the Brooke tenantry, the Rev. P. O’Neill in the chair, +was held at Coolgreany on the Sunday previous to the 15th December 1886, +the date on which the “Plan of Campaign” was adopted on the estate, at +which it was resolved that if I refused the terms offered they would +join the “Plan.”</p> + +<p>I had no conference at Freeman’s house or anywhere else at any time with +two parish priests. On the 15th December 1886, when seated in Freeman’s +house waiting to receive the rents, four priests, a reporter of the +<i>Freeman’s Journal</i>, some local reporters, and four of the tenants +rushed into the room; and the priests in the rudest possible manner (the +Rev. P. Farrelly, one of them, calling me “Francy Hyne’s hangman,” and +other terms of abuse) informed me that unless I re-instated a former +Roman Catholic tenant in a farm which he had previously held, and which +was then let to a Protestant, and gave an abatement of 30 per cent., no +rent would be paid <i>me</i> that day. Dr. Dillon, C.C., was not present on +this occasion, or, if so, I do not remember seeing him.</p> + +<p>On my asking if I had no alternative but to concede to their demand, the +Rev. Mr. Dunphy, parish priest, replied, “None other; do not think, sir, +we have come here to-day to do honour to you.”</p> + +<p>The Rev. P. O’Neill spoke as he always does, in a more gentlemanly and +conciliatory manner, and I therefore, as the confusion in the room was +great, offered to discuss the matter with him, the Rev. O’Donel, C.C., +and the tenants, if the other priests, who were strangers to me, and the +reporters would leave the room. This the Rev. Mr. Dunphy declared they +would not do, and I accordingly refused further to discuss the matter.</p> + +<p>After they left the house, one of the tenants, Mick <a name="page374" id="page374"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 374] +</span>Darcy, stepped +forward and said, “Settle with us, Captain.” I replied, “Certainly, if +you come back with me into the house.” The Rev. Mr. Dunphy took him by +the collar of his coat and threw him against the wall of the house, then +turning to me with his hand raised said, “You shall not do so; we, who +claim the temporal as well as spiritual power over <i>you</i> as well as +these poor creatures, will settle this matter with you.”</p> + +<p>The tenants were then taken down to the League rooms, where two M.P.s, +Sir Thomas Esmonde and Mr. Mayne, were waiting to receive the rents, +which, one by one, they were ordered in to pay into the war-chest of the +“Plan of Campaign.”</p> + +<p>I have I fear written too much of this commencement of the war on the +estate which has since led to over seventy of the tenants and their +families being ejected, and has brought ruin on nearly all who joined +it. I have considerable experience as a land agent, but I know of no +estate where the tenants were more respectable, better housed, or, as a +body, in better circumstances than on the Brooke estate. They had a +kind, indulgent landlord, and they knew it; and nothing but the belief +that, led by their clergy, they were foremost in a battle fighting for +their country and religion, would have induced them to put up with the +great hardships and loss they have undoubtedly had to suffer.</p> + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="page375" id="page375"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 375] +</span><a name="noteL" id="noteL" />NOTE L.<br /> + +A DUCAL SUPPER IN IRELAND IN 1711.<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. <a href="#page283">283</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>The following entry I take from the Expense-Book of the Duke of Ormond, +under date of August 23, 1711:—</p> + + +<div class="center"> +<br /><br /> +His Grace came to Kilkenny, half an hour after 10 at night. +<br /><br /> +HIS GRACE’S TABLE.<br /><br /> + +Pottage. Sautee Veal.<br /> +5 Pullets, Bacon and Collyflowers.<br /> +Pottage Meagre.<br /> +Pikes with White Sauce.<br /> +A Turbot with Lobster Sauce.<br /> +Umbles.<br /> +A Hare Hasht.<br /> +Buttered Chickens, G.<br /> +Hasht Veal and New Laid Eggs.<br /> +Removes.<br /> +A Shoulder and Neck of Mutton.<br /> +Haunch of Venison.<br /> +<br /><br /> +<i>Second Course.</i><br /> +<br /> +Lobsters.<br /> +Tarts, an Oval Dish.<br /> +Crabbs Buttered.<br /> +4 Pheasants, 4 Partridges, 4 Turkeys.<br /> +Ragoo Mushrooms.<br /> +Kidney Beans. Ragoo Oysters.<br /> +Fritters.<br /> +Two Sallets. +</div> + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="noteM" id="noteM" />NOTE M.<br /> + +LETTER FROM MR. O’LEARY.<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. <a href="#page291">291</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>In the first edition of this book I credited Mr. O’Leary with making +this pungent remark about figs and grapes, because I found it jotted +down in my original memoranda as coming from him. In a private note he +assures me that he does not think it was made by him, and though this +does not agree with my own <a name="page376" id="page376"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 376] +</span>recollection, I defer, of course, to his +impression. And this I do the more readily that it affords me an +opportunity for printing the following very characteristic and +interesting letter sent to me by him for publication should I think fit +to use it.</p> + +<p>As the most important support given by the Irish in America to the +Nationalists is solicited by their agents on the express ground that +they are really labouring to establish an Irish Republic, this outspoken +declaration of Mr. O’Leary, that he does not believe they “expect or +desire” the establishment of an Irish Republic, will be of interest on +my side of the water:—</p> +<blockquote> +<p class="dateline"> “DUBLIN, <i>Sept.</i> 9, ’88.</p> + +<p> “My Dear Sir,—I am giving more bother about what you make me say + in your book than the thing is probably worth, especially seeing + that what you say about me and my present attitude towards men and + things here is almost entirely correct.</p> + +<p> “It is proverbially hard to prove a negative, and my main reason + for believing I did not say the thing about figs and grapes is that + I never could remember the whole of any proverb in conversation; + but I am absolutely certain I never said that ‘some of them (the + National Leaguers) expect to found an Irish republic on robbery, + and to administer it by falsehood. We don’t.’ Most certainly I do + not expect to found anything on robbery, or administer anything by + falsehood, but I do not in the least believe that the National + League either expects or desires to found an Irish republic at all! + Neither do I believe that the Leaguers will long retain the + administration of such small measure of Home Rule, as I now (since + the late utterances of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Gladstone) believe we + are going to get. My fault with the present people is not that they + are looking, or mean to look, for too much, but that they may be + induced, by pressure from their English Radical allies, to be + content with too little. It is only a large and liberal measure of + Home Rule which will ever satisfy the Irish people, and I fear + that, if the smaller fry of Radical M.P.’s are allowed to have a + strong voice in a matter of which they know next to nothing, the + settlement of the Irish question will be indefinitely postponed.—I + remain, faithfully yours,</p> + +<p class="signed"> “JOHN O’LEARY.”</p> +</blockquote> + + +<hr /><h3><a name="page377" id="page377"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 377] +</span><a name="noteN" id="noteN" />NOTE N.<br /> + +BOYCOTTING PRIVATE OPINION.<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. <a href="#page293">293</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>This case of Mr. Taylor is worth preserving <i>in extenso</i> as an +illustration of that spirit in the Irish journalism of the day, against +which Mr. Rolleston and his friends protest as fatal to independence, +manliness, and truth. I simply cite the original attack made upon Mr. +Taylor, the replies made by himself and his friends, and the comments +made upon those replies by the journal which assailed him. They all tell +their own story.</p> + +<p class="center"> (<i>UNITED IRELAND</i>, JUNE 16.)</p> + +<p> Mr. John F. Taylor owes everything he has or is to the Irish + National Party; nor is he slow to confess it where the + acknowledgment will serve his personal interests. His sneers are + all anonymous, and, like Mr. Fagg, the grateful and deferential + valet in <i>The Rivals</i>, “it hurts his conscience to be found out.” + There is no honesty or sincerity in the man. His covert gibes are + the spiteful emanation of personal disappointment; his lofty + morality is a cloak for unscrupulous self-seeking. He has always + shown himself ready to say anything or do anything that may serve + his own interests. In the general election of 1885 he made frantic + efforts to get into Parliament as a member of the Irish Party. He + ghosted every member of the party whose influence he thought might + help him—notably the two men, Mr. Dillon and Mr. O’Brien, at whom + he now sneers, as he fondly believes, in the safe seclusion of an + anonymous letter of an English newspaper. During the period of + probation his hand was incessant on Mr. Dillon’s door-knocker. The + most earnest supplications were not spared. All in vain. Either his + character or his ability failed to satisfy the Irish leader, and + his claim was summarily rejected. Since then his wounded vanity has + found vent in spiteful calumny of almost every member of the Irish + Party—whenever he found malice a luxury that could be safely + indulged in.</p> + +<p> “His next step was a startling one. We have absolute <a name="page378" id="page378"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 378] +</span>reason to + know, when the last Coercion Act was in full swing, this + pure-souled and disinterested patriot begged for, received, and + accepted a very petty Crown Prosecutorship under a Coercion + Government. As was wittily said at the time, he sold his + principles, not for a mess of pottage, but for the stick that + stirred the mess. Strong pressure was brought to bear on him, and + he was induced for his own sake, after many protests and with much + reluctance, to publicly refuse the office he had already privately + accepted. Mr. Taylor professes to model himself on Robert Emmet and + Thomas Davis; it is hard to realise Thomas Davis or Robert Emmet as + a Coercion Crown Prosecutor in the pay of Dublin Castle. Since then + there has been no more persistent caviller at the Irish policy and + the Irish Party in company where he believed such cavilling paid. + When Home Rule was proposed by Mr. Gladstone, he had a thousand + foolish sneers for the measure and its author. When the Bill was + defeated, he elected Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Goschen, and Mr. T.W. + Russell as the gods of his idolatry. Such a nature needs a patron, + and Mr. Webb, Q.C., the Tory County Court Judge who doubled the + sentence on Father M‘Fadden, was the patron to be selected. It is + shrewdly suspected that he supplied most of the misguiding + information for Dr. Webb’s coercion pamphlet, and it is probable + that Dr. Webb gives him a lift with his weekly letter to the + <i>Manchester Guardian.</i></p> + + +<p class="center"> (<i>UNITED IRELAND</i>, JUNE 23.)</p> + +<p class="center"> MR. JOHN F. TAYLOR.</p> + +<p class="center"> <i>To the Editor of “United Ireland.”</i></p> + +<p> Sir,—You would not, I am sure, allow intentional misstatements to + appear in your columns, and I ask you to allow me space to correct + three erroneous observations made about myself in your current + issue—</p> + +<p> 1. The first statement is to the effect that I owe everything I + have, or that I am, to the Irish National Party. I owe absolutely + nothing to the Irish Party, except an attempt to boycott me on my + circuit, which, fortunately for me, has failed.</p> + +<p> 2. The second is to the effect that I made “frantic efforts” (these + are the words, I think) to enter Parliament, and besieged Mr. + Dillon’s house during the time when candidates were being chosen. I + saw Mr. Dillon exactly twice, both occasions at Mr. Davitt’s + request. Mr. Davitt urged me to <a name="page379" id="page379"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 379] +</span>allow my name to go forward as a + candidate, and it was at his wish and solicitation that I saw Mr. + Dillon.</p> + +<p> 3. It is further said that I begged a Crown Prosecutorship. + Fortunately, Mr. Walker and The M‘Dermot are living men, and they + know this to be absolutely untrue. I was offered such an + appointment, and, contrary to my own judgment, I allowed myself to + be guided by Mr. Davitt, who thought the matter would be + misunderstood in the state of things then existing. I believe I am + the only person that ever declined such an offer.</p> + +<p> As to general statements, these are of no importance, and I shall + not trouble you about them.—Yours very truly,</p> + +<p class="signed"> JOHN F. TAYLOR.</p> + +<p> <i>P.S.</i>—The introduction of Dr. Webb’s name was a gratuitous + outrage, Dr. Webb and I never assisted each other in anything + except in the defence of P.N. Fitzgerald. J.F.T.</p> + + +<p class="center"> <i>To the Editor of “United Ireland.”</i></p> + +<p> Dear Sir,—As my name has been introduced into the controversy + between yourself and Mr. Taylor, I feel called upon to substantiate + the two statements wherein my name occurs in Mr. Taylor’s letter of + last week. It was at my request that he called upon Mr. John + Dillon, M.P. I think I accompanied him on the occasion, and unless + my memory is very much at fault, Mr. Dillon was not unfriendly to + Mr. Taylor’s proposed candidature. This visit occurred some three + months after Mr. Taylor had, on my advice, declined the Crown + Prosecutorship for King’s County, a post afterwards applied for by + and granted to a near relative of one of the most prominent members + of the Irish Party. With Mr. Taylor’s general views on the present + situation, or opinions upon parties or men, I have no concern. But, + in so far as the circumstances related above are dealt with in your + issue of last week, I think an unjust imputation has been made + against him, and in the interests of truth and fair play I feel + called upon to adduce the testimony of facts as they + occurred.—Yours truly,</p> + +<p class="signed"> MICHAEL DAVITT.</p> + +<p class="i0"> Ballybrack, Co. Dublin,<br /> June 19, 1888.</p> + + +<p class="center"> <br /><i>To the Editor of “United Ireland.”</i></p> + +<p> Sir,—As this is, I believe, the first time I have sought to + intrude upon your columns, I hope you will allow me some <a name="page380" id="page380"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 380] +</span>slight + space in the interests of fair-play and freedom of speech. Those + interests seem to me to have been quite set at naught in the + attack, or rather series of attacks, upon Mr. Taylor in your last + issue. Mr. Taylor’s views upon many matters are not mine. He is far + more democratic in his opinions than I see any sufficient reason + for being, and he is very much more of what is called a land + reformer than I am; but on an acquaintance of some years I have + ever found him an honourable and high-minded gentleman, and as good + a Nationalist, from my point of view, as most of the members of the + Irish Parliamentary Party whom I either know or know of. Of some of + the charges made against Mr. Taylor, such as the seeking for Crown + Prosecutorships and the like, I am in no position to speak, save + from my knowledge of his character, but I understand Mr. Davitt + knows all about these things, and I suppose he will tell what he + knows. But of the main matter, and I think the chief cause of your + ire, I am quite in a position to speak. I have read at least a + score of Mr. Taylor’s letters to the <i>Manchester Guardian</i>, and I + have always found them very intelligently written, and invariably + characterised by a spirit of fairness and moderation; indeed, the + chief fault I found with them was that they took too favourable a + view of the motives, if not the acts, of many of our public men, + but notably of Messrs. Dillon and O’Brien. You may, of course, + fairly say that I am not the best judge of either the acts or the + motives of these gentlemen, and I freely grant you that I may not, + for my way of looking upon the Irish question is quite other than + theirs; but what I must be excused for holding is that both I and + Mr. Taylor have quite as good a right to our opinions as either of + these gentlemen, or as any other member of the Irish Parliamentary + Party. But this is the very last right that people are inclined to + grant to each other in Ireland just now. Personally I care very + little for this, but for Ireland’s sake I care much. Some twenty + years ago or so I was sent into penal servitude with the almost + entire approval, expressed or implied, of the Irish Press. Some + short time after the same Press found out that I and my friends had + not sinned so grievously in striving to free Ireland. But men and + times and things may change again, and, though I am growing old, I + hope still to live long enough to be forgiven for my imperfect + appreciation of the blessings of Boycotting, and the Plan of + Campaign, and many similar blessings. It matters little indeed how + or when I die, so that Ireland lives, but her life can only be a + living death if Irishmen are not free to say <a name="page381" id="page381"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 381] +</span>what they believe, and + to act as they deem right.—Your obedient servant,</p> + +<p class="signed"> JOHN O’LEARY.</p> + +<p class="i0"> June 18, 1888.</p> + + +<p class="center"> <br /><i>To the Editor of “United Ireland.”</i></p> + +<p> Dear Sir,—I observe that in your last issue, amongst other things, + you state that Mr. Taylor accepted a Crown Prosecutorship in 1885. + I happen to know the precise facts. Mr. Taylor was offered the + Crown Prosecutorship of the King’s County, and some of us strongly + advised him to accept it. There were no political prosecutions + impending at the time, and it seemed to me that a Nationalist who + would do his work honestly in prosecuting offenders against the + ordinary law might strike a blow against tyranny by refusing to + accept a brief, if offered, against men accused of political + offences or prosecuted under a Coercion Act. I know that a similar + view was entertained by the late Very Rev. Dr. Kavanagh of Kildare, + and many others. However, we failed to influence Mr. Taylor further + than to make him say that he would do nothing in the matter until + Mr. Davitt was consulted. I, for one, called on Mr. Davitt, and + pressed my views upon him; but he was decided that no Nationalist + could identify himself in the smallest way with Castle rule in + Ireland. This settled the question, and Mr. Taylor declined the + post, which was subsequently applied for by Mr. Luke Dillon, who + now holds it.—Faithfully yours,</p> + +<p class="signed"> JAMES A. POOLE.</p> + +<p class="i0"> 29 Harcourt Street.</p> + + + +<p class="center"><br /> EDITORIAL NOTE.<br /> +<i>“United Ireland,” June 23.</i> +</p> + +<p> We devote a large portion of our space to-day to the apparently + organised defence of Mr. J.F. Taylor and his friends, and we are + quite content to rest upon their letters the justification for our + comments. When a gentleman who avows himself a disappointed + aspirant for Parliamentary honours, and who owns his regret that he + did not become a petty Castle placeman, is discovered writing in an + important English Liberal paper, venomous little innuendos at the + expense of sorely attacked Irish leaders which excite the + enthusiasm of the <i>Liarish Times</i>, it was high time to intimate to + the <i>Manchester Guardian</i> the source from which its Irish + information is derived. The case against Mr. Taylor as a + criticaster is clinched by the fact that his cause is espoused by + Mr. John <a name="page382" id="page382"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 382] +</span>O’Leary. The Irish public are a little weary of Mr. + O’Leary’s querulous complaints as an <i>homme incompris</i>. So far as + we are aware, the only ground he himself has for complaining of + want of toleration is that he possibly considers the good-humoured + toleration for years invariably extended to his opinions on men and + things savours of neglect. His idea of toleration with respect to + others seems to be toleration for everybody except the unhappy + wretches who may happen to be for the moment doing any practicable + service in the Irish cause.</p> + + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="noteO" id="noteO" />NOTE O.<br /> + +BOYCOTTING BY “CROWNER’S QUEST LAW.”<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. <a href="#page312">312</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>The following circumstantial account of this deplorable case of Ellen +Gaffney preserved here, as I find it printed in the <i>Irish Times</i> of +February 27, 1888.</p> +<blockquote> +<p>“In the Court of Queen’s Bench, on Saturday, the Lord Chief-Justice (Sir +Michael Morris, Bart.), Mr. Justice O’Brien, Mr. Justice Murphy, and Mr. +Justice Gibson presiding, judgment was delivered in the case of Ellen +Gaffney. The original motion was to quash the verdict of a coroner’s +jury held at Philipstown on August 27th and September 1st last, on the +body of a child named Mary Anne Gaffney.</p> + +<p>“The Lord Chief-Justice said it appeared that Mary Anne Gaffney, the +child on whose body the inquest was held, was born on the 23d July, and +that she died on the 25th August, 1887. A Dr. Clarke, who had been very +much referred to in the course of the proceedings, called upon the local +sergeant of the police, and directed his attention to the body, but the +sergeant having inspected the body, came to the conclusion that there +was no need for an inquest. The doctor considered differently, and the +sergeant communicated with the Coroner on the 26th August, and <a name="page383" id="page383"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 383] +</span>on the +next day that gentleman arrived in Philipstown. He had a conference +there with Dr. Clarke and with a reverend gentleman named Father Bergin, +and subsequently proceeded to hold an inquest upon the child in a +public-house—a most appropriate place apparently for the transactions +which afterwards occurred there. The investigation, if it might be so +called, was proceeded with upon that 27th of August. Very strong +affidavits had been made on the part of Mrs. Gaffney—who applied to +have the inquisition quashed—her husband, and some of the constabulary +authorities as to the line of conduct pursued upon that occasion. Ellen +Gaffney and her husband were taken into custody on the day the inquest +opened by the verbal direction of the Coroner, who refused to complete +the depositions given by the former on the ground that she was not +sworn. That did not take him out of the difficulty, for if she was not +sworn she had a right to be sworn, and the Coroner had no right to +prevent her. The inquest was resumed on the 1st September in the +court-house at Philipstown—the proper place—and a curious letter was +read from the Coroner, the effect of which was that he did not consider +that there was any ground for detaining the man Gaffney in custody, but +the woman was brought before a justice of the peace and committed for +trial. She was in prison from August 27th until the month of December, +when the lucky accident of a winter assize occurred, else she might be +there still. At the adjourned inquest the Coroner proceeded to read over +the depositions taken on the former day, and it was sworn by four +witnesses, whom he (the Lord Chief-Justice) entirely credited, that the +Coroner read these depositions as if they were originals, whereas an +unprecedented transaction had occurred. The Coroner had given the +original depositions out of his own custody, and given them to a +<a name="page384" id="page384"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 384] +</span>reverend gentleman who was rather careless of them, as was shown by the +evidence of a witness named Greene, who deposed that he saw a car on the +road upon which sat two clergymen, and he found on the road the original +depositions which, presumably, one of the clergymen had dropped. The +depositions were handed to a magistrate and afterwards returned to the +police at Philipstown, who had possession of them on the resumption of +the inquest. If the case stood alone there it was difficult to +understand how a Coroner could come into court and appear by counsel to +resist the quashing of an inquisition in regard to which at the very +door such gross personal misconduct was demonstrated. No doubt, he said, +he did not read them as originals but as copies, and it was strange, +that being so, that he did not inform the jury of what had become of +them, and he complained now of not being told by the police of their +recovery—not told of his own misconduct. On the 1st September, Ellen +Gaffney applied by a solicitor—Mr. Disdall, and as a set-off the +Coroner permitted a gentleman named O’Kearney Whyte to appear—for whom? +Was it for the constituted authorities or for the next-of-kin? No, but +for the Rev. Father Bergin, who was described as president of the local +branch of the National League, and the Coroner (Mr. Gowing) alleged as +the reason why he allowed him to appear and cross-examine the witnesses +and address the jury and give him the right of reply like Crown counsel +was, that Ellen Gaffney stated that she had been so much annoyed by +Father Bergin that she attributed the loss of her child to him—that it +was he who had murdered the child. It was asserted that Father Bergin +sat on the bench with the Coroner and interfered during the conduct of +the inquest, and having to give some explanation of that Mr. Gowing’s +version was certainly a most amusing one. He said it <a name="page385" id="page385"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 385] +</span>was the habit to +invite to a seat on the bench people of a respectable position in +life—which, of course, a clergyman should be in—and that he asked +Father Bergin to sit beside him in that capacity. But see the dilemma +the Coroner put himself in. According to his own statement he had +previously allowed this reverend gentleman to interfere, and to be +represented by a solicitor because he was incriminated, inculpated, or +accused, and it certainly was not customary to invite any one so +situated to occupy a seat on the bench. He (the Lord Chief Baron) did +not believe that Father Bergin was incriminated in any way, but that was +the Coroner’s allegation, and such was his peculiar action thereafter. +The Coroner further stated that no matter whether he read the originals +or the copies of the first day’s depositions, it was on the evidence of +September 1st that the jury acted. If that was so he placed himself in a +further dilemma, for there was no evidence before the jury at all on the +second day upon which they could bring a verdict against Ellen Gaffney. +In regard to the recording and announcing of the verdict it appeared +that the jury were 19 in number, and after their deliberations the +foreman declared that 13 were for finding a verdict one way and 6 for +another; that Mr. Whyte dictated the verdict to the Coroner, and the +Coroner asked the 13 men if that was what they agreed to. Mr. Whyte’s +statement was that the jury, through the foreman, stated what their +verdict was; that he wrote it down, and that the Coroner asked him for +what he had written, and used it himself. But in addition to that, when +the jury came in the Coroner and Mr. Whyte divided them—placed them +apart while the verdict was being written—and then said to the 13 men, +“Is that what you agree to?” Such apparent misconduct it was hardly +possible to conceive in anybody <a name="page386" id="page386"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 386] +</span>occupying a judicial position as did the +Coroner, and especially a Coroner who had an inquisition quashed before. +What he had mentioned was sufficient to call forth the emphatic decision +of the court quashing the proceedings, which, however, were also +impeached on the grounds of its insufficiency and irregularity, and of +the character of the finding itself. It was not until the Coroner had +been threatened with the consequences of his contempt that he made a +return to the visit of <i>certiorari</i>, and it was then found that out of +ten so-called depositions only one contained any signature—that of Dr. +Clarke’s, which was one of those lost by the clergyman, and not before +the jury on the 1st September. He (the Lord Chief-Justice) had tried to +read the documents, but in vain—they were of such a scrawling and +scribbling character, but, as he had said, all were incomplete and +utterly worthless except the one which was not properly before the jury. +Then, what was the finding on this inquisition, which should have been +substantially as perfect as an indictment? “That Mary Anne Gaffney came +by her death, and that the mother of this child, Ellen Gaffney, is +guilty of wilful neglect by not supplying the necessary food and care to +sustain the life of this child.” Upon what charge could the woman have +been implicated on that vague finding? He (his Lordship) could +understand its being contended that that amounted argumentatively to a +verdict of manslaughter; but the Coroner issued his warrant and sent +this woman to prison as being guilty of murder, and she remained in +custody, as he had already remarked, until discharged by the learned +judge who went the Winter Assizes in December. Upon all of these grounds +they were clearly of opinion that this inquisition should be quashed, +and Mr. Coroner Gowing having had the self-possession to come there to +show cause against the conditional order, <a name="page387" id="page387"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 387] +</span>under such circumstances, must +bear the costs of that argument.</p> + +<p>Mr. Fred. Moorhead, who, instructed by Mr. O’Kearney Whyte, appeared for +the Coroner, asked whether the Court would require, as was usual when +costs were awarded against a magistrate, an undertaking from the other +side—</p> + +<p>The Lord Chief-Justice.—That is not to bring an action against the +Coroner, you mean?</p> + +<p>Mr. Moorhead.—Yes, my Lord. I think it is a usual undertaking when +costs are awarded in such a case. I think you ought—</p> + +<p>The Lord Chief-Justice.—Well, I don’t know that we ought, but we most +certainly will not. (Laughter.)</p> + +<p>Mr. David Sherlock, who (instructed by Mr. Archibald W. Disdall) +appeared for Ellen Gaffney.—Rest assured, we certainly will bring an +action.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p class="center">THE END.</p> + +<hr class="full" /> + + + + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + + + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote1" + name="footnote1"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 1:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag1">(return)</a><p>I have the authority of Mr. Hennessey, “the best living +Irish scholar, and a Kerryman to boot,” for this spelling. I am quite +right, he says, in stating that the people there pronounce the names of +Glenbeigh and Rossbeigh as Glenbéhy and Rossbéhy in three syllables. +“Bethe,” pronounced “behy,” is the genitive of “beith,” the birch, of +which there were formerly large woods in Ireland. Glenbehy and Rossbehy +mean the “Glen,” and the “Ross” or “wooded point” of the birch.</p> + +</blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote2" name="footnote2"></a> + <span class='fnheader'>Footnote 2:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag2">(return)</a> + +<p> A letter received by me from a Protestant Irish gentleman, +long an ardent Nationalist, seems to confirm this. He writes to me (June +15),</p> +<blockquote> “There is a noble river here, with a convenient line of quays for + unloading merchandise. But every sack that is landed must be carried out + of the ship on men’s backs. The quay labourers won’t allow a steam crane + to be set up. If it is tried there is a riot and a tumult, and no + Limerick tradesman can purchase anything from a vessel that uses it, on + pain of being boycotted. The result is that the labourers are masters of + the situation, and when they catch a vessel with a cargo which it is + imperative to land quickly, they wait till the work is half done, and + then strike for 8s. a day! If other labourers are imported, they are + boycotted for ‘grabbing work,’ and any one who sells provisions to them + is boycotted.” +</blockquote> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote3" + name="footnote3"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 3:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag3">(return)</a><p> An interesting account of this gentleman, and of his +connection with the earlier developments of the Irish agitation, given +to me by Mr. Colomb of the R.I.C., will be found at p.<a href="#page38">38</a>, and in the +Appendix, <a href="#noteF">Note F.</a></p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote4" + name="footnote4"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 4:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag4">(return)</a><p> See Appendix, <a href="#noteF">Note F.</a></p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote5" + name="footnote5"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 5:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag5">(return)</a><p> The name of this blacksmith’s son learned in the Law of the +League is given in Lord Cowper’s Report (2. 18,370) as Michael Healy. +While these pages are in the printer’s hands the London papers chronicle +(May 25, 1888) the arrest of a person described to me as this +magistrate’s brother, Jeremiah Healy, on a charge of robbing and setting +fire to the Protestant church at Killarney!</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote6" + name="footnote6"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 6:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag6">(return)</a><p> Mr. Colomb sends me, June 30, the following interesting +note:—The letter of which I gave you a copy was produced in evidence at +Kerry Summer Assizes, 1867. J. D. Sheehan, Esq., M.P., is the same man +who was arrested on the 12th February 1867, and to whom the foregoing +letter, ordering the rising in Killarney, is addressed. He was kept in +custody for some time, and eventually released, it is believed, on the +understanding that he was to keep out of Ireland. He came back in 1873 +or 1874 and married the proprietress of a Hotel at Killarney. His +connection with the Glenbehy evictions is referred to on page <a href="#page10">10</a>, and in +<a href="#noteF">Note F</a> of the Appendix I give an interesting account, furnished me by +Mr. Colomb, of his activity in connection with the case of the Misses +Curtin at Firies.</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote7" + name="footnote7"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 7:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag7">(return)</a><p> In the time of Henry VIII. these cities waged actual war +with each other, like Florence and Pisa, by sea and land. Limerick was +then called “Little London.”</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote8" + name="footnote8"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 8:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag8">(return)</a><p> It was on the 17th October 1886 that Mr. Dillon first +promulgated the Plan of Campaign at all at Portumna.</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote9" + name="footnote9"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 9:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag9">(return)</a><p> Mr. Ponsonby’s account of this affair will be found in the +Appendix, <a href="#noteG">Note G.</a> The Post-Office Savings Bank deposits at Youghal, +which were £3031, 0s. 7d. in 1880, rose to £7038, 7s. 2d. in 1887.</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote10" + name="footnote10"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 10:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag10">(return)</a><p> As to the ability of these tenants to pay their way, one +fact which I have since ascertained sufficiently supports Mr. Tener’s +contention. The deposits in the Postal Savings Banks of the three purely +agricultural towns of Portumna, Woodford, and Loughrea, which in 1880, +throwing off the shillings and pence, were respectively, £2539, £259, +and £5500, rose in 1887 to £3376, £1350, and £6311, an increase of +nearly £3000.</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote11" + name="footnote11"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 11:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag11">(return)</a><p> Mr. Tener, to whom I sent proofs of these pages, writes to +me (July 18): “I shall soon execute the decree of the County-Court Judge +Henn against Father Coen for £5, 5s., being two and a half year’s +rent.”</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote12" + name="footnote12"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 12:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag12">(return)</a><p> At a hearing of cases before Judge Henn some time after I +left Portumna, the Judge was reported in the papers as “severely” +commenting upon the carelessness with which the estate-books were kept, +tenants who were proceeded against for arrears producing “receipts” in +court. I wrote to Mr. Tener on this subject. Under date of June 5th he +replied to me: “Judge Henn did not use the severe language reported. +There was no reporter present but a local man, and I have reason to +believe the report in the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i> came from the lawyer of +the tenants, who is on the staff of that journal. But the tenants are +drilled not to show the receipts they hold, and to take advantage of +every little error which they might at once get corrected by calling at +the estate office. In no case, however, did any wrong occur to any +tenant.”</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote13" + name="footnote13"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 13:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag13">(return)</a><p> The town and estate proper of Woodford belong to Sir Henry +Burke, Bart. The nearest point to Woodford of Lord Clamicarde’s property +is distant one mile from the town. And on the so-called Woodford estate +there are not “316 tenants,” as stated in publications I have seen, but +260.</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote14" + name="footnote14"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 14:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag14">(return)</a><p> Martin Kenny, the “victim” of this eviction, is the tenant +to whom the Rev. Mr. Crawford (<i>vide</i> page <a href="#page118">118</a>) gave £50 for certain +cattle, in order that he (Kenny) might pay his rent But, although he got +the £50, he nevertheless suffered himself to be evicted; no doubt +fearing the vengeance of the League should he pay.</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote15" + name="footnote15"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 15:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag15">(return)</a><p> The valuation for taxes of this holding is £7, 15s. for +the land, and £5 for the presbytery house. The church is exempt.</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote16" + name="footnote16"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 16:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag16">(return)</a><p> Of “Dr.” Tully Mr. Tener wrote to me (July 18): “Tully has +the holding at £2, 10s. a year, being 50 per cent, under the valuation +of the land for taxes, which is £3, 15s. As the total valuation with the +house (built by him) is only £4, he pays no poor-rates. He was in +arrears May 1, 1887, of three years for £7, 10s. Lord Clanricarde +offered him, with others, 20 per cent, abatement, making for him 70 per +cent, under the valuation—and he refused!” Since then (on Saturday +Sept. 1), Tully has been evicted after a dramatic “resistance,” of +which, with instructive incidents attending it, Mr. Tener sends me an +account, to be found in the Appendix, <a href="#noteH">Note H.</a></p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote17" + name="footnote17"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 17:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag17">(return)</a><p> <a href="#noteH2">Note H2.</a></p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote18" + name="footnote18"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 18:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag18">(return)</a><p> Mr. Tener writes to me (July 18): “At Allendarragh, near +the scene of Finlay’s murder, Thomas Noonan, who lately was brave enough +to accept the post of process-server vacated by that murder, was shot at +on the 13th instant. It was on the highway. He heard a heavy stone fall +from a wall on the road and turned to see what caused it. He distinctly +saw two men behind the wall with guns, and saw them fire. One shot +struck a stone in the road very near him—the other went wide. His idea +is that one gun dislodged the stone on which it had been laid for an +aim, and that its fall disturbed the aim and saved him. He fully +identifies one of the men as Henry Bowles, a nephew of ‘Dr.’ Tully, who +lives with Tully, and Bowles, after being arrested and examined at +Woodford, has been remanded, bail being refused, to Galway Jail. Before +this shooting Noonan had served a notice from me upon Tully, against +whom I have Judge Henn’s decree for three years’ rent, and whose equity +of redemption expired July 9th.”</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote19" + name="footnote19"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 19:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag19">(return)</a><p> I have since learned that my jarvey was well informed. Sir +Henry Burke actually paid Mr. Dillon £160 for the maintenance of his +tenants while out of their farms. This, two other landlords, Lords +Dunsandle and Westmeath, refused to do, but, like Sir Henry, they both +paid all the costs, and accepted a “League” reduction of 5s. 6d. and 6s. +in the pound (June 9, 1888).</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote20" + name="footnote20"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 20:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag20">(return)</a><p> Down to the date at which I write this note (June 9), Mr. +Seigne has kindly, but without results, endeavoured to get for me some +authentic return made by a small tenant-farmer of his incomings and +outgoings.</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote21" + name="footnote21"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 21:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag21">(return)</a><p> <a href="#noteI">Note I.</a></p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote22" + name="footnote22"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 22:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag22">(return)</a><p> <a href="#noteK">Note K.</a></p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote23" + name="footnote23"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 23:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag23">(return)</a><p> While these pages are going through the press a Scottish +friend sends me the following extract from a letter published in the +<i>Scotsman</i> of July 25:— + +“In the same way I, in August last, when in +Wicklow, ascertained as carefully as I could the facts as to the Bodyke +evictions; and being desirous to learn now if that estate was still out +of cultivation, as I had found it in August, I wrote the gentleman I +have referred to above. His reply is as follows:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“‘I can answer your question as far as the Brooke estate is concerned. +None of the tenants are back in their farms, nor are they likely to be. +The landlord has the land partly stocked with cattle; but I may say the +land is nearly waste; the gates, fences, and farmsteads partly +destroyed. I was at the fair of Coolgreany about three weeks ago, and +the country looked quite changed; the weeds predominating in the land +that the tenantry had under cultivation when they were evicted from +their farms. The landlord has done nothing to lay the land down with +grass seed, consequently the land is waste. The village of Coolgreany is +on the property, and there was a good monthly fair held there, but it is +very much gone down since the disagreement between the landlord and +tenant. The tenants, speaking generally, in allowing themselves to be +evicted and not redeeming before six months, are giving up all their +improvements to the landlord, no matter what they may be worth. I have +got quite tired of the vexed question, and may say I have given up +reading about evictions, and pity the tenant who is foolish enough to +allow any party to advise him so badly as to allow himself to be +evicted.’</p> + +<p>“Those who read this testimony of a candid witness, and remember the +cordial footing on which Mr. Brooke stood with his tenantry in Bodyke +before Mr. Billon appeared amongst them, may well ask what good his +interference did to the now impoverished tenantry of Bodyke, or to the +district now deserted or laid waste.—I am, etc.,</p> + +<p class="signed">A RADICAL UNIONIST.”</p> +</blockquote> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote24" + name="footnote24"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 24:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag24">(return)</a><p> In curious confirmation of this opinion expressed to me by +a man of the country in March, I find in the <i>Dublin Express</i> of July +19th this official news from the Athy Vice-Guardians:</p> + +<p>“At the meeting of the Vice-Guardians of the Athy Union yesterday, a +letter was read from Mr. G. Finlay, Auditor, in which he stated that the +two sureties of Collector Kealy, of the Luggacurren district, had been +evicted from their holdings by Lord Lansdowne, and were not now in +possession of any lands there. They were allowed outdoor relief to the +extent of £1 a week each on the ground of destitution. The Auditor +continued: ‘The Collector tells me that they both possess other lands, +and have money in bank. The Collector is satisfied that they are as +good, if not better, securities for the amount of his bond now than at +the time they became sureties for him. The Clerk of the Union concurs in +this opinion.’</p> + +<p>“It was ordered to bring the matter under the notice of the Board.”</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote25" + name="footnote25"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 25:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag25">(return)</a><p> <i>Explanatory Note attached to First Edition.</i>—After this +chapter had actually gone to press, I received a letter from the friend +who had put me into communication with the labourers referred to in it, +begging me to strike out all direct indications of their whereabouts, on +the ground that these might lead to grave annoyance and trouble for +these poor men from the local tyrants.</p> + +<p>I do not know that I ought to regret the annoyance thus caused to my +publisher and to me, as no words of mine could emphasise so clearly the +nature and the scope of the odious, illegal, or anti-legal “coercion” +established in certain parts of Ireland as the asterisks which mark my +compliance with my friend’s request. What can be said for the freedom of +a country in which a man of character and position honestly believes it +to be “dangerous” for poor men to say the things recorded in the text of +this chapter about their own feelings, wishes, opinions, and interests?</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote26" + name="footnote26"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 26:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag26">(return)</a><p> It may be well to say here that whatever prominence Mr. +O’Donovan Rossa has had among the Irish in America has been largely, if +not chiefly, due to the curious persistency of Sir William Harcourt, +when a Minister, in making him the ideal Irish-American leader. In and +out of Parliament, Sir William Harcourt continually spoke of Mr. Rossa +as of a kind of Irish Jupiter Tonans, wielding all the terrors of +dynamite from beyond the Atlantic. This was a source of equal amusement +to the Irish-American organisers in America and satisfaction to Mr. +Rossa himself. I remember that when a question arose of excluding Mr. +Rossa from an important Irish-American convention at Philadelphia, as +not being the delegate of any recognised Irish-American body, Mr. +Sullivan told me that he should recommend the admission of Mr. Rossa to +the floor without a right to deliberative action, expressly because his +presence, when reported, would be a cause of terror to Sir William +Harcourt.</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote27" + name="footnote27"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 27:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag27">(return)</a><p> <a href="#noteM">Note M.</a></p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote28" + name="footnote28"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 28:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag28">(return)</a><p> <a href="#noteN">Note N.</a></p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote29" + name="footnote29"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 29:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag29">(return)</a><p> <a href="#noteO">Note O.</a></p></blockquote> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14511 ***</div> +</body> +</html> 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..5986dc2 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #14511 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14511) diff --git a/old/14511-8.txt b/old/14511-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..12f2dc8 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14511-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9343 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 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.) (2 of 2) (1888) + +Author: William Henry Hurlbert + +Release Date: December 29, 2004 [EBook #14511] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRELAND, VOL. 2 *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Robert Ledger and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + +IRELAND UNDER COERCION + +THE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN + + +BY + +WILLIAM HENRY HURLBERT + + +VOL. II. + +_SECOND EDITION._ + +1888 + + +"Upon the future of Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire." +CARDINAL MANNING TO EARL GREY, 1868 + + + + +CONTENTS OF VOL. II. + +CHAPTER VII. + Rossbehy, Feb. 21, 1 + The latest eviction at Glenbehy, 1 + Trafalgar Square, 1, 2 + Father Little, 3 + Mr. Frost, 3, 4 + Priest and landlord, 3 + Savings Banks' deposits at Six-mile Bridge, 5 + Drive through Limerick, 5 + Population and trade, 5, 6 + Boycotting and commerce, 6, 7 + Shores of the Atlantic, 7 + Tralee, 7 + Killorglin, 8 + Hostelry in the hills, 8 + Facts of the eviction, 9-13 + Glenbehy Eviction Fund (see Note G2), 12 + A walk on Washington's birthday, 13 + A tenant at Glenbehy offers £13 in two instalments + in full for £240 arrears, 13 + English and Irish members, 14 + "Winn's Folly," 15 + Acreage and rental of the Glenbehy estate, 16 + Work of eviction begun, 17 + Patience of officers, 17 + American and Irish evictions contrasted, 17 + "Oh, he's quite familiar," 18 + A modest Poor Law Guardian, 18, 19 + Moonlighters' swords, 20 + Father Quilter and the "poor slaves," his people, 21,22 + Beauty of Lough Caragh, 23 + Difficulty of getting evidence, 25 + Effects of terrorism in Kerry, 25 + Singular identification of a murderer, 26 + Local administration in Tralee, 28 + +CHAPTER VIII. + Cork, Feb. 23, 30 + Press accounts of Glenbehy evictions astonish an eye-witness, 30 + Castle Island, 31 + Mr. Roche and Mr. Gladstone, 31 + Opinions of a railway traveller, 31, 32 + Misrepresentations of evictions, 32 + Cork, past and present, 34 + Mr. Gladstone and the Dean, 35 + League Courts in Kerry, 36 + Local Law Lords, 36 + Mr. Colomb and the Fenian rising in 1867, 37 + Remarkable letter of an M.P., 38 + Irish Constabulary, _morale_ of the force, 40 + The clergy and the Plan of Campaign, 41 + Municipal history, 43 + Increase of public burdens, 44 + Tralee Board of Guardians, 46 + Labourers and tenants, 46 + Feb. 25, 47 + Boycotting, 47-49 + Land law and freedom of contract, 49 + Rivalry between Limerick and Cork, 50 + Henry VIII. and the Irish harp, 50 + Municipal Parliamentary franchise, 51 + Environs of Cork, 52 + Churches and chapels, 53 + Attractive home at Belmullet, 54 + Lord Carnarvon and the Priest, 55 + Feb. 26, 56 + Blarney Castle, 56, 57 + St. Anne's Hill, 56, 57 + An evicted woman on "the Plan," 59 + The Ponsonby estate, 59 + Feb. 27--A day at Youghal, 60 + Father Keller, 61-76 + On emigration and migration, 66 + Protestants and Catholics (see Note G3), 68 + Meath as a field for peasant proprietors, 69 + Ghost of British protection, 70 + A farmer evicted from a tenancy of 200 years, 71 + Sir Walter Raleigh's house and garden, 71-73 + Churches of St. Mary of Youghal and St. Nicholas of Galway, 73 + Monument and churchyard, 73, 74 + An Elizabethan candidate for canonisation, 75 + Drive to Lismore, 76 + Driver's opinions on the Ponsonby estates, 77 + Dromaneen Castle and the Countess of Desmond, 78 + Trappist Monastery at Cappoquin, 78 + Lismore, 78, 79 + Castle grounds and cathedral, 79, 80 + +CHAPTER IX. + Feb. 28, 82 + Portumna, Galway, 82 + Run through Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, + Queen's and King's County to Parsonstown, 82 + A Canadian priest on the situation, 83 + His reply to M. de Mandat Grancey, 83 + Relations of priests with the League, 83-85 + Parsonstown and Lord Rosse, 86 + Drive to Portumna, 87 + An abandoned railway, 88 + American storms, grain, and beasts, 88, 89 + Portumna Castle, 90, 91 + Lord Clanricarde's estate, 92 + Mr. Tener, 92-128 + Plan of Campaign, 94-99 + Ability of tenants to pay their rents, 95 + Mr. Dillon in 1886, 96 + Mr. Parnell in 1885, 97 + Tenants in greater danger than landlords and agents, 100 + Feb. 29, 100 + Conference between evicted tenants and agent, 100-106 + Castle and park, 107 + The League shopkeeper and tenant, 108 + Under police escort, 109 + Cost of 'knocking' a man, 109 + What constitutes a group, 110 + Favourite spots for administering a League oath, 110 + Disbursing treasurers, 111 + Change of venue, 111 + Bishop of Clonfert, 112-115 + Bector of Portumna, 115 + Father Coen, 116 + Coercion on the part of the League, 118-121 + Deposits in banks, 120 + Should landlords and shopkeepers be placed on one footing? 121 + New Castle of Portumna, 122 + Portumna Union, 123, 124 + Troubles of resident landlords, 125-127 + Effects of the agitation on the people, 124 + War against property and private rights, 127 + Mr. Tener's experiences in Cavan, 127-130 + Similar cases in Leitrim, 130-132 + Sale of rents and value of tenant-right, 133, 134 + +CHAPTER X. + Dublin, March 1, 135 + Portumna to Woodford, 135 + Evictions of October 1887, 135 + Capture of Cloondadauv Castle, 137-141 + A tenant and a priest, 141-144 + Workmen's wages in Massachusetts compared with + the profits of a tenant farmer in Ireland, 146 + Loughrea, 148, 149 + Murder of Finlay, 150, 151 + The chrysoprase Lake of Loughrea, 154 + Lord Clanricarde's estate office, acreage, and rental, 155 + Woodford acreage and rental, 155,156 + Drive from Loughrea to Woodlawn, 156-160 + A Galway "jarvey" on the situation, 156-159 + Woodlawn and the Ashtown property, 160 + +CHAPTER XI. + Borris, March 2, 161 + Mr. Kavanagh, 161-163 + Borris House, 163-167 + A living Banshee, 165, 166 + Land Corporation--its mode of working, 167 + Meeting in Dublin, 1885, 168 + Rev. Mr. Cantwell, 168 + Lord Lansdowne's property at Luggacurren, 169 + Mr. Kavanagh's career, 170 + Books and papers at Borris, 171 + Strongbow, 172 + "The five bloods," 172, 173 + Genealogy of M'Morroghs and Kavanaghs, 173 + March 4, 174 + Protestant service read every morning, 174 + A Catholic gentleman's views, 175 + Relation of tenants to village despots, 176 + Would America make a State of Ireland? 177 + Land Acts since 1870, 178 + The O'Grady of Kilballyowen and his rental, 179 + Dispute with his tenants: its cause and effect, 180 + His circular to his tenantry, 181-186 + +CHAPTER XII. + Grenane House, March 5, 187 + Visit to Mr. Seigne, 187 + Beautiful situation of Grenane, 189 + A lady of the country, 189 + Mr. Seigne's experience of the tenants, 191-194 + The beauty of Woodstock, 194-198 + The watch of Waterloo, 197-200 + Curious discovery of stolen property, 200 + Dublin, March 6, 200 + State of deposits in the Savings Banks, 200-201 + Interest on "Plan of Campaign" funds, 202 + +CHAPTER XIII. + Dublin, March 8, 203 + Inch and the Coolgreany evictions, 203 + Sweet vale of Avoca, 204 + Dr. Dillon of Arklow, 204 + Fathers O'Neill and Dunphy, 205, 206 + Mr. Davitt watching the evictions, 207 + Lazy and thriftless tenants better off than before, 209 + A self-made committee, 211 + The Brooke estate, 212 + Sir Thomas Esmonde's house, 213 + An Arklow dinner, 214 + Dr. Dillon in his study, 215-217 + Visit to Glenart Castle, 217 + +CHAPTER XIV. + Dublin, March 9, 219 + Athy, 219 + A political jarvey, 220-225 + "Who is Mr. Gilhooly?" 221 + Lord Lansdowne's offer refused through pressure of the League, 226 + Mr. Kilbride, M.P., and Mr. Dunne, 226-228 + Lord Lansdowne's estate in Kerry, 228-231 + Plan of Campaign at Luggacurren, 231-236 + Interview with Father Maher, 236-239 + A "jarvey" on a J.P., 240 + "Railway amenities," 241 + Dublin, March 10, 242 + Mr. Brooke, 242-248 + Unreasonable tenants, 243, 244 + Size and rental of estate, 246 + Sub-commissioner's reduction reversed, 246, 247 + +CHAPTER XV. + Maryborough, 249 + Archbishop Croke, 249 + Interviews with labourers, 251-253 + Views of a successful country teacher, 254, 255 + A veteran of the '48, 256-260 + Amount of wages to men, 261 + The farmers and labourers and lawyers, 264, 265 + Dublin, June 23, 268 + Mr. Hamilton Stubber and Mr. Robert Staples, 268-270 + From Attanagh to Ballyragget, 270 + Case of "a little-good-for tenant," 271, 272 + Mr. Kough and his tenants, 273-277 + Mr. Richardson of Castle Comer, 277 + Position of the tenants, 282 + £70 a year for whisky, 282 + Kilkenny Castle, 282 + Mr. Rolleston of Delgany, 283-292 + John O'Leary, 285-292 + Boycotting private opinion, 292 + The League as now conducted, 295 + Poems and Ballads of "Young Ireland," 296 + Law Courts and Trinity College, 297 + American Civil War, 299-302 + Dublin, June 24, 302 + A dinner with officials, 303-306 + A priest earns over £20,000, 305, 306 + "Crowner's Quest Law," 309-311 + +CHAPTER XVI. + Belfast, June 25, 313 + Ulster in Irish history, 313 + Moira, 315 + Views of an Ulsterman, 315, 316 + Beauty of Belfast, 317, 318 + Its buildings, 319-321 + Dr. Hanna, 322-324 + Dr. Kane, 325 + June 26, 326 + Sir John Preston, 326-328 + Mr. Cameron, of Royal Irish Constabulary, 328 + Police parade, 328 + Belfast steamers, 329 + Scotland and America at work on Ireland, 330 + +EPILOGUE, p. 333-349 + +APPENDIX. + + NOTES-- + + F. The Moonlighters and Home Rule (pp. 10, 38), 351 + G. The Ponsonby Property (pp. 59-66), 353 + G2 The Glenbehy Eviction Fund (p. 12), 360 + G3 Home Rule and Protestantism (p. 68), 362 + H. Tully and the Woodford Evictions (p. 149), 364 + H2. Boycotting the Dead (p. 151), 370 + I. The Savings Banks (P.O.) (vol. i. p. 39, vol. ii. pp. 5 and 200), 371 + K. The Coolgreany Evictions (p. 216), 372 + L. A Ducal Supper in 1711 (p. 283), 374 + M. Letter from Mr. O'Leary (p. 291), 375 + N. Boycotting Private Opinion (p. 293), 377 + O. Boycotting by Crowner's Quest Law (p. 312), 382 + + + + + CHAPTER VII. + + +ROSSBEHY,[1] _Feb. 21._--We are here on the eve of battle! An "eviction" +is to be made to-morrow on the Glenbehy[1] estate of Mr. Winn, an uncle +of Lord Headley, so upon the invitation of Colonel Turner, who has come +to see that all is done decently and in order, I left Ennis with him at +7.40 A.M. for Limerick; the "city of the Liberator" for "the city of the +Broken Treaty." There we breakfasted at the Artillery Barracks. + +The officers showed us there the new twelve-pounder gun with its +elaborately scientific machinery, its Scotch sight, and its four-mile +range. I compared notes about the Trafalgar Square riots of February +1886 with an Irish officer who happened to have been on the opposite +side of Pall Mall from me at the moment when the mob, getting out of the +hand of my socialistic friend Mr. Hyndman, and advancing towards St. +James' Street and Piccadilly was broken by a skilful and very spirited +charge of the police. He gave a most humorous account of his own +sensations when he first came into contact with the multitude after +emerging from St. Paul's, where, as he put it, he had left the people +"all singing away like devils." But I found he quite agreed with me in +thinking that there was a visible nucleus of something like military +organisation in the mob of that day, which was overborne and, as it +were, smothered by the mere mob element before it came to trying +conclusions with the police. + +On our way to Limerick, Colonel Turner caught sight, at a station, of +Father Little, the parish priest of Six Mile Bridge, in County Clare, +and jumping out of the carriage invited him to get in and pursue his +journey with us, which he very politely did. Father Little is a tall +fine-looking man of a Saxon rather than a Celtic type, and I daresay +comes of the Cromwellian stock. He is a staunch and outspoken +Nationalist, and has been made rather prominent of late by his +championship of certain of his parishioners in their contest with their +landlord, Mr. H.V. D'Esterre, who lives chiefly at Bournemouth in +England, but owns 2833 acres in County Clare at Rosmanagher, valued at +£1625 a year. More than a year ago one of Father Little's parishioners, +Mr. Frost, successfully resisted a large force of the constabulary bent +on executing a process of ejectment against him obtained by Mr. +D'Esterre. + +Frost's holding was of 33 Irish, or, in round numbers, about 50 English, +acres, at a rental of £117, 10s., on which he had asked but had not +obtained an abatement. The Poor-Law valuation of the holding was £78, +and Frost estimated the value of his and his father's improvements, +including the homestead and the offices, or in other words his +tenant-right, at £400. The authorities sent a stronger body of +constables and ejected Frost. But as soon as they had left the place +Frost came back with his family, on the 28th Jan. 1887, and reoccupied +it. Of course proceedings were taken against him immediately, and a +small war was waged over the Frost farm until the 5th of September last, +when an expedition was sent against it, and it was finally captured, and +Frost evicted with his family. Upon this last occasion Father Little +(who gave me a very temperate but vigorous account of the whole affair) +distinguished himself by a most ingenious and original attempt to "hold +the fort." He chained himself to the main doorway, and stretching the +chains right and left secured them to two other doors. It was of this +refreshing touch of humour that I heard the other day at Abbeyleix as +happening not in Clare but in Kerry. + +Since his eviction Frost has been living, Father Little tells me, in a +wooden hut put up for him on the lands of a kinsman of the same name, +who is also a tenant of Mr. D'Esterre, and who has since been served by +his landlord with a notice of ejectment for arrears, although he had +paid up six months' dues two months only before the service. Father +Little charged the landlord in this case with prevarication and other +evasive proceedings in the course of his negotiations with the tenants; +and Colonel Turner did not contest the statements made by him in support +of his contention that the Rosmanagher difficulty might have been +avoided had the tenants been more fairly and more considerately dealt +with. It is strong presumptive evidence against the landlord that a +kinsman, Mr. Robert D'Esterre, is one of the subscribers to a fund +raised by Father Little in aid of the evicted man Frost. On the other +hand, as illustrating the condition of the tenants, it is noteworthy +that the Post-Office Savings Bank's deposits at Six-Mile Bridge rose +from £382, 17s. 10d. in 1880 to £934, 13s. 4d. in 1887. + +After breakfast we took a car and drove rapidly about the city for an +hour. With its noble river flowing through the very heart of the place, +and broadening soon into an estuary of the Atlantic, Limerick ought long +ago to have taken its place in the front rank of British ports dealing +with the New World. In the seventeenth century it was the fourth city of +Ireland, Boate putting it then next after Dublin, Galway, and Waterford. +Belfast at that time, he describes as a place hardly comparable "to a +small market-town in England." To-day Limerick has a population of some +forty thousand, and Belfast a population of more than two hundred +thousand souls. This change cannot be attributed solely, if at all, to +the "Protestant ascendency," nor yet to the alleged superiority of the +Northern over the Southern Irish in energy and thrift, For in the +seventeenth century Limerick was more important than Cork, whereas it +had so far fallen behind its Southern competitor in the eighteenth +century that it contained in 1781 but 3859 houses, while Cork contained +5295. To-day its population is about half as large as that of Cork. It +is a very well built city, its main thoroughfare, George Street, being +at least a mile in length, and a picturesque city also, thanks to the +island site of its most ancient quarter, the English Town, and to the +hills of Clare and Killaloe, which close the prospect of the surrounding +country. But the streets, though many of them are handsome, have a +neglected look, as have also the quays and bridges. One of my +companions, to whom I spoke of this, replied, "if they look neglected, +it's because they are neglected. Politics are the death of the place, +and the life of its publics."[2] + +As we approached the shores of the Atlantic from Limerick, the scenery +became very grand and beautiful. On the right of the railway the country +rolled and undulated away towards the Stacks, amid the spurs and slopes +of which, in the wood of Clonlish, Sanders, the Nuncio sent over to +organise Catholic Ireland against Elizabeth, miserably perished of want +and disease six years before the advent of the great Armada. To the +south-west rose the grand outlines of the Macgillicuddy's Reeks, the +highest points, I believe, in the South of Ireland. We established +ourselves at the County Kerry Club on our arrival in Tralee, which I +found to be a brisk prosperous-looking town, and quite well built. A +Nationalist member once gave me a gloomy notion of Tralee, by telling +me, when I asked him whether he looked forward with longing to a seat in +the Parliament of Ireland, that "when he was in Dublin now he always +thought of London, just as when he used to be in Tralee he always +thought of Dublin." But he did less than justice to the town upon the +Lee. We left it at half-past four in the train for Killorglin. The +little station there was full of policemen and soldiers, and knots of +country people stood about the platform discussing the morrow. There had +been some notion that the car-drivers at Killorglin might "boycott" the +authorities. But they were only anxious to turn an honest penny by +bringing us on to this lonely but extremely neat and comfortable +hostelry in the hills. + +We left the Sheriff and the escort to find their way as best they could +after us. + +Mrs. Shee, the landlady here, ushered us into a very pretty room hung +with little landscapes of the country, and made cheery by a roaring +fire. Two or three officers of the soldiers sent on here to prevent any +serious uproar to-morrow dined with us. + +The constabulary are in force, but in great good humour. They have no +belief that there will be any trouble, though all sorts of wild tales +were flying about Tralee before we left, of English members of +Parliament coming down to denounce the "Coercion" law, and of risings in +the hills, and I know not what besides. The agent of the Winn property, +or of Mr. Head of Reigate in Surrey, the mortgagee of the estate, who +holds a power of attorney from Mr. Winn, is here, a quiet, intelligent +young man, who has given me the case in a nut-shell. + +The tenant to be evicted, James Griffin, is the son and heir of one Mrs. +Griffin, who on the 5th of April 1854 took a lease of the lands known as +West Lettur from the then Lord Headley and the Hon. R. Winn, at the +annual rent of £32, 10s. This rent has since been reduced by a judicial +process to £26. In 1883 James Griffin, who was then, as he is now, an +active member of the local branch of the National League, and who was +imprisoned under Mr. Gladstone's Act of 1881 as a "suspect," was +evicted, being then several years in arrears. He re-entered unlawfully +immediately afterwards, and has remained in West Lettur unlawfully ever +since, actively deterring and discouraging other tenants from paying +their rents. He took a great part in promoting the refusal to pay which +led to the famous evictions of last year. As to these, it seems the +tenants had agreed, in 1886, to accept a proposition from Mr. Head, +remitting four-fifths of all their arrears upon payment of one year's +rent and costs. Mr. Sheehan, M.P., a hotel-keeper in Killarney, +intervened, advising the tenants that the Dublin Parliament would soon +be established, and would abolish "landlordism," whereupon they refused +to keep their agreement.[3] Sir Redvers Buller, who then filled the post +now held by Sir West Ridgway, seeing this alarming deadlock, urged Mr. +Head to go further, and offer to take a half-year's rent and costs. If +the tenants refused this Sir Redvers advised Mr. Head to destroy all +houses occupied by mere trespassers, such as Griffin, who, if they could +hold a place for twelve years, would acquire a title under the Statute +of Limitations. A negotiation conducted by Sir Redvers and Father +Quilter, P.P., followed, and Father Quilter, for the tenants, finally, +in writing, accepted Mr. Head's offer, under which, by the payment of +£865, they would be rid of a legal liability for £6177. The League again +intervened with bribes and threats, and Father Quilter found himself +obliged to write to Colonel Turner a letter in which he said, "Only +seventeen of the seventy tenants have sent on their rents to Mr. Roe +(the agent). Though promising that they would accept the terms, they +have withdrawn at the last moment from fulfilment.... I shall never +again during my time in Glenbehy interfere between a landlord and his +tenants. I have poor slaves who will not keep their word. Now let Mr. +Roe or any other agent in future deal with Glenbeighans as he likes." +The farms lie at a distance even from this inn, and very far therefore +from Killorglin, and the agent, knowing that the tenants would be +encouraged by Griffin and by Mr. Harrington, M.P., and others, to come +back into their holdings as soon as the officers withdrew, ordered the +woodwork of several cottages to be burned in order to prevent this. This +burning of the cottages, which were the lawful property of the +mortgagee, made a great figure in the newspaper reports, and +"scandalised the civilised world." The present agent thinks it was +impolitic on that account, but he has no doubt it was a good thing +financially for the evicted tenants. "You will see the shells of the +cottages to-morrow," he said, "and you will judge for yourself what they +were worth." But the sympathy excited by the illustrations of the cruel +conflagration and the heartrending descriptions of the reporters, +resulted in a very handsome subscription for the benefit of the tenants +of Glenbehy. General Sir William Butler, whose name came so prominently +before the public in connection with his failure to appear and give +evidence in a recent _cause célèbre_, and whose brother is a Resident +Magistrate in Kerry, was one of the subscribers. The fund thus raised +has been since administered by two trustees, Father Quilter, P.P., and +Mr. Shee, a son of our brisk little landlady here, who maintain out of +it very comfortably the evicted tenants. Not long ago a man in Tralee +tried to bribe the agent into having him evicted, that he might make a +claim on this fund! At Killorglin the Post-Office Savings Bank deposits, +which stood at £282, 15s. 9d. in 1880, rose in 1887 to £1299, 2s. 6d. +James Griffin, despite, or because, of the two evictions through which +he has passed, is very well off. He owns a very good horse and cart, and +seven or eight head of cattle. His arrears now amount to about £240, and +on being urged yesterday to make a proposition which might avoid an +eviction, he gravely offered to pay £8 of the current half-year's rent +in cash, and the remaining £5 in June, the landlord taking on himself +all the costs and giving him a clean receipt! This liberal proposition +was declined. The zeal of her son in behalf of the evicted tenants does +not seem to affect the amiable anxiety of our trim and energetic hostess +to make things agreeable here to the minions of the alien despotism. The +officers both of the police and of the military appear to be on the best +of terms with the whole household, and everything is going as merrily as +marriage bells on this eve of an eviction. + +TRALEE, _Wednesday evening, Feb. 22._--We rose early at Mrs. Shee's, +made a good breakfast, and set out for the scene of the day's work. It +was a glorious morning for Washington's birthday, and I could not help +imagining the amazement with which that stern old Virginian landlord +would have regarded the elaborate preparations thought necessary here in +Ireland in the year of our Lord 1888, to eject a tenant who owes two +hundred and forty pounds of arrears on a holding at twenty-six pounds a +year, and offers to settle the little unpleasantness by paying thirteen +pounds in two instalments! + +We had a five miles' march of it through a singularly wild and +picturesque region, the hills which lead up to the Macgillicuddy's Reeks +on our left, and on the right the lower hills trending to the salt water +of Dingle Bay. Our start had been delayed by the non-appearance of the +Sheriff, in aid of whom all this parade of power was made; but it turned +out afterwards that he had gone on without stopping to let Colonel +Turner know it. + +The air was so bracing and the scenery so fine that we walked most of +the way. Two or three cars drove past us, the police and the troops +making way for them very civilly, though some of the officers thought +they were taking some Nationalist leaders and some English +"sympathisers" to Glenbehy. One of the officers, when I commented upon +this, told me they never had much trouble with the Irish members. "Some +of them," he said, "talk more than is necessary, and flourish about; but +they have sense enough to let us go about our work without foolishly +trying to bother us. The English are not always like that." And he then +told me a story of a scene in which an English M.P., we will call Mr. +Gargoyle, was a conspicuous actor. Mr. Gargoyle being present either at +an eviction or a prohibited meeting, I didn't note which, with two or +three Irish members, all of them were politely requested to step on one +side and let the police march past. The Irish members touched their hats +in return to the salute of the officer, and drew to one side of the +road. But Mr. Gargoyle defiantly planted himself in the middle of the +road. The police, marching four abreast, hesitated for a moment, and +then suddenly dividing into two columns marched on. The right-hand man +of the first double file, as he went by, just touched the M.P. with his +shoulder, and thereby sent him up against the left-hand man of the +corresponding double file, who promptly returned the attention. And in +this manner the distinguished visitor went gyrating through the whole +length of the column, to emerge at the end of it breathless, hatless, +and bewildered, to the intense and ill-suppressed delight of his Irish +colleagues. + +Our hostess's son, the trustee of the Eviction Fund, was on one of the +cars which passed us, with two or three companions, who proved to be +"gentlemen of the Press." We passed a number of cottages and some larger +houses on the way, the inmates of which seemed to be minding their own +business and taking but a slight interest in the great event of the day. +We made a little detour at one of the finest points on the road to visit +"Winn's Folly," a modern mediæval castle of considerable size, upon a +most enchanting site, with noble views on every side, quite impossible +to be seen through its narrow loopholed and latticed windows. The castle +is extremely well built, of a fine stone from the neighbourhood, and +with a very small expenditure might be made immediately habitable. But +no one has ever lived in it. It has only been occupied as a temporary +barrack by the police when sent here, and the largest rooms are now +littered with straw for the use of the force. At the beginning of the +century, and for many years afterwards, Lord and Lady Headley lived on +the estate, and kept a liberal house. Their residence was on a fine +point running out into the bay, but, I am told, the sea has now invaded +it, and eaten it away. In 1809 the acreage of this Glenbehy property was +8915 Irish acres or 14,442 English acres, set down under Bath's +valuation at £2299, 17s. 6d. Between 1830 and 1860 the rental averaged +£5000 a year, and between these years £17,898, 14s. 5d. were expended by +the landlord in improvements upon the property. This castle, which we +visited, must have involved since then an outlay of at least £10,000 in +the place. + +The present Lord Headley, only a year or two ago, went through the +Bankruptcy Court, and the Hon. Rowland Winn, his uncle, the titular +owner of Glenbehy, is set down among the Irish landlords as owning +13,932 Irish acres at a rental of £1382. + +After we passed the castle we began to hear the blowing of rude horns +from time to time on the distant hills. These were signals to the people +of our approach, and gave quite the air of an invasion to our +expedition. We passed the burned cottages of last year just before +reaching Mr. Griffin's house at West Lettur. They were certainly not +large cottages, and I saw but three of them. We found the Sheriff at +West Lettur. The police and the soldiers drew a cordon around the place, +within which no admittance was to be had except on business; and the +myrmidons of the law going into the house with the agent held a final +conference with the tenant, of which nothing came but a renewal of his +previous offer. Then the work of eviction began. There was no attempt at +a resistance, and but for the martial aspect of the forces, and an +occasional blast of a horn from the hills, or the curious noises made +from time to time by a small concourse of people, chiefly women, +assembled on the slope of an adjoining tenancy, the proceedings were as +dull as a parish meeting. What most struck me about the affair was the +patience and good-nature of the officers. In the two hours and a half +which we spent at West Lettur a New York Sheriff's deputies would have +put fifty tenants with all their bags and baggage out of as many houses +into the street. In fact it is very likely that at least that number of +New York tenants were actually so ousted from their houses during this +very time. + +The evicted Mr. Griffin was a stout, stalwart man of middle age, +comfortably dressed, with the air rather of a citizen than of a farmer, +who took the whole thing most coolly, as did also his women-kind. All of +them were well dressed, and they superintended the removal and piling up +of their household goods as composedly as if they were simply moving out +of one house into another. The house itself was a large comfortable +house of the country, and it was amply furnished. + +I commented on Griffin's indifference to the bailiff, a quiet, +good-natured man. + +"Oh, he's quite familiar," was the reply; "it's the third time he's been +evicted! I believe's going to America." + +"Oh! he will do very well," said a gentleman who had joined the +expedition like myself to see the scene. "He is a shrewd chap, and not +troubled by bashfulness. He sat on a Board of Guardians with a man I +knew four years ago, and one day he read out his own name, 'James +Griffin,' among a list of applicants for relief at Cahirciveen. The +chairman looked up, and said, 'Surely that is not your name you are +reading, is it?' 'It is, indeed,' replied Griffin, 'and I am as much in +need of relief as any one!' Perhaps you'll be surprised to hear he +didn't get it. This is a good holding he had, and he used to do pretty +well with it--not in his mother's time only of the flush prices, but in +his own. It was the going to Kilmainham that spoiled him." + +"How did that spoil him?" + +"Oh, it made a great man of him, being locked up. He was too well +treated there. He got a liking for sherry and bitters, and he's never +been able to make his dinner since without a nip of them. Mrs. Shee +knows that well." + +To make an eviction complete and legal here, everything belonging to the +tenant, and every live creature must be taken out of the house. A cat +may save a house as a cat may save a derelict ship. Then the Sheriff +must "walk" over the whole holding. All this takes time. There was an +unobtrusive search for arms too going on all the time. Three ramrods +were found hidden in a straw-bed--two of which showed signs of recent +use. But the guns had vanished. An officer told me that not long ago two +revolvers were found in a corner of the thatch of a house; but the +cartridges for them were only some time afterwards discovered neatly +packed away in the top of a bedroom wall. It is not the ownership of +these arms, it is the careful concealment of them which indicates +sinister intent. One of the constables brought out three "Moonlighters' +swords" found hidden away in the house. One of these Colonel Turner +showed me. It was a reversal of the Scriptural injunction, being a +ploughshare beaten into a weapon, and a very nasty weapon of offence, +one end of it sharpened for an ugly thrust, the other fashioned into +quite a fair grip. While I was examining this trophy there was a stir, +and presently two of the gentlemen who had passed us on Mr. Shee's car +came rather suddenly out of the house in company with two or three +constables. + +They were representatives, they said, of the Press, and as such desired +to be allowed to remain. Colonel Turner replied that this could not be, +and, in fact, no one had been suffered to enter the house except the +law-officers, the agent, and the constables. So the representatives of +the Press were obliged to pass outside of the lines, one of the +constables declaring that they had got into the house through a hole in +the back wall! + +Shortly after this incident there arose a considerable noise of groaning +and shouting from the hill-side beyond the highway, and presently a +number of people, women and children predominating, appeared coming down +towards the precincts of the house. They were following a person in a +clerical dress, who proved to be Father Quilter, the parish priest, who +had denounced his people to Colonel Turner as "poor slaves" of the +League! A colloquy followed between Father Quilter and the policemen of +the cordon. This was brought to a close by Mr. Roche, the resident +magistrate, who went forward, and finding that Father Quilter wished to +pass the cordon, politely but firmly informed him that this could not be +done. "Not if I am the bearer of a telegram for the lawyer?" asked +Father Quilter, in a loud and not entirely amiable tone. "Not on any +terms whatever," responded the magistrate. Father Quilter still +maintaining his ground, the women crowded in around and behind him, the +men bringing up the rear at a respectable distance, and the small boys +shouting loudly. For a moment faint hopes arose within me that I was +about to witness one of the .exciting scenes of which I have more than +once read. But only for a moment. The magistrate ordered the police to +advance. As they drew near the wall with an evident intention of going +over it into the highway, Father Quilter and the women fell back, the +boys and men retreated up the opposite hill, and the brief battle of +Glenbehy was over. + +A small messenger bearing a telegram then emerged from the crowd, and +showing his telegram, was permitted to pass. Father Quilter, in a loud +voice, commented upon this, crying out, "See now your consistency! You +said no one should pass, and you let the messenger come in!" To this +sally no reply was returned. After a little the priest, followed by most +of the people, went up the hill to the holding of another tenant, and +there, as the police came in and reported, held a meeting. From time to +time cries were heard in the distance, and ever and anon the blast of a +horn came from some outlying hill. + +But no notice was taken of these things by the police, and when the +tedious formalities of the law had all been gone through with, a squad +of men were put in charge of the house and the holding, the rest of the +army re-formed for the march back, our cars came up, and we left West +Lettur. Seeing a number of men come down the hill, as the column +prepared to move, Mr. Roche, making his voice tremendous, after the +fashion of a Greek chorus, commanded the police to arrest and handcuff +any riotous person making provocative noises. This had the desired +effect, and the march back began in silence. When the column was fairly +in the road, "boos" and groans went up from knots of men higher up the +hill, but no heed was taken of these, and no further incident occurred. +I shall be curious to see whether the story of this affair can possibly +be worked up into a thrilling narrative. + +We lunched at Mrs. Shee's, where no sort of curiosity was manifested +about the proceedings at West Lettur, and I came back here with Colonel +Turner by another road, which led us past one of the loveliest lakes I +have ever seen--Lough Caragh. Less known to fame than the much larger +Lake of Killarney, it is in its way quite worthy of comparison with any +of the lesser lakes of Europe. It is not indeed set in a coronal of +mountains like Orta, but its shores are well wooded, picturesque, and +enlivened by charming seats--now, for the most part, alas!--abandoned by +their owners. We had a pleasant club dinner here this evening, after +which came in to see me Mr. Hussey, to whom I had sent a letter from Mr. +Froude. Few men, I imagine, know this whole region better than Mr. +Hussey. Some gentlemen of the country joined in the conversation, and +curious stories were told of the difficulty of getting evidence in +criminal cases. What Froude says of the effect of the prohibitive and +protection policy in Ireland upon the morals of the people as to +smuggling must be said, I fear, of the effect of the Penal Laws against +Catholics upon their morals as to perjury. It is not surprising that the +peasants should have been educated into the state of mind of the +Irishman in the old American story, who, being solicited to promise his +vote when he landed in New York, asked whether the party which sought it +was for the Government or against it. Against it, he was told, "Then +begorra you shall have my vote, for I'm agin the Government whatever it +is." One shocking case was told of a notorious and terrible murder here +in Kerry. An old man and his son, so poor that they lay naked in their +beds, were taken out and shot by a party of Moonlighters for breaking a +boycott. They were left for dead, and their bodies thrown upon a +dunghill. The boy, however, was still alive when they were found, and it +was thought he might recover. The magistrates questioned him as to his +knowledge of the murderers. The boy's mother stood behind the +magistrate, and when the question was put, held up her finger in a +warning manner at the poor lad. She didn't wish him to "peach," as, if +he lived, the friends of the murderers would make it impossible for them +to keep their holding and live on it. The lad lied, and died with the +lie on his lips. Who shall sit in judgment on that wretched mother and +her son? But what rule can possibly be too stern to crush out the +terrorism which makes such things possible? + +And what right have Englishmen to expect their dominion to stand in +Ireland when their party leaders for party ends shake hands with men who +wink at and use this terrorism? It has so wrought upon the population +here, that in another case, in which the truth needed by justice and the +fears of a poor family trembling for their substance and their lives +came thus into collision, an Irish Judge did not hesitate to warn the +jury against allowing themselves to be influenced by "the usual family +lie"! + +A magistrate told us a curious story, which recalls a case noted by Sir +Walter Scott, about the detection of a murderer, who lay long in wait +for a certain police sergeant, obnoxious to the "Moonlighters," and +finally shot him dead in the public street of Loughrea, after dark on a +rainy night, as he was returning from the Post-Office on one side of the +street to the Police Barracks on the other. The town and the +neighbouring country were all agog about the matter, but no trace could +be got until the Dublin detectives came down three days after the +murder. It had rained more or less every one of these days, and the +pools of water were still standing in the street, as on the night of the +murder. One of the Dublin officers closely examining the highway saw a +heavy footprint in the coarse mud at the bottom of one of these pools. +He had the water drawn off, and made out clearly, from the print in the +mud, that the brogan worn by the foot which made it had a broken +sole-piece turned over under the foot. By this the murderer was +eventually traced, captured, tried, and found guilty. + +Mr. Morphy, I find, is coming down from Dublin to conduct the +prosecution in the case of the Crown against the murderers of +Fitzmaurice, the old man, so brutally slain the other day near Lixnaw, +in the presence of his daughter, for taking and farming a farm given up +by his thriftless brother. "He will find," said one of the company, +"the mischief done in this instance also by prematurely pressing for +evidence. The girl Honora, who saw her father murdered, never ought to +have been subjected to any inquiry at first by any one, least of all by +the local priest. Her first thought inevitably was that if she intimated +who the men were, they would be screened, and she would suffer. Now she +is recovering her self-possession and coming round, and she will tell +the truth." + +"Meanwhile," said a magistrate, "the girl and her family are all +'boycotted,' and that, mark you, by the priest, as well as by the +people. The girl's life would be in peril were not these scoundrels +cowards as well as bullies. Two staunch policemen--Irishmen and +Catholics both of them--are in constant attendance, with orders to +prevent any one from trying to intimidate or to tamper with her. A +police hut is putting up close to the Fitzmaurice house. The Nationalist +papers haven't a word to say for this poor girl or her murdered father. +But they are always putting in some sly word in behalf of Moriarty and +Hayes, the men accused of the murder." + +"Furthermore," said another guest, "these two men are regularly supplied +while in prison with special meals by Mrs. Tangney. Who foots the bills? +That is what she won't tell, nor has the Head-Constable so far been able +accurately to ascertain. All we know is that the friends of the +prisoners haven't the money to do it." + +Late in the evening came in a tall fine-looking Kerry squire, who told +us, _à propos_ of the Fitzmaurice murder, that only a day or two ago a +very decent tenant of his, who had taken over a holding from a +disreputable kinsman, intending to manage it for the benefit of this +kinsman's family, came to him and said he must give it up, as the +Moonlighters had threatened him if he continued to hold it. + +A man of substance in Tralee gave me some startling facts as to the +local administration here. In Tralee Union, he said, there were in 1879 +eighty-seven persons receiving outdoor relief, at a cost to the Union of +£30, 17s. 11d., being an average per head of 7s. 1d., and 1879 was a +very bad year, the worst since the great famine year, 1847. A +Nationalist Board was elected in 1880, and a Nationalist chairman in +1884. 1884 was a very good year, but in that year no fewer than 3434 +persons received outdoor relief, at a cost of £2534, 13s. 10d., making +an average per head of 14s. 9d.! And at the present time £5000 nominal +worth of dishonoured cheques of the authorities were flying all over the +county! + +"On whom," I asked, "does the burden fall of these levies and +extravagances?" + +"On the landlords, not on the tenants," he promptly replied. "The +landlord pays the whole of the rates on all holdings of less than £4 a +year, and on all land which is either really or technically in his own +possession. He also pays one-half of the rates on all the rest of his +property." + +"Then, in a case like that of Griffin's, evicted at Glenbehy, with +arrears going back to 1883, who would pay the rates?" + +"The landlord of course!"[4] + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +CORK, _Thursday, Feb. 23d._--We left Tralee this morning. It was +difficult to recognise the events yesterday witnessed by us at Glenbehy +in the accounts which we read of them to-day when we got the newspapers. + +As these accounts are obviously intended to be read, not in Ireland, +where nobody seems to take the least interest in Irish affairs beyond +his own bailiwick, but in England and America, it is only natural, I +suppose, that they should be coloured to suit the taste of the market +for which they are destined. It is astonishing how little interest the +people generally show in the newspapers. The Irish make good journalists +as they make good soldiers; but most of the journalists who now +represent Irish constituencies at Westminster find their chief field of +activity, I am told, not in Irish but in British or in American +journals. Mr. Roche, R.M., who travelled with us as far as Castle +Island, where we left him, was much less moved by the grotesque accounts +given in the local journals of his conduct yesterday than by Mr. +Gladstone's "retractation" of the extraordinary attack which he made the +other day upon Mr. Roche himself, and four other magistrates by name. + +"The retractation aggravates the attack," he said. + +When one sees what a magistrate now represents in Ireland, it certainly +is not easy to reconcile an inconsiderate attack upon the character and +conduct of such an officer with the most elementary ideas of good +citizenship. + +After Mr. Roche left us, a gentleman in the carriage, who is interested +in some Castle Island property, told us that nothing could be worse than +the state of that region. Open defiance of the moral authority of the +clergy is as rife there, he says, as open defiance of the civil +authorities. The church was not long ago broken into, and the sacred +vestments were defiled; and, but the other day, a young girl of the +place came to a magistrate and asked him to give her a summons against +the parish priest "for assaulting her." The magistrate, a Protestant, +but a personal friend of the priest, esteeming him for his fidelity to +his duties, asked the girl what on earth she meant. She proceeded with +perfect coolness to say that the priest had impertinently interfered +with her, "assaulted her," and told her to "go home," when he found her +sitting in a lonely part of the road with her young man, rather late at +night! For this, the girl, professing to be a Catholic, actually wanted +the Protestant magistrate to have her parish priest brought into his +court! He told the girl plainly what he thought of her conduct, +whereupon she went away, very angry, and vowing vengeance both against +the priest and against him. + +This same gentleman said that at the Bodyke evictions, of which so much +has been heard, the girls and women swarmed about the police using +language so revoltingly obscene that the policemen blushed--such +language, he said, as was never heard from decent Irishwomen in the days +of his youth. + +Of this business of evictions, he said, the greatest imaginable +misrepresentations are made in the press and by public speakers. "You +have just seen one eviction yourself," he said, "and you can judge for +yourself whether that can be truly described in Mr. Gladstone's language +as a 'sentence of death.' The people that were put out of these burned +houses you saw, houses that never would have needed to be burned, had +Harrington and the other Leaguers allowed the people to keep their +pledges given Sir Redvers Buller, those very people are better off now +than they were before they were evicted, in so far as this, that they +get their food and drink and shelter without working for it, and I'm +sorry to say that the Government and the League, between them, have been +soliciting half of Ireland for the last six or eight years to think that +sort of thing a heaven upon earth. An eviction in Ireland in these days +generally means just this, that the fight between a landlord and the +League has come to a head. If the tenant wants to be rid of his holding, +or if he is more afraid of the League than of the law, why, out he goes, +and then he is a victim of heartless oppression; but if he is +well-to-do, and if he thinks he will be protected, he takes the eviction +proceedings just for a notice to stop palavering and make a settlement, +and a settlement is made. The ordinary Irish tenant don't think anything +more of an eviction than Irish gentlemen used to think of a duel; but +you can never get English people to understand the one any more than the +other!" + +The fine broad streets which Cork owes to the filling up and bridging +over of the canals which in the last century made her a kind of Irish +Venice, give the city a comely and even stately aspect. But they are not +much better kept and looked after than the streets of New York. And they +are certainly less busy and animated than when I last was here, five +years ago. All the canals, however, are not filled up or bridged over. +From my windows, in a neat comfortable little private hotel on +Morrison's Quay, I look down upon the deck of a small barque, moored +well up among the houses. The hospitable and dignified County Club is +within two minutes' walk of my hostelry, and the equally hospitable and +more bustling City Club, but a little farther off, at the end of the +South Mall. At luncheon to-day a gentleman who was at Kilkenny with Mr. +Gladstone on the occasion of his visit to that city told me a story too +good to be lost. The party were eight in number, and on their return to +Abbeyleix they naturally looked out for an empty railway carriage. The +train was rather full, but in one compartment my informant descried a +dignitary, whom he knew, of the Protestant Church of Ireland, its only +occupant. He went up and saluted the Dean, and, pointing to his +companions, asked if he would object to changing his place in the train, +which would give them a compartment to themselves. The Dean courteously, +and indeed briskly, assented, when he saw that Mr. Gladstone was one of +the party. + +After the train moved off, Mr. Gladstone said, "Was not that gentleman +who so kindly vacated his place for us a clergyman?" + +"Yes." "I hope he won't think I have disestablished him again!" + +At the next station, my informant getting out for a moment to thank the +Dean again for his civility, and chat with him, repeated Mr. Gladstone's +remark. + +"Oh!" said the Dean; "you may tell him I don't mind his disestablishing +me again; for he didn't disendow me; he didn't confiscate my ticket!" + +With this gentleman was another from Kerry, who tells me there is a +distinct change for the better already visible in that county, which he +attributes to the steady action of the Dublin authorities in enforcing +the law. + +"The League Courts," he said, "are ceasing to be the terror they used to +be." + +I asked what he meant by the "League Courts," when he expressed his +astonishment at my not knowing that it was the practice of the League to +hold regular Courts, before which the tenants are summoned, as if by a +process of the law, to explain their conduct, when they are charged with +paying their rents without the permission of the Local League. In his +part of Kerry, he tells me, these Courts used not very long ago to sit +regularly every Sunday. The idea, he says, is as old as the time of the +United Irishmen, who used to terrorise the country just in the same way. +A man whom he named, a blacksmith, acted as a kind of "Law Lord," and to +him the chairmen of the different local "Courts" used to refer cases +heard before them![5] + +All this was testified to openly two years ago, before Lord Cowper's +Commission, but no decisive action has ever been taken by the Government +to put a stop to the scandal, and relieve the tenants from this open +tyranny. These Courts enforced, and still enforce, their decrees by +various forms of outrage, ranging "from the boycott," in its simplest +forms up to direct outrages upon property and the person. + +"This dual Government business," he said, "can only end in a duel +between the two Governments, and it must be a duel to the death of one +or the other." + +To-night at dinner I had a most interesting conversation with Mr. +Colomb, Assistant Inspector-General of the Constabulary, who is here +engaged with Mr. Cameron of Belfast, and Colonel Turner, in +investigating the affair at Mitchelstown. Mr. Colomb was at Killarney at +the time of the Fenian rising under "General O'Connor" in 1867--a rising +which was undoubtedly an indirect consequence of our own Civil War in +America. Warning came to two magistrates, of impending trouble from +Cahirciveen. Upon this Mr. Colomb immediately ordered the arrest of all +passengers to arrive that day at Killarney by the "stage-car" from that +place. When the car came in at night, it brought only one person--"an +awful-looking ruffian he was," said Mr. Colomb, "whom, by his +square-toed shoes, we knew to be just arrived from your side of the +water." + +He was examined, and said he was a commercial traveller, and that he had +only one letter about him, a business letter, addressed to "J. D. +Sheehan." + +"Have you any objection to show us that letter?" + +"Certainly not," he replied very coolly, and, taking it out of his +pocket, he walked toward a table on which stood a candle, as if to read +it. A gentleman who was closely watching him, caught him by the wrist, +just as he was putting the letter to the flame, and saved it. It was +addressed to J. D. Sheehan, Esq., Killarney [Present], and ran as +follows: + + "_Feb. 12th, Morning_. + + "MY DEAR SHEEHAN,--I have the honour to introduce to you Captain + Mortimer Moriarty. He will be of great assistance to you, and I + have told him all that is to be done until I get to your place. The + Private _Spys_ are very active this morning. Unless they smell a + rat all will be done without any trouble. + + "Success to you. Hoping to meet soon,--Yours as ever. + + "(Signed) JOHN J. O'CONNOR."[6] + +Despatches were at once sent off to the authorities at different points. +They were all transmitted, except to Cahirciveen, the wires to which +place were found to have been cut. Mr. Colomb--who had a force of but +seventeen men in the town of Killarney--saw the uselessness of trying to +communicate with the officer at Cahirciveen, but was so strongly urged +by the magistrates that he unwillingly consented to endeavour to do so, +and a mounted orderly was sent. Just after this unfortunate officer had +passed Glenbehy (the scene of the eviction I have just witnessed) he was +shot by some of O'Connor's party, whom he tried to pass in the dark, and +who were marching on Killarney, and fell from his horse, which galloped +off. He managed to crawl to a neighbouring cottage, where he was not +long after found by "General O'Connor" and some of his followers. The +wounded man was kindly treated by O'Connor, who had him examined for +despatches, but prevented one of his men from shooting him dead, as he +lay on the ground, and had his wounds as well attended to as was +possible. There was no response in the country to the Kerry rising, such +as it was, because the intended seizure of Chester Castle by the Fenians +failed, but O'Connor was not captured, though great efforts were made to +seize him. How he escaped is not known to this day. + +At that time, as always in emergencies, Mr. Colomh says the Constabulary +behaved with exemplary coolness, courage, and fidelity. His position +gives him a very thorough knowledge of the force, which is almost +entirely recruited from the body of the Irish people. Of late years not +a few men of family, reduced in fortune, have taken service in it. Among +these has been mentioned to me a young Irishman of title, and of an +ancient race, who is a sergeant in the force, and who recently declined +to accept a commission, as his increased expenses would make it harder +for him to support his two sisters. Another constable in the ranks +represents a family illustrious in the annals of England four centuries +ago. + +As to the _morale_ of the force, he cites one eloquent fact. Out of a +total of more than 13,000 men, the cases of drunkenness, proved or +admitted, average no more than fourteen a week! On many days absolutely +no such cases occur. This is really amazing when one thinks how many of +the men are isolated on lonely posts all over the island, exposed to all +sorts of weather, and cut off from the ordinary resources and amusements +of social life. + +CORK, _Friday, Feb. 24th._--This morning after breakfast I met in the +South Mall a charming ecclesiastic, whose acquaintance I made in Rome +while I was attending the great celebration there in 1867 of St. Peter's +Day. Father Burke introduced me to him after the Pontifical Mass at San +Paolo fuori le Mure; and we had a delightful symposium that afternoon. I +walked with him to his lodgings, talking over those "days long +vanished," and the friend whose genius made them, like the suppers of +Plato, "a joy for ever." He is sorely troubled now by the attitude of a +portion of the clergy in his part of Ireland, which is one almost of +open hostility, he says, to the moral authority of the Church, and +indicates the development of a class of priests moving in the direction +of the "conventional priests," by whom the Church was disgraced during +the darkest days of the French Revolution of 1793. + +Almost more mischievous than these men, he thinks, who must eventually +go the way of their kind in times past, are the timid priests, for the +most part parish priests, who go in fear of their violent curates, and +of the politicians who tyrannise their flocks. He showed me a letter +written to him last week by one of these, whose parish is just now in a +tempest over the Plan of Campaign. Certainly a most remarkable letter. +In it the writer frankly says, "There is no justification for the Plan +of Campaign on this property. + +"I assented to putting it in force here," he goes on, "because I did not +at the time know the facts of the case, and took them on trust from +persons who, I find, have practised upon my confidence. What am I to do? +I am made to appear as a consenting party now, and, indeed, an assisting +agent in action, which I certainly was led to believe right and +necessary, but which upon the facts I now see involves much injustice +to ---- (naming the landlord), and I fear positive ruin to worthy men and +families of my people. I shall be grateful and glad of your counsel in +these most distressing circumstances." + +"What can any one do to help such a man?" said my friend. "The +rebellious and unruly in the Church, be they priests or laymen, can only +in the end damage themselves. _Tu es Petrus_; and revolt, like schism, +is a devil which only carries away those of whom it gets possession out +of the Church and into the sea. But a weak sentinel on the wall or at +the gate who drops his musket to wipe his eyes, that is a thing for +tears!" + +He asked me to come and see him if possible in his own county, and he +has promised to send me letters to-day for priests who will he glad to +tell me what they know only too well of the pressure put upon the better +sort of the people by the organised idlers and mischief-makers in Clare +and Kerry. + +To-day at the City Club, I made the acquaintance of the Town-Clerk of +Cork, Mr. Alexander M'Carthy, a staunch Nationalist and Home Ruler, who +holds his office almost by a sort of hereditary tenure, having been +appointed to it in 1859 in succession to his father. He gave me many +interesting particulars as to the municipal history and administration +of Cork, and showed me some of the responses he is receiving to a kind +of circular letter sent by the municipality to the town governments of +England, touching the recent proceedings against the Mayor. So far these +responses have not been very sympathetic. He invited me to lunch here +with him to-morrow, and visit some of the most interesting points in and +around the city. Here, too, I met Colonel Spaight, Inspector of the +Local Government Board, who gives me a startling account of the increase +of the public burdens. Twenty years ago there were no persons whatever +seeking outdoor relief in Cork. This year, out of a total population of +145,216, there are 3775 persons here receiving indoor relief, and 4337 +receiving outdoor relief, making in all 8112, or nearly 6 per cent. of +the inhabitants. This proportion is swelled by the influx of people from +other regions seeking occupation here, which they do not find, or simply +coming here because they are sure of relief. This state of things +illustrates not so much the decay of industry in Cork as the development +of a spirit of mendicancy throughout Ireland. In the opinion of many +thoughtful people, this began with the Duchess of Marlborough's Fund, +and with the Mansion House Fund. Colonel Spaight remembers that in +Strokestown Union, Roscommon, when the guardians there received a supply +of one hundred tons of seed potatoes, they distributed eighty tons, and +were then completely at a loss what to do with the remaining twenty +tons. Mr. Parnell and Mr. O'Kelly, however, came to Roscommon, and the +latter made a speech out of the hotel window to the people, advising +them to apply for more, and take all they could get. "With a stroke of a +pen," he said, "we'll wipe out the seed rate!" Whereupon the +applications for seed rose to six hundred tons! + +The Labourers Act, passed by the British Parliament for the benefit of +the Irish labourers, who get but scant recognition of their wants and +wishes from the tenant farmers, is not producing the good results +expected from it, mainly because it is perverted to all sorts of +jobbery. Only last week Colonel Spaight had to hand in to the Local +Government Board a report on certain schemes of expenditure under this +Act, prepared by the Board of Guardians of Tralee. These schemes +contemplated the erection of 196 cottages in 135 electoral divisions of +the Union. This meant, of course, so much money of the ratepayers to be +turned over to local contractors. Colonel Spaight on inspection found +that of the 196 proposed cottages, the erection of 61 had been forbidden +by the sanitary authorities, the notices for the erection of 23 had been +wrongly served, 20 were proposed to be erected on sites not adjoining a +public road, and no necessity had been shown for erecting 40 of the +others. He accordingly recommended that only 32 be allowed to be +erected! For a small town like Tralee this proposition to put up 196 +buildings at the public expense where only 32 were needed is not bad. It +has the right old Tammany Ring smack, and would have commanded, I am +sure, the patronising approval of the late Mr. Tweed. + +I mentioned it to-night at the County Club, when a gentleman said that +this morning at Macroom a serious "row" had occurred between the local +Board of Guardians there and a great crowd of labourers. The labourers +thronged the Board-room, demanding the half-acre plots of land which had +been promised them. The Guardians put them off, promising to attend to +them when the regular business of the meeting was over. So the poor +fellows were kept waiting for three mortal hours, at the end of which +time they espied the elected Nationalist members of the Board subtly +filing out of the place. This angered them. They stopped the fugitives, +blockaded the Board-room, and forced the Guardians to appoint a +committee to act upon their demands. + +It is certainly a curious fact that, so far, in Ireland I have seen no +decent cottages for labourers, excepting those put up at their own +expense on their own property by landlords. + +I dined to-night at the County Club with Captain Plunkett, a most +energetic, spirited, and well-informed resident magistrate, a brother of +the late Lord Louth,--still remembered, I dare say, at the New York +Hotel as the only Briton who ever really mastered the mystery of +concocting a "cocktail,"--and an uncle of the present peer. We had a +very cheery dinner, and a very clever lawyer, Mr. Shannon, gave us an +irresistible reproduction of a charge delivered by an Irish judge famous +for shooting over the heads of juries, who sent twelve worthy citizens +of Galway out of their minds by bidding them remember, in a case of +larceny, that they could not find the prisoner guilty unless they were +quite sure "as to the _animus furandi_ and the _asportavit_." + +_Saturday, Feb. 25._--I had an interesting talk this morning at the +County Club with a gentleman from Limerick on the subject of +"boycotting." I told him what I had seen at Edenvale of the practice as +applied to a forlorn and helpless old woman, for the crime of standing +by her "boycotted" son. "You think this an extreme case," he said, "but +you are quite mistaken. It is a typical case certainly, but it gives you +only an inadequate idea of the scope given to this infernal machinery. +The 'boycott' is now used in Ireland as the Inquisition was used in +Spain,--to stifle freedom of thought and action. It is to-day the chief +reliance of the National League for keeping up its membership, and +squeezing subscriptions out of the people. If you want proof of this," +he added, "ask any Nationalist you know whether members of the League in +the country allow farmers who are not members to associate with them in +any way. I can cite you a case at Ballingarry, in my county, where last +summer a resolution of the League was published and put on the Chapel +door, that members of the National League were thenceforth to have no +dealings or communication with any person not a member. This I saw with +my own eyes, and it was matter of public notoriety." + +I lunched at the City Club with Mr. M'Carthy. Sir Daniel O'Sullivan, +formerly Mayor of Cork, whose views of Home Rule seem to differ widely +from those of his successor, now incarcerated here, was one of the +company. In the course of an animated but perfectly good-natured +discussion of the Land Law question between two other gentlemen present, +one of them, a strong Nationalist, smote his Unionist opponent very +neatly under the fifth rib. The latter contending that it was monstrous +to interfere by law with the principle of freedom of contract, the +Nationalist responded, "That cannot be; it must be right and legitimate +to do it, for the Imperial Parliament has done it four times within +seventeen years!" + +I walked with Mr. M'Carthy to his apartments, where he showed me many +curious papers and volumes bearing on municipal law and municipal +history in Ireland. Among these, two most elaborate and interesting +volumes, being the Council Books of Cork, Youghal, and Kinsale, from +1610 to 1659, 1666 to 1687, and 1690 to 1800. The records for the years +not enumerated have perished, that is, for the first five or six years +after the Restoration, and for the years just preceding and just +following the fall of James II. These volumes take one back to the +condition of Southern Ireland immediately after English greed and +intrigue had sapped the foundations of the peace which followed the +submission of the great Earl of Tyrone, and brought about the flight to +the Continent of that chieftain, and of his friend and ally, the Earl of +Tyrconnell. + +They give us no picture, unfortunately, of the closing years of +Elizabeth's long struggle to establish the English power, or of the +occupation of Kinsale by the Spanish in the name of the Pope. But there +is abundant evidence in them of the theological hatred which so +embittered the conflict of races in Ireland during the seventeenth +century. + +It was a relief to turn from these to a solemn controversy waged in our +own times between Cork and Limerick over a question of municipal +precedence, in which Mr. M'Carthy did battle for the City of the Galley +and the Towers[7] against the City of the Gateway and Cathedral dome. +The truth seems to be that King John gave charters to both cities, but +to Cork twelve years earlier than to Limerick. Speaking of this contest, +by the way, with a loyalist of Cork to-night, I observed that it was +almost as odd to find such a question hotly disputed between two +Nationalist cities as to see the champions of Irish independence +marching under the banner of the harp, which was invented for Ireland by +Henry VIII. + +"I don't know why you call Cork a Nationalist city," he replied, "for +Parnell and Maurice Healy were returned for it by a clear minority of +the voters. If all the voters had gone to the polls, they would both +have been beaten." + +A curious statement certainly, and worth looking into. Mr. M'Carthy gave +me also much information as to the working of the municipal system here, +and a copy of the rules which govern the debates of the Town Council. +One of these might be adopted with advantage in other assemblies, to +wit, "that no member be permitted to occupy the time of the Council for +more than ten minutes." + +There is an important difference between the parliamentary and the +municipal constituencies of Cork. The former constituency comprises all +residents within the borough boundaries occupying premises of the +rateable value of £10 a year. The municipal constituency consists of no +more than 1800 voters, divided among the seven wards which make up the +city under the "3d and 4th Victoria," and which contain about 13,000 of +the 15,116 Parliamentary voters of the borough. The same thing is true +in the main of nine out of the eleven municipal boroughs of Ireland +including Dublin. The 3d and 4th Victoria was amended for Dublin in +1849, so as to give that city the municipal franchise then existing in +England, but no move in that direction was made for Cork, Waterford, +Limerick, or any other municipal borough. The Nationalists have taken no +interest in the question. Perhaps they have good reason for this, as in +Belfast, where the municipal franchise has been widely extended since +the present Government came into power, the democratic electorate has +put the whole municipal government into the hands of the Unionists. The +day being cool, though fine, Mr. M'Carthy got an "inside car," and we +went off for a drive about the city. The environs of Cork are very +attractive. We visited the new cemetery grounds which are very neatly +and tastefully laid out. There was a conflict over them, the owners of +family vaults staunchly standing out against the "levelling" tendency of +a harmonious city of the dead. But all is well that ends well, and now +two handsome stone chapels, one Catholic and one Protestant, keep watch +and ward over the silent sleepers, standing face to face near the grand +entrance, and exactly alike in their architecture. A very pretty drive +took us to the water-works, which are extensive, well planned, and +exceedingly well kept. They are awaiting now the arrival from America of +some great turbine wheels, but the engines are of English make. In the +city we visited the new Protestant cathedral of St. Finbar, a very fine +church, which advantageously replaces a "spacious structure of the Doric +order," built here in the reign of George II., with the proceeds of a +parliamentary tax on coals. Despite his name, I imagine that admirable +prelate, Dr. England, the first Catholic bishop of my native city in +America, must have been a Corkonian, for he it was, I believe, who put +the cathedral of Charleston under the invocation of St. Finbar, the +first bishop of Cork. The church stands charmingly amid fine trees on a +southern branch of the river Lea. We visited also two fine Catholic +churches, one of St. Vincent de Paul, and the other the Church of St. +Peter and St. Paul, a grandly proportioned and imposing edifice. + +It was at vespers that we entered it, and found it filled with the +kneeling people. This noble church is rather ignobly hidden away behind +crowded houses and shops, and the contrast was very striking when we +emerged from its dim religious space and silence into the thronged and +rather noisy streets. There is a statue here of Father Mathew; but what +I have seen to-night makes me doubt whether the present generation of +Corkonians would have erected it. + +At dinner a gentleman gave us a most interesting account of the +picturesque home which a man of taste, and a lover of natural history, +has made for himself at the remote seaside village of Belmullet, in +Mayo, the seat of the Mayo quarries, in which Mr. Davitt takes so much +interest. The sea brings in there all sorts of wreckage, and the house +is beautifully finished with mahogany and other rare woods, just as I +remember finding in a noble mansion in South Wales, near a dangerous +head-land, some magnificent doors and wainscotings made of that most +beautiful of the Central American woods, nogarote, which I never saw in +the United States, excepting in a superb specimen of it sent home by +myself from Corinto. This colonist of Mayo employs all the people he can +get in the fisheries there, which are very rich; and the ducks and wild +geese are so numerous that he sometimes sends as far as to Wicklow for +men to capture and sell them for him. He was once fortunate enough to +trap a pair of the snow geese of the Arctic region, but Belmullet, in +other respects a primeval paradise, is cursed with the small boy of +civilisation; and one of these pests of society slew the goose with a +stone. The widowed gander consoled himself by contracting family ties +with the common domestic goose of the parish, and all his progeny, in +other particulars indistinguishable from that familiar bird, bear the +black marks distinctive of the Arctic tribe. + +Belmullet, this gentleman tells me, boasts a very good little inn, kept +by a Mrs. Deehan, which was honoured by a visit from Lord Carnarvon with +his wife and daughters during the Earl's Viceroyalty. This was in the +course of a private and personal, not official tour, during which, Lord +Carnarvon says, he was everywhere received with the greatest courtesy by +all sorts and conditions of the people. It is an interesting +illustration of the temper in which certain priests in Ireland deal with +matters of State, that when Lord Carnarvon politely invited the parish +priest of Belmullet to come to see him, that functionary declined to do +so. Upon this the placable Viceroy sent to know whether the priest would +receive the visit he refused to pay. The priest replied that he never +declined to receive any gentleman who wished to see him; and the Viceroy +accordingly called upon him, to the edification of the people, who +afterwards listened very respectfully to a little speech which His +Excellency made to them from a car. It is rather surprising that these +incidents have never been adduced in proof of Lord Carnarvon's +determination to take the Home Rule wind out of the sails of the +Liberals! + + +CORK, _Sunday, Feb. 26._--I went out to-day with Mr. Cameron to see +Blarney Castle and St. Anne's Hill. Nothing can be lovelier than the +country around Cork and the valley of the Lea. A "light railway," of the +sort authorised by the Act of 1883, takes you out quickly enough to +Blarney, and the train was well filled. The construction of these +railways is found fault with as aggravating instead of relieving those +defects in the organisation and management of the Irish railways, which +are so thoroughly and intelligently exposed in the Public Works Report +of Sir James Allport and his fellow-commissioners. A morning paper +to-day points this out sharply. + +In the days of King William III. Blarney Castle must have been a +magnificent stronghold. It stands very finely on a well-wooded height, +and dominates the land for miles around. But it held out against the +victor of the Boyne so long that, when he captured it, he thought it +best, in the expressive phrase of the Commonwealth, to "slight" it, +little now remaining of it but the gigantic keep, the walls of which are +some six yards thick, and a range of ruined outworks stretching along +and above a line of caverns, probably the work of the quarrymen who got +out the stone for the Castle ages ago. The legend of the Blarney Stone +does not seem to be a hundred years old, but the stone itself is one of +the front battlements of the grand old tower, which has more than once +fallen to the ground from the giddy height at which it was originally +set. It is now made fast there by iron clamps, in such a position that +to kiss it one should be a Japanese acrobat, or a volunteer rifleman +shooting for the championship of the world. There are many and very fine +trees in the grounds about the Castle, and there is a charming garden, +now closed against the casual tourist, as it has been leased with the +modern house to a tenant who lives here. In the leafy summer the place +must be a dream of beauty. An avenue of stately trees quite overarching +the highway leads from Blarney to St. Anne's Hill, the site of which, at +least, is that of an ideal sanatorium. We walked thither over hill and +dale. The panorama commanded by the buildings of the sanatorium is one +of the widest and finest imaginable, worthy to be compared with the +prospect from the Star and Garter at Richmond, or with that from the +terrace at St. Germain. + +Several handsome lodges or cottages have been built about the extensive +grounds. These are comfortably furnished and leased to people who prefer +to bring their households here rather than take up their abode in the +hotel, which, however, seems to be a very well kept and comfortable sort +of place, with billiard and music rooms, a small theatre, and all kinds +of contrivances for making the country almost as tedious as the town. +The establishment is directed now by a German resident physician, but +belongs to an Irish gentleman, Mr. Barter, who lives here himself, and +here manages what I am told is one of the finest dairy farms and dairies +in Ireland. Our return trip to Cork on the "light railway," with a warm +red sunset lighting up the river Lea, and throwing its glamour over the +varied and picturesque scenery through which we ran, was not the least +delightful part of a very delightful excursion. + +After we got back I spent half-an-hour with a gentleman who knows the +country about Youghal, which I propose to visit to-morrow, and who saw +something of the recent troubles there arising out of the Plan of +Campaign, as put into effect on the Ponsonby property. + +He is of the opinion that the Nationalists were misled into this contest +by bad information as to Mr. Ponsonby's resources and relations. They +expected to drive him to the wall, but they will fail to do this, and +failing to do this they will be left in the vocative. He showed me a +curious souvenir of the day of the evictions, in the shape of a +quatrain, written by the young wife of an evicted tenant. This young +woman, Mrs. Mahoney, was observed by one of the officers, as the +eviction went on, to go apart to a window, where she stood for a while +apparently writing something on a wooden panel of the shutter. After the +eviction was over the officer remembered this, and going up to the +window found these lines pencilled upon the panel:-- + + "We are evicted from this house, + Me and my loving man; + We're homeless now upon the world! + May the divil take 'the Plan'!" + +CORK, _Monday, Feb. 27._--A most interesting day. I left alone and early +by the train for Youghal, having sent before me a letter of introduction +to Canon Keller, the parish priest, who has recently become a +conspicuous person through his refusal to give evidence about matters, +his knowledge of which he conceives to be "privileged," as acquired in +his capacity as a priest. + +I had many fine views of the shore and the sea as we ran along, and the +site of Youghal itself is very fine. It is an old seaport town, and once +was a place of considerable trade, especially in wool. + +Oliver dwelt here for a while, and from Youghal he embarked on his +victorious return to England. He seems to have done his work while he +was here "not negligently," like Harrison at Naseby Field, for when he +departed he left Youghal a citadel of Protestant intolerance. Even under +Charles II they maintained an ordinance forbidding "any Papist to buy or +barter anything in the public markets," which may be taken as a piece of +cold-blooded and statutory "boycotting." Then there was no parish priest +in Youghal; now it may almost be said there is nobody in Youghal but the +parish priest! So does "the whirligig of time bring in his revenges"! + +At Youghal station a very civil young man came up, calling me by name, +and said Father Keller had sent him with a car to meet me. We drove up +past some beautiful grounds into the main street. A picturesque +waterside town, little lanes and narrow streets leading out of the main +artery down to the bay, and a savour of the sea in the place, grateful +doubtless to the souls of Raleigh and the west country folk he brought +over here when he became lord of the land, just three hundred years ago. +Edmund Spenser came here in those days to see him, and talk over the +events of that senseless rising of the Desmonds, which gave the poet of +the "Faerie Queen" his awful pictures of the desolation of Ireland, and +made the planter of Virginia master of more than forty thousand acres of +Irish land. + +We turned suddenly into a little narrow wynd, and pulled up, the driver +saying, "There is the Father, yer honour!" In a moment up came a tall, +very fine-looking ecclesiastic, quite the best dressed and most +distinguished-looking priest I have yet seen in Ireland, with features +of a fine Teutonic type, and the erect bearing of a soldier. I jumped +down to greet him, and he proposed that we should walk together to his +house near by. An extremely good house I found it to be, well placed in +the most interesting quarter of the town. Having it in my mind to drive +on from Youghal to Lismore, there to make an early dinner, see the +castle of the Duke of Devonshire, and return to Cork by an evening +train, I had to decline Father Keller's cordial hospitalities, but he +gave me a most interesting hour with him in his comfortable study. +Father Keller stands firmly by the position which earned for him a +sentence of imprisonment last year, when he refused to testify before a +court of justice in a bankruptcy case, on the ground that it might +"drift him into answers which would disclose secrets he was bound in +honour not to disclose." He does not accept the view taken of his +conduct, however, by Lord Selborne, that, in the circumstances, his +refusal is to be regarded as the act of his ecclesiastical superiors +rather than his own. He maintains it as his own view of the sworn duty +of a priest, and not unnaturally therefore he looks upon his sentence as +a blow levelled at the clergy; nor, as I understood him, has he +abandoned his original contention, that the Court had no right to summon +him as a witness. It was impossible to listen to him on this subject, +and doubt his entire good faith, nor do I see that he ought to be held +responsible for the interpretation put by Mr. Lane, M.P., and others +upon his attitude as a priest, in a sense going to make him merely a +"martyr" of Home Rule. I did not gather from what he said that, in his +mind, the question of his relations with the Nationalists or the Plan of +Campaign entered into that affair at all, but simply that he believed +the right and the duty of a priest to protect, no matter at what cost to +himself, secrets confided to him as a priest, was really involved in his +consent or refusal to answer, when he was asked whether he was or was +not on a certain day at the "Mall House" in Youghal. Of course from the +connection of this refusal in this particular case with the Nationalist +movement, Nationalists would easily glide into the idea that he refused +to testify in order to serve their cause. + +As to the troubles on the Ponsonby estate, Father Keller spoke very +freely. He divided the responsibility for them between the +untractableness of the agent, and the absenteeism of the owner. It was +only since the troubles began, he said, that he had ever seen Mr. +Ponsonby, who lived in Hampshire, and was therefore out of touch with +the condition and the feelings of the people here. In a personal +interview with him he had found Mr. Ponsonby a kindly disposed +Englishman, but the estate is heavily encumbered, and the agent who has +had complete control of it forced the tenants, by his hard and fast +refusal of a reasonable reduction more than two years ago, into an +initial combination to defend themselves by "clubbing" their rents. That +was before Mr. Dillon announced the Plan of Campaign at all. + +"It was not till the autumn of 1886," said Father Keller, "that any +question arose of the Plan of Campaign here,[8] and it was by the +tenants themselves that the determination was taken to adopt it. My part +has been that of a peace-maker throughout, and we should have had peace +if Mr. Ponsonby would have listened to me; we should have had peace, and +he would have received a reasonable rental for his property. Instead of +this, look at the law costs arising out of bankruptcy proceedings and +sheriff's sales and writs and processes, and the whole district thrown +into disorder and confusion, and the industrious people now put out of +their holdings, and forced into idleness." + +As to the recent evictions which had taken place, Father Keller said +they had taken him as well as the people by surprise, and had thus led +to greater agitation and excitement. "But the unfortunate incident of +the loss of Hanlon's life," he said, "would never have occurred had I +been duly apprised of what was going on in the town. I had come home +into my house, having quieted the people, and left all in order, as I +thought, when that charge of the police, for which there was no +occasion, and which led to the killing of Hanlon, was ordered. I made my +way rapidly to the people, and when I appeared they were brought to +patience and to good order with astonishing ease, despite all that had +occurred." + +As to the present outlook, it was his opinion that Mr. Ponsonby, even +with the Cork Defence Union behind him, could not hold out. "The Land +Corporation were taking over some parts of the estate, and putting +Emergency men on them--a set of desperate men, a kind of _enfants +perdus_," he said, "to work and manage the land;" but he did not believe +the operation could be successfully carried out. Meanwhile he +confidently counted upon seeing "the present Tory Government give way, +and go out, when it would become necessary for the landlords to do +justice to the rack-rented people. Pray understand," said Father Keller, +"that I do not say all landlords stand at all where Mr. Ponsonby has +been put by his agent, for that is not the case; but the action of many +landlords in the county Cork in sustaining Mr. Ponsonby, whose estate is +and has been as badly rack-rented an estate as can be found, is, in my +judgment, most unwise, and threatening to the peace and happiness of +Ireland."[9] + +I asked whether, in his opinion, it would be possible for the Ponsonby +tenants to live and prosper here on this estate, could they become +peasant proprietors of it under Lord Ashbourne's Act, provided they +increased in numbers, as in that event might be expected. This he +thought very doubtful so far as a few of the tenants are concerned. + +"Would you seek a remedy, then," I asked, "in emigration?" + +"No, not in emigration," he replied, "but in migration." + +I begged him to explain the difference. + +"What I mean," he said, "is, that the people should migrate, not out of +Ireland, but from those parts of Ireland which cannot support them into +parts of Ireland which can support them. There is room in Meath, for +example, for the people of many congested districts." + +"You would, then, turn the great cattle farms of Meath," I said, "into +peasant holdings?" + +"Certainly." + +"But would not that involve the expropriation of many people now +established in Meath, and the disturbance or destruction of a great +cattle industry for which Ireland has especial advantages?" + +To this Father Keller replied that he did not wish to see Ireland +exporting her cattle, any more than to see Ireland exporting her sons +and daughters. "I mean," he said, quite earnestly, "when they are forced +to export them to pay exorbitant rents, and thus deprive themselves of +their capital or of a fair share of the comforts of life. I should be +glad to see the Irish people sufficient to themselves by the domestic +exchange of their own industries and products." At the same time he +begged me to understand that he had no wish to see this development +attended by any estrangement or hostile feeling between Ireland and +Great Britain. "On the contrary," he said, "I have seen with the +greatest satisfaction the growth of such good feeling towards England as +I never expected to witness, as the result of the visits here of English +public men, sympathising with the Irish tenants. I believe their visits +are opening the way to a real union of the Democracies of the two +countries, and to an alliance between them against the aristocratic +classes which depress both peoples." This alliance Father Keller +believed would be a sufficient guarantee against any religious contest +between the Catholics of Ireland and the Protestants of Great Britain. + +"I was much astounded," he said, "the other day, to hear from an English +gentleman that he had met a Protestant clergyman who told him he really +believed that a persecution of the Protestants would follow the +establishment of Home Rule in Ireland. I begged him to consider that Mr. +Parnell was a Protestant, and I assured him Protestants would have +absolutely nothing to fear from Home Rule." + +Reverting to his idea of re-distributing the Irish population through +Ireland, under changed conditions, social and economical, I asked him +how in Meath, for example, he would meet the difficulty of stocking with +cattle the peasant holdings of a new set of proprietors not owning +stock. He thought it would be easily met by advances of money from the +Treasury to the peasant proprietors, these advances to be repaid, with +interest, as in the case of Lady Burdett Coutts, and the advances made +by her to the fishermen now under the direction of Father Davis at +Baltimore. + +I was struck by the resemblance of these views to the Irish policy +sketched for me by my Nationalist fellow-traveller of the other night +from London. "The evil that men do lives after them"--and when one +remembers how only a hundred years ago, and just after the establishment +of American Independence ought to have taught England a lesson, the +Irish House of Commons had to deal with the persistent determination of +the English manufacturers to fight the bogey of Irish competition by +protective duties in England against imports from Ireland, it is not +surprising that Irishmen who allow sentiment to get the upper hand of +sense should now think of playing a return game. England went in fear +then not only of Irish beasts and Irish butter, but of Irish woollens, +Irish cottons, Irish leather, Irish glass. Nay, absurd as it may now +seem, English ironmasters no longer ago than in 1785 testified before a +Parliamentary Committee that unless a duty was clapped on Irish +manufactures of iron, the Irish ironmasters had such advantages through +cheaper labour and through the discrimination in their favour under the +then existing relations with the new Republic of the United States that +they would "ruin the ironmasters of England." + +In Ireland, as in America, the benign spirit of Free Trade is thwarted +and intercepted at every turn by the abominable ghost of British +Protection. What a blessing it would have been if the meddlesome +palaverers of the Cobden Club, American as well as English, could ever +have been made to understand the essentially insular character of +Protection and the essentially continental character of Free Trade! + +It should never be forgotten, and it is almost never remembered, that +when the Treaty of Versailles was making in 1783 the American +Commissioners offered complete free trade between the United States and +all parts of the British Dominions save the territories of the East +India Company. The British Commissioner, David Hartley, saw the value of +this proposition, and submitted it at London. But King George III. would +not entertain it. + +When I rose to leave him Father Keller courteously insisted on showing +me the "lions" of Youghal. A most accomplished cicerone he proved to be. +As we left his house we met in the street two or three of the "evicted" +tenants, whom he introduced to me. One of these, Mr. Loughlin, was the +holder of farms representing a rental of £94. A stalwart, hearty, +rotund, and rubicund farmer he was, and in reply to my query how long +the holdings he had lost had been in his family, he answered, "not far +from two hundred years." Certainly some one must have blundered as badly +as at Balaklava to make it necessary for a tenant with such a past +behind him to go out of his holdings on arrears of a twelvemonth. Father +Keller gave me, as we left Mr. Loughlin and his friend, a leaflet in +which he has printed the story of "the struggle for life on the Ponsonby +estate," as he understands it. + +A minute's walk brought us to Sir Walter Raleigh's house, now the +property of Sir John Pope Hennessey. It was probably built by Sir Walter +while he lived here in 1588-89, during the time of the great Armada; for +it is a typical Elizabethan house, quaintly gabled, with charming Tudor +windows, and delightfully wainscoted with richly carved black oak. A +chimney-piece in the library where Sir John's aged mother received us +most kindly and hospitably is a marvel of Elizabethan woodwork. The +shelves are filled with a quaint and miscellaneous collection of old and +rare books. I opened at random one fine old quarto, and found it to +contain, among other curious tracts, models of typography, a Latin +critical disquisition by Raphael Regini on the first edition of +Plutarch's Life of Cicero, "_nuper inventâ diu desideraiâ _"--a +disquisition quite aglow with the cinquecento delight in discovery and +adventure. In the grounds of this charming house stand four very fine +Irish yews forming a little hollow square, within which, according to a +local legend, Sir Walter sat enjoying the first pipe of tobacco ever +lighted in Ireland, when his terrified serving-maid espying the smoke +that curled about her master's head hastily ran up and emptied a pail of +water over him. In the garden here, too, we are told, was first planted +the esculent which better deserves to be called the Curse of Ireland +than does the Nine of Diamonds to be known as the Curse of Scotland. The +Irish yew must have been indigenous here, for the name of Youghal, +Father Keller tells me, in Irish signifies "the wood of yew-trees." A +subterranean passage is said to lead from Sir Walter's dining-room into +the church, but we preferred the light of day. + +The precincts of the church adjoin the grounds and garden, and with +these make up a most fascinating poem in architecture. The churches of +St. Mary of Youghal and St. Nicholas of Galway have always been cited to +me as the two most interesting churches in Ireland. Certainly this +church of St. Mary, as now restored, is worth a journey to see. Its +massive tower, with walls eight feet thick, its battlemented chancel, +the pointed arches of its nave and aisles, a curious and, so far as I +know, unique arch in the north transept, drawn at an obtuse angle and +demarcating a quaint little side-chapel, and the interesting monuments +it contains, all were pointed out to me with as much zest and +intelligent delight by Father Keller as if the edifice were still +dedicated to the faith which originally called it into existence. It +contains a fine Jacobean tomb of Richard, the "great Earl of Cork," who +died here in September 1643. On this monument, which is in admirable +condition, the effigy of the earl appears between those of his two +wives, while below them kneel his five sons and seven daughters, their +names and those of their partners in marriage inscribed upon the marble. +It was of this earl that Oliver said: "Had there been an Earl of Cork in +every province, there had been no rebellion in Ireland." Several Earls +of Desmond are also buried here, including the founder of the church, +and under a monumental effigy in one of the transepts lies the wonderful +old Countess of Desmond, who having danced in her youth with Richard +III. lived through the Tudor dynasty "to the age of a hundred and ten," +and, as the old distich tells us, "died by a fall from a cherry-tree +then." + +In the churchyard is a hillock, bare of grass, about a tomb. There lies +buried, according to tradition, a public functionary who attested a +statement by exclaiming, "If I speak falsely, may grass never grow on my +grave." One of his descendants is doubtless now an M.P. Mr. Cameron had +kindly written from Cork to the officer in charge of the constabulary +here asking him to get me a good car for Lismore. So Father Keller very +kindly walked with me through the town to the "Devonshire Arms," a very +neat and considerable hotel, in quest of him. On the way he pointed out +to me what remains of a house which is supposed to have served as the +headquarters of Cromwell while he was here, and a small chapel also in +which the Protector worshipped after his sort. Off the main street is a +lane called Windmill Lane, where probably stood the windmill from which +in 1580 a Franciscan friar, Father David O'Neilan, was hung by the feet +and shot to death by the soldiers of Elizabeth because he refused to +acknowledge the spiritual supremacy of the Queen. He had been dragged +through the main street at the tail of a horse to the place of +execution. His name is one of many names of confessors of that time +about to be submitted at Rome for canonisation. We could not find the +officer I sought at the hotel, but Father Keller took me to a livery-man +in the main street, who very promptly got out a car with "his best +horse," and a jarvey who would "surely take me over to Lismore inside of +two hours and a half." He was as good as his master's word, and a +delightful drive it was, following the course of Spenser's river, the +Awniduffe, "which by the Englishman is called Blackwater." Nobody now +calls it anything else. The view of Youghal Harbour, as we made a great +circuit by the bridge on leaving the town, was exceedingly fine. Lying +as it does within easy reach of Cork, this might be made a very pleasant +summer halting-place for Americans landing at Queenstown, who now go +further and probably fare worse. One Western wanderer, with his family, +Father Keller told me, did last year establish himself here, a Catholic +from Boston, to whom a son was born, and who begged the Father to give +the lad a local name in baptism, "the oldest he could think of." + +I should have thought St. Declan would have been "old" enough, or St. +Nessan of "Ireland's Eye," or Saint Cartagh, who made Lismore a holy +city, "into the half of which no woman durst enter," sufficiently +"local," but Father Keller found in the Calendar a more satisfactory +saint still in St. Goran or "Curran," known also as St. Mochicaroen _de +Nona_, from a change he made in the recitation of that part of the Holy +Office. + +The drive from Youghal to Lismore along the Blackwater, begins, +continues, and ends in beauty. In the summer a steamer makes the trip by +the river, and it must be as charming in its way as the ascent of the +Dart from Dartmouth to Totness, or of the Eance from Dinard to St. +Suliac. My jarvey was rather a taciturn fellow, but by no means +insensible to the charms of his native region. About the Ponsonby estate +and its troubles he said very little, but that little was not entirely +in keeping with what I had heard at Youghal. "It was an old place, and +there was no grand house on it. But the landlord was a kind-man." +"Father Keller was a good man too. It was a great pity the people +couldn't be on their farms; and there was land that was taken on the +hills. It was a great pity. The people came from all parts to see the +Blackwater and Lismore; and there was money going." "Yes, he would be +glad to see it all quiet again. Ah yes! that was a most beautiful place +there just running out into the Blackwater. It was a gentleman owned it; +he lived there a good deal, and he fished. Ah! there's no such river in +the whole world for salmon as the Blackwater; indeed, there is not! +Everything was better when he was a lad. There was more money going, and +less talking. Father Keller was a very good man; but he was a new man, +and came to Youghal from Queenstown." + +We passed on our way the ruins of Dromaneen Castle, the birthplace of +the lively old Countess of Desmond, who lies buried at Youghal. Here, +too, according to a local tradition, she met her death, having climbed +too high into a famous cherry-tree at Affane, near Dromaneen, planted +there by Sir Walter Raleigh, who first introduced this fruit, as well as +the tobacco plant and the potato, into Ireland. At Cappoquin, which +stands beautifully on the river, I should have been glad to halt for the +night, in order to visit the Trappist Monastery there, an offshoot of La +Meilleraye, planted, I think, by some monks from Santa Susanna, of +Lulworth, after Charles X. took refuge in the secluded and beautiful +home of the Welds. The schools of this monastery have been a benediction +to all this part of Ireland for more than half a century. + +Lismore has nothing now to show of its ancient importance save its +castle and its cathedral, both of them absolutely modern! A hundred +years ago the castle was simply a ruin overhanging the river. It then +belonged to the fifth Duke of Devonshire, who had inherited it from his +mother, the only child and heiress of the friend of Pope, Richard, +fourth Earl of Cork, and third Earl of Burlington. It had come into the +hands of the Boyles by purchase from Sir Walter Ealeigh, to whom +Elizabeth had granted it, with all its appendages and appurtenances. The +fifth Duke of Devonshire, who was the husband of Coleridge's "lady +nursed in pomp and pleasure," did little or nothing, I believe, to +restore the vanished glories of Lismore; and the castle, as it now +exists, is the creation of his son, the artistic bachelor Duke, to whom +England owes the Crystal Palace and all the other outcomes of Sir Joseph +Paxton's industry and enterprise. His kinsman and successor, the present +Duke, used to visit Lismore regularly down to the time of the atrocious +murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish, and many of the beautiful walks and +groves which make the place lovely are due, I believe, to his taste and +his appreciation of the natural charms of Lismore. I dismissed my car at +the "Devonshire Arms," an admirable little hotel near the river, and +having ordered my dinner there, walked down to the castle, almost within +the grounds of which the hotel stands. It is impossible to imagine a +more picturesque site for a great inland mansion. The views up and down +the Blackwater from the drawing-room windows are simply the perfection +of river landscape. The grounds are beautifully laid out, one secluded +garden-walk, in particular, taking you back to the inimitable Italian +garden-walks of the seventeenth century. In the vestibule is the sword +of state of the Corporation of Youghal, a carved wooden cradle for which +still stands in the church at that place, and over the great gateway are +the arms of the great Earl of Cork, but these are almost the only +outward and visible signs of the historic past about the castle. Seen +from the graceful stone bridge which spans the river, its grey towers +and turrets quite excuse the youthful enthusiasm with which the Duke of +Connaught, who made a visit here when he was Prince Arthur, is said to +have written to his mother, that Lismore was "a beautiful place, very +like Windsor Castle, only much finer." + +Lismore Cathedral was almost entirely rebuilt by the second Earl of Cork +three or four years after the Restoration, and has a handsome marble +spire, but there is little in it to recall the Catholic times in which +Lismore was a city of churches and a centre of Irish devotion. + +The hostess of the "Devonshire Arms" gave me some excellent salmon, +fresh from the river, and a very good dinner. She bewailed the evil days +on which she has fallen, and the loss to Lismore of all that the Castle +used to mean to the people. Lady Edward Cavendish had spent a short time +here some little time ago, she said, and the people were delighted to +have her come there. "It would be a great thing for the country if all +the uproar and quarrelling could be put an end to. It did nobody any +good, least of all the poor people." + +From Lismore I came back by the railway through Fermoy. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +PORTUMNA, GALWAY, _Feb. 28._--I left Cork by an early train to-day, and +passing through the counties of Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Queen's, and +King's, reached this place after dark on a car from Parsonstown. The day +was delightfully cool and bright. I had the carriage to myself almost +all the way, and gave up all the time I could snatch from the constantly +varying and often very beautiful scenery to reading a curious pamphlet +which I picked up in Dublin entitled _Pour I'Irlande._ It purports to +have been written by a "Canadian priest" living at Lurgan in Ireland, +and to be a reply to M. de Mandat Grancey's volume, _Chez Paddy._ It is +adorned with a frontispiece representing a monster of the Cerberus type +on a monument, with three heads and three collars labelled respectively +"Flattery," "Famine," and "Coercion." On the pedestal is the +inscription--"1800 to 1887. Erected by the grateful Irish to the English +Government." The text is in keeping with the frontispiece. In a passage +devoted to the "atrocious evictions" of Glenbehy in 1887, the agent of +the property is represented as "setting fire with petroleum" to the +houses of two helpless men, and turning out "eighteen human beings into +the highway in the depth of winter." Not a word is said of the agent's +flat denial of these charges, nor a word of the advice given to the +agent by Sir Redvers Buller that the mortgagee ought to level the +cottages occupied by trespassers, nor a word about Father Quilter's +letter to Colonel Turner, branding his flock as "poor slaves" of the +League, and turning them over to "Mr. Roe or any other agent" to do as +he liked with them, since they could not, or would not, keep their +plighted faith given through their own priest. + +This sort of ostrich fury is common enough among the regular drumbeaters +of the Irish agitation. But it is not creditable to a "Canadian priest." +Still less creditable is his direct arraignment of M. de Mandat +Grancey's good faith and veracity upon the strength of what he describes +as M. de Mandat Grancey's amplification and distortion of a story told +by himself. This was a tale of a priest called out to confess one of his +parishioners. The penitent accused himself of killing one man, and +trying to kill several others. The priest, as the dreadful tale went on, +made a tally on his sleeve, with chalk, of the crimes recited. "Good +heavens! my son," he cried at last, "what had all these men done to you +that you tried to send them all into eternity? Who were they?" + +"Oh, Father, they were all bailiffs or tax-collectors!" + +"You idiot!" exclaimed the confessor, angrily rubbing at his sleeve, +"why didn't ye tell me that before instead of letting me spoil my best +cassock?" + +As I happened to have the book of M. de Mandat Grancey in my +despatch-box, I compared it with the attack made upon it. The results +were edifying. In the first place, M. de Mandat Grancey does not +indicate the Canadian priest as his authority. He says that he heard the +story, apparently at a dinner-table in France, from a _curé Irlandais_, +who was endeavouring to impress upon his hearers "the sympathy of the +clergy with the Land League." The "Canadian priest" now comes forward +and makes it a count in his indictment against M. de Mandat Grancey that +he is described as an "Irish curate," when he is in fact neither an +Irishman nor a curate. What was more natural than that an ecclesiastic, +claiming to live in Ireland, and telling stories in France about the +sympathy of the Irish clergy with the Land League, should be taken by +one of his auditors to be an Irish _curé_, particularly as the French +_curé_ is, I believe, the equivalent of the Irish "parish priest"? + +In the next place, the "Canadian priest" declares that the story "is as +old as the Round Towers of Ireland," and that M. de Mandat Grancey +represents him as making himself the hero of the tale. As a matter of +fact, M. de Mandat Grancey does nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he +expressly says that the _curé Irlandais_, who told the story, gave it to +his hearers as having occurred not to himself at all, but "to one of his +colleagues." Furthermore he is at the pains to add (_Chez Paddy_, p. 43) +that the story, which was not to the taste of some of the French +ecclesiastics who heard it, was related "as a simple pleasantry." +"But," he adds, and this I suspect is the sting which has so exasperated +the "Canadian priest," "he gave us to understand at the same time that +this pleasantry struck the keynote of the state of mind of many Irish +priests, and, he said, that he was himself the President of the League +in his district." + +In connection with Colonel Turner's statements as to the conduct of +Father White at Milltown Malbay, and with the accounts given me of the +conduct of Father Sheehan at Lixnaw, this side-light upon the relations +of a certain class of the Irish clergy with the most violent henchmen of +the League, is certainly noteworthy. I happen to have had some +correspondence with friends of mine in Paris, who are friends also of M. +de Mandat Grarncey, about his visit to Ireland before he made it, and I +am quite certain that he went there, to put the case mildly, with no +prejudices in favour of the English Government or against the +Nationalists. Perhaps the extreme bitterness shown in the pamphlet of +the "Canadian priest" may have been born of his disgust at finding that +the sympathy of French Catholics with Catholic Ireland draws the line at +priests who regard the assassination of "bailiffs and tax-collectors" as +a pardonable, if not positively amusing, excess of patriotic zeal. + +It was late when I reached Parsonstown, known of old in Irish story as +Birr, from St. Brendan's Abbey of Biorra, and now a clean prosperous +place, carefully looked after by the chief landlord of the region, the +Earl of Rosse, who, while he inherits the astronomical tastes and the +mathematical ability of his father, is not so absorbed in star-gazing as +to be indifferent to his terrestrial duties and obligations. I have +heard nothing but good of him, and of his management of his estates, +from men of the most diverse political views. But I think it more +important to get a look at the Clanricarde property, about which I have +heard little but evil from anybody. The strongest point I have heard +made in favour of the owner is, that he is habitually described by that +dumb organ of a down-trodden people, _United Ireland_, as "the most vile +Clanricarde." + +I found a good car at the railway station, and set off at once for +Portumna. Parsonstown was called by Sir William Petty, in his _Survey of +Ireland_, the _umbilicus Hiberniæ_. It is the centre of Ireland, as a +point near Newnham Paddox is of England, and the famous or infamous "Bog +of Allan" stretches hence to Athlone. Our way fortunately took us +westward. A light railway was laid down some years ago from Parsonstown +to Portumna, but it did not pay, and it has now been abandoned. + +"What has become of the road?" I asked my jarvey. + +"Oh! they just take up the rails when they like, the people do." + +"And what do they do with them?" + +"Is it what they do with them? Oh; they make fences of them for the +beasts." + +He was a dry, shrewd old fellow, not very amiably disposed, I was sorry +to find, towards my own country. + +"Ah! it's America, sorr, that's been the ruin of us entirely." + +"Pray, how is that?" + +"It's the storms they send; and then the grain; and now they tell me +it's the American beasts that's spoiling the market altogether for +Ireland." + +"Is that what your member tells you?" + +"The member, sorr? which member?" + +"The member of Parliament for your district, I mean. What is his name?" + +"His name? Well, I'm not sure; and I don't know that I know the man at +all. But I believe his name is Mulloy." + +"Does he live in Portumna?" + +"Oh no, not at all. I don't know at all where he lives, but I believe +it's in Tullamore. But what would he know about America? Sure, any one +can see it's the storms and the grain that is the death of us in +Ireland." + +"But I thought it was the landlords and the rents?" + +"Oh, that's in Woodford and Loughrea; not here at all. There'll be no +good till we get a war." + +"Get a war? with whom? What do you want a war for?" + +"Ah! it was the good time when we had the Crimean war--with the wheat +all about Portumna. I'll show you the great store there was built. It's +no use now. But we'll have a war. My son, he's a soldier now. He went +out to America. But he didn't like it." + +"Why not?" I asked. + +"Oh, he didn't like it. He could get no work, but to be a porter, and it +was too hard. So he came back in three months' time, and then he 'listed +for a soldier. He's over in England now. He likes it very well. He's +getting very good pay. They pay the soldiers well. There's a troop of +Hussars here now. They bring a power of money to the place." + +"What do they do with the wheat lands now?" + +"Oh, they're for sheep; they do very well. Were you ever in Australia, +sorr?" pointing to a place we were passing. "There was a man came here +from Australia with a pot of money, and he bought that place; but he +thought he was a bigger man than he was, and now he's found himself out. +I think he would have done as well to stay in Australia where he was." + +In quite a different vein he spoke of the landlord of another large +seat, and of the way in which the people, some of them, had +misbehaved--breaking open the graves of the family on the place, "and +tossing the coffins and the bones about, and all for what?" + +The view as we crossed the long and very fine bridge over the Shannon +after dusk was very striking. It was not too dark to make out the course +of the broad gleaming river, and the lights of the town made it seem +larger, I daresay, than it really is. As we drove up the main street I +told my jarvey to take me to the Castle. + +"To the Castle, is it?" he replied, looking around at me with an +astonished air. + +"Yes," I said, "I am going to see Mr. Tener, the agent, who lives there, +doesn't he?" + +"Oh, the new agent? Oh yes; I believe he's a very good man." + +"You don't expect to be 'boycotted' for going to the Castle, do you?" + +"And why should I be? But I haven't been inside of the Castle gates for +twenty years. And--here they are!" he cried out suddenly, pulling up his +horse just in time to avoid driving him up against a pair of iron gates +inhospitably closed. It was by this time pitch dark. Not a light could +we see within the enclosure. But presently a couple of shadowy forms +appeared behind the iron gates; the iron gates creaked on their hinges, +a masculine voice bade us drive in, and a policeman with a lantern +advanced from a thicket of trees. All this had a fine martial and +adventurous aspect, and my jarvey seemed to enjoy it as much as I. + +We got directions from the friendly policeman as to the roads and the +landmarks, and after once nearly running into a clump of trees found +ourselves at last in an open courtyard, where men appeared and took +charge of the car, the horse, and my luggage. We were in a quadrangle of +the out-buildings attached to the old residence of the Clanricardes, +which had escaped the fire of 1826. The late Marquis for a long time +hesitated whether to reconstruct the castle on the old site (the walls +are still standing), or to build an entirely new house on another site. +He finally chose the latter alternative, chiefly, I am told, under the +advice of his oldest son, the late Lord Dunkellin, one of the most +charming and deservedly popular men of his time. He was a great friend +and admirer of Father Burke, whom he used to claim as a Galway cousin, +and with whom I met him in Rome not long before his death in the summer +of 1867. His brother, the present Marquis, I have never met, but Mr. +Tener, his present agent here, who passed some time in America several +years ago, learning from him that I wished to see this place, very +courteously wrote to me asking me to make his house my headquarters. I +found my way through queer passages to a cheery little hall where my +host met me, and taking me into a pleasant little parlour, enlivened by +flowers, and a merrily blazing fire, presented me to Mrs. Tener. + +Mr. Tener is an Ulster man from the County Cavan. He went with his wife +on their bridal trip to America, and what he there saw of the peremptory +fashion in which the authorities deal with conspiracies to resist the +law seems not unnaturally to have made him a little impatient of the +dilatory, not to say dawdling, processes of the law in his own country. +He gave me a very interesting account after dinner this evening of the +situation in which he found affairs on this property, an account very +different from those which I have seen in print. He is himself the owner +of a small landed property in Cavan, and he has had a good deal of +experience as an agent for other properties. "I have a very simple +rule," he said to me, "in dealing with Irish tenants, and that is +neither to do an injustice nor to submit to one." It was only, he said, +after convincing himself that the Clanricarde tenants had no legitimate +ground of complaint against the management of the estate, not removable +upon a fair and candid discussion of all the issues involved between +them and himself, that he consented to take charge of the property. That +to do this was to run a certain personal risk, in the present state of +the country, he was quite aware. + +But he takes this part of the contract very coolly, telling me that the +only real danger, he thinks, is incurred when he makes a journey of +which he has to send a notice by telegraph--a remark which recalled to +me the curious advice given me in Dublin to seal my letters, as a +protection against "the Nationalist clerks in the post-offices." The +park of Portumua Castle, which is very extensive, is patrolled by armed +policemen, and whenever Mr. Tener drives out he is followed by a police +car carrying two armed men. + +"Against whom are all these precautions necessary?" I asked. "Against +the evicted tenants, or against the local agents of the League?" + +"Not at all against the tenants," he replied, "as you can satisfy +yourself by talking with them. The trouble comes not from the tenants at +all, nor from the people here at Portumna, but from mischievous and +dangerous persons at Loughrea and Woodford. Woodford, mind you, not +being Lord Clanricarde's place at all, though all the country has been +roused about the cruel Clanricarde and his wicked Woodford evictions. +Woodford was simply the headquarters of the agitation against Lord +Clanricarde and my predecessor, Mr. Joyce, and it has got the name of +the 'cockpit of Ireland,' because it was there that Mr. Dillon, in +October 1886, opened the 'war against the landlords' with the 'Plan of +Campaign.' It is an odd circumstance, by the way, worth noting, that +when these apostles of Irish agitation went to Lord Clanricarde's +property nearer the city of Gralway, and tried to stir the people up, +they failed dismally, because the people there could understand no +English, and the Irish agitators could speak no Irish! Nobody has ever +had the face to pretend that the Clanricarde estates were 'rack-rented.' +There have been many personal attacks made upon Mr. Joyce and upon Lord +Clanricarde, and Mr. Joyce has brought that well-known action against +the Marquis for libel, and all this answers with the general public as +an argument to show that the tenants on the Clanricarde property must +have had great grievances, and must have been cruelly ground down and +unable to pay their way. I will introduce you, if you will allow me, to +the Catholic Bishop here, and to the resident Protestant clergyman, and +to the manager of the bank, and they can help you to form your own +judgment as to the state of the tenants. You will find that whatever +quarrels they may have had with their landlord or his agent, they are +now, and always have been, quite able to pay their rents, and I need not +tell you that it is no longer in the power of a landlord or an agent to +say what these rents shall be."[10] + +"Mr. Dillon in that speech of his at Woodford (I have it here as +published in _United Ireland_), you will see, openly advised, or rather +ordered, the tenants here to club their rents, or, in plain English, the +money due to their landlord, with the deliberate intent to confiscate to +their own use, or, in their own jargon, 'grab,' the money of any one of +their number who, after going into this dishonest combination, might +find it working badly and wish to get out of it. Here is his own +language:"-- + +I took the speech as reported in the _United Ireland_ of October 23rd, +1886, and therein found Mr. Dillon, M.P., using these words:--"If you +mean to fight really, you must put the money aside for two +reasons--first of all because you want the means to support the men who +are hit first; and, secondly, because you want to prohibit traitors +going behind your back. There is no way to deal with a traitor except to +get his money under lock and key, and if you find that he pays his rent, +and betrays the organisation, what will you do with him? I will tell you +what to do with him. _Close upon his money, and use it for the +organisation_. I have always opposed outrages. _This is a legal plan, +and it is ten times more effective_." + +Not a word here as to the morality of the proceeding thus recommended; +but almost in the same breath in which he bade his ignorant hearers +regard his plan as "legal," Mr. Dillon said to them, "_this must be done +privately, and you must not inform the public where the money is +placed_!" + +Why not, if the plan was "legal"? Mr. Dillon, I believe, is not a +lawyer, but he can hardly have deluded himself into thinking his plan of +campaign "legal" in the face of the particular pains taken by his +leader, Mr. Parnell, to disclaim all participation in any such plans. A +year before Mr. Dillon made this curious speech, Mr. Parnell, I +remember, on the 11th of October 1885, speaking at Kildare, declared +that he had "in no case during the last few years advised any +combination among tenants against even rack-rents," and insisted that +any combination of the sort which might exist should be regarded as an +"isolated" combination, "confined to the tenants of individual estates, +who, of their own accord, without any incitement from us, on the +contrary, kept back by us, without any urging on our part, without any +advice on our part, but stung by necessity, and the terrible realities +of their position, may have formed such a combination among themselves +to secure such a reduction of rent as will enable them to live in their +own homes." From this language of Mr. Parnell in October 1885 to Mr. +Dillon's speech in October 1886, urging and advising the tenants to +organise, exact contributions from every member of the organisation, and +put these contributions under the control of third parties determined to +confiscate the money subscribed by any member who might not find the +organisation working to his advantage, is a rather long step! It covers +all the distance between a cunning defensive evasion of the law, and an +open aggressive violation of the law--not of the land only, but of +common honesty. One of two things is clear: either these combinations +are voluntary and "isolated," and intended, as Mr. Parnell asserts, to +secure such a reduction of rents as will enable the tenants, and each of +them, to live peacefully and comfortably at home, and in that case any +member of the combination who finds that he can attain his object better +by leaving it has an absolute right to do this, and to demand the return +of his money; or they are part of a system imposed upon the tenants by a +moral coercion inconsistent with the most elementary ideas of private +right and personal freedom. This makes the importance of Mr. Dillon's +speech, that by his denunciation of any member who wishes to withdraw +from this "voluntary" combination as a "traitor," and by his order to +"close upon the money" of any such member, "and use it for the +organisation," he brands the "organisation" as a subterranean despotism +of a very cheap and nasty kind. The Government which tolerates the +creation of such a Houndsditch tyranny as this within its dominions +richly deserves to be overthrown. As for the people who submit +themselves to it, I do not wonder that in his more lucid moments a +Catholic priest like Father Quilter feels himself moved to denounce them +as "poor slaves." Of course with a benevolent neutral like myself, the +question always recurs, Who trained them to submit to this sort of +thing? But I really am at a loss to see why a parcel of conspirators +should be encouraged in the nineteenth century to bully Irish farmers +out of their manhood and their money, because in the seventeenth century +it pleased the stupid rulers of England, as the great Duke of Ormond +indignantly said, to "put so general a discountenance upon the +improvement of Ireland, as if it were resolved that to keep it low is to +keep it safe." + +On going back to the little drawing-room after dinner we found Mrs. +Tener among her flowers, busy with some literary work. It is not a gay +life here, she admits, her nearest visiting acquaintance living some +seven or eight miles away--but she takes long walks with a couple of +stalwart dogs in her company, and has little fear of being molested. +"The tenants are in more danger," she thinks, "than the landlords or the +agents"--nor do I see any reason to doubt this, remembering the Connells +whom I saw at Edenvale, and the story of the "boycotted" Fitzmaurice +brutally murdered in the presence of his daughter at Lixnaw on the 31st +of January, as if by way of welcome to Lord Ripon and Mr. Morley on +their arrival at Dublin. + + +PORTUMNA, _Feb. 29th._--Early this morning two of the "evicted" tenants, +and an ex-bailiff of the property here, came by appointment to discuss +the situation with Mr. Tener. He asked me to attend the conference, and +upon learning that I was an American, they expressed their perfect +willingness that I should do so. The tenants were quiet, sturdy, +intelligent-looking men. I asked one of them if he objected to telling +me whether he thought the rent he had refused to pay excessive, or +whether he was simply unable to pay it. + +"I had the money, sir, to pay the rent," he replied, "and I wanted to +pay the rent--only I wouldn't be let." + +"Who wouldn't let you?" I asked. + +"The people that were in with the League." + +"Was your holding worth anything to you?" I asked. + +"It was indeed. Two or three years ago I could have sold my right for a +matter of three hundred pounds." + +"Yes!" interrupted the other tenant, "and a bit before that for six +hundred pounds." + +"Is it not worth three hundred pounds to you now?" + +"No," said Mr. Tener, "for he has lost it by refusing the settlement I +offered to make, and driving us into proceedings against him, and +allowing his six months' equity of redemption to lapse." + +"And sure, if we had it, no one would be let to buy it now, sir," said +the tenant. "But it's we that hope Mr. Tener here will let us come back +on the holdings--that is, if we'd be protected coming back." + +"Now, do you see," said Mr. Tener, "what it is you ask me to do? You ask +me to make you a present outright of the property you chose foolishly to +throw away, and to do this after you have put the estate to endless +trouble and expense; don't you think that is asking me to do a good +deal?" + +The tenants looked at one another, at Mr. Tener, and at me, and the +ex-bailiff smiled. + +"You must see this," said Mr. Tener, "but I am perfectly willing now to +say to you, in the presence of this gentleman, that in spite of all, I +am quite willing to do what you ask, and to let you come back into the +titles you have forfeited, for I would rather have you back on the +property than strangers--" + +"And, indeed, we're sure you would." + +"But understand, you must pay down a year's rent and the costs you have +put us to." + +"Ah! sure you wouldn't have us to pay the costs?" + +"But indeed I will," responded Mr. Tener; "you mustn't for a moment +suppose I will have any question about that. You brought all this +trouble on yourselves, and on us; and while I am ready and willing to +deal more than fairly, to deal liberally with you about the arrears--and +to give you time--the costs you must pay." + +"And what would they be, the costs?" queried one of the tenants +anxiously. + +"Oh, that I can't tell you, for I don't know," said Mr. Tener, "but they +shall not be anything beyond the strict necessary costs." + +"And if we come back would we be protected?" + +"Of course you will have protection. But why do you want protection? +Here you are, a couple of strong grown men, with men-folk of your +families. See here! why don't you go to such an one, and such an one," +naming other tenants; "you know them well. Go to them quietly and sound +them to see if they will come back on the same terms with you; form a +combination to be honest and to stand by your rights, and defy and break +up the other dishonest combination you go in fear of! Is it not a shame +for men like you to lie down and let those fellows walk over you, and +drive you out of your livelihood and your homes?" + +The tenants looked at each other, and at the rest of us. "I think," said +one of them at last, "I think ---- and ----," naming two men, "would come +with us. Of course," turning to Mr. Tener, "you wouldn't discover on us, +sir." + +"Discover on you! Certainly not," said Mr. Tener. "But why don't you +make up your minds to be men, and 'discover' on yourselves, and defy +these fellows?" + +"And the cattle, sir? would we get protection for the cattle? They'd be +murdered else entirely." + +"Of course," said Mr. Tener, "the police would endeavour to protect the +cattle." + +Then, turning to me, he said, "That is a very reasonable question. These +scoundrels, when they are afraid to tackle the men put under their ban, +go about at night, and mutilate and torture and kill the poor beasts. I +remember a case," he went on, "in Roscommon, where several head of +cattle mysteriously disappeared. They could be found nowhere. No trace +of them could be got. But long weeks after they vanished, some lads in a +field several miles away saw numbers of crows hovering over a particular +point. They went there, and there at the bottom of an abandoned +coal-shaft lay the shattered remains of these lost cattle. The poor +beasts had been driven blindfold over the fields and down into this pit, +where, with broken limbs, and maimed, they all miserably died of +hunger." + +"Yes," said one of the tenants, "and our cattle'd be driven into the +Shannon, and drownded, and washed away." + +"You must understand," interposed Mr. Tener "that when cattle are thus +maliciously destroyed the owners can recover nothing unless the remains +of the poor beasts are found and identified within three days." + +The disgust which I felt and expressed at these revelations seemed to +encourage the tenants. One of them said that before the evictions came +off certain of the National Leaguers visited him, and told him he must +resist the officers. "I consulted my sister," he said, "and she said, +'Don't you be such a fool as to be doing that; we'll all be ruined +entirely by those rascals and rogues of the League.' And I didn't +resist. But only the other day I went to a priest in the trouble we are +in, and what do you think he said to me? He said, 'Why didn't you do as +you were bid? then you would be helped,' and he would do nothing for us! +Would you think that right, sir, in your country?" + +"I should think in my country," I replied, "that a priest who behaved in +that way ought to be unfrocked." + +"Did you pay over all your rent into the hands of the trustees of the +League?" I asked of one of these tenants. + +"I paid over money to them, sir," he replied. + +"Yes," I said, "but did you pay over all the amount of the rent, or how +much of it?" + +"Oh! I paid as much as I thought they would think I ought to pay!" he +responded, with that sly twinkle of the peasant's eye one sees so often +in rural France. + +"Oh! I understand," I said, laughing. "But if you come to terms now with +Mr. Tener here, will you get that money back again?" + +"Divil a penny of it!" he replied, with much emphasis. + +Finally they got up together to take their leave, after a long whispered +conversation together. + +"And if we made it half the costs?" + +"No!" said Mr. Tener good-naturedly but firmly; "not a penny off the +costs." + +"Well, we'll see the men, sir, just quietly, and we'll let you know what +can be done"; and with that they wished us, most civilly, good-morning, +and went their way. + +We walked in the park for some time, and a wild, beautiful park it is, +not the less beautiful for being given up, as it is, very much to the +Dryads to deal with it as they list. It is as unlike a trim English park +as possible; but it contains many very fine trees, and grand open sweeps +of landscape. In a tangled copse are the ruins of an ancient Franciscan +abbey, in one corner of which lie buried together, under a monumental +mound of brickwork, the late Marquis of Clanricarde and his wife. The +walls of the Castle, burned in 1826, are still standing, and so perfect +that the building might easily enough have been restored. A keen-eyed, +wiry old household servant, still here, told us the house was burned in +the afternoon of January 6, 1826. There were three women-servants in the +house--"Anna and Mary Meehan, and Mrs. Underwood, the housekeeper"; and +they were getting the Castle ready for his Lordship's arrival, so little +of an "absentee" was the late Lord Clanricarde, then only one year +married to the daughter of George Canning. The fires were laid on in the +upper rooms, and Mrs. Underwood went off upon an errand. When she came +back all was in flames. + +The deer-park is full of deer, now become quite wild. We heard them +crashing through the undergrowth on all sides. There must be capital +fishing, too, in the lake, and in the river of which it is an expansion. + +While they were getting the cars ready for a drive, came up another son +of the soil. This man I found had only a small interest in the battle on +the Clanricarde estates, holding his homestead of another landlord. But +he admitted he had gone in a manner into the "combination," in that he +had paid a certain, not very large, sum, which he named, to the +trustees, "just for peace and quiet." He considered it gone, past +recovery; and he named another man with a small holding, but doing a +considerable business in other ways, who had "paid £10 or more just not +to be bothered." Upon this Mr. Tener told me of a shopkeeper at Loughrea +in a large way of business, a man with seven or eight thousand pounds, +who, finding his goods about to be seized after the agent had turned a +sharp strategic corner on him, and unexpectedly got into his shop, was +about to own up to his defeat, and make a fair settlement, when the +secretary of the League appeared, and requested a private talk with him. +In a quarter of an hour the tradesman reappeared looking rather sullen +and crestfallen. He said he couldn't pay, and must let the goods be +taken. So taken they were, and duly put up under the process and sold. +He bought them in himself, paying all the costs. + +Presently two cars appeared. We got upon one, Mr. Tener driving a +spirited nag, and taking on the seat with him a loaded carbine-rifle. +Two armed policeman followed us upon the other, keeping at such a +distance as would enable them easily to cover any one approaching from +either side of the roadway. It quite took me back to the delightful days +of 1866 in Mexico, when we used to ride out to picnics at the Rincon at +Orizaba armed to the teeth, and ready at a moment's notice to throw the +four-in-hand mule-wagons into a hollow square, and prepare to receive +cavalry. As it seems to be perfectly well understood that the regular +price paid for shooting a designated person (they call it "knocking" him +in these parts) is the ridiculously small sum of four pounds, and that +two persons who divide this sum are always detailed by the organisers of +outrage to "knock" an objectionable individual, it is obvious that too +much care can hardly be taken by prudent people in coming and going +through such a country. Fortunately for the people most directly +concerned to avoid these unpleasantnesses a systematic leakage seems to +exist in the machinery of mischief. The places where the oaths of this +local "Mafia" are administered, for instance, are well known. A roadside +near a chapel is frequently selected--and this for two or three obvious +reasons. The sanctity of the spot may be supposed to impress the +neophyte; and if the police or any other undesirable people should +suddenly come upon the officiating adepts and the expectant acolyte, a +group on the roadside is not necessarily a criminal gathering--though I +do not see why, in such times, our old American college definition of a +"group" as a gathering of "three or more persons" should not be adopted +by the authorities, and held to make such a gathering liable to +dispersion by the police, as our "groups" used to be subject to +proctorial punishment. Mills are another favourite resort of the +law-breakers. Mr. Tener tells me that a large mill between this place +and Loughrea is a great centre of trouble, not wholly to the +disadvantage of the astute miller, who finds it not only brings grist to +his mill, but takes away grist from another mill belonging to a couple +of worthy ladies, and once quite prosperous. It is no uncommon thing, it +appears, for the same person to be put through the ceremony of swearing +fidelity more than once, and at more than one place, with the not +unnatural result, however, of diminishing the pressure of the oath upon +his conscience or his fears, and also of alienating his affections, as +he is expected to pay down two shillings on each occasion. Once a +member, he contributes a penny a week to the general fund. It seems also +to be an open secret who the disbursing treasurers are of this fund, +from whom the members, detailed to do the dark bidding of the +"organisation," receive their wage. "A stout gentleman with sandy hair +and wearing glasses" was the description given to me of one such +functionary. When so much is known of the methods and the men, why is it +that so many crimes are committed with virtual impunity? For two +sufficient reasons. Witnesses cannot be got to testify, or trusted, if +they do testify, to speak the truth; and it is idle to expect juries of +the vicinage in nine cases out of ten will do their duty. Political +cowardice having made it impossible to transfer the venue in cases of +Irish crime, as to which all the authorities were agreed about these +points, from Ireland into Great Britain, it is found that even to +transfer the trial of "Moonlighters" from Clare or Kerry into Wicklow, +for example, has a most instructive effect, opening the eyes of the +people of Wicklow to a state of things in their own island, of which +happily for themselves they were previously as ignorant as the people of +Surrey or of Middlesex. This explains the indignant wish expressed to me +some time ago in a letter from a priest in another part of Ireland, that +"martial law" might be proclaimed in Clare and Kerry to "stamp out the +Moonlighters, those pests of society." That in Clare and Kerry priests +should be found not only disposed to wink at and condone the proceedings +of these "pests of society," but openly to co-operate with them under +the pretext of a "national" movement, is surely a thing equally +intolerable by the Church and dangerous to the cause of Irish autonomy. +This I am glad to say is strongly felt, and has been on more than one +occasion very vigorously stated by one of the most eminent and estimable +of Irish ecclesiastics, the Bishop-Coadjutor of Clonfert, upon whom I +called this morning. Dr. Healy, who is a senator of the Royal University +of Ireland, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, presides over that +part of the diocese of Clonfort which includes Portumna and Woodford. He +lives in a handsome and commodious, but simple and unpretentious house, +set in ample grounds well-planted, and commanding a wide view of a most +agreeable country. We were ushered into a well-furnished study, and the +bishop came in at once to greet us with the most cordial courtesy. He is +a frank, dignified, unaffected man, and in his becoming episcopal +purple, with the gold chain and cross, looked every inch a bishop. I was +particularly anxious to see Dr. Healy, as a type of the high-minded and +courageous ecclesiastics who, in Ireland, have resolutely refused to +subordinate their duties and their authority as ecclesiastics to the +convenience and the policy of an organisation absolutely controlled by +Mr. Parnell, who not only is not a Catholic, but who is an open ally and +associate of the bitterest enemies of the Catholic Church in France and +in England. Protestant historians affirm that Pope Innocent was one of +the financial backers of William of Orange when he set sail from Holland +to crush the Catholic faith in Great Britain and Ireland, and drive the +Catholic house of Stuart into exile. But it was reserved for the +nineteenth century to witness the strange spectacle of men, calling +themselves Irishmen and Catholics, deliberately slandering and assailing +in concord with a non-Catholic political leader the consecrated pastors +and masters of the Church in Ireland. When in order to explain what they +themselves concede to be "the absence from the popular ranks of the best +of the priesthood," Nationalist writers find it necessary to denounce +Cardinal Cullen and Cardinal M'Cabe as "anti-Irish "; and to sneer at +men like Dr. Healy as "Castle Bishops," it is impossible not to be +reminded of the three "patriotic" tailors of Tooley Street. + +Bishop Healy looks upon the systematic development of a substantial +peasant proprietary throughout Ireland as the economic hope of the +country, and he regards therefore the actual "campaigning" of the +self-styled "Nationalists" as essentially anti-national, inasmuch as its +methods are demoralising the people of Ireland, and destroying that +respect for law and for private rights which lies at the foundation of +civil order and of property. In his opinion, "Home Rule," to the people +in general, means simply ownership of the land which they are to live +on, and to live by. How that ownership shall be brought about peaceably, +fairly, and without wrong or outrage to any man or class of men is a +problem of politics to be worked out by politicians, and by public men. +That men, calling themselves Catholics, should be led on to attempt to +bring this or any other object about by immoral and criminal means is +quite another matter, and a matter falling within the domain, not of the +State primarily, but of the Church. + +As to this, Bishop Healy, who was in Rome not very long ago, and who, +while in Rome, had more than one audience of His Holiness by command, +has no doubt whatever that the Vatican will insist upon the abandonment +and repudiation by Catholics of boycotting, and "plans of campaign," and +all such devices of evil. Nor has the Bishop any doubt that whenever the +Holy Father speaks the priests and the people of Ireland will obey. + +To say this, of course, is only to say that the Bishop believes the +priests of Ireland to be honest priests, and the people of Ireland to be +good Catholics. + +If he is mistaken in this it will be a doleful thing, not for the +Church, but for the Irish priests, and for the Irish people. No Irishman +who witnessed the magnificent display made at Rome this year, of the +scope and power of the Catholic Church, can labour under any delusions +on that point. + +From the Bishop's residence we went to call upon the Protestant rector +of Portumna, Mr. Crawford. The handsome Anglican church stands within an +angle of the park, and the parsonage is a very substantial mansion. Mr. +Crawford, the present rector, who is a man of substance, holds a fine +farm of the Clanricarde estate, at a peppercorn rent, and he is tenant +also of another holding at £118 a year, as to which he has brought the +agent into Court, with the object, as he avers, of setting an example to +the other tenants, and inducing them, like himself, to fight under the +law instead of against it. He is not, however, in arrears, and in that +respect sets a better example, I am sorry to say, than the Catholic +priest, Father Coen, who made himself so conspicuous here on the +occasion of the much bewritten Woodford evictions. The case of Father +Coen is most instructive, and most unpleasant. He occupies an excellent +house on a holding of twenty-three acres of good laud, with a garden--in +short, a handsome country residence, which was provided by the late Lord +Clanricarde, expressly for the accommodation of whoever might be the +Catholic priest in that part of his estate. For all this the rent is +fixed at the absurd and nominal sum of two guineas a year! Yet Father +Coen, who now enjoys the mansion, and has a substantial income from the +parish, is actually two years and a half in arrears with this rent! This +fact Mr. Tener mentioned to the Bishop, whose countenance naturally +darkened. "What am I to do in such a case, my lord?" asked Mr. Tener. +"Do?" said the Bishop, "do your plain duty, and proceed against him +according to law." But suppose he were proceeded against and evicted, as +in America he certainly would be, who can doubt that he would instantly +be paraded, before the world, on both sides of the Atlantic as a +"martyr," suffering for the holy cause of an oppressed and down-trodden +people, at the hands of a "most vile" Marquis, and of a remorse-less and +blood-thirsty agent?[11] Mr. Crawford, a tall, fine-looking man, talked +very fully and freely about the situation here. He came to Portumna +about eight years ago; one of his reasons for accepting the position +here offered him being that he wished to take over a piece of property +near Woodford from his brother-in-law, who found he could not manage it. +As a practical farmer, and a straightforward capable man of business, he +has gradually acquired the general confidence of the tenants here. That +they are, as a rule, quite able to pay the rents which they have been +"coerced" into refusing to pay, he fully believes. He told me of cases +in which Catholic tenants of Lord Clanricarde came to him when the +agitation began about the Plan of Campaign, and begged him privately to +take the money for their rents, and hold it for them till the time +should come for a settlement. + +The reason for this was that they did not wish to be obliged to give +over the money into the "Trust" created by the Campaigners, and wanted +it to be safely put beyond the reach of these obliging "friends." One +very shrewd tenant came to him and begged him to buy some beasts, in +order that he might pay his rent out of the proceeds. The man owed £15 +to the Clanricarde property. Mr. Crawford did not particularly want to +buy his beasts, but eventually agreed to do so, and gave him £50 for +them. The man went off with the money, but he never paid the rent! Mr. +Crawford discovering this called him to account, and refused to grant +him some further favour which he asked. The result is that the +"distressed tenant" now cuts Mr. Crawford when he meets him, and is the +prosperous owner of quite a small herd of cattle. + +Mr. Crawford's opinion of the mischief done by the methods and spirit of +the National League in this place is quite in accord with the opinions +of the Bishop-Coadjutor. Power without responsibility, which made the +Cæesars madmen, easily turns the heads of village tyrants, and there is +something positively grotesque in the excesses of this subterranean +"Home Rule." Mr. Crawford told me of a case here, in which a tenant +farmer, whom he named, came to him in great wrath, not unmingled with +terror, to say that the League had ordered him, on pain of being +boycotted, to give up his holding to the heirs of a woman from whom, +twenty years ago, he had bought, for £100 in cash, the tenant-right of +her deceased husband! There was no question of refunding the £100. He +was merely to consider himself a "land-grabber," and evict himself for +the benefit of those heirs who had never done a stroke of work on the +property for twenty years, and who had no shadow of a legal or moral +claim on it, except that the oldest of them was an active member of the +local League! + +Nor was this unique. + +In another case, the children of a tenant, who died forty years ago, +came forward and called upon the League to boycott an old man who had +been in possession of the holding during nearly half a century. In a +third case, a tenant-farmer, some ten years ago, had in his employ as +herd a man who fell ill and died. He put into the vacant place an +honest, capable young fellow, who still holds it, and has faithfully and +efficiently served him. Only the other day this tenant-farmer was warned +by the League to expect trouble, unless he dismissed this herd, and put +into his place the son, now grown to man's estate, of the herd who died +ten years ago! + +It is amusing, if not instructive, to find the hereditary principle, +just now threatened in its application to the British Senate, cropping +out afresh as an element in the regeneration of Irish agriculture and +the land tenure of Ireland! + +On our way back to the Castle we called on Mr. Place, the manager of the +Portumna Branch of the Hibernian Bank, who lives in the town. He was +amusing himself, after the labour of the day in the bank, with some +amateur work as a carpenter, but received us very cordially. He said +there was no doubt that the deposits in the bank had increased +considerably since the adoption of the Plan of Campaign on the +Clanricarde property. Money was paid into the bank continually by +persons who wished the fact of their payments kept secret; and he knew +of more than one case in which tenants, whose stock had been seized by +the agent for the rents, were much delighted at the seizure, since it +had paid off their rents, and so enabled them to retain their holdings +and keep out of the grasp of the League, even though to do this they had +undergone a forced sale and been muleted in costs. + +It was his opinion that the tenants on the Clanricarde property, who are +not in arrears, would gladly accept a twenty-five per cent. reduction, +and do very well by accepting it. But they are constrained into a +hostile attitude by the tenants who are in arrears, some of them for +several years (as, for example, Father Coen), although I find, to my +astonishment, that in Ireland the landlord has no power to distrain for +more than a twelvemonth's rent, no matter how far back the arrears may +run. + +Mr. Place seems to think it would be well to put all the creditors of +the tenants on one footing with the landlords. The shopkeepers and other +creditors, he thinks, in that event would see many things in quite a new +light. + +What is called the new Castle of Portumna is a large and handsome +building of the Mansard type, standing on an eminence in the park, at +some distance from the original seat. The building was finished not long +before the death of his father, the late Marquis. It has never been +occupied, save by a large force of police quartered in it not very long +ago by Mr. Tener in readiness for an expedition against the Castle of +Cloondadauv, to the scene of which he promises to drive me to-morrow on +my way back to Dublin. It is thoroughly well built, and might easily be +made a most delightful residence. The views which it commands of the +Shannon are magnificent, and there are many fine trees about it. + +The old man who has charge of it is a typical Galway retainer of the old +school. The "boys," he says, once tried to "boycott" him because he was +the pound-master; but he showed fight, and they let him alone. He +pointed out to me from the top of the house, in the distance, the +residences of Colonel Hickie, and of the young Lord Avonmore, who lately +succeeded on the death of his brother in the recent Egyptian expedition. +The place is now shut up, and the owners live in France. + +We visited too the Portumna Union before driving home. The buildings of +this Union are extensive for the place, and well built, and it seems to +be well-ordered and neatly kept--thanks, in no small degree, I suspect, +to the influence of the Sisters who have charge of the hospital, but +whose benign spirit shows itself not only in the flower-garden which +they have called into being, but in many details of the administration +beyond their special control. + +The contrast was very striking between the atmosphere of this +unpretending refuge of the helpless and that of certain of the +"laicised" hospitals of France, which I not long ago visited, from which +the devoted nuns have been expelled to make way for hired nurses. I made +a remark to this effect to the clerk of the Union, Mr. Lavan, whom we +found in his office. + +"Oh, yes," he said, "I have no doubt of that. We owe more than I can say +to the Sisters, but I don't know how long we should have them here if +the local guardians could have their way." + +In explanation of this, he went on to tell me that these local +guardians, who are elected, are hostile to the whole administration, +because of its relations with the Local Government Board at Dublin, +which controls their generous tendency to expend the money of the +ratepayers. By way of expressing their feelings, therefore, they have +been trying to cut down, not only the salary of the clerk, but that of +the Catholic chaplain of the Union; and as there is a good deal of +irreligious feeling among the agitators here, it is his impression that +they would make things disagreeable for the Sisters also were they in +any way to get the management into their own hands. That there cannot be +much real distress in this neighbourhood appears from two facts. There +are now but 130 inmates of this Union, out of a population of 12,900, +and the outlay for out-of-door relief averages between eight and ten +pounds a week. + +In the quiet, neat chapel two or three of the inmates were kneeling at +prayers; and others whom we saw in the kitchen and about the offices had +nothing of the "workhouse" look which is so painful in the ordinary +inmates of an English or American almshouse. + +"The trouble with the place," said Mr. Lavan, "is that they like it too +well. It takes an eviction almost to get them out of it." + +We sat down with Mr. Lavan in his office, and had an interesting talk +with him. + +He is the agent of Mr. Mathews, who lives between Woodford and Portumna. +Mr. Mathews is a resident landlord, he says, who has constantly employed +and has lived on friendly terms with his tenants, numbering twenty, who +hold now under judicial rents. On these judicial rents two years ago +they were allowed a further reduction of 15 per cent. Last year they +were allowed 20 per cent. This year he offered them a reduction of 25 +per cent., which they rejected, demanding 35 per cent. + +This demand Mr. Lavan considers to be unreasonable in the extreme, and +he attributes it to the influence of the National Leaguers here, whose +representatives among the local guardians constantly vote away the money +of the ratepayers in "relief to evicted tenants who have ample means and +can in no respect be called destitute." In his opinion the effect of the +Nationalist agitation here has been to upset all ideas of right and +wrong in the minds of the people where any question arises between +tenants and landlords. He told a story, confirmed by Mr. Tener, of a +bailiff, whom he named, on the Clanricarde property here, who was +compelled two years ago to resign his place in order to prevent the +"boycotting" of his mother who keeps a shop on the farm. He was +familiar, too, with the details of a story told me by one of the +Clanricarde tenants, a farmer near Loughrea who holds a farm at £90 a +year. This man was forced to subscribe to the Plan of Campaign. The +agent proceeded against him for the rent due, and he incurred costs of +£10. His sheep and crop were then seized. + +He begged the local leaders to "permit" him to pay his rent, as he was +able to do it _without drawing out the funds in their hands_! They +refused, and so compelled him to allow his property to be publicly sold, +and to incur further costs of £10. "His farm lies so near the town that +he did not dare to risk the vengeance of the local ruffians." + +Mr. Lavan gave me the name also of another man who is now actually under +a "boycott," because he has ventured to resist the modest demand made by +the son of a man whose tenant-right he bought, paying him £100 for it, +twenty years ago, that he shall give up his farm without being +reimbursed for his outlay made to purchase it! In other words, after +twenty years' peaceable possession of a piece of property, bought and +paid for, this tenant-farmer is treated as a "land-grabber" by the +self-installed "Nationalist" government of Ireland, because he will not +submit to be robbed both of the money which he paid for his +tenant-right, and of his tenant-right! + +Obviously in such a case as this the "war against landlordism" is simply +a war against property and against private rights. Priests of the +Catholic Church who not only countenance but aid and abet such +proceedings certainly go even beyond Dr. M'Glynn. Dr. M'Glynn, so far as +I know, stops at the confiscation of all private property in rent by the +State for the State. But here is simply a confiscation of the property +of A for the benefit of B, such as might happen if B, being armed and +meeting A unarmed in a forest, should confiscate the watch and chain of +A, bought by A of B's lamented but unthrifty father twenty years before! + +After dinner to-night Mr. Tener gave me some interesting and edifying +accounts of his experience in other parts of Ireland. + +Some time ago, before the Plan of Campaign was adopted, one of his +tenants in Cavan came to him with a doleful story of the bad times and +the low prices, and wound up by saying he could pay no more than half a +year's rent. + +"Now his rent had been reduced under the Land Act," said Mr, Tener, "and +I had voluntarily thrown off a lot of arrears, so I looked at him +quietly and said, 'Mickey, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You have +been very well treated, and you can perfectly well pay your rent. Your +wife would be ashamed of you if she knew you were trying to get out of +it.'" + +"Ah no, your honour!" he briskly replied; "indade she would approve it. +If you won't discover on me, I'll tell you the truth. It was the wife +herself, she's a great schollard, and reads the papers, that tould me +not to pay you more than half the rent--for she says there's a new Act +coming to wipe it all out. Will you take the half-year?" + +"No, I will not. Don't be afraid of your wife, but pay what you owe, +like a man. You've got the money there in your pocket." + +This was a good shot. Mickey couldn't resist it, and his countenance +broke into a broad smile. + +"Ah no! I've got it in two pockets. Begorra, it was the wife herself +made up the money in two parcels, and she put one into each pocket, to +be sure--and I wasn't to give your honour but one, if you would take it. +But there's the money, and I daresay it's all for the best." + +On another occasion, when he was collecting the rents of a property in +the county of Longford, one tenant came forward as the spokesman of the +rest, admitted that the rents had been accepted fairly after a reduction +under the Land Act, expressed the general wish of the tenants to meet +their obligations, and wound up by asking a further abatement, "the +times were so bad, and the money couldn't be got, it couldn't indeed!" + +Mr. Tener listened patiently--to listen patiently is the most essential +quality of an agent in Ireland--and finally said:-- + +"Very well, if you haven't got the money to pay in full, pay +three-quarters of it, and I'll give you time for the rest." + +"Thank your honour!" said Pat, "and that'll be thirty pounds--and here +it is in one pound notes, and hard enough to get they are, these times!" + +So Mr. Tener took the money, counted the notes twice over, and then, +writing out a receipt, handed it to the tenant. + +"All right, Pat, there's your receipt for thirty-nine pounds, and I'm +glad to see ten-pound notes going about the country in these hard +times!" + +By mistake the "distressful" orator had put one ten-pound note into his +parcel! He took his receipt, and went off without a word. But the +combination to get an "abatement" broke down then and there, and the +other tenants came forward and put down their money. + +These incidents occurred to Mr. Tener himself. Not less amusing and +instructive was a similar mistake on a larger scale made by an +over-crafty tenant in dealing with one of Mr. Tener's friends a few +years ago in the county of Leitrim. This tenant, whom we will call +Denis, was the fugleman also of a combination. He was a cattle dealer as +well as a farmer, and having spent a couple of hours in idly eloquent +attempts to bring about a general abatement of the rents, he lost his +patience. + +"Ah, well, your honour!" he said, "I can't stay here all day talking +like these men, I must go to the fair at Boyle. Will you take a +deposit-receipt of the bank for ten pounds and give me the pound change? +that'll just be the nine pounds for the half-year's rent. But all the +same, yer honour, those men are all farmers, and it's not out of the +farm at all I made the ten pounds, it's out of the dealing!" + +"But you couldn't deal without a farm, Denis, for the stock," said the +agent, as he glanced at the receipt. He hastily turned it over, and went +on, "Just indorse the receipt, and I'll consider your proposition." + +The receipt was indorsed, and at once taken off by the agent's clerk to +the bank to bring back pound-notes for it, while the agent quietly +proceeded to fill out the regular form of receipt for a full year's +rent, eighteen pounds. Denis noted what he supposed of course to be the +agent's blunder, but like an astute person held his peace. The clerk +came back with the notes. Denis took up his receipt, and the agent +quietly began handing him note after note across the table. + +"But, your honour!" exclaimed Denis, "what on earth are ye giving me all +this money for?" + +"It's your change," said the agent, quite imperturbably. "You gave me a +bank receipt for one hundred pounds. I have given you a receipt for your +full year's rent, and here are eighty-two pounds in notes, and with it +eighteen shillings in silver--that's five per cent. reduction. I would +have made it ten per cent., only you were so very sharp, first about not +having the money, and then about the full receipt!" + +In an instant all eyes were fastened upon Denis. Ichabod! the glory had +departed. The chorus went up from his disenchanted followers:-- + +"Ah, glory be to God, you were not bright enough for the agent, Denis!" + +And so that day the agent made a very full and handsome collection--and +there was a slight reduction in the deposit-accounts of the local bank! + +In the evening Mr. Tener gave me the details of some cases of direct +intimidation with the names of the tenants concerned. One man, whose +farm he visited, told him he had paid his rent not long before to the +previous agent. "Well," said Mr. Tener, "show me your receipt!" On this +the tenant said that he dare not keep the receipt about him, nor even in +the house, lest it should be demanded by the emissaries of the League, +who went round to keep the tenants up to the "Plan of Campaign," and +that it was hidden in his stable. And he went out to the stable and +brought it in. + +This, he had reason to believe, was not an uncommon case.[12] The same +man, wishing to take a grass farm which the people hoped the agent would +consent to have "cut up" was asked to give two names on a +promissory-note to pay the rent. He demurred to this, and after a parley +said, "Would a certificate do?" upon which he pulled out an old +tobacco-box, and carefully unfolded from it a bank certificate of +deposit for a hundred pounds sterling! This tenant held eleven Irish, or +more than seventeen English, acres, and his yearly rent was £11, 16s. +6d. + +The people before this agitation began were generally quiet, thrifty, +and industrious. They were great sheep-raisers. An old law of the Irish +Parliament had exempted sheep, but not cattle or crops, from distraint, +with an eye to encouraging the woollen interest in Ireland. + +As to the sale of tenant-right in Ireland, he told me a curious story. +One woman, a widow, whom he named, owed two year' rent on a holding in +Ulster at £4 a year. She was abundantly able to pay, but for her own +reasons preferred to be evicted, and, finally, by an understanding with +him, offered her tenant-right for sale. A man who had made money in +iron-mines in the County of Durham was a bidder, and finally offered +£240 for the holding. It was knocked down to him. He then saw the agent, +who told him he had paid too much. The woman was then appealed to, and +she admitted that the agent was right. But it was shown that others had +offered £200, and the woman finally agreed to take, and received, that +amount in gold, being fifty years' purchase! + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +DUBLIN, _Thursday, March 1._--This has been a crowded day. I left +Portumna very early on a car with Mr. Tener, intending to visit the +scene of his latest collision with the "National" government of Ireland, +on my way to Loughrea. It was a bright spring morning, more like April +in Italy than like March in America, and the country is full of natural +beauty. We made our first halt at the derelict house of Martin Kenny, +one of the "victims" of the famous "Woodford evictions," so called, as I +have said, because Woodford is the nearest town.[13] The eviction here +took place October 21st, 1887. The house has been dismantled by the +neighbours since that time, each man carrying off a door, or a shutter, +or whatever best suited him. One of the constables who followed us as +Mr. Tener's body-guard had been present at the eviction. He came into +the house with us, and very graphically described the performance. The +house was still full of heavy stones taken into it, partly to block the +entrances, and partly as ammunition; and trunks of trees used as +_chevaux defrise_ still protruded through the door and the window. These +trees had been cut down by the garrison in the woodlands here and there +all over the property. I asked if the law in Ireland punished +depredations of this sort, and was informed that trees planted by +tenants, if registered by them within a certain time, are the property +of the tenants. This would astonish our landlords in America, where the +tenant who sticks so much as a sunflower into his garden-patch makes a +present of it to his landlord.[14] + +I asked if the place made a long defence. Mr. Tener and the constable +both laughed, and the former told me that when the storming party +arrived shortly after daybreak, they found the house garrisoned only by +some small boys, who had been left there to keep watch. The men were +fast asleep at some other place. The small boys ran away as fast as +possible to give the alarm, but the police went in, and in a jiffey +pulled to pieces the elaborate defences prepared to repel them. Father +Coen, the constable said, got to Kenny's house an hour after it was all +over, with a mob of people howling and groaning. But the work had been +done, and other work also at the Castle of Cloondadauv, to which we next +drove. + +This place takes its truly awe-inspiring name from a ruined Norman tower +standing on a picturesque promontory of no great height, which juts out +into the lovely lake here made by the Shannon. At no great expense this +tower might be so restored as to make an ideal fishing-box. It now +simply adorns the holding formerly occupied by Mr. John Stanislaus +Burke, a former tenant of Lord Clanricarde. The story of its capture on +the 17th of September is worth telling. + +Some days before the evictions were to come off, a meeting was held at +Woodford or Loughrea, at which one of the speakers, the patriotic Dr. +Tully, rather incautiously and exultingly told his hearers that the +defence in 1886 of the tenant's house known as "Fort Saunders" had been +a grand and gallant affair indeed, but that next time "the exterminators +would have to storm a castle"! + +This put Mr. Tener at once on the alert, and as Mr. Burke of Cloondadauv +was set down for eviction, it didn't require much cogitation to fix upon +the fortress destined to be "stormed." So he set about the campaign. The +County Inspector of the constabulary, who had made a secret +reconnaissance, reported that he found the place too strong to be taken +if defended, except "by artillery." So it was determined to take it by +surprise. + +When the previous evictions were made, the agent and the public forces +had marched from Portumna by the highway to Woodford, so that, of +course, their advent was announced by the scouts and sentinels of the +League from hill to hill long before they reached the scene of action, +and abundant time was given to the agitators for organising a +"reception." Mr. Tener profited by the experience of his predecessors. +He contrived to get his force of constabulary through the town of +Portumna without attracting any popular attention. And as early rising +is not a popular virtue here, he resolved to steal a march on the +defenders of Cloondadauv. + +He had brought up certain large boats to Portumna, and put them on the +lake. Rousing his men before dawn, he soon had them all embarked, and on +their way swiftly and silently by the river and the lake to Cloondadauv. +They reached the promontory by daybreak, and as soon as the hour of +legal action had arrived they were landed, and surrounded the "castle." +The ancient portal was found to be blocked with heavy stones and trunks +of trees, nor did any adit appear to be available, till a young +gentleman who had accompanied the party as a volunteer, discovered in +one wall of the tower, at some little height from the ground, the vent +of one of those conduits not infrequently found running down through the +walls of old castles, which were used sometimes as waste-ways for +rubbish from above, and sometimes to receive water-pipes from below. +Looking up into this vent, he saw a rope hanging free within it. Upon +this he hauled resolutely, and finding it firmly attached above, came to +the conclusion that it must have been fixed there by the garrison as a +means of access to the interior. + +Like an adventurous young tar, he bade his comrades stand by, and nimbly +"swarmed" up the rope, without thought or care of what might await him +at the top. In a few moments his shouts from above proclaimed the +capture of the stronghold. It was absolutely deserted; the garrison, +confident that no attack would that day be made, had gone off to the +nearest village. The interior of the castle was found filled with +munitions of war, in the shape of huge beams and piles of stones +laboriously carried up the winding stairs, and heaped on all the +landing-places in readiness for use. On the flat roof of the castle was +established a sort of furnace for heating water or oil, to be poured +down upon the besiegers; and crowbars lay there in readiness to loosen +out and dislodge the battlements, and topple them over upon the +assailants. + +The officers soon made their way all over the building, and thence +proceeded to the residence of Mr. Burke near by, a large and very +commodious house. All the formalities were gone through with, a +detachment of policemen was put in charge, and the rest of the forces +set out on their return to Portumna, before the organised "defenders" of +Cloondadauv, hastily called out of their comfortable beds or from their +breakfast-tables had realised the situation, and got the populace into +motion. A mass meeting was held in the neighbourhood, and many speeches +were made. But the castle and the farm-house and the holding all remain +in the hands of a cool, quiet, determined-looking young Ulsterman, who +tells me that he is getting on very well, and feels quite able with his +police-guard to protect himself. "Once in a while," he said, "they come +here from Loughrea with English Parliament-men, and stand outside of the +gate, and call me 'Clanricarde's dog,' and make like speeches at me; but +I don't mind them, and they see it, and go away again." + +Of Mr. Burke, the evicted tenant here, Mr. Crawford, the Protestant +clergyman at Portumna, told me that he was abundantly able to pay his +rent. The whole debt for which Burke was evicted was £115; and Mr. +Crawford said he had himself offered Burke £300 for the holding. Burke +would have gladly taken this, but "the League wouldn't let him." When +his right was put up for sale at Galway for £5, he did not dare to buy +it in, and he is now living with his wife and children on the League +funds. Lord Clanricarde's agent offered to take him back and restore his +right if he would pay what he owed; but he dared not accept. This farm +comprises over one hundred and ten English acres, which Burke held at a +rent--fixed by the Land Court--of £77, the valuation for taxes being +£83. + +To call the eviction of such a tenant in such circumstances from such a +holding a "sentence of death," is making ducks and drakes of the English +language. Mr. Crawford's opinion, founded upon a thorough personal +knowledge of the region, is that there is no exceptional distress in +this part of Ireland, and that over-renting has nothing to do with such +distress as does exist here. The case of a man named Egan, one of the +"victims" of the Woodford evictions of 1886, certainly bears out this +view of the matter. Egan, who was a tenant, not at all of Lord +Clanricarde, but of a certain Mrs. Lewis, had occupied for twenty years +a holding of about sixteen Irish acres, or more than twenty English +acres. This he held at a yearly rental of £8, 15s., being 9d. over the +valuation. + +In August 1886 he was evicted for refusing to pay one year's rent then +due. At that time the crops standing on the land were valued by him at +£60, 13s. He also owned six beasts. In other words, this man, when he +was called upon to pay a debt of £8, 15s. had in his own possession, +beside the valuable tenant-right of his holding, more than a hundred +pounds sterling of merchantable assets. He refused to pay, and he was +evicted. + +This was in August 1886. But such are the ideas now current in Ireland +as to the relations of landlord and tenant, that immediately after his +eviction Egan sent his daughter to gather some cabbages off the farm as +if nothing had happened. The Emergency men in charge actually objected, +and sent the damsel away. Thereupon Egan, on the 6th of September, +served a legal notice on Mrs. Lewis, his landlady, requiring her either +to let him take all the crops on the farm, or to pay him their value, +estimated by him, as I have said, at £60, 13s. Two days after this, on +the 8th of September, more than a hundred men came to the place by night +and removed the greater portion of the crops. Not wishing a return of +these visitors, Mrs. Lewis, on the 16th of September, sent word to Egan +to come and take away what was left of the crops; one of the horses +employed in the nocturnal harvest of September 8th having been seized by +the police and identified as belonging to Egan. Egan did not respond; +but in July 1887 he brought an action against his landlady to recover +£100 sterling for her "detention of his goods," and her "conversion of +the same to her own use "! + +The case was heard by the Recorder at Kilmainham, and the facts which I +have briefly recited were established by the evidence. The daughter of +this extraordinary "victim" Egan appeared as a witness, so "fashionably +dressed" as to attract a remark on the subject from the defendant's +counsel. To this she replied that "her brothers in America sent her +money." + +"If your brothers in America sent you money for such purposes," not +unnaturally observed the Recorder, "why did they allow your father to +sacrifice crops worth £60 for the non-payment of £8, 15s.?" + +"They were tired of that," said the young lady airily; "the land wasn't +worth the rent!" + +That is to say, a farm which yielded a crop of £60, and pastured several +head of cattle, was not worth £8, 15s. a year. Certainly it was not +worth £8, 15s. a year if the tenant under the operation of the existing +or the impending laws of Great Britain in Ireland could get, or hope to +get it for the half of that rent, or for no rent at all. + +But this being thus, on what grounds are the rest of mankind invited to +regard this excellent man as a "victim" worthy of sympathy and of +material aid? How had he come to be in arrears of a year in August 1886? +The proceedings at Kilmainham tell us this. + +In November 1885 he had demanded, with other tenants of Mrs. Lewis, a +reduction of 50 per cent. This would have given him his holding at a +rental of £4, 7s. 6d. Mrs. Lewis refused the concession, and a month +afterwards an attempt was made to blow up her son's house with dynamite. +Between that time and August 1886, all the efforts of her son, who was +also her agent, to collect her dues by seizing beasts, were defeated by +the driving away of the cattle, so that no remedy but an eviction was +left to her. I take it for granted that Mrs. Lewis had a family to +maintain, and debts of one sort and another to pay, as well as Mr. +Egan--but I observe this material difference between her position and +his during the whole of this period of "strained relations" between +herself and her tenant, that whereas she lay completely out of the +enjoyment of the rent due her, being the interest on her capital, +represented in her title to the land, Mr. Egan remained in the complete +enjoyment and use of the land. Clearly the tenant was in a better +position than the landlord, and as we are dealing not with the history +of Ireland in the past, but with the condition of Ireland at present, it +appears to me to be quite beside the purpose to ask my sympathies for +Mr. Egan on the ground that a century or half a century ago the +ancestors of Mr. Egan may have been at the mercy of the ancestors of +Mrs. Lewis. However that may have been, Mr. Egan seems to me now to have +had legally much the advantage of Mrs. Lewis. Not only this. Both +legally and materially Mr. Egan, the tenant-farmer at Woodford, seems to +me to have had much the advantage of thousands of his countrymen living +and earning their livelihood by their daily labour in such a typical +American commonwealth, for example, as Massachusetts. I have here with +me the Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics of +Massachusetts. From this I learn that in 1876 the average yearly wages +earned by workmen in Massachusetts were $482.72, or in round numbers +something over £96. Out of this amount the Massachusetts workman had to +feed, clothe, and house himself, and those dependent on him. + +His outlay for rent alone was on the average $109.07, or in round +numbers rather less than £22, making 22-1/2 per cent, of his earnings. + +How was it with Mr. Egan? Out of his labour on his holding he got +merchantable crops worth £60 sterling, or in round numbers $300, besides +producing in the shape of vegetables and dairy stuff, pigs and poultry, +certainly a very large proportion of the food necessary for his +household, and raising and fattening beasts, worth at a low estimate £20 +or $100 more. And while thus engaged, his outlay for rent, which +included not only the house in which he lived, but the land out of which +he got the returns of his labour expended upon it, was £8, 15s., or +considerably less than one-half the outlay of the Massachusetts workman +upon the rent of nothing more than a roof to shelter himself and his +family. Furthermore, the money thus paid out by the Massachusetts +workman for rent was simply a tribute paid for accommodation had and +enjoyed, while out of every pound sterling paid as rent by the Irish +tenant there reverted to his credit, so long as he continued to fulfil +his legal obligations, a certain proportion, calculable, valuable, and +saleable, in the form of his tenant-right. + +I am not surprised to learn that the Recorder dismissed the suit brought +by Mr. Egan, and gave costs against him. But the mere fact that in such +circumstances it was possible for Egan to bring such a suit, and get a +hearing for it, makes it quite clear that Americans of a sympathetic +turn of mind can very easily find much more meritorious objects of +sympathy than the Irish tenant-farmers of Galway without crossing the +Atlantic in quest of them. + +From Cloondadauv to Loughrea we had a long but very interesting drive, +passing on the way, and at no great distance from each other, Father +Coen's neat, prosperous-looking presbytery of Ballinakill, and the shop +and house of a local boat-builder named Tully, who is pleasantly known +in the neighbourhood as "Dr. Tully," by reason of his recommendation of +a very particular sort of "pills for landlords." The presbytery is now +occupied by Father Coen, who finds it becoming his position as the moral +teacher and guide of his people to be in arrears of two and a half years +with the rent of his holding, and who is said to have entertained Mr. +Blunt and other sympathising statesmen very handsomely on their visit to +Loughrea and Woodford,[15] "Dr." Tully being one of the guests invited +to meet them.[16] Not far from this presbytery, Mr. Tener showed me the +scene of one of the most cowardly murders which have disgraced this +region. Of Loughrea, the objective of our drive this morning, Sir George +Trevelyan, I am told, during his brief rule in Ireland, found it +necessary to say that murder had there become an institution. Woodford, +previously a dull and law-abiding spot, was illuminated by a lurid light +of modern progress about three years ago, upon the transfer thither in +the summer of 1885 of a priest from Loughrea, familiarly known as "the +firebrand priest." + +In November of that year, as I have already related, Mr. Egan and other +tenants of Mrs. Lewis of Woodford made their demand for a 50 per cent. +reduction of their rents, upon the refusal of which an attempt was made +with dynamite on the 18th December to blow up the house of Mrs. Lewis's +son and agent. All the bailiffs in the region round about were warned to +give up serving processes, and many of them were cowed into doing so. +One man, however, was not cowed. This was a gallant Irish soldier, +discharged with honour after the Crimean war, and known in the country +as "Balaklava," because he was one of the "noble six hundred," who there +rode "into the jaws of death, into the valley of hell." His name was +Finlay, and he was a Catholic. At a meeting in Woodford, Father Coen +(the priest now in arrears), it is said, looked significantly at Finlay, +and said, "no process-server will be got to serve processes for Sir +Henry Burke of Marble Hill." The words and the look were thrown away on +the veteran who had faced the roar and the crash of the Russian guns, +and later on, in December 1885, Finlay did his duty, and served the +processes given to him. From that moment he and his wife were +"boycotted." His own kinsfolk dared not speak to him. His house was +attacked by night. He was a doomed man. On the 3d March 1886, about 2 +o'clock P.M., he left his house--which Mr. Tener pointed out to me--to +cut fuel in a wood belonging to Sir Henry Burke, at no great distance. +Twice he made the journey between his house and the wood. The third time +he went and returned no more. His wife growing uneasy at his prolonged +absence went out to look for him. She found his body riddled with +bullets lying lifeless in the highway. The police who went into Woodford +with the tale report the people as laughing and jeering at the agony of +the widowed woman. She was with them, and, maddened by the savage +conduct of these wretched creatures, she knelt down over-against the +house of Father Egan, and called down the curse of God upon him. + +On the next day things were worse. No one could be found to supply a +coffin for the murdered man.[17] When the police called upon the priests +to exert their influence and enforce some semblance at least of +Christian and Catholic decency upon the people confided to their charge, +the priests not only refused to do their duty, but floutingly referred +the police to Lady Mary Burke. "He did her work," they said, "let her +send a hearse now to bury him." The lady thus insolently spoken of is +one of the best of the Catholic women of Ireland. At her summons Father +Burke, a few years only before his death, I remember, made a long winter +journey, though in very bad health, from Dublin to Marble Hill to soothe +the last hours and attend the death-bed of her husband. + +No one who knew and loved him can wish him to have lived to hear from +her lips such a tale of the degradation of Catholic priests in his own +land of Galway. + +Mr. Tener pointed out to me, at another place on the road, near +Ballinagar, the deserted burying-ground in which, after much trouble, a +grave was found for the brave old soldier who had escaped the Russian +cannon-balls to be so foully done to death by felons of his own race. +There the last rites were performed by Father Callaghy, a priest who was +himself "boycotted" for resigning the presidency of the League in his +parish, and for the still graver offence of paying his rent. For weeks +it was necessary to guard the grave![18] + +From that day to this no one has been brought to justice for this crime, +committed in broad daylight, and within sight of the highway. Mr. Place, +whom I saw at Portumna, told me that he believed the police had no moral +doubt as to the murderer of Finlay, but that it was useless to think of +getting legal evidence to convict him. + +Mr. Tener tells me that when Mr. Wilfrid Blunt came to Woodford he went +with Father Egan, and accompanied by the police, to see the widow of +this murdered man, heard from her own lips the sickening story, and took +notes of it. But when Mr. Rowlands, M.P., an English "friend of Home +Rule," was examined the other day during the trial of Mr. Blunt, he was +obliged to confess that though he had visited Woodford more than once, +and conversed freely with Mr. Blunt about it, he had "never heard of the +murder of Finlay." + +Such an incident is apparently of little interest to politicians at +Westminster. Fortunately for Ireland, it is of a nature to command more +attention at the Vatican. + +Nature has sketched the scenery of this part of Ireland with a free, +bold hand. It is not so grand or so wild as the scenery of Western +Donegal, but it has both a wildness and a grandeur of its own. Sir Henry +Burke's seat of Marble Hill, as seen in the distance from the road, +stands superbly, high up on a lofty range of wooded hills, from which it +commands the country for miles. And no town I have seen in Ireland is +more picturesquely placed than Loughrea. It has an almost Italian aspect +as you approach it from Woodford. But no lake in Lombardy or Piedmont is +so peculiarly and exquisitely tinted as the lough on which it stands. +The delicate grey-green of the sparkling waters reminded me of the +singular and well-defined belts and stretches of chrysoprase upon which +you sometimes come in sailing through the dark azure of the Southern +Seas. I have never before seen precisely such a hue in any body of fresh +water. The lake is incorrectly described, Mr. Tener tells me, in the +guide-books, as being one of the many curious developments of the Lower +Shannon. It is fed by springs, but if, like the river-lakes, it was +formed by a solution of the limestone, this fact may have some chemical +relation with its very peculiar colour. It contains three picturesque +islands. No stream flows into it, but two streams issue from it. The +town of Loughrea is an ancient holding of the De Burghs, and the +estate-office of Lord Clanricarde is here in one wing of a great +barrack, standing, as I understood Mr. Tener to say, on the site of a +former fortress of the family. Lord Clanricarde's property here is put +down by Mr. Hussey de Burgh at 49,025 acres in County Galway, valued at +£19,634, and at 3576 acres in the county of the City of Galway, valued +at £1202. These, I believe, are statute acres, and in estimating the +relation of Irish rentals to Irish land this fact must be always +ascertained. Of the so-called "Woodford" property the present rental is +no more than £1900, payable by 260 tenants. The Poor-Law valuation for +taxes is £2400. There was a revision of the whole Galway property made +by the father of the present Marquis. Of the 260 Woodford holdings only +twelve were increased, in no case more than 6-1/4 per cent, over the +valuation. In 1882 six of these twelve tenants applied to the Land +Court. The rents were in no case restored to the figures before 1872, +but about 7 per cent. was taken off the increased rental. The assertion +repeatedly made that in 1882 rents were reduced by the Land Court 50 per +cent. on the Clanricarde estates, Mr. Tener tells me, is absolutely +false. In the first year of the Court no reduction went beyond 10 per +cent., and in later years, even under the panic of low prices, the +average has not exceeded 20 per cent. + +After making arrangements for a car to take me on to Woodlawn, where I +was to catch the Dublin train, I went out with Mr. Tener to look at the +town. + +My drive from Loughrea to Woodlawn was delightful. It took me over a +long stretch of the best hunting country of Galway, and my jarvey was a +Galwegian of the type dear to the heart of Lever. He was a "Nationalist" +after his fashion, but he did not hesitate to come rattling up through +the town to the Estate Office to take me up; and after we got fairly off +upon the highway, he spoke with more freedom than respect of all sorts +and conditions of men in and about Loughrea. + +"He's a sharp little man, that Mr. Tener," he said, "and he gave the +boys a most beautiful beating at Burke's place." + +This was said with genuine gusto, and not at all in the querulous spirit +of the delightful member of Parliament who complained at Westminster +with unconscious humour that the agent and the police in that case had +"dishonourably" stolen a march on the defenders of Cloondadauv! + +"But we've beaten them entirely," he said, with equal zest, "at Marble +Hill. Sir Henry has agreed to pay all the costs, and the living expenses +too, of the poor men that were put out.[19] I didn't ever think we'd get +that; but ye see the truth is," he added confidentially, "he must have +the money, Sir Henry--he's lying out of a deal, and then there's heavy +charges on the property. A fine property it is indeed!" + +"In fact," I said, "you put Sir Henry to the wall. Is that it?" + +"Well, it's like that. But we shan't get that out of Clanricarde, I'm +thinking. He's got a power o' money they tell me; and he's that of the +ould Burke blood, he won't mind fighting just as long as you like!" + +As we drove along, he pointed out to me several fine stretches of +hunting country, and, to my surprise, informed me that only the other +day "there was as fine a meet as ever you saw, more than a hundred +ladies and gentlemen--a grand sight it was." + +I asked if the hunting had not been "put down by the League." + +"Oh, now then, sir, who'd be wanting to put down the hunting here in +Galway?--and Ballinasloe? Were you ever at Ballinasloe? just the +grandest horse fair there is in the whole wide world!" + +I insisted that I had always heard a great deal about the opposition of +the League to hunting. + +"Oh, that'll be some little lawyer fellow," he replied, "like that +Healy, that can't sit on a horse! It's the grandest country in all the +world for riding over. What for wouldn't they ride over it?" + +"Were there many went out to America from about Loughrea?" + +"Oh, yes; they were always coming and going. But as many came back." + +"Why?" + +"Oh, they didn't like the country. It wasn't as good a country, was it, +as old Ireland? And they had to work too hard; and then some of them got +money, and they'd like to spend it in the old place." + +The country about Woodlawn is very picturesque and well wooded, and for +a long distance we followed the neatly-kept stone walls of the large and +handsome park of Lord Ashtown. + +"The most beautiful and biggest trees in all Ireland, sorr," said the +jarvey, "and it's a great pity, it is, ye can't stay to let me drive you +all over it, for the finest part of the park is just what you can't see +from this road. Oh, her ladyship would never object to any gentleman +driving about to see the beauties of the place. She is a very good +woman, is her ladyship. She gave work the last Christmas to thirty-two +men, and there wasn't another house in the country there that had work +for more than ten or twelve. A very good woman she is, indeed." + +"Yes, that is a very handsome church, it is indeed. It is the Protestant +Church. Lord Ashtown built it; he was a very good man too, and did a +power of good--building and making roads, and giving work to the people. +He was buried there in that Castle, over the station--Trench's Castle, +they called it." + +"All that lumber there by the station?" + +"That came out of the Ashtown woods. They were always cutting down the +trees; there was so many of them you might be cutting for years--you +would never get to the end of them." + +Woodlawn Station is one of the neatest and prettiest railway stations I +have seen in Ireland--more like a picturesque stone cottage, green and +gay with flowers, than like a station. The station-master's family of +cheery well-dressed lads and lasses went and came about the bright fire +in the waiting-room in a friendly unobtrusive fashion, chatting with the +policeman and the porter and the passengers. It was hard to believe +one's-self within an easy drive of the "cockpit of Ireland." + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + +BORRIS, _Friday, March 2d._--This is the land of the Kavanaghs, and a +lovely, picturesque, richly-wooded land it is. I left Dublin with Mr. +Gyles by an afternoon train; the weather almost like June. We ran from +the County of Dublin into Kildare, and from Kildare into Carlow, through +hills; rural scenery quite unlike anything I have hitherto seen in +Ireland. At Bagnalstown, a very pretty place, with a spire which takes +the eye, our host joined us, and came on with us to this still more +attractive spot. Borris has been the seat of his family for many +centuries. The MacMorroghs of Leinster, whom the Kavanaghs lineally +represent, dwelt here long before Dermot MacMorrogh, finding his +elective throne in Leinster too hot to hold him, went off into +Aquitaine, to get that famous "letter of marque" from Henry II. of +England, with the help of which this king without a kingdom induced +Richard de Clare, an earl without an earldom, to lend him a hand and +bring the Normans into Ireland. Many of this race lie buried in the +ruins of St. Mullen's Abbey, on the Barrow, in this county. But none of +them, I opine, ever did such credit to the name as its present +representative, Arthur MacMorrogh Kavanagh. + +I had some correspondence with Mr. Kavanagh several years ago, when he +sent me, through my correspondent for publication in New York, a very +striking statement of his views on the then condition of Irish +affairs--views since abundantly vindicated; and like most people who +have paid any attention to the recent history of Ireland, I knew how +wonderful an illustration his whole career has been of what philosophers +call the superiority of man to his accidents, and plain people the power +of the will. But I knew this only imperfectly. His servant brought him +up to the carriage and placed him in it. This it was impossible not to +see. But I had not talked with him for five minutes before it quite +passed out of my mind. Never was there such a justification of the +paradoxical title which Wilkinson gave to his once famous book, _The +Human Body, and its Connexion with Man_,--never such a living refutation +of the theory that it is the thumb which differentiates man from the +lower animals. Twenty times this evening I have been reminded of the +retort I heard made the other day at Cork by a lawyer, who knows Mr. +Kavanagh well, to a priest of "Nationalist" proclivities, who knows him +not at all. Some allusion having been made to Borris, the lawyer said to +me, "You will see at Borris the best and ablest Irishman alive." On this +the priest testily and tartly broke in, "Do you mean the man without +hands or feet?" + +"I mean," replied the lawyer, very quietly, "the man in whom all that +has gone in you or me to arms and legs has gone to heart and head!" + +Borris House stands high in the heart of an extensive and nobly wooded +park, and commands one of the finest landscapes I have seen in Ireland. +As we stood and gazed upon it from the hall door, the distant hills were +touched with a soft purple light such as transfigures the Apennines at +sunset. + +"You should see this view in June," said Mrs, Kavanagh, "we are all +brown and bare now." + +Brown and bare, like most other terms, are relative. To the eye of an +American this whole region now seems a sea of verdure, less clear and +fresh, I can easily suppose, than it may be in the early summer, but +verdure still. And one must get into the Adirondacks, or up among the +mountains of Western Virginia, to find on our Atlantic slope such trees +as I have this evening seen. One grand ilex near the house could hardly +be matched in the Villa d'Este. + +The house is stately and commodious, and more ancient than it appears to +be,--so many additions have been made to it at different times. It has +passed through more than one siege, and in the '98 Mr. Kavanagh tells me +the townspeople of Borris came up here and sought refuge. There are vast +caverns under the house and grounds, doubtless made by taking out from +the hill the stone used in building this house, and the fortresses which +stood here before it. In these all sorts of stores were kept, and many +of the people found shelter. + +I need not say that there is a banshee at Borris--though no living +witness, I believe, has heard its warning wail. But as we sat in the +beautiful library, and watched the dying light of day, a lady present +told us a tale more gruesome than many of those in which the "psychical" +inquirers delight. She was sitting, she said, in an upper room of an +ancient mansion here in Carlow, in which she lives, when, from the lawn +below, there came up to her a low, sad, shrill cry--the croon of a +woman, such as one hears from the mourners sitting among the turbaned +tombstones of the hill of Eyoub at Constantinople. It startled her, and +she held her breath and listened. She was alone, as she knew, in that +part of the house, and the hall door below was unlocked, as is the +fashion still in Ireland, despite all the troubles and turmoils. Again +the sound came, and this time nearer to the house. Could it be the +banshee? Again and again it rose and died away, each time nearer and +nearer. Then, as she listened, all her nerves strung to the keenest +sensibility, it came again, and now, beyond a doubt, within the hall +below. + +With an effort she rose from her chair, opened a door leading into a +corridor running aside from the main stairway, and fled at full speed +towards the wing in which she knew that she would find some of the +maids. As she sped along she heard the cry again and again far behind +her, as from a creature slowly and steadily mounting the grand stairway +towards the room which she had just quitted. + +She found the maids, who fell into a terrible fright when she told her +story and dared not budge. So the bells were violently rung till the +butler and footman appeared. To the first she said simply, "There is a +mad woman in this house--go and find her!" + +"The man looked at me," she said, "as I spoke with a curious expression +in his face as of one who thought, 'yes, there is a mad woman in the +house, and she is not far to seek!'" + +But the lady insisted, and the men finally went off on their quest. In +the course of half an hour it was rewarded. The mad woman--a dangerous +creature--who had wandered away from an asylum in the neighbourhood, was +found curled up and fast asleep in the lady's own bed! + +Fancy a delicate woman going alone into her bedroom at midnight to be +suddenly confronted by an apparition of that sort! + + +BORRIS, _March 3d._--After a stroll on the lawn this morning, the wide +and glorious prospect bathed in the light of a really soft spring day, I +had a conversation with Mr. Kavanagh about the Land Corporation, of +which he is the guiding spirit. This is a defensive organisation of the +Irish landlords against the Land League. When a landlord has been driven +into evicting his tenants, the next step, in the "war against +landlordism," is to prevent other tenants from taking the vacated lands +and cultivating them. This is accomplished by "boycotting" any man who +does this as a "land-grabber." + +The ultimate sanction of the "boycott" being "murder," derelict farms +increased under this system very rapidly; and the Eleventh Commandment +of the League, "Thou shalt not pay the rent which thy neighbour hath +refused to pay," was in a fair way to dethrone the Ten Commandments of +Sinai throughout Ireland, even before the formal adoption in 1886 of the +"Plan of Campaign." + +Mr. Gladstone would perhaps have hit the facts more accurately, if, +instead of calling an eviction in Ireland a "sentence of death," he had +called the taking of a tenancy a sentence of death. Mr. Hussey at Lixnaw +had two tenants, Edmond and James Fitzmaurice. Edmond Fitzmaurice was +"evicted" in May 1887; but he was taken into the house of a neighbour, +made very comfortable, and still lives. James Fitzmaurice took, for the +sake of the family, the land from which Edmond was evicted, and for this +he was denounced as a "land-grabber," boycotted, and finally shot dead +in the presence of his daughter. + +At a meeting in Dublin in the autumn of 1885, a parish priest, the Rev. +Mr. Cantwell, described it as a "cardinal virtue" that "no one should +take a farm from which another had been evicted," and called upon the +people who heard him to "pass any such man by unnoticed, and treat him +as an enemy in their midst." Public opinion and the law, if not the +authorities of his church would make short work of any priest who talked +in this fashion in New York. But in Ireland, and under the British +Government, it seems they order things differently. So it occurred one +day to the landlords thus assailed, as it did to the sea-lions of the +Cape of Good Hope when the French sailors attacked them, that they might +defend themselves. + +To this end the Land Corporation was instituted, with a considerable +capital at its back, and Mr. Kavanagh at its head. The "plan of +campaign" of this Corporation is to take over from the landlords +derelict lands and cultivate them, stocking them where that is +necessary. + +It is in this way that the derelict lands on the Ponsonby property at +Youghal are now worked. But Mr. Kavanagh tells me that the men employed +by the Corporation, of whom Father Keller spoke as a set of desperadoes +or "_enfants perdus_," are really a body of resolute and capable working +men farmers. Many, but by no means all of them, are Protestants and +Ulstermen; and that they are up to their work would seem to be shown by +the fact stated to me, that in no case so far have any of them been +deterred and driven off from the holdings confided to them. A great part +of the Luggacurren property of Lord Lansdowne is now worked by the +Corporation; and Mr. Kavanagh was kind enough to let me see the +accounts, which indicate a good business result for the current year on +that property. This is all very interesting. But what a picture it +presents of social demoralisation! And what is to be the end of it all? +Can a country be called civilised in which a farmer with a family to +maintain, having the capital and the experience necessary to manage +successfully a small farm, is absolutely forbidden, on pain of social +ostracism, and eventually on pain of death, by a conspiracy of his +neighbours, to take that farm of its lawful owner at what he considers +to be a fair rent? And how long can any civilisation of our complex +modern type endure in a country in which such a state of things +tolerated by the alleged Government of that country has to be met, and +more or less partially mitigated, by deviating to the cultivation of +farms rendered in this way derelict large amounts of capital which might +be, and ought to be, far more profitably employed in other ways? + +Mr. Kavanagh, after serving the office of High Sheriff thirty years ago, +first for Kilkenny, and then for Carlow, sat in Parliament for fourteen +years, from 1866 to 1880, as an Irish county member. He has a very large +property here in Carlow, and property also in Wexford, and in Kilkenny, +and was sworn into the Privy Council two years ago. If the personal +interests and the family traditions of any man alive can be said to be +rooted in the Irish soil, this is certainly true of his interests and +his traditions. How can the peace and prosperity of Ireland be served by +a state of things which condemns an Irishman of such ties and such +training to expend his energies and his ability in defending the +elementary right of Paddy O'Rourke to take stock and work a ten-acre +farm on terms that suit himself and his landlord? + +In the afternoon we took a delightful walk through the woods, Mr. +Kavanagh going with us on horseback. Every hill and clump of trees on +this large domain he knows, and he led us like a master of woodcraft +through all manner of leafy byways to the finest points of view. The +Barrow flows past Borris, making pictures at every turn, and the banks +on both sides are densely and beautifully wooded. We came in one place +upon a sawmill at work in the forest, and Mr. Kavanagh showed us with +pride the piles of excellent timber which he turns out here. But he took +a greater pride in a group, sacred from the axe, of really magnificent +Scotch firs, such as I had certainly not expected to find in Ireland. +Nearer the mansion are some remarkable Irish yews. The gardens are of +all sorts and very extensive, but we found the head-gardener bitterly +lamenting the destruction by a fire in one of the conservatories of more +than six thousand plants just prepared for setting out. + +There are many curious old books and papers here, and a student of early +Irish history might find matter to keep him well employed for a long +time in this region. It was from this region and the race which ruled +it, of which race Mr. Kavanagh is the actual representative, that the +initiative came of the first Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. Strongbow +made what, from the Anglo-Norman point of view, was a perfectly +legitimate bargain, with a dispossessed prince to help him to the +recovery of his rights on the understanding that these rights, when +recovered, should pass in succession to himself through the only +daughter of the prince, whom he proposed to marry. It does not appear +that Strongbow knew, or that Dermot MacMorrogh cared to tell him, how +utterly unlike the rights of an Anglo-Norman prince were those of the +elective life-tenant of an Irish principality. FitzStephen, the son by +her second marriage of Nesta, the Welsh royal mistress of Henry +Beauclerk, and his cousin, Maurice Fitzgerald, the leaders into Ireland +of the Geraldines, were no more clear in their minds about this than +Strongbow, and it is to the original muddle thus created that Professor +Richey doubtless rightly refers the worst and most troublesome +complications of the land question in Ireland. The distinction between +the King's lieges and the "mere Irish," for example, is unquestionably a +legal distinction, though it is continually and most mischievously used +as if it were a proof of the race-hatred borne by the Normans and Saxons +in Ireland from the first against the Celts. The O'Briens, the O'Neills, +the O'Mullaghlins, the O'Connors, and the M'Morroghs, "the five bloods," +as they are called, were certainly Celts, but whether in virtue of their +being, or claiming to be, the royal races respectively of Minister, of +Ulster, of Meath, of Connaught, and of Leinster, or from whatever other +reason, these races were "within the king's law," and were never "mere +Irish" from the first planting of the Anglo-Norman power in Ireland. The +case of a priest, Shan O'Kerry, "an Irish enemy of the king," presented +"contrary to the form of statute" to the vicarage of Lusk, in the reign +of Edward IV. (1465), illustrates this. An Act of Parliament was passed +to declare the aforesaid "Shan O'Kerry," or "John of Kevernon," to be +"English born, and of English nation," and that he might "hold and enjoy +the said benefice." + +There is a genealogy here of the M'Morroghs and Kavanaghs, most +gorgeously and elaborately gotten up many years ago for Mr. Kavanagh's +grandfather, which shows how soon the Norman and the native strains of +blood become commingled. When one remembers how much Norman blood must +have gone even into far-off Connaught when King John, in the early part +of the thirteenth century, coolly gave away that realm of the O'Connors +to the De Burgos, and how continually the English of the Pale fled from +the exactions inflicted upon them by their own people, and sought refuge +"among the savage and mere Irish," one cannot help thinking that the" +Race Question" has been "worked for at least all it is worth" by +philosophers bent on unravelling the 'snarl' of Irish affairs. If this +genealogy may be trusted, there was little to choose between the ages +which immediately preceded and the ages which followed the Anglo-Norman +invasion in the matter of respect for human life. Celtic chiefs and +Norman knights "died in their boots" as regularly as frontiersmen in +Texas. One personage is designated in the genealogy as "the murderer," +for the truly Hibernian reason, so far as appears, that he was himself +murdered while quite a youth, and before he had had a chance to murder +more than three or four of his immediate relatives. It was as if the son +of Geoffrey Plantagenet and the Lady Constance should be branded in +history as "Arthur, the Assassin." + + +BORRIS, _March 4th._--This is a staunch Protestant house, and Mr. +Kavanagh himself reads a Protestant service every morning. But there is +little or nothing apparently in this part of Ireland of the bitter +feeling about and against the Catholics which exists in the North. A +very lively and pleasant Catholic gentleman came in to-day informally +and joined the house party at luncheon. We all walked out over the +property afterwards, visiting quite a different region from that which +we saw yesterday--different but equally beautiful and striking, and this +Catholic gentleman cited several cases which had fallen within his own +knowledge of priests who begin to feel their moral control of the people +slipping away from them through the operation of the "Plan of Campaign." +I told him what I had heard in regard to one such priest from my +ecclesiastical friend in Cork. "It does not surprise me at all," he +said, "and, indeed, I not very long ago read precisely such another +letter from a priest in a somewhat similar position. I read it with pain +and shame as a Catholic," he continued, "for it was simply a complete +admission that the priest, although entirely convinced that his +parishioners were making most unfair demands upon their landlord to whom +the letter was addressed, felt himself entirely powerless to bring them +to a sense of their misconduct." "Had this priest given in his adhesion +to the Plan of Campaign?" I asked. "Yes," was the reply, "and it was +this fact which had broken his hold on the people when he tried to bring +them to abandon their attitude under the Plan. His letter was really +nothing more nor less than an appeal to the landlord, and that landlord +a Protestant, to help him to get out of the hole into which he had put +himself." + +Of the tenants and their relation to the village despots who administer +the Plan of Campaign, this gentleman had many stories also to tell of +the same tenor with all that I have hitherto heard on this subject. +Everywhere it is the same thing. The well-to-do and well-disposed +tenants are coerced by the thriftless and shiftless. "I have the +agencies of several properties," he said, "and in some of the best parts +of Ireland. I have had little or no trouble on any of them, for I have +one uniform method. I treat every tenant as if he were the only man I +had to deal with, study his personal ways and character, humour him, and +get him on my side against himself. You can always do this with an +Irishman if you will take the trouble to do it. Within the past years I +have had tenants come and tell me they were in fear the Plan of Campaign +would be brought upon them, just as if it were a kind of potato disease, +and beg me to agree to take the rent from them in that case, and just +not discover on them that they had paid it before it was due!" + +This gentleman is a pessimist as to the future. "I am a youngish man +still," he said, "and a single man, and I am glad of it. I don't believe +the English will ever learn how to govern this country, and I am sure it +can never govern itself. Would your people make a State of it?" + +To this I replied that with Cuba and Canada and Mexico, all still to be +digested and assimilated, I thought the deglutition of Ireland by the +great Republic must be remitted to a future much too remote to interest +either of us. + +"I suppose so," he said in a humorously despondent tone; "and so I see +nothing for people who think as I do, but Australia or New Zealand!" + +Mr. Kavanagh sees the future, I think, in colouring not quite so dark. +As a public man, familiar for years with the method and ways of British +Parliaments, he seems to regard the possible future legislation of +Westminster with more anxiety and alarm than the past or present +agitations in Ireland. The business of banishing political economy to +Jupiter and Saturn, however delightful it may be to the people who make +laws, is a dangerous one to the people for whom the laws are made. While +he has very positive opinions as to the wisdom of the concession made in +the successive Land Acts for Ireland, which have been passed since 1870, +he is much less disquieted, I think, by those concessions, than by the +spirit by which the legislation granting them has been guided. He thinks +great good has been already done by Mr. Balfour, and that much more good +will be done by him if the Irish people are made to feel that clamorous +resistance to the law will no longer be regarded at Westminster as a +sufficient reason for changing the law. That is as much as to say that +party spirit in Great Britain is the chief peril of Ireland to-day. And +how can any Irishman, no matter what his state in his own country may +be, or his knowledge of Irish affairs, or his patriotic earnestness and +desire for Irish prosperity, hope to control the tides of party spirit +in England or Scotland? + +Of the influence upon the people in Ireland of the spirit of recent +legislation for Ireland, the story of the troubles on the O'Grady +estate, as Mr. Kavanagh tells it to me, is a most striking illustration. +"The O'Grady of Kilballyowen," as his title shows, is the direct +representative, not of any Norman invader, but of an ancient Irish race. +The O'Gradys were the heads of a sept of the "mere Irish"; and if there +be such a thing--past, present, or future--as an "Irish nation," the +place of the O'Gradys in that nation ought to be assumed. Mr. Thomas De +Courcy O'Grady, who now wears the historic designation, owns and lives +on an estate of a little more than 1000 acres, in the Golden Vein of +Ireland, at Killmallock, in the county of Limerick. The land is +excellent, and for the last half-century certainly it has been let to +the tenants at rents which must be considered fair, since they have +never been raised. In 1845, two years before the great famine, the +rental was £2142. This rental was paid throughout the famine years +without difficulty; and in 1881 the rental stood at £2108. + +There has never been an eviction on the estate until last year, when six +tenants were evicted. All of these lived in good comfortable houses, and +were prosperous dairy-farmers. Why were they evicted? + +In October 1886, during the candidacy at New York of the Land Reformer, +Mr. George, Mr. Dillon, M.P., propounded the "Plan of Campaign" at +Portumna in Galway. The March rents being then due on the estate of The +O'Grady in Limerick, his agent, Mr. Shine, was directed to continue the +abatements of 15 per cent, on the judicial rents, and of 25 per cent, on +all other rents, which had been cheerfully accepted in 1885. But there +was a priest at Kilballyowen, Father Ryan, who wrought upon the tenants +until they demanded a general abatement of 40 per cent. This being +refused, they asked for 30 per cent. on the judicial rents, and 40 per +cent. on the others. This also being refused, Father Ryan had his way, +and the "Plan of Campaign" was adopted. The O'Grady's writs issued +against several of the tenants were met by a "Plan of Campaign" auction +of cattle at Herbertstown in December 1886, the returns of which were +paid into "the Fund." For this, one of the tenants, Thomas Moroney, who +held, besides a a farm of 37 Irish acres, a "public," and five small +houses, at Herbertstown, and the right to the tolls on cattle at the +Herbertstown farm, valued at from £50 to £60 a year, and who held all +these at a yearly rent of £85, was proceeded against. Judge Boyd +pronounced him a bankrupt. + +In the spring of 1887, after The O'Grady had been put to great costs and +trouble, the tenants made a move. They offered to accept a general +abatement of 17-1/2 per cent., "The O'Grady to pay all the costs." + +Here is the same story again of the small solicitors behind the "Plan of +Campaign" promoting the strife, and counting on the landlords to defray +the charges of battle! + +The O'Grady responded with the following circular:-- + + KlLLBALLYOWEN, BRUFF, CO. LlMERICK, + + _13th August 1877_. + + To my Tenants on Kilballyowen and Herbertstown Estate, Co. + Limerick. + + MY FRIENDS,--Pending the evictions by the Sheriff on my estate, + caused by your refusal to pay judicial rents on offers of liberal + abatements, I desire to remind you of the following facts:-- + + I am a resident landlord; my ancestors have dwelt amongst you for + over 400 years; every tenant is personally known to me, and the + most friendly relations have always existed between us. + + I am not aware of there ever having been an eviction by the Sheriff + on my estate. + + Farming myself over 400 acres, and my late agent (Mr. Shine), a + tenant farmer living within four miles of my property, I have every + opportunity of realising and knowing your wants. + + On the passing of the Land Act of 1881, I desired you to have any + benefit it could afford you, and as you nearly all held under + lease--which precluded you from going into court--I intimated to + you my wish, and offered you to allow your lands to be valued at my + expense, or to let you go into court and get your rents fixed by + the sub-commissioners. + + You elected to have a valuation made, and Mr. Edmond Moroney was + agreed on as a land-valuer, possessing the confidence of tenants + and landlord. + + I may mention, up to then I had not known Mr. Moroney personally. + + In 1883 Mr. Moroney valued your holdings, and, as a result, his + valuation was accepted (except in three or four cases), and + judicial agreements signed by you, at rents ascertained by Mr. + Moroney's valuation. + + The late Patrick Hogan objected to Mr. Moroney's valuation of his + farm, and went into court, and had his rent fixed by the County + Court Judge. + + Thomas Moroney would not allow Mr. Edmond Moroney to value his + holding, nor would he go into court, his reason no doubt being he + should disclose the receipts of the amount of the tolls of the + fairs. + + The rents were subsequently paid on Mr. Moroney's valuation with + punctuality. + + In 1885, recognising the fall in prices of stock and produce, and + at the request of my late agent, Mr. Shine, I directed him to allow + you 15 per cent. on all judicial rents, or rents abated on Mr. + Moroney's valuation, and 25 per cent. on all other rents, when you + paid punctually and with thanks. + + In October last, when calling in the March 1886 rents, at the + instance of Mr. Shine, I agreed to continue the abatement of 15 per + cent, and 25 per cent., which, when intimated to you, were refused, + and a meeting held, demanding an all-round abatement of 40 per + cent. + + This I considered unreasonable and unjust, and I refused to give + it. + + The Plan of Campaign was then most unjustly adopted on the estate, + and you refused to pay your rents. + + Thomas Moroney was elected as a test case to try the legality of + the sale and removal of your property to avoid payment of your + rent. His tenancy was a mixed holding of house property in the + village of Herbertstown, the tolls of the fairs, and 37 acres of + land, at a rent of £85, and a Poor-Law valuation of £73, 5s., made + as follows:-- + + Land valued at £42 5 0 + Tolls of fair at 17 0 0 + Public house and yard at 11 0 0 + Five small houses and forge at 3 0 0 + -------- + £73 5 0 + + I always was led to believe the tolls of the fair averaged from £50 + to £60 a year, there being four fairs in the year; and I believe + his reason for refusing to allow Mr. E. Moroney to value his + holding, or to go into court, was that he should disclose the + amount of the tolls, and in consequence I never considered he was + entitled to any abatement; but still I gave it to him, and was + prepared to do so. The result of his case was that his conduct in + making away with his property was unjustifiable, and his farm and + holding was sold out for the benefit of his creditors, and he is no + longer a tenant on the estate. + + I subsequently took proceedings against six other tenants, who + refused payment of rent, and removed their cattle off the land to + avoid payment, and having got judgment against them, the Sheriff + sold out four of their farms, and writs of possession on the title + were taken out against them, and are now lodged with the Sheriff + for execution. I have also got judgments for possession against two + other tenants for non-payment of rent, also lodged with the + Sheriff. One the widow of Patrick Hogan, who got his rent fixed in + the County Court, and the other Mrs. Denis Ryan, whose farm on her + marriage I assented to be put in settlement for her protection, Mr. + Shine, my agent, consenting to act as one of her trustees, whose + name, with his co-trustee, Mr. Thomas FitzGerald, appear as + defendants, they having signed her judicial agreement. + + The following are the names of the above tenants, the extent of + their holdings, the rent, the Poor-Law valuation, and the average + rent per Irish acre:-- + + +------------------+------------+-------------+---------+-----------+ + | | Acreage in | Judicial | Rent | | + | TENANT. | Irish | Rent Less 20| per | Poor Law | + | | Measure. | per cent. | acre[A]| Valuation | + +------------------+------------+-------------+---------+-----------+ + | | A. R. P. | £ s. d. | | £ s. d. | + |John Carroll, | 87 3 38 | 132 4 0 | 30/- | 127 10 0 | + |Honora Crimmins, | 35 0 27 | 64 5 6 | 36/6 | 52 15 0 | + |James Baggott, | 18 0 0 | 37 16 10 | 42/- | 22 5 0 | + |Margaret Moloney, | 23 2 9 | 46 2 8 | 39/2 | 44 15 0 | + |Mrs. Denis Ryan, | 66 2 3 | 93 2 5 | 28/- | 96 0 0 | + |Maryanne Hogan, | 53 2 33 | 112 0 0 | 41/8 | 117 15 0 | + | +------------+-------------+---------+-----------+ + | | 294 3 30 | 485 11 5 | ... | 461 0 0 | + +------------------+------------+-------------+---------+-----------+ + + [A] Rent per Irish acre after abatement of 20 per cent. + + This represents an average of 34s. the Irish acre, for some of the + best land in Ireland, and shows a difference of only £24, 11s. 5d. + between the rent, less 20 per cent. now offered, and Poor-Law + valuation. + + After putting me to the cost of these proceedings, and giving me + every opposition and annoyance, amongst such, compelling my agent + (by threats of boycotting) to resign, boycotting myself and + household, preventing my servants from attending chapel, and + driving my labourers away, negotiations for a settlement were + opened, and you offered to accept an all-round abatement of 17-1/2 + per cent. and to pay up one year's rent, provided I paid all costs, + including the costs in Moroney's case; this of course I refused, + but with a desire to aid you in coming to a settlement, and to + prevent the loss to the tenants of the farms under eviction on the + Title, I offered to allow the 17-1/2 per cent. all round on payment + of one year's rent and costs, and to give time for payment of the + costs as stated in my Solicitor's letter of the 2d June 1887 to + Canon Scully. + + This offer was refused, and the writs for possession have been + lodged with the Sheriff. + + I never commenced these proceedings in a vindictive spirit, or with + any desire to punish any of you for your ungracious conduct, but + simply to protect my property from unjust and unreasonable demands. + + You will owe two years' rent next month (September), and I now + write you this circular letter to point out to each, individually, + the position of the tenants under eviction, and even at this late + hour to give them an opportunity of saving their holdings, to + enable them to do so, and with a view to settlement, I am now + prepared to allow 20 per cent. all round, on payment of a year's + rent and costs. + + Under no circumstance will I forego payment of costs, as they must + be paid in full. + + If this money be paid forthwith, I will arrange with my brother, + the purchaser, to restore the four holdings purchased by him at + sheriff's sale to the late tenants. + + After this offer I disclaim any responsibility for the result of + the evictions, and the loss attendant thereon, as it now remains + with you to avert same. + + +All the evictions have since been carried out, and the Land Corporation +men are at work upon the estate! Whom has all this advantaged? The +tenants?--Certainly not. The O'Grady?--Certainly not. The peace and +order of Ireland?--Certainly not. But it has given the National League +another appeal to the intelligent "sympathies" of England and America. +It has strengthened the revolutionary element in Irish society. It has +"driven another nail into the coffin" of Irish landlordism and of the +private ownership of land throughout Great Britain. + + +Such at least is the opinion of Mr. Kavanagh. If I were an Englishman or +a Scotchman, I should be strongly inclined to take very serious account +of this opinion in forecasting the future of landed property in England +or Scotland. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + + +GREENANE HOUSE, THOMASTOWN, _March 5th._--The breakfast-room at Borris +this morning was gay with pink coats. A meet was to come off at a place +between Borris and Thomastown, and bidding fare-well to my cordial host +and hostess, I set out at 11 o'clock for a flying visit to this quaint +and charming house of Mr. Seigne, one of the best known and most highly +esteemed agents in this part of Ireland. + +My jarvey from Borris had an unusually neat and well-balanced car. When +I praised it he told me it was "built by an American," not an Irish +American, I understood him to say, but a genuine Yankee, who, for some +mysterious reason, has established himself in this region, where he has +prospered as a cart and car builder ever since. "Just the best cars in +all Ireland he builds, your honour!" Why don't he naturalise them in +America? + +All the way was charming, the day very bright, and even warm, and the +hill scenery picturesque at every turn. We looked out sharply for the +hunt, but in vain. My jarvey, who knew the whole country, said they must +have broken cover somewhere on the upper road, and we should miss them +entirely. And so we did. + +The silting up of the river Nore has reduced Thomastown or +Ballymacanton, which was its Irish name, from its former importance as +an emporium for the country about Kilkenny. The river now is not +navigable above Inistiogue. But two martial square towers, one at either +end of a fine bridge which spans the stream here, speak of the good old +times when the masters of Thomastown took toll and tribute of traders +and travellers. The lands about the place then belonged to the great +monastery of Jerpoint, the ruins of which are still the most interesting +of their kind in this part of Ireland. They have long made a part of the +estate of the Butlers. We rattled rapidly through the quiet little town, +and whisking out of a small public square into a sort of wynd between +two houses, suddenly found ourselves in the precincts of Grenane House. +The house takes its name from the old castle of Grenane, an Irish +fortress established here by some native despot long before Thomas +Fitz-Anthony the Norman came into the land. The ruins of this castle +still stand some half a mile away. "We call the place Candahar," said +Mr. Seigne, as he came up with two ladies from the meadows below the +house, "because you come into it so suddenly, just as you do into that +Oriental town." But what a charming occidental place it is! It stands +well above the river, the slope adorned with many fine old trees, some +of which grow, and grow prosperously, in the queerest and most +improbable forms, bent double, twisted, but still most green and +vigorous. They have no business under any known theory of arboriculture +to be beautiful, but beautiful they are. The views of the bridge, of the +towers, and of the river, from this slope would make the fortune of the +place in a land of peace and order. + +A most original and delightful lady of the country lunched with +us,--such a character as Miss Edgeworth or Miss Austen might have drawn. +Shrewd, humorous, sensible, fearless, and ready with impartial hand to +box the ears alike of Trojan and of Tyrian. She not only sees both sides +of the question in Ireland as between the landlords and the tenants, but +takes both sides of the question. She holds lands by inheritance, which +make her keenly alive to the wrongs of the landlords, and she holds +farms as a tenant, which make her implacably critical as to their +claims. She mercilessly demolished in one capacity whatever she advanced +in the other, and all with the most perfect nonchalance and good faith. +This curiously dual attitude reminded me of the confederate General, +Braxton Bragg, of whom his comrades in the old army of the United States +used to say that he once had a very sharp official correspondence with +himself. He happened to hold a staff appointment, being also a line +officer. So in his quality of a staff officer, he found fault with +himself in his capacity as a line officer, reprimanded himself sharply, +replied defiantly to the reprimand, and eventually reported himself to +himself for discipline at head-quarters. She told an excellent story of +a near kinsman of hers who, holding a very good living in the Protestant +Irish Church, came rather unexpectedly by inheritance into a baronetcy, +upon which his women-folk insisted that it would be derogatory to a +baronet to be a parson. "Would you believe it, the poor man was silly +enough to listen to their cackle, and resign seven hundred a year!" + +"That didn't clear him," I said, "of the cloth, did it?" + +"Not a bit, of course, poor foolish man. He was just as much a parson as +ever, only without a parsonage. Men are fools enough of themselves, +don't you think, without needing to listen to women?" + +Mr. Seigne comes of a French Protestant stock long ago planted in +Ireland, and his Gallic blood doubtless helps him to handle the +practical problems daily submitted in these days to an Irish +land-agent--problems very different, as he thinks, from those with which +an Irish agent had to deal in the days before 1870. The Irish tenant has +a vantage-ground now in his relations with his landlord which he never +had in the olden time, and this makes it more important than it ever was +that the agent should have what may be called a diplomatic taste for +treating with individuals, finding out the bent of mind of this man and +of that, and negotiating over particulars, instead of insisting, in the +English fashion, on general rules, without regard to special cases. I +have met no one who has seemed to me so cool and precise as Mr. Seigne +in his study of the phenomena of the present situation. I asked him +whether he could now say, as Mr. Senior did a quarter of century ago, +that the Irish tenants were less improvident, and more averse from +running into debt than the English. + +"I think not," he replied; "on the contrary, in some parts of Ireland +now the shopkeepers are kept on the verge of bankruptcy by the +recklessness with which the tenants incurred debts immediately after the +passing of the Land Act of 1870--a time when shopkeepers, and bankers +also, almost forced credit upon the farmers, and made thereby 'bad +debts' innumerable. Farmers rarely keep anything like an account of +their receipts and expenses. I know only one tenant-farmer in this +neighbourhood who keeps what can be called an account, showing what he +takes from his labour and spends on his living."[20] "They save a great +deal of money often," he says, "but almost never in any systematic way. +They spend much less on clothes and furniture, and the outward show of +things, than English people of the same condition do, and they do not +stint themselves in meat and drink as the French peasants do. In fact, +under the operation of existing circumstances, they are getting into the +way of improving their condition, not so much by sacrifices and savings, +as by an insistence on rent being fixed low enough to leave full margin +for improved living." + +"I had a very frank statement on this point," said Mr. Seigne, "not long +ago from a Tipperary man. When I tried to show him that his father had +paid a good many years ago the very same rent which he declares himself +unable to pay now, he admitted this at once. But it was a confession and +avoidance. 'My father could pay the rent, and did pay the rent,' he +said, 'because he was content to live so that he could pay it. He sat on +a boss of straw, and ate out of a bowl. He lived in a way in which I +don't intend to live, and so he could pay the rent. Now, I must have, +and I mean to have, out of the land, before I pay the rent, the means of +living as I wish to live; and if I can't have it, I'll sell out and go +away; but I'll be--if I don't fight before I do that same!'" + +"What could you reply to that?" I asked. + +"Oh," I said, "'that's square and straightforward. Only just let me know +the point at which you mean to fight, and then we'll see if we can agree +about something.'" + +"The truth is," said Mr. Seigne, "that there is a pressure upward now +from below. The labourers don't want to live any longer as the farmers +have always made them live; and so the farmers, having to consider the +growing demands of the labourers, and meaning to live better themselves, +push up against the landlord, and insist that the means of the +improvement shall come out of him." + +He then told me an instructive story of his calling upon a +tenant-farmer, at whose place he found the labourers sitting about their +meal of pork and green vegetables. The farmer asked him into another +room, where he saw the farmer's family making their meal of stirabout +and milk and potatoes. + +"I asked you in here," said the farmer, "because we keep in here to +ourselves. I don't want those fellows to see that we can't afford to +give ourselves what we have to give them,"--this with strong language +indicating that he must himself be given a way to advance equally with +the progressive labourer, or he would know the reason why! + +This afternoon Mr. Seigne drove me over through a beautiful country to +Woodstock, near Inistiogue, the seat of the late Colonel Tighe, the head +of the family of which the authoress of "Psyche" was an ornament. + +It is the finest place in this part of Ireland, and one of the finest I +have seen in the three kingdoms, a much more picturesque and more nobly +planted place indeed than its namesake in England. The mansion has no +architectural pretensions, being simply a very large and, I should +think, extremely comfortable house of the beginning of this century. The +library is very rich, and there are some good pictures, as well as +certain statues in the vestibule, which would have no interest for the +Weissnichtwo professor of _Sartor Resartus_, but are regarded with some +awe by the good people of Inistiogue. + +The park would do no discredit to a palace, and if the vague project of +establishing a royal residence in Ireland for one of the British Princes +should ever take shape, it would not be easy, I should say, to find a +demesne more befitting the home of a prince than this of the Tighes. At +present it serves the State at least as usefully, being the "pleasaunce" +of the people for miles around, who come here freely to walk and drive. + +It stretches for miles along the Nore, and is crowned by a gloriously +wooded hill nearly a thousand feet in height. The late Colonel Tighe, a +most accomplished man, and a passionate lover of trees, made it a kind +of private Kew Gardens. He planted long avenues of the rarest and finest +trees, araucarias, Scotch firs, oaks, beeches, cedars of Lebanon; laid +out miles of the most varied and delightful drives, and built the most +extensive conservatories in Ireland. + +The turfed and terraced walks among those conservatories are +indescribably lovely, and the whole place to-day was vocal with +innumerable birds. Picturesque little cottages and arbours are to be +found in unexpected nooks all through the woodlands, each commanding +some green vista of forest aisles, or some wide view of hill and +champaign, enlivened by the winding river. From one of those to-day we +looked out over a landscape to which Turner alone or Claude could have +done justice, the river, spanned by a fine bridge, in the middle +distance, and all the region wooded as in the days of which Edmund +Spenser sings, when Ireland + + "Flourished in fame, + Of wealth and goodnesse far above the rest + Of all that bears the British Islands' name." + +Over the whole place broods an indefinable charm. You feel that this was +the home at once and the work of a refined and thoughtful spirit. And so +indeed it was. Here for the greater part of the current century the +owner lived, making the development of the estate and of this demesne +his constant care and chief pleasure. And here still lives his widow, +with whom we took tea in a stately quiet drawing-room. Lady Louisa Tighe +was in Brussels with her mother, the Duchess of Richmond, on the eve of +Waterloo. She was a child then of ten years old, and her mother bade +them bring her down into the historic ball-room before the Duke of +Wellington left it. The duke took up his sword. "Let Louisa buckle it +for you," said her mother, and when the little girl had girded it on, +the great captain stooped, took her up in his arms, and kissed her. "One +never knows what may happen, child," he said good-naturedly; and taking +his small gold watch out of his fob, he bade her keep it for him. + +She keeps it still. For more than sixty years it has measured out in +this beautiful Irish home the hours of a life given to good works and +gracious usefulness. To-day, with all the vivacity of interest in the +people and the place which one might look for in a woman of twenty, this +charming old lady of eighty-three, showing barely threescore years in +her carriage, her countenance, and her voice, entertained us with minute +and most interesting accounts of the local industries which flourish +here mainly through her sympathetic and intelligent supervision. We +seemed to be in another world from the Ireland of Chicago or +Westminster! + +Mr. Seigne drove me back here by a most picturesque road leading along +the banks of the Nore, quite overhung with trees, which in places dip +their branches almost into the swift deep stream. "This is the favourite +drive of all the lovers hereabouts," he said, "and there is a spice of +danger in it which makes it more romantic. Once, not very long ago, a +couple of young people, too absorbed in their love-making to watch their +horse, drove off the bank. Luckily for them they fell into the branches +of one of these overhanging trees, while the horse and car went plunging +into the water. There they swung, holding each other hand in hand, +making a pretty and pathetic tableau, till their cries brought some +anglers in a boat on the river to the rescue." + +We spoke of Lady Louisa, and of the watch of Waterloo. "That watch had a +wonderful escape a few years ago," said Mr. Seigne. + +Lady Louisa, it seems, had a confidential butler whom she most +implicitly trusted. One day it was found that a burglary had apparently +been committed at Woodstock, and that with a quantity of jewelry the +priceless watch had vanished. The butler was very active about the +matter, and as no trace could be found leading out of the house, he +intimated a suspicion that the affair might possibly have some +connection with a guest not long before at the house. This angered Lady +Louisa, who thereupon consulted the agent, who employed a capable +detective from Dublin. The detective came down to Inistiogue as a +commercial traveller, wandered about, made the acquaintance of Lady +Louisa's maid, of the butler, and of other people about the house, and +formed his own conclusions. Two or three days after his arrival he +walked into the shop of a small jeweller in a neighbouring town, and +affecting a confidential manner, told the jeweller he wanted to buy +"some of those things from Woodstock." The man was taken by surprise, +and going into a backshop produced one very fine diamond, and a number +of pieces of silver plate, of the disappearance of which the butler had +said nothing to his mistress. This led to the arrest of the butler, and +to the discovery that for a long time he had been purloining property +from the house and selling it. Many cases of excellent claret had found +their way in this fashion to a public-house which had acquired quite a +reputation for its Bordeaux with the officers quartered in its +neighbourhood. The wine-bins at Woodstock were found full of bottles of +water. Much of the capital port left by Colonel Tighe had gone--but the +hock was untouched. "Probably the butler didn't care for hock," said Mr. +Seigne. The Waterloo watch was recovered from a very decent fellow, a +travelling dealer, to whom it had been sold: and many pieces of jewelry +were traced up to London. But Lady Louisa could not be induced to go up +to London to identify them or testify. + + +DUBLIN, _Tuesday, March 6._--It is a curious fact, which I learned +to-day from the Registrar-General, that the deposits in the Post-office +Savings Banks have never diminished in Ireland since these banks were +established.[21] These deposits are chiefly made, I understand, by the +small tenants, who are less represented by the deposits in the General +Savings Banks than are the shopkeepers and the cattle-drovers. In the +General Savings Banks the deposit line fluctuates more; though on the +whole there has been a steady increase in these deposits also throughout +Ireland. + +Of the details of the dealings of the private banks it is very hard to +get an accurate account. One gentleman, the manager of a branch of one +important bank, tells me that a great deal of money is made by usurers +out of the tenants, by backing their small bills. This practice goes +back to the first establishment of banks in Ireland. Formerly it was not +an uncommon thing for a landlord to offer his tenants a reduction, say, +of twenty per cent., on condition of their paying the rent when it fell +due. Such were the relations then between landlord and tenants, and so +little was punctuality expected in such payments that this might be +regarded as a sort of discount arrangement. The tenant who wished to +avail himself of such an offer would go to some friendly local usurer +and ask for a loan that he might avail himself of it. "One of these +usurers, whom I knew very well," said the manager, "told me long ago +that he found these operations very profitable. His method of procedure +was to agree to advance the rent to the tenant at ten per cent., payable +at a near and certain date. This would reduce the landlord's reduction +at once, of course, for the tenant, to ten per cent., but that was not +to be disdained; and so the bargain would be struck. If the money was +repaid at the fixed date, it was not a bad thing for the usurer. But it +was almost never so repaid; and with repeated renewals the usurer, by +his own showing, used to receive eventually twenty, fifty, and, in some +cases, nearly a hundred per cent, for his loan." + +It is the opinion of this gentleman that, under the "Plan of Campaign," +a good deal of money-making is done in a quiet way by some of the +"trustees," who turn over at good interest, with the help of friendly +financiers, the funds lodged with them, being held to account to the +tenants only for the principal. "Of course," he said, "all this is +doubtless at least as legitimate as any other part of the 'Plan,' and I +daresay it all goes for 'the good of the cause.' But neither the tenants +nor the landlords get much by it!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + + +DUBLIN, _Thursday, March 8._--At eight o'clock this morning I left the +Harcourt Street station for Inch, to take a look at the scene of the +Coolgreany evictions of last summer. These evictions came of the +adoption of the Plan of Campaign, under the direction of Mr. Dillon, +M.P., on the Wexford property of Mr. George Brooke of Dublin. The agent +of Mr. Brooke's estate, Captain Hamilton, is the honorary director of +the Property Defence Association, so that we have here obviously a +grapple between the National League doing the work, consciously or +unconsciously, of the agrarian revolutionists, and a combination of +landed proprietors fighting for the rights of property as they +understand them. + +We ran through a beautiful country for the greater part of the way. At +Bray, which is a favourite Irish watering-place, the sea broke upon us +bright and full of life; and the station itself was more like a +considerable English station than any I have seen. Thence we passed into +a richly-wooded region, with neat, well-kept hedges, as far as Rathdrum +and the "Sweet Vale of Avoca." The hills about Shillelagh are +particularly well forested, though, as the name suggests, they must have +been cut for cudgels pretty extensively for now a great many years. We +came again on the sea at the fishing port of Arklow, where the stone +walls about the station were populous with small ragamuffins, and at the +station of Inch I found a car waiting for me with Mr. Holmes, a young +English Catholic officer, who had most obligingly offered to show me the +place and the people. We had hardly got into the roadway when we +overtook a most intelligent-looking, energetic young priest, walking +briskly on in the direction of our course. This was Dr. Dillon, the +curate of Arklow. We pulled up at once, and Mr. Holmes, introducing me +to him, we begged him to take a seat with us. He excused himself as +having to join another priest with whom he was going to a function at +Inch; but he was good enough to walk a little way with us, and gave me +an appointment for 2 P.M. at his own town of Arklow, where I could catch +the train back to Dublin. We drove on rapidly and called on Father +O'Neill, the parish priest. We found him in full canonicals, as he was +to officiate at the function this morning, and with him were Father +Dunphy, the parish priest of Arklow, and two or three more robed +priests. + +Father O'Neill, whose face and manner are those of the higher order of +the continental clergy, briefly set forth to me his view of the +transactions at Coolgreany. He said that before the Plan of Campaign was +adopted by the tenants, Mr. William O'Brien, M.P., had written to him +explaining what the effect of the Plan would be, and urging him to take +whatever steps he could to obviate the necessity of adopting it, as it +might eventually result to the disadvantage of the tenants. "To that +end," said Father O'Neill, "I called upon Captain Hamilton, the agent, +with Dr. Dillon of Arklow, but he positively refused to listen to us, +and in fact ordered us, not very civilly, to leave his office." + +It was after this he said that he felt bound to let the tenants take +their own way. Eighty of them joined in the "Plan of Campaign" and paid +the amount of the rent due, less a reduction of 30 per cent., which they +demanded of the agent, into the hands of Sir Thomas Esmonde, M.P., Sir +Thomas being a resident in the country, and Mr. Mayne, M.P. Writs of +ejectment were obtained against them afterwards, and in July last +sixty-seven of them were evicted, who are now living in "Laud League +huts," put up on the holdings of three small tenants who were exempted +from the Plan of Campaign, and allowed to pay their rents subject to a +smaller reduction made by the agent, in order that they might retain +their land as a refuge for the rest. + +All this Father O'Neill told us very quietly, in a gentle, +undemonstrative way, but he was much interested when I told him I had +recently come from Rome, where these proceedings, I was sure, were +exciting a good deal of serious attention. "Yes," he said, "and Father +Dunphy who is here in the other room, has just got back from Rome, where +he had two audiences of the Holy Father." + +"Doubtless, then," I said, "he will have given his Holiness full +particulars of all that took place here." + +"No doubt," responded Father O'Neill, "and he tells me the Holy Father +listened with great attention to all he had to say--though of course, he +expressed no opinion about it to Father Dunphy." + +As the time fixed for the function was at hand, we were obliged to leave +without seeing Father Dunphy. + +From the Presbytery we drove to the scene of the evictions. These +evictions were in July. Mr. Holmes witnessed them, and gave me a lively +account of the affair. The "battle" was not a very tough one. Mr. +Davitt, who was present, stood under a tree very quietly watching it +all. "He looked very picturesque," said Mr. Holmes, "in a light grey +suit, with a broad white beaver shading his dark Spanish face; and +smoked his cigar very composedly." After it was over, Dr. Dillon brought +up one of the tenants, and presented him to Mr. Davitt as "the man who +had resisted this unjust eviction." Mr. Davitt took his cigar from his +lips, and in the hearing of all who stood about sarcastically said, +"Well, if he couldn't make a better resistance than that he ought to go +up for six months!" The first house we came upon was derelict--all +battered and despoiled, the people in the neighbourhood here, as +elsewhere, regarding such houses as free spoil, and carrying off from +time to time whatever they happen to fancy. Near this house we met an +emergency man, named Bolton, an alert, energetic-looking native of +Wicklow. He has four brothers; and is now at work on one of the +"evicted" holdings. + +I asked if he was "boycotted," and what his relations were with the +people. + +He laughed in a shrewd, good-natured way. "Oh, I'm boycotted, of +course," he said; "but I don't care a button for any of these people, +and I'd rather they wouldn't speak to me. They know I can take care of +myself, and they give me a good wide berth. All I have to object to is +that they set fire to an outhouse of mine, and cut the ears of one of my +heifers, and for that I want damages. Otherwise I'm getting on very +well; and I think this will be a good year, if the law is enforced, and +these fellows are made to behave themselves." + +Near Bolton's farm we passed the holding of a tenant named Kavanagh, one +of the three who were "allowed" to pay their rents. Several Land League +huts are on his place, and the evicted people who occupy them put their +cattle with his. He is a quiet, cautious man, and very reticent. But it +seemed to me that he was not entirely satisfied with the "squatters" who +have been quartered upon him. And it appears that he has taken another +holding in Carlow. From his place we drove to Ballyfad, where a large +house, at the end of a good avenue of trees, once the mansion of a +squire, but now much dilapidated, is occupied as headquarters by the +police. Here we found Mr. George Freeman, the bailiff of the Coolgreany +property, a strong, sturdy man, much disgusted at finding it necessary +to go about protected by two policemen. That this was necessary, +however, he admitted, pointing out to us the place where one Kinsella +was killed not very long ago. The son of this man Kinsella was formerly +one of Mr. Brooke's gamekeepers, and is now, Mr. Freeman thinks, in +concert with another man named Ryan, the chief stay of the League in +keeping up its dominion over the evicted tenants. + +Many of these tenants, he believes, would gladly pay their rents now, +and come back if they dared. + +"Every man, sir," he said, "that has anything to lose, would be glad to +come back next Monday if he thought his life would be safe. But all the +lazy and thriftless ones are better off now than they ever were; they +get from £4 to £6 a month, with nothing to do, and so they're in clover, +and they naturally don't like to have the industrious, well-to-do +tenants spoil their fun by making a general settlement." + +"Besides that," he added, "that man Kinsella and his comrade Ryan are +the terror of the whole of them. Kinsella always was a curious, silent, +moody fellow. He knows every inch of the country, going over it all the +time by night and day as a gamekeeper, and I am quite sure the +Parnellite men and the Land Leaguers are just as much afraid of him and +Ryan as the tenants are. He don't care a bit for them; and they've no +control of him at all." + +Mr. Freeman said he remembered very well the occasion referred to by +Father O'Neill, when Captain Hamilton refused to confer with Dr. Dillon +and himself. + +"Did Father O'Neill tell you, sir," he said, "that Captain Hamilton was +quite willing to talk with him and Father O'Donel, the parish priests, +and with the Coolgreany people, but he would have nothing to say to any +one who was not their priest, and had no business to be meddling with +the matter at all?" + +"No; he did not tell me that." + +"Ah! well, sir, that made all the difference. Father Dunphy, who was +there, is a high-tempered man, and he said he had just as much right to +represent the tenants as Captain Hamilton to represent the landlord, and +that Captain Hamilton wouldn't allow. It was the outside people made all +the trouble. In June of last year there was a conference at my house, +and all that time there was a Committee sitting at Coolgreany, and the +tenants would not be allowed to do anything without the Committee." + +"And who made the Committee?" + +"Oh, they made themselves, I suppose, sir. There was Sir Thomas +Esmonde--he was a convert, you know, of Father O'Neill--and Mr. Mayne +and Mr. John Dillon. And Dr. Dillon of Arklow, he was as busy as he +could be till the evictions were made in July. And then he was in +retreat. And I believe, sir, it is quite true that he wanted the Bishop +to let him come out of the retreat just to have a hand in the business." + +The police sergeant, a very cool, sensible man, quite agreed with the +bailiff as to the influence upon the present situation of the +ex-gamekeeper Kinsella, and his friend Eyan. "If they were two +Invincibles, sir," he said, "these member fellows of the League couldn't +be in greater fear of them than they are. They say nothing, and do just +as they please. That Kinsella, when Mr. John Dillon was down here, just +told him before a lot of people that he 'wanted no words and no advice +from him,' and he's just in that surly way with all the people about." + +As to the Brooke estate, I am told here it was bought more than twenty +years ago with a Landed Estates Court title from Colonel Forde, by the +grandfather of Mr. Brooke. He paid about £75,000 sterling for it. His +son died young, and the present owner came into it as a child, Mr. Vesey +being then the agent, who, during the minority, spent a great deal on +improving the property. Captain Hamilton came in as agent only a few +years ago. While the Act of 1881 was impending, an abatement was granted +of more than twenty per cent. In 1882 the tenants all paid except +eleven, who went into Court and got their rents cut down by the +Sub-Commissioners. There were appeals; and in 1885, after Court +valuations, the rents cut down by the Sub-Commissioners were restored in +several cases. There never was any rack-renting on the estate at all. +There are upon it in all more than a hundred tenants, twelve of whom are +Protestants, holding a little less in all than one-fourth of the +property. + +There are fifteen judicial tenants, twenty-one lease-holders, and +seventy-seven hold from year to year. + +The gross rental is a little over £2000 a year of which one-half goes to +Mr. Brooke's mother. Mr. Brooke himself is a wealthy man, at the head of +the most important firm of wine-merchants in Ireland, and he has +repeatedly spent on the property more than he took out of it. + +The house of Sir Thomas Esmonde, M.P., was pointed out to me from the +road. "Sir Thomas is to marry an heiress, sir, isn't he, in America?" +asked an ingenuous inquirer. I avowed my ignorance on this point. "Oh, +well, they say so, for anyway the old house is being put in order for +now the first time in forty years." + +We reached Arklow in time for luncheon, and drove to the large police +barracks there. These were formerly the quarters of the troops. Arklow +was one of the earliest settlements of the Anglo-Normans in Ireland +under Henry II., and once rejoiced in a castle and a monastery both now +obliterated; though a bit of an old tower here is said to have been +erected in his time. The town lives by fishing, and by shipping copper +and lead ore to South Wales. The houses are rather neat and well kept; +but the street was full of little ragged, merry mendicants. + +We went into a small branch of the Bank of Ireland, and asked where we +should find the hotel. We were very civilly directed to "The Register's +Office over the way." This seemed odd enough. But reaching it we were +further puzzled to see the sign over the doorway of a "coach-builder"! +However, we rang the bell, and presently a maid-servant appeared, who +assured us that this was really the hotel, and that we could have +"whatever we liked" for luncheon. We liked what we found we could +get--chops, potatoes, and parsnips; and without too much delay these +were neatly served to us in a most remarkable room, ablaze with mural +ornaments and decorations, upon which every imaginable pigment of the +modern palette seemed to have been lavished, from a Nile-water-green +dado to a scarlet and silver frieze. There were five times as many +potatoes served to us as two men could possibly eat, and not one of them +was half-boiled. But otherwise the meal was well enough, and the service +excellent. Beer could be got for us, but the house had no licence, Lord +Carysfort, the owner of the property, thinking, so our hostess said, +that "there were too many licences in the town already." Lord Carysfort +is probably right; but it is not every owner of a house, or even of a +lease in Ireland, I fear, who would take such a view and act on it to +the detriment of his own property. + +Dr. Dillon lives in the main square of Arklow in a very neat house. He +was absent at a funeral in the handsome Catholic church near by when we +called, but we were shown into his study, and he presently came in. + +His study was that of a man of letters and of politics. Blue-books and +statistical works lay about in all directions, and on the table were the +March numbers of the _Nineteenth Century_, and the _Contemporary +Review_. + +"You are abreast of the times, I see," I said to him, pointing to these +periodicals. + +"Yes," he replied, "they have just come in; and there is a capital paper +by Mr. John Morley in this _Nineteenth Century_." + +Nothing could be livelier than Dr. Dillon's interest in all that is +going on on both sides of the Atlantic, more positive than his opinions, +or more terse and clear than his way of putting them. He agreed entirely +with Father O'Neill as to the pressure put upon the Coolgreany tenants, +not so much by Mr. Brooke as by the agent, Captain Hamilton; but he +thought Mr. Brooke also to blame for his treatment of them. + +"Two of the most respectable of them," said Dr. Dillon, "went to see Mr. +Brooke in Dublin, and he wouldn't listen to them. On the contrary, he +absolutely put them out of his office without hearing a word they had to +say."[22] + +I found Dr. Dillon a strong disciple of Mr. Henry George, and a firm +believer in the doctrine of the "nationalisation of the land." "It is +certain to come," he said, "as certain to come in Great Britain as in +Ireland, and the sooner the better. The movement about the sewerage +rates in London," he added, "is the first symptom of the land war in +London. It is the thin edge of the wedge to break down landlordism in +the British metropolis." + +He is watching American politics, too, very closely, and inclines to +sympathise with President Cleveland. Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia, he +tells me, in his passage through Ireland the other day, did not hesitate +to express his conviction that President Cleveland would be re-elected. + +Dr. Dillon was so earnest and so interesting that the time slipped by +very fast, until a casual glance at my watch showed me that we must make +great haste to catch the Dublin train. + +We left therefore rather hurriedly, but before reaching the station we +saw the Dublin train go careering by, its white pennon of smoke and +vapour curling away along the valley. + +I made the best of it, however, and letting Mr. Holmes depart by a train +which took him home, I found a smart jarvey with a car, and drove out to +Glenart Castle, the beautiful house of the Earl of Carysfort. This is a +very handsome modern house, built in a castellated style of a very good +whitish grey marble, with extensive and extremely well-kept terraced +gardens and conservatories. + +It stands very well on one high bank of the river, a residence of the +Earl of Wicklow occupying the other bank. My jarvey called my attention +to the excellence of the roads, on which he said Lord Carysfort has +spent "a deal of money," as well as upon the gardens of the new Castle. +The head-gardener, an Englishman, told me he found the native labourers +very intelligent and willing both to learn and to work. Evidently here +is another centre of useful and civilising influences, not managed by an +"absentee."[23] + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + + +DUBLIN, _Friday, March 9th._--At 7.40 this morning I took the train for +Athy to visit the Luggacurren estates of Lord Lansdowne. Mr. Lynch, a +resident magistrate here, some time ago kindly offered to show me over +the place, but I thought it as well to take my chance with the people of +Athy who are reported to have been very hot over the whole matter here, +and so wrote to Mr. Lynch that I would find him at the Lodge, which is +the headquarters of the property. + +Athy is a neat, well-built little town, famous of old as a frontier +fortress of Kildare. An embattled tower, flanked by small square +turrets, guards a picturesque old bridge here over the Barrow, the +bridge being known in the country as "Crom-a-boo," from the old war-cry +of the Fitz-Geralds. It is a busy place now; and there was quite a +bustle at the very pretty little station. I asked a friendly old porter +which was the best hotel in the town. "The best? Ah! there's only one, +and it's not the best--but there are worse--and it's Kavanagh's." I +found it easily enough, and was ushered by a civil man, who emerged from +the shop which occupies part of it, into a sort of reading-room with a +green table. A rather slatternly but very active girl soon converted +this into a neat breakfast-table, and gave me an excellent breakfast. +The landlord found me a good car, and off I set for the residence of +Father Maher, the curate of whom I had heard as one of the most fiery +and intractable of the National League priests in this part of Ireland. + + +My jarvey was rather taciturn at first, but turned out to be something +of a politician. He wanted Home Rule, one of his reasons being that then +they "wouldn't let the Americans come and ruin them altogether, driving +out the grain from the markets." About this he was very clear and +positive. "Oh, it doesn't matter now whether the land is good or bad, +America has just ruined the farmers entirely." + +I told him I had always heard this achievement attributed to England. +"Oh! that was quite a mistake! What the English did was to punish the +men that stood up for Ireland. There was Mr. O'Brien. But for him there +wasn't a man of Lord Lansdowne's people would have had the heart to +stand up. He did it all; and now, what were they doing to him? They were +putting him on a cold plank-bed on a stone floor in a damp cell!" + +"But the English put all their prisoners in those cells, don't they?" I +asked. + +"And what of it, sir?" he retorted. "They're good enough for most of +them, but not for a gentleman like Mr. O'Brien, that would spill the +last drop of his heart's blood for Ireland!" + +"But," I said, "they're doing just the same thing with Mr. Gilhooly, I +hear." + +"And who is Mr. Gilhooly, now? And it's not for the likes of him to +complain and be putting on airs as if he was Mr. O'Brien!" + +"Yes, it is a fine country for hunting!" + +"Was it ever put down here, the hunting?" + +"No, indeed! Sure, the people wouldn't let it be!" + +"Not if Mr. O'Brien told them they must?" I queried. + +"Mr. O'Brien; ah, he wouldn't think of such a thing! It brings money all +the time to Athy, and sells the horses." + +As to the troubles at Luggacurren, he was not very clear. "It was a +beautiful place, Mr. Dunne's; we'd see it presently. And Mr. Dunne, he +was a good one for sport. It was that, your honour, that got him into +the trouble"-- + +"And Mr. Kilbride?" + +"Oh, Mr. Kilbride's place was a very good place too, but not like Mr. +Dunne's. And he was doing very well, Mr. Kilbride. He was getting a good +living from the League, and he was a Member of Parliament. Oh, yes, he +wasn't the only one of the tenants that was doing good to himself. There +was more of them that was getting more than ever they made out of the +land."[24] + +"Was the land so bad, then?" I asked. + +"No, there was as good land at Luggacurren as any there was in all +Ireland; but," and here he pointed off to the crests of the hills in the +distance, "there was a deal of land there of the estate on the hills, +and it was very poor land, but the tenants had to pay as much for that +as for the good property of Dunne and Kilbride." + +"Do you know Mr. Lynch, the magistrate?" I asked. "If you do, look out +for him, as he has promised to join me and show me the place." + +"Oh no, sorr!" the jarvey exclaimed at once; "don't mind about him. Hell +have his own car, and your honour won't want to take him on ours." + +"Why not?" I persisted, "there's plenty of room." + +"Oh! but indeed, sir, if it wasn't that you were going to the priest's, +Father Maher, you wouldn't get a car at Athy--no, not under ten pounds!" + +"Not under ten pounds," I replied. "Would I get one then for ten +pounds?" + +"It's a deal of money, ten pounds, sorr, and you wouldn't have a poor +man throw away ten pounds?" + +"Certainly not, nor ten shillings either. Is it a question of principle, +or a question of price?" + +The man looked around at me with a droll glimmer in his eye: "Ah, to be +sure, your honour's a great lawyer; but he'll come pounding along with +his big horse in his own car, Mr. Lynch; and sure it'll be quicker for +your honour just driving to Father Maher's." + +There was no resisting this, so I laughed and bade him drive on. + +"Whose house is that?" I asked, as we passed a house surrounded with +trees. + +"Oh! that's the priest, Father Keogh--a very good man, but not so much +for the people as Father Maher, who has everything to look after about +them." + +We came presently within sight of a handsome residence, Lansdowne Lodge, +the headquarters of the estate. Many fine cattle were grazing in the +fields about it. + +"They are Lord Lansdowne's beasts," said my jarvey; "and it's the +emergency men are looking after them." + +Nearly opposite were the Land League huts erected on the holding of an +unevicted tenant--a small village of neat wooden "shanties." On the +roadway in front of these half-a-dozen men were lounging about. They +watched us with much curiosity as we drove up, and whispered eagerly +together. + +"They're some of the evicted men, your honour," said my jarvey, with a +twinkle in his eye; and then under his breath, "They'll be thinking your +honour's came down to arrange it all. They think everybody that comes is +come about an arrangement." + +"Oh, then, they all want it arranged!" + +"No; not all, but many of them do. Some of them like it well enough +going about like gentlemen with nothing to do, only their hands in their +pockets." + +We turned out of the highway here and passed some very pretty cottages. + +"No, they're not for labourers, your honour," said my jarvey; "the +estate built them for mechanics. It's the tenants look after the +labourers, and little it is they do for them." + +Then, pointing to a ridge of hills beyond us, he said: "It was +Kilbride's father, sir, evicted seventeen tenants on these hills--poor +labouring men, with their families, many years ago,--and now he's +evicted himself, and a Member of Parliament!" + +Father Maher's house stands well off from the highway. He was not at +home, being "away at a service in the hills," but would be back before +two o'clock. I left my name for him, with a memorandum of my purpose in +calling, and we drove on to see the bailiff of the estate, Mr. Hind. On +the way we met Father Norris, a curate of the parish, in a smart trap +with a good horse, and had a brief colloquy with him. Mr. Hind we found +busy afield; a quiet, staunch sort of man. He spoke of the situation +very coolly and dispassionately. "The tenants in the main were a good +set of men--as they had reason to be, Lord Lansdowne having been not +only a fair landlord, but a liberal and enterprising promoter of local +improvements." I had been told in Dublin that Lord Lansdowne had offered +a subscription of £200 towards establishing creameries, and providing +high-class bulls for this estate. Similar offers had been cordially met +by Lord Lansdowne's tenants in Kerry, and with excellent results. But +here they were rejected almost scornfully, though accompanied by offers +of abatement on the rents, which, in the case of Mr. Kilbride, for +example, amounted to 20 per cent. + +"How did this happen, the tenants being good men as you say?" I asked of +Mr. Hind. + +"Because they were unable to resist the pressure put on them by the two +chief tenants, Kilbride and Dunne, with the help of the League. Kilbride +and Dunne both lived very well." My information at Dublin was that Mr. +Kilbride had a fine house built by Lord Lansdowne, and a farm of seven +hundred acres, at a rent of £760, 10s. Mr. Dunne, who co-operated with +him, held four town lands comprising 1304 acres, at a yearly rent of +£1348, 15s. Upon this property Lord Lansdowne had expended in drainage +and works £1993, 11s. 9d., and in buildings £631, 15s. 4d., or in all +very nearly two years' rental. On Mr. Kilbride's holdings Lord Lansdowne +had expended in drainage works £1931, 6s. 3d., and in buildings £1247, +19s. 5d., or in all more than four years' rental. Mr. Kilbride held his +lands on life leases. Mr. Dunne held his smallest holding of 84 acres on +a yearly tenure; his two largest holdings, one on a lease for 31 years +from 1874, and the other on a life lease, and his fourth holding of 172 +acres on a life lease. + +Where does the hardship appear in all this to Mr. Dunne or Mr. Kilbride? + +On Mr. Kilbride's holdings, for instance, Lord Lansdowne expended over +£3000, for which he added to the rent £130 a year, or about 4 per cent., +while he himself stood to pay 6-1/2 per cent, on the loans he made from +the Board of Works for the expenditure. In the same way it was with Mr. +Dunne's farms. They were mostly in grass, and Lord Lansdowne laid out +more than £2500 on them, borrowed at the same rate from the Board, for +which he added to the rent only £66 a year, or about 2-1/2 per cent. Mr. +Kilbride was a Poor-Law Guardian, and Mr. Dunne a Justice of the Peace. +The leases in both of these cases, and in those of other large tenants, +seem to have been made at the instance of the tenants themselves, and +afforded security against any advance in the rental during a time of +high agricultural prices. And it would appear that for the last quarter +of a century there has been no important advance in the rental. In 1887 +the rental was only £300 higher than in 1862, though during the interval +the landlord had laid out £20,000 on improvements in the shape of +drainage, roads, labourers' cottages, and other permanent works. +Moreover, in fifteen years only one tenant has been evicted for +non-payment of rent. + +"Was there any ill-feeling towards the Marquis among the tenants?" I +asked of Mr. Hind. + +"Certainly not, and no reason for any. They were a good set of men, and +they would never have gone into this fight, only for a few who were in +trouble, and I'm sure that to-day most of them would be thankful if they +could settle and get back. The best of them had money enough, and didn't +like the fight at all." + +All the trouble here seems to have originated with the adoption of the +Plan of Campaign. + +Lord Lansdowne, besides this estate in Queen's County, owns property in +a wild, mountainous part of the county of Kerry. On this property the +tenants occupy, for the most part, small holdings, the average rental +being about £10, and many of the rentals much lower. They are not +capitalist farmers at all, and few of them are able to average the +profits of their industry, setting the gains of a good, against the +losses of a bad, season. In October 1886, while Mr. Dillon was +organising his Plan of Campaign, Lord Lansdowne visited his Kerry +property to look into the condition of the people. The local Bank had +just failed, and the shopkeepers and money-lenders were refusing credit +and calling in loans. The pressure they put upon these small farmers, +together with the fall in the price of dairy produce and of young stock +at that time, caused real distress, and Lord Lansdowne, after looking +into the situation, offered, of his own motion, abatements varying from +25 to 35 per cent, to all of them whose rents had not been judicially +fixed under the Act of 1881, for a term of fifteen years. + +As to these, Lord Lansdowne wrote a letter on the 21st of October 1886 +(four days after the promulgation of the Plan of Campaign at Portumna on +the Clanricarde property), to his agent, Mr. Townsend Trench. This +letter was published. I have a copy of it given to me in Dublin, and it +states the case as between the landlords and the tenants under judicial +rents most clearly and temperately. + +"It might, I think," says the Marquis, "be very fairly argued, that the +State having imposed the terms of a contract on landlord and tenant, +that contract should not be interfered with except by the State. + +"The punctual payment of the 'judicial rent' was the one advantage to +which the landlords were desired to look when, in 1881, they were +deprived of many of the most valuable attributes of ownership. + +"It was distinctly stipulated that the enormous privileges which were +suddenly and unexpectedly conferred upon the tenants were to be enjoyed +by them conditionally upon the fulfilment on their part of the statutory +obligations specified in the Act. Of those, by far the most important +was the punctual payment of the rent fixed by the Court for the judicial +term. + +"This obligation being unfulfilled, the landlord might reasonably claim +that he should be free to exercise his own discretion in determining +whether any given tenancy should or should not be perpetuated. + +"In many cases [such cases are probably not so numerous on my estate as +upon many others] the resumption of the holding, and the consolidation +of adjoining farms, would be clearly advantageous to the whole +community. In the congested districts the consolidation of farms is the +only solution that I have seen suggested for meeting a chronic +difficulty. + +"I have no reason to believe that the Judicial Rents in force on my +estate are such that, upon an average of the yield and prices of +agricultural produce, my tenants would find it difficult to pay them." + +In spite of all these considerations Lord Lansdowne instructed Mr. +Trench to grant to these tenants under judicial leases an abatement of +20 per cent. on the November gale of 1886. This abatement, freely +offered, was gladly accepted. There had been no outrages or disturbances +on the Kerry properties, and the relations of the landlord with his +tenants, before and after this visit of Lord Lansdowne to Kerry, and +these reductions which followed it, had been, and continued to be, +excellent. + +But the tale of Kerry reached Luggacurren; and certain of the tenants on +the latter estate were moved by it to demand for the Queen's County +property identical treatment with that accorded to the very differently +situated property in Kerry. + +The leaders of the Luggacurren movement, I gather from Mr. Hind, never +pretended inability to pay their rents. They simply demanded abatements +of 35 per cent. on non-judicial, and 25 per cent. on judicial, rents as +their due, on the ground that they should be treated like the tenants in +Kerry: and the Plan of Campaign being by this time in full operation in +more than one part of Ireland, they threatened to resort to it if their +demand was refused. Lord Lansdowne at once declared that he would not +repeat at Luggacurren his concession made in Kerry as to the rents +judicially fixed; but he offered on a fair consideration of the +non-judicial rents to make abatements on them ranging from 15 to 25 per +cent. + +The offer was refused, and the war began. On the 23d of March 1887 Mr. +Kilbride was evicted. One week afterwards, on the 29th of March, he got +up in the rooms of the National League in Dublin, and openly declared +that "the Luggacurren evictions differed from most other evictions in +this, that they were able to pay the rent. It was a fight," he +exultingly exclaimed, "of intelligence against intelligence; it was +diamond cut diamond!" In other words, it was a struggle, not for +justice, but for victory. + +On all these points, and others furnished to me at Dublin touching this +estate, much light was thrown by the bailiff, who had not been concerned +in the evictions. He told me what he knew, and then very obligingly +offered to conduct me to the lodge, where we should find Mr. Hutchins, +who has charge now of the properties taken up by Mr. Kavanagh's Land +Corporation. My patriotic jarvey from Athy made no objection to my +giving the bailiff a lift, and we drove off to the lodge. On the way the +jarvey good-naturedly exclaimed, "Ah! there comes Mr. Lynch," and even +offered to pull up that the magistrate might overtake us. + +We found Mr. Hutchins at home, a cool, quiet, energetic, northern man, +who seems to be handling the difficult situation here with great +firmness and prudence. Mrs. Hutchins, who has lived here now for nearly +a year--a life not unlike that of the wife of an American officer on the +Far Western frontier--very amicably asked me to lunch, and Mr. Hutchins +offered to show me the holdings of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Kilbride. Mr. Lynch +proposed that we should all go on my car, but I remembered the protest +of the jarvey, and sending him to await me at Father Maher's, I drove +off with Mr. Hutchins. As we drove along, he confirmed the jarvey's hint +as to the difference between the views and conduct of the parish priest +and the views and conduct of his more fiery curate. This is a very +common state of affairs, I find, all over Ireland. + +The house of Mr. Dunne is that of a large gentleman farmer. It is very +well fitted up, but it was plain that the tenants had done little or +nothing to make or keep it a "house beautiful." The walls had never been +papered, and the wood-work showed no recent traces of the brush. "He +spent more money on horse-racing than on housekeeping," said a shrewd +old man who was in the house. In fact, Mr. Dunne, I am told, entered a +horse for the races at the Curragh after he had undergone what Mr. +Gladstone calls "the sentence of death" of an eviction! + +Some of the doors bore marks of the crowbar but no great mischief had +been done to them or to the large fine windows. The only serious damage +done during the eviction was the cutting of a hole through the roof. An +upper room had been provisioned to stand a siege, and so scientifically +barricaded with logs and trunks of trees that after several vain +attempts to break through the door the assailants climbed to the roof, +and in twenty minutes cut their way in from without. The dining and +drawing rooms were those of a gentleman's residence, and one of the +party remembered attending here a social festivity got up with much +display. + +A large cattle-yard has been established on this place, with an +original, and, as I was assured, most successful weighing-machine by the +Land Corporation. We found it full of very fine-looking cattle, and Mr. +Hutchins seems to think the operation of managing the estate as a kind +of "ranch" decidedly promising. "I am not a bit sorry for Mr. Dunne," he +said, "but I am very sorry for other quiet, good tenants who have been +deluded or driven into giving up valuable holdings to keep him and Mr. +Kilbride company, and give colour to the vapourings of Mr. William +O'Brien." + +The cases of some of these tenants were instructive. One poor man, +Knowles, had gone out to America, and regularly sent home money to his +family to pay the rent. They found other uses for it, and when the storm +came he was two years and a half in arrears. In another instance, two +brothers held contiguous holdings, and were in a manner partners. One +was fonder of Athy than of agriculture; the other a steady husbandman. +Four years' arrears had grown up against the one; only a half-year's +gale against the other. Clearly this difference originated outside of +the fall of prices! In a third case, a tenant wrote to Mr. Trench +begging to have something done, as he had the money to pay, and wanted +to pay, but "didn't dare." + +From Mr. Dunne's we drove to Mr. Kilbride's, another ample, very +comfortable house--not so thoroughly well fitted up with bathroom and +other modern appurtenances as Mr. Dunne's perhaps--but still a very good +house. It stands on a large green knoll, rather bare of trees, and +commands a fine sweep of landscape. + +Mr. Hutchins drove me to the little road which leads up past the "Land +League village" to the house of Father Maher, and there set me down. + +I walked up and found the curate at home--a tall, slender, well-made +young priest, with a keen, intelligent face. He received me very +politely, and, when I showed him the card of an eminent dignitary of the +Church, with cordiality. + +I found him full of sympathy with the people of his parish, but neither +vehement nor unfair. He did not deny that there were tenants on Lord +Lansdowne's estate who were amply able to pay their rents; but he did +most emphatically assert that there were not a few of them who really +could not pay their rents. + +"I assure you," he said, "there are some of them who cannot even pay +their dues to their priest, and when I say that, you will know how +pinched and driven they must indeed be." It was in view of these tenants +that he seemed to justify the course of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Kilbride. +"They must all stand or fall together." He had nothing to say to the +discredit of Lord Lansdowne; but he spoke with some bitterness of the +agent, Mr. Townsend Trench, as having protested against Lord Lansdowne's +making reductions here while he had himself made the same reductions on +the neighbouring estate of Mrs. Adair. + +"In truth," he said, "Mr. Trench has made all this trouble worse all +along. He is too much of a Napoleon"--and with a humorous twinkle in his +eye as he spoke--"too much of a Napoleon the Third. + +"I was just reading his father's book when you came in. Here it is," and +he handed me a copy of Trench's _Realities of Irish Life_. + +"Did you ever read it? This Mr. Trench, the father, was a kind of +Napoleon among agents in his own time, and the son, you see, thinks it +ought to be understood that he is quite as great a man as his father. +Did you never hear how he found a lot of his father's manuscripts once, +and threw them all in the fire, calling out as he did so, 'There goes +some more of my father's vanity?'" + +About his people, and with his people, Father Maher said he "felt most +strongly." How could he help it? He was himself the son of an evicted +father. + +"Of course, Father Maher," I said, "you will understand that I wish to +get at both sides of this question and of all questions here. Pray tell +me then, where I shall find the story of the Luggacurren property most +fully and fairly set forth in print?" + +Without a moment's hesitation he replied, "By far the best and fairest +account of the whole matter you will get in the Irish correspondence of +the London _Times_." + +How the conflict would end he could not say. But he was at a loss to see +how it could pay Lord Lansdowne to maintain it. + +He very civilly pressed me to stay and lunch with him, but when I told +him I had already accepted an invitation from Mr. Hutchins, he very +kindly bestirred himself to find my jarvey. + +I hastened back to the lodge, where I found a very pleasant little +company. They were all rather astonished, I thought, by the few words I +had to say of Father Maher, and especially by his frank and sensible +recommendation of the reports in the London _Times_ as the best account +I could find of the Luggacurren difficulty. To this they could not +demur, but things have got, or are getting, in Ireland, I fear, to a +point at which candour, on one side or the other of the burning +questions here debated, is regarded with at least as much suspicion as +the most deliberate misrepresentation. As to Mr. Town send Trench, what +Father Maher failed to tell me, I was here told: That down to the time +of the actual evictions he offered to take six months' rent from the +tenants, give them a clean book, and pay all the costs. To refuse this +certainly looks like a "war measure." + +But for the loneliness of her life here, Mrs. Hutchins tells me she +would find it delightful. The country is exceedingly lovely in the +summer and autumn months. + +When my car came out to take me back to Athy, I found my jarvey in +excellent spirits, and quite friendly even with Mr. Hutchins himself. He +kept up a running fire of lively commentaries upon the residents whose +estates we passed. + +"Would you think now, your honour," he said, pointing with his whip to +one large mansion standing well among good trees, "that that's the +snuggest man there is about Athy? But he is; and it's no wonder! Would +you believe it, he never buys a newspaper, but he walks all the way into +Athy, and goes about from the bank to the shops till he finds one, and +picks it up and reads it. He's mighty fond of the news, but he's fonder, +you see, of a penny! + +"There now, your honour, just look at that house! It's a magistrate he +is that lives there; and why? Why, just to be called 'your honour,' and +have the people tip their hats to him. Oh! he delights in that, he does. +Why, you might knock a man, or put him in the water, you might, indeed, +but if you came before Mr.----, and you just called him 'your honour' +often enough, and made up to him, you'd be all right! You've just to go +up to him with your hat in your hand, looking up at him, and to say, +'Ah! now, your honour'" (imitating the wheedling tone to perfection), +"and indeed you'd get anything out of him--barring a sixpence, that is, +or a penny! + +"Ah! he's a snug one, too!" And with that he launched a sharp thwack of +the whip at the grey mare, and we went rattling on apace. + +At the very pretty station of Athy we parted the best of friends. "Wish +you safe home, your honour." The kindly railway porter, also, who had +recommended Kavanagh's Hotel, was anxious to know how I found it, and so +busied himself to get me a good carriage when the train came in, that I +feel bound to exempt Athy from the judgment passed by Sir James +Allport's committee against the "amenities of railway travelling in +Ireland." + + +DUBLIN, _Saturday, March 10._--I called by appointment to-day upon Mr. +Brooke, the owner of the Coolgreany estate, at his counting-house in +Gardiner's Row. It is one of the spacious old last-century houses of +Dublin; the counting-room is installed with dark, old-fashioned mahogany +fittings, in what once was, and might easily again be made, a +drawing-room. Pictures hang on the walls, and the atmosphere of the +whole place is one of courtesy and culture rather than of mere modern +commerce. One of the portraits here is that of Mr. Brooke's +granduncle--a handsome, full-blooded, rather testy-looking old warrior, +in the close-fitting scarlet uniform of the Prince Regent's time. + +"He ought to have been called Lord Baltimore," said Mr. Brooke +good-naturedly; "for he fought against your people for that city at +Bladensburg with Ross." + +"That was the battle," I said, "in which, according to a popular +tradition in my country, the Americans took so little interest that they +left the field almost as soon as it began." + +Another portrait is of a kinsman who was murdered in the highway here in +Ireland many years ago, under peculiarly atrocious circumstances, and +with no sort of provocation or excuse. + +Mr. Brooke confirmed Dr. Dillon's statement that he had ordered out of +his counting-house two tenants who came into it with a peculiarly brazen +proposition, of which I must presume Dr. Dillon was ignorant when he +cited the fact as a count against the landlord of Coolgreany. I give the +story as Mr Brooke tells it. "The Rent Audit," he says, "at which my +tenants were idiots enough to join the Plan of Campaign occurred about +the 12th December 1886, when, as you know, I refused to accept the terms +which they proposed to me. I heard nothing more from them till about the +middle of February 1887, when coming to my office one day I found two +tenants waiting for me. One was Stephen Maher, a mountain man, and the +other Patrick Kehoe. 'What do you want?' I asked. Whereupon they both +arose, and Pat Kehoe pointed to Maher. Maher fumbled at his clothes, and +rubbed himself softly for a bit, and then produced a scrap of paper. +'It's a bit of paper from the tenants, sir,' he said. A queer bit of +paper it was to look at--ruled paper, with a composition written upon it +which might have been the work of a village schoolmaster. It was neither +signed nor addressed! The pith of it was in these words,--'in +consequence of the manner in which we have been harassed, our cattle +driven throughout the country, and our crops not sown, we shall be +unable to pay the half-year's rent due in March, in addition to the +reduction already claimed!' I own I rather lost my temper at this! +Remember I had already plainly refused to give 'the reduction already +claimed,' and had told them not once, but twenty times, that I would +never surrender to the 'Plan of Campaign'! I am afraid my language was +Pagan rather than Parliamentary--but I told them plainly, at least, that +if they did not break from the Plan of Campaign, and pay their debts, +they might be sure I would turn the whole of them out! I gave them back +their precious bit of paper and sent them packing. + +"One of them, I have told you, was a mountain man, Stephen Maher. He is +commonly known among the people as 'the old fox of the mountain,' and he +is very proud of it! + +"This old Stephen Maher," said Mr. Brooke, "is renowned in connection +with a trial for murder, at which he was summoned as a witness. When he +was cross-examined by Mr. Molloy, Q.C., he fenced and dodged about with +that distinguished counsellor for a long time, until getting vexed by +the lawyer's persistency, he exclaimed, 'Now thin, Mr. Molloy, I'd have +ye to know that I had a cliverer man nor iver you was, Mr. Molloy, at +me, and I had to shtan' up to him for three hours before the Crowner, +an' he was onable to git the throoth out of me, so he was! so he was!'" + + +Neither did Dr. Dillon mention the fact that one of the demands made of +Captain Hamilton, Mr. Brooke's agent, in December 1886, was that a +Protestant tenant named Webster should be evicted by Mr. Brooke from a +farm for which he had paid his rent, to make room for the return thither +of a Roman Catholic tenant named Lenahan, previously evicted for +non-payment of his rent. + +When Mr. Brooke's grandfather bought the Coolgreany property in 1864, he +adopted a system of betterments, which has been ever since kept up on +the estate. Nearly every tenant's house on the property has been slated, +and otherwise repaired by the landlord, nor has one penny ever been +added on that account to the rents. + +In the village of Coolgreany all the houses on one side of the main +street were built in this way by the landlord, and the same thing was +done in the village of Croghan, where twenty tenants have a grazing +right of three sheep for every acre held on the Croghan Mountain, +pronounced by the valuers of the Land Court to be one of the best +grazing mountains in Ireland. + +Captain Hamilton became the agent of the property in 1879, on the death +of Mr. Vesey. One of his earliest acts was to advise Mr. Brooke to grant +an abatement of 25 per cent. in June 1881, while the Land Act was +passing. At the same time, he cautioned the tenants that this was only a +temporary reduction, and advised them to get judicial rents fixed. + +The League advised them not to do this, but to demand 25 per cent. +reduction again in December 1881. This demand was rejected, and forty +writs were issued. The tenants thereupon in January 1882 came in and +paid the full rent, with the costs. + +Eleven tenants after this went into Court, and in 1883 the +Sub-Commissioners cut down their rents. In five cases Mr. Brooke +appealed. What was the result before the Chief Commissioner? The rent of +Mary Green, which had been £43, and had been cut down by the +Sub-Commissioners to £39, was restored to £43; the rent of Mr. Kavanagh, +cut down from £57 to £52, was restored to £55; the rent of Pat Kehoe +(one of the two tenants "ejected" from Mr. Brooke's office as already +stated), cut down from £81 to £70, was restored to £81; the rent of +Graham, cut down from £38 to £32, 10s., was restored to £38. Other +reductions were maintained. + +This appears to be the record of "rack-renting" on the Coolgreany +property. + +There are 114 tenants, of whom 15 hold under judicial rents; 22 are +leaseholders, and 77 are non-judicial yearly tenants. There are 12 +Protestants holding in all a little more than 1200 acres. All the rest +are Catholics, 14 of these being cottier tenants. The estate consists of +5165 acres. The average is about £24, and the average rental about £26, +10s. The gross rental is £2614, of which £1000 go to the jointure of Mr. +Brooke's mother, and £800 are absorbed by the tithe charges, half +poor-rates and other taxes. During the year 1886, in which this war was +declared against him, Mr. Brooke spent £714 in improvements upon the +property: so in that year his income from Coolgreany was practically +_nil_. + +What in these circumstances would have been the position of this +landlord had he not possessed ample means not invested in this +particular estate? And what has been the result to the tenants of this +conflict into which it seems clear that they were led, less to protect +any direct interest of their own than to jeopardise their homes and +their livelihood for the promotion of a general agrarian agitation? It +is not clear that they are absolutely so far out of pocket, for I find +that the Post-Office Savings Bank deposits at Inch and Gorey rose from +£3699, 5s. 4d. in 1880 to £5308, 13s. in 1887, showing an increase of +£1609, 7s. 8d. But they are out of house and home and work, entered +pupils in that school of idleness and iniquity which has been kept by +one Preceptor from the beginning of time. + + + + +CHAPTER XV.[25] + + +* * * *--Mrs. Kavanagh was quite right when she told me at Borris in +March that this country should be seen in June! The drive to this lovely +place this morning was one long enchantment of verdure and hawthorn +blossoms and fragrance. + +I came over from London to bring to a head some inquiries which have too +long delayed the publication of this diary. My intention had been to go +directly to Thurles, but a telegram which I received from the Archbishop +of Cashel just before I left telling me that he could not be at home for +the last three days of the week, I came directly here. Nothing can be +more utterly unlike the popular notions of Ireland and of Irish life +than the aspect of this most smiling and beautiful region: nothing more +thoroughly Irish than its people. + +* * * who is one of the most active and energetic of Irish landlords, +lives part of the year abroad, but keeps up his Irish property with +care, at the expense, I suspect, of his estates elsewhere. + +From a noble avenue of trees, making the highway like the main road of a +private park, we turned into a literal paradise of gardens. The air was +balmy with their wealth of odours. "Oh! yes, sir," said the coachman, +with an air of sympathetic pride, "our lady is just the greatest lady in +all this land for flowers!" + +And for ivy, he might have added. We drove between green walls of ivy up +to a house which seemed itself to be built of ivy, like that wonderful +old mansion of Castle Leod in Scotland. Here, plainly, is another centre +of "sweetness and light," the abolition of which must make, not this +region alone, but Ireland poorer in that precise form of wealth, which, +as Laboulaye has shown in one of the best of his lectures, is absolutely +identical with civilisation. It is such places as this, which, in the +interest of the people, justify the exemption from redistribution and +resettlement, made in one of a series of remarkable articles on Ireland +recently published in the _Birmingham Post_, of lands, the "breaking up +of which would interfere with the amenity of a residence." + +* * * relations with all classes of the people here are so cordial and +straightforward that he has been easily able to give me to-day, what I +have sought in vain elsewhere in Ireland, an opportunity of conversing +frankly and freely with several labouring men. For obvious reasons these +men, as a rule, shrink from any expression of their real feelings. Their +position is apparently one of absolute dependence either upon the +farmers or the landlords, there being no other local market for their +labour, which is their only stock-in-trade. As one of them said to me +to-day, "The farmers will work a man just as long as they can't help it, +and then they throw him away." + +I asked if there were no regular farm-labourers hired at fixed rates by +the year? + +"Oh! very few--less now than ever; and there'll be fewer before there'll +be more. The farmers don't want to pay the labourers or to pay the +landlords; they want the land and the work for nothing, sir,--they do +indeed!" + +"What does a farm-hand get," I asked, "if he is hired for a long time?" + +"Well, permanent men, they'll get 6s. a week with breakfast and dinner, +or 7s. maybe, with one meal; and a servant-boy, sir, he'll get 2s. a +week or may be 3s. with his board; but it's seldom he gets it." + +"And what has he for his board?" + +"Oh, stirabout; and then twice a week coorse Russian or American meat, +what they call the 'kitchen,' and they like it better than good meat, +sir, because it feeds the pot more." + +By this I found he meant that the "coorse meat" gave out more +"unctuosity" in the boiling--the meat being always served up boiled in a +pot with vegetables, like the "bacon and greens" of the "crackers" in +the South. + +"And nothing else?" + +"Yes; buttermilk and potatoes." + +"And these wages are the highest?" + +"Oh, I know a boy got 5s., but by living in his father's house, and +working out it was he got it. And then they go over to England to work." + +"What wages do they get there?" + +"Oh, it differs, but they do well; 9s. a week, I think, and their board, +and straw to sleep on in the stables." + +"But doesn't it cost them a good deal to go and come?" + +"Oh no; they get cheap rates. They send them from Galway to Dublin like +cattle, at £2, 5s. a car, and that makes about 1s. 6d. a head; and then +they are taken over on the steamers very cheap. Often the graziers that +do large business with the companies, will have a right to send over a +number of men free; and they stowaway too; and then on the railways in +England they get passes free often from cattle-dealers, specially when +they are coming back, and the dealers don't want their passes. They do +very well. They'll bring back £7 and £10. I was on a boat once, and +there was a man; he was drunk; he was from Galway somewhere, and they +took away and kept for him £18, all in good golden sovereigns; that was +the most I ever saw. And he was drunk, or who'd ever have known he had +it?" + +"Do the farmers build houses for the labourers?" + +"Build houses, is it! Glory be to God! who ever heard of such a thing? +The farmers are a poor proud lot. They'd let a labourer die in the +ditch!" + +All that this poor man said was corroborated by another man of a higher +class, very familiar with the conditions of life and labour here, and +indeed one of the most interesting men I have met in Ireland. Born the +son of a labouring man, he was educated by a priest and educated +himself, till he fitted himself for the charge of a small school, which +he kept to such good purpose that in eighteen years he saved £1100, with +which capital he resolved to begin life as a small farmer and +shopkeeper. He had studied all the agricultural works he could get, and +before he went fairly into the business, he travelled on the Continent, +looking carefully into the methods of culture and manner of life of the +people, especially in Italy and in Belgium. The Belgian farming gave him +new ideas of what might be done in Ireland, and those ideas he has put +into practice, with the best results. + +"On the same land with my neighbours," he said, "I double their +production. Where they get two tons of hay I get four or four and a +half, where they get forty-five barrels of potatoes I get a hundred. +Only the other day I got £20 for a bullock I had taken pains with to +fatten him up scientifically. Of course I had a small capital to start +with: but where did I get that? Not from the Government. I earned and +saved it myself; and then I wasn't above learning how best to use it." + +He thinks the people here--though by no means what they might be with +more thrift and knowledge--much better off than the same class in many +other parts of Ireland. There are no "Gombeen men" here, he says, and no +usurious shopkeepers. "The people back each other in a friendly way when +they need help." Many of the labourers, he says, are in debt to him, but +he never presses them, and they are very patient with each other. They +would do much better if any pains were taken to teach them. It is his +belief that agricultural schools and model farms would do more than +almost any measure that could be devised for bringing up the standard of +comfort and prosperity here, and making the country quiet. + +It is the opinion of this man that the people of this place have been +led to regard the Papal Decree as a kind of attack on their liberties, +and that they are quite as likely to resist as to obey it. For his own +part, he thinks Ireland ought to have her own parliament, and make her +own laws. He is not satisfied with the laws actually made, though he +admits they are better than the older laws were. "The tenants get their +own improvements now," he said, "and in old times the more a man +improved the worse it was for him, the agent all the while putting up +the rents." + +But he does not want Irish independence. "The people that talk that +way," he said, "have never travelled. They don't see how idle it is for +Ireland to talk about supporting herself. She just can't do it." + +Not less interesting was my talk to-day with quite a different person. +This was a keen-eyed, hawk-billed, wiry veteran of the '48. As a youth +he had been out with "Meagher of the Sword," and his eyes glowed when he +found that I had known that champion of Erin. "I was out at Ballinagar," +he said; "there were five hundred men with guns, and five hundred +pikemen." It struck me he would like to be going "out" again in the same +fashion, but he had little respect for the "Nationalists." + +"There's too many lawyers among them," he said, "too many lawyers and +too many dealers. The lawyers are doing well, thanks to the League. Oh +yes!" with a knowing chuckle, and a light of mischief in his eye; "the +lawyers are doing very well! There's one little bit of a solicitor not +far from here was of no good at all four years ago, and now they tell me +he's made four thousand pounds in three years' time, good money, and got +it all in hand! And there's another, I hear, has made six thousand. The +lawyers that call themselves Nationalists, they just keep mischief +agoing to further themselves. What do they care for the labourers? Why, +no more than the farmers do--and what would become of the poor men! * * +* * here, he is making * * * * * * * and he keeps more poor men going +than all the lawyers and all the farmers in the place a good part of the +year." + +"Are the labourers," I asked, "Nationalists?" + +"They don't know what they are," he answered. "They hate the farmers, +but they love Ireland, and they all stand together for the counthry!" + +"How is it with the Plan of Campaign and the Boycotting?" + +"Now what use have the labourers got for the Plan of Campaign? No more +than for the moon! And for the Boycotting, I never liked it--but I was +never afraid of it--and there's not been much of it here." + +"Will the Papal Decree put a stop to what there is of it?" + +"I wouldn't mind the Pope's Decree no more than that door!" he exclaimed +indignantly. "Hasn't he enough, sure, to mind in Rome? Why didn't he +defend his own country, not bothering about Ireland!" + +"Are you not a Catholic, then?" I asked. + +"Oh yes, I'm a Catholic, but I wouldn't mind the Decree. Only remember," +he added, after a pause, "just this: it don't trouble me, for I've +nothing to do with the Plan of Campaign--only I don't want the Pope to +be meddlin' in matters that don't concern him." + +"It's out of respect, then, for the Pope that you wouldn't mind the +Decree?" + +"Just that, intirely! It was some of them Englishmen wheedled it out of +him, you may be sure, sir." + +"I am told you went out to America once." + +"Yes, I went there in '48, and I came back in '51." + +"What made you go?" I asked. + +"Is it what made me go?" he replied, with a sudden fierceness in his +voice. "It was the evictions made me go; that we was put out of the good +holding my father had, and his father before him; and I can never +forgive it, never! But I came back; and it was * * * father that was the +good man to me and to mine, else where would I be?" + +I afterwards learned from * * * * that the evictions of which the old +man spoke with so much bitterness were made in carrying out important +improvements, and that it was quite true that his father had greatly +befriended the emigrant when he got enough of the New World and came +home. + +It was curious to see the old grudge fresh and fierce in the old man's +heart, but side by side with it the lion lying down with the lamb--a +warm and genuine recognition of the kindness and help bestowed on +himself. His resentment against the landlord's action in one generation +did not in the least interfere with his recognition of the landlord's +usefulness and liberality in the next generation. + +"You didn't like America?" I said. "Where did you live there?" + +"I lived at North Brookfield in Massachusetts, a year or two," he +replied, "with Governor Amasa Walker. Did you know him? He was a good +man; he was fond of the people, but he thought too much of the nagurs." + +"Yes," I answered; "I know all about him, and he was, as you say, a very +good man, even if he was an abolitionist. But why didn't you stay in +North Brookfield?" + +"Oh, it was a poor country indeed! A blast of wind would blow all the +ground away there was! It does no good to the people, going to America," +he said; "they come back worse than they went!" + +He is at work now in some quarries here. + +"The quarrymen get six shillings a week," he said, "with bread and tea +and butter and meat three times a week. With nine shillings a week and +board, a man'll make himself bigger than * * *!" + +"Was the country quiet now?" + +"This country here? Oh! it's very quiet; with potatoes at 3s. 6d. a +barrel, it's a good year for the people. They're a very quiet +people,"--in corroboration apparently of which statement he told me a +story of a coroner's jury called to sit on the body of a man found on +the highway shot through the head, which returned an unanimous verdict +of "Died by the visitation of God." + +This country is dominated by the Rocky Hills climbing up to Cullenagh, +which divides the Barrow valley from the Nore. We drove this afternoon +to * a most lovely place. The mansion there is now shut up and +dismantled, but the park and the grounds are very beautiful, with a +beauty rather enhanced than diminished by the somewhat unkempt +luxuriance of the vegetation. We passed a now well-grown tree planted by +the Prince of Wales * * * * * * and drove over many miles of excellent +road made by * * * * * * * * employs * * * * * * * * regularly, * * * +men as labourers, cartmen and masons, to whom he pays out annually the +sum of * * Mr. * * who, by the way, rather resented my asking him if he +came of one of the Cromwellian English families so numerous here, and +informed me that his people came over with Strongbow--assures me that +but for these works of * * * * these men under him would be literally +without occupation. In addition to these there are about a dozen more +men employed * * as gamekeepers and plantation-men. At the * * places +belonging to * * * * * * * * * * above eighty men find constant +employment, and receive regular wages amounting to over £4000. Were * * +* * dispossessed or driven out of Ireland, all this outlay would come to +an end, and with what result to these working-men? As things now are, +while * * * working-men receive a regular wage of five shillings, the +same men, as farmers' labourers, would receive, now and then, five +shillings a week, and that without food! I saw enough in the course of +our afternoon's drive to satisfy me that my informant of the morning had +probably not overstated matters when he told me that for at least +seventy per cent. of the work done by the labourers here, from November +to May, they have to look to the landlords. On the property of * * as +well as on the neighbouring properties * * * * * * * the houses have +been generally put up by the landlords. We called in the course of the +afternoon upon a labouring man who lives with his wife in a very neat, +cozy, and quite new house, built recently for him by * *. These good +people have been living on this property for now nearly half a century. +Their new house having been built for them, * * has had an agreement +prepared, under which it may be secured to them. The terms have all been +discussed and found satisfactory, but the old labourer now hesitates +about signing the agreement. He gives, and can be got to give, no reason +for this; but when we drove up he came out to greet us in the most +friendly manner. We went in and found his wife, a shrewd, sharp-eyed, +little old dame, with whom * * * * fell into a confabulation, while I +went into the next room with the labourer himself. The house was neatly +furnished--with little ornaments and photographs on the mantel-shelf, +and nothing of the happy-go-lucky look so common about the houses of the +working people in Ireland, as well as about the houses of the lesser +squires. + +I paid him a compliment on the appearance of his house and grounds. +"Yes, sir!" he answered: "it's a very good place it is, and * * * * has +built it just to please us." + +"But I am told you want to leave it?" + +"Ah, no, that is not so, sir, indeed at all! We've three children you +see, sir, in America--two girls and a boy we have." + +"And where are they?" + +"Ah, the girls they're not in any factory at all. They're like leddies, +living out in a place they call * * in Massachusetts; and the lad, he +was on a farm there. But we don't know where he is nor his sisters any +more just now. And the wife, she thinks she would like to go out to +America and see the children." + +"Do you hear from them regularly?" + +"Well, it's only a few pounds they send, but they're doing very well. +Domestics they are, quite like leddies; there's their pictures on the +shelf." + +"But what would you do there?" + +"Ah! we'd have lodgings, the wife says, sir. But I like the ould place +myself." + +"I think you are quite right there," I replied. "And do you get work +here from the farmers as the labourers do in my country?" + +"Work from the farmers, sir?" he answered, rather sharply. "What they +can't help we get, but no more! If the farmers in America is like them, +it's not I would be going there! The farmers! For the farmers, a +labourer, sir, is not of the race of Adam! They think any place good +enough for a labourer--any place and any food! Is the farmers that way +in America?" + +"Well, I don't know that they are so very much more liberal than your +farmers are," I replied; "but I think they'd have to treat you as being +of the race of Adam! But are not the farmers here, or the Guardians, +obliged to build houses for the labourers? I thought there was an Act of +Parliament about that?" + +"And so there is but what's the good of it? It's just to get the +labourers' votes, and then they fool the labourers, just making them +quarrel about where the cottages shall be, what they call the 'sites'; +and then there's no cottages built at all, at all. It's the lawyers, you +see, sir, gets in with the farmers--the strongest farmers--and then they +just make fools of the labourers as if there was no Act of Parliament at +all." + +"But if the labourers want to go away, to emigrate," I said, "as you +want to do, to America, don't the farmers, or the Government, or the +landlords, help them to get away and make a start?" + +"Not a bit of it, sir," he replied; "not a bit of it. I believe, +though," he added after a moment; "I believe they do get some help to go +to Australia. But they're mostly no good that goes that way. The best is +them that go for themselves, or their friends help them. But there's not +so many going this year." + +When we drove away I asked * * if he had made any progress towards a +signature of the agreement with the labourer's wife. + +"No; she couldn't be got to say yes or no. I asked her," said * * "what +reason they had for imagining that after all these years I would try to +do them an injury? She protested they never thought of such a thing; but +she couldn't be brought to say she wished her husband to sign the paper. +It's very odd, indeed." + +I couldn't help suspecting that the _materfamilias_ was at the bottom of +it all, and that she was bent upon going out to America to participate +in the prosperity of her two daughters, who were living "like leddies" +at * * in Massachusetts. + +The incident recalled to me something which happened years ago when I +was returning with the Storys from Rome to Boston. Our Cunarder, in the +middle of the night, off the Irish coast, ran down and instantly sank a +small schooner. + +In a wonderfully short time we had come-to, and a boat's crew had +succeeded in picking up and bringing all the poor people on board. Among +them was a wizened old woman, upon whom all sorts of kind attentions +were naturally lavished by the ship's company. She could not be +persuaded to go into a cabin after she had recovered from the shock and +the fright of the accident, but, comforted and clothed with new and dry +garments, she took refuge under one of the companion-ways, and there, +sitting huddled up, with her arms about her knees, she crooned and +moaned to herself, "I was near being in a wetter and a warmer place; I +was near being in a wetter and a warmer place!" by the half hour +together. We found that the poor old soul had been to Liverpool to see +her son off on a sailing ship as an emigrant to America. So a +subscription was soon made up to send her on our arrival to New York +there to await her son. We had some trouble in making her understand +what was to be done with her, but when she finally got it fairly into +her head, gleams of mingled surprise and delight came over her withered +face, and she finally broke out, "Oh, then, glory be to God! it's a +mercy that I was drownded! glory be to God! and it's the proud boy +Terence will be when he gets out to America to find his poor ould mother +waiting for him there that he left behind him in Liverpool, and quite +the leddy with all this good gold money in her hand, glory be to God!" + +On our way back to * * we passed through * * a very neat +prosperous-looking town, which * * tells me is growing up on the heels +of * *. * * * was one of the few places at which the "no rent" +manifesto, issued by Mr. Parnell and his colleagues from their prison in +Kilmainham, during the confinement of Mr. Davitt at Portland, and +without concert with him, was taken up by a village curate and commended +to the people. He was arrested for it by Mr. Gladstone's Government, and +locked up for six weeks. + + +DUBLIN, _Saturday, June 23d._--I left * * * yesterday morning early on +an "outside car," with one of my fellow-guests in that "bower of +beauty," who was bent on killing a salmon somewhere in the Nore * * We +drove through a most varied and picturesque country, viewing on the way +the seats of Mr. Hamilton Stubber and Mr. Robert Staples, both finely +situated in well-wooded parks. Mr. Stubber was formerly master of the +Queen's County hounds, a famous pack, which, as our jarvey put it, +"brought a power of money into the county, and made it aisy for a poor +man." But the local agitations wore out his patience, and he put the +pack down some years ago. Not far from his house is an astonishing +modern "tumulus," or mound of hewn and squared stones. These it seems +were quarried and brought here by him, with the intention of building a +new and handsome residence. This intention he abandoned under the same +annoyance. + +"They call it Mr. Stubber's Cairn," said the jarvey; "and a sorrowful +sight it is, to think of the work it would have given the people, +building the big house that'll never be built now, I'm thinking." If Mr. +Stubber should become an "absentee," he can hardly, I think, be blamed +for it. + +His property marches with that of Mr. Robert Staples, who comes of a +Gloucestershire family planted in Ireland under Charles I. + +"Mr. Staples is farming his own lands," said our jarvey, when I +commented on the fine appearance of some fields as we drove by; "and +he'll be doing very well this year. Ah! he comes and goes, but he's here +a great deal, and he looks after everything himself; that's the reason +the fields is good." + +This is a property of some 1500 statute acres. Only last March the +landlord took over from one tenant, who was in arrears of two years and +a half and owed him some £300, a farm of 90 acres, giving the man fifty +pounds to boot, and bidding him go in peace. I wonder whether this +proceeding would make the landlord a "land-grabber," and expose him to +the pains and penalties of "boycotting"? + +On this place, too, it seems that Mr. Staples's grandfather put up many +houses for the tenants; a thing worth noting, as one of not a few +instances I have come upon to show that it will not do to accept without +examination the sweeping statements so familiar to us in America, that +improvements have never been made by the landlord upon Irish estates. + +My companion had meant to put me down at the railway station of +Attanagh, there to catch a good train to Kilkenny. + +But we had a capital nag, and reached Attanagh so early that we +determined to drive on to Ballyragget. + +From Attanagh to Ballyragget the road ran along a plateau which +commanded the most beautiful views of the valley of the Nore and of the +finely wooded country beyond. Ballyragget itself is a brisk little +market town, the American influence showing itself here, as in so many +other places, in such trifles as the signs on the shops which describe +them as "stores." My salmon-fishing companion put me down at the station +and went off to the river, which flows through the town, and is here a +swift and not inconsiderable stream. + +An hour in the train took me to Kilkenny, where I met by appointment +several persons whom I had been unable to see during my previous visit +in March. + +These gentlemen, experienced agents, gave me a good deal of information +as to the effect of the present state of things upon the "_moral_" of +the tenantry in different parts of Ireland. On one estate, for example, +in the county of Longford, a tenant has been doing battle for the cause +of Ireland in the following extraordinary fashion. + +He held certain lands at a rental of £23, 4s. Being, to use the +picturesque language of the agent, a "little good for tenant," he fell +into arrears, and on the 1st of May 1885 owed nearly three years' rent, +or £63, 12s., in addition to a sum of £150 which he had borrowed of his +amiable landlord three or four years before to enable him to work his +farm. Of this total sum of £213, 12s. he positively refused to pay one +penny. Proceedings were accordingly taken against him, and he was +evicted. By this eviction his title to the tenancy was broken. The +landlord nevertheless, for the sake of peace and quiet, offered to allow +him to sell, to a man who wished to take the place, any interest he +might have had in the holding, and to forgive both the arrears of the +rent and the £150 which had been borrowed by him. The ex-tenant flatly +refused to accept this offer, became a weekly pensioner upon the +National League, and declared war. The landlord was forced to get a +caretaker for the place from the Property Defence Association at a cost +of £1 per week, to provide a house for a police protection party, and to +defray the expenses of that party upon fuel and lights. Nor was this +all. The landlord found himself further obliged to employ men from the +same Property Defence Association to cut and save the hay-crop on the +land, and when this had been done no one could be found to buy the crop. +The crop and the lands were "boycotted." It was only in May last that a +purchaser could be found for the hay cut and saved two years ago--this +purchaser being himself a "boycotted" man on an adjoining property. He +bought the hay, paying for it a price which did not quite cover one-half +the cost of sowing it! + +"No one denies for a moment," said the agent, "that the tenant in all +this business has been more than fairly, even generously, treated by the +estate; yet no one seems to think it anything but natural and reasonable +that he should demand, as he now demands, to be put back into the +possession of his forfeited tenancy at a certain rent fixed by himself," +which he will obligingly agree to pay, "provided that the hay cut and +saved on the property two years ago is accounted for to him by the +estate!" + +In another case an agent, Mr. Ivough, had to deal with a body of five +hundred tenants on a considerable estate. Of these tenants, two hundred +settled their rents with the landlord before the passing of the Land Act +of 1881, and valuations made by the landlord's valuer, with their full +assent. There was no business for the lawyers, so far as they were +concerned, and no compulsion of any sort was put on them. Among them was +a man who had married the daughter of an old tenant on the estate, and +so came into a holding of 12 Irish, or more than 20 statute, acres, at a +rental of £18 a year. The valuer reduced this to £14, 10s., which +satisfied the tenant, and as the agent agreed to make this reduced +valuation retroactive, all went as smoothly as possible for two years, +when the tenant began to fall into arrears. When the Sub-Commissioners, +between 1885 and 1887, took to making sweeping reductions, the tenants +who had settled freely under the recent valuation grumbled bitterly. As +one of them tersely put it to the agent, "We were a parcel of bloody +fools, and you ought to have told us these Sub-Commissioners were +coming!" Mr. Sweeney, the tenant by marriage already mentioned, was not +content to express his particular dissatisfaction in idle words, but +kept on going into arrears. In May 1888 things came to a crisis. The +agent refused to accept a settlement which included the payment by him +of the costs of the proceedings forced upon him by his tenant. "You have +had a good holding," said the agent, "with plenty of water and good +land. In this current year two acres of your wheat will pay the whole +rent. You have broken up and sold bit by bit a mill that was on the +place; and above all, when Mr. Gladstone made us accept the judicial +rents, he told us we might be sure, if we did this, of punctual payment. +That was the one consideration held out to us. And we are entitled to +that!" + +The tenant being out of his holding, the agent wishes to put another +tenant into it. But the holding is "boycotted." Several tenants are +anxious for it, and would gladly take it, but they dare not The great +evicted will neither sell any tenant-right he may have, nor pay his +arrears and costs, nor give up the place to another tenant. To put +Property Defence men on the holding would cost the landlord £2, 10s. a +week, and do him no great good, as the evicted man "holds the fort," +being established in a house which he occupies on an adjoining property, +and for which presumably he pays his rent. It seems as if Mr. Sweeney +were inspired by the example of another tenant, named Barry, who, before +the passing of the Land Act of 1881, gave up freely a holding of 20 +acres, on a property managed by Mr. Kough; but as he was on such good +terms with the agent that he could borrow money of him, he begged the +agent to let him retain at a low rent a piece of this surrendered land +directly adjoining his house. He asked this in the name of his eight or +nine children, and it was granted him. The agent afterwards found that +the piece of land in question was by far the best of the surrendered +holding. But that is a mere detail. This ingenious tenant Barry, living +now on another estate just outside the grasp of the agent, has +systematically "boycotted" for the last nine years the land which he +gave up, feeding his own cattle upon it freely meanwhile, and keeping +all would-be tenants at a distance! "He is now," said the agent, "quite +a wealthy man in his way, jobbing cattle at all the great markets!" + +"When the eviction of Sweeney took place," said the agent, "I was +present in person, as I thought I ought to be, and the result is that I +have been held up to the execration of mankind as a monster for putting +out a child in a cradle into a storm. As a matter of fact," he said, +"there was a cradle in the way, which the sheriff-Officer gently took +up, and by direction of the tenant's wife removed. I made no remark +about it at all, but a local paper published a lying story, which the +publisher had to retract, that I had said 'Throw out the child!'" + +"Two priests," he said, "came quite uninvited and certainly without +provocation, to see me, and one of them shouted out, 'Ah! we know you'll +be making another Coolgreany,' which was as much as to say there 'would +be bloodshed.' This was the more intolerable," he added, "that, as I +afterwards found, I had already done for the sake of the tenants +precisely what these ecclesiastics professed that they had come to ask +me to do! + +"For thirty years," said this gentleman, "I have lived in the midst of +these people--and in all that time I have never had so much as a +threatening letter. But after this story was published of my throwing +out a cradle with a child in it, I was insulted in the street by a woman +whom I had never seen before. Two girls, too, called out at the +eviction, 'You've bad pluck; why didn't you tell us you were coming down +the day?' and another woman made me laugh by crying after me, 'You've +two good-looking daughters, but you're a bad man yourself.'" + +Quite as instructive is the story given me on this occasion of the +Tyaquin estate in the county of Galway. This estate is managed by an +agent, Mr. Eichardson of Castle Coiner, in this county of Kilkenny. + +The rents on this Galway estate, as Mr. Richardson assures me, have been +unaltered for between thirty and forty years, and some of them for even +a longer period. For the last twenty-five years certainty, during which +Mr. Richardson has been the agent of the estate, and probably, he +thinks, for many years previous, there has never been a case of the +non-payment of rent, except in recent years when rents were withheld for +a time for political reasons. + +Large sums of money have been laid out in various useful improvements. +Constant occupation was given to those requiring it, until the agrarian +agitation became fully developed. On the demesne and the home farms the +best systems of reclaiming waste lands and the best systems of +agriculture were practically exhibited, so that the estate was an +agricultural free school for all who cared to learn. + +When the Land Act of 1881 was passed, almost all the tenants applied, +and had judicial rents fixed, many of them by consent of the agent. + +In 1887 the tenants were called on as usual to pay these judicial rents. +A large minority refused to do so except on certain terms, which were +refused. The dispute continued for many months, but as the charges on +the estate had to be met, the agent was obliged to give way, and allow +an abatement of four shillings in the pound on these judicial rents. +Some of these charges, to meet which the agent gave way, were for money +borrowed from the Commissioners of Public Works to _improve the holdings +of the tenants_. For these improvements thus thrown entirely upon the +funds of the estate no increase of rent or charge of any kind had been +laid upon the tenants. + +When a settlement was agreed on, those of the tenants who had adopted +the Plan came in a body to pay their rents on 3d January 1888. They +stated that they were unable to pay more than the rent due up to +November 1886, and that they would never have adopted the Plan had they +not been driven into it by _sheer distress_. After which they handed Mr. +Richardson a cheque drawn by John T. Dillon, Esq., M.P., for the amount +banked with the National League. + +An article appeared shortly afterwards in a League newspaper, loudly +boasting of the great victory won by Mr. Dillon, M.P., for the starving +and poverty-stricken tenants. Two of these tenants (brothers) were under +a yearly rent of £7, 10s. They declared they could only pay £3, 15s., or +a half-year's rent, and this only if they got an abatement of 15s. Yet +these same tenants were then paying Mr. Richardson £50 a year for a +grass farm, and about £12 for meadows, as well as £30 a year more for a +grass farm to an adjoining landlord. + +Another tenant who held a farm at £13, 5s. a year declared he could only +pay £6, 12s. 6d., or a half-year's rent, if he got an abatement of £1, +6s. 6d. A very short time before, this tenant had taken a grass farm +from an adjoining landlord, and he was so anxious to get it that he +showed the landlord a bundle of large notes, amounting to rather more +than £300 sterling, in order to prove his solvency! The same tenant has +since written a letter to Mr. Richardson offering £50 a year for a grass +farm! + +All these campaigners, Mr. Richardson says, "with one noble exception, +the wife of a tenant who was ill, declined to pay a penny of rent beyond +November 1st, 1886," stating that they were "absolutely unable" to do +more. So they all left the May 1887 rent unpaid, and the hanging gale to +November 1887, which, however, they were not even asked to pay. + +The morning after the settlement many of the tenants who, when they were +all present in a body on the previous evening, had declared their +"inability" to pay the half-year's rent due down to May 1887, +individually came to Mr. Richardson unasked, and paid it, some saying +they had "borrowed the money that night," but others frankly declaring +that they dared not break the rule publicly, having been ordered by the +League only to pay to November 1886, for fear of the consequences. These +would have been injury to their cattle, or the burning of their hay, or +possibly murder. + +Of the country about Kilkenny, I am told, as of the country about +Carlow, that nearly or quite seventy per cent, of the labourers are +dependent upon the landlords from November to May for such employment as +they get. + +The shopkeepers, too, are in a bad way, being in many cases reduced to +the condition of mere agents of the great wholesale houses elsewhere, +and kept going by these houses mainly in the hope of recovering old +debts. There is a severe pressure of usury, too, upon the farmers. "If a +farmer," said one resident to me, "wants to borrow a small sum of the +Loan Fund Bank, he must have two securities--one of them a substantial +man good for the debt. These two indorsers must be 'treated' by the +borrower whom they back; and he must pay them a weekly sum for the +countenance they have given him, which not seldom amounts, before he +gets through with the matter, to a hundred per cent, on the original +loan." + +I am assured too that the consumption of spirits all through this region +has greatly increased of late years. "The official reports will show +you," said one gentleman, "that the annual outlay upon whisky in Ireland +equals the sum saved to the tenants by the reductions in rent." This is +a proposition so remarkable that I simply record it for future +verification, as having been made by a very quiet, cool, and methodical +person, whose information on other points I have found to be correct. He +tells me too, as of his own knowledge, that in going over some financial +matters with a small farmer in his neighbourhood, he ascertained, beyond +a peradventure, that this farmer annually spent in whisky, for the use +of his family, consisting of himself, his wife and three adult children, +nearly, or quite, _seventy pounds a year_! "You won't believe this," he +said to me; "and if you print the statement nobody else will believe it; +but for all that it is the simple unexaggerated truth." + +Falstaff's reckoning at Dame Quickly's becomes a moderate score in +comparison with this! + +I spent half an hour again in the muniment-room at Kilkenny Castle, +where, in the Expense-Book of the second Duke of Ormond, I found a +supper _menu_ worthy of record, as illustrating what people meant by +"keeping open house" in the great families of the time of Queen +Anne.[Note L.] + +Taking a train early in the afternoon, I came on here in time to dine +last night with Mr. Rolleston of Delgany, an uncompromising Protestant +"Home Ruler"--as Protestant and as uncompromising as John Mitchel--whose +recent pamphlet on "Boycotting" has deservedly attracted so much +attention on both sides of the Irish Sea. + +I was first led into a correspondence with Mr. Rolleston by a remarkable +article of his published in the _Dublin University Review_ for February +1886, on "The Archbishop in Politics." In that article, Mr. Rolleston, +while avowing himself to be robust enough to digest without much +difficulty the _ex officio_ franchise conferred upon the Catholic clergy +by Mr. Parnell to secure the acceptance of his candidates at +Parliamentary conventions, made a very firm and fearless protest against +the attempt of the Archbishops of Dublin and Cashel to "boycott" +Catholic criticism of the National League and its methods, by declaring +such criticism to be "a public insult" offered, not to the Archbishops +of Cashel and Dublin personally, or as political supporters of the +National League, but to the Archbishops as dignitaries of the Catholic +Church, and to their Archiepiscopal office. The "boycotting," by +clerical machinery, of independent lay opinion in civil matters, is to +the body politic of a Catholic country what the germ of cancer is to the +physical body. And though Mr. Rolleston, in this article, avowed himself +to be a hearty supporter of the "political programme of the National +League," and went so far even as to maintain that the social boycotting, +"which makes the League technically an illegal conspiracy against law +and individual liberty," might be "in many cases justified by the +magnitude of the legalised crime against which it was directed," it was +obvious to me that he could not long remain blind to the true drift of +things in an organisation condemned, by the conditions it has created +for itself, to deal with the thinkers of Ireland as it deals with the +tenants of Ireland. His recent pamphlet on "Boycotting" proves that I +was right. What he said to me the other day in a letter about the +pamphlet may be said as truly of the article. It was "a shaft sunk into +the obscure depths of Irish opinion, to bring to light and turn to +service whatever there may be in those depths of sound and healthy;" and +one of my special objects in this present visit to Ireland was to get a +personal touch of the intellectual movement which is throwing such +thinkers as Mr. Rolleston to the front. + +We were five at table, Mr. Rolleston's other guests being Mr. John +O'Leary, whose name is held in honour for his courage and honesty by all +who know anything of the story of Ireland in our times, and who was sent +a quarter of a century ago as a Fenian patriot--not into seclusion with +sherry and bitters, at Kilmainham, like Mr. Gladstone's "suspects" of +1881--but like Michael Davitt, into the stern reality of penal +servitude; Dr. Sigerson, Dean of the Faculty of Science of the Boyal +University, and an authority upon the complicated question of Irish Land +Tenures; and Mr. John F. Taylor, a leading barrister of Dublin, an ally +on the Land Question of Mr. Davitt, and an outspoken Repealer of the +Union of 1800. + +I have long wished to meet Mr. O'Leary, who sent me, through a +correspondent of mine, two years ago, one of the most thoughtful and +well-considered papers I have ever read on the possibilities and +impossibilities of Home Rule for Ireland; and it was a great pleasure to +find in the man the elevation of tone, the breadth of view, and the +refined philosophic perception of the strong and weak points in the +Irish case, which had charmed me in. the paper. Now that "Conservative" +Englishmen have come to treat the main points of Chartism almost as +commonplaces in politics, it is surely time for them to recognise the +honesty and integrity of the spirit which revolted in the Ireland of +1848 against the then seemingly hopeless condition of that country. Of +that spirit Mr. O'Leary is a living, earnest, and most interesting +incarnation. He strikes one at once as a much younger man in all that +makes the youth of the intellect and the emotions than any Nationalist +M.P. of half his years whom I have ever met. No Irishman living has +dealt stronger or more open blows than he against the English dominion +in Ireland. Born in Tipperary, where he inherited a small property in +houses, he was sent to Trinity College in Dublin, and while a student +there was drawn into the "Young Ireland" party mainly by the poems of +Thomas Davis. Late in the electrical year of the "battle summer," 1848, +he was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in a plot to rescue +Smith O'Brien and other state prisoners. The suspicion was well founded, +but could not be established, and after a day or two he was liberated. +From Trinity, after this, he went to the Queen's College in Cork, where +he took his degree, and studied medicine. When the Fenian movement +became serious, after the close of our American Civil War, O'Leary threw +himself into it with Stephens, Luby, and Charles Kickham. Stephens +appointed him one of the chief organisers of the I.E.B. with Luby and +Kickham, and he took charge of the _Irish People_--the organ of the +Fenians of 1865. It was as a subordinate contributor to this journal +that Sir William Harcourt's familiar Irish bogy, O'Donovan Rossa[26], +was arrested together with his chief, Mr. O'Leary, and with Kickham in +1865, and found guilty, with them, after a trial before Mr. Justice +Keogh, of treason-felony. The speech then delivered by Mr. O'Leary in +the dock made a profound impression upon the public mind in America. It +was the speech, not of a conspirator, but of a patriot. The indignation +with which he repelled for himself and for his associate Luby the +charges levelled at them both, without a particle of supporting +evidence, by the prosecuting counsel, of aiming at massacre and plunder, +was its most salient feature. The terrible sentence passed upon him, of +penal servitude for twenty years, Mr. O'Leary accepted with a calm +dignity, which I am glad, for the sake of Irish manhood, to find that +his friends here now recall with pride, when their ears are vexed by the +shrill and clamorous complaints of more recent "patriots," under the +comparatively trivial punishments which they invite. + +In 1870, Mr. O'Leary and his companions were released and pardoned on +condition of remaining beyond the British dominions until the expiration +of their sentences. Mr. O'Leary fixed his residence for a time in Paris, +and thence went to America, where he and Kickham were regarded as the +leaders of the American branch of the I. R. B. He returned to Ireland in +1885, his term of sentence having then expired, and it was shortly after +his return that he gave to my correspondent the letter upon Irish +affairs to which I have already referred. He had been chosen President +of the "Young Ireland Society" of Dublin before he returned, and in that +capacity delivered at the Rotunda, in the Irish capital, before a vast +crowd assembled to welcome him back, an address which showed how +thoughtfully and calmly he had devoted himself during his long years of +imprisonment and exile to the cause of Ireland. Mr. William O'Brien, +M.P., and Mr. Redmond, M.P., took part in this reception, but their +subsequent course shows that they can hardly have relished Mr. O'Leary's +fearless and outspoken protests against the intolerance and injustice of +the agrarian organisation which controls their action. In England, as +well as well as in Ireland, Mr. O'Leary spoke to great multitudes of his +countrymen, and always in the same sense. Mr. Rolleston tells me that +Mr. O'Leary's denunciations of "the dynamite section of the Irish +people," to use the euphemism of an American journal, "are the only ones +ever uttered by an Irish leader, lay or clerical." The day must come, if +it be not already close at hand, when the Irish leader of whom this can +be truly said, must be felt by his own people to be the one man worthy +of their trust. The thing that has been shall be, and there is nothing +new under the sun. The Marats and the Robespierres, the Barères and the +Collots, are the pallbearers, not the standard-bearers of liberty. + +Towards the National League, as at present administered on the lines of +the agrarian agitation, Mr. O'Leary has so far preserved an attitude of +neutrality, though he has never for a moment hesitated either in public +or in private most vehemently to condemn such sworn Fenians as have +accepted seats in the British Parliament, speaking his mind freely and +firmly of them as "double-oathed men" playing a constitutional part with +one hand, and a treasonable part with the other. + +Yet he is not at one with the extreme and fanatical Fenians who oppose +constitutional agitation simply because it is constitutional. His +objection to the existing Nationalism was exactly put, Mr. Rolleston +tells me, by a clever writer in the Dublin _Mail_, who said that +O'Connell having tried "moral force" and failed, and the Fenians having +tried "physical force" and failed, the Leaguers were now trying to +succeed by the use of "immoral force." + +Dr. Sigerson, who, as a man of science, must necessarily revolt from the +coarse and clumsy methods of the blunderers who have done so much since +1885 to discredit the cause of Ireland, evidently clings to the hope +that something may still be saved from the visible wreck of what has +come, even in Ireland, to be called "Parnellism," and he good-naturedly +persisted in speaking of our host last night and of his friends as +"mugwumps." For the "mugwumps" of my own country I have no particular +admiration, being rather inclined, with my friend Senator Conkling (now +gone to his rest from the racket of American politics), to regard them +as "Madonnas who wish it to be distinctly understood that they might +have been Magdalens." But these Irish "mugwumps" seem to me to earn +their title by simply refusing to believe that two and two, which make +four in France or China, can be bullied into making five in Ireland. +"What certain 'Parnellites' object to," said one of the company, "is +that we can't be made to go out gathering grapes of thorns or figs of +thistles. Some of them expect to found an Irish republic on robbery, and +to administer it by falsehood. We don't."[27] This is precisely the +spirit in which Mr. Rolleston wrote to me not long before I left England +this week. "I have been slowly forced," he wrote, "to the conclusion +that the National League is a body which deserves nothing but +reprobation from all who wish well to Ireland. It has plunged this +country into a state of moral degradation, from which it will take us at +least a generation to recover. It is teaching the people that no law of +justice, of candour, of honour, or of humanity can be allowed to +interfere with the political ends of the moment. It is, in fact, +absolutely divorcing morality from politics. The mendacity of some of +its leaders is shameless and sickening, and still more sickening is the +complete indifference with which this mendacity is regarded in Ireland." + + +It is the spirit, too, of a letter which I received not long ago from +the west of Ireland, in which my correspondent quoted the bearer of one +of the most distinguished of Irish names, and a strong "Home Ruler," as +saying to him, "These Nationalists are stripping Irishmen as bare of +moral sense as the Bushmen of South Africa." + +This very day I find in one of the leading Nationalist journals here +letters from Mr. Davitt, Mr. O'Leary, and Mr. Taylor himself, which +convict that journal of making last week a statement about Mr. Taylor +absolutely untrue, and, so far as appears, absolutely without the shadow +of a foundation. These letters throw such a curious light on passing +events here at this moment that I shall preserve them.[28] The statement +to which they refer was thus put in the journal which made it: "We have +absolute reason to know that when the last Coercion Act was in full +swing this pure-souled and disinterested patriot (Mr. John F. Taylor) +begged for, received, and accepted a very petty Crown Prosecutorship +under a Coercion Government. As was wittily said at the time, He sold +his principles, not for a mess of pottage, but for the stick that +stirred the mess." This is no assertion "upon hearsay"--no publication of +a rumour or report. It is an assertion made, not upon belief even, but +upon a claim of "absolute knowledge." + +Yet to-day, in the same journal, I find Mr. Taylor declaring this +statement, made upon a claim of "absolute knowledge," to be "absolutely +untrue," and appealing in support of this declaration to Mr. Walker, the +host of Lord Riand Mr. Morley, and to The M'Dermot, Q.C., a conspicuous +Home Ruler; to which Mr. Davitt adds: "Mr. Taylor, on my advice, +declined the Crown Prosecutorship for King's County, a post afterwards +applied for by, and granted to, a near relative of one of the most +prominent members of the Irish Party,"--meaning Mr. Luke Dillon, a +cousin of Mr. John Dillon, M.P.! + +We had much interesting conversation last night about the relations of +the Irish leaders here with public and party questions in America, as to +which I find Mr. O'Leary unusually well and accurately informed. + +I am sorry that I must get off to-morrow into Mayo to see Lord Lucan's +country there, for I should have been particularly pleased to look more +closely with Mr. Rolleston into the intellectual revolt against +"Parnellism" and its methods, of which his attitude and that of his +friends here is an unmistakable symptom. As he tersely puts it, he sees +"no hope in Irish politics, except a reformation of the League, a return +to the principles of Thomas Davis." + +The lines for a reformation or transformation of the League, as it now +exists, appear to have been laid down in the original constitution of +the body. Under that constitution, it seems, the League was meant to be +controlled by a representative committee chosen annually, open to public +criticism, and liable to removal by a new election. As things now are, +the officers of this alleged democratic organisation are absolutely +self-elected, and wield the wide and indefinite power they possess over +the people of Ireland in a perfectly unauthorised, irresponsible way. It +is a curious illustration of the autocratic or bureaucratic system under +which the Irish movement is now conducted, that Mr. Davitt, who does not +pretend to be a Parliamentarian, and owes indeed much of his authority +to his refusal to enter Parliament and take oaths of allegiance, does +not hesitate for a moment to discipline any Irish member of Parliament +who incurs his disapprobation. Sir Thomas Esmonde, for example, was +severely taken to task by him the other day in the public prints for +venturing to put a question, in his place at Westminster, to the +Government about a man-of-war stationed in Kingstown harbour. Mr. Davitt +very peremptorily ordered Sir Thomas to remember that he is not sent to +Westminster to recognise the British Government, or concern himself +about British regiments or ships, and Sir Thomas accepts the rebuke in +silence. Whom does such a member of Parliament represent--the +constituents who nominally elect him, or the leader who cracks the whip +over him so sharply? + +I have to-day been looking through a small and beautifully-printed +volume of poems just issued here by Gill and Son, Nationalist +publishers, I take it, who have the courage of their convictions, since +their books bear the imprint of "O'Connell," and not of Sackville +Street. This little book of the _Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland _is +a symptom too. It is dedicated in a few brief but vigorous stanzas to +John O'Leary, as one who + + "Hated all things base, + And held his country's honour high." + +And the spirit of all the poems it contains is the spirit of '48, or of +that earlier Ireland of Robert Emmet, celebrated in some charming verses +by "Rose Kavanagh" on "St. Michan's Churchyard," where the + + "sunbeam went and came + Above the stone which waits the name + His land must write with freedom's flame." + +It interests an American to find among these poems and ballads a +striking threnody called "The Exile's Return," signed with the name of +"Patrick Henry"; and it is noteworthy, for more reasons than one, that +the volume winds up with a "Marching Song of the Gaelic Athletes," +signed "An Chraoibhin Aoibbinn." These Athletes are numbered now, I am +assured, not by thousands, but by myriads, and their organisation covers +all parts of Ireland. If the spirit of '48 and of '98 is really moving +among them, I should say they are likely to be at least as troublesome +in the end to the "uncrowned king" as to the crowned Queen of Ireland. + +As for the literary merit of these _Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland_, +it strikes one key with their political quality. One exquisite ballad of +"The Stolen Child," by W. B. Yeats, might have been sung in the +moonlight on a sylvan lake by the spirit of Heinrich Heine. + +I spent an hour or two this morning most agreeably in the libraries of +the Law Courts and of Trinity College: the latter one of the stateliest +most academic "halls of peace" I have ever seen; and this afternoon I +called upon Dr. Sigerson, a most patriotic Irishman, of obviously Danish +blood, who has his own ideas as to Clontarf and Brian Boru; and who gave +me very kindly a copy of his valuable report on that Irish Crisis of +1879-80, out of which Michael Davitt so skilfully developed the agrarian +movement whereof "Parnellism" down to this time has been the not very +well adjusted instrument. The report was drawn up after a thorough +inspection by Dr. Sigerson and his associate, Dr. Kenny, visiting +physicians to the North Dublin Union, of some of the most distressed +districts of Mayo, Sligo, and Galway; and a more interesting, +intelligent, and impressive picture of the worst phases of the social +conditions of Ireland ten years ago is not to be found. I have just been +reading it over carefully in conjunction with my memoranda made from the +Emigration and Seed Potato Fund Reports, which Mr. Tuke gave me some +time ago, and it strongly reinforces the evidence imbedded in those +reports, which goes to show that agitation for political objects in +Ireland has perhaps done as much as all other causes put together to +depress the condition of the poor in Ireland, by driving and keeping +capital out of the country. The worst districts visited in 1879 by Dr. +Sigerson and Dr. Kenny do not appear to have been so completely cut off +from civilisation as was the region about Gweedore before the purchase +of his property there by Lord George Hill, and the remedies suggested by +Dr. Sigerson for the suffering in these districts are all in the +direction of the remedies applied by Lord George Hill to the condition +in which he found Gweedore. After giving full value to the stock +explanations of Irish distress in the congested districts, such as +excessive rents, penal laws, born of religious or "racial" animosity, +and a defective system of land tenure, it seems to be clear that the +main difficulties have arisen from the isolation of these districts, and +from the lack of varied industries. Political agitation has checked any +flow of capital into these districts, and a flow of capital into them +would surely have given them better communications and more varied +industries. Dr. Sigerson states that some of the worst of these regions +in the west of Ireland are as well adapted to flax-culture as Ulster, +and Napoleon III. showed what could be done for such wastes as La +Sologne and the desert of the Landes by the intelligent study of a +country and the judicious development of such values as are inherent in +it. The loss of population in Ireland is not unprecedented. The State of +New Hampshire, in America, one of the original thirteen colonies which +established the American Union, has twice shown an actual loss in +population during the past century. The population of the State declined +during the decade between 1810 and 1820, and again during the decade +between 1860 and 1870. This phenomenon, unique in American history, is +to be explained only by three causes, all active in the case of +congested Ireland,--a decaying agriculture, lack of communications, and +the absence of varied industries. During the decade from 1860 to 1870 +the great Civil War was fought out. Yet, despite the terrible waste of +life and capital in that war, especially at the South, the Northern +State of New Hampshire, peopled by the energetic English adventurers who +founded New England, was actually the only State which came out of the +contest with a positive decline in population. Virginia (including West +Virginia, which seceded from that Commonwealth in 1861) rose from +1,596,318 inhabitants in 1860 to 1,667,177 in 1870. South Carolina, +which was ravaged by the war more severely than any State except +Virginia, and upon which the Republican majority at Washington pressed +with such revengeful hostility after the downfall of the Confederacy, +showed in 1870 a positive increase in population, as compared with 1860, +from 703,708 to 705,606. But New Hampshire, lying hundreds of miles +beyond the area of the conflict, showed a positive decrease from 326,073 +to 318,300. During my college days at Cambridge the mountain regions of +New Hampshire were favourite "stamping grounds" in the vacations, and I +exaggerate nothing when I say that in the secluded nooks and corners of +the State, the people cut off from communication with the rest of New +England, and scratching out of a rocky land an inadequate subsistence, +were not much, if at all, in advance of the least prosperous dwellers in +the most remote parts of Ireland which I have visited. They furnished +their full contingent to that strange American exodus, which, about a +quarter of a century ago, was led out of New England by one Adams to the +Holy Land, in anticipation of the Second Advent, a real modern crusade +of superstitious land speculators, there to perish, for the most part, +miserably about Jaffa--leaving houses and allotments to pass into the +control of a more practical colony of Teutons, which I found +establishing itself there in 1869. + +Since 1870 a change has come over New Hampshire. The population has +risen to 346,984. In places waste and fallen twenty years ago brisk and +smiling villages have sprung up along lines of communication established +to carry on the business of thriving factories. + +What reason can there be in the nature of things to prevent the +development of analogous results, through the application of analogous +forces, in the case of "congested" Ireland? A Nationalist friend, to +whom I put this question this afternoon, answers it by alleging that so +long as fiscal laws for Ireland are made at Westminster, British capital +invested in Great Britain will prevent the application of these +analogous forces to "congested" Ireland. His notion is that were Ireland +as independent of Great Britain, for example, in fiscal matters as is +Canada, Ireland might seek and secure a fiscal union with the United +States, such as was partially secured to Canada under the Reciprocity +Treaty denounced by Mr. Seward. + +"Give us this," he said, "and take us into your system of American +free-trade as between the different States of your American Union, and +no end of capital will soon be coming into Ireland, not only from your +enormously rich and growing Republic, but from Great Britain too. Give +us the American market, putting Great Britain on a less-favoured +footing, just as Mr. Blake and his party wish to do in the case of +Canada, and between India doing her own manufacturing on the one side, +and Ireland becoming a manufacturing centre on the other, and a mart in +Europe for American goods, we'll get our revenge on Elizabeth and +Cromwell in a fashion John Bull has never dreamt of in these times, +though he used to be in a mortal funk of it a hundred years ago, when +there wasn't nearly as much danger of it!" + + +DUBLIN, _Sunday, June 24._--"Put not your faith in porters!" I had +expected to pass this day at Castlebar, on the estate of Lord Lucan, and +I exchanged telegrams to that effect yesterday with Mr. Harding, the +Earl's grandson, who, in the absence of his wonderfully energetic +grandsire, is administering there what Lord Lucan, with pardonable +pride, declares to be the finest and most successful dairy-farm in all +Ireland. I asked the porter to find the earliest morning train; and +after a careful search he assured me that by leaving Dublin just after 7 +A.M. I could reach Castlebar a little after noon. + +Upon this I determined to dine with Mr. Colomb, and spend the night in +Dublin. But when I reached the station a couple of hours ago, it was to +discover that my excellent porter had confounded 7 A.M. with 7 P.M. + +There is no morning train to Castlebar! So here I am with no recourse, +my time being short, but to give up the glimpse I had promised myself of +Mayo, and go on this afternoon to Belfast on my way back to London. + +At dinner last night Mr. Colomb gave me further and very interesting +light upon the events of 1867, of which he had already spoken with me at +Cork, as well as upon the critical period of Mr. Gladstone's experiments +of 1881-82 at "Coercion" in Ireland. + +Mr. Colomb lives in a remarkably bright and pleasant suburb of Dublin, +which not only is called a "park," as suburbs are apt to be, but really +is a park, as suburbs are less apt to be. His house is set near some +very fine old trees, shading a beautiful expanse of turf. He is an +amateur artist of much more than ordinary skill. His walls are gay, and +his portfolios filled, with charming water-colours, sketches, and +studies made from Nature all over the United Kingdom. The grand +coast-scenery of Cornwall and of Western Ireland, the lovely lake +landscapes of Killarney, sylvan homes and storied towers, all have been +laid under contribution by an eye quick to seize and a hand prompt to +reproduce these most subtle and transient atmospheric effects of light +and colour which are the legitimate domain of the true water-colourist. +With all these pictures about us--and with Mr. Colomb's workshop fitted +up with Armstrong lathes and all manner of tools wherein he varies the +routine of official life by making all manner of instruments, and +wreaking his ingenuity upon all kinds of inventions--and with the +pleasant company of Mr. Davies, the agreeable and accomplished official +secretary of Sir West Ridgway, the evening wore quickly away. In the +course of conversation the question of the average income of the Irish +priests arose, and I mentioned the fact that Lord Lucan, whose knowledge +of the smallest details of Irish life is amazingly thorough, puts it +down at about ten shillings a year per house in the average Irish +parish. + +He rated Father M'Fadden and his curate of Gweedore, for example, +without a moment's hesitation, at a thousand pounds a year in the whole, +or very nearly the amount stated to me by Sergeant Mahony at Baron's +Court. This brought from Mr. Davies a curious account of the proceedings +in a recent case of a contested will before Judge Warren here in Dublin. +The will in question was made by the late Father M'Garvey of Milford, a +little village near Mulroy Bay in Donegal, notable chiefly as the scene +of the murder of the late Earl of Leitrim. Father M'Garvey, who died in +March last, left by this will to religious and charitable uses the whole +of his property, save £800 bequeathed in it to his niece, Mrs. O'Connor. +It was found that he died possessed not only of a farm at Ardara, but of +cash on deposit in the Northern Bank to the very respectable amount of +£23,711. Mrs. O'Connor contested the will. The Archbishop of Armagh, and +Father Sheridan, C.C. of Letterkenny, instituted an action against her +to establish the will. Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, lying in Londonderry +jail as a first-class misdemeanant, was brought from Londonderry as a +witness for the niece. But on the trial of the case it appeared that +there was actually no evidence to sustain the plea of the niece that +"undue influence" had been exerted upon her uncle by the Archbishop, who +at the time of the making of the will was Bishop of Raphoe, or by +anybody else; so the judge instructed the jury to find on all the issues +for the plaintiffs, which was done. The judge declared the conduct of +the defendant in advancing a charge of "undue influence" in such +circumstances against ecclesiastics to be most reprehensible; but the +Archbishop very graciously intimated through his lawyer his intention of +paying the costs of the niece who had given him all this trouble, +because she was a poor woman who had been led into her course by +disappointment at receiving so small a part of so large an inheritance. +Had the priest's property come to him in any other way than through his +office as a priest her claim might have been more worthy of +consideration, but Mr. M'Dermot, Q.C., who represented the Archbishop, +took pains to make it clear that as an ecclesiastic his client, who had +nothing to do with the making of the will, was bound to regard it "as +proper and in accordance with the fitness of things that what had been +received from the poor should be given back to the poor." + +I see no adequate answer to this contention of the Archbishop. But it +certainly goes to confirm the estimates given me by Sergeant Mahony of +Father M'Fadden's receipts at Gweedore, and the opinion expressed to me +by Lord Lucan as to the average returns of an average Catholic parish, +that the priest of Milford, a place hardly so considerable as Gweedore, +should have acquired so handsome a property in the exercise there of his +parochial functions. + +One form in which the priests in many parts of Ireland collect dues is +certainly unknown to the practice of the Church elsewhere, I believe, +and it must tend to swell the incomes of the priests at the expense, +perhaps, of their legitimate influence. This is the custom of personal +collections by the priests. In many parishes the priest stands by the +church-door, or walks about the church--not with a bag in his hand, as +is sometimes done in France on great occasions when a _quéle_ is made by +the _curé_ for some special object,--but with an open plate in which the +people put their offerings. I have heard of parishes in which the priest +sits by a table near the church-door, takes the offerings from the +parishioners as they pass, and comments freely upon the ratio of the +gift to the known or presumed financial ability of the giver. + +We had some curious stories, too, from a gentleman present of the +relation of the priests in wild, out-of-the-way corners of Ireland to +the people, stories which take one back to days long before Lever. One, +for example, of a delightful and stalwart old parish priest of eighty, +upon whom an airy young patriot called to propose that he should accept +the presidency of a local Land League. The veteran, whose only idea of +the Land League was that it had used bad language about Cardinal Cullen, +no sooner caught the drift of the youth than he snatched up a huge +blackthorn, fell upon him, and "boycotted" him head-foremost out of a +window. Luckily it was on the ground floor. + +Another strenuous spiritual shepherd came down during the distribution +of potato-seed to the little port in which it was going on, and took up +his station on board of the distributing ship. One of his parishioners, +having received his due quota, made his way back again unobserved on +board of the ship. As he came up to receive a second dole, the good +father spied him, and staying not "to parley or dissemble," simply +fetched him a whack over the sconce with a stick, which tumbled him out +of the ship, head-foremost, into the hooker riding beside her! Quite of +another drift was a much more astonishing tale of certain proceedings +had here in February last before the Lord Chief-Justice. These took +place in connection with a motion to quash the verdict of a coroner's +jury, held in August 1887, on the body of a child named Ellen Gaffney, +at Philipstown, in King's County, which preserves the memory of the +Spanish sovereign of England, as Maryborough in Queen's preserves the +memory of his Tudor consort. Cervantes never imagined an Alcalde of the +quality of the "Crowner"' who figures in this story. Were it not that +his antics cost a poor woman her liberty from August 1887 till December +of that year, when the happy chance of a winter assizes set her free, +and might have cost her her life, the story of this ideal magistrate +would be extremely diverting. + +A child was born to Mrs. Gaffney at Philipstown on the 23d of July, and +died there on the 25th of August 1887, Mrs. Gaffney being the wife of a +"boycotted" man. + +A local doctor named Clarke came to the police and asked the Sergeant to +inspect the body of the child, and call for an inquest. The sergeant +inspected the body, and saw no reason to doubt that the child had died a +natural death. This did not please the doctor, so the Coroner was sent +for. He came to Philipstown the next day, conferred there with the +doctor, and with a priest, Father Bergin, and proceeded to hold an +inquest on the child in a public-house, "a most appropriate place," said +Sir Michael Morris from the bench, "for the transactions which +subsequently occurred." Strong depositions were afterwards made by the +woman Mrs. Gaffney, by her husband, and by the police authorities, as to +the conduct of this "inquest." She and her husband were arrested on a +verbal order of the Coroner on the day when the inquest was held, August +27th, and the woman was kept in prison from that time till the assizes +in December. The "inquest" was not completed on the 27th of August, and +after the Coroner adjourned it, two priests drove away on a car from the +"public-house" in which it had been held. That night, or the next day, a +man came to a magistrate with a bundle of papers which he had found in +the road near Philipstown. The magistrate examined them, and finding +them to be the depositions taken before the Coroner in the case of Ellen +Gaffney, handed them to the police. How did they come to be in the road? +On the 1st of September the Coroner resumed his inquest, this time in +the Court-House at Philipstown, and one of the police, with the +depositions in his pocket, went to hear the proceedings. Great was his +amazement to see certain papers produced, and calmly read, as being the +very original depositions which at that moment were in his own custody! +He held his peace, and let the inquest go on. A letter was read from the +Coroner, to the effect that he saw no ground for detaining the husband, +Gaffney--but the woman was taken before a justice of the peace, and +committed to prison on this finding by the Coroner's jury: "That Mary +Anne Gaffney came by her death; and that the mother of the child, Ellen +Gaffney, is guilty of wilful neglect by not supplying the necessary food +and care to sustain the life of this child "! + +It is scarcely credible, but it is true, that upon this extraordinary +finding the Coroner issued a warrant for "murder" against this poor +woman, on which she was actually locked up for more than three months! +The jury which made this unique finding consisted of nineteen persons, +and it was in evidence that their foreman reported thirteen of the jury +to be for finding one way and six for finding another, whereupon a +certain Mr. Whyte, who came into the case as the representative of +Father Bergin, President of the local branch of the National +League--nobody can quite see on what colourable pretext--was allowed by +the Coroner to write down the finding I have quoted, and hand it to the +Coroner. The Coroner read it over. He and Mr. Whyte then put six of the +jury in one place, and thirteen in another; the Coroner read the finding +aloud to the thirteen, and said to them, "Is that what you agree to?" +and so the inquest was closed, and the warrant issued--for murder--and +the woman, this poor peasant mother sent off to jail with the brand upon +her of infanticide.[29] + +Where would that poor woman be now were there no "Coercion" in Ireland +to protect her against "Crowner's quest law" thus administered? And what +is to be thought of educated and responsible public men in England who, +as recent events have shown, are not ashamed to go to "Crowner's quest +Courts" of this sort for weapons of attack, not upon the administration +only of their own Government, but upon the character and the motives of +their political opponents? + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + + +BELFAST, _Monday, June 25._--I left Dublin yesterday at 4 P.M., in a +train which went off at high pressure as an "express," but came into +Belfast panting and dilatory as an "excursion." The day was fine, and +the line passes through what is reputed to be the most prosperous part +of Ireland. In this part of Ireland, too, the fate of the island has +been more than once settled by the arbitrament of arms; and if +Parliamentary England throws up the sponge in the wrestle with the +League, it is probable enough that the old story will come to be told +over again here. + +At Dundalk the Irish monarchy of the Braces was made and unmade. The +plantation of Ulster under James I. clinched the grasp not so much of +England as of Scotland upon Ireland, and determined the course of events +here through the Great Rebellion. The landing of the Duke of Schomberg +at Carrickfergus opened the way for the subjugation of Jacobite Ireland +by William of Orange. The successful descent of the French upon the same +place in February 1760, after the close of "the Great Year," in which +Walpole tells us he came to expect a new victory every morning with the +rolls for breakfast, and after Hawke had broken the strength of the +great French Armada off Belleisle, and done for England the service +which Nelson did for her again off Trafalgar in 1805, shows what might +have happened had Thurot commanded the fleet of Conflans. In this same +region, too, the rout of Munro by Nugent at Ballinahinch practically +ended the insurrection of 1798. + +There are good reasons in the physical geography of the British Islands +for this controlling influence of Ulster over the affairs of Ireland, +which it seems to me a serious mistake to overlook. + +The author of a brief but very hard-headed and practical letter on the +pacification of Ireland, which appeared in the _Times_ newspaper in +1886, while the air was thrilling with rumours of Mr. Gladstone's +impending appearance as the champion of "Home Rule," carried, I +remember, to the account of St. George's Channel "nine-tenths of the +troubles, religious, political, and social, under which Ireland has +laboured for seven centuries." I cannot help thinking he hit the nail on +the head; and St. George's Channel does not divide Ulster from Scotland. +From Donaghadee, which has an excellent harbour, the houses on the +Scottish coast can easily be made out in clear weather. A chain is no +stronger than its weakest link, and it is as hard to see how, even with +the consent of Ulster, the independence of Ireland could be maintained +against the interests and the will of Scotland, as it is easy to see why +Leinster, Munster, and Connaught have been so difficult of control and +assimilation by England. To dream of establishing the independence of +Ireland against the will of Ulster appears to me to be little short of +madness. + +At Moira, which stands very prettily above the Ulster Canal, a small +army of people returning from a day in the country to Belfast came upon +us and trebled the length of our train. We picked up more at Lisburn, +where stands the Cathedral Church of Jeremy Taylor, the "Shakespeare of +divines." Here my only companion in the compartment from Dublin left me, +a most kindly, intelligent Ulster man, who had very positive views as to +the political situation. He much commended the recent discourse in +Scotland of a Presbyterian minister, who spoke of the Papal Decree as +"pouring water on a drowned mouse," a remark which led me to elicit the +fact that he had never seen either Clare or Kerry; and he was very warm +in his admiration of Mr. Chamberlain. He told me, what I had heard from +many other men of Ulster, that the North had armed itself thoroughly +when the Home Rule business began with Mr. Gladstone. "I am a Unionist," +he said, "but I think the Union is worth as much to England as it is to +Ireland, and if England means to break it up it is not the part of +Irishmen who think and feel as I do to let her choose her own time for +doing it, and stand still while she robs us of our property and turns us +out defenceless to be trampled under foot by the most worthless +vagabonds in our own island." He thinks the National League has had its +death-blow. "What I fear now," he said, "is that we are running straight +into a social war, and that will never be a war against the landlords in +Ireland; it'll be a war against the Protestants and all the decent +people there are among the Catholics." + +He was very cordial when he found I was an American, and with that +offhand hospitality which seems to know no distinctions of race or +religion in Ireland urged me to come and make him a visit at a place he +has nearer the sea-coast. "I'll show you Downpatrick," he said, "where +the tombs of St. Patrick and St. Bridget and St. Columb are, the saints +sleeping quite at their ease, with a fine prosperous Presbyterian town +all about them. And I'll drive you to Tullymore, where you'll see the +most beautiful park, and the finest views from it all the way to the +Isle of Man, that are to be seen in all Ireland." He was very much +interested in the curious story of the sequestration of the remains of +Mr. Stewart of New York, who was born, he tells me, at Lisburn, where +the wildest fabrications on the subject seem to have got currency. That +this feat of body-snatching is supposed to have been performed by a +little syndicate of Italians, afterwards broken up by the firmness of +Lady Crawford in resisting the ghastly pressure to which the widow and +the executors of Mr. Stewart are believed to have succumbed, was quite a +new idea to him. + +From Moira to Belfast the scenery along the line grows in beauty +steadily. If Belfast were not the busiest and most thriving city in +Ireland, it would still be well worth a visit for the picturesque charms +of its situation and of the scenery which surrounds it. At some future +day I hope to get a better notion both of its activity and of its +attractions than it would be possible for me to attempt to get in this +flying visit, made solely to take the touch of the atmosphere of the +place at this season of the year; for we are on the very eve of the +battle month of the Boyne. + +Mr. Cameron, the Town Inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary, met me +at the station, in accordance with a promise which he kindly made when I +saw him several weeks ago at Cork; and this morning he took me all over +the city. It is very well laid out, in the new quarters especially, with +broad avenues and spacious squares. In fact, as a local wag said to me +to-day at the Ulster Club, "You can drive through Belfast without once +going into a street"--most of the thoroughfares which are not called +"avenues" or "places" being known as "roads." It is, of course, an +essentially modern city. When Boate made his survey of Ireland two +centuries ago, Belfast was so small a place that he took small note of +it, though it had been incorporated by James I. in 1613 in favour of the +Chichester family, still represented here. In a very careful _Tour in +Ireland_, published at Dublin in 1780, the author says of Belfast, "I +could not help remarking the great number of Scots who reside in this +place, and who carry on a good trade with Scotland." It seems then to +have had a population of less than 20,000 souls, as it only touched that +number at the beginning of this century. It has since then advanced by +"leaps and bounds," after an almost American fashion, till it has now +become the second, and bids fair at no distant day to become the first, +city in Ireland. Few of the American cities which are its true +contemporaries can be compared with Belfast in beauty. The quarter in +which my host lives was reclaimed from the sea marshes not quite so long +ago, I believe, as was the Commonwealth Avenue quarter of Boston, and +though it does not show so many costly private houses perhaps as that +quarter of the New England capital, its "roads" and "avenues" are on the +whole better built, and there is no public building in Boston so +imposing as the Queen's College, with its Tudor front six hundred feet +in length, and its graceful central tower. The Botanic Gardens near by +are much prettier and much better equipped for the pleasure and +instruction of the people than any public gardens in either Boston or +New York. These American comparisons make themselves, all the conditions +of Belfast being rather of the New World than of the Old. The oldest +building pointed out to me to-day is the whilom mansion of the Marquis +of Donegal, now used as offices, and still called the Castle. + +This stands near Donegal Square, a fine site, disfigured by a quadrangle +of commonplace brick buildings, occupied as a sort of Linen Exchange, +concerning which a controversy rages, I am told. They are erected on +land granted by Lord Donegal to encourage the linen trade, and the +buildings used to be leased at a rental of £1 per window. The present +holders receive £10 per window, and are naturally loath to part with so +good a thing, though there is an earnest desire in the city to see these +unsightly structures removed, and their place taken by stately municipal +buildings more in key with the really remarkable and monumental private +warehouses which already adorn this Square. Mr. Robinson, one of the +partners of a firm which has just completed one of these warehouses, was +good enough to show us over it. It is built of a warm grey stone, which +lends itself easily to the chisel, and it is decorated with a wealth of +carving and of architectural ornaments such as the great burghers of +Flanders lavished on their public buildings. The interior arrangements +are worthy of the external stateliness of the warehouse. Pneumatic tubes +for the delivery of cash--a Scottish invention--electric lights, steam +lifts, a kitchen at the top of the lofty edifice heated by steam from +the great engine-room in the cellars, and furnishing meals to the +employees, attest the energy and enterprise of the firm. The most +delicate of the linen fabrics sold here are made, I was informed, all +over the north country. The looms, three or four of which are kept going +here in a great room to show the intricacy and perfection of the +processes, are supplied by the firm to the hand-workers on a system +which enables them, while earning good wages from week to week, to +acquire the eventual ownership of the machines. The building is crowned +by a sort of observatory, from which we enjoyed a noble prospect +overlooking the whole city and miles of the beautiful country around. A +haze on the horizon hid the coast of Scotland, which is quite visible +under a clear sky. The Queen's Bridge over the Lagan, built in 1842 +between Antrim and Down, was a conspicuous feature in the panorama. Its +five great arches of hewn granite span the distance formerly traversed +by an older bridge of twenty-one arches 840 feet in length, which was +begun in 1682, and finished just in time to welcome Schomberg and King +William. + +The not less imposing warehouse of Richardson and Co., built of a +singularly beautiful brown stone, and decorated with equal taste and +liberality, adjoins that of Robinson and Cleaver. The banks, the public +offices, the clubs, the city library, the museum, the Presbyterian +college, the principal churches, all of them modern, all alike bear +witness to the public spirit and pride in their town of the good people +of Belfast. With more time at my disposal I would have been very glad to +visit some of the flax-mills called into being by the great impulse +which the cotton famine resulting from our Civil War gave to the linen +manufactures of Northern Ireland, and the famous shipyards of the Woolfs +on Queen's Island, As things are, it was more to my purpose to see some +of the representative men of this great Protestant stronghold. + +I passed a very interesting hour with the Rev. Dr. Hanna, who is reputed +to be a sort of clerical "Lion of the North," and whom I found to be in +almost all respects a complete antitype of Father M'Fadden of Gweedore. + + +Dr. Hanna is not unjustly proud of being at the head of the most +extensive Sunday-school organisation in Ireland, if not in the world; +and I find that the anniversary parade of his pupils, appointed for +Saturday, June 30th, is looked forward to with some anxiety by the +authorities here. He tells me that he expects to put two thousand +children that day into motion for a grand excursion to Moira; but +although he speaks very plainly as to the ill-will with which a certain +class of the Catholics here regard both himself and his organisation, he +does not anticipate any attack from them. With what seems to me very +commendable prudence, he has resolved this year to put this procession +into the streets without banners and bands, so that no charge of +provocation may be even colourably advanced against it. This is no +slight concession from a man so determined and so outspoken, not to say +aggressive, in his Protestantism as Dr. Hanna; and the Nationalist +Catholics will be very ill-advised, it strikes me, if they misinterpret +it. + +He spoke respectfully of the Papal decree against Boycotting and the +Plan of Campaign; but he seems to think it will not command the respect +of the masses of the Catholic population, nor be really enforced by the +clergy. Like most of the Ulstermen I have met, he has a firm faith, not +only in the power of the Protestant North to protect itself, but in its +determination to protect itself against the consequences which the +northern Protestants believe must inevitably follow any attempt to +establish an Irish nationality. Dr. Hanna is neither an Orangeman nor a +Tory. He says there are but three known Orangemen among the clerical +members of the General Assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church, which +unanimously pronounced against Mr. Gladstone's scheme of Home Rule, and +not more than a dozen Tories. Of the 550 members of the Assembly, 538, +he says, were followers of Mr. Gladstone before he adopted the politics +of Mr. Parnell; and only three out of the whole number have given him +their support. In the country at large, Dr. Hanna puts down the +Unionists at two millions, of whom 1,200,000 are Protestants, and +800,000 Catholics; and he maintains that if the Parliamentary +representatives were chosen by a general vote, the Parnellite 80 would +be cut down to 62; while the Unionists would number 44. He regards the +Parnellite policy as "an organised imposture," and firmly believes that +an Irish Parliament in Dublin would now mean civil war in Ireland. He +had a visit here last week, he says, from an American Presbyterian +minister, who came out to Ireland a month ago a "Home Ruler"; but, as +the result of a trip through North-Western Ireland, is going back to +denounce the Home Rule movement as a mischievous fraud. + +When I asked him what remedy he would propose for the discontent stirred +up by the agitation of Home Rule, this Presbyterian clergyman replied +emphatically, "Balfour, Balfour, and more Balfour!" + +This on the ground, as I understood, that Mr. Balfour's administration +of the law has been the firmest, least wavering, and most equitable +known in Ireland for many a day. + +Later in the day I had the pleasure of a conversation with the Rev. Dr. +Kane, the Grand Master of the Orangemen at Belfast. Dr. Kane is a tall, +fine-looking, frank, and resolute man, who obviously has the courage of +his opinions. He thinks there will be no disturbances this year on the +12th of July, but that the Orange demonstrations will be on a greater +scale and more imposing than ever. He derides the notion that +"Parnellism" is making any progress in Ulster. On the contrary, the +concurrence this year of the anniversary of the defeat of the Great +Armada with the anniversary of the Revolution of 1688 has aroused the +strongest feelings of enthusiasm among the Protestants of the North, and +they were never so determined as they now are not to tolerate anything +remotely looking to the constitution of a separate and separatist +Government at Dublin. + +BELFAST, _Tuesday, June 26._--Sir John Preston, the head of one of the +great Belfast houses, and a former Mayor of the city, dined with us last +night, and in the evening Sir James Haslett, the actual Mayor, came in. + +I find that in Belfast the office of Mayor is served without a salary, +and is consequently filled as a rule by citizens of "weight and +instance." In Dublin the Lord Mayor receives £3000 a year, with a +contingent fund of £1500, and the office is becoming a distinctly +political post. The face of Belfast is so firmly set against the +tendency to subordinate municipal interests to general party exigencies, +that the Corporation compelled Mr. Cobain, M.P., who sits at Westminster +now for this constituency, to resign the post which he held as treasurer +and cashier of the Corporation when he became a candidate for a seat in +Parliament. I am not surprised, therefore, to learn that the city rates +and taxes are much lower in the commercial than they are in the +political capital of Ireland. + +Both Sir John Preston and Sir James Haslett have visited America. Sir +John went there to represent the linen industries of Ireland, and to +urge upon Congress the propriety of reducing our import duties upon +fabrics which the American climate makes it practically imposssible to +manufacture on our side of the water. Senator Sherman, who twenty years +ago had the candour to admit that the wit of man could not devise a +tariff so adjusted as to raise the revenue necessary for the Government +which should not afford adequate incidental protection to all legitimate +American industries, gave Sir John reason to hope that something might +be done in the direction of a more liberal treatment of the linen +industries. But nothing practical came of it. Sir John ought to have +known that our typical American Protectionist, the late Horace Greeley, +really persuaded himself, and tried to persuade other people, that with +duties enough clapped on the Asiatic production, excellent tea might be +grown on the uplands of South Carolina! + +In former years Sir John Preston used to visit Gweedore every year for +sport and recreation. He knew Lord George Hill very well, "as true and +noble a man as ever lived, who stinted himself to improve the state of +his tenants." He threw an odd light on the dreamy desire which had so +much amused me of the "beauty of Gweedore" to become "a dressmaker at +Derry," by telling me that long ago the gossips there used to tell +wonderful stories of a Gweedore girl who had made her fortune as a +milliner in the "Maiden City." + +This morning Mr. Cameron, who as Town Inspector of the Royal Irish +Constabulary will be responsible for public peace and order here during +the next critical fortnight, held a review of his men on a common beyond +the Theological College. About two hundred and fifty of the force were +paraded, with about twenty mounted policemen, and for an hour and a +half, under a tolerably warm sun, they were put through a regular +military drill. A finer body of men cannot be seen, and in point of +discipline and training they can hold their own, I should say, with the +best of her Majesty's regiments. Without such discipline and training it +would not be easy for any such body of men to pass with composure +through the ordeal of insults and abuse to which the testimony of +trustworthy eye-witnesses compels me to believe they are habitually +subjected in the more disturbed districts of Ireland. As to the +immediate outlook here, Mr. Cameron seems quite at his ease. Even if +ill-disposed persons should set about provoking a collision between "the +victors and the vanquished of the Boyne" his arrangements are so made, +he says, as to prevent the development of anything like the outbreaks of +former years. + +On the advice of Sir John Preston I shall take the Fleetwood route on my +return to London to-night. + +This secures one a comfortable night on board of a very good and +well-equipped boat, from which you go ashore, he tells me, into an +excellent station of the London and North-Western Railway at Fleetwood, +on the mouth of the Wyre on the Lancashire coast. Twenty years ago this +was a small bathing resort called into existence chiefly by the +enterprise of a local baronet whose name it bears. Its present +prosperity and prospective importance are another illustration of the +vigour and vitality of the North of Ireland, which is connected through +Fleetwood with the great manufacturing regions of middle and northern +England, as it is through Larne with the heart of Scotland. + +While it is as true now of the predominantly Catholic south of Ireland +as it was when Sir Robert Peel made the remark forty years ago, that it +stands "with its back to England and its face to the West," this +Protestant Ireland of the North faces both ways, drawing Canada and the +United States to itself through Moville and Derry and Belfast, and +holding fast at the same time upon the resources of Great Britain +through Glasgow and Liverpool. One of the best informed bankers in +London told me not long ago, that pretty nearly all the securities of +the great company which has recently taken over the business of the +Guinnesses have already found their way into the North of Ireland and +are held here. With such resources in its wealth and industry, better +educated, better equipped, and holding a practically impregnable +position in the North of Ireland, with Scotland and the sea at its back, +Ulster is very much stronger relatively to the rest of Ireland than La +Vendée was relatively to the rest of the French Republic in the last +century. In a struggle for independence against the rest of Ireland it +would have nothing to fear from the United States, where any attempt to +organise hostilities against it would put the Irish-American population +in serious peril, not only from the American Government, but from +popular feeling, and force home upon the attention of the +quickest-witted people in the world the significant fact that while the +chief contributions, so far, of America to Southern Ireland, have been +alms and agitation, the chief contributions of Scotland to Northern +Ireland have been skilled agriculture and successful activity. It is +surely not without meaning that the only steamers of Irish build which +now traverse the Atlantic come from the dockyards, not of Galway nor of +Cork, the natural gateways of Ireland to the west, but of Belfast, the +natural gateway of Ireland to the north. + + + + +EPILOGUE. + + +Not once, but a hundred times, during the visits to Ireland recorded in +this book, I have been reminded of the state of feeling and opinion +which existed in the Border States, as they were called, of the American +Union, after the invasion of Virginia by a piratical band under John +Brown, and before the long-pending issues between the South, insisting +upon its constitutional rights, and the North, restive under its +constitutional obligations, were brought to a head by the election of +President Lincoln. + +All analogies, I know, are deceptive, and I do not insist upon this +analogy. But it has a certain value here. For to-day in Ireland, as then +in America, we find a grave question of politics, in itself not +unmanageable, perhaps, by a race trained to self-government, seriously +complicated and aggravated, not only by considerations of moral right +and moral wrong, but by a profound perturbation of the material +interests of the community. + +I well remember that after a careful study of the situation in America +at the time of which I speak, Mr. Nassau Senior, a most careful and +competent observer, frankly told me that he saw no possible way in which +the problem could be worked out peacefully. The event justified this +gloomy forecast. + +It would be presumptuous in me to say as much of the actual situation in +Ireland; but it would be uncandid not to say that the optimists of +Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee had greater +apparent odds in their favour in 1861 than the optimists of Ireland seem +to me to have in 1888. + +Ireland stands to-day between Great Britain and the millions of the +Irish race in America and Australia very much as the Border States of +the American Union stood in 1861 between the North and the South. There +was little either in the Tariff question or in the Slavery question to +shake the foundations of law and order in the Border States, could they +have been left to themselves; and the Border States enjoyed all the +advantages and immunities of "Home Rule" to an extent and under +guarantees never yet openly demanded for Ireland by any responsible +legislator within the walls of the British Parliament. But so powerful +was the leverage upon them of conflicting passions and interests beyond +their own borders that these sovereign states, well organised, +homogeneous, prosperous communities, much more populous and richer in +the aggregate in 1861 than Ireland is to-day, practically lost the +control of their own affairs, and were swept helplessly into a terrific +conflict, which they had the greatest imaginable interest in avoiding, +and no interest whatever in promoting. + +I have seen and heard nothing in Ireland to warrant the very common +impression that the country, as a whole, is either misgoverned or +ungovernable; nothing to justify me in regarding the difficulties which +there impede the maintenance of law and order as really indigenous and +spontaneous. The "agitated" Ireland of 1888 appears to me to be almost +as clearly and demonstrably the creation of forces not generated in, but +acting upon, a country, as was the "bleeding Kansas" of 1856. But the +"bleeding Kansas" of 1856 brought the great American Union to the verge +of disruption, and the "agitated Ireland" of 1888 may do as much, or +worse, for the British Empire. There is, no doubt, a great deal of +distress in one or another part of Ireland, though it has not been my +fortune to come upon any outward and visible signs of such grinding +misery as forces itself upon you in certain of the richest provinces of +that independent, busy, prosperous, Roman Catholic kingdom of Belgium, +which on a territory little more than one-third as large as the +territory of Ireland, maintains nearly a million more inhabitants, and +adds to its population, on an average, in round numbers, as many people +in four years as Ireland loses in five. + +I have seen peasant proprietors in Flanders and Brabant who could give +the ideal Irish agent of the Nationalist newspapers lessons in +rack-renting, though I am not at all sure that they might not get a hint +or two themselves from some of the small farmers who came in my way in +Ireland. + +Like all countries, mainly agricultural, too, Ireland has suffered a +great deal of late years from the fall in prices following upon a period +of intoxicating prosperity. Whether she has suffered more relatively +than we should have suffered from the same cause in America, had we been +foolish enough to imitate the monometallic policy of Germany in 1873, is +however open to question; and I have an impression, which it will +require evidence to remove, that the actual organisation known as the +National Land League could never have been called into being had the +British Government devoted to action upon the Currency Question, before +1879, the time and energy which it has expended before and since that +date in unsettling the principles of free contract, and tinkering at the +relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland. + +But I am trenching upon inquiries here beyond the province of this book. + +Fortunately it is not necessary to my object in printing these volumes +that I should either form or formulate any positive opinions as to the +origin of the existing crisis in Ireland. Nor need I volunteer any +suggestions of my own as to the methods by which order may best be +maintained and civil government carried on in Ireland. It suffices for +me that I close this self-imposed survey of men and things in that +country with a conviction, as positive as it is melancholy, that the +work which Mr. Redmond, M.P., informed us at Chicago that he and his +Nationalist colleagues had undertaken, of "making the government of +Ireland by England impossible," has been so far achieved, and by such +methods as to make it extremely doubtful whether Ireland can be governed +by anybody at all in accordance with any of the systems of government +hitherto recognised in or adopted for that country. I certainly can see +nothing in the organisation and conduct, down to this time, of the party +known as the party of the Irish Nationalists, I will not say to +encourage, but even to excuse, a belief that Ireland could be governed +as a civilised country were it turned over to-morrow to their control. A +great deal has been done by them to propagate throughout Christendom a +general impression that England has dismally failed to govern Ireland in +the past, and is unlikely hereafter to succeed in governing Ireland. But +even granting this impression to be absolutely well founded, it by no +means follows that Ireland is any more capable of governing herself than +England is of governing her. The Russians have not made a brilliant +success of their administration in Poland, but the Poles certainly +administered Poland no better than the Russians have done. With an Irish +representation in an Imperial British Parliament at Westminster, +Ireland, under Mr. Gladstone's "base and blackguard" Union of 1800, has +at least succeeded in shaking off some of the weightiest of the burdens +by which, in the days of Swift, of Grattan, and of O'Connell, she most +loudly declared herself to be oppressed. Whether with a Parliament at +Dublin she would have fared as well in this respect since 1800 must be a +matter of conjecture merely--and it must be equally a matter of +conjecture also whether she would fare any better in this respect with a +Parliament at Dublin hereafter. I am in no position to pronounce upon +this--but it is quite certain that nothing is more uncommon than to find +an educated and intelligent man, not an active partisan, in Ireland +to-day, who looks forward to the reestablishment, in existing +circumstances, of a Parliament at Dublin with confidence or hope. + +How the establishment of such a Parliament would affect the position of +Great Britain as a power in Europe, and how it would affect the fiscal +policy, and with the fiscal policy the well-being of the British people, +are questions for British subjects to consider, not for me. + +That the processes employed during the past decade, and now employed to +bring about the establishment of such a Parliament, have been, and are +in their nature, essentially revolutionary, subversive of all sound and +healthy relations between man and man, inconsistent with social +stability, and therefore with social progress and with social peace, +what I have seen and heard in Ireland during the past six months compels +me to feel. Of the "Coercion," under which the Nationalist speakers and +writers ask us in America to believe that the island groans and +travails, I have seen literally nothing. + +Nowhere in the world is the press more absolutely free than to-day in +Ireland. Nowhere in the world are the actions of men in authority more +bitterly and unsparingly criticised. If public men or private citizens +are sent to prison in Ireland, they are sent there, not as they were in +America during the civil war, or in Ireland under the "Coercion Act" of +1881, on suspicion of something they may have done, or may have intended +to do, but after being tried for doing, and convicted of having done, +certain things made offences against the law by a Parliament in which +they are represented, and of which, in some cases, they are members. + +To call this "Coercion" is, from the American point of view, simply +ludicrous. What it may be from the British or the Irish point of view is +another affair, and does not concern me. I may be permitted, however, I +hope without incivility, to say that if this be "Coercion" from the +British or the Irish point of view, I am well content to be an American +citizen. Ours is essentially a government not of emotions, but of +statutes, and most Americans, I think, will agree with me that the sage +was right who declared it to be better to live where nothing is lawful +than where all things are lawful. + +The "Coercion" which I have found established in Ireland, and which I +recognise in the title of this book, is the "Coercion," not of a +government, but of a combination to make a particular government +impossible. It is a "Coercion" applied not to men who break a public +law, or offend against any recognised code of morals, but to men who +refuse to be bound in their personal relations and their business +transactions by the will of other men, their equals only, clothed with +no legal authority over them. It is a "Coercion" administered not by +public and responsible functionaries, but by secret tribunals. Its +sanctions are not the law and honest public opinion, but the base +instinct of personal cowardice, and the instinct, not less base, of +personal greed. Whether anything more than a steady, firm administration +of the law is needed to abolish this "Coercion" is a matter as to which +authorities differ. I should be glad to believe with Colonel Saunderson +that "the Leaguers would not hold up the 'land-grabber' to execration, +and denounce him as they do, unless they knew in fact that the moment +the law is made supreme in Ireland the tenants would become just as +amenable to it as any other subjects of the Queen." But some recent +events suggest a doubt whether these "other subjects of the Queen" are +as amenable to the law as my own countrymen are. + +That the Church to which the great majority of the Irish people have for +so many ages, and through so many tribulations, borne steadfast +allegiance, has been shaken in its hold upon the conscience of Ireland +by the machinery of this odious and ignoble "Coercion," appears to me to +be unquestionable. That the head of that Church, being compelled by +evidence to believe this, has found it necessary to intervene for the +restoration of the just spiritual authority of the Church over the Irish +people all the world now knows--nor can I think that his intervention +has come a day or an hour too soon, to arrest the progress in Ireland of +a social disease which threatens, not the political interests of the +empire of which Ireland is a part alone, but the character of the Irish +people themselves, and the very existence among them of the elementary +conditions of a Christian civilisation. + +It would be unjust to the Irish people to forget that this demoralising +"Coercion" against which the Head of the Catholic Church has declared +war, seems to me to have been seriously reinforced by the Land +Legislation of the Imperial Parliament. + +No one denies that great reforms and readjustments of the Land Tenure in +Ireland needed to be made long before any serious attempt was made to +make them. + +But that such reforms and readjustments might have been made without +cutting completely loose from the moorings of political economy, appears +pretty clearly, not only from examples on the continent of Europe, and +in my own country, but from the Rent and Tenancy Acts carried out in +India under the viceroyalty of Lord Dufferin since 1885. The conditions +of these measures were different, of course, in each of the cases of +Oudh, Bengal, and the Punjab, and in none of these cases were they +nearly identical with the conditions of any practicable land measure for +Ireland. But two great characteristics seem to me to mark the Indian +legislation, which are not conspicuous in the legislation for Ireland. + +These are a spirit of equity as between the landlords and the tenants, +and finality. I do not see how it can be questioned that the landlords +of Ireland have been dealt with by recent British legislation as if they +were offenders to be mulcted, and that the tenants in Ireland have been +encouraged by recent British legislation to anticipate an eventual +transfer to them, on steadily improving terms, of the land-ownership of +the island. Mr. Davitt is perhaps the most popular Irishman living, and +I believe him to be sincerely convinced that the ownership of the land +of Ireland (and of all other countries) ought to be vested in the State. +But if the independence of Ireland were acknowledged by Great Britain +to-morrow, and all the actual landlords of Ireland were compelled +to-morrow to part with their ownership, such as it is, of the land, I +believe Mr. Davitt would be further from the recognition and triumph of +his principle of State-ownership than he is to-day with a British +Parliament hostile to "Home Rule," but apparently not altogether +unwilling to make the landlords of Ireland an acceptable burnt-offering +upon the altar of imperial unity. Probably he sees this himself, and the +existing state of things may not be wholly displeasing to him, as +holding out a hope that the flame which he has been helped by British +legislation to kindle in Ireland may already be taking hold upon the +substructions and outworks of the edifice of property in Great Britain +also. + +One thing at least is clear. + +The two antagonistic principles which confront each other in Ireland +to-day are the principles of the Agrarian Revolution represented by Mr. +Davitt, and the principle of Authority, represented in the domain of +politics by the British Government, and in the domain of morals by the +Vatican. With one or the other of these principles the victory must +rest. If the Irish people of all classes who live in Ireland could be +polled to-day, it is likely enough that a decisive majority of them +would declare for the principle of Authority in the State and in the +Church, could that over-riding issue be made perfectly plain and +intelligible to them. But how is that possible? In what country of the +world, and in what age of the world, has it ever been possible to get +such an issue made perfectly plain and intelligible to any people? + +In the domain of morals the principle of Authority, so far as concerns +Catholic Ireland, rests with a power which is not likely to waver or +give way. The Papal Decree has gone forth. Those who profess to accept +it will be compelled to obey it. Those who reject it, whatever their +place in the hierarchy of the Church may be, must sooner or later find +themselves where Dr. M'Glynn of New York now is. Catholic Ireland can +only continue to be Catholic on the condition of obedience, not formal +but real, not in matters indifferent, but in matters vital and +important, to the Head of the Catholic Church. + +In the domain of politics the principle of Authority rests with an +Administration which is at the mercy of the intelligence or the +ignorance, the constancy or the fickleness, the weakness or the +strength, of constituencies in Great Britain, not necessarily familiar +with the facts of the situation in Ireland, not necessarily enlightened +as to the real interests either of Great Britain or of Ireland, nor even +necessarily awake, with Cardinal Manning, to the truth that upon the +future of Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire. + +With two, three, four, or five years of a steady and cool administration +of the laws in Ireland, by an executive officer such as Mr. Balfour +seems to me to have shown himself to be--with a judicious abstinence of +the British Legislature from feverish and fussy legislation about +Ireland, with a prudent and persistent development of the material +resources of Ireland, and with a genuine co-operation of the people who +own land in Ireland with the people who wish to own land in Ireland, for +the readjustment of land-ownership, the principle of Authority in the +domain of politics may doubtless win in the conflict with the principle +of the Agrarian revolution. + +But how many contingencies are here involved! Meanwhile the influences +which imperil in Ireland the principle of Authority, in the domains +alike of politics and of morals, are at work incessantly, to undermine +and deteriorate the character of the Irish people, to take the vigour +and the manhood out of them, to unfit them day by day, not only for good +citizenship in the British Empire or the United States, but for good +citizenship in any possible Ireland under any possible form of +government. To arrest these influences before they bring on in Ireland a +social crash, the effects of which must be felt far beyond the +boundaries of that country, is a matter of primary importance, +doubtless, to the British people. It is a matter, too, of hardly less +than primary importance to the people of my own country. Unfortunately +it does not rest with us to devise or to apply an efficient check to +these influences. + +That rests with the people of Great Britain, so long as they insist that +Ireland shall remain an integral portion of the British dominions. I do +not see how they can acquit themselves of this responsibility, or escape +the consequences of evading it, solely by devising the most ingenious +machinery of local administration for Ireland, or the most liberal +schemes for fostering the material interests of the Irish people. Such +things, of course, must in due time be attended to. But the first duty +of a government is to govern; and I believe that Earl Grey has summed up +the situation in Ireland more concisely and more courageously than any +other British statesman in his outspoken declaration, that "in order to +avert the wreck of the nation, it is absolutely necessary that some +means or other should be found for securing to Ireland during the +present crisis a wiser and more stable administration of its affairs +than can be looked for under its existing institutions." + +I have heard and read a good deal in the past of the "Three F's" thought +a panacea for Irish discontent. Three other F's seem to me quite as +important to the future of Irish content and public order. These are, +Fair Dealing towards Landlords as well as Tenants; Finality of Agrarian +Legislation at Westminster; and last and most essential of all, Fixity +of Executive Tenure. + +The words I have just quoted of Earl Grey, show it to be the conviction +of the oldest living leader of English Liberalism that this last is the +vital point, the key of the situation. Let me bracket with his words, +and leave to the consideration of my readers, the following pregnant +passage from a letter written to me by an Irish correspondent who is as +devoted to Irish independence as is Earl Grey to imperial unity:-- + +"If the present Nationalist movement succeeds, it will have the effect +of putting the worst elements of the Irish nation in power, and keeping +them there irremoveably. We are to have an Executive at the mercy of a +House of Representatives, and the result will be a government, or series +of governments, as weak and vicious as those of France, with this +difference, that here all purifying changes such as seem imminent in +France will be absolutely prevented by the irresistible power of +England. The true model for us would be a constitution like yours in the +United States, with an Executive responsible to the nation at large, and +irremoveable for a term of years. But this we shall never get from +England. Shall we make use of Home Rule to take it for ourselves? + +"Many earnest and active Irish Unionists now say that if any bill +resembling Mr. Gladstone's passes, they will make separation, their +definite policy. If Home Rule comes without the landlords having been +bought out on reasonable terms, a class will be created in Ireland full +of bitter and most just hatred of England--a class which may very likely +one day play the part here which the persecuted Irish Presbyterians who +fled from the tyranny of the English Church in Ireland played in your +own Revolution beyond the Atlantic." + + +<p><hr /></p> + + +APPENDIX. + +NOTE F. + +THE "MOONLIGHTERS" AND "HOME RULE." + +(Vol. ii. p. 38.) + + +On Monday, the 1st of February 1886, the _Irish Times_ published the +following story from Tralee, near the scene of the "boycotting," +temporal and spiritual, of the unfortunate daughters of Mr. Jeremiah +Curtin, murdered in his own house by "moonlighters":-- + + "TRALEE, _Sunday_. + + "It was stated that the bishop had ordered Mass to be celebrated + for them--the Curtins--but this did not take place. At the village + of Firies a number of people had assembled. They stopped loitering + about the place in the forenoon, waiting for a meeting of the + National League, which was subsequently held. A threatening notice + was discovered posted up on the door of a house formerly used as a + forge. It ran as follows:-- + + "'NOTICE.--If we are honoured by the presence of the bloodthirsty + perjurers at Mass on any of the forthcoming Sundays, take good care + you'll stand up very politely and walk out. Don't be under the + impression that all the Moonlighters are dead, and that this notice + is a child's play, as Shawn Nelleen titled the last one. I'll be + sure to keep my word, as you will see before long, so have no + welcome for the Curtins, and, above all, let no one work for them + in any way. As you respect the Captain, and as you value your own + life, abide by this notice.'--Signed, 'A MOONLIGHTER.' + + "The above notice was written on tea paper in large legible style, + and evidently by an intelligent person. Groups were perusing it + during the day. A force of police marched through the village and + back, but did not observe this document, as it is still posted on + the door of the house." + +The "bloodthirsty perjurers" here mentioned were the daughters who had +dared to demand and to promote the punishment of the assassins of their +father! For this crime these daughters were to be excommunicated by the +people of Firies, and denied the consolations of religion in their deep +sorrow, even in defiance of the order of the Catholic bishop. + +As the advent of Mr. Gladstone to power in alliance with Mr. Parnell was +then imminent, Mr. Sheehan, M.P., wrote a letter to the parish priest of +Firies, the Rev. Mr. O'Connor, begging him in substance to put the +brakes--for a time--upon the wheels of the local rack, lest the outcries +of the young women subjected to this moral torture should interfere with +the success of the new alliance. This, in plain English, is the only +possible meaning of the letter which I here reprint from a leaflet +issued by an Irish society:-- + + "The Rev. Father O'Connor, P.P., has received the following letter + from Mr. Sheehau, M.P., in reference to this matter, under date + + "'House of Commons, _January 26th._ + + "'REV. DEAR SIR,--At this important juncture in our history, I am + sorry to see reports of the Firies display. Nothing that has taken + place yet in the South of Ireland has done so much harm to the + National cause. If they persist they will ruin us. To-morrow + evening will be most important in Parliamentary history. Our party + expect the defeat of the Government and resumption of power by Mr. + Gladstone. If we succeed in this, which we are confident of, the + future of our country will be great, and, although an appeal to the + constituencies must be made, the Irish party in those few days have + made an impression in future that no Government can withstand. The + Salisbury Government want to appeal to the country on the integrity + of the empire, and, of course, for the last few days have tried all + means to lead to this by raking up the Curtin case and all judicial + cases, which _must be avoided for a short time_, as our stoppage to + the Eviction Act will cover all this.--Yours faithfully, J.D. + SHEEHAN.'" + +This letter was read, the leaflet informs us, by the Rev. Mr. O'Connor, +at the National Schools and other places. + + + +NOTE G. + +THE PONSONBY PROPERTY. + +(Vol. ii. pp. 59-66.) + + +The account which the Rev. Canon Keller gave me of "The Struggle for +Life on the Ponsonby Estate," in a tract bearing that title, and +authorised by him to be published by the National League, is so +circumstantial and elaborate that, after reading it carefully, I took +unusual pains to obtain some reply to it from the representatives of the +landlord implicated. These finally led to a visit from Mr. Ponsonby +himself, who was so kind as to call upon me in London on the 15th of +May, with papers and documents. I give in the following colloquy the +results of this interview, putting together with the allegations of +Canon Keller the answers of Mr. Ponsonby, and leave the matter in this +form to the judgment of my readers. + +_Q_. Canon Keller, I see, describes you, Mr. Ponsonby, as "a retired +navy officer, and an absentee Irish landlord." He says your estate is +now "universally known as the famous Ponsonby Estate," and that it is +occupied "by from 300 to 400 tenants, holding farms varying in extent +from an acre and a half to over two hundred acres." Are these statements +correct? + +_A_. I am a retired navy officer certainly, and perhaps I may be called +an "absentee Irish landlord." I lived on my property for some time, and +I have always attended to it. I succeeded to the estate in 1868, and +almost my first act was to borrow £2000 of the Board of Works for +drainage purposes--the tenants agreeing to pay half the interest. As a +matter of fact some never paid at all, and I afterwards wiped out the +claims against them. There are about 300 tenants on the property, and +the average holdings are of about 36 acres, at an average rental of £30 +a holding. There are, however, not a few large farms. + +_Q_. Canon Keller says that "in the memory of living witnesses, and far +beyond it, the Ponsonby tenants have been notoriously rack-rented and +oppressed"; and that they have been committed to the "tender mercies of +agents, seeing little or nothing of their landlord, and experiencing no +practical sympathy from that quarter." How is this? + +_A_. I wish to believe Canon Keller truthful when he knows the truth. He +certainly does not know the truth here. He is a newcomer at Youghal, +having come there in November 1885, and hardly so much of an authority +about "the memory of living witnesses and far beyond it" as the tenants +on the estate, who, when I went there first with my wife, presented to +me, May 25, 1868, an address of welcome, referring in very different +terms to the history of the estate and of my family connection with it. +Here is the original address, and a copy of it--the latter being quite +at your service. + +This original address is very handsomely engrossed, and is signed by +fifty tenants. Among the names I observed those of Martin Loughlin, +Peter McDonough, Michael Gould, William Forrest, and John Heaphey, all +of whom are cited by Canon Keller in his tract as conspicuous victims of +the oppression and rack-renting which he says have prevailed upon the +Ponsonby estates time out of mind. It was rather surprising, therefore, +to find them joining with more than forty other tenants to sign an +address, of which I here print the text:-- + + To C.W. TALBOT PONSONBY, Esq. + + Honoured Sir,--The Tenantry of your Estates near Youghal have heard + with extreme pleasure of the arrival of yourself and lady in the + neighbourhood, and have deputed us to address you on their behalf. + + Through us they bid you and Mrs. Ponsonby welcome, and respectfully + congratulate you on your accession to the Estates. + + The name of Ponsonby is traditionally revered in this part of the + country, being associated in the recollections and impressions of + the people with all that is exalted, honourable, and generous. It + has been matter of regret that the heads of the family have not + (probably from uncontrollable causes) visited these Estates for + many years, but the tenantry have never wavered in their sentiments + of respect towards them. + + We will not disguise from you the conviction generally entertained + that the improvement of landed property, and the condition of its + occupiers, is best promoted under the personal observation and + supervision of the proprietor, and your tenantry on that account + hail with satisfaction the promise your presence affords of future + intercourse between you and them. + + Again, on the part of your Tenants and all connected with your + Estates, tendering you and your lady a most hearty welcome, and + sincerely wishing you and her a long and happy career--We subscribe + ourselves, Honoured Sir, Respectfully yours, + + YOUGHAL, _May_ 1868. + +_Q_. Did Canon Keller ever see this address, may I ask, Mr. Ponsonby? + +_A_. I believe not; and I may as well say at once that I suppose he has +taken for gospel all the stories which any of the tenants under the +terrorism which has been established on the place think it best to pour +into his listening ear. As I have said, he is quite a new man at +Youghal, and when he first came there he was a quiet and not at all +revolutionary priest. You saw him, and saw how good his manners are, and +that he is a well-educated man. But on Sunday, November 7, 1886, a great +meeting was held at Youghal. It was a queer meeting for a Sunday, being +openly a political meeting, with banners and bands, to hear speeches +from Mr. Lane, M.P., Mr. Flynn, M.P., and others. The Rev. Mr. Keller +presided, and a priest from America, Father Hayes of Georgetown, Iowa, +in the United States, was present. It was ostensibly a Home Rule +meeting, but the burden of the speeches was agrarian. Mr. Lane, M.P., +made a bitter personal attack on another Nationalist member, Sir Joseph +M'Kenna of Killeagh, calling him a "heartless and inhuman landlord;" and +my property was also attended to by Mr. Lane, who advised my tenants +openly not to accept my offer of 20 per cent. reduction, but to demand +40 per cent. Father Hayes in his speech bade "every man stand to his +guns," and wound up by declaring that if England and the landlords +behaved in America as they behaved in Ireland, the Americans "would pelt +them not only with dynamite, but with the lightnings of Heaven and the +fires of hell, till every British bull-dog, whelp, and cur would be +pulverised and made top-dressing for the soil." Canon Keller afterwards +expressed disapproval of this speech of Hayes, and this coming to the +knowledge of Hayes in America, Hayes denounced Keller for not daring to +do this at the time in his presence. Since then Canon Keller has been +much more violent in tone. + +_Q_. I don't want to carry you through a long examination, Mr. Ponsonby, +but I see typical cases here, about which I should like to ask a +question or two. Here, is Callaghan Flavin, for instance, described by +Canon Keller as one of eight tenants who "had to retreat before the +crowbar brigade," and who "deserved a better fate." Canon Keller says he +is assured by a competent judge that Flavin's improvements, "full value +for £341, 10s.," are now "the landlord's property." What are the facts +about Mr. Flavin? + +_A_. Mr. Flavin's farm was held by his cousin, Ellen Flavin of Gilmore, +who, on the 7th of February 1872, surrendered it to the landlord on +receiving from me a sum of £172, 10s. 6d. I obtained a charging order +under section 27 of the Land Act, entitling me to an annuity of £8, 12s. +6d. for thirty-five years from July 3, 1872. It was let to Callaghan +Flavin in preference to other applicants, July 3, 1872; and in 1873, at +his request, I obtained a loan from the Board of Works for the thorough +draining of a portion of the farm. Thirteen acres were drained at a cost +of £84, 6s. 3d., for which the tenant promised to pay 5 per cent. +interest, which I eventually forgave him. There was no house on the +farm. He took it without one, and I did not want one there. He built a +house himself without consulting my agent, and then wanted me to make +him an allowance for it. I told him he had thirty-one years to enjoy it +in, and must be content with that. About the same time he took another +farm of mine at a rent of £35. Since I came into my property in 1868 I +have laid out upon it in drainage, buildings, and planting--here are the +accounts, which you may look at--over £15,000, including about £8000 of +loans from the Board of Works. In the drainage the tenants got work for +which they were paid. I gave them slates for the buildings, with timber +and stone from the estate, and they supplied the labour. There is no +case in which the outlays for improvements came from the tenants--not a +single one. I repeat it, Canon Keller's tract is a tissue of fictions. + +What nonsense it is to talk about the "traditional rack-renting" of a +property held by the Ponsonbys for two hundred years, the tenants on +which could welcome me when I came into it with the language of the +address you have here seen! + +I never evicted tenants for less than three years' arrears, till what +Canon Keller calls the "crowbar brigade," by which he means the officers +of the law, had to be put into action to meet the "Plan of Campaign" in +May last. I did not proceed against the tenants because they could not +pay. I selected the tenants who could pay, and who were led, or, I +believe in most cases, "coerced," into refusing to pay by agitators with +Mr. Lane, M.P., to inspire them, and Canon Keller, P.P., to glorify them +in a tract. + +_Q_. What were your personal relations with the tenants when you were at +Inchiquin? + +_A_. Always most friendly; and even the other day when I was there, +while none of them would speak to me when they were all together, those +I met individually touched their hats, and were as civil as ever. I +believe they would all be thankful to have things as they were, and I +have never refused to meet and treat with them on fair individual terms. + +In November 1885 my offer of an abatement of 15 per cent. being refused, +a few tenants, I believe, clubbed their rents, and for the sake of peace +I then offered 20 per cent., which they accepted and paid. In October +1886 I hoped to prevent trouble by making the same offer of 20 per cent. +abatement on non-judicial and 10 per cent. on judicial rents. One man +took the latter abatement and paid. Then another tenant demanded 40 per +cent. My agent said he would give them time, and also take money on +account, the effect of which would be to put me out of court, and +prevent my getting an order of ejectment if I wanted to for the balance. +I thought this fair, and approved it, but I refused to make a 40 per +cent. all-round abatement, authorising my agent, however, to make what +abatements he liked in special cases. My words were, "I don't limit you +on the amount of abatement you give, or as to the number of tenants you +may choose so to treat." If this was not a fair free hand, what would +be? My agent afterwards told me he had no chance to make this known. The +fact is they meant to force the Plan on the tenants and me, and to +prevent any settlement but a "victory for the League!" + +In my original notes of my conversation with Father Keller at Youghal, I +found the name of one tenant whom he introduced to me, and who certainly +told me that his holdings amounted to some £300 a year, and that they +had been in his family for "two hundred years," set down as Doyle--I so +printed it with the statements made. But Father Keller, to whom I +submitted my proofs, and who was so good as to revise them, struck out +the name of Doyle, and inserted that of Loughlin, putting the rental +down at £94 (vol. ii. p. 71). Of course I accept this correction. But on +my mentioning the matter to Mr. Ponsonby by letter, he replies to me +(July 27th) as follows:-- + + "Maurice Doyle is a son of Richard Doyle, who died in 1876, leaving + his widow to carry on his farm of 74 acres 1 rood, in the townland + of Ballykitty, which he held in 1858 at a rental of £50, 11s. In + 1868 this was reduced to £48, 11s. In September 1871 he took in + addition a farm of 159 acres 2 roods at £130, in Burgen and + Ballykitty. He afterwards got a lease for thirty-one years of this + larger farm, with a portion of his earlier holding, for £155. This + left him to pay £21, 11s. for the residue of the earlier holding as + in 1858. But at his request, in 1876, the year of his death, I + reduced this to £17. + + "In March 1879, by the death of Mr. Henry Hall, in whose family it + had been for certainly a century, the Inchiquin farm of 213 acres, + valued at £258, 10s., came on my hands. This farm was valued in + 1873 by one valuer at £384, 10s., and by another at £390, 10s. In + an old lease I find that this farm was let at £3 an acre. Mr. Henry + Hall to the day of his death held it at £306, 7s. 6d., under a + lease which I made a lease for life. For this farm Mrs. Richard + Doyle applied, agreeing to take it on a 31 years' lease, at £370 a + year. I let it to her, and she became the lease-holder, putting in + her son Maurice Doyle to take charge of it, though not as the + tenant. He was an active Land Leaguer from the moment he got into + the place, and in 1886 he was a leader in promoting the Plan of + Campaign. Proceedings had to be taken against his mother in order + to eject him, as she was the tenant, not he. I objected to this, + for I always have had the greatest regard for her. Had she been let + alone she would have paid her rent as she had always done. But Mr. + Lane and his allies saw it would never do to let Maurice Doyle + retain his place on his mother's holding. All this will show you + that Maurice Doyle did not inherit the Inchiquin farm. The only + inherited holding of his mother is the farm of 74 acres 1 rood in + the townland of Ballykitty, held by his father in 1858. I have no + doubt you saw Doyle at Youghal, by the description you gave me, and + you remembered his name at once. He was a thickset heavy-looking + man, florid, with a military moustache, the last time I saw him. + His mother is one of the 'rack-rented' tenants you hear of, having + been able in ten years to increase her acreage from 74 acres to 376 + acres, and her rental from £48, 11s. to £542!" + + +As to the general effect of all this business upon the tenants, and upon +himself, Mr. Ponsonby spoke most feelingly. "The tenants are ruined +where they might have been thriving. My means of being useful to them or +to myself are taken away. My charges, though, all remain. I have to pay +tithes for Protestant Church service, of which I can't have the benefit, +the churches being closed; and the other day I had a notice that any +property I had in England would be held liable for quit-rents to the +Crown on my property in Ireland, of which the Government denies me +practically any control or use!" + + + +NOTE G2. + +THE GLENBEHY EVICTION FUND. + +(Vol. ii. p. 12.) + + +In the _London Times_ of September 15 appears the following letter from +the Land Agent whom I saw at Glenbehy, setting forth the effect of this +"Glenbehy Eviction Fund" upon the morals of the tenants and the peace of +the place:-- + + _To the Editor of the Times._ + + "Sir,--Although nearly eighteen months have elapsed since the + evictions on the Glenbehy estate, after which the above-named fund + was started and largely subscribed to by the sympathetic British + public, I think it only fair to throw a little light on the manner + in which this fund has been expended, and the effects which are + still felt in consequence of the money not yet being exhausted. + + "It was generally supposed that the tenants then evicted were in + such poor circumstances as to be unable to settle, whereas, as a + matter of fact, they were, and are, with a few exceptions, the most + well-to-do on the estate, having, for the most part, from five to + fifteen head of cattle, in addition to sheep, pigs, etc. + + "Among the tenants evicted at that time many had not paid rents + since 1879, and had been in illegal occupation since 1884, from + which latter date the landlord was responsible for taxes, provided + it is proved that sufficient distress cannot be made of the lands. + These tenants were offered a clear receipt to May 1, 1886, if they + paid half a year's rent, which would scarcely have paid the cost of + proceedings, and the landlord would therefore have been put to + actual loss. These people, though well able to settle, are given to + understand that as soon as they do so their participation in the + eviction fund will cease, and thus it will be seen that a direct + premium is being paid to dishonesty. + + "In one case a widow woman was summoned for being on the farm from + which she was at that time evicted. Finding out that one of her + children was ill, I applied to the magistrate at the hearing of the + case only to impose a nominal fine. In consequence she was fined + one penny, but sooner than pay this she went to gaol, though she + had several head of cattle and, prior to her eviction, a very nice + farm. The case of this woman fairly illustrates the combination + which has existed to avoid the fulfilment of obligations. + + "The amount of fines paid for similar offences comes, in several + instances, to nearly what I require to effect a settlement. Some of + the tenants actually wrote to the late agent on this estate begging + him to evict them in order that they might come in for a share of + the money raised for the relief of distress, and this clearly shows + beyond dispute that the well-meaning subscribers to the fund will + be more or less responsible for any further evictions to which it + may be necessary to resort. I may mention that the parish priest is + one of the trustees for the money which is thus being used for the + purpose of preventing settlements and keeping the place in a + continual state of turmoil. + + "Judge Currane, at the January sessions held at Killarney this + year, ruled in about fifty ejectment cases on this estate that + tenants owing one and a half to nine years' rent should pay half a + year's rent and costs within a week, a quarter of a year's rent by + June 1, and a quarter of a year's rent by October 1; arrears to be + cancelled. Some of these, owing to non-compliance with the Judge's + ruling, may have to be evicted, and their eviction will be what is + termed the unrooting of peasants' houses and the ejectment of + overburdened tenants for not paying impossible rents. + + "I confess I am at a loss to understand how Mr. Parnell's Arrears + Act would have improved matters or have averted what one of your + contemporaries calls a "painful scandal."--I am, Sirs, yours, &c., + + "D. TODD-THORNTON, J.P., Land Agent. + + "Glenbehy, Killarney." + + + +NOTE G. + +HOME RULE AND PROTESTANTISM. + +(Vol. ii. p. 68.) + + +I fear that all the "Nationalist" clergy in Ireland are not as careful +as Father Keller to avoid giving occasion for this impression that Irish +autonomy would be followed by a persecution of the Protestants. But a +little more than three years ago, for example, the following circular +was issued by the Bishop of Ossory, and affixed to the door of the +churches in his diocese. Who can wonder that it should have been +regarded by Protestants in that diocese as a direct stirring up of +bitter religious animosities against them? Or that, emanating directly +as it did from a bishop of the Church, it should be represented as +emanating indirectly from the Head of the Church himself at Rome? + + "_Kilkenny, April 16th, 1885._ + + "REV. DEAR SIR,--May I ask you to read the following circular for + the people at each of the Masses on Sunday, 19th April? + + "The course to be adopted for the future by the Priest of the Parish + to whom notice of a Mixed Marriage is given by the Minister, or the + Registrar, is as follows:--he makes the following entry on the book + of Parochial announcements, and reads it three consecutive Sundays + from the Altar:-- + + "'The Priests of the Parish have received the following notice of a + marriage to be celebrated between a Catholic and a Protestant. [Here + read Registrar's notice in full.] We have now to inform you that the + law of the Catholic Church regarding such marriages is: that the + Catholic party contracting marriage before a Registrar or other + unauthorised person is, by the very fact of so doing, + Excommunicated; and the witnesses to such marriage are also + Excommunicated.' + + "I should be very much obliged if, as occasion may require, you + would explain the effects of this Excommunication from the Altar. + + "You will please take notice that the Registrar or Minister is bound + legally to send the notice of marriage referred to above, and also, + that in reading it out _in the form, and with the accompanying + remarks above_, you incur no legal penalty. + + "I feel sure that with your accustomed zeal you will do everything + in your power to prevent abuses in regard to the Sacrament of + Matrimony, which is great in Christ and the Church, and to induce + the faithful to prepare for receiving it by Prayer, by works of + Charity, and by approaching the Sacrament of Penance to purify their + souls.--Yours faithfully in Christ, + + [Image: Cross] A. BROWNRIGG." + + + "MY DEAR BRETHREN,--We have been very much pained to learn, within + the past month, that marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics + have increased very much in this city of Kilkenny. Many + _evil-disposed_ persons, utterly unmindful of the prohibitions of + the Church, and regardless of the dreadful consequences they bring + on themselves, have not hesitated to enter into those _unholy + matrimonial alliances_ called "Mixed Marriages," which the Catholic + Church has always _hated and detested_. Those misguided Catholics, + who do not deserve the name, have not blushed to go, in some + instances, before the Protestant Minister, in other instances, + before the Public Registrar, to ask them to assist at their marriage + with a Protestant. By contracting marriage in this way, they run a + great risk of bringing on themselves and on their children, should + they have any, the _maledictions_ of Heaven instead of the blessings + of religion. In order to put a stop to this growing abuse, and to + prevent it from spreading like a contagion to other parts of the + Diocese, we beg to remind the faithful of certain regulations which, + for the future, shall have force in the Diocese of Ossory in + reference to the Catholics, who so far forget themselves as to + contract such marriages. + + "1. In the first place, any one who contracts a "Mixed Marriage" + without a dispensation from the Holy See and before a Protestant + Minister or a Registrar is, by the very fact, guilty of a most + grievous mortal sin by violating a solemn law of the Church in a + most grave matter. + + "2. The Catholic who assists as witness at such marriage also + commits a most grievous sin by co-operating in an unlawful act. + + "3. Both the Catholic party contracting the marriage and the + Catholic witnesses to it cannot be absolved by any priest in the + Diocese of Ossory, unless by the Bishop or by those to whom he + grants special faculties. + + "4. In order more effectually to deter people from entering into + _those detestable marriages_, the penalty of _Excommunication_ + is hereby attached to that sin both for the Catholic _contracting_ + party as also for the Catholic _witnesses_ to such marriage. + + "5. The notice which the Protestant Rector or the Registrar is + legally bound in such cases to send to the Parish Priest of the + Catholic party, will be read from the Altar for three consecutive + Sundays, and thus the _crime_ of the offending party brought out + into open light before his or her fellow-parishioners. + + "6. For the rest, we hope the sense of decency and religion of the + Catholic people and their Pastors shall be no more hurt by any + Catholic entering into those marriages, so full of, misery and evil + of every kind for themselves, their children, and society at + large.--Yours faithfully in Christ, + + [Image: Cross] ABRAHAM, Bishop of Ossory. + + + +NOTE H. + +TULLY AND THE WOODFORD EVICTIONS. + +(Vol. ii. p. 149.) + + +Since the first edition of this book was published certain "evictions" +mentioned in it as impending on the Clanricarde estates have been +carried out. I have no reason to suppose that there was more or less +reason for carrying out these evictions than there usually is, not in +Ireland only, but all over the civilised world, for a resort by the +legal owners of property to legal means of recovering the possession of +it from persons who fail to comply with the terms on which it was put +into their keeping. Whether this failure results from dishonesty or from +misfortune is a consideration not often allowed, I think, to affect the +right of the legal owner of the property concerned to his legal remedy +in any other country but Ireland, nor even in Ireland in the case of any +property other than property in land. But as what I learned on the spot +touching the general condition of the Clanricarde tenants, and touching +the conduct and character of Lord Clanricarde's agent, Mr. Tener, led me +to take a special interest in these evictions, I asked him to send me +some account of them. In reply he gave me a number of interesting +details. + +The only serious attempt at resisting the execution of the law was made +by "Dr." Tully, one of the leading local "agitators," to the tendency of +whose harangues judicial reference was made during the investigation +into the case of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt. Tully had a holding of seventeen +acres at a rent of £2, 10s., the Government valuation being £4. He +earned a good livelihood as a boat-builder, and he had put up a slated +house on his holding. But in November 1884 he chose to stop paying the +very low rent at which he held his place, and he has paid no rent since +that time. As is stated in a footnote on page 153, vol. ii. of this +book, a decree was granted against Tully by Judge Henn for three years' +rent due in May 1887, and his equity of redemption having expired July +9, 1888, this recourse was had to the law against him. + +As the leading spirit of the agitation, Tully had put a garrison into +his house of twelve men and two women. He had dug a ditch around it, +taken out the window-sashes, filled up the casements and the doorways +with stones and trunks of trees. Portholes had been pierced under the +roof, through which the defenders might thrust red-hot pikes, +pitchforks, and other weapons, and empty pails of boiling water upon the +assailants. A brief parley took place. Tully refused to make any offer +of a settlement unless the agent would agree to reinstate all the +evicted tenants, to which Mr. Tener replied that he would recognise no +"combination," but was ready to deal with every tenant fairly and +individually. Finally the Sheriff ordered his men to take the place. +Ladders were planted, and while some of the constables, under the +protection of a shield covered with zinc, a sort of Roman _testudo_, +worked at removing the earthern ramparts, others nimbly climbed to the +roof and began to break in from above. In their excitement the garrison +helped this forward by breaking holes through the roof themselves to get +at the attacking party, and in about twenty minutes the fortress was +captured, and the inmates were prisoners. Two constables were burned by +the red-hot pikes, the gun of another was broken to pieces by a huge +stone, and a fourth was slightly wounded by a fork. One of the defenders +got a sword-cut; and Tully was brought forth as one too severely wounded +to walk. Upon investigation, however, the surgeon refused to certify +that he was unable to undergo the ordinary imprisonment in such cases +made and provided. + +The collapse of the resistance at this central point was followed by a +general surrender. + +After the capture of Tully's house, Mr. Tener writes to me, "I found it +being gutted by his family, who would have carried it away piecemeal. +They had already taken away the flooring of one of the rooms." Thereupon +Mr. Tener had the house pulled down, with the result of seeing a +statement made in a leading Nationalist paper that he was "evicting the +tenants and pulling down their houses." + +"Yesterday," Mr. Tener writes to me on the 9th of September, "I walked +twenty-five miles, visiting thirty farms about Portumna. Except in two +or three cases, the tenants have ample means, and part of the live stock +alone on the farms, exclusive of the crops, would suffice to pay all the +rents I had demanded. On the farms recently 'evicted,' I found treble +the amount of the rent due in live stock alone." + +As to one case of these recent evictions, I found it stated in an Irish +journal that a young man, who had been ill of consumption for two years, +the son of a tenant, was removed from the house, the local physician +refusing to certify that he was unfit for removal, and that he died a +few days afterwards. The implication was obvious, and I asked Mr. Tener +for the facts. + +He replied, "This young man, John Fahey, was in consumption, but did not +appear to be in any danger. Dr. Carte, an Army surgeon, examined him, +and said there was no immediate danger. The day was fine and he walked +about wrapped in a comfortable coat, and talked with me and others. His +father, a respectable man, made no attempt to defend his house; and at +his request, after the crowd had gone away, my man in charge permitted +the invalid and the family to reoccupy the house temporarily because of +his illness. There was no inquest, and no need of any, after his death. +His father, Patrick Fahey, had means to pay, but told me he 'could not,' +which meant he 'dared not.' I went to him personally twice, and sent him +many messages. But the terror of the League was upon the poor man. + +"An interesting case is that of Michael Fahey, of Dooras. In 1883 his +rent was judicially reduced about 5 per cent., from £33 to £31, 5s. His +house and all about it is substantial and comfortable. His father, about +thirty years ago, fought for a whole night and bravely beat off a party +of 'Terry-Alts,' the 'Moonlighters' of that day. For his courage the +Government presented him with a gun, of which the son is very proud. +Pity he did not inherit the pluck with the gun of his parent! + +"I had been privately told that this tenant would pay; but that he would +first produce a doctor's certificate that his old mother could not be +moved. He did give the Sheriff a carefully worded document to show this, +but it was so vague that I objected to its being received by the +Sheriff. Upon this (not before! mark the craft of even a well-disposed +Irish tenant in those evil days), I was asked to go into the house. I +went in and entered the parlour. There the tenant told me he would pay +the year's rent and the costs, amounting to £50. He had risen from his +seat to fetch the money, when, lo! Father Egan (the priest upon whose +head the widow of the murdered Finlay called down the curse of God in +the open street of Woodford) appeared in the doorway. He had come in on +a pretence of seeing the old mother of the tenant, who had (for that +occasion) taken to her bed. The bedroom lay beyond the parlour, and was +entered from it. The tenant actually shook with fear as Father Egan +passed through, and I thought all hope of a settlement gone, when +suddenly the officer of the police came in, passed into the bedroom, and +told Father Egan he must withdraw. This Father Egan refused to do, +whereupon the officer said very quietly, 'I shall remove you forthwith +if you do not go out quietly.' Upon this Father Egan hastily left. The +tenant then went into the bedroom and soon reappeared with the £50 in +bank-notes, which he paid me. All this was dramatic enough. But the +comedy was next performed in front of the house, where all could see it, +of handing to the Sheriff the alleged doctor's certificate, and of my +saying aloud that 'in the circumstances' I had no objection to his +receiving it! After this all the forces proceeded to take their luncheon +on the green bank sloping down to the Shannon in front of the +farm-house. There is a fine orchard on the place, and it recalled to me +some of the farms I saw in Virginia. + +"I had gone into the house again, and was standing near the fire in the +kitchen, where some of my escort were taking their luncheon. It is a +large kitchen, and perhaps a dozen people were in it, when in came +Father Egan again and called to the tenant Fahey, 'Put out those +policemen, and do not suffer one of them to remain.' + +"The sergeant instantly said, 'We are here on duty, Father Egan, and if +you dare to try to intimidate this tenant, I shall either put you out or +arrest you.' + +"'Yes,' I interposed, looking at the sergeant, 'you are certainly here +on duty, and in the name of the law, and it is sad to see a clergyman +here in the interest of an illegal, criminal, and rebellious movement, +and of the immoral Plan of Campaign.' + +"'Oh!' exclaimed Father Egan, 'the opinion of the agent of the Marquis +of Clanricarde is valuable, truly!' + +"'I give you,' I said, 'not my opinion, but the opinion of Dr. Healy and +Dr. O'Dwyer, bishops of your Church, and men worthy of all respect and +reverence. And I am sorry to know that some ecclesiastics deserve no +respect, but that at their doors lies the main responsibility for the +misery and the crime which afflict our unhappy country. I feel sure a +just God will punish them in due time.' + +"Father Egan made no reply, but paused a moment, and then walked out of +the house. + +"At the next house, that of Dennis Fahey, we found a still better +dwelling. Here we had another mock certificate, but we received the rent +with the costs." + + + +NOTE H2. + +BOYCOTTING THE DEAD. + +(Vol. ii. p. 151.) + + +The following official account sent to me (July 24) of an affair in +Donegal, the result of the gospel of "Boycotting" taught in that region, +needs and will bear no comment. + +Patrick Cavanagh came to reside at Clonmany, County Donegal, about two +months ago, as caretaker on some evicted farms. He died on Wednesday +evening, June 20th, having received the full rites of the Roman Catholic +Church. The people had displayed no ill-will towards him during his +brief residence at Clonmany, and on the evening of his death his body +was washed and laid out by some women. On Thursday two townsmen dug his +grave, where pointed out by Father Doherty, P.P. + +The first symptom of change of feeling was that on Thursday every +carpenter applied to had some excuse for not making a coffin for the +body of deceased. On Friday morning the grave was found to be filled +with stones, and a deputation waited on Father Doherty to protest +against Cavanagh's burial in the chapel graveyard. He told them to go +home and mind their business. About 10.30 A.M. on Friday the chapel bell +was rung--not tolled or rung as for service, but faster. The local +sergeant of police went to the cemetery; when he arrived there the +tolling ceased. He then went to Father Doherty, who told those present +that their conduct was such as to render them unfit for residence +anywhere but in a savage country. He told them to go to their homes, and +advised them to allow the corpse to be buried in the grave he had marked +out. After Father Doherty had left, the people condemned his +interference, and said they would not allow any stranger to be buried in +the graveyard. When Constable Brady put it to those present that their +real objection did not lie in the fact that Cavanagh had been a +stranger, he was not contradicted. + +The body was ultimately buried at Carndonagh on Saturday, several people +remaining in the graveyard at Clonmany all through the night (Friday) +till the body was taken to Carndonagh for burial. + +At Carndonagh Petty Sessions, on the 18th July 1888, Con. Doherty and +Owen Doherty, with five others, were prosecuted for unlawful assembly on +the occasion above referred to. The first two named, who were the +ringleaders, were convicted, and sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment +each with hard labour; the charges against the remainder were dismissed. + + + +NOTE I. + +POST-OFFICE SAVINGS BANKS. + +(Vol. i. p. 117; vol. ii. pp. 5, 12, 66, 95, 200, 248.) + + +As the Post-Office Savings Banks represent the smaller depositors, and +command special confidence among them even in the disturbed districts, I +print here an official statement showing the balances due to depositors +in the undermentioned offices, situated in certain of the most disturbed +regions I visited, on the 31st December of the years 1880 and 1887 +respectively:-- + + +-----------------+-----------------+---------------+ + | OFFICE. | 1880. | 1887. | + +-----------------+-----------------+---------------+ + | | £ s. d. | £ s. d. | + | Bunbeg, | 1,270 6 7 | 1,206 18 2 | + | Falcarragh, | 62 15 10 | 494 10 8 | + | Gorey, | 3,690 14 4 | 5,099 5 7 | + | Inch, |[A] 8 11 0 | 209 7 5 | + | Killorglin, | 282 15 9 | 1,299 2 6 | + | Loughrea, | 5,500 19 9 | 6,311 4 11 | + | Mitchelstown, | 1,387 13 2 | 2,846 9 3 | + | Portumna, | 2,539 10 11 | 3,376 5 4 | + | Sixmilebridge, | 382 17 10 | 934 13 4 | + | Stradbally, | 1,812 14 8 | 2,178 18 2 | + | Woodford, | 259 14 6 | 1,350 17 11 | + | Youghal, | 3,031 0 7 | 7,038 7 2 | + +-----------------+-----------------+---------------+ + [A] This Office was not opened for Savings Bank + business until the year 1881, the amount shown + being balance due on the 31st December 1882. + +It appears from this table that the deposits in these Savings Banks +increased in the aggregate from £20,329, 15s. 11d. in 1880 to £32,347, +9s. 7d. in 1887, or almost 60 per cent, in seven years. They fell off in +only one case, at Bunbeg, and there only to a nominal amount. At Youghal +they much more than doubled, increasing about 133 per cent. Yet in all +these places the Plan of Campaign has been invoked "because the people +were penniless and could not pay their debts!" + + + +NOTE K. + +THE COOLGREANY EVICTIONS. + +(Vol. ii. p. 216.) + + +Captain Hamilton sends me the following graphic account of this affair +at Coolgreany:-- + +In the _Freeman's Journal_ of the 16th December 1886, it is reported +that a meeting of the Brooke tenantry, the Rev. P. O'Neill in the chair, +was held at Coolgreany on the Sunday previous to the 15th December 1886, +the date on which the "Plan of Campaign" was adopted on the estate, at +which it was resolved that if I refused the terms offered they would +join the "Plan." + +I had no conference at Freeman's house or anywhere else at any time with +two parish priests. On the 15th December 1886, when seated in Freeman's +house waiting to receive the rents, four priests, a reporter of the +_Freeman's Journal_, some local reporters, and four of the tenants +rushed into the room; and the priests in the rudest possible manner (the +Rev. P. Farrelly, one of them, calling me "Francy Hyne's hangman," and +other terms of abuse) informed me that unless I re-instated a former +Roman Catholic tenant in a farm which he had previously held, and which +was then let to a Protestant, and gave an abatement of 30 per cent., no +rent would be paid _me_ that day. Dr. Dillon, C.C., was not present on +this occasion, or, if so, I do not remember seeing him. + +On my asking if I had no alternative but to concede to their demand, the +Rev. Mr. Dunphy, parish priest, replied, "None other; do not think, sir, +we have come here to-day to do honour to you." + +The Rev. P. O'Neill spoke as he always does, in a more gentlemanly and +conciliatory manner, and I therefore, as the confusion in the room was +great, offered to discuss the matter with him, the Rev. O'Donel, C.C., +and the tenants, if the other priests, who were strangers to me, and the +reporters would leave the room. This the Rev. Mr. Dunphy declared they +would not do, and I accordingly refused further to discuss the matter. + +After they left the house, one of the tenants, Mick Darcy, stepped +forward and said, "Settle with us, Captain." I replied, "Certainly, if +you come back with me into the house." The Rev. Mr. Dunphy took him by +the collar of his coat and threw him against the wall of the house, then +turning to me with his hand raised said, "You shall not do so; we, who +claim the temporal as well as spiritual power over _you_ as well as +these poor creatures, will settle this matter with you." + +The tenants were then taken down to the League rooms, where two M.P.s, +Sir Thomas Esmonde and Mr. Mayne, were waiting to receive the rents, +which, one by one, they were ordered in to pay into the war-chest of the +"Plan of Campaign." + +I have I fear written too much of this commencement of the war on the +estate which has since led to over seventy of the tenants and their +families being ejected, and has brought ruin on nearly all who joined +it. I have considerable experience as a land agent, but I know of no +estate where the tenants were more respectable, better housed, or, as a +body, in better circumstances than on the Brooke estate. They had a +kind, indulgent landlord, and they knew it; and nothing but the belief +that, led by their clergy, they were foremost in a battle fighting for +their country and religion, would have induced them to put up with the +great hardships and loss they have undoubtedly had to suffer. + + + +NOTE L. + +A DUCAL SUPPER IN IRELAND IN 1711. + +(Vol. ii. p. 283.) + + +The following entry I take from the Expense-Book of the Duke of Ormond, +under date of August 23, 1711:-- + +His Grace came to Kilkenny, half an hour after 10 at night. + +HIS GRACE'S TABLE. + +Pottage. Sautee Veal. +5 Pullets, Bacon and Collyflowers. +Pottage Meagre. +Pikes with White Sauce. +A Turbot with Lobster Sauce. +Umbles. +A Hare Hasht. +Buttered Chickens, G. +Hasht Veal and New Laid Eggs. +Removes. +A Shoulder and Neck of Mutton. +Haunch of Venison. + +_Second Course._ + +Lobsters. +Tarts, an Oval Dish. +Crabbs Buttered. +4 Pheasants, 4 Partridges, 4 Turkeys. +Ragoo Mushrooms. +Kidney Beans. Ragoo Oysters. +Fritters. +Two Sallets. + + + +NOTE M. + +LETTER FROM MR. O'LEARY. + +(Vol. ii. p. 291.) + + +In the first edition of this book I credited Mr. O'Leary with making +this pungent remark about figs and grapes, because I found it jotted +down in my original memoranda as coming from him. In a private note he +assures me that he does not think it was made by him, and though this +does not agree with my own recollection, I defer, of course, to his +impression. And this I do the more readily that it affords me an +opportunity for printing the following very characteristic and +interesting letter sent to me by him for publication should I think fit +to use it. + +As the most important support given by the Irish in America to the +Nationalists is solicited by their agents on the express ground that +they are really labouring to establish an Irish Republic, this outspoken +declaration of Mr. O'Leary, that he does not believe they "expect or +desire" the establishment of an Irish Republic, will be of interest on +my side of the water:-- + + "DUBLIN, _Sept._ 9, '88. + + "My Dear Sir,--I am giving more bother about what you make me say + in your book than the thing is probably worth, especially seeing + that what you say about me and my present attitude towards men and + things here is almost entirely correct. + + "It is proverbially hard to prove a negative, and my main reason + for believing I did not say the thing about figs and grapes is that + I never could remember the whole of any proverb in conversation; + but I am absolutely certain I never said that 'some of them (the + National Leaguers) expect to found an Irish republic on robbery, + and to administer it by falsehood. We don't.' Most certainly I do + not expect to found anything on robbery, or administer anything by + falsehood, but I do not in the least believe that the National + League either expects or desires to found an Irish republic at all! + Neither do I believe that the Leaguers will long retain the + administration of such small measure of Home Rule, as I now (since + the late utterances of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Gladstone) believe we + are going to get. My fault with the present people is not that they + are looking, or mean to look, for too much, but that they may be + induced, by pressure from their English Radical allies, to be + content with too little. It is only a large and liberal measure of + Home Rule which will ever satisfy the Irish people, and I fear + that, if the smaller fry of Radical M.P.'s are allowed to have a + strong voice in a matter of which they know next to nothing, the + settlement of the Irish question will be indefinitely postponed.--I + remain, faithfully yours, + + "JOHN O'LEARY." + + + +NOTE N + +BOYCOTTING PRIVATE OPINION. + +(Vol. ii. p. 293.) + + +This case of Mr. Taylor is worth preserving _in extenso_ as an +illustration of that spirit in the Irish journalism of the day, against +which Mr. Rolleston and his friends protest as fatal to independence, +manliness, and truth. I simply cite the original attack made upon Mr. +Taylor, the replies made by himself and his friends, and the comments +made upon those replies by the journal which assailed him. They all tell +their own story. + + (_UNITED IRELAND_, JUNE 16.) + + Mr. John F. Taylor owes everything he has or is to the Irish + National Party; nor is he slow to confess it where the + acknowledgment will serve his personal interests. His sneers are + all anonymous, and, like Mr. Fagg, the grateful and deferential + valet in _The Rivals_, "it hurts his conscience to be found out." + There is no honesty or sincerity in the man. His covert gibes are + the spiteful emanation of personal disappointment; his lofty + morality is a cloak for unscrupulous self-seeking. He has always + shown himself ready to say anything or do anything that may serve + his own interests. In the general election of 1885 he made frantic + efforts to get into Parliament as a member of the Irish Party. He + ghosted every member of the party whose influence he thought might + help him--notably the two men, Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien, at whom + he now sneers, as he fondly believes, in the safe seclusion of an + anonymous letter of an English newspaper. During the period of + probation his hand was incessant on Mr. Dillon's door-knocker. The + most earnest supplications were not spared. All in vain. Either his + character or his ability failed to satisfy the Irish leader, and + his claim was summarily rejected. Since then his wounded vanity has + found vent in spiteful calumny of almost every member of the Irish + Party--whenever he found malice a luxury that could be safely + indulged in. + + "His next step was a startling one. We have absolute reason to + know, when the last Coercion Act was in full swing, this + pure-souled and disinterested patriot begged for, received, and + accepted a very petty Crown Prosecutorship under a Coercion + Government. As was wittily said at the time, he sold his + principles, not for a mess of pottage, but for the stick that + stirred the mess. Strong pressure was brought to bear on him, and + he was induced for his own sake, after many protests and with much + reluctance, to publicly refuse the office he had already privately + accepted. Mr. Taylor professes to model himself on Robert Emmet and + Thomas Davis; it is hard to realise Thomas Davis or Robert Emmet as + a Coercion Crown Prosecutor in the pay of Dublin Castle. Since then + there has been no more persistent caviller at the Irish policy and + the Irish Party in company where he believed such cavilling paid. + When Home Rule was proposed by Mr. Gladstone, he had a thousand + foolish sneers for the measure and its author. When the Bill was + defeated, he elected Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Goschen, and Mr. T.W. + Russell as the gods of his idolatry. Such a nature needs a patron, + and Mr. Webb, Q.C., the Tory County Court Judge who doubled the + sentence on Father M'Fadden, was the patron to be selected. It is + shrewdly suspected that he supplied most of the misguiding + information for Dr. Webb's coercion pamphlet, and it is probable + that Dr. Webb gives him a lift with his weekly letter to the + _Manchester Guardian._ + + + (_UNITED IRELAND_, JUNE 23.) + + MR. JOHN F. TAYLOR. + + _To the Editor of "United Ireland."_ + + Sir,--You would not, I am sure, allow intentional misstatements to + appear in your columns, and I ask you to allow me space to correct + three erroneous observations made about myself in your current + issue-- + + 1. The first statement is to the effect that I owe everything I + have, or that I am, to the Irish National Party. I owe absolutely + nothing to the Irish Party, except an attempt to boycott me on my + circuit, which, fortunately for me, has failed. + + 2. The second is to the effect that I made "frantic efforts" (these + are the words, I think) to enter Parliament, and besieged Mr. + Dillon's house during the time when candidates were being chosen. I + saw Mr. Dillon exactly twice, both occasions at Mr. Davitt's + request. Mr. Davitt urged me to allow my name to go forward as a + candidate, and it was at his wish and solicitation that I saw Mr. + Dillon. + + 3. It is further said that I begged a Crown Prosecutorship. + Fortunately, Mr. Walker and The M'Dermot are living men, and they + know this to be absolutely untrue. I was offered such an + appointment, and, contrary to my own judgment, I allowed myself to + be guided by Mr. Davitt, who thought the matter would be + misunderstood in the state of things then existing. I believe I am + the only person that ever declined such an offer. + + As to general statements, these are of no importance, and I shall + not trouble you about them.--Yours very truly, + + JOHN F. TAYLOR. + + _P.S._--The introduction of Dr. Webb's name was a gratuitous + outrage, Dr. Webb and I never assisted each other in anything + except in the defence of P.N. Fitzgerald. J.F.T. + + + _To the Editor of "United Ireland."_ + + Dear Sir,--As my name has been introduced into the controversy + between yourself and Mr. Taylor, I feel called upon to substantiate + the two statements wherein my name occurs in Mr. Taylor's letter of + last week. It was at my request that he called upon Mr. John + Dillon, M.P. I think I accompanied him on the occasion, and unless + my memory is very much at fault, Mr. Dillon was not unfriendly to + Mr. Taylor's proposed candidature. This visit occurred some three + months after Mr. Taylor had, on my advice, declined the Crown + Prosecutorship for King's County, a post afterwards applied for by + and granted to a near relative of one of the most prominent members + of the Irish Party. With Mr. Taylor's general views on the present + situation, or opinions upon parties or men, I have no concern. But, + in so far as the circumstances related above are dealt with in your + issue of last week, I think an unjust imputation has been made + against him, and in the interests of truth and fair play I feel + called upon to adduce the testimony of facts as they + occurred.--Yours truly, + + MICHAEL DAVITT. + + Ballybrack, Co. Dublin, + + June 19, 1888. + + + _To the Editor of "United Ireland."_ + + Sir,--As this is, I believe, the first time I have sought to + intrude upon your columns, I hope you will allow me some slight + space in the interests of fair-play and freedom of speech. Those + interests seem to me to have been quite set at naught in the + attack, or rather series of attacks, upon Mr. Taylor in your last + issue. Mr. Taylor's views upon many matters are not mine. He is far + more democratic in his opinions than I see any sufficient reason + for being, and he is very much more of what is called a land + reformer than I am; but on an acquaintance of some years I have + ever found him an honourable and high-minded gentleman, and as good + a Nationalist, from my point of view, as most of the members of the + Irish Parliamentary Party whom I either know or know of. Of some of + the charges made against Mr. Taylor, such as the seeking for Crown + Prosecutorships and the like, I am in no position to speak, save + from my knowledge of his character, but I understand Mr. Davitt + knows all about these things, and I suppose he will tell what he + knows. But of the main matter, and I think the chief cause of your + ire, I am quite in a position to speak. I have read at least a + score of Mr. Taylor's letters to the _Manchester Guardian_, and I + have always found them very intelligently written, and invariably + characterised by a spirit of fairness and moderation; indeed, the + chief fault I found with them was that they took too favourable a + view of the motives, if not the acts, of many of our public men, + but notably of Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien. You may, of course, + fairly say that I am not the best judge of either the acts or the + motives of these gentlemen, and I freely grant you that I may not, + for my way of looking upon the Irish question is quite other than + theirs; but what I must be excused for holding is that both I and + Mr. Taylor have quite as good a right to our opinions as either of + these gentlemen, or as any other member of the Irish Parliamentary + Party. But this is the very last right that people are inclined to + grant to each other in Ireland just now. Personally I care very + little for this, but for Ireland's sake I care much. Some twenty + years ago or so I was sent into penal servitude with the almost + entire approval, expressed or implied, of the Irish Press. Some + short time after the same Press found out that I and my friends had + not sinned so grievously in striving to free Ireland. But men and + times and things may change again, and, though I am growing old, I + hope still to live long enough to be forgiven for my imperfect + appreciation of the blessings of Boycotting, and the Plan of + Campaign, and many similar blessings. It matters little indeed how + or when I die, so that Ireland lives, but her life can only be a + living death if Irishmen are not free to say what they believe, and + to act as they deem right.--Your obedient servant, + + JOHN O'LEARY. + + June 18, 1888. + + + _To the Editor of "United Ireland."_ + + Dear Sir,--I observe that in your last issue, amongst other things, + you state that Mr. Taylor accepted a Crown Prosecutorship in 1885. + I happen to know the precise facts. Mr. Taylor was offered the + Crown Prosecutorship of the King's County, and some of us strongly + advised him to accept it. There were no political prosecutions + impending at the time, and it seemed to me that a Nationalist who + would do his work honestly in prosecuting offenders against the + ordinary law might strike a blow against tyranny by refusing to + accept a brief, if offered, against men accused of political + offences or prosecuted under a Coercion Act. I know that a similar + view was entertained by the late Very Rev. Dr. Kavanagh of Kildare, + and many others. However, we failed to influence Mr. Taylor further + than to make him say that he would do nothing in the matter until + Mr. Davitt was consulted. I, for one, called on Mr. Davitt, and + pressed my views upon him; but he was decided that no Nationalist + could identify himself in the smallest way with Castle rule in + Ireland. This settled the question, and Mr. Taylor declined the + post, which was subsequently applied for by Mr. Luke Dillon, who + now holds it.--Faithfully yours, + + JAMES A. POOLE. + + 29 Harcourt Street. + + + + EDITORIAL NOTE. + + _"United Ireland," June 23._ + + We devote a large portion of our space to-day to the apparently + organised defence of Mr. J.F. Taylor and his friends, and we are + quite content to rest upon their letters the justification for our + comments. When a gentleman who avows himself a disappointed + aspirant for Parliamentary honours, and who owns his regret that he + did not become a petty Castle placeman, is discovered writing in an + important English Liberal paper, venomous little innuendos at the + expense of sorely attacked Irish leaders which excite the + enthusiasm of the _Liarish Times_, it was high time to intimate to + the _Manchester Guardian_ the source from which its Irish + information is derived. The case against Mr. Taylor as a + criticaster is clinched by the fact that his cause is espoused by + Mr. John O'Leary. The Irish public are a little weary of Mr. + O'Leary's querulous complaints as an _homme incompris_. So far as + we are aware, the only ground he himself has for complaining of + want of toleration is that he possibly considers the good-humoured + toleration for years invariably extended to his opinions on men and + things savours of neglect. His idea of toleration with respect to + others seems to be toleration for everybody except the unhappy + wretches who may happen to be for the moment doing any practicable + service in the Irish cause. + + + + +NOTE O. + +BOYCOTTING BY "CROWNER'S QUEST LAW." + +(Vol. ii. p. 312.) + + +The following circumstantial account of this deplorable case of Ellen +Gaffney preserved here, as I find it printed in the _Irish Times_ of +February 27, 1888. + +"In the Court of Queen's Bench, on Saturday, the Lord Chief-Justice (Sir +Michael Morris, Bart.), Mr. Justice O'Brien, Mr. Justice Murphy, and Mr. +Justice Gibson presiding, judgment was delivered in the case of Ellen +Gaffney. The original motion was to quash the verdict of a coroner's +jury held at Philipstown on August 27th and September 1st last, on the +body of a child named Mary Anne Gaffney. + +"The Lord Chief-Justice said it appeared that Mary Anne Gaffney, the +child on whose body the inquest was held, was born on the 23d July, and +that she died on the 25th August, 1887. A Dr. Clarke, who had been very +much referred to in the course of the proceedings, called upon the local +sergeant of the police, and directed his attention to the body, but the +sergeant having inspected the body, came to the conclusion that there +was no need for an inquest. The doctor considered differently, and the +sergeant communicated with the Coroner on the 26th August, and on the +next day that gentleman arrived in Philipstown. He had a conference +there with Dr. Clarke and with a reverend gentleman named Father Bergin, +and subsequently proceeded to hold an inquest upon the child in a +public-house--a most appropriate place apparently for the transactions +which afterwards occurred there. The investigation, if it might be so +called, was proceeded with upon that 27th of August. Very strong +affidavits had been made on the part of Mrs. Gaffney--who applied to +have the inquisition quashed--her husband, and some of the constabulary +authorities as to the line of conduct pursued upon that occasion. Ellen +Gaffney and her husband were taken into custody on the day the inquest +opened by the verbal direction of the Coroner, who refused to complete +the depositions given by the former on the ground that she was not +sworn. That did not take him out of the difficulty, for if she was not +sworn she had a right to be sworn, and the Coroner had no right to +prevent her. The inquest was resumed on the 1st September in the +court-house at Philipstown--the proper place--and a curious letter was +read from the Coroner, the effect of which was that he did not consider +that there was any ground for detaining the man Gaffney in custody, but +the woman was brought before a justice of the peace and committed for +trial. She was in prison from August 27th until the month of December, +when the lucky accident of a winter assize occurred, else she might be +there still. At the adjourned inquest the Coroner proceeded to read over +the depositions taken on the former day, and it was sworn by four +witnesses, whom he (the Lord Chief-Justice) entirely credited, that the +Coroner read these depositions as if they were originals, whereas an +unprecedented transaction had occurred. The Coroner had given the +original depositions out of his own custody, and given them to a +reverend gentleman who was rather careless of them, as was shown by the +evidence of a witness named Greene, who deposed that he saw a car on the +road upon which sat two clergymen, and he found on the road the original +depositions which, presumably, one of the clergymen had dropped. The +depositions were handed to a magistrate and afterwards returned to the +police at Philipstown, who had possession of them on the resumption of +the inquest. If the case stood alone there it was difficult to +understand how a Coroner could come into court and appear by counsel to +resist the quashing of an inquisition in regard to which at the very +door such gross personal misconduct was demonstrated. No doubt, he said, +he did not read them as originals but as copies, and it was strange, +that being so, that he did not inform the jury of what had become of +them, and he complained now of not being told by the police of their +recovery--not told of his own misconduct. On the 1st September, Ellen +Gaffney applied by a solicitor--Mr. Disdall, and as a set-off the +Coroner permitted a gentleman named O'Kearney Whyte to appear--for whom? +Was it for the constituted authorities or for the next-of-kin? No, but +for the Rev. Father Bergin, who was described as president of the local +branch of the National League, and the Coroner (Mr. Gowing) alleged as +the reason why he allowed him to appear and cross-examine the witnesses +and address the jury and give him the right of reply like Crown counsel +was, that Ellen Gaffney stated that she had been so much annoyed by +Father Bergin that she attributed the loss of her child to him--that it +was he who had murdered the child. It was asserted that Father Bergin +sat on the bench with the Coroner and interfered during the conduct of +the inquest, and having to give some explanation of that Mr. Gowing's +version was certainly a most amusing one. He said it was the habit to +invite to a seat on the bench people of a respectable position in +life--which, of course, a clergyman should be in--and that he asked +Father Bergin to sit beside him in that capacity. But see the dilemma +the Coroner put himself in. According to his own statement he had +previously allowed this reverend gentleman to interfere, and to be +represented by a solicitor because he was incriminated, inculpated, or +accused, and it certainly was not customary to invite any one so +situated to occupy a seat on the bench. He (the Lord Chief Baron) did +not believe that Father Bergin was incriminated in any way, but that was +the Coroner's allegation, and such was his peculiar action thereafter. +The Coroner further stated that no matter whether he read the originals +or the copies of the first day's depositions, it was on the evidence of +September 1st that the jury acted. If that was so he placed himself in a +further dilemma, for there was no evidence before the jury at all on the +second day upon which they could bring a verdict against Ellen Gaffney. +In regard to the recording and announcing of the verdict it appeared +that the jury were 19 in number, and after their deliberations the +foreman declared that 13 were for finding a verdict one way and 6 for +another; that Mr. Whyte dictated the verdict to the Coroner, and the +Coroner asked the 13 men if that was what they agreed to. Mr. Whyte's +statement was that the jury, through the foreman, stated what their +verdict was; that he wrote it down, and that the Coroner asked him for +what he had written, and used it himself. But in addition to that, when +the jury came in the Coroner and Mr. Whyte divided them--placed them +apart while the verdict was being written--and then said to the 13 men, +"Is that what you agree to?" Such apparent misconduct it was hardly +possible to conceive in anybody occupying a judicial position as did the +Coroner, and especially a Coroner who had an inquisition quashed before. +What he had mentioned was sufficient to call forth the emphatic decision +of the court quashing the proceedings, which, however, were also +impeached on the grounds of its insufficiency and irregularity, and of +the character of the finding itself. It was not until the Coroner had +been threatened with the consequences of his contempt that he made a +return to the visit of _certiorari_, and it was then found that out of +ten so-called depositions only one contained any signature--that of Dr. +Clarke's, which was one of those lost by the clergyman, and not before +the jury on the 1st September. He (the Lord Chief-Justice) had tried to +read the documents, but in vain--they were of such a scrawling and +scribbling character, but, as he had said, all were incomplete and +utterly worthless except the one which was not properly before the jury. +Then, what was the finding on this inquisition, which should have been +substantially as perfect as an indictment? "That Mary Anne Gaffney came +by her death, and that the mother of this child, Ellen Gaffney, is +guilty of wilful neglect by not supplying the necessary food and care to +sustain the life of this child." Upon what charge could the woman have +been implicated on that vague finding? He (his Lordship) could +understand its being contended that that amounted argumentatively to a +verdict of manslaughter; but the Coroner issued his warrant and sent +this woman to prison as being guilty of murder, and she remained in +custody, as he had already remarked, until discharged by the learned +judge who went the Winter Assizes in December. Upon all of these grounds +they were clearly of opinion that this inquisition should be quashed, +and Mr. Coroner Gowing having had the self-possession to come there to +show cause against the conditional order, under such circumstances, must +bear the costs of that argument. + +Mr. Fred. Moorhead, who, instructed by Mr. O'Kearney Whyte, appeared for +the Coroner, asked whether the Court would require, as was usual when +costs were awarded against a magistrate, an undertaking from the other +side-- + +The Lord Chief-Justice.--That is not to bring an action against the +Coroner, you mean? + +Mr. Moorhead.--Yes, my Lord. I think it is a usual undertaking when +costs are awarded in such a case. I think you ought-- + +The Lord Chief-Justice.--Well, I don't know that we ought, but we most +certainly will not. (Laughter.) + +Mr. David Sherlock, who (instructed by Mr. Archibald W. Disdall) +appeared for Ellen Gaffney.--Rest assured, we certainly will bring an +action. + + +THE END. + + * * * * * + + + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] I have the authority of Mr. Hennessey, "the best living +Irish scholar, and a Kerryman to boot," for this spelling. I am quite +right, he says, in stating that the people there pronounce the names of +Glenbeigh and Rossbeigh as Glenbéhy and Rossbéhy in three syllables. +"Bethe," pronounced "behy," is the genitive of "beith," the birch, of +which there were formerly large woods in Ireland. Glenbehy and Rossbehy +mean the "Glen," and the "Ross" or "wooded point" of the birch. + +[2] A letter received by me from a Protestant Irish gentleman, +long an ardent Nationalist, seems to confirm this. He writes to me (June +15), + + "There is a noble river here, with a convenient line of quays for + unloading merchandise. But every sack that is landed must be carried + out of the ship on men's backs. The quay labourers won't allow a + steam crane to be set up. If it is tried there is a riot and a + tumult, and no Limerick tradesman can purchase anything from a + vessel that uses it, on pain of being boycotted. The result is that + the labourers are masters of the situation, and when they catch a + vessel with a cargo which it is imperative to land quickly, they + wait till the work is half done, and then strike for 8s. a day! If + other labourers are imported, they are boycotted for 'grabbing + work,' and any one who sells provisions to them is boycotted." + +[3] An interesting account of this gentleman, and of his +connection with the earlier developments of the Irish agitation, given +to me by Mr. Colomb of the R.I.C., will be found at p.38, and in the +Appendix, Note F. + +[4] See Appendix, Note F. + +[5] The name of this blacksmith's son learned in the Law of the +League is given in Lord Cowper's Report (2. 18,370) as Michael Healy. +While these pages are in the printer's hands the London papers chronicle +(May 25, 1888) the arrest of a person described to me as this +magistrate's brother, Jeremiah Healy, on a charge of robbing and setting +fire to the Protestant church at Killarney! + +[6] Mr. Colomb sends me, June 30, the following interesting +note:--The letter of which I gave you a copy was produced in evidence at +Kerry Summer Assizes, 1867. J. D. Sheehan, Esq., M.P., is the same man +who was arrested on the 12th February 1867, and to whom the foregoing +letter, ordering the rising in Killarney, is addressed. He was kept in +custody for some time, and eventually released, it is believed, on the +understanding that he was to keep out of Ireland. He came back in 1873 +or 1874 and married the proprietress of a Hotel at Killarney. His +connection with the Glenbehy evictions is referred to on page 10, and in +Note F of the Appendix I give an interesting account, furnished me by +Mr. Colomb, of his activity in connection with the case of the Misses +Curtin at Firies. + +[7] In the time of Henry VIII. these cities waged actual war +with each other, like Florence and Pisa, by sea and land. Limerick was +then called "Little London." + +[8] It was on the 17th October 1886 that Mr. Dillon first +promulgated the Plan of Campaign at all at Portumna. + +[9] Mr. Ponsonby's account of this affair will be found in the +Appendix, Note G. The Post-Office Savings Bank deposits at Youghal, +which were £3031, 0s. 7d. in 1880, rose to £7038, 7s. 2d. in 1887. + +[10] As to the ability of these tenants to pay their way, one +fact which I have since ascertained sufficiently supports Mr. Tener's +contention. The deposits in the Postal Savings Banks of the three purely +agricultural towns of Portumna, Woodford, and Loughrea, which in 1880, +throwing off the shillings and pence, were respectively, £2539, £259, +and £5500, rose in 1887 to £3376, £1350, and £6311, an increase of +nearly £3000. + +[11] Mr. Tener, to whom I sent proofs of these pages, writes to +me (July 18): "I shall soon execute the decree of the County-Court Judge +Henn against Father Coen for £5, 5s., being two and a half year's +rent." + +[12] At a hearing of cases before Judge Henn some time after I +left Portumna, the Judge was reported in the papers as "severely" +commenting upon the carelessness with which the estate-books were kept, +tenants who were proceeded against for arrears producing "receipts" in +court. I wrote to Mr. Tener on this subject. Under date of June 5th he +replied to me: "Judge Henn did not use the severe language reported. +There was no reporter present but a local man, and I have reason to +believe the report in the _Freeman's Journal_ came from the lawyer of +the tenants, who is on the staff of that journal. But the tenants are +drilled not to show the receipts they hold, and to take advantage of +every little error which they might at once get corrected by calling at +the estate office. In no case, however, did any wrong occur to any +tenant." + +[13] The town and estate proper of Woodford belong to Sir Henry +Burke, Bart. The nearest point to Woodford of Lord Clamicarde's property +is distant one mile from the town. And on the so-called Woodford estate +there are not "316 tenants," as stated in publications I have seen, but +260. + +[14] Martin Kenny, the "victim" of this eviction, is the tenant +to whom the Rev. Mr. Crawford (_vide_ page 118) gave £50 for certain +cattle, in order that he (Kenny) might pay his rent But, although he got +the £50, he nevertheless suffered himself to be evicted; no doubt +fearing the vengeance of the League should he pay. + +[15] The valuation for taxes of this holding is £7, 15s. for +the land, and £5 for the presbytery house. The church is exempt. + +[16] Of "Dr." Tully Mr. Tener wrote to me (July 18): + + "Tully has the holding at £2, 10s. a year, being 50 per cent, under + the valuation of the land for taxes, which is £3, 15s. As the total + valuation with the house (built by him) is only £4, he pays no + poor-rates. He was in arrears May 1, 1887, of three years for £7, + 10s. Lord Clanricarde offered him, with others, 20 per cent, + abatement, making for him 70 per cent, under the valuation--and he + refused!" + +Since then (on Saturday Sept. 1), Tully has been evicted after a +dramatic "resistance," of which, with instructive incidents attending +it, Mr. Tener sends me an account, to be found in the Appendix, Note H. + +[17] Note H2. + +[18] Mr. Tener writes to me (July 18): + + "At Allendarragh, near the scene of Finlay's murder, Thomas Noonan, + who lately was brave enough to accept the post of process-server + vacated by that murder, was shot at on the 13th instant. It was on + the highway. He heard a heavy stone fall from a wall on the road and + turned to see what caused it. He distinctly saw two men behind the + wall with guns, and saw them fire. One shot struck a stone in the + road very near him--the other went wide. His idea is that one gun + dislodged the stone on which it had been laid for an aim, and that + its fall disturbed the aim and saved him. He fully identifies one of + the men as Henry Bowles, a nephew of 'Dr.' Tully, who lives with + Tully, and Bowles, after being arrested and examined at Woodford, + has been remanded, bail being refused, to Galway Jail. Before this + shooting Noonan had served a notice from me upon Tully, against whom + I have Judge Henn's decree for three years' rent, and whose equity + of redemption expired July 9th." + +[19] I have since learned that my jarvey was well informed. Sir +Henry Burke actually paid Mr. Dillon £160 for the maintenance of his +tenants while out of their farms. This, two other landlords, Lords +Dunsandle and Westmeath, refused to do, but, like Sir Henry, they both +paid all the costs, and accepted a "League" reduction of 5s. 6d. and 6s. +in the pound (June 9, 1888). + +[20] Down to the date at which I write this note (June 9), Mr. +Seigne has kindly, but without results, endeavoured to get for me some +authentic return made by a small tenant-farmer of his incomings and +outgoings. + +[21] Note I. + +[22] Note K. + +[23] While these pages are going through the press a Scottish +friend sends me the following extract from a letter published in the +_Scotsman_ of July 25:-- + + "In the same way I, in August last, when in Wicklow, ascertained as + carefully as I could the facts as to the Bodyke evictions; and being + desirous to learn now if that estate was still out of cultivation, + as I had found it in August, I wrote the gentleman I have referred + to above. His reply is as follows:-- + + "'I can answer your question as far as the Brooke estate is + concerned. None of the tenants are back in their farms, nor + are they likely to be. The landlord has the land partly + stocked with cattle; but I may say the land is nearly waste; + the gates, fences, and farmsteads partly destroyed. I was at + the fair of Coolgreany about three weeks ago, and the country + looked quite changed; the weeds predominating in the land + that the tenantry had under cultivation when they were + evicted from their farms. The landlord has done nothing to + lay the land down with grass seed, consequently the land is + waste. The village of Coolgreany is on the property, and + there was a good monthly fair held there, but it is very much + gone down since the disagreement between the landlord and + tenant. The tenants, speaking generally, in allowing + themselves to be evicted and not redeeming before six months, + are giving up all their improvements to the landlord, no + matter what they may be worth. I have got quite tired of the + vexed question, and may say I have given up reading about + evictions, and pity the tenant who is foolish enough to allow + any party to advise him so badly as to allow himself to be + evicted.' + + "Those who read this testimony of a candid witness, and remember the + cordial footing on which Mr. Brooke stood with his tenantry in + Bodyke before Mr. Billon appeared amongst them, may well ask what + good his interference did to the now impoverished tenantry of + Bodyke, or to the district now deserted or laid waste.--I am, etc., + + A RADICAL UNIONIST." + +[24] In curious confirmation of this opinion expressed to me by +a man of the country in March, I find in the _Dublin Express_ of July +19th this official news from the Athy Vice-Guardians: + + "At the meeting of the Vice-Guardians of the Athy Union yesterday, a + letter was read from Mr. G. Finlay, Auditor, in which he stated that + the two sureties of Collector Kealy, of the Luggacurren district, + had been evicted from their holdings by Lord Lansdowne, and were not + now in possession of any lands there. They were allowed outdoor + relief to the extent of £1 a week each on the ground of destitution. + The Auditor continued: 'The Collector tells me that they both + possess other lands, and have money in bank. The Collector is + satisfied that they are as good, if not better, securities for the + amount of his bond now than at the time they became sureties for + him. The Clerk of the Union concurs in this opinion.' + + "It was ordered to bring the matter under the notice of the Board." + +[25] _Explanatory Note attached to First Edition._--After this +chapter had actually gone to press, I received a letter from the friend +who had put me into communication with the labourers referred to in it, +begging me to strike out all direct indications of their whereabouts, on +the ground that these might lead to grave annoyance and trouble for +these poor men from the local tyrants. + +I do not know that I ought to regret the annoyance thus caused to my +publisher and to me, as no words of mine could emphasise so clearly the +nature and the scope of the odious, illegal, or anti-legal "coercion" +established in certain parts of Ireland as the asterisks which mark my +compliance with my friend's request. What can be said for the freedom of +a country in which a man of character and position honestly believes it +to be "dangerous" for poor men to say the things recorded in the text of +this chapter about their own feelings, wishes, opinions, and interests? + +[26] It may be well to say here that whatever prominence Mr. +O'Donovan Rossa has had among the Irish in America has been largely, if +not chiefly, due to the curious persistency of Sir William Harcourt, +when a Minister, in making him the ideal Irish-American leader. In and +out of Parliament, Sir William Harcourt continually spoke of Mr. Rossa +as of a kind of Irish Jupiter Tonans, wielding all the terrors of +dynamite from beyond the Atlantic. This was a source of equal amusement +to the Irish-American organisers in America and satisfaction to Mr. +Rossa himself. I remember that when a question arose of excluding Mr. +Rossa from an important Irish-American convention at Philadelphia, as +not being the delegate of any recognised Irish-American body, Mr. +Sullivan told me that he should recommend the admission of Mr. Rossa to +the floor without a right to deliberative action, expressly because his +presence, when reported, would be a cause of terror to Sir William +Harcourt. + +[27] See Appendix, Note M. + +[28] Note N. + +[29] Note O. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of +2) (1888), by William Henry Hurlbert + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRELAND, VOL. 2 *** + +***** This file should be named 14511-8.txt or 14511-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/5/1/14511/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Robert Ledger and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +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 + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/14511-8.zip b/old/14511-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..31d1509 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14511-8.zip diff --git a/old/14511-h.zip b/old/14511-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..fd31a55 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14511-h.zip diff --git a/old/14511-h/14511-h.htm b/old/14511-h/14511-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9f9fe15 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14511-h/14511-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,10402 @@ +<!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=us-ascii" /> + + <title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ireland Under Coercion (v2) 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; } + .signed {text-align: right; margin-right: 5%;} + .dateline {text-align: right; margin-top: 2em; margin-right: 5%;} + .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} + .i6 {text-indent: 0px; margin-left: 6em} + + .poem { text-indent: 0px; margin-left: 4em} + .red {color: red} + + .placard {padding: 2em; border: thin solid} + + .TOC { list-style-type: none; position: relative;} + .TOCSub { margin-right: 5%; list-style-type: none; position: relative;} + + span.diary { font-weight: bold;} + p.diary {margin-top:4em} + div.center{align: center} + li { margin-top: 0.53em; line-height: 1.2em } + + table {border-collapse: collapse; text-align: center;} + td {text-align:center; padding: 3px; border: 1px solid black} + thead {font-weight: bold; text-align: center} + --> + /*]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 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.) (2 of 2) (1888) + +Author: William Henry Hurlbert + +Release Date: December 29, 2004 [EBook #14511] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRELAND, VOL. 2 *** + + + + +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. II.</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> + + + +<h2>CONTENTS OF VOL. II.</h2> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER VII.</p> +<ul class="TOC"> +<li>Rossbehy, Feb. 21, <a href="#page1">1</a></li> +<li>The latest eviction at Glenbehy, <a href="#page1">1</a></li> +<li>Trafalgar Square, <a href="#page1">1</a>, <a href="#page2">2</a></li> +<li>Father Little, <a href="#page3">3</a></li> +<li>Mr. Frost, <a href="#page3">3</a>, <a href="#page4">4</a></li> +<li>Priest and landlord, <a href="#page3">3</a></li> +<li>Savings Banks’ deposits at Six-mile Bridge, <a href="#page5">5</a></li> +<li>Drive through Limerick, <a href="#page5">5</a></li> +<li>Population and trade, <a href="#page5">5</a>, <a href="#page6">6</a></li> +<li>Boycotting and commerce, <a href="#page6">6</a>, <a href="#page7">7</a></li> +<li>Shores of the Atlantic, <a href="#page7">7</a></li> +<li>Tralee, <a href="#page7">7</a></li> +<li>Killorglin, <a href="#page8">8</a></li> +<li>Hostelry in the hills, <a href="#page8">8</a></li> +<li>Facts of the eviction, <a href="#page9">9</a>-<a href="#page13">13</a></li> +<li>Glenbehy Eviction Fund (see Note <a href="#noteG2">G2</a>), <a href="#page12">12</a></li> +<li>A walk on Washington’s birthday, <a href="#page13">13</a></li> +<li>A tenant at Glenbehy offers £13 in two instalments in full for £240 arrears, <a href="#page13">13</a></li> +<li>English and Irish members, <a href="#page14">14</a></li> +<li>“Winn’s Folly,” <a href="#page15">15</a></li> +<li>Acreage and rental of the Glenbehy estate, <a href="#page16">16</a></li> +<li>Work of eviction begun, <a href="#page17">17</a></li> +<li>Patience of officers, <a href="#page17">17</a></li> +<li>American and Irish evictions contrasted, <a href="#page17">17</a></li> +<li>“Oh, he’s quite familiar,” <a href="#page18">18</a></li> +<li>A modest Poor Law Guardian, <a href="#page18">18</a>, <a href="#page19">19</a></li> +<li>Moonlighters’ swords, <a href="#page20">20</a></li> +<li>Father Quilter and the “poor slaves,” his people, <a href="#page21">21</a>,<a href="#page22">22</a></li> +<li>Beauty of Lough Caragh, <a href="#page23">23</a></li> +<li>Difficulty of getting evidence, <a href="#page25">25</a></li> +<li>Effects of terrorism in Kerry, <a href="#page25">25</a></li> +<li>Singular identification of a murderer, <a href="#page26">26</a></li> +<li>Local administration in Tralee, <a href="#page28">28</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0"> +CHAPTER VIII.</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Cork, Feb. 23, <a href="#page30">30</a></li> +<li>Press accounts of Glenbehy evictions astonish an eye-witness, <a href="#page30">30</a></li> +<li>Castle Island, <a href="#page31">31</a></li> +<li>Mr. Roche and Mr. Gladstone, <a href="#page31">31</a></li> +<li>Opinions of a railway traveller, <a href="#page31">31</a>, <a href="#page32">32</a></li> +<li>Misrepresentations of evictions, <a href="#page32">32</a></li> +<li>Cork, past and present, <a href="#page34">34</a></li> +<li>Mr. Gladstone and the Dean, <a href="#page35">35</a></li> +<li>League Courts in Kerry, <a href="#page36">36</a></li> +<li>Local Law Lords, <a href="#page36">36</a></li> +<li>Mr. Colomb and the Fenian rising in 1867, <a href="#page37">37</a></li> +<li>Remarkable letter of an M.P., <a href="#page38">38</a></li> +<li>Irish Constabulary, <i>morale</i> of the force, <a href="#page40">40</a></li> +<li>The clergy and the Plan of Campaign, <a href="#page41">41</a></li> +<li>Municipal history, <a href="#page43">43</a></li> +<li>Increase of public burdens, <a href="#page44">44</a></li> +<li>Tralee Board of Guardians, <a href="#page46">46</a></li> +<li>Labourers and tenants, <a href="#page46">46</a></li> +<li>Feb. 25, <a href="#page47">47</a></li> +<li>Boycotting, <a href="#page47">47</a>-<a href="#page49">49</a></li> +<li>Land law and freedom of contract, <a href="#page49">49</a></li> +<li>Rivalry between Limerick and Cork, <a href="#page50">50</a></li> +<li>Henry VIII. and the Irish harp, <a href="#page50">50</a></li> +<li>Municipal Parliamentary franchise, <a href="#page51">51</a></li> +<li>Environs of Cork, <a href="#page52">52</a></li> +<li>Churches and chapels, <a href="#page53">53</a></li> +<li>Attractive home at Belmullet, <a href="#page54">54</a></li> +<li>Lord Carnarvon and the Priest, <a href="#page55">55</a></li> +<li>Feb. 26, <a href="#page56">56</a></li> +<li>Blarney Castle, 56, <a href="#page57">57</a></li> +<li>St. Anne’s Hill, <a href="#page56">56</a>, <a href="#page57">57</a></li> +<li>An evicted woman on “the Plan,” <a href="#page59">59</a></li> +<li>The Ponsonby estate, <a href="#page59">59</a></li> +<li>Feb. 27—A day at Youghal, <a href="#page60">60</a></li> +<li>Father Keller, <a href="#page61">61</a>-<a href="#page76">76</a></li> +<li>On emigration and migration, <a href="#page66">66</a></li> +<li>Protestants and Catholics (see Note <a href="#noteG3">G3</a>), <a href="#page68">68</a></li> +<li>Meath as a field for peasant proprietors, <a href="#page69">69</a></li> +<li>Ghost of British protection, <a href="#page70">70</a></li> +<li>A farmer evicted from a tenancy of <a href="#page200">200</a> years, <a href="#page71">71</a></li> +<li>Sir Walter Raleigh’s house and garden, <a href="#page71">71</a>-<a href="#page73">73</a></li> +<li>Churches of St. Mary of Youghal and St. Nicholas of Galway, <a href="#page73">73</a></li> +<li>Monument and churchyard, <a href="#page73">73</a>, <a href="#page74">74</a></li> +<li>An Elizabethan candidate for canonisation, <a href="#page75">75</a></li> +<li>Drive to Lismore, <a href="#page76">76</a></li> +<li>Driver’s opinions on the Ponsonby estates, <a href="#page77">77</a></li> +<li>Dromaneen Castle and the Countess of Desmond, <a href="#page78">78</a></li> +<li>Trappist Monastery at Cappoquin, <a href="#page78">78</a></li> +<li>Lismore, <a href="#page78">78</a>, <a href="#page79">79</a></li> +<li>Castle grounds and cathedral, <a href="#page79">79</a>, <a href="#page80">80</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER IX. +</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Feb. 28, <a href="#page82">82</a></li> +<li>Portumna, Galway, <a href="#page82">82</a></li> +<li>Run through Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Queen’s and King’s County to Parsonstown, <a href="#page82">82</a></li> +<li>A Canadian priest on the situation, <a href="#page83">83</a></li> +<li>His reply to M. de Mandat Grancey, <a href="#page83">83</a></li> +<li>Relations of priests with the League, <a href="#page83">83</a>-<a href="#page85">85</a></li> +<li>Parsonstown and Lord Rosse, <a href="#page86">86</a></li> +<li>Drive to Portumna, <a href="#page87">87</a></li> +<li>An abandoned railway, <a href="#page88">88</a></li> +<li>American storms, grain, and beasts, <a href="#page88">88</a>, <a href="#page89">89</a></li> +<li>Portumna Castle, <a href="#page90">90</a>, <a href="#page91">91</a></li> +<li>Lord Clanricarde’s estate, <a href="#page92">92</a></li> +<li>Mr. Tener, <a href="#page92">92</a>-<a href="#page128">128</a></li> +<li>Plan of Campaign, <a href="#page94">94</a>-<a href="#page99">99</a></li> +<li>Ability of tenants to pay their rents, <a href="#page95">95</a></li> +<li>Mr. Dillon in 1886, <a href="#page96">96</a></li> +<li>Mr. Parnell in 1885, <a href="#page97">97</a></li> +<li>Tenants in greater danger than landlords and agents, <a href="#page100">100</a></li> +<li>Feb. 29, <a href="#page100">100</a></li> +<li>Conference between evicted tenants and agent, <a href="#page100">100</a>-<a href="#page106">106</a></li> +<li>Castle and park, <a href="#page107">107</a></li> +<li>The League shopkeeper and tenant, <a href="#page108">108</a></li> +<li>Under police escort, <a href="#page109">109</a></li> +<li>Cost of ‘knocking’ a man, <a href="#page109">109</a></li> +<li>What constitutes a group, <a href="#page110">110</a></li> +<li>Favourite spots for administering a League oath, <a href="#page110">110</a></li> +<li>Disbursing treasurers, <a href="#page111">111</a></li> +<li>Change of venue, <a href="#page111">111</a></li> +<li>Bishop of Clonfert, <a href="#page112">112</a>-<a href="#page115">115</a></li> +<li>Bector of Portumna, <a href="#page115">115</a></li> +<li>Father Coen, <a href="#page116">116</a></li> +<li>Coercion on the part of the League, <a href="#page118">118</a>-<a href="#page121">121</a></li> +<li>Deposits in banks, <a href="#page120">120</a></li> +<li>Should landlords and shopkeepers be placed on one footing? <a href="#page121">121</a></li> +<li>New Castle of Portumna, <a href="#page122">122</a></li> +<li>Portumna Union, <a href="#page123">123</a>, <a href="#page124">124</a></li> +<li>Troubles of resident landlords, <a href="#page125">125</a>-<a href="#page127">127</a></li> +<li>Effects of the agitation on the people, <a href="#page124">124</a></li> +<li>War against property and private rights, <a href="#page127">127</a></li> +<li>Mr. Tener’s experiences in Cavan, <a href="#page127">127</a>-<a href="#page130">130</a></li> +<li>Similar cases in Leitrim, <a href="#page130">130</a>-<a href="#page132">132</a></li> +<li>Sale of rents and value of tenant-right, <a href="#page133">133</a>, <a href="#page134">134</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER X. +</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Dublin, March 1, <a href="#page135">135</a></li> +<li>Portumna to Woodford, <a href="#page135">135</a></li> +<li>Evictions of October 1887, <a href="#page135">135</a></li> +<li>Capture of Cloondadauv Castle, <a href="#page137">137</a>-<a href="#page141">141</a></li> +<li>A tenant and a priest, <a href="#page141">141</a>-<a href="#page144">144</a></li> +<li>Workmen’s wages in Massachusetts compared with the profits of a tenant farmer in Ireland, <a href="#page146">146</a></li> +<li>Loughrea, <a href="#page148">148</a>, <a href="#page149">149</a></li> +<li>Murder of Finlay, <a href="#page150">150</a>, <a href="#page151">151</a></li> +<li>The chrysoprase Lake of Loughrea, <a href="#page154">154</a></li> +<li>Lord Clanricarde’s estate office, acreage, and rental, <a href="#page155">155</a></li> +<li>Woodford acreage and rental, <a href="#page155">155</a>,<a href="#page156">156</a></li> +<li>Drive from Loughrea to Woodlawn, <a href="#page156">156</a>-<a href="#page160">160</a></li> +<li>A Galway “jarvey” on the situation, <a href="#page156">156</a>-<a href="#page159">159</a></li> +<li>Woodlawn and the Ashtown property, <a href="#page160">160</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER XI. +</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Borris, March 2, <a href="#page161">161</a></li> +<li>Mr. Kavanagh, <a href="#page161">161</a>-<a href="#page163">163</a></li> +<li>Borris House, <a href="#page163">163</a>-<a href="#page167">167</a></li> +<li>A living Banshee, <a href="#page165">165</a>, <a href="#page166">166</a></li> +<li>Land Corporation—its mode of working, <a href="#page167">167</a></li> +<li>Meeting in Dublin, 1885, <a href="#page168">168</a></li> +<li>Rev. Mr. Cantwell, <a href="#page168">168</a></li> +<li>Lord Lansdowne’s property at Luggacurren, <a href="#page169">169</a></li> +<li>Mr. Kavanagh’s career, <a href="#page170">170</a></li> +<li>Books and papers at Borris, <a href="#page171">171</a></li> +<li>Strongbow, <a href="#page172">172</a></li> +<li>“The five bloods,” <a href="#page172">172</a>, <a href="#page173">173</a></li> +<li>Genealogy of M‘Morroghs and Kavanaghs, <a href="#page173">173</a></li> +<li>March 4, <a href="#page174">174</a></li> +<li>Protestant service read every morning, <a href="#page174">174</a></li> +<li>A Catholic gentleman’s views, <a href="#page175">175</a></li> +<li>Relation of tenants to village despots, <a href="#page176">176</a></li> +<li>Would America make a State of Ireland? <a href="#page177">177</a></li> +<li>Land Acts since 1870, <a href="#page178">178</a></li> +<li>The O’Grady of Kilballyowen and his rental, <a href="#page179">179</a></li> +<li>Dispute with his tenants: its cause and effect, <a href="#page180">180</a></li> +<li>His circular to his tenantry, <a href="#page181">181</a>-<a href="#page186">186</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER XII. +</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Grenane House, March 5, <a href="#page187">187</a></li> +<li>Visit to Mr. Seigne, <a href="#page187">187</a></li> +<li>Beautiful situation of Grenane, <a href="#page189">189</a></li> +<li>A lady of the country, <a href="#page189">189</a></li> +<li>Mr. Seigne’s experience of the tenants, <a href="#page191">191</a>-<a href="#page194">194</a></li> +<li>The beauty of Woodstock, <a href="#page194">194</a>-<a href="#page198">198</a></li> +<li>The watch of Waterloo, <a href="#page197">197</a>-<a href="#page200">200</a></li> +<li>Curious discovery of stolen property, <a href="#page200">200</a></li> +<li>Dublin, March 6, <a href="#page200">200</a></li> +<li>State of deposits in the Savings Banks, <a href="#page200">200</a>-<a href="#page201">201</a></li> +<li>Interest on “Plan of Campaign” funds, <a href="#page202">202</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER XIII. +</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Dublin, March 8, <a href="#page203">203</a></li> +<li>Inch and the Coolgreany evictions, <a href="#page203">203</a></li> +<li>Sweet vale of Avoca, <a href="#page204">204</a></li> +<li>Dr. Dillon of Arklow, <a href="#page204">204</a></li> +<li>Fathers O’Neill and Dunphy, <a href="#page205">205</a>, <a href="#page206">206</a></li> +<li>Mr. Davitt watching the evictions, <a href="#page207">207</a></li> +<li>Lazy and thriftless tenants better off than before, <a href="#page209">209</a></li> +<li>A self-made committee, <a href="#page211">211</a></li> +<li>The Brooke estate, <a href="#page212">212</a></li> +<li>Sir Thomas Esmonde’s house, <a href="#page213">213</a></li> +<li>An Arklow dinner, <a href="#page214">214</a></li> +<li>Dr. Dillon in his study, <a href="#page215">215</a>-<a href="#page217">217</a></li> +<li>Visit to Glenart Castle, <a href="#page217">217</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER XIV. +</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Dublin, March 9, <a href="#page219">219</a></li> +<li>Athy, <a href="#page219">219</a></li> +<li>A political jarvey, <a href="#page220">220</a>-<a href="#page225">225</a></li> +<li>“Who is Mr. Gilhooly?” <a href="#page221">221</a></li> +<li>Lord Lansdowne’s offer refused through pressure of the League, <a href="#page226">226</a></li> +<li>Mr. Kilbride, M.P., and Mr. Dunne, <a href="#page226">226</a>-<a href="#page228">228</a></li> +<li>Lord Lansdowne’s estate in Kerry, <a href="#page228">228</a>-<a href="#page231">231</a></li> +<li>Plan of Campaign at Luggacurren, <a href="#page231">231</a>-<a href="#page236">236</a></li> +<li>Interview with Father Maher, <a href="#page236">236</a>-<a href="#page239">239</a></li> +<li>A “jarvey” on a J.P., <a href="#page240">240</a></li> +<li>“Railway amenities,” <a href="#page241">241</a></li> +<li>Dublin, March 10, <a href="#page242">242</a></li> +<li>Mr. Brooke, <a href="#page242">242</a>-<a href="#page248">248</a></li> +<li>Unreasonable tenants, <a href="#page243">243</a>, <a href="#page244">244</a></li> +<li>Size and rental of estate, <a href="#page246">246</a></li> +<li>Sub-commissioner’s reduction reversed, <a href="#page246">246</a>, <a href="#page247">247</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER XV. +</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Maryborough, <a href="#page249">249</a></li> +<li>Archbishop Croke, <a href="#page249">249</a></li> +<li>Interviews with labourers, <a href="#page251">251</a>-<a href="#page253">253</a></li> +<li>Views of a successful country teacher, <a href="#page254">254</a>, <a href="#page255">255</a></li> +<li>A veteran of the ’48, <a href="#page256">256</a>-<a href="#page260">260</a></li> +<li>Amount of wages to men, <a href="#page261">261</a></li> +<li>The farmers and labourers and lawyers, <a href="#page264">264</a>, <a href="#page265">265</a></li> +<li>Dublin, June 23, <a href="#page268">268</a></li> +<li>Mr. Hamilton Stubber and Mr. Robert Staples, <a href="#page268">268</a>-<a href="#page270">270</a></li> +<li>From Attanagh to Ballyragget, <a href="#page270">270</a></li> +<li>Case of “a little-good-for tenant,” <a href="#page271">271</a>, <a href="#page272">272</a></li> +<li>Mr. Kough and his tenants, <a href="#page273">273</a>-<a href="#page277">277</a></li> +<li>Mr. Richardson of Castle Comer, <a href="#page277">277</a></li> +<li>Position of the tenants, <a href="#page282">282</a></li> +<li>£70 a year for whisky, <a href="#page282">282</a></li> +<li>Kilkenny Castle, <a href="#page282">282</a></li> +<li>Mr. Rolleston of Delgany, <a href="#page283">283</a>-<a href="#page292">292</a></li> +<li>John O’Leary, <a href="#page285">285</a>-<a href="#page292">292</a></li> +<li>Boycotting private opinion, <a href="#page292">292</a></li> +<li>The League as now conducted, <a href="#page295">295</a></li> +<li>Poems and Ballads of “Young Ireland,” <a href="#page296">296</a></li> +<li>Law Courts and Trinity College, <a href="#page297">297</a></li> +<li>American Civil War, <a href="#page299">299</a>-<a href="#page302">302</a></li> +<li>Dublin, June 24, <a href="#page302">302</a></li> +<li>A dinner with officials, <a href="#page303">303</a>-<a href="#page306">306</a></li> +<li>A priest earns over £20,000, <a href="#page305">305</a>, <a href="#page306">306</a></li> +<li>“Crowner’s Quest Law,” <a href="#page309">309</a>-<a href="#page311">311</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER XVI. +</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Belfast, June 25, <a href="#page313">313</a></li> +<li>Ulster in Irish history, <a href="#page313">313</a></li> +<li>Moira, <a href="#page315">315</a></li> +<li>Views of an Ulsterman, <a href="#page315">315</a>, <a href="#page316">316</a></li> +<li>Beauty of Belfast, <a href="#page317">317</a>, <a href="#page318">318</a></li> +<li>Its buildings, <a href="#page319">319</a>-<a href="#page321">321</a></li> +<li>Dr. Hanna, <a href="#page322">322</a>-<a href="#page324">324</a></li> +<li>Dr. Kane, <a href="#page325">325</a></li> +<li>June 26, <a href="#page326">326</a></li> +<li>Sir John Preston, <a href="#page326">326</a>-<a href="#page328">328</a></li> +<li>Mr. Cameron, of Royal Irish Constabulary, <a href="#page328">328</a></li> +<li>Police parade, <a href="#page328">328</a></li> +<li>Belfast steamers, <a href="#page329">329</a></li> +<li>Scotland and America at work on Ireland, <a href="#page330">330</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">EPILOGUE, p. <a href="#page333">333</a>-<a href="#page349">349</a></p> + +<p class="i0"> +APPENDIX.<br /><br />NOTES— +</p><ul class="TOC"> + +<li><a href="#noteF">F.</a> The Moonlighters and Home Rule (pp. <a href="#page10">10</a>, <a href="#page38">38</a>), <a href="#page351">351</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteG">G.</a> The Ponsonby Property (pp. <a href="#page59">59</a>-<a href="#page66">66</a>), <a href="#page353">353</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteG2">G2.</a> The Glenbehy Eviction Fund (p. <a href="#page12">12</a>), <a href="#page360">360</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteG3">G3.</a> Home Rule and Protestantism (p. <a href="#page68">68</a>), <a href="#page362">362</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteH">H.</a> Tully and the Woodford Evictions (p. <a href="#page149">149</a>), <a href="#page364">364</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteH2">H2.</a> Boycotting the Dead (p. <a href="#page151">151</a>), <a href="#page370">370</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteI">I.</a> The Savings Banks (P.O.) (vol. i. p. <a href="#page39">39</a>, vol. ii. pp. <a href="#page5">5</a> and <a href="#page200">200</a>), <a href="#page371">371</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteK">K.</a> The Coolgreany Evictions (p. <a href="#page216">216</a>), <a href="#page372">372</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteL">L.</a> A Ducal Supper in 1711 (p. <a href="#page283">283</a>), <a href="#page374">374</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteM">M.</a> Letter from Mr. O’Leary (p. <a href="#page291">291</a>), <a href="#page375">375</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteN">N.</a> Boycotting Private Opinion (p. <a href="#page293">293</a>), <a href="#page377">377</a></li> +<li><a href="#noteO">O.</a> Boycotting by Crowner’s Quest Law (p. <a href="#page312">312</a>), <a href="#page382">382</a></li> +</ul> + + + +<h2><a name="page1" id="page1"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 1] +</span>CHAPTER VII.</h2> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">ROSSBEHY,<a id="footnotetag1" + name="footnotetag1"></a><a href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a> <i>Feb. 21.</i>—</span>We are here on the eve of battle! An “eviction” +is to be made to-morrow on the Glenbehy +<a href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a> estate of Mr. Winn, an uncle +of Lord Headley, so upon the invitation of Colonel Turner, who has come +to see that all is done decently and in order, I left Ennis with him at +7.40 A.M. for Limerick; the “city of the Liberator” for “the city of the +Broken Treaty.” There we breakfasted at the Artillery Barracks.</p> + +<p>The officers showed us there the new twelve-pounder gun with its +elaborately scientific machinery, its Scotch sight, and its four-mile +range. I compared notes about the Trafalgar Square riots of February +1886 with an Irish officer who happened to have <a name="page2" id="page2"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 2] +</span>been on the opposite +side of Pall Mall from me at the moment when the mob, getting out of the +hand of my socialistic friend Mr. Hyndman, and advancing towards St. +James’ Street and Piccadilly was broken by a skilful and very spirited +charge of the police. He gave a most humorous account of his own +sensations when he first came into contact with the multitude after +emerging from St. Paul’s, where, as he put it, he had left the people +“all singing away like devils.” But I found he quite agreed with me in +thinking that there was a visible nucleus of something like military +organisation in the mob of that day, which was overborne and, as it +were, smothered by the mere mob element before it came to trying +conclusions with the police.</p> + +<p>On our way to Limerick, Colonel Turner caught sight, at a station, of +Father Little, the parish priest of Six Mile Bridge, in County Clare, +and jumping out of the carriage invited him to get in and pursue his +journey with us, which he very politely did. Father Little is a tall +fine-looking man of a Saxon rather than a Celtic type, and I daresay +comes of the Cromwellian stock. He is a staunch and outspoken +Nationalist, and has been made rather prominent of late by his +championship of certain of his <a name="page3" id="page3"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 3] +</span>parishioners in their contest with their +landlord, Mr. H.V. D’Esterre, who lives chiefly at Bournemouth in +England, but owns 2833 acres in County Clare at Rosmanagher, valued at +£1625 a year. More than a year ago one of Father Little’s parishioners, +Mr. Frost, successfully resisted a large force of the constabulary bent +on executing a process of ejectment against him obtained by Mr. +D’Esterre.</p> + +<p>Frost’s holding was of 33 Irish, or, in round numbers, about 50 English, +acres, at a rental of £117, 10s., on which he had asked but had not +obtained an abatement. The Poor-Law valuation of the holding was £78, +and Frost estimated the value of his and his father’s improvements, +including the homestead and the offices, or in other words his +tenant-right, at £400. The authorities sent a stronger body of +constables and ejected Frost. But as soon as they had left the place +Frost came back with his family, on the 28th Jan. 1887, and reoccupied +it. Of course proceedings were taken against him immediately, and a +small war was waged over the Frost farm until the 5th of September last, +when an expedition was sent against it, and it was finally captured, and +Frost evicted with <a name="page4" id="page4"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 4] +</span>his family. Upon this last occasion Father Little +(who gave me a very temperate but vigorous account of the whole affair) +distinguished himself by a most ingenious and original attempt to “hold +the fort.” He chained himself to the main doorway, and stretching the +chains right and left secured them to two other doors. It was of this +refreshing touch of humour that I heard the other day at Abbeyleix as +happening not in Clare but in Kerry.</p> + +<p>Since his eviction Frost has been living, Father Little tells me, in a +wooden hut put up for him on the lands of a kinsman of the same name, +who is also a tenant of Mr. D’Esterre, and who has since been served by +his landlord with a notice of ejectment for arrears, although he had +paid up six months’ dues two months only before the service. Father +Little charged the landlord in this case with prevarication and other +evasive proceedings in the course of his negotiations with the tenants; +and Colonel Turner did not contest the statements made by him in support +of his contention that the Rosmanagher difficulty might have been +avoided had the tenants been more fairly and more considerately dealt +with. It is strong presumptive evidence against the landlord that a +kinsman, Mr. Robert <a name="page5" id="page5"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 5] +</span>D’Esterre, is one of the subscribers to a fund +raised by Father Little in aid of the evicted man Frost. On the other +hand, as illustrating the condition of the tenants, it is noteworthy +that the Post-Office Savings Bank’s deposits at Six-Mile Bridge rose +from £382, 17s. 10d. in 1880 to £934, 13s. 4d. in 1887. + +After breakfast we took a car and drove rapidly about the city for an +hour. With its noble river flowing through the very heart of the place, +and broadening soon into an estuary of the Atlantic, Limerick ought long +ago to have taken its place in the front rank of British ports dealing +with the New World. In the seventeenth century it was the fourth city of +Ireland, Boate putting it then next after Dublin, Galway, and Waterford. +Belfast at that time, he describes as a place hardly comparable “to a +small market-town in England.” To-day Limerick has a population of some +forty thousand, and Belfast a population of more than two hundred +thousand souls. This change cannot be attributed solely, if at all, to +the “Protestant ascendency,” nor yet to the alleged superiority of the +Northern over the Southern Irish in energy and thrift, For in the +seventeenth century Limerick <a name="page6" id="page6"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 6] +</span>was more important than Cork, whereas it +had so far fallen behind its Southern competitor in the eighteenth +century that it contained in 1781 but 3859 houses, while Cork contained +5295. To-day its population is about half as large as that of Cork. It +is a very well built city, its main thoroughfare, George Street, being +at least a mile in length, and a picturesque city also, thanks to the +island site of its most ancient quarter, the English Town, and to the +hills of Clare and Killaloe, which close the prospect of the surrounding +country. But the streets, though many of them are handsome, have a +neglected look, as have also the quays and bridges. One of my +companions, to whom I spoke of this, replied, “if they look neglected, +it’s because they are neglected. Politics are the death of the place, +and the life of its publics.”<a id="footnotetag2" + name="footnotetag2"></a><a href="#footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a></p> + +<p>As we approached the shores of the Atlantic from Limerick, the scenery +became very grand and <a name="page7" id="page7"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 7] +</span>beautiful. On the right of the railway the country +rolled and undulated away towards the Stacks, amid the spurs and slopes +of which, in the wood of Clonlish, Sanders, the Nuncio sent over to +organise Catholic Ireland against Elizabeth, miserably perished of want +and disease six years before the advent of the great Armada. To the +south-west rose the grand outlines of the Macgillicuddy’s Reeks, the +highest points, I believe, in the South of Ireland. We established +ourselves at the County Kerry Club on our arrival in Tralee, which I +found to be a brisk prosperous-looking town, and quite well built. A +Nationalist member once gave me a gloomy notion of Tralee, by telling +me, when I asked him whether he looked forward with longing to a seat in +the Parliament of Ireland, that “when he was in Dublin now he always +thought of London, just as when he used to be in Tralee he always +thought of Dublin.” But he did less than justice to the town upon the +Lee. We left it at half-past <a name="page8" id="page8"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 8] +</span>four in the train for Killorglin. The +little station there was full of policemen and soldiers, and knots of +country people stood about the platform discussing the morrow. There had +been some notion that the car-drivers at Killorglin might “boycott” the +authorities. But they were only anxious to turn an honest penny by +bringing us on to this lonely but extremely neat and comfortable +hostelry in the hills.</p> + +<p>We left the Sheriff and the escort to find their way as best they could +after us.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Shee, the landlady here, ushered us into a very pretty room hung +with little landscapes of the country, and made cheery by a roaring +fire. Two or three officers of the soldiers sent on here to prevent any +serious uproar to-morrow dined with us.</p> + +<p>The constabulary are in force, but in great good humour. They have no +belief that there will be any trouble, though all sorts of wild tales +were flying about Tralee before we left, of English members of +Parliament coming down to denounce the “Coercion” law, and of risings in +the hills, and I know not what besides. The agent of the Winn property, +or of Mr. Head of Reigate in Surrey, the mortgagee of the estate, who +holds a power of attorney from Mr. Winn, is here, a quiet, intelligent +<a name="page9" id="page9"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 9] +</span>young man, who has given me the case in a nut-shell.</p> + +<p>The tenant to be evicted, James Griffin, is the son and heir of one Mrs. +Griffin, who on the 5th of April 1854 took a lease of the lands known as +West Lettur from the then Lord Headley and the Hon. R. Winn, at the +annual rent of £32, 10s. This rent has since been reduced by a judicial +process to £26. In 1883 James Griffin, who was then, as he is now, an +active member of the local branch of the National League, and who was +imprisoned under Mr. Gladstone’s Act of 1881 as a “suspect,” was +evicted, being then several years in arrears. He re-entered unlawfully +immediately afterwards, and has remained in West Lettur unlawfully ever +since, actively deterring and discouraging other tenants from paying +their rents. He took a great part in promoting the refusal to pay which +led to the famous evictions of last year. As to these, it seems the +tenants had agreed, in 1886, to accept a proposition from Mr. Head, +remitting four-fifths of all their arrears upon payment of one year’s +rent and costs. Mr. Sheehan, M.P., a hotel-keeper in Killarney, +intervened, advising the tenants that the Dublin Parliament would soon +be established, and would abolish “landlordism,” whereupon they <a name="page10" id="page10"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 10]</span>refused +to keep their agreement.<a id="footnotetag3" + name="footnotetag3"></a><a href="#footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a> Sir Redvers Buller, who then filled the post +now held by Sir West Ridgway, seeing this alarming deadlock, urged Mr. +Head to go further, and offer to take a half-year’s rent and costs. If +the tenants refused this Sir Redvers advised Mr. Head to destroy all +houses occupied by mere trespassers, such as Griffin, who, if they could +hold a place for twelve years, would acquire a title under the Statute +of Limitations. A negotiation conducted by Sir Redvers and Father +Quilter, P.P., followed, and Father Quilter, for the tenants, finally, +in writing, accepted Mr. Head’s offer, under which, by the payment of +£865, they would be rid of a legal liability for £6177. The League again +intervened with bribes and threats, and Father Quilter found himself +obliged to write to Colonel Turner a letter in which he said, “Only +seventeen of the seventy tenants have sent on their rents to Mr. Roe +(the agent). Though promising that they would accept the terms, they +have withdrawn at the last moment from fulfilment.... I shall never +again during my time in Glenbehy <a name="page11" id="page11"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 11] +</span>interfere between a landlord and his +tenants. I have poor slaves who will not keep their word. Now let Mr. +Roe or any other agent in future deal with Glenbeighans as he likes.” +The farms lie at a distance even from this inn, and very far therefore +from Killorglin, and the agent, knowing that the tenants would be +encouraged by Griffin and by Mr. Harrington, M.P., and others, to come +back into their holdings as soon as the officers withdrew, ordered the +woodwork of several cottages to be burned in order to prevent this. This +burning of the cottages, which were the lawful property of the +mortgagee, made a great figure in the newspaper reports, and +“scandalised the civilised world.” The present agent thinks it was +impolitic on that account, but he has no doubt it was a good thing +financially for the evicted tenants. “You will see the shells of the +cottages to-morrow,” he said, “and you will judge for yourself what they +were worth.” But the sympathy excited by the illustrations of the cruel +conflagration and the heartrending descriptions of the reporters, +resulted in a very handsome subscription for the benefit of the tenants +of Glenbehy. General Sir William Butler, whose name came so prominently +before the public in connection with <a name="page12" id="page12"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 12] +</span>his failure to appear and give +evidence in a recent <i>cause célèbre</i>, and whose brother is a Resident +Magistrate in Kerry, was one of the subscribers. The fund thus raised +has been since administered by two trustees, Father Quilter, P.P., and +Mr. Shee, a son of our brisk little landlady here, who maintain out of +it very comfortably the evicted tenants. Not long ago a man in Tralee +tried to bribe the agent into having him evicted, that he might make a +claim on this fund! At Killorglin the Post-Office Savings Bank deposits, +which stood at £282, 15s. 9d. in 1880, rose in 1887 to £1299, 2s. 6d. +James Griffin, despite, or because, of the two evictions through which +he has passed, is very well off. He owns a very good horse and cart, and +seven or eight head of cattle. His arrears now amount to about £240, and +on being urged yesterday to make a proposition which might avoid an +eviction, he gravely offered to pay £8 of the current half-year’s rent +in cash, and the remaining £5 in June, the landlord taking on himself +all the costs and giving him a clean receipt! This liberal proposition +was declined. The zeal of her son in behalf of the evicted tenants does +not seem to affect the amiable anxiety of our trim and energetic hostess +to make things agreeable here to the minions of the alien <a name="page13" id="page13"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 13] +</span>despotism. The +officers both of the police and of the military appear to be on the best +of terms with the whole household, and everything is going as merrily as +marriage bells on this eve of an eviction.</p> + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">TRALEE, <i>Wednesday evening, Feb. 22.</i>—</span>We rose early at Mrs. Shee’s, +made a good breakfast, and set out for the scene of the day’s work. It +was a glorious morning for Washington’s birthday, and I could not help +imagining the amazement with which that stern old Virginian landlord +would have regarded the elaborate preparations thought necessary here in +Ireland in the year of our Lord 1888, to eject a tenant who owes two +hundred and forty pounds of arrears on a holding at twenty-six pounds a +year, and offers to settle the little unpleasantness by paying thirteen +pounds in two instalments!</p> + +<p>We had a five miles’ march of it through a singularly wild and +picturesque region, the hills which lead up to the Macgillicuddy’s Reeks +on our left, and on the right the lower hills trending to the salt water +of Dingle Bay. Our start had been delayed by the non-appearance of the +Sheriff, in aid of whom all this parade of power was made; but it turned +out afterwards that he had gone on without stopping to let Colonel +Turner know it.</p> + +<p><a name="page14" id="page14"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 14] +</span>The air was so bracing and the scenery so fine that we walked most of +the way. Two or three cars drove past us, the police and the troops +making way for them very civilly, though some of the officers thought +they were taking some Nationalist leaders and some English +“sympathisers” to Glenbehy. One of the officers, when I commented upon +this, told me they never had much trouble with the Irish members. “Some +of them,” he said, “talk more than is necessary, and flourish about; but +they have sense enough to let us go about our work without foolishly +trying to bother us. The English are not always like that.” And he then +told me a story of a scene in which an English M.P., we will call Mr. +Gargoyle, was a conspicuous actor. Mr. Gargoyle being present either at +an eviction or a prohibited meeting, I didn’t note which, with two or +three Irish members, all of them were politely requested to step on one +side and let the police march past. The Irish members touched their hats +in return to the salute of the officer, and drew to one side of the +road. But Mr. Gargoyle defiantly planted himself in the middle of the +road. The police, marching four abreast, hesitated for a moment, and +then suddenly dividing into two columns <a name="page15" id="page15"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 15] +</span>marched on. The right-hand man +of the first double file, as he went by, just touched the M.P. with his +shoulder, and thereby sent him up against the left-hand man of the +corresponding double file, who promptly returned the attention. And in +this manner the distinguished visitor went gyrating through the whole +length of the column, to emerge at the end of it breathless, hatless, +and bewildered, to the intense and ill-suppressed delight of his Irish +colleagues.</p> + +<p>Our hostess’s son, the trustee of the Eviction Fund, was on one of the +cars which passed us, with two or three companions, who proved to be +“gentlemen of the Press.” We passed a number of cottages and some larger +houses on the way, the inmates of which seemed to be minding their own +business and taking but a slight interest in the great event of the day. +We made a little detour at one of the finest points on the road to visit +“Winn’s Folly,” a modern mediæval castle of considerable size, upon a +most enchanting site, with noble views on every side, quite impossible +to be seen through its narrow loopholed and latticed windows. The castle +is extremely well built, of a fine stone from the neighbourhood, and +with a very small expenditure might <a name="page16" id="page16"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 16] +</span>be made immediately habitable. But +no one has ever lived in it. It has only been occupied as a temporary +barrack by the police when sent here, and the largest rooms are now +littered with straw for the use of the force. At the beginning of the +century, and for many years afterwards, Lord and Lady Headley lived on +the estate, and kept a liberal house. Their residence was on a fine +point running out into the bay, but, I am told, the sea has now invaded +it, and eaten it away. In 1809 the acreage of this Glenbehy property was +8915 Irish acres or 14,442 English acres, set down under Bath’s +valuation at £2299, 17s. 6d. Between 1830 and 1860 the rental averaged +£5000 a year, and between these years £17,898, 14s. 5d. were expended by +the landlord in improvements upon the property. This castle, which we +visited, must have involved since then an outlay of at least £10,000 in +the place.</p> + +<p>The present Lord Headley, only a year or two ago, went through the +Bankruptcy Court, and the Hon. Rowland Winn, his uncle, the titular +owner of Glenbehy, is set down among the Irish landlords as owning +13,932 Irish acres at a rental of £1382.</p> + +<p>After we passed the castle we began to hear the blowing of rude horns +from time to time on the <a name="page17" id="page17"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 17] +</span>distant hills. These were signals to the people +of our approach, and gave quite the air of an invasion to our +expedition. We passed the burned cottages of last year just before +reaching Mr. Griffin’s house at West Lettur. They were certainly not +large cottages, and I saw but three of them. We found the Sheriff at +West Lettur. The police and the soldiers drew a cordon around the place, +within which no admittance was to be had except on business; and the +myrmidons of the law going into the house with the agent held a final +conference with the tenant, of which nothing came but a renewal of his +previous offer. Then the work of eviction began. There was no attempt at +a resistance, and but for the martial aspect of the forces, and an +occasional blast of a horn from the hills, or the curious noises made +from time to time by a small concourse of people, chiefly women, +assembled on the slope of an adjoining tenancy, the proceedings were as +dull as a parish meeting. What most struck me about the affair was the +patience and good-nature of the officers. In the two hours and a half +which we spent at West Lettur a New York Sheriff’s deputies would have +put fifty tenants with all their bags and baggage out of as many houses <a name="page18" id="page18"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 18] +</span> +into the street. In fact it is very likely that at least that number of +New York tenants were actually so ousted from their houses during this +very time.</p> + +<p>The evicted Mr. Griffin was a stout, stalwart man of middle age, +comfortably dressed, with the air rather of a citizen than of a farmer, +who took the whole thing most coolly, as did also his women-kind. All of +them were well dressed, and they superintended the removal and piling up +of their household goods as composedly as if they were simply moving out +of one house into another. The house itself was a large comfortable +house of the country, and it was amply furnished.</p> + +<p>I commented on Griffin’s indifference to the bailiff, a quiet, +good-natured man.</p> + +<p>“Oh, he’s quite familiar,” was the reply; “it’s the third time he’s been +evicted! I believe’s going to America.”</p> + +<p>“Oh! he will do very well,” said a gentleman who had joined the +expedition like myself to see the scene. “He is a shrewd chap, and not +troubled by bashfulness. He sat on a Board of Guardians with a man I +knew four years ago, and one day he read out his own name, ‘James +Griffin,’ among a list of applicants for relief at Cahirciveen. The <a name="page19" id="page19"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 19] +</span> +chairman looked up, and said, ‘Surely that is not your name you are +reading, is it?’ ‘It is, indeed,’ replied Griffin, ‘and I am as much in +need of relief as any one!’ Perhaps you’ll be surprised to hear he +didn’t get it. This is a good holding he had, and he used to do pretty +well with it—not in his mother’s time only of the flush prices, but in +his own. It was the going to Kilmainham that spoiled him.”</p> + +<p>“How did that spoil him?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, it made a great man of him, being locked up. He was too well +treated there. He got a liking for sherry and bitters, and he’s never +been able to make his dinner since without a nip of them. Mrs. Shee +knows that well.”</p> + +<p>To make an eviction complete and legal here, everything belonging to the +tenant, and every live creature must be taken out of the house. A cat +may save a house as a cat may save a derelict ship. Then the Sheriff +must “walk” over the whole holding. All this takes time. There was an +unobtrusive search for arms too going on all the time. Three ramrods +were found hidden in a straw-bed—two of which showed signs of recent +use. But the guns had vanished. An officer told me that not long ago two +revolvers were found in a corner of the <a name="page20" id="page20"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 20] +</span>thatch of a house; but the +cartridges for them were only some time afterwards discovered neatly +packed away in the top of a bedroom wall. It is not the ownership of +these arms, it is the careful concealment of them which indicates +sinister intent. One of the constables brought out three “Moonlighters’ +swords” found hidden away in the house. One of these Colonel Turner +showed me. It was a reversal of the Scriptural injunction, being a +ploughshare beaten into a weapon, and a very nasty weapon of offence, +one end of it sharpened for an ugly thrust, the other fashioned into +quite a fair grip. While I was examining this trophy there was a stir, +and presently two of the gentlemen who had passed us on Mr. Shee’s car +came rather suddenly out of the house in company with two or three +constables.</p> + +<p>They were representatives, they said, of the Press, and as such desired +to be allowed to remain. Colonel Turner replied that this could not be, +and, in fact, no one had been suffered to enter the house except the +law-officers, the agent, and the constables. So the representatives of +the Press were obliged to pass outside of the lines, one of the +constables declaring that they had got into the house through a hole in +the back wall!</p> + +<p><a name="page21" id="page21"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 21] +</span>Shortly after this incident there arose a considerable noise of groaning +and shouting from the hill-side beyond the highway, and presently a +number of people, women and children predominating, appeared coming down +towards the precincts of the house. They were following a person in a +clerical dress, who proved to be Father Quilter, the parish priest, who +had denounced his people to Colonel Turner as “poor slaves” of the +League! A colloquy followed between Father Quilter and the policemen of +the cordon. This was brought to a close by Mr. Roche, the resident +magistrate, who went forward, and finding that Father Quilter wished to +pass the cordon, politely but firmly informed him that this could not be +done. “Not if I am the bearer of a telegram for the lawyer?” asked +Father Quilter, in a loud and not entirely amiable tone. “Not on any +terms whatever,” responded the magistrate. Father Quilter still +maintaining his ground, the women crowded in around and behind him, the +men bringing up the rear at a respectable distance, and the small boys +shouting loudly. For a moment faint hopes arose within me that I was +about to witness one of the .exciting scenes of which I have more than +once <a name="page22" id="page22"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 22] +</span>read. But only for a moment. The magistrate ordered the police to +advance. As they drew near the wall with an evident intention of going +over it into the highway, Father Quilter and the women fell back, the +boys and men retreated up the opposite hill, and the brief battle of +Glenbehy was over.</p> + +<p>A small messenger bearing a telegram then emerged from the crowd, and +showing his telegram, was permitted to pass. Father Quilter, in a loud +voice, commented upon this, crying out, “See now your consistency! You +said no one should pass, and you let the messenger come in!” To this +sally no reply was returned. After a little the priest, followed by most +of the people, went up the hill to the holding of another tenant, and +there, as the police came in and reported, held a meeting. From time to +time cries were heard in the distance, and ever and anon the blast of a +horn came from some outlying hill.</p> + +<p>But no notice was taken of these things by the police, and when the +tedious formalities of the law had all been gone through with, a squad +of men were put in charge of the house and the holding, the rest of the +army re-formed for the march back, our cars came up, and we left West +Lettur. <a name="page23" id="page23"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 23] +</span>Seeing a number of men come down the hill, as the column +prepared to move, Mr. Roche, making his voice tremendous, after the +fashion of a Greek chorus, commanded the police to arrest and handcuff +any riotous person making provocative noises. This had the desired +effect, and the march back began in silence. When the column was fairly +in the road, “boos” and groans went up from knots of men higher up the +hill, but no heed was taken of these, and no further incident occurred. +I shall be curious to see whether the story of this affair can possibly +be worked up into a thrilling narrative.</p> + +<p>We lunched at Mrs. Shee’s, where no sort of curiosity was manifested +about the proceedings at West Lettur, and I came back here with Colonel +Turner by another road, which led us past one of the loveliest lakes I +have ever seen—Lough Caragh. Less known to fame than the much larger +Lake of Killarney, it is in its way quite worthy of comparison with any +of the lesser lakes of Europe. It is not indeed set in a coronal of +mountains like Orta, but its shores are well wooded, picturesque, and +enlivened by charming seats—now, for the most part, alas!--abandoned by +their owners. We had a pleasant club dinner here this evening, after +which <a name="page24" id="page24"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 24] +</span>came in to see me Mr. Hussey, to whom I had sent a letter from Mr. +Froude. Few men, I imagine, know this whole region better than Mr. +Hussey. Some gentlemen of the country joined in the conversation, and +curious stories were told of the difficulty of getting evidence in +criminal cases. What Froude says of the effect of the prohibitive and +protection policy in Ireland upon the morals of the people as to +smuggling must be said, I fear, of the effect of the Penal Laws against +Catholics upon their morals as to perjury. It is not surprising that the +peasants should have been educated into the state of mind of the +Irishman in the old American story, who, being solicited to promise his +vote when he landed in New York, asked whether the party which sought it +was for the Government or against it. Against it, he was told, “Then +begorra you shall have my vote, for I’m agin the Government whatever it +is.” One shocking case was told of a notorious and terrible murder here +in Kerry. An old man and his son, so poor that they lay naked in their +beds, were taken out and shot by a party of Moonlighters for breaking a +boycott. They were left for dead, and their bodies thrown upon a +dunghill. The boy, however, was <a name="page25" id="page25"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 25] +</span>still alive when they were found, and it +was thought he might recover. The magistrates questioned him as to his +knowledge of the murderers. The boy’s mother stood behind the +magistrate, and when the question was put, held up her finger in a +warning manner at the poor lad. She didn’t wish him to “peach,” as, if +he lived, the friends of the murderers would make it impossible for them +to keep their holding and live on it. The lad lied, and died with the +lie on his lips. Who shall sit in judgment on that wretched mother and +her son? But what rule can possibly be too stern to crush out the +terrorism which makes such things possible?</p> + +<p>And what right have Englishmen to expect their dominion to stand in +Ireland when their party leaders for party ends shake hands with men who +wink at and use this terrorism? It has so wrought upon the population +here, that in another case, in which the truth needed by justice and the +fears of a poor family trembling for their substance and their lives +came thus into collision, an Irish Judge did not hesitate to warn the +jury against allowing themselves to be influenced by “the usual family +lie”!</p> + +<p>A magistrate told us a curious story, which <a name="page26" id="page26"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 26] +</span>recalls a case noted by Sir +Walter Scott, about the detection of a murderer, who lay long in wait +for a certain police sergeant, obnoxious to the “Moonlighters,” and +finally shot him dead in the public street of Loughrea, after dark on a +rainy night, as he was returning from the Post-Office on one side of the +street to the Police Barracks on the other. The town and the +neighbouring country were all agog about the matter, but no trace could +be got until the Dublin detectives came down three days after the +murder. It had rained more or less every one of these days, and the +pools of water were still standing in the street, as on the night of the +murder. One of the Dublin officers closely examining the highway saw a +heavy footprint in the coarse mud at the bottom of one of these pools. +He had the water drawn off, and made out clearly, from the print in the +mud, that the brogan worn by the foot which made it had a broken +sole-piece turned over under the foot. By this the murderer was +eventually traced, captured, tried, and found guilty.</p> + +<p>Mr. Morphy, I find, is coming down from Dublin to conduct the +prosecution in the case of the Crown against the murderers of +Fitzmaurice, the old man, <a name="page27" id="page27"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 27] +</span>so brutally slain the other day near Lixnaw, +in the presence of his daughter, for taking and farming a farm given up +by his thriftless brother. “He will find,” said one of the company, +“the mischief done in this instance also by prematurely pressing for +evidence. The girl Honora, who saw her father murdered, never ought to +have been subjected to any inquiry at first by any one, least of all by +the local priest. Her first thought inevitably was that if she intimated +who the men were, they would be screened, and she would suffer. Now she +is recovering her self-possession and coming round, and she will tell +the truth.”</p> + +<p>“Meanwhile,” said a magistrate, “the girl and her family are all +‘boycotted,’ and that, mark you, by the priest, as well as by the +people. The girl’s life would be in peril were not these scoundrels +cowards as well as bullies. Two staunch policemen—Irishmen and +Catholics both of them—are in constant attendance, with orders to +prevent any one from trying to intimidate or to tamper with her. A +police hut is putting up close to the Fitzmaurice house. The Nationalist +papers haven’t a word to say for this poor girl or her murdered father. +But they are always putting in some sly word in behalf <a name="page28" id="page28"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 28] +</span>of Moriarty and +Hayes, the men accused of the murder.”</p> + +<p>“Furthermore,” said another guest, “these two men are regularly supplied +while in prison with special meals by Mrs. Tangney. Who foots the bills? +That is what she won’t tell, nor has the Head-Constable so far been able +accurately to ascertain. All we know is that the friends of the +prisoners haven’t the money to do it.”</p> + +<p>Late in the evening came in a tall fine-looking Kerry squire, who told +us, <i>à propos</i> of the Fitzmaurice murder, that only a day or two ago a +very decent tenant of his, who had taken over a holding from a +disreputable kinsman, intending to manage it for the benefit of this +kinsman’s family, came to him and said he must give it up, as the +Moonlighters had threatened him if he continued to hold it.</p> + +<p>A man of substance in Tralee gave me some startling facts as to the +local administration here. In Tralee Union, he said, there were in 1879 +eighty-seven persons receiving outdoor relief, at a cost to the Union of +£30, 17s. 11d., being an average per head of 7s. 1d., and 1879 was a +very bad year, the worst since the great famine year, 1847. A +Nationalist Board was elected in 1880, <a name="page29" id="page29"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 29] +</span>and a Nationalist chairman in +1884. 1884 was a very good year, but in that year no fewer than 3434 +persons received outdoor relief, at a cost of £2534, 13s. 10d., making +an average per head of 14s. 9d.! And at the present time £5000 nominal +worth of dishonoured cheques of the authorities were flying all over the +county!</p> + +<p>“On whom,” I asked, “does the burden fall of these levies and +extravagances?”</p> + +<p>“On the landlords, not on the tenants,” he promptly replied. “The +landlord pays the whole of the rates on all holdings of less than £4 a +year, and on all land which is either really or technically in his own +possession. He also pays one-half of the rates on all the rest of his +property.”</p> + +<p>“Then, in a case like that of Griffin’s, evicted at Glenbehy, with +arrears going back to 1883, who would pay the rates?”</p> + +<p>“The landlord of course!”<a id="footnotetag4" + name="footnotetag4"></a><a href="#footnote4"><sup>4</sup></a></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page30" id="page30"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 30] +</span>CHAPTER VIII.</h2> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">CORK, <i>Thursday, Feb. 23d.</i>—</span>We left Tralee this morning. It was +difficult to recognise the events yesterday witnessed by us at Glenbehy +in the accounts which we read of them to-day when we got the newspapers.</p> + +<p>As these accounts are obviously intended to be read, not in Ireland, +where nobody seems to take the least interest in Irish affairs beyond +his own bailiwick, but in England and America, it is only natural, I +suppose, that they should be coloured to suit the taste of the market +for which they are destined. It is astonishing how little interest the +people generally show in the newspapers. The Irish make good journalists +as they make good soldiers; but most of the journalists who now +represent Irish constituencies at Westminster find their chief field of +activity, I am told, not in Irish but in British or in American +journals. Mr. Roche, R.M., who travelled with us as far as Castle +Island, where we <a name="page31" id="page31"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 31] +</span>left him, was much less moved by the grotesque accounts +given in the local journals of his conduct yesterday than by Mr. +Gladstone’s “retractation” of the extraordinary attack which he made the +other day upon Mr. Roche himself, and four other magistrates by name.</p> + +<p>“The retractation aggravates the attack,” he said.</p> + +<p>When one sees what a magistrate now represents in Ireland, it certainly +is not easy to reconcile an inconsiderate attack upon the character and +conduct of such an officer with the most elementary ideas of good +citizenship.</p> + +<p>After Mr. Roche left us, a gentleman in the carriage, who is interested +in some Castle Island property, told us that nothing could be worse than +the state of that region. Open defiance of the moral authority of the +clergy is as rife there, he says, as open defiance of the civil +authorities. The church was not long ago broken into, and the sacred +vestments were defiled; and, but the other day, a young girl of the +place came to a magistrate and asked him to give her a summons against +the parish priest “for assaulting her.” The magistrate, a Protestant, +but a personal friend of the priest, esteeming him for his fidelity to +his duties, asked the girl what <a name="page32" id="page32"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 32] +</span>on earth she meant. She proceeded with +perfect coolness to say that the priest had impertinently interfered +with her, “assaulted her,” and told her to “go home,” when he found her +sitting in a lonely part of the road with her young man, rather late at +night! For this, the girl, professing to be a Catholic, actually wanted +the Protestant magistrate to have her parish priest brought into his +court! He told the girl plainly what he thought of her conduct, +whereupon she went away, very angry, and vowing vengeance both against +the priest and against him.</p> + +<p>This same gentleman said that at the Bodyke evictions, of which so much +has been heard, the girls and women swarmed about the police using +language so revoltingly obscene that the policemen blushed—such +language, he said, as was never heard from decent Irishwomen in the days +of his youth.</p> + +<p>Of this business of evictions, he said, the greatest imaginable +misrepresentations are made in the press and by public speakers. “You +have just seen one eviction yourself,” he said, “and you can judge for +yourself whether that can be truly described in Mr. Gladstone’s language +as a ‘sentence of death.’ The people that were put out of these burned +houses <a name="page33" id="page33"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 33] +</span>you saw, houses that never would have needed to be burned, had +Harrington and the other Leaguers allowed the people to keep their +pledges given Sir Redvers Buller, those very people are better off now +than they were before they were evicted, in so far as this, that they +get their food and drink and shelter without working for it, and I’m +sorry to say that the Government and the League, between them, have been +soliciting half of Ireland for the last six or eight years to think that +sort of thing a heaven upon earth. An eviction in Ireland in these days +generally means just this, that the fight between a landlord and the +League has come to a head. If the tenant wants to be rid of his holding, +or if he is more afraid of the League than of the law, why, out he goes, +and then he is a victim of heartless oppression; but if he is +well-to-do, and if he thinks he will be protected, he takes the eviction +proceedings just for a notice to stop palavering and make a settlement, +and a settlement is made. The ordinary Irish tenant don’t think anything +more of an eviction than Irish gentlemen used to think of a duel; but +you can never get English people to understand the one any more than the +other!”</p> + +<p><a name="page34" id="page34"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 34] +</span>The fine broad streets which Cork owes to the filling up and bridging +over of the canals which in the last century made her a kind of Irish +Venice, give the city a comely and even stately aspect. But they are not +much better kept and looked after than the streets of New York. And they +are certainly less busy and animated than when I last was here, five +years ago. All the canals, however, are not filled up or bridged over. +From my windows, in a neat comfortable little private hotel on +Morrison’s Quay, I look down upon the deck of a small barque, moored +well up among the houses. The hospitable and dignified County Club is +within two minutes’ walk of my hostelry, and the equally hospitable and +more bustling City Club, but a little farther off, at the end of the +South Mall. At luncheon to-day a gentleman who was at Kilkenny with Mr. +Gladstone on the occasion of his visit to that city told me a story too +good to be lost. The party were eight in number, and on their return to +Abbeyleix they naturally looked out for an empty railway carriage. The +train was rather full, but in one compartment my informant descried a +dignitary, whom he knew, of the Protestant Church of Ireland, its only +occupant. <a name="page35" id="page35"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 35] +</span>He went up and saluted the Dean, and, pointing to his +companions, asked if he would object to changing his place in the train, +which would give them a compartment to themselves. The Dean courteously, +and indeed briskly, assented, when he saw that Mr. Gladstone was one of +the party.</p> + +<p>After the train moved off, Mr. Gladstone said, “Was not that gentleman +who so kindly vacated his place for us a clergyman?”</p> + +<p>“Yes.” “I hope he won’t think I have disestablished him again!”</p> + +<p>At the next station, my informant getting out for a moment to thank the +Dean again for his civility, and chat with him, repeated Mr. Gladstone’s +remark.</p> + +<p>“Oh!” said the Dean; “you may tell him I don’t mind his disestablishing +me again; for he didn’t disendow me; he didn’t confiscate my ticket!”</p> + +<p>With this gentleman was another from Kerry, who tells me there is a +distinct change for the better already visible in that county, which he +attributes to the steady action of the Dublin authorities in enforcing +the law.</p> + +<p>“The League Courts,” he said, “are ceasing to be the terror they used to +be.”</p> + +<p>I asked what he meant by the “League Courts,” <a name="page36" id="page36"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 36] +</span>when he expressed his +astonishment at my not knowing that it was the practice of the League to +hold regular Courts, before which the tenants are summoned, as if by a +process of the law, to explain their conduct, when they are charged with +paying their rents without the permission of the Local League. In his +part of Kerry, he tells me, these Courts used not very long ago to sit +regularly every Sunday. The idea, he says, is as old as the time of the +United Irishmen, who used to terrorise the country just in the same way. +A man whom he named, a blacksmith, acted as a kind of “Law Lord,” and to +him the chairmen of the different local “Courts” used to refer cases +heard before them!<a id="footnotetag5" + name="footnotetag5"></a><a href="#footnote5"><sup>5</sup></a></p> + +<p>All this was testified to openly two years ago, before Lord Cowper’s +Commission, but no decisive action has ever been taken by the Government +to put a stop to the scandal, and relieve the tenants from this open +tyranny. These Courts enforced, and still enforce, their decrees by +various forms of outrage, <a name="page37" id="page37"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 37] +</span>ranging “from the boycott,” in its simplest +forms up to direct outrages upon property and the person.</p> + +<p>“This dual Government business,” he said, “can only end in a duel +between the two Governments, and it must be a duel to the death of one +or the other.”</p> + +<p>To-night at dinner I had a most interesting conversation with Mr. +Colomb, Assistant Inspector-General of the Constabulary, who is here +engaged with Mr. Cameron of Belfast, and Colonel Turner, in +investigating the affair at Mitchelstown. Mr. Colomb was at Killarney at +the time of the Fenian rising under “General O’Connor” in 1867—a rising +which was undoubtedly an indirect consequence of our own Civil War in +America. Warning came to two magistrates, of impending trouble from +Cahirciveen. Upon this Mr. Colomb immediately ordered the arrest of all +passengers to arrive that day at Killarney by the “stage-car” from that +place. When the car came in at night, it brought only one person—“an +awful-looking ruffian he was,” said Mr. Colomb, “whom, by his +square-toed shoes, we knew to be just arrived from your side of the +water.”</p> + +<p>He was examined, and said he was a commercial traveller, and that he had +only one letter about him, a business letter, addressed to “J. D. +Sheehan.”</p> + +<p><a name="page38" id="page38"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 38] +</span>“Have you any objection to show us that letter?”</p> + +<p>“Certainly not,” he replied very coolly, and, taking it out of his +pocket, he walked toward a table on which stood a candle, as if to read +it. A gentleman who was closely watching him, caught him by the wrist, +just as he was putting the letter to the flame, and saved it. It was +addressed to J. D. Sheehan, Esq., Killarney [Present], and ran as +follows:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p class="dateline"> “<i>Feb. 12th, Morning</i>.</p> + +<p> “MY DEAR SHEEHAN,—I have the honour to introduce to you Captain + Mortimer Moriarty. He will be of great assistance to you, and I + have told him all that is to be done until I get to your place. The + Private <i>Spys</i> are very active this morning. Unless they smell a + rat all will be done without any trouble.</p> + +<p> “Success to you. Hoping to meet soon,—Yours as ever.</p> + +<p class="signed"> “(Signed) JOHN J. O’CONNOR.”<a id="footnotetag6" + name="footnotetag6"></a><a href="#footnote6"><sup>6</sup></a></p> +</blockquote> +<p><a name="page39" id="page39"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 39] +</span>Despatches were at once sent off to the authorities at different points. +They were all transmitted, except to Cahirciveen, the wires to which +place were found to have been cut. Mr. Colomb—who had a force of but +seventeen men in the town of Killarney—saw the uselessness of trying to +communicate with the officer at Cahirciveen, but was so strongly urged +by the magistrates that he unwillingly consented to endeavour to do so, +and a mounted orderly was sent. Just after this unfortunate officer had +passed Glenbehy (the scene of the eviction I have just witnessed) he was +shot by some of O’Connor’s party, whom he tried to pass in the dark, and +who were marching on Killarney, and fell from his horse, which galloped +off. He managed to crawl to a neighbouring cottage, where he was not +long after found by ”General O’Connor“ and some of his followers. The +wounded man was kindly treated by O’Connor, who had him examined for +despatches, but prevented one of his men from shooting him dead, as he +lay on the ground, and had his wounds as well attended to as was +possible. There was no response in the country to the Kerry rising, such +as it was, because the intended seizure of Chester Castle by the Fenians +failed, but O’Connor <a name="page40" id="page40"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 40] +</span>was not captured, though great efforts were made to +seize him. How he escaped is not known to this day.</p> + +<p>At that time, as always in emergencies, Mr. Colomh says the Constabulary +behaved with exemplary coolness, courage, and fidelity. His position +gives him a very thorough knowledge of the force, which is almost +entirely recruited from the body of the Irish people. Of late years not +a few men of family, reduced in fortune, have taken service in it. Among +these has been mentioned to me a young Irishman of title, and of an +ancient race, who is a sergeant in the force, and who recently declined +to accept a commission, as his increased expenses would make it harder +for him to support his two sisters. Another constable in the ranks +represents a family illustrious in the annals of England four centuries +ago.</p> + +<p>As to the <i>morale</i> of the force, he cites one eloquent fact. Out of a +total of more than 13,000 men, the cases of drunkenness, proved or +admitted, average no more than fourteen a week! On many days absolutely +no such cases occur. This is really amazing when one thinks how many of +the men are isolated on lonely posts all over the island, exposed to all +sorts of weather, and cut off from the ordinary resources and amusements +of social life.</p> + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">CORK, <i>Friday, Feb. 24th.</i>—</span>This morning after breakfast I met in the +South Mall a charming ecclesiastic, whose acquaintance I made in Rome +while I was attending the great celebration there in 1867 of St. Peter’s +Day. Father Burke introduced me to him after the Pontifical Mass at San +Paolo fuori le Mure; and we had a delightful symposium that afternoon. I +walked with him to his lodgings, talking over those ”days long +vanished,“ and the friend whose genius made them, like the suppers of +Plato, ”a joy for ever.“ He is sorely troubled now by the attitude of a +portion of the clergy in his part of Ireland, which is one almost of +open hostility, he says, to the moral authority of the Church, and +indicates the development of a class of priests moving in the direction +of the ”conventional priests,“ by whom the Church was disgraced during +the darkest days of the French Revolution of 1793.</p> + +<p>Almost more mischievous than these men, he thinks, who must eventually +go the way of their kind in times past, are the timid priests, for the +most part parish priests, who go in fear of their violent curates, and +of the politicians who tyrannise their <a name="page41" id="page41"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 41] +</span>flocks. He showed me a letter +written to him last week by one of these, whose parish is just now in a +tempest over the Plan of Campaign. Certainly a most remarkable letter. +In it the writer frankly says, ”There is no justification for the Plan +of Campaign on this property.</p> + +<p>“I assented to putting it in force here,” he goes on, “because I did not +at the time know the facts of the case, and took them on trust from +persons who, I find, have practised upon my confidence. What am I to do? +I am made to appear as a consenting party now, and, indeed, an assisting +agent in action, which I certainly was led to believe right and +necessary, but which upon the facts I now see involves much injustice +to —— (naming the landlord), and I fear positive ruin to worthy men and +families of my people. I shall be grateful and glad of your counsel in +these most distressing circumstances.”</p> + +<p>“What can any one do to help such a man?” said my friend. “The +rebellious and unruly in the Church, be they priests or laymen, can only +in the end damage themselves. <i>Tu es Petrus</i>; and revolt, like schism, +is a devil which only carries away those of whom it gets possession out +of the Church and <a name="page42" id="page42"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 42] +</span>into the sea. But a weak sentinel on the wall or at +the gate who drops his musket to wipe his eyes, that is a thing for +tears!”</p> + +<p>He asked me to come and see him if possible in his own county, and he +has promised to send me letters to-day for priests who will he glad to +tell me what they know only too well of the pressure put upon the better +sort of the people by the organised idlers and mischief-makers in Clare +and Kerry.</p> + +<p>To-day at the City Club, I made the acquaintance of the Town-Clerk of +Cork, Mr. Alexander M‘Carthy, a staunch Nationalist and Home Ruler, who +holds his office almost by a sort of hereditary tenure, having been +appointed to it in 1859 in succession to his father. He gave me many +interesting particulars as to the municipal history and administration +of Cork, and showed me some of the responses he is receiving to a kind +of circular letter sent by the municipality to the town governments of +England, touching the recent proceedings against the Mayor. So far these +responses have not been very sympathetic. He invited me to lunch here +with him to-morrow, and visit some of the most interesting points in and +around the city. Here, too, I met Colonel Spaight, Inspector <a name="page43" id="page43"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 43] +</span>of the +Local Government Board, who gives me a startling account of the increase +of the public burdens. Twenty years ago there were no persons whatever +seeking outdoor relief in Cork. This year, out of a total population of +145,216, there are 3775 persons here receiving indoor relief, and 4337 +receiving outdoor relief, making in all 8112, or nearly 6 per cent. of +the inhabitants. This proportion is swelled by the influx of people from +other regions seeking occupation here, which they do not find, or simply +coming here because they are sure of relief. This state of things +illustrates not so much the decay of industry in Cork as the development +of a spirit of mendicancy throughout Ireland. In the opinion of many +thoughtful people, this began with the Duchess of Marlborough’s Fund, +and with the Mansion House Fund. Colonel Spaight remembers that in +Strokestown Union, Roscommon, when the guardians there received a supply +of one hundred tons of seed potatoes, they distributed eighty tons, and +were then completely at a loss what to do with the remaining twenty +tons. Mr. Parnell and Mr. O’Kelly, however, came to Roscommon, and the +latter made a speech out of the hotel window to the people, advising +them to apply for more, and <a name="page44" id="page44"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 44] +</span>take all they could get. “With a stroke of a +pen,” he said, “we’ll wipe out the seed rate!” Whereupon the +applications for seed rose to six hundred tons!</p> + +<p>The Labourers Act, passed by the British Parliament for the benefit of +the Irish labourers, who get but scant recognition of their wants and +wishes from the tenant farmers, is not producing the good results +expected from it, mainly because it is perverted <a name="page45" id="page45"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 45] +</span>to all sorts of +jobbery. Only last week Colonel Spaight had to hand in to the Local +Government Board a report on certain schemes of expenditure under this +Act, prepared by the Board of Guardians of Tralee. These schemes +contemplated the erection of 196 cottages in 135 electoral divisions of +the Union. This meant, of course, so much money of the ratepayers to be +turned over to local contractors. Colonel Spaight on inspection found +that of the 196 proposed cottages, the erection of 61 had been forbidden +by the sanitary authorities, the notices for the erection of 23 had been +wrongly served, 20 were proposed to be erected on sites not adjoining a +public road, and no necessity had been shown for erecting 40 of the +others. He accordingly recommended that only 32 be allowed to be +erected! For a small town like Tralee this proposition to put <a name="page46" id="page46"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 46] +</span>up 196 +buildings at the public expense where only 32 were needed is not bad. It +has the right old Tammany Ring smack, and would have commanded, I am +sure, the patronising approval of the late Mr. Tweed.</p> + +<p>I mentioned it to-night at the County Club, when a gentleman said that +this morning at Macroom a serious “row” had occurred between the local +Board of Guardians there and a great crowd of labourers. The labourers +thronged the Board-room, demanding the half-acre plots of land which had +been promised them. The Guardians put them off, promising to attend to +them when the regular business of the meeting was over. So the poor +fellows were kept waiting for three mortal hours, at the end of which +time they espied the elected Nationalist members of the Board subtly +filing out of the place. This angered them. They stopped the fugitives, +blockaded the Board-room, and forced the Guardians to appoint a +committee to act upon their demands.</p> + +<p>It is certainly a curious fact that, so far, in Ireland I have seen no +decent cottages for labourers, excepting those put up at their own +expense on their own property by landlords.</p> + +<p><a name="page47" id="page47"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 47] +</span>I dined to-night at the County Club with Captain Plunkett, a most +energetic, spirited, and well-informed resident magistrate, a brother of +the late Lord Louth,—still remembered, I dare say, at the New York +Hotel as the only Briton who ever really mastered the mystery of +concocting a “cocktail,”—and an uncle of the present peer. We had a +very cheery dinner, and a very clever lawyer, Mr. Shannon, gave us an +irresistible reproduction of a charge delivered by an Irish judge famous +for shooting over the heads of juries, who sent twelve worthy citizens +of Galway out of their minds by bidding them remember, in a case of +larceny, that they could not find the prisoner guilty unless they were +quite sure “as to the <i>animus furandi</i> and the <i>asportavit</i>.”</p> + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary"><i>Saturday, Feb. 25.</i>—</span>I had an interesting talk this morning at the +County Club with a gentleman from Limerick on the subject of +“boycotting.” I told him what I had seen at Edenvale of the practice as +applied to a forlorn and helpless old woman, for the crime of standing +by her “boycotted” son. “You think this an extreme case,” he said, “but +you are quite mistaken. It is a typical case certainly, but it gives you +only an inadequate idea of <a name="page48" id="page48"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 48] +</span>the scope given to this infernal machinery. +The ‘boycott’ is now used in Ireland as the Inquisition was used in +Spain,—to stifle freedom of thought and action. It is to-day the chief +reliance of the National League for keeping up its membership, and +squeezing subscriptions out of the people. If you want proof of this,” +he added, “ask any Nationalist you know whether members of the League in +the country allow farmers who are not members to associate with them in +any way. I can cite you a case at Ballingarry, in my county, where last +summer a resolution of the League was published and put on the Chapel +door, that members of the National League were thenceforth to have no +dealings or communication with any person not a member. This I saw with +my own eyes, and it was matter of public notoriety.”</p> + +<p>I lunched at the City Club with Mr. M‘Carthy. Sir Daniel O’Sullivan, +formerly Mayor of Cork, whose views of Home Rule seem to differ widely +from those of his successor, now incarcerated here, was one of the +company. In the course of an animated but perfectly good-natured +discussion of the Land Law question between two other gentlemen present, +one of them, a strong Nationalist, <a name="page49" id="page49"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 49] +</span>smote his Unionist opponent very +neatly under the fifth rib. The latter contending that it was monstrous +to interfere by law with the principle of freedom of contract, the +Nationalist responded, “That cannot be; it must be right and legitimate +to do it, for the Imperial Parliament has done it four times within +seventeen years!”</p> + +<p>I walked with Mr. M‘Carthy to his apartments, where he showed me many +curious papers and volumes bearing on municipal law and municipal +history in Ireland. Among these, two most elaborate and interesting +volumes, being the Council Books of Cork, Youghal, and Kinsale, from +1610 to 1659, 1666 to 1687, and 1690 to 1800. The records for the years +not enumerated have perished, that is, for the first five or six years +after the Restoration, and for the years just preceding and just +following the fall of James II. These volumes take one back to the +condition of Southern Ireland immediately after English greed and +intrigue had sapped the foundations of the peace which followed the +submission of the great Earl of Tyrone, and brought about the flight to +the Continent of that chieftain, and of his friend and ally, the Earl of +Tyrconnell.</p> + +<p>They give us no picture, unfortunately, of the <a name="page50" id="page50"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 50] +</span>closing years of +Elizabeth’s long struggle to establish the English power, or of the +occupation of Kinsale by the Spanish in the name of the Pope. But there +is abundant evidence in them of the theological hatred which so +embittered the conflict of races in Ireland during the seventeenth +century.</p> + +<p>It was a relief to turn from these to a solemn controversy waged in our +own times between Cork and Limerick over a question of municipal +precedence, in which Mr. M‘Carthy did battle for the City of the Galley +and the Towers<a id="footnotetag7" + name="footnotetag7"></a><a href="#footnote7"><sup>7</sup></a> against the City of the Gateway and Cathedral dome. +The truth seems to be that King John gave charters to both cities, but +to Cork twelve years earlier than to Limerick. Speaking of this contest, +by the way, with a loyalist of Cork to-night, I observed that it was +almost as odd to find such a question hotly disputed between two +Nationalist cities as to see the champions of Irish independence +marching under the banner of the harp, which was invented for Ireland by +Henry VIII.</p> + +<p>“I don’t know why you call Cork a Nationalist <a name="page51" id="page51"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 51] +</span>city,” he replied, “for +Parnell and Maurice Healy were returned for it by a clear minority of +the voters. If all the voters had gone to the polls, they would both +have been beaten.”</p> + +<p>A curious statement certainly, and worth looking into. Mr. M‘Carthy gave +me also much information as to the working of the municipal system here, +and a copy of the rules which govern the debates of the Town Council. +One of these might be adopted with advantage in other assemblies, to +wit, “that no member be permitted to occupy the time of the Council for +more than ten minutes.”</p> + +<p>There is an important difference between the parliamentary and the +municipal constituencies of Cork. The former constituency comprises all +residents within the borough boundaries occupying premises of the +rateable value of £10 a year. The municipal constituency consists of no +more than 1800 voters, divided among the seven wards which make up the +city under the “3d and 4th Victoria,” and which contain about 13,000 of +the 15,116 Parliamentary voters of the borough. The same thing is true +in the main of nine out of the eleven municipal boroughs of Ireland +including Dublin. The 3d and 4th Victoria was amended for Dublin in +<a name="page52" id="page52"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 52] +</span>1849, so as to give that city the municipal franchise then existing in +England, but no move in that direction was made for Cork, Waterford, +Limerick, or any other municipal borough. The Nationalists have taken no +interest in the question. Perhaps they have good reason for this, as in +Belfast, where the municipal franchise has been widely extended since +the present Government came into power, the democratic electorate has +put the whole municipal government into the hands of the Unionists. The +day being cool, though fine, Mr. M‘Carthy got an “inside car,” and we +went off for a drive about the city. The environs of Cork are very +attractive. We visited the new cemetery grounds which are very neatly +and tastefully laid out. There was a conflict over them, the owners of +family vaults staunchly standing out against the “levelling” tendency of +a harmonious city of the dead. But all is well that ends well, and now +two handsome stone chapels, one Catholic and one Protestant, keep watch +and ward over the silent sleepers, standing face to face near the grand +entrance, and exactly alike in their architecture. A very pretty drive +took us to the water-works, which are extensive, well planned, and +exceedingly well <a name="page53" id="page53"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 53] +</span>kept. They are awaiting now the arrival from America of +some great turbine wheels, but the engines are of English make. In the +city we visited the new Protestant cathedral of St. Finbar, a very fine +church, which advantageously replaces a “spacious structure of the Doric +order,” built here in the reign of George II., with the proceeds of a +parliamentary tax on coals. Despite his name, I imagine that admirable +prelate, Dr. England, the first Catholic bishop of my native city in +America, must have been a Corkonian, for he it was, I believe, who put +the cathedral of Charleston under the invocation of St. Finbar, the +first bishop of Cork. The church stands charmingly amid fine trees on a +southern branch of the river Lea. We visited also two fine Catholic +churches, one of St. Vincent de Paul, and the other the Church of St. +Peter and St. Paul, a grandly proportioned and imposing edifice.</p> + +<p>It was at vespers that we entered it, and found it filled with the +kneeling people. This noble church is rather ignobly hidden away behind +crowded houses and shops, and the contrast was very striking when we +emerged from its dim religious space and silence into the thronged and +rather noisy streets. There is a statue here of Father Mathew; but what +<a name="page54" id="page54"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 54] +</span>I have seen to-night makes me doubt whether the present generation of +Corkonians would have erected it.</p> + +<p>At dinner a gentleman gave us a most interesting account of the +picturesque home which a man of taste, and a lover of natural history, +has made for himself at the remote seaside village of Belmullet, in +Mayo, the seat of the Mayo quarries, in which Mr. Davitt takes so much +interest. The sea brings in there all sorts of wreckage, and the house +is beautifully finished with mahogany and other rare woods, just as I +remember finding in a noble mansion in South Wales, near a dangerous +head-land, some magnificent doors and wainscotings made of that most +beautiful of the Central American woods, nogarote, which I never saw in +the United States, excepting in a superb specimen of it sent home by +myself from Corinto. This colonist of Mayo employs all the people he can +get in the fisheries there, which are very rich; and the ducks and wild +geese are so numerous that he sometimes sends as far as to Wicklow for +men to capture and sell them for him. He was once fortunate enough to +trap a pair of the snow geese of the Arctic region, but Belmullet, in +other respects a <a name="page55" id="page55"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 55] +</span>primeval paradise, is cursed with the small boy of +civilisation; and one of these pests of society slew the goose with a +stone. The widowed gander consoled himself by contracting family ties +with the common domestic goose of the parish, and all his progeny, in +other particulars indistinguishable from that familiar bird, bear the +black marks distinctive of the Arctic tribe.</p> + +<p>Belmullet, this gentleman tells me, boasts a very good little inn, kept +by a Mrs. Deehan, which was honoured by a visit from Lord Carnarvon with +his wife and daughters during the Earl’s Viceroyalty. This was in the +course of a private and personal, not official tour, during which, Lord +Carnarvon says, he was everywhere received with the greatest courtesy by +all sorts and conditions of the people. It is an interesting +illustration of the temper in which certain priests in Ireland deal with +matters of State, that when Lord Carnarvon politely invited the parish +priest of Belmullet to come to see him, that functionary declined to do +so. Upon this the placable Viceroy sent to know whether the priest would +receive the visit he refused to pay. The priest replied that he never +declined to receive any gentleman who wished to see him; and the Vice<a name="page56" id="page56"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 56] +</span>roy +accordingly called upon him, to the edification of the people, who +afterwards listened very respectfully to a little speech which His +Excellency made to them from a car. It is rather surprising that these +incidents have never been adduced in proof of Lord Carnarvon’s +determination to take the Home Rule wind out of the sails of the +Liberals!</p> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">CORK, <i>Sunday, Feb. 26.</i>—</span>I went out to-day with Mr. Cameron to see +Blarney Castle and St. Anne’s Hill. Nothing can be lovelier than the +country around Cork and the valley of the Lea. A “light railway,” of the +sort authorised by the Act of 1883, takes you out quickly enough to +Blarney, and the train was well filled. The construction of these +railways is found fault with as aggravating instead of relieving those +defects in the organisation and management of the Irish railways, which +are so thoroughly and intelligently exposed in the Public Works Report +of Sir James Allport and his fellow-commissioners. A morning paper +to-day points this out sharply.</p> + +<p>In the days of King William III. Blarney Castle must have been a +magnificent stronghold. It stands very finely on a well-wooded height, +and <a name="page57" id="page57"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 57] +</span>dominates the land for miles around. But it held out against the +victor of the Boyne so long that, when he captured it, he thought it +best, in the expressive phrase of the Commonwealth, to “slight” it, +little now remaining of it but the gigantic keep, the walls of which are +some six yards thick, and a range of ruined outworks stretching along +and above a line of caverns, probably the work of the quarrymen who got +out the stone for the Castle ages ago. The legend of the Blarney Stone +does not seem to be a hundred years old, but the stone itself is one of +the front battlements of the grand old tower, which has more than once +fallen to the ground from the giddy height at which it was originally +set. It is now made fast there by iron clamps, in such a position that +to kiss it one should be a Japanese acrobat, or a volunteer rifleman +shooting for the championship of the world. There are many and very fine +trees in the grounds about the Castle, and there is a charming garden, +now closed against the casual tourist, as it has been leased with the +modern house to a tenant who lives here. In the leafy summer the place +must be a dream of beauty. An avenue of stately trees quite overarching +the highway leads from Blarney to St. Anne’s Hill, the <a name="page58" id="page58"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 58] +</span>site of which, at +least, is that of an ideal sanatorium. We walked thither over hill and +dale. The panorama commanded by the buildings of the sanatorium is one +of the widest and finest imaginable, worthy to be compared with the +prospect from the Star and Garter at Richmond, or with that from the +terrace at St. Germain.</p> + +<p>Several handsome lodges or cottages have been built about the extensive +grounds. These are comfortably furnished and leased to people who prefer +to bring their households here rather than take up their abode in the +hotel, which, however, seems to be a very well kept and comfortable sort +of place, with billiard and music rooms, a small theatre, and all kinds +of contrivances for making the country almost as tedious as the town. +The establishment is directed now by a German resident physician, but +belongs to an Irish gentleman, Mr. Barter, who lives here himself, and +here manages what I am told is one of the finest dairy farms and dairies +in Ireland. Our return trip to Cork on the “light railway,” with a warm +red sunset lighting up the river Lea, and throwing its glamour over the +varied and picturesque scenery through which we ran, was not the least +delightful part of a very delightful excursion.</p> + +<p><a name="page59" id="page59"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 59] +</span>After we got back I spent half-an-hour with a gentleman who knows the +country about Youghal, which I propose to visit to-morrow, and who saw +something of the recent troubles there arising out of the Plan of +Campaign, as put into effect on the Ponsonby property.</p> + +<p>He is of the opinion that the Nationalists were misled into this contest +by bad information as to Mr. Ponsonby’s resources and relations. They +expected to drive him to the wall, but they will fail to do this, and +failing to do this they will be left in the vocative. He showed me a +curious souvenir of the day of the evictions, in the shape of a +quatrain, written by the young wife of an evicted tenant. This young +woman, Mrs. Mahoney, was observed by one of the officers, as the +eviction went on, to go apart to a window, where she stood for a while +apparently writing something on a wooden panel of the shutter. After the +eviction was over the officer remembered this, and going up to the +window found these lines pencilled upon the panel:—</p> + +<p class="poem">“We are evicted from this house,<br /> +<span class="i2">Me and my loving man;</span><br /> +We’re homeless now upon the world!<br /> +<span class="i2">May the divil take ‘the Plan’!”</span> +</p> +<p class="diary"><a name="page60" id="page60"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 60] +</span><span class="diary">CORK, <i>Monday, Feb. 27.</i>—</span>A most interesting day. I left alone and early +by the train for Youghal, having sent before me a letter of introduction +to Canon Keller, the parish priest, who has recently become a +conspicuous person through his refusal to give evidence about matters, +his knowledge of which he conceives to be “privileged,” as acquired in +his capacity as a priest.</p> + +<p>I had many fine views of the shore and the sea as we ran along, and the +site of Youghal itself is very fine. It is an old seaport town, and once +was a place of considerable trade, especially in wool.</p> + +<p>Oliver dwelt here for a while, and from Youghal he embarked on his +victorious return to England. He seems to have done his work while he +was here “not negligently,” like Harrison at Naseby Field, for when he +departed he left Youghal a citadel of Protestant intolerance. Even under +Charles II they maintained an ordinance forbidding “any Papist to buy or +barter anything in the public markets,” which may be taken as a piece of +cold-blooded and statutory “boycotting.” Then there was no parish priest +in Youghal; now it may almost be said there is nobody in Youghal but the +<a name="page61" id="page61"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 61] +</span>parish priest! So does “the whirligig of time bring in his revenges”!</p> + +<p>At Youghal station a very civil young man came up, calling me by name, +and said Father Keller had sent him with a car to meet me. We drove up +past some beautiful grounds into the main street. A picturesque +waterside town, little lanes and narrow streets leading out of the main +artery down to the bay, and a savour of the sea in the place, grateful +doubtless to the souls of Raleigh and the west country folk he brought +over here when he became lord of the land, just three hundred years ago. +Edmund Spenser came here in those days to see him, and talk over the +events of that senseless rising of the Desmonds, which gave the poet of +the “Faerie Queen” his awful pictures of the desolation of Ireland, and +made the planter of Virginia master of more than forty thousand acres of +Irish land.</p> + +<p>We turned suddenly into a little narrow wynd, and pulled up, the driver +saying, “There is the Father, yer honour!” In a moment up came a tall, +very fine-looking ecclesiastic, quite the best dressed and most +distinguished-looking priest I have yet seen in Ireland, with features +of a fine Teutonic <a name="page62" id="page62"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 62] +</span>type, and the erect bearing of a soldier. I jumped +down to greet him, and he proposed that we should walk together to his +house near by. An extremely good house I found it to be, well placed in +the most interesting quarter of the town. Having it in my mind to drive +on from Youghal to Lismore, there to make an early dinner, see the +castle of the Duke of Devonshire, and return to Cork by an evening +train, I had to decline Father Keller’s cordial hospitalities, but he +gave me a most interesting hour with him in his comfortable study. +Father Keller stands firmly by the position which earned for him a +sentence of imprisonment last year, when he refused to testify before a +court of justice in a bankruptcy case, on the ground that it might +“drift him into answers which would disclose secrets he was bound in +honour not to disclose.” He does not accept the view taken of his +conduct, however, by Lord Selborne, that, in the circumstances, his +refusal is to be regarded as the act of his ecclesiastical superiors +rather than his own. He maintains it as his own view of the sworn duty +of a priest, and not unnaturally therefore he looks upon his sentence as +a blow levelled at the clergy; nor, as I understood him, has he +abandoned his original contention, that the Court had no right to <a name="page63" id="page63"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 63] +</span>summon +him as a witness. It was impossible to listen to him on this subject, +and doubt his entire good faith, nor do I see that he ought to be held +responsible for the interpretation put by Mr. Lane, M.P., and others +upon his attitude as a priest, in a sense going to make him merely a +“martyr” of Home Rule. I did not gather from what he said that, in his +mind, the question of his relations with the Nationalists or the Plan of +Campaign entered into that affair at all, but simply that he believed +the right and the duty of a priest to protect, no matter at what cost to +himself, secrets confided to him as a priest, was really involved in his +consent or refusal to answer, when he was asked whether he was or was +not on a certain day at the “Mall House” in Youghal. Of course from the +connection of this refusal in this particular case with the Nationalist +movement, Nationalists would easily glide into the idea that he refused +to testify in order to serve their cause.</p> + +<p>As to the troubles on the Ponsonby estate, Father Keller spoke very +freely. He divided the responsibility for them between the +untractableness of the agent, and the absenteeism of the owner. It was +only since the troubles began, he said, that he <a name="page64" id="page64"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 64] +</span>had ever seen Mr. +Ponsonby, who lived in Hampshire, and was therefore out of touch with +the condition and the feelings of the people here. In a personal +interview with him he had found Mr. Ponsonby a kindly disposed +Englishman, but the estate is heavily encumbered, and the agent who has +had complete control of it forced the tenants, by his hard and fast +refusal of a reasonable reduction more than two years ago, into an +initial combination to defend themselves by “clubbing” their rents. That +was before Mr. Dillon announced the Plan of Campaign at all.</p> + +<p>“It was not till the autumn of 1886,” said Father Keller, “that any +question arose of the Plan of Campaign here,<a id="footnotetag8" + name="footnotetag8"></a><a href="#footnote8"><sup>8</sup></a> and it was by the +tenants themselves that the determination was taken to adopt it. My part +has been that of a peace-maker throughout, and we should have had peace +if Mr. Ponsonby would have listened to me; we should have had peace, and +he would have received a reasonable rental for his property. Instead of +this, look at the law costs arising out of bankruptcy proceedings and +sheriff’s sales and writs and <a name="page65" id="page65"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 65] +</span>processes, and the whole district thrown +into disorder and confusion, and the industrious people now put out of +their holdings, and forced into idleness.”</p> + +<p>As to the recent evictions which had taken place, Father Keller said +they had taken him as well as the people by surprise, and had thus led +to greater agitation and excitement. “But the unfortunate incident of +the loss of Hanlon’s life,” he said, “would never have occurred had I +been duly apprised of what was going on in the town. I had come home +into my house, having quieted the people, and left all in order, as I +thought, when that charge of the police, for which there was no +occasion, and which led to the killing of Hanlon, was ordered. I made my +way rapidly to the people, and when I appeared they were brought to +patience and to good order with astonishing ease, despite all that had +occurred.”</p> + +<p>As to the present outlook, it was his opinion that Mr. Ponsonby, even +with the Cork Defence Union behind him, could not hold out. “The Land +Corporation were taking over some parts of the estate, and putting +Emergency men on them—a set of desperate men, a kind of <i>enfants +perdus</i>,” he said, “to work and manage the land;” but he did not believe +the operation could be successfully <a name="page66" id="page66"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 66] +</span>carried out. Meanwhile he +confidently counted upon seeing “the present Tory Government give way, +and go out, when it would become necessary for the landlords to do +justice to the rack-rented people. Pray understand,” said Father Keller, +“that I do not say all landlords stand at all where Mr. Ponsonby has +been put by his agent, for that is not the case; but the action of many +landlords in the county Cork in sustaining Mr. Ponsonby, whose estate is +and has been as badly rack-rented an estate as can be found, is, in my +judgment, most unwise, and threatening to the peace and happiness of +Ireland.”<a id="footnotetag9" + name="footnotetag9"></a><a href="#footnote9"><sup>9</sup></a></p> + +<p>I asked whether, in his opinion, it would be possible for the Ponsonby +tenants to live and prosper here on this estate, could they become +peasant proprietors of it under Lord Ashbourne’s Act, provided they +increased in numbers, as in that event might be expected. This he +thought very doubtful so far as a few of the tenants are concerned.</p> + +<p>“Would you seek a remedy, then,” I asked, “in emigration?”</p> + +<p><a name="page67" id="page67"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 67] +</span>“No, not in emigration,” he replied, “but in migration.”</p> + +<p>I begged him to explain the difference.</p> + +<p>“What I mean,” he said, “is, that the people should migrate, not out of +Ireland, but from those parts of Ireland which cannot support them into +parts of Ireland which can support them. There is room in Meath, for +example, for the people of many congested districts.”</p> + +<p>“You would, then, turn the great cattle farms of Meath,” I said, “into +peasant holdings?”</p> + +<p>“Certainly.”</p> + +<p>“But would not that involve the expropriation of many people now +established in Meath, and the disturbance or destruction of a great +cattle industry for which Ireland has especial advantages?”</p> + +<p>To this Father Keller replied that he did not wish to see Ireland +exporting her cattle, any more than to see Ireland exporting her sons +and daughters. “I mean,” he said, quite earnestly, “when they are forced +to export them to pay exorbitant rents, and thus deprive themselves of +their capital or of a fair share of the comforts of life. I should be +glad to see the Irish people sufficient to themselves by the domestic +exchange of their own industries and <a name="page68" id="page68"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 68] +</span>products.” At the same time he +begged me to understand that he had no wish to see this development +attended by any estrangement or hostile feeling between Ireland and +Great Britain. “On the contrary,” he said, “I have seen with the +greatest satisfaction the growth of such good feeling towards England as +I never expected to witness, as the result of the visits here of English +public men, sympathising with the Irish tenants. I believe their visits +are opening the way to a real union of the Democracies of the two +countries, and to an alliance between them against the aristocratic +classes which depress both peoples.” This alliance Father Keller +believed would be a sufficient guarantee against any religious contest +between the Catholics of Ireland and the Protestants of Great Britain.</p> + +<p>“I was much astounded,” he said, “the other day, to hear from an English +gentleman that he had met a Protestant clergyman who told him he really +believed that a persecution of the Protestants would follow the +establishment of Home Rule in Ireland. I begged him to consider that Mr. +Parnell was a Protestant, and I assured him Protestants would have +absolutely nothing to fear from Home Rule.”</p> + +<p>Reverting to his idea of re-distributing the Irish <a name="page69" id="page69"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 69] +</span>population through +Ireland, under changed conditions, social and economical, I asked him +how in Meath, for example, he would meet the difficulty of stocking with +cattle the peasant holdings of a new set of proprietors not owning +stock. He thought it would be easily met by advances of money from the +Treasury to the peasant proprietors, these advances to be repaid, with +interest, as in the case of Lady Burdett Coutts, and the advances made +by her to the fishermen now under the direction of Father Davis at +Baltimore.</p> + +<p>I was struck by the resemblance of these views to the Irish policy +sketched for me by my Nationalist fellow-traveller of the other night +from London. “The evil that men do lives after them”—and when one +remembers how only a hundred years ago, and just after the establishment +of American Independence ought to have taught England a lesson, the +Irish House of Commons had to deal with the persistent determination of +the English manufacturers to fight the bogey of Irish competition by +protective duties in England against imports from Ireland, it is not +surprising that Irishmen who allow sentiment to get the upper hand of +sense should now think of playing a return game. England <a name="page70" id="page70"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 70] +</span>went in fear +then not only of Irish beasts and Irish butter, but of Irish woollens, +Irish cottons, Irish leather, Irish glass. Nay, absurd as it may now +seem, English ironmasters no longer ago than in 1785 testified before a +Parliamentary Committee that unless a duty was clapped on Irish +manufactures of iron, the Irish ironmasters had such advantages through +cheaper labour and through the discrimination in their favour under the +then existing relations with the new Republic of the United States that +they would “ruin the ironmasters of England.”</p> + +<p>In Ireland, as in America, the benign spirit of Free Trade is thwarted +and intercepted at every turn by the abominable ghost of British +Protection. What a blessing it would have been if the meddlesome +palaverers of the Cobden Club, American as well as English, could ever +have been made to understand the essentially insular character of +Protection and the essentially continental character of Free Trade!</p> + +<p>It should never be forgotten, and it is almost never remembered, that +when the Treaty of Versailles was making in 1783 the American +Commissioners offered complete free trade between the United States and +all parts of the British Dominions <a name="page71" id="page71"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 71] +</span>save the territories of the East +India Company. The British Commissioner, David Hartley, saw the value of +this proposition, and submitted it at London. But King George III. would +not entertain it.</p> + +<p>When I rose to leave him Father Keller courteously insisted on showing +me the “lions” of Youghal. A most accomplished cicerone he proved to be. +As we left his house we met in the street two or three of the “evicted” +tenants, whom he introduced to me. One of these, Mr. Loughlin, was the +holder of farms representing a rental of £94. A stalwart, hearty, +rotund, and rubicund farmer he was, and in reply to my query how long +the holdings he had lost had been in his family, he answered, “not far +from two hundred years.” Certainly some one must have blundered as badly +as at Balaklava to make it necessary for a tenant with such a past +behind him to go out of his holdings on arrears of a twelvemonth. Father +Keller gave me, as we left Mr. Loughlin and his friend, a leaflet in +which he has printed the story of “the struggle for life on the Ponsonby +estate,” as he understands it.</p> + +<p>A minute’s walk brought us to Sir Walter Raleigh’s house, now the +property of Sir John Pope Hennessey. <a name="page72" id="page72"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 72] +</span>It was probably built by Sir Walter +while he lived here in 1588-89, during the time of the great Armada; for +it is a typical Elizabethan house, quaintly gabled, with charming Tudor +windows, and delightfully wainscoted with richly carved black oak. A +chimney-piece in the library where Sir John’s aged mother received us +most kindly and hospitably is a marvel of Elizabethan woodwork. The +shelves are filled with a quaint and miscellaneous collection of old and +rare books. I opened at random one fine old quarto, and found it to +contain, among other curious tracts, models of typography, a Latin +critical disquisition by Raphael Regini on the first edition of +Plutarch’s Life of Cicero, “<i>nuper inventâ diu desideraiâ </i>”—a +disquisition quite aglow with the cinquecento delight in discovery and +adventure. In the grounds of this charming house stand four very fine +Irish yews forming a little hollow square, within which, according to a +local legend, Sir Walter sat enjoying the first pipe of tobacco ever +lighted in Ireland, when his terrified serving-maid espying the smoke +that curled about her master’s head hastily ran up and emptied a pail of +water over him. In the garden here, too, we are told, was first planted +the esculent which better deserves to be called the <a name="page73" id="page73"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 73] +</span>Curse of Ireland +than does the Nine of Diamonds to be known as the Curse of Scotland. The +Irish yew must have been indigenous here, for the name of Youghal, +Father Keller tells me, in Irish signifies “the wood of yew-trees.” A +subterranean passage is said to lead from Sir Walter’s dining-room into +the church, but we preferred the light of day.</p> + +<p>The precincts of the church adjoin the grounds and garden, and with +these make up a most fascinating poem in architecture. The churches of +St. Mary of Youghal and St. Nicholas of Galway have always been cited to +me as the two most interesting churches in Ireland. Certainly this +church of St. Mary, as now restored, is worth a journey to see. Its +massive tower, with walls eight feet thick, its battlemented chancel, +the pointed arches of its nave and aisles, a curious and, so far as I +know, unique arch in the north transept, drawn at an obtuse angle and +demarcating a quaint little side-chapel, and the interesting monuments +it contains, all were pointed out to me with as much zest and +intelligent delight by Father Keller as if the edifice were still +dedicated to the faith which originally called it into existence. It +contains a fine Jacobean tomb of Richard, the “great Earl of Cork,” who +died here in <a name="page74" id="page74"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 74] +</span>September 1643. On this monument, which is in admirable +condition, the effigy of the earl appears between those of his two +wives, while below them kneel his five sons and seven daughters, their +names and those of their partners in marriage inscribed upon the marble. +It was of this earl that Oliver said: “Had there been an Earl of Cork in +every province, there had been no rebellion in Ireland.” Several Earls +of Desmond are also buried here, including the founder of the church, +and under a monumental effigy in one of the transepts lies the wonderful +old Countess of Desmond, who having danced in her youth with Richard +III. lived through the Tudor dynasty “to the age of a hundred and ten,” +and, as the old distich tells us, “died by a fall from a cherry-tree +then.”</p> + +<p>In the churchyard is a hillock, bare of grass, about a tomb. There lies +buried, according to tradition, a public functionary who attested a +statement by exclaiming, “If I speak falsely, may grass never grow on my +grave.” One of his descendants is doubtless now an M.P. Mr. Cameron had +kindly written from Cork to the officer in charge of the constabulary +here asking him to get me a good car for Lismore. So Father Keller very +kindly walked with <a name="page75" id="page75"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 75] +</span>me through the town to the “Devonshire Arms,” a very +neat and considerable hotel, in quest of him. On the way he pointed out +to me what remains of a house which is supposed to have served as the +headquarters of Cromwell while he was here, and a small chapel also in +which the Protector worshipped after his sort. Off the main street is a +lane called Windmill Lane, where probably stood the windmill from which +in 1580 a Franciscan friar, Father David O’Neilan, was hung by the feet +and shot to death by the soldiers of Elizabeth because he refused to +acknowledge the spiritual supremacy of the Queen. He had been dragged +through the main street at the tail of a horse to the place of +execution. His name is one of many names of confessors of that time +about to be submitted at Rome for canonisation. We could not find the +officer I sought at the hotel, but Father Keller took me to a livery-man +in the main street, who very promptly got out a car with “his best +horse,” and a jarvey who would “surely take me over to Lismore inside of +two hours and a half.” He was as good as his master’s word, and a +delightful drive it was, following the course of Spenser’s river, the +Awniduffe, “which by the Englishman is called Blackwater.” <a name="page76" id="page76"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 76] +</span>Nobody now +calls it anything else. The view of Youghal Harbour, as we made a great +circuit by the bridge on leaving the town, was exceedingly fine. Lying +as it does within easy reach of Cork, this might be made a very pleasant +summer halting-place for Americans landing at Queenstown, who now go +further and probably fare worse. One Western wanderer, with his family, +Father Keller told me, did last year establish himself here, a Catholic +from Boston, to whom a son was born, and who begged the Father to give +the lad a local name in baptism, “the oldest he could think of.”</p> + +<p>I should have thought St. Declan would have been “old” enough, or St. +Nessan of “Ireland’s Eye,” or Saint Cartagh, who made Lismore a holy +city, “into the half of which no woman durst enter,” sufficiently +“local,” but Father Keller found in the Calendar a more satisfactory +saint still in St. Goran or “Curran,” known also as St. Mochicaroen <i>de +Nona</i>, from a change he made in the recitation of that part of the Holy +Office.</p> + +<p>The drive from Youghal to Lismore along the Blackwater, begins, +continues, and ends in beauty. In the summer a steamer makes the trip by +the river, and it must be as charming in its way <a name="page77" id="page77"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 77] +</span>as the ascent of the +Dart from Dartmouth to Totness, or of the Eance from Dinard to St. +Suliac. My jarvey was rather a taciturn fellow, but by no means +insensible to the charms of his native region. About the Ponsonby estate +and its troubles he said very little, but that little was not entirely +in keeping with what I had heard at Youghal. “It was an old place, and +there was no grand house on it. But the landlord was a kind-man.” +“Father Keller was a good man too. It was a great pity the people +couldn’t be on their farms; and there was land that was taken on the +hills. It was a great pity. The people came from all parts to see the +Blackwater and Lismore; and there was money going.” “Yes, he would be +glad to see it all quiet again. Ah yes! that was a most beautiful place +there just running out into the Blackwater. It was a gentleman owned it; +he lived there a good deal, and he fished. Ah! there’s no such river in +the whole world for salmon as the Blackwater; indeed, there is not! +Everything was better when he was a lad. There was more money going, and +less talking. Father Keller was a very good man; but he was a new man, +and came to Youghal from Queenstown.”</p> + +<p><a name="page78" id="page78"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 78] +</span>We passed on our way the ruins of Dromaneen Castle, the birthplace of +the lively old Countess of Desmond, who lies buried at Youghal. Here, +too, according to a local tradition, she met her death, having climbed +too high into a famous cherry-tree at Affane, near Dromaneen, planted +there by Sir Walter Raleigh, who first introduced this fruit, as well as +the tobacco plant and the potato, into Ireland. At Cappoquin, which +stands beautifully on the river, I should have been glad to halt for the +night, in order to visit the Trappist Monastery there, an offshoot of La +Meilleraye, planted, I think, by some monks from Santa Susanna, of +Lulworth, after Charles X. took refuge in the secluded and beautiful +home of the Welds. The schools of this monastery have been a benediction +to all this part of Ireland for more than half a century.</p> + +<p>Lismore has nothing now to show of its ancient importance save its +castle and its cathedral, both of them absolutely modern! A hundred +years ago the castle was simply a ruin overhanging the river. It then +belonged to the fifth Duke of Devonshire, who had inherited it from his +mother, the only child and heiress of the friend of Pope, Richard, +fourth Earl of Cork, and third Earl of Burlington. <a name="page79" id="page79"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 79] +</span>It had come into the +hands of the Boyles by purchase from Sir Walter Ealeigh, to whom +Elizabeth had granted it, with all its appendages and appurtenances. The +fifth Duke of Devonshire, who was the husband of Coleridge’s “lady +nursed in pomp and pleasure,” did little or nothing, I believe, to +restore the vanished glories of Lismore; and the castle, as it now +exists, is the creation of his son, the artistic bachelor Duke, to whom +England owes the Crystal Palace and all the other outcomes of Sir Joseph +Paxton’s industry and enterprise. His kinsman and successor, the present +Duke, used to visit Lismore regularly down to the time of the atrocious +murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish, and many of the beautiful walks and +groves which make the place lovely are due, I believe, to his taste and +his appreciation of the natural charms of Lismore. I dismissed my car at +the “Devonshire Arms,” an admirable little hotel near the river, and +having ordered my dinner there, walked down to the castle, almost within +the grounds of which the hotel stands. It is impossible to imagine a +more picturesque site for a great inland mansion. The views up and down +the Blackwater from the drawing-room windows are simply the perfection +of <a name="page80" id="page80"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 80] +</span>river landscape. The grounds are beautifully laid out, one secluded +garden-walk, in particular, taking you back to the inimitable Italian +garden-walks of the seventeenth century. In the vestibule is the sword +of state of the Corporation of Youghal, a carved wooden cradle for which +still stands in the church at that place, and over the great gateway are +the arms of the great Earl of Cork, but these are almost the only +outward and visible signs of the historic past about the castle. Seen +from the graceful stone bridge which spans the river, its grey towers +and turrets quite excuse the youthful enthusiasm with which the Duke of +Connaught, who made a visit here when he was Prince Arthur, is said to +have written to his mother, that Lismore was “a beautiful place, very +like Windsor Castle, only much finer.”</p> + +<p>Lismore Cathedral was almost entirely rebuilt by the second Earl of Cork +three or four years after the Restoration, and has a handsome marble +spire, but there is little in it to recall the Catholic times in which +Lismore was a city of churches and a centre of Irish devotion.</p> + +<p>The hostess of the “Devonshire Arms” gave me some excellent salmon, +fresh from the river, and a <a name="page81" id="page81"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 81] +</span>very good dinner. She bewailed the evil days +on which she has fallen, and the loss to Lismore of all that the Castle +used to mean to the people. Lady Edward Cavendish had spent a short time +here some little time ago, she said, and the people were delighted to +have her come there. “It would be a great thing for the country if all +the uproar and quarrelling could be put an end to. It did nobody any +good, least of all the poor people.”</p> + +<p>From Lismore I came back by the railway through Fermoy.</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page82" id="page82"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 82] +</span>CHAPTER IX.</h2> + + +<p class="diay"><span class="diary">PORTUMNA, GALWAY, <i>Feb. 28.</i>—</span>I left Cork by an early train to-day, and +passing through the counties of Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Queen’s, and +King’s, reached this place after dark on a car from Parsonstown. The day +was delightfully cool and bright. I had the carriage to myself almost +all the way, and gave up all the time I could snatch from the constantly +varying and often very beautiful scenery to reading a curious pamphlet +which I picked up in Dublin entitled <i>Pour I’Irlande.</i> It purports to +have been written by a “Canadian priest” living at Lurgan in Ireland, +and to be a reply to M. de Mandat Grancey’s volume, <i>Chez Paddy.</i> It is +adorned with a frontispiece representing a monster of the Cerberus type +on a monument, with three heads and three collars labelled respectively +“Flattery,” “Famine,” and “Coercion.” On the pedestal is the +inscription—“1800 to 1887. Erected by the grateful Irish to the English +<a name="page83" id="page83"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 83] +</span>Government.” The text is in keeping with the frontispiece. In a passage +devoted to the “atrocious evictions” of Glenbehy in 1887, the agent of +the property is represented as “setting fire with petroleum” to the +houses of two helpless men, and turning out “eighteen human beings into +the highway in the depth of winter.” Not a word is said of the agent’s +flat denial of these charges, nor a word of the advice given to the +agent by Sir Redvers Buller that the mortgagee ought to level the +cottages occupied by trespassers, nor a word about Father Quilter’s +letter to Colonel Turner, branding his flock as “poor slaves” of the +League, and turning them over to “Mr. Roe or any other agent” to do as +he liked with them, since they could not, or would not, keep their +plighted faith given through their own priest.</p> + +<p>This sort of ostrich fury is common enough among the regular drumbeaters +of the Irish agitation. But it is not creditable to a “Canadian priest.” +Still less creditable is his direct arraignment of M. de Mandat +Grancey’s good faith and veracity upon the strength of what he describes +as M. de Mandat Grancey’s amplification and distortion of a story told +by himself. This was a tale of a <a name="page84" id="page84"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 84] +</span>priest called out to confess one of his +parishioners. The penitent accused himself of killing one man, and +trying to kill several others. The priest, as the dreadful tale went on, +made a tally on his sleeve, with chalk, of the crimes recited. “Good +heavens! my son,” he cried at last, “what had all these men done to you +that you tried to send them all into eternity? Who were they?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, Father, they were all bailiffs or tax-collectors!”</p> + +<p>“You idiot!” exclaimed the confessor, angrily rubbing at his sleeve, +“why didn’t ye tell me that before instead of letting me spoil my best +cassock?”</p> + +<p>As I happened to have the book of M. de Mandat Grancey in my +despatch-box, I compared it with the attack made upon it. The results +were edifying. In the first place, M. de Mandat Grancey does not +indicate the Canadian priest as his authority. He says that he heard the +story, apparently at a dinner-table in France, from a <i>curé Irlandais</i>, +who was endeavouring to impress upon his hearers “the sympathy of the +clergy with the Land League.” The “Canadian priest” now comes forward +and makes it a count in his indictment against M. de Mandat Grancey that +he is described as an “Irish <a name="page85" id="page85"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 85] +</span>curate,” when he is in fact neither an +Irishman nor a curate. What was more natural than that an ecclesiastic, +claiming to live in Ireland, and telling stories in France about the +sympathy of the Irish clergy with the Land League, should be taken by +one of his auditors to be an Irish <i>curé</i>, particularly as the French +<i>curé</i> is, I believe, the equivalent of the Irish “parish priest”?</p> + +<p>In the next place, the “Canadian priest” declares that the story “is as +old as the Round Towers of Ireland,” and that M. de Mandat Grancey +represents him as making himself the hero of the tale. As a matter of +fact, M. de Mandat Grancey does nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he +expressly says that the <i>curé Irlandais</i>, who told the story, gave it to +his hearers as having occurred not to himself at all, but “to one of his +colleagues.” Furthermore he is at the pains to add (<i>Chez Paddy</i>, p. <a href="#page43">43</a>) +that the story, which was not to the taste of some of the French +ecclesiastics who heard it, was related “as a simple pleasantry.” +“But,” he adds, and this I suspect is the sting which has so exasperated +the “Canadian priest,” “he gave us to understand at the same time that +this pleasantry struck the keynote of the state of mind of many Irish +priests, and, he <a name="page86" id="page86"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 86] +</span>said, that he was himself the President of the League +in his district.”</p> + +<p>In connection with Colonel Turner’s statements as to the conduct of +Father White at Milltown Malbay, and with the accounts given me of the +conduct of Father Sheehan at Lixnaw, this side-light upon the relations +of a certain class of the Irish clergy with the most violent henchmen of +the League, is certainly noteworthy. I happen to have had some +correspondence with friends of mine in Paris, who are friends also of M. +de Mandat Grarncey, about his visit to Ireland before he made it, and I +am quite certain that he went there, to put the case mildly, with no +prejudices in favour of the English Government or against the +Nationalists. Perhaps the extreme bitterness shown in the pamphlet of +the “Canadian priest” may have been born of his disgust at finding that +the sympathy of French Catholics with Catholic Ireland draws the line at +priests who regard the assassination of “bailiffs and tax-collectors” as +a pardonable, if not positively amusing, excess of patriotic zeal.</p> + +<p>It was late when I reached Parsonstown, known of old in Irish story as +Birr, from St. Brendan’s Abbey of Biorra, and now a clean prosperous +place, <a name="page87" id="page87"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 87] +</span>carefully looked after by the chief landlord of the region, the +Earl of Rosse, who, while he inherits the astronomical tastes and the +mathematical ability of his father, is not so absorbed in star-gazing as +to be indifferent to his terrestrial duties and obligations. I have +heard nothing but good of him, and of his management of his estates, +from men of the most diverse political views. But I think it more +important to get a look at the Clanricarde property, about which I have +heard little but evil from anybody. The strongest point I have heard +made in favour of the owner is, that he is habitually described by that +dumb organ of a down-trodden people, <i>United Ireland</i>, as “the most vile +Clanricarde.”</p> + +<p>I found a good car at the railway station, and set off at once for +Portumna. Parsonstown was called by Sir William Petty, in his <i>Survey of +Ireland</i>, the <i>umbilicus Hiberniæ</i>. It is the centre of Ireland, as a +point near Newnham Paddox is of England, and the famous or infamous “Bog +of Allan” stretches hence to Athlone. Our way fortunately took us +westward. A light railway was laid down some years ago from Parsonstown +to Portumna, but it did not pay, and it has now been abandoned.</p> + +<p>“What has become of the road?” I asked my jarvey.</p> + +<p><a name="page88" id="page88"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 88] +</span>“Oh! they just take up the rails when they like, the people do.”</p> + +<p>“And what do they do with them?”</p> + +<p>“Is it what they do with them? Oh; they make fences of them for the +beasts.”</p> + +<p>He was a dry, shrewd old fellow, not very amiably disposed, I was sorry +to find, towards my own country.</p> + +<p>“Ah! it’s America, sorr, that’s been the ruin of us entirely.”</p> + +<p>“Pray, how is that?”</p> + +<p>“It’s the storms they send; and then the grain; and now they tell me +it’s the American beasts that’s spoiling the market altogether for +Ireland.”</p> + +<p>“Is that what your member tells you?”</p> + +<p>“The member, sorr? which member?”</p> + +<p>“The member of Parliament for your district, I mean. What is his name?”</p> + +<p>“His name? Well, I’m not sure; and I don’t know that I know the man at +all. But I believe his name is Mulloy.”</p> + +<p>“Does he live in Portumna?”</p> + +<p>“Oh no, not at all. I don’t know at all where he lives, but I believe +it’s in Tullamore. But what would he know about America? Sure, any one +can <a name="page89" id="page89"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 89] +</span>see it’s the storms and the grain that is the death of us in +Ireland.”</p> + +<p>“But I thought it was the landlords and the rents?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, that’s in Woodford and Loughrea; not here at all. There’ll be no +good till we get a war.”</p> + +<p>“Get a war? with whom? What do you want a war for?”</p> + +<p>“Ah! it was the good time when we had the Crimean war—with the wheat +all about Portumna. I’ll show you the great store there was built. It’s +no use now. But we’ll have a war. My son, he’s a soldier now. He went +out to America. But he didn’t like it.”</p> + +<p>“Why not?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“Oh, he didn’t like it. He could get no work, but to be a porter, and it +was too hard. So he came back in three months’ time, and then he ’listed +for a soldier. He’s over in England now. He likes it very well. He’s +getting very good pay. They pay the soldiers well. There’s a troop of +Hussars here now. They bring a power of money to the place.”</p> + +<p>“What do they do with the wheat lands now?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, they’re for sheep; they do very well. Were you ever in Australia, +sorr?” pointing to a <a name="page90" id="page90"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 90] +</span>place we were passing. “There was a man came here +from Australia with a pot of money, and he bought that place; but he +thought he was a bigger man than he was, and now he’s found himself out. +I think he would have done as well to stay in Australia where he was.”</p> + +<p>In quite a different vein he spoke of the landlord of another large +seat, and of the way in which the people, some of them, had +misbehaved—breaking open the graves of the family on the place, “and +tossing the coffins and the bones about, and all for what?”</p> + +<p>The view as we crossed the long and very fine bridge over the Shannon +after dusk was very striking. It was not too dark to make out the course +of the broad gleaming river, and the lights of the town made it seem +larger, I daresay, than it really is. As we drove up the main street I +told my jarvey to take me to the Castle.</p> + +<p>“To the Castle, is it?” he replied, looking around at me with an +astonished air.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” I said, “I am going to see Mr. Tener, the agent, who lives there, +doesn’t he?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, the new agent? Oh yes; I believe he’s a very good man.”</p> + +<p>“<a name="page91" id="page91"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 91] +</span>You don’t expect to be ‘boycotted’ for going to the Castle, do you?”</p> + +<p>“And why should I be? But I haven’t been inside of the Castle gates for +twenty years. And—here they are!” he cried out suddenly, pulling up his +horse just in time to avoid driving him up against a pair of iron gates +inhospitably closed. It was by this time pitch dark. Not a light could +we see within the enclosure. But presently a couple of shadowy forms +appeared behind the iron gates; the iron gates creaked on their hinges, +a masculine voice bade us drive in, and a policeman with a lantern +advanced from a thicket of trees. All this had a fine martial and +adventurous aspect, and my jarvey seemed to enjoy it as much as I.</p> + +<p>We got directions from the friendly policeman as to the roads and the +landmarks, and after once nearly running into a clump of trees found +ourselves at last in an open courtyard, where men appeared and took +charge of the car, the horse, and my luggage. We were in a quadrangle of +the out-buildings attached to the old residence of the Clanricardes, +which had escaped the fire of 1826. The late Marquis for a long time +hesitated whether to reconstruct the castle on the old site (the walls +are <a name="page92" id="page92"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 92] +</span>still standing), or to build an entirely new house on another site. +He finally chose the latter alternative, chiefly, I am told, under the +advice of his oldest son, the late Lord Dunkellin, one of the most +charming and deservedly popular men of his time. He was a great friend +and admirer of Father Burke, whom he used to claim as a Galway cousin, +and with whom I met him in Rome not long before his death in the summer +of 1867. His brother, the present Marquis, I have never met, but Mr. +Tener, his present agent here, who passed some time in America several +years ago, learning from him that I wished to see this place, very +courteously wrote to me asking me to make his house my headquarters. I +found my way through queer passages to a cheery little hall where my +host met me, and taking me into a pleasant little parlour, enlivened by +flowers, and a merrily blazing fire, presented me to Mrs. Tener.</p> + +<p>Mr. Tener is an Ulster man from the County Cavan. He went with his wife +on their bridal trip to America, and what he there saw of the peremptory +fashion in which the authorities deal with conspiracies to resist the +law seems not unnaturally to have made him a little impatient of the +dilatory, not to say dawdling, processes of the law in his <a name="page93" id="page93"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 93] +</span>own country. +He gave me a very interesting account after dinner this evening of the +situation in which he found affairs on this property, an account very +different from those which I have seen in print. He is himself the owner +of a small landed property in Cavan, and he has had a good deal of +experience as an agent for other properties. “I have a very simple +rule,” he said to me, “in dealing with Irish tenants, and that is +neither to do an injustice nor to submit to one.” It was only, he said, +after convincing himself that the Clanricarde tenants had no legitimate +ground of complaint against the management of the estate, not removable +upon a fair and candid discussion of all the issues involved between +them and himself, that he consented to take charge of the property. That +to do this was to run a certain personal risk, in the present state of +the country, he was quite aware.</p> + +<p>But he takes this part of the contract very coolly, telling me that the +only real danger, he thinks, is incurred when he makes a journey of +which he has to send a notice by telegraph—a remark which recalled to +me the curious advice given me in Dublin to seal my letters, as a +protection against “the Nationalist clerks in the post-offices.” The +park of Portumua Castle, which is very extensive, is patrolled <a name="page94" id="page94"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 94] +</span>by armed +policemen, and whenever Mr. Tener drives out he is followed by a police +car carrying two armed men.</p> + +<p>“Against whom are all these precautions necessary?” I asked. “Against +the evicted tenants, or against the local agents of the League?”</p> + +<p>“Not at all against the tenants,” he replied, “as you can satisfy +yourself by talking with them. The trouble comes not from the tenants at +all, nor from the people here at Portumna, but from mischievous and +dangerous persons at Loughrea and Woodford. Woodford, mind you, not +being Lord Clanricarde’s place at all, though all the country has been +roused about the cruel Clanricarde and his wicked Woodford evictions. +Woodford was simply the headquarters of the agitation against Lord +Clanricarde and my predecessor, Mr. Joyce, and it has got the name of +the ‘cockpit of Ireland,’ because it was there that Mr. Dillon, in +October 1886, opened the ‘war against the landlords’ with the ‘Plan of +Campaign.’ It is an odd circumstance, by the way, worth noting, that +when these apostles of Irish agitation went to Lord Clanricarde’s +property nearer the city of Gralway, and tried to stir the people up, +they failed dismally, because the people there could understand no +English, and the Irish agitators could <a name="page95" id="page95"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 95] +</span>speak no Irish! Nobody has ever +had the face to pretend that the Clanricarde estates were ‘rack-rented.’ +There have been many personal attacks made upon Mr. Joyce and upon Lord +Clanricarde, and Mr. Joyce has brought that well-known action against +the Marquis for libel, and all this answers with the general public as +an argument to show that the tenants on the Clanricarde property must +have had great grievances, and must have been cruelly ground down and +unable to pay their way. I will introduce you, if you will allow me, to +the Catholic Bishop here, and to the resident Protestant clergyman, and +to the manager of the bank, and they can help you to form your own +judgment as to the state of the tenants. You will find that whatever +quarrels they may have had with their landlord or his agent, they are +now, and always have been, quite able to pay their rents, and I need not +tell you that it is no longer in the power of a landlord or an agent to +say what these rents shall be.”<a id="footnotetag10" + name="footnotetag10"></a><a href="#footnote10"><sup>10</sup></a></p> + +<p>“Mr. Dillon in that speech of his at Woodford <a name="page96" id="page96"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 96] +</span>(I have it here as +published in <i>United Ireland</i>), you will see, openly advised, or rather +ordered, the tenants here to club their rents, or, in plain English, the +money due to their landlord, with the deliberate intent to confiscate to +their own use, or, in their own jargon, ‘grab,’ the money of any one of +their number who, after going into this dishonest combination, might +find it working badly and wish to get out of it. Here is his own +language:”—</p> + +<p>I took the speech as reported in the <i>United Ireland</i> of October 23rd, +1886, and therein found Mr. Dillon, M.P., using these words:—“If you +mean to fight really, you must put the money aside for two +reasons—first of all because you want the means to support the men who +are hit first; and, secondly, because you want to prohibit traitors +going behind your back. There is no way to deal with a traitor except to +get his money under lock and key, and if you find that he pays his rent, +and betrays the organisation, what will you do with him? I will tell you +what to do with him. <i>Close upon his money, and use it for the +organisation</i>. I have always opposed outrages. <i>This is a legal plan, +and it is ten times more effective</i>.”</p> + +<p>Not a word here as to the morality of the proceeding thus recommended; +but almost in the <a name="page97" id="page97"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 97] +</span>same breath in which he bade his ignorant hearers +regard his plan as “legal,” Mr. Dillon said to them, “<i>this must be done +privately, and you must not inform the public where the money is +placed</i>!”</p> + +<p>Why not, if the plan was “legal”? Mr. Dillon, I believe, is not a +lawyer, but he can hardly have deluded himself into thinking his plan of +campaign “legal” in the face of the particular pains taken by his +leader, Mr. Parnell, to disclaim all participation in any such plans. A +year before Mr. Dillon made this curious speech, Mr. Parnell, I +remember, on the 11th of October 1885, speaking at Kildare, declared +that he had “in no case during the last few years advised any +combination among tenants against even rack-rents,” and insisted that +any combination of the sort which might exist should be regarded as an +“isolated” combination, “confined to the tenants of individual estates, +who, of their own accord, without any incitement from us, on the +contrary, kept back by us, without any urging on our part, without any +advice on our part, but stung by necessity, and the terrible realities +of their position, may have formed such a combination among themselves +to secure such a reduction of rent as will enable them to live in their +own homes.” From this language of Mr. Parnell in October 1885 to <a name="page98" id="page98"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 98] +</span>Mr. +Dillon’s speech in October 1886, urging and advising the tenants to +organise, exact contributions from every member of the organisation, and +put these contributions under the control of third parties determined to +confiscate the money subscribed by any member who might not find the +organisation working to his advantage, is a rather long step! It covers +all the distance between a cunning defensive evasion of the law, and an +open aggressive violation of the law—not of the land only, but of +common honesty. One of two things is clear: either these combinations +are voluntary and “isolated,” and intended, as Mr. Parnell asserts, to +secure such a reduction of rents as will enable the tenants, and each of +them, to live peacefully and comfortably at home, and in that case any +member of the combination who finds that he can attain his object better +by leaving it has an absolute right to do this, and to demand the return +of his money; or they are part of a system imposed upon the tenants by a +moral coercion inconsistent with the most elementary ideas of private +right and personal freedom. This makes the importance of Mr. Dillon’s +speech, that by his denunciation of any member who wishes to withdraw +from this “voluntary” combination as a “traitor,” and by his order to +“close upon the <a name="page99" id="page99"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 99] +</span>money” of any such member, “and use it for the +organisation,” he brands the “organisation” as a subterranean despotism +of a very cheap and nasty kind. The Government which tolerates the +creation of such a Houndsditch tyranny as this within its dominions +richly deserves to be overthrown. As for the people who submit +themselves to it, I do not wonder that in his more lucid moments a +Catholic priest like Father Quilter feels himself moved to denounce them +as “poor slaves.” Of course with a benevolent neutral like myself, the +question always recurs, Who trained them to submit to this sort of +thing? But I really am at a loss to see why a parcel of conspirators +should be encouraged in the nineteenth century to bully Irish farmers +out of their manhood and their money, because in the seventeenth century +it pleased the stupid rulers of England, as the great Duke of Ormond +indignantly said, to “put so general a discountenance upon the +improvement of Ireland, as if it were resolved that to keep it low is to +keep it safe.”</p> + +<p>On going back to the little drawing-room after dinner we found Mrs. +Tener among her flowers, busy with some literary work. It is not a gay +life here, she admits, her nearest visiting acquaintance living <a name="page100" id="page100"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 100] +</span>some +seven or eight miles away—but she takes long walks with a couple of +stalwart dogs in her company, and has little fear of being molested. +“The tenants are in more danger,” she thinks, “than the landlords or the +agents”—nor do I see any reason to doubt this, remembering the Connells +whom I saw at Edenvale, and the story of the “boycotted” Fitzmaurice +brutally murdered in the presence of his daughter at Lixnaw on the 31st +of January, as if by way of welcome to Lord Ripon and Mr. Morley on +their arrival at Dublin.</p> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">PORTUMNA, <i>Feb. 29th.</i>—</span>Early this morning two of the “evicted” tenants, +and an ex-bailiff of the property here, came by appointment to discuss +the situation with Mr. Tener. He asked me to attend the conference, and +upon learning that I was an American, they expressed their perfect +willingness that I should do so. The tenants were quiet, sturdy, +intelligent-looking men. I asked one of them if he objected to telling +me whether he thought the rent he had refused to pay excessive, or +whether he was simply unable to pay it.</p> + +<p>“I had the money, sir, to pay the rent,” he <a name="page101" id="page101"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 101] +</span>replied, “and I wanted to +pay the rent—only I wouldn’t be let.”</p> + +<p>“Who wouldn’t let you?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“The people that were in with the League.”</p> + +<p>“Was your holding worth anything to you?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“It was indeed. Two or three years ago I could have sold my right for a +matter of three hundred pounds.”</p> + +<p>“Yes!” interrupted the other tenant, “and a bit before that for six +hundred pounds.”</p> + +<p>“Is it not worth three hundred pounds to you now?”</p> + +<p>“No,” said Mr. Tener, “for he has lost it by refusing the settlement I +offered to make, and driving us into proceedings against him, and +allowing his six months’ equity of redemption to lapse.”</p> + +<p>“And sure, if we had it, no one would be let to buy it now, sir,” said +the tenant. “But it’s we that hope Mr. Tener here will let us come back +on the holdings—that is, if we’d be protected coming back.”</p> + +<p>“Now, do you see,” said Mr. Tener, “what it is you ask me to do? You ask +me to make you a present outright of the property you chose foolishly to +throw away, and to do this after you have put <a name="page102" id="page102"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 102] +</span>the estate to endless +trouble and expense; don’t you think that is asking me to do a good +deal?”</p> + +<p>The tenants looked at one another, at Mr. Tener, and at me, and the +ex-bailiff smiled.</p> + +<p>“You must see this,” said Mr. Tener, “but I am perfectly willing now to +say to you, in the presence of this gentleman, that in spite of all, I +am quite willing to do what you ask, and to let you come back into the +titles you have forfeited, for I would rather have you back on the +property than strangers—”</p> + +<p>“And, indeed, we’re sure you would.”</p> + +<p>“But understand, you must pay down a year’s rent and the costs you have +put us to.”</p> + +<p>“Ah! sure you wouldn’t have us to pay the costs?”</p> + +<p>“But indeed I will,” responded Mr. Tener; “you mustn’t for a moment +suppose I will have any question about that. You brought all this +trouble on yourselves, and on us; and while I am ready and willing to +deal more than fairly, to deal liberally with you about the arrears—and +to give you time—the costs you must pay.”</p> + +<p>“And what would they be, the costs?” queried one of the tenants +anxiously.</p> + +<p>“Oh, that I can’t tell you, for I don’t know,” said <a name="page103" id="page103"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 103] +</span>Mr. Tener, “but they +shall not be anything beyond the strict necessary costs.”</p> + +<p>“And if we come back would we be protected?”</p> + +<p>“Of course you will have protection. But why do you want protection? +Here you are, a couple of strong grown men, with men-folk of your +families. See here! why don’t you go to such an one, and such an one,” +naming other tenants; “you know them well. Go to them quietly and sound +them to see if they will come back on the same terms with you; form a +combination to be honest and to stand by your rights, and defy and break +up the other dishonest combination you go in fear of! Is it not a shame +for men like you to lie down and let those fellows walk over you, and +drive you out of your livelihood and your homes?”</p> + +<p>The tenants looked at each other, and at the rest of us. “I think,” said +one of them at last, “I think —— and ——,” naming two men, “would come +with us. Of course,” turning to Mr. Tener, “you wouldn’t discover on us, +sir.”</p> + +<p>“Discover on you! Certainly not,” said Mr. Tener. “But why don’t you +make up your minds to be men, and ‘discover’ on yourselves, and defy +these fellows?”</p> + +<p><a name="page104" id="page104"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 104] +</span>“And the cattle, sir? would we get protection for the cattle? They’d be +murdered else entirely.”</p> + +<p>“Of course,” said Mr. Tener, “the police would endeavour to protect the +cattle.”</p> + +<p>Then, turning to me, he said, “That is a very reasonable question. These +scoundrels, when they are afraid to tackle the men put under their ban, +go about at night, and mutilate and torture and kill the poor beasts. I +remember a case,” he went on, “in Roscommon, where several head of +cattle mysteriously disappeared. They could be found nowhere. No trace +of them could be got. But long weeks after they vanished, some lads in a +field several miles away saw numbers of crows hovering over a particular +point. They went there, and there at the bottom of an abandoned +coal-shaft lay the shattered remains of these lost cattle. The poor +beasts had been driven blindfold over the fields and down into this pit, +where, with broken limbs, and maimed, they all miserably died of +hunger.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said one of the tenants, “and our cattle’d be driven into the +Shannon, and drownded, and washed away.”</p> + +<p>“You must understand,” interposed Mr. Tener <a name="page105" id="page105"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 105] +</span>“that when cattle are thus +maliciously destroyed the owners can recover nothing unless the remains +of the poor beasts are found and identified within three days.”</p> + +<p>The disgust which I felt and expressed at these revelations seemed to +encourage the tenants. One of them said that before the evictions came +off certain of the National Leaguers visited him, and told him he must +resist the officers. “I consulted my sister,” he said, “and she said, +‘Don’t you be such a fool as to be doing that; we’ll all be ruined +entirely by those rascals and rogues of the League.’ And I didn’t +resist. But only the other day I went to a priest in the trouble we are +in, and what do you think he said to me? He said, ‘Why didn’t you do as +you were bid? then you would be helped,’ and he would do nothing for us! +Would you think that right, sir, in your country?”</p> + +<p>“I should think in my country,” I replied, “that a priest who behaved in +that way ought to be unfrocked.”</p> + +<p>“Did you pay over all your rent into the hands of the trustees of the +League?” I asked of one of these tenants.</p> + +<p>“I paid over money to them, sir,” he replied.</p> + +<p><a name="page106" id="page106"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 106] +</span>“Yes,” I said, “but did you pay over all the amount of the rent, or how +much of it?”</p> + +<p>“Oh! I paid as much as I thought they would think I ought to pay!” he +responded, with that sly twinkle of the peasant’s eye one sees so often +in rural France.</p> + +<p>“Oh! I understand,” I said, laughing. “But if you come to terms now with +Mr. Tener here, will you get that money back again?”</p> + +<p>“Divil a penny of it!” he replied, with much emphasis.</p> + +<p>Finally they got up together to take their leave, after a long whispered +conversation together.</p> + +<p>“And if we made it half the costs?”</p> + +<p>“No!” said Mr. Tener good-naturedly but firmly; “not a penny off the +costs.”</p> + +<p>“Well, we’ll see the men, sir, just quietly, and we’ll let you know what +can be done”; and with that they wished us, most civilly, good-morning, +and went their way.</p> + +<p>We walked in the park for some time, and a wild, beautiful park it is, +not the less beautiful for being given up, as it is, very much to the +Dryads to deal with it as they list. It is as unlike a trim English park +as possible; but it contains many <a name="page107" id="page107"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 107] +</span>very fine trees, and grand open sweeps +of landscape. In a tangled copse are the ruins of an ancient Franciscan +abbey, in one corner of which lie buried together, under a monumental +mound of brickwork, the late Marquis of Clanricarde and his wife. The +walls of the Castle, burned in 1826, are still standing, and so perfect +that the building might easily enough have been restored. A keen-eyed, +wiry old household servant, still here, told us the house was burned in +the afternoon of January 6, 1826. There were three women-servants in the +house—“Anna and Mary Meehan, and Mrs. Underwood, the housekeeper”; and +they were getting the Castle ready for his Lordship’s arrival, so little +of an “absentee” was the late Lord Clanricarde, then only one year +married to the daughter of George Canning. The fires were laid on in the +upper rooms, and Mrs. Underwood went off upon an errand. When she came +back all was in flames.</p> + +<p>The deer-park is full of deer, now become quite wild. We heard them +crashing through the undergrowth on all sides. There must be capital +fishing, too, in the lake, and in the river of which it is an expansion.</p> + +<p>While they were getting the cars ready for a <a name="page108" id="page108"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 108] +</span>drive, came up another son +of the soil. This man I found had only a small interest in the battle on +the Clanricarde estates, holding his homestead of another landlord. But +he admitted he had gone in a manner into the “combination,” in that he +had paid a certain, not very large, sum, which he named, to the +trustees, “just for peace and quiet.” He considered it gone, past +recovery; and he named another man with a small holding, but doing a +considerable business in other ways, who had “paid £10 or more just not +to be bothered.” Upon this Mr. Tener told me of a shopkeeper at Loughrea +in a large way of business, a man with seven or eight thousand pounds, +who, finding his goods about to be seized after the agent had turned a +sharp strategic corner on him, and unexpectedly got into his shop, was +about to own up to his defeat, and make a fair settlement, when the +secretary of the League appeared, and requested a private talk with him. +In a quarter of an hour the tradesman reappeared looking rather sullen +and crestfallen. He said he couldn’t pay, and must let the goods be +taken. So taken they were, and duly put up under the process and sold. +He bought them in himself, paying all the costs.</p> + +<p><a name="page109" id="page109"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 109] +</span>Presently two cars appeared. We got upon one, Mr. Tener driving a +spirited nag, and taking on the seat with him a loaded carbine-rifle. +Two armed policeman followed us upon the other, keeping at such a +distance as would enable them easily to cover any one approaching from +either side of the roadway. It quite took me back to the delightful days +of 1866 in Mexico, when we used to ride out to picnics at the Rincon at +Orizaba armed to the teeth, and ready at a moment’s notice to throw the +four-in-hand mule-wagons into a hollow square, and prepare to receive +cavalry. As it seems to be perfectly well understood that the regular +price paid for shooting a designated person (they call it “knocking” him +in these parts) is the ridiculously small sum of four pounds, and that +two persons who divide this sum are always detailed by the organisers of +outrage to “knock” an objectionable individual, it is obvious that too +much care can hardly be taken by prudent people in coming and going +through such a country. Fortunately for the people most directly +concerned to avoid these unpleasantnesses a systematic leakage seems to +exist in the machinery of mischief. The places where the oaths of this +local “Mafia” are admin<a name="page110" id="page110"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 110] +</span>istered, for instance, are well known. A roadside +near a chapel is frequently selected—and this for two or three obvious +reasons. The sanctity of the spot may be supposed to impress the +neophyte; and if the police or any other undesirable people should +suddenly come upon the officiating adepts and the expectant acolyte, a +group on the roadside is not necessarily a criminal gathering—though I +do not see why, in such times, our old American college definition of a +“group” as a gathering of “three or more persons” should not be adopted +by the authorities, and held to make such a gathering liable to +dispersion by the police, as our “groups” used to be subject to +proctorial punishment. Mills are another favourite resort of the +law-breakers. Mr. Tener tells me that a large mill between this place +and Loughrea is a great centre of trouble, not wholly to the +disadvantage of the astute miller, who finds it not only brings grist to +his mill, but takes away grist from another mill belonging to a couple +of worthy ladies, and once quite prosperous. It is no uncommon thing, it +appears, for the same person to be put through the ceremony of swearing +fidelity more than once, and at more than one place, with the not +unnatural result, however, of <a name="page111" id="page111"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 111] +</span>diminishing the pressure of the oath upon +his conscience or his fears, and also of alienating his affections, as +he is expected to pay down two shillings on each occasion. Once a +member, he contributes a penny a week to the general fund. It seems also +to be an open secret who the disbursing treasurers are of this fund, +from whom the members, detailed to do the dark bidding of the +“organisation,” receive their wage. “A stout gentleman with sandy hair +and wearing glasses” was the description given to me of one such +functionary. When so much is known of the methods and the men, why is it +that so many crimes are committed with virtual impunity? For two +sufficient reasons. Witnesses cannot be got to testify, or trusted, if +they do testify, to speak the truth; and it is idle to expect juries of +the vicinage in nine cases out of ten will do their duty. Political +cowardice having made it impossible to transfer the venue in cases of +Irish crime, as to which all the authorities were agreed about these +points, from Ireland into Great Britain, it is found that even to +transfer the trial of “Moonlighters” from Clare or Kerry into Wicklow, +for example, has a most instructive effect, opening the eyes of the +people of Wicklow to a state of things <a name="page112" id="page112"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 112] +</span>in their own island, of which +happily for themselves they were previously as ignorant as the people of +Surrey or of Middlesex. This explains the indignant wish expressed to me +some time ago in a letter from a priest in another part of Ireland, that +“martial law” might be proclaimed in Clare and Kerry to “stamp out the +Moonlighters, those pests of society.” That in Clare and Kerry priests +should be found not only disposed to wink at and condone the proceedings +of these “pests of society,” but openly to co-operate with them under +the pretext of a “national” movement, is surely a thing equally +intolerable by the Church and dangerous to the cause of Irish autonomy. +This I am glad to say is strongly felt, and has been on more than one +occasion very vigorously stated by one of the most eminent and estimable +of Irish ecclesiastics, the Bishop-Coadjutor of Clonfert, upon whom I +called this morning. Dr. Healy, who is a senator of the Royal University +of Ireland, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, presides over that +part of the diocese of Clonfort which includes Portumna and Woodford. He +lives in a handsome and commodious, but simple and unpretentious house, +set in ample grounds well-planted, and commanding a wide view <a name="page113" id="page113"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 113] +</span>of a most +agreeable country. We were ushered into a well-furnished study, and the +bishop came in at once to greet us with the most cordial courtesy. He is +a frank, dignified, unaffected man, and in his becoming episcopal +purple, with the gold chain and cross, looked every inch a bishop. I was +particularly anxious to see Dr. Healy, as a type of the high-minded and +courageous ecclesiastics who, in Ireland, have resolutely refused to +subordinate their duties and their authority as ecclesiastics to the +convenience and the policy of an organisation absolutely controlled by +Mr. Parnell, who not only is not a Catholic, but who is an open ally and +associate of the bitterest enemies of the Catholic Church in France and +in England. Protestant historians affirm that Pope Innocent was one of +the financial backers of William of Orange when he set sail from Holland +to crush the Catholic faith in Great Britain and Ireland, and drive the +Catholic house of Stuart into exile. But it was reserved for the +nineteenth century to witness the strange spectacle of men, calling +themselves Irishmen and Catholics, deliberately slandering and assailing +in concord with a non-Catholic political leader the consecrated pastors +and masters of the Church in Ireland. When in <a name="page114" id="page114"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 114] +</span>order to explain what they +themselves concede to be “the absence from the popular ranks of the best +of the priesthood,” Nationalist writers find it necessary to denounce +Cardinal Cullen and Cardinal M‘Cabe as “anti-Irish ”; and to sneer at +men like Dr. Healy as “Castle Bishops,” it is impossible not to be +reminded of the three “patriotic” tailors of Tooley Street.</p> + +<p>Bishop Healy looks upon the systematic development of a substantial +peasant proprietary throughout Ireland as the economic hope of the +country, and he regards therefore the actual “campaigning” of the +self-styled “Nationalists” as essentially anti-national, inasmuch as its +methods are demoralising the people of Ireland, and destroying that +respect for law and for private rights which lies at the foundation of +civil order and of property. In his opinion, “Home Rule,” to the people +in general, means simply ownership of the land which they are to live +on, and to live by. How that ownership shall be brought about peaceably, +fairly, and without wrong or outrage to any man or class of men is a +problem of politics to be worked out by politicians, and by public men. +That men, calling themselves Catholics, should be led on to attempt <a name="page115" id="page115"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 115] +</span>to +bring this or any other object about by immoral and criminal means is +quite another matter, and a matter falling within the domain, not of the +State primarily, but of the Church.</p> + +<p>As to this, Bishop Healy, who was in Rome not very long ago, and who, +while in Rome, had more than one audience of His Holiness by command, +has no doubt whatever that the Vatican will insist upon the abandonment +and repudiation by Catholics of boycotting, and “plans of campaign,” and +all such devices of evil. Nor has the Bishop any doubt that whenever the +Holy Father speaks the priests and the people of Ireland will obey.</p> + +<p>To say this, of course, is only to say that the Bishop believes the +priests of Ireland to be honest priests, and the people of Ireland to be +good Catholics.</p> + +<p>If he is mistaken in this it will be a doleful thing, not for the +Church, but for the Irish priests, and for the Irish people. No Irishman +who witnessed the magnificent display made at Rome this year, of the +scope and power of the Catholic Church, can labour under any delusions +on that point.</p> + +<p>From the Bishop’s residence we went to call upon the Protestant rector +of Portumna, Mr. Crawford. <a name="page116" id="page116"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 116] +</span>The handsome Anglican church stands within an +angle of the park, and the parsonage is a very substantial mansion. Mr. +Crawford, the present rector, who is a man of substance, holds a fine +farm of the Clanricarde estate, at a peppercorn rent, and he is tenant +also of another holding at £118 a year, as to which he has brought the +agent into Court, with the object, as he avers, of setting an example to +the other tenants, and inducing them, like himself, to fight under the +law instead of against it. He is not, however, in arrears, and in that +respect sets a better example, I am sorry to say, than the Catholic +priest, Father Coen, who made himself so conspicuous here on the +occasion of the much bewritten Woodford evictions. The case of Father +Coen is most instructive, and most unpleasant. He occupies an excellent +house on a holding of twenty-three acres of good laud, with a garden—in +short, a handsome country residence, which was provided by the late Lord +Clanricarde, expressly for the accommodation of whoever might be the +Catholic priest in that part of his estate. For all this the rent is +fixed at the absurd and nominal sum of two guineas a year! Yet Father +Coen, who now enjoys the mansion, and has a substantial income from the +parish, is actually two <a name="page117" id="page117"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 117] +</span>years and a half in arrears with this rent! This +fact Mr. Tener mentioned to the Bishop, whose countenance naturally +darkened. “What am I to do in such a case, my lord?” asked Mr. Tener. +“Do?” said the Bishop, “do your plain duty, and proceed against him +according to law.” But suppose he were proceeded against and evicted, as +in America he certainly would be, who can doubt that he would instantly +be paraded, before the world, on both sides of the Atlantic as a +“martyr,” suffering for the holy cause of an oppressed and down-trodden +people, at the hands of a “most vile” Marquis, and of a remorse-less and +blood-thirsty agent?<a id="footnotetag11" + name="footnotetag11"></a><a href="#footnote11"><sup>11</sup></a> Mr. Crawford, a tall, fine-looking man, talked +very fully and freely about the situation here. He came to Portumna +about eight years ago; one of his reasons for accepting the position +here offered him being that he wished to take over a piece of property +near Woodford from his brother-in-law, who found he could not manage it. +As a practical farmer, and a straightforward capable man of business, he +has gradually acquired the general confidence of the tenants here. That +<a name="page118" id="page118"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 118] +</span>they are, as a rule, quite able to pay the rents which they have been +“coerced” into refusing to pay, he fully believes. He told me of cases +in which Catholic tenants of Lord Clanricarde came to him when the +agitation began about the Plan of Campaign, and begged him privately to +take the money for their rents, and hold it for them till the time +should come for a settlement.</p> + +<p>The reason for this was that they did not wish to be obliged to give +over the money into the “Trust” created by the Campaigners, and wanted +it to be safely put beyond the reach of these obliging “friends.” One +very shrewd tenant came to him and begged him to buy some beasts, in +order that he might pay his rent out of the proceeds. The man owed £15 +to the Clanricarde property. Mr. Crawford did not particularly want to +buy his beasts, but eventually agreed to do so, and gave him £50 for +them. The man went off with the money, but he never paid the rent! Mr. +Crawford discovering this called him to account, and refused to grant +him some further favour which he asked. The result is that the +“distressed tenant” now cuts Mr. Crawford when he meets him, and is the +prosperous owner of quite a small herd of cattle.</p> + +<p><a name="page119" id="page119"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 119] +</span>Mr. Crawford’s opinion of the mischief done by the methods and spirit of +the National League in this place is quite in accord with the opinions +of the Bishop-Coadjutor. Power without responsibility, which made the +Cæesars madmen, easily turns the heads of village tyrants, and there is +something positively grotesque in the excesses of this subterranean +“Home Rule.” Mr. Crawford told me of a case here, in which a tenant +farmer, whom he named, came to him in great wrath, not unmingled with +terror, to say that the League had ordered him, on pain of being +boycotted, to give up his holding to the heirs of a woman from whom, +twenty years ago, he had bought, for £100 in cash, the tenant-right of +her deceased husband! There was no question of refunding the £100. He +was merely to consider himself a “land-grabber,” and evict himself for +the benefit of those heirs who had never done a stroke of work on the +property for twenty years, and who had no shadow of a legal or moral +claim on it, except that the oldest of them was an active member of the +local League!</p> + +<p>Nor was this unique.</p> + +<p>In another case, the children of a tenant, who died forty years ago, +came forward and called upon the <a name="page120" id="page120"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 120] +</span>League to boycott an old man who had +been in possession of the holding during nearly half a century. In a +third case, a tenant-farmer, some ten years ago, had in his employ as +herd a man who fell ill and died. He put into the vacant place an +honest, capable young fellow, who still holds it, and has faithfully and +efficiently served him. Only the other day this tenant-farmer was warned +by the League to expect trouble, unless he dismissed this herd, and put +into his place the son, now grown to man’s estate, of the herd who died +ten years ago!</p> + +<p>It is amusing, if not instructive, to find the hereditary principle, +just now threatened in its application to the British Senate, cropping +out afresh as an element in the regeneration of Irish agriculture and +the land tenure of Ireland!</p> + +<p>On our way back to the Castle we called on Mr. Place, the manager of the +Portumna Branch of the Hibernian Bank, who lives in the town. He was +amusing himself, after the labour of the day in the bank, with some +amateur work as a carpenter, but received us very cordially. He said +there was no doubt that the deposits in the bank had increased +considerably since the adoption of the Plan of Campaign on the +Clanricarde property. <a name="page121" id="page121"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 121] +</span>Money was paid into the bank continually by +persons who wished the fact of their payments kept secret; and he knew +of more than one case in which tenants, whose stock had been seized by +the agent for the rents, were much delighted at the seizure, since it +had paid off their rents, and so enabled them to retain their holdings +and keep out of the grasp of the League, even though to do this they had +undergone a forced sale and been muleted in costs.</p> + +<p>It was his opinion that the tenants on the Clanricarde property, who are +not in arrears, would gladly accept a twenty-five per cent. reduction, +and do very well by accepting it. But they are constrained into a +hostile attitude by the tenants who are in arrears, some of them for +several years (as, for example, Father Coen), although I find, to my +astonishment, that in Ireland the landlord has no power to distrain for +more than a twelvemonth’s rent, no matter how far back the arrears may +run.</p> + +<p>Mr. Place seems to think it would be well to put all the creditors of +the tenants on one footing with the landlords. The shopkeepers and other +creditors, he thinks, in that event would see many things in quite a new +light.</p> + +<p><a name="page122" id="page122"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 122] +</span>What is called the new Castle of Portumna is a large and handsome +building of the Mansard type, standing on an eminence in the park, at +some distance from the original seat. The building was finished not long +before the death of his father, the late Marquis. It has never been +occupied, save by a large force of police quartered in it not very long +ago by Mr. Tener in readiness for an expedition against the Castle of +Cloondadauv, to the scene of which he promises to drive me to-morrow on +my way back to Dublin. It is thoroughly well built, and might easily be +made a most delightful residence. The views which it commands of the +Shannon are magnificent, and there are many fine trees about it.</p> + +<p>The old man who has charge of it is a typical Galway retainer of the old +school. The “boys,” he says, once tried to “boycott” him because he was +the pound-master; but he showed fight, and they let him alone. He +pointed out to me from the top of the house, in the distance, the +residences of Colonel Hickie, and of the young Lord Avonmore, who lately +succeeded on the death of his brother in the recent Egyptian expedition. +The place is now shut up, and the owners live in France.</p> + +<p><a name="page123" id="page123"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 123] +</span>We visited too the Portumna Union before driving home. The buildings of +this Union are extensive for the place, and well built, and it seems to +be well-ordered and neatly kept—thanks, in no small degree, I suspect, +to the influence of the Sisters who have charge of the hospital, but +whose benign spirit shows itself not only in the flower-garden which +they have called into being, but in many details of the administration +beyond their special control.</p> + +<p>The contrast was very striking between the atmosphere of this +unpretending refuge of the helpless and that of certain of the +“laicised” hospitals of France, which I not long ago visited, from which +the devoted nuns have been expelled to make way for hired nurses. I made +a remark to this effect to the clerk of the Union, Mr. Lavan, whom we +found in his office.</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes,” he said, “I have no doubt of that. We owe more than I can say +to the Sisters, but I don’t know how long we should have them here if +the local guardians could have their way.”</p> + +<p>In explanation of this, he went on to tell me that these local +guardians, who are elected, are hostile to the whole administration, +because of its <a name="page124" id="page124"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 124] +</span>relations with the Local Government Board at Dublin, +which controls their generous tendency to expend the money of the +ratepayers. By way of expressing their feelings, therefore, they have +been trying to cut down, not only the salary of the clerk, but that of +the Catholic chaplain of the Union; and as there is a good deal of +irreligious feeling among the agitators here, it is his impression that +they would make things disagreeable for the Sisters also were they in +any way to get the management into their own hands. That there cannot be +much real distress in this neighbourhood appears from two facts. There +are now but 130 inmates of this Union, out of a population of 12,900, +and the outlay for out-of-door relief averages between eight and ten +pounds a week.</p> + +<p>In the quiet, neat chapel two or three of the inmates were kneeling at +prayers; and others whom we saw in the kitchen and about the offices had +nothing of the “workhouse” look which is so painful in the ordinary +inmates of an English or American almshouse.</p> + +<p>“The trouble with the place,” said Mr. Lavan, “is that they like it too +well. It takes an eviction almost to get them out of it.”</p> + +<p><a name="page125" id="page125"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 125] +</span>We sat down with Mr. Lavan in his office, and had an interesting talk +with him.</p> + +<p>He is the agent of Mr. Mathews, who lives between Woodford and Portumna. +Mr. Mathews is a resident landlord, he says, who has constantly employed +and has lived on friendly terms with his tenants, numbering twenty, who +hold now under judicial rents. On these judicial rents two years ago +they were allowed a further reduction of 15 per cent. Last year they +were allowed 20 per cent. This year he offered them a reduction of 25 +per cent., which they rejected, demanding 35 per cent.</p> + +<p>This demand Mr. Lavan considers to be unreasonable in the extreme, and +he attributes it to the influence of the National Leaguers here, whose +representatives among the local guardians constantly vote away the money +of the ratepayers in “relief to evicted tenants who have ample means and +can in no respect be called destitute.” In his opinion the effect of the +Nationalist agitation here has been to upset all ideas of right and +wrong in the minds of the people where any question arises between +tenants and landlords. He told a story, confirmed by Mr. Tener, of a +bailiff, whom he named, on the <a name="page126" id="page126"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 126] +</span>Clanricarde property here, who was +compelled two years ago to resign his place in order to prevent the +“boycotting” of his mother who keeps a shop on the farm. He was +familiar, too, with the details of a story told me by one of the +Clanricarde tenants, a farmer near Loughrea who holds a farm at £90 a +year. This man was forced to subscribe to the Plan of Campaign. The +agent proceeded against him for the rent due, and he incurred costs of +£10. His sheep and crop were then seized.</p> + +<p>He begged the local leaders to “permit” him to pay his rent, as he was +able to do it <i>without drawing out the funds in their hands</i>! They +refused, and so compelled him to allow his property to be publicly sold, +and to incur further costs of £10. “His farm lies so near the town that +he did not dare to risk the vengeance of the local ruffians.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Lavan gave me the name also of another man who is now actually under +a “boycott,” because he has ventured to resist the modest demand made by +the son of a man whose tenant-right he bought, paying him £100 for it, +twenty years ago, that he shall give up his farm without being +reimbursed for his outlay made to purchase it! In other words, after +twenty years’ peaceable <a name="page127" id="page127"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 127] +</span>possession of a piece of property, bought and +paid for, this tenant-farmer is treated as a “land-grabber” by the +self-installed “Nationalist” government of Ireland, because he will not +submit to be robbed both of the money which he paid for his +tenant-right, and of his tenant-right!</p> + +<p>Obviously in such a case as this the “war against landlordism” is simply +a war against property and against private rights. Priests of the +Catholic Church who not only countenance but aid and abet such +proceedings certainly go even beyond Dr. M‘Glynn. Dr. M‘Glynn, so far as +I know, stops at the confiscation of all private property in rent by the +State for the State. But here is simply a confiscation of the property +of A for the benefit of B, such as might happen if B, being armed and +meeting A unarmed in a forest, should confiscate the watch and chain of +A, bought by A of B’s lamented but unthrifty father twenty years before!</p> + +<p>After dinner to-night Mr. Tener gave me some interesting and edifying +accounts of his experience in other parts of Ireland.</p> + +<p>Some time ago, before the Plan of Campaign was adopted, one of his +tenants in Cavan came to him with a doleful story of the bad times and +the low <a name="page128" id="page128"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 128] +</span>prices, and wound up by saying he could pay no more than half a +year’s rent.</p> + +<p>“Now his rent had been reduced under the Land Act,” said Mr, Tener, “and +I had voluntarily thrown off a lot of arrears, so I looked at him +quietly and said, ‘Mickey, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You have +been very well treated, and you can perfectly well pay your rent. Your +wife would be ashamed of you if she knew you were trying to get out of +it.’”</p> + +<p>“Ah no, your honour!” he briskly replied; “indade she would approve it. +If you won’t discover on me, I’ll tell you the truth. It was the wife +herself, she’s a great schollard, and reads the papers, that tould me +not to pay you more than half the rent—for she says there’s a new Act +coming to wipe it all out. Will you take the half-year?”</p> + +<p>“No, I will not. Don’t be afraid of your wife, but pay what you owe, +like a man. You’ve got the money there in your pocket.”</p> + +<p>This was a good shot. Mickey couldn’t resist it, and his countenance +broke into a broad smile.</p> + +<p>“Ah no! I’ve got it in two pockets. Begorra, it was the wife herself +made up the money in two <a name="page129" id="page129"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 129] +</span>parcels, and she put one into each pocket, to +be sure—and I wasn’t to give your honour but one, if you would take it. +But there’s the money, and I daresay it’s all for the best.”</p> + +<p>On another occasion, when he was collecting the rents of a property in +the county of Longford, one tenant came forward as the spokesman of the +rest, admitted that the rents had been accepted fairly after a reduction +under the Land Act, expressed the general wish of the tenants to meet +their obligations, and wound up by asking a further abatement, “the +times were so bad, and the money couldn’t be got, it couldn’t indeed!”</p> + +<p>Mr. Tener listened patiently—to listen patiently is the most essential +quality of an agent in Ireland—and finally said:—</p> + +<p>“Very well, if you haven’t got the money to pay in full, pay +three-quarters of it, and I’ll give you time for the rest.”</p> + +<p>“Thank your honour!” said Pat, “and that’ll be thirty pounds—and here +it is in one pound notes, and hard enough to get they are, these times!”</p> + +<p>So Mr. Tener took the money, counted the notes twice over, and then, +writing out a receipt, handed it to the tenant.</p> + +<p><a name="page130" id="page130"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 130] +</span>“All right, Pat, there’s your receipt for thirty-nine pounds, and I’m +glad to see ten-pound notes going about the country in these hard +times!”</p> + +<p>By mistake the “distressful” orator had put one ten-pound note into his +parcel! He took his receipt, and went off without a word. But the +combination to get an “abatement” broke down then and there, and the +other tenants came forward and put down their money.</p> + +<p>These incidents occurred to Mr. Tener himself. Not less amusing and +instructive was a similar mistake on a larger scale made by an +over-crafty tenant in dealing with one of Mr. Tener’s friends a few +years ago in the county of Leitrim. This tenant, whom we will call +Denis, was the fugleman also of a combination. He was a cattle dealer as +well as a farmer, and having spent a couple of hours in idly eloquent +attempts to bring about a general abatement of the rents, he lost his +patience.</p> + +<p>“Ah, well, your honour!” he said, “I can’t stay here all day talking +like these men, I must go to the fair at Boyle. Will you take a +deposit-receipt of the bank for ten pounds and give me the pound change? +that’ll just be the nine pounds for the half-year’s rent. But all the +same, yer honour, <a name="page131" id="page131"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 131] +</span>those men are all farmers, and it’s not out of the +farm at all I made the ten pounds, it’s out of the dealing!”</p> + +<p>“But you couldn’t deal without a farm, Denis, for the stock,” said the +agent, as he glanced at the receipt. He hastily turned it over, and went +on, “Just indorse the receipt, and I’ll consider your proposition.”</p> + +<p>The receipt was indorsed, and at once taken off by the agent’s clerk to +the bank to bring back pound-notes for it, while the agent quietly +proceeded to fill out the regular form of receipt for a full year’s +rent, eighteen pounds. Denis noted what he supposed of course to be the +agent’s blunder, but like an astute person held his peace. The clerk +came back with the notes. Denis took up his receipt, and the agent +quietly began handing him note after note across the table.</p> + +<p>“But, your honour!” exclaimed Denis, “what on earth are ye giving me all +this money for?”</p> + +<p>“It’s your change,” said the agent, quite imperturbably. “You gave me a +bank receipt for one hundred pounds. I have given you a receipt for your +full year’s rent, and here are eighty-two pounds in notes, and with it +eighteen shillings in <a name="page132" id="page132"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 132] +</span>silver—that’s five per cent. reduction. I would +have made it ten per cent., only you were so very sharp, first about not +having the money, and then about the full receipt!”</p> + +<p>In an instant all eyes were fastened upon Denis. Ichabod! the glory had +departed. The chorus went up from his disenchanted followers:—</p> + +<p>“Ah, glory be to God, you were not bright enough for the agent, Denis!”</p> + +<p>And so that day the agent made a very full and handsome collection—and +there was a slight reduction in the deposit-accounts of the local bank!</p> + +<p>In the evening Mr. Tener gave me the details of some cases of direct +intimidation with the names of the tenants concerned. One man, whose +farm he visited, told him he had paid his rent not long before to the +previous agent. “Well,” said Mr. Tener, “show me your receipt!” On this +the tenant said that he dare not keep the receipt about him, nor even in +the house, lest it should be demanded by the emissaries of the League, +who went round to keep the tenants up to the “Plan of Campaign,” and +that it was hidden in his stable. And he went out to the stable and +brought it in.</p> + +<p>This, he had reason to believe, was not an uncom<a name="page133" id="page133"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 133] +</span>mon case.<a id="footnotetag12" + name="footnotetag12"></a><a href="#footnote12"><sup>12</sup></a> The same +man, wishing to take a grass farm which the people hoped the agent would +consent to have “cut up” was asked to give two names on a +promissory-note to pay the rent. He demurred to this, and after a parley +said, “Would a certificate do?” upon which he pulled out an old +tobacco-box, and carefully unfolded from it a bank certificate of +deposit for a hundred pounds sterling! This tenant held eleven Irish, or +more than seventeen English, acres, and his yearly rent was £11, 16s. +6d.</p> + +<p>The people before this agitation began were generally quiet, thrifty, +and industrious. They were great sheep-raisers. An old law of the Irish +Parliament had exempted sheep, but not cattle or <a name="page134" id="page134"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 134] +</span>crops, from distraint, +with an eye to encouraging the woollen interest in Ireland.</p> + +<p>As to the sale of tenant-right in Ireland, he told me a curious story. +One woman, a widow, whom he named, owed two year’ rent on a holding in +Ulster at £4 a year. She was abundantly able to pay, but for her own +reasons preferred to be evicted, and, finally, by an understanding with +him, offered her tenant-right for sale. A man who had made money in +iron-mines in the County of Durham was a bidder, and finally offered +£240 for the holding. It was knocked down to him. He then saw the agent, +who told him he had paid too much. The woman was then appealed to, and +she admitted that the agent was right. But it was shown that others had +offered £200, and the woman finally agreed to take, and received, that +amount in gold, being fifty years’ purchase!</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page135" id="page135"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 135] +</span>CHAPTER X.</h2> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">DUBLIN, <i>Thursday, March 1.</i>—</span>This has been a crowded day. I left +Portumna very early on a car with Mr. Tener, intending to visit the +scene of his latest collision with the “National” government of Ireland, +on my way to Loughrea. It was a bright spring morning, more like April +in Italy than like March in America, and the country is full of natural +beauty. We made our first halt at the derelict house of Martin Kenny, +one of the “victims” of the famous “Woodford evictions,” so called, as I +have said, because Woodford is the nearest town.<a id="footnotetag13" + name="footnotetag13"></a><a href="#footnote13"><sup>13</sup></a> The eviction here +took place October 21st, 1887. The house has been dismantled by the +neighbours since that time, each man carrying off a door, or a shutter, +<a name="page136" id="page136"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 136] +</span>or whatever best suited him. One of the constables who followed us as +Mr. Tener’s body-guard had been present at the eviction. He came into +the house with us, and very graphically described the performance. The +house was still full of heavy stones taken into it, partly to block the +entrances, and partly as ammunition; and trunks of trees used as +<i>chevaux defrise</i> still protruded through the door and the window. These +trees had been cut down by the garrison in the woodlands here and there +all over the property. I asked if the law in Ireland punished +depredations of this sort, and was informed that trees planted by +tenants, if registered by them within a certain time, are the property +of the tenants. This would astonish our landlords in America, where the +tenant who sticks so much as a sunflower into his garden-patch makes a +present of it to his landlord.<a id="footnotetag14" + name="footnotetag14"></a><a href="#footnote14"><sup>14</sup></a></p> + +<p>I asked if the place made a long defence. Mr. Tener and the constable +both laughed, and the <a name="page137" id="page137"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 137] +</span>former told me that when the storming party +arrived shortly after daybreak, they found the house garrisoned only by +some small boys, who had been left there to keep watch. The men were +fast asleep at some other place. The small boys ran away as fast as +possible to give the alarm, but the police went in, and in a jiffey +pulled to pieces the elaborate defences prepared to repel them. Father +Coen, the constable said, got to Kenny’s house an hour after it was all +over, with a mob of people howling and groaning. But the work had been +done, and other work also at the Castle of Cloondadauv, to which we next +drove.</p> + +<p>This place takes its truly awe-inspiring name from a ruined Norman tower +standing on a picturesque promontory of no great height, which juts out +into the lovely lake here made by the Shannon. At no great expense this +tower might be so restored as to make an ideal fishing-box. It now +simply adorns the holding formerly occupied by Mr. John Stanislaus +Burke, a former tenant of Lord Clanricarde. The story of its capture on +the 17th of September is worth telling.</p> + +<p>Some days before the evictions were to come off, a meeting was held at +Woodford or Loughrea, at <a name="page138" id="page138"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 138] +</span>which one of the speakers, the patriotic Dr. +Tully, rather incautiously and exultingly told his hearers that the +defence in 1886 of the tenant’s house known as “Fort Saunders” had been +a grand and gallant affair indeed, but that next time “the exterminators +would have to storm a castle”!</p> + +<p>This put Mr. Tener at once on the alert, and as Mr. Burke of Cloondadauv +was set down for eviction, it didn’t require much cogitation to fix upon +the fortress destined to be “stormed.” So he set about the campaign. The +County Inspector of the constabulary, who had made a secret +reconnaissance, reported that he found the place too strong to be taken +if defended, except “by artillery.” So it was determined to take it by +surprise.</p> + +<p>When the previous evictions were made, the agent and the public forces +had marched from Portumna by the highway to Woodford, so that, of +course, their advent was announced by the scouts and sentinels of the +League from hill to hill long before they reached the scene of action, +and abundant time was given to the agitators for organising a +“reception.” Mr. Tener profited by the experience of his predecessors. +He contrived to get his force of constabulary through the town of +Portumna <a name="page139" id="page139"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 139] +</span>without attracting any popular attention. And as early rising +is not a popular virtue here, he resolved to steal a march on the +defenders of Cloondadauv.</p> + +<p>He had brought up certain large boats to Portumna, and put them on the +lake. Rousing his men before dawn, he soon had them all embarked, and on +their way swiftly and silently by the river and the lake to Cloondadauv. +They reached the promontory by daybreak, and as soon as the hour of +legal action had arrived they were landed, and surrounded the “castle.” +The ancient portal was found to be blocked with heavy stones and trunks +of trees, nor did any adit appear to be available, till a young +gentleman who had accompanied the party as a volunteer, discovered in +one wall of the tower, at some little height from the ground, the vent +of one of those conduits not infrequently found running down through the +walls of old castles, which were used sometimes as waste-ways for +rubbish from above, and sometimes to receive water-pipes from below. +Looking up into this vent, he saw a rope hanging free within it. Upon +this he hauled resolutely, and finding it firmly attached above, came to +the <a name="page140" id="page140"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 140] +</span>conclusion that it must have been fixed there by the garrison as a +means of access to the interior.</p> + +<p>Like an adventurous young tar, he bade his comrades stand by, and nimbly +“swarmed” up the rope, without thought or care of what might await him +at the top. In a few moments his shouts from above proclaimed the +capture of the stronghold. It was absolutely deserted; the garrison, +confident that no attack would that day be made, had gone off to the +nearest village. The interior of the castle was found filled with +munitions of war, in the shape of huge beams and piles of stones +laboriously carried up the winding stairs, and heaped on all the +landing-places in readiness for use. On the flat roof of the castle was +established a sort of furnace for heating water or oil, to be poured +down upon the besiegers; and crowbars lay there in readiness to loosen +out and dislodge the battlements, and topple them over upon the +assailants.</p> + +<p>The officers soon made their way all over the building, and thence +proceeded to the residence of Mr. Burke near by, a large and very +commodious house. All the formalities were gone through with, a +detachment of policemen was put in charge, and the rest of the forces +set out on their return to <a name="page141" id="page141"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 141] +</span>Portumna, before the organised “defenders” of +Cloondadauv, hastily called out of their comfortable beds or from their +breakfast-tables had realised the situation, and got the populace into +motion. A mass meeting was held in the neighbourhood, and many speeches +were made. But the castle and the farm-house and the holding all remain +in the hands of a cool, quiet, determined-looking young Ulsterman, who +tells me that he is getting on very well, and feels quite able with his +police-guard to protect himself. “Once in a while,” he said, “they come +here from Loughrea with English Parliament-men, and stand outside of the +gate, and call me ‘Clanricarde’s dog,’ and make like speeches at me; but +I don’t mind them, and they see it, and go away again.”</p> + +<p>Of Mr. Burke, the evicted tenant here, Mr. Crawford, the Protestant +clergyman at Portumna, told me that he was abundantly able to pay his +rent. The whole debt for which Burke was evicted was £115; and Mr. +Crawford said he had himself offered Burke £300 for the holding. Burke +would have gladly taken this, but “the League wouldn’t let him.” When +his right was put up for sale at Galway for £5, he did not dare to buy +it in, <a name="page142" id="page142"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 142] +</span>and he is now living with his wife and children on the League +funds. Lord Clanricarde’s agent offered to take him back and restore his +right if he would pay what he owed; but he dared not accept. This farm +comprises over one hundred and ten English acres, which Burke held at a +rent—fixed by the Land Court—of £77, the valuation for taxes being +£83.</p> + +<p>To call the eviction of such a tenant in such circumstances from such a +holding a “sentence of death,” is making ducks and drakes of the English +language. Mr. Crawford’s opinion, founded upon a thorough personal +knowledge of the region, is that there is no exceptional distress in +this part of Ireland, and that over-renting has nothing to do with such +distress as does exist here. The case of a man named Egan, one of the +“victims” of the Woodford evictions of 1886, certainly bears out this +view of the matter. Egan, who was a tenant, not at all of Lord +Clanricarde, but of a certain Mrs. Lewis, had occupied for twenty years +a holding of about sixteen Irish acres, or more than twenty English +acres. This he held at a yearly rental of £8, 15s., being 9d. over the +valuation.</p> + +<p>In August 1886 he was evicted for refusing to <a name="page143" id="page143"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 143] +</span>pay one year’s rent then +due. At that time the crops standing on the land were valued by him at +£60, 13s. He also owned six beasts. In other words, this man, when he +was called upon to pay a debt of £8, 15s. had in his own possession, +beside the valuable tenant-right of his holding, more than a hundred +pounds sterling of merchantable assets. He refused to pay, and he was +evicted.</p> + +<p>This was in August 1886. But such are the ideas now current in Ireland +as to the relations of landlord and tenant, that immediately after his +eviction Egan sent his daughter to gather some cabbages off the farm as +if nothing had happened. The Emergency men in charge actually objected, +and sent the damsel away. Thereupon Egan, on the 6th of September, +served a legal notice on Mrs. Lewis, his landlady, requiring her either +to let him take all the crops on the farm, or to pay him their value, +estimated by him, as I have said, at £60, 13s. Two days after this, on +the 8th of September, more than a hundred men came to the place by night +and removed the greater portion of the crops. Not wishing a return of +these visitors, Mrs. Lewis, on the 16th of September, sent word to Egan +to come and take away what was left of the crops; one of <a name="page144" id="page144"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 144] +</span>the horses +employed in the nocturnal harvest of September 8th having been seized by +the police and identified as belonging to Egan. Egan did not respond; +but in July 1887 he brought an action against his landlady to recover +£100 sterling for her “detention of his goods,” and her “conversion of +the same to her own use ”!</p> + +<p>The case was heard by the Recorder at Kilmainham, and the facts which I +have briefly recited were established by the evidence. The daughter of +this extraordinary “victim” Egan appeared as a witness, so “fashionably +dressed” as to attract a remark on the subject from the defendant’s +counsel. To this she replied that “her brothers in America sent her +money.”</p> + +<p>“If your brothers in America sent you money for such purposes,” not +unnaturally observed the Recorder, “why did they allow your father to +sacrifice crops worth £60 for the non-payment of <a name="page145" id="page145"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 145] +</span>£8, 15s.?”</p> + +<p>“They were tired of that,” said the young lady airily; “the land wasn’t +worth the rent!”</p> + +<p>That is to say, a farm which yielded a crop of £60, and pastured several +head of cattle, was not worth £8, 15s. a year. Certainly it was not +worth £8, 15s. a year if the tenant under the operation of the existing +or the impending laws of Great Britain in Ireland could get, or hope to +get it for the half of that rent, or for no rent at all.</p> + +<p>But this being thus, on what grounds are the rest of mankind invited to +regard this excellent man as a “victim” worthy of sympathy and of +material aid? How had he come to be in arrears of a year in August 1886? +The proceedings at Kilmainham tell us this.</p> + +<p>In November 1885 he had demanded, with other tenants of Mrs. Lewis, a +reduction of 50 per cent. This would have given him his holding at a +rental of £4, 7s. 6d. Mrs. Lewis refused the concession, and a month +afterwards an attempt was made to blow up her son’s house with dynamite. +Between that time and August 1886, all the efforts of her son, who was +also her agent, to collect her dues by seizing beasts, were defeated by +the driving away of the cattle, so that no remedy but an eviction was +left to her. I take it for granted that Mrs. Lewis had a family to +maintain, and debts of one sort and another to pay, as well as Mr. +Egan—but I observe this material difference between her position and +his during the whole of this period of “strained <a name="page146" id="page146"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 146] +</span>relations” between +herself and her tenant, that whereas she lay completely out of the +enjoyment of the rent due her, being the interest on her capital, +represented in her title to the land, Mr. Egan remained in the complete +enjoyment and use of the land. Clearly the tenant was in a better +position than the landlord, and as we are dealing not with the history +of Ireland in the past, but with the condition of Ireland at present, it +appears to me to be quite beside the purpose to ask my sympathies for +Mr. Egan on the ground that a century or half a century ago the +ancestors of Mr. Egan may have been at the mercy of the ancestors of +Mrs. Lewis. However that may have been, Mr. Egan seems to me now to have +had legally much the advantage of Mrs. Lewis. Not only this. Both +legally and materially Mr. Egan, the tenant-farmer at Woodford, seems to +me to have had much the advantage of thousands of his countrymen living +and earning their livelihood by their daily labour in such a typical +American commonwealth, for example, as Massachusetts. I have here with +me the Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics of +Massachusetts. From this I learn that in 1876 the average yearly wages +earned by workmen in Massachusetts were <a name="page147" id="page147"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 147] +</span>$482.72, or in round numbers +something over £96. Out of this amount the Massachusetts workman had to +feed, clothe, and house himself, and those dependent on him.</p> + +<p>His outlay for rent alone was on the average $109.07, or in round +numbers rather less than £22, making 22-1/2 per cent, of his earnings.</p> + +<p>How was it with Mr. Egan? Out of his labour on his holding he got +merchantable crops worth £60 sterling, or in round numbers $300, besides +producing in the shape of vegetables and dairy stuff, pigs and poultry, +certainly a very large proportion of the food necessary for his +household, and raising and fattening beasts, worth at a low estimate £20 +or $100 more. And while thus engaged, his outlay for rent, which +included not only the house in which he lived, but the land out of which +he got the returns of his labour expended upon it, was £8, 15s., or +considerably less than one-half the outlay of the Massachusetts workman +upon the rent of nothing more than a roof to shelter himself and his +family. Furthermore, the money thus paid out by the Massachusetts +workman for rent was simply a tribute paid for accommodation had and +enjoyed, while out of every pound sterling paid as rent by <a name="page148" id="page148"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 148] +</span>the Irish +tenant there reverted to his credit, so long as he continued to fulfil +his legal obligations, a certain proportion, calculable, valuable, and +saleable, in the form of his tenant-right.</p> + +<p>I am not surprised to learn that the Recorder dismissed the suit brought +by Mr. Egan, and gave costs against him. But the mere fact that in such +circumstances it was possible for Egan to bring such a suit, and get a +hearing for it, makes it quite clear that Americans of a sympathetic +turn of mind can very easily find much more meritorious objects of +sympathy than the Irish tenant-farmers of Galway without crossing the +Atlantic in quest of them.</p> + +<p>From Cloondadauv to Loughrea we had a long but very interesting drive, +passing on the way, and at no great distance from each other, Father +Coen’s neat, prosperous-looking presbytery of Ballinakill, and the shop +and house of a local boat-builder named Tully, who is pleasantly known +in the neighbourhood as “Dr. Tully,” by reason of his recommendation of +a very particular sort of “pills for landlords.” The presbytery is now +occupied by Father Coen, who finds it becoming his position as the moral +teacher and guide of his people to be in arrears of two and a half years +with the rent of his holding, and who is said to <a name="page149" id="page149"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 149] +</span>have entertained Mr. +Blunt and other sympathising statesmen very handsomely on their visit to +Loughrea and Woodford,<a id="footnotetag15" + name="footnotetag15"></a><a href="#footnote15"><sup>15</sup></a> “Dr.” Tully being one of the guests invited +to meet them.<a id="footnotetag16" + name="footnotetag16"></a><a href="#footnote16"><sup>16</sup></a> Not far from this presbytery, Mr. Tener showed me the +scene of one of the most cowardly murders which have disgraced this +region. Of Loughrea, the objective of our drive this morning, Sir George +Trevelyan, I am told, during his brief rule in Ireland, found it +necessary to say that murder had there become an institution. Woodford, +previously a dull and law-abiding spot, was illuminated by a lurid light +of modern progress about three years ago, upon the transfer thither in +the summer of 1885 of a priest from Loughrea, familiarly known as “the +firebrand priest.”</p> + +<p>In November of that year, as I have already related, Mr. Egan and other +tenants of Mrs. Lewis of <a name="page150" id="page150"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 150] +</span>Woodford made their demand for a 50 per cent. +reduction of their rents, upon the refusal of which an attempt was made +with dynamite on the 18th December to blow up the house of Mrs. Lewis’s +son and agent. All the bailiffs in the region round about were warned to +give up serving processes, and many of them were cowed into doing so. +One man, however, was not cowed. This was a gallant Irish soldier, +discharged with honour after the Crimean war, and known in the country +as “Balaklava,” because he was one of the “noble six hundred,” who there +rode “into the jaws of death, into the valley of hell.” His name was +Finlay, and he was a Catholic. At a meeting in Woodford, Father Coen +(the priest now in arrears), it is said, looked significantly at Finlay, +and said, “no process-server will be got to serve processes for Sir +Henry Burke of Marble Hill.” The words and the look were thrown away on +the veteran who had faced the roar and the crash of the Russian guns, +and later on, in December 1885, Finlay did his duty, and served the +processes given to him. From that moment he and his wife were +“boycotted.” His own kinsfolk dared not speak to him. His house was +attacked by night. He was a doomed man. On the 3d March 1886, about 2 +o’clock P.M., <a name="page151" id="page151"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 151] +</span>he left his house—which Mr. Tener pointed out to me—to +cut fuel in a wood belonging to Sir Henry Burke, at no great distance. +Twice he made the journey between his house and the wood. The third time +he went and returned no more. His wife growing uneasy at his prolonged +absence went out to look for him. She found his body riddled with +bullets lying lifeless in the highway. The police who went into Woodford +with the tale report the people as laughing and jeering at the agony of +the widowed woman. She was with them, and, maddened by the savage +conduct of these wretched creatures, she knelt down over-against the +house of Father Egan, and called down the curse of God upon him.</p> + +<p>On the next day things were worse. No one could be found to supply a +coffin for the murdered man.<a id="footnotetag17" + name="footnotetag17"></a><a href="#footnote17"><sup>17</sup></a> When the police called upon the priests +to exert their influence and enforce some semblance at least of +Christian and Catholic decency upon the people confided to their charge, +the priests not only refused to do their duty, but floutingly referred +the police to Lady Mary Burke. “He did her work,” they said, “let her +send a hearse now to bury him.” <a name="page152" id="page152"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 152] +</span>The lady thus insolently spoken of is +one of the best of the Catholic women of Ireland. At her summons Father +Burke, a few years only before his death, I remember, made a long winter +journey, though in very bad health, from Dublin to Marble Hill to soothe +the last hours and attend the death-bed of her husband.</p> + +<p>No one who knew and loved him can wish him to have lived to hear from +her lips such a tale of the degradation of Catholic priests in his own +land of Galway.</p> + +<p>Mr. Tener pointed out to me, at another place on the road, near +Ballinagar, the deserted burying-ground in which, after much trouble, a +grave was found for the brave old soldier who had escaped the Russian +cannon-balls to be so foully done to death by felons of his own race. +There the last rites were performed by Father Callaghy, a priest who was +himself “boycotted” for resigning the presidency of the League in his +parish, and for the still graver offence of paying his rent. For weeks +it was necessary to guard the grave!<a id="footnotetag18" + name="footnotetag18"></a><a href="#footnote18"><sup>18</sup></a></p> + +<p><a name="page153" id="page153"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 153] +</span>From that day to this no one has been brought to justice for this crime, +committed in broad daylight, and within sight of the highway. Mr. Place, +whom I saw at Portumna, told me that he believed the police had no moral +doubt as to the murderer of Finlay, but that it was useless to think of +getting legal evidence to convict him.</p> + +<p>Mr. Tener tells me that when Mr. Wilfrid Blunt came to Woodford he went +with Father Egan, and accompanied by the police, to see the widow of +this murdered man, heard from her own lips the sickening story, and took +notes of it. But when Mr. Rowlands, M.P., an English “friend of Home +Rule,” was examined the other day during the trial of Mr. Blunt, he was +obliged to confess that though he had visited Woodford more than once, +and conversed <a name="page154" id="page154"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 154] +</span>freely with Mr. Blunt about it, he had “never heard of the +murder of Finlay.”</p> + +<p>Such an incident is apparently of little interest to politicians at +Westminster. Fortunately for Ireland, it is of a nature to command more +attention at the Vatican.</p> + +<p>Nature has sketched the scenery of this part of Ireland with a free, +bold hand. It is not so grand or so wild as the scenery of Western +Donegal, but it has both a wildness and a grandeur of its own. Sir Henry +Burke’s seat of Marble Hill, as seen in the distance from the road, +stands superbly, high up on a lofty range of wooded hills, from which it +commands the country for miles. And no town I have seen in Ireland is +more picturesquely placed than Loughrea. It has an almost Italian aspect +as you approach it from Woodford. But no lake in Lombardy or Piedmont is +so peculiarly and exquisitely tinted as the lough on which it stands. +The delicate grey-green of the sparkling waters reminded me of the +singular and well-defined belts and stretches of chrysoprase upon which +you sometimes come in sailing through the dark azure of the Southern +Seas. I have never before seen precisely such a hue in any body of fresh +water. The lake <a name="page155" id="page155"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 155] +</span>is incorrectly described, Mr. Tener tells me, in the +guide-books, as being one of the many curious developments of the Lower +Shannon. It is fed by springs, but if, like the river-lakes, it was +formed by a solution of the limestone, this fact may have some chemical +relation with its very peculiar colour. It contains three picturesque +islands. No stream flows into it, but two streams issue from it. The +town of Loughrea is an ancient holding of the De Burghs, and the +estate-office of Lord Clanricarde is here in one wing of a great +barrack, standing, as I understood Mr. Tener to say, on the site of a +former fortress of the family. Lord Clanricarde’s property here is put +down by Mr. Hussey de Burgh at 49,025 acres in County Galway, valued at +£19,634, and at 3576 acres in the county of the City of Galway, valued +at £1202. These, I believe, are statute acres, and in estimating the +relation of Irish rentals to Irish land this fact must be always +ascertained. Of the so-called “Woodford” property the present rental is +no more than £1900, payable by 260 tenants. The Poor-Law valuation for +taxes is £2400. There was a revision of the whole Galway property made +by the father of the present Marquis. Of the 260 Woodford holdings <a name="page156" id="page156"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 156] +</span>only +twelve were increased, in no case more than 6-1/4 per cent, over the +valuation. In 1882 six of these twelve tenants applied to the Land +Court. The rents were in no case restored to the figures before 1872, +but about 7 per cent. was taken off the increased rental. The assertion +repeatedly made that in 1882 rents were reduced by the Land Court 50 per +cent. on the Clanricarde estates, Mr. Tener tells me, is absolutely +false. In the first year of the Court no reduction went beyond 10 per +cent., and in later years, even under the panic of low prices, the +average has not exceeded 20 per cent.</p> + +<p>After making arrangements for a car to take me on to Woodlawn, where I +was to catch the Dublin train, I went out with Mr. Tener to look at the +town.</p> + +<p>My drive from Loughrea to Woodlawn was delightful. It took me over a +long stretch of the best hunting country of Galway, and my jarvey was a +Galwegian of the type dear to the heart of Lever. He was a “Nationalist” +after his fashion, but he did not hesitate to come rattling up through +the town to the Estate Office to take me up; and after we got fairly off +upon the highway, he spoke with more freedom than respect of all sorts +and conditions of men in and about Loughrea.</p> + +<p><a name="page157" id="page157"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 157] +</span>“He’s a sharp little man, that Mr. Tener,” he said, “and he gave the +boys a most beautiful beating at Burke’s place.”</p> + +<p>This was said with genuine gusto, and not at all in the querulous spirit +of the delightful member of Parliament who complained at Westminster +with unconscious humour that the agent and the police in that case had +“dishonourably” stolen a march on the defenders of Cloondadauv!</p> + +<p>“But we’ve beaten them entirely,” he said, with equal zest, “at Marble +Hill. Sir Henry has agreed to pay all the costs, and the living expenses +too, of the poor men that were put out.<a id="footnotetag19" + name="footnotetag19"></a><a href="#footnote19"><sup>19</sup></a> I didn’t ever think we’d get +that; but ye see the truth is,” he added confidentially, “he must have +the money, Sir Henry—he’s lying out of a deal, and then there’s heavy +charges on the property. A fine property it is indeed!”</p> + +<p>“In fact,” I said, “you put Sir Henry to the wall. Is that it?”</p> + +<p>“Well, it’s like that. But we shan’t get that out <a name="page158" id="page158"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 158] +</span>of Clanricarde, I’m +thinking. He’s got a power o’ money they tell me; and he’s that of the +ould Burke blood, he won’t mind fighting just as long as you like!”</p> + +<p>As we drove along, he pointed out to me several fine stretches of +hunting country, and, to my surprise, informed me that only the other +day “there was as fine a meet as ever you saw, more than a hundred +ladies and gentlemen—a grand sight it was.”</p> + +<p>I asked if the hunting had not been “put down by the League.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, now then, sir, who’d be wanting to put down the hunting here in +Galway?—and Ballinasloe? Were you ever at Ballinasloe? just the +grandest horse fair there is in the whole wide world!”</p> + +<p>I insisted that I had always heard a great deal about the opposition of +the League to hunting.</p> + +<p>“Oh, that’ll be some little lawyer fellow,” he replied, “like that +Healy, that can’t sit on a horse! It’s the grandest country in all the +world for riding over. What for wouldn’t they ride over it?”</p> + +<p>“Were there many went out to America from about Loughrea?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes; they were always coming and going. But as many came back.”</p> + +<p><a name="page159" id="page159"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 159] +</span>“Why?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, they didn’t like the country. It wasn’t as good a country, was it, +as old Ireland? And they had to work too hard; and then some of them got +money, and they’d like to spend it in the old place.”</p> + +<p>The country about Woodlawn is very picturesque and well wooded, and for +a long distance we followed the neatly-kept stone walls of the large and +handsome park of Lord Ashtown.</p> + +<p>“The most beautiful and biggest trees in all Ireland, sorr,” said the +jarvey, “and it’s a great pity, it is, ye can’t stay to let me drive you +all over it, for the finest part of the park is just what you can’t see +from this road. Oh, her ladyship would never object to any gentleman +driving about to see the beauties of the place. She is a very good +woman, is her ladyship. She gave work the last Christmas to thirty-two +men, and there wasn’t another house in the country there that had work +for more than ten or twelve. A very good woman she is, indeed.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, that is a very handsome church, it is indeed. It is the Protestant +Church. Lord Ashtown built it; he was a very good man too, and did a +power of good—building and making roads, and giving work to the people. +He was buried there in <a name="page160" id="page160"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 160] +</span>that Castle, over the station—Trench’s Castle, +they called it.”</p> + +<p>“All that lumber there by the station?”</p> + +<p>“That came out of the Ashtown woods. They were always cutting down the +trees; there was so many of them you might be cutting for years—you +would never get to the end of them.”</p> + +<p>Woodlawn Station is one of the neatest and prettiest railway stations I +have seen in Ireland—more like a picturesque stone cottage, green and +gay with flowers, than like a station. The station-master’s family of +cheery well-dressed lads and lasses went and came about the bright fire +in the waiting-room in a friendly unobtrusive fashion, chatting with the +policeman and the porter and the passengers. It was hard to believe +one’s-self within an easy drive of the “cockpit of Ireland.”</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page161" id="page161"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 161] +</span>CHAPTER XI.</h2> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">BORRIS, <i>Friday, March 2d.</i>—</span>This is the land of the Kavanaghs, and a +lovely, picturesque, richly-wooded land it is. I left Dublin with Mr. +Gyles by an afternoon train; the weather almost like June. We ran from +the County of Dublin into Kildare, and from Kildare into Carlow, through +hills; rural scenery quite unlike anything I have hitherto seen in +Ireland. At Bagnalstown, a very pretty place, with a spire which takes +the eye, our host joined us, and came on with us to this still more +attractive spot. Borris has been the seat of his family for many +centuries. The MacMorroghs of Leinster, whom the Kavanaghs lineally +represent, dwelt here long before Dermot MacMorrogh, finding his +elective throne in Leinster too hot to hold him, went off into +Aquitaine, to get that famous “letter of marque” from Henry II. of +England, with the help of which this king without a kingdom induced +Richard de Clare, an earl without an earldom, to lend him a <a name="page162" id="page162"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 162] +</span>hand and +bring the Normans into Ireland. Many of this race lie buried in the +ruins of St. Mullen’s Abbey, on the Barrow, in this county. But none of +them, I opine, ever did such credit to the name as its present +representative, Arthur MacMorrogh Kavanagh.</p> + +<p>I had some correspondence with Mr. Kavanagh several years ago, when he +sent me, through my correspondent for publication in New York, a very +striking statement of his views on the then condition of Irish +affairs—views since abundantly vindicated; and like most people who +have paid any attention to the recent history of Ireland, I knew how +wonderful an illustration his whole career has been of what philosophers +call the superiority of man to his accidents, and plain people the power +of the will. But I knew this only imperfectly. His servant brought him +up to the carriage and placed him in it. This it was impossible not to +see. But I had not talked with him for five minutes before it quite +passed out of my mind. Never was there such a justification of the +paradoxical title which Wilkinson gave to his once famous book, <i>The +Human Body, and its Connexion with Man</i>,—never such a living refutation +of the theory that it is the <a name="page163" id="page163"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 163] +</span>thumb which differentiates man from the +lower animals. Twenty times this evening I have been reminded of the +retort I heard made the other day at Cork by a lawyer, who knows Mr. +Kavanagh well, to a priest of “Nationalist” proclivities, who knows him +not at all. Some allusion having been made to Borris, the lawyer said to +me, “You will see at Borris the best and ablest Irishman alive.” On this +the priest testily and tartly broke in, “Do you mean the man without +hands or feet?”</p> + +<p>“I mean,” replied the lawyer, very quietly, “the man in whom all that +has gone in you or me to arms and legs has gone to heart and head!”</p> + +<p>Borris House stands high in the heart of an extensive and nobly wooded +park, and commands one of the finest landscapes I have seen in Ireland. +As we stood and gazed upon it from the hall door, the distant hills were +touched with a soft purple light such as transfigures the Apennines at +sunset.</p> + +<p>“You should see this view in June,” said Mrs, Kavanagh, “we are all +brown and bare now.”</p> + +<p>Brown and bare, like most other terms, are relative. To the eye of an +American this whole region now seems a sea of verdure, less clear and +fresh, I can easily suppose, than it may be in the early <a name="page164" id="page164"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 164] +</span>summer, but +verdure still. And one must get into the Adirondacks, or up among the +mountains of Western Virginia, to find on our Atlantic slope such trees +as I have this evening seen. One grand ilex near the house could hardly +be matched in the Villa d’Este.</p> + +<p>The house is stately and commodious, and more ancient than it appears to +be,—so many additions have been made to it at different times. It has +passed through more than one siege, and in the ’98 Mr. Kavanagh tells me +the townspeople of Borris came up here and sought refuge. There are vast +caverns under the house and grounds, doubtless made by taking out from +the hill the stone used in building this house, and the fortresses which +stood here before it. In these all sorts of stores were kept, and many +of the people found shelter.</p> + +<p>I need not say that there is a banshee at Borris—though no living +witness, I believe, has heard its warning wail. But as we sat in the +beautiful library, and watched the dying light of day, a lady present +told us a tale more gruesome than many of those in which the “psychical” +inquirers delight. She was sitting, she said, in an upper room of an +ancient mansion here in Carlow, in which she <a name="page165" id="page165"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 165] +</span>lives, when, from the lawn +below, there came up to her a low, sad, shrill cry—the croon of a +woman, such as one hears from the mourners sitting among the turbaned +tombstones of the hill of Eyoub at Constantinople. It startled her, and +she held her breath and listened. She was alone, as she knew, in that +part of the house, and the hall door below was unlocked, as is the +fashion still in Ireland, despite all the troubles and turmoils. Again +the sound came, and this time nearer to the house. Could it be the +banshee? Again and again it rose and died away, each time nearer and +nearer. Then, as she listened, all her nerves strung to the keenest +sensibility, it came again, and now, beyond a doubt, within the hall +below.</p> + +<p>With an effort she rose from her chair, opened a door leading into a +corridor running aside from the main stairway, and fled at full speed +towards the wing in which she knew that she would find some of the +maids. As she sped along she heard the cry again and again far behind +her, as from a creature slowly and steadily mounting the grand stairway +towards the room which she had just quitted.</p> + +<p>She found the maids, who fell into a terrible fright when she told her +story and dared not budge. <a name="page166" id="page166"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 166] +</span>So the bells were violently rung till the +butler and footman appeared. To the first she said simply, “There is a +mad woman in this house—go and find her!”</p> + +<p>“The man looked at me,” she said, “as I spoke with a curious expression +in his face as of one who thought, ‘yes, there is a mad woman in the +house, and she is not far to seek!’”</p> + +<p>But the lady insisted, and the men finally went off on their quest. In +the course of half an hour it was rewarded. The mad woman—a dangerous +creature—who had wandered away from an asylum in the neighbourhood, was +found curled up and fast asleep in the lady’s own bed!</p> + +<p>Fancy a delicate woman going alone into her bedroom at midnight to be +suddenly confronted by an apparition of that sort!</p> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">BORRIS, <i>March 3d.</i>—</span>After a stroll on the lawn this morning, the wide +and glorious prospect bathed in the light of a really soft spring day, I +had a conversation with Mr. Kavanagh about the Land Corporation, of +which he is the guiding spirit. This is a defensive organisation of the +Irish landlords against the Land League. When a landlord has been driven +into <a name="page167" id="page167"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 167] +</span>evicting his tenants, the next step, in the “war against +landlordism,” is to prevent other tenants from taking the vacated lands +and cultivating them. This is accomplished by “boycotting” any man who +does this as a “land-grabber.”</p> + +<p>The ultimate sanction of the “boycott” being “murder,” derelict farms +increased under this system very rapidly; and the Eleventh Commandment +of the League, “Thou shalt not pay the rent which thy neighbour hath +refused to pay,” was in a fair way to dethrone the Ten Commandments of +Sinai throughout Ireland, even before the formal adoption in 1886 of the +“Plan of Campaign.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Gladstone would perhaps have hit the facts more accurately, if, +instead of calling an eviction in Ireland a “sentence of death,” he had +called the taking of a tenancy a sentence of death. Mr. Hussey at Lixnaw +had two tenants, Edmond and James Fitzmaurice. Edmond Fitzmaurice was +“evicted” in May 1887; but he was taken into the house of a neighbour, +made very comfortable, and still lives. James Fitzmaurice took, for the +sake of the family, the land from which Edmond was evicted, and for this +he was denounced as a “land-grabber,” boycotted, and finally shot dead +in the presence of his daughter.</p> + +<p><a name="page168" id="page168"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 168] +</span>At a meeting in Dublin in the autumn of 1885, a parish priest, the Rev. +Mr. Cantwell, described it as a “cardinal virtue” that “no one should +take a farm from which another had been evicted,” and called upon the +people who heard him to “pass any such man by unnoticed, and treat him +as an enemy in their midst.” Public opinion and the law, if not the +authorities of his church would make short work of any priest who talked +in this fashion in New York. But in Ireland, and under the British +Government, it seems they order things differently. So it occurred one +day to the landlords thus assailed, as it did to the sea-lions of the +Cape of Good Hope when the French sailors attacked them, that they might +defend themselves.</p> + +<p>To this end the Land Corporation was instituted, with a considerable +capital at its back, and Mr. Kavanagh at its head. The “plan of +campaign” of this Corporation is to take over from the landlords +derelict lands and cultivate them, stocking them where that is +necessary.</p> + +<p>It is in this way that the derelict lands on the Ponsonby property at +Youghal are now worked. But Mr. Kavanagh tells me that the men employed +by the Corporation, of whom Father Keller spoke <a name="page169" id="page169"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 169] +</span>as a set of desperadoes +or “<i>enfants perdus</i>,” are really a body of resolute and capable working +men farmers. Many, but by no means all of them, are Protestants and +Ulstermen; and that they are up to their work would seem to be shown by +the fact stated to me, that in no case so far have any of them been +deterred and driven off from the holdings confided to them. A great part +of the Luggacurren property of Lord Lansdowne is now worked by the +Corporation; and Mr. Kavanagh was kind enough to let me see the +accounts, which indicate a good business result for the current year on +that property. This is all very interesting. But what a picture it +presents of social demoralisation! And what is to be the end of it all? +Can a country be called civilised in which a farmer with a family to +maintain, having the capital and the experience necessary to manage +successfully a small farm, is absolutely forbidden, on pain of social +ostracism, and eventually on pain of death, by a conspiracy of his +neighbours, to take that farm of its lawful owner at what he considers +to be a fair rent? And how long can any civilisation of our complex +modern type endure in a country in which such a state of things +tolerated by the alleged Government of that country <a name="page170" id="page170"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 170] +</span>has to be met, and +more or less partially mitigated, by deviating to the cultivation of +farms rendered in this way derelict large amounts of capital which might +be, and ought to be, far more profitably employed in other ways?</p> + +<p>Mr. Kavanagh, after serving the office of High Sheriff thirty years ago, +first for Kilkenny, and then for Carlow, sat in Parliament for fourteen +years, from 1866 to 1880, as an Irish county member. He has a very large +property here in Carlow, and property also in Wexford, and in Kilkenny, +and was sworn into the Privy Council two years ago. If the personal +interests and the family traditions of any man alive can be said to be +rooted in the Irish soil, this is certainly true of his interests and +his traditions. How can the peace and prosperity of Ireland be served by +a state of things which condemns an Irishman of such ties and such +training to expend his energies and his ability in defending the +elementary right of Paddy O’Rourke to take stock and work a ten-acre +farm on terms that suit himself and his landlord?</p> + +<p>In the afternoon we took a delightful walk through the woods, Mr. +Kavanagh going with us on horseback. Every hill and clump of trees on +this <a name="page171" id="page171"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 171] +</span>large domain he knows, and he led us like a master of woodcraft +through all manner of leafy byways to the finest points of view. The +Barrow flows past Borris, making pictures at every turn, and the banks +on both sides are densely and beautifully wooded. We came in one place +upon a sawmill at work in the forest, and Mr. Kavanagh showed us with +pride the piles of excellent timber which he turns out here. But he took +a greater pride in a group, sacred from the axe, of really magnificent +Scotch firs, such as I had certainly not expected to find in Ireland. +Nearer the mansion are some remarkable Irish yews. The gardens are of +all sorts and very extensive, but we found the head-gardener bitterly +lamenting the destruction by a fire in one of the conservatories of more +than six thousand plants just prepared for setting out.</p> + +<p>There are many curious old books and papers here, and a student of early +Irish history might find matter to keep him well employed for a long +time in this region. It was from this region and the race which ruled +it, of which race Mr. Kavanagh is the actual representative, that the +initiative came of the first Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. Strongbow +made what, from the Anglo-Norman point of view, <a name="page172" id="page172"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 172] +</span>was a perfectly +legitimate bargain, with a dispossessed prince to help him to the +recovery of his rights on the understanding that these rights, when +recovered, should pass in succession to himself through the only +daughter of the prince, whom he proposed to marry. It does not appear +that Strongbow knew, or that Dermot MacMorrogh cared to tell him, how +utterly unlike the rights of an Anglo-Norman prince were those of the +elective life-tenant of an Irish principality. FitzStephen, the son by +her second marriage of Nesta, the Welsh royal mistress of Henry +Beauclerk, and his cousin, Maurice Fitzgerald, the leaders into Ireland +of the Geraldines, were no more clear in their minds about this than +Strongbow, and it is to the original muddle thus created that Professor +Richey doubtless rightly refers the worst and most troublesome +complications of the land question in Ireland. The distinction between +the King’s lieges and the “mere Irish,” for example, is unquestionably a +legal distinction, though it is continually and most mischievously used +as if it were a proof of the race-hatred borne by the Normans and Saxons +in Ireland from the first against the Celts. The O’Briens, the O’Neills, +the O’Mullaghlins, the O’Connors, and the M‘Morroghs, <a name="page173" id="page173"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 173] +</span>“the five bloods,” +as they are called, were certainly Celts, but whether in virtue of their +being, or claiming to be, the royal races respectively of Minister, of +Ulster, of Meath, of Connaught, and of Leinster, or from whatever other +reason, these races were “within the king’s law,” and were never “mere +Irish” from the first planting of the Anglo-Norman power in Ireland. The +case of a priest, Shan O’Kerry, “an Irish enemy of the king,” presented +“contrary to the form of statute” to the vicarage of Lusk, in the reign +of Edward IV. (1465), illustrates this. An Act of Parliament was passed +to declare the aforesaid “Shan O’Kerry,” or “John of Kevernon,” to be +“English born, and of English nation,” and that he might “hold and enjoy +the said benefice.”</p> + +<p>There is a genealogy here of the M‘Morroghs and Kavanaghs, most +gorgeously and elaborately gotten up many years ago for Mr. Kavanagh’s +grandfather, which shows how soon the Norman and the native strains of +blood become commingled. When one remembers how much Norman blood must +have gone even into far-off Connaught when King John, in the early part +of the thirteenth century, coolly gave away that realm of the O’Connors +to the <a name="page174" id="page174"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 174] +</span>De Burgos, and how continually the English of the Pale fled from +the exactions inflicted upon them by their own people, and sought refuge +“among the savage and mere Irish,” one cannot help thinking that the“ +Race Question” has been “worked for at least all it is worth” by +philosophers bent on unravelling the ‘snarl’ of Irish affairs. If this +genealogy may be trusted, there was little to choose between the ages +which immediately preceded and the ages which followed the Anglo-Norman +invasion in the matter of respect for human life. Celtic chiefs and +Norman knights “died in their boots” as regularly as frontiersmen in +Texas. One personage is designated in the genealogy as “the murderer,” +for the truly Hibernian reason, so far as appears, that he was himself +murdered while quite a youth, and before he had had a chance to murder +more than three or four of his immediate relatives. It was as if the son +of Geoffrey Plantagenet and the Lady Constance should be branded in +history as “Arthur, the Assassin.”</p> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">BORRIS, <i>March 4th.</i>—</span>This is a staunch Protestant house, and Mr. +Kavanagh himself reads a Protestant service every morning. But there is +little or <a name="page175" id="page175"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 175] +</span>nothing apparently in this part of Ireland of the bitter +feeling about and against the Catholics which exists in the North. A +very lively and pleasant Catholic gentleman came in to-day informally +and joined the house party at luncheon. We all walked out over the +property afterwards, visiting quite a different region from that which +we saw yesterday—different but equally beautiful and striking, and this +Catholic gentleman cited several cases which had fallen within his own +knowledge of priests who begin to feel their moral control of the people +slipping away from them through the operation of the “Plan of Campaign.” +I told him what I had heard in regard to one such priest from my +ecclesiastical friend in Cork. “It does not surprise me at all,” he +said, “and, indeed, I not very long ago read precisely such another +letter from a priest in a somewhat similar position. I read it with pain +and shame as a Catholic,” he continued, “for it was simply a complete +admission that the priest, although entirely convinced that his +parishioners were making most unfair demands upon their landlord to whom +the letter was addressed, felt himself entirely powerless to bring them +to a sense of their misconduct.” “Had this priest given in his ad<a name="page176" id="page176"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 176] +</span>hesion +to the Plan of Campaign?” I asked. “Yes,” was the reply, “and it was +this fact which had broken his hold on the people when he tried to bring +them to abandon their attitude under the Plan. His letter was really +nothing more nor less than an appeal to the landlord, and that landlord +a Protestant, to help him to get out of the hole into which he had put +himself.”</p> + +<p>Of the tenants and their relation to the village despots who administer +the Plan of Campaign, this gentleman had many stories also to tell of +the same tenor with all that I have hitherto heard on this subject. +Everywhere it is the same thing. The well-to-do and well-disposed +tenants are coerced by the thriftless and shiftless. “I have the +agencies of several properties,” he said, “and in some of the best parts +of Ireland. I have had little or no trouble on any of them, for I have +one uniform method. I treat every tenant as if he were the only man I +had to deal with, study his personal ways and character, humour him, and +get him on my side against himself. You can always do this with an +Irishman if you will take the trouble to do it. Within the past years I +have had tenants come and tell me they were in fear the Plan of Campaign +<a name="page177" id="page177"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 177] +</span>would be brought upon them, just as if it were a kind of potato disease, +and beg me to agree to take the rent from them in that case, and just +not discover on them that they had paid it before it was due!”</p> + +<p>This gentleman is a pessimist as to the future. “I am a youngish man +still,” he said, “and a single man, and I am glad of it. I don’t believe +the English will ever learn how to govern this country, and I am sure it +can never govern itself. Would your people make a State of it?”</p> + +<p>To this I replied that with Cuba and Canada and Mexico, all still to be +digested and assimilated, I thought the deglutition of Ireland by the +great Republic must be remitted to a future much too remote to interest +either of us.</p> + +<p>“I suppose so,” he said in a humorously despondent tone; “and so I see +nothing for people who think as I do, but Australia or New Zealand!”</p> + +<p>Mr. Kavanagh sees the future, I think, in colouring not quite so dark. +As a public man, familiar for years with the method and ways of British +Parliaments, he seems to regard the possible future legislation of +Westminster with more anxiety and alarm than the past or present +agitations in Ireland. <a name="page178" id="page178"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 178] +</span>The business of banishing political economy to +Jupiter and Saturn, however delightful it may be to the people who make +laws, is a dangerous one to the people for whom the laws are made. While +he has very positive opinions as to the wisdom of the concession made in +the successive Land Acts for Ireland, which have been passed since 1870, +he is much less disquieted, I think, by those concessions, than by the +spirit by which the legislation granting them has been guided. He thinks +great good has been already done by Mr. Balfour, and that much more good +will be done by him if the Irish people are made to feel that clamorous +resistance to the law will no longer be regarded at Westminster as a +sufficient reason for changing the law. That is as much as to say that +party spirit in Great Britain is the chief peril of Ireland to-day. And +how can any Irishman, no matter what his state in his own country may +be, or his knowledge of Irish affairs, or his patriotic earnestness and +desire for Irish prosperity, hope to control the tides of party spirit +in England or Scotland?</p> + +<p>Of the influence upon the people in Ireland of the spirit of recent +legislation for Ireland, the story of the troubles on the O’Grady +estate, as Mr. <a name="page179" id="page179"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 179] +</span>Kavanagh tells it to me, is a most striking illustration. +“The O’Grady of Kilballyowen,” as his title shows, is the direct +representative, not of any Norman invader, but of an ancient Irish race. +The O’Gradys were the heads of a sept of the “mere Irish”; and if there +be such a thing—past, present, or future—as an “Irish nation,” the +place of the O’Gradys in that nation ought to be assumed. Mr. Thomas De +Courcy O’Grady, who now wears the historic designation, owns and lives +on an estate of a little more than 1000 acres, in the Golden Vein of +Ireland, at Killmallock, in the county of Limerick. The land is +excellent, and for the last half-century certainly it has been let to +the tenants at rents which must be considered fair, since they have +never been raised. In 1845, two years before the great famine, the +rental was £2142. This rental was paid throughout the famine years +without difficulty; and in 1881 the rental stood at £2108.</p> + +<p>There has never been an eviction on the estate until last year, when six +tenants were evicted. All of these lived in good comfortable houses, and +were prosperous dairy-farmers. Why were they evicted?</p> + +<p><a name="page180" id="page180"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 180] +</span>In October 1886, during the candidacy at New York of the Land Reformer, +Mr. George, Mr. Dillon, M.P., propounded the “Plan of Campaign” at +Portumna in Galway. The March rents being then due on the estate of The +O’Grady in Limerick, his agent, Mr. Shine, was directed to continue the +abatements of 15 per cent, on the judicial rents, and of 25 per cent, on +all other rents, which had been cheerfully accepted in 1885. But there +was a priest at Kilballyowen, Father Ryan, who wrought upon the tenants +until they demanded a general abatement of 40 per cent. This being +refused, they asked for 30 per cent. on the judicial rents, and 40 per +cent. on the others. This also being refused, Father Ryan had his way, +and the “Plan of Campaign” was adopted. The O’Grady’s writs issued +against several of the tenants were met by a “Plan of Campaign” auction +of cattle at Herbertstown in December 1886, the returns of which were +paid into “the Fund.” For this, one of the tenants, Thomas Moroney, who +held, besides a a farm of 37 Irish acres, a “public,” and five small +houses, at Herbertstown, and the right to the tolls on cattle at the +Herbertstown farm, valued at from £50 to £60 a year, and who held all +these at a <a name="page181" id="page181"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 181] +</span>yearly rent of £85, was proceeded against. Judge Boyd +pronounced him a bankrupt.</p> + +<p>In the spring of 1887, after The O’Grady had been put to great costs and +trouble, the tenants made a move. They offered to accept a general +abatement of 17-1/2 per cent., “The O’Grady to pay all the costs.”</p> + +<p>Here is the same story again of the small solicitors behind the “Plan of +Campaign” promoting the strife, and counting on the landlords to defray +the charges of battle!</p> + +<p>The O’Grady responded with the following circular:—</p> +<blockquote> +<p class="dateline"> KlLLBALLYOWEN, BRUFF, CO. LlMERICK,<br /> +<i>13th August 1877</i>.</p> + +<p class="center">To my Tenants on Kilballyowen and Herbertstown Estate, Co. + Limerick.</p> + +<p> MY FRIENDS,—Pending the evictions by the Sheriff on my estate, + caused by your refusal to pay judicial rents on offers of liberal + abatements, I desire to remind you of the following facts:—</p> + +<p> I am a resident landlord; my ancestors have dwelt amongst you for + over 400 years; every tenant is personally known to me, and the + most friendly relations have always existed between us.</p> + +<p> I am not aware of there ever having been an eviction by the Sheriff + on my estate.</p> + +<p> Farming myself over 400 acres, and my late agent (Mr. Shine), a + tenant farmer living within four miles <a name="page182" id="page182"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 182] +</span>of my property, I have every + opportunity of realising and knowing your wants.</p> + +<p> On the passing of the Land Act of 1881, I desired you to have any + benefit it could afford you, and as you nearly all held under + lease—which precluded you from going into court—I intimated to + you my wish, and offered you to allow your lands to be valued at my + expense, or to let you go into court and get your rents fixed by + the sub-commissioners.</p> + +<p> You elected to have a valuation made, and Mr. Edmond Moroney was + agreed on as a land-valuer, possessing the confidence of tenants + and landlord.</p> + +<p> I may mention, up to then I had not known Mr. Moroney personally.</p> + +<p> In 1883 Mr. Moroney valued your holdings, and, as a result, his + valuation was accepted (except in three or four cases), and + judicial agreements signed by you, at rents ascertained by Mr. + Moroney’s valuation.</p> + +<p> The late Patrick Hogan objected to Mr. Moroney’s valuation of his + farm, and went into court, and had his rent fixed by the County + Court Judge.</p> + +<p> Thomas Moroney would not allow Mr. Edmond Moroney to value his + holding, nor would he go into court, his reason no doubt being he + should disclose the receipts of the amount of the tolls of the + fairs.</p> + +<p> The rents were subsequently paid on Mr. Moroney’s valuation with + punctuality.</p> + +<p> In 1885, recognising the fall in prices of stock and produce, and + at the request of my late agent, Mr. Shine, I directed him to allow + you 15 per cent. on all judicial rents, or rents abated on Mr. + Moroney’s valuation, and 25 per cent. on all other rents, when you + paid punctually and with thanks.</p> + +<p> In October last, when calling in the March 1886 rents, at the + instance of Mr. Shine, I agreed to con<a name="page183" id="page183"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 183] +</span>tinue the abatement of 15 per + cent, and 25 per cent., which, when intimated to you, were refused, + and a meeting held, demanding an all-round abatement of 40 per + cent.</p> + +<p> This I considered unreasonable and unjust, and I refused to give + it.</p> + +<p> The Plan of Campaign was then most unjustly adopted on the estate, + and you refused to pay your rents.</p> + +<p> Thomas Moroney was elected as a test case to try the legality of + the sale and removal of your property to avoid payment of your + rent. His tenancy was a mixed holding of house property in the + village of Herbertstown, the tolls of the fairs, and 37 acres of + land, at a rent of £85, and a Poor-Law valuation of £73, 5s., made + as follows:—</p> + +<div class="center"> <table><tr><td> Land valued</td><td>at £42 5 0</td></tr> + <tr><td> Tolls of fair </td><td>at 17 0 0</td></tr> + <tr><td> Public house and yard </td><td>at 11 0 0</td></tr> + <tr><td> Five small houses and forge </td><td>at 3 0 0</td></tr> + <tr><td></td><td>£73 5 0</td></tr> +</table></div> +<p> I always was led to believe the tolls of the fair averaged from £50 + to £60 a year, there being four fairs in the year; and I believe + his reason for refusing to allow Mr. E. Moroney to value his + holding, or to go into court, was that he should disclose the + amount of the tolls, and in consequence I never considered he was + entitled to any abatement; but still I gave it to him, and was + prepared to do so. The result of his case was that his conduct in + making away with his property was unjustifiable, and his farm and + holding was sold out for the benefit of his creditors, and he is no + longer a tenant on the estate.</p> + +<p> <a name="page184" id="page184"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 184] +</span>I subsequently took proceedings against six other tenants, who + refused payment of rent, and removed their cattle off the land to + avoid payment, and having got judgment against them, the Sheriff + sold out four of their farms, and writs of possession on the title + were taken out against them, and are now lodged with the Sheriff + for execution. I have also got judgments for possession against two + other tenants for non-payment of rent, also lodged with the + Sheriff. One the widow of Patrick Hogan, who got his rent fixed in + the County Court, and the other Mrs. Denis Ryan, whose farm on her + marriage I assented to be put in settlement for her protection, Mr. + Shine, my agent, consenting to act as one of her trustees, whose + name, with his co-trustee, Mr. Thomas FitzGerald, appear as + defendants, they having signed her judicial agreement.</p> + +<p> The following are the names of the above tenants, the extent of + their holdings, the rent, the Poor-Law valuation, and the average + rent per Irish acre:—</p> + +<div class="center"><table> +<thead><tr> +<td> TENANT. </td> +<td> Acreage in Irish Measure.</td> +<td> Judicial Rent Less 20 per cent</td> +<td> Rent per acre [A] </td> +<td> Poor Law Valuation </td></tr> +</thead><tbody> + <tr><td> </td><td> A. R. P. </td><td> £ s. d. </td><td> </td><td> £ s. d. </td></tr> + <tr><td>John Carroll </td><td> 87 3 38 </td><td> 132 4 0 </td><td> 30/- </td><td> 127 10 0 </td></tr> + <tr><td>Honora Crimmins </td><td> 35 0 27 </td><td> 64 5 6 </td><td> 36/6 </td><td> 52 15 0 </td></tr> + <tr><td>James Baggott </td><td> 18 0 0 </td><td> 37 16 10 </td><td> 42/- </td><td> 22 5 0 </td></tr> + <tr><td>Margaret Moloney </td><td> 23 2 9 </td><td> 46 2 8 </td><td> 39/2 </td><td> 44 15 0 </td></tr> + <tr><td>Mrs. Denis Ryan </td><td> 66 2 3 </td><td> 93 2 5 </td><td> 28/- </td><td> 96 0 0 </td></tr> + <tr><td>Maryanne Hogan </td><td> 53 2 33 </td><td> 112 0 0 </td><td> 41/8 </td><td> 117 15 0 </td></tr> + <tr><td> </td><td> 294 3 30 </td><td> 485 11 5 </td><td> ... </td><td> 461 0 0 </td></tr> +</tbody></table> +</div> +<p>[A] Rent per Irish acre after abatement of 20 per cent.</p> + +<p> This represents an average of 34s. the Irish acre, for some of the + best land in Ireland, and shows a difference of only £24, 11s. 5d. + between the rent, less 20 per cent. now offered, and Poor-Law + valuation.</p> + +<p> <a name="page185" id="page185"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 185] +</span>After putting me to the cost of these proceedings, and giving me + every opposition and annoyance, amongst such, compelling my agent + (by threats of boycotting) to resign, boycotting myself and + household, preventing my servants from attending chapel, and + driving my labourers away, negotiations for a settlement were + opened, and you offered to accept an all-round abatement of 17-1/2 + per cent. and to pay up one year’s rent, provided I paid all costs, + including the costs in Moroney’s case; this of course I refused, + but with a desire to aid you in coming to a settlement, and to + prevent the loss to the tenants of the farms under eviction on the + Title, I offered to allow the 17-1/2 per cent. all round on payment + of one year’s rent and costs, and to give time for payment of the + costs as stated in my Solicitor’s letter of the 2d June 1887 to + Canon Scully.</p> + +<p> This offer was refused, and the writs for possession have been + lodged with the Sheriff.</p> + +<p> I never commenced these proceedings in a vindictive spirit, or with + any desire to punish any of you for your ungracious conduct, but + simply to protect my property from unjust and unreasonable demands.</p> + +<p> You will owe two years’ rent next month (September), and I now + write you this circular letter to point out to each, individually, + the position of the tenants under eviction, and even at this late + hour to give them an opportunity of saving their holdings, to + enable them to do so, and with a view to settlement, I am now + prepared to allow 20 per cent. all round, on payment of a year’s + rent and costs.</p> + +<p> Under no circumstance will I forego payment of costs, as they must + be paid in full.</p> + +<p> If this money be paid forthwith, I will arrange with my brother, + the purchaser, to restore the four holdings purchased by him at + sheriff’s sale to the late tenants.</p> + +<p> <a name="page186" id="page186"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 186] +</span>After this offer I disclaim any responsibility for the result of + the evictions, and the loss attendant thereon, as it now remains + with you to avert same.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>All the evictions have since been carried out, and the Land Corporation +men are at work upon the estate! Whom has all this advantaged? The +tenants?—Certainly not. The O’Grady?—Certainly not. The peace and +order of Ireland?—Certainly not. But it has given the National League +another appeal to the intelligent “sympathies” of England and America. +It has strengthened the revolutionary element in Irish society. It has +“driven another nail into the coffin” of Irish landlordism and of the +private ownership of land throughout Great Britain.</p> + + +<p>Such at least is the opinion of Mr. Kavanagh. If I were an Englishman or +a Scotchman, I should be strongly inclined to take very serious account +of this opinion in forecasting the future of landed property in England +or Scotland.</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page187" id="page187"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 187] +</span>CHAPTER XII.</h2> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">GREENANE HOUSE, THOMASTOWN, <i>March 5th.</i>—</span>The breakfast-room at Borris +this morning was gay with pink coats. A meet was to come off at a place +between Borris and Thomastown, and bidding fare-well to my cordial host +and hostess, I set out at 11 o’clock for a flying visit to this quaint +and charming house of Mr. Seigne, one of the best known and most highly +esteemed agents in this part of Ireland.</p> + +<p>My jarvey from Borris had an unusually neat and well-balanced car. When +I praised it he told me it was “built by an American,” not an Irish +American, I understood him to say, but a genuine Yankee, who, for some +mysterious reason, has established himself in this region, where he has +prospered as a cart and car builder ever since. “Just the best cars in +all Ireland he builds, your honour!” Why don’t he naturalise them in +America?</p> + +<p>All the way was charming, the day very bright, and even warm, and the +hill scenery picturesque at every turn. We looked out sharply for the +hunt, <a name="page188" id="page188"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 188] +</span>but in vain. My jarvey, who knew the whole country, said they must +have broken cover somewhere on the upper road, and we should miss them +entirely. And so we did.</p> + +<p>The silting up of the river Nore has reduced Thomastown or +Ballymacanton, which was its Irish name, from its former importance as +an emporium for the country about Kilkenny. The river now is not +navigable above Inistiogue. But two martial square towers, one at either +end of a fine bridge which spans the stream here, speak of the good old +times when the masters of Thomastown took toll and tribute of traders +and travellers. The lands about the place then belonged to the great +monastery of Jerpoint, the ruins of which are still the most interesting +of their kind in this part of Ireland. They have long made a part of the +estate of the Butlers. We rattled rapidly through the quiet little town, +and whisking out of a small public square into a sort of wynd between +two houses, suddenly found ourselves in the precincts of Grenane House. +The house takes its name from the old castle of Grenane, an Irish +fortress established here by some native despot long before Thomas +Fitz-Anthony the Norman came into the <a name="page189" id="page189"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 189] +</span>land. The ruins of this castle +still stand some half a mile away. “We call the place Candahar,” said +Mr. Seigne, as he came up with two ladies from the meadows below the +house, “because you come into it so suddenly, just as you do into that +Oriental town.” But what a charming occidental place it is! It stands +well above the river, the slope adorned with many fine old trees, some +of which grow, and grow prosperously, in the queerest and most +improbable forms, bent double, twisted, but still most green and +vigorous. They have no business under any known theory of arboriculture +to be beautiful, but beautiful they are. The views of the bridge, of the +towers, and of the river, from this slope would make the fortune of the +place in a land of peace and order.</p> + +<p>A most original and delightful lady of the country lunched with +us,—such a character as Miss Edgeworth or Miss Austen might have drawn. +Shrewd, humorous, sensible, fearless, and ready with impartial hand to +box the ears alike of Trojan and of Tyrian. She not only sees both sides +of the question in Ireland as between the landlords and the tenants, but +takes both sides of the question. She holds lands by inheritance, which +make her keenly <a name="page190" id="page190"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 190] +</span>alive to the wrongs of the landlords, and she holds +farms as a tenant, which make her implacably critical as to their +claims. She mercilessly demolished in one capacity whatever she advanced +in the other, and all with the most perfect nonchalance and good faith. +This curiously dual attitude reminded me of the confederate General, +Braxton Bragg, of whom his comrades in the old army of the United States +used to say that he once had a very sharp official correspondence with +himself. He happened to hold a staff appointment, being also a line +officer. So in his quality of a staff officer, he found fault with +himself in his capacity as a line officer, reprimanded himself sharply, +replied defiantly to the reprimand, and eventually reported himself to +himself for discipline at head-quarters. She told an excellent story of +a near kinsman of hers who, holding a very good living in the Protestant +Irish Church, came rather unexpectedly by inheritance into a baronetcy, +upon which his women-folk insisted that it would be derogatory to a +baronet to be a parson. “Would you believe it, the poor man was silly +enough to listen to their cackle, and resign seven hundred a year!”</p> + +<p>“That didn’t clear him,” I said, “of the cloth, did it?”</p> + +<p>“<a name="page191" id="page191"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 191] +</span>Not a bit, of course, poor foolish man. He was just as much a parson as +ever, only without a parsonage. Men are fools enough of themselves, +don’t you think, without needing to listen to women?”</p> + +<p>Mr. Seigne comes of a French Protestant stock long ago planted in +Ireland, and his Gallic blood doubtless helps him to handle the +practical problems daily submitted in these days to an Irish +land-agent—problems very different, as he thinks, from those with which +an Irish agent had to deal in the days before 1870. The Irish tenant has +a vantage-ground now in his relations with his landlord which he never +had in the olden time, and this makes it more important than it ever was +that the agent should have what may be called a diplomatic taste for +treating with individuals, finding out the bent of mind of this man and +of that, and negotiating over particulars, instead of insisting, in the +English fashion, on general rules, without regard to special cases. I +have met no one who has seemed to me so cool and precise as Mr. Seigne +in his study of the phenomena of the present situation. I asked him +whether he could now say, as Mr. Senior did a quarter of century ago, +that the Irish tenants were <a name="page192" id="page192"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 192] +</span>less improvident, and more averse from +running into debt than the English.</p> + +<p>“I think not,” he replied; “on the contrary, in some parts of Ireland +now the shopkeepers are kept on the verge of bankruptcy by the +recklessness with which the tenants incurred debts immediately after the +passing of the Land Act of 1870—a time when shopkeepers, and bankers +also, almost forced credit upon the farmers, and made thereby ‘bad +debts’ innumerable. Farmers rarely keep anything like an account of +their receipts and expenses. I know only one tenant-farmer in this +neighbourhood who keeps what can be called an account, showing what he +takes from his labour and spends on his living.”<a id="footnotetag20" + name="footnotetag20"></a><a href="#footnote20"><sup>20</sup></a> “They save a great +deal of money often,” he says, “but almost never in any systematic way. +They spend much less on clothes and furniture, and the outward show of +things, than English people of the same condition do, and they do not +stint themselves in meat and drink as the French peasants do. In fact, +under the operation of existing circumstances, they are getting into the +way of improving <a name="page193" id="page193"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 193] +</span>their condition, not so much by sacrifices and savings, +as by an insistence on rent being fixed low enough to leave full margin +for improved living.”</p> + +<p>“I had a very frank statement on this point,” said Mr. Seigne, “not long +ago from a Tipperary man. When I tried to show him that his father had +paid a good many years ago the very same rent which he declares himself +unable to pay now, he admitted this at once. But it was a confession and +avoidance. ‘My father could pay the rent, and did pay the rent,’ he +said, ‘because he was content to live so that he could pay it. He sat on +a boss of straw, and ate out of a bowl. He lived in a way in which I +don’t intend to live, and so he could pay the rent. Now, I must have, +and I mean to have, out of the land, before I pay the rent, the means of +living as I wish to live; and if I can’t have it, I’ll sell out and go +away; but I’ll be—if I don’t fight before I do that same!’”</p> + +<p>“What could you reply to that?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“Oh,” I said, “‘that’s square and straightforward. Only just let me know +the point at which you mean to fight, and then we’ll see if we can agree +about something.’”</p> + +<p>“The truth is,” said Mr. Seigne, “that there is a <a name="page194" id="page194"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 194] +</span>pressure upward now +from below. The labourers don’t want to live any longer as the farmers +have always made them live; and so the farmers, having to consider the +growing demands of the labourers, and meaning to live better themselves, +push up against the landlord, and insist that the means of the +improvement shall come out of him.”</p> + +<p>He then told me an instructive story of his calling upon a +tenant-farmer, at whose place he found the labourers sitting about their +meal of pork and green vegetables. The farmer asked him into another +room, where he saw the farmer’s family making their meal of stirabout +and milk and potatoes.</p> + +<p>“I asked you in here,” said the farmer, “because we keep in here to +ourselves. I don’t want those fellows to see that we can’t afford to +give ourselves what we have to give them,”—this with strong language +indicating that he must himself be given a way to advance equally with +the progressive labourer, or he would know the reason why!</p> + +<p>This afternoon Mr. Seigne drove me over through a beautiful country to +Woodstock, near Inistiogue, the seat of the late Colonel Tighe, the head +of the family of which the authoress of “Psyche” was an ornament.</p> + +<p><a name="page195" id="page195"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 195] +</span>It is the finest place in this part of Ireland, and one of the finest I +have seen in the three kingdoms, a much more picturesque and more nobly +planted place indeed than its namesake in England. The mansion has no +architectural pretensions, being simply a very large and, I should +think, extremely comfortable house of the beginning of this century. The +library is very rich, and there are some good pictures, as well as +certain statues in the vestibule, which would have no interest for the +Weissnichtwo professor of <i>Sartor Resartus</i>, but are regarded with some +awe by the good people of Inistiogue.</p> + +<p>The park would do no discredit to a palace, and if the vague project of +establishing a royal residence in Ireland for one of the British Princes +should ever take shape, it would not be easy, I should say, to find a +demesne more befitting the home of a prince than this of the Tighes. At +present it serves the State at least as usefully, being the “pleasaunce” +of the people for miles around, who come here freely to walk and drive.</p> + +<p>It stretches for miles along the Nore, and is crowned by a gloriously +wooded hill nearly a thousand feet in height. The late Colonel Tighe, a +most accomplished man, and a passionate lover of trees, <a name="page196" id="page196"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 196] +</span>made it a kind +of private Kew Gardens. He planted long avenues of the rarest and finest +trees, araucarias, Scotch firs, oaks, beeches, cedars of Lebanon; laid +out miles of the most varied and delightful drives, and built the most +extensive conservatories in Ireland.</p> + +<p>The turfed and terraced walks among those conservatories are +indescribably lovely, and the whole place to-day was vocal with +innumerable birds. Picturesque little cottages and arbours are to be +found in unexpected nooks all through the woodlands, each commanding +some green vista of forest aisles, or some wide view of hill and +champaign, enlivened by the winding river. From one of those to-day we +looked out over a landscape to which Turner alone or Claude could have +done justice, the river, spanned by a fine bridge, in the middle +distance, and all the region wooded as in the days of which Edmund +Spenser sings, when Ireland</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i6">“Flourished in fame,</span><br /> + Of wealth and goodnesse far above the rest<br /> + Of all that bears the British Islands’ name.”<br /> +</p> + +<p>Over the whole place broods an indefinable charm. You feel that this was +the home at once and the work of a refined and thoughtful spirit. And so +<a name="page197" id="page197"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 197] +</span>indeed it was. Here for the greater part of the current century the +owner lived, making the development of the estate and of this demesne +his constant care and chief pleasure. And here still lives his widow, +with whom we took tea in a stately quiet drawing-room. Lady Louisa Tighe +was in Brussels with her mother, the Duchess of Richmond, on the eve of +Waterloo. She was a child then of ten years old, and her mother bade +them bring her down into the historic ball-room before the Duke of +Wellington left it. The duke took up his sword. “Let Louisa buckle it +for you,” said her mother, and when the little girl had girded it on, +the great captain stooped, took her up in his arms, and kissed her. “One +never knows what may happen, child,” he said good-naturedly; and taking +his small gold watch out of his fob, he bade her keep it for him.</p> + +<p>She keeps it still. For more than sixty years it has measured out in +this beautiful Irish home the hours of a life given to good works and +gracious usefulness. To-day, with all the vivacity of interest in the +people and the place which one might look for in a woman of twenty, this +charming old lady of eighty-three, showing barely threescore years in +her carriage, her countenance, and her voice, entertained <a name="page198" id="page198"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 198] +</span>us with minute +and most interesting accounts of the local industries which flourish +here mainly through her sympathetic and intelligent supervision. We +seemed to be in another world from the Ireland of Chicago or +Westminster!</p> + +<p>Mr. Seigne drove me back here by a most picturesque road leading along +the banks of the Nore, quite overhung with trees, which in places dip +their branches almost into the swift deep stream. “This is the favourite +drive of all the lovers hereabouts,” he said, “and there is a spice of +danger in it which makes it more romantic. Once, not very long ago, a +couple of young people, too absorbed in their love-making to watch their +horse, drove off the bank. Luckily for them they fell into the branches +of one of these overhanging trees, while the horse and car went plunging +into the water. There they swung, holding each other hand in hand, +making a pretty and pathetic tableau, till their cries brought some +anglers in a boat on the river to the rescue.”</p> + +<p>We spoke of Lady Louisa, and of the watch of Waterloo. “That watch had a +wonderful escape a few years ago,” said Mr. Seigne.</p> + +<p>Lady Louisa, it seems, had a confidential butler <a name="page199" id="page199"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 199] +</span>whom she most +implicitly trusted. One day it was found that a burglary had apparently +been committed at Woodstock, and that with a quantity of jewelry the +priceless watch had vanished. The butler was very active about the +matter, and as no trace could be found leading out of the house, he +intimated a suspicion that the affair might possibly have some +connection with a guest not long before at the house. This angered Lady +Louisa, who thereupon consulted the agent, who employed a capable +detective from Dublin. The detective came down to Inistiogue as a +commercial traveller, wandered about, made the acquaintance of Lady +Louisa’s maid, of the butler, and of other people about the house, and +formed his own conclusions. Two or three days after his arrival he +walked into the shop of a small jeweller in a neighbouring town, and +affecting a confidential manner, told the jeweller he wanted to buy +“some of those things from Woodstock.” The man was taken by surprise, +and going into a backshop produced one very fine diamond, and a number +of pieces of silver plate, of the disappearance of which the butler had +said nothing to his mistress. This led to the arrest of the butler, and +to the discovery that for a long time <a name="page200" id="page200"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 200] +</span>he had been purloining property +from the house and selling it. Many cases of excellent claret had found +their way in this fashion to a public-house which had acquired quite a +reputation for its Bordeaux with the officers quartered in its +neighbourhood. The wine-bins at Woodstock were found full of bottles of +water. Much of the capital port left by Colonel Tighe had gone—but the +hock was untouched. “Probably the butler didn’t care for hock,” said Mr. +Seigne. The Waterloo watch was recovered from a very decent fellow, a +travelling dealer, to whom it had been sold: and many pieces of jewelry +were traced up to London. But Lady Louisa could not be induced to go up +to London to identify them or testify.</p> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">DUBLIN, <i>Tuesday, March 6.</i>—</span>It is a curious fact, which I learned +to-day from the Registrar-General, that the deposits in the Post-office +Savings Banks have never diminished in Ireland since these banks were +established.<a id="footnotetag21" + name="footnotetag21"></a><a href="#footnote21"><sup>21</sup></a> These deposits are chiefly made, I understand, by the +small tenants, who are less represented by the deposits in the General +Savings Banks than are the shopkeepers <a name="page201" id="page201"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 201] +</span>and the cattle-drovers. In the +General Savings Banks the deposit line fluctuates more; though on the +whole there has been a steady increase in these deposits also throughout +Ireland.</p> + +<p>Of the details of the dealings of the private banks it is very hard to +get an accurate account. One gentleman, the manager of a branch of one +important bank, tells me that a great deal of money is made by usurers +out of the tenants, by backing their small bills. This practice goes +back to the first establishment of banks in Ireland. Formerly it was not +an uncommon thing for a landlord to offer his tenants a reduction, say, +of twenty per cent., on condition of their paying the rent when it fell +due. Such were the relations then between landlord and tenants, and so +little was punctuality expected in such payments that this might be +regarded as a sort of discount arrangement. The tenant who wished to +avail himself of such an offer would go to some friendly local usurer +and ask for a loan that he might avail himself of it. “One of these +usurers, whom I knew very well,” said the manager, “told me long ago +that he found these operations very profitable. His method of procedure +was to agree to advance the rent to the tenant at ten per <a name="page202" id="page202"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 202] +</span>cent., payable +at a near and certain date. This would reduce the landlord’s reduction +at once, of course, for the tenant, to ten per cent., but that was not +to be disdained; and so the bargain would be struck. If the money was +repaid at the fixed date, it was not a bad thing for the usurer. But it +was almost never so repaid; and with repeated renewals the usurer, by +his own showing, used to receive eventually twenty, fifty, and, in some +cases, nearly a hundred per cent, for his loan.”</p> + +<p>It is the opinion of this gentleman that, under the “Plan of Campaign,” +a good deal of money-making is done in a quiet way by some of the +“trustees,” who turn over at good interest, with the help of friendly +financiers, the funds lodged with them, being held to account to the +tenants only for the principal. “Of course,” he said, “all this is +doubtless at least as legitimate as any other part of the ‘Plan,’ and I +daresay it all goes for ‘the good of the cause.’ But neither the tenants +nor the landlords get much by it!”</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page203" id="page203"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 203] +</span>CHAPTER XIII.</h2> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">DUBLIN, <i>Thursday, March 8.</i>—</span>At eight o’clock this morning I left the +Harcourt Street station for Inch, to take a look at the scene of the +Coolgreany evictions of last summer. These evictions came of the +adoption of the Plan of Campaign, under the direction of Mr. Dillon, +M.P., on the Wexford property of Mr. George Brooke of Dublin. The agent +of Mr. Brooke’s estate, Captain Hamilton, is the honorary director of +the Property Defence Association, so that we have here obviously a +grapple between the National League doing the work, consciously or +unconsciously, of the agrarian revolutionists, and a combination of +landed proprietors fighting for the rights of property as they +understand them.</p> + +<p>We ran through a beautiful country for the greater part of the way. At +Bray, which is a favourite Irish watering-place, the sea broke upon us +bright and full of life; and the station itself was more like a +considerable English station than any <a name="page204" id="page204"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 204] +</span>I have seen. Thence we passed into +a richly-wooded region, with neat, well-kept hedges, as far as Rathdrum +and the “Sweet Vale of Avoca.” The hills about Shillelagh are +particularly well forested, though, as the name suggests, they must have +been cut for cudgels pretty extensively for now a great many years. We +came again on the sea at the fishing port of Arklow, where the stone +walls about the station were populous with small ragamuffins, and at the +station of Inch I found a car waiting for me with Mr. Holmes, a young +English Catholic officer, who had most obligingly offered to show me the +place and the people. We had hardly got into the roadway when we +overtook a most intelligent-looking, energetic young priest, walking +briskly on in the direction of our course. This was Dr. Dillon, the +curate of Arklow. We pulled up at once, and Mr. Holmes, introducing me +to him, we begged him to take a seat with us. He excused himself as +having to join another priest with whom he was going to a function at +Inch; but he was good enough to walk a little way with us, and gave me +an appointment for 2 P.M. at his own town of Arklow, where I could catch +the train back to Dublin. We drove on rapidly and called on <a name="page205" id="page205"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 205] +</span>Father +O’Neill, the parish priest. We found him in full canonicals, as he was +to officiate at the function this morning, and with him were Father +Dunphy, the parish priest of Arklow, and two or three more robed +priests.</p> + +<p>Father O’Neill, whose face and manner are those of the higher order of +the continental clergy, briefly set forth to me his view of the +transactions at Coolgreany. He said that before the Plan of Campaign was +adopted by the tenants, Mr. William O’Brien, M.P., had written to him +explaining what the effect of the Plan would be, and urging him to take +whatever steps he could to obviate the necessity of adopting it, as it +might eventually result to the disadvantage of the tenants. “To that +end,” said Father O’Neill, “I called upon Captain Hamilton, the agent, +with Dr. Dillon of Arklow, but he positively refused to listen to us, +and in fact ordered us, not very civilly, to leave his office.”</p> + +<p>It was after this he said that he felt bound to let the tenants take +their own way. Eighty of them joined in the “Plan of Campaign” and paid +the amount of the rent due, less a reduction of 30 per cent., which they +demanded of the agent, into the hands of Sir Thomas Esmonde, M.P., Sir +Thomas <a name="page206" id="page206"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 206] +</span>being a resident in the country, and Mr. Mayne, M.P. Writs of +ejectment were obtained against them afterwards, and in July last +sixty-seven of them were evicted, who are now living in “Laud League +huts,” put up on the holdings of three small tenants who were exempted +from the Plan of Campaign, and allowed to pay their rents subject to a +smaller reduction made by the agent, in order that they might retain +their land as a refuge for the rest.</p> + +<p>All this Father O’Neill told us very quietly, in a gentle, +undemonstrative way, but he was much interested when I told him I had +recently come from Rome, where these proceedings, I was sure, were +exciting a good deal of serious attention. “Yes,” he said, “and Father +Dunphy who is here in the other room, has just got back from Rome, where +he had two audiences of the Holy Father.”</p> + +<p>“Doubtless, then,” I said, “he will have given his Holiness full +particulars of all that took place here.”</p> + +<p>“No doubt,” responded Father O’Neill, “and he tells me the Holy Father +listened with great attention to all he had to say—though of course, he +expressed no opinion about it to Father Dunphy.”</p> + +<p><a name="page207" id="page207"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 207] +</span>As the time fixed for the function was at hand, we were obliged to leave +without seeing Father Dunphy.</p> + +<p>From the Presbytery we drove to the scene of the evictions. These +evictions were in July. Mr. Holmes witnessed them, and gave me a lively +account of the affair. The “battle” was not a very tough one. Mr. +Davitt, who was present, stood under a tree very quietly watching it +all. “He looked very picturesque,” said Mr. Holmes, “in a light grey +suit, with a broad white beaver shading his dark Spanish face; and +smoked his cigar very composedly.” After it was over, Dr. Dillon brought +up one of the tenants, and presented him to Mr. Davitt as “the man who +had resisted this unjust eviction.” Mr. Davitt took his cigar from his +lips, and in the hearing of all who stood about sarcastically said, +“Well, if he couldn’t make a better resistance than that he ought to go +up for six months!” The first house we came upon was derelict—all +battered and despoiled, the people in the neighbourhood here, as +elsewhere, regarding such houses as free spoil, and carrying off from +time to time whatever they happen to fancy. Near this house we met an +emergency man, named <a name="page208" id="page208"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 208] +</span>Bolton, an alert, energetic-looking native of +Wicklow. He has four brothers; and is now at work on one of the +“evicted” holdings.</p> + +<p>I asked if he was “boycotted,” and what his relations were with the +people.</p> + +<p>He laughed in a shrewd, good-natured way. “Oh, I’m boycotted, of +course,” he said; “but I don’t care a button for any of these people, +and I’d rather they wouldn’t speak to me. They know I can take care of +myself, and they give me a good wide berth. All I have to object to is +that they set fire to an outhouse of mine, and cut the ears of one of my +heifers, and for that I want damages. Otherwise I’m getting on very +well; and I think this will be a good year, if the law is enforced, and +these fellows are made to behave themselves.”</p> + +<p>Near Bolton’s farm we passed the holding of a tenant named Kavanagh, one +of the three who were “allowed” to pay their rents. Several Land League +huts are on his place, and the evicted people who occupy them put their +cattle with his. He is a quiet, cautious man, and very reticent. But it +seemed to me that he was not entirely satisfied with the “squatters” who +have been quartered upon him. And it appears that he has taken another +holding <a name="page209" id="page209"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 209] +</span>in Carlow. From his place we drove to Ballyfad, where a large +house, at the end of a good avenue of trees, once the mansion of a +squire, but now much dilapidated, is occupied as headquarters by the +police. Here we found Mr. George Freeman, the bailiff of the Coolgreany +property, a strong, sturdy man, much disgusted at finding it necessary +to go about protected by two policemen. That this was necessary, +however, he admitted, pointing out to us the place where one Kinsella +was killed not very long ago. The son of this man Kinsella was formerly +one of Mr. Brooke’s gamekeepers, and is now, Mr. Freeman thinks, in +concert with another man named Ryan, the chief stay of the League in +keeping up its dominion over the evicted tenants.</p> + +<p>Many of these tenants, he believes, would gladly pay their rents now, +and come back if they dared.</p> + +<p>“Every man, sir,” he said, “that has anything to lose, would be glad to +come back next Monday if he thought his life would be safe. But all the +lazy and thriftless ones are better off now than they ever were; they +get from £4 to £6 a month, with nothing to do, and so they’re in clover, +and they naturally don’t like to have the industrious, well-<a name="page210" id="page210"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 210] +</span>to-do +tenants spoil their fun by making a general settlement.”</p> + +<p>“Besides that,” he added, “that man Kinsella and his comrade Ryan are +the terror of the whole of them. Kinsella always was a curious, silent, +moody fellow. He knows every inch of the country, going over it all the +time by night and day as a gamekeeper, and I am quite sure the +Parnellite men and the Land Leaguers are just as much afraid of him and +Ryan as the tenants are. He don’t care a bit for them; and they’ve no +control of him at all.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Freeman said he remembered very well the occasion referred to by +Father O’Neill, when Captain Hamilton refused to confer with Dr. Dillon +and himself.</p> + +<p>“Did Father O’Neill tell you, sir,” he said, “that Captain Hamilton was +quite willing to talk with him and Father O’Donel, the parish priests, +and with the Coolgreany people, but he would have nothing to say to any +one who was not their priest, and had no business to be meddling with +the matter at all?”</p> + +<p>“No; he did not tell me that.”</p> + +<p>“Ah! well, sir, that made all the difference. Father Dunphy, who was +there, is a high-tempered <a name="page211" id="page211"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 211] +</span>man, and he said he had just as much right to +represent the tenants as Captain Hamilton to represent the landlord, and +that Captain Hamilton wouldn’t allow. It was the outside people made all +the trouble. In June of last year there was a conference at my house, +and all that time there was a Committee sitting at Coolgreany, and the +tenants would not be allowed to do anything without the Committee.”</p> + +<p>“And who made the Committee?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, they made themselves, I suppose, sir. There was Sir Thomas +Esmonde—he was a convert, you know, of Father O’Neill—and Mr. Mayne +and Mr. John Dillon. And Dr. Dillon of Arklow, he was as busy as he +could be till the evictions were made in July. And then he was in +retreat. And I believe, sir, it is quite true that he wanted the Bishop +to let him come out of the retreat just to have a hand in the business.”</p> + +<p>The police sergeant, a very cool, sensible man, quite agreed with the +bailiff as to the influence upon the present situation of the +ex-gamekeeper Kinsella, and his friend Eyan. “If they were two +Invincibles, sir,” he said, “these member fellows of the League couldn’t +be in greater fear of them than they are. <a name="page212" id="page212"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 212] +</span>They say nothing, and do just +as they please. That Kinsella, when Mr. John Dillon was down here, just +told him before a lot of people that he ‘wanted no words and no advice +from him,’ and he’s just in that surly way with all the people about.”</p> + +<p>As to the Brooke estate, I am told here it was bought more than twenty +years ago with a Landed Estates Court title from Colonel Forde, by the +grandfather of Mr. Brooke. He paid about £75,000 sterling for it. His +son died young, and the present owner came into it as a child, Mr. Vesey +being then the agent, who, during the minority, spent a great deal on +improving the property. Captain Hamilton came in as agent only a few +years ago. While the Act of 1881 was impending, an abatement was granted +of more than twenty per cent. In 1882 the tenants all paid except +eleven, who went into Court and got their rents cut down by the +Sub-Commissioners. There were appeals; and in 1885, after Court +valuations, the rents cut down by the Sub-Commissioners were restored in +several cases. There never was any rack-renting on the estate at all. +There are upon it in all more than a hundred tenants, twelve of whom are +Protestants, holding a little less in all than one-fourth of the +property.</p> + +<p><a name="page213" id="page213"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 213] +</span>There are fifteen judicial tenants, twenty-one lease-holders, and +seventy-seven hold from year to year.</p> + +<p>The gross rental is a little over £2000 a year of which one-half goes to +Mr. Brooke’s mother. Mr. Brooke himself is a wealthy man, at the head of +the most important firm of wine-merchants in Ireland, and he has +repeatedly spent on the property more than he took out of it.</p> + +<p>The house of Sir Thomas Esmonde, M.P., was pointed out to me from the +road. “Sir Thomas is to marry an heiress, sir, isn’t he, in America?” +asked an ingenuous inquirer. I avowed my ignorance on this point. “Oh, +well, they say so, for anyway the old house is being put in order for +now the first time in forty years.”</p> + +<p>We reached Arklow in time for luncheon, and drove to the large police +barracks there. These were formerly the quarters of the troops. Arklow +was one of the earliest settlements of the Anglo-Normans in Ireland +under Henry II., and once rejoiced in a castle and a monastery both now +obliterated; though a bit of an old tower here is said to have been +erected in his time. The town lives by fishing, and by shipping copper +and lead ore to <a name="page214" id="page214"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 214] +</span>South Wales. The houses are rather neat and well kept; +but the street was full of little ragged, merry mendicants.</p> + +<p>We went into a small branch of the Bank of Ireland, and asked where we +should find the hotel. We were very civilly directed to “The Register’s +Office over the way.” This seemed odd enough. But reaching it we were +further puzzled to see the sign over the doorway of a “coach-builder”! +However, we rang the bell, and presently a maid-servant appeared, who +assured us that this was really the hotel, and that we could have +“whatever we liked” for luncheon. We liked what we found we could +get—chops, potatoes, and parsnips; and without too much delay these +were neatly served to us in a most remarkable room, ablaze with mural +ornaments and decorations, upon which every imaginable pigment of the +modern palette seemed to have been lavished, from a Nile-water-green +dado to a scarlet and silver frieze. There were five times as many +potatoes served to us as two men could possibly eat, and not one of them +was half-boiled. But otherwise the meal was well enough, and the service +excellent. Beer could be got for us, but the house had no licence, Lord +Carysfort, the owner of the <a name="page215" id="page215"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 215] +</span>property, thinking, so our hostess said, +that “there were too many licences in the town already.” Lord Carysfort +is probably right; but it is not every owner of a house, or even of a +lease in Ireland, I fear, who would take such a view and act on it to +the detriment of his own property.</p> + +<p>Dr. Dillon lives in the main square of Arklow in a very neat house. He +was absent at a funeral in the handsome Catholic church near by when we +called, but we were shown into his study, and he presently came in.</p> + +<p>His study was that of a man of letters and of politics. Blue-books and +statistical works lay about in all directions, and on the table were the +March numbers of the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, and the <i>Contemporary +Review</i>.</p> + +<p>“You are abreast of the times, I see,” I said to him, pointing to these +periodicals.</p> + +<p>“Yes,” he replied, “they have just come in; and there is a capital paper +by Mr. John Morley in this <i>Nineteenth Century</i>.”</p> + +<p>Nothing could be livelier than Dr. Dillon’s interest in all that is +going on on both sides of the Atlantic, more positive than his opinions, +or more terse and clear than his way of putting them. He <a name="page216" id="page216"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 216] +</span>agreed entirely +with Father O’Neill as to the pressure put upon the Coolgreany tenants, +not so much by Mr. Brooke as by the agent, Captain Hamilton; but he +thought Mr. Brooke also to blame for his treatment of them.</p> + +<p>“Two of the most respectable of them,” said Dr. Dillon, “went to see Mr. +Brooke in Dublin, and he wouldn’t listen to them. On the contrary, he +absolutely put them out of his office without hearing a word they had to +say.”<a id="footnotetag22" + name="footnotetag22"></a><a href="#footnote22"><sup>22</sup></a></p> + +<p>I found Dr. Dillon a strong disciple of Mr. Henry George, and a firm +believer in the doctrine of the “nationalisation of the land.” “It is +certain to come,” he said, “as certain to come in Great Britain as in +Ireland, and the sooner the better. The movement about the sewerage +rates in London,” he added, “is the first symptom of the land war in +London. It is the thin edge of the wedge to break down landlordism in +the British metropolis.”</p> + +<p>He is watching American politics, too, very closely, and inclines to +sympathise with President Cleveland. Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia, he +tells me, in his passage through Ireland the other day, did not hesitate +to express his conviction that President Cleveland would be re-elected.</p> + +<p><a name="page217" id="page217"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 217] +</span>Dr. Dillon was so earnest and so interesting that the time slipped by +very fast, until a casual glance at my watch showed me that we must make +great haste to catch the Dublin train.</p> + +<p>We left therefore rather hurriedly, but before reaching the station we +saw the Dublin train go careering by, its white pennon of smoke and +vapour curling away along the valley.</p> + +<p>I made the best of it, however, and letting Mr. Holmes depart by a train +which took him home, I found a smart jarvey with a car, and drove out to +Glenart Castle, the beautiful house of the Earl of Carysfort. This is a +very handsome modern house, built in a castellated style of a very good +whitish grey marble, with extensive and extremely well-kept terraced +gardens and conservatories.</p> + +<p>It stands very well on one high bank of the river, a residence of the +Earl of Wicklow occupying the other bank. My jarvey called my attention +to the excellence of the roads, on which he said Lord Carysfort has +spent “a deal of money,” as well as upon the gardens of the new Castle. +The head-gardener, an Englishman, told me he found the native labourers +very intelligent and willing both to learn and to work. Evidently here +is another centre of useful <a name="page218" id="page218"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 218] +</span>and civilising influences, not managed by an +“absentee.”<a id="footnotetag23" + name="footnotetag23"></a><a href="#footnote23"><sup>23</sup></a></p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page219" id="page219"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 219] +</span>CHAPTER XIV.</h2> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">DUBLIN, <i>Friday, March 9th.</i>—</span>At 7.40 this morning I took the train for +Athy to visit the Luggacurren estates of Lord Lansdowne. Mr. Lynch, a +resident magistrate here, some time ago kindly offered to show me over +the place, but I thought it as well to take my chance with the people of +Athy who are reported to have been very hot over the whole matter here, +and so wrote to Mr. Lynch that I would find him at the Lodge, which is +the headquarters of the property.</p> + +<p>Athy is a neat, well-built little town, famous of old as a frontier +fortress of Kildare. An embattled tower, flanked by small square +turrets, guards a picturesque old bridge here over the Barrow, the +bridge being known in the country as “Crom-a-boo,” from the old war-cry +of the Fitz-Geralds. It is a busy place now; and there was quite a +bustle at the very pretty little station. I asked a friendly old porter +which was the best hotel in the town. “The <a name="page220" id="page220"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 220] +</span>best? Ah! there’s only one, +and it’s not the best—but there are worse—and it’s Kavanagh’s.” I +found it easily enough, and was ushered by a civil man, who emerged from +the shop which occupies part of it, into a sort of reading-room with a +green table. A rather slatternly but very active girl soon converted +this into a neat breakfast-table, and gave me an excellent breakfast. +The landlord found me a good car, and off I set for the residence of +Father Maher, the curate of whom I had heard as one of the most fiery +and intractable of the National League priests in this part of Ireland.</p> + + +<p>My jarvey was rather taciturn at first, but turned out to be something +of a politician. He wanted Home Rule, one of his reasons being that then +they “wouldn’t let the Americans come and ruin them altogether, driving +out the grain from the markets.” About this he was very clear and +positive. “Oh, it doesn’t matter now whether the land is good or bad, +America has just ruined the farmers entirely.”</p> + +<p>I told him I had always heard this achievement attributed to England. +“Oh! that was quite a mistake! What the English did was to punish the +men that stood up for Ireland. There was Mr. O’Brien. But for him there +wasn’t a man of Lord Lansdowne’s <a name="page221" id="page221"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 221] +</span>people would have had the heart to +stand up. He did it all; and now, what were they doing to him? They were +putting him on a cold plank-bed on a stone floor in a damp cell!”</p> + +<p>“But the English put all their prisoners in those cells, don’t they?” I +asked.</p> + +<p>“And what of it, sir?” he retorted. “They’re good enough for most of +them, but not for a gentleman like Mr. O’Brien, that would spill the +last drop of his heart’s blood for Ireland!”</p> + +<p>“But,” I said, “they’re doing just the same thing with Mr. Gilhooly, I +hear.”</p> + +<p>“And who is Mr. Gilhooly, now? And it’s not for the likes of him to +complain and be putting on airs as if he was Mr. O’Brien!”</p> + +<p>“Yes, it is a fine country for hunting!”</p> + +<p>“Was it ever put down here, the hunting?”</p> + +<p>“No, indeed! Sure, the people wouldn’t let it be!”</p> + +<p>“Not if Mr. O’Brien told them they must?” I queried.</p> + +<p>“Mr. O’Brien; ah, he wouldn’t think of such a thing! It brings money all +the time to Athy, and sells the horses.”</p> + +<p>As to the troubles at Luggacurren, he was not very clear. “It was a +beautiful place, Mr. Dunne’s; we’d <a name="page222" id="page222"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 222] +</span>see it presently. And Mr. Dunne, he +was a good one for sport. It was that, your honour, that got him into +the trouble”—</p> + +<p>“And Mr. Kilbride?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, Mr. Kilbride’s place was a very good place too, but not like Mr. +Dunne’s. And he was doing very well, Mr. Kilbride. He was getting a good +living from the League, and he was a Member of Parliament. Oh, yes, he +wasn’t the only one of the tenants that was doing good to himself. There +was more of them that was getting more than ever they made out of the +land.”<a id="footnotetag24" + name="footnotetag24"></a><a href="#footnote24"><sup>24</sup></a></p> + +<p>“Was the land so bad, then?” I asked.</p> + +<p><a name="page223" id="page223"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 223] +</span>“No, there was as good land at Luggacurren as any there was in all +Ireland; but,” and here he pointed off to the crests of the hills in the +distance, “there was a deal of land there of the estate on the hills, +and it was very poor land, but the tenants had to pay as much for that +as for the good property of Dunne and Kilbride.”</p> + +<p>“Do you know Mr. Lynch, the magistrate?” I asked. “If you do, look out +for him, as he has promised to join me and show me the place.”</p> + +<p>“Oh no, sorr!” the jarvey exclaimed at once; “don’t mind about him. Hell +have his own car, and your honour won’t want to take him on ours.”</p> + +<p>“Why not?” I persisted, “there’s plenty of room.”</p> + +<p>“Oh! but indeed, sir, if it wasn’t that you were going to the priest’s, +Father Maher, you wouldn’t get a car at Athy—no, not under ten pounds!”</p> + +<p>“Not under ten pounds,” I replied. “Would I get one then for ten +pounds?”</p> + +<p>“It’s a deal of money, ten pounds, sorr, and you wouldn’t have a poor +man throw away ten pounds?”</p> + +<p>“Certainly not, nor ten shillings either. Is it a question of principle, +or a question of price?”</p> + +<p>The man looked around at me with a droll <a name="page224" id="page224"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 224] +</span>glimmer in his eye: “Ah, to be +sure, your honour’s a great lawyer; but he’ll come pounding along with +his big horse in his own car, Mr. Lynch; and sure it’ll be quicker for +your honour just driving to Father Maher’s.”</p> + +<p>There was no resisting this, so I laughed and bade him drive on.</p> + +<p>“Whose house is that?” I asked, as we passed a house surrounded with +trees.</p> + +<p>“Oh! that’s the priest, Father Keogh—a very good man, but not so much +for the people as Father Maher, who has everything to look after about +them.”</p> + +<p>We came presently within sight of a handsome residence, Lansdowne Lodge, +the headquarters of the estate. Many fine cattle were grazing in the +fields about it.</p> + +<p>“They are Lord Lansdowne’s beasts,” said my jarvey; “and it’s the +emergency men are looking after them.”</p> + +<p>Nearly opposite were the Land League huts erected on the holding of an +unevicted tenant—a small village of neat wooden “shanties.” On the +roadway in front of these half-a-dozen men were lounging about. They +watched us with much curiosity as we drove up, and whispered eagerly +together.</p> + +<p><a name="page225" id="page225"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 225] +</span>“They’re some of the evicted men, your honour,” said my jarvey, with a +twinkle in his eye; and then under his breath, “They’ll be thinking your +honour’s came down to arrange it all. They think everybody that comes is +come about an arrangement.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, then, they all want it arranged!”</p> + +<p>“No; not all, but many of them do. Some of them like it well enough +going about like gentlemen with nothing to do, only their hands in their +pockets.”</p> + +<p>We turned out of the highway here and passed some very pretty cottages.</p> + +<p>“No, they’re not for labourers, your honour,” said my jarvey; “the +estate built them for mechanics. It’s the tenants look after the +labourers, and little it is they do for them.”</p> + +<p>Then, pointing to a ridge of hills beyond us, he said: “It was +Kilbride’s father, sir, evicted seventeen tenants on these hills—poor +labouring men, with their families, many years ago,—and now he’s +evicted himself, and a Member of Parliament!”</p> + +<p>Father Maher’s house stands well off from the highway. He was not at +home, being “away at a service in the hills,” but would be back before +two o’clock. I left my name for him, with a memo<a name="page226" id="page226"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 226] +</span>randum of my purpose in +calling, and we drove on to see the bailiff of the estate, Mr. Hind. On +the way we met Father Norris, a curate of the parish, in a smart trap +with a good horse, and had a brief colloquy with him. Mr. Hind we found +busy afield; a quiet, staunch sort of man. He spoke of the situation +very coolly and dispassionately. “The tenants in the main were a good +set of men—as they had reason to be, Lord Lansdowne having been not +only a fair landlord, but a liberal and enterprising promoter of local +improvements.” I had been told in Dublin that Lord Lansdowne had offered +a subscription of £200 towards establishing creameries, and providing +high-class bulls for this estate. Similar offers had been cordially met +by Lord Lansdowne’s tenants in Kerry, and with excellent results. But +here they were rejected almost scornfully, though accompanied by offers +of abatement on the rents, which, in the case of Mr. Kilbride, for +example, amounted to 20 per cent.</p> + +<p>“How did this happen, the tenants being good men as you say?” I asked of +Mr. Hind.</p> + +<p>“Because they were unable to resist the pressure put on them by the two +chief tenants, Kilbride and Dunne, with the help of the League. Kilbride +and <a name="page227" id="page227"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 227] +</span>Dunne both lived very well.” My information at Dublin was that Mr. +Kilbride had a fine house built by Lord Lansdowne, and a farm of seven +hundred acres, at a rent of £760, 10s. Mr. Dunne, who co-operated with +him, held four town lands comprising 1304 acres, at a yearly rent of +£1348, 15s. Upon this property Lord Lansdowne had expended in drainage +and works £1993, 11s. 9d., and in buildings £631, 15s. 4d., or in all +very nearly two years’ rental. On Mr. Kilbride’s holdings Lord Lansdowne +had expended in drainage works £1931, 6s. 3d., and in buildings £1247, +19s. 5d., or in all more than four years’ rental. Mr. Kilbride held his +lands on life leases. Mr. Dunne held his smallest holding of 84 acres on +a yearly tenure; his two largest holdings, one on a lease for 31 years +from 1874, and the other on a life lease, and his fourth holding of 172 +acres on a life lease.</p> + +<p>Where does the hardship appear in all this to Mr. Dunne or Mr. Kilbride?</p> + +<p>On Mr. Kilbride’s holdings, for instance, Lord Lansdowne expended over +£3000, for which he added to the rent £130 a year, or about 4 per cent., +while he himself stood to pay 6-1/2 per cent, on the loans he made from +the Board of Works <a name="page228" id="page228"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 228] +</span>for the expenditure. In the same way it was with Mr. +Dunne’s farms. They were mostly in grass, and Lord Lansdowne laid out +more than £2500 on them, borrowed at the same rate from the Board, for +which he added to the rent only £66 a year, or about 2-1/2 per cent. Mr. +Kilbride was a Poor-Law Guardian, and Mr. Dunne a Justice of the Peace. +The leases in both of these cases, and in those of other large tenants, +seem to have been made at the instance of the tenants themselves, and +afforded security against any advance in the rental during a time of +high agricultural prices. And it would appear that for the last quarter +of a century there has been no important advance in the rental. In 1887 +the rental was only £300 higher than in 1862, though during the interval +the landlord had laid out £20,000 on improvements in the shape of +drainage, roads, labourers’ cottages, and other permanent works. +Moreover, in fifteen years only one tenant has been evicted for +non-payment of rent.</p> + +<p>“Was there any ill-feeling towards the Marquis among the tenants?” I +asked of Mr. Hind.</p> + +<p>“Certainly not, and no reason for any. They were a good set of men, and +they would never have gone into this fight, only for a few who were in +<a name="page229" id="page229"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 229] +</span>trouble, and I’m sure that to-day most of them would be thankful if they +could settle and get back. The best of them had money enough, and didn’t +like the fight at all.”</p> + +<p>All the trouble here seems to have originated with the adoption of the +Plan of Campaign.</p> + +<p>Lord Lansdowne, besides this estate in Queen’s County, owns property in +a wild, mountainous part of the county of Kerry. On this property the +tenants occupy, for the most part, small holdings, the average rental +being about £10, and many of the rentals much lower. They are not +capitalist farmers at all, and few of them are able to average the +profits of their industry, setting the gains of a good, against the +losses of a bad, season. In October 1886, while Mr. Dillon was +organising his Plan of Campaign, Lord Lansdowne visited his Kerry +property to look into the condition of the people. The local Bank had +just failed, and the shopkeepers and money-lenders were refusing credit +and calling in loans. The pressure they put upon these small farmers, +together with the fall in the price of dairy produce and of young stock +at that time, caused real distress, and Lord Lansdowne, after looking +into the situation, offered, of his own motion, abatements <a name="page230" id="page230"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 230] +</span>varying from +25 to 35 per cent, to all of them whose rents had not been judicially +fixed under the Act of 1881, for a term of fifteen years.</p> + +<p>As to these, Lord Lansdowne wrote a letter on the 21st of October 1886 +(four days after the promulgation of the Plan of Campaign at Portumna on +the Clanricarde property), to his agent, Mr. Townsend Trench. This +letter was published. I have a copy of it given to me in Dublin, and it +states the case as between the landlords and the tenants under judicial +rents most clearly and temperately.</p> + +<p>“It might, I think,” says the Marquis, “be very fairly argued, that the +State having imposed the terms of a contract on landlord and tenant, +that contract should not be interfered with except by the State.</p> + +<p>The punctual payment of the ‘judicial rent’ was the one advantage to +which the landlords were desired to look when, in 1881, they were +deprived of many of the most valuable attributes of ownership.</p> + +<p>“It was distinctly stipulated that the enormous privileges which were +suddenly and unexpectedly conferred upon the tenants were to be enjoyed +by them conditionally upon the fulfilment on their part of the statutory +obligations specified in the Act. <a name="page231" id="page231"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 231] +</span>Of those, by far the most important +was the punctual payment of the rent fixed by the Court for the judicial +term.</p> + +<p>“This obligation being unfulfilled, the landlord might reasonably claim +that he should be free to exercise his own discretion in determining +whether any given tenancy should or should not be perpetuated.</p> + +<p>“In many cases [such cases are probably not so numerous on my estate as +upon many others] the resumption of the holding, and the consolidation +of adjoining farms, would be clearly advantageous to the whole +community. In the congested districts the consolidation of farms is the +only solution that I have seen suggested for meeting a chronic +difficulty.</p> + +<p>“I have no reason to believe that the Judicial Rents in force on my +estate are such that, upon an average of the yield and prices of +agricultural produce, my tenants would find it difficult to pay them.”</p> + +<p>In spite of all these considerations Lord Lansdowne instructed Mr. +Trench to grant to these tenants under judicial leases an abatement of +20 per cent. on the November gale of 1886. This abatement, freely +offered, was gladly accepted. There <a name="page232" id="page232"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 232] +</span>had been no outrages or disturbances +on the Kerry properties, and the relations of the landlord with his +tenants, before and after this visit of Lord Lansdowne to Kerry, and +these reductions which followed it, had been, and continued to be, +excellent.</p> + +<p>But the tale of Kerry reached Luggacurren; and certain of the tenants on +the latter estate were moved by it to demand for the Queen’s County +property identical treatment with that accorded to the very differently +situated property in Kerry.</p> + +<p>The leaders of the Luggacurren movement, I gather from Mr. Hind, never +pretended inability to pay their rents. They simply demanded abatements +of 35 per cent. on non-judicial, and 25 per cent. on judicial, rents as +their due, on the ground that they should be treated like the tenants in +Kerry: and the Plan of Campaign being by this time in full operation in +more than one part of Ireland, they threatened to resort to it if their +demand was refused. Lord Lansdowne at once declared that he would not +repeat at Luggacurren his concession made in Kerry as to the rents +judicially fixed; but he offered on a fair consideration of the +non-judicial rents to make abatements on them ranging from 15 to 25 per +cent.</p> + +<p><a name="page233" id="page233"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 233] +</span>The offer was refused, and the war began. On the 23d of March 1887 Mr. +Kilbride was evicted. One week afterwards, on the 29th of March, he got +up in the rooms of the National League in Dublin, and openly declared +that “the Luggacurren evictions differed from most other evictions in +this, that they were able to pay the rent. It was a fight,” he +exultingly exclaimed, “of intelligence against intelligence; it was +diamond cut diamond!” In other words, it was a struggle, not for +justice, but for victory.</p> + +<p>On all these points, and others furnished to me at Dublin touching this +estate, much light was thrown by the bailiff, who had not been concerned +in the evictions. He told me what he knew, and then very obligingly +offered to conduct me to the lodge, where we should find Mr. Hutchins, +who has charge now of the properties taken up by Mr. Kavanagh’s Land +Corporation. My patriotic jarvey from Athy made no objection to my +giving the bailiff a lift, and we drove off to the lodge. On the way the +jarvey good-naturedly exclaimed, “Ah! there comes Mr. Lynch,” and even +offered to pull up that the magistrate might overtake us.</p> + +<p>We found Mr. Hutchins at home, a cool, quiet, <a name="page234" id="page234"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 234] +</span>energetic, northern man, +who seems to be handling the difficult situation here with great +firmness and prudence. Mrs. Hutchins, who has lived here now for nearly +a year—a life not unlike that of the wife of an American officer on the +Far Western frontier—very amicably asked me to lunch, and Mr. Hutchins +offered to show me the holdings of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Kilbride. Mr. Lynch +proposed that we should all go on my car, but I remembered the protest +of the jarvey, and sending him to await me at Father Maher’s, I drove +off with Mr. Hutchins. As we drove along, he confirmed the jarvey’s hint +as to the difference between the views and conduct of the parish priest +and the views and conduct of his more fiery curate. This is a very +common state of affairs, I find, all over Ireland.</p> + +<p>The house of Mr. Dunne is that of a large gentleman farmer. It is very +well fitted up, but it was plain that the tenants had done little or +nothing to make or keep it a “house beautiful.” The walls had never been +papered, and the wood-work showed no recent traces of the brush. “He +spent more money on horse-racing than on housekeeping,” said a shrewd +old man who was in the house. In fact, Mr. Dunne, I am told, entered a +horse for the <a name="page235" id="page235"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 235] +</span>races at the Curragh after he had undergone what Mr. +Gladstone calls “the sentence of death” of an eviction!</p> + +<p>Some of the doors bore marks of the crowbar but no great mischief had +been done to them or to the large fine windows. The only serious damage +done during the eviction was the cutting of a hole through the roof. An +upper room had been provisioned to stand a siege, and so scientifically +barricaded with logs and trunks of trees that after several vain +attempts to break through the door the assailants climbed to the roof, +and in twenty minutes cut their way in from without. The dining and +drawing rooms were those of a gentleman’s residence, and one of the +party remembered attending here a social festivity got up with much +display.</p> + +<p>A large cattle-yard has been established on this place, with an +original, and, as I was assured, most successful weighing-machine by the +Land Corporation. We found it full of very fine-looking cattle, and Mr. +Hutchins seems to think the operation of managing the estate as a kind +of “ranch” decidedly promising. “I am not a bit sorry for Mr. Dunne,” he +said, “but I am very sorry for other quiet, good tenants who have been +deluded or driven into giving <a name="page236" id="page236"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 236] +</span>up valuable holdings to keep him and Mr. +Kilbride company, and give colour to the vapourings of Mr. William +O’Brien.”</p> + +<p>The cases of some of these tenants were instructive. One poor man, +Knowles, had gone out to America, and regularly sent home money to his +family to pay the rent. They found other uses for it, and when the storm +came he was two years and a half in arrears. In another instance, two +brothers held contiguous holdings, and were in a manner partners. One +was fonder of Athy than of agriculture; the other a steady husbandman. +Four years’ arrears had grown up against the one; only a half-year’s +gale against the other. Clearly this difference originated outside of +the fall of prices! In a third case, a tenant wrote to Mr. Trench +begging to have something done, as he had the money to pay, and wanted +to pay, but “didn’t dare.”</p> + +<p>From Mr. Dunne’s we drove to Mr. Kilbride’s, another ample, very +comfortable house—not so thoroughly well fitted up with bathroom and +other modern appurtenances as Mr. Dunne’s perhaps—but still a very good +house. It stands on a large green knoll, rather bare of trees, and +commands a fine sweep of landscape.</p> + +<p><a name="page237" id="page237"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 237] +</span>Mr. Hutchins drove me to the little road which leads up past the “Land +League village” to the house of Father Maher, and there set me down.</p> + +<p>I walked up and found the curate at home—a tall, slender, well-made +young priest, with a keen, intelligent face. He received me very +politely, and, when I showed him the card of an eminent dignitary of the +Church, with cordiality.</p> + +<p>I found him full of sympathy with the people of his parish, but neither +vehement nor unfair. He did not deny that there were tenants on Lord +Lansdowne’s estate who were amply able to pay their rents; but he did +most emphatically assert that there were not a few of them who really +could not pay their rents.</p> + +<p>“I assure you,” he said, “there are some of them who cannot even pay +their dues to their priest, and when I say that, you will know how +pinched and driven they must indeed be.” It was in view of these tenants +that he seemed to justify the course of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Kilbride. +“They must all stand or fall together.” He had nothing to say to the +discredit of Lord Lansdowne; but he spoke with some bitterness of the +agent, Mr. Townsend Trench, as having protested against Lord Lansdowne’s +mak<a name="page238" id="page238"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 238] +</span>ing reductions here while he had himself made the same reductions on +the neighbouring estate of Mrs. Adair.</p> + +<p>“In truth,” he said, “Mr. Trench has made all this trouble worse all +along. He is too much of a Napoleon”—and with a humorous twinkle in his +eye as he spoke—“too much of a Napoleon the Third.</p> + +<p>“I was just reading his father’s book when you came in. Here it is,” and +he handed me a copy of Trench’s <i>Realities of Irish Life</i>.</p> + +<p>“Did you ever read it? This Mr. Trench, the father, was a kind of +Napoleon among agents in his own time, and the son, you see, thinks it +ought to be understood that he is quite as great a man as his father. +Did you never hear how he found a lot of his father’s manuscripts once, +and threw them all in the fire, calling out as he did so, ‘There goes +some more of my father’s vanity?’”</p> + +<p>About his people, and with his people, Father Maher said he “felt most +strongly.” How could he help it? He was himself the son of an evicted +father.</p> + +<p>“Of course, Father Maher,” I said, “you will understand that I wish to +get at both sides of this <a name="page239" id="page239"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 239] +</span>question and of all questions here. Pray tell +me then, where I shall find the story of the Luggacurren property most +fully and fairly set forth in print?”</p> + +<p>Without a moment’s hesitation he replied, “By far the best and fairest +account of the whole matter you will get in the Irish correspondence of +the London <i>Times</i>.”</p> + +<p>How the conflict would end he could not say. But he was at a loss to see +how it could pay Lord Lansdowne to maintain it.</p> + +<p>He very civilly pressed me to stay and lunch with him, but when I told +him I had already accepted an invitation from Mr. Hutchins, he very +kindly bestirred himself to find my jarvey.</p> + +<p>I hastened back to the lodge, where I found a very pleasant little +company. They were all rather astonished, I thought, by the few words I +had to say of Father Maher, and especially by his frank and sensible +recommendation of the reports in the London <i>Times</i> as the best account +I could find of the Luggacurren difficulty. To this they could not +demur, but things have got, or are getting, in Ireland, I fear, to a +point at which candour, on one side or the other of the burning +questions here <a name="page240" id="page240"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 240] +</span>debated, is regarded with at least as much suspicion as +the most deliberate misrepresentation. As to Mr. Town send Trench, what +Father Maher failed to tell me, I was here told: That down to the time +of the actual evictions he offered to take six months’ rent from the +tenants, give them a clean book, and pay all the costs. To refuse this +certainly looks like a “war measure.”</p> + +<p>But for the loneliness of her life here, Mrs. Hutchins tells me she +would find it delightful. The country is exceedingly lovely in the +summer and autumn months.</p> + +<p>When my car came out to take me back to Athy, I found my jarvey in +excellent spirits, and quite friendly even with Mr. Hutchins himself. He +kept up a running fire of lively commentaries upon the residents whose +estates we passed.</p> + +<p>“Would you think now, your honour,” he said, pointing with his whip to +one large mansion standing well among good trees, “that that’s the +snuggest man there is about Athy? But he is; and it’s no wonder! Would +you believe it, he never buys a newspaper, but he walks all the way into +Athy, and goes about from the bank to the shops till he finds one, and +picks it up and reads it. He’s <a name="page241" id="page241"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 241] +</span>mighty fond of the news, but he’s fonder, +you see, of a penny!</p> + +<p>“There now, your honour, just look at that house! It’s a magistrate he +is that lives there; and why? Why, just to be called ‘your honour,’ and +have the people tip their hats to him. Oh! he delights in that, he does. +Why, you might knock a man, or put him in the water, you might, indeed, +but if you came before Mr.——, and you just called him ‘your honour’ +often enough, and made up to him, you’d be all right! You’ve just to go +up to him with your hat in your hand, looking up at him, and to say, +‘Ah! now, your honour’“ (imitating the wheedling tone to perfection), +”and indeed you’d get anything out of him—barring a sixpence, that is, +or a penny!</p> + +<p>“Ah! he’s a snug one, too!” And with that he launched a sharp thwack of +the whip at the grey mare, and we went rattling on apace.</p> + +<p>At the very pretty station of Athy we parted the best of friends. “Wish +you safe home, your honour.” The kindly railway porter, also, who had +recommended Kavanagh’s Hotel, was anxious to know how I found it, and so +busied himself to get me a good carriage when the train came in, that I +feel bound to exempt Athy from the judgment <a name="page242" id="page242"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 242] +</span>passed by Sir James +Allport’s committee against the “amenities of railway travelling in +Ireland.”</p> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">DUBLIN, <i>Saturday, March 10.</i>—</span>I called by appointment to-day upon Mr. +Brooke, the owner of the Coolgreany estate, at his counting-house in +Gardiner’s Row. It is one of the spacious old last-century houses of +Dublin; the counting-room is installed with dark, old-fashioned mahogany +fittings, in what once was, and might easily again be made, a +drawing-room. Pictures hang on the walls, and the atmosphere of the +whole place is one of courtesy and culture rather than of mere modern +commerce. One of the portraits here is that of Mr. Brooke’s +granduncle—a handsome, full-blooded, rather testy-looking old warrior, +in the close-fitting scarlet uniform of the Prince Regent’s time.</p> + +<p>“He ought to have been called Lord Baltimore,” said Mr. Brooke +good-naturedly; “for he fought against your people for that city at +Bladensburg with Ross.”</p> + +<p>“That was the battle,” I said, “in which, according to a popular +tradition in my country, the Americans took so little interest that they +left the field almost as soon as it began.”</p> + +<p>Another portrait is of a kinsman who was mur<a name="page243" id="page243"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 243] +</span>dered in the highway here in +Ireland many years ago, under peculiarly atrocious circumstances, and +with no sort of provocation or excuse.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brooke confirmed Dr. Dillon’s statement that he had ordered out of +his counting-house two tenants who came into it with a peculiarly brazen +proposition, of which I must presume Dr. Dillon was ignorant when he +cited the fact as a count against the landlord of Coolgreany. I give the +story as Mr Brooke tells it. “The Rent Audit,” he says, “at which my +tenants were idiots enough to join the Plan of Campaign occurred about +the 12th December 1886, when, as you know, I refused to accept the terms +which they proposed to me. I heard nothing more from them till about the +middle of February 1887, when coming to my office one day I found two +tenants waiting for me. One was Stephen Maher, a mountain man, and the +other Patrick Kehoe. ‘What do you want?’ I asked. Whereupon they both +arose, and Pat Kehoe pointed to Maher. Maher fumbled at his clothes, and +rubbed himself softly for a bit, and then produced a scrap of paper. +‘It’s a bit of paper from the tenants, sir,’ he said. A queer bit of +paper it was to look at—ruled paper, with a composition written <a name="page244" id="page244"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 244] +</span>upon it +which might have been the work of a village schoolmaster. It was neither +signed nor addressed! The pith of it was in these words,—‘in +consequence of the manner in which we have been harassed, our cattle +driven throughout the country, and our crops not sown, we shall be +unable to pay the half-year’s rent due in March, in addition to the +reduction already claimed!’ I own I rather lost my temper at this! +Remember I had already plainly refused to give ‘the reduction already +claimed,’ and had told them not once, but twenty times, that I would +never surrender to the ‘Plan of Campaign’! I am afraid my language was +Pagan rather than Parliamentary—but I told them plainly, at least, that +if they did not break from the Plan of Campaign, and pay their debts, +they might be sure I would turn the whole of them out! I gave them back +their precious bit of paper and sent them packing.</p> + +<p>“One of them, I have told you, was a mountain man, Stephen Maher. He is +commonly known among the people as ‘the old fox of the mountain,’ and he +is very proud of it!</p> + +<p>“This old Stephen Maher,” said Mr. Brooke, “is renowned in connection +with a trial for murder, at <a name="page245" id="page245"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 245] +</span>which he was summoned as a witness. When he +was cross-examined by Mr. Molloy, Q.C., he fenced and dodged about with +that distinguished counsellor for a long time, until getting vexed by +the lawyer’s persistency, he exclaimed, ‘Now thin, Mr. Molloy, I’d have +ye to know that I had a cliverer man nor iver you was, Mr. Molloy, at +me, and I had to shtan’ up to him for three hours before the Crowner, +an’ he was onable to git the throoth out of me, so he was! so he was!’”</p> + + +<p>Neither did Dr. Dillon mention the fact that one of the demands made of +Captain Hamilton, Mr. Brooke’s agent, in December 1886, was that a +Protestant tenant named Webster should be evicted by Mr. Brooke from a +farm for which he had paid his rent, to make room for the return thither +of a Roman Catholic tenant named Lenahan, previously evicted for +non-payment of his rent.</p> + +<p>When Mr. Brooke’s grandfather bought the Coolgreany property in 1864, he +adopted a system of betterments, which has been ever since kept up on +the estate. Nearly every tenant’s house on the property has been slated, +and otherwise repaired by the landlord, nor has one penny ever been +added on that account to the rents.</p> + +<p><a name="page246" id="page246"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 246] +</span>In the village of Coolgreany all the houses on one side of the main +street were built in this way by the landlord, and the same thing was +done in the village of Croghan, where twenty tenants have a grazing +right of three sheep for every acre held on the Croghan Mountain, +pronounced by the valuers of the Land Court to be one of the best +grazing mountains in Ireland.</p> + +<p>Captain Hamilton became the agent of the property in 1879, on the death +of Mr. Vesey. One of his earliest acts was to advise Mr. Brooke to grant +an abatement of 25 per cent. in June 1881, while the Land Act was +passing. At the same time, he cautioned the tenants that this was only a +temporary reduction, and advised them to get judicial rents fixed.</p> + +<p>The League advised them not to do this, but to demand 25 per cent. +reduction again in December 1881. This demand was rejected, and forty +writs were issued. The tenants thereupon in January 1882 came in and +paid the full rent, with the costs.</p> + +<p>Eleven tenants after this went into Court, and in 1883 the +Sub-Commissioners cut down their rents. In five cases Mr. Brooke +appealed. What was the result before the Chief Commissioner? The rent <a name="page247" id="page247"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 247] +</span>of +Mary Green, which had been £43, and had been cut down by the +Sub-Commissioners to £39, was restored to £43; the rent of Mr. Kavanagh, +cut down from £57 to £52, was restored to £55; the rent of Pat Kehoe +(one of the two tenants “ejected” from Mr. Brooke’s office as already +stated), cut down from £81 to £70, was restored to £81; the rent of +Graham, cut down from £38 to £32, 10s., was restored to £38. Other +reductions were maintained.</p> + +<p>This appears to be the record of “rack-renting” on the Coolgreany +property.</p> + +<p>There are 114 tenants, of whom 15 hold under judicial rents; 22 are +leaseholders, and 77 are non-judicial yearly tenants. There are 12 +Protestants holding in all a little more than 1200 acres. All the rest +are Catholics, 14 of these being cottier tenants. The estate consists of +5165 acres. The average is about £24, and the average rental about £26, +10s. The gross rental is £2614, of which £1000 go to the jointure of Mr. +Brooke’s mother, and £800 are absorbed by the tithe charges, half +poor-rates and other taxes. During the year 1886, in which this war was +declared against him, Mr. Brooke spent £714 in improvements upon the +property: so in <a name="page248" id="page248"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 248] +</span>that year his income from Coolgreany was practically +<i>nil</i>.</p> + +<p>What in these circumstances would have been the position of this +landlord had he not possessed ample means not invested in this +particular estate? And what has been the result to the tenants of this +conflict into which it seems clear that they were led, less to protect +any direct interest of their own than to jeopardise their homes and +their livelihood for the promotion of a general agrarian agitation? It +is not clear that they are absolutely so far out of pocket, for I find +that the Post-Office Savings Bank deposits at Inch and Gorey rose from +£3699, 5s. 4d. in 1880 to £5308, 13s. in 1887, showing an increase of +£1609, 7s. 8d. But they are out of house and home and work, entered +pupils in that school of idleness and iniquity which has been kept by +one Preceptor from the beginning of time.</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page249" id="page249"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 249] +</span>CHAPTER XV.<a id="footnotetag25" + name="footnotetag25"></a><a href="#footnote25"><sup>25</sup></a></h2> + + +<p>* * * *—Mrs. Kavanagh was quite right when she told me at Borris in +March that this country should be seen in June! The drive to this lovely +place this morning was one long enchantment of verdure and hawthorn +blossoms and fragrance.</p> + +<p>I came over from London to bring to a head some inquiries which have too +long delayed the publication of this diary. My intention had been to go +directly to Thurles, but a telegram which I received from the Archbishop +of Cashel just before <a name="page250" id="page250"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 250] +</span>I left telling me that he could not be at home for +the last three days of the week, I came directly here. Nothing can be +more utterly unlike the popular notions of Ireland and of Irish life +than the aspect of this most smiling and beautiful region: nothing more +thoroughly Irish than its people.</p> + +<p>* * * who is one of the most active and energetic of Irish landlords, +lives part of the year abroad, but keeps up his Irish property with +care, at the expense, I suspect, of his estates elsewhere.</p> + +<p>From a noble avenue of trees, making the highway like the main road of a +private park, we turned into a literal paradise of gardens. The air was +balmy with their wealth of odours. “Oh! yes, sir,” said the coachman, +with an air of sympathetic pride, “our lady is just the greatest lady in +all this land for flowers!”</p> + +<p>And for ivy, he might have added. We drove between green walls of ivy up +to a house which seemed itself to be built of ivy, like that wonderful +old mansion of Castle Leod in Scotland. Here, plainly, is another centre +of “sweetness and light,” the abolition of which must make, not this +region alone, but Ireland poorer in that precise form of wealth, which, +as Laboulaye has shown in one of the best of his lectures, is absolutely +identical with <a name="page251" id="page251"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 251] +</span>civilisation. It is such places as this, which, in the +interest of the people, justify the exemption from redistribution and +resettlement, made in one of a series of remarkable articles on Ireland +recently published in the <i>Birmingham Post</i>, of lands, the “breaking up +of which would interfere with the amenity of a residence.”</p> + +<p>* * * relations with all classes of the people here are so cordial and +straightforward that he has been easily able to give me to-day, what I +have sought in vain elsewhere in Ireland, an opportunity of conversing +frankly and freely with several labouring men. For obvious reasons these +men, as a rule, shrink from any expression of their real feelings. Their +position is apparently one of absolute dependence either upon the +farmers or the landlords, there being no other local market for their +labour, which is their only stock-in-trade. As one of them said to me +to-day, “The farmers will work a man just as long as they can’t help it, +and then they throw him away.”</p> + +<p>I asked if there were no regular farm-labourers hired at fixed rates by +the year?</p> + +<p>“Oh! very few—less now than ever; and there’ll be fewer before there’ll +be more. The farmers don’t want to pay the labourers or to pay the +landlords; <a name="page252" id="page252"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 252] +</span>they want the land and the work for nothing, sir,—they do +indeed!”</p> + +<p>“What does a farm-hand get,” I asked, “if he is hired for a long time?”</p> + +<p>“Well, permanent men, they’ll get 6s. a week with breakfast and dinner, +or 7s. maybe, with one meal; and a servant-boy, sir, he’ll get 2s. a +week or may be 3s. with his board; but it’s seldom he gets it.”</p> + +<p>“And what has he for his board?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, stirabout; and then twice a week coorse Russian or American meat, +what they call the ‘kitchen,’ and they like it better than good meat, +sir, because it feeds the pot more.”</p> + +<p>By this I found he meant that the “coorse meat” gave out more +“unctuosity” in the boiling—the meat being always served up boiled in a +pot with vegetables, like the “bacon and greens” of the “crackers” in +the South.</p> + +<p>“And nothing else?”</p> + +<p>“Yes; buttermilk and potatoes.”</p> + +<p>“And these wages are the highest?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I know a boy got 5s., but by living in his father’s house, and +working out it was he got it. And then they go over to England to work.”</p> + +<p>“What wages do they get there?”</p> + +<p><a name="page253" id="page253"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 253] +</span>“Oh, it differs, but they do well; 9s. a week, I think, and their board, +and straw to sleep on in the stables.”</p> + +<p>“But doesn’t it cost them a good deal to go and come?”</p> + +<p>“Oh no; they get cheap rates. They send them from Galway to Dublin like +cattle, at £2, 5s. a car, and that makes about 1s. 6d. a head; and then +they are taken over on the steamers very cheap. Often the graziers that +do large business with the companies, will have a right to send over a +number of men free; and they stowaway too; and then on the railways in +England they get passes free often from cattle-dealers, specially when +they are coming back, and the dealers don’t want their passes. They do +very well. They’ll bring back £7 and £10. I was on a boat once, and +there was a man; he was drunk; he was from Galway somewhere, and they +took away and kept for him £18, all in good golden sovereigns; that was +the most I ever saw. And he was drunk, or who’d ever have known he had +it?”</p> + +<p>“Do the farmers build houses for the labourers?”</p> + +<p>“Build houses, is it! Glory be to God! who ever heard of such a thing? +The farmers are a poor proud lot. They’d let a labourer die in the +ditch!”</p> + +<p><a name="page254" id="page254"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 254] +</span>All that this poor man said was corroborated by another man of a higher +class, very familiar with the conditions of life and labour here, and +indeed one of the most interesting men I have met in Ireland. Born the +son of a labouring man, he was educated by a priest and educated +himself, till he fitted himself for the charge of a small school, which +he kept to such good purpose that in eighteen years he saved £1100, with +which capital he resolved to begin life as a small farmer and +shopkeeper. He had studied all the agricultural works he could get, and +before he went fairly into the business, he travelled on the Continent, +looking carefully into the methods of culture and manner of life of the +people, especially in Italy and in Belgium. The Belgian farming gave him +new ideas of what might be done in Ireland, and those ideas he has put +into practice, with the best results.</p> + +<p>“On the same land with my neighbours,” he said, “I double their +production. Where they get two tons of hay I get four or four and a +half, where they get forty-five barrels of potatoes I get a hundred. +Only the other day I got £20 for a bullock I had taken pains with to +fatten him up scientifically. Of course I had a small capital to start +with: but where did I get that? Not from <a name="page255" id="page255"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 255] +</span>the Government. I earned and +saved it myself; and then I wasn’t above learning how best to use it.”</p> + +<p>He thinks the people here—though by no means what they might be with +more thrift and knowledge—much better off than the same class in many +other parts of Ireland. There are no “Gombeen men” here, he says, and no +usurious shopkeepers. “The people back each other in a friendly way when +they need help.” Many of the labourers, he says, are in debt to him, but +he never presses them, and they are very patient with each other. They +would do much better if any pains were taken to teach them. It is his +belief that agricultural schools and model farms would do more than +almost any measure that could be devised for bringing up the standard of +comfort and prosperity here, and making the country quiet.</p> + +<p>It is the opinion of this man that the people of this place have been +led to regard the Papal Decree as a kind of attack on their liberties, +and that they are quite as likely to resist as to obey it. For his own +part, he thinks Ireland ought to have her own parliament, and make her +own laws. He is not satisfied with the laws actually made, though he +admits they are better than the older laws were. “The tenants get their +own improvements now,” he said, “and in <a name="page256" id="page256"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 256] +</span>old times the more a man +improved the worse it was for him, the agent all the while putting up +the rents.”</p> + +<p>But he does not want Irish independence. “The people that talk that +way,” he said, “have never travelled. They don’t see how idle it is for +Ireland to talk about supporting herself. She just can’t do it.”</p> + +<p>Not less interesting was my talk to-day with quite a different person. +This was a keen-eyed, hawk-billed, wiry veteran of the ’48. As a youth +he had been out with “Meagher of the Sword,” and his eyes glowed when he +found that I had known that champion of Erin. “I was out at Ballinagar,” +he said; “there were five hundred men with guns, and five hundred +pikemen.” It struck me he would like to be going “out” again in the same +fashion, but he had little respect for the “Nationalists.”</p> + +<p>“There’s too many lawyers among them,” he said, “too many lawyers and +too many dealers. The lawyers are doing well, thanks to the League. Oh +yes!” with a knowing chuckle, and a light of mischief in his eye; “the +lawyers are doing very well! There’s one little bit of a solicitor not +far from here was of no good at all four years ago, and now they tell me +he’s made four thousand pounds in three years’ time, <a name="page257" id="page257"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 257] +</span>good money, and got +it all in hand! And there’s another, I hear, has made six thousand. The +lawyers that call themselves Nationalists, they just keep mischief +agoing to further themselves. What do they care for the labourers? Why, +no more than the farmers do—and what would become of the poor men! * * +* * here, he is making * * * * * * * and he keeps more poor men going +than all the lawyers and all the farmers in the place a good part of the +year.”</p> + +<p>“Are the labourers,” I asked, “Nationalists?”</p> + +<p>“They don’t know what they are,” he answered. “They hate the farmers, +but they love Ireland, and they all stand together for the counthry!”</p> + +<p>“How is it with the Plan of Campaign and the Boycotting?”</p> + +<p>“Now what use have the labourers got for the Plan of Campaign? No more +than for the moon! And for the Boycotting, I never liked it—but I was +never afraid of it—and there’s not been much of it here.”</p> + +<p>“Will the Papal Decree put a stop to what there is of it?”</p> + +<p>“I wouldn’t mind the Pope’s Decree no more than that door!” he exclaimed +indignantly. “Hasn’t <a name="page258" id="page258"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 258] +</span>he enough, sure, to mind in Rome? Why didn’t he +defend his own country, not bothering about Ireland!”</p> + +<p>“Are you not a Catholic, then?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“Oh yes, I’m a Catholic, but I wouldn’t mind the Decree. Only remember,” +he added, after a pause, “just this: it don’t trouble me, for I’ve +nothing to do with the Plan of Campaign—only I don’t want the Pope to +be meddlin’ in matters that don’t concern him.”</p> + +<p>“It’s out of respect, then, for the Pope that you wouldn’t mind the +Decree?”</p> + +<p>“Just that, intirely! It was some of them Englishmen wheedled it out of +him, you may be sure, sir.”</p> + +<p>“I am told you went out to America once.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, I went there in ’48, and I came back in ’51.”</p> + +<p>“What made you go?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“Is it what made me go?” he replied, with a sudden fierceness in his +voice. “It was the evictions made me go; that we was put out of the good +holding my father had, and his father before him; and I can never +forgive it, never! But I came back; and it was * * * father that was <a name="page259" id="page259"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 259] +</span>the +good man to me and to mine, else where would I be?”</p> + +<p>I afterwards learned from * * * * that the evictions of which the old +man spoke with so much bitterness were made in carrying out important +improvements, and that it was quite true that his father had greatly +befriended the emigrant when he got enough of the New World and came +home.</p> + +<p>It was curious to see the old grudge fresh and fierce in the old man’s +heart, but side by side with it the lion lying down with the lamb—a +warm and genuine recognition of the kindness and help bestowed on +himself. His resentment against the landlord’s action in one generation +did not in the least interfere with his recognition of the landlord’s +usefulness and liberality in the next generation.</p> + +<p>“You didn’t like America?” I said. “Where did you live there?”</p> + +<p>“I lived at North Brookfield in Massachusetts, a year or two,” he +replied, “with Governor Amasa Walker. Did you know him? He was a good +man; he was fond of the people, but he thought too much of the nagurs.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” I answered; “I know all about him, and he was, as you say, a very +good man, even if he was <a name="page260" id="page260"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 260] +</span>an abolitionist. But why didn’t you stay in +North Brookfield?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, it was a poor country indeed! A blast of wind would blow all the +ground away there was! It does no good to the people, going to America,” +he said; “they come back worse than they went!”</p> + +<p>He is at work now in some quarries here.</p> + +<p>“The quarrymen get six shillings a week,” he said, “with bread and tea +and butter and meat three times a week. With nine shillings a week and +board, a man’ll make himself bigger than * * *!”</p> + +<p>“Was the country quiet now?”</p> + +<p>“This country here? Oh! it’s very quiet; with potatoes at 3s. 6d. a +barrel, it’s a good year for the people. They’re a very quiet +people,”—in corroboration apparently of which statement he told me a +story of a coroner’s jury called to sit on the body of a man found on +the highway shot through the head, which returned an unanimous verdict +of “Died by the visitation of God.”</p> + +<p>This country is dominated by the Rocky Hills climbing up to Cullenagh, +which divides the Barrow valley from the Nore. We drove this afternoon +to * a most lovely place. The mansion there is now shut <a name="page261" id="page261"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 261] +</span>up and +dismantled, but the park and the grounds are very beautiful, with a +beauty rather enhanced than diminished by the somewhat unkempt +luxuriance of the vegetation. We passed a now well-grown tree planted by +the Prince of Wales * * * * * * and drove over many miles of excellent +road made by * * * * * * * * employs * * * * * * * * regularly, * * * +men as labourers, cartmen and masons, to whom he pays out annually the +sum of * * Mr. * * who, by the way, rather resented my asking him if he +came of one of the Cromwellian English families so numerous here, and +informed me that his people came over with Strongbow—assures me that +but for these works of * * * * these men under him would be literally +without occupation. In addition to these there are about a dozen more +men employed * * as gamekeepers and plantation-men. At the * * places +belonging to * * * * * * * * * * above eighty men find constant +employment, and receive regular wages amounting to over £4000. Were * * +* * dispossessed or driven out of Ireland, all <a name="page262" id="page262"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 262] +</span>this outlay would come to +an end, and with what result to these working-men? As things now are, +while * * * working-men receive a regular wage of five shillings, the +same men, as farmers’ labourers, would receive, now and then, five +shillings a week, and that without food! I saw enough in the course of +our afternoon’s drive to satisfy me that my informant of the morning had +probably not overstated matters when he told me that for at least +seventy per cent. of the work done by the labourers here, from November +to May, they have to look to the landlords. On the property of * * as +well as on the neighbouring properties * * * * * * * the houses have +been generally put up by the landlords. We called in the course of the +afternoon upon a labouring man who lives with his wife in a very neat, +cozy, and quite new house, built recently for him by * *. These good +people have been living on this property for now nearly half a century. +Their new house having been built for them, * * has had an agreement +prepared, under which it may be secured to them. The terms have all been +discussed and found satisfactory, but the old labourer now hesitates +<a name="page263" id="page263"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 263] +</span>about signing the agreement. He gives, and can be got to give, no reason +for this; but when we drove up he came out to greet us in the most +friendly manner. We went in and found his wife, a shrewd, sharp-eyed, +little old dame, with whom * * * * fell into a confabulation, while I +went into the next room with the labourer himself. The house was neatly +furnished—with little ornaments and photographs on the mantel-shelf, +and nothing of the happy-go-lucky look so common about the houses of the +working people in Ireland, as well as about the houses of the lesser +squires.</p> + +<p>I paid him a compliment on the appearance of his house and grounds. +“Yes, sir!” he answered: “it’s a very good place it is, and * * * * has +built it just to please us.”</p> + +<p>“But I am told you want to leave it?”</p> + +<p>“Ah, no, that is not so, sir, indeed at all! We’ve three children you +see, sir, in America—two girls and a boy we have.”</p> + +<p>“And where are they?”</p> + +<p>“Ah, the girls they’re not in any factory at all. They’re like leddies, +living out in a place they call * * in Massachusetts; and the lad, he +was on a farm there. But we don’t know where he is nor <a name="page264" id="page264"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 264] +</span>his sisters any +more just now. And the wife, she thinks she would like to go out to +America and see the children.”</p> + +<p>“Do you hear from them regularly?”</p> + +<p>“Well, it’s only a few pounds they send, but they’re doing very well. +Domestics they are, quite like leddies; there’s their pictures on the +shelf.”</p> + +<p>“But what would you do there?”</p> + +<p>“Ah! we’d have lodgings, the wife says, sir. But I like the ould place +myself.”</p> + +<p>“I think you are quite right there,” I replied. “And do you get work +here from the farmers as the labourers do in my country?”</p> + +<p>“Work from the farmers, sir?” he answered, rather sharply. “What they +can’t help we get, but no more! If the farmers in America is like them, +it’s not I would be going there! The farmers! For the farmers, a +labourer, sir, is not of the race of Adam! They think any place good +enough for a labourer—any place and any food! Is the farmers that way +in America?”</p> + +<p>“Well, I don’t know that they are so very much more liberal than your +farmers are,” I replied; “but I think they’d have to treat you as being +of the race of Adam! But are not the farmers here, or <a name="page265" id="page265"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 265] +</span>the Guardians, +obliged to build houses for the labourers? I thought there was an Act of +Parliament about that?”</p> + +<p>“And so there is but what’s the good of it? It’s just to get the +labourers’ votes, and then they fool the labourers, just making them +quarrel about where the cottages shall be, what they call the ‘sites’; +and then there’s no cottages built at all, at all. It’s the lawyers, you +see, sir, gets in with the farmers—the strongest farmers—and then they +just make fools of the labourers as if there was no Act of Parliament at +all.”</p> + +<p>“But if the labourers want to go away, to emigrate,” I said, “as you +want to do, to America, don’t the farmers, or the Government, or the +landlords, help them to get away and make a start?”</p> + +<p>“Not a bit of it, sir,” he replied; “not a bit of it. I believe, +though,” he added after a moment; “I believe they do get some help to go +to Australia. But they’re mostly no good that goes that way. The best is +them that go for themselves, or their friends help them. But there’s not +so many going this year.”</p> + +<p>When we drove away I asked * * if he had made any progress towards a +signature of the agreement with the labourer’s wife.</p> + +<p><a name="page266" id="page266"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 266] +</span>“No; she couldn’t be got to say yes or no. I asked her,” said * * “what +reason they had for imagining that after all these years I would try to +do them an injury? She protested they never thought of such a thing; but +she couldn’t be brought to say she wished her husband to sign the paper. +It’s very odd, indeed.”</p> + +<p>I couldn’t help suspecting that the <i>materfamilias</i> was at the bottom of +it all, and that she was bent upon going out to America to participate +in the prosperity of her two daughters, who were living “like leddies” +at * * in Massachusetts.</p> + +<p>The incident recalled to me something which happened years ago when I +was returning with the Storys from Rome to Boston. Our Cunarder, in the +middle of the night, off the Irish coast, ran down and instantly sank a +small schooner.</p> + +<p>In a wonderfully short time we had come-to, and a boat’s crew had +succeeded in picking up and bringing all the poor people on board. Among +them was a wizened old woman, upon whom all sorts of kind attentions +were naturally lavished by the ship’s company. She could not be +persuaded to go into a cabin after she had recovered from the shock and +the fright of the accident, but, comforted <a name="page267" id="page267"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 267] +</span>and clothed with new and dry +garments, she took refuge under one of the companion-ways, and there, +sitting huddled up, with her arms about her knees, she crooned and +moaned to herself, “I was near being in a wetter and a warmer place; I +was near being in a wetter and a warmer place!” by the half hour +together. We found that the poor old soul had been to Liverpool to see +her son off on a sailing ship as an emigrant to America. So a +subscription was soon made up to send her on our arrival to New York +there to await her son. We had some trouble in making her understand +what was to be done with her, but when she finally got it fairly into +her head, gleams of mingled surprise and delight came over her withered +face, and she finally broke out, “Oh, then, glory be to God! it’s a +mercy that I was drownded! glory be to God! and it’s the proud boy +Terence will be when he gets out to America to find his poor ould mother +waiting for him there that he left behind him in Liverpool, and quite +the leddy with all this good gold money in her hand, glory be to God!”</p> + +<p>On our way back to * * we passed through * * a very neat +prosperous-looking town, which * * tells me is growing up on <a name="page268" id="page268"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 268] +</span>the heels +of * *. * * * was one of the few places at which the “no rent” +manifesto, issued by Mr. Parnell and his colleagues from their prison in +Kilmainham, during the confinement of Mr. Davitt at Portland, and +without concert with him, was taken up by a village curate and commended +to the people. He was arrested for it by Mr. Gladstone’s Government, and +locked up for six weeks.</p> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">DUBLIN, <i>Saturday, June 23d.</i>—</span>I left * * * yesterday morning early on +an “outside car,” with one of my fellow-guests in that “bower of +beauty,” who was bent on killing a salmon somewhere in the Nore * * We +drove through a most varied and picturesque country, viewing on the way +the seats of Mr. Hamilton Stubber and Mr. Robert Staples, both finely +situated in well-wooded parks. Mr. Stubber was formerly master of the +Queen’s County hounds, a famous pack, which, as our jarvey put it, +“brought a power of money into the county, and made it aisy for a poor +man.” But the local agitations wore out his patience, and he put the +pack down some years ago. Not far from his house is an astonishing +modern “tumulus,” or mound of hewn <a name="page269" id="page269"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 269] +</span>and squared stones. These it seems +were quarried and brought here by him, with the intention of building a +new and handsome residence. This intention he abandoned under the same +annoyance.</p> + +<p>“They call it Mr. Stubber’s Cairn,” said the jarvey; “and a sorrowful +sight it is, to think of the work it would have given the people, +building the big house that’ll never be built now, I’m thinking.” If Mr. +Stubber should become an “absentee,” he can hardly, I think, be blamed +for it.</p> + +<p>His property marches with that of Mr. Robert Staples, who comes of a +Gloucestershire family planted in Ireland under Charles I.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Staples is farming his own lands,” said our jarvey, when I +commented on the fine appearance of some fields as we drove by; “and +he’ll be doing very well this year. Ah! he comes and goes, but he’s here +a great deal, and he looks after everything himself; that’s the reason +the fields is good.”</p> + +<p>This is a property of some 1500 statute acres. Only last March the +landlord took over from one tenant, who was in arrears of two years and +a half and owed him some £300, a farm of 90 acres, giving the man fifty +pounds to boot, and bidding him go in peace. I wonder whether this +proceeding would <a name="page270" id="page270"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 270] +</span>make the landlord a “land-grabber,” and expose him to +the pains and penalties of “boycotting”?</p> + +<p>On this place, too, it seems that Mr. Staples’s grandfather put up many +houses for the tenants; a thing worth noting, as one of not a few +instances I have come upon to show that it will not do to accept without +examination the sweeping statements so familiar to us in America, that +improvements have never been made by the landlord upon Irish estates.</p> + +<p>My companion had meant to put me down at the railway station of +Attanagh, there to catch a good train to Kilkenny.</p> + +<p>But we had a capital nag, and reached Attanagh so early that we +determined to drive on to Ballyragget.</p> + +<p>From Attanagh to Ballyragget the road ran along a plateau which +commanded the most beautiful views of the valley of the Nore and of the +finely wooded country beyond. Ballyragget itself is a brisk little +market town, the American influence showing itself here, as in so many +other places, in such trifles as the signs on the shops which describe +them as “stores.” My salmon-fishing companion put me down at the station +and went off to the <a name="page271" id="page271"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 271] +</span>river, which flows through the town, and is here a +swift and not inconsiderable stream.</p> + +<p>An hour in the train took me to Kilkenny, where I met by appointment +several persons whom I had been unable to see during my previous visit +in March.</p> + +<p>These gentlemen, experienced agents, gave me a good deal of information +as to the effect of the present state of things upon the “<i>moral</i>” of +the tenantry in different parts of Ireland. On one estate, for example, +in the county of Longford, a tenant has been doing battle for the cause +of Ireland in the following extraordinary fashion.</p> + +<p>He held certain lands at a rental of £23, 4s. Being, to use the +picturesque language of the agent, a “little good for tenant,” he fell +into arrears, and on the 1st of May 1885 owed nearly three years’ rent, +or £63, 12s., in addition to a sum of £150 which he had borrowed of his +amiable landlord three or four years before to enable him to work his +farm. Of this total sum of £213, 12s. he positively refused to pay one +penny. Proceedings were accordingly taken against him, and he was +evicted. By this eviction his title to the tenancy was broken. The +landlord nevertheless, for the sake of peace and quiet, offered <a name="page272" id="page272"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 272] +</span>to allow +him to sell, to a man who wished to take the place, any interest he +might have had in the holding, and to forgive both the arrears of the +rent and the £150 which had been borrowed by him. The ex-tenant flatly +refused to accept this offer, became a weekly pensioner upon the +National League, and declared war. The landlord was forced to get a +caretaker for the place from the Property Defence Association at a cost +of £1 per week, to provide a house for a police protection party, and to +defray the expenses of that party upon fuel and lights. Nor was this +all. The landlord found himself further obliged to employ men from the +same Property Defence Association to cut and save the hay-crop on the +land, and when this had been done no one could be found to buy the crop. +The crop and the lands were “boycotted.” It was only in May last that a +purchaser could be found for the hay cut and saved two years ago—this +purchaser being himself a “boycotted” man on an adjoining property. He +bought the hay, paying for it a price which did not quite cover one-half +the cost of sowing it!</p> + +<p>“No one denies for a moment,” said the agent, “that the tenant in all +this business has been more than fairly, even generously, treated by the +estate; <a name="page273" id="page273"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 273] +</span>yet no one seems to think it anything but natural and reasonable +that he should demand, as he now demands, to be put back into the +possession of his forfeited tenancy at a certain rent fixed by himself,” +which he will obligingly agree to pay, “provided that the hay cut and +saved on the property two years ago is accounted for to him by the +estate!”</p> + +<p>In another case an agent, Mr. Ivough, had to deal with a body of five +hundred tenants on a considerable estate. Of these tenants, two hundred +settled their rents with the landlord before the passing of the Land Act +of 1881, and valuations made by the landlord’s valuer, with their full +assent. There was no business for the lawyers, so far as they were +concerned, and no compulsion of any sort was put on them. Among them was +a man who had married the daughter of an old tenant on the estate, and +so came into a holding of 12 Irish, or more than 20 statute, acres, at a +rental of £18 a year. The valuer reduced this to £14, 10s., which +satisfied the tenant, and as the agent agreed to make this reduced +valuation retroactive, all went as smoothly as possible for two years, +when the tenant began to fall into arrears. When the Sub-Commissioners, +between 1885 and 1887, took to <a name="page274" id="page274"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 274] +</span>making sweeping reductions, the tenants +who had settled freely under the recent valuation grumbled bitterly. As +one of them tersely put it to the agent, “We were a parcel of bloody +fools, and you ought to have told us these Sub-Commissioners were +coming!” Mr. Sweeney, the tenant by marriage already mentioned, was not +content to express his particular dissatisfaction in idle words, but +kept on going into arrears. In May 1888 things came to a crisis. The +agent refused to accept a settlement which included the payment by him +of the costs of the proceedings forced upon him by his tenant. “You have +had a good holding,” said the agent, “with plenty of water and good +land. In this current year two acres of your wheat will pay the whole +rent. You have broken up and sold bit by bit a mill that was on the +place; and above all, when Mr. Gladstone made us accept the judicial +rents, he told us we might be sure, if we did this, of punctual payment. +That was the one consideration held out to us. And we are entitled to +that!”</p> + +<p>The tenant being out of his holding, the agent wishes to put another +tenant into it. But the holding is “boycotted.” Several tenants are +anxious <a name="page275" id="page275"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 275] +</span>for it, and would gladly take it, but they dare not The great +evicted will neither sell any tenant-right he may have, nor pay his +arrears and costs, nor give up the place to another tenant. To put +Property Defence men on the holding would cost the landlord £2, 10s. a +week, and do him no great good, as the evicted man “holds the fort,” +being established in a house which he occupies on an adjoining property, +and for which presumably he pays his rent. It seems as if Mr. Sweeney +were inspired by the example of another tenant, named Barry, who, before +the passing of the Land Act of 1881, gave up freely a holding of 20 +acres, on a property managed by Mr. Kough; but as he was on such good +terms with the agent that he could borrow money of him, he begged the +agent to let him retain at a low rent a piece of this surrendered land +directly adjoining his house. He asked this in the name of his eight or +nine children, and it was granted him. The agent afterwards found that +the piece of land in question was by far the best of the surrendered +holding. But that is a mere detail. This ingenious tenant Barry, living +now on another estate just outside the grasp of the agent, has +systematically “boycotted” for the last nine years <a name="page276" id="page276"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 276] +</span>the land which he +gave up, feeding his own cattle upon it freely meanwhile, and keeping +all would-be tenants at a distance! “He is now,” said the agent, “quite +a wealthy man in his way, jobbing cattle at all the great markets!”</p> + +<p>“When the eviction of Sweeney took place,” said the agent, “I was +present in person, as I thought I ought to be, and the result is that I +have been held up to the execration of mankind as a monster for putting +out a child in a cradle into a storm. As a matter of fact,” he said, +“there was a cradle in the way, which the sheriff-Officer gently took +up, and by direction of the tenant’s wife removed. I made no remark +about it at all, but a local paper published a lying story, which the +publisher had to retract, that I had said ‘Throw out the child!’”</p> + +<p>“Two priests,” he said, “came quite uninvited and certainly without +provocation, to see me, and one of them shouted out, ‘Ah! we know you’ll +be making another Coolgreany,’ which was as much as to say there ‘would +be bloodshed.’ This was the more intolerable,” he added, “that, as I +afterwards found, I had already done for the sake of the tenants +precisely what these ecclesiastics professed that they had come to ask +me to do!</p> + +<p><a name="page277" id="page277"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 277] +</span>“For thirty years,” said this gentleman, “I have lived in the midst of +these people—and in all that time I have never had so much as a +threatening letter. But after this story was published of my throwing +out a cradle with a child in it, I was insulted in the street by a woman +whom I had never seen before. Two girls, too, called out at the +eviction, ‘You’ve bad pluck; why didn’t you tell us you were coming down +the day?’ and another woman made me laugh by crying after me, ‘You’ve +two good-looking daughters, but you’re a bad man yourself.’”</p> + +<p>Quite as instructive is the story given me on this occasion of the +Tyaquin estate in the county of Galway. This estate is managed by an +agent, Mr. Eichardson of Castle Coiner, in this county of Kilkenny.</p> + +<p>The rents on this Galway estate, as Mr. Richardson assures me, have been +unaltered for between thirty and forty years, and some of them for even +a longer period. For the last twenty-five years certainty, during which +Mr. Richardson has been the agent of the estate, and probably, he +thinks, for many years previous, there has never been a case of the +non-payment of rent, except in recent years <a name="page278" id="page278"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 278] +</span>when rents were withheld for +a time for political reasons.</p> + +<p>Large sums of money have been laid out in various useful improvements. +Constant occupation was given to those requiring it, until the agrarian +agitation became fully developed. On the demesne and the home farms the +best systems of reclaiming waste lands and the best systems of +agriculture were practically exhibited, so that the estate was an +agricultural free school for all who cared to learn.</p> + +<p>When the Land Act of 1881 was passed, almost all the tenants applied, +and had judicial rents fixed, many of them by consent of the agent.</p> + +<p>In 1887 the tenants were called on as usual to pay these judicial rents. +A large minority refused to do so except on certain terms, which were +refused. The dispute continued for many months, but as the charges on +the estate had to be met, the agent was obliged to give way, and allow +an abatement of four shillings in the pound on these judicial rents. +Some of these charges, to meet which the agent gave way, were for money +borrowed from the Commissioners of Public Works to <i>improve the holdings +of the tenants</i>. For these improvements thus thrown entirely upon the +funds of the estate no increase of <a name="page279" id="page279"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 279] +</span>rent or charge of any kind had been +laid upon the tenants.</p> + +<p>When a settlement was agreed on, those of the tenants who had adopted +the Plan came in a body to pay their rents on 3d January 1888. They +stated that they were unable to pay more than the rent due up to +November 1886, and that they would never have adopted the Plan had they +not been driven into it by <i>sheer distress</i>. After which they handed Mr. +Richardson a cheque drawn by John T. Dillon, Esq., M.P., for the amount +banked with the National League.</p> + +<p>An article appeared shortly afterwards in a League newspaper, loudly +boasting of the great victory won by Mr. Dillon, M.P., for the starving +and poverty-stricken tenants. Two of these tenants (brothers) were under +a yearly rent of £7, 10s. They declared they could only pay £3, 15s., or +a <a name="page280" id="page280"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 280] +</span>half-year’s rent, and this only if they got an abatement of 15s. Yet +these same tenants were then paying Mr. Richardson £50 a year for a +grass farm, and about £12 for meadows, as well as £30 a year more for a +grass farm to an adjoining landlord.</p> + +<p>Another tenant who held a farm at £13, 5s. a year declared he could only +pay £6, 12s. 6d., or a half-year’s rent, if he got an abatement of £1, +6s. 6d. A very short time before, this tenant had taken a grass farm +from an adjoining landlord, and he was so anxious to get it that he +showed the landlord a bundle of large notes, amounting to rather more +than £300 sterling, in order to prove his solvency! The same tenant has +since written a letter to Mr. Richardson offering £50 a year for a grass +farm!</p> + +<p>All these campaigners, Mr. Richardson says, “with one noble exception, +the wife of a tenant who was ill, declined to pay a penny of rent beyond +November 1st, 1886,” stating that they were “absolutely unable” to do +more. So they all left the May 1887 rent unpaid, and the hanging gale to +November 1887, which, however, they were not even asked to pay.</p> + +<p>The morning after the settlement many of the tenants who, when they were +all present in a body on the previous evening, had declared their +“inability” to pay the half-year’s rent due down to May 1887, +individually came to Mr. Richardson unasked, and paid it, some saying +they had “borrowed the money that night,” but others frankly declaring +that they dared not break the rule publicly, having been ordered by the +League only <a name="page281" id="page281"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 281] +</span>to pay to November 1886, for fear of the consequences. These +would have been injury to their cattle, or the burning of their hay, or +possibly murder.</p> + +<p>Of the country about Kilkenny, I am told, as of the country about +Carlow, that nearly or quite seventy per cent, of the labourers are +dependent upon the landlords from November to May for such employment as +they get.</p> + +<p>The shopkeepers, too, are in a bad way, being in many cases reduced to +the condition of mere agents of the great wholesale houses elsewhere, +and kept going by these houses mainly in the hope of recovering old +debts. There is a severe pressure of usury, too, upon the farmers. “If a +farmer,” said one resident to me, “wants to borrow a small sum of the +Loan Fund Bank, he must have two securities—one of them a substantial +man good for the debt. These two indorsers must be ‘treated’ by the +borrower whom they back; and he must pay them a weekly sum for the +countenance they have given him, which not seldom amounts, before he +gets through with the matter, to a hundred per cent, on the original +loan.”</p> + +<p>I am assured too that the consumption of spirits <a name="page282" id="page282"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 282] +</span>all through this region +has greatly increased of late years. “The official reports will show +you,” said one gentleman, “that the annual outlay upon whisky in Ireland +equals the sum saved to the tenants by the reductions in rent.” This is +a proposition so remarkable that I simply record it for future +verification, as having been made by a very quiet, cool, and methodical +person, whose information on other points I have found to be correct. He +tells me too, as of his own knowledge, that in going over some financial +matters with a small farmer in his neighbourhood, he ascertained, beyond +a peradventure, that this farmer annually spent in whisky, for the use +of his family, consisting of himself, his wife and three adult children, +nearly, or quite, <i>seventy pounds a year</i>! “You won’t believe this,” he +said to me; “and if you print the statement nobody else will believe it; +but for all that it is the simple unexaggerated truth.”</p> + +<p>Falstaff’s reckoning at Dame Quickly’s becomes a moderate score in +comparison with this!</p> + +<p>I spent half an hour again in the muniment-room at Kilkenny Castle, +where, in the Expense-Book of the second Duke of Ormond, I found a +supper <i>menu</i> worthy of record, as illustrating what people meant <a name="page283" id="page283"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 283] +</span>by +“keeping open house” in the great families of the time of Queen +Anne.[Note <a href="#noteL">L.</a>]</p> + +<p>Taking a train early in the afternoon, I came on here in time to dine +last night with Mr. Rolleston of Delgany, an uncompromising Protestant +“Home Ruler”—as Protestant and as uncompromising as John Mitchel—whose +recent pamphlet on “Boycotting” has deservedly attracted so much +attention on both sides of the Irish Sea.</p> + +<p>I was first led into a correspondence with Mr. Rolleston by a remarkable +article of his published in the <i>Dublin University Review</i> for February +1886, on “The Archbishop in Politics.” In that article, Mr. Rolleston, +while avowing himself to be robust enough to digest without much +difficulty the <i>ex officio</i> franchise conferred upon the Catholic clergy +by Mr. Parnell to secure the acceptance of his candidates at +Parliamentary conventions, made a very firm and fearless protest against +the attempt of the Archbishops of Dublin and Cashel to “boycott” +Catholic criticism of the National League and its methods, by declaring +such criticism to be “a public insult” offered, not to the Archbishops +of Cashel and Dublin personally, or as political sup<a name="page284" id="page284"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 284] +</span>porters of the +National League, but to the Archbishops as dignitaries of the Catholic +Church, and to their Archiepiscopal office. The “boycotting,” by +clerical machinery, of independent lay opinion in civil matters, is to +the body politic of a Catholic country what the germ of cancer is to the +physical body. And though Mr. Rolleston, in this article, avowed himself +to be a hearty supporter of the “political programme of the National +League,” and went so far even as to maintain that the social boycotting, +“which makes the League technically an illegal conspiracy against law +and individual liberty,” might be “in many cases justified by the +magnitude of the legalised crime against which it was directed,” it was +obvious to me that he could not long remain blind to the true drift of +things in an organisation condemned, by the conditions it has created +for itself, to deal with the thinkers of Ireland as it deals with the +tenants of Ireland. His recent pamphlet on “Boycotting” proves that I +was right. What he said to me the other day in a letter about the +pamphlet may be said as truly of the article. It was “a shaft sunk into +the obscure depths of Irish opinion, to bring to light and turn to +service whatever there may be in those depths of <a name="page285" id="page285"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 285] +</span>sound and healthy;” and +one of my special objects in this present visit to Ireland was to get a +personal touch of the intellectual movement which is throwing such +thinkers as Mr. Rolleston to the front.</p> + +<p>We were five at table, Mr. Rolleston’s other guests being Mr. John +O’Leary, whose name is held in honour for his courage and honesty by all +who know anything of the story of Ireland in our times, and who was sent +a quarter of a century ago as a Fenian patriot—not into seclusion with +sherry and bitters, at Kilmainham, like Mr. Gladstone’s “suspects” of +1881—but like Michael Davitt, into the stern reality of penal +servitude; Dr. Sigerson, Dean of the Faculty of Science of the Boyal +University, and an authority upon the complicated question of Irish Land +Tenures; and Mr. John F. Taylor, a leading barrister of Dublin, an ally +on the Land Question of Mr. Davitt, and an outspoken Repealer of the +Union of 1800.</p> + +<p>I have long wished to meet Mr. O’Leary, who sent me, through a +correspondent of mine, two years ago, one of the most thoughtful and +well-considered papers I have ever read on the possibilities and +impossibilities of Home Rule for Ireland; and it was a great pleasure to +find in the man the eleva<a name="page286" id="page286"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 286] +</span>tion of tone, the breadth of view, and the +refined philosophic perception of the strong and weak points in the +Irish case, which had charmed me in. the paper. Now that “Conservative” +Englishmen have come to treat the main points of Chartism almost as +commonplaces in politics, it is surely time for them to recognise the +honesty and integrity of the spirit which revolted in the Ireland of +1848 against the then seemingly hopeless condition of that country. Of +that spirit Mr. O’Leary is a living, earnest, and most interesting +incarnation. He strikes one at once as a much younger man in all that +makes the youth of the intellect and the emotions than any Nationalist +M.P. of half his years whom I have ever met. No Irishman living has +dealt stronger or more open blows than he against the English dominion +in Ireland. Born in Tipperary, where he inherited a small property in +houses, he was sent to Trinity College in Dublin, and while a student +there was drawn into the “Young Ireland” party mainly by the poems of +Thomas Davis. Late in the electrical year of the “battle summer,” 1848, +he was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in a plot to rescue +Smith O’Brien and other state prisoners. The suspicion was well founded, +but could not be estab<a name="page287" id="page287"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 287] +</span>lished, and after a day or two he was liberated. +From Trinity, after this, he went to the Queen’s College in Cork, where +he took his degree, and studied medicine. When the Fenian movement +became serious, after the close of our American Civil War, O’Leary threw +himself into it with Stephens, Luby, and Charles Kickham. Stephens +appointed him one of the chief organisers of the I.E.B. with Luby and +Kickham, and he took charge of the <i>Irish People</i>—the organ of the +Fenians of 1865. It was as a subordinate contributor to this journal +that Sir William Harcourt’s familiar Irish bogy, O’Donovan Rossa<a id="footnotetag26" + name="footnotetag26"></a><a href="#footnote26"><sup>26</sup></a>, +was arrested together with his chief, Mr. O’Leary, and with Kickham in +1865, and found guilty, <a name="page288" id="page288"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 288] +</span>with them, after a trial before Mr. Justice +Keogh, of treason-felony. The speech then delivered by Mr. O’Leary in +the dock made a profound impression upon the public mind in America. It +was the speech, not of a conspirator, but of a patriot. The indignation +with which he repelled for himself and for his associate Luby the +charges levelled at them both, without a particle of supporting +evidence, by the prosecuting counsel, of aiming at massacre and plunder, +was its most salient feature. The terrible sentence passed upon him, of +penal servitude for twenty years, Mr. O’Leary accepted with a calm +dignity, which I am glad, for the sake of Irish manhood, to find that +his friends here now recall with pride, when their ears are vexed by the +shrill and clamorous complaints of more recent “patriots,” under the +comparatively trivial punishments which they invite.</p> + +<p>In 1870, Mr. O’Leary and his companions were released and pardoned on +condition of remaining beyond the British dominions until the expiration +of their sentences. Mr. O’Leary fixed his residence for a time in Paris, +and thence went to America, where he and Kickham were regarded as the +leaders of the American branch of the I. R. B. He returned to <a name="page289" id="page289"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 289] +</span>Ireland in +1885, his term of sentence having then expired, and it was shortly after +his return that he gave to my correspondent the letter upon Irish +affairs to which I have already referred. He had been chosen President +of the “Young Ireland Society” of Dublin before he returned, and in that +capacity delivered at the Rotunda, in the Irish capital, before a vast +crowd assembled to welcome him back, an address which showed how +thoughtfully and calmly he had devoted himself during his long years of +imprisonment and exile to the cause of Ireland. Mr. William O’Brien, +M.P., and Mr. Redmond, M.P., took part in this reception, but their +subsequent course shows that they can hardly have relished Mr. O’Leary’s +fearless and outspoken protests against the intolerance and injustice of +the agrarian organisation which controls their action. In England, as +well as well as in Ireland, Mr. O’Leary spoke to great multitudes of his +countrymen, and always in the same sense. Mr. Rolleston tells me that +Mr. O’Leary’s denunciations of “the dynamite section of the Irish +people,” to use the euphemism of an American journal, “are the only ones +ever uttered by an Irish leader, lay or clerical.” The day must come, if +it be not already close at hand, when the Irish leader of <a name="page290" id="page290"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 290] +</span>whom this can +be truly said, must be felt by his own people to be the one man worthy +of their trust. The thing that has been shall be, and there is nothing +new under the sun. The Marats and the Robespierres, the Barères and the +Collots, are the pallbearers, not the standard-bearers of liberty.</p> + +<p>Towards the National League, as at present administered on the lines of +the agrarian agitation, Mr. O’Leary has so far preserved an attitude of +neutrality, though he has never for a moment hesitated either in public +or in private most vehemently to condemn such sworn Fenians as have +accepted seats in the British Parliament, speaking his mind freely and +firmly of them as “double-oathed men” playing a constitutional part with +one hand, and a treasonable part with the other.</p> + +<p>Yet he is not at one with the extreme and fanatical Fenians who oppose +constitutional agitation simply because it is constitutional. His +objection to the existing Nationalism was exactly put, Mr. Rolleston +tells me, by a clever writer in the Dublin <i>Mail</i>, who said that +O’Connell having tried “moral force” and failed, and the Fenians having +tried “physical force” and failed, the Leaguers were now trying to +succeed by the use of “immoral force.”</p> + +<p><a name="page291" id="page291"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 291] +</span>Dr. Sigerson, who, as a man of science, must necessarily revolt from the +coarse and clumsy methods of the blunderers who have done so much since +1885 to discredit the cause of Ireland, evidently clings to the hope +that something may still be saved from the visible wreck of what has +come, even in Ireland, to be called “Parnellism,” and he good-naturedly +persisted in speaking of our host last night and of his friends as +“mugwumps.” For the “mugwumps” of my own country I have no particular +admiration, being rather inclined, with my friend Senator Conkling (now +gone to his rest from the racket of American politics), to regard them +as “Madonnas who wish it to be distinctly understood that they might +have been Magdalens.” But these Irish “mugwumps” seem to me to earn +their title by simply refusing to believe that two and two, which make +four in France or China, can be bullied into making five in Ireland. +“What certain ‘Parnellites’ object to,” said one of the company, “is +that we can’t be made to go out gathering grapes of thorns or figs of +thistles. Some of them expect to found an Irish republic on robbery, and +to administer it by falsehood. We don’t.”<a id="footnotetag27" + name="footnotetag27"></a><a href="#footnote27"><sup>27</sup></a> This is precisely the +<a name="page292" id="page292"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 292] +</span>spirit in which Mr. Rolleston wrote to me not long before I left England +this week. “I have been slowly forced,” he wrote, “to the conclusion +that the National League is a body which deserves nothing but +reprobation from all who wish well to Ireland. It has plunged this +country into a state of moral degradation, from which it will take us at +least a generation to recover. It is teaching the people that no law of +justice, of candour, of honour, or of humanity can be allowed to +interfere with the political ends of the moment. It is, in fact, +absolutely divorcing morality from politics. The mendacity of some of +its leaders is shameless and sickening, and still more sickening is the +complete indifference with which this mendacity is regarded in Ireland.”</p> + + +<p>It is the spirit, too, of a letter which I received not long ago from +the west of Ireland, in which my correspondent quoted the bearer of one +of the most distinguished of Irish names, and a strong “Home Ruler,” as +saying to him, “These Nationalists are stripping Irishmen as bare of +moral sense as the Bushmen of South Africa.”</p> + +<p>This very day I find in one of the leading Nationalist journals here +letters from Mr. Davitt, Mr. O’Leary, and Mr. Taylor himself, which +convict <a name="page293" id="page293"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 293] +</span>that journal of making last week a statement about Mr. Taylor +absolutely untrue, and, so far as appears, absolutely without the shadow +of a foundation. These letters throw such a curious light on passing +events here at this moment that I shall preserve them.<a id="footnotetag28" + name="footnotetag28"></a><a href="#footnote28"><sup>28</sup></a> The statement +to which they refer was thus put in the journal which made it: “We have +absolute reason to know that when the last Coercion Act was in full +swing this pure-souled and disinterested patriot (Mr. John F. Taylor) +begged for, received, and accepted a very petty Crown Prosecutorship +under a Coercion Government. As was wittily said at the time, He sold +his principles, not for a mess of pottage, but for the stick that +stirred the mess.” This is no assertion “upon hearsay”—no publication of +a rumour or report. It is an assertion made, not upon belief even, but +upon a claim of “absolute knowledge.”</p> + +<p>Yet to-day, in the same journal, I find Mr. Taylor declaring this +statement, made upon a claim of “absolute knowledge,” to be “absolutely +untrue,” and appealing in support of this declaration to Mr. Walker, the +host of Lord Riand Mr. Morley, and to The M‘Dermot, Q.C., a conspicuous +Home Ruler; to which Mr. Davitt adds: “Mr. Taylor, on my <a name="page294" id="page294"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 294] +</span>advice, +declined the Crown Prosecutorship for King’s County, a post afterwards +applied for by, and granted to, a near relative of one of the most +prominent members of the Irish Party,”—meaning Mr. Luke Dillon, a +cousin of Mr. John Dillon, M.P.!</p> + +<p>We had much interesting conversation last night about the relations of +the Irish leaders here with public and party questions in America, as to +which I find Mr. O’Leary unusually well and accurately informed.</p> + +<p>I am sorry that I must get off to-morrow into Mayo to see Lord Lucan’s +country there, for I should have been particularly pleased to look more +closely with Mr. Rolleston into the intellectual revolt against +“Parnellism” and its methods, of which his attitude and that of his +friends here is an unmistakable symptom. As he tersely puts it, he sees +“no hope in Irish politics, except a reformation of the League, a return +to the principles of Thomas Davis.”</p> + +<p>The lines for a reformation or transformation of the League, as it now +exists, appear to have been laid down in the original constitution of +the body. Under that constitution, it seems, the League was meant to be +controlled by a representative committee chosen annually, open to public +criticism, <a name="page295" id="page295"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 295] +</span>and liable to removal by a new election. As things now are, +the officers of this alleged democratic organisation are absolutely +self-elected, and wield the wide and indefinite power they possess over +the people of Ireland in a perfectly unauthorised, irresponsible way. It +is a curious illustration of the autocratic or bureaucratic system under +which the Irish movement is now conducted, that Mr. Davitt, who does not +pretend to be a Parliamentarian, and owes indeed much of his authority +to his refusal to enter Parliament and take oaths of allegiance, does +not hesitate for a moment to discipline any Irish member of Parliament +who incurs his disapprobation. Sir Thomas Esmonde, for example, was +severely taken to task by him the other day in the public prints for +venturing to put a question, in his place at Westminster, to the +Government about a man-of-war stationed in Kingstown harbour. Mr. Davitt +very peremptorily ordered Sir Thomas to remember that he is not sent to +Westminster to recognise the British Government, or concern himself +about British regiments or ships, and Sir Thomas accepts the rebuke in +silence. Whom does such a member of Parliament represent—the +constituents who nominally elect him, or the leader who cracks the whip +over him so sharply?</p> + +<p><a name="page296" id="page296"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 296] +</span>I have to-day been looking through a small and beautifully-printed +volume of poems just issued here by Gill and Son, Nationalist +publishers, I take it, who have the courage of their convictions, since +their books bear the imprint of “O’Connell,” and not of Sackville +Street. This little book of the <i>Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland </i>is +a symptom too. It is dedicated in a few brief but vigorous stanzas to +John O’Leary, as one who</p> + +<p class="poem"> +<span class="i4">“Hated all things base,</span><br /> + And held his country’s honour high.”</p> + +<p>And the spirit of all the poems it contains is the spirit of ’48, or of +that earlier Ireland of Robert Emmet, celebrated in some charming verses +by “Rose Kavanagh” on “St. Michan’s Churchyard,” where the</p> + +<p class="poem"><span class="i4"> “sunbeam went and came</span><br /> + Above the stone which waits the name<br /> + His land must write with freedom‘s flame.” +</p> + +<p>It interests an American to find among these poems and ballads a +striking threnody called “The Exile’s Return,” signed with the name of +“Patrick Henry”; and it is noteworthy, for more reasons than one, that +the volume winds up with a “Marching Song of the Gaelic Athletes,” +signed “An Chraoibhin Aoibbinn.” These Athletes are <a name="page297" id="page297"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 297] +</span>numbered now, I am +assured, not by thousands, but by myriads, and their organisation covers +all parts of Ireland. If the spirit of ’48 and of ’98 is really moving +among them, I should say they are likely to be at least as troublesome +in the end to the “uncrowned king” as to the crowned Queen of Ireland.</p> + +<p>As for the literary merit of these <i>Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland</i>, +it strikes one key with their political quality. One exquisite ballad of +“The Stolen Child,” by W. B. Yeats, might have been sung in the +moonlight on a sylvan lake by the spirit of Heinrich Heine.</p> + +<p>I spent an hour or two this morning most agreeably in the libraries of +the Law Courts and of Trinity College: the latter one of the stateliest +most academic “halls of peace” I have ever seen; and this afternoon I +called upon Dr. Sigerson, a most patriotic Irishman, of obviously Danish +blood, who has his own ideas as to Clontarf and Brian Boru; and who gave +me very kindly a copy of his valuable report on that Irish Crisis of +1879-80, out of which Michael Davitt so skilfully developed the agrarian +movement whereof “Parnellism” down to this time has been the not very +well adjusted instrument. The report was drawn up after a thorough +inspection by Dr. Siger<a name="page298" id="page298"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 298] +</span>son and his associate, Dr. Kenny, visiting +physicians to the North Dublin Union, of some of the most distressed +districts of Mayo, Sligo, and Galway; and a more interesting, +intelligent, and impressive picture of the worst phases of the social +conditions of Ireland ten years ago is not to be found. I have just been +reading it over carefully in conjunction with my memoranda made from the +Emigration and Seed Potato Fund Reports, which Mr. Tuke gave me some +time ago, and it strongly reinforces the evidence imbedded in those +reports, which goes to show that agitation for political objects in +Ireland has perhaps done as much as all other causes put together to +depress the condition of the poor in Ireland, by driving and keeping +capital out of the country. The worst districts visited in 1879 by Dr. +Sigerson and Dr. Kenny do not appear to have been so completely cut off +from civilisation as was the region about Gweedore before the purchase +of his property there by Lord George Hill, and the remedies suggested by +Dr. Sigerson for the suffering in these districts are all in the +direction of the remedies applied by Lord George Hill to the condition +in which he found Gweedore. After giving full value to the stock +explanations of Irish distress in the congested districts, such as +excessive rents, <a name="page299" id="page299"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 299] +</span>penal laws, born of religious or “racial” animosity, +and a defective system of land tenure, it seems to be clear that the +main difficulties have arisen from the isolation of these districts, and +from the lack of varied industries. Political agitation has checked any +flow of capital into these districts, and a flow of capital into them +would surely have given them better communications and more varied +industries. Dr. Sigerson states that some of the worst of these regions +in the west of Ireland are as well adapted to flax-culture as Ulster, +and Napoleon III. showed what could be done for such wastes as La +Sologne and the desert of the Landes by the intelligent study of a +country and the judicious development of such values as are inherent in +it. The loss of population in Ireland is not unprecedented. The State of +New Hampshire, in America, one of the original thirteen colonies which +established the American Union, has twice shown an actual loss in +population during the past century. The population of the State declined +during the decade between 1810 and 1820, and again during the decade +between 1860 and 1870. This phenomenon, unique in American history, is +to be explained only by three causes, all active in the case of +congested Ireland,—a decaying agriculture, lack of communications, and +the absence of varied <a name="page300" id="page300"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 300] +</span>industries. During the decade from 1860 to 1870 +the great Civil War was fought out. Yet, despite the terrible waste of +life and capital in that war, especially at the South, the Northern +State of New Hampshire, peopled by the energetic English adventurers who +founded New England, was actually the only State which came out of the +contest with a positive decline in population. Virginia (including West +Virginia, which seceded from that Commonwealth in 1861) rose from +1,596,318 inhabitants in 1860 to 1,667,177 in 1870. South Carolina, +which was ravaged by the war more severely than any State except +Virginia, and upon which the Republican majority at Washington pressed +with such revengeful hostility after the downfall of the Confederacy, +showed in 1870 a positive increase in population, as compared with 1860, +from 703,708 to 705,606. But New Hampshire, lying hundreds of miles +beyond the area of the conflict, showed a positive decrease from 326,073 +to 318,300. During my college days at Cambridge the mountain regions of +New Hampshire were favourite “stamping grounds” in the vacations, and I +exaggerate nothing when I say that in the secluded nooks and corners of +the State, the people cut off from communication with the rest of New +England, and scratching out <a name="page301" id="page301"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 301] +</span>of a rocky land an inadequate subsistence, +were not much, if at all, in advance of the least prosperous dwellers in +the most remote parts of Ireland which I have visited. They furnished +their full contingent to that strange American exodus, which, about a +quarter of a century ago, was led out of New England by one Adams to the +Holy Land, in anticipation of the Second Advent, a real modern crusade +of superstitious land speculators, there to perish, for the most part, +miserably about Jaffa—leaving houses and allotments to pass into the +control of a more practical colony of Teutons, which I found +establishing itself there in 1869.</p> + +<p>Since 1870 a change has come over New Hampshire. The population has +risen to 346,984. In places waste and fallen twenty years ago brisk and +smiling villages have sprung up along lines of communication established +to carry on the business of thriving factories.</p> + +<p>What reason can there be in the nature of things to prevent the +development of analogous results, through the application of analogous +forces, in the case of “congested” Ireland? A Nationalist friend, to +whom I put this question this afternoon, answers it by alleging that so +long as fiscal laws for Ireland are made at Westminster, British capital +invested <a name="page302" id="page302"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 302] +</span>in Great Britain will prevent the application of these +analogous forces to “congested” Ireland. His notion is that were Ireland +as independent of Great Britain, for example, in fiscal matters as is +Canada, Ireland might seek and secure a fiscal union with the United +States, such as was partially secured to Canada under the Reciprocity +Treaty denounced by Mr. Seward.</p> + +<p>“Give us this,” he said, “and take us into your system of American +free-trade as between the different States of your American Union, and +no end of capital will soon be coming into Ireland, not only from your +enormously rich and growing Republic, but from Great Britain too. Give +us the American market, putting Great Britain on a less-favoured +footing, just as Mr. Blake and his party wish to do in the case of +Canada, and between India doing her own manufacturing on the one side, +and Ireland becoming a manufacturing centre on the other, and a mart in +Europe for American goods, we’ll get our revenge on Elizabeth and +Cromwell in a fashion John Bull has never dreamt of in these times, +though he used to be in a mortal funk of it a hundred years ago, when +there wasn’t nearly as much danger of it!”</p> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">DUBLIN, <i>Sunday, June 24.</i>—</span>“Put not your faith in <a name="page303" id="page303"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 303] +</span>porters!” I had +expected to pass this day at Castlebar, on the estate of Lord Lucan, and +I exchanged telegrams to that effect yesterday with Mr. Harding, the +Earl’s grandson, who, in the absence of his wonderfully energetic +grandsire, is administering there what Lord Lucan, with pardonable +pride, declares to be the finest and most successful dairy-farm in all +Ireland. I asked the porter to find the earliest morning train; and +after a careful search he assured me that by leaving Dublin just after 7 +A.M. I could reach Castlebar a little after noon.</p> + +<p>Upon this I determined to dine with Mr. Colomb, and spend the night in +Dublin. But when I reached the station a couple of hours ago, it was to +discover that my excellent porter had confounded 7 A.M. with 7 P.M.</p> + +<p>There is no morning train to Castlebar! So here I am with no recourse, +my time being short, but to give up the glimpse I had promised myself of +Mayo, and go on this afternoon to Belfast on my way back to London.</p> + +<p>At dinner last night Mr. Colomb gave me further and very interesting +light upon the events of 1867, of which he had already spoken with me at +Cork, as well as upon the critical period of Mr. Gladstone’s experiments +of 1881-82 at “Coercion” in Ireland.</p> + +<p><a name="page304" id="page304"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 304] +</span>Mr. Colomb lives in a remarkably bright and pleasant suburb of Dublin, +which not only is called a “park,” as suburbs are apt to be, but really +is a park, as suburbs are less apt to be. His house is set near some +very fine old trees, shading a beautiful expanse of turf. He is an +amateur artist of much more than ordinary skill. His walls are gay, and +his portfolios filled, with charming water-colours, sketches, and +studies made from Nature all over the United Kingdom. The grand +coast-scenery of Cornwall and of Western Ireland, the lovely lake +landscapes of Killarney, sylvan homes and storied towers, all have been +laid under contribution by an eye quick to seize and a hand prompt to +reproduce these most subtle and transient atmospheric effects of light +and colour which are the legitimate domain of the true water-colourist. +With all these pictures about us—and with Mr. Colomb’s workshop fitted +up with Armstrong lathes and all manner of tools wherein he varies the +routine of official life by making all manner of instruments, and +wreaking his ingenuity upon all kinds of inventions—and with the +pleasant company of Mr. Davies, the agreeable and accomplished official +secretary of Sir West Ridgway, the evening wore quickly away. In the +course of conversation the question of the average income of the <a name="page305" id="page305"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 305] +</span>Irish +priests arose, and I mentioned the fact that Lord Lucan, whose knowledge +of the smallest details of Irish life is amazingly thorough, puts it +down at about ten shillings a year per house in the average Irish +parish.</p> + +<p>He rated Father M‘Fadden and his curate of Gweedore, for example, +without a moment’s hesitation, at a thousand pounds a year in the whole, +or very nearly the amount stated to me by Sergeant Mahony at Baron’s +Court. This brought from Mr. Davies a curious account of the proceedings +in a recent case of a contested will before Judge Warren here in Dublin. +The will in question was made by the late Father M‘Garvey of Milford, a +little village near Mulroy Bay in Donegal, notable chiefly as the scene +of the murder of the late Earl of Leitrim. Father M‘Garvey, who died in +March last, left by this will to religious and charitable uses the whole +of his property, save £800 bequeathed in it to his niece, Mrs. O’Connor. +It was found that he died possessed not only of a farm at Ardara, but of +cash on deposit in the Northern Bank to the very respectable amount of +£23,711. Mrs. O’Connor contested the will. The Archbishop of Armagh, and +Father Sheridan, C.C. of Letterkenny, instituted an action against her +to establish the will. Father M‘Fadden of Gweedore, <a name="page306" id="page306"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 306] +</span>lying in Londonderry +jail as a first-class misdemeanant, was brought from Londonderry as a +witness for the niece. But on the trial of the case it appeared that +there was actually no evidence to sustain the plea of the niece that +“undue influence” had been exerted upon her uncle by the Archbishop, who +at the time of the making of the will was Bishop of Raphoe, or by +anybody else; so the judge instructed the jury to find on all the issues +for the plaintiffs, which was done. The judge declared the conduct of +the defendant in advancing a charge of “undue influence” in such +circumstances against ecclesiastics to be most reprehensible; but the +Archbishop very graciously intimated through his lawyer his intention of +paying the costs of the niece who had given him all this trouble, +because she was a poor woman who had been led into her course by +disappointment at receiving so small a part of so large an inheritance. +Had the priest’s property come to him in any other way than through his +office as a priest her claim might have been more worthy of +consideration, but Mr. M‘Dermot, Q.C., who represented the Archbishop, +took pains to make it clear that as an ecclesiastic his client, who had +nothing to do with the making of the will, was bound to regard it “as +proper and in accordance <a name="page307" id="page307"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 307] +</span>with the fitness of things that what had been +received from the poor should be given back to the poor.”</p> + +<p>I see no adequate answer to this contention of the Archbishop. But it +certainly goes to confirm the estimates given me by Sergeant Mahony of +Father M‘Fadden’s receipts at Gweedore, and the opinion expressed to me +by Lord Lucan as to the average returns of an average Catholic parish, +that the priest of Milford, a place hardly so considerable as Gweedore, +should have acquired so handsome a property in the exercise there of his +parochial functions.</p> + +<p>One form in which the priests in many parts of Ireland collect dues is +certainly unknown to the practice of the Church elsewhere, I believe, +and it must tend to swell the incomes of the priests at the expense, +perhaps, of their legitimate influence. This is the custom of personal +collections by the priests. In many parishes the priest stands by the +church-door, or walks about the church—not with a bag in his hand, as +is sometimes done in France on great occasions when a <i>quéle</i> is made by +the <i>curé</i> for some special object,—but with an open plate in which the +people put their offerings. I have heard of parishes in which the priest +sits by a table near the church-door, takes the offerings <a name="page308" id="page308"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 308] +</span>from the +parishioners as they pass, and comments freely upon the ratio of the +gift to the known or presumed financial ability of the giver.</p> + +<p>We had some curious stories, too, from a gentleman present of the +relation of the priests in wild, out-of-the-way corners of Ireland to +the people, stories which take one back to days long before Lever. One, +for example, of a delightful and stalwart old parish priest of eighty, +upon whom an airy young patriot called to propose that he should accept +the presidency of a local Land League. The veteran, whose only idea of +the Land League was that it had used bad language about Cardinal Cullen, +no sooner caught the drift of the youth than he snatched up a huge +blackthorn, fell upon him, and “boycotted” him head-foremost out of a +window. Luckily it was on the ground floor.</p> + +<p>Another strenuous spiritual shepherd came down during the distribution +of potato-seed to the little port in which it was going on, and took up +his station on board of the distributing ship. One of his parishioners, +having received his due quota, made his way back again unobserved on +board of the ship. As he came up to receive a second dole, the good +father spied him, and staying not “to parley or dissemble,” <a name="page309" id="page309"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 309] +</span>simply +fetched him a whack over the sconce with a stick, which tumbled him out +of the ship, head-foremost, into the hooker riding beside her! Quite of +another drift was a much more astonishing tale of certain proceedings +had here in February last before the Lord Chief-Justice. These took +place in connection with a motion to quash the verdict of a coroner’s +jury, held in August 1887, on the body of a child named Ellen Gaffney, +at Philipstown, in King’s County, which preserves the memory of the +Spanish sovereign of England, as Maryborough in Queen’s preserves the +memory of his Tudor consort. Cervantes never imagined an Alcalde of the +quality of the “Crowner”’ who figures in this story. Were it not that +his antics cost a poor woman her liberty from August 1887 till December +of that year, when the happy chance of a winter assizes set her free, +and might have cost her her life, the story of this ideal magistrate +would be extremely diverting.</p> + +<p>A child was born to Mrs. Gaffney at Philipstown on the 23d of July, and +died there on the 25th of August 1887, Mrs. Gaffney being the wife of a +“boycotted” man.</p> + +<p>A local doctor named Clarke came to the police and asked the Sergeant to +inspect the body of the <a name="page310" id="page310"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 310] +</span>child, and call for an inquest. The sergeant +inspected the body, and saw no reason to doubt that the child had died a +natural death. This did not please the doctor, so the Coroner was sent +for. He came to Philipstown the next day, conferred there with the +doctor, and with a priest, Father Bergin, and proceeded to hold an +inquest on the child in a public-house, “a most appropriate place,” said +Sir Michael Morris from the bench, “for the transactions which +subsequently occurred.” Strong depositions were afterwards made by the +woman Mrs. Gaffney, by her husband, and by the police authorities, as to +the conduct of this “inquest.” She and her husband were arrested on a +verbal order of the Coroner on the day when the inquest was held, August +27th, and the woman was kept in prison from that time till the assizes +in December. The “inquest” was not completed on the 27th of August, and +after the Coroner adjourned it, two priests drove away on a car from the +“public-house” in which it had been held. That night, or the next day, a +man came to a magistrate with a bundle of papers which he had found in +the road near Philipstown. The magistrate examined them, and finding +them to be the depositions taken before the Coroner in the case of Ellen +Gaffney, handed them <a name="page311" id="page311"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 311] +</span>to the police. How did they come to be in the road? +On the 1st of September the Coroner resumed his inquest, this time in +the Court-House at Philipstown, and one of the police, with the +depositions in his pocket, went to hear the proceedings. Great was his +amazement to see certain papers produced, and calmly read, as being the +very original depositions which at that moment were in his own custody! +He held his peace, and let the inquest go on. A letter was read from the +Coroner, to the effect that he saw no ground for detaining the husband, +Gaffney—but the woman was taken before a justice of the peace, and +committed to prison on this finding by the Coroner’s jury: “That Mary +Anne Gaffney came by her death; and that the mother of the child, Ellen +Gaffney, is guilty of wilful neglect by not supplying the necessary food +and care to sustain the life of this child ”!</p> + +<p>It is scarcely credible, but it is true, that upon this extraordinary +finding the Coroner issued a warrant for “murder” against this poor +woman, on which she was actually locked up for more than three months! +The jury which made this unique finding consisted of nineteen persons, +and it was in evidence that their foreman reported thirteen of the jury +to be for finding one way and six for finding <a name="page312" id="page312"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 312] +</span>another, whereupon a +certain Mr. Whyte, who came into the case as the representative of +Father Bergin, President of the local branch of the National +League—nobody can quite see on what colourable pretext—was allowed by +the Coroner to write down the finding I have quoted, and hand it to the +Coroner. The Coroner read it over. He and Mr. Whyte then put six of the +jury in one place, and thirteen in another; the Coroner read the finding +aloud to the thirteen, and said to them, “Is that what you agree to?” +and so the inquest was closed, and the warrant issued—for murder—and +the woman, this poor peasant mother sent off to jail with the brand upon +her of infanticide.<a id="footnotetag29" + name="footnotetag29"></a><a href="#footnote29"><sup>29</sup></a></p> + +<p>Where would that poor woman be now were there no “Coercion” in Ireland +to protect her against “Crowner’s quest law” thus administered? And what +is to be thought of educated and responsible public men in England who, +as recent events have shown, are not ashamed to go to “Crowner’s quest +Courts” of this sort for weapons of attack, not upon the administration +only of their own Government, but upon the character and the motives of +their political opponents?</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page313" id="page313"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 313] +</span>CHAPTER XVI.</h2> + + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">BELFAST, <i>Monday, June 25.</i>—</span>I left Dublin yesterday at 4 P.M., in a +train which went off at high pressure as an “express,” but came into +Belfast panting and dilatory as an “excursion.” The day was fine, and +the line passes through what is reputed to be the most prosperous part +of Ireland. In this part of Ireland, too, the fate of the island has +been more than once settled by the arbitrament of arms; and if +Parliamentary England throws up the sponge in the wrestle with the +League, it is probable enough that the old story will come to be told +over again here.</p> + +<p>At Dundalk the Irish monarchy of the Braces was made and unmade. The +plantation of Ulster under James I. clinched the grasp not so much of +England as of Scotland upon Ireland, and determined the course of events +here through the Great Rebellion. The landing of the Duke of Schomberg +at Carrickfergus opened the way for the subjugation of Jacobite <a name="page314" id="page314"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 314] +</span>Ireland +by William of Orange. The successful descent of the French upon the same +place in February 1760, after the close of “the Great Year,” in which +Walpole tells us he came to expect a new victory every morning with the +rolls for breakfast, and after Hawke had broken the strength of the +great French Armada off Belleisle, and done for England the service +which Nelson did for her again off Trafalgar in 1805, shows what might +have happened had Thurot commanded the fleet of Conflans. In this same +region, too, the rout of Munro by Nugent at Ballinahinch practically +ended the insurrection of 1798.</p> + +<p>There are good reasons in the physical geography of the British Islands +for this controlling influence of Ulster over the affairs of Ireland, +which it seems to me a serious mistake to overlook.</p> + +<p>The author of a brief but very hard-headed and practical letter on the +pacification of Ireland, which appeared in the <i>Times</i> newspaper in +1886, while the air was thrilling with rumours of Mr. Gladstone’s +impending appearance as the champion of “Home Rule,” carried, I +remember, to the account of St. George’s Channel “nine-tenths of the +troubles, religious, political, and social, under which Ireland has +<a name="page315" id="page315"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 315] +</span>laboured for seven centuries.” I cannot help thinking he hit the nail on +the head; and St. George’s Channel does not divide Ulster from Scotland. +From Donaghadee, which has an excellent harbour, the houses on the +Scottish coast can easily be made out in clear weather. A chain is no +stronger than its weakest link, and it is as hard to see how, even with +the consent of Ulster, the independence of Ireland could be maintained +against the interests and the will of Scotland, as it is easy to see why +Leinster, Munster, and Connaught have been so difficult of control and +assimilation by England. To dream of establishing the independence of +Ireland against the will of Ulster appears to me to be little short of +madness.</p> + +<p>At Moira, which stands very prettily above the Ulster Canal, a small +army of people returning from a day in the country to Belfast came upon +us and trebled the length of our train. We picked up more at Lisburn, +where stands the Cathedral Church of Jeremy Taylor, the “Shakespeare of +divines.” Here my only companion in the compartment from Dublin left me, +a most kindly, intelligent Ulster man, who had very positive views as to +the political situation. He much commended the recent dis<a name="page316" id="page316"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 316] +</span>course in +Scotland of a Presbyterian minister, who spoke of the Papal Decree as +“pouring water on a drowned mouse,” a remark which led me to elicit the +fact that he had never seen either Clare or Kerry; and he was very warm +in his admiration of Mr. Chamberlain. He told me, what I had heard from +many other men of Ulster, that the North had armed itself thoroughly +when the Home Rule business began with Mr. Gladstone. “I am a Unionist,” +he said, “but I think the Union is worth as much to England as it is to +Ireland, and if England means to break it up it is not the part of +Irishmen who think and feel as I do to let her choose her own time for +doing it, and stand still while she robs us of our property and turns us +out defenceless to be trampled under foot by the most worthless +vagabonds in our own island.” He thinks the National League has had its +death-blow. “What I fear now,” he said, “is that we are running straight +into a social war, and that will never be a war against the landlords in +Ireland; it’ll be a war against the Protestants and all the decent +people there are among the Catholics.”</p> + +<p>He was very cordial when he found I was an <a name="page317" id="page317"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 317] +</span>American, and with that +offhand hospitality which seems to know no distinctions of race or +religion in Ireland urged me to come and make him a visit at a place he +has nearer the sea-coast. “I’ll show you Downpatrick,” he said, “where +the tombs of St. Patrick and St. Bridget and St. Columb are, the saints +sleeping quite at their ease, with a fine prosperous Presbyterian town +all about them. And I’ll drive you to Tullymore, where you’ll see the +most beautiful park, and the finest views from it all the way to the +Isle of Man, that are to be seen in all Ireland.” He was very much +interested in the curious story of the sequestration of the remains of +Mr. Stewart of New York, who was born, he tells me, at Lisburn, where +the wildest fabrications on the subject seem to have got currency. That +this feat of body-snatching is supposed to have been performed by a +little syndicate of Italians, afterwards broken up by the firmness of +Lady Crawford in resisting the ghastly pressure to which the widow and +the executors of Mr. Stewart are believed to have succumbed, was quite a +new idea to him.</p> + +<p>From Moira to Belfast the scenery along the line grows in beauty +steadily. If Belfast were not the busiest and most thriving city in +Ireland, it would <a name="page318" id="page318"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 318] +</span>still be well worth a visit for the picturesque charms +of its situation and of the scenery which surrounds it. At some future +day I hope to get a better notion both of its activity and of its +attractions than it would be possible for me to attempt to get in this +flying visit, made solely to take the touch of the atmosphere of the +place at this season of the year; for we are on the very eve of the +battle month of the Boyne.</p> + +<p>Mr. Cameron, the Town Inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary, met me +at the station, in accordance with a promise which he kindly made when I +saw him several weeks ago at Cork; and this morning he took me all over +the city. It is very well laid out, in the new quarters especially, with +broad avenues and spacious squares. In fact, as a local wag said to me +to-day at the Ulster Club, “You can drive through Belfast without once +going into a street”—most of the thoroughfares which are not called +“avenues” or “places” being known as “roads.” It is, of course, an +essentially modern city. When Boate made his survey of Ireland two +centuries ago, Belfast was so small a place that he took small note of +it, though it had been incorporated by James I. in 1613 in favour of the +Chichester <a name="page319" id="page319"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 319] +</span>family, still represented here. In a very careful <i>Tour in +Ireland</i>, published at Dublin in 1780, the author says of Belfast, “I +could not help remarking the great number of Scots who reside in this +place, and who carry on a good trade with Scotland.” It seems then to +have had a population of less than 20,000 souls, as it only touched that +number at the beginning of this century. It has since then advanced by +“leaps and bounds,” after an almost American fashion, till it has now +become the second, and bids fair at no distant day to become the first, +city in Ireland. Few of the American cities which are its true +contemporaries can be compared with Belfast in beauty. The quarter in +which my host lives was reclaimed from the sea marshes not quite so long +ago, I believe, as was the Commonwealth Avenue quarter of Boston, and +though it does not show so many costly private houses perhaps as that +quarter of the New England capital, its “roads” and “avenues” are on the +whole better built, and there is no public building in Boston so +imposing as the Queen’s College, with its Tudor front six hundred feet +in length, and its graceful central tower. The Botanic Gardens near by +are much prettier and much better equipped for the pleasure and +instruction of the <a name="page320" id="page320"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 320] +</span>people than any public gardens in either Boston or +New York. These American comparisons make themselves, all the conditions +of Belfast being rather of the New World than of the Old. The oldest +building pointed out to me to-day is the whilom mansion of the Marquis +of Donegal, now used as offices, and still called the Castle.</p> + +<p>This stands near Donegal Square, a fine site, disfigured by a quadrangle +of commonplace brick buildings, occupied as a sort of Linen Exchange, +concerning which a controversy rages, I am told. They are erected on +land granted by Lord Donegal to encourage the linen trade, and the +buildings used to be leased at a rental of £1 per window. The present +holders receive £10 per window, and are naturally loath to part with so +good a thing, though there is an earnest desire in the city to see these +unsightly structures removed, and their place taken by stately municipal +buildings more in key with the really remarkable and monumental private +warehouses which already adorn this Square. Mr. Robinson, one of the +partners of a firm which has just completed one of these warehouses, was +good enough to show us over it. It is built of a warm grey stone, which +lends itself easily to the chisel, <a name="page321" id="page321"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 321] +</span>and it is decorated with a wealth of +carving and of architectural ornaments such as the great burghers of +Flanders lavished on their public buildings. The interior arrangements +are worthy of the external stateliness of the warehouse. Pneumatic tubes +for the delivery of cash—a Scottish invention—electric lights, steam +lifts, a kitchen at the top of the lofty edifice heated by steam from +the great engine-room in the cellars, and furnishing meals to the +employees, attest the energy and enterprise of the firm. The most +delicate of the linen fabrics sold here are made, I was informed, all +over the north country. The looms, three or four of which are kept going +here in a great room to show the intricacy and perfection of the +processes, are supplied by the firm to the hand-workers on a system +which enables them, while earning good wages from week to week, to +acquire the eventual ownership of the machines. The building is crowned +by a sort of observatory, from which we enjoyed a noble prospect +overlooking the whole city and miles of the beautiful country around. A +haze on the horizon hid the coast of Scotland, which is quite visible +under a clear sky. The Queen’s Bridge over the Lagan, built in 1842 +between Antrim and Down, was a conspicuous <a name="page322" id="page322"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 322] +</span>feature in the panorama. Its +five great arches of hewn granite span the distance formerly traversed +by an older bridge of twenty-one arches 840 feet in length, which was +begun in 1682, and finished just in time to welcome Schomberg and King +William.</p> + +<p>The not less imposing warehouse of Richardson and Co., built of a +singularly beautiful brown stone, and decorated with equal taste and +liberality, adjoins that of Robinson and Cleaver. The banks, the public +offices, the clubs, the city library, the museum, the Presbyterian +college, the principal churches, all of them modern, all alike bear +witness to the public spirit and pride in their town of the good people +of Belfast. With more time at my disposal I would have been very glad to +visit some of the flax-mills called into being by the great impulse +which the cotton famine resulting from our Civil War gave to the linen +manufactures of Northern Ireland, and the famous shipyards of the Woolfs +on Queen’s Island, As things are, it was more to my purpose to see some +of the representative men of this great Protestant stronghold.</p> + +<p>I passed a very interesting hour with the Rev. Dr. Hanna, who is reputed +to be a sort of clerical <a name="page323" id="page323"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 323] +</span>“Lion of the North,” and whom I found to be in +almost all respects a complete antitype of Father M‘Fadden of Gweedore.</p> + + +<p>Dr. Hanna is not unjustly proud of being at the head of the most +extensive Sunday-school organisation in Ireland, if not in the world; +and I find that the anniversary parade of his pupils, appointed for +Saturday, June 30th, is looked forward to with some anxiety by the +authorities here. He tells me that he expects to put two thousand +children that day into motion for a grand excursion to Moira; but +although he speaks very plainly as to the ill-will with which a certain +class of the Catholics here regard both himself and his organisation, he +does not anticipate any attack from them. With what seems to me very +commendable prudence, he has resolved this year to put this procession +into the streets without banners and bands, so that no charge of +provocation may be even colourably advanced against it. This is no +slight concession from a man so determined and so outspoken, not to say +aggressive, in his Protestantism as Dr. Hanna; and the Nationalist +Catholics will be very ill-advised, it strikes me, if they misinterpret +it.</p> + +<p><a name="page324" id="page324"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 324] +</span>He spoke respectfully of the Papal decree against Boycotting and the +Plan of Campaign; but he seems to think it will not command the respect +of the masses of the Catholic population, nor be really enforced by the +clergy. Like most of the Ulstermen I have met, he has a firm faith, not +only in the power of the Protestant North to protect itself, but in its +determination to protect itself against the consequences which the +northern Protestants believe must inevitably follow any attempt to +establish an Irish nationality. Dr. Hanna is neither an Orangeman nor a +Tory. He says there are but three known Orangemen among the clerical +members of the General Assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church, which +unanimously pronounced against Mr. Gladstone’s scheme of Home Rule, and +not more than a dozen Tories. Of the 550 members of the Assembly, 538, +he says, were followers of Mr. Gladstone before he adopted the politics +of Mr. Parnell; and only three out of the whole number have given him +their support. In the country at large, Dr. Hanna puts down the +Unionists at two millions, of whom 1,200,000 are Protestants, and +800,000 Catholics; and he maintains that if the Parliamentary +representatives were <a name="page325" id="page325"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 325] +</span>chosen by a general vote, the Parnellite 80 would +be cut down to 62; while the Unionists would number 44. He regards the +Parnellite policy as “an organised imposture,” and firmly believes that +an Irish Parliament in Dublin would now mean civil war in Ireland. He +had a visit here last week, he says, from an American Presbyterian +minister, who came out to Ireland a month ago a “Home Ruler”; but, as +the result of a trip through North-Western Ireland, is going back to +denounce the Home Rule movement as a mischievous fraud.</p> + +<p>When I asked him what remedy he would propose for the discontent stirred +up by the agitation of Home Rule, this Presbyterian clergyman replied +emphatically, “Balfour, Balfour, and more Balfour!”</p> + +<p>This on the ground, as I understood, that Mr. Balfour’s administration +of the law has been the firmest, least wavering, and most equitable +known in Ireland for many a day.</p> + +<p>Later in the day I had the pleasure of a conversation with the Rev. Dr. +Kane, the Grand Master of the Orangemen at Belfast. Dr. Kane is a tall, +fine-looking, frank, and resolute man, who obviously has the courage of +his opinions. He thinks there will be no disturbances this year on the +12th of <a name="page326" id="page326"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 326] +</span>July, but that the Orange demonstrations will be on a greater +scale and more imposing than ever. He derides the notion that +“Parnellism” is making any progress in Ulster. On the contrary, the +concurrence this year of the anniversary of the defeat of the Great +Armada with the anniversary of the Revolution of 1688 has aroused the +strongest feelings of enthusiasm among the Protestants of the North, and +they were never so determined as they now are not to tolerate anything +remotely looking to the constitution of a separate and separatist +Government at Dublin.</p> + +<p class="diary"><span class="diary">BELFAST, <i>Tuesday, June 26.</i>—</span>Sir John Preston, the head of one of the +great Belfast houses, and a former Mayor of the city, dined with us last +night, and in the evening Sir James Haslett, the actual Mayor, came in.</p> + +<p>I find that in Belfast the office of Mayor is served without a salary, +and is consequently filled as a rule by citizens of “weight and +instance.” In Dublin the Lord Mayor receives £3000 a year, with a +contingent fund of £1500, and the office is becoming a distinctly +political post. The face of Belfast is so firmly set against the +tendency to <a name="page327" id="page327"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 327] +</span>subordinate municipal interests to general party exigencies, +that the Corporation compelled Mr. Cobain, M.P., who sits at Westminster +now for this constituency, to resign the post which he held as treasurer +and cashier of the Corporation when he became a candidate for a seat in +Parliament. I am not surprised, therefore, to learn that the city rates +and taxes are much lower in the commercial than they are in the +political capital of Ireland.</p> + +<p>Both Sir John Preston and Sir James Haslett have visited America. Sir +John went there to represent the linen industries of Ireland, and to +urge upon Congress the propriety of reducing our import duties upon +fabrics which the American climate makes it practically imposssible to +manufacture on our side of the water. Senator Sherman, who twenty years +ago had the candour to admit that the wit of man could not devise a +tariff so adjusted as to raise the revenue necessary for the Government +which should not afford adequate incidental protection to all legitimate +American industries, gave Sir John reason to hope that something might +be done in the direction of a more liberal treatment of the linen +industries. But nothing practical came of it. Sir John ought to <a name="page328" id="page328"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 328] +</span>have +known that our typical American Protectionist, the late Horace Greeley, +really persuaded himself, and tried to persuade other people, that with +duties enough clapped on the Asiatic production, excellent tea might be +grown on the uplands of South Carolina!</p> + +<p>In former years Sir John Preston used to visit Gweedore every year for +sport and recreation. He knew Lord George Hill very well, “as true and +noble a man as ever lived, who stinted himself to improve the state of +his tenants.” He threw an odd light on the dreamy desire which had so +much amused me of the “beauty of Gweedore” to become “a dressmaker at +Derry,” by telling me that long ago the gossips there used to tell +wonderful stories of a Gweedore girl who had made her fortune as a +milliner in the “Maiden City.”</p> + +<p>This morning Mr. Cameron, who as Town Inspector of the Royal Irish +Constabulary will be responsible for public peace and order here during +the next critical fortnight, held a review of his men on a common beyond +the Theological College. About two hundred and fifty of the force were +paraded, with about twenty mounted policemen, and for an hour and a +half, under a tolerably warm <a name="page329" id="page329"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 329] +</span>sun, they were put through a regular +military drill. A finer body of men cannot be seen, and in point of +discipline and training they can hold their own, I should say, with the +best of her Majesty’s regiments. Without such discipline and training it +would not be easy for any such body of men to pass with composure +through the ordeal of insults and abuse to which the testimony of +trustworthy eye-witnesses compels me to believe they are habitually +subjected in the more disturbed districts of Ireland. As to the +immediate outlook here, Mr. Cameron seems quite at his ease. Even if +ill-disposed persons should set about provoking a collision between “the +victors and the vanquished of the Boyne” his arrangements are so made, +he says, as to prevent the development of anything like the outbreaks of +former years.</p> + +<p>On the advice of Sir John Preston I shall take the Fleetwood route on my +return to London to-night.</p> + +<p>This secures one a comfortable night on board of a very good and +well-equipped boat, from which you go ashore, he tells me, into an +excellent station of the London and North-Western Railway at Fleetwood, +on the mouth of the Wyre on the <a name="page330" id="page330"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 330] +</span>Lancashire coast. Twenty years ago this +was a small bathing resort called into existence chiefly by the +enterprise of a local baronet whose name it bears. Its present +prosperity and prospective importance are another illustration of the +vigour and vitality of the North of Ireland, which is connected through +Fleetwood with the great manufacturing regions of middle and northern +England, as it is through Larne with the heart of Scotland.</p> + +<p>While it is as true now of the predominantly Catholic south of Ireland +as it was when Sir Robert Peel made the remark forty years ago, that it +stands “with its back to England and its face to the West,” this +Protestant Ireland of the North faces both ways, drawing Canada and the +United States to itself through Moville and Derry and Belfast, and +holding fast at the same time upon the resources of Great Britain +through Glasgow and Liverpool. One of the best informed bankers in +London told me not long ago, that pretty nearly all the securities of +the great company which has recently taken over the business of the +Guinnesses have already found their way into the North of Ireland and +are held here. With such resources in its wealth and industry, better +educated, better <a name="page331" id="page331"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 331] +</span>equipped, and holding a practically impregnable +position in the North of Ireland, with Scotland and the sea at its back, +Ulster is very much stronger relatively to the rest of Ireland than La +Vendée was relatively to the rest of the French Republic in the last +century. In a struggle for independence against the rest of Ireland it +would have nothing to fear from the United States, where any attempt to +organise hostilities against it would put the Irish-American population +in serious peril, not only from the American Government, but from +popular feeling, and force home upon the attention of the +quickest-witted people in the world the significant fact that while the +chief contributions, so far, of America to Southern Ireland, have been +alms and agitation, the chief contributions of Scotland to Northern +Ireland have been skilled agriculture and successful activity. It is +surely not without meaning that the only steamers of Irish build which +now traverse the Atlantic come from the dockyards, not of Galway nor of +Cork, the natural gateways of Ireland to the west, but of Belfast, the +natural gateway of Ireland to the north<a name="page332" id="page332"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 332] +</span>.</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page333" id="page333"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 333] +</span>EPILOGUE.</h2> + + +<p>Not once, but a hundred times, during the visits to Ireland recorded in +this book, I have been reminded of the state of feeling and opinion +which existed in the Border States, as they were called, of the American +Union, after the invasion of Virginia by a piratical band under John +Brown, and before the long-pending issues between the South, insisting +upon its constitutional rights, and the North, restive under its +constitutional obligations, were brought to a head by the election of +President Lincoln.</p> + +<p>All analogies, I know, are deceptive, and I do not insist upon this +analogy. But it has a certain value here. For to-day in Ireland, as then +in America, we find a grave question of politics, in itself not +unmanageable, perhaps, by a race trained to self-government, seriously +complicated and aggravated, not only by considerations of moral right +and moral wrong, but by a profound perturbation of the material +interests of the community.</p> + +<p>I well remember that after a careful study of the <a name="page334" id="page334"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 334] +</span>situation in America +at the time of which I speak, Mr. Nassau Senior, a most careful and +competent observer, frankly told me that he saw no possible way in which +the problem could be worked out peacefully. The event justified this +gloomy forecast.</p> + +<p>It would be presumptuous in me to say as much of the actual situation in +Ireland; but it would be uncandid not to say that the optimists of +Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee had greater +apparent odds in their favour in 1861 than the optimists of Ireland seem +to me to have in 1888.</p> + +<p>Ireland stands to-day between Great Britain and the millions of the +Irish race in America and Australia very much as the Border States of +the American Union stood in 1861 between the North and the South. There +was little either in the Tariff question or in the Slavery question to +shake the foundations of law and order in the Border States, could they +have been left to themselves; and the Border States enjoyed all the +advantages and immunities of “Home Rule” to an extent and under +guarantees never yet openly demanded for Ireland by any responsible +legislator within the walls of the British Parliament. But so powerful +was the leverage upon them of conflicting passions and interests beyond +their own borders that these sovereign states, well organised, +homogeneous, pros<a name="page335" id="page335"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 335] +</span>perous communities, much more populous and richer in +the aggregate in 1861 than Ireland is to-day, practically lost the +control of their own affairs, and were swept helplessly into a terrific +conflict, which they had the greatest imaginable interest in avoiding, +and no interest whatever in promoting.</p> + +<p>I have seen and heard nothing in Ireland to warrant the very common +impression that the country, as a whole, is either misgoverned or +ungovernable; nothing to justify me in regarding the difficulties which +there impede the maintenance of law and order as really indigenous and +spontaneous. The “agitated” Ireland of 1888 appears to me to be almost +as clearly and demonstrably the creation of forces not generated in, but +acting upon, a country, as was the “bleeding Kansas” of 1856. But the +“bleeding Kansas” of 1856 brought the great American Union to the verge +of disruption, and the “agitated Ireland” of 1888 may do as much, or +worse, for the British Empire. There is, no doubt, a great deal of +distress in one or another part of Ireland, though it has not been my +fortune to come upon any outward and visible signs of such grinding +misery as forces itself upon you in certain of the richest provinces of +that independent, busy, prosperous, Roman Catholic kingdom of Belgium, +which on a territory little more than one-third as large as the +territory of Ireland, maintains nearly a <a name="page336" id="page336"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 336] +</span>million more inhabitants, and +adds to its population, on an average, in round numbers, as many people +in four years as Ireland loses in five.</p> + +<p>I have seen peasant proprietors in Flanders and Brabant who could give +the ideal Irish agent of the Nationalist newspapers lessons in +rack-renting, though I am not at all sure that they might not get a hint +or two themselves from some of the small farmers who came in my way in +Ireland.</p> + +<p>Like all countries, mainly agricultural, too, Ireland has suffered a +great deal of late years from the fall in prices following upon a period +of intoxicating prosperity. Whether she has suffered more relatively +than we should have suffered from the same cause in America, had we been +foolish enough to imitate the monometallic policy of Germany in 1873, is +however open to question; and I have an impression, which it will +require evidence to remove, that the actual organisation known as the +National Land League could never have been called into being had the +British Government devoted to action upon the Currency Question, before +1879, the time and energy which it has expended before and since that +date in unsettling the principles of free contract, and tinkering at the +relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland.</p> + +<p>But I am trenching upon inquiries here beyond the province of this book.</p> + +<p><a name="page337" id="page337"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 337] +</span>Fortunately it is not necessary to my object in printing these volumes +that I should either form or formulate any positive opinions as to the +origin of the existing crisis in Ireland. Nor need I volunteer any +suggestions of my own as to the methods by which order may best be +maintained and civil government carried on in Ireland. It suffices for +me that I close this self-imposed survey of men and things in that +country with a conviction, as positive as it is melancholy, that the +work which Mr. Redmond, M.P., informed us at Chicago that he and his +Nationalist colleagues had undertaken, of “making the government of +Ireland by England impossible,” has been so far achieved, and by such +methods as to make it extremely doubtful whether Ireland can be governed +by anybody at all in accordance with any of the systems of government +hitherto recognised in or adopted for that country. I certainly can see +nothing in the organisation and conduct, down to this time, of the party +known as the party of the Irish Nationalists, I will not say to +encourage, but even to excuse, a belief that Ireland could be governed +as a civilised country were it turned over to-morrow to their control. A +great deal has been done by them to propagate throughout Christendom a +general impression that England has dismally failed to govern Ireland in +the past, and is unlikely hereafter to succeed in <a name="page338" id="page338"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 338] +</span>governing Ireland. But +even granting this impression to be absolutely well founded, it by no +means follows that Ireland is any more capable of governing herself than +England is of governing her. The Russians have not made a brilliant +success of their administration in Poland, but the Poles certainly +administered Poland no better than the Russians have done. With an Irish +representation in an Imperial British Parliament at Westminster, +Ireland, under Mr. Gladstone’s “base and blackguard” Union of 1800, has +at least succeeded in shaking off some of the weightiest of the burdens +by which, in the days of Swift, of Grattan, and of O’Connell, she most +loudly declared herself to be oppressed. Whether with a Parliament at +Dublin she would have fared as well in this respect since 1800 must be a +matter of conjecture merely—and it must be equally a matter of +conjecture also whether she would fare any better in this respect with a +Parliament at Dublin hereafter. I am in no position to pronounce upon +this—but it is quite certain that nothing is more uncommon than to find +an educated and intelligent man, not an active partisan, in Ireland +to-day, who looks forward to the reestablishment, in existing +circumstances, of a Parliament at Dublin with confidence or hope.</p> + +<p>How the establishment of such a Parliament would affect the position of +Great Britain as a power <a name="page339" id="page339"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 339] +</span>in Europe, and how it would affect the fiscal +policy, and with the fiscal policy the well-being of the British people, +are questions for British subjects to consider, not for me.</p> + +<p>That the processes employed during the past decade, and now employed to +bring about the establishment of such a Parliament, have been, and are +in their nature, essentially revolutionary, subversive of all sound and +healthy relations between man and man, inconsistent with social +stability, and therefore with social progress and with social peace, +what I have seen and heard in Ireland during the past six months compels +me to feel. Of the “Coercion,” under which the Nationalist speakers and +writers ask us in America to believe that the island groans and +travails, I have seen literally nothing.</p> + +<p>Nowhere in the world is the press more absolutely free than to-day in +Ireland. Nowhere in the world are the actions of men in authority more +bitterly and unsparingly criticised. If public men or private citizens +are sent to prison in Ireland, they are sent there, not as they were in +America during the civil war, or in Ireland under the “Coercion Act” of +1881, on suspicion of something they may have done, or may have intended +to do, but after being tried for doing, and convicted of having done, +certain things made offences against the law by a <a name="page340" id="page340"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 340] +</span>Parliament in which +they are represented, and of which, in some cases, they are members.</p> + +<p>To call this “Coercion” is, from the American point of view, simply +ludicrous. What it may be from the British or the Irish point of view is +another affair, and does not concern me. I may be permitted, however, I +hope without incivility, to say that if this be “Coercion” from the +British or the Irish point of view, I am well content to be an American +citizen. Ours is essentially a government not of emotions, but of +statutes, and most Americans, I think, will agree with me that the sage +was right who declared it to be better to live where nothing is lawful +than where all things are lawful.</p> + +<p>The “Coercion” which I have found established in Ireland, and which I +recognise in the title of this book, is the “Coercion,” not of a +government, but of a combination to make a particular government +impossible. It is a “Coercion” applied not to men who break a public +law, or offend against any recognised code of morals, but to men who +refuse to be bound in their personal relations and their business +transactions by the will of other men, their equals only, clothed with +no legal authority over them. It is a “Coercion” administered not by +public and responsible functionaries, but by secret tribunals. Its +sanctions are not the law and honest public opinion, but the base +instinct of personal <a name="page341" id="page341"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 341] +</span>cowardice, and the instinct, not less base, of +personal greed. Whether anything more than a steady, firm administration +of the law is needed to abolish this “Coercion” is a matter as to which +authorities differ. I should be glad to believe with Colonel Saunderson +that “the Leaguers would not hold up the ‘land-grabber’ to execration, +and denounce him as they do, unless they knew in fact that the moment +the law is made supreme in Ireland the tenants would become just as +amenable to it as any other subjects of the Queen.” But some recent +events suggest a doubt whether these “other subjects of the Queen” are +as amenable to the law as my own countrymen are.</p> + +<p>That the Church to which the great majority of the Irish people have for +so many ages, and through so many tribulations, borne steadfast +allegiance, has been shaken in its hold upon the conscience of Ireland +by the machinery of this odious and ignoble “Coercion,” appears to me to +be unquestionable. That the head of that Church, being compelled by +evidence to believe this, has found it necessary to intervene for the +restoration of the just spiritual authority of the Church over the Irish +people all the world now knows—nor can I think that his intervention +has come a day or an hour too soon, to arrest the progress in Ireland of +a social disease which threatens, not the political interests of the +<a name="page342" id="page342"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 342] +</span>empire of which Ireland is a part alone, but the character of the Irish +people themselves, and the very existence among them of the elementary +conditions of a Christian civilisation.</p> + +<p>It would be unjust to the Irish people to forget that this demoralising +“Coercion” against which the Head of the Catholic Church has declared +war, seems to me to have been seriously reinforced by the Land +Legislation of the Imperial Parliament.</p> + +<p>No one denies that great reforms and readjustments of the Land Tenure in +Ireland needed to be made long before any serious attempt was made to +make them.</p> + +<p>But that such reforms and readjustments might have been made without +cutting completely loose from the moorings of political economy, appears +pretty clearly, not only from examples on the continent of Europe, and +in my own country, but from the Rent and Tenancy Acts carried out in +India under the viceroyalty of Lord Dufferin since 1885. The conditions +of these measures were different, of course, in each of the cases of +Oudh, Bengal, and the Punjab, and in none of these cases were they +nearly identical with the conditions of any practicable land measure for +Ireland. But two great characteristics seem to me to mark the Indian +legislation, which are not conspicuous in the legislation for Ireland.</p> + +<p><a name="page343" id="page343"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 343] +</span>These are a spirit of equity as between the landlords and the tenants, +and finality. I do not see how it can be questioned that the landlords +of Ireland have been dealt with by recent British legislation as if they +were offenders to be mulcted, and that the tenants in Ireland have been +encouraged by recent British legislation to anticipate an eventual +transfer to them, on steadily improving terms, of the land-ownership of +the island. Mr. Davitt is perhaps the most popular Irishman living, and +I believe him to be sincerely convinced that the ownership of the land +of Ireland (and of all other countries) ought to be vested in the State. +But if the independence of Ireland were acknowledged by Great Britain +to-morrow, and all the actual landlords of Ireland were compelled +to-morrow to part with their ownership, such as it is, of the land, I +believe Mr. Davitt would be further from the recognition and triumph of +his principle of State-ownership than he is to-day with a British +Parliament hostile to “Home Rule,” but apparently not altogether +unwilling to make the landlords of Ireland an acceptable burnt-offering +upon the altar of imperial unity. Probably he sees this himself, and the +existing state of things may not be wholly displeasing to him, as +holding out a hope that the flame which he has been helped by British +legislation to kindle in Ireland may already be taking hold upon the +substructions <a name="page344" id="page344"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 344] +</span>and outworks of the edifice of property in Great Britain +also.</p> + +<p>One thing at least is clear.</p> + +<p>The two antagonistic principles which confront each other in Ireland +to-day are the principles of the Agrarian Revolution represented by Mr. +Davitt, and the principle of Authority, represented in the domain of +politics by the British Government, and in the domain of morals by the +Vatican. With one or the other of these principles the victory must +rest. If the Irish people of all classes who live in Ireland could be +polled to-day, it is likely enough that a decisive majority of them +would declare for the principle of Authority in the State and in the +Church, could that over-riding issue be made perfectly plain and +intelligible to them. But how is that possible? In what country of the +world, and in what age of the world, has it ever been possible to get +such an issue made perfectly plain and intelligible to any people?</p> + +<p>In the domain of morals the principle of Authority, so far as concerns +<a name="page345" id="page345"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 345] +</span>Catholic Ireland, rests with a power which is not likely to waver or +give way. The Papal Decree has gone forth. Those who profess to accept +it will be compelled to obey it. Those who reject it, whatever their +place in the hierarchy of the Church may be, must sooner or later find +themselves where Dr. M‘Glynn of New York now is. Catholic Ireland can +only continue to be Catholic on the condition of obedience, not formal +but real, not in matters indifferent, but in matters vital and +important, to the Head of the Catholic Church.</p> + +<p>In the domain of politics the principle of Authority rests with an +Administration which is at the mercy of the intelligence or the +ignorance, the constancy or the fickleness, the weakness or the +strength, of constituencies in Great Britain, not necessarily familiar +with the facts of the situation in Ireland, not necessarily enlightened +as to the real interests either of Great Britain or of Ireland, nor even +necessarily awake, with Cardinal Manning, to the truth that upon the +future of Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire.</p> + +<p>With two, three, four, or five years of a steady and cool administration +of the laws in Ireland, by an executive officer such as Mr. Balfour +seems to me to have shown himself to be—with a judicious abstinence of +the British Legislature from feverish and fussy legislation about +Ireland, with a prudent and persistent development of the material +resources of Ireland, and with a genuine co-operation of the people who +own land in Ireland with the people who wish to own land in Ireland, for +the readjustment of land-ownership, the principle of Authority in the +domain of politics may doubtless win in the conflict with the principle +of the Agrarian revolution.</p> + +<p><a name="page346" id="page346"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 346] +</span>But how many contingencies are here involved! Meanwhile the influences +which imperil in Ireland the principle of Authority, in the domains +alike of politics and of morals, are at work incessantly, to undermine +and deteriorate the character of the Irish people, to take the vigour +and the manhood out of them, to unfit them day by day, not only for good +citizenship in the British Empire or the United States, but for good +citizenship in any possible Ireland under any possible form of +government. To arrest these influences before they bring on in Ireland a +social crash, the effects of which must be felt far beyond the +boundaries of that country, is a matter of primary importance, +doubtless, to the British people. It is a matter, too, of hardly less +than primary importance to the people of my own country. Unfortunately +it does not rest with us to devise or to apply an efficient check to +these influences.</p> + +<p>That rests with the people of Great Britain, so long as they insist that +Ireland shall remain an integral portion of the British dominions. I do +not see how they can acquit themselves of this responsibility, or escape +the consequences of evading it, solely by devising the most ingenious +machinery of local administration for Ireland, or the most liberal +schemes for fostering the material interests of the Irish people. Such +things, of course, must <a name="page347" id="page347"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 347] +</span>in due time be attended to. But the first duty +of a government is to govern; and I believe that Earl Grey has summed up +the situation in Ireland more concisely and more courageously than any +other British statesman in his outspoken declaration, that “in order to +avert the wreck of the nation, it is absolutely necessary that some +means or other should be found for securing to Ireland during the +present crisis a wiser and more stable administration of its affairs +than can be looked for under its existing institutions.”</p> + +<p>I have heard and read a good deal in the past of the “Three F’s” thought +a panacea for Irish discontent. Three other F’s seem to me quite as +important to the future of Irish content and public order. These are, +Fair Dealing towards Landlords as well as Tenants; Finality of Agrarian +Legislation at Westminster; and last and most essential of all, Fixity +of Executive Tenure.</p> + +<p>The words I have just quoted of Earl Grey, show it to be the conviction +of the oldest living leader of English Liberalism that this last is the +vital point, the key of the situation. Let me bracket with his words, +and leave to the consideration of my readers, the following pregnant +passage from a letter written to me by an Irish correspondent who is as +devoted to Irish independence as is Earl Grey to imperial unity:—</p> + +<p><a name="page348" id="page348"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 348] +</span>If the present Nationalist movement succeeds, it will have the effect +of putting the worst elements of the Irish nation in power, and keeping +them there irremoveably. We are to have an Executive at the mercy of a +House of Representatives, and the result will be a government, or series +of governments, as weak and vicious as those of France, with this +difference, that here all purifying changes such as seem imminent in +France will be absolutely prevented by the irresistible power of +England. The true model for us would be a constitution like yours in the +United States, with an Executive responsible to the nation at large, and +irremoveable for a term of years. But this we shall never get from +England. Shall we make use of Home Rule to take it for ourselves?</p> + +<p>“Many earnest and active Irish Unionists now say that if any bill +resembling Mr. Gladstone’s passes, they will make separation, their +definite policy. If Home Rule comes without the landlords having been +bought out on reasonable terms, a class will be created in Ireland full +of bitter and most just hatred of England—a class which may very likely +one day play the part here which the persecuted Irish Presbyterians who +fled from the tyranny of the English Church in Ireland played in your +own Revolution beyond the Atlantic.”</p> + +<hr /> +<p><a name="page349" id="page349"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 349] +</span></p> + +<h2><a name="page350" id="page350"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 350] +</span>APPENDIX.</h2> + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="page351" id="page351"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 351] +</span><a name="noteF" id="noteF" />NOTE F.<br /> + +THE “MOONLIGHTERS” AND “HOME RULE.”<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. 38.)</h3> + + +<p>On Monday, the 1st of February 1886, the <i>Irish Times</i> published the +following story from Tralee, near the scene of the “boycotting,” +temporal and spiritual, of the unfortunate daughters of Mr. Jeremiah +Curtin, murdered in his own house by “moonlighters”:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<p class="dateline"> “TRALEE, <i>Sunday</i>.</p> + +<p> “It was stated that the bishop had ordered Mass to be celebrated + for them—the Curtins—but this did not take place. At the village + of Firies a number of people had assembled. They stopped loitering + about the place in the forenoon, waiting for a meeting of the + National League, which was subsequently held. A threatening notice + was discovered posted up on the door of a house formerly used as a + forge. It ran as follows:—</p> + +<blockquote> “‘NOTICE.—If we are honoured by the presence of the bloodthirsty + perjurers at Mass on any of the forthcoming Sundays, take good care + you’ll stand up very politely and walk out. Don’t be under the + impression that all the Moonlighters are dead, and that this notice + is a child’s play, as Shawn Nelleen titled the last one. I’ll be + sure to keep my word, as you will see before long, so have no + welcome for the Curtins, and, above all, let no one work for them + in any way. As you respect the Captain, and as you value your own + life, abide by this notice.’—Signed, + <p class="signed">‘A MOONLIGHTER.’</p></blockquote> + +<p> “The above notice was written on tea paper in large legible style, + and evidently by an intelligent person. Groups were perusing it + during the day. A force of police marched through the village and + back, but did not observe this document, as it is still posted on + the door of the house.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The “bloodthirsty perjurers” here mentioned were the daughters who had +dared to demand and to pro<a name="page352" id="page352"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 352] +</span>mote the punishment of the assassins of their +father! For this crime these daughters were to be excommunicated by the +people of Firies, and denied the consolations of religion in their deep +sorrow, even in defiance of the order of the Catholic bishop.</p> + +<p>As the advent of Mr. Gladstone to power in alliance with Mr. Parnell was +then imminent, Mr. Sheehan, M.P., wrote a letter to the parish priest of +Firies, the Rev. Mr. O’Connor, begging him in substance to put the +brakes—for a time—upon the wheels of the local rack, lest the outcries +of the young women subjected to this moral torture should interfere with +the success of the new alliance. This, in plain English, is the only +possible meaning of the letter which I here reprint from a leaflet +issued by an Irish society:—</p> +<blockquote> +<p> “The Rev. Father O’Connor, P.P., has received the following letter + from Mr. Sheehau, M.P., in reference to this matter, under date</p> + +<p class="dateline"> “‘House of Commons, <i>January 26th.</i></p> + +<p> “‘REV. DEAR SIR,—At this important juncture in our history, I am + sorry to see reports of the Firies display. Nothing that has taken + place yet in the South of Ireland has done so much harm to the + National cause. If they persist they will ruin us. To-morrow + evening will be most important in Parliamentary history. Our party + expect the defeat of the Government and resumption of power by Mr. + Gladstone. If we succeed in this, which we are confident of, the + future of our country will be great, and, although an appeal to the + constituencies must be made, the Irish party in those few days have + made an impression in future that no Government can withstand. The + Salisbury Government want to appeal to the country on the integrity + of the empire, and, of course, for the last few days have tried all + means to lead to this by raking up the Curtin case and all judicial + cases, which <i>must be avoided for a short time</i>, as our stoppage to + the Eviction Act will cover all this.—</p> +<p class='signed'>Yours faithfully, J.D. SHEEHAN.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p class="i0">This letter was read, the leaflet informs us, by the Rev. Mr. O’Connor, +at the National Schools and other places.</p> + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="page353" id="page353"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 353] +</span><a name="noteG" id="noteG" />NOTE G.<br /> + +THE PONSONBY PROPERTY.<br /> + +(Vol. ii. pp. <a href="#page59">59</a>-<a href="#page66">66</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>The account which the Rev. Canon Keller gave me of “The Struggle for +Life on the Ponsonby Estate,” in a tract bearing that title, and +authorised by him to be published by the National League, is so +circumstantial and elaborate that, after reading it carefully, I took +unusual pains to obtain some reply to it from the representatives of the +landlord implicated. These finally led to a visit from Mr. Ponsonby +himself, who was so kind as to call upon me in London on the 15th of +May, with papers and documents. I give in the following colloquy the +results of this interview, putting together with the allegations of +Canon Keller the answers of Mr. Ponsonby, and leave the matter in this +form to the judgment of my readers.</p> + +<p><i>Q</i>. Canon Keller, I see, describes you, Mr. Ponsonby, as “a retired +navy officer, and an absentee Irish landlord.” He says your estate is +now “universally known as the famous Ponsonby Estate,” and that it is +occupied “by from 300 to 400 tenants, holding farms varying in extent +from an acre and a half to over two hundred acres.” Are these statements +correct?</p> + +<p><i>A</i>. I am a retired navy officer certainly, and perhaps I may be called +an “absentee Irish landlord.” I lived on my property for some time, and +I have always attended to it. I succeeded to the estate in 1868, and +almost my first act was to borrow £2000 of the Board of Works for +drainage purposes—the tenants agreeing to pay half the interest. As a +matter of fact some never paid at all, and I afterwards wiped out the +claims against them. There are about 300 tenants on the property, and +the average holdings are of about 36 <a name="page354" id="page354"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 354] +</span>acres, at an average rental of £30 +a holding. There are, however, not a few large farms.</p> + +<p><i>Q</i>. Canon Keller says that “in the memory of living witnesses, and far +beyond it, the Ponsonby tenants have been notoriously rack-rented and +oppressed”; and that they have been committed to the “tender mercies of +agents, seeing little or nothing of their landlord, and experiencing no +practical sympathy from that quarter.” How is this?</p> + +<p><i>A</i>. I wish to believe Canon Keller truthful when he knows the truth. He +certainly does not know the truth here. He is a newcomer at Youghal, +having come there in November 1885, and hardly so much of an authority +about “the memory of living witnesses and far beyond it” as the tenants +on the estate, who, when I went there first with my wife, presented to +me, May 25, 1868, an address of welcome, referring in very different +terms to the history of the estate and of my family connection with it. +Here is the original address, and a copy of it—the latter being quite +at your service.</p> + +<p>This original address is very handsomely engrossed, and is signed by +fifty tenants. Among the names I observed those of Martin Loughlin, +Peter McDonough, Michael Gould, William Forrest, and John Heaphey, all +of whom are cited by Canon Keller in his tract as conspicuous victims of +the oppression and rack-renting which he says have prevailed upon the +Ponsonby estates time out of mind. It was rather surprising, therefore, +to find them joining with more than forty other tenants to sign an +address, of which I here print the text:—</p> +<blockquote> +<p class="center"> To C.W. TALBOT PONSONBY, Esq.</p> + +<p> Honoured Sir,—The Tenantry of your Estates near Youghal have heard + with extreme pleasure of the arrival of yourself and lady in the + neighbourhood, and have deputed us to address you on their behalf.</p> + +<p> <a name="page355" id="page355"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 355] +</span>Through us they bid you and Mrs. Ponsonby welcome, and respectfully + congratulate you on your accession to the Estates.</p> + +<p> The name of Ponsonby is traditionally revered in this part of the + country, being associated in the recollections and impressions of + the people with all that is exalted, honourable, and generous. It + has been matter of regret that the heads of the family have not + (probably from uncontrollable causes) visited these Estates for + many years, but the tenantry have never wavered in their sentiments + of respect towards them.</p> + +<p> We will not disguise from you the conviction generally entertained + that the improvement of landed property, and the condition of its + occupiers, is best promoted under the personal observation and + supervision of the proprietor, and your tenantry on that account + hail with satisfaction the promise your presence affords of future + intercourse between you and them.</p> + +<p> Again, on the part of your Tenants and all connected with your + Estates, tendering you and your lady a most hearty welcome, and + sincerely wishing you and her a long and happy career—We subscribe + ourselves, Honoured Sir, Respectfully yours,</p> + +<p class="signed"> YOUGHAL, <i>May</i> 1868.</p> +</blockquote> +<p><i>Q</i>. Did Canon Keller ever see this address, may I ask, Mr. Ponsonby?</p> + +<p><i>A</i>. I believe not; and I may as well say at once that I suppose he has +taken for gospel all the stories which any of the tenants under the +terrorism which has been established on the place think it best to pour +into his listening ear. As I have said, he is quite a new man at +Youghal, and when he first came there he was a quiet and not at all +revolutionary priest. You saw him, and saw how good his manners are, and +that he is a well-educated man. But on Sunday, November 7, 1886, a great +meeting was held at Youghal. It was a queer meeting for a Sunday, being +openly a political meeting, with banners and bands, to hear speeches +from Mr. Lane, M.P., Mr. Flynn, M.P., and others. The Rev. Mr. Keller +presided, and a priest from America, Father Hayes of Georgetown, Iowa, +in the United States, was present. It was ostensibly a <a name="page356" id="page356"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 356] +</span>Home Rule +meeting, but the burden of the speeches was agrarian. Mr. Lane, M.P., +made a bitter personal attack on another Nationalist member, Sir Joseph +M‘Kenna of Killeagh, calling him a “heartless and inhuman landlord;” and +my property was also attended to by Mr. Lane, who advised my tenants +openly not to accept my offer of 20 per cent. reduction, but to demand +40 per cent. Father Hayes in his speech bade “every man stand to his +guns,” and wound up by declaring that if England and the landlords +behaved in America as they behaved in Ireland, the Americans “would pelt +them not only with dynamite, but with the lightnings of Heaven and the +fires of hell, till every British bull-dog, whelp, and cur would be +pulverised and made top-dressing for the soil.” Canon Keller afterwards +expressed disapproval of this speech of Hayes, and this coming to the +knowledge of Hayes in America, Hayes denounced Keller for not daring to +do this at the time in his presence. Since then Canon Keller has been +much more violent in tone.</p> + +<p><i>Q</i>. I don’t want to carry you through a long examination, Mr. Ponsonby, +but I see typical cases here, about which I should like to ask a +question or two. Here, is Callaghan Flavin, for instance, described by +Canon Keller as one of eight tenants who “had to retreat before the +crowbar brigade,” and who “deserved a better fate.” Canon Keller says he +is assured by a competent judge that Flavin’s improvements, “full value +for £341, 10s.,” are now “the landlord’s property.” What are the facts +about Mr. Flavin?</p> + +<p><i>A</i>. Mr. Flavin’s farm was held by his cousin, Ellen Flavin of Gilmore, +who, on the 7th of February 1872, surrendered it to the landlord on +receiving from me a sum of £172, 10s. 6d. I obtained a charging order +under section 27 of the Land Act, entitling me to an annuity of £8, 12s. +6d. for thirty-five years from <a name="page357" id="page357"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 357] +</span>July 3, 1872. It was let to Callaghan +Flavin in preference to other applicants, July 3, 1872; and in 1873, at +his request, I obtained a loan from the Board of Works for the thorough +draining of a portion of the farm. Thirteen acres were drained at a cost +of £84, 6s. 3d., for which the tenant promised to pay 5 per cent. +interest, which I eventually forgave him. There was no house on the +farm. He took it without one, and I did not want one there. He built a +house himself without consulting my agent, and then wanted me to make +him an allowance for it. I told him he had thirty-one years to enjoy it +in, and must be content with that. About the same time he took another +farm of mine at a rent of £35. Since I came into my property in 1868 I +have laid out upon it in drainage, buildings, and planting—here are the +accounts, which you may look at—over £15,000, including about £8000 of +loans from the Board of Works. In the drainage the tenants got work for +which they were paid. I gave them slates for the buildings, with timber +and stone from the estate, and they supplied the labour. There is no +case in which the outlays for improvements came from the tenants—not a +single one. I repeat it, Canon Keller’s tract is a tissue of fictions.</p> + +<p>What nonsense it is to talk about the “traditional rack-renting” of a +property held by the Ponsonbys for two hundred years, the tenants on +which could welcome me when I came into it with the language of the +address you have here seen!</p> + +<p>I never evicted tenants for less than three years’ arrears, till what +Canon Keller calls the “crowbar brigade,” by which he means the officers +of the law, had to be put into action to meet the “Plan of Campaign” in +May last. I did not proceed against the tenants because they could not +pay. I selected the tenants who could pay, and who were led, or, I +believe <a name="page358" id="page358"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 358] +</span>in most cases, “coerced,” into refusing to pay by agitators with +Mr. Lane, M.P., to inspire them, and Canon Keller, P.P., to glorify them +in a tract.</p> + +<p><i>Q</i>. What were your personal relations with the tenants when you were at +Inchiquin?</p> + +<p><i>A</i>. Always most friendly; and even the other day when I was there, +while none of them would speak to me when they were all together, those +I met individually touched their hats, and were as civil as ever. I +believe they would all be thankful to have things as they were, and I +have never refused to meet and treat with them on fair individual terms.</p> + +<p>In November 1885 my offer of an abatement of 15 per cent. being refused, +a few tenants, I believe, clubbed their rents, and for the sake of peace +I then offered 20 per cent., which they accepted and paid. In October +1886 I hoped to prevent trouble by making the same offer of 20 per cent. +abatement on non-judicial and 10 per cent. on judicial rents. One man +took the latter abatement and paid. Then another tenant demanded 40 per +cent. My agent said he would give them time, and also take money on +account, the effect of which would be to put me out of court, and +prevent my getting an order of ejectment if I wanted to for the balance. +I thought this fair, and approved it, but I refused to make a 40 per +cent. all-round abatement, authorising my agent, however, to make what +abatements he liked in special cases. My words were, “I don’t limit you +on the amount of abatement you give, or as to the number of tenants you +may choose so to treat.” If this was not a fair free hand, what would +be? My agent afterwards told me he had no chance to make this known. The +fact is they meant to force the Plan on the tenants and me, and to +prevent any settlement but a “victory for the League!”</p> + +<p>In my original notes of my conversation with Father <a name="page359" id="page359"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 359] +</span>Keller at Youghal, I +found the name of one tenant whom he introduced to me, and who certainly +told me that his holdings amounted to some £300 a year, and that they +had been in his family for “two hundred years,” set down as Doyle—I so +printed it with the statements made. But Father Keller, to whom I +submitted my proofs, and who was so good as to revise them, struck out +the name of Doyle, and inserted that of Loughlin, putting the rental +down at £94 (vol. ii. p. <a href="#page71">71</a>). Of course I accept this correction. But on +my mentioning the matter to Mr. Ponsonby by letter, he replies to me +(July 27th) as follows:—</p> +<blockquote> +<p> “Maurice Doyle is a son of Richard Doyle, who died in 1876, leaving + his widow to carry on his farm of 74 acres 1 rood, in the townland + of Ballykitty, which he held in 1858 at a rental of £50, 11s. In + 1868 this was reduced to £48, 11s. In September 1871 he took in + addition a farm of 159 acres 2 roods at £130, in Burgen and + Ballykitty. He afterwards got a lease for thirty-one years of this + larger farm, with a portion of his earlier holding, for £155. This + left him to pay £21, 11s. for the residue of the earlier holding as + in 1858. But at his request, in 1876, the year of his death, I + reduced this to £17.</p> + +<p> “In March 1879, by the death of Mr. Henry Hall, in whose family it + had been for certainly a century, the Inchiquin farm of 213 acres, + valued at £258, 10s., came on my hands. This farm was valued in + 1873 by one valuer at £384, 10s., and by another at £390, 10s. In + an old lease I find that this farm was let at £3 an acre. Mr. Henry + Hall to the day of his death held it at £306, 7s. 6d., under a + lease which I made a lease for life. For this farm Mrs. Richard + Doyle applied, agreeing to take it on a 31 years’ lease, at £370 a + year. I let it to her, and she became the lease-holder, putting in + her son Maurice Doyle to take charge of it, though not as the + tenant. He was an active Land Leaguer from the moment he got into + the place, and in 1886 he was a leader in promoting the Plan of + Campaign. Proceedings had to be taken against his mother in order + to eject him, as she was the tenant, not he. I objected to this, + for I always have had the greatest regard for her. Had she been let + alone she would have paid her rent as she had always done. But Mr. + Lane and his allies saw it would <a name="page360" id="page360"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 360] +</span>never do to let Maurice Doyle + retain his place on his mother’s holding. All this will show you + that Maurice Doyle did not inherit the Inchiquin farm. The only + inherited holding of his mother is the farm of 74 acres 1 rood in + the townland of Ballykitty, held by his father in 1858. I have no + doubt you saw Doyle at Youghal, by the description you gave me, and + you remembered his name at once. He was a thickset heavy-looking + man, florid, with a military moustache, the last time I saw him. + His mother is one of the ‘rack-rented’ tenants you hear of, having + been able in ten years to increase her acreage from 74 acres to 376 + acres, and her rental from £48, 11s. to £542!”</p> + +</blockquote> + +<p>As to the general effect of all this business upon the tenants, and upon +himself, Mr. Ponsonby spoke most feelingly. “The tenants are ruined +where they might have been thriving. My means of being useful to them or +to myself are taken away. My charges, though, all remain. I have to pay +tithes for Protestant Church service, of which I can’t have the benefit, +the churches being closed; and the other day I had a notice that any +property I had in England would be held liable for quit-rents to the +Crown on my property in Ireland, of which the Government denies me +practically any control or use!”</p> + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="noteG2" id="noteG2" />NOTE G2.<br /> + +THE GLENBEHY EVICTION FUND.<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. <a href="#page12">12</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>In the <i>London Times</i> of September 15 appears the following letter from +the Land Agent whom I saw at Glenbehy, setting forth the effect of this +“Glenbehy Eviction Fund” upon the morals of the tenants and the peace of +the place:—</p> +<blockquote> +<p class="center"> <i>To the Editor of the Times.</i></p> + +<p> “Sir,—Although nearly eighteen months have elapsed since the + evictions on the Glenbehy estate, after which the above-<a name="page361" id="page361"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 361] +</span>named fund + was started and largely subscribed to by the sympathetic British + public, I think it only fair to throw a little light on the manner + in which this fund has been expended, and the effects which are + still felt in consequence of the money not yet being exhausted.</p> + +<p> “It was generally supposed that the tenants then evicted were in + such poor circumstances as to be unable to settle, whereas, as a + matter of fact, they were, and are, with a few exceptions, the most + well-to-do on the estate, having, for the most part, from five to + fifteen head of cattle, in addition to sheep, pigs, etc.</p> + +<p> “Among the tenants evicted at that time many had not paid rents + since 1879, and had been in illegal occupation since 1884, from + which latter date the landlord was responsible for taxes, provided + it is proved that sufficient distress cannot be made of the lands. + These tenants were offered a clear receipt to May 1, 1886, if they + paid half a year’s rent, which would scarcely have paid the cost of + proceedings, and the landlord would therefore have been put to + actual loss. These people, though well able to settle, are given to + understand that as soon as they do so their participation in the + eviction fund will cease, and thus it will be seen that a direct + premium is being paid to dishonesty.</p> + +<p> “In one case a widow woman was summoned for being on the farm from + which she was at that time evicted. Finding out that one of her + children was ill, I applied to the magistrate at the hearing of the + case only to impose a nominal fine. In consequence she was fined + one penny, but sooner than pay this she went to gaol, though she + had several head of cattle and, prior to her eviction, a very nice + farm. The case of this woman fairly illustrates the combination + which has existed to avoid the fulfilment of obligations.</p> + +<p> “The amount of fines paid for similar offences comes, in several + instances, to nearly what I require to effect a settlement. Some of + the tenants actually wrote to the late agent on this estate begging + him to evict them in order that they might come in for a share of + the money raised for the relief of distress, and this clearly shows + beyond dispute that the well-meaning subscribers to the fund will + be more or less responsible for any further evictions to which it + may be necessary to resort. I may mention that the parish priest is + one of the trustees for the money which is thus being used for the + purpose of preventing settlements and keeping the place in a + continual state of turmoil.</p> + +<p> “Judge Currane, at the January sessions held at Killarney <a name="page362" id="page362"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 362] +</span>this + year, ruled in about fifty ejectment cases on this estate that + tenants owing one and a half to nine years’ rent should pay half a + year’s rent and costs within a week, a quarter of a year’s rent by + June 1, and a quarter of a year’s rent by October 1; arrears to be + cancelled. Some of these, owing to non-compliance with the Judge’s + ruling, may have to be evicted, and their eviction will be what is + termed the unrooting of peasants’ houses and the ejectment of + overburdened tenants for not paying impossible rents.</p> + +<p> “I confess I am at a loss to understand how Mr. Parnell’s Arrears + Act would have improved matters or have averted what one of your + contemporaries calls a “painful scandal.”—I am, Sirs, yours, &c.,</p> + +<p class="signed"> “D. TODD-THORNTON, J.P., Land Agent.</p> + +<p class="i0"> “Glenbehy, Killarney.”</p> +</blockquote> + + +<hr /><h3><a name="noteG3" id="noteG3" />NOTE G3.<br /> + +HOME RULE AND PROTESTANTISM.<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. <a href="#page68">68</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>I fear that all the “Nationalist” clergy in Ireland are not as careful +as Father Keller to avoid giving occasion for this impression that Irish +autonomy would be followed by a persecution of the Protestants. But a +little more than three years ago, for example, the following circular +was issued by the Bishop of Ossory, and affixed to the door of the +churches in his diocese. Who can wonder that it should have been +regarded by Protestants in that diocese as a direct stirring up of +bitter religious animosities against them? Or that, emanating directly +as it did from a bishop of the Church, it should be represented as +emanating indirectly from the Head of the Church himself at Rome?</p> + +<p> “<i>Kilkenny, April 16th, 1885.</i></p> + +<p> “REV. DEAR SIR,—May I ask you to read the following circular for + the people at each of the Masses on Sunday, 19th April?</p> + +<p> “The course to be adopted for the future by the Priest of the Parish + to whom notice of a Mixed Marriage is given by the <a name="page363" id="page363"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 363] +</span>Minister, or the + Registrar, is as follows:—he makes the following entry on the book + of Parochial announcements, and reads it three consecutive Sundays + from the Altar:—</p> + +<p> “‘The Priests of the Parish have received the following notice of a + marriage to be celebrated between a Catholic and a Protestant. [Here + read Registrar’s notice in full.] We have now to inform you that the + law of the Catholic Church regarding such marriages is: that the + Catholic party contracting marriage before a Registrar or other + unauthorised person is, by the very fact of so doing, + Excommunicated; and the witnesses to such marriage are also + Excommunicated.’</p> + +<p> “I should be very much obliged if, as occasion may require, you + would explain the effects of this Excommunication from the Altar.</p> + +<p> “You will please take notice that the Registrar or Minister is bound + legally to send the notice of marriage referred to above, and also, + that in reading it out <i>in the form, and with the accompanying + remarks above</i>, you incur no legal penalty.</p> + +<p> “I feel sure that with your accustomed zeal you will do everything + in your power to prevent abuses in regard to the Sacrament of + Matrimony, which is great in Christ and the Church, and to induce + the faithful to prepare for receiving it by Prayer, by works of + Charity, and by approaching the Sacrament of Penance to purify their + souls.—Yours faithfully in Christ,</p> + +<p class="signed"> [Image: Cross] A. BROWNRIGG.”</p> + + +<p> “MY DEAR BRETHREN,—We have been very much pained to learn, within + the past month, that marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics + have increased very much in this city of Kilkenny. Many + <i>evil-disposed</i> persons, utterly unmindful of the prohibitions of + the Church, and regardless of the dreadful consequences they bring + on themselves, have not hesitated to enter into those <i>unholy + matrimonial alliances</i> called “Mixed Marriages,” which the Catholic + Church has always <i>hated and detested</i>. Those misguided Catholics, + who do not deserve the name, have not blushed to go, in some + instances, before the Protestant Minister, in other instances, + before the Public Registrar, to ask them to assist at their marriage + with a Protestant. By contracting marriage in this way, they run a + great risk of bringing on themselves and on their children, should + they have any, the <i>maledictions</i> of Heaven instead of the blessings + of religion. In order to put a stop to this growing abuse, and to + prevent it from spreading like a contagion to other parts of the + Diocese, we beg to remind the faithful of certain regulations which, + for the future, shall have force in the Diocese of <a name="page364" id="page364"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 364] +</span>Ossory in + reference to the Catholics, who so far forget themselves as to + contract such marriages.</p> + +<p> “1. In the first place, any one who contracts a “Mixed Marriage” + without a dispensation from the Holy See and before a Protestant + Minister or a Registrar is, by the very fact, guilty of a most + grievous mortal sin by violating a solemn law of the Church in a + most grave matter.</p> + +<p> “2. The Catholic who assists as witness at such marriage also + commits a most grievous sin by co-operating in an unlawful act.</p> + +<p> “3. Both the Catholic party contracting the marriage and the + Catholic witnesses to it cannot be absolved by any priest in the + Diocese of Ossory, unless by the Bishop or by those to whom he + grants special faculties.</p> + +<p> “4. In order more effectually to deter people from entering into + <i>those detestable marriages</i>, the penalty of <i>Excommunication</i> + is hereby attached to that sin both for the Catholic <i>contracting</i> + party as also for the Catholic <i>witnesses</i> to such marriage.</p> + +<p> “5. The notice which the Protestant Rector or the Registrar is + legally bound in such cases to send to the Parish Priest of the + Catholic party, will be read from the Altar for three consecutive + Sundays, and thus the <i>crime</i> of the offending party brought out + into open light before his or her fellow-parishioners.</p> + +<p> “6. For the rest, we hope the sense of decency and religion of the + Catholic people and their Pastors shall be no more hurt by any + Catholic entering into those marriages, so full of, misery and evil + of every kind for themselves, their children, and society at + large.—Yours faithfully in Christ,</p> + +<p class="signed"> [Image: Cross] ABRAHAM, Bishop of Ossory.</p> + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="noteH" id="noteH" />NOTE H.<br /> + +TULLY AND THE WOODFORD EVICTIONS.<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. <a href="#page149">149</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>Since the first edition of this book was published certain “evictions” +mentioned in it as impending on the Clanricarde estates have been +carried out. I have <a name="page365" id="page365"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 365] +</span>no reason to suppose that there was more or less +reason for carrying out these evictions than there usually is, not in +Ireland only, but all over the civilised world, for a resort by the +legal owners of property to legal means of recovering the possession of +it from persons who fail to comply with the terms on which it was put +into their keeping. Whether this failure results from dishonesty or from +misfortune is a consideration not often allowed, I think, to affect the +right of the legal owner of the property concerned to his legal remedy +in any other country but Ireland, nor even in Ireland in the case of any +property other than property in land. But as what I learned on the spot +touching the general condition of the Clanricarde tenants, and touching +the conduct and character of Lord Clanricarde’s agent, Mr. Tener, led me +to take a special interest in these evictions, I asked him to send me +some account of them. In reply he gave me a number of interesting +details.</p> + +<p>The only serious attempt at resisting the execution of the law was made +by “Dr.” Tully, one of the leading local “agitators,” to the tendency of +whose harangues judicial reference was made during the investigation +into the case of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt. Tully had a holding of seventeen +acres at a rent of £2, 10s., the Government valuation being £4. He +earned a good livelihood as a boat-builder, and he had put up a slated +house on his holding. But in November 1884 he chose to stop paying the +very low rent at which he held his place, and he has paid no rent since +that time. As is stated in a footnote on page <a href="#page153">153</a>, vol. ii. of this +book, a decree was granted against Tully by Judge Henn for three years’ +rent due in May 1887, and his equity of redemption having expired July +9, 1888, this recourse was had to the law against him.</p> + +<p>As the leading spirit of the agitation, Tully had put <a name="page366" id="page366"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 366] +</span>a garrison into +his house of twelve men and two women. He had dug a ditch around it, +taken out the window-sashes, filled up the casements and the doorways +with stones and trunks of trees. Portholes had been pierced under the +roof, through which the defenders might thrust red-hot pikes, +pitchforks, and other weapons, and empty pails of boiling water upon the +assailants. A brief parley took place. Tully refused to make any offer +of a settlement unless the agent would agree to reinstate all the +evicted tenants, to which Mr. Tener replied that he would recognise no +“combination,” but was ready to deal with every tenant fairly and +individually. Finally the Sheriff ordered his men to take the place. +Ladders were planted, and while some of the constables, under the +protection of a shield covered with zinc, a sort of Roman <i>testudo</i>, +worked at removing the earthern ramparts, others nimbly climbed to the +roof and began to break in from above. In their excitement the garrison +helped this forward by breaking holes through the roof themselves to get +at the attacking party, and in about twenty minutes the fortress was +captured, and the inmates were prisoners. Two constables were burned by +the red-hot pikes, the gun of another was broken to pieces by a huge +stone, and a fourth was slightly wounded by a fork. One of the defenders +got a sword-cut; and Tully was brought forth as one too severely wounded +to walk. Upon investigation, however, the surgeon refused to certify +that he was unable to undergo the ordinary imprisonment in such cases +made and provided.</p> + +<p>The collapse of the resistance at this central point was followed by a +general surrender.</p> + +<p>After the capture of Tully’s house, Mr. Tener writes to me, “I found it +being gutted by his family, who would have carried it away piecemeal. +They had <a name="page367" id="page367"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 367] +</span>already taken away the flooring of one of the rooms.” Thereupon +Mr. Tener had the house pulled down, with the result of seeing a +statement made in a leading Nationalist paper that he was “evicting the +tenants and pulling down their houses.”</p> + +<p>“Yesterday,” Mr. Tener writes to me on the 9th of September, “I walked +twenty-five miles, visiting thirty farms about Portumna. Except in two +or three cases, the tenants have ample means, and part of the live stock +alone on the farms, exclusive of the crops, would suffice to pay all the +rents I had demanded. On the farms recently ‘evicted,’ I found treble +the amount of the rent due in live stock alone.”</p> + +<p>As to one case of these recent evictions, I found it stated in an Irish +journal that a young man, who had been ill of consumption for two years, +the son of a tenant, was removed from the house, the local physician +refusing to certify that he was unfit for removal, and that he died a +few days afterwards. The implication was obvious, and I asked Mr. Tener +for the facts.</p> + +<p>He replied, “This young man, John Fahey, was in consumption, but did not +appear to be in any danger. Dr. Carte, an Army surgeon, examined him, +and said there was no immediate danger. The day was fine and he walked +about wrapped in a comfortable coat, and talked with me and others. His +father, a respectable man, made no attempt to defend his house; and at +his request, after the crowd had gone away, my man in charge permitted +the invalid and the family to reoccupy the house temporarily because of +his illness. There was no inquest, and no need of any, after his death. +His father, Patrick Fahey, had means to pay, but told me he ‘could not,’ +which meant he ‘dared not.’ I went to him personally twice, and sent him +many messages. But the terror of the League was upon the poor man.</p> + +<p><a name="page368" id="page368"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 368] +</span>“An interesting case is that of Michael Fahey, of Dooras. In 1883 his +rent was judicially reduced about 5 per cent., from £33 to £31, 5s. His +house and all about it is substantial and comfortable. His father, about +thirty years ago, fought for a whole night and bravely beat off a party +of ‘Terry-Alts,’ the ‘Moonlighters’ of that day. For his courage the +Government presented him with a gun, of which the son is very proud. +Pity he did not inherit the pluck with the gun of his parent!</p> + +<p>“I had been privately told that this tenant would pay; but that he would +first produce a doctor’s certificate that his old mother could not be +moved. He did give the Sheriff a carefully worded document to show this, +but it was so vague that I objected to its being received by the +Sheriff. Upon this (not before! mark the craft of even a well-disposed +Irish tenant in those evil days), I was asked to go into the house. I +went in and entered the parlour. There the tenant told me he would pay +the year’s rent and the costs, amounting to £50. He had risen from his +seat to fetch the money, when, lo! Father Egan (the priest upon whose +head the widow of the murdered Finlay called down the curse of God in +the open street of Woodford) appeared in the doorway. He had come in on +a pretence of seeing the old mother of the tenant, who had (for that +occasion) taken to her bed. The bedroom lay beyond the parlour, and was +entered from it. The tenant actually shook with fear as Father Egan +passed through, and I thought all hope of a settlement gone, when +suddenly the officer of the police came in, passed into the bedroom, and +told Father Egan he must withdraw. This Father Egan refused to do, +whereupon the officer said very quietly, ‘I shall remove you forthwith +if you do not go out quietly.’ Upon this Father Egan hastily left. The +tenant then went into the bedroom and soon <a name="page369" id="page369"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 369] +</span>reappeared with the £50 in +bank-notes, which he paid me. All this was dramatic enough. But the +comedy was next performed in front of the house, where all could see it, +of handing to the Sheriff the alleged doctor’s certificate, and of my +saying aloud that ‘in the circumstances’ I had no objection to his +receiving it! After this all the forces proceeded to take their luncheon +on the green bank sloping down to the Shannon in front of the +farm-house. There is a fine orchard on the place, and it recalled to me +some of the farms I saw in Virginia.</p> + +<p>“I had gone into the house again, and was standing near the fire in the +kitchen, where some of my escort were taking their luncheon. It is a +large kitchen, and perhaps a dozen people were in it, when in came +Father Egan again and called to the tenant Fahey, ‘Put out those +policemen, and do not suffer one of them to remain.’</p> + +<p>“The sergeant instantly said, ‘We are here on duty, Father Egan, and if +you dare to try to intimidate this tenant, I shall either put you out or +arrest you.’</p> + +<p>“‘Yes,’ I interposed, looking at the sergeant, ‘you are certainly here +on duty, and in the name of the law, and it is sad to see a clergyman +here in the interest of an illegal, criminal, and rebellious movement, +and of the immoral Plan of Campaign.’</p> + +<p>“‘Oh!’ exclaimed Father Egan, ‘the opinion of the agent of the Marquis +of Clanricarde is valuable, truly!’</p> + +<p>“‘I give you,’ I said, ‘not my opinion, but the opinion of Dr. Healy and +Dr. O’Dwyer, bishops of your Church, and men worthy of all respect and +reverence. And I am sorry to know that some ecclesiastics deserve no +respect, but that at their doors lies the main responsibility for the +misery and the crime which afflict our unhappy country. I feel sure a +just God will punish them in due time.’</p> + +<p><a name="page370" id="page370"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 370] +</span>“Father Egan made no reply, but paused a moment, and then walked out of +the house.</p> + +<p>“At the next house, that of Dennis Fahey, we found a still better +dwelling. Here we had another mock certificate, but we received the rent +with the costs.”</p> + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="noteH2" id="noteH2" />NOTE H2.<br /> + +BOYCOTTING THE DEAD.<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. <a href="#page151">151</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>The following official account sent to me (July 24) of an affair in +Donegal, the result of the gospel of “Boycotting” taught in that region, +needs and will bear no comment.</p> + +<p>Patrick Cavanagh came to reside at Clonmany, County Donegal, about two +months ago, as caretaker on some evicted farms. He died on Wednesday +evening, June 20th, having received the full rites of the Roman Catholic +Church. The people had displayed no ill-will towards him during his +brief residence at Clonmany, and on the evening of his death his body +was washed and laid out by some women. On Thursday two townsmen dug his +grave, where pointed out by Father Doherty, P.P.</p> + +<p>The first symptom of change of feeling was that on Thursday every +carpenter applied to had some excuse for not making a coffin for the +body of deceased. On Friday morning the grave was found to be filled +with stones, and a deputation waited on Father Doherty to protest +against Cavanagh’s burial in the chapel graveyard. He told them to go +home and mind their business. About 10.30 A.M. on Friday the chapel bell +was rung—not tolled or rung as for service, but faster. The local +sergeant of police went to the cemetery; when he <a name="page371" id="page371"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 371] +</span>arrived there the +tolling ceased. He then went to Father Doherty, who told those present +that their conduct was such as to render them unfit for residence +anywhere but in a savage country. He told them to go to their homes, and +advised them to allow the corpse to be buried in the grave he had marked +out. After Father Doherty had left, the people condemned his +interference, and said they would not allow any stranger to be buried in +the graveyard. When Constable Brady put it to those present that their +real objection did not lie in the fact that Cavanagh had been a +stranger, he was not contradicted.</p> + +<p>The body was ultimately buried at Carndonagh on Saturday, several people +remaining in the graveyard at Clonmany all through the night (Friday) +till the body was taken to Carndonagh for burial.</p> + +<p>At Carndonagh Petty Sessions, on the 18th July 1888, Con. Doherty and +Owen Doherty, with five others, were prosecuted for unlawful assembly on +the occasion above referred to. The first two named, who were the +ringleaders, were convicted, and sentenced to six weeks’ imprisonment +each with hard labour; the charges against the remainder were dismissed.</p> + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="noteI" id="noteI" />NOTE I.<br /> + +POST-OFFICE SAVINGS BANKS.<br /> + +(Vol. i. p. 117; vol. ii. pp. <a href="#page5">5</a>, <a href="#page12">12</a>, <a href="#page66">66</a>, <a href="#page95">95</a>, <a href="#page200">200</a>, <a href="#page248">248</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>As the Post-Office Savings Banks represent the smaller depositors, and +command special confidence among them even in the disturbed districts, I +print here an official statement showing the balances due to depositors +in the undermentioned offices, situated in certain of the most disturbed +regions I visited, on the <a name="page372" id="page372"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 372] +</span>31st December of the years 1880 and 1887 +respectively:—</p> + +<div class="center"><table> +<thead><tr><td> OFFICE </td><td> 1880 </td><td> 1887 </td></tr></thead><tbody> +<tr><td> </td><td> £ s. d. </td><td> £ s. d. </td></tr> +<tr><td> Bunbeg </td><td> 1,270 6 7 </td><td> 1,206 18 2 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Falcarragh </td><td> 62 15 10 </td><td> 494 10 8 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Gorey </td><td> 3,690 14 4 </td><td> 5,099 5 7 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Inch </td><td>[A] 8 11 0 </td><td> 209 7 5 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Killorglin </td><td> 282 15 9 </td><td> 1,299 2 6 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Loughrea </td><td> 5,500 19 9 </td><td> 6,311 4 11 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Mitchelstown </td><td> 1,387 13 2 </td><td> 2,846 9 3 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Portumna </td><td> 2,539 10 11 </td><td> 3,376 5 4 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Sixmilebridge </td><td> 382 17 10 </td><td> 934 13 4 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Stradbally </td><td> 1,812 14 8 </td><td> 2,178 18 2 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Woodford </td><td> 259 14 6 </td><td> 1,350 17 11 </td></tr> +<tr><td> Youghal </td><td> 3,031 0 7 </td><td> 7,038 7 2 </td></tr></tbody> +</table></div> +<p> + [A] This Office was not opened for Savings Bank + business until the year 1881, the amount shown + being balance due on the 31st December 1882.</p> + +<p>It appears from this table that the deposits in these Savings Banks +increased in the aggregate from £20,329, 15s. 11d. in 1880 to £32,347, +9s. 7d. in 1887, or almost 60 per cent, in seven years. They fell off in +only one case, at Bunbeg, and there only to a nominal amount. At Youghal +they much more than doubled, increasing about 133 per cent. Yet in all +these places the Plan of Campaign has been invoked “because the people +were penniless and could not pay their debts!”</p> + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="noteK" id="noteK" />NOTE K.<br /> + +THE COOLGREANY EVICTIONS.<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. <a href="#page216">216</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>Captain Hamilton sends me the following graphic account of this affair +at Coolgreany:—</p> + +<p><a name="page373" id="page373"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 373] +</span>In the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i> of the 16th December 1886, it is reported +that a meeting of the Brooke tenantry, the Rev. P. O’Neill in the chair, +was held at Coolgreany on the Sunday previous to the 15th December 1886, +the date on which the “Plan of Campaign” was adopted on the estate, at +which it was resolved that if I refused the terms offered they would +join the “Plan.”</p> + +<p>I had no conference at Freeman’s house or anywhere else at any time with +two parish priests. On the 15th December 1886, when seated in Freeman’s +house waiting to receive the rents, four priests, a reporter of the +<i>Freeman’s Journal</i>, some local reporters, and four of the tenants +rushed into the room; and the priests in the rudest possible manner (the +Rev. P. Farrelly, one of them, calling me “Francy Hyne’s hangman,” and +other terms of abuse) informed me that unless I re-instated a former +Roman Catholic tenant in a farm which he had previously held, and which +was then let to a Protestant, and gave an abatement of 30 per cent., no +rent would be paid <i>me</i> that day. Dr. Dillon, C.C., was not present on +this occasion, or, if so, I do not remember seeing him.</p> + +<p>On my asking if I had no alternative but to concede to their demand, the +Rev. Mr. Dunphy, parish priest, replied, “None other; do not think, sir, +we have come here to-day to do honour to you.”</p> + +<p>The Rev. P. O’Neill spoke as he always does, in a more gentlemanly and +conciliatory manner, and I therefore, as the confusion in the room was +great, offered to discuss the matter with him, the Rev. O’Donel, C.C., +and the tenants, if the other priests, who were strangers to me, and the +reporters would leave the room. This the Rev. Mr. Dunphy declared they +would not do, and I accordingly refused further to discuss the matter.</p> + +<p>After they left the house, one of the tenants, Mick <a name="page374" id="page374"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 374] +</span>Darcy, stepped +forward and said, “Settle with us, Captain.” I replied, “Certainly, if +you come back with me into the house.” The Rev. Mr. Dunphy took him by +the collar of his coat and threw him against the wall of the house, then +turning to me with his hand raised said, “You shall not do so; we, who +claim the temporal as well as spiritual power over <i>you</i> as well as +these poor creatures, will settle this matter with you.”</p> + +<p>The tenants were then taken down to the League rooms, where two M.P.s, +Sir Thomas Esmonde and Mr. Mayne, were waiting to receive the rents, +which, one by one, they were ordered in to pay into the war-chest of the +“Plan of Campaign.”</p> + +<p>I have I fear written too much of this commencement of the war on the +estate which has since led to over seventy of the tenants and their +families being ejected, and has brought ruin on nearly all who joined +it. I have considerable experience as a land agent, but I know of no +estate where the tenants were more respectable, better housed, or, as a +body, in better circumstances than on the Brooke estate. They had a +kind, indulgent landlord, and they knew it; and nothing but the belief +that, led by their clergy, they were foremost in a battle fighting for +their country and religion, would have induced them to put up with the +great hardships and loss they have undoubtedly had to suffer.</p> + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="page375" id="page375"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 375] +</span><a name="noteL" id="noteL" />NOTE L.<br /> + +A DUCAL SUPPER IN IRELAND IN 1711.<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. <a href="#page283">283</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>The following entry I take from the Expense-Book of the Duke of Ormond, +under date of August 23, 1711:—</p> + + +<div class="center"> +<br /><br /> +His Grace came to Kilkenny, half an hour after 10 at night. +<br /><br /> +HIS GRACE’S TABLE.<br /><br /> + +Pottage. Sautee Veal.<br /> +5 Pullets, Bacon and Collyflowers.<br /> +Pottage Meagre.<br /> +Pikes with White Sauce.<br /> +A Turbot with Lobster Sauce.<br /> +Umbles.<br /> +A Hare Hasht.<br /> +Buttered Chickens, G.<br /> +Hasht Veal and New Laid Eggs.<br /> +Removes.<br /> +A Shoulder and Neck of Mutton.<br /> +Haunch of Venison.<br /> +<br /><br /> +<i>Second Course.</i><br /> +<br /> +Lobsters.<br /> +Tarts, an Oval Dish.<br /> +Crabbs Buttered.<br /> +4 Pheasants, 4 Partridges, 4 Turkeys.<br /> +Ragoo Mushrooms.<br /> +Kidney Beans. Ragoo Oysters.<br /> +Fritters.<br /> +Two Sallets. +</div> + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="noteM" id="noteM" />NOTE M.<br /> + +LETTER FROM MR. O’LEARY.<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. <a href="#page291">291</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>In the first edition of this book I credited Mr. O’Leary with making +this pungent remark about figs and grapes, because I found it jotted +down in my original memoranda as coming from him. In a private note he +assures me that he does not think it was made by him, and though this +does not agree with my own <a name="page376" id="page376"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 376] +</span>recollection, I defer, of course, to his +impression. And this I do the more readily that it affords me an +opportunity for printing the following very characteristic and +interesting letter sent to me by him for publication should I think fit +to use it.</p> + +<p>As the most important support given by the Irish in America to the +Nationalists is solicited by their agents on the express ground that +they are really labouring to establish an Irish Republic, this outspoken +declaration of Mr. O’Leary, that he does not believe they “expect or +desire” the establishment of an Irish Republic, will be of interest on +my side of the water:—</p> +<blockquote> +<p class="dateline"> “DUBLIN, <i>Sept.</i> 9, ’88.</p> + +<p> “My Dear Sir,—I am giving more bother about what you make me say + in your book than the thing is probably worth, especially seeing + that what you say about me and my present attitude towards men and + things here is almost entirely correct.</p> + +<p> “It is proverbially hard to prove a negative, and my main reason + for believing I did not say the thing about figs and grapes is that + I never could remember the whole of any proverb in conversation; + but I am absolutely certain I never said that ‘some of them (the + National Leaguers) expect to found an Irish republic on robbery, + and to administer it by falsehood. We don’t.’ Most certainly I do + not expect to found anything on robbery, or administer anything by + falsehood, but I do not in the least believe that the National + League either expects or desires to found an Irish republic at all! + Neither do I believe that the Leaguers will long retain the + administration of such small measure of Home Rule, as I now (since + the late utterances of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Gladstone) believe we + are going to get. My fault with the present people is not that they + are looking, or mean to look, for too much, but that they may be + induced, by pressure from their English Radical allies, to be + content with too little. It is only a large and liberal measure of + Home Rule which will ever satisfy the Irish people, and I fear + that, if the smaller fry of Radical M.P.’s are allowed to have a + strong voice in a matter of which they know next to nothing, the + settlement of the Irish question will be indefinitely postponed.—I + remain, faithfully yours,</p> + +<p class="signed"> “JOHN O’LEARY.”</p> +</blockquote> + + +<hr /><h3><a name="page377" id="page377"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 377] +</span><a name="noteN" id="noteN" />NOTE N.<br /> + +BOYCOTTING PRIVATE OPINION.<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. <a href="#page293">293</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>This case of Mr. Taylor is worth preserving <i>in extenso</i> as an +illustration of that spirit in the Irish journalism of the day, against +which Mr. Rolleston and his friends protest as fatal to independence, +manliness, and truth. I simply cite the original attack made upon Mr. +Taylor, the replies made by himself and his friends, and the comments +made upon those replies by the journal which assailed him. They all tell +their own story.</p> + +<p class="center"> (<i>UNITED IRELAND</i>, JUNE 16.)</p> + +<p> Mr. John F. Taylor owes everything he has or is to the Irish + National Party; nor is he slow to confess it where the + acknowledgment will serve his personal interests. His sneers are + all anonymous, and, like Mr. Fagg, the grateful and deferential + valet in <i>The Rivals</i>, “it hurts his conscience to be found out.” + There is no honesty or sincerity in the man. His covert gibes are + the spiteful emanation of personal disappointment; his lofty + morality is a cloak for unscrupulous self-seeking. He has always + shown himself ready to say anything or do anything that may serve + his own interests. In the general election of 1885 he made frantic + efforts to get into Parliament as a member of the Irish Party. He + ghosted every member of the party whose influence he thought might + help him—notably the two men, Mr. Dillon and Mr. O’Brien, at whom + he now sneers, as he fondly believes, in the safe seclusion of an + anonymous letter of an English newspaper. During the period of + probation his hand was incessant on Mr. Dillon’s door-knocker. The + most earnest supplications were not spared. All in vain. Either his + character or his ability failed to satisfy the Irish leader, and + his claim was summarily rejected. Since then his wounded vanity has + found vent in spiteful calumny of almost every member of the Irish + Party—whenever he found malice a luxury that could be safely + indulged in.</p> + +<p> “His next step was a startling one. We have absolute <a name="page378" id="page378"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 378] +</span>reason to + know, when the last Coercion Act was in full swing, this + pure-souled and disinterested patriot begged for, received, and + accepted a very petty Crown Prosecutorship under a Coercion + Government. As was wittily said at the time, he sold his + principles, not for a mess of pottage, but for the stick that + stirred the mess. Strong pressure was brought to bear on him, and + he was induced for his own sake, after many protests and with much + reluctance, to publicly refuse the office he had already privately + accepted. Mr. Taylor professes to model himself on Robert Emmet and + Thomas Davis; it is hard to realise Thomas Davis or Robert Emmet as + a Coercion Crown Prosecutor in the pay of Dublin Castle. Since then + there has been no more persistent caviller at the Irish policy and + the Irish Party in company where he believed such cavilling paid. + When Home Rule was proposed by Mr. Gladstone, he had a thousand + foolish sneers for the measure and its author. When the Bill was + defeated, he elected Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Goschen, and Mr. T.W. + Russell as the gods of his idolatry. Such a nature needs a patron, + and Mr. Webb, Q.C., the Tory County Court Judge who doubled the + sentence on Father M‘Fadden, was the patron to be selected. It is + shrewdly suspected that he supplied most of the misguiding + information for Dr. Webb’s coercion pamphlet, and it is probable + that Dr. Webb gives him a lift with his weekly letter to the + <i>Manchester Guardian.</i></p> + + +<p class="center"> (<i>UNITED IRELAND</i>, JUNE 23.)</p> + +<p class="center"> MR. JOHN F. TAYLOR.</p> + +<p class="center"> <i>To the Editor of “United Ireland.”</i></p> + +<p> Sir,—You would not, I am sure, allow intentional misstatements to + appear in your columns, and I ask you to allow me space to correct + three erroneous observations made about myself in your current + issue—</p> + +<p> 1. The first statement is to the effect that I owe everything I + have, or that I am, to the Irish National Party. I owe absolutely + nothing to the Irish Party, except an attempt to boycott me on my + circuit, which, fortunately for me, has failed.</p> + +<p> 2. The second is to the effect that I made “frantic efforts” (these + are the words, I think) to enter Parliament, and besieged Mr. + Dillon’s house during the time when candidates were being chosen. I + saw Mr. Dillon exactly twice, both occasions at Mr. Davitt’s + request. Mr. Davitt urged me to <a name="page379" id="page379"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 379] +</span>allow my name to go forward as a + candidate, and it was at his wish and solicitation that I saw Mr. + Dillon.</p> + +<p> 3. It is further said that I begged a Crown Prosecutorship. + Fortunately, Mr. Walker and The M‘Dermot are living men, and they + know this to be absolutely untrue. I was offered such an + appointment, and, contrary to my own judgment, I allowed myself to + be guided by Mr. Davitt, who thought the matter would be + misunderstood in the state of things then existing. I believe I am + the only person that ever declined such an offer.</p> + +<p> As to general statements, these are of no importance, and I shall + not trouble you about them.—Yours very truly,</p> + +<p class="signed"> JOHN F. TAYLOR.</p> + +<p> <i>P.S.</i>—The introduction of Dr. Webb’s name was a gratuitous + outrage, Dr. Webb and I never assisted each other in anything + except in the defence of P.N. Fitzgerald. J.F.T.</p> + + +<p class="center"> <i>To the Editor of “United Ireland.”</i></p> + +<p> Dear Sir,—As my name has been introduced into the controversy + between yourself and Mr. Taylor, I feel called upon to substantiate + the two statements wherein my name occurs in Mr. Taylor’s letter of + last week. It was at my request that he called upon Mr. John + Dillon, M.P. I think I accompanied him on the occasion, and unless + my memory is very much at fault, Mr. Dillon was not unfriendly to + Mr. Taylor’s proposed candidature. This visit occurred some three + months after Mr. Taylor had, on my advice, declined the Crown + Prosecutorship for King’s County, a post afterwards applied for by + and granted to a near relative of one of the most prominent members + of the Irish Party. With Mr. Taylor’s general views on the present + situation, or opinions upon parties or men, I have no concern. But, + in so far as the circumstances related above are dealt with in your + issue of last week, I think an unjust imputation has been made + against him, and in the interests of truth and fair play I feel + called upon to adduce the testimony of facts as they + occurred.—Yours truly,</p> + +<p class="signed"> MICHAEL DAVITT.</p> + +<p class="i0"> Ballybrack, Co. Dublin,<br /> June 19, 1888.</p> + + +<p class="center"> <br /><i>To the Editor of “United Ireland.”</i></p> + +<p> Sir,—As this is, I believe, the first time I have sought to + intrude upon your columns, I hope you will allow me some <a name="page380" id="page380"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 380] +</span>slight + space in the interests of fair-play and freedom of speech. Those + interests seem to me to have been quite set at naught in the + attack, or rather series of attacks, upon Mr. Taylor in your last + issue. Mr. Taylor’s views upon many matters are not mine. He is far + more democratic in his opinions than I see any sufficient reason + for being, and he is very much more of what is called a land + reformer than I am; but on an acquaintance of some years I have + ever found him an honourable and high-minded gentleman, and as good + a Nationalist, from my point of view, as most of the members of the + Irish Parliamentary Party whom I either know or know of. Of some of + the charges made against Mr. Taylor, such as the seeking for Crown + Prosecutorships and the like, I am in no position to speak, save + from my knowledge of his character, but I understand Mr. Davitt + knows all about these things, and I suppose he will tell what he + knows. But of the main matter, and I think the chief cause of your + ire, I am quite in a position to speak. I have read at least a + score of Mr. Taylor’s letters to the <i>Manchester Guardian</i>, and I + have always found them very intelligently written, and invariably + characterised by a spirit of fairness and moderation; indeed, the + chief fault I found with them was that they took too favourable a + view of the motives, if not the acts, of many of our public men, + but notably of Messrs. Dillon and O’Brien. You may, of course, + fairly say that I am not the best judge of either the acts or the + motives of these gentlemen, and I freely grant you that I may not, + for my way of looking upon the Irish question is quite other than + theirs; but what I must be excused for holding is that both I and + Mr. Taylor have quite as good a right to our opinions as either of + these gentlemen, or as any other member of the Irish Parliamentary + Party. But this is the very last right that people are inclined to + grant to each other in Ireland just now. Personally I care very + little for this, but for Ireland’s sake I care much. Some twenty + years ago or so I was sent into penal servitude with the almost + entire approval, expressed or implied, of the Irish Press. Some + short time after the same Press found out that I and my friends had + not sinned so grievously in striving to free Ireland. But men and + times and things may change again, and, though I am growing old, I + hope still to live long enough to be forgiven for my imperfect + appreciation of the blessings of Boycotting, and the Plan of + Campaign, and many similar blessings. It matters little indeed how + or when I die, so that Ireland lives, but her life can only be a + living death if Irishmen are not free to say <a name="page381" id="page381"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 381] +</span>what they believe, and + to act as they deem right.—Your obedient servant,</p> + +<p class="signed"> JOHN O’LEARY.</p> + +<p class="i0"> June 18, 1888.</p> + + +<p class="center"> <br /><i>To the Editor of “United Ireland.”</i></p> + +<p> Dear Sir,—I observe that in your last issue, amongst other things, + you state that Mr. Taylor accepted a Crown Prosecutorship in 1885. + I happen to know the precise facts. Mr. Taylor was offered the + Crown Prosecutorship of the King’s County, and some of us strongly + advised him to accept it. There were no political prosecutions + impending at the time, and it seemed to me that a Nationalist who + would do his work honestly in prosecuting offenders against the + ordinary law might strike a blow against tyranny by refusing to + accept a brief, if offered, against men accused of political + offences or prosecuted under a Coercion Act. I know that a similar + view was entertained by the late Very Rev. Dr. Kavanagh of Kildare, + and many others. However, we failed to influence Mr. Taylor further + than to make him say that he would do nothing in the matter until + Mr. Davitt was consulted. I, for one, called on Mr. Davitt, and + pressed my views upon him; but he was decided that no Nationalist + could identify himself in the smallest way with Castle rule in + Ireland. This settled the question, and Mr. Taylor declined the + post, which was subsequently applied for by Mr. Luke Dillon, who + now holds it.—Faithfully yours,</p> + +<p class="signed"> JAMES A. POOLE.</p> + +<p class="i0"> 29 Harcourt Street.</p> + + + +<p class="center"><br /> EDITORIAL NOTE.<br /> +<i>“United Ireland,” June 23.</i> +</p> + +<p> We devote a large portion of our space to-day to the apparently + organised defence of Mr. J.F. Taylor and his friends, and we are + quite content to rest upon their letters the justification for our + comments. When a gentleman who avows himself a disappointed + aspirant for Parliamentary honours, and who owns his regret that he + did not become a petty Castle placeman, is discovered writing in an + important English Liberal paper, venomous little innuendos at the + expense of sorely attacked Irish leaders which excite the + enthusiasm of the <i>Liarish Times</i>, it was high time to intimate to + the <i>Manchester Guardian</i> the source from which its Irish + information is derived. The case against Mr. Taylor as a + criticaster is clinched by the fact that his cause is espoused by + Mr. John <a name="page382" id="page382"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 382] +</span>O’Leary. The Irish public are a little weary of Mr. + O’Leary’s querulous complaints as an <i>homme incompris</i>. So far as + we are aware, the only ground he himself has for complaining of + want of toleration is that he possibly considers the good-humoured + toleration for years invariably extended to his opinions on men and + things savours of neglect. His idea of toleration with respect to + others seems to be toleration for everybody except the unhappy + wretches who may happen to be for the moment doing any practicable + service in the Irish cause.</p> + + + + +<hr /><h3><a name="noteO" id="noteO" />NOTE O.<br /> + +BOYCOTTING BY “CROWNER’S QUEST LAW.”<br /> + +(Vol. ii. p. <a href="#page312">312</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>The following circumstantial account of this deplorable case of Ellen +Gaffney preserved here, as I find it printed in the <i>Irish Times</i> of +February 27, 1888.</p> +<blockquote> +<p>“In the Court of Queen’s Bench, on Saturday, the Lord Chief-Justice (Sir +Michael Morris, Bart.), Mr. Justice O’Brien, Mr. Justice Murphy, and Mr. +Justice Gibson presiding, judgment was delivered in the case of Ellen +Gaffney. The original motion was to quash the verdict of a coroner’s +jury held at Philipstown on August 27th and September 1st last, on the +body of a child named Mary Anne Gaffney.</p> + +<p>“The Lord Chief-Justice said it appeared that Mary Anne Gaffney, the +child on whose body the inquest was held, was born on the 23d July, and +that she died on the 25th August, 1887. A Dr. Clarke, who had been very +much referred to in the course of the proceedings, called upon the local +sergeant of the police, and directed his attention to the body, but the +sergeant having inspected the body, came to the conclusion that there +was no need for an inquest. The doctor considered differently, and the +sergeant communicated with the Coroner on the 26th August, and <a name="page383" id="page383"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 383] +</span>on the +next day that gentleman arrived in Philipstown. He had a conference +there with Dr. Clarke and with a reverend gentleman named Father Bergin, +and subsequently proceeded to hold an inquest upon the child in a +public-house—a most appropriate place apparently for the transactions +which afterwards occurred there. The investigation, if it might be so +called, was proceeded with upon that 27th of August. Very strong +affidavits had been made on the part of Mrs. Gaffney—who applied to +have the inquisition quashed—her husband, and some of the constabulary +authorities as to the line of conduct pursued upon that occasion. Ellen +Gaffney and her husband were taken into custody on the day the inquest +opened by the verbal direction of the Coroner, who refused to complete +the depositions given by the former on the ground that she was not +sworn. That did not take him out of the difficulty, for if she was not +sworn she had a right to be sworn, and the Coroner had no right to +prevent her. The inquest was resumed on the 1st September in the +court-house at Philipstown—the proper place—and a curious letter was +read from the Coroner, the effect of which was that he did not consider +that there was any ground for detaining the man Gaffney in custody, but +the woman was brought before a justice of the peace and committed for +trial. She was in prison from August 27th until the month of December, +when the lucky accident of a winter assize occurred, else she might be +there still. At the adjourned inquest the Coroner proceeded to read over +the depositions taken on the former day, and it was sworn by four +witnesses, whom he (the Lord Chief-Justice) entirely credited, that the +Coroner read these depositions as if they were originals, whereas an +unprecedented transaction had occurred. The Coroner had given the +original depositions out of his own custody, and given them to a +<a name="page384" id="page384"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 384] +</span>reverend gentleman who was rather careless of them, as was shown by the +evidence of a witness named Greene, who deposed that he saw a car on the +road upon which sat two clergymen, and he found on the road the original +depositions which, presumably, one of the clergymen had dropped. The +depositions were handed to a magistrate and afterwards returned to the +police at Philipstown, who had possession of them on the resumption of +the inquest. If the case stood alone there it was difficult to +understand how a Coroner could come into court and appear by counsel to +resist the quashing of an inquisition in regard to which at the very +door such gross personal misconduct was demonstrated. No doubt, he said, +he did not read them as originals but as copies, and it was strange, +that being so, that he did not inform the jury of what had become of +them, and he complained now of not being told by the police of their +recovery—not told of his own misconduct. On the 1st September, Ellen +Gaffney applied by a solicitor—Mr. Disdall, and as a set-off the +Coroner permitted a gentleman named O’Kearney Whyte to appear—for whom? +Was it for the constituted authorities or for the next-of-kin? No, but +for the Rev. Father Bergin, who was described as president of the local +branch of the National League, and the Coroner (Mr. Gowing) alleged as +the reason why he allowed him to appear and cross-examine the witnesses +and address the jury and give him the right of reply like Crown counsel +was, that Ellen Gaffney stated that she had been so much annoyed by +Father Bergin that she attributed the loss of her child to him—that it +was he who had murdered the child. It was asserted that Father Bergin +sat on the bench with the Coroner and interfered during the conduct of +the inquest, and having to give some explanation of that Mr. Gowing’s +version was certainly a most amusing one. He said it <a name="page385" id="page385"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 385] +</span>was the habit to +invite to a seat on the bench people of a respectable position in +life—which, of course, a clergyman should be in—and that he asked +Father Bergin to sit beside him in that capacity. But see the dilemma +the Coroner put himself in. According to his own statement he had +previously allowed this reverend gentleman to interfere, and to be +represented by a solicitor because he was incriminated, inculpated, or +accused, and it certainly was not customary to invite any one so +situated to occupy a seat on the bench. He (the Lord Chief Baron) did +not believe that Father Bergin was incriminated in any way, but that was +the Coroner’s allegation, and such was his peculiar action thereafter. +The Coroner further stated that no matter whether he read the originals +or the copies of the first day’s depositions, it was on the evidence of +September 1st that the jury acted. If that was so he placed himself in a +further dilemma, for there was no evidence before the jury at all on the +second day upon which they could bring a verdict against Ellen Gaffney. +In regard to the recording and announcing of the verdict it appeared +that the jury were 19 in number, and after their deliberations the +foreman declared that 13 were for finding a verdict one way and 6 for +another; that Mr. Whyte dictated the verdict to the Coroner, and the +Coroner asked the 13 men if that was what they agreed to. Mr. Whyte’s +statement was that the jury, through the foreman, stated what their +verdict was; that he wrote it down, and that the Coroner asked him for +what he had written, and used it himself. But in addition to that, when +the jury came in the Coroner and Mr. Whyte divided them—placed them +apart while the verdict was being written—and then said to the 13 men, +“Is that what you agree to?” Such apparent misconduct it was hardly +possible to conceive in anybody <a name="page386" id="page386"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 386] +</span>occupying a judicial position as did the +Coroner, and especially a Coroner who had an inquisition quashed before. +What he had mentioned was sufficient to call forth the emphatic decision +of the court quashing the proceedings, which, however, were also +impeached on the grounds of its insufficiency and irregularity, and of +the character of the finding itself. It was not until the Coroner had +been threatened with the consequences of his contempt that he made a +return to the visit of <i>certiorari</i>, and it was then found that out of +ten so-called depositions only one contained any signature—that of Dr. +Clarke’s, which was one of those lost by the clergyman, and not before +the jury on the 1st September. He (the Lord Chief-Justice) had tried to +read the documents, but in vain—they were of such a scrawling and +scribbling character, but, as he had said, all were incomplete and +utterly worthless except the one which was not properly before the jury. +Then, what was the finding on this inquisition, which should have been +substantially as perfect as an indictment? “That Mary Anne Gaffney came +by her death, and that the mother of this child, Ellen Gaffney, is +guilty of wilful neglect by not supplying the necessary food and care to +sustain the life of this child.” Upon what charge could the woman have +been implicated on that vague finding? He (his Lordship) could +understand its being contended that that amounted argumentatively to a +verdict of manslaughter; but the Coroner issued his warrant and sent +this woman to prison as being guilty of murder, and she remained in +custody, as he had already remarked, until discharged by the learned +judge who went the Winter Assizes in December. Upon all of these grounds +they were clearly of opinion that this inquisition should be quashed, +and Mr. Coroner Gowing having had the self-possession to come there to +show cause against the conditional order, <a name="page387" id="page387"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 387] +</span>under such circumstances, must +bear the costs of that argument.</p> + +<p>Mr. Fred. Moorhead, who, instructed by Mr. O’Kearney Whyte, appeared for +the Coroner, asked whether the Court would require, as was usual when +costs were awarded against a magistrate, an undertaking from the other +side—</p> + +<p>The Lord Chief-Justice.—That is not to bring an action against the +Coroner, you mean?</p> + +<p>Mr. Moorhead.—Yes, my Lord. I think it is a usual undertaking when +costs are awarded in such a case. I think you ought—</p> + +<p>The Lord Chief-Justice.—Well, I don’t know that we ought, but we most +certainly will not. (Laughter.)</p> + +<p>Mr. David Sherlock, who (instructed by Mr. Archibald W. Disdall) +appeared for Ellen Gaffney.—Rest assured, we certainly will bring an +action.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p class="center">THE END.</p> + +<hr class="full" /> + + + + +<p>FOOTNOTES:</p> + + + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote1" + name="footnote1"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 1:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag1">(return)</a><p>I have the authority of Mr. Hennessey, “the best living +Irish scholar, and a Kerryman to boot,” for this spelling. I am quite +right, he says, in stating that the people there pronounce the names of +Glenbeigh and Rossbeigh as Glenbéhy and Rossbéhy in three syllables. +“Bethe,” pronounced “behy,” is the genitive of “beith,” the birch, of +which there were formerly large woods in Ireland. Glenbehy and Rossbehy +mean the “Glen,” and the “Ross” or “wooded point” of the birch.</p> + +</blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote2" name="footnote2"></a> + <span class='fnheader'>Footnote 2:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag2">(return)</a> + +<p> A letter received by me from a Protestant Irish gentleman, +long an ardent Nationalist, seems to confirm this. He writes to me (June +15),</p> +<blockquote> “There is a noble river here, with a convenient line of quays for + unloading merchandise. But every sack that is landed must be carried out + of the ship on men’s backs. The quay labourers won’t allow a steam crane + to be set up. If it is tried there is a riot and a tumult, and no + Limerick tradesman can purchase anything from a vessel that uses it, on + pain of being boycotted. The result is that the labourers are masters of + the situation, and when they catch a vessel with a cargo which it is + imperative to land quickly, they wait till the work is half done, and + then strike for 8s. a day! If other labourers are imported, they are + boycotted for ‘grabbing work,’ and any one who sells provisions to them + is boycotted.” +</blockquote> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote3" + name="footnote3"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 3:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag3">(return)</a><p> An interesting account of this gentleman, and of his +connection with the earlier developments of the Irish agitation, given +to me by Mr. Colomb of the R.I.C., will be found at p.<a href="#page38">38</a>, and in the +Appendix, <a href="#noteF">Note F.</a></p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote4" + name="footnote4"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 4:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag4">(return)</a><p> See Appendix, <a href="#noteF">Note F.</a></p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote5" + name="footnote5"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 5:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag5">(return)</a><p> The name of this blacksmith’s son learned in the Law of the +League is given in Lord Cowper’s Report (2. 18,370) as Michael Healy. +While these pages are in the printer’s hands the London papers chronicle +(May 25, 1888) the arrest of a person described to me as this +magistrate’s brother, Jeremiah Healy, on a charge of robbing and setting +fire to the Protestant church at Killarney!</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote6" + name="footnote6"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 6:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag6">(return)</a><p> Mr. Colomb sends me, June 30, the following interesting +note:—The letter of which I gave you a copy was produced in evidence at +Kerry Summer Assizes, 1867. J. D. Sheehan, Esq., M.P., is the same man +who was arrested on the 12th February 1867, and to whom the foregoing +letter, ordering the rising in Killarney, is addressed. He was kept in +custody for some time, and eventually released, it is believed, on the +understanding that he was to keep out of Ireland. He came back in 1873 +or 1874 and married the proprietress of a Hotel at Killarney. His +connection with the Glenbehy evictions is referred to on page <a href="#page10">10</a>, and in +<a href="#noteF">Note F</a> of the Appendix I give an interesting account, furnished me by +Mr. Colomb, of his activity in connection with the case of the Misses +Curtin at Firies.</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote7" + name="footnote7"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 7:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag7">(return)</a><p> In the time of Henry VIII. these cities waged actual war +with each other, like Florence and Pisa, by sea and land. Limerick was +then called “Little London.”</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote8" + name="footnote8"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 8:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag8">(return)</a><p> It was on the 17th October 1886 that Mr. Dillon first +promulgated the Plan of Campaign at all at Portumna.</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote9" + name="footnote9"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 9:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag9">(return)</a><p> Mr. Ponsonby’s account of this affair will be found in the +Appendix, <a href="#noteG">Note G.</a> The Post-Office Savings Bank deposits at Youghal, +which were £3031, 0s. 7d. in 1880, rose to £7038, 7s. 2d. in 1887.</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote10" + name="footnote10"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 10:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag10">(return)</a><p> As to the ability of these tenants to pay their way, one +fact which I have since ascertained sufficiently supports Mr. Tener’s +contention. The deposits in the Postal Savings Banks of the three purely +agricultural towns of Portumna, Woodford, and Loughrea, which in 1880, +throwing off the shillings and pence, were respectively, £2539, £259, +and £5500, rose in 1887 to £3376, £1350, and £6311, an increase of +nearly £3000.</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote11" + name="footnote11"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 11:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag11">(return)</a><p> Mr. Tener, to whom I sent proofs of these pages, writes to +me (July 18): “I shall soon execute the decree of the County-Court Judge +Henn against Father Coen for £5, 5s., being two and a half year’s +rent.”</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote12" + name="footnote12"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 12:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag12">(return)</a><p> At a hearing of cases before Judge Henn some time after I +left Portumna, the Judge was reported in the papers as “severely” +commenting upon the carelessness with which the estate-books were kept, +tenants who were proceeded against for arrears producing “receipts” in +court. I wrote to Mr. Tener on this subject. Under date of June 5th he +replied to me: “Judge Henn did not use the severe language reported. +There was no reporter present but a local man, and I have reason to +believe the report in the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i> came from the lawyer of +the tenants, who is on the staff of that journal. But the tenants are +drilled not to show the receipts they hold, and to take advantage of +every little error which they might at once get corrected by calling at +the estate office. In no case, however, did any wrong occur to any +tenant.”</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote13" + name="footnote13"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 13:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag13">(return)</a><p> The town and estate proper of Woodford belong to Sir Henry +Burke, Bart. The nearest point to Woodford of Lord Clamicarde’s property +is distant one mile from the town. And on the so-called Woodford estate +there are not “316 tenants,” as stated in publications I have seen, but +260.</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote14" + name="footnote14"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 14:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag14">(return)</a><p> Martin Kenny, the “victim” of this eviction, is the tenant +to whom the Rev. Mr. Crawford (<i>vide</i> page <a href="#page118">118</a>) gave £50 for certain +cattle, in order that he (Kenny) might pay his rent But, although he got +the £50, he nevertheless suffered himself to be evicted; no doubt +fearing the vengeance of the League should he pay.</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote15" + name="footnote15"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 15:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag15">(return)</a><p> The valuation for taxes of this holding is £7, 15s. for +the land, and £5 for the presbytery house. The church is exempt.</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote16" + name="footnote16"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 16:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag16">(return)</a><p> Of “Dr.” Tully Mr. Tener wrote to me (July 18): “Tully has +the holding at £2, 10s. a year, being 50 per cent, under the valuation +of the land for taxes, which is £3, 15s. As the total valuation with the +house (built by him) is only £4, he pays no poor-rates. He was in +arrears May 1, 1887, of three years for £7, 10s. Lord Clanricarde +offered him, with others, 20 per cent, abatement, making for him 70 per +cent, under the valuation—and he refused!” Since then (on Saturday +Sept. 1), Tully has been evicted after a dramatic “resistance,” of +which, with instructive incidents attending it, Mr. Tener sends me an +account, to be found in the Appendix, <a href="#noteH">Note H.</a></p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote17" + name="footnote17"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 17:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag17">(return)</a><p> <a href="#noteH2">Note H2.</a></p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote18" + name="footnote18"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 18:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag18">(return)</a><p> Mr. Tener writes to me (July 18): “At Allendarragh, near +the scene of Finlay’s murder, Thomas Noonan, who lately was brave enough +to accept the post of process-server vacated by that murder, was shot at +on the 13th instant. It was on the highway. He heard a heavy stone fall +from a wall on the road and turned to see what caused it. He distinctly +saw two men behind the wall with guns, and saw them fire. One shot +struck a stone in the road very near him—the other went wide. His idea +is that one gun dislodged the stone on which it had been laid for an +aim, and that its fall disturbed the aim and saved him. He fully +identifies one of the men as Henry Bowles, a nephew of ‘Dr.’ Tully, who +lives with Tully, and Bowles, after being arrested and examined at +Woodford, has been remanded, bail being refused, to Galway Jail. Before +this shooting Noonan had served a notice from me upon Tully, against +whom I have Judge Henn’s decree for three years’ rent, and whose equity +of redemption expired July 9th.”</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote19" + name="footnote19"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 19:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag19">(return)</a><p> I have since learned that my jarvey was well informed. Sir +Henry Burke actually paid Mr. Dillon £160 for the maintenance of his +tenants while out of their farms. This, two other landlords, Lords +Dunsandle and Westmeath, refused to do, but, like Sir Henry, they both +paid all the costs, and accepted a “League” reduction of 5s. 6d. and 6s. +in the pound (June 9, 1888).</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote20" + name="footnote20"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 20:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag20">(return)</a><p> Down to the date at which I write this note (June 9), Mr. +Seigne has kindly, but without results, endeavoured to get for me some +authentic return made by a small tenant-farmer of his incomings and +outgoings.</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote21" + name="footnote21"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 21:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag21">(return)</a><p> <a href="#noteI">Note I.</a></p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote22" + name="footnote22"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 22:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag22">(return)</a><p> <a href="#noteK">Note K.</a></p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote23" + name="footnote23"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 23:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag23">(return)</a><p> While these pages are going through the press a Scottish +friend sends me the following extract from a letter published in the +<i>Scotsman</i> of July 25:— + +“In the same way I, in August last, when in +Wicklow, ascertained as carefully as I could the facts as to the Bodyke +evictions; and being desirous to learn now if that estate was still out +of cultivation, as I had found it in August, I wrote the gentleman I +have referred to above. His reply is as follows:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>“‘I can answer your question as far as the Brooke estate is concerned. +None of the tenants are back in their farms, nor are they likely to be. +The landlord has the land partly stocked with cattle; but I may say the +land is nearly waste; the gates, fences, and farmsteads partly +destroyed. I was at the fair of Coolgreany about three weeks ago, and +the country looked quite changed; the weeds predominating in the land +that the tenantry had under cultivation when they were evicted from +their farms. The landlord has done nothing to lay the land down with +grass seed, consequently the land is waste. The village of Coolgreany is +on the property, and there was a good monthly fair held there, but it is +very much gone down since the disagreement between the landlord and +tenant. The tenants, speaking generally, in allowing themselves to be +evicted and not redeeming before six months, are giving up all their +improvements to the landlord, no matter what they may be worth. I have +got quite tired of the vexed question, and may say I have given up +reading about evictions, and pity the tenant who is foolish enough to +allow any party to advise him so badly as to allow himself to be +evicted.’</p> + +<p>“Those who read this testimony of a candid witness, and remember the +cordial footing on which Mr. Brooke stood with his tenantry in Bodyke +before Mr. Billon appeared amongst them, may well ask what good his +interference did to the now impoverished tenantry of Bodyke, or to the +district now deserted or laid waste.—I am, etc.,</p> + +<p class="signed">A RADICAL UNIONIST.”</p> +</blockquote> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote24" + name="footnote24"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 24:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag24">(return)</a><p> In curious confirmation of this opinion expressed to me by +a man of the country in March, I find in the <i>Dublin Express</i> of July +19th this official news from the Athy Vice-Guardians:</p> + +<p>“At the meeting of the Vice-Guardians of the Athy Union yesterday, a +letter was read from Mr. G. Finlay, Auditor, in which he stated that the +two sureties of Collector Kealy, of the Luggacurren district, had been +evicted from their holdings by Lord Lansdowne, and were not now in +possession of any lands there. They were allowed outdoor relief to the +extent of £1 a week each on the ground of destitution. The Auditor +continued: ‘The Collector tells me that they both possess other lands, +and have money in bank. The Collector is satisfied that they are as +good, if not better, securities for the amount of his bond now than at +the time they became sureties for him. The Clerk of the Union concurs in +this opinion.’</p> + +<p>“It was ordered to bring the matter under the notice of the Board.”</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote25" + name="footnote25"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 25:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag25">(return)</a><p> <i>Explanatory Note attached to First Edition.</i>—After this +chapter had actually gone to press, I received a letter from the friend +who had put me into communication with the labourers referred to in it, +begging me to strike out all direct indications of their whereabouts, on +the ground that these might lead to grave annoyance and trouble for +these poor men from the local tyrants.</p> + +<p>I do not know that I ought to regret the annoyance thus caused to my +publisher and to me, as no words of mine could emphasise so clearly the +nature and the scope of the odious, illegal, or anti-legal “coercion” +established in certain parts of Ireland as the asterisks which mark my +compliance with my friend’s request. What can be said for the freedom of +a country in which a man of character and position honestly believes it +to be “dangerous” for poor men to say the things recorded in the text of +this chapter about their own feelings, wishes, opinions, and interests?</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote26" + name="footnote26"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 26:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag26">(return)</a><p> It may be well to say here that whatever prominence Mr. +O’Donovan Rossa has had among the Irish in America has been largely, if +not chiefly, due to the curious persistency of Sir William Harcourt, +when a Minister, in making him the ideal Irish-American leader. In and +out of Parliament, Sir William Harcourt continually spoke of Mr. Rossa +as of a kind of Irish Jupiter Tonans, wielding all the terrors of +dynamite from beyond the Atlantic. This was a source of equal amusement +to the Irish-American organisers in America and satisfaction to Mr. +Rossa himself. I remember that when a question arose of excluding Mr. +Rossa from an important Irish-American convention at Philadelphia, as +not being the delegate of any recognised Irish-American body, Mr. +Sullivan told me that he should recommend the admission of Mr. Rossa to +the floor without a right to deliberative action, expressly because his +presence, when reported, would be a cause of terror to Sir William +Harcourt.</p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote27" + name="footnote27"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 27:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag27">(return)</a><p> <a href="#noteM">Note M.</a></p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote28" + name="footnote28"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 28:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag28">(return)</a><p> <a href="#noteN">Note N.</a></p> + +</blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote29" + name="footnote29"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 29:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag29">(return)</a><p> <a href="#noteO">Note O.</a></p></blockquote> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of +2) (1888), by William Henry Hurlbert + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRELAND, VOL. 2 *** + +***** This file should be named 14511-h.htm or 14511-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/5/1/14511/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Robert Ledger and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +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 + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/old/14511.txt b/old/14511.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1175ede --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14511.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9343 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 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.) (2 of 2) (1888) + +Author: William Henry Hurlbert + +Release Date: December 29, 2004 [EBook #14511] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRELAND, VOL. 2 *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Robert Ledger and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + +IRELAND UNDER COERCION + +THE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN + + +BY + +WILLIAM HENRY HURLBERT + + +VOL. II. + +_SECOND EDITION._ + +1888 + + +"Upon the future of Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire." +CARDINAL MANNING TO EARL GREY, 1868 + + + + +CONTENTS OF VOL. II. + +CHAPTER VII. + Rossbehy, Feb. 21, 1 + The latest eviction at Glenbehy, 1 + Trafalgar Square, 1, 2 + Father Little, 3 + Mr. Frost, 3, 4 + Priest and landlord, 3 + Savings Banks' deposits at Six-mile Bridge, 5 + Drive through Limerick, 5 + Population and trade, 5, 6 + Boycotting and commerce, 6, 7 + Shores of the Atlantic, 7 + Tralee, 7 + Killorglin, 8 + Hostelry in the hills, 8 + Facts of the eviction, 9-13 + Glenbehy Eviction Fund (see Note G2), 12 + A walk on Washington's birthday, 13 + A tenant at Glenbehy offers L13 in two instalments + in full for L240 arrears, 13 + English and Irish members, 14 + "Winn's Folly," 15 + Acreage and rental of the Glenbehy estate, 16 + Work of eviction begun, 17 + Patience of officers, 17 + American and Irish evictions contrasted, 17 + "Oh, he's quite familiar," 18 + A modest Poor Law Guardian, 18, 19 + Moonlighters' swords, 20 + Father Quilter and the "poor slaves," his people, 21,22 + Beauty of Lough Caragh, 23 + Difficulty of getting evidence, 25 + Effects of terrorism in Kerry, 25 + Singular identification of a murderer, 26 + Local administration in Tralee, 28 + +CHAPTER VIII. + Cork, Feb. 23, 30 + Press accounts of Glenbehy evictions astonish an eye-witness, 30 + Castle Island, 31 + Mr. Roche and Mr. Gladstone, 31 + Opinions of a railway traveller, 31, 32 + Misrepresentations of evictions, 32 + Cork, past and present, 34 + Mr. Gladstone and the Dean, 35 + League Courts in Kerry, 36 + Local Law Lords, 36 + Mr. Colomb and the Fenian rising in 1867, 37 + Remarkable letter of an M.P., 38 + Irish Constabulary, _morale_ of the force, 40 + The clergy and the Plan of Campaign, 41 + Municipal history, 43 + Increase of public burdens, 44 + Tralee Board of Guardians, 46 + Labourers and tenants, 46 + Feb. 25, 47 + Boycotting, 47-49 + Land law and freedom of contract, 49 + Rivalry between Limerick and Cork, 50 + Henry VIII. and the Irish harp, 50 + Municipal Parliamentary franchise, 51 + Environs of Cork, 52 + Churches and chapels, 53 + Attractive home at Belmullet, 54 + Lord Carnarvon and the Priest, 55 + Feb. 26, 56 + Blarney Castle, 56, 57 + St. Anne's Hill, 56, 57 + An evicted woman on "the Plan," 59 + The Ponsonby estate, 59 + Feb. 27--A day at Youghal, 60 + Father Keller, 61-76 + On emigration and migration, 66 + Protestants and Catholics (see Note G3), 68 + Meath as a field for peasant proprietors, 69 + Ghost of British protection, 70 + A farmer evicted from a tenancy of 200 years, 71 + Sir Walter Raleigh's house and garden, 71-73 + Churches of St. Mary of Youghal and St. Nicholas of Galway, 73 + Monument and churchyard, 73, 74 + An Elizabethan candidate for canonisation, 75 + Drive to Lismore, 76 + Driver's opinions on the Ponsonby estates, 77 + Dromaneen Castle and the Countess of Desmond, 78 + Trappist Monastery at Cappoquin, 78 + Lismore, 78, 79 + Castle grounds and cathedral, 79, 80 + +CHAPTER IX. + Feb. 28, 82 + Portumna, Galway, 82 + Run through Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, + Queen's and King's County to Parsonstown, 82 + A Canadian priest on the situation, 83 + His reply to M. de Mandat Grancey, 83 + Relations of priests with the League, 83-85 + Parsonstown and Lord Rosse, 86 + Drive to Portumna, 87 + An abandoned railway, 88 + American storms, grain, and beasts, 88, 89 + Portumna Castle, 90, 91 + Lord Clanricarde's estate, 92 + Mr. Tener, 92-128 + Plan of Campaign, 94-99 + Ability of tenants to pay their rents, 95 + Mr. Dillon in 1886, 96 + Mr. Parnell in 1885, 97 + Tenants in greater danger than landlords and agents, 100 + Feb. 29, 100 + Conference between evicted tenants and agent, 100-106 + Castle and park, 107 + The League shopkeeper and tenant, 108 + Under police escort, 109 + Cost of 'knocking' a man, 109 + What constitutes a group, 110 + Favourite spots for administering a League oath, 110 + Disbursing treasurers, 111 + Change of venue, 111 + Bishop of Clonfert, 112-115 + Bector of Portumna, 115 + Father Coen, 116 + Coercion on the part of the League, 118-121 + Deposits in banks, 120 + Should landlords and shopkeepers be placed on one footing? 121 + New Castle of Portumna, 122 + Portumna Union, 123, 124 + Troubles of resident landlords, 125-127 + Effects of the agitation on the people, 124 + War against property and private rights, 127 + Mr. Tener's experiences in Cavan, 127-130 + Similar cases in Leitrim, 130-132 + Sale of rents and value of tenant-right, 133, 134 + +CHAPTER X. + Dublin, March 1, 135 + Portumna to Woodford, 135 + Evictions of October 1887, 135 + Capture of Cloondadauv Castle, 137-141 + A tenant and a priest, 141-144 + Workmen's wages in Massachusetts compared with + the profits of a tenant farmer in Ireland, 146 + Loughrea, 148, 149 + Murder of Finlay, 150, 151 + The chrysoprase Lake of Loughrea, 154 + Lord Clanricarde's estate office, acreage, and rental, 155 + Woodford acreage and rental, 155,156 + Drive from Loughrea to Woodlawn, 156-160 + A Galway "jarvey" on the situation, 156-159 + Woodlawn and the Ashtown property, 160 + +CHAPTER XI. + Borris, March 2, 161 + Mr. Kavanagh, 161-163 + Borris House, 163-167 + A living Banshee, 165, 166 + Land Corporation--its mode of working, 167 + Meeting in Dublin, 1885, 168 + Rev. Mr. Cantwell, 168 + Lord Lansdowne's property at Luggacurren, 169 + Mr. Kavanagh's career, 170 + Books and papers at Borris, 171 + Strongbow, 172 + "The five bloods," 172, 173 + Genealogy of M'Morroghs and Kavanaghs, 173 + March 4, 174 + Protestant service read every morning, 174 + A Catholic gentleman's views, 175 + Relation of tenants to village despots, 176 + Would America make a State of Ireland? 177 + Land Acts since 1870, 178 + The O'Grady of Kilballyowen and his rental, 179 + Dispute with his tenants: its cause and effect, 180 + His circular to his tenantry, 181-186 + +CHAPTER XII. + Grenane House, March 5, 187 + Visit to Mr. Seigne, 187 + Beautiful situation of Grenane, 189 + A lady of the country, 189 + Mr. Seigne's experience of the tenants, 191-194 + The beauty of Woodstock, 194-198 + The watch of Waterloo, 197-200 + Curious discovery of stolen property, 200 + Dublin, March 6, 200 + State of deposits in the Savings Banks, 200-201 + Interest on "Plan of Campaign" funds, 202 + +CHAPTER XIII. + Dublin, March 8, 203 + Inch and the Coolgreany evictions, 203 + Sweet vale of Avoca, 204 + Dr. Dillon of Arklow, 204 + Fathers O'Neill and Dunphy, 205, 206 + Mr. Davitt watching the evictions, 207 + Lazy and thriftless tenants better off than before, 209 + A self-made committee, 211 + The Brooke estate, 212 + Sir Thomas Esmonde's house, 213 + An Arklow dinner, 214 + Dr. Dillon in his study, 215-217 + Visit to Glenart Castle, 217 + +CHAPTER XIV. + Dublin, March 9, 219 + Athy, 219 + A political jarvey, 220-225 + "Who is Mr. Gilhooly?" 221 + Lord Lansdowne's offer refused through pressure of the League, 226 + Mr. Kilbride, M.P., and Mr. Dunne, 226-228 + Lord Lansdowne's estate in Kerry, 228-231 + Plan of Campaign at Luggacurren, 231-236 + Interview with Father Maher, 236-239 + A "jarvey" on a J.P., 240 + "Railway amenities," 241 + Dublin, March 10, 242 + Mr. Brooke, 242-248 + Unreasonable tenants, 243, 244 + Size and rental of estate, 246 + Sub-commissioner's reduction reversed, 246, 247 + +CHAPTER XV. + Maryborough, 249 + Archbishop Croke, 249 + Interviews with labourers, 251-253 + Views of a successful country teacher, 254, 255 + A veteran of the '48, 256-260 + Amount of wages to men, 261 + The farmers and labourers and lawyers, 264, 265 + Dublin, June 23, 268 + Mr. Hamilton Stubber and Mr. Robert Staples, 268-270 + From Attanagh to Ballyragget, 270 + Case of "a little-good-for tenant," 271, 272 + Mr. Kough and his tenants, 273-277 + Mr. Richardson of Castle Comer, 277 + Position of the tenants, 282 + L70 a year for whisky, 282 + Kilkenny Castle, 282 + Mr. Rolleston of Delgany, 283-292 + John O'Leary, 285-292 + Boycotting private opinion, 292 + The League as now conducted, 295 + Poems and Ballads of "Young Ireland," 296 + Law Courts and Trinity College, 297 + American Civil War, 299-302 + Dublin, June 24, 302 + A dinner with officials, 303-306 + A priest earns over L20,000, 305, 306 + "Crowner's Quest Law," 309-311 + +CHAPTER XVI. + Belfast, June 25, 313 + Ulster in Irish history, 313 + Moira, 315 + Views of an Ulsterman, 315, 316 + Beauty of Belfast, 317, 318 + Its buildings, 319-321 + Dr. Hanna, 322-324 + Dr. Kane, 325 + June 26, 326 + Sir John Preston, 326-328 + Mr. Cameron, of Royal Irish Constabulary, 328 + Police parade, 328 + Belfast steamers, 329 + Scotland and America at work on Ireland, 330 + +EPILOGUE, p. 333-349 + +APPENDIX. + + NOTES-- + + F. The Moonlighters and Home Rule (pp. 10, 38), 351 + G. The Ponsonby Property (pp. 59-66), 353 + G2 The Glenbehy Eviction Fund (p. 12), 360 + G3 Home Rule and Protestantism (p. 68), 362 + H. Tully and the Woodford Evictions (p. 149), 364 + H2. Boycotting the Dead (p. 151), 370 + I. The Savings Banks (P.O.) (vol. i. p. 39, vol. ii. pp. 5 and 200), 371 + K. The Coolgreany Evictions (p. 216), 372 + L. A Ducal Supper in 1711 (p. 283), 374 + M. Letter from Mr. O'Leary (p. 291), 375 + N. Boycotting Private Opinion (p. 293), 377 + O. Boycotting by Crowner's Quest Law (p. 312), 382 + + + + + CHAPTER VII. + + +ROSSBEHY,[1] _Feb. 21._--We are here on the eve of battle! An "eviction" +is to be made to-morrow on the Glenbehy[1] estate of Mr. Winn, an uncle +of Lord Headley, so upon the invitation of Colonel Turner, who has come +to see that all is done decently and in order, I left Ennis with him at +7.40 A.M. for Limerick; the "city of the Liberator" for "the city of the +Broken Treaty." There we breakfasted at the Artillery Barracks. + +The officers showed us there the new twelve-pounder gun with its +elaborately scientific machinery, its Scotch sight, and its four-mile +range. I compared notes about the Trafalgar Square riots of February +1886 with an Irish officer who happened to have been on the opposite +side of Pall Mall from me at the moment when the mob, getting out of the +hand of my socialistic friend Mr. Hyndman, and advancing towards St. +James' Street and Piccadilly was broken by a skilful and very spirited +charge of the police. He gave a most humorous account of his own +sensations when he first came into contact with the multitude after +emerging from St. Paul's, where, as he put it, he had left the people +"all singing away like devils." But I found he quite agreed with me in +thinking that there was a visible nucleus of something like military +organisation in the mob of that day, which was overborne and, as it +were, smothered by the mere mob element before it came to trying +conclusions with the police. + +On our way to Limerick, Colonel Turner caught sight, at a station, of +Father Little, the parish priest of Six Mile Bridge, in County Clare, +and jumping out of the carriage invited him to get in and pursue his +journey with us, which he very politely did. Father Little is a tall +fine-looking man of a Saxon rather than a Celtic type, and I daresay +comes of the Cromwellian stock. He is a staunch and outspoken +Nationalist, and has been made rather prominent of late by his +championship of certain of his parishioners in their contest with their +landlord, Mr. H.V. D'Esterre, who lives chiefly at Bournemouth in +England, but owns 2833 acres in County Clare at Rosmanagher, valued at +L1625 a year. More than a year ago one of Father Little's parishioners, +Mr. Frost, successfully resisted a large force of the constabulary bent +on executing a process of ejectment against him obtained by Mr. +D'Esterre. + +Frost's holding was of 33 Irish, or, in round numbers, about 50 English, +acres, at a rental of L117, 10s., on which he had asked but had not +obtained an abatement. The Poor-Law valuation of the holding was L78, +and Frost estimated the value of his and his father's improvements, +including the homestead and the offices, or in other words his +tenant-right, at L400. The authorities sent a stronger body of +constables and ejected Frost. But as soon as they had left the place +Frost came back with his family, on the 28th Jan. 1887, and reoccupied +it. Of course proceedings were taken against him immediately, and a +small war was waged over the Frost farm until the 5th of September last, +when an expedition was sent against it, and it was finally captured, and +Frost evicted with his family. Upon this last occasion Father Little +(who gave me a very temperate but vigorous account of the whole affair) +distinguished himself by a most ingenious and original attempt to "hold +the fort." He chained himself to the main doorway, and stretching the +chains right and left secured them to two other doors. It was of this +refreshing touch of humour that I heard the other day at Abbeyleix as +happening not in Clare but in Kerry. + +Since his eviction Frost has been living, Father Little tells me, in a +wooden hut put up for him on the lands of a kinsman of the same name, +who is also a tenant of Mr. D'Esterre, and who has since been served by +his landlord with a notice of ejectment for arrears, although he had +paid up six months' dues two months only before the service. Father +Little charged the landlord in this case with prevarication and other +evasive proceedings in the course of his negotiations with the tenants; +and Colonel Turner did not contest the statements made by him in support +of his contention that the Rosmanagher difficulty might have been +avoided had the tenants been more fairly and more considerately dealt +with. It is strong presumptive evidence against the landlord that a +kinsman, Mr. Robert D'Esterre, is one of the subscribers to a fund +raised by Father Little in aid of the evicted man Frost. On the other +hand, as illustrating the condition of the tenants, it is noteworthy +that the Post-Office Savings Bank's deposits at Six-Mile Bridge rose +from L382, 17s. 10d. in 1880 to L934, 13s. 4d. in 1887. + +After breakfast we took a car and drove rapidly about the city for an +hour. With its noble river flowing through the very heart of the place, +and broadening soon into an estuary of the Atlantic, Limerick ought long +ago to have taken its place in the front rank of British ports dealing +with the New World. In the seventeenth century it was the fourth city of +Ireland, Boate putting it then next after Dublin, Galway, and Waterford. +Belfast at that time, he describes as a place hardly comparable "to a +small market-town in England." To-day Limerick has a population of some +forty thousand, and Belfast a population of more than two hundred +thousand souls. This change cannot be attributed solely, if at all, to +the "Protestant ascendency," nor yet to the alleged superiority of the +Northern over the Southern Irish in energy and thrift, For in the +seventeenth century Limerick was more important than Cork, whereas it +had so far fallen behind its Southern competitor in the eighteenth +century that it contained in 1781 but 3859 houses, while Cork contained +5295. To-day its population is about half as large as that of Cork. It +is a very well built city, its main thoroughfare, George Street, being +at least a mile in length, and a picturesque city also, thanks to the +island site of its most ancient quarter, the English Town, and to the +hills of Clare and Killaloe, which close the prospect of the surrounding +country. But the streets, though many of them are handsome, have a +neglected look, as have also the quays and bridges. One of my +companions, to whom I spoke of this, replied, "if they look neglected, +it's because they are neglected. Politics are the death of the place, +and the life of its publics."[2] + +As we approached the shores of the Atlantic from Limerick, the scenery +became very grand and beautiful. On the right of the railway the country +rolled and undulated away towards the Stacks, amid the spurs and slopes +of which, in the wood of Clonlish, Sanders, the Nuncio sent over to +organise Catholic Ireland against Elizabeth, miserably perished of want +and disease six years before the advent of the great Armada. To the +south-west rose the grand outlines of the Macgillicuddy's Reeks, the +highest points, I believe, in the South of Ireland. We established +ourselves at the County Kerry Club on our arrival in Tralee, which I +found to be a brisk prosperous-looking town, and quite well built. A +Nationalist member once gave me a gloomy notion of Tralee, by telling +me, when I asked him whether he looked forward with longing to a seat in +the Parliament of Ireland, that "when he was in Dublin now he always +thought of London, just as when he used to be in Tralee he always +thought of Dublin." But he did less than justice to the town upon the +Lee. We left it at half-past four in the train for Killorglin. The +little station there was full of policemen and soldiers, and knots of +country people stood about the platform discussing the morrow. There had +been some notion that the car-drivers at Killorglin might "boycott" the +authorities. But they were only anxious to turn an honest penny by +bringing us on to this lonely but extremely neat and comfortable +hostelry in the hills. + +We left the Sheriff and the escort to find their way as best they could +after us. + +Mrs. Shee, the landlady here, ushered us into a very pretty room hung +with little landscapes of the country, and made cheery by a roaring +fire. Two or three officers of the soldiers sent on here to prevent any +serious uproar to-morrow dined with us. + +The constabulary are in force, but in great good humour. They have no +belief that there will be any trouble, though all sorts of wild tales +were flying about Tralee before we left, of English members of +Parliament coming down to denounce the "Coercion" law, and of risings in +the hills, and I know not what besides. The agent of the Winn property, +or of Mr. Head of Reigate in Surrey, the mortgagee of the estate, who +holds a power of attorney from Mr. Winn, is here, a quiet, intelligent +young man, who has given me the case in a nut-shell. + +The tenant to be evicted, James Griffin, is the son and heir of one Mrs. +Griffin, who on the 5th of April 1854 took a lease of the lands known as +West Lettur from the then Lord Headley and the Hon. R. Winn, at the +annual rent of L32, 10s. This rent has since been reduced by a judicial +process to L26. In 1883 James Griffin, who was then, as he is now, an +active member of the local branch of the National League, and who was +imprisoned under Mr. Gladstone's Act of 1881 as a "suspect," was +evicted, being then several years in arrears. He re-entered unlawfully +immediately afterwards, and has remained in West Lettur unlawfully ever +since, actively deterring and discouraging other tenants from paying +their rents. He took a great part in promoting the refusal to pay which +led to the famous evictions of last year. As to these, it seems the +tenants had agreed, in 1886, to accept a proposition from Mr. Head, +remitting four-fifths of all their arrears upon payment of one year's +rent and costs. Mr. Sheehan, M.P., a hotel-keeper in Killarney, +intervened, advising the tenants that the Dublin Parliament would soon +be established, and would abolish "landlordism," whereupon they refused +to keep their agreement.[3] Sir Redvers Buller, who then filled the post +now held by Sir West Ridgway, seeing this alarming deadlock, urged Mr. +Head to go further, and offer to take a half-year's rent and costs. If +the tenants refused this Sir Redvers advised Mr. Head to destroy all +houses occupied by mere trespassers, such as Griffin, who, if they could +hold a place for twelve years, would acquire a title under the Statute +of Limitations. A negotiation conducted by Sir Redvers and Father +Quilter, P.P., followed, and Father Quilter, for the tenants, finally, +in writing, accepted Mr. Head's offer, under which, by the payment of +L865, they would be rid of a legal liability for L6177. The League again +intervened with bribes and threats, and Father Quilter found himself +obliged to write to Colonel Turner a letter in which he said, "Only +seventeen of the seventy tenants have sent on their rents to Mr. Roe +(the agent). Though promising that they would accept the terms, they +have withdrawn at the last moment from fulfilment.... I shall never +again during my time in Glenbehy interfere between a landlord and his +tenants. I have poor slaves who will not keep their word. Now let Mr. +Roe or any other agent in future deal with Glenbeighans as he likes." +The farms lie at a distance even from this inn, and very far therefore +from Killorglin, and the agent, knowing that the tenants would be +encouraged by Griffin and by Mr. Harrington, M.P., and others, to come +back into their holdings as soon as the officers withdrew, ordered the +woodwork of several cottages to be burned in order to prevent this. This +burning of the cottages, which were the lawful property of the +mortgagee, made a great figure in the newspaper reports, and +"scandalised the civilised world." The present agent thinks it was +impolitic on that account, but he has no doubt it was a good thing +financially for the evicted tenants. "You will see the shells of the +cottages to-morrow," he said, "and you will judge for yourself what they +were worth." But the sympathy excited by the illustrations of the cruel +conflagration and the heartrending descriptions of the reporters, +resulted in a very handsome subscription for the benefit of the tenants +of Glenbehy. General Sir William Butler, whose name came so prominently +before the public in connection with his failure to appear and give +evidence in a recent _cause celebre_, and whose brother is a Resident +Magistrate in Kerry, was one of the subscribers. The fund thus raised +has been since administered by two trustees, Father Quilter, P.P., and +Mr. Shee, a son of our brisk little landlady here, who maintain out of +it very comfortably the evicted tenants. Not long ago a man in Tralee +tried to bribe the agent into having him evicted, that he might make a +claim on this fund! At Killorglin the Post-Office Savings Bank deposits, +which stood at L282, 15s. 9d. in 1880, rose in 1887 to L1299, 2s. 6d. +James Griffin, despite, or because, of the two evictions through which +he has passed, is very well off. He owns a very good horse and cart, and +seven or eight head of cattle. His arrears now amount to about L240, and +on being urged yesterday to make a proposition which might avoid an +eviction, he gravely offered to pay L8 of the current half-year's rent +in cash, and the remaining L5 in June, the landlord taking on himself +all the costs and giving him a clean receipt! This liberal proposition +was declined. The zeal of her son in behalf of the evicted tenants does +not seem to affect the amiable anxiety of our trim and energetic hostess +to make things agreeable here to the minions of the alien despotism. The +officers both of the police and of the military appear to be on the best +of terms with the whole household, and everything is going as merrily as +marriage bells on this eve of an eviction. + +TRALEE, _Wednesday evening, Feb. 22._--We rose early at Mrs. Shee's, +made a good breakfast, and set out for the scene of the day's work. It +was a glorious morning for Washington's birthday, and I could not help +imagining the amazement with which that stern old Virginian landlord +would have regarded the elaborate preparations thought necessary here in +Ireland in the year of our Lord 1888, to eject a tenant who owes two +hundred and forty pounds of arrears on a holding at twenty-six pounds a +year, and offers to settle the little unpleasantness by paying thirteen +pounds in two instalments! + +We had a five miles' march of it through a singularly wild and +picturesque region, the hills which lead up to the Macgillicuddy's Reeks +on our left, and on the right the lower hills trending to the salt water +of Dingle Bay. Our start had been delayed by the non-appearance of the +Sheriff, in aid of whom all this parade of power was made; but it turned +out afterwards that he had gone on without stopping to let Colonel +Turner know it. + +The air was so bracing and the scenery so fine that we walked most of +the way. Two or three cars drove past us, the police and the troops +making way for them very civilly, though some of the officers thought +they were taking some Nationalist leaders and some English +"sympathisers" to Glenbehy. One of the officers, when I commented upon +this, told me they never had much trouble with the Irish members. "Some +of them," he said, "talk more than is necessary, and flourish about; but +they have sense enough to let us go about our work without foolishly +trying to bother us. The English are not always like that." And he then +told me a story of a scene in which an English M.P., we will call Mr. +Gargoyle, was a conspicuous actor. Mr. Gargoyle being present either at +an eviction or a prohibited meeting, I didn't note which, with two or +three Irish members, all of them were politely requested to step on one +side and let the police march past. The Irish members touched their hats +in return to the salute of the officer, and drew to one side of the +road. But Mr. Gargoyle defiantly planted himself in the middle of the +road. The police, marching four abreast, hesitated for a moment, and +then suddenly dividing into two columns marched on. The right-hand man +of the first double file, as he went by, just touched the M.P. with his +shoulder, and thereby sent him up against the left-hand man of the +corresponding double file, who promptly returned the attention. And in +this manner the distinguished visitor went gyrating through the whole +length of the column, to emerge at the end of it breathless, hatless, +and bewildered, to the intense and ill-suppressed delight of his Irish +colleagues. + +Our hostess's son, the trustee of the Eviction Fund, was on one of the +cars which passed us, with two or three companions, who proved to be +"gentlemen of the Press." We passed a number of cottages and some larger +houses on the way, the inmates of which seemed to be minding their own +business and taking but a slight interest in the great event of the day. +We made a little detour at one of the finest points on the road to visit +"Winn's Folly," a modern mediaeval castle of considerable size, upon a +most enchanting site, with noble views on every side, quite impossible +to be seen through its narrow loopholed and latticed windows. The castle +is extremely well built, of a fine stone from the neighbourhood, and +with a very small expenditure might be made immediately habitable. But +no one has ever lived in it. It has only been occupied as a temporary +barrack by the police when sent here, and the largest rooms are now +littered with straw for the use of the force. At the beginning of the +century, and for many years afterwards, Lord and Lady Headley lived on +the estate, and kept a liberal house. Their residence was on a fine +point running out into the bay, but, I am told, the sea has now invaded +it, and eaten it away. In 1809 the acreage of this Glenbehy property was +8915 Irish acres or 14,442 English acres, set down under Bath's +valuation at L2299, 17s. 6d. Between 1830 and 1860 the rental averaged +L5000 a year, and between these years L17,898, 14s. 5d. were expended by +the landlord in improvements upon the property. This castle, which we +visited, must have involved since then an outlay of at least L10,000 in +the place. + +The present Lord Headley, only a year or two ago, went through the +Bankruptcy Court, and the Hon. Rowland Winn, his uncle, the titular +owner of Glenbehy, is set down among the Irish landlords as owning +13,932 Irish acres at a rental of L1382. + +After we passed the castle we began to hear the blowing of rude horns +from time to time on the distant hills. These were signals to the people +of our approach, and gave quite the air of an invasion to our +expedition. We passed the burned cottages of last year just before +reaching Mr. Griffin's house at West Lettur. They were certainly not +large cottages, and I saw but three of them. We found the Sheriff at +West Lettur. The police and the soldiers drew a cordon around the place, +within which no admittance was to be had except on business; and the +myrmidons of the law going into the house with the agent held a final +conference with the tenant, of which nothing came but a renewal of his +previous offer. Then the work of eviction began. There was no attempt at +a resistance, and but for the martial aspect of the forces, and an +occasional blast of a horn from the hills, or the curious noises made +from time to time by a small concourse of people, chiefly women, +assembled on the slope of an adjoining tenancy, the proceedings were as +dull as a parish meeting. What most struck me about the affair was the +patience and good-nature of the officers. In the two hours and a half +which we spent at West Lettur a New York Sheriff's deputies would have +put fifty tenants with all their bags and baggage out of as many houses +into the street. In fact it is very likely that at least that number of +New York tenants were actually so ousted from their houses during this +very time. + +The evicted Mr. Griffin was a stout, stalwart man of middle age, +comfortably dressed, with the air rather of a citizen than of a farmer, +who took the whole thing most coolly, as did also his women-kind. All of +them were well dressed, and they superintended the removal and piling up +of their household goods as composedly as if they were simply moving out +of one house into another. The house itself was a large comfortable +house of the country, and it was amply furnished. + +I commented on Griffin's indifference to the bailiff, a quiet, +good-natured man. + +"Oh, he's quite familiar," was the reply; "it's the third time he's been +evicted! I believe's going to America." + +"Oh! he will do very well," said a gentleman who had joined the +expedition like myself to see the scene. "He is a shrewd chap, and not +troubled by bashfulness. He sat on a Board of Guardians with a man I +knew four years ago, and one day he read out his own name, 'James +Griffin,' among a list of applicants for relief at Cahirciveen. The +chairman looked up, and said, 'Surely that is not your name you are +reading, is it?' 'It is, indeed,' replied Griffin, 'and I am as much in +need of relief as any one!' Perhaps you'll be surprised to hear he +didn't get it. This is a good holding he had, and he used to do pretty +well with it--not in his mother's time only of the flush prices, but in +his own. It was the going to Kilmainham that spoiled him." + +"How did that spoil him?" + +"Oh, it made a great man of him, being locked up. He was too well +treated there. He got a liking for sherry and bitters, and he's never +been able to make his dinner since without a nip of them. Mrs. Shee +knows that well." + +To make an eviction complete and legal here, everything belonging to the +tenant, and every live creature must be taken out of the house. A cat +may save a house as a cat may save a derelict ship. Then the Sheriff +must "walk" over the whole holding. All this takes time. There was an +unobtrusive search for arms too going on all the time. Three ramrods +were found hidden in a straw-bed--two of which showed signs of recent +use. But the guns had vanished. An officer told me that not long ago two +revolvers were found in a corner of the thatch of a house; but the +cartridges for them were only some time afterwards discovered neatly +packed away in the top of a bedroom wall. It is not the ownership of +these arms, it is the careful concealment of them which indicates +sinister intent. One of the constables brought out three "Moonlighters' +swords" found hidden away in the house. One of these Colonel Turner +showed me. It was a reversal of the Scriptural injunction, being a +ploughshare beaten into a weapon, and a very nasty weapon of offence, +one end of it sharpened for an ugly thrust, the other fashioned into +quite a fair grip. While I was examining this trophy there was a stir, +and presently two of the gentlemen who had passed us on Mr. Shee's car +came rather suddenly out of the house in company with two or three +constables. + +They were representatives, they said, of the Press, and as such desired +to be allowed to remain. Colonel Turner replied that this could not be, +and, in fact, no one had been suffered to enter the house except the +law-officers, the agent, and the constables. So the representatives of +the Press were obliged to pass outside of the lines, one of the +constables declaring that they had got into the house through a hole in +the back wall! + +Shortly after this incident there arose a considerable noise of groaning +and shouting from the hill-side beyond the highway, and presently a +number of people, women and children predominating, appeared coming down +towards the precincts of the house. They were following a person in a +clerical dress, who proved to be Father Quilter, the parish priest, who +had denounced his people to Colonel Turner as "poor slaves" of the +League! A colloquy followed between Father Quilter and the policemen of +the cordon. This was brought to a close by Mr. Roche, the resident +magistrate, who went forward, and finding that Father Quilter wished to +pass the cordon, politely but firmly informed him that this could not be +done. "Not if I am the bearer of a telegram for the lawyer?" asked +Father Quilter, in a loud and not entirely amiable tone. "Not on any +terms whatever," responded the magistrate. Father Quilter still +maintaining his ground, the women crowded in around and behind him, the +men bringing up the rear at a respectable distance, and the small boys +shouting loudly. For a moment faint hopes arose within me that I was +about to witness one of the .exciting scenes of which I have more than +once read. But only for a moment. The magistrate ordered the police to +advance. As they drew near the wall with an evident intention of going +over it into the highway, Father Quilter and the women fell back, the +boys and men retreated up the opposite hill, and the brief battle of +Glenbehy was over. + +A small messenger bearing a telegram then emerged from the crowd, and +showing his telegram, was permitted to pass. Father Quilter, in a loud +voice, commented upon this, crying out, "See now your consistency! You +said no one should pass, and you let the messenger come in!" To this +sally no reply was returned. After a little the priest, followed by most +of the people, went up the hill to the holding of another tenant, and +there, as the police came in and reported, held a meeting. From time to +time cries were heard in the distance, and ever and anon the blast of a +horn came from some outlying hill. + +But no notice was taken of these things by the police, and when the +tedious formalities of the law had all been gone through with, a squad +of men were put in charge of the house and the holding, the rest of the +army re-formed for the march back, our cars came up, and we left West +Lettur. Seeing a number of men come down the hill, as the column +prepared to move, Mr. Roche, making his voice tremendous, after the +fashion of a Greek chorus, commanded the police to arrest and handcuff +any riotous person making provocative noises. This had the desired +effect, and the march back began in silence. When the column was fairly +in the road, "boos" and groans went up from knots of men higher up the +hill, but no heed was taken of these, and no further incident occurred. +I shall be curious to see whether the story of this affair can possibly +be worked up into a thrilling narrative. + +We lunched at Mrs. Shee's, where no sort of curiosity was manifested +about the proceedings at West Lettur, and I came back here with Colonel +Turner by another road, which led us past one of the loveliest lakes I +have ever seen--Lough Caragh. Less known to fame than the much larger +Lake of Killarney, it is in its way quite worthy of comparison with any +of the lesser lakes of Europe. It is not indeed set in a coronal of +mountains like Orta, but its shores are well wooded, picturesque, and +enlivened by charming seats--now, for the most part, alas!--abandoned by +their owners. We had a pleasant club dinner here this evening, after +which came in to see me Mr. Hussey, to whom I had sent a letter from Mr. +Froude. Few men, I imagine, know this whole region better than Mr. +Hussey. Some gentlemen of the country joined in the conversation, and +curious stories were told of the difficulty of getting evidence in +criminal cases. What Froude says of the effect of the prohibitive and +protection policy in Ireland upon the morals of the people as to +smuggling must be said, I fear, of the effect of the Penal Laws against +Catholics upon their morals as to perjury. It is not surprising that the +peasants should have been educated into the state of mind of the +Irishman in the old American story, who, being solicited to promise his +vote when he landed in New York, asked whether the party which sought it +was for the Government or against it. Against it, he was told, "Then +begorra you shall have my vote, for I'm agin the Government whatever it +is." One shocking case was told of a notorious and terrible murder here +in Kerry. An old man and his son, so poor that they lay naked in their +beds, were taken out and shot by a party of Moonlighters for breaking a +boycott. They were left for dead, and their bodies thrown upon a +dunghill. The boy, however, was still alive when they were found, and it +was thought he might recover. The magistrates questioned him as to his +knowledge of the murderers. The boy's mother stood behind the +magistrate, and when the question was put, held up her finger in a +warning manner at the poor lad. She didn't wish him to "peach," as, if +he lived, the friends of the murderers would make it impossible for them +to keep their holding and live on it. The lad lied, and died with the +lie on his lips. Who shall sit in judgment on that wretched mother and +her son? But what rule can possibly be too stern to crush out the +terrorism which makes such things possible? + +And what right have Englishmen to expect their dominion to stand in +Ireland when their party leaders for party ends shake hands with men who +wink at and use this terrorism? It has so wrought upon the population +here, that in another case, in which the truth needed by justice and the +fears of a poor family trembling for their substance and their lives +came thus into collision, an Irish Judge did not hesitate to warn the +jury against allowing themselves to be influenced by "the usual family +lie"! + +A magistrate told us a curious story, which recalls a case noted by Sir +Walter Scott, about the detection of a murderer, who lay long in wait +for a certain police sergeant, obnoxious to the "Moonlighters," and +finally shot him dead in the public street of Loughrea, after dark on a +rainy night, as he was returning from the Post-Office on one side of the +street to the Police Barracks on the other. The town and the +neighbouring country were all agog about the matter, but no trace could +be got until the Dublin detectives came down three days after the +murder. It had rained more or less every one of these days, and the +pools of water were still standing in the street, as on the night of the +murder. One of the Dublin officers closely examining the highway saw a +heavy footprint in the coarse mud at the bottom of one of these pools. +He had the water drawn off, and made out clearly, from the print in the +mud, that the brogan worn by the foot which made it had a broken +sole-piece turned over under the foot. By this the murderer was +eventually traced, captured, tried, and found guilty. + +Mr. Morphy, I find, is coming down from Dublin to conduct the +prosecution in the case of the Crown against the murderers of +Fitzmaurice, the old man, so brutally slain the other day near Lixnaw, +in the presence of his daughter, for taking and farming a farm given up +by his thriftless brother. "He will find," said one of the company, +"the mischief done in this instance also by prematurely pressing for +evidence. The girl Honora, who saw her father murdered, never ought to +have been subjected to any inquiry at first by any one, least of all by +the local priest. Her first thought inevitably was that if she intimated +who the men were, they would be screened, and she would suffer. Now she +is recovering her self-possession and coming round, and she will tell +the truth." + +"Meanwhile," said a magistrate, "the girl and her family are all +'boycotted,' and that, mark you, by the priest, as well as by the +people. The girl's life would be in peril were not these scoundrels +cowards as well as bullies. Two staunch policemen--Irishmen and +Catholics both of them--are in constant attendance, with orders to +prevent any one from trying to intimidate or to tamper with her. A +police hut is putting up close to the Fitzmaurice house. The Nationalist +papers haven't a word to say for this poor girl or her murdered father. +But they are always putting in some sly word in behalf of Moriarty and +Hayes, the men accused of the murder." + +"Furthermore," said another guest, "these two men are regularly supplied +while in prison with special meals by Mrs. Tangney. Who foots the bills? +That is what she won't tell, nor has the Head-Constable so far been able +accurately to ascertain. All we know is that the friends of the +prisoners haven't the money to do it." + +Late in the evening came in a tall fine-looking Kerry squire, who told +us, _a propos_ of the Fitzmaurice murder, that only a day or two ago a +very decent tenant of his, who had taken over a holding from a +disreputable kinsman, intending to manage it for the benefit of this +kinsman's family, came to him and said he must give it up, as the +Moonlighters had threatened him if he continued to hold it. + +A man of substance in Tralee gave me some startling facts as to the +local administration here. In Tralee Union, he said, there were in 1879 +eighty-seven persons receiving outdoor relief, at a cost to the Union of +L30, 17s. 11d., being an average per head of 7s. 1d., and 1879 was a +very bad year, the worst since the great famine year, 1847. A +Nationalist Board was elected in 1880, and a Nationalist chairman in +1884. 1884 was a very good year, but in that year no fewer than 3434 +persons received outdoor relief, at a cost of L2534, 13s. 10d., making +an average per head of 14s. 9d.! And at the present time L5000 nominal +worth of dishonoured cheques of the authorities were flying all over the +county! + +"On whom," I asked, "does the burden fall of these levies and +extravagances?" + +"On the landlords, not on the tenants," he promptly replied. "The +landlord pays the whole of the rates on all holdings of less than L4 a +year, and on all land which is either really or technically in his own +possession. He also pays one-half of the rates on all the rest of his +property." + +"Then, in a case like that of Griffin's, evicted at Glenbehy, with +arrears going back to 1883, who would pay the rates?" + +"The landlord of course!"[4] + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +CORK, _Thursday, Feb. 23d._--We left Tralee this morning. It was +difficult to recognise the events yesterday witnessed by us at Glenbehy +in the accounts which we read of them to-day when we got the newspapers. + +As these accounts are obviously intended to be read, not in Ireland, +where nobody seems to take the least interest in Irish affairs beyond +his own bailiwick, but in England and America, it is only natural, I +suppose, that they should be coloured to suit the taste of the market +for which they are destined. It is astonishing how little interest the +people generally show in the newspapers. The Irish make good journalists +as they make good soldiers; but most of the journalists who now +represent Irish constituencies at Westminster find their chief field of +activity, I am told, not in Irish but in British or in American +journals. Mr. Roche, R.M., who travelled with us as far as Castle +Island, where we left him, was much less moved by the grotesque accounts +given in the local journals of his conduct yesterday than by Mr. +Gladstone's "retractation" of the extraordinary attack which he made the +other day upon Mr. Roche himself, and four other magistrates by name. + +"The retractation aggravates the attack," he said. + +When one sees what a magistrate now represents in Ireland, it certainly +is not easy to reconcile an inconsiderate attack upon the character and +conduct of such an officer with the most elementary ideas of good +citizenship. + +After Mr. Roche left us, a gentleman in the carriage, who is interested +in some Castle Island property, told us that nothing could be worse than +the state of that region. Open defiance of the moral authority of the +clergy is as rife there, he says, as open defiance of the civil +authorities. The church was not long ago broken into, and the sacred +vestments were defiled; and, but the other day, a young girl of the +place came to a magistrate and asked him to give her a summons against +the parish priest "for assaulting her." The magistrate, a Protestant, +but a personal friend of the priest, esteeming him for his fidelity to +his duties, asked the girl what on earth she meant. She proceeded with +perfect coolness to say that the priest had impertinently interfered +with her, "assaulted her," and told her to "go home," when he found her +sitting in a lonely part of the road with her young man, rather late at +night! For this, the girl, professing to be a Catholic, actually wanted +the Protestant magistrate to have her parish priest brought into his +court! He told the girl plainly what he thought of her conduct, +whereupon she went away, very angry, and vowing vengeance both against +the priest and against him. + +This same gentleman said that at the Bodyke evictions, of which so much +has been heard, the girls and women swarmed about the police using +language so revoltingly obscene that the policemen blushed--such +language, he said, as was never heard from decent Irishwomen in the days +of his youth. + +Of this business of evictions, he said, the greatest imaginable +misrepresentations are made in the press and by public speakers. "You +have just seen one eviction yourself," he said, "and you can judge for +yourself whether that can be truly described in Mr. Gladstone's language +as a 'sentence of death.' The people that were put out of these burned +houses you saw, houses that never would have needed to be burned, had +Harrington and the other Leaguers allowed the people to keep their +pledges given Sir Redvers Buller, those very people are better off now +than they were before they were evicted, in so far as this, that they +get their food and drink and shelter without working for it, and I'm +sorry to say that the Government and the League, between them, have been +soliciting half of Ireland for the last six or eight years to think that +sort of thing a heaven upon earth. An eviction in Ireland in these days +generally means just this, that the fight between a landlord and the +League has come to a head. If the tenant wants to be rid of his holding, +or if he is more afraid of the League than of the law, why, out he goes, +and then he is a victim of heartless oppression; but if he is +well-to-do, and if he thinks he will be protected, he takes the eviction +proceedings just for a notice to stop palavering and make a settlement, +and a settlement is made. The ordinary Irish tenant don't think anything +more of an eviction than Irish gentlemen used to think of a duel; but +you can never get English people to understand the one any more than the +other!" + +The fine broad streets which Cork owes to the filling up and bridging +over of the canals which in the last century made her a kind of Irish +Venice, give the city a comely and even stately aspect. But they are not +much better kept and looked after than the streets of New York. And they +are certainly less busy and animated than when I last was here, five +years ago. All the canals, however, are not filled up or bridged over. +From my windows, in a neat comfortable little private hotel on +Morrison's Quay, I look down upon the deck of a small barque, moored +well up among the houses. The hospitable and dignified County Club is +within two minutes' walk of my hostelry, and the equally hospitable and +more bustling City Club, but a little farther off, at the end of the +South Mall. At luncheon to-day a gentleman who was at Kilkenny with Mr. +Gladstone on the occasion of his visit to that city told me a story too +good to be lost. The party were eight in number, and on their return to +Abbeyleix they naturally looked out for an empty railway carriage. The +train was rather full, but in one compartment my informant descried a +dignitary, whom he knew, of the Protestant Church of Ireland, its only +occupant. He went up and saluted the Dean, and, pointing to his +companions, asked if he would object to changing his place in the train, +which would give them a compartment to themselves. The Dean courteously, +and indeed briskly, assented, when he saw that Mr. Gladstone was one of +the party. + +After the train moved off, Mr. Gladstone said, "Was not that gentleman +who so kindly vacated his place for us a clergyman?" + +"Yes." "I hope he won't think I have disestablished him again!" + +At the next station, my informant getting out for a moment to thank the +Dean again for his civility, and chat with him, repeated Mr. Gladstone's +remark. + +"Oh!" said the Dean; "you may tell him I don't mind his disestablishing +me again; for he didn't disendow me; he didn't confiscate my ticket!" + +With this gentleman was another from Kerry, who tells me there is a +distinct change for the better already visible in that county, which he +attributes to the steady action of the Dublin authorities in enforcing +the law. + +"The League Courts," he said, "are ceasing to be the terror they used to +be." + +I asked what he meant by the "League Courts," when he expressed his +astonishment at my not knowing that it was the practice of the League to +hold regular Courts, before which the tenants are summoned, as if by a +process of the law, to explain their conduct, when they are charged with +paying their rents without the permission of the Local League. In his +part of Kerry, he tells me, these Courts used not very long ago to sit +regularly every Sunday. The idea, he says, is as old as the time of the +United Irishmen, who used to terrorise the country just in the same way. +A man whom he named, a blacksmith, acted as a kind of "Law Lord," and to +him the chairmen of the different local "Courts" used to refer cases +heard before them![5] + +All this was testified to openly two years ago, before Lord Cowper's +Commission, but no decisive action has ever been taken by the Government +to put a stop to the scandal, and relieve the tenants from this open +tyranny. These Courts enforced, and still enforce, their decrees by +various forms of outrage, ranging "from the boycott," in its simplest +forms up to direct outrages upon property and the person. + +"This dual Government business," he said, "can only end in a duel +between the two Governments, and it must be a duel to the death of one +or the other." + +To-night at dinner I had a most interesting conversation with Mr. +Colomb, Assistant Inspector-General of the Constabulary, who is here +engaged with Mr. Cameron of Belfast, and Colonel Turner, in +investigating the affair at Mitchelstown. Mr. Colomb was at Killarney at +the time of the Fenian rising under "General O'Connor" in 1867--a rising +which was undoubtedly an indirect consequence of our own Civil War in +America. Warning came to two magistrates, of impending trouble from +Cahirciveen. Upon this Mr. Colomb immediately ordered the arrest of all +passengers to arrive that day at Killarney by the "stage-car" from that +place. When the car came in at night, it brought only one person--"an +awful-looking ruffian he was," said Mr. Colomb, "whom, by his +square-toed shoes, we knew to be just arrived from your side of the +water." + +He was examined, and said he was a commercial traveller, and that he had +only one letter about him, a business letter, addressed to "J. D. +Sheehan." + +"Have you any objection to show us that letter?" + +"Certainly not," he replied very coolly, and, taking it out of his +pocket, he walked toward a table on which stood a candle, as if to read +it. A gentleman who was closely watching him, caught him by the wrist, +just as he was putting the letter to the flame, and saved it. It was +addressed to J. D. Sheehan, Esq., Killarney [Present], and ran as +follows: + + "_Feb. 12th, Morning_. + + "MY DEAR SHEEHAN,--I have the honour to introduce to you Captain + Mortimer Moriarty. He will be of great assistance to you, and I + have told him all that is to be done until I get to your place. The + Private _Spys_ are very active this morning. Unless they smell a + rat all will be done without any trouble. + + "Success to you. Hoping to meet soon,--Yours as ever. + + "(Signed) JOHN J. O'CONNOR."[6] + +Despatches were at once sent off to the authorities at different points. +They were all transmitted, except to Cahirciveen, the wires to which +place were found to have been cut. Mr. Colomb--who had a force of but +seventeen men in the town of Killarney--saw the uselessness of trying to +communicate with the officer at Cahirciveen, but was so strongly urged +by the magistrates that he unwillingly consented to endeavour to do so, +and a mounted orderly was sent. Just after this unfortunate officer had +passed Glenbehy (the scene of the eviction I have just witnessed) he was +shot by some of O'Connor's party, whom he tried to pass in the dark, and +who were marching on Killarney, and fell from his horse, which galloped +off. He managed to crawl to a neighbouring cottage, where he was not +long after found by "General O'Connor" and some of his followers. The +wounded man was kindly treated by O'Connor, who had him examined for +despatches, but prevented one of his men from shooting him dead, as he +lay on the ground, and had his wounds as well attended to as was +possible. There was no response in the country to the Kerry rising, such +as it was, because the intended seizure of Chester Castle by the Fenians +failed, but O'Connor was not captured, though great efforts were made to +seize him. How he escaped is not known to this day. + +At that time, as always in emergencies, Mr. Colomh says the Constabulary +behaved with exemplary coolness, courage, and fidelity. His position +gives him a very thorough knowledge of the force, which is almost +entirely recruited from the body of the Irish people. Of late years not +a few men of family, reduced in fortune, have taken service in it. Among +these has been mentioned to me a young Irishman of title, and of an +ancient race, who is a sergeant in the force, and who recently declined +to accept a commission, as his increased expenses would make it harder +for him to support his two sisters. Another constable in the ranks +represents a family illustrious in the annals of England four centuries +ago. + +As to the _morale_ of the force, he cites one eloquent fact. Out of a +total of more than 13,000 men, the cases of drunkenness, proved or +admitted, average no more than fourteen a week! On many days absolutely +no such cases occur. This is really amazing when one thinks how many of +the men are isolated on lonely posts all over the island, exposed to all +sorts of weather, and cut off from the ordinary resources and amusements +of social life. + +CORK, _Friday, Feb. 24th._--This morning after breakfast I met in the +South Mall a charming ecclesiastic, whose acquaintance I made in Rome +while I was attending the great celebration there in 1867 of St. Peter's +Day. Father Burke introduced me to him after the Pontifical Mass at San +Paolo fuori le Mure; and we had a delightful symposium that afternoon. I +walked with him to his lodgings, talking over those "days long +vanished," and the friend whose genius made them, like the suppers of +Plato, "a joy for ever." He is sorely troubled now by the attitude of a +portion of the clergy in his part of Ireland, which is one almost of +open hostility, he says, to the moral authority of the Church, and +indicates the development of a class of priests moving in the direction +of the "conventional priests," by whom the Church was disgraced during +the darkest days of the French Revolution of 1793. + +Almost more mischievous than these men, he thinks, who must eventually +go the way of their kind in times past, are the timid priests, for the +most part parish priests, who go in fear of their violent curates, and +of the politicians who tyrannise their flocks. He showed me a letter +written to him last week by one of these, whose parish is just now in a +tempest over the Plan of Campaign. Certainly a most remarkable letter. +In it the writer frankly says, "There is no justification for the Plan +of Campaign on this property. + +"I assented to putting it in force here," he goes on, "because I did not +at the time know the facts of the case, and took them on trust from +persons who, I find, have practised upon my confidence. What am I to do? +I am made to appear as a consenting party now, and, indeed, an assisting +agent in action, which I certainly was led to believe right and +necessary, but which upon the facts I now see involves much injustice +to ---- (naming the landlord), and I fear positive ruin to worthy men and +families of my people. I shall be grateful and glad of your counsel in +these most distressing circumstances." + +"What can any one do to help such a man?" said my friend. "The +rebellious and unruly in the Church, be they priests or laymen, can only +in the end damage themselves. _Tu es Petrus_; and revolt, like schism, +is a devil which only carries away those of whom it gets possession out +of the Church and into the sea. But a weak sentinel on the wall or at +the gate who drops his musket to wipe his eyes, that is a thing for +tears!" + +He asked me to come and see him if possible in his own county, and he +has promised to send me letters to-day for priests who will he glad to +tell me what they know only too well of the pressure put upon the better +sort of the people by the organised idlers and mischief-makers in Clare +and Kerry. + +To-day at the City Club, I made the acquaintance of the Town-Clerk of +Cork, Mr. Alexander M'Carthy, a staunch Nationalist and Home Ruler, who +holds his office almost by a sort of hereditary tenure, having been +appointed to it in 1859 in succession to his father. He gave me many +interesting particulars as to the municipal history and administration +of Cork, and showed me some of the responses he is receiving to a kind +of circular letter sent by the municipality to the town governments of +England, touching the recent proceedings against the Mayor. So far these +responses have not been very sympathetic. He invited me to lunch here +with him to-morrow, and visit some of the most interesting points in and +around the city. Here, too, I met Colonel Spaight, Inspector of the +Local Government Board, who gives me a startling account of the increase +of the public burdens. Twenty years ago there were no persons whatever +seeking outdoor relief in Cork. This year, out of a total population of +145,216, there are 3775 persons here receiving indoor relief, and 4337 +receiving outdoor relief, making in all 8112, or nearly 6 per cent. of +the inhabitants. This proportion is swelled by the influx of people from +other regions seeking occupation here, which they do not find, or simply +coming here because they are sure of relief. This state of things +illustrates not so much the decay of industry in Cork as the development +of a spirit of mendicancy throughout Ireland. In the opinion of many +thoughtful people, this began with the Duchess of Marlborough's Fund, +and with the Mansion House Fund. Colonel Spaight remembers that in +Strokestown Union, Roscommon, when the guardians there received a supply +of one hundred tons of seed potatoes, they distributed eighty tons, and +were then completely at a loss what to do with the remaining twenty +tons. Mr. Parnell and Mr. O'Kelly, however, came to Roscommon, and the +latter made a speech out of the hotel window to the people, advising +them to apply for more, and take all they could get. "With a stroke of a +pen," he said, "we'll wipe out the seed rate!" Whereupon the +applications for seed rose to six hundred tons! + +The Labourers Act, passed by the British Parliament for the benefit of +the Irish labourers, who get but scant recognition of their wants and +wishes from the tenant farmers, is not producing the good results +expected from it, mainly because it is perverted to all sorts of +jobbery. Only last week Colonel Spaight had to hand in to the Local +Government Board a report on certain schemes of expenditure under this +Act, prepared by the Board of Guardians of Tralee. These schemes +contemplated the erection of 196 cottages in 135 electoral divisions of +the Union. This meant, of course, so much money of the ratepayers to be +turned over to local contractors. Colonel Spaight on inspection found +that of the 196 proposed cottages, the erection of 61 had been forbidden +by the sanitary authorities, the notices for the erection of 23 had been +wrongly served, 20 were proposed to be erected on sites not adjoining a +public road, and no necessity had been shown for erecting 40 of the +others. He accordingly recommended that only 32 be allowed to be +erected! For a small town like Tralee this proposition to put up 196 +buildings at the public expense where only 32 were needed is not bad. It +has the right old Tammany Ring smack, and would have commanded, I am +sure, the patronising approval of the late Mr. Tweed. + +I mentioned it to-night at the County Club, when a gentleman said that +this morning at Macroom a serious "row" had occurred between the local +Board of Guardians there and a great crowd of labourers. The labourers +thronged the Board-room, demanding the half-acre plots of land which had +been promised them. The Guardians put them off, promising to attend to +them when the regular business of the meeting was over. So the poor +fellows were kept waiting for three mortal hours, at the end of which +time they espied the elected Nationalist members of the Board subtly +filing out of the place. This angered them. They stopped the fugitives, +blockaded the Board-room, and forced the Guardians to appoint a +committee to act upon their demands. + +It is certainly a curious fact that, so far, in Ireland I have seen no +decent cottages for labourers, excepting those put up at their own +expense on their own property by landlords. + +I dined to-night at the County Club with Captain Plunkett, a most +energetic, spirited, and well-informed resident magistrate, a brother of +the late Lord Louth,--still remembered, I dare say, at the New York +Hotel as the only Briton who ever really mastered the mystery of +concocting a "cocktail,"--and an uncle of the present peer. We had a +very cheery dinner, and a very clever lawyer, Mr. Shannon, gave us an +irresistible reproduction of a charge delivered by an Irish judge famous +for shooting over the heads of juries, who sent twelve worthy citizens +of Galway out of their minds by bidding them remember, in a case of +larceny, that they could not find the prisoner guilty unless they were +quite sure "as to the _animus furandi_ and the _asportavit_." + +_Saturday, Feb. 25._--I had an interesting talk this morning at the +County Club with a gentleman from Limerick on the subject of +"boycotting." I told him what I had seen at Edenvale of the practice as +applied to a forlorn and helpless old woman, for the crime of standing +by her "boycotted" son. "You think this an extreme case," he said, "but +you are quite mistaken. It is a typical case certainly, but it gives you +only an inadequate idea of the scope given to this infernal machinery. +The 'boycott' is now used in Ireland as the Inquisition was used in +Spain,--to stifle freedom of thought and action. It is to-day the chief +reliance of the National League for keeping up its membership, and +squeezing subscriptions out of the people. If you want proof of this," +he added, "ask any Nationalist you know whether members of the League in +the country allow farmers who are not members to associate with them in +any way. I can cite you a case at Ballingarry, in my county, where last +summer a resolution of the League was published and put on the Chapel +door, that members of the National League were thenceforth to have no +dealings or communication with any person not a member. This I saw with +my own eyes, and it was matter of public notoriety." + +I lunched at the City Club with Mr. M'Carthy. Sir Daniel O'Sullivan, +formerly Mayor of Cork, whose views of Home Rule seem to differ widely +from those of his successor, now incarcerated here, was one of the +company. In the course of an animated but perfectly good-natured +discussion of the Land Law question between two other gentlemen present, +one of them, a strong Nationalist, smote his Unionist opponent very +neatly under the fifth rib. The latter contending that it was monstrous +to interfere by law with the principle of freedom of contract, the +Nationalist responded, "That cannot be; it must be right and legitimate +to do it, for the Imperial Parliament has done it four times within +seventeen years!" + +I walked with Mr. M'Carthy to his apartments, where he showed me many +curious papers and volumes bearing on municipal law and municipal +history in Ireland. Among these, two most elaborate and interesting +volumes, being the Council Books of Cork, Youghal, and Kinsale, from +1610 to 1659, 1666 to 1687, and 1690 to 1800. The records for the years +not enumerated have perished, that is, for the first five or six years +after the Restoration, and for the years just preceding and just +following the fall of James II. These volumes take one back to the +condition of Southern Ireland immediately after English greed and +intrigue had sapped the foundations of the peace which followed the +submission of the great Earl of Tyrone, and brought about the flight to +the Continent of that chieftain, and of his friend and ally, the Earl of +Tyrconnell. + +They give us no picture, unfortunately, of the closing years of +Elizabeth's long struggle to establish the English power, or of the +occupation of Kinsale by the Spanish in the name of the Pope. But there +is abundant evidence in them of the theological hatred which so +embittered the conflict of races in Ireland during the seventeenth +century. + +It was a relief to turn from these to a solemn controversy waged in our +own times between Cork and Limerick over a question of municipal +precedence, in which Mr. M'Carthy did battle for the City of the Galley +and the Towers[7] against the City of the Gateway and Cathedral dome. +The truth seems to be that King John gave charters to both cities, but +to Cork twelve years earlier than to Limerick. Speaking of this contest, +by the way, with a loyalist of Cork to-night, I observed that it was +almost as odd to find such a question hotly disputed between two +Nationalist cities as to see the champions of Irish independence +marching under the banner of the harp, which was invented for Ireland by +Henry VIII. + +"I don't know why you call Cork a Nationalist city," he replied, "for +Parnell and Maurice Healy were returned for it by a clear minority of +the voters. If all the voters had gone to the polls, they would both +have been beaten." + +A curious statement certainly, and worth looking into. Mr. M'Carthy gave +me also much information as to the working of the municipal system here, +and a copy of the rules which govern the debates of the Town Council. +One of these might be adopted with advantage in other assemblies, to +wit, "that no member be permitted to occupy the time of the Council for +more than ten minutes." + +There is an important difference between the parliamentary and the +municipal constituencies of Cork. The former constituency comprises all +residents within the borough boundaries occupying premises of the +rateable value of L10 a year. The municipal constituency consists of no +more than 1800 voters, divided among the seven wards which make up the +city under the "3d and 4th Victoria," and which contain about 13,000 of +the 15,116 Parliamentary voters of the borough. The same thing is true +in the main of nine out of the eleven municipal boroughs of Ireland +including Dublin. The 3d and 4th Victoria was amended for Dublin in +1849, so as to give that city the municipal franchise then existing in +England, but no move in that direction was made for Cork, Waterford, +Limerick, or any other municipal borough. The Nationalists have taken no +interest in the question. Perhaps they have good reason for this, as in +Belfast, where the municipal franchise has been widely extended since +the present Government came into power, the democratic electorate has +put the whole municipal government into the hands of the Unionists. The +day being cool, though fine, Mr. M'Carthy got an "inside car," and we +went off for a drive about the city. The environs of Cork are very +attractive. We visited the new cemetery grounds which are very neatly +and tastefully laid out. There was a conflict over them, the owners of +family vaults staunchly standing out against the "levelling" tendency of +a harmonious city of the dead. But all is well that ends well, and now +two handsome stone chapels, one Catholic and one Protestant, keep watch +and ward over the silent sleepers, standing face to face near the grand +entrance, and exactly alike in their architecture. A very pretty drive +took us to the water-works, which are extensive, well planned, and +exceedingly well kept. They are awaiting now the arrival from America of +some great turbine wheels, but the engines are of English make. In the +city we visited the new Protestant cathedral of St. Finbar, a very fine +church, which advantageously replaces a "spacious structure of the Doric +order," built here in the reign of George II., with the proceeds of a +parliamentary tax on coals. Despite his name, I imagine that admirable +prelate, Dr. England, the first Catholic bishop of my native city in +America, must have been a Corkonian, for he it was, I believe, who put +the cathedral of Charleston under the invocation of St. Finbar, the +first bishop of Cork. The church stands charmingly amid fine trees on a +southern branch of the river Lea. We visited also two fine Catholic +churches, one of St. Vincent de Paul, and the other the Church of St. +Peter and St. Paul, a grandly proportioned and imposing edifice. + +It was at vespers that we entered it, and found it filled with the +kneeling people. This noble church is rather ignobly hidden away behind +crowded houses and shops, and the contrast was very striking when we +emerged from its dim religious space and silence into the thronged and +rather noisy streets. There is a statue here of Father Mathew; but what +I have seen to-night makes me doubt whether the present generation of +Corkonians would have erected it. + +At dinner a gentleman gave us a most interesting account of the +picturesque home which a man of taste, and a lover of natural history, +has made for himself at the remote seaside village of Belmullet, in +Mayo, the seat of the Mayo quarries, in which Mr. Davitt takes so much +interest. The sea brings in there all sorts of wreckage, and the house +is beautifully finished with mahogany and other rare woods, just as I +remember finding in a noble mansion in South Wales, near a dangerous +head-land, some magnificent doors and wainscotings made of that most +beautiful of the Central American woods, nogarote, which I never saw in +the United States, excepting in a superb specimen of it sent home by +myself from Corinto. This colonist of Mayo employs all the people he can +get in the fisheries there, which are very rich; and the ducks and wild +geese are so numerous that he sometimes sends as far as to Wicklow for +men to capture and sell them for him. He was once fortunate enough to +trap a pair of the snow geese of the Arctic region, but Belmullet, in +other respects a primeval paradise, is cursed with the small boy of +civilisation; and one of these pests of society slew the goose with a +stone. The widowed gander consoled himself by contracting family ties +with the common domestic goose of the parish, and all his progeny, in +other particulars indistinguishable from that familiar bird, bear the +black marks distinctive of the Arctic tribe. + +Belmullet, this gentleman tells me, boasts a very good little inn, kept +by a Mrs. Deehan, which was honoured by a visit from Lord Carnarvon with +his wife and daughters during the Earl's Viceroyalty. This was in the +course of a private and personal, not official tour, during which, Lord +Carnarvon says, he was everywhere received with the greatest courtesy by +all sorts and conditions of the people. It is an interesting +illustration of the temper in which certain priests in Ireland deal with +matters of State, that when Lord Carnarvon politely invited the parish +priest of Belmullet to come to see him, that functionary declined to do +so. Upon this the placable Viceroy sent to know whether the priest would +receive the visit he refused to pay. The priest replied that he never +declined to receive any gentleman who wished to see him; and the Viceroy +accordingly called upon him, to the edification of the people, who +afterwards listened very respectfully to a little speech which His +Excellency made to them from a car. It is rather surprising that these +incidents have never been adduced in proof of Lord Carnarvon's +determination to take the Home Rule wind out of the sails of the +Liberals! + + +CORK, _Sunday, Feb. 26._--I went out to-day with Mr. Cameron to see +Blarney Castle and St. Anne's Hill. Nothing can be lovelier than the +country around Cork and the valley of the Lea. A "light railway," of the +sort authorised by the Act of 1883, takes you out quickly enough to +Blarney, and the train was well filled. The construction of these +railways is found fault with as aggravating instead of relieving those +defects in the organisation and management of the Irish railways, which +are so thoroughly and intelligently exposed in the Public Works Report +of Sir James Allport and his fellow-commissioners. A morning paper +to-day points this out sharply. + +In the days of King William III. Blarney Castle must have been a +magnificent stronghold. It stands very finely on a well-wooded height, +and dominates the land for miles around. But it held out against the +victor of the Boyne so long that, when he captured it, he thought it +best, in the expressive phrase of the Commonwealth, to "slight" it, +little now remaining of it but the gigantic keep, the walls of which are +some six yards thick, and a range of ruined outworks stretching along +and above a line of caverns, probably the work of the quarrymen who got +out the stone for the Castle ages ago. The legend of the Blarney Stone +does not seem to be a hundred years old, but the stone itself is one of +the front battlements of the grand old tower, which has more than once +fallen to the ground from the giddy height at which it was originally +set. It is now made fast there by iron clamps, in such a position that +to kiss it one should be a Japanese acrobat, or a volunteer rifleman +shooting for the championship of the world. There are many and very fine +trees in the grounds about the Castle, and there is a charming garden, +now closed against the casual tourist, as it has been leased with the +modern house to a tenant who lives here. In the leafy summer the place +must be a dream of beauty. An avenue of stately trees quite overarching +the highway leads from Blarney to St. Anne's Hill, the site of which, at +least, is that of an ideal sanatorium. We walked thither over hill and +dale. The panorama commanded by the buildings of the sanatorium is one +of the widest and finest imaginable, worthy to be compared with the +prospect from the Star and Garter at Richmond, or with that from the +terrace at St. Germain. + +Several handsome lodges or cottages have been built about the extensive +grounds. These are comfortably furnished and leased to people who prefer +to bring their households here rather than take up their abode in the +hotel, which, however, seems to be a very well kept and comfortable sort +of place, with billiard and music rooms, a small theatre, and all kinds +of contrivances for making the country almost as tedious as the town. +The establishment is directed now by a German resident physician, but +belongs to an Irish gentleman, Mr. Barter, who lives here himself, and +here manages what I am told is one of the finest dairy farms and dairies +in Ireland. Our return trip to Cork on the "light railway," with a warm +red sunset lighting up the river Lea, and throwing its glamour over the +varied and picturesque scenery through which we ran, was not the least +delightful part of a very delightful excursion. + +After we got back I spent half-an-hour with a gentleman who knows the +country about Youghal, which I propose to visit to-morrow, and who saw +something of the recent troubles there arising out of the Plan of +Campaign, as put into effect on the Ponsonby property. + +He is of the opinion that the Nationalists were misled into this contest +by bad information as to Mr. Ponsonby's resources and relations. They +expected to drive him to the wall, but they will fail to do this, and +failing to do this they will be left in the vocative. He showed me a +curious souvenir of the day of the evictions, in the shape of a +quatrain, written by the young wife of an evicted tenant. This young +woman, Mrs. Mahoney, was observed by one of the officers, as the +eviction went on, to go apart to a window, where she stood for a while +apparently writing something on a wooden panel of the shutter. After the +eviction was over the officer remembered this, and going up to the +window found these lines pencilled upon the panel:-- + + "We are evicted from this house, + Me and my loving man; + We're homeless now upon the world! + May the divil take 'the Plan'!" + +CORK, _Monday, Feb. 27._--A most interesting day. I left alone and early +by the train for Youghal, having sent before me a letter of introduction +to Canon Keller, the parish priest, who has recently become a +conspicuous person through his refusal to give evidence about matters, +his knowledge of which he conceives to be "privileged," as acquired in +his capacity as a priest. + +I had many fine views of the shore and the sea as we ran along, and the +site of Youghal itself is very fine. It is an old seaport town, and once +was a place of considerable trade, especially in wool. + +Oliver dwelt here for a while, and from Youghal he embarked on his +victorious return to England. He seems to have done his work while he +was here "not negligently," like Harrison at Naseby Field, for when he +departed he left Youghal a citadel of Protestant intolerance. Even under +Charles II they maintained an ordinance forbidding "any Papist to buy or +barter anything in the public markets," which may be taken as a piece of +cold-blooded and statutory "boycotting." Then there was no parish priest +in Youghal; now it may almost be said there is nobody in Youghal but the +parish priest! So does "the whirligig of time bring in his revenges"! + +At Youghal station a very civil young man came up, calling me by name, +and said Father Keller had sent him with a car to meet me. We drove up +past some beautiful grounds into the main street. A picturesque +waterside town, little lanes and narrow streets leading out of the main +artery down to the bay, and a savour of the sea in the place, grateful +doubtless to the souls of Raleigh and the west country folk he brought +over here when he became lord of the land, just three hundred years ago. +Edmund Spenser came here in those days to see him, and talk over the +events of that senseless rising of the Desmonds, which gave the poet of +the "Faerie Queen" his awful pictures of the desolation of Ireland, and +made the planter of Virginia master of more than forty thousand acres of +Irish land. + +We turned suddenly into a little narrow wynd, and pulled up, the driver +saying, "There is the Father, yer honour!" In a moment up came a tall, +very fine-looking ecclesiastic, quite the best dressed and most +distinguished-looking priest I have yet seen in Ireland, with features +of a fine Teutonic type, and the erect bearing of a soldier. I jumped +down to greet him, and he proposed that we should walk together to his +house near by. An extremely good house I found it to be, well placed in +the most interesting quarter of the town. Having it in my mind to drive +on from Youghal to Lismore, there to make an early dinner, see the +castle of the Duke of Devonshire, and return to Cork by an evening +train, I had to decline Father Keller's cordial hospitalities, but he +gave me a most interesting hour with him in his comfortable study. +Father Keller stands firmly by the position which earned for him a +sentence of imprisonment last year, when he refused to testify before a +court of justice in a bankruptcy case, on the ground that it might +"drift him into answers which would disclose secrets he was bound in +honour not to disclose." He does not accept the view taken of his +conduct, however, by Lord Selborne, that, in the circumstances, his +refusal is to be regarded as the act of his ecclesiastical superiors +rather than his own. He maintains it as his own view of the sworn duty +of a priest, and not unnaturally therefore he looks upon his sentence as +a blow levelled at the clergy; nor, as I understood him, has he +abandoned his original contention, that the Court had no right to summon +him as a witness. It was impossible to listen to him on this subject, +and doubt his entire good faith, nor do I see that he ought to be held +responsible for the interpretation put by Mr. Lane, M.P., and others +upon his attitude as a priest, in a sense going to make him merely a +"martyr" of Home Rule. I did not gather from what he said that, in his +mind, the question of his relations with the Nationalists or the Plan of +Campaign entered into that affair at all, but simply that he believed +the right and the duty of a priest to protect, no matter at what cost to +himself, secrets confided to him as a priest, was really involved in his +consent or refusal to answer, when he was asked whether he was or was +not on a certain day at the "Mall House" in Youghal. Of course from the +connection of this refusal in this particular case with the Nationalist +movement, Nationalists would easily glide into the idea that he refused +to testify in order to serve their cause. + +As to the troubles on the Ponsonby estate, Father Keller spoke very +freely. He divided the responsibility for them between the +untractableness of the agent, and the absenteeism of the owner. It was +only since the troubles began, he said, that he had ever seen Mr. +Ponsonby, who lived in Hampshire, and was therefore out of touch with +the condition and the feelings of the people here. In a personal +interview with him he had found Mr. Ponsonby a kindly disposed +Englishman, but the estate is heavily encumbered, and the agent who has +had complete control of it forced the tenants, by his hard and fast +refusal of a reasonable reduction more than two years ago, into an +initial combination to defend themselves by "clubbing" their rents. That +was before Mr. Dillon announced the Plan of Campaign at all. + +"It was not till the autumn of 1886," said Father Keller, "that any +question arose of the Plan of Campaign here,[8] and it was by the +tenants themselves that the determination was taken to adopt it. My part +has been that of a peace-maker throughout, and we should have had peace +if Mr. Ponsonby would have listened to me; we should have had peace, and +he would have received a reasonable rental for his property. Instead of +this, look at the law costs arising out of bankruptcy proceedings and +sheriff's sales and writs and processes, and the whole district thrown +into disorder and confusion, and the industrious people now put out of +their holdings, and forced into idleness." + +As to the recent evictions which had taken place, Father Keller said +they had taken him as well as the people by surprise, and had thus led +to greater agitation and excitement. "But the unfortunate incident of +the loss of Hanlon's life," he said, "would never have occurred had I +been duly apprised of what was going on in the town. I had come home +into my house, having quieted the people, and left all in order, as I +thought, when that charge of the police, for which there was no +occasion, and which led to the killing of Hanlon, was ordered. I made my +way rapidly to the people, and when I appeared they were brought to +patience and to good order with astonishing ease, despite all that had +occurred." + +As to the present outlook, it was his opinion that Mr. Ponsonby, even +with the Cork Defence Union behind him, could not hold out. "The Land +Corporation were taking over some parts of the estate, and putting +Emergency men on them--a set of desperate men, a kind of _enfants +perdus_," he said, "to work and manage the land;" but he did not believe +the operation could be successfully carried out. Meanwhile he +confidently counted upon seeing "the present Tory Government give way, +and go out, when it would become necessary for the landlords to do +justice to the rack-rented people. Pray understand," said Father Keller, +"that I do not say all landlords stand at all where Mr. Ponsonby has +been put by his agent, for that is not the case; but the action of many +landlords in the county Cork in sustaining Mr. Ponsonby, whose estate is +and has been as badly rack-rented an estate as can be found, is, in my +judgment, most unwise, and threatening to the peace and happiness of +Ireland."[9] + +I asked whether, in his opinion, it would be possible for the Ponsonby +tenants to live and prosper here on this estate, could they become +peasant proprietors of it under Lord Ashbourne's Act, provided they +increased in numbers, as in that event might be expected. This he +thought very doubtful so far as a few of the tenants are concerned. + +"Would you seek a remedy, then," I asked, "in emigration?" + +"No, not in emigration," he replied, "but in migration." + +I begged him to explain the difference. + +"What I mean," he said, "is, that the people should migrate, not out of +Ireland, but from those parts of Ireland which cannot support them into +parts of Ireland which can support them. There is room in Meath, for +example, for the people of many congested districts." + +"You would, then, turn the great cattle farms of Meath," I said, "into +peasant holdings?" + +"Certainly." + +"But would not that involve the expropriation of many people now +established in Meath, and the disturbance or destruction of a great +cattle industry for which Ireland has especial advantages?" + +To this Father Keller replied that he did not wish to see Ireland +exporting her cattle, any more than to see Ireland exporting her sons +and daughters. "I mean," he said, quite earnestly, "when they are forced +to export them to pay exorbitant rents, and thus deprive themselves of +their capital or of a fair share of the comforts of life. I should be +glad to see the Irish people sufficient to themselves by the domestic +exchange of their own industries and products." At the same time he +begged me to understand that he had no wish to see this development +attended by any estrangement or hostile feeling between Ireland and +Great Britain. "On the contrary," he said, "I have seen with the +greatest satisfaction the growth of such good feeling towards England as +I never expected to witness, as the result of the visits here of English +public men, sympathising with the Irish tenants. I believe their visits +are opening the way to a real union of the Democracies of the two +countries, and to an alliance between them against the aristocratic +classes which depress both peoples." This alliance Father Keller +believed would be a sufficient guarantee against any religious contest +between the Catholics of Ireland and the Protestants of Great Britain. + +"I was much astounded," he said, "the other day, to hear from an English +gentleman that he had met a Protestant clergyman who told him he really +believed that a persecution of the Protestants would follow the +establishment of Home Rule in Ireland. I begged him to consider that Mr. +Parnell was a Protestant, and I assured him Protestants would have +absolutely nothing to fear from Home Rule." + +Reverting to his idea of re-distributing the Irish population through +Ireland, under changed conditions, social and economical, I asked him +how in Meath, for example, he would meet the difficulty of stocking with +cattle the peasant holdings of a new set of proprietors not owning +stock. He thought it would be easily met by advances of money from the +Treasury to the peasant proprietors, these advances to be repaid, with +interest, as in the case of Lady Burdett Coutts, and the advances made +by her to the fishermen now under the direction of Father Davis at +Baltimore. + +I was struck by the resemblance of these views to the Irish policy +sketched for me by my Nationalist fellow-traveller of the other night +from London. "The evil that men do lives after them"--and when one +remembers how only a hundred years ago, and just after the establishment +of American Independence ought to have taught England a lesson, the +Irish House of Commons had to deal with the persistent determination of +the English manufacturers to fight the bogey of Irish competition by +protective duties in England against imports from Ireland, it is not +surprising that Irishmen who allow sentiment to get the upper hand of +sense should now think of playing a return game. England went in fear +then not only of Irish beasts and Irish butter, but of Irish woollens, +Irish cottons, Irish leather, Irish glass. Nay, absurd as it may now +seem, English ironmasters no longer ago than in 1785 testified before a +Parliamentary Committee that unless a duty was clapped on Irish +manufactures of iron, the Irish ironmasters had such advantages through +cheaper labour and through the discrimination in their favour under the +then existing relations with the new Republic of the United States that +they would "ruin the ironmasters of England." + +In Ireland, as in America, the benign spirit of Free Trade is thwarted +and intercepted at every turn by the abominable ghost of British +Protection. What a blessing it would have been if the meddlesome +palaverers of the Cobden Club, American as well as English, could ever +have been made to understand the essentially insular character of +Protection and the essentially continental character of Free Trade! + +It should never be forgotten, and it is almost never remembered, that +when the Treaty of Versailles was making in 1783 the American +Commissioners offered complete free trade between the United States and +all parts of the British Dominions save the territories of the East +India Company. The British Commissioner, David Hartley, saw the value of +this proposition, and submitted it at London. But King George III. would +not entertain it. + +When I rose to leave him Father Keller courteously insisted on showing +me the "lions" of Youghal. A most accomplished cicerone he proved to be. +As we left his house we met in the street two or three of the "evicted" +tenants, whom he introduced to me. One of these, Mr. Loughlin, was the +holder of farms representing a rental of L94. A stalwart, hearty, +rotund, and rubicund farmer he was, and in reply to my query how long +the holdings he had lost had been in his family, he answered, "not far +from two hundred years." Certainly some one must have blundered as badly +as at Balaklava to make it necessary for a tenant with such a past +behind him to go out of his holdings on arrears of a twelvemonth. Father +Keller gave me, as we left Mr. Loughlin and his friend, a leaflet in +which he has printed the story of "the struggle for life on the Ponsonby +estate," as he understands it. + +A minute's walk brought us to Sir Walter Raleigh's house, now the +property of Sir John Pope Hennessey. It was probably built by Sir Walter +while he lived here in 1588-89, during the time of the great Armada; for +it is a typical Elizabethan house, quaintly gabled, with charming Tudor +windows, and delightfully wainscoted with richly carved black oak. A +chimney-piece in the library where Sir John's aged mother received us +most kindly and hospitably is a marvel of Elizabethan woodwork. The +shelves are filled with a quaint and miscellaneous collection of old and +rare books. I opened at random one fine old quarto, and found it to +contain, among other curious tracts, models of typography, a Latin +critical disquisition by Raphael Regini on the first edition of +Plutarch's Life of Cicero, "_nuper inventa diu desideraia _"--a +disquisition quite aglow with the cinquecento delight in discovery and +adventure. In the grounds of this charming house stand four very fine +Irish yews forming a little hollow square, within which, according to a +local legend, Sir Walter sat enjoying the first pipe of tobacco ever +lighted in Ireland, when his terrified serving-maid espying the smoke +that curled about her master's head hastily ran up and emptied a pail of +water over him. In the garden here, too, we are told, was first planted +the esculent which better deserves to be called the Curse of Ireland +than does the Nine of Diamonds to be known as the Curse of Scotland. The +Irish yew must have been indigenous here, for the name of Youghal, +Father Keller tells me, in Irish signifies "the wood of yew-trees." A +subterranean passage is said to lead from Sir Walter's dining-room into +the church, but we preferred the light of day. + +The precincts of the church adjoin the grounds and garden, and with +these make up a most fascinating poem in architecture. The churches of +St. Mary of Youghal and St. Nicholas of Galway have always been cited to +me as the two most interesting churches in Ireland. Certainly this +church of St. Mary, as now restored, is worth a journey to see. Its +massive tower, with walls eight feet thick, its battlemented chancel, +the pointed arches of its nave and aisles, a curious and, so far as I +know, unique arch in the north transept, drawn at an obtuse angle and +demarcating a quaint little side-chapel, and the interesting monuments +it contains, all were pointed out to me with as much zest and +intelligent delight by Father Keller as if the edifice were still +dedicated to the faith which originally called it into existence. It +contains a fine Jacobean tomb of Richard, the "great Earl of Cork," who +died here in September 1643. On this monument, which is in admirable +condition, the effigy of the earl appears between those of his two +wives, while below them kneel his five sons and seven daughters, their +names and those of their partners in marriage inscribed upon the marble. +It was of this earl that Oliver said: "Had there been an Earl of Cork in +every province, there had been no rebellion in Ireland." Several Earls +of Desmond are also buried here, including the founder of the church, +and under a monumental effigy in one of the transepts lies the wonderful +old Countess of Desmond, who having danced in her youth with Richard +III. lived through the Tudor dynasty "to the age of a hundred and ten," +and, as the old distich tells us, "died by a fall from a cherry-tree +then." + +In the churchyard is a hillock, bare of grass, about a tomb. There lies +buried, according to tradition, a public functionary who attested a +statement by exclaiming, "If I speak falsely, may grass never grow on my +grave." One of his descendants is doubtless now an M.P. Mr. Cameron had +kindly written from Cork to the officer in charge of the constabulary +here asking him to get me a good car for Lismore. So Father Keller very +kindly walked with me through the town to the "Devonshire Arms," a very +neat and considerable hotel, in quest of him. On the way he pointed out +to me what remains of a house which is supposed to have served as the +headquarters of Cromwell while he was here, and a small chapel also in +which the Protector worshipped after his sort. Off the main street is a +lane called Windmill Lane, where probably stood the windmill from which +in 1580 a Franciscan friar, Father David O'Neilan, was hung by the feet +and shot to death by the soldiers of Elizabeth because he refused to +acknowledge the spiritual supremacy of the Queen. He had been dragged +through the main street at the tail of a horse to the place of +execution. His name is one of many names of confessors of that time +about to be submitted at Rome for canonisation. We could not find the +officer I sought at the hotel, but Father Keller took me to a livery-man +in the main street, who very promptly got out a car with "his best +horse," and a jarvey who would "surely take me over to Lismore inside of +two hours and a half." He was as good as his master's word, and a +delightful drive it was, following the course of Spenser's river, the +Awniduffe, "which by the Englishman is called Blackwater." Nobody now +calls it anything else. The view of Youghal Harbour, as we made a great +circuit by the bridge on leaving the town, was exceedingly fine. Lying +as it does within easy reach of Cork, this might be made a very pleasant +summer halting-place for Americans landing at Queenstown, who now go +further and probably fare worse. One Western wanderer, with his family, +Father Keller told me, did last year establish himself here, a Catholic +from Boston, to whom a son was born, and who begged the Father to give +the lad a local name in baptism, "the oldest he could think of." + +I should have thought St. Declan would have been "old" enough, or St. +Nessan of "Ireland's Eye," or Saint Cartagh, who made Lismore a holy +city, "into the half of which no woman durst enter," sufficiently +"local," but Father Keller found in the Calendar a more satisfactory +saint still in St. Goran or "Curran," known also as St. Mochicaroen _de +Nona_, from a change he made in the recitation of that part of the Holy +Office. + +The drive from Youghal to Lismore along the Blackwater, begins, +continues, and ends in beauty. In the summer a steamer makes the trip by +the river, and it must be as charming in its way as the ascent of the +Dart from Dartmouth to Totness, or of the Eance from Dinard to St. +Suliac. My jarvey was rather a taciturn fellow, but by no means +insensible to the charms of his native region. About the Ponsonby estate +and its troubles he said very little, but that little was not entirely +in keeping with what I had heard at Youghal. "It was an old place, and +there was no grand house on it. But the landlord was a kind-man." +"Father Keller was a good man too. It was a great pity the people +couldn't be on their farms; and there was land that was taken on the +hills. It was a great pity. The people came from all parts to see the +Blackwater and Lismore; and there was money going." "Yes, he would be +glad to see it all quiet again. Ah yes! that was a most beautiful place +there just running out into the Blackwater. It was a gentleman owned it; +he lived there a good deal, and he fished. Ah! there's no such river in +the whole world for salmon as the Blackwater; indeed, there is not! +Everything was better when he was a lad. There was more money going, and +less talking. Father Keller was a very good man; but he was a new man, +and came to Youghal from Queenstown." + +We passed on our way the ruins of Dromaneen Castle, the birthplace of +the lively old Countess of Desmond, who lies buried at Youghal. Here, +too, according to a local tradition, she met her death, having climbed +too high into a famous cherry-tree at Affane, near Dromaneen, planted +there by Sir Walter Raleigh, who first introduced this fruit, as well as +the tobacco plant and the potato, into Ireland. At Cappoquin, which +stands beautifully on the river, I should have been glad to halt for the +night, in order to visit the Trappist Monastery there, an offshoot of La +Meilleraye, planted, I think, by some monks from Santa Susanna, of +Lulworth, after Charles X. took refuge in the secluded and beautiful +home of the Welds. The schools of this monastery have been a benediction +to all this part of Ireland for more than half a century. + +Lismore has nothing now to show of its ancient importance save its +castle and its cathedral, both of them absolutely modern! A hundred +years ago the castle was simply a ruin overhanging the river. It then +belonged to the fifth Duke of Devonshire, who had inherited it from his +mother, the only child and heiress of the friend of Pope, Richard, +fourth Earl of Cork, and third Earl of Burlington. It had come into the +hands of the Boyles by purchase from Sir Walter Ealeigh, to whom +Elizabeth had granted it, with all its appendages and appurtenances. The +fifth Duke of Devonshire, who was the husband of Coleridge's "lady +nursed in pomp and pleasure," did little or nothing, I believe, to +restore the vanished glories of Lismore; and the castle, as it now +exists, is the creation of his son, the artistic bachelor Duke, to whom +England owes the Crystal Palace and all the other outcomes of Sir Joseph +Paxton's industry and enterprise. His kinsman and successor, the present +Duke, used to visit Lismore regularly down to the time of the atrocious +murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish, and many of the beautiful walks and +groves which make the place lovely are due, I believe, to his taste and +his appreciation of the natural charms of Lismore. I dismissed my car at +the "Devonshire Arms," an admirable little hotel near the river, and +having ordered my dinner there, walked down to the castle, almost within +the grounds of which the hotel stands. It is impossible to imagine a +more picturesque site for a great inland mansion. The views up and down +the Blackwater from the drawing-room windows are simply the perfection +of river landscape. The grounds are beautifully laid out, one secluded +garden-walk, in particular, taking you back to the inimitable Italian +garden-walks of the seventeenth century. In the vestibule is the sword +of state of the Corporation of Youghal, a carved wooden cradle for which +still stands in the church at that place, and over the great gateway are +the arms of the great Earl of Cork, but these are almost the only +outward and visible signs of the historic past about the castle. Seen +from the graceful stone bridge which spans the river, its grey towers +and turrets quite excuse the youthful enthusiasm with which the Duke of +Connaught, who made a visit here when he was Prince Arthur, is said to +have written to his mother, that Lismore was "a beautiful place, very +like Windsor Castle, only much finer." + +Lismore Cathedral was almost entirely rebuilt by the second Earl of Cork +three or four years after the Restoration, and has a handsome marble +spire, but there is little in it to recall the Catholic times in which +Lismore was a city of churches and a centre of Irish devotion. + +The hostess of the "Devonshire Arms" gave me some excellent salmon, +fresh from the river, and a very good dinner. She bewailed the evil days +on which she has fallen, and the loss to Lismore of all that the Castle +used to mean to the people. Lady Edward Cavendish had spent a short time +here some little time ago, she said, and the people were delighted to +have her come there. "It would be a great thing for the country if all +the uproar and quarrelling could be put an end to. It did nobody any +good, least of all the poor people." + +From Lismore I came back by the railway through Fermoy. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +PORTUMNA, GALWAY, _Feb. 28._--I left Cork by an early train to-day, and +passing through the counties of Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Queen's, and +King's, reached this place after dark on a car from Parsonstown. The day +was delightfully cool and bright. I had the carriage to myself almost +all the way, and gave up all the time I could snatch from the constantly +varying and often very beautiful scenery to reading a curious pamphlet +which I picked up in Dublin entitled _Pour I'Irlande._ It purports to +have been written by a "Canadian priest" living at Lurgan in Ireland, +and to be a reply to M. de Mandat Grancey's volume, _Chez Paddy._ It is +adorned with a frontispiece representing a monster of the Cerberus type +on a monument, with three heads and three collars labelled respectively +"Flattery," "Famine," and "Coercion." On the pedestal is the +inscription--"1800 to 1887. Erected by the grateful Irish to the English +Government." The text is in keeping with the frontispiece. In a passage +devoted to the "atrocious evictions" of Glenbehy in 1887, the agent of +the property is represented as "setting fire with petroleum" to the +houses of two helpless men, and turning out "eighteen human beings into +the highway in the depth of winter." Not a word is said of the agent's +flat denial of these charges, nor a word of the advice given to the +agent by Sir Redvers Buller that the mortgagee ought to level the +cottages occupied by trespassers, nor a word about Father Quilter's +letter to Colonel Turner, branding his flock as "poor slaves" of the +League, and turning them over to "Mr. Roe or any other agent" to do as +he liked with them, since they could not, or would not, keep their +plighted faith given through their own priest. + +This sort of ostrich fury is common enough among the regular drumbeaters +of the Irish agitation. But it is not creditable to a "Canadian priest." +Still less creditable is his direct arraignment of M. de Mandat +Grancey's good faith and veracity upon the strength of what he describes +as M. de Mandat Grancey's amplification and distortion of a story told +by himself. This was a tale of a priest called out to confess one of his +parishioners. The penitent accused himself of killing one man, and +trying to kill several others. The priest, as the dreadful tale went on, +made a tally on his sleeve, with chalk, of the crimes recited. "Good +heavens! my son," he cried at last, "what had all these men done to you +that you tried to send them all into eternity? Who were they?" + +"Oh, Father, they were all bailiffs or tax-collectors!" + +"You idiot!" exclaimed the confessor, angrily rubbing at his sleeve, +"why didn't ye tell me that before instead of letting me spoil my best +cassock?" + +As I happened to have the book of M. de Mandat Grancey in my +despatch-box, I compared it with the attack made upon it. The results +were edifying. In the first place, M. de Mandat Grancey does not +indicate the Canadian priest as his authority. He says that he heard the +story, apparently at a dinner-table in France, from a _cure Irlandais_, +who was endeavouring to impress upon his hearers "the sympathy of the +clergy with the Land League." The "Canadian priest" now comes forward +and makes it a count in his indictment against M. de Mandat Grancey that +he is described as an "Irish curate," when he is in fact neither an +Irishman nor a curate. What was more natural than that an ecclesiastic, +claiming to live in Ireland, and telling stories in France about the +sympathy of the Irish clergy with the Land League, should be taken by +one of his auditors to be an Irish _cure_, particularly as the French +_cure_ is, I believe, the equivalent of the Irish "parish priest"? + +In the next place, the "Canadian priest" declares that the story "is as +old as the Round Towers of Ireland," and that M. de Mandat Grancey +represents him as making himself the hero of the tale. As a matter of +fact, M. de Mandat Grancey does nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he +expressly says that the _cure Irlandais_, who told the story, gave it to +his hearers as having occurred not to himself at all, but "to one of his +colleagues." Furthermore he is at the pains to add (_Chez Paddy_, p. 43) +that the story, which was not to the taste of some of the French +ecclesiastics who heard it, was related "as a simple pleasantry." +"But," he adds, and this I suspect is the sting which has so exasperated +the "Canadian priest," "he gave us to understand at the same time that +this pleasantry struck the keynote of the state of mind of many Irish +priests, and, he said, that he was himself the President of the League +in his district." + +In connection with Colonel Turner's statements as to the conduct of +Father White at Milltown Malbay, and with the accounts given me of the +conduct of Father Sheehan at Lixnaw, this side-light upon the relations +of a certain class of the Irish clergy with the most violent henchmen of +the League, is certainly noteworthy. I happen to have had some +correspondence with friends of mine in Paris, who are friends also of M. +de Mandat Grarncey, about his visit to Ireland before he made it, and I +am quite certain that he went there, to put the case mildly, with no +prejudices in favour of the English Government or against the +Nationalists. Perhaps the extreme bitterness shown in the pamphlet of +the "Canadian priest" may have been born of his disgust at finding that +the sympathy of French Catholics with Catholic Ireland draws the line at +priests who regard the assassination of "bailiffs and tax-collectors" as +a pardonable, if not positively amusing, excess of patriotic zeal. + +It was late when I reached Parsonstown, known of old in Irish story as +Birr, from St. Brendan's Abbey of Biorra, and now a clean prosperous +place, carefully looked after by the chief landlord of the region, the +Earl of Rosse, who, while he inherits the astronomical tastes and the +mathematical ability of his father, is not so absorbed in star-gazing as +to be indifferent to his terrestrial duties and obligations. I have +heard nothing but good of him, and of his management of his estates, +from men of the most diverse political views. But I think it more +important to get a look at the Clanricarde property, about which I have +heard little but evil from anybody. The strongest point I have heard +made in favour of the owner is, that he is habitually described by that +dumb organ of a down-trodden people, _United Ireland_, as "the most vile +Clanricarde." + +I found a good car at the railway station, and set off at once for +Portumna. Parsonstown was called by Sir William Petty, in his _Survey of +Ireland_, the _umbilicus Hiberniae_. It is the centre of Ireland, as a +point near Newnham Paddox is of England, and the famous or infamous "Bog +of Allan" stretches hence to Athlone. Our way fortunately took us +westward. A light railway was laid down some years ago from Parsonstown +to Portumna, but it did not pay, and it has now been abandoned. + +"What has become of the road?" I asked my jarvey. + +"Oh! they just take up the rails when they like, the people do." + +"And what do they do with them?" + +"Is it what they do with them? Oh; they make fences of them for the +beasts." + +He was a dry, shrewd old fellow, not very amiably disposed, I was sorry +to find, towards my own country. + +"Ah! it's America, sorr, that's been the ruin of us entirely." + +"Pray, how is that?" + +"It's the storms they send; and then the grain; and now they tell me +it's the American beasts that's spoiling the market altogether for +Ireland." + +"Is that what your member tells you?" + +"The member, sorr? which member?" + +"The member of Parliament for your district, I mean. What is his name?" + +"His name? Well, I'm not sure; and I don't know that I know the man at +all. But I believe his name is Mulloy." + +"Does he live in Portumna?" + +"Oh no, not at all. I don't know at all where he lives, but I believe +it's in Tullamore. But what would he know about America? Sure, any one +can see it's the storms and the grain that is the death of us in +Ireland." + +"But I thought it was the landlords and the rents?" + +"Oh, that's in Woodford and Loughrea; not here at all. There'll be no +good till we get a war." + +"Get a war? with whom? What do you want a war for?" + +"Ah! it was the good time when we had the Crimean war--with the wheat +all about Portumna. I'll show you the great store there was built. It's +no use now. But we'll have a war. My son, he's a soldier now. He went +out to America. But he didn't like it." + +"Why not?" I asked. + +"Oh, he didn't like it. He could get no work, but to be a porter, and it +was too hard. So he came back in three months' time, and then he 'listed +for a soldier. He's over in England now. He likes it very well. He's +getting very good pay. They pay the soldiers well. There's a troop of +Hussars here now. They bring a power of money to the place." + +"What do they do with the wheat lands now?" + +"Oh, they're for sheep; they do very well. Were you ever in Australia, +sorr?" pointing to a place we were passing. "There was a man came here +from Australia with a pot of money, and he bought that place; but he +thought he was a bigger man than he was, and now he's found himself out. +I think he would have done as well to stay in Australia where he was." + +In quite a different vein he spoke of the landlord of another large +seat, and of the way in which the people, some of them, had +misbehaved--breaking open the graves of the family on the place, "and +tossing the coffins and the bones about, and all for what?" + +The view as we crossed the long and very fine bridge over the Shannon +after dusk was very striking. It was not too dark to make out the course +of the broad gleaming river, and the lights of the town made it seem +larger, I daresay, than it really is. As we drove up the main street I +told my jarvey to take me to the Castle. + +"To the Castle, is it?" he replied, looking around at me with an +astonished air. + +"Yes," I said, "I am going to see Mr. Tener, the agent, who lives there, +doesn't he?" + +"Oh, the new agent? Oh yes; I believe he's a very good man." + +"You don't expect to be 'boycotted' for going to the Castle, do you?" + +"And why should I be? But I haven't been inside of the Castle gates for +twenty years. And--here they are!" he cried out suddenly, pulling up his +horse just in time to avoid driving him up against a pair of iron gates +inhospitably closed. It was by this time pitch dark. Not a light could +we see within the enclosure. But presently a couple of shadowy forms +appeared behind the iron gates; the iron gates creaked on their hinges, +a masculine voice bade us drive in, and a policeman with a lantern +advanced from a thicket of trees. All this had a fine martial and +adventurous aspect, and my jarvey seemed to enjoy it as much as I. + +We got directions from the friendly policeman as to the roads and the +landmarks, and after once nearly running into a clump of trees found +ourselves at last in an open courtyard, where men appeared and took +charge of the car, the horse, and my luggage. We were in a quadrangle of +the out-buildings attached to the old residence of the Clanricardes, +which had escaped the fire of 1826. The late Marquis for a long time +hesitated whether to reconstruct the castle on the old site (the walls +are still standing), or to build an entirely new house on another site. +He finally chose the latter alternative, chiefly, I am told, under the +advice of his oldest son, the late Lord Dunkellin, one of the most +charming and deservedly popular men of his time. He was a great friend +and admirer of Father Burke, whom he used to claim as a Galway cousin, +and with whom I met him in Rome not long before his death in the summer +of 1867. His brother, the present Marquis, I have never met, but Mr. +Tener, his present agent here, who passed some time in America several +years ago, learning from him that I wished to see this place, very +courteously wrote to me asking me to make his house my headquarters. I +found my way through queer passages to a cheery little hall where my +host met me, and taking me into a pleasant little parlour, enlivened by +flowers, and a merrily blazing fire, presented me to Mrs. Tener. + +Mr. Tener is an Ulster man from the County Cavan. He went with his wife +on their bridal trip to America, and what he there saw of the peremptory +fashion in which the authorities deal with conspiracies to resist the +law seems not unnaturally to have made him a little impatient of the +dilatory, not to say dawdling, processes of the law in his own country. +He gave me a very interesting account after dinner this evening of the +situation in which he found affairs on this property, an account very +different from those which I have seen in print. He is himself the owner +of a small landed property in Cavan, and he has had a good deal of +experience as an agent for other properties. "I have a very simple +rule," he said to me, "in dealing with Irish tenants, and that is +neither to do an injustice nor to submit to one." It was only, he said, +after convincing himself that the Clanricarde tenants had no legitimate +ground of complaint against the management of the estate, not removable +upon a fair and candid discussion of all the issues involved between +them and himself, that he consented to take charge of the property. That +to do this was to run a certain personal risk, in the present state of +the country, he was quite aware. + +But he takes this part of the contract very coolly, telling me that the +only real danger, he thinks, is incurred when he makes a journey of +which he has to send a notice by telegraph--a remark which recalled to +me the curious advice given me in Dublin to seal my letters, as a +protection against "the Nationalist clerks in the post-offices." The +park of Portumua Castle, which is very extensive, is patrolled by armed +policemen, and whenever Mr. Tener drives out he is followed by a police +car carrying two armed men. + +"Against whom are all these precautions necessary?" I asked. "Against +the evicted tenants, or against the local agents of the League?" + +"Not at all against the tenants," he replied, "as you can satisfy +yourself by talking with them. The trouble comes not from the tenants at +all, nor from the people here at Portumna, but from mischievous and +dangerous persons at Loughrea and Woodford. Woodford, mind you, not +being Lord Clanricarde's place at all, though all the country has been +roused about the cruel Clanricarde and his wicked Woodford evictions. +Woodford was simply the headquarters of the agitation against Lord +Clanricarde and my predecessor, Mr. Joyce, and it has got the name of +the 'cockpit of Ireland,' because it was there that Mr. Dillon, in +October 1886, opened the 'war against the landlords' with the 'Plan of +Campaign.' It is an odd circumstance, by the way, worth noting, that +when these apostles of Irish agitation went to Lord Clanricarde's +property nearer the city of Gralway, and tried to stir the people up, +they failed dismally, because the people there could understand no +English, and the Irish agitators could speak no Irish! Nobody has ever +had the face to pretend that the Clanricarde estates were 'rack-rented.' +There have been many personal attacks made upon Mr. Joyce and upon Lord +Clanricarde, and Mr. Joyce has brought that well-known action against +the Marquis for libel, and all this answers with the general public as +an argument to show that the tenants on the Clanricarde property must +have had great grievances, and must have been cruelly ground down and +unable to pay their way. I will introduce you, if you will allow me, to +the Catholic Bishop here, and to the resident Protestant clergyman, and +to the manager of the bank, and they can help you to form your own +judgment as to the state of the tenants. You will find that whatever +quarrels they may have had with their landlord or his agent, they are +now, and always have been, quite able to pay their rents, and I need not +tell you that it is no longer in the power of a landlord or an agent to +say what these rents shall be."[10] + +"Mr. Dillon in that speech of his at Woodford (I have it here as +published in _United Ireland_), you will see, openly advised, or rather +ordered, the tenants here to club their rents, or, in plain English, the +money due to their landlord, with the deliberate intent to confiscate to +their own use, or, in their own jargon, 'grab,' the money of any one of +their number who, after going into this dishonest combination, might +find it working badly and wish to get out of it. Here is his own +language:"-- + +I took the speech as reported in the _United Ireland_ of October 23rd, +1886, and therein found Mr. Dillon, M.P., using these words:--"If you +mean to fight really, you must put the money aside for two +reasons--first of all because you want the means to support the men who +are hit first; and, secondly, because you want to prohibit traitors +going behind your back. There is no way to deal with a traitor except to +get his money under lock and key, and if you find that he pays his rent, +and betrays the organisation, what will you do with him? I will tell you +what to do with him. _Close upon his money, and use it for the +organisation_. I have always opposed outrages. _This is a legal plan, +and it is ten times more effective_." + +Not a word here as to the morality of the proceeding thus recommended; +but almost in the same breath in which he bade his ignorant hearers +regard his plan as "legal," Mr. Dillon said to them, "_this must be done +privately, and you must not inform the public where the money is +placed_!" + +Why not, if the plan was "legal"? Mr. Dillon, I believe, is not a +lawyer, but he can hardly have deluded himself into thinking his plan of +campaign "legal" in the face of the particular pains taken by his +leader, Mr. Parnell, to disclaim all participation in any such plans. A +year before Mr. Dillon made this curious speech, Mr. Parnell, I +remember, on the 11th of October 1885, speaking at Kildare, declared +that he had "in no case during the last few years advised any +combination among tenants against even rack-rents," and insisted that +any combination of the sort which might exist should be regarded as an +"isolated" combination, "confined to the tenants of individual estates, +who, of their own accord, without any incitement from us, on the +contrary, kept back by us, without any urging on our part, without any +advice on our part, but stung by necessity, and the terrible realities +of their position, may have formed such a combination among themselves +to secure such a reduction of rent as will enable them to live in their +own homes." From this language of Mr. Parnell in October 1885 to Mr. +Dillon's speech in October 1886, urging and advising the tenants to +organise, exact contributions from every member of the organisation, and +put these contributions under the control of third parties determined to +confiscate the money subscribed by any member who might not find the +organisation working to his advantage, is a rather long step! It covers +all the distance between a cunning defensive evasion of the law, and an +open aggressive violation of the law--not of the land only, but of +common honesty. One of two things is clear: either these combinations +are voluntary and "isolated," and intended, as Mr. Parnell asserts, to +secure such a reduction of rents as will enable the tenants, and each of +them, to live peacefully and comfortably at home, and in that case any +member of the combination who finds that he can attain his object better +by leaving it has an absolute right to do this, and to demand the return +of his money; or they are part of a system imposed upon the tenants by a +moral coercion inconsistent with the most elementary ideas of private +right and personal freedom. This makes the importance of Mr. Dillon's +speech, that by his denunciation of any member who wishes to withdraw +from this "voluntary" combination as a "traitor," and by his order to +"close upon the money" of any such member, "and use it for the +organisation," he brands the "organisation" as a subterranean despotism +of a very cheap and nasty kind. The Government which tolerates the +creation of such a Houndsditch tyranny as this within its dominions +richly deserves to be overthrown. As for the people who submit +themselves to it, I do not wonder that in his more lucid moments a +Catholic priest like Father Quilter feels himself moved to denounce them +as "poor slaves." Of course with a benevolent neutral like myself, the +question always recurs, Who trained them to submit to this sort of +thing? But I really am at a loss to see why a parcel of conspirators +should be encouraged in the nineteenth century to bully Irish farmers +out of their manhood and their money, because in the seventeenth century +it pleased the stupid rulers of England, as the great Duke of Ormond +indignantly said, to "put so general a discountenance upon the +improvement of Ireland, as if it were resolved that to keep it low is to +keep it safe." + +On going back to the little drawing-room after dinner we found Mrs. +Tener among her flowers, busy with some literary work. It is not a gay +life here, she admits, her nearest visiting acquaintance living some +seven or eight miles away--but she takes long walks with a couple of +stalwart dogs in her company, and has little fear of being molested. +"The tenants are in more danger," she thinks, "than the landlords or the +agents"--nor do I see any reason to doubt this, remembering the Connells +whom I saw at Edenvale, and the story of the "boycotted" Fitzmaurice +brutally murdered in the presence of his daughter at Lixnaw on the 31st +of January, as if by way of welcome to Lord Ripon and Mr. Morley on +their arrival at Dublin. + + +PORTUMNA, _Feb. 29th._--Early this morning two of the "evicted" tenants, +and an ex-bailiff of the property here, came by appointment to discuss +the situation with Mr. Tener. He asked me to attend the conference, and +upon learning that I was an American, they expressed their perfect +willingness that I should do so. The tenants were quiet, sturdy, +intelligent-looking men. I asked one of them if he objected to telling +me whether he thought the rent he had refused to pay excessive, or +whether he was simply unable to pay it. + +"I had the money, sir, to pay the rent," he replied, "and I wanted to +pay the rent--only I wouldn't be let." + +"Who wouldn't let you?" I asked. + +"The people that were in with the League." + +"Was your holding worth anything to you?" I asked. + +"It was indeed. Two or three years ago I could have sold my right for a +matter of three hundred pounds." + +"Yes!" interrupted the other tenant, "and a bit before that for six +hundred pounds." + +"Is it not worth three hundred pounds to you now?" + +"No," said Mr. Tener, "for he has lost it by refusing the settlement I +offered to make, and driving us into proceedings against him, and +allowing his six months' equity of redemption to lapse." + +"And sure, if we had it, no one would be let to buy it now, sir," said +the tenant. "But it's we that hope Mr. Tener here will let us come back +on the holdings--that is, if we'd be protected coming back." + +"Now, do you see," said Mr. Tener, "what it is you ask me to do? You ask +me to make you a present outright of the property you chose foolishly to +throw away, and to do this after you have put the estate to endless +trouble and expense; don't you think that is asking me to do a good +deal?" + +The tenants looked at one another, at Mr. Tener, and at me, and the +ex-bailiff smiled. + +"You must see this," said Mr. Tener, "but I am perfectly willing now to +say to you, in the presence of this gentleman, that in spite of all, I +am quite willing to do what you ask, and to let you come back into the +titles you have forfeited, for I would rather have you back on the +property than strangers--" + +"And, indeed, we're sure you would." + +"But understand, you must pay down a year's rent and the costs you have +put us to." + +"Ah! sure you wouldn't have us to pay the costs?" + +"But indeed I will," responded Mr. Tener; "you mustn't for a moment +suppose I will have any question about that. You brought all this +trouble on yourselves, and on us; and while I am ready and willing to +deal more than fairly, to deal liberally with you about the arrears--and +to give you time--the costs you must pay." + +"And what would they be, the costs?" queried one of the tenants +anxiously. + +"Oh, that I can't tell you, for I don't know," said Mr. Tener, "but they +shall not be anything beyond the strict necessary costs." + +"And if we come back would we be protected?" + +"Of course you will have protection. But why do you want protection? +Here you are, a couple of strong grown men, with men-folk of your +families. See here! why don't you go to such an one, and such an one," +naming other tenants; "you know them well. Go to them quietly and sound +them to see if they will come back on the same terms with you; form a +combination to be honest and to stand by your rights, and defy and break +up the other dishonest combination you go in fear of! Is it not a shame +for men like you to lie down and let those fellows walk over you, and +drive you out of your livelihood and your homes?" + +The tenants looked at each other, and at the rest of us. "I think," said +one of them at last, "I think ---- and ----," naming two men, "would come +with us. Of course," turning to Mr. Tener, "you wouldn't discover on us, +sir." + +"Discover on you! Certainly not," said Mr. Tener. "But why don't you +make up your minds to be men, and 'discover' on yourselves, and defy +these fellows?" + +"And the cattle, sir? would we get protection for the cattle? They'd be +murdered else entirely." + +"Of course," said Mr. Tener, "the police would endeavour to protect the +cattle." + +Then, turning to me, he said, "That is a very reasonable question. These +scoundrels, when they are afraid to tackle the men put under their ban, +go about at night, and mutilate and torture and kill the poor beasts. I +remember a case," he went on, "in Roscommon, where several head of +cattle mysteriously disappeared. They could be found nowhere. No trace +of them could be got. But long weeks after they vanished, some lads in a +field several miles away saw numbers of crows hovering over a particular +point. They went there, and there at the bottom of an abandoned +coal-shaft lay the shattered remains of these lost cattle. The poor +beasts had been driven blindfold over the fields and down into this pit, +where, with broken limbs, and maimed, they all miserably died of +hunger." + +"Yes," said one of the tenants, "and our cattle'd be driven into the +Shannon, and drownded, and washed away." + +"You must understand," interposed Mr. Tener "that when cattle are thus +maliciously destroyed the owners can recover nothing unless the remains +of the poor beasts are found and identified within three days." + +The disgust which I felt and expressed at these revelations seemed to +encourage the tenants. One of them said that before the evictions came +off certain of the National Leaguers visited him, and told him he must +resist the officers. "I consulted my sister," he said, "and she said, +'Don't you be such a fool as to be doing that; we'll all be ruined +entirely by those rascals and rogues of the League.' And I didn't +resist. But only the other day I went to a priest in the trouble we are +in, and what do you think he said to me? He said, 'Why didn't you do as +you were bid? then you would be helped,' and he would do nothing for us! +Would you think that right, sir, in your country?" + +"I should think in my country," I replied, "that a priest who behaved in +that way ought to be unfrocked." + +"Did you pay over all your rent into the hands of the trustees of the +League?" I asked of one of these tenants. + +"I paid over money to them, sir," he replied. + +"Yes," I said, "but did you pay over all the amount of the rent, or how +much of it?" + +"Oh! I paid as much as I thought they would think I ought to pay!" he +responded, with that sly twinkle of the peasant's eye one sees so often +in rural France. + +"Oh! I understand," I said, laughing. "But if you come to terms now with +Mr. Tener here, will you get that money back again?" + +"Divil a penny of it!" he replied, with much emphasis. + +Finally they got up together to take their leave, after a long whispered +conversation together. + +"And if we made it half the costs?" + +"No!" said Mr. Tener good-naturedly but firmly; "not a penny off the +costs." + +"Well, we'll see the men, sir, just quietly, and we'll let you know what +can be done"; and with that they wished us, most civilly, good-morning, +and went their way. + +We walked in the park for some time, and a wild, beautiful park it is, +not the less beautiful for being given up, as it is, very much to the +Dryads to deal with it as they list. It is as unlike a trim English park +as possible; but it contains many very fine trees, and grand open sweeps +of landscape. In a tangled copse are the ruins of an ancient Franciscan +abbey, in one corner of which lie buried together, under a monumental +mound of brickwork, the late Marquis of Clanricarde and his wife. The +walls of the Castle, burned in 1826, are still standing, and so perfect +that the building might easily enough have been restored. A keen-eyed, +wiry old household servant, still here, told us the house was burned in +the afternoon of January 6, 1826. There were three women-servants in the +house--"Anna and Mary Meehan, and Mrs. Underwood, the housekeeper"; and +they were getting the Castle ready for his Lordship's arrival, so little +of an "absentee" was the late Lord Clanricarde, then only one year +married to the daughter of George Canning. The fires were laid on in the +upper rooms, and Mrs. Underwood went off upon an errand. When she came +back all was in flames. + +The deer-park is full of deer, now become quite wild. We heard them +crashing through the undergrowth on all sides. There must be capital +fishing, too, in the lake, and in the river of which it is an expansion. + +While they were getting the cars ready for a drive, came up another son +of the soil. This man I found had only a small interest in the battle on +the Clanricarde estates, holding his homestead of another landlord. But +he admitted he had gone in a manner into the "combination," in that he +had paid a certain, not very large, sum, which he named, to the +trustees, "just for peace and quiet." He considered it gone, past +recovery; and he named another man with a small holding, but doing a +considerable business in other ways, who had "paid L10 or more just not +to be bothered." Upon this Mr. Tener told me of a shopkeeper at Loughrea +in a large way of business, a man with seven or eight thousand pounds, +who, finding his goods about to be seized after the agent had turned a +sharp strategic corner on him, and unexpectedly got into his shop, was +about to own up to his defeat, and make a fair settlement, when the +secretary of the League appeared, and requested a private talk with him. +In a quarter of an hour the tradesman reappeared looking rather sullen +and crestfallen. He said he couldn't pay, and must let the goods be +taken. So taken they were, and duly put up under the process and sold. +He bought them in himself, paying all the costs. + +Presently two cars appeared. We got upon one, Mr. Tener driving a +spirited nag, and taking on the seat with him a loaded carbine-rifle. +Two armed policeman followed us upon the other, keeping at such a +distance as would enable them easily to cover any one approaching from +either side of the roadway. It quite took me back to the delightful days +of 1866 in Mexico, when we used to ride out to picnics at the Rincon at +Orizaba armed to the teeth, and ready at a moment's notice to throw the +four-in-hand mule-wagons into a hollow square, and prepare to receive +cavalry. As it seems to be perfectly well understood that the regular +price paid for shooting a designated person (they call it "knocking" him +in these parts) is the ridiculously small sum of four pounds, and that +two persons who divide this sum are always detailed by the organisers of +outrage to "knock" an objectionable individual, it is obvious that too +much care can hardly be taken by prudent people in coming and going +through such a country. Fortunately for the people most directly +concerned to avoid these unpleasantnesses a systematic leakage seems to +exist in the machinery of mischief. The places where the oaths of this +local "Mafia" are administered, for instance, are well known. A roadside +near a chapel is frequently selected--and this for two or three obvious +reasons. The sanctity of the spot may be supposed to impress the +neophyte; and if the police or any other undesirable people should +suddenly come upon the officiating adepts and the expectant acolyte, a +group on the roadside is not necessarily a criminal gathering--though I +do not see why, in such times, our old American college definition of a +"group" as a gathering of "three or more persons" should not be adopted +by the authorities, and held to make such a gathering liable to +dispersion by the police, as our "groups" used to be subject to +proctorial punishment. Mills are another favourite resort of the +law-breakers. Mr. Tener tells me that a large mill between this place +and Loughrea is a great centre of trouble, not wholly to the +disadvantage of the astute miller, who finds it not only brings grist to +his mill, but takes away grist from another mill belonging to a couple +of worthy ladies, and once quite prosperous. It is no uncommon thing, it +appears, for the same person to be put through the ceremony of swearing +fidelity more than once, and at more than one place, with the not +unnatural result, however, of diminishing the pressure of the oath upon +his conscience or his fears, and also of alienating his affections, as +he is expected to pay down two shillings on each occasion. Once a +member, he contributes a penny a week to the general fund. It seems also +to be an open secret who the disbursing treasurers are of this fund, +from whom the members, detailed to do the dark bidding of the +"organisation," receive their wage. "A stout gentleman with sandy hair +and wearing glasses" was the description given to me of one such +functionary. When so much is known of the methods and the men, why is it +that so many crimes are committed with virtual impunity? For two +sufficient reasons. Witnesses cannot be got to testify, or trusted, if +they do testify, to speak the truth; and it is idle to expect juries of +the vicinage in nine cases out of ten will do their duty. Political +cowardice having made it impossible to transfer the venue in cases of +Irish crime, as to which all the authorities were agreed about these +points, from Ireland into Great Britain, it is found that even to +transfer the trial of "Moonlighters" from Clare or Kerry into Wicklow, +for example, has a most instructive effect, opening the eyes of the +people of Wicklow to a state of things in their own island, of which +happily for themselves they were previously as ignorant as the people of +Surrey or of Middlesex. This explains the indignant wish expressed to me +some time ago in a letter from a priest in another part of Ireland, that +"martial law" might be proclaimed in Clare and Kerry to "stamp out the +Moonlighters, those pests of society." That in Clare and Kerry priests +should be found not only disposed to wink at and condone the proceedings +of these "pests of society," but openly to co-operate with them under +the pretext of a "national" movement, is surely a thing equally +intolerable by the Church and dangerous to the cause of Irish autonomy. +This I am glad to say is strongly felt, and has been on more than one +occasion very vigorously stated by one of the most eminent and estimable +of Irish ecclesiastics, the Bishop-Coadjutor of Clonfert, upon whom I +called this morning. Dr. Healy, who is a senator of the Royal University +of Ireland, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, presides over that +part of the diocese of Clonfort which includes Portumna and Woodford. He +lives in a handsome and commodious, but simple and unpretentious house, +set in ample grounds well-planted, and commanding a wide view of a most +agreeable country. We were ushered into a well-furnished study, and the +bishop came in at once to greet us with the most cordial courtesy. He is +a frank, dignified, unaffected man, and in his becoming episcopal +purple, with the gold chain and cross, looked every inch a bishop. I was +particularly anxious to see Dr. Healy, as a type of the high-minded and +courageous ecclesiastics who, in Ireland, have resolutely refused to +subordinate their duties and their authority as ecclesiastics to the +convenience and the policy of an organisation absolutely controlled by +Mr. Parnell, who not only is not a Catholic, but who is an open ally and +associate of the bitterest enemies of the Catholic Church in France and +in England. Protestant historians affirm that Pope Innocent was one of +the financial backers of William of Orange when he set sail from Holland +to crush the Catholic faith in Great Britain and Ireland, and drive the +Catholic house of Stuart into exile. But it was reserved for the +nineteenth century to witness the strange spectacle of men, calling +themselves Irishmen and Catholics, deliberately slandering and assailing +in concord with a non-Catholic political leader the consecrated pastors +and masters of the Church in Ireland. When in order to explain what they +themselves concede to be "the absence from the popular ranks of the best +of the priesthood," Nationalist writers find it necessary to denounce +Cardinal Cullen and Cardinal M'Cabe as "anti-Irish "; and to sneer at +men like Dr. Healy as "Castle Bishops," it is impossible not to be +reminded of the three "patriotic" tailors of Tooley Street. + +Bishop Healy looks upon the systematic development of a substantial +peasant proprietary throughout Ireland as the economic hope of the +country, and he regards therefore the actual "campaigning" of the +self-styled "Nationalists" as essentially anti-national, inasmuch as its +methods are demoralising the people of Ireland, and destroying that +respect for law and for private rights which lies at the foundation of +civil order and of property. In his opinion, "Home Rule," to the people +in general, means simply ownership of the land which they are to live +on, and to live by. How that ownership shall be brought about peaceably, +fairly, and without wrong or outrage to any man or class of men is a +problem of politics to be worked out by politicians, and by public men. +That men, calling themselves Catholics, should be led on to attempt to +bring this or any other object about by immoral and criminal means is +quite another matter, and a matter falling within the domain, not of the +State primarily, but of the Church. + +As to this, Bishop Healy, who was in Rome not very long ago, and who, +while in Rome, had more than one audience of His Holiness by command, +has no doubt whatever that the Vatican will insist upon the abandonment +and repudiation by Catholics of boycotting, and "plans of campaign," and +all such devices of evil. Nor has the Bishop any doubt that whenever the +Holy Father speaks the priests and the people of Ireland will obey. + +To say this, of course, is only to say that the Bishop believes the +priests of Ireland to be honest priests, and the people of Ireland to be +good Catholics. + +If he is mistaken in this it will be a doleful thing, not for the +Church, but for the Irish priests, and for the Irish people. No Irishman +who witnessed the magnificent display made at Rome this year, of the +scope and power of the Catholic Church, can labour under any delusions +on that point. + +From the Bishop's residence we went to call upon the Protestant rector +of Portumna, Mr. Crawford. The handsome Anglican church stands within an +angle of the park, and the parsonage is a very substantial mansion. Mr. +Crawford, the present rector, who is a man of substance, holds a fine +farm of the Clanricarde estate, at a peppercorn rent, and he is tenant +also of another holding at L118 a year, as to which he has brought the +agent into Court, with the object, as he avers, of setting an example to +the other tenants, and inducing them, like himself, to fight under the +law instead of against it. He is not, however, in arrears, and in that +respect sets a better example, I am sorry to say, than the Catholic +priest, Father Coen, who made himself so conspicuous here on the +occasion of the much bewritten Woodford evictions. The case of Father +Coen is most instructive, and most unpleasant. He occupies an excellent +house on a holding of twenty-three acres of good laud, with a garden--in +short, a handsome country residence, which was provided by the late Lord +Clanricarde, expressly for the accommodation of whoever might be the +Catholic priest in that part of his estate. For all this the rent is +fixed at the absurd and nominal sum of two guineas a year! Yet Father +Coen, who now enjoys the mansion, and has a substantial income from the +parish, is actually two years and a half in arrears with this rent! This +fact Mr. Tener mentioned to the Bishop, whose countenance naturally +darkened. "What am I to do in such a case, my lord?" asked Mr. Tener. +"Do?" said the Bishop, "do your plain duty, and proceed against him +according to law." But suppose he were proceeded against and evicted, as +in America he certainly would be, who can doubt that he would instantly +be paraded, before the world, on both sides of the Atlantic as a +"martyr," suffering for the holy cause of an oppressed and down-trodden +people, at the hands of a "most vile" Marquis, and of a remorse-less and +blood-thirsty agent?[11] Mr. Crawford, a tall, fine-looking man, talked +very fully and freely about the situation here. He came to Portumna +about eight years ago; one of his reasons for accepting the position +here offered him being that he wished to take over a piece of property +near Woodford from his brother-in-law, who found he could not manage it. +As a practical farmer, and a straightforward capable man of business, he +has gradually acquired the general confidence of the tenants here. That +they are, as a rule, quite able to pay the rents which they have been +"coerced" into refusing to pay, he fully believes. He told me of cases +in which Catholic tenants of Lord Clanricarde came to him when the +agitation began about the Plan of Campaign, and begged him privately to +take the money for their rents, and hold it for them till the time +should come for a settlement. + +The reason for this was that they did not wish to be obliged to give +over the money into the "Trust" created by the Campaigners, and wanted +it to be safely put beyond the reach of these obliging "friends." One +very shrewd tenant came to him and begged him to buy some beasts, in +order that he might pay his rent out of the proceeds. The man owed L15 +to the Clanricarde property. Mr. Crawford did not particularly want to +buy his beasts, but eventually agreed to do so, and gave him L50 for +them. The man went off with the money, but he never paid the rent! Mr. +Crawford discovering this called him to account, and refused to grant +him some further favour which he asked. The result is that the +"distressed tenant" now cuts Mr. Crawford when he meets him, and is the +prosperous owner of quite a small herd of cattle. + +Mr. Crawford's opinion of the mischief done by the methods and spirit of +the National League in this place is quite in accord with the opinions +of the Bishop-Coadjutor. Power without responsibility, which made the +Caeesars madmen, easily turns the heads of village tyrants, and there is +something positively grotesque in the excesses of this subterranean +"Home Rule." Mr. Crawford told me of a case here, in which a tenant +farmer, whom he named, came to him in great wrath, not unmingled with +terror, to say that the League had ordered him, on pain of being +boycotted, to give up his holding to the heirs of a woman from whom, +twenty years ago, he had bought, for L100 in cash, the tenant-right of +her deceased husband! There was no question of refunding the L100. He +was merely to consider himself a "land-grabber," and evict himself for +the benefit of those heirs who had never done a stroke of work on the +property for twenty years, and who had no shadow of a legal or moral +claim on it, except that the oldest of them was an active member of the +local League! + +Nor was this unique. + +In another case, the children of a tenant, who died forty years ago, +came forward and called upon the League to boycott an old man who had +been in possession of the holding during nearly half a century. In a +third case, a tenant-farmer, some ten years ago, had in his employ as +herd a man who fell ill and died. He put into the vacant place an +honest, capable young fellow, who still holds it, and has faithfully and +efficiently served him. Only the other day this tenant-farmer was warned +by the League to expect trouble, unless he dismissed this herd, and put +into his place the son, now grown to man's estate, of the herd who died +ten years ago! + +It is amusing, if not instructive, to find the hereditary principle, +just now threatened in its application to the British Senate, cropping +out afresh as an element in the regeneration of Irish agriculture and +the land tenure of Ireland! + +On our way back to the Castle we called on Mr. Place, the manager of the +Portumna Branch of the Hibernian Bank, who lives in the town. He was +amusing himself, after the labour of the day in the bank, with some +amateur work as a carpenter, but received us very cordially. He said +there was no doubt that the deposits in the bank had increased +considerably since the adoption of the Plan of Campaign on the +Clanricarde property. Money was paid into the bank continually by +persons who wished the fact of their payments kept secret; and he knew +of more than one case in which tenants, whose stock had been seized by +the agent for the rents, were much delighted at the seizure, since it +had paid off their rents, and so enabled them to retain their holdings +and keep out of the grasp of the League, even though to do this they had +undergone a forced sale and been muleted in costs. + +It was his opinion that the tenants on the Clanricarde property, who are +not in arrears, would gladly accept a twenty-five per cent. reduction, +and do very well by accepting it. But they are constrained into a +hostile attitude by the tenants who are in arrears, some of them for +several years (as, for example, Father Coen), although I find, to my +astonishment, that in Ireland the landlord has no power to distrain for +more than a twelvemonth's rent, no matter how far back the arrears may +run. + +Mr. Place seems to think it would be well to put all the creditors of +the tenants on one footing with the landlords. The shopkeepers and other +creditors, he thinks, in that event would see many things in quite a new +light. + +What is called the new Castle of Portumna is a large and handsome +building of the Mansard type, standing on an eminence in the park, at +some distance from the original seat. The building was finished not long +before the death of his father, the late Marquis. It has never been +occupied, save by a large force of police quartered in it not very long +ago by Mr. Tener in readiness for an expedition against the Castle of +Cloondadauv, to the scene of which he promises to drive me to-morrow on +my way back to Dublin. It is thoroughly well built, and might easily be +made a most delightful residence. The views which it commands of the +Shannon are magnificent, and there are many fine trees about it. + +The old man who has charge of it is a typical Galway retainer of the old +school. The "boys," he says, once tried to "boycott" him because he was +the pound-master; but he showed fight, and they let him alone. He +pointed out to me from the top of the house, in the distance, the +residences of Colonel Hickie, and of the young Lord Avonmore, who lately +succeeded on the death of his brother in the recent Egyptian expedition. +The place is now shut up, and the owners live in France. + +We visited too the Portumna Union before driving home. The buildings of +this Union are extensive for the place, and well built, and it seems to +be well-ordered and neatly kept--thanks, in no small degree, I suspect, +to the influence of the Sisters who have charge of the hospital, but +whose benign spirit shows itself not only in the flower-garden which +they have called into being, but in many details of the administration +beyond their special control. + +The contrast was very striking between the atmosphere of this +unpretending refuge of the helpless and that of certain of the +"laicised" hospitals of France, which I not long ago visited, from which +the devoted nuns have been expelled to make way for hired nurses. I made +a remark to this effect to the clerk of the Union, Mr. Lavan, whom we +found in his office. + +"Oh, yes," he said, "I have no doubt of that. We owe more than I can say +to the Sisters, but I don't know how long we should have them here if +the local guardians could have their way." + +In explanation of this, he went on to tell me that these local +guardians, who are elected, are hostile to the whole administration, +because of its relations with the Local Government Board at Dublin, +which controls their generous tendency to expend the money of the +ratepayers. By way of expressing their feelings, therefore, they have +been trying to cut down, not only the salary of the clerk, but that of +the Catholic chaplain of the Union; and as there is a good deal of +irreligious feeling among the agitators here, it is his impression that +they would make things disagreeable for the Sisters also were they in +any way to get the management into their own hands. That there cannot be +much real distress in this neighbourhood appears from two facts. There +are now but 130 inmates of this Union, out of a population of 12,900, +and the outlay for out-of-door relief averages between eight and ten +pounds a week. + +In the quiet, neat chapel two or three of the inmates were kneeling at +prayers; and others whom we saw in the kitchen and about the offices had +nothing of the "workhouse" look which is so painful in the ordinary +inmates of an English or American almshouse. + +"The trouble with the place," said Mr. Lavan, "is that they like it too +well. It takes an eviction almost to get them out of it." + +We sat down with Mr. Lavan in his office, and had an interesting talk +with him. + +He is the agent of Mr. Mathews, who lives between Woodford and Portumna. +Mr. Mathews is a resident landlord, he says, who has constantly employed +and has lived on friendly terms with his tenants, numbering twenty, who +hold now under judicial rents. On these judicial rents two years ago +they were allowed a further reduction of 15 per cent. Last year they +were allowed 20 per cent. This year he offered them a reduction of 25 +per cent., which they rejected, demanding 35 per cent. + +This demand Mr. Lavan considers to be unreasonable in the extreme, and +he attributes it to the influence of the National Leaguers here, whose +representatives among the local guardians constantly vote away the money +of the ratepayers in "relief to evicted tenants who have ample means and +can in no respect be called destitute." In his opinion the effect of the +Nationalist agitation here has been to upset all ideas of right and +wrong in the minds of the people where any question arises between +tenants and landlords. He told a story, confirmed by Mr. Tener, of a +bailiff, whom he named, on the Clanricarde property here, who was +compelled two years ago to resign his place in order to prevent the +"boycotting" of his mother who keeps a shop on the farm. He was +familiar, too, with the details of a story told me by one of the +Clanricarde tenants, a farmer near Loughrea who holds a farm at L90 a +year. This man was forced to subscribe to the Plan of Campaign. The +agent proceeded against him for the rent due, and he incurred costs of +L10. His sheep and crop were then seized. + +He begged the local leaders to "permit" him to pay his rent, as he was +able to do it _without drawing out the funds in their hands_! They +refused, and so compelled him to allow his property to be publicly sold, +and to incur further costs of L10. "His farm lies so near the town that +he did not dare to risk the vengeance of the local ruffians." + +Mr. Lavan gave me the name also of another man who is now actually under +a "boycott," because he has ventured to resist the modest demand made by +the son of a man whose tenant-right he bought, paying him L100 for it, +twenty years ago, that he shall give up his farm without being +reimbursed for his outlay made to purchase it! In other words, after +twenty years' peaceable possession of a piece of property, bought and +paid for, this tenant-farmer is treated as a "land-grabber" by the +self-installed "Nationalist" government of Ireland, because he will not +submit to be robbed both of the money which he paid for his +tenant-right, and of his tenant-right! + +Obviously in such a case as this the "war against landlordism" is simply +a war against property and against private rights. Priests of the +Catholic Church who not only countenance but aid and abet such +proceedings certainly go even beyond Dr. M'Glynn. Dr. M'Glynn, so far as +I know, stops at the confiscation of all private property in rent by the +State for the State. But here is simply a confiscation of the property +of A for the benefit of B, such as might happen if B, being armed and +meeting A unarmed in a forest, should confiscate the watch and chain of +A, bought by A of B's lamented but unthrifty father twenty years before! + +After dinner to-night Mr. Tener gave me some interesting and edifying +accounts of his experience in other parts of Ireland. + +Some time ago, before the Plan of Campaign was adopted, one of his +tenants in Cavan came to him with a doleful story of the bad times and +the low prices, and wound up by saying he could pay no more than half a +year's rent. + +"Now his rent had been reduced under the Land Act," said Mr, Tener, "and +I had voluntarily thrown off a lot of arrears, so I looked at him +quietly and said, 'Mickey, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You have +been very well treated, and you can perfectly well pay your rent. Your +wife would be ashamed of you if she knew you were trying to get out of +it.'" + +"Ah no, your honour!" he briskly replied; "indade she would approve it. +If you won't discover on me, I'll tell you the truth. It was the wife +herself, she's a great schollard, and reads the papers, that tould me +not to pay you more than half the rent--for she says there's a new Act +coming to wipe it all out. Will you take the half-year?" + +"No, I will not. Don't be afraid of your wife, but pay what you owe, +like a man. You've got the money there in your pocket." + +This was a good shot. Mickey couldn't resist it, and his countenance +broke into a broad smile. + +"Ah no! I've got it in two pockets. Begorra, it was the wife herself +made up the money in two parcels, and she put one into each pocket, to +be sure--and I wasn't to give your honour but one, if you would take it. +But there's the money, and I daresay it's all for the best." + +On another occasion, when he was collecting the rents of a property in +the county of Longford, one tenant came forward as the spokesman of the +rest, admitted that the rents had been accepted fairly after a reduction +under the Land Act, expressed the general wish of the tenants to meet +their obligations, and wound up by asking a further abatement, "the +times were so bad, and the money couldn't be got, it couldn't indeed!" + +Mr. Tener listened patiently--to listen patiently is the most essential +quality of an agent in Ireland--and finally said:-- + +"Very well, if you haven't got the money to pay in full, pay +three-quarters of it, and I'll give you time for the rest." + +"Thank your honour!" said Pat, "and that'll be thirty pounds--and here +it is in one pound notes, and hard enough to get they are, these times!" + +So Mr. Tener took the money, counted the notes twice over, and then, +writing out a receipt, handed it to the tenant. + +"All right, Pat, there's your receipt for thirty-nine pounds, and I'm +glad to see ten-pound notes going about the country in these hard +times!" + +By mistake the "distressful" orator had put one ten-pound note into his +parcel! He took his receipt, and went off without a word. But the +combination to get an "abatement" broke down then and there, and the +other tenants came forward and put down their money. + +These incidents occurred to Mr. Tener himself. Not less amusing and +instructive was a similar mistake on a larger scale made by an +over-crafty tenant in dealing with one of Mr. Tener's friends a few +years ago in the county of Leitrim. This tenant, whom we will call +Denis, was the fugleman also of a combination. He was a cattle dealer as +well as a farmer, and having spent a couple of hours in idly eloquent +attempts to bring about a general abatement of the rents, he lost his +patience. + +"Ah, well, your honour!" he said, "I can't stay here all day talking +like these men, I must go to the fair at Boyle. Will you take a +deposit-receipt of the bank for ten pounds and give me the pound change? +that'll just be the nine pounds for the half-year's rent. But all the +same, yer honour, those men are all farmers, and it's not out of the +farm at all I made the ten pounds, it's out of the dealing!" + +"But you couldn't deal without a farm, Denis, for the stock," said the +agent, as he glanced at the receipt. He hastily turned it over, and went +on, "Just indorse the receipt, and I'll consider your proposition." + +The receipt was indorsed, and at once taken off by the agent's clerk to +the bank to bring back pound-notes for it, while the agent quietly +proceeded to fill out the regular form of receipt for a full year's +rent, eighteen pounds. Denis noted what he supposed of course to be the +agent's blunder, but like an astute person held his peace. The clerk +came back with the notes. Denis took up his receipt, and the agent +quietly began handing him note after note across the table. + +"But, your honour!" exclaimed Denis, "what on earth are ye giving me all +this money for?" + +"It's your change," said the agent, quite imperturbably. "You gave me a +bank receipt for one hundred pounds. I have given you a receipt for your +full year's rent, and here are eighty-two pounds in notes, and with it +eighteen shillings in silver--that's five per cent. reduction. I would +have made it ten per cent., only you were so very sharp, first about not +having the money, and then about the full receipt!" + +In an instant all eyes were fastened upon Denis. Ichabod! the glory had +departed. The chorus went up from his disenchanted followers:-- + +"Ah, glory be to God, you were not bright enough for the agent, Denis!" + +And so that day the agent made a very full and handsome collection--and +there was a slight reduction in the deposit-accounts of the local bank! + +In the evening Mr. Tener gave me the details of some cases of direct +intimidation with the names of the tenants concerned. One man, whose +farm he visited, told him he had paid his rent not long before to the +previous agent. "Well," said Mr. Tener, "show me your receipt!" On this +the tenant said that he dare not keep the receipt about him, nor even in +the house, lest it should be demanded by the emissaries of the League, +who went round to keep the tenants up to the "Plan of Campaign," and +that it was hidden in his stable. And he went out to the stable and +brought it in. + +This, he had reason to believe, was not an uncommon case.[12] The same +man, wishing to take a grass farm which the people hoped the agent would +consent to have "cut up" was asked to give two names on a +promissory-note to pay the rent. He demurred to this, and after a parley +said, "Would a certificate do?" upon which he pulled out an old +tobacco-box, and carefully unfolded from it a bank certificate of +deposit for a hundred pounds sterling! This tenant held eleven Irish, or +more than seventeen English, acres, and his yearly rent was L11, 16s. +6d. + +The people before this agitation began were generally quiet, thrifty, +and industrious. They were great sheep-raisers. An old law of the Irish +Parliament had exempted sheep, but not cattle or crops, from distraint, +with an eye to encouraging the woollen interest in Ireland. + +As to the sale of tenant-right in Ireland, he told me a curious story. +One woman, a widow, whom he named, owed two year' rent on a holding in +Ulster at L4 a year. She was abundantly able to pay, but for her own +reasons preferred to be evicted, and, finally, by an understanding with +him, offered her tenant-right for sale. A man who had made money in +iron-mines in the County of Durham was a bidder, and finally offered +L240 for the holding. It was knocked down to him. He then saw the agent, +who told him he had paid too much. The woman was then appealed to, and +she admitted that the agent was right. But it was shown that others had +offered L200, and the woman finally agreed to take, and received, that +amount in gold, being fifty years' purchase! + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + +DUBLIN, _Thursday, March 1._--This has been a crowded day. I left +Portumna very early on a car with Mr. Tener, intending to visit the +scene of his latest collision with the "National" government of Ireland, +on my way to Loughrea. It was a bright spring morning, more like April +in Italy than like March in America, and the country is full of natural +beauty. We made our first halt at the derelict house of Martin Kenny, +one of the "victims" of the famous "Woodford evictions," so called, as I +have said, because Woodford is the nearest town.[13] The eviction here +took place October 21st, 1887. The house has been dismantled by the +neighbours since that time, each man carrying off a door, or a shutter, +or whatever best suited him. One of the constables who followed us as +Mr. Tener's body-guard had been present at the eviction. He came into +the house with us, and very graphically described the performance. The +house was still full of heavy stones taken into it, partly to block the +entrances, and partly as ammunition; and trunks of trees used as +_chevaux defrise_ still protruded through the door and the window. These +trees had been cut down by the garrison in the woodlands here and there +all over the property. I asked if the law in Ireland punished +depredations of this sort, and was informed that trees planted by +tenants, if registered by them within a certain time, are the property +of the tenants. This would astonish our landlords in America, where the +tenant who sticks so much as a sunflower into his garden-patch makes a +present of it to his landlord.[14] + +I asked if the place made a long defence. Mr. Tener and the constable +both laughed, and the former told me that when the storming party +arrived shortly after daybreak, they found the house garrisoned only by +some small boys, who had been left there to keep watch. The men were +fast asleep at some other place. The small boys ran away as fast as +possible to give the alarm, but the police went in, and in a jiffey +pulled to pieces the elaborate defences prepared to repel them. Father +Coen, the constable said, got to Kenny's house an hour after it was all +over, with a mob of people howling and groaning. But the work had been +done, and other work also at the Castle of Cloondadauv, to which we next +drove. + +This place takes its truly awe-inspiring name from a ruined Norman tower +standing on a picturesque promontory of no great height, which juts out +into the lovely lake here made by the Shannon. At no great expense this +tower might be so restored as to make an ideal fishing-box. It now +simply adorns the holding formerly occupied by Mr. John Stanislaus +Burke, a former tenant of Lord Clanricarde. The story of its capture on +the 17th of September is worth telling. + +Some days before the evictions were to come off, a meeting was held at +Woodford or Loughrea, at which one of the speakers, the patriotic Dr. +Tully, rather incautiously and exultingly told his hearers that the +defence in 1886 of the tenant's house known as "Fort Saunders" had been +a grand and gallant affair indeed, but that next time "the exterminators +would have to storm a castle"! + +This put Mr. Tener at once on the alert, and as Mr. Burke of Cloondadauv +was set down for eviction, it didn't require much cogitation to fix upon +the fortress destined to be "stormed." So he set about the campaign. The +County Inspector of the constabulary, who had made a secret +reconnaissance, reported that he found the place too strong to be taken +if defended, except "by artillery." So it was determined to take it by +surprise. + +When the previous evictions were made, the agent and the public forces +had marched from Portumna by the highway to Woodford, so that, of +course, their advent was announced by the scouts and sentinels of the +League from hill to hill long before they reached the scene of action, +and abundant time was given to the agitators for organising a +"reception." Mr. Tener profited by the experience of his predecessors. +He contrived to get his force of constabulary through the town of +Portumna without attracting any popular attention. And as early rising +is not a popular virtue here, he resolved to steal a march on the +defenders of Cloondadauv. + +He had brought up certain large boats to Portumna, and put them on the +lake. Rousing his men before dawn, he soon had them all embarked, and on +their way swiftly and silently by the river and the lake to Cloondadauv. +They reached the promontory by daybreak, and as soon as the hour of +legal action had arrived they were landed, and surrounded the "castle." +The ancient portal was found to be blocked with heavy stones and trunks +of trees, nor did any adit appear to be available, till a young +gentleman who had accompanied the party as a volunteer, discovered in +one wall of the tower, at some little height from the ground, the vent +of one of those conduits not infrequently found running down through the +walls of old castles, which were used sometimes as waste-ways for +rubbish from above, and sometimes to receive water-pipes from below. +Looking up into this vent, he saw a rope hanging free within it. Upon +this he hauled resolutely, and finding it firmly attached above, came to +the conclusion that it must have been fixed there by the garrison as a +means of access to the interior. + +Like an adventurous young tar, he bade his comrades stand by, and nimbly +"swarmed" up the rope, without thought or care of what might await him +at the top. In a few moments his shouts from above proclaimed the +capture of the stronghold. It was absolutely deserted; the garrison, +confident that no attack would that day be made, had gone off to the +nearest village. The interior of the castle was found filled with +munitions of war, in the shape of huge beams and piles of stones +laboriously carried up the winding stairs, and heaped on all the +landing-places in readiness for use. On the flat roof of the castle was +established a sort of furnace for heating water or oil, to be poured +down upon the besiegers; and crowbars lay there in readiness to loosen +out and dislodge the battlements, and topple them over upon the +assailants. + +The officers soon made their way all over the building, and thence +proceeded to the residence of Mr. Burke near by, a large and very +commodious house. All the formalities were gone through with, a +detachment of policemen was put in charge, and the rest of the forces +set out on their return to Portumna, before the organised "defenders" of +Cloondadauv, hastily called out of their comfortable beds or from their +breakfast-tables had realised the situation, and got the populace into +motion. A mass meeting was held in the neighbourhood, and many speeches +were made. But the castle and the farm-house and the holding all remain +in the hands of a cool, quiet, determined-looking young Ulsterman, who +tells me that he is getting on very well, and feels quite able with his +police-guard to protect himself. "Once in a while," he said, "they come +here from Loughrea with English Parliament-men, and stand outside of the +gate, and call me 'Clanricarde's dog,' and make like speeches at me; but +I don't mind them, and they see it, and go away again." + +Of Mr. Burke, the evicted tenant here, Mr. Crawford, the Protestant +clergyman at Portumna, told me that he was abundantly able to pay his +rent. The whole debt for which Burke was evicted was L115; and Mr. +Crawford said he had himself offered Burke L300 for the holding. Burke +would have gladly taken this, but "the League wouldn't let him." When +his right was put up for sale at Galway for L5, he did not dare to buy +it in, and he is now living with his wife and children on the League +funds. Lord Clanricarde's agent offered to take him back and restore his +right if he would pay what he owed; but he dared not accept. This farm +comprises over one hundred and ten English acres, which Burke held at a +rent--fixed by the Land Court--of L77, the valuation for taxes being +L83. + +To call the eviction of such a tenant in such circumstances from such a +holding a "sentence of death," is making ducks and drakes of the English +language. Mr. Crawford's opinion, founded upon a thorough personal +knowledge of the region, is that there is no exceptional distress in +this part of Ireland, and that over-renting has nothing to do with such +distress as does exist here. The case of a man named Egan, one of the +"victims" of the Woodford evictions of 1886, certainly bears out this +view of the matter. Egan, who was a tenant, not at all of Lord +Clanricarde, but of a certain Mrs. Lewis, had occupied for twenty years +a holding of about sixteen Irish acres, or more than twenty English +acres. This he held at a yearly rental of L8, 15s., being 9d. over the +valuation. + +In August 1886 he was evicted for refusing to pay one year's rent then +due. At that time the crops standing on the land were valued by him at +L60, 13s. He also owned six beasts. In other words, this man, when he +was called upon to pay a debt of L8, 15s. had in his own possession, +beside the valuable tenant-right of his holding, more than a hundred +pounds sterling of merchantable assets. He refused to pay, and he was +evicted. + +This was in August 1886. But such are the ideas now current in Ireland +as to the relations of landlord and tenant, that immediately after his +eviction Egan sent his daughter to gather some cabbages off the farm as +if nothing had happened. The Emergency men in charge actually objected, +and sent the damsel away. Thereupon Egan, on the 6th of September, +served a legal notice on Mrs. Lewis, his landlady, requiring her either +to let him take all the crops on the farm, or to pay him their value, +estimated by him, as I have said, at L60, 13s. Two days after this, on +the 8th of September, more than a hundred men came to the place by night +and removed the greater portion of the crops. Not wishing a return of +these visitors, Mrs. Lewis, on the 16th of September, sent word to Egan +to come and take away what was left of the crops; one of the horses +employed in the nocturnal harvest of September 8th having been seized by +the police and identified as belonging to Egan. Egan did not respond; +but in July 1887 he brought an action against his landlady to recover +L100 sterling for her "detention of his goods," and her "conversion of +the same to her own use "! + +The case was heard by the Recorder at Kilmainham, and the facts which I +have briefly recited were established by the evidence. The daughter of +this extraordinary "victim" Egan appeared as a witness, so "fashionably +dressed" as to attract a remark on the subject from the defendant's +counsel. To this she replied that "her brothers in America sent her +money." + +"If your brothers in America sent you money for such purposes," not +unnaturally observed the Recorder, "why did they allow your father to +sacrifice crops worth L60 for the non-payment of L8, 15s.?" + +"They were tired of that," said the young lady airily; "the land wasn't +worth the rent!" + +That is to say, a farm which yielded a crop of L60, and pastured several +head of cattle, was not worth L8, 15s. a year. Certainly it was not +worth L8, 15s. a year if the tenant under the operation of the existing +or the impending laws of Great Britain in Ireland could get, or hope to +get it for the half of that rent, or for no rent at all. + +But this being thus, on what grounds are the rest of mankind invited to +regard this excellent man as a "victim" worthy of sympathy and of +material aid? How had he come to be in arrears of a year in August 1886? +The proceedings at Kilmainham tell us this. + +In November 1885 he had demanded, with other tenants of Mrs. Lewis, a +reduction of 50 per cent. This would have given him his holding at a +rental of L4, 7s. 6d. Mrs. Lewis refused the concession, and a month +afterwards an attempt was made to blow up her son's house with dynamite. +Between that time and August 1886, all the efforts of her son, who was +also her agent, to collect her dues by seizing beasts, were defeated by +the driving away of the cattle, so that no remedy but an eviction was +left to her. I take it for granted that Mrs. Lewis had a family to +maintain, and debts of one sort and another to pay, as well as Mr. +Egan--but I observe this material difference between her position and +his during the whole of this period of "strained relations" between +herself and her tenant, that whereas she lay completely out of the +enjoyment of the rent due her, being the interest on her capital, +represented in her title to the land, Mr. Egan remained in the complete +enjoyment and use of the land. Clearly the tenant was in a better +position than the landlord, and as we are dealing not with the history +of Ireland in the past, but with the condition of Ireland at present, it +appears to me to be quite beside the purpose to ask my sympathies for +Mr. Egan on the ground that a century or half a century ago the +ancestors of Mr. Egan may have been at the mercy of the ancestors of +Mrs. Lewis. However that may have been, Mr. Egan seems to me now to have +had legally much the advantage of Mrs. Lewis. Not only this. Both +legally and materially Mr. Egan, the tenant-farmer at Woodford, seems to +me to have had much the advantage of thousands of his countrymen living +and earning their livelihood by their daily labour in such a typical +American commonwealth, for example, as Massachusetts. I have here with +me the Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics of +Massachusetts. From this I learn that in 1876 the average yearly wages +earned by workmen in Massachusetts were $482.72, or in round numbers +something over L96. Out of this amount the Massachusetts workman had to +feed, clothe, and house himself, and those dependent on him. + +His outlay for rent alone was on the average $109.07, or in round +numbers rather less than L22, making 22-1/2 per cent, of his earnings. + +How was it with Mr. Egan? Out of his labour on his holding he got +merchantable crops worth L60 sterling, or in round numbers $300, besides +producing in the shape of vegetables and dairy stuff, pigs and poultry, +certainly a very large proportion of the food necessary for his +household, and raising and fattening beasts, worth at a low estimate L20 +or $100 more. And while thus engaged, his outlay for rent, which +included not only the house in which he lived, but the land out of which +he got the returns of his labour expended upon it, was L8, 15s., or +considerably less than one-half the outlay of the Massachusetts workman +upon the rent of nothing more than a roof to shelter himself and his +family. Furthermore, the money thus paid out by the Massachusetts +workman for rent was simply a tribute paid for accommodation had and +enjoyed, while out of every pound sterling paid as rent by the Irish +tenant there reverted to his credit, so long as he continued to fulfil +his legal obligations, a certain proportion, calculable, valuable, and +saleable, in the form of his tenant-right. + +I am not surprised to learn that the Recorder dismissed the suit brought +by Mr. Egan, and gave costs against him. But the mere fact that in such +circumstances it was possible for Egan to bring such a suit, and get a +hearing for it, makes it quite clear that Americans of a sympathetic +turn of mind can very easily find much more meritorious objects of +sympathy than the Irish tenant-farmers of Galway without crossing the +Atlantic in quest of them. + +From Cloondadauv to Loughrea we had a long but very interesting drive, +passing on the way, and at no great distance from each other, Father +Coen's neat, prosperous-looking presbytery of Ballinakill, and the shop +and house of a local boat-builder named Tully, who is pleasantly known +in the neighbourhood as "Dr. Tully," by reason of his recommendation of +a very particular sort of "pills for landlords." The presbytery is now +occupied by Father Coen, who finds it becoming his position as the moral +teacher and guide of his people to be in arrears of two and a half years +with the rent of his holding, and who is said to have entertained Mr. +Blunt and other sympathising statesmen very handsomely on their visit to +Loughrea and Woodford,[15] "Dr." Tully being one of the guests invited +to meet them.[16] Not far from this presbytery, Mr. Tener showed me the +scene of one of the most cowardly murders which have disgraced this +region. Of Loughrea, the objective of our drive this morning, Sir George +Trevelyan, I am told, during his brief rule in Ireland, found it +necessary to say that murder had there become an institution. Woodford, +previously a dull and law-abiding spot, was illuminated by a lurid light +of modern progress about three years ago, upon the transfer thither in +the summer of 1885 of a priest from Loughrea, familiarly known as "the +firebrand priest." + +In November of that year, as I have already related, Mr. Egan and other +tenants of Mrs. Lewis of Woodford made their demand for a 50 per cent. +reduction of their rents, upon the refusal of which an attempt was made +with dynamite on the 18th December to blow up the house of Mrs. Lewis's +son and agent. All the bailiffs in the region round about were warned to +give up serving processes, and many of them were cowed into doing so. +One man, however, was not cowed. This was a gallant Irish soldier, +discharged with honour after the Crimean war, and known in the country +as "Balaklava," because he was one of the "noble six hundred," who there +rode "into the jaws of death, into the valley of hell." His name was +Finlay, and he was a Catholic. At a meeting in Woodford, Father Coen +(the priest now in arrears), it is said, looked significantly at Finlay, +and said, "no process-server will be got to serve processes for Sir +Henry Burke of Marble Hill." The words and the look were thrown away on +the veteran who had faced the roar and the crash of the Russian guns, +and later on, in December 1885, Finlay did his duty, and served the +processes given to him. From that moment he and his wife were +"boycotted." His own kinsfolk dared not speak to him. His house was +attacked by night. He was a doomed man. On the 3d March 1886, about 2 +o'clock P.M., he left his house--which Mr. Tener pointed out to me--to +cut fuel in a wood belonging to Sir Henry Burke, at no great distance. +Twice he made the journey between his house and the wood. The third time +he went and returned no more. His wife growing uneasy at his prolonged +absence went out to look for him. She found his body riddled with +bullets lying lifeless in the highway. The police who went into Woodford +with the tale report the people as laughing and jeering at the agony of +the widowed woman. She was with them, and, maddened by the savage +conduct of these wretched creatures, she knelt down over-against the +house of Father Egan, and called down the curse of God upon him. + +On the next day things were worse. No one could be found to supply a +coffin for the murdered man.[17] When the police called upon the priests +to exert their influence and enforce some semblance at least of +Christian and Catholic decency upon the people confided to their charge, +the priests not only refused to do their duty, but floutingly referred +the police to Lady Mary Burke. "He did her work," they said, "let her +send a hearse now to bury him." The lady thus insolently spoken of is +one of the best of the Catholic women of Ireland. At her summons Father +Burke, a few years only before his death, I remember, made a long winter +journey, though in very bad health, from Dublin to Marble Hill to soothe +the last hours and attend the death-bed of her husband. + +No one who knew and loved him can wish him to have lived to hear from +her lips such a tale of the degradation of Catholic priests in his own +land of Galway. + +Mr. Tener pointed out to me, at another place on the road, near +Ballinagar, the deserted burying-ground in which, after much trouble, a +grave was found for the brave old soldier who had escaped the Russian +cannon-balls to be so foully done to death by felons of his own race. +There the last rites were performed by Father Callaghy, a priest who was +himself "boycotted" for resigning the presidency of the League in his +parish, and for the still graver offence of paying his rent. For weeks +it was necessary to guard the grave![18] + +From that day to this no one has been brought to justice for this crime, +committed in broad daylight, and within sight of the highway. Mr. Place, +whom I saw at Portumna, told me that he believed the police had no moral +doubt as to the murderer of Finlay, but that it was useless to think of +getting legal evidence to convict him. + +Mr. Tener tells me that when Mr. Wilfrid Blunt came to Woodford he went +with Father Egan, and accompanied by the police, to see the widow of +this murdered man, heard from her own lips the sickening story, and took +notes of it. But when Mr. Rowlands, M.P., an English "friend of Home +Rule," was examined the other day during the trial of Mr. Blunt, he was +obliged to confess that though he had visited Woodford more than once, +and conversed freely with Mr. Blunt about it, he had "never heard of the +murder of Finlay." + +Such an incident is apparently of little interest to politicians at +Westminster. Fortunately for Ireland, it is of a nature to command more +attention at the Vatican. + +Nature has sketched the scenery of this part of Ireland with a free, +bold hand. It is not so grand or so wild as the scenery of Western +Donegal, but it has both a wildness and a grandeur of its own. Sir Henry +Burke's seat of Marble Hill, as seen in the distance from the road, +stands superbly, high up on a lofty range of wooded hills, from which it +commands the country for miles. And no town I have seen in Ireland is +more picturesquely placed than Loughrea. It has an almost Italian aspect +as you approach it from Woodford. But no lake in Lombardy or Piedmont is +so peculiarly and exquisitely tinted as the lough on which it stands. +The delicate grey-green of the sparkling waters reminded me of the +singular and well-defined belts and stretches of chrysoprase upon which +you sometimes come in sailing through the dark azure of the Southern +Seas. I have never before seen precisely such a hue in any body of fresh +water. The lake is incorrectly described, Mr. Tener tells me, in the +guide-books, as being one of the many curious developments of the Lower +Shannon. It is fed by springs, but if, like the river-lakes, it was +formed by a solution of the limestone, this fact may have some chemical +relation with its very peculiar colour. It contains three picturesque +islands. No stream flows into it, but two streams issue from it. The +town of Loughrea is an ancient holding of the De Burghs, and the +estate-office of Lord Clanricarde is here in one wing of a great +barrack, standing, as I understood Mr. Tener to say, on the site of a +former fortress of the family. Lord Clanricarde's property here is put +down by Mr. Hussey de Burgh at 49,025 acres in County Galway, valued at +L19,634, and at 3576 acres in the county of the City of Galway, valued +at L1202. These, I believe, are statute acres, and in estimating the +relation of Irish rentals to Irish land this fact must be always +ascertained. Of the so-called "Woodford" property the present rental is +no more than L1900, payable by 260 tenants. The Poor-Law valuation for +taxes is L2400. There was a revision of the whole Galway property made +by the father of the present Marquis. Of the 260 Woodford holdings only +twelve were increased, in no case more than 6-1/4 per cent, over the +valuation. In 1882 six of these twelve tenants applied to the Land +Court. The rents were in no case restored to the figures before 1872, +but about 7 per cent. was taken off the increased rental. The assertion +repeatedly made that in 1882 rents were reduced by the Land Court 50 per +cent. on the Clanricarde estates, Mr. Tener tells me, is absolutely +false. In the first year of the Court no reduction went beyond 10 per +cent., and in later years, even under the panic of low prices, the +average has not exceeded 20 per cent. + +After making arrangements for a car to take me on to Woodlawn, where I +was to catch the Dublin train, I went out with Mr. Tener to look at the +town. + +My drive from Loughrea to Woodlawn was delightful. It took me over a +long stretch of the best hunting country of Galway, and my jarvey was a +Galwegian of the type dear to the heart of Lever. He was a "Nationalist" +after his fashion, but he did not hesitate to come rattling up through +the town to the Estate Office to take me up; and after we got fairly off +upon the highway, he spoke with more freedom than respect of all sorts +and conditions of men in and about Loughrea. + +"He's a sharp little man, that Mr. Tener," he said, "and he gave the +boys a most beautiful beating at Burke's place." + +This was said with genuine gusto, and not at all in the querulous spirit +of the delightful member of Parliament who complained at Westminster +with unconscious humour that the agent and the police in that case had +"dishonourably" stolen a march on the defenders of Cloondadauv! + +"But we've beaten them entirely," he said, with equal zest, "at Marble +Hill. Sir Henry has agreed to pay all the costs, and the living expenses +too, of the poor men that were put out.[19] I didn't ever think we'd get +that; but ye see the truth is," he added confidentially, "he must have +the money, Sir Henry--he's lying out of a deal, and then there's heavy +charges on the property. A fine property it is indeed!" + +"In fact," I said, "you put Sir Henry to the wall. Is that it?" + +"Well, it's like that. But we shan't get that out of Clanricarde, I'm +thinking. He's got a power o' money they tell me; and he's that of the +ould Burke blood, he won't mind fighting just as long as you like!" + +As we drove along, he pointed out to me several fine stretches of +hunting country, and, to my surprise, informed me that only the other +day "there was as fine a meet as ever you saw, more than a hundred +ladies and gentlemen--a grand sight it was." + +I asked if the hunting had not been "put down by the League." + +"Oh, now then, sir, who'd be wanting to put down the hunting here in +Galway?--and Ballinasloe? Were you ever at Ballinasloe? just the +grandest horse fair there is in the whole wide world!" + +I insisted that I had always heard a great deal about the opposition of +the League to hunting. + +"Oh, that'll be some little lawyer fellow," he replied, "like that +Healy, that can't sit on a horse! It's the grandest country in all the +world for riding over. What for wouldn't they ride over it?" + +"Were there many went out to America from about Loughrea?" + +"Oh, yes; they were always coming and going. But as many came back." + +"Why?" + +"Oh, they didn't like the country. It wasn't as good a country, was it, +as old Ireland? And they had to work too hard; and then some of them got +money, and they'd like to spend it in the old place." + +The country about Woodlawn is very picturesque and well wooded, and for +a long distance we followed the neatly-kept stone walls of the large and +handsome park of Lord Ashtown. + +"The most beautiful and biggest trees in all Ireland, sorr," said the +jarvey, "and it's a great pity, it is, ye can't stay to let me drive you +all over it, for the finest part of the park is just what you can't see +from this road. Oh, her ladyship would never object to any gentleman +driving about to see the beauties of the place. She is a very good +woman, is her ladyship. She gave work the last Christmas to thirty-two +men, and there wasn't another house in the country there that had work +for more than ten or twelve. A very good woman she is, indeed." + +"Yes, that is a very handsome church, it is indeed. It is the Protestant +Church. Lord Ashtown built it; he was a very good man too, and did a +power of good--building and making roads, and giving work to the people. +He was buried there in that Castle, over the station--Trench's Castle, +they called it." + +"All that lumber there by the station?" + +"That came out of the Ashtown woods. They were always cutting down the +trees; there was so many of them you might be cutting for years--you +would never get to the end of them." + +Woodlawn Station is one of the neatest and prettiest railway stations I +have seen in Ireland--more like a picturesque stone cottage, green and +gay with flowers, than like a station. The station-master's family of +cheery well-dressed lads and lasses went and came about the bright fire +in the waiting-room in a friendly unobtrusive fashion, chatting with the +policeman and the porter and the passengers. It was hard to believe +one's-self within an easy drive of the "cockpit of Ireland." + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + +BORRIS, _Friday, March 2d._--This is the land of the Kavanaghs, and a +lovely, picturesque, richly-wooded land it is. I left Dublin with Mr. +Gyles by an afternoon train; the weather almost like June. We ran from +the County of Dublin into Kildare, and from Kildare into Carlow, through +hills; rural scenery quite unlike anything I have hitherto seen in +Ireland. At Bagnalstown, a very pretty place, with a spire which takes +the eye, our host joined us, and came on with us to this still more +attractive spot. Borris has been the seat of his family for many +centuries. The MacMorroghs of Leinster, whom the Kavanaghs lineally +represent, dwelt here long before Dermot MacMorrogh, finding his +elective throne in Leinster too hot to hold him, went off into +Aquitaine, to get that famous "letter of marque" from Henry II. of +England, with the help of which this king without a kingdom induced +Richard de Clare, an earl without an earldom, to lend him a hand and +bring the Normans into Ireland. Many of this race lie buried in the +ruins of St. Mullen's Abbey, on the Barrow, in this county. But none of +them, I opine, ever did such credit to the name as its present +representative, Arthur MacMorrogh Kavanagh. + +I had some correspondence with Mr. Kavanagh several years ago, when he +sent me, through my correspondent for publication in New York, a very +striking statement of his views on the then condition of Irish +affairs--views since abundantly vindicated; and like most people who +have paid any attention to the recent history of Ireland, I knew how +wonderful an illustration his whole career has been of what philosophers +call the superiority of man to his accidents, and plain people the power +of the will. But I knew this only imperfectly. His servant brought him +up to the carriage and placed him in it. This it was impossible not to +see. But I had not talked with him for five minutes before it quite +passed out of my mind. Never was there such a justification of the +paradoxical title which Wilkinson gave to his once famous book, _The +Human Body, and its Connexion with Man_,--never such a living refutation +of the theory that it is the thumb which differentiates man from the +lower animals. Twenty times this evening I have been reminded of the +retort I heard made the other day at Cork by a lawyer, who knows Mr. +Kavanagh well, to a priest of "Nationalist" proclivities, who knows him +not at all. Some allusion having been made to Borris, the lawyer said to +me, "You will see at Borris the best and ablest Irishman alive." On this +the priest testily and tartly broke in, "Do you mean the man without +hands or feet?" + +"I mean," replied the lawyer, very quietly, "the man in whom all that +has gone in you or me to arms and legs has gone to heart and head!" + +Borris House stands high in the heart of an extensive and nobly wooded +park, and commands one of the finest landscapes I have seen in Ireland. +As we stood and gazed upon it from the hall door, the distant hills were +touched with a soft purple light such as transfigures the Apennines at +sunset. + +"You should see this view in June," said Mrs, Kavanagh, "we are all +brown and bare now." + +Brown and bare, like most other terms, are relative. To the eye of an +American this whole region now seems a sea of verdure, less clear and +fresh, I can easily suppose, than it may be in the early summer, but +verdure still. And one must get into the Adirondacks, or up among the +mountains of Western Virginia, to find on our Atlantic slope such trees +as I have this evening seen. One grand ilex near the house could hardly +be matched in the Villa d'Este. + +The house is stately and commodious, and more ancient than it appears to +be,--so many additions have been made to it at different times. It has +passed through more than one siege, and in the '98 Mr. Kavanagh tells me +the townspeople of Borris came up here and sought refuge. There are vast +caverns under the house and grounds, doubtless made by taking out from +the hill the stone used in building this house, and the fortresses which +stood here before it. In these all sorts of stores were kept, and many +of the people found shelter. + +I need not say that there is a banshee at Borris--though no living +witness, I believe, has heard its warning wail. But as we sat in the +beautiful library, and watched the dying light of day, a lady present +told us a tale more gruesome than many of those in which the "psychical" +inquirers delight. She was sitting, she said, in an upper room of an +ancient mansion here in Carlow, in which she lives, when, from the lawn +below, there came up to her a low, sad, shrill cry--the croon of a +woman, such as one hears from the mourners sitting among the turbaned +tombstones of the hill of Eyoub at Constantinople. It startled her, and +she held her breath and listened. She was alone, as she knew, in that +part of the house, and the hall door below was unlocked, as is the +fashion still in Ireland, despite all the troubles and turmoils. Again +the sound came, and this time nearer to the house. Could it be the +banshee? Again and again it rose and died away, each time nearer and +nearer. Then, as she listened, all her nerves strung to the keenest +sensibility, it came again, and now, beyond a doubt, within the hall +below. + +With an effort she rose from her chair, opened a door leading into a +corridor running aside from the main stairway, and fled at full speed +towards the wing in which she knew that she would find some of the +maids. As she sped along she heard the cry again and again far behind +her, as from a creature slowly and steadily mounting the grand stairway +towards the room which she had just quitted. + +She found the maids, who fell into a terrible fright when she told her +story and dared not budge. So the bells were violently rung till the +butler and footman appeared. To the first she said simply, "There is a +mad woman in this house--go and find her!" + +"The man looked at me," she said, "as I spoke with a curious expression +in his face as of one who thought, 'yes, there is a mad woman in the +house, and she is not far to seek!'" + +But the lady insisted, and the men finally went off on their quest. In +the course of half an hour it was rewarded. The mad woman--a dangerous +creature--who had wandered away from an asylum in the neighbourhood, was +found curled up and fast asleep in the lady's own bed! + +Fancy a delicate woman going alone into her bedroom at midnight to be +suddenly confronted by an apparition of that sort! + + +BORRIS, _March 3d._--After a stroll on the lawn this morning, the wide +and glorious prospect bathed in the light of a really soft spring day, I +had a conversation with Mr. Kavanagh about the Land Corporation, of +which he is the guiding spirit. This is a defensive organisation of the +Irish landlords against the Land League. When a landlord has been driven +into evicting his tenants, the next step, in the "war against +landlordism," is to prevent other tenants from taking the vacated lands +and cultivating them. This is accomplished by "boycotting" any man who +does this as a "land-grabber." + +The ultimate sanction of the "boycott" being "murder," derelict farms +increased under this system very rapidly; and the Eleventh Commandment +of the League, "Thou shalt not pay the rent which thy neighbour hath +refused to pay," was in a fair way to dethrone the Ten Commandments of +Sinai throughout Ireland, even before the formal adoption in 1886 of the +"Plan of Campaign." + +Mr. Gladstone would perhaps have hit the facts more accurately, if, +instead of calling an eviction in Ireland a "sentence of death," he had +called the taking of a tenancy a sentence of death. Mr. Hussey at Lixnaw +had two tenants, Edmond and James Fitzmaurice. Edmond Fitzmaurice was +"evicted" in May 1887; but he was taken into the house of a neighbour, +made very comfortable, and still lives. James Fitzmaurice took, for the +sake of the family, the land from which Edmond was evicted, and for this +he was denounced as a "land-grabber," boycotted, and finally shot dead +in the presence of his daughter. + +At a meeting in Dublin in the autumn of 1885, a parish priest, the Rev. +Mr. Cantwell, described it as a "cardinal virtue" that "no one should +take a farm from which another had been evicted," and called upon the +people who heard him to "pass any such man by unnoticed, and treat him +as an enemy in their midst." Public opinion and the law, if not the +authorities of his church would make short work of any priest who talked +in this fashion in New York. But in Ireland, and under the British +Government, it seems they order things differently. So it occurred one +day to the landlords thus assailed, as it did to the sea-lions of the +Cape of Good Hope when the French sailors attacked them, that they might +defend themselves. + +To this end the Land Corporation was instituted, with a considerable +capital at its back, and Mr. Kavanagh at its head. The "plan of +campaign" of this Corporation is to take over from the landlords +derelict lands and cultivate them, stocking them where that is +necessary. + +It is in this way that the derelict lands on the Ponsonby property at +Youghal are now worked. But Mr. Kavanagh tells me that the men employed +by the Corporation, of whom Father Keller spoke as a set of desperadoes +or "_enfants perdus_," are really a body of resolute and capable working +men farmers. Many, but by no means all of them, are Protestants and +Ulstermen; and that they are up to their work would seem to be shown by +the fact stated to me, that in no case so far have any of them been +deterred and driven off from the holdings confided to them. A great part +of the Luggacurren property of Lord Lansdowne is now worked by the +Corporation; and Mr. Kavanagh was kind enough to let me see the +accounts, which indicate a good business result for the current year on +that property. This is all very interesting. But what a picture it +presents of social demoralisation! And what is to be the end of it all? +Can a country be called civilised in which a farmer with a family to +maintain, having the capital and the experience necessary to manage +successfully a small farm, is absolutely forbidden, on pain of social +ostracism, and eventually on pain of death, by a conspiracy of his +neighbours, to take that farm of its lawful owner at what he considers +to be a fair rent? And how long can any civilisation of our complex +modern type endure in a country in which such a state of things +tolerated by the alleged Government of that country has to be met, and +more or less partially mitigated, by deviating to the cultivation of +farms rendered in this way derelict large amounts of capital which might +be, and ought to be, far more profitably employed in other ways? + +Mr. Kavanagh, after serving the office of High Sheriff thirty years ago, +first for Kilkenny, and then for Carlow, sat in Parliament for fourteen +years, from 1866 to 1880, as an Irish county member. He has a very large +property here in Carlow, and property also in Wexford, and in Kilkenny, +and was sworn into the Privy Council two years ago. If the personal +interests and the family traditions of any man alive can be said to be +rooted in the Irish soil, this is certainly true of his interests and +his traditions. How can the peace and prosperity of Ireland be served by +a state of things which condemns an Irishman of such ties and such +training to expend his energies and his ability in defending the +elementary right of Paddy O'Rourke to take stock and work a ten-acre +farm on terms that suit himself and his landlord? + +In the afternoon we took a delightful walk through the woods, Mr. +Kavanagh going with us on horseback. Every hill and clump of trees on +this large domain he knows, and he led us like a master of woodcraft +through all manner of leafy byways to the finest points of view. The +Barrow flows past Borris, making pictures at every turn, and the banks +on both sides are densely and beautifully wooded. We came in one place +upon a sawmill at work in the forest, and Mr. Kavanagh showed us with +pride the piles of excellent timber which he turns out here. But he took +a greater pride in a group, sacred from the axe, of really magnificent +Scotch firs, such as I had certainly not expected to find in Ireland. +Nearer the mansion are some remarkable Irish yews. The gardens are of +all sorts and very extensive, but we found the head-gardener bitterly +lamenting the destruction by a fire in one of the conservatories of more +than six thousand plants just prepared for setting out. + +There are many curious old books and papers here, and a student of early +Irish history might find matter to keep him well employed for a long +time in this region. It was from this region and the race which ruled +it, of which race Mr. Kavanagh is the actual representative, that the +initiative came of the first Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. Strongbow +made what, from the Anglo-Norman point of view, was a perfectly +legitimate bargain, with a dispossessed prince to help him to the +recovery of his rights on the understanding that these rights, when +recovered, should pass in succession to himself through the only +daughter of the prince, whom he proposed to marry. It does not appear +that Strongbow knew, or that Dermot MacMorrogh cared to tell him, how +utterly unlike the rights of an Anglo-Norman prince were those of the +elective life-tenant of an Irish principality. FitzStephen, the son by +her second marriage of Nesta, the Welsh royal mistress of Henry +Beauclerk, and his cousin, Maurice Fitzgerald, the leaders into Ireland +of the Geraldines, were no more clear in their minds about this than +Strongbow, and it is to the original muddle thus created that Professor +Richey doubtless rightly refers the worst and most troublesome +complications of the land question in Ireland. The distinction between +the King's lieges and the "mere Irish," for example, is unquestionably a +legal distinction, though it is continually and most mischievously used +as if it were a proof of the race-hatred borne by the Normans and Saxons +in Ireland from the first against the Celts. The O'Briens, the O'Neills, +the O'Mullaghlins, the O'Connors, and the M'Morroghs, "the five bloods," +as they are called, were certainly Celts, but whether in virtue of their +being, or claiming to be, the royal races respectively of Minister, of +Ulster, of Meath, of Connaught, and of Leinster, or from whatever other +reason, these races were "within the king's law," and were never "mere +Irish" from the first planting of the Anglo-Norman power in Ireland. The +case of a priest, Shan O'Kerry, "an Irish enemy of the king," presented +"contrary to the form of statute" to the vicarage of Lusk, in the reign +of Edward IV. (1465), illustrates this. An Act of Parliament was passed +to declare the aforesaid "Shan O'Kerry," or "John of Kevernon," to be +"English born, and of English nation," and that he might "hold and enjoy +the said benefice." + +There is a genealogy here of the M'Morroghs and Kavanaghs, most +gorgeously and elaborately gotten up many years ago for Mr. Kavanagh's +grandfather, which shows how soon the Norman and the native strains of +blood become commingled. When one remembers how much Norman blood must +have gone even into far-off Connaught when King John, in the early part +of the thirteenth century, coolly gave away that realm of the O'Connors +to the De Burgos, and how continually the English of the Pale fled from +the exactions inflicted upon them by their own people, and sought refuge +"among the savage and mere Irish," one cannot help thinking that the" +Race Question" has been "worked for at least all it is worth" by +philosophers bent on unravelling the 'snarl' of Irish affairs. If this +genealogy may be trusted, there was little to choose between the ages +which immediately preceded and the ages which followed the Anglo-Norman +invasion in the matter of respect for human life. Celtic chiefs and +Norman knights "died in their boots" as regularly as frontiersmen in +Texas. One personage is designated in the genealogy as "the murderer," +for the truly Hibernian reason, so far as appears, that he was himself +murdered while quite a youth, and before he had had a chance to murder +more than three or four of his immediate relatives. It was as if the son +of Geoffrey Plantagenet and the Lady Constance should be branded in +history as "Arthur, the Assassin." + + +BORRIS, _March 4th._--This is a staunch Protestant house, and Mr. +Kavanagh himself reads a Protestant service every morning. But there is +little or nothing apparently in this part of Ireland of the bitter +feeling about and against the Catholics which exists in the North. A +very lively and pleasant Catholic gentleman came in to-day informally +and joined the house party at luncheon. We all walked out over the +property afterwards, visiting quite a different region from that which +we saw yesterday--different but equally beautiful and striking, and this +Catholic gentleman cited several cases which had fallen within his own +knowledge of priests who begin to feel their moral control of the people +slipping away from them through the operation of the "Plan of Campaign." +I told him what I had heard in regard to one such priest from my +ecclesiastical friend in Cork. "It does not surprise me at all," he +said, "and, indeed, I not very long ago read precisely such another +letter from a priest in a somewhat similar position. I read it with pain +and shame as a Catholic," he continued, "for it was simply a complete +admission that the priest, although entirely convinced that his +parishioners were making most unfair demands upon their landlord to whom +the letter was addressed, felt himself entirely powerless to bring them +to a sense of their misconduct." "Had this priest given in his adhesion +to the Plan of Campaign?" I asked. "Yes," was the reply, "and it was +this fact which had broken his hold on the people when he tried to bring +them to abandon their attitude under the Plan. His letter was really +nothing more nor less than an appeal to the landlord, and that landlord +a Protestant, to help him to get out of the hole into which he had put +himself." + +Of the tenants and their relation to the village despots who administer +the Plan of Campaign, this gentleman had many stories also to tell of +the same tenor with all that I have hitherto heard on this subject. +Everywhere it is the same thing. The well-to-do and well-disposed +tenants are coerced by the thriftless and shiftless. "I have the +agencies of several properties," he said, "and in some of the best parts +of Ireland. I have had little or no trouble on any of them, for I have +one uniform method. I treat every tenant as if he were the only man I +had to deal with, study his personal ways and character, humour him, and +get him on my side against himself. You can always do this with an +Irishman if you will take the trouble to do it. Within the past years I +have had tenants come and tell me they were in fear the Plan of Campaign +would be brought upon them, just as if it were a kind of potato disease, +and beg me to agree to take the rent from them in that case, and just +not discover on them that they had paid it before it was due!" + +This gentleman is a pessimist as to the future. "I am a youngish man +still," he said, "and a single man, and I am glad of it. I don't believe +the English will ever learn how to govern this country, and I am sure it +can never govern itself. Would your people make a State of it?" + +To this I replied that with Cuba and Canada and Mexico, all still to be +digested and assimilated, I thought the deglutition of Ireland by the +great Republic must be remitted to a future much too remote to interest +either of us. + +"I suppose so," he said in a humorously despondent tone; "and so I see +nothing for people who think as I do, but Australia or New Zealand!" + +Mr. Kavanagh sees the future, I think, in colouring not quite so dark. +As a public man, familiar for years with the method and ways of British +Parliaments, he seems to regard the possible future legislation of +Westminster with more anxiety and alarm than the past or present +agitations in Ireland. The business of banishing political economy to +Jupiter and Saturn, however delightful it may be to the people who make +laws, is a dangerous one to the people for whom the laws are made. While +he has very positive opinions as to the wisdom of the concession made in +the successive Land Acts for Ireland, which have been passed since 1870, +he is much less disquieted, I think, by those concessions, than by the +spirit by which the legislation granting them has been guided. He thinks +great good has been already done by Mr. Balfour, and that much more good +will be done by him if the Irish people are made to feel that clamorous +resistance to the law will no longer be regarded at Westminster as a +sufficient reason for changing the law. That is as much as to say that +party spirit in Great Britain is the chief peril of Ireland to-day. And +how can any Irishman, no matter what his state in his own country may +be, or his knowledge of Irish affairs, or his patriotic earnestness and +desire for Irish prosperity, hope to control the tides of party spirit +in England or Scotland? + +Of the influence upon the people in Ireland of the spirit of recent +legislation for Ireland, the story of the troubles on the O'Grady +estate, as Mr. Kavanagh tells it to me, is a most striking illustration. +"The O'Grady of Kilballyowen," as his title shows, is the direct +representative, not of any Norman invader, but of an ancient Irish race. +The O'Gradys were the heads of a sept of the "mere Irish"; and if there +be such a thing--past, present, or future--as an "Irish nation," the +place of the O'Gradys in that nation ought to be assumed. Mr. Thomas De +Courcy O'Grady, who now wears the historic designation, owns and lives +on an estate of a little more than 1000 acres, in the Golden Vein of +Ireland, at Killmallock, in the county of Limerick. The land is +excellent, and for the last half-century certainly it has been let to +the tenants at rents which must be considered fair, since they have +never been raised. In 1845, two years before the great famine, the +rental was L2142. This rental was paid throughout the famine years +without difficulty; and in 1881 the rental stood at L2108. + +There has never been an eviction on the estate until last year, when six +tenants were evicted. All of these lived in good comfortable houses, and +were prosperous dairy-farmers. Why were they evicted? + +In October 1886, during the candidacy at New York of the Land Reformer, +Mr. George, Mr. Dillon, M.P., propounded the "Plan of Campaign" at +Portumna in Galway. The March rents being then due on the estate of The +O'Grady in Limerick, his agent, Mr. Shine, was directed to continue the +abatements of 15 per cent, on the judicial rents, and of 25 per cent, on +all other rents, which had been cheerfully accepted in 1885. But there +was a priest at Kilballyowen, Father Ryan, who wrought upon the tenants +until they demanded a general abatement of 40 per cent. This being +refused, they asked for 30 per cent. on the judicial rents, and 40 per +cent. on the others. This also being refused, Father Ryan had his way, +and the "Plan of Campaign" was adopted. The O'Grady's writs issued +against several of the tenants were met by a "Plan of Campaign" auction +of cattle at Herbertstown in December 1886, the returns of which were +paid into "the Fund." For this, one of the tenants, Thomas Moroney, who +held, besides a a farm of 37 Irish acres, a "public," and five small +houses, at Herbertstown, and the right to the tolls on cattle at the +Herbertstown farm, valued at from L50 to L60 a year, and who held all +these at a yearly rent of L85, was proceeded against. Judge Boyd +pronounced him a bankrupt. + +In the spring of 1887, after The O'Grady had been put to great costs and +trouble, the tenants made a move. They offered to accept a general +abatement of 17-1/2 per cent., "The O'Grady to pay all the costs." + +Here is the same story again of the small solicitors behind the "Plan of +Campaign" promoting the strife, and counting on the landlords to defray +the charges of battle! + +The O'Grady responded with the following circular:-- + + KlLLBALLYOWEN, BRUFF, CO. LlMERICK, + + _13th August 1877_. + + To my Tenants on Kilballyowen and Herbertstown Estate, Co. + Limerick. + + MY FRIENDS,--Pending the evictions by the Sheriff on my estate, + caused by your refusal to pay judicial rents on offers of liberal + abatements, I desire to remind you of the following facts:-- + + I am a resident landlord; my ancestors have dwelt amongst you for + over 400 years; every tenant is personally known to me, and the + most friendly relations have always existed between us. + + I am not aware of there ever having been an eviction by the Sheriff + on my estate. + + Farming myself over 400 acres, and my late agent (Mr. Shine), a + tenant farmer living within four miles of my property, I have every + opportunity of realising and knowing your wants. + + On the passing of the Land Act of 1881, I desired you to have any + benefit it could afford you, and as you nearly all held under + lease--which precluded you from going into court--I intimated to + you my wish, and offered you to allow your lands to be valued at my + expense, or to let you go into court and get your rents fixed by + the sub-commissioners. + + You elected to have a valuation made, and Mr. Edmond Moroney was + agreed on as a land-valuer, possessing the confidence of tenants + and landlord. + + I may mention, up to then I had not known Mr. Moroney personally. + + In 1883 Mr. Moroney valued your holdings, and, as a result, his + valuation was accepted (except in three or four cases), and + judicial agreements signed by you, at rents ascertained by Mr. + Moroney's valuation. + + The late Patrick Hogan objected to Mr. Moroney's valuation of his + farm, and went into court, and had his rent fixed by the County + Court Judge. + + Thomas Moroney would not allow Mr. Edmond Moroney to value his + holding, nor would he go into court, his reason no doubt being he + should disclose the receipts of the amount of the tolls of the + fairs. + + The rents were subsequently paid on Mr. Moroney's valuation with + punctuality. + + In 1885, recognising the fall in prices of stock and produce, and + at the request of my late agent, Mr. Shine, I directed him to allow + you 15 per cent. on all judicial rents, or rents abated on Mr. + Moroney's valuation, and 25 per cent. on all other rents, when you + paid punctually and with thanks. + + In October last, when calling in the March 1886 rents, at the + instance of Mr. Shine, I agreed to continue the abatement of 15 per + cent, and 25 per cent., which, when intimated to you, were refused, + and a meeting held, demanding an all-round abatement of 40 per + cent. + + This I considered unreasonable and unjust, and I refused to give + it. + + The Plan of Campaign was then most unjustly adopted on the estate, + and you refused to pay your rents. + + Thomas Moroney was elected as a test case to try the legality of + the sale and removal of your property to avoid payment of your + rent. His tenancy was a mixed holding of house property in the + village of Herbertstown, the tolls of the fairs, and 37 acres of + land, at a rent of L85, and a Poor-Law valuation of L73, 5s., made + as follows:-- + + Land valued at L42 5 0 + Tolls of fair at 17 0 0 + Public house and yard at 11 0 0 + Five small houses and forge at 3 0 0 + -------- + L73 5 0 + + I always was led to believe the tolls of the fair averaged from L50 + to L60 a year, there being four fairs in the year; and I believe + his reason for refusing to allow Mr. E. Moroney to value his + holding, or to go into court, was that he should disclose the + amount of the tolls, and in consequence I never considered he was + entitled to any abatement; but still I gave it to him, and was + prepared to do so. The result of his case was that his conduct in + making away with his property was unjustifiable, and his farm and + holding was sold out for the benefit of his creditors, and he is no + longer a tenant on the estate. + + I subsequently took proceedings against six other tenants, who + refused payment of rent, and removed their cattle off the land to + avoid payment, and having got judgment against them, the Sheriff + sold out four of their farms, and writs of possession on the title + were taken out against them, and are now lodged with the Sheriff + for execution. I have also got judgments for possession against two + other tenants for non-payment of rent, also lodged with the + Sheriff. One the widow of Patrick Hogan, who got his rent fixed in + the County Court, and the other Mrs. Denis Ryan, whose farm on her + marriage I assented to be put in settlement for her protection, Mr. + Shine, my agent, consenting to act as one of her trustees, whose + name, with his co-trustee, Mr. Thomas FitzGerald, appear as + defendants, they having signed her judicial agreement. + + The following are the names of the above tenants, the extent of + their holdings, the rent, the Poor-Law valuation, and the average + rent per Irish acre:-- + + +------------------+------------+-------------+---------+-----------+ + | | Acreage in | Judicial | Rent | | + | TENANT. | Irish | Rent Less 20| per | Poor Law | + | | Measure. | per cent. | acre[A]| Valuation | + +------------------+------------+-------------+---------+-----------+ + | | A. R. P. | L s. d. | | L s. d. | + |John Carroll, | 87 3 38 | 132 4 0 | 30/- | 127 10 0 | + |Honora Crimmins, | 35 0 27 | 64 5 6 | 36/6 | 52 15 0 | + |James Baggott, | 18 0 0 | 37 16 10 | 42/- | 22 5 0 | + |Margaret Moloney, | 23 2 9 | 46 2 8 | 39/2 | 44 15 0 | + |Mrs. Denis Ryan, | 66 2 3 | 93 2 5 | 28/- | 96 0 0 | + |Maryanne Hogan, | 53 2 33 | 112 0 0 | 41/8 | 117 15 0 | + | +------------+-------------+---------+-----------+ + | | 294 3 30 | 485 11 5 | ... | 461 0 0 | + +------------------+------------+-------------+---------+-----------+ + + [A] Rent per Irish acre after abatement of 20 per cent. + + This represents an average of 34s. the Irish acre, for some of the + best land in Ireland, and shows a difference of only L24, 11s. 5d. + between the rent, less 20 per cent. now offered, and Poor-Law + valuation. + + After putting me to the cost of these proceedings, and giving me + every opposition and annoyance, amongst such, compelling my agent + (by threats of boycotting) to resign, boycotting myself and + household, preventing my servants from attending chapel, and + driving my labourers away, negotiations for a settlement were + opened, and you offered to accept an all-round abatement of 17-1/2 + per cent. and to pay up one year's rent, provided I paid all costs, + including the costs in Moroney's case; this of course I refused, + but with a desire to aid you in coming to a settlement, and to + prevent the loss to the tenants of the farms under eviction on the + Title, I offered to allow the 17-1/2 per cent. all round on payment + of one year's rent and costs, and to give time for payment of the + costs as stated in my Solicitor's letter of the 2d June 1887 to + Canon Scully. + + This offer was refused, and the writs for possession have been + lodged with the Sheriff. + + I never commenced these proceedings in a vindictive spirit, or with + any desire to punish any of you for your ungracious conduct, but + simply to protect my property from unjust and unreasonable demands. + + You will owe two years' rent next month (September), and I now + write you this circular letter to point out to each, individually, + the position of the tenants under eviction, and even at this late + hour to give them an opportunity of saving their holdings, to + enable them to do so, and with a view to settlement, I am now + prepared to allow 20 per cent. all round, on payment of a year's + rent and costs. + + Under no circumstance will I forego payment of costs, as they must + be paid in full. + + If this money be paid forthwith, I will arrange with my brother, + the purchaser, to restore the four holdings purchased by him at + sheriff's sale to the late tenants. + + After this offer I disclaim any responsibility for the result of + the evictions, and the loss attendant thereon, as it now remains + with you to avert same. + + +All the evictions have since been carried out, and the Land Corporation +men are at work upon the estate! Whom has all this advantaged? The +tenants?--Certainly not. The O'Grady?--Certainly not. The peace and +order of Ireland?--Certainly not. But it has given the National League +another appeal to the intelligent "sympathies" of England and America. +It has strengthened the revolutionary element in Irish society. It has +"driven another nail into the coffin" of Irish landlordism and of the +private ownership of land throughout Great Britain. + + +Such at least is the opinion of Mr. Kavanagh. If I were an Englishman or +a Scotchman, I should be strongly inclined to take very serious account +of this opinion in forecasting the future of landed property in England +or Scotland. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + + +GREENANE HOUSE, THOMASTOWN, _March 5th._--The breakfast-room at Borris +this morning was gay with pink coats. A meet was to come off at a place +between Borris and Thomastown, and bidding fare-well to my cordial host +and hostess, I set out at 11 o'clock for a flying visit to this quaint +and charming house of Mr. Seigne, one of the best known and most highly +esteemed agents in this part of Ireland. + +My jarvey from Borris had an unusually neat and well-balanced car. When +I praised it he told me it was "built by an American," not an Irish +American, I understood him to say, but a genuine Yankee, who, for some +mysterious reason, has established himself in this region, where he has +prospered as a cart and car builder ever since. "Just the best cars in +all Ireland he builds, your honour!" Why don't he naturalise them in +America? + +All the way was charming, the day very bright, and even warm, and the +hill scenery picturesque at every turn. We looked out sharply for the +hunt, but in vain. My jarvey, who knew the whole country, said they must +have broken cover somewhere on the upper road, and we should miss them +entirely. And so we did. + +The silting up of the river Nore has reduced Thomastown or +Ballymacanton, which was its Irish name, from its former importance as +an emporium for the country about Kilkenny. The river now is not +navigable above Inistiogue. But two martial square towers, one at either +end of a fine bridge which spans the stream here, speak of the good old +times when the masters of Thomastown took toll and tribute of traders +and travellers. The lands about the place then belonged to the great +monastery of Jerpoint, the ruins of which are still the most interesting +of their kind in this part of Ireland. They have long made a part of the +estate of the Butlers. We rattled rapidly through the quiet little town, +and whisking out of a small public square into a sort of wynd between +two houses, suddenly found ourselves in the precincts of Grenane House. +The house takes its name from the old castle of Grenane, an Irish +fortress established here by some native despot long before Thomas +Fitz-Anthony the Norman came into the land. The ruins of this castle +still stand some half a mile away. "We call the place Candahar," said +Mr. Seigne, as he came up with two ladies from the meadows below the +house, "because you come into it so suddenly, just as you do into that +Oriental town." But what a charming occidental place it is! It stands +well above the river, the slope adorned with many fine old trees, some +of which grow, and grow prosperously, in the queerest and most +improbable forms, bent double, twisted, but still most green and +vigorous. They have no business under any known theory of arboriculture +to be beautiful, but beautiful they are. The views of the bridge, of the +towers, and of the river, from this slope would make the fortune of the +place in a land of peace and order. + +A most original and delightful lady of the country lunched with +us,--such a character as Miss Edgeworth or Miss Austen might have drawn. +Shrewd, humorous, sensible, fearless, and ready with impartial hand to +box the ears alike of Trojan and of Tyrian. She not only sees both sides +of the question in Ireland as between the landlords and the tenants, but +takes both sides of the question. She holds lands by inheritance, which +make her keenly alive to the wrongs of the landlords, and she holds +farms as a tenant, which make her implacably critical as to their +claims. She mercilessly demolished in one capacity whatever she advanced +in the other, and all with the most perfect nonchalance and good faith. +This curiously dual attitude reminded me of the confederate General, +Braxton Bragg, of whom his comrades in the old army of the United States +used to say that he once had a very sharp official correspondence with +himself. He happened to hold a staff appointment, being also a line +officer. So in his quality of a staff officer, he found fault with +himself in his capacity as a line officer, reprimanded himself sharply, +replied defiantly to the reprimand, and eventually reported himself to +himself for discipline at head-quarters. She told an excellent story of +a near kinsman of hers who, holding a very good living in the Protestant +Irish Church, came rather unexpectedly by inheritance into a baronetcy, +upon which his women-folk insisted that it would be derogatory to a +baronet to be a parson. "Would you believe it, the poor man was silly +enough to listen to their cackle, and resign seven hundred a year!" + +"That didn't clear him," I said, "of the cloth, did it?" + +"Not a bit, of course, poor foolish man. He was just as much a parson as +ever, only without a parsonage. Men are fools enough of themselves, +don't you think, without needing to listen to women?" + +Mr. Seigne comes of a French Protestant stock long ago planted in +Ireland, and his Gallic blood doubtless helps him to handle the +practical problems daily submitted in these days to an Irish +land-agent--problems very different, as he thinks, from those with which +an Irish agent had to deal in the days before 1870. The Irish tenant has +a vantage-ground now in his relations with his landlord which he never +had in the olden time, and this makes it more important than it ever was +that the agent should have what may be called a diplomatic taste for +treating with individuals, finding out the bent of mind of this man and +of that, and negotiating over particulars, instead of insisting, in the +English fashion, on general rules, without regard to special cases. I +have met no one who has seemed to me so cool and precise as Mr. Seigne +in his study of the phenomena of the present situation. I asked him +whether he could now say, as Mr. Senior did a quarter of century ago, +that the Irish tenants were less improvident, and more averse from +running into debt than the English. + +"I think not," he replied; "on the contrary, in some parts of Ireland +now the shopkeepers are kept on the verge of bankruptcy by the +recklessness with which the tenants incurred debts immediately after the +passing of the Land Act of 1870--a time when shopkeepers, and bankers +also, almost forced credit upon the farmers, and made thereby 'bad +debts' innumerable. Farmers rarely keep anything like an account of +their receipts and expenses. I know only one tenant-farmer in this +neighbourhood who keeps what can be called an account, showing what he +takes from his labour and spends on his living."[20] "They save a great +deal of money often," he says, "but almost never in any systematic way. +They spend much less on clothes and furniture, and the outward show of +things, than English people of the same condition do, and they do not +stint themselves in meat and drink as the French peasants do. In fact, +under the operation of existing circumstances, they are getting into the +way of improving their condition, not so much by sacrifices and savings, +as by an insistence on rent being fixed low enough to leave full margin +for improved living." + +"I had a very frank statement on this point," said Mr. Seigne, "not long +ago from a Tipperary man. When I tried to show him that his father had +paid a good many years ago the very same rent which he declares himself +unable to pay now, he admitted this at once. But it was a confession and +avoidance. 'My father could pay the rent, and did pay the rent,' he +said, 'because he was content to live so that he could pay it. He sat on +a boss of straw, and ate out of a bowl. He lived in a way in which I +don't intend to live, and so he could pay the rent. Now, I must have, +and I mean to have, out of the land, before I pay the rent, the means of +living as I wish to live; and if I can't have it, I'll sell out and go +away; but I'll be--if I don't fight before I do that same!'" + +"What could you reply to that?" I asked. + +"Oh," I said, "'that's square and straightforward. Only just let me know +the point at which you mean to fight, and then we'll see if we can agree +about something.'" + +"The truth is," said Mr. Seigne, "that there is a pressure upward now +from below. The labourers don't want to live any longer as the farmers +have always made them live; and so the farmers, having to consider the +growing demands of the labourers, and meaning to live better themselves, +push up against the landlord, and insist that the means of the +improvement shall come out of him." + +He then told me an instructive story of his calling upon a +tenant-farmer, at whose place he found the labourers sitting about their +meal of pork and green vegetables. The farmer asked him into another +room, where he saw the farmer's family making their meal of stirabout +and milk and potatoes. + +"I asked you in here," said the farmer, "because we keep in here to +ourselves. I don't want those fellows to see that we can't afford to +give ourselves what we have to give them,"--this with strong language +indicating that he must himself be given a way to advance equally with +the progressive labourer, or he would know the reason why! + +This afternoon Mr. Seigne drove me over through a beautiful country to +Woodstock, near Inistiogue, the seat of the late Colonel Tighe, the head +of the family of which the authoress of "Psyche" was an ornament. + +It is the finest place in this part of Ireland, and one of the finest I +have seen in the three kingdoms, a much more picturesque and more nobly +planted place indeed than its namesake in England. The mansion has no +architectural pretensions, being simply a very large and, I should +think, extremely comfortable house of the beginning of this century. The +library is very rich, and there are some good pictures, as well as +certain statues in the vestibule, which would have no interest for the +Weissnichtwo professor of _Sartor Resartus_, but are regarded with some +awe by the good people of Inistiogue. + +The park would do no discredit to a palace, and if the vague project of +establishing a royal residence in Ireland for one of the British Princes +should ever take shape, it would not be easy, I should say, to find a +demesne more befitting the home of a prince than this of the Tighes. At +present it serves the State at least as usefully, being the "pleasaunce" +of the people for miles around, who come here freely to walk and drive. + +It stretches for miles along the Nore, and is crowned by a gloriously +wooded hill nearly a thousand feet in height. The late Colonel Tighe, a +most accomplished man, and a passionate lover of trees, made it a kind +of private Kew Gardens. He planted long avenues of the rarest and finest +trees, araucarias, Scotch firs, oaks, beeches, cedars of Lebanon; laid +out miles of the most varied and delightful drives, and built the most +extensive conservatories in Ireland. + +The turfed and terraced walks among those conservatories are +indescribably lovely, and the whole place to-day was vocal with +innumerable birds. Picturesque little cottages and arbours are to be +found in unexpected nooks all through the woodlands, each commanding +some green vista of forest aisles, or some wide view of hill and +champaign, enlivened by the winding river. From one of those to-day we +looked out over a landscape to which Turner alone or Claude could have +done justice, the river, spanned by a fine bridge, in the middle +distance, and all the region wooded as in the days of which Edmund +Spenser sings, when Ireland + + "Flourished in fame, + Of wealth and goodnesse far above the rest + Of all that bears the British Islands' name." + +Over the whole place broods an indefinable charm. You feel that this was +the home at once and the work of a refined and thoughtful spirit. And so +indeed it was. Here for the greater part of the current century the +owner lived, making the development of the estate and of this demesne +his constant care and chief pleasure. And here still lives his widow, +with whom we took tea in a stately quiet drawing-room. Lady Louisa Tighe +was in Brussels with her mother, the Duchess of Richmond, on the eve of +Waterloo. She was a child then of ten years old, and her mother bade +them bring her down into the historic ball-room before the Duke of +Wellington left it. The duke took up his sword. "Let Louisa buckle it +for you," said her mother, and when the little girl had girded it on, +the great captain stooped, took her up in his arms, and kissed her. "One +never knows what may happen, child," he said good-naturedly; and taking +his small gold watch out of his fob, he bade her keep it for him. + +She keeps it still. For more than sixty years it has measured out in +this beautiful Irish home the hours of a life given to good works and +gracious usefulness. To-day, with all the vivacity of interest in the +people and the place which one might look for in a woman of twenty, this +charming old lady of eighty-three, showing barely threescore years in +her carriage, her countenance, and her voice, entertained us with minute +and most interesting accounts of the local industries which flourish +here mainly through her sympathetic and intelligent supervision. We +seemed to be in another world from the Ireland of Chicago or +Westminster! + +Mr. Seigne drove me back here by a most picturesque road leading along +the banks of the Nore, quite overhung with trees, which in places dip +their branches almost into the swift deep stream. "This is the favourite +drive of all the lovers hereabouts," he said, "and there is a spice of +danger in it which makes it more romantic. Once, not very long ago, a +couple of young people, too absorbed in their love-making to watch their +horse, drove off the bank. Luckily for them they fell into the branches +of one of these overhanging trees, while the horse and car went plunging +into the water. There they swung, holding each other hand in hand, +making a pretty and pathetic tableau, till their cries brought some +anglers in a boat on the river to the rescue." + +We spoke of Lady Louisa, and of the watch of Waterloo. "That watch had a +wonderful escape a few years ago," said Mr. Seigne. + +Lady Louisa, it seems, had a confidential butler whom she most +implicitly trusted. One day it was found that a burglary had apparently +been committed at Woodstock, and that with a quantity of jewelry the +priceless watch had vanished. The butler was very active about the +matter, and as no trace could be found leading out of the house, he +intimated a suspicion that the affair might possibly have some +connection with a guest not long before at the house. This angered Lady +Louisa, who thereupon consulted the agent, who employed a capable +detective from Dublin. The detective came down to Inistiogue as a +commercial traveller, wandered about, made the acquaintance of Lady +Louisa's maid, of the butler, and of other people about the house, and +formed his own conclusions. Two or three days after his arrival he +walked into the shop of a small jeweller in a neighbouring town, and +affecting a confidential manner, told the jeweller he wanted to buy +"some of those things from Woodstock." The man was taken by surprise, +and going into a backshop produced one very fine diamond, and a number +of pieces of silver plate, of the disappearance of which the butler had +said nothing to his mistress. This led to the arrest of the butler, and +to the discovery that for a long time he had been purloining property +from the house and selling it. Many cases of excellent claret had found +their way in this fashion to a public-house which had acquired quite a +reputation for its Bordeaux with the officers quartered in its +neighbourhood. The wine-bins at Woodstock were found full of bottles of +water. Much of the capital port left by Colonel Tighe had gone--but the +hock was untouched. "Probably the butler didn't care for hock," said Mr. +Seigne. The Waterloo watch was recovered from a very decent fellow, a +travelling dealer, to whom it had been sold: and many pieces of jewelry +were traced up to London. But Lady Louisa could not be induced to go up +to London to identify them or testify. + + +DUBLIN, _Tuesday, March 6._--It is a curious fact, which I learned +to-day from the Registrar-General, that the deposits in the Post-office +Savings Banks have never diminished in Ireland since these banks were +established.[21] These deposits are chiefly made, I understand, by the +small tenants, who are less represented by the deposits in the General +Savings Banks than are the shopkeepers and the cattle-drovers. In the +General Savings Banks the deposit line fluctuates more; though on the +whole there has been a steady increase in these deposits also throughout +Ireland. + +Of the details of the dealings of the private banks it is very hard to +get an accurate account. One gentleman, the manager of a branch of one +important bank, tells me that a great deal of money is made by usurers +out of the tenants, by backing their small bills. This practice goes +back to the first establishment of banks in Ireland. Formerly it was not +an uncommon thing for a landlord to offer his tenants a reduction, say, +of twenty per cent., on condition of their paying the rent when it fell +due. Such were the relations then between landlord and tenants, and so +little was punctuality expected in such payments that this might be +regarded as a sort of discount arrangement. The tenant who wished to +avail himself of such an offer would go to some friendly local usurer +and ask for a loan that he might avail himself of it. "One of these +usurers, whom I knew very well," said the manager, "told me long ago +that he found these operations very profitable. His method of procedure +was to agree to advance the rent to the tenant at ten per cent., payable +at a near and certain date. This would reduce the landlord's reduction +at once, of course, for the tenant, to ten per cent., but that was not +to be disdained; and so the bargain would be struck. If the money was +repaid at the fixed date, it was not a bad thing for the usurer. But it +was almost never so repaid; and with repeated renewals the usurer, by +his own showing, used to receive eventually twenty, fifty, and, in some +cases, nearly a hundred per cent, for his loan." + +It is the opinion of this gentleman that, under the "Plan of Campaign," +a good deal of money-making is done in a quiet way by some of the +"trustees," who turn over at good interest, with the help of friendly +financiers, the funds lodged with them, being held to account to the +tenants only for the principal. "Of course," he said, "all this is +doubtless at least as legitimate as any other part of the 'Plan,' and I +daresay it all goes for 'the good of the cause.' But neither the tenants +nor the landlords get much by it!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + + +DUBLIN, _Thursday, March 8._--At eight o'clock this morning I left the +Harcourt Street station for Inch, to take a look at the scene of the +Coolgreany evictions of last summer. These evictions came of the +adoption of the Plan of Campaign, under the direction of Mr. Dillon, +M.P., on the Wexford property of Mr. George Brooke of Dublin. The agent +of Mr. Brooke's estate, Captain Hamilton, is the honorary director of +the Property Defence Association, so that we have here obviously a +grapple between the National League doing the work, consciously or +unconsciously, of the agrarian revolutionists, and a combination of +landed proprietors fighting for the rights of property as they +understand them. + +We ran through a beautiful country for the greater part of the way. At +Bray, which is a favourite Irish watering-place, the sea broke upon us +bright and full of life; and the station itself was more like a +considerable English station than any I have seen. Thence we passed into +a richly-wooded region, with neat, well-kept hedges, as far as Rathdrum +and the "Sweet Vale of Avoca." The hills about Shillelagh are +particularly well forested, though, as the name suggests, they must have +been cut for cudgels pretty extensively for now a great many years. We +came again on the sea at the fishing port of Arklow, where the stone +walls about the station were populous with small ragamuffins, and at the +station of Inch I found a car waiting for me with Mr. Holmes, a young +English Catholic officer, who had most obligingly offered to show me the +place and the people. We had hardly got into the roadway when we +overtook a most intelligent-looking, energetic young priest, walking +briskly on in the direction of our course. This was Dr. Dillon, the +curate of Arklow. We pulled up at once, and Mr. Holmes, introducing me +to him, we begged him to take a seat with us. He excused himself as +having to join another priest with whom he was going to a function at +Inch; but he was good enough to walk a little way with us, and gave me +an appointment for 2 P.M. at his own town of Arklow, where I could catch +the train back to Dublin. We drove on rapidly and called on Father +O'Neill, the parish priest. We found him in full canonicals, as he was +to officiate at the function this morning, and with him were Father +Dunphy, the parish priest of Arklow, and two or three more robed +priests. + +Father O'Neill, whose face and manner are those of the higher order of +the continental clergy, briefly set forth to me his view of the +transactions at Coolgreany. He said that before the Plan of Campaign was +adopted by the tenants, Mr. William O'Brien, M.P., had written to him +explaining what the effect of the Plan would be, and urging him to take +whatever steps he could to obviate the necessity of adopting it, as it +might eventually result to the disadvantage of the tenants. "To that +end," said Father O'Neill, "I called upon Captain Hamilton, the agent, +with Dr. Dillon of Arklow, but he positively refused to listen to us, +and in fact ordered us, not very civilly, to leave his office." + +It was after this he said that he felt bound to let the tenants take +their own way. Eighty of them joined in the "Plan of Campaign" and paid +the amount of the rent due, less a reduction of 30 per cent., which they +demanded of the agent, into the hands of Sir Thomas Esmonde, M.P., Sir +Thomas being a resident in the country, and Mr. Mayne, M.P. Writs of +ejectment were obtained against them afterwards, and in July last +sixty-seven of them were evicted, who are now living in "Laud League +huts," put up on the holdings of three small tenants who were exempted +from the Plan of Campaign, and allowed to pay their rents subject to a +smaller reduction made by the agent, in order that they might retain +their land as a refuge for the rest. + +All this Father O'Neill told us very quietly, in a gentle, +undemonstrative way, but he was much interested when I told him I had +recently come from Rome, where these proceedings, I was sure, were +exciting a good deal of serious attention. "Yes," he said, "and Father +Dunphy who is here in the other room, has just got back from Rome, where +he had two audiences of the Holy Father." + +"Doubtless, then," I said, "he will have given his Holiness full +particulars of all that took place here." + +"No doubt," responded Father O'Neill, "and he tells me the Holy Father +listened with great attention to all he had to say--though of course, he +expressed no opinion about it to Father Dunphy." + +As the time fixed for the function was at hand, we were obliged to leave +without seeing Father Dunphy. + +From the Presbytery we drove to the scene of the evictions. These +evictions were in July. Mr. Holmes witnessed them, and gave me a lively +account of the affair. The "battle" was not a very tough one. Mr. +Davitt, who was present, stood under a tree very quietly watching it +all. "He looked very picturesque," said Mr. Holmes, "in a light grey +suit, with a broad white beaver shading his dark Spanish face; and +smoked his cigar very composedly." After it was over, Dr. Dillon brought +up one of the tenants, and presented him to Mr. Davitt as "the man who +had resisted this unjust eviction." Mr. Davitt took his cigar from his +lips, and in the hearing of all who stood about sarcastically said, +"Well, if he couldn't make a better resistance than that he ought to go +up for six months!" The first house we came upon was derelict--all +battered and despoiled, the people in the neighbourhood here, as +elsewhere, regarding such houses as free spoil, and carrying off from +time to time whatever they happen to fancy. Near this house we met an +emergency man, named Bolton, an alert, energetic-looking native of +Wicklow. He has four brothers; and is now at work on one of the +"evicted" holdings. + +I asked if he was "boycotted," and what his relations were with the +people. + +He laughed in a shrewd, good-natured way. "Oh, I'm boycotted, of +course," he said; "but I don't care a button for any of these people, +and I'd rather they wouldn't speak to me. They know I can take care of +myself, and they give me a good wide berth. All I have to object to is +that they set fire to an outhouse of mine, and cut the ears of one of my +heifers, and for that I want damages. Otherwise I'm getting on very +well; and I think this will be a good year, if the law is enforced, and +these fellows are made to behave themselves." + +Near Bolton's farm we passed the holding of a tenant named Kavanagh, one +of the three who were "allowed" to pay their rents. Several Land League +huts are on his place, and the evicted people who occupy them put their +cattle with his. He is a quiet, cautious man, and very reticent. But it +seemed to me that he was not entirely satisfied with the "squatters" who +have been quartered upon him. And it appears that he has taken another +holding in Carlow. From his place we drove to Ballyfad, where a large +house, at the end of a good avenue of trees, once the mansion of a +squire, but now much dilapidated, is occupied as headquarters by the +police. Here we found Mr. George Freeman, the bailiff of the Coolgreany +property, a strong, sturdy man, much disgusted at finding it necessary +to go about protected by two policemen. That this was necessary, +however, he admitted, pointing out to us the place where one Kinsella +was killed not very long ago. The son of this man Kinsella was formerly +one of Mr. Brooke's gamekeepers, and is now, Mr. Freeman thinks, in +concert with another man named Ryan, the chief stay of the League in +keeping up its dominion over the evicted tenants. + +Many of these tenants, he believes, would gladly pay their rents now, +and come back if they dared. + +"Every man, sir," he said, "that has anything to lose, would be glad to +come back next Monday if he thought his life would be safe. But all the +lazy and thriftless ones are better off now than they ever were; they +get from L4 to L6 a month, with nothing to do, and so they're in clover, +and they naturally don't like to have the industrious, well-to-do +tenants spoil their fun by making a general settlement." + +"Besides that," he added, "that man Kinsella and his comrade Ryan are +the terror of the whole of them. Kinsella always was a curious, silent, +moody fellow. He knows every inch of the country, going over it all the +time by night and day as a gamekeeper, and I am quite sure the +Parnellite men and the Land Leaguers are just as much afraid of him and +Ryan as the tenants are. He don't care a bit for them; and they've no +control of him at all." + +Mr. Freeman said he remembered very well the occasion referred to by +Father O'Neill, when Captain Hamilton refused to confer with Dr. Dillon +and himself. + +"Did Father O'Neill tell you, sir," he said, "that Captain Hamilton was +quite willing to talk with him and Father O'Donel, the parish priests, +and with the Coolgreany people, but he would have nothing to say to any +one who was not their priest, and had no business to be meddling with +the matter at all?" + +"No; he did not tell me that." + +"Ah! well, sir, that made all the difference. Father Dunphy, who was +there, is a high-tempered man, and he said he had just as much right to +represent the tenants as Captain Hamilton to represent the landlord, and +that Captain Hamilton wouldn't allow. It was the outside people made all +the trouble. In June of last year there was a conference at my house, +and all that time there was a Committee sitting at Coolgreany, and the +tenants would not be allowed to do anything without the Committee." + +"And who made the Committee?" + +"Oh, they made themselves, I suppose, sir. There was Sir Thomas +Esmonde--he was a convert, you know, of Father O'Neill--and Mr. Mayne +and Mr. John Dillon. And Dr. Dillon of Arklow, he was as busy as he +could be till the evictions were made in July. And then he was in +retreat. And I believe, sir, it is quite true that he wanted the Bishop +to let him come out of the retreat just to have a hand in the business." + +The police sergeant, a very cool, sensible man, quite agreed with the +bailiff as to the influence upon the present situation of the +ex-gamekeeper Kinsella, and his friend Eyan. "If they were two +Invincibles, sir," he said, "these member fellows of the League couldn't +be in greater fear of them than they are. They say nothing, and do just +as they please. That Kinsella, when Mr. John Dillon was down here, just +told him before a lot of people that he 'wanted no words and no advice +from him,' and he's just in that surly way with all the people about." + +As to the Brooke estate, I am told here it was bought more than twenty +years ago with a Landed Estates Court title from Colonel Forde, by the +grandfather of Mr. Brooke. He paid about L75,000 sterling for it. His +son died young, and the present owner came into it as a child, Mr. Vesey +being then the agent, who, during the minority, spent a great deal on +improving the property. Captain Hamilton came in as agent only a few +years ago. While the Act of 1881 was impending, an abatement was granted +of more than twenty per cent. In 1882 the tenants all paid except +eleven, who went into Court and got their rents cut down by the +Sub-Commissioners. There were appeals; and in 1885, after Court +valuations, the rents cut down by the Sub-Commissioners were restored in +several cases. There never was any rack-renting on the estate at all. +There are upon it in all more than a hundred tenants, twelve of whom are +Protestants, holding a little less in all than one-fourth of the +property. + +There are fifteen judicial tenants, twenty-one lease-holders, and +seventy-seven hold from year to year. + +The gross rental is a little over L2000 a year of which one-half goes to +Mr. Brooke's mother. Mr. Brooke himself is a wealthy man, at the head of +the most important firm of wine-merchants in Ireland, and he has +repeatedly spent on the property more than he took out of it. + +The house of Sir Thomas Esmonde, M.P., was pointed out to me from the +road. "Sir Thomas is to marry an heiress, sir, isn't he, in America?" +asked an ingenuous inquirer. I avowed my ignorance on this point. "Oh, +well, they say so, for anyway the old house is being put in order for +now the first time in forty years." + +We reached Arklow in time for luncheon, and drove to the large police +barracks there. These were formerly the quarters of the troops. Arklow +was one of the earliest settlements of the Anglo-Normans in Ireland +under Henry II., and once rejoiced in a castle and a monastery both now +obliterated; though a bit of an old tower here is said to have been +erected in his time. The town lives by fishing, and by shipping copper +and lead ore to South Wales. The houses are rather neat and well kept; +but the street was full of little ragged, merry mendicants. + +We went into a small branch of the Bank of Ireland, and asked where we +should find the hotel. We were very civilly directed to "The Register's +Office over the way." This seemed odd enough. But reaching it we were +further puzzled to see the sign over the doorway of a "coach-builder"! +However, we rang the bell, and presently a maid-servant appeared, who +assured us that this was really the hotel, and that we could have +"whatever we liked" for luncheon. We liked what we found we could +get--chops, potatoes, and parsnips; and without too much delay these +were neatly served to us in a most remarkable room, ablaze with mural +ornaments and decorations, upon which every imaginable pigment of the +modern palette seemed to have been lavished, from a Nile-water-green +dado to a scarlet and silver frieze. There were five times as many +potatoes served to us as two men could possibly eat, and not one of them +was half-boiled. But otherwise the meal was well enough, and the service +excellent. Beer could be got for us, but the house had no licence, Lord +Carysfort, the owner of the property, thinking, so our hostess said, +that "there were too many licences in the town already." Lord Carysfort +is probably right; but it is not every owner of a house, or even of a +lease in Ireland, I fear, who would take such a view and act on it to +the detriment of his own property. + +Dr. Dillon lives in the main square of Arklow in a very neat house. He +was absent at a funeral in the handsome Catholic church near by when we +called, but we were shown into his study, and he presently came in. + +His study was that of a man of letters and of politics. Blue-books and +statistical works lay about in all directions, and on the table were the +March numbers of the _Nineteenth Century_, and the _Contemporary +Review_. + +"You are abreast of the times, I see," I said to him, pointing to these +periodicals. + +"Yes," he replied, "they have just come in; and there is a capital paper +by Mr. John Morley in this _Nineteenth Century_." + +Nothing could be livelier than Dr. Dillon's interest in all that is +going on on both sides of the Atlantic, more positive than his opinions, +or more terse and clear than his way of putting them. He agreed entirely +with Father O'Neill as to the pressure put upon the Coolgreany tenants, +not so much by Mr. Brooke as by the agent, Captain Hamilton; but he +thought Mr. Brooke also to blame for his treatment of them. + +"Two of the most respectable of them," said Dr. Dillon, "went to see Mr. +Brooke in Dublin, and he wouldn't listen to them. On the contrary, he +absolutely put them out of his office without hearing a word they had to +say."[22] + +I found Dr. Dillon a strong disciple of Mr. Henry George, and a firm +believer in the doctrine of the "nationalisation of the land." "It is +certain to come," he said, "as certain to come in Great Britain as in +Ireland, and the sooner the better. The movement about the sewerage +rates in London," he added, "is the first symptom of the land war in +London. It is the thin edge of the wedge to break down landlordism in +the British metropolis." + +He is watching American politics, too, very closely, and inclines to +sympathise with President Cleveland. Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia, he +tells me, in his passage through Ireland the other day, did not hesitate +to express his conviction that President Cleveland would be re-elected. + +Dr. Dillon was so earnest and so interesting that the time slipped by +very fast, until a casual glance at my watch showed me that we must make +great haste to catch the Dublin train. + +We left therefore rather hurriedly, but before reaching the station we +saw the Dublin train go careering by, its white pennon of smoke and +vapour curling away along the valley. + +I made the best of it, however, and letting Mr. Holmes depart by a train +which took him home, I found a smart jarvey with a car, and drove out to +Glenart Castle, the beautiful house of the Earl of Carysfort. This is a +very handsome modern house, built in a castellated style of a very good +whitish grey marble, with extensive and extremely well-kept terraced +gardens and conservatories. + +It stands very well on one high bank of the river, a residence of the +Earl of Wicklow occupying the other bank. My jarvey called my attention +to the excellence of the roads, on which he said Lord Carysfort has +spent "a deal of money," as well as upon the gardens of the new Castle. +The head-gardener, an Englishman, told me he found the native labourers +very intelligent and willing both to learn and to work. Evidently here +is another centre of useful and civilising influences, not managed by an +"absentee."[23] + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + + +DUBLIN, _Friday, March 9th._--At 7.40 this morning I took the train for +Athy to visit the Luggacurren estates of Lord Lansdowne. Mr. Lynch, a +resident magistrate here, some time ago kindly offered to show me over +the place, but I thought it as well to take my chance with the people of +Athy who are reported to have been very hot over the whole matter here, +and so wrote to Mr. Lynch that I would find him at the Lodge, which is +the headquarters of the property. + +Athy is a neat, well-built little town, famous of old as a frontier +fortress of Kildare. An embattled tower, flanked by small square +turrets, guards a picturesque old bridge here over the Barrow, the +bridge being known in the country as "Crom-a-boo," from the old war-cry +of the Fitz-Geralds. It is a busy place now; and there was quite a +bustle at the very pretty little station. I asked a friendly old porter +which was the best hotel in the town. "The best? Ah! there's only one, +and it's not the best--but there are worse--and it's Kavanagh's." I +found it easily enough, and was ushered by a civil man, who emerged from +the shop which occupies part of it, into a sort of reading-room with a +green table. A rather slatternly but very active girl soon converted +this into a neat breakfast-table, and gave me an excellent breakfast. +The landlord found me a good car, and off I set for the residence of +Father Maher, the curate of whom I had heard as one of the most fiery +and intractable of the National League priests in this part of Ireland. + + +My jarvey was rather taciturn at first, but turned out to be something +of a politician. He wanted Home Rule, one of his reasons being that then +they "wouldn't let the Americans come and ruin them altogether, driving +out the grain from the markets." About this he was very clear and +positive. "Oh, it doesn't matter now whether the land is good or bad, +America has just ruined the farmers entirely." + +I told him I had always heard this achievement attributed to England. +"Oh! that was quite a mistake! What the English did was to punish the +men that stood up for Ireland. There was Mr. O'Brien. But for him there +wasn't a man of Lord Lansdowne's people would have had the heart to +stand up. He did it all; and now, what were they doing to him? They were +putting him on a cold plank-bed on a stone floor in a damp cell!" + +"But the English put all their prisoners in those cells, don't they?" I +asked. + +"And what of it, sir?" he retorted. "They're good enough for most of +them, but not for a gentleman like Mr. O'Brien, that would spill the +last drop of his heart's blood for Ireland!" + +"But," I said, "they're doing just the same thing with Mr. Gilhooly, I +hear." + +"And who is Mr. Gilhooly, now? And it's not for the likes of him to +complain and be putting on airs as if he was Mr. O'Brien!" + +"Yes, it is a fine country for hunting!" + +"Was it ever put down here, the hunting?" + +"No, indeed! Sure, the people wouldn't let it be!" + +"Not if Mr. O'Brien told them they must?" I queried. + +"Mr. O'Brien; ah, he wouldn't think of such a thing! It brings money all +the time to Athy, and sells the horses." + +As to the troubles at Luggacurren, he was not very clear. "It was a +beautiful place, Mr. Dunne's; we'd see it presently. And Mr. Dunne, he +was a good one for sport. It was that, your honour, that got him into +the trouble"-- + +"And Mr. Kilbride?" + +"Oh, Mr. Kilbride's place was a very good place too, but not like Mr. +Dunne's. And he was doing very well, Mr. Kilbride. He was getting a good +living from the League, and he was a Member of Parliament. Oh, yes, he +wasn't the only one of the tenants that was doing good to himself. There +was more of them that was getting more than ever they made out of the +land."[24] + +"Was the land so bad, then?" I asked. + +"No, there was as good land at Luggacurren as any there was in all +Ireland; but," and here he pointed off to the crests of the hills in the +distance, "there was a deal of land there of the estate on the hills, +and it was very poor land, but the tenants had to pay as much for that +as for the good property of Dunne and Kilbride." + +"Do you know Mr. Lynch, the magistrate?" I asked. "If you do, look out +for him, as he has promised to join me and show me the place." + +"Oh no, sorr!" the jarvey exclaimed at once; "don't mind about him. Hell +have his own car, and your honour won't want to take him on ours." + +"Why not?" I persisted, "there's plenty of room." + +"Oh! but indeed, sir, if it wasn't that you were going to the priest's, +Father Maher, you wouldn't get a car at Athy--no, not under ten pounds!" + +"Not under ten pounds," I replied. "Would I get one then for ten +pounds?" + +"It's a deal of money, ten pounds, sorr, and you wouldn't have a poor +man throw away ten pounds?" + +"Certainly not, nor ten shillings either. Is it a question of principle, +or a question of price?" + +The man looked around at me with a droll glimmer in his eye: "Ah, to be +sure, your honour's a great lawyer; but he'll come pounding along with +his big horse in his own car, Mr. Lynch; and sure it'll be quicker for +your honour just driving to Father Maher's." + +There was no resisting this, so I laughed and bade him drive on. + +"Whose house is that?" I asked, as we passed a house surrounded with +trees. + +"Oh! that's the priest, Father Keogh--a very good man, but not so much +for the people as Father Maher, who has everything to look after about +them." + +We came presently within sight of a handsome residence, Lansdowne Lodge, +the headquarters of the estate. Many fine cattle were grazing in the +fields about it. + +"They are Lord Lansdowne's beasts," said my jarvey; "and it's the +emergency men are looking after them." + +Nearly opposite were the Land League huts erected on the holding of an +unevicted tenant--a small village of neat wooden "shanties." On the +roadway in front of these half-a-dozen men were lounging about. They +watched us with much curiosity as we drove up, and whispered eagerly +together. + +"They're some of the evicted men, your honour," said my jarvey, with a +twinkle in his eye; and then under his breath, "They'll be thinking your +honour's came down to arrange it all. They think everybody that comes is +come about an arrangement." + +"Oh, then, they all want it arranged!" + +"No; not all, but many of them do. Some of them like it well enough +going about like gentlemen with nothing to do, only their hands in their +pockets." + +We turned out of the highway here and passed some very pretty cottages. + +"No, they're not for labourers, your honour," said my jarvey; "the +estate built them for mechanics. It's the tenants look after the +labourers, and little it is they do for them." + +Then, pointing to a ridge of hills beyond us, he said: "It was +Kilbride's father, sir, evicted seventeen tenants on these hills--poor +labouring men, with their families, many years ago,--and now he's +evicted himself, and a Member of Parliament!" + +Father Maher's house stands well off from the highway. He was not at +home, being "away at a service in the hills," but would be back before +two o'clock. I left my name for him, with a memorandum of my purpose in +calling, and we drove on to see the bailiff of the estate, Mr. Hind. On +the way we met Father Norris, a curate of the parish, in a smart trap +with a good horse, and had a brief colloquy with him. Mr. Hind we found +busy afield; a quiet, staunch sort of man. He spoke of the situation +very coolly and dispassionately. "The tenants in the main were a good +set of men--as they had reason to be, Lord Lansdowne having been not +only a fair landlord, but a liberal and enterprising promoter of local +improvements." I had been told in Dublin that Lord Lansdowne had offered +a subscription of L200 towards establishing creameries, and providing +high-class bulls for this estate. Similar offers had been cordially met +by Lord Lansdowne's tenants in Kerry, and with excellent results. But +here they were rejected almost scornfully, though accompanied by offers +of abatement on the rents, which, in the case of Mr. Kilbride, for +example, amounted to 20 per cent. + +"How did this happen, the tenants being good men as you say?" I asked of +Mr. Hind. + +"Because they were unable to resist the pressure put on them by the two +chief tenants, Kilbride and Dunne, with the help of the League. Kilbride +and Dunne both lived very well." My information at Dublin was that Mr. +Kilbride had a fine house built by Lord Lansdowne, and a farm of seven +hundred acres, at a rent of L760, 10s. Mr. Dunne, who co-operated with +him, held four town lands comprising 1304 acres, at a yearly rent of +L1348, 15s. Upon this property Lord Lansdowne had expended in drainage +and works L1993, 11s. 9d., and in buildings L631, 15s. 4d., or in all +very nearly two years' rental. On Mr. Kilbride's holdings Lord Lansdowne +had expended in drainage works L1931, 6s. 3d., and in buildings L1247, +19s. 5d., or in all more than four years' rental. Mr. Kilbride held his +lands on life leases. Mr. Dunne held his smallest holding of 84 acres on +a yearly tenure; his two largest holdings, one on a lease for 31 years +from 1874, and the other on a life lease, and his fourth holding of 172 +acres on a life lease. + +Where does the hardship appear in all this to Mr. Dunne or Mr. Kilbride? + +On Mr. Kilbride's holdings, for instance, Lord Lansdowne expended over +L3000, for which he added to the rent L130 a year, or about 4 per cent., +while he himself stood to pay 6-1/2 per cent, on the loans he made from +the Board of Works for the expenditure. In the same way it was with Mr. +Dunne's farms. They were mostly in grass, and Lord Lansdowne laid out +more than L2500 on them, borrowed at the same rate from the Board, for +which he added to the rent only L66 a year, or about 2-1/2 per cent. Mr. +Kilbride was a Poor-Law Guardian, and Mr. Dunne a Justice of the Peace. +The leases in both of these cases, and in those of other large tenants, +seem to have been made at the instance of the tenants themselves, and +afforded security against any advance in the rental during a time of +high agricultural prices. And it would appear that for the last quarter +of a century there has been no important advance in the rental. In 1887 +the rental was only L300 higher than in 1862, though during the interval +the landlord had laid out L20,000 on improvements in the shape of +drainage, roads, labourers' cottages, and other permanent works. +Moreover, in fifteen years only one tenant has been evicted for +non-payment of rent. + +"Was there any ill-feeling towards the Marquis among the tenants?" I +asked of Mr. Hind. + +"Certainly not, and no reason for any. They were a good set of men, and +they would never have gone into this fight, only for a few who were in +trouble, and I'm sure that to-day most of them would be thankful if they +could settle and get back. The best of them had money enough, and didn't +like the fight at all." + +All the trouble here seems to have originated with the adoption of the +Plan of Campaign. + +Lord Lansdowne, besides this estate in Queen's County, owns property in +a wild, mountainous part of the county of Kerry. On this property the +tenants occupy, for the most part, small holdings, the average rental +being about L10, and many of the rentals much lower. They are not +capitalist farmers at all, and few of them are able to average the +profits of their industry, setting the gains of a good, against the +losses of a bad, season. In October 1886, while Mr. Dillon was +organising his Plan of Campaign, Lord Lansdowne visited his Kerry +property to look into the condition of the people. The local Bank had +just failed, and the shopkeepers and money-lenders were refusing credit +and calling in loans. The pressure they put upon these small farmers, +together with the fall in the price of dairy produce and of young stock +at that time, caused real distress, and Lord Lansdowne, after looking +into the situation, offered, of his own motion, abatements varying from +25 to 35 per cent, to all of them whose rents had not been judicially +fixed under the Act of 1881, for a term of fifteen years. + +As to these, Lord Lansdowne wrote a letter on the 21st of October 1886 +(four days after the promulgation of the Plan of Campaign at Portumna on +the Clanricarde property), to his agent, Mr. Townsend Trench. This +letter was published. I have a copy of it given to me in Dublin, and it +states the case as between the landlords and the tenants under judicial +rents most clearly and temperately. + +"It might, I think," says the Marquis, "be very fairly argued, that the +State having imposed the terms of a contract on landlord and tenant, +that contract should not be interfered with except by the State. + +"The punctual payment of the 'judicial rent' was the one advantage to +which the landlords were desired to look when, in 1881, they were +deprived of many of the most valuable attributes of ownership. + +"It was distinctly stipulated that the enormous privileges which were +suddenly and unexpectedly conferred upon the tenants were to be enjoyed +by them conditionally upon the fulfilment on their part of the statutory +obligations specified in the Act. Of those, by far the most important +was the punctual payment of the rent fixed by the Court for the judicial +term. + +"This obligation being unfulfilled, the landlord might reasonably claim +that he should be free to exercise his own discretion in determining +whether any given tenancy should or should not be perpetuated. + +"In many cases [such cases are probably not so numerous on my estate as +upon many others] the resumption of the holding, and the consolidation +of adjoining farms, would be clearly advantageous to the whole +community. In the congested districts the consolidation of farms is the +only solution that I have seen suggested for meeting a chronic +difficulty. + +"I have no reason to believe that the Judicial Rents in force on my +estate are such that, upon an average of the yield and prices of +agricultural produce, my tenants would find it difficult to pay them." + +In spite of all these considerations Lord Lansdowne instructed Mr. +Trench to grant to these tenants under judicial leases an abatement of +20 per cent. on the November gale of 1886. This abatement, freely +offered, was gladly accepted. There had been no outrages or disturbances +on the Kerry properties, and the relations of the landlord with his +tenants, before and after this visit of Lord Lansdowne to Kerry, and +these reductions which followed it, had been, and continued to be, +excellent. + +But the tale of Kerry reached Luggacurren; and certain of the tenants on +the latter estate were moved by it to demand for the Queen's County +property identical treatment with that accorded to the very differently +situated property in Kerry. + +The leaders of the Luggacurren movement, I gather from Mr. Hind, never +pretended inability to pay their rents. They simply demanded abatements +of 35 per cent. on non-judicial, and 25 per cent. on judicial, rents as +their due, on the ground that they should be treated like the tenants in +Kerry: and the Plan of Campaign being by this time in full operation in +more than one part of Ireland, they threatened to resort to it if their +demand was refused. Lord Lansdowne at once declared that he would not +repeat at Luggacurren his concession made in Kerry as to the rents +judicially fixed; but he offered on a fair consideration of the +non-judicial rents to make abatements on them ranging from 15 to 25 per +cent. + +The offer was refused, and the war began. On the 23d of March 1887 Mr. +Kilbride was evicted. One week afterwards, on the 29th of March, he got +up in the rooms of the National League in Dublin, and openly declared +that "the Luggacurren evictions differed from most other evictions in +this, that they were able to pay the rent. It was a fight," he +exultingly exclaimed, "of intelligence against intelligence; it was +diamond cut diamond!" In other words, it was a struggle, not for +justice, but for victory. + +On all these points, and others furnished to me at Dublin touching this +estate, much light was thrown by the bailiff, who had not been concerned +in the evictions. He told me what he knew, and then very obligingly +offered to conduct me to the lodge, where we should find Mr. Hutchins, +who has charge now of the properties taken up by Mr. Kavanagh's Land +Corporation. My patriotic jarvey from Athy made no objection to my +giving the bailiff a lift, and we drove off to the lodge. On the way the +jarvey good-naturedly exclaimed, "Ah! there comes Mr. Lynch," and even +offered to pull up that the magistrate might overtake us. + +We found Mr. Hutchins at home, a cool, quiet, energetic, northern man, +who seems to be handling the difficult situation here with great +firmness and prudence. Mrs. Hutchins, who has lived here now for nearly +a year--a life not unlike that of the wife of an American officer on the +Far Western frontier--very amicably asked me to lunch, and Mr. Hutchins +offered to show me the holdings of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Kilbride. Mr. Lynch +proposed that we should all go on my car, but I remembered the protest +of the jarvey, and sending him to await me at Father Maher's, I drove +off with Mr. Hutchins. As we drove along, he confirmed the jarvey's hint +as to the difference between the views and conduct of the parish priest +and the views and conduct of his more fiery curate. This is a very +common state of affairs, I find, all over Ireland. + +The house of Mr. Dunne is that of a large gentleman farmer. It is very +well fitted up, but it was plain that the tenants had done little or +nothing to make or keep it a "house beautiful." The walls had never been +papered, and the wood-work showed no recent traces of the brush. "He +spent more money on horse-racing than on housekeeping," said a shrewd +old man who was in the house. In fact, Mr. Dunne, I am told, entered a +horse for the races at the Curragh after he had undergone what Mr. +Gladstone calls "the sentence of death" of an eviction! + +Some of the doors bore marks of the crowbar but no great mischief had +been done to them or to the large fine windows. The only serious damage +done during the eviction was the cutting of a hole through the roof. An +upper room had been provisioned to stand a siege, and so scientifically +barricaded with logs and trunks of trees that after several vain +attempts to break through the door the assailants climbed to the roof, +and in twenty minutes cut their way in from without. The dining and +drawing rooms were those of a gentleman's residence, and one of the +party remembered attending here a social festivity got up with much +display. + +A large cattle-yard has been established on this place, with an +original, and, as I was assured, most successful weighing-machine by the +Land Corporation. We found it full of very fine-looking cattle, and Mr. +Hutchins seems to think the operation of managing the estate as a kind +of "ranch" decidedly promising. "I am not a bit sorry for Mr. Dunne," he +said, "but I am very sorry for other quiet, good tenants who have been +deluded or driven into giving up valuable holdings to keep him and Mr. +Kilbride company, and give colour to the vapourings of Mr. William +O'Brien." + +The cases of some of these tenants were instructive. One poor man, +Knowles, had gone out to America, and regularly sent home money to his +family to pay the rent. They found other uses for it, and when the storm +came he was two years and a half in arrears. In another instance, two +brothers held contiguous holdings, and were in a manner partners. One +was fonder of Athy than of agriculture; the other a steady husbandman. +Four years' arrears had grown up against the one; only a half-year's +gale against the other. Clearly this difference originated outside of +the fall of prices! In a third case, a tenant wrote to Mr. Trench +begging to have something done, as he had the money to pay, and wanted +to pay, but "didn't dare." + +From Mr. Dunne's we drove to Mr. Kilbride's, another ample, very +comfortable house--not so thoroughly well fitted up with bathroom and +other modern appurtenances as Mr. Dunne's perhaps--but still a very good +house. It stands on a large green knoll, rather bare of trees, and +commands a fine sweep of landscape. + +Mr. Hutchins drove me to the little road which leads up past the "Land +League village" to the house of Father Maher, and there set me down. + +I walked up and found the curate at home--a tall, slender, well-made +young priest, with a keen, intelligent face. He received me very +politely, and, when I showed him the card of an eminent dignitary of the +Church, with cordiality. + +I found him full of sympathy with the people of his parish, but neither +vehement nor unfair. He did not deny that there were tenants on Lord +Lansdowne's estate who were amply able to pay their rents; but he did +most emphatically assert that there were not a few of them who really +could not pay their rents. + +"I assure you," he said, "there are some of them who cannot even pay +their dues to their priest, and when I say that, you will know how +pinched and driven they must indeed be." It was in view of these tenants +that he seemed to justify the course of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Kilbride. +"They must all stand or fall together." He had nothing to say to the +discredit of Lord Lansdowne; but he spoke with some bitterness of the +agent, Mr. Townsend Trench, as having protested against Lord Lansdowne's +making reductions here while he had himself made the same reductions on +the neighbouring estate of Mrs. Adair. + +"In truth," he said, "Mr. Trench has made all this trouble worse all +along. He is too much of a Napoleon"--and with a humorous twinkle in his +eye as he spoke--"too much of a Napoleon the Third. + +"I was just reading his father's book when you came in. Here it is," and +he handed me a copy of Trench's _Realities of Irish Life_. + +"Did you ever read it? This Mr. Trench, the father, was a kind of +Napoleon among agents in his own time, and the son, you see, thinks it +ought to be understood that he is quite as great a man as his father. +Did you never hear how he found a lot of his father's manuscripts once, +and threw them all in the fire, calling out as he did so, 'There goes +some more of my father's vanity?'" + +About his people, and with his people, Father Maher said he "felt most +strongly." How could he help it? He was himself the son of an evicted +father. + +"Of course, Father Maher," I said, "you will understand that I wish to +get at both sides of this question and of all questions here. Pray tell +me then, where I shall find the story of the Luggacurren property most +fully and fairly set forth in print?" + +Without a moment's hesitation he replied, "By far the best and fairest +account of the whole matter you will get in the Irish correspondence of +the London _Times_." + +How the conflict would end he could not say. But he was at a loss to see +how it could pay Lord Lansdowne to maintain it. + +He very civilly pressed me to stay and lunch with him, but when I told +him I had already accepted an invitation from Mr. Hutchins, he very +kindly bestirred himself to find my jarvey. + +I hastened back to the lodge, where I found a very pleasant little +company. They were all rather astonished, I thought, by the few words I +had to say of Father Maher, and especially by his frank and sensible +recommendation of the reports in the London _Times_ as the best account +I could find of the Luggacurren difficulty. To this they could not +demur, but things have got, or are getting, in Ireland, I fear, to a +point at which candour, on one side or the other of the burning +questions here debated, is regarded with at least as much suspicion as +the most deliberate misrepresentation. As to Mr. Town send Trench, what +Father Maher failed to tell me, I was here told: That down to the time +of the actual evictions he offered to take six months' rent from the +tenants, give them a clean book, and pay all the costs. To refuse this +certainly looks like a "war measure." + +But for the loneliness of her life here, Mrs. Hutchins tells me she +would find it delightful. The country is exceedingly lovely in the +summer and autumn months. + +When my car came out to take me back to Athy, I found my jarvey in +excellent spirits, and quite friendly even with Mr. Hutchins himself. He +kept up a running fire of lively commentaries upon the residents whose +estates we passed. + +"Would you think now, your honour," he said, pointing with his whip to +one large mansion standing well among good trees, "that that's the +snuggest man there is about Athy? But he is; and it's no wonder! Would +you believe it, he never buys a newspaper, but he walks all the way into +Athy, and goes about from the bank to the shops till he finds one, and +picks it up and reads it. He's mighty fond of the news, but he's fonder, +you see, of a penny! + +"There now, your honour, just look at that house! It's a magistrate he +is that lives there; and why? Why, just to be called 'your honour,' and +have the people tip their hats to him. Oh! he delights in that, he does. +Why, you might knock a man, or put him in the water, you might, indeed, +but if you came before Mr.----, and you just called him 'your honour' +often enough, and made up to him, you'd be all right! You've just to go +up to him with your hat in your hand, looking up at him, and to say, +'Ah! now, your honour'" (imitating the wheedling tone to perfection), +"and indeed you'd get anything out of him--barring a sixpence, that is, +or a penny! + +"Ah! he's a snug one, too!" And with that he launched a sharp thwack of +the whip at the grey mare, and we went rattling on apace. + +At the very pretty station of Athy we parted the best of friends. "Wish +you safe home, your honour." The kindly railway porter, also, who had +recommended Kavanagh's Hotel, was anxious to know how I found it, and so +busied himself to get me a good carriage when the train came in, that I +feel bound to exempt Athy from the judgment passed by Sir James +Allport's committee against the "amenities of railway travelling in +Ireland." + + +DUBLIN, _Saturday, March 10._--I called by appointment to-day upon Mr. +Brooke, the owner of the Coolgreany estate, at his counting-house in +Gardiner's Row. It is one of the spacious old last-century houses of +Dublin; the counting-room is installed with dark, old-fashioned mahogany +fittings, in what once was, and might easily again be made, a +drawing-room. Pictures hang on the walls, and the atmosphere of the +whole place is one of courtesy and culture rather than of mere modern +commerce. One of the portraits here is that of Mr. Brooke's +granduncle--a handsome, full-blooded, rather testy-looking old warrior, +in the close-fitting scarlet uniform of the Prince Regent's time. + +"He ought to have been called Lord Baltimore," said Mr. Brooke +good-naturedly; "for he fought against your people for that city at +Bladensburg with Ross." + +"That was the battle," I said, "in which, according to a popular +tradition in my country, the Americans took so little interest that they +left the field almost as soon as it began." + +Another portrait is of a kinsman who was murdered in the highway here in +Ireland many years ago, under peculiarly atrocious circumstances, and +with no sort of provocation or excuse. + +Mr. Brooke confirmed Dr. Dillon's statement that he had ordered out of +his counting-house two tenants who came into it with a peculiarly brazen +proposition, of which I must presume Dr. Dillon was ignorant when he +cited the fact as a count against the landlord of Coolgreany. I give the +story as Mr Brooke tells it. "The Rent Audit," he says, "at which my +tenants were idiots enough to join the Plan of Campaign occurred about +the 12th December 1886, when, as you know, I refused to accept the terms +which they proposed to me. I heard nothing more from them till about the +middle of February 1887, when coming to my office one day I found two +tenants waiting for me. One was Stephen Maher, a mountain man, and the +other Patrick Kehoe. 'What do you want?' I asked. Whereupon they both +arose, and Pat Kehoe pointed to Maher. Maher fumbled at his clothes, and +rubbed himself softly for a bit, and then produced a scrap of paper. +'It's a bit of paper from the tenants, sir,' he said. A queer bit of +paper it was to look at--ruled paper, with a composition written upon it +which might have been the work of a village schoolmaster. It was neither +signed nor addressed! The pith of it was in these words,--'in +consequence of the manner in which we have been harassed, our cattle +driven throughout the country, and our crops not sown, we shall be +unable to pay the half-year's rent due in March, in addition to the +reduction already claimed!' I own I rather lost my temper at this! +Remember I had already plainly refused to give 'the reduction already +claimed,' and had told them not once, but twenty times, that I would +never surrender to the 'Plan of Campaign'! I am afraid my language was +Pagan rather than Parliamentary--but I told them plainly, at least, that +if they did not break from the Plan of Campaign, and pay their debts, +they might be sure I would turn the whole of them out! I gave them back +their precious bit of paper and sent them packing. + +"One of them, I have told you, was a mountain man, Stephen Maher. He is +commonly known among the people as 'the old fox of the mountain,' and he +is very proud of it! + +"This old Stephen Maher," said Mr. Brooke, "is renowned in connection +with a trial for murder, at which he was summoned as a witness. When he +was cross-examined by Mr. Molloy, Q.C., he fenced and dodged about with +that distinguished counsellor for a long time, until getting vexed by +the lawyer's persistency, he exclaimed, 'Now thin, Mr. Molloy, I'd have +ye to know that I had a cliverer man nor iver you was, Mr. Molloy, at +me, and I had to shtan' up to him for three hours before the Crowner, +an' he was onable to git the throoth out of me, so he was! so he was!'" + + +Neither did Dr. Dillon mention the fact that one of the demands made of +Captain Hamilton, Mr. Brooke's agent, in December 1886, was that a +Protestant tenant named Webster should be evicted by Mr. Brooke from a +farm for which he had paid his rent, to make room for the return thither +of a Roman Catholic tenant named Lenahan, previously evicted for +non-payment of his rent. + +When Mr. Brooke's grandfather bought the Coolgreany property in 1864, he +adopted a system of betterments, which has been ever since kept up on +the estate. Nearly every tenant's house on the property has been slated, +and otherwise repaired by the landlord, nor has one penny ever been +added on that account to the rents. + +In the village of Coolgreany all the houses on one side of the main +street were built in this way by the landlord, and the same thing was +done in the village of Croghan, where twenty tenants have a grazing +right of three sheep for every acre held on the Croghan Mountain, +pronounced by the valuers of the Land Court to be one of the best +grazing mountains in Ireland. + +Captain Hamilton became the agent of the property in 1879, on the death +of Mr. Vesey. One of his earliest acts was to advise Mr. Brooke to grant +an abatement of 25 per cent. in June 1881, while the Land Act was +passing. At the same time, he cautioned the tenants that this was only a +temporary reduction, and advised them to get judicial rents fixed. + +The League advised them not to do this, but to demand 25 per cent. +reduction again in December 1881. This demand was rejected, and forty +writs were issued. The tenants thereupon in January 1882 came in and +paid the full rent, with the costs. + +Eleven tenants after this went into Court, and in 1883 the +Sub-Commissioners cut down their rents. In five cases Mr. Brooke +appealed. What was the result before the Chief Commissioner? The rent of +Mary Green, which had been L43, and had been cut down by the +Sub-Commissioners to L39, was restored to L43; the rent of Mr. Kavanagh, +cut down from L57 to L52, was restored to L55; the rent of Pat Kehoe +(one of the two tenants "ejected" from Mr. Brooke's office as already +stated), cut down from L81 to L70, was restored to L81; the rent of +Graham, cut down from L38 to L32, 10s., was restored to L38. Other +reductions were maintained. + +This appears to be the record of "rack-renting" on the Coolgreany +property. + +There are 114 tenants, of whom 15 hold under judicial rents; 22 are +leaseholders, and 77 are non-judicial yearly tenants. There are 12 +Protestants holding in all a little more than 1200 acres. All the rest +are Catholics, 14 of these being cottier tenants. The estate consists of +5165 acres. The average is about L24, and the average rental about L26, +10s. The gross rental is L2614, of which L1000 go to the jointure of Mr. +Brooke's mother, and L800 are absorbed by the tithe charges, half +poor-rates and other taxes. During the year 1886, in which this war was +declared against him, Mr. Brooke spent L714 in improvements upon the +property: so in that year his income from Coolgreany was practically +_nil_. + +What in these circumstances would have been the position of this +landlord had he not possessed ample means not invested in this +particular estate? And what has been the result to the tenants of this +conflict into which it seems clear that they were led, less to protect +any direct interest of their own than to jeopardise their homes and +their livelihood for the promotion of a general agrarian agitation? It +is not clear that they are absolutely so far out of pocket, for I find +that the Post-Office Savings Bank deposits at Inch and Gorey rose from +L3699, 5s. 4d. in 1880 to L5308, 13s. in 1887, showing an increase of +L1609, 7s. 8d. But they are out of house and home and work, entered +pupils in that school of idleness and iniquity which has been kept by +one Preceptor from the beginning of time. + + + + +CHAPTER XV.[25] + + +* * * *--Mrs. Kavanagh was quite right when she told me at Borris in +March that this country should be seen in June! The drive to this lovely +place this morning was one long enchantment of verdure and hawthorn +blossoms and fragrance. + +I came over from London to bring to a head some inquiries which have too +long delayed the publication of this diary. My intention had been to go +directly to Thurles, but a telegram which I received from the Archbishop +of Cashel just before I left telling me that he could not be at home for +the last three days of the week, I came directly here. Nothing can be +more utterly unlike the popular notions of Ireland and of Irish life +than the aspect of this most smiling and beautiful region: nothing more +thoroughly Irish than its people. + +* * * who is one of the most active and energetic of Irish landlords, +lives part of the year abroad, but keeps up his Irish property with +care, at the expense, I suspect, of his estates elsewhere. + +From a noble avenue of trees, making the highway like the main road of a +private park, we turned into a literal paradise of gardens. The air was +balmy with their wealth of odours. "Oh! yes, sir," said the coachman, +with an air of sympathetic pride, "our lady is just the greatest lady in +all this land for flowers!" + +And for ivy, he might have added. We drove between green walls of ivy up +to a house which seemed itself to be built of ivy, like that wonderful +old mansion of Castle Leod in Scotland. Here, plainly, is another centre +of "sweetness and light," the abolition of which must make, not this +region alone, but Ireland poorer in that precise form of wealth, which, +as Laboulaye has shown in one of the best of his lectures, is absolutely +identical with civilisation. It is such places as this, which, in the +interest of the people, justify the exemption from redistribution and +resettlement, made in one of a series of remarkable articles on Ireland +recently published in the _Birmingham Post_, of lands, the "breaking up +of which would interfere with the amenity of a residence." + +* * * relations with all classes of the people here are so cordial and +straightforward that he has been easily able to give me to-day, what I +have sought in vain elsewhere in Ireland, an opportunity of conversing +frankly and freely with several labouring men. For obvious reasons these +men, as a rule, shrink from any expression of their real feelings. Their +position is apparently one of absolute dependence either upon the +farmers or the landlords, there being no other local market for their +labour, which is their only stock-in-trade. As one of them said to me +to-day, "The farmers will work a man just as long as they can't help it, +and then they throw him away." + +I asked if there were no regular farm-labourers hired at fixed rates by +the year? + +"Oh! very few--less now than ever; and there'll be fewer before there'll +be more. The farmers don't want to pay the labourers or to pay the +landlords; they want the land and the work for nothing, sir,--they do +indeed!" + +"What does a farm-hand get," I asked, "if he is hired for a long time?" + +"Well, permanent men, they'll get 6s. a week with breakfast and dinner, +or 7s. maybe, with one meal; and a servant-boy, sir, he'll get 2s. a +week or may be 3s. with his board; but it's seldom he gets it." + +"And what has he for his board?" + +"Oh, stirabout; and then twice a week coorse Russian or American meat, +what they call the 'kitchen,' and they like it better than good meat, +sir, because it feeds the pot more." + +By this I found he meant that the "coorse meat" gave out more +"unctuosity" in the boiling--the meat being always served up boiled in a +pot with vegetables, like the "bacon and greens" of the "crackers" in +the South. + +"And nothing else?" + +"Yes; buttermilk and potatoes." + +"And these wages are the highest?" + +"Oh, I know a boy got 5s., but by living in his father's house, and +working out it was he got it. And then they go over to England to work." + +"What wages do they get there?" + +"Oh, it differs, but they do well; 9s. a week, I think, and their board, +and straw to sleep on in the stables." + +"But doesn't it cost them a good deal to go and come?" + +"Oh no; they get cheap rates. They send them from Galway to Dublin like +cattle, at L2, 5s. a car, and that makes about 1s. 6d. a head; and then +they are taken over on the steamers very cheap. Often the graziers that +do large business with the companies, will have a right to send over a +number of men free; and they stowaway too; and then on the railways in +England they get passes free often from cattle-dealers, specially when +they are coming back, and the dealers don't want their passes. They do +very well. They'll bring back L7 and L10. I was on a boat once, and +there was a man; he was drunk; he was from Galway somewhere, and they +took away and kept for him L18, all in good golden sovereigns; that was +the most I ever saw. And he was drunk, or who'd ever have known he had +it?" + +"Do the farmers build houses for the labourers?" + +"Build houses, is it! Glory be to God! who ever heard of such a thing? +The farmers are a poor proud lot. They'd let a labourer die in the +ditch!" + +All that this poor man said was corroborated by another man of a higher +class, very familiar with the conditions of life and labour here, and +indeed one of the most interesting men I have met in Ireland. Born the +son of a labouring man, he was educated by a priest and educated +himself, till he fitted himself for the charge of a small school, which +he kept to such good purpose that in eighteen years he saved L1100, with +which capital he resolved to begin life as a small farmer and +shopkeeper. He had studied all the agricultural works he could get, and +before he went fairly into the business, he travelled on the Continent, +looking carefully into the methods of culture and manner of life of the +people, especially in Italy and in Belgium. The Belgian farming gave him +new ideas of what might be done in Ireland, and those ideas he has put +into practice, with the best results. + +"On the same land with my neighbours," he said, "I double their +production. Where they get two tons of hay I get four or four and a +half, where they get forty-five barrels of potatoes I get a hundred. +Only the other day I got L20 for a bullock I had taken pains with to +fatten him up scientifically. Of course I had a small capital to start +with: but where did I get that? Not from the Government. I earned and +saved it myself; and then I wasn't above learning how best to use it." + +He thinks the people here--though by no means what they might be with +more thrift and knowledge--much better off than the same class in many +other parts of Ireland. There are no "Gombeen men" here, he says, and no +usurious shopkeepers. "The people back each other in a friendly way when +they need help." Many of the labourers, he says, are in debt to him, but +he never presses them, and they are very patient with each other. They +would do much better if any pains were taken to teach them. It is his +belief that agricultural schools and model farms would do more than +almost any measure that could be devised for bringing up the standard of +comfort and prosperity here, and making the country quiet. + +It is the opinion of this man that the people of this place have been +led to regard the Papal Decree as a kind of attack on their liberties, +and that they are quite as likely to resist as to obey it. For his own +part, he thinks Ireland ought to have her own parliament, and make her +own laws. He is not satisfied with the laws actually made, though he +admits they are better than the older laws were. "The tenants get their +own improvements now," he said, "and in old times the more a man +improved the worse it was for him, the agent all the while putting up +the rents." + +But he does not want Irish independence. "The people that talk that +way," he said, "have never travelled. They don't see how idle it is for +Ireland to talk about supporting herself. She just can't do it." + +Not less interesting was my talk to-day with quite a different person. +This was a keen-eyed, hawk-billed, wiry veteran of the '48. As a youth +he had been out with "Meagher of the Sword," and his eyes glowed when he +found that I had known that champion of Erin. "I was out at Ballinagar," +he said; "there were five hundred men with guns, and five hundred +pikemen." It struck me he would like to be going "out" again in the same +fashion, but he had little respect for the "Nationalists." + +"There's too many lawyers among them," he said, "too many lawyers and +too many dealers. The lawyers are doing well, thanks to the League. Oh +yes!" with a knowing chuckle, and a light of mischief in his eye; "the +lawyers are doing very well! There's one little bit of a solicitor not +far from here was of no good at all four years ago, and now they tell me +he's made four thousand pounds in three years' time, good money, and got +it all in hand! And there's another, I hear, has made six thousand. The +lawyers that call themselves Nationalists, they just keep mischief +agoing to further themselves. What do they care for the labourers? Why, +no more than the farmers do--and what would become of the poor men! * * +* * here, he is making * * * * * * * and he keeps more poor men going +than all the lawyers and all the farmers in the place a good part of the +year." + +"Are the labourers," I asked, "Nationalists?" + +"They don't know what they are," he answered. "They hate the farmers, +but they love Ireland, and they all stand together for the counthry!" + +"How is it with the Plan of Campaign and the Boycotting?" + +"Now what use have the labourers got for the Plan of Campaign? No more +than for the moon! And for the Boycotting, I never liked it--but I was +never afraid of it--and there's not been much of it here." + +"Will the Papal Decree put a stop to what there is of it?" + +"I wouldn't mind the Pope's Decree no more than that door!" he exclaimed +indignantly. "Hasn't he enough, sure, to mind in Rome? Why didn't he +defend his own country, not bothering about Ireland!" + +"Are you not a Catholic, then?" I asked. + +"Oh yes, I'm a Catholic, but I wouldn't mind the Decree. Only remember," +he added, after a pause, "just this: it don't trouble me, for I've +nothing to do with the Plan of Campaign--only I don't want the Pope to +be meddlin' in matters that don't concern him." + +"It's out of respect, then, for the Pope that you wouldn't mind the +Decree?" + +"Just that, intirely! It was some of them Englishmen wheedled it out of +him, you may be sure, sir." + +"I am told you went out to America once." + +"Yes, I went there in '48, and I came back in '51." + +"What made you go?" I asked. + +"Is it what made me go?" he replied, with a sudden fierceness in his +voice. "It was the evictions made me go; that we was put out of the good +holding my father had, and his father before him; and I can never +forgive it, never! But I came back; and it was * * * father that was the +good man to me and to mine, else where would I be?" + +I afterwards learned from * * * * that the evictions of which the old +man spoke with so much bitterness were made in carrying out important +improvements, and that it was quite true that his father had greatly +befriended the emigrant when he got enough of the New World and came +home. + +It was curious to see the old grudge fresh and fierce in the old man's +heart, but side by side with it the lion lying down with the lamb--a +warm and genuine recognition of the kindness and help bestowed on +himself. His resentment against the landlord's action in one generation +did not in the least interfere with his recognition of the landlord's +usefulness and liberality in the next generation. + +"You didn't like America?" I said. "Where did you live there?" + +"I lived at North Brookfield in Massachusetts, a year or two," he +replied, "with Governor Amasa Walker. Did you know him? He was a good +man; he was fond of the people, but he thought too much of the nagurs." + +"Yes," I answered; "I know all about him, and he was, as you say, a very +good man, even if he was an abolitionist. But why didn't you stay in +North Brookfield?" + +"Oh, it was a poor country indeed! A blast of wind would blow all the +ground away there was! It does no good to the people, going to America," +he said; "they come back worse than they went!" + +He is at work now in some quarries here. + +"The quarrymen get six shillings a week," he said, "with bread and tea +and butter and meat three times a week. With nine shillings a week and +board, a man'll make himself bigger than * * *!" + +"Was the country quiet now?" + +"This country here? Oh! it's very quiet; with potatoes at 3s. 6d. a +barrel, it's a good year for the people. They're a very quiet +people,"--in corroboration apparently of which statement he told me a +story of a coroner's jury called to sit on the body of a man found on +the highway shot through the head, which returned an unanimous verdict +of "Died by the visitation of God." + +This country is dominated by the Rocky Hills climbing up to Cullenagh, +which divides the Barrow valley from the Nore. We drove this afternoon +to * a most lovely place. The mansion there is now shut up and +dismantled, but the park and the grounds are very beautiful, with a +beauty rather enhanced than diminished by the somewhat unkempt +luxuriance of the vegetation. We passed a now well-grown tree planted by +the Prince of Wales * * * * * * and drove over many miles of excellent +road made by * * * * * * * * employs * * * * * * * * regularly, * * * +men as labourers, cartmen and masons, to whom he pays out annually the +sum of * * Mr. * * who, by the way, rather resented my asking him if he +came of one of the Cromwellian English families so numerous here, and +informed me that his people came over with Strongbow--assures me that +but for these works of * * * * these men under him would be literally +without occupation. In addition to these there are about a dozen more +men employed * * as gamekeepers and plantation-men. At the * * places +belonging to * * * * * * * * * * above eighty men find constant +employment, and receive regular wages amounting to over L4000. Were * * +* * dispossessed or driven out of Ireland, all this outlay would come to +an end, and with what result to these working-men? As things now are, +while * * * working-men receive a regular wage of five shillings, the +same men, as farmers' labourers, would receive, now and then, five +shillings a week, and that without food! I saw enough in the course of +our afternoon's drive to satisfy me that my informant of the morning had +probably not overstated matters when he told me that for at least +seventy per cent. of the work done by the labourers here, from November +to May, they have to look to the landlords. On the property of * * as +well as on the neighbouring properties * * * * * * * the houses have +been generally put up by the landlords. We called in the course of the +afternoon upon a labouring man who lives with his wife in a very neat, +cozy, and quite new house, built recently for him by * *. These good +people have been living on this property for now nearly half a century. +Their new house having been built for them, * * has had an agreement +prepared, under which it may be secured to them. The terms have all been +discussed and found satisfactory, but the old labourer now hesitates +about signing the agreement. He gives, and can be got to give, no reason +for this; but when we drove up he came out to greet us in the most +friendly manner. We went in and found his wife, a shrewd, sharp-eyed, +little old dame, with whom * * * * fell into a confabulation, while I +went into the next room with the labourer himself. The house was neatly +furnished--with little ornaments and photographs on the mantel-shelf, +and nothing of the happy-go-lucky look so common about the houses of the +working people in Ireland, as well as about the houses of the lesser +squires. + +I paid him a compliment on the appearance of his house and grounds. +"Yes, sir!" he answered: "it's a very good place it is, and * * * * has +built it just to please us." + +"But I am told you want to leave it?" + +"Ah, no, that is not so, sir, indeed at all! We've three children you +see, sir, in America--two girls and a boy we have." + +"And where are they?" + +"Ah, the girls they're not in any factory at all. They're like leddies, +living out in a place they call * * in Massachusetts; and the lad, he +was on a farm there. But we don't know where he is nor his sisters any +more just now. And the wife, she thinks she would like to go out to +America and see the children." + +"Do you hear from them regularly?" + +"Well, it's only a few pounds they send, but they're doing very well. +Domestics they are, quite like leddies; there's their pictures on the +shelf." + +"But what would you do there?" + +"Ah! we'd have lodgings, the wife says, sir. But I like the ould place +myself." + +"I think you are quite right there," I replied. "And do you get work +here from the farmers as the labourers do in my country?" + +"Work from the farmers, sir?" he answered, rather sharply. "What they +can't help we get, but no more! If the farmers in America is like them, +it's not I would be going there! The farmers! For the farmers, a +labourer, sir, is not of the race of Adam! They think any place good +enough for a labourer--any place and any food! Is the farmers that way +in America?" + +"Well, I don't know that they are so very much more liberal than your +farmers are," I replied; "but I think they'd have to treat you as being +of the race of Adam! But are not the farmers here, or the Guardians, +obliged to build houses for the labourers? I thought there was an Act of +Parliament about that?" + +"And so there is but what's the good of it? It's just to get the +labourers' votes, and then they fool the labourers, just making them +quarrel about where the cottages shall be, what they call the 'sites'; +and then there's no cottages built at all, at all. It's the lawyers, you +see, sir, gets in with the farmers--the strongest farmers--and then they +just make fools of the labourers as if there was no Act of Parliament at +all." + +"But if the labourers want to go away, to emigrate," I said, "as you +want to do, to America, don't the farmers, or the Government, or the +landlords, help them to get away and make a start?" + +"Not a bit of it, sir," he replied; "not a bit of it. I believe, +though," he added after a moment; "I believe they do get some help to go +to Australia. But they're mostly no good that goes that way. The best is +them that go for themselves, or their friends help them. But there's not +so many going this year." + +When we drove away I asked * * if he had made any progress towards a +signature of the agreement with the labourer's wife. + +"No; she couldn't be got to say yes or no. I asked her," said * * "what +reason they had for imagining that after all these years I would try to +do them an injury? She protested they never thought of such a thing; but +she couldn't be brought to say she wished her husband to sign the paper. +It's very odd, indeed." + +I couldn't help suspecting that the _materfamilias_ was at the bottom of +it all, and that she was bent upon going out to America to participate +in the prosperity of her two daughters, who were living "like leddies" +at * * in Massachusetts. + +The incident recalled to me something which happened years ago when I +was returning with the Storys from Rome to Boston. Our Cunarder, in the +middle of the night, off the Irish coast, ran down and instantly sank a +small schooner. + +In a wonderfully short time we had come-to, and a boat's crew had +succeeded in picking up and bringing all the poor people on board. Among +them was a wizened old woman, upon whom all sorts of kind attentions +were naturally lavished by the ship's company. She could not be +persuaded to go into a cabin after she had recovered from the shock and +the fright of the accident, but, comforted and clothed with new and dry +garments, she took refuge under one of the companion-ways, and there, +sitting huddled up, with her arms about her knees, she crooned and +moaned to herself, "I was near being in a wetter and a warmer place; I +was near being in a wetter and a warmer place!" by the half hour +together. We found that the poor old soul had been to Liverpool to see +her son off on a sailing ship as an emigrant to America. So a +subscription was soon made up to send her on our arrival to New York +there to await her son. We had some trouble in making her understand +what was to be done with her, but when she finally got it fairly into +her head, gleams of mingled surprise and delight came over her withered +face, and she finally broke out, "Oh, then, glory be to God! it's a +mercy that I was drownded! glory be to God! and it's the proud boy +Terence will be when he gets out to America to find his poor ould mother +waiting for him there that he left behind him in Liverpool, and quite +the leddy with all this good gold money in her hand, glory be to God!" + +On our way back to * * we passed through * * a very neat +prosperous-looking town, which * * tells me is growing up on the heels +of * *. * * * was one of the few places at which the "no rent" +manifesto, issued by Mr. Parnell and his colleagues from their prison in +Kilmainham, during the confinement of Mr. Davitt at Portland, and +without concert with him, was taken up by a village curate and commended +to the people. He was arrested for it by Mr. Gladstone's Government, and +locked up for six weeks. + + +DUBLIN, _Saturday, June 23d._--I left * * * yesterday morning early on +an "outside car," with one of my fellow-guests in that "bower of +beauty," who was bent on killing a salmon somewhere in the Nore * * We +drove through a most varied and picturesque country, viewing on the way +the seats of Mr. Hamilton Stubber and Mr. Robert Staples, both finely +situated in well-wooded parks. Mr. Stubber was formerly master of the +Queen's County hounds, a famous pack, which, as our jarvey put it, +"brought a power of money into the county, and made it aisy for a poor +man." But the local agitations wore out his patience, and he put the +pack down some years ago. Not far from his house is an astonishing +modern "tumulus," or mound of hewn and squared stones. These it seems +were quarried and brought here by him, with the intention of building a +new and handsome residence. This intention he abandoned under the same +annoyance. + +"They call it Mr. Stubber's Cairn," said the jarvey; "and a sorrowful +sight it is, to think of the work it would have given the people, +building the big house that'll never be built now, I'm thinking." If Mr. +Stubber should become an "absentee," he can hardly, I think, be blamed +for it. + +His property marches with that of Mr. Robert Staples, who comes of a +Gloucestershire family planted in Ireland under Charles I. + +"Mr. Staples is farming his own lands," said our jarvey, when I +commented on the fine appearance of some fields as we drove by; "and +he'll be doing very well this year. Ah! he comes and goes, but he's here +a great deal, and he looks after everything himself; that's the reason +the fields is good." + +This is a property of some 1500 statute acres. Only last March the +landlord took over from one tenant, who was in arrears of two years and +a half and owed him some L300, a farm of 90 acres, giving the man fifty +pounds to boot, and bidding him go in peace. I wonder whether this +proceeding would make the landlord a "land-grabber," and expose him to +the pains and penalties of "boycotting"? + +On this place, too, it seems that Mr. Staples's grandfather put up many +houses for the tenants; a thing worth noting, as one of not a few +instances I have come upon to show that it will not do to accept without +examination the sweeping statements so familiar to us in America, that +improvements have never been made by the landlord upon Irish estates. + +My companion had meant to put me down at the railway station of +Attanagh, there to catch a good train to Kilkenny. + +But we had a capital nag, and reached Attanagh so early that we +determined to drive on to Ballyragget. + +From Attanagh to Ballyragget the road ran along a plateau which +commanded the most beautiful views of the valley of the Nore and of the +finely wooded country beyond. Ballyragget itself is a brisk little +market town, the American influence showing itself here, as in so many +other places, in such trifles as the signs on the shops which describe +them as "stores." My salmon-fishing companion put me down at the station +and went off to the river, which flows through the town, and is here a +swift and not inconsiderable stream. + +An hour in the train took me to Kilkenny, where I met by appointment +several persons whom I had been unable to see during my previous visit +in March. + +These gentlemen, experienced agents, gave me a good deal of information +as to the effect of the present state of things upon the "_moral_" of +the tenantry in different parts of Ireland. On one estate, for example, +in the county of Longford, a tenant has been doing battle for the cause +of Ireland in the following extraordinary fashion. + +He held certain lands at a rental of L23, 4s. Being, to use the +picturesque language of the agent, a "little good for tenant," he fell +into arrears, and on the 1st of May 1885 owed nearly three years' rent, +or L63, 12s., in addition to a sum of L150 which he had borrowed of his +amiable landlord three or four years before to enable him to work his +farm. Of this total sum of L213, 12s. he positively refused to pay one +penny. Proceedings were accordingly taken against him, and he was +evicted. By this eviction his title to the tenancy was broken. The +landlord nevertheless, for the sake of peace and quiet, offered to allow +him to sell, to a man who wished to take the place, any interest he +might have had in the holding, and to forgive both the arrears of the +rent and the L150 which had been borrowed by him. The ex-tenant flatly +refused to accept this offer, became a weekly pensioner upon the +National League, and declared war. The landlord was forced to get a +caretaker for the place from the Property Defence Association at a cost +of L1 per week, to provide a house for a police protection party, and to +defray the expenses of that party upon fuel and lights. Nor was this +all. The landlord found himself further obliged to employ men from the +same Property Defence Association to cut and save the hay-crop on the +land, and when this had been done no one could be found to buy the crop. +The crop and the lands were "boycotted." It was only in May last that a +purchaser could be found for the hay cut and saved two years ago--this +purchaser being himself a "boycotted" man on an adjoining property. He +bought the hay, paying for it a price which did not quite cover one-half +the cost of sowing it! + +"No one denies for a moment," said the agent, "that the tenant in all +this business has been more than fairly, even generously, treated by the +estate; yet no one seems to think it anything but natural and reasonable +that he should demand, as he now demands, to be put back into the +possession of his forfeited tenancy at a certain rent fixed by himself," +which he will obligingly agree to pay, "provided that the hay cut and +saved on the property two years ago is accounted for to him by the +estate!" + +In another case an agent, Mr. Ivough, had to deal with a body of five +hundred tenants on a considerable estate. Of these tenants, two hundred +settled their rents with the landlord before the passing of the Land Act +of 1881, and valuations made by the landlord's valuer, with their full +assent. There was no business for the lawyers, so far as they were +concerned, and no compulsion of any sort was put on them. Among them was +a man who had married the daughter of an old tenant on the estate, and +so came into a holding of 12 Irish, or more than 20 statute, acres, at a +rental of L18 a year. The valuer reduced this to L14, 10s., which +satisfied the tenant, and as the agent agreed to make this reduced +valuation retroactive, all went as smoothly as possible for two years, +when the tenant began to fall into arrears. When the Sub-Commissioners, +between 1885 and 1887, took to making sweeping reductions, the tenants +who had settled freely under the recent valuation grumbled bitterly. As +one of them tersely put it to the agent, "We were a parcel of bloody +fools, and you ought to have told us these Sub-Commissioners were +coming!" Mr. Sweeney, the tenant by marriage already mentioned, was not +content to express his particular dissatisfaction in idle words, but +kept on going into arrears. In May 1888 things came to a crisis. The +agent refused to accept a settlement which included the payment by him +of the costs of the proceedings forced upon him by his tenant. "You have +had a good holding," said the agent, "with plenty of water and good +land. In this current year two acres of your wheat will pay the whole +rent. You have broken up and sold bit by bit a mill that was on the +place; and above all, when Mr. Gladstone made us accept the judicial +rents, he told us we might be sure, if we did this, of punctual payment. +That was the one consideration held out to us. And we are entitled to +that!" + +The tenant being out of his holding, the agent wishes to put another +tenant into it. But the holding is "boycotted." Several tenants are +anxious for it, and would gladly take it, but they dare not The great +evicted will neither sell any tenant-right he may have, nor pay his +arrears and costs, nor give up the place to another tenant. To put +Property Defence men on the holding would cost the landlord L2, 10s. a +week, and do him no great good, as the evicted man "holds the fort," +being established in a house which he occupies on an adjoining property, +and for which presumably he pays his rent. It seems as if Mr. Sweeney +were inspired by the example of another tenant, named Barry, who, before +the passing of the Land Act of 1881, gave up freely a holding of 20 +acres, on a property managed by Mr. Kough; but as he was on such good +terms with the agent that he could borrow money of him, he begged the +agent to let him retain at a low rent a piece of this surrendered land +directly adjoining his house. He asked this in the name of his eight or +nine children, and it was granted him. The agent afterwards found that +the piece of land in question was by far the best of the surrendered +holding. But that is a mere detail. This ingenious tenant Barry, living +now on another estate just outside the grasp of the agent, has +systematically "boycotted" for the last nine years the land which he +gave up, feeding his own cattle upon it freely meanwhile, and keeping +all would-be tenants at a distance! "He is now," said the agent, "quite +a wealthy man in his way, jobbing cattle at all the great markets!" + +"When the eviction of Sweeney took place," said the agent, "I was +present in person, as I thought I ought to be, and the result is that I +have been held up to the execration of mankind as a monster for putting +out a child in a cradle into a storm. As a matter of fact," he said, +"there was a cradle in the way, which the sheriff-Officer gently took +up, and by direction of the tenant's wife removed. I made no remark +about it at all, but a local paper published a lying story, which the +publisher had to retract, that I had said 'Throw out the child!'" + +"Two priests," he said, "came quite uninvited and certainly without +provocation, to see me, and one of them shouted out, 'Ah! we know you'll +be making another Coolgreany,' which was as much as to say there 'would +be bloodshed.' This was the more intolerable," he added, "that, as I +afterwards found, I had already done for the sake of the tenants +precisely what these ecclesiastics professed that they had come to ask +me to do! + +"For thirty years," said this gentleman, "I have lived in the midst of +these people--and in all that time I have never had so much as a +threatening letter. But after this story was published of my throwing +out a cradle with a child in it, I was insulted in the street by a woman +whom I had never seen before. Two girls, too, called out at the +eviction, 'You've bad pluck; why didn't you tell us you were coming down +the day?' and another woman made me laugh by crying after me, 'You've +two good-looking daughters, but you're a bad man yourself.'" + +Quite as instructive is the story given me on this occasion of the +Tyaquin estate in the county of Galway. This estate is managed by an +agent, Mr. Eichardson of Castle Coiner, in this county of Kilkenny. + +The rents on this Galway estate, as Mr. Richardson assures me, have been +unaltered for between thirty and forty years, and some of them for even +a longer period. For the last twenty-five years certainty, during which +Mr. Richardson has been the agent of the estate, and probably, he +thinks, for many years previous, there has never been a case of the +non-payment of rent, except in recent years when rents were withheld for +a time for political reasons. + +Large sums of money have been laid out in various useful improvements. +Constant occupation was given to those requiring it, until the agrarian +agitation became fully developed. On the demesne and the home farms the +best systems of reclaiming waste lands and the best systems of +agriculture were practically exhibited, so that the estate was an +agricultural free school for all who cared to learn. + +When the Land Act of 1881 was passed, almost all the tenants applied, +and had judicial rents fixed, many of them by consent of the agent. + +In 1887 the tenants were called on as usual to pay these judicial rents. +A large minority refused to do so except on certain terms, which were +refused. The dispute continued for many months, but as the charges on +the estate had to be met, the agent was obliged to give way, and allow +an abatement of four shillings in the pound on these judicial rents. +Some of these charges, to meet which the agent gave way, were for money +borrowed from the Commissioners of Public Works to _improve the holdings +of the tenants_. For these improvements thus thrown entirely upon the +funds of the estate no increase of rent or charge of any kind had been +laid upon the tenants. + +When a settlement was agreed on, those of the tenants who had adopted +the Plan came in a body to pay their rents on 3d January 1888. They +stated that they were unable to pay more than the rent due up to +November 1886, and that they would never have adopted the Plan had they +not been driven into it by _sheer distress_. After which they handed Mr. +Richardson a cheque drawn by John T. Dillon, Esq., M.P., for the amount +banked with the National League. + +An article appeared shortly afterwards in a League newspaper, loudly +boasting of the great victory won by Mr. Dillon, M.P., for the starving +and poverty-stricken tenants. Two of these tenants (brothers) were under +a yearly rent of L7, 10s. They declared they could only pay L3, 15s., or +a half-year's rent, and this only if they got an abatement of 15s. Yet +these same tenants were then paying Mr. Richardson L50 a year for a +grass farm, and about L12 for meadows, as well as L30 a year more for a +grass farm to an adjoining landlord. + +Another tenant who held a farm at L13, 5s. a year declared he could only +pay L6, 12s. 6d., or a half-year's rent, if he got an abatement of L1, +6s. 6d. A very short time before, this tenant had taken a grass farm +from an adjoining landlord, and he was so anxious to get it that he +showed the landlord a bundle of large notes, amounting to rather more +than L300 sterling, in order to prove his solvency! The same tenant has +since written a letter to Mr. Richardson offering L50 a year for a grass +farm! + +All these campaigners, Mr. Richardson says, "with one noble exception, +the wife of a tenant who was ill, declined to pay a penny of rent beyond +November 1st, 1886," stating that they were "absolutely unable" to do +more. So they all left the May 1887 rent unpaid, and the hanging gale to +November 1887, which, however, they were not even asked to pay. + +The morning after the settlement many of the tenants who, when they were +all present in a body on the previous evening, had declared their +"inability" to pay the half-year's rent due down to May 1887, +individually came to Mr. Richardson unasked, and paid it, some saying +they had "borrowed the money that night," but others frankly declaring +that they dared not break the rule publicly, having been ordered by the +League only to pay to November 1886, for fear of the consequences. These +would have been injury to their cattle, or the burning of their hay, or +possibly murder. + +Of the country about Kilkenny, I am told, as of the country about +Carlow, that nearly or quite seventy per cent, of the labourers are +dependent upon the landlords from November to May for such employment as +they get. + +The shopkeepers, too, are in a bad way, being in many cases reduced to +the condition of mere agents of the great wholesale houses elsewhere, +and kept going by these houses mainly in the hope of recovering old +debts. There is a severe pressure of usury, too, upon the farmers. "If a +farmer," said one resident to me, "wants to borrow a small sum of the +Loan Fund Bank, he must have two securities--one of them a substantial +man good for the debt. These two indorsers must be 'treated' by the +borrower whom they back; and he must pay them a weekly sum for the +countenance they have given him, which not seldom amounts, before he +gets through with the matter, to a hundred per cent, on the original +loan." + +I am assured too that the consumption of spirits all through this region +has greatly increased of late years. "The official reports will show +you," said one gentleman, "that the annual outlay upon whisky in Ireland +equals the sum saved to the tenants by the reductions in rent." This is +a proposition so remarkable that I simply record it for future +verification, as having been made by a very quiet, cool, and methodical +person, whose information on other points I have found to be correct. He +tells me too, as of his own knowledge, that in going over some financial +matters with a small farmer in his neighbourhood, he ascertained, beyond +a peradventure, that this farmer annually spent in whisky, for the use +of his family, consisting of himself, his wife and three adult children, +nearly, or quite, _seventy pounds a year_! "You won't believe this," he +said to me; "and if you print the statement nobody else will believe it; +but for all that it is the simple unexaggerated truth." + +Falstaff's reckoning at Dame Quickly's becomes a moderate score in +comparison with this! + +I spent half an hour again in the muniment-room at Kilkenny Castle, +where, in the Expense-Book of the second Duke of Ormond, I found a +supper _menu_ worthy of record, as illustrating what people meant by +"keeping open house" in the great families of the time of Queen +Anne.[Note L.] + +Taking a train early in the afternoon, I came on here in time to dine +last night with Mr. Rolleston of Delgany, an uncompromising Protestant +"Home Ruler"--as Protestant and as uncompromising as John Mitchel--whose +recent pamphlet on "Boycotting" has deservedly attracted so much +attention on both sides of the Irish Sea. + +I was first led into a correspondence with Mr. Rolleston by a remarkable +article of his published in the _Dublin University Review_ for February +1886, on "The Archbishop in Politics." In that article, Mr. Rolleston, +while avowing himself to be robust enough to digest without much +difficulty the _ex officio_ franchise conferred upon the Catholic clergy +by Mr. Parnell to secure the acceptance of his candidates at +Parliamentary conventions, made a very firm and fearless protest against +the attempt of the Archbishops of Dublin and Cashel to "boycott" +Catholic criticism of the National League and its methods, by declaring +such criticism to be "a public insult" offered, not to the Archbishops +of Cashel and Dublin personally, or as political supporters of the +National League, but to the Archbishops as dignitaries of the Catholic +Church, and to their Archiepiscopal office. The "boycotting," by +clerical machinery, of independent lay opinion in civil matters, is to +the body politic of a Catholic country what the germ of cancer is to the +physical body. And though Mr. Rolleston, in this article, avowed himself +to be a hearty supporter of the "political programme of the National +League," and went so far even as to maintain that the social boycotting, +"which makes the League technically an illegal conspiracy against law +and individual liberty," might be "in many cases justified by the +magnitude of the legalised crime against which it was directed," it was +obvious to me that he could not long remain blind to the true drift of +things in an organisation condemned, by the conditions it has created +for itself, to deal with the thinkers of Ireland as it deals with the +tenants of Ireland. His recent pamphlet on "Boycotting" proves that I +was right. What he said to me the other day in a letter about the +pamphlet may be said as truly of the article. It was "a shaft sunk into +the obscure depths of Irish opinion, to bring to light and turn to +service whatever there may be in those depths of sound and healthy;" and +one of my special objects in this present visit to Ireland was to get a +personal touch of the intellectual movement which is throwing such +thinkers as Mr. Rolleston to the front. + +We were five at table, Mr. Rolleston's other guests being Mr. John +O'Leary, whose name is held in honour for his courage and honesty by all +who know anything of the story of Ireland in our times, and who was sent +a quarter of a century ago as a Fenian patriot--not into seclusion with +sherry and bitters, at Kilmainham, like Mr. Gladstone's "suspects" of +1881--but like Michael Davitt, into the stern reality of penal +servitude; Dr. Sigerson, Dean of the Faculty of Science of the Boyal +University, and an authority upon the complicated question of Irish Land +Tenures; and Mr. John F. Taylor, a leading barrister of Dublin, an ally +on the Land Question of Mr. Davitt, and an outspoken Repealer of the +Union of 1800. + +I have long wished to meet Mr. O'Leary, who sent me, through a +correspondent of mine, two years ago, one of the most thoughtful and +well-considered papers I have ever read on the possibilities and +impossibilities of Home Rule for Ireland; and it was a great pleasure to +find in the man the elevation of tone, the breadth of view, and the +refined philosophic perception of the strong and weak points in the +Irish case, which had charmed me in. the paper. Now that "Conservative" +Englishmen have come to treat the main points of Chartism almost as +commonplaces in politics, it is surely time for them to recognise the +honesty and integrity of the spirit which revolted in the Ireland of +1848 against the then seemingly hopeless condition of that country. Of +that spirit Mr. O'Leary is a living, earnest, and most interesting +incarnation. He strikes one at once as a much younger man in all that +makes the youth of the intellect and the emotions than any Nationalist +M.P. of half his years whom I have ever met. No Irishman living has +dealt stronger or more open blows than he against the English dominion +in Ireland. Born in Tipperary, where he inherited a small property in +houses, he was sent to Trinity College in Dublin, and while a student +there was drawn into the "Young Ireland" party mainly by the poems of +Thomas Davis. Late in the electrical year of the "battle summer," 1848, +he was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in a plot to rescue +Smith O'Brien and other state prisoners. The suspicion was well founded, +but could not be established, and after a day or two he was liberated. +From Trinity, after this, he went to the Queen's College in Cork, where +he took his degree, and studied medicine. When the Fenian movement +became serious, after the close of our American Civil War, O'Leary threw +himself into it with Stephens, Luby, and Charles Kickham. Stephens +appointed him one of the chief organisers of the I.E.B. with Luby and +Kickham, and he took charge of the _Irish People_--the organ of the +Fenians of 1865. It was as a subordinate contributor to this journal +that Sir William Harcourt's familiar Irish bogy, O'Donovan Rossa[26], +was arrested together with his chief, Mr. O'Leary, and with Kickham in +1865, and found guilty, with them, after a trial before Mr. Justice +Keogh, of treason-felony. The speech then delivered by Mr. O'Leary in +the dock made a profound impression upon the public mind in America. It +was the speech, not of a conspirator, but of a patriot. The indignation +with which he repelled for himself and for his associate Luby the +charges levelled at them both, without a particle of supporting +evidence, by the prosecuting counsel, of aiming at massacre and plunder, +was its most salient feature. The terrible sentence passed upon him, of +penal servitude for twenty years, Mr. O'Leary accepted with a calm +dignity, which I am glad, for the sake of Irish manhood, to find that +his friends here now recall with pride, when their ears are vexed by the +shrill and clamorous complaints of more recent "patriots," under the +comparatively trivial punishments which they invite. + +In 1870, Mr. O'Leary and his companions were released and pardoned on +condition of remaining beyond the British dominions until the expiration +of their sentences. Mr. O'Leary fixed his residence for a time in Paris, +and thence went to America, where he and Kickham were regarded as the +leaders of the American branch of the I. R. B. He returned to Ireland in +1885, his term of sentence having then expired, and it was shortly after +his return that he gave to my correspondent the letter upon Irish +affairs to which I have already referred. He had been chosen President +of the "Young Ireland Society" of Dublin before he returned, and in that +capacity delivered at the Rotunda, in the Irish capital, before a vast +crowd assembled to welcome him back, an address which showed how +thoughtfully and calmly he had devoted himself during his long years of +imprisonment and exile to the cause of Ireland. Mr. William O'Brien, +M.P., and Mr. Redmond, M.P., took part in this reception, but their +subsequent course shows that they can hardly have relished Mr. O'Leary's +fearless and outspoken protests against the intolerance and injustice of +the agrarian organisation which controls their action. In England, as +well as well as in Ireland, Mr. O'Leary spoke to great multitudes of his +countrymen, and always in the same sense. Mr. Rolleston tells me that +Mr. O'Leary's denunciations of "the dynamite section of the Irish +people," to use the euphemism of an American journal, "are the only ones +ever uttered by an Irish leader, lay or clerical." The day must come, if +it be not already close at hand, when the Irish leader of whom this can +be truly said, must be felt by his own people to be the one man worthy +of their trust. The thing that has been shall be, and there is nothing +new under the sun. The Marats and the Robespierres, the Bareres and the +Collots, are the pallbearers, not the standard-bearers of liberty. + +Towards the National League, as at present administered on the lines of +the agrarian agitation, Mr. O'Leary has so far preserved an attitude of +neutrality, though he has never for a moment hesitated either in public +or in private most vehemently to condemn such sworn Fenians as have +accepted seats in the British Parliament, speaking his mind freely and +firmly of them as "double-oathed men" playing a constitutional part with +one hand, and a treasonable part with the other. + +Yet he is not at one with the extreme and fanatical Fenians who oppose +constitutional agitation simply because it is constitutional. His +objection to the existing Nationalism was exactly put, Mr. Rolleston +tells me, by a clever writer in the Dublin _Mail_, who said that +O'Connell having tried "moral force" and failed, and the Fenians having +tried "physical force" and failed, the Leaguers were now trying to +succeed by the use of "immoral force." + +Dr. Sigerson, who, as a man of science, must necessarily revolt from the +coarse and clumsy methods of the blunderers who have done so much since +1885 to discredit the cause of Ireland, evidently clings to the hope +that something may still be saved from the visible wreck of what has +come, even in Ireland, to be called "Parnellism," and he good-naturedly +persisted in speaking of our host last night and of his friends as +"mugwumps." For the "mugwumps" of my own country I have no particular +admiration, being rather inclined, with my friend Senator Conkling (now +gone to his rest from the racket of American politics), to regard them +as "Madonnas who wish it to be distinctly understood that they might +have been Magdalens." But these Irish "mugwumps" seem to me to earn +their title by simply refusing to believe that two and two, which make +four in France or China, can be bullied into making five in Ireland. +"What certain 'Parnellites' object to," said one of the company, "is +that we can't be made to go out gathering grapes of thorns or figs of +thistles. Some of them expect to found an Irish republic on robbery, and +to administer it by falsehood. We don't."[27] This is precisely the +spirit in which Mr. Rolleston wrote to me not long before I left England +this week. "I have been slowly forced," he wrote, "to the conclusion +that the National League is a body which deserves nothing but +reprobation from all who wish well to Ireland. It has plunged this +country into a state of moral degradation, from which it will take us at +least a generation to recover. It is teaching the people that no law of +justice, of candour, of honour, or of humanity can be allowed to +interfere with the political ends of the moment. It is, in fact, +absolutely divorcing morality from politics. The mendacity of some of +its leaders is shameless and sickening, and still more sickening is the +complete indifference with which this mendacity is regarded in Ireland." + + +It is the spirit, too, of a letter which I received not long ago from +the west of Ireland, in which my correspondent quoted the bearer of one +of the most distinguished of Irish names, and a strong "Home Ruler," as +saying to him, "These Nationalists are stripping Irishmen as bare of +moral sense as the Bushmen of South Africa." + +This very day I find in one of the leading Nationalist journals here +letters from Mr. Davitt, Mr. O'Leary, and Mr. Taylor himself, which +convict that journal of making last week a statement about Mr. Taylor +absolutely untrue, and, so far as appears, absolutely without the shadow +of a foundation. These letters throw such a curious light on passing +events here at this moment that I shall preserve them.[28] The statement +to which they refer was thus put in the journal which made it: "We have +absolute reason to know that when the last Coercion Act was in full +swing this pure-souled and disinterested patriot (Mr. John F. Taylor) +begged for, received, and accepted a very petty Crown Prosecutorship +under a Coercion Government. As was wittily said at the time, He sold +his principles, not for a mess of pottage, but for the stick that +stirred the mess." This is no assertion "upon hearsay"--no publication of +a rumour or report. It is an assertion made, not upon belief even, but +upon a claim of "absolute knowledge." + +Yet to-day, in the same journal, I find Mr. Taylor declaring this +statement, made upon a claim of "absolute knowledge," to be "absolutely +untrue," and appealing in support of this declaration to Mr. Walker, the +host of Lord Riand Mr. Morley, and to The M'Dermot, Q.C., a conspicuous +Home Ruler; to which Mr. Davitt adds: "Mr. Taylor, on my advice, +declined the Crown Prosecutorship for King's County, a post afterwards +applied for by, and granted to, a near relative of one of the most +prominent members of the Irish Party,"--meaning Mr. Luke Dillon, a +cousin of Mr. John Dillon, M.P.! + +We had much interesting conversation last night about the relations of +the Irish leaders here with public and party questions in America, as to +which I find Mr. O'Leary unusually well and accurately informed. + +I am sorry that I must get off to-morrow into Mayo to see Lord Lucan's +country there, for I should have been particularly pleased to look more +closely with Mr. Rolleston into the intellectual revolt against +"Parnellism" and its methods, of which his attitude and that of his +friends here is an unmistakable symptom. As he tersely puts it, he sees +"no hope in Irish politics, except a reformation of the League, a return +to the principles of Thomas Davis." + +The lines for a reformation or transformation of the League, as it now +exists, appear to have been laid down in the original constitution of +the body. Under that constitution, it seems, the League was meant to be +controlled by a representative committee chosen annually, open to public +criticism, and liable to removal by a new election. As things now are, +the officers of this alleged democratic organisation are absolutely +self-elected, and wield the wide and indefinite power they possess over +the people of Ireland in a perfectly unauthorised, irresponsible way. It +is a curious illustration of the autocratic or bureaucratic system under +which the Irish movement is now conducted, that Mr. Davitt, who does not +pretend to be a Parliamentarian, and owes indeed much of his authority +to his refusal to enter Parliament and take oaths of allegiance, does +not hesitate for a moment to discipline any Irish member of Parliament +who incurs his disapprobation. Sir Thomas Esmonde, for example, was +severely taken to task by him the other day in the public prints for +venturing to put a question, in his place at Westminster, to the +Government about a man-of-war stationed in Kingstown harbour. Mr. Davitt +very peremptorily ordered Sir Thomas to remember that he is not sent to +Westminster to recognise the British Government, or concern himself +about British regiments or ships, and Sir Thomas accepts the rebuke in +silence. Whom does such a member of Parliament represent--the +constituents who nominally elect him, or the leader who cracks the whip +over him so sharply? + +I have to-day been looking through a small and beautifully-printed +volume of poems just issued here by Gill and Son, Nationalist +publishers, I take it, who have the courage of their convictions, since +their books bear the imprint of "O'Connell," and not of Sackville +Street. This little book of the _Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland _is +a symptom too. It is dedicated in a few brief but vigorous stanzas to +John O'Leary, as one who + + "Hated all things base, + And held his country's honour high." + +And the spirit of all the poems it contains is the spirit of '48, or of +that earlier Ireland of Robert Emmet, celebrated in some charming verses +by "Rose Kavanagh" on "St. Michan's Churchyard," where the + + "sunbeam went and came + Above the stone which waits the name + His land must write with freedom's flame." + +It interests an American to find among these poems and ballads a +striking threnody called "The Exile's Return," signed with the name of +"Patrick Henry"; and it is noteworthy, for more reasons than one, that +the volume winds up with a "Marching Song of the Gaelic Athletes," +signed "An Chraoibhin Aoibbinn." These Athletes are numbered now, I am +assured, not by thousands, but by myriads, and their organisation covers +all parts of Ireland. If the spirit of '48 and of '98 is really moving +among them, I should say they are likely to be at least as troublesome +in the end to the "uncrowned king" as to the crowned Queen of Ireland. + +As for the literary merit of these _Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland_, +it strikes one key with their political quality. One exquisite ballad of +"The Stolen Child," by W. B. Yeats, might have been sung in the +moonlight on a sylvan lake by the spirit of Heinrich Heine. + +I spent an hour or two this morning most agreeably in the libraries of +the Law Courts and of Trinity College: the latter one of the stateliest +most academic "halls of peace" I have ever seen; and this afternoon I +called upon Dr. Sigerson, a most patriotic Irishman, of obviously Danish +blood, who has his own ideas as to Clontarf and Brian Boru; and who gave +me very kindly a copy of his valuable report on that Irish Crisis of +1879-80, out of which Michael Davitt so skilfully developed the agrarian +movement whereof "Parnellism" down to this time has been the not very +well adjusted instrument. The report was drawn up after a thorough +inspection by Dr. Sigerson and his associate, Dr. Kenny, visiting +physicians to the North Dublin Union, of some of the most distressed +districts of Mayo, Sligo, and Galway; and a more interesting, +intelligent, and impressive picture of the worst phases of the social +conditions of Ireland ten years ago is not to be found. I have just been +reading it over carefully in conjunction with my memoranda made from the +Emigration and Seed Potato Fund Reports, which Mr. Tuke gave me some +time ago, and it strongly reinforces the evidence imbedded in those +reports, which goes to show that agitation for political objects in +Ireland has perhaps done as much as all other causes put together to +depress the condition of the poor in Ireland, by driving and keeping +capital out of the country. The worst districts visited in 1879 by Dr. +Sigerson and Dr. Kenny do not appear to have been so completely cut off +from civilisation as was the region about Gweedore before the purchase +of his property there by Lord George Hill, and the remedies suggested by +Dr. Sigerson for the suffering in these districts are all in the +direction of the remedies applied by Lord George Hill to the condition +in which he found Gweedore. After giving full value to the stock +explanations of Irish distress in the congested districts, such as +excessive rents, penal laws, born of religious or "racial" animosity, +and a defective system of land tenure, it seems to be clear that the +main difficulties have arisen from the isolation of these districts, and +from the lack of varied industries. Political agitation has checked any +flow of capital into these districts, and a flow of capital into them +would surely have given them better communications and more varied +industries. Dr. Sigerson states that some of the worst of these regions +in the west of Ireland are as well adapted to flax-culture as Ulster, +and Napoleon III. showed what could be done for such wastes as La +Sologne and the desert of the Landes by the intelligent study of a +country and the judicious development of such values as are inherent in +it. The loss of population in Ireland is not unprecedented. The State of +New Hampshire, in America, one of the original thirteen colonies which +established the American Union, has twice shown an actual loss in +population during the past century. The population of the State declined +during the decade between 1810 and 1820, and again during the decade +between 1860 and 1870. This phenomenon, unique in American history, is +to be explained only by three causes, all active in the case of +congested Ireland,--a decaying agriculture, lack of communications, and +the absence of varied industries. During the decade from 1860 to 1870 +the great Civil War was fought out. Yet, despite the terrible waste of +life and capital in that war, especially at the South, the Northern +State of New Hampshire, peopled by the energetic English adventurers who +founded New England, was actually the only State which came out of the +contest with a positive decline in population. Virginia (including West +Virginia, which seceded from that Commonwealth in 1861) rose from +1,596,318 inhabitants in 1860 to 1,667,177 in 1870. South Carolina, +which was ravaged by the war more severely than any State except +Virginia, and upon which the Republican majority at Washington pressed +with such revengeful hostility after the downfall of the Confederacy, +showed in 1870 a positive increase in population, as compared with 1860, +from 703,708 to 705,606. But New Hampshire, lying hundreds of miles +beyond the area of the conflict, showed a positive decrease from 326,073 +to 318,300. During my college days at Cambridge the mountain regions of +New Hampshire were favourite "stamping grounds" in the vacations, and I +exaggerate nothing when I say that in the secluded nooks and corners of +the State, the people cut off from communication with the rest of New +England, and scratching out of a rocky land an inadequate subsistence, +were not much, if at all, in advance of the least prosperous dwellers in +the most remote parts of Ireland which I have visited. They furnished +their full contingent to that strange American exodus, which, about a +quarter of a century ago, was led out of New England by one Adams to the +Holy Land, in anticipation of the Second Advent, a real modern crusade +of superstitious land speculators, there to perish, for the most part, +miserably about Jaffa--leaving houses and allotments to pass into the +control of a more practical colony of Teutons, which I found +establishing itself there in 1869. + +Since 1870 a change has come over New Hampshire. The population has +risen to 346,984. In places waste and fallen twenty years ago brisk and +smiling villages have sprung up along lines of communication established +to carry on the business of thriving factories. + +What reason can there be in the nature of things to prevent the +development of analogous results, through the application of analogous +forces, in the case of "congested" Ireland? A Nationalist friend, to +whom I put this question this afternoon, answers it by alleging that so +long as fiscal laws for Ireland are made at Westminster, British capital +invested in Great Britain will prevent the application of these +analogous forces to "congested" Ireland. His notion is that were Ireland +as independent of Great Britain, for example, in fiscal matters as is +Canada, Ireland might seek and secure a fiscal union with the United +States, such as was partially secured to Canada under the Reciprocity +Treaty denounced by Mr. Seward. + +"Give us this," he said, "and take us into your system of American +free-trade as between the different States of your American Union, and +no end of capital will soon be coming into Ireland, not only from your +enormously rich and growing Republic, but from Great Britain too. Give +us the American market, putting Great Britain on a less-favoured +footing, just as Mr. Blake and his party wish to do in the case of +Canada, and between India doing her own manufacturing on the one side, +and Ireland becoming a manufacturing centre on the other, and a mart in +Europe for American goods, we'll get our revenge on Elizabeth and +Cromwell in a fashion John Bull has never dreamt of in these times, +though he used to be in a mortal funk of it a hundred years ago, when +there wasn't nearly as much danger of it!" + + +DUBLIN, _Sunday, June 24._--"Put not your faith in porters!" I had +expected to pass this day at Castlebar, on the estate of Lord Lucan, and +I exchanged telegrams to that effect yesterday with Mr. Harding, the +Earl's grandson, who, in the absence of his wonderfully energetic +grandsire, is administering there what Lord Lucan, with pardonable +pride, declares to be the finest and most successful dairy-farm in all +Ireland. I asked the porter to find the earliest morning train; and +after a careful search he assured me that by leaving Dublin just after 7 +A.M. I could reach Castlebar a little after noon. + +Upon this I determined to dine with Mr. Colomb, and spend the night in +Dublin. But when I reached the station a couple of hours ago, it was to +discover that my excellent porter had confounded 7 A.M. with 7 P.M. + +There is no morning train to Castlebar! So here I am with no recourse, +my time being short, but to give up the glimpse I had promised myself of +Mayo, and go on this afternoon to Belfast on my way back to London. + +At dinner last night Mr. Colomb gave me further and very interesting +light upon the events of 1867, of which he had already spoken with me at +Cork, as well as upon the critical period of Mr. Gladstone's experiments +of 1881-82 at "Coercion" in Ireland. + +Mr. Colomb lives in a remarkably bright and pleasant suburb of Dublin, +which not only is called a "park," as suburbs are apt to be, but really +is a park, as suburbs are less apt to be. His house is set near some +very fine old trees, shading a beautiful expanse of turf. He is an +amateur artist of much more than ordinary skill. His walls are gay, and +his portfolios filled, with charming water-colours, sketches, and +studies made from Nature all over the United Kingdom. The grand +coast-scenery of Cornwall and of Western Ireland, the lovely lake +landscapes of Killarney, sylvan homes and storied towers, all have been +laid under contribution by an eye quick to seize and a hand prompt to +reproduce these most subtle and transient atmospheric effects of light +and colour which are the legitimate domain of the true water-colourist. +With all these pictures about us--and with Mr. Colomb's workshop fitted +up with Armstrong lathes and all manner of tools wherein he varies the +routine of official life by making all manner of instruments, and +wreaking his ingenuity upon all kinds of inventions--and with the +pleasant company of Mr. Davies, the agreeable and accomplished official +secretary of Sir West Ridgway, the evening wore quickly away. In the +course of conversation the question of the average income of the Irish +priests arose, and I mentioned the fact that Lord Lucan, whose knowledge +of the smallest details of Irish life is amazingly thorough, puts it +down at about ten shillings a year per house in the average Irish +parish. + +He rated Father M'Fadden and his curate of Gweedore, for example, +without a moment's hesitation, at a thousand pounds a year in the whole, +or very nearly the amount stated to me by Sergeant Mahony at Baron's +Court. This brought from Mr. Davies a curious account of the proceedings +in a recent case of a contested will before Judge Warren here in Dublin. +The will in question was made by the late Father M'Garvey of Milford, a +little village near Mulroy Bay in Donegal, notable chiefly as the scene +of the murder of the late Earl of Leitrim. Father M'Garvey, who died in +March last, left by this will to religious and charitable uses the whole +of his property, save L800 bequeathed in it to his niece, Mrs. O'Connor. +It was found that he died possessed not only of a farm at Ardara, but of +cash on deposit in the Northern Bank to the very respectable amount of +L23,711. Mrs. O'Connor contested the will. The Archbishop of Armagh, and +Father Sheridan, C.C. of Letterkenny, instituted an action against her +to establish the will. Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, lying in Londonderry +jail as a first-class misdemeanant, was brought from Londonderry as a +witness for the niece. But on the trial of the case it appeared that +there was actually no evidence to sustain the plea of the niece that +"undue influence" had been exerted upon her uncle by the Archbishop, who +at the time of the making of the will was Bishop of Raphoe, or by +anybody else; so the judge instructed the jury to find on all the issues +for the plaintiffs, which was done. The judge declared the conduct of +the defendant in advancing a charge of "undue influence" in such +circumstances against ecclesiastics to be most reprehensible; but the +Archbishop very graciously intimated through his lawyer his intention of +paying the costs of the niece who had given him all this trouble, +because she was a poor woman who had been led into her course by +disappointment at receiving so small a part of so large an inheritance. +Had the priest's property come to him in any other way than through his +office as a priest her claim might have been more worthy of +consideration, but Mr. M'Dermot, Q.C., who represented the Archbishop, +took pains to make it clear that as an ecclesiastic his client, who had +nothing to do with the making of the will, was bound to regard it "as +proper and in accordance with the fitness of things that what had been +received from the poor should be given back to the poor." + +I see no adequate answer to this contention of the Archbishop. But it +certainly goes to confirm the estimates given me by Sergeant Mahony of +Father M'Fadden's receipts at Gweedore, and the opinion expressed to me +by Lord Lucan as to the average returns of an average Catholic parish, +that the priest of Milford, a place hardly so considerable as Gweedore, +should have acquired so handsome a property in the exercise there of his +parochial functions. + +One form in which the priests in many parts of Ireland collect dues is +certainly unknown to the practice of the Church elsewhere, I believe, +and it must tend to swell the incomes of the priests at the expense, +perhaps, of their legitimate influence. This is the custom of personal +collections by the priests. In many parishes the priest stands by the +church-door, or walks about the church--not with a bag in his hand, as +is sometimes done in France on great occasions when a _quele_ is made by +the _cure_ for some special object,--but with an open plate in which the +people put their offerings. I have heard of parishes in which the priest +sits by a table near the church-door, takes the offerings from the +parishioners as they pass, and comments freely upon the ratio of the +gift to the known or presumed financial ability of the giver. + +We had some curious stories, too, from a gentleman present of the +relation of the priests in wild, out-of-the-way corners of Ireland to +the people, stories which take one back to days long before Lever. One, +for example, of a delightful and stalwart old parish priest of eighty, +upon whom an airy young patriot called to propose that he should accept +the presidency of a local Land League. The veteran, whose only idea of +the Land League was that it had used bad language about Cardinal Cullen, +no sooner caught the drift of the youth than he snatched up a huge +blackthorn, fell upon him, and "boycotted" him head-foremost out of a +window. Luckily it was on the ground floor. + +Another strenuous spiritual shepherd came down during the distribution +of potato-seed to the little port in which it was going on, and took up +his station on board of the distributing ship. One of his parishioners, +having received his due quota, made his way back again unobserved on +board of the ship. As he came up to receive a second dole, the good +father spied him, and staying not "to parley or dissemble," simply +fetched him a whack over the sconce with a stick, which tumbled him out +of the ship, head-foremost, into the hooker riding beside her! Quite of +another drift was a much more astonishing tale of certain proceedings +had here in February last before the Lord Chief-Justice. These took +place in connection with a motion to quash the verdict of a coroner's +jury, held in August 1887, on the body of a child named Ellen Gaffney, +at Philipstown, in King's County, which preserves the memory of the +Spanish sovereign of England, as Maryborough in Queen's preserves the +memory of his Tudor consort. Cervantes never imagined an Alcalde of the +quality of the "Crowner"' who figures in this story. Were it not that +his antics cost a poor woman her liberty from August 1887 till December +of that year, when the happy chance of a winter assizes set her free, +and might have cost her her life, the story of this ideal magistrate +would be extremely diverting. + +A child was born to Mrs. Gaffney at Philipstown on the 23d of July, and +died there on the 25th of August 1887, Mrs. Gaffney being the wife of a +"boycotted" man. + +A local doctor named Clarke came to the police and asked the Sergeant to +inspect the body of the child, and call for an inquest. The sergeant +inspected the body, and saw no reason to doubt that the child had died a +natural death. This did not please the doctor, so the Coroner was sent +for. He came to Philipstown the next day, conferred there with the +doctor, and with a priest, Father Bergin, and proceeded to hold an +inquest on the child in a public-house, "a most appropriate place," said +Sir Michael Morris from the bench, "for the transactions which +subsequently occurred." Strong depositions were afterwards made by the +woman Mrs. Gaffney, by her husband, and by the police authorities, as to +the conduct of this "inquest." She and her husband were arrested on a +verbal order of the Coroner on the day when the inquest was held, August +27th, and the woman was kept in prison from that time till the assizes +in December. The "inquest" was not completed on the 27th of August, and +after the Coroner adjourned it, two priests drove away on a car from the +"public-house" in which it had been held. That night, or the next day, a +man came to a magistrate with a bundle of papers which he had found in +the road near Philipstown. The magistrate examined them, and finding +them to be the depositions taken before the Coroner in the case of Ellen +Gaffney, handed them to the police. How did they come to be in the road? +On the 1st of September the Coroner resumed his inquest, this time in +the Court-House at Philipstown, and one of the police, with the +depositions in his pocket, went to hear the proceedings. Great was his +amazement to see certain papers produced, and calmly read, as being the +very original depositions which at that moment were in his own custody! +He held his peace, and let the inquest go on. A letter was read from the +Coroner, to the effect that he saw no ground for detaining the husband, +Gaffney--but the woman was taken before a justice of the peace, and +committed to prison on this finding by the Coroner's jury: "That Mary +Anne Gaffney came by her death; and that the mother of the child, Ellen +Gaffney, is guilty of wilful neglect by not supplying the necessary food +and care to sustain the life of this child "! + +It is scarcely credible, but it is true, that upon this extraordinary +finding the Coroner issued a warrant for "murder" against this poor +woman, on which she was actually locked up for more than three months! +The jury which made this unique finding consisted of nineteen persons, +and it was in evidence that their foreman reported thirteen of the jury +to be for finding one way and six for finding another, whereupon a +certain Mr. Whyte, who came into the case as the representative of +Father Bergin, President of the local branch of the National +League--nobody can quite see on what colourable pretext--was allowed by +the Coroner to write down the finding I have quoted, and hand it to the +Coroner. The Coroner read it over. He and Mr. Whyte then put six of the +jury in one place, and thirteen in another; the Coroner read the finding +aloud to the thirteen, and said to them, "Is that what you agree to?" +and so the inquest was closed, and the warrant issued--for murder--and +the woman, this poor peasant mother sent off to jail with the brand upon +her of infanticide.[29] + +Where would that poor woman be now were there no "Coercion" in Ireland +to protect her against "Crowner's quest law" thus administered? And what +is to be thought of educated and responsible public men in England who, +as recent events have shown, are not ashamed to go to "Crowner's quest +Courts" of this sort for weapons of attack, not upon the administration +only of their own Government, but upon the character and the motives of +their political opponents? + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + + +BELFAST, _Monday, June 25._--I left Dublin yesterday at 4 P.M., in a +train which went off at high pressure as an "express," but came into +Belfast panting and dilatory as an "excursion." The day was fine, and +the line passes through what is reputed to be the most prosperous part +of Ireland. In this part of Ireland, too, the fate of the island has +been more than once settled by the arbitrament of arms; and if +Parliamentary England throws up the sponge in the wrestle with the +League, it is probable enough that the old story will come to be told +over again here. + +At Dundalk the Irish monarchy of the Braces was made and unmade. The +plantation of Ulster under James I. clinched the grasp not so much of +England as of Scotland upon Ireland, and determined the course of events +here through the Great Rebellion. The landing of the Duke of Schomberg +at Carrickfergus opened the way for the subjugation of Jacobite Ireland +by William of Orange. The successful descent of the French upon the same +place in February 1760, after the close of "the Great Year," in which +Walpole tells us he came to expect a new victory every morning with the +rolls for breakfast, and after Hawke had broken the strength of the +great French Armada off Belleisle, and done for England the service +which Nelson did for her again off Trafalgar in 1805, shows what might +have happened had Thurot commanded the fleet of Conflans. In this same +region, too, the rout of Munro by Nugent at Ballinahinch practically +ended the insurrection of 1798. + +There are good reasons in the physical geography of the British Islands +for this controlling influence of Ulster over the affairs of Ireland, +which it seems to me a serious mistake to overlook. + +The author of a brief but very hard-headed and practical letter on the +pacification of Ireland, which appeared in the _Times_ newspaper in +1886, while the air was thrilling with rumours of Mr. Gladstone's +impending appearance as the champion of "Home Rule," carried, I +remember, to the account of St. George's Channel "nine-tenths of the +troubles, religious, political, and social, under which Ireland has +laboured for seven centuries." I cannot help thinking he hit the nail on +the head; and St. George's Channel does not divide Ulster from Scotland. +From Donaghadee, which has an excellent harbour, the houses on the +Scottish coast can easily be made out in clear weather. A chain is no +stronger than its weakest link, and it is as hard to see how, even with +the consent of Ulster, the independence of Ireland could be maintained +against the interests and the will of Scotland, as it is easy to see why +Leinster, Munster, and Connaught have been so difficult of control and +assimilation by England. To dream of establishing the independence of +Ireland against the will of Ulster appears to me to be little short of +madness. + +At Moira, which stands very prettily above the Ulster Canal, a small +army of people returning from a day in the country to Belfast came upon +us and trebled the length of our train. We picked up more at Lisburn, +where stands the Cathedral Church of Jeremy Taylor, the "Shakespeare of +divines." Here my only companion in the compartment from Dublin left me, +a most kindly, intelligent Ulster man, who had very positive views as to +the political situation. He much commended the recent discourse in +Scotland of a Presbyterian minister, who spoke of the Papal Decree as +"pouring water on a drowned mouse," a remark which led me to elicit the +fact that he had never seen either Clare or Kerry; and he was very warm +in his admiration of Mr. Chamberlain. He told me, what I had heard from +many other men of Ulster, that the North had armed itself thoroughly +when the Home Rule business began with Mr. Gladstone. "I am a Unionist," +he said, "but I think the Union is worth as much to England as it is to +Ireland, and if England means to break it up it is not the part of +Irishmen who think and feel as I do to let her choose her own time for +doing it, and stand still while she robs us of our property and turns us +out defenceless to be trampled under foot by the most worthless +vagabonds in our own island." He thinks the National League has had its +death-blow. "What I fear now," he said, "is that we are running straight +into a social war, and that will never be a war against the landlords in +Ireland; it'll be a war against the Protestants and all the decent +people there are among the Catholics." + +He was very cordial when he found I was an American, and with that +offhand hospitality which seems to know no distinctions of race or +religion in Ireland urged me to come and make him a visit at a place he +has nearer the sea-coast. "I'll show you Downpatrick," he said, "where +the tombs of St. Patrick and St. Bridget and St. Columb are, the saints +sleeping quite at their ease, with a fine prosperous Presbyterian town +all about them. And I'll drive you to Tullymore, where you'll see the +most beautiful park, and the finest views from it all the way to the +Isle of Man, that are to be seen in all Ireland." He was very much +interested in the curious story of the sequestration of the remains of +Mr. Stewart of New York, who was born, he tells me, at Lisburn, where +the wildest fabrications on the subject seem to have got currency. That +this feat of body-snatching is supposed to have been performed by a +little syndicate of Italians, afterwards broken up by the firmness of +Lady Crawford in resisting the ghastly pressure to which the widow and +the executors of Mr. Stewart are believed to have succumbed, was quite a +new idea to him. + +From Moira to Belfast the scenery along the line grows in beauty +steadily. If Belfast were not the busiest and most thriving city in +Ireland, it would still be well worth a visit for the picturesque charms +of its situation and of the scenery which surrounds it. At some future +day I hope to get a better notion both of its activity and of its +attractions than it would be possible for me to attempt to get in this +flying visit, made solely to take the touch of the atmosphere of the +place at this season of the year; for we are on the very eve of the +battle month of the Boyne. + +Mr. Cameron, the Town Inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary, met me +at the station, in accordance with a promise which he kindly made when I +saw him several weeks ago at Cork; and this morning he took me all over +the city. It is very well laid out, in the new quarters especially, with +broad avenues and spacious squares. In fact, as a local wag said to me +to-day at the Ulster Club, "You can drive through Belfast without once +going into a street"--most of the thoroughfares which are not called +"avenues" or "places" being known as "roads." It is, of course, an +essentially modern city. When Boate made his survey of Ireland two +centuries ago, Belfast was so small a place that he took small note of +it, though it had been incorporated by James I. in 1613 in favour of the +Chichester family, still represented here. In a very careful _Tour in +Ireland_, published at Dublin in 1780, the author says of Belfast, "I +could not help remarking the great number of Scots who reside in this +place, and who carry on a good trade with Scotland." It seems then to +have had a population of less than 20,000 souls, as it only touched that +number at the beginning of this century. It has since then advanced by +"leaps and bounds," after an almost American fashion, till it has now +become the second, and bids fair at no distant day to become the first, +city in Ireland. Few of the American cities which are its true +contemporaries can be compared with Belfast in beauty. The quarter in +which my host lives was reclaimed from the sea marshes not quite so long +ago, I believe, as was the Commonwealth Avenue quarter of Boston, and +though it does not show so many costly private houses perhaps as that +quarter of the New England capital, its "roads" and "avenues" are on the +whole better built, and there is no public building in Boston so +imposing as the Queen's College, with its Tudor front six hundred feet +in length, and its graceful central tower. The Botanic Gardens near by +are much prettier and much better equipped for the pleasure and +instruction of the people than any public gardens in either Boston or +New York. These American comparisons make themselves, all the conditions +of Belfast being rather of the New World than of the Old. The oldest +building pointed out to me to-day is the whilom mansion of the Marquis +of Donegal, now used as offices, and still called the Castle. + +This stands near Donegal Square, a fine site, disfigured by a quadrangle +of commonplace brick buildings, occupied as a sort of Linen Exchange, +concerning which a controversy rages, I am told. They are erected on +land granted by Lord Donegal to encourage the linen trade, and the +buildings used to be leased at a rental of L1 per window. The present +holders receive L10 per window, and are naturally loath to part with so +good a thing, though there is an earnest desire in the city to see these +unsightly structures removed, and their place taken by stately municipal +buildings more in key with the really remarkable and monumental private +warehouses which already adorn this Square. Mr. Robinson, one of the +partners of a firm which has just completed one of these warehouses, was +good enough to show us over it. It is built of a warm grey stone, which +lends itself easily to the chisel, and it is decorated with a wealth of +carving and of architectural ornaments such as the great burghers of +Flanders lavished on their public buildings. The interior arrangements +are worthy of the external stateliness of the warehouse. Pneumatic tubes +for the delivery of cash--a Scottish invention--electric lights, steam +lifts, a kitchen at the top of the lofty edifice heated by steam from +the great engine-room in the cellars, and furnishing meals to the +employees, attest the energy and enterprise of the firm. The most +delicate of the linen fabrics sold here are made, I was informed, all +over the north country. The looms, three or four of which are kept going +here in a great room to show the intricacy and perfection of the +processes, are supplied by the firm to the hand-workers on a system +which enables them, while earning good wages from week to week, to +acquire the eventual ownership of the machines. The building is crowned +by a sort of observatory, from which we enjoyed a noble prospect +overlooking the whole city and miles of the beautiful country around. A +haze on the horizon hid the coast of Scotland, which is quite visible +under a clear sky. The Queen's Bridge over the Lagan, built in 1842 +between Antrim and Down, was a conspicuous feature in the panorama. Its +five great arches of hewn granite span the distance formerly traversed +by an older bridge of twenty-one arches 840 feet in length, which was +begun in 1682, and finished just in time to welcome Schomberg and King +William. + +The not less imposing warehouse of Richardson and Co., built of a +singularly beautiful brown stone, and decorated with equal taste and +liberality, adjoins that of Robinson and Cleaver. The banks, the public +offices, the clubs, the city library, the museum, the Presbyterian +college, the principal churches, all of them modern, all alike bear +witness to the public spirit and pride in their town of the good people +of Belfast. With more time at my disposal I would have been very glad to +visit some of the flax-mills called into being by the great impulse +which the cotton famine resulting from our Civil War gave to the linen +manufactures of Northern Ireland, and the famous shipyards of the Woolfs +on Queen's Island, As things are, it was more to my purpose to see some +of the representative men of this great Protestant stronghold. + +I passed a very interesting hour with the Rev. Dr. Hanna, who is reputed +to be a sort of clerical "Lion of the North," and whom I found to be in +almost all respects a complete antitype of Father M'Fadden of Gweedore. + + +Dr. Hanna is not unjustly proud of being at the head of the most +extensive Sunday-school organisation in Ireland, if not in the world; +and I find that the anniversary parade of his pupils, appointed for +Saturday, June 30th, is looked forward to with some anxiety by the +authorities here. He tells me that he expects to put two thousand +children that day into motion for a grand excursion to Moira; but +although he speaks very plainly as to the ill-will with which a certain +class of the Catholics here regard both himself and his organisation, he +does not anticipate any attack from them. With what seems to me very +commendable prudence, he has resolved this year to put this procession +into the streets without banners and bands, so that no charge of +provocation may be even colourably advanced against it. This is no +slight concession from a man so determined and so outspoken, not to say +aggressive, in his Protestantism as Dr. Hanna; and the Nationalist +Catholics will be very ill-advised, it strikes me, if they misinterpret +it. + +He spoke respectfully of the Papal decree against Boycotting and the +Plan of Campaign; but he seems to think it will not command the respect +of the masses of the Catholic population, nor be really enforced by the +clergy. Like most of the Ulstermen I have met, he has a firm faith, not +only in the power of the Protestant North to protect itself, but in its +determination to protect itself against the consequences which the +northern Protestants believe must inevitably follow any attempt to +establish an Irish nationality. Dr. Hanna is neither an Orangeman nor a +Tory. He says there are but three known Orangemen among the clerical +members of the General Assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church, which +unanimously pronounced against Mr. Gladstone's scheme of Home Rule, and +not more than a dozen Tories. Of the 550 members of the Assembly, 538, +he says, were followers of Mr. Gladstone before he adopted the politics +of Mr. Parnell; and only three out of the whole number have given him +their support. In the country at large, Dr. Hanna puts down the +Unionists at two millions, of whom 1,200,000 are Protestants, and +800,000 Catholics; and he maintains that if the Parliamentary +representatives were chosen by a general vote, the Parnellite 80 would +be cut down to 62; while the Unionists would number 44. He regards the +Parnellite policy as "an organised imposture," and firmly believes that +an Irish Parliament in Dublin would now mean civil war in Ireland. He +had a visit here last week, he says, from an American Presbyterian +minister, who came out to Ireland a month ago a "Home Ruler"; but, as +the result of a trip through North-Western Ireland, is going back to +denounce the Home Rule movement as a mischievous fraud. + +When I asked him what remedy he would propose for the discontent stirred +up by the agitation of Home Rule, this Presbyterian clergyman replied +emphatically, "Balfour, Balfour, and more Balfour!" + +This on the ground, as I understood, that Mr. Balfour's administration +of the law has been the firmest, least wavering, and most equitable +known in Ireland for many a day. + +Later in the day I had the pleasure of a conversation with the Rev. Dr. +Kane, the Grand Master of the Orangemen at Belfast. Dr. Kane is a tall, +fine-looking, frank, and resolute man, who obviously has the courage of +his opinions. He thinks there will be no disturbances this year on the +12th of July, but that the Orange demonstrations will be on a greater +scale and more imposing than ever. He derides the notion that +"Parnellism" is making any progress in Ulster. On the contrary, the +concurrence this year of the anniversary of the defeat of the Great +Armada with the anniversary of the Revolution of 1688 has aroused the +strongest feelings of enthusiasm among the Protestants of the North, and +they were never so determined as they now are not to tolerate anything +remotely looking to the constitution of a separate and separatist +Government at Dublin. + +BELFAST, _Tuesday, June 26._--Sir John Preston, the head of one of the +great Belfast houses, and a former Mayor of the city, dined with us last +night, and in the evening Sir James Haslett, the actual Mayor, came in. + +I find that in Belfast the office of Mayor is served without a salary, +and is consequently filled as a rule by citizens of "weight and +instance." In Dublin the Lord Mayor receives L3000 a year, with a +contingent fund of L1500, and the office is becoming a distinctly +political post. The face of Belfast is so firmly set against the +tendency to subordinate municipal interests to general party exigencies, +that the Corporation compelled Mr. Cobain, M.P., who sits at Westminster +now for this constituency, to resign the post which he held as treasurer +and cashier of the Corporation when he became a candidate for a seat in +Parliament. I am not surprised, therefore, to learn that the city rates +and taxes are much lower in the commercial than they are in the +political capital of Ireland. + +Both Sir John Preston and Sir James Haslett have visited America. Sir +John went there to represent the linen industries of Ireland, and to +urge upon Congress the propriety of reducing our import duties upon +fabrics which the American climate makes it practically imposssible to +manufacture on our side of the water. Senator Sherman, who twenty years +ago had the candour to admit that the wit of man could not devise a +tariff so adjusted as to raise the revenue necessary for the Government +which should not afford adequate incidental protection to all legitimate +American industries, gave Sir John reason to hope that something might +be done in the direction of a more liberal treatment of the linen +industries. But nothing practical came of it. Sir John ought to have +known that our typical American Protectionist, the late Horace Greeley, +really persuaded himself, and tried to persuade other people, that with +duties enough clapped on the Asiatic production, excellent tea might be +grown on the uplands of South Carolina! + +In former years Sir John Preston used to visit Gweedore every year for +sport and recreation. He knew Lord George Hill very well, "as true and +noble a man as ever lived, who stinted himself to improve the state of +his tenants." He threw an odd light on the dreamy desire which had so +much amused me of the "beauty of Gweedore" to become "a dressmaker at +Derry," by telling me that long ago the gossips there used to tell +wonderful stories of a Gweedore girl who had made her fortune as a +milliner in the "Maiden City." + +This morning Mr. Cameron, who as Town Inspector of the Royal Irish +Constabulary will be responsible for public peace and order here during +the next critical fortnight, held a review of his men on a common beyond +the Theological College. About two hundred and fifty of the force were +paraded, with about twenty mounted policemen, and for an hour and a +half, under a tolerably warm sun, they were put through a regular +military drill. A finer body of men cannot be seen, and in point of +discipline and training they can hold their own, I should say, with the +best of her Majesty's regiments. Without such discipline and training it +would not be easy for any such body of men to pass with composure +through the ordeal of insults and abuse to which the testimony of +trustworthy eye-witnesses compels me to believe they are habitually +subjected in the more disturbed districts of Ireland. As to the +immediate outlook here, Mr. Cameron seems quite at his ease. Even if +ill-disposed persons should set about provoking a collision between "the +victors and the vanquished of the Boyne" his arrangements are so made, +he says, as to prevent the development of anything like the outbreaks of +former years. + +On the advice of Sir John Preston I shall take the Fleetwood route on my +return to London to-night. + +This secures one a comfortable night on board of a very good and +well-equipped boat, from which you go ashore, he tells me, into an +excellent station of the London and North-Western Railway at Fleetwood, +on the mouth of the Wyre on the Lancashire coast. Twenty years ago this +was a small bathing resort called into existence chiefly by the +enterprise of a local baronet whose name it bears. Its present +prosperity and prospective importance are another illustration of the +vigour and vitality of the North of Ireland, which is connected through +Fleetwood with the great manufacturing regions of middle and northern +England, as it is through Larne with the heart of Scotland. + +While it is as true now of the predominantly Catholic south of Ireland +as it was when Sir Robert Peel made the remark forty years ago, that it +stands "with its back to England and its face to the West," this +Protestant Ireland of the North faces both ways, drawing Canada and the +United States to itself through Moville and Derry and Belfast, and +holding fast at the same time upon the resources of Great Britain +through Glasgow and Liverpool. One of the best informed bankers in +London told me not long ago, that pretty nearly all the securities of +the great company which has recently taken over the business of the +Guinnesses have already found their way into the North of Ireland and +are held here. With such resources in its wealth and industry, better +educated, better equipped, and holding a practically impregnable +position in the North of Ireland, with Scotland and the sea at its back, +Ulster is very much stronger relatively to the rest of Ireland than La +Vendee was relatively to the rest of the French Republic in the last +century. In a struggle for independence against the rest of Ireland it +would have nothing to fear from the United States, where any attempt to +organise hostilities against it would put the Irish-American population +in serious peril, not only from the American Government, but from +popular feeling, and force home upon the attention of the +quickest-witted people in the world the significant fact that while the +chief contributions, so far, of America to Southern Ireland, have been +alms and agitation, the chief contributions of Scotland to Northern +Ireland have been skilled agriculture and successful activity. It is +surely not without meaning that the only steamers of Irish build which +now traverse the Atlantic come from the dockyards, not of Galway nor of +Cork, the natural gateways of Ireland to the west, but of Belfast, the +natural gateway of Ireland to the north. + + + + +EPILOGUE. + + +Not once, but a hundred times, during the visits to Ireland recorded in +this book, I have been reminded of the state of feeling and opinion +which existed in the Border States, as they were called, of the American +Union, after the invasion of Virginia by a piratical band under John +Brown, and before the long-pending issues between the South, insisting +upon its constitutional rights, and the North, restive under its +constitutional obligations, were brought to a head by the election of +President Lincoln. + +All analogies, I know, are deceptive, and I do not insist upon this +analogy. But it has a certain value here. For to-day in Ireland, as then +in America, we find a grave question of politics, in itself not +unmanageable, perhaps, by a race trained to self-government, seriously +complicated and aggravated, not only by considerations of moral right +and moral wrong, but by a profound perturbation of the material +interests of the community. + +I well remember that after a careful study of the situation in America +at the time of which I speak, Mr. Nassau Senior, a most careful and +competent observer, frankly told me that he saw no possible way in which +the problem could be worked out peacefully. The event justified this +gloomy forecast. + +It would be presumptuous in me to say as much of the actual situation in +Ireland; but it would be uncandid not to say that the optimists of +Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee had greater +apparent odds in their favour in 1861 than the optimists of Ireland seem +to me to have in 1888. + +Ireland stands to-day between Great Britain and the millions of the +Irish race in America and Australia very much as the Border States of +the American Union stood in 1861 between the North and the South. There +was little either in the Tariff question or in the Slavery question to +shake the foundations of law and order in the Border States, could they +have been left to themselves; and the Border States enjoyed all the +advantages and immunities of "Home Rule" to an extent and under +guarantees never yet openly demanded for Ireland by any responsible +legislator within the walls of the British Parliament. But so powerful +was the leverage upon them of conflicting passions and interests beyond +their own borders that these sovereign states, well organised, +homogeneous, prosperous communities, much more populous and richer in +the aggregate in 1861 than Ireland is to-day, practically lost the +control of their own affairs, and were swept helplessly into a terrific +conflict, which they had the greatest imaginable interest in avoiding, +and no interest whatever in promoting. + +I have seen and heard nothing in Ireland to warrant the very common +impression that the country, as a whole, is either misgoverned or +ungovernable; nothing to justify me in regarding the difficulties which +there impede the maintenance of law and order as really indigenous and +spontaneous. The "agitated" Ireland of 1888 appears to me to be almost +as clearly and demonstrably the creation of forces not generated in, but +acting upon, a country, as was the "bleeding Kansas" of 1856. But the +"bleeding Kansas" of 1856 brought the great American Union to the verge +of disruption, and the "agitated Ireland" of 1888 may do as much, or +worse, for the British Empire. There is, no doubt, a great deal of +distress in one or another part of Ireland, though it has not been my +fortune to come upon any outward and visible signs of such grinding +misery as forces itself upon you in certain of the richest provinces of +that independent, busy, prosperous, Roman Catholic kingdom of Belgium, +which on a territory little more than one-third as large as the +territory of Ireland, maintains nearly a million more inhabitants, and +adds to its population, on an average, in round numbers, as many people +in four years as Ireland loses in five. + +I have seen peasant proprietors in Flanders and Brabant who could give +the ideal Irish agent of the Nationalist newspapers lessons in +rack-renting, though I am not at all sure that they might not get a hint +or two themselves from some of the small farmers who came in my way in +Ireland. + +Like all countries, mainly agricultural, too, Ireland has suffered a +great deal of late years from the fall in prices following upon a period +of intoxicating prosperity. Whether she has suffered more relatively +than we should have suffered from the same cause in America, had we been +foolish enough to imitate the monometallic policy of Germany in 1873, is +however open to question; and I have an impression, which it will +require evidence to remove, that the actual organisation known as the +National Land League could never have been called into being had the +British Government devoted to action upon the Currency Question, before +1879, the time and energy which it has expended before and since that +date in unsettling the principles of free contract, and tinkering at the +relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland. + +But I am trenching upon inquiries here beyond the province of this book. + +Fortunately it is not necessary to my object in printing these volumes +that I should either form or formulate any positive opinions as to the +origin of the existing crisis in Ireland. Nor need I volunteer any +suggestions of my own as to the methods by which order may best be +maintained and civil government carried on in Ireland. It suffices for +me that I close this self-imposed survey of men and things in that +country with a conviction, as positive as it is melancholy, that the +work which Mr. Redmond, M.P., informed us at Chicago that he and his +Nationalist colleagues had undertaken, of "making the government of +Ireland by England impossible," has been so far achieved, and by such +methods as to make it extremely doubtful whether Ireland can be governed +by anybody at all in accordance with any of the systems of government +hitherto recognised in or adopted for that country. I certainly can see +nothing in the organisation and conduct, down to this time, of the party +known as the party of the Irish Nationalists, I will not say to +encourage, but even to excuse, a belief that Ireland could be governed +as a civilised country were it turned over to-morrow to their control. A +great deal has been done by them to propagate throughout Christendom a +general impression that England has dismally failed to govern Ireland in +the past, and is unlikely hereafter to succeed in governing Ireland. But +even granting this impression to be absolutely well founded, it by no +means follows that Ireland is any more capable of governing herself than +England is of governing her. The Russians have not made a brilliant +success of their administration in Poland, but the Poles certainly +administered Poland no better than the Russians have done. With an Irish +representation in an Imperial British Parliament at Westminster, +Ireland, under Mr. Gladstone's "base and blackguard" Union of 1800, has +at least succeeded in shaking off some of the weightiest of the burdens +by which, in the days of Swift, of Grattan, and of O'Connell, she most +loudly declared herself to be oppressed. Whether with a Parliament at +Dublin she would have fared as well in this respect since 1800 must be a +matter of conjecture merely--and it must be equally a matter of +conjecture also whether she would fare any better in this respect with a +Parliament at Dublin hereafter. I am in no position to pronounce upon +this--but it is quite certain that nothing is more uncommon than to find +an educated and intelligent man, not an active partisan, in Ireland +to-day, who looks forward to the reestablishment, in existing +circumstances, of a Parliament at Dublin with confidence or hope. + +How the establishment of such a Parliament would affect the position of +Great Britain as a power in Europe, and how it would affect the fiscal +policy, and with the fiscal policy the well-being of the British people, +are questions for British subjects to consider, not for me. + +That the processes employed during the past decade, and now employed to +bring about the establishment of such a Parliament, have been, and are +in their nature, essentially revolutionary, subversive of all sound and +healthy relations between man and man, inconsistent with social +stability, and therefore with social progress and with social peace, +what I have seen and heard in Ireland during the past six months compels +me to feel. Of the "Coercion," under which the Nationalist speakers and +writers ask us in America to believe that the island groans and +travails, I have seen literally nothing. + +Nowhere in the world is the press more absolutely free than to-day in +Ireland. Nowhere in the world are the actions of men in authority more +bitterly and unsparingly criticised. If public men or private citizens +are sent to prison in Ireland, they are sent there, not as they were in +America during the civil war, or in Ireland under the "Coercion Act" of +1881, on suspicion of something they may have done, or may have intended +to do, but after being tried for doing, and convicted of having done, +certain things made offences against the law by a Parliament in which +they are represented, and of which, in some cases, they are members. + +To call this "Coercion" is, from the American point of view, simply +ludicrous. What it may be from the British or the Irish point of view is +another affair, and does not concern me. I may be permitted, however, I +hope without incivility, to say that if this be "Coercion" from the +British or the Irish point of view, I am well content to be an American +citizen. Ours is essentially a government not of emotions, but of +statutes, and most Americans, I think, will agree with me that the sage +was right who declared it to be better to live where nothing is lawful +than where all things are lawful. + +The "Coercion" which I have found established in Ireland, and which I +recognise in the title of this book, is the "Coercion," not of a +government, but of a combination to make a particular government +impossible. It is a "Coercion" applied not to men who break a public +law, or offend against any recognised code of morals, but to men who +refuse to be bound in their personal relations and their business +transactions by the will of other men, their equals only, clothed with +no legal authority over them. It is a "Coercion" administered not by +public and responsible functionaries, but by secret tribunals. Its +sanctions are not the law and honest public opinion, but the base +instinct of personal cowardice, and the instinct, not less base, of +personal greed. Whether anything more than a steady, firm administration +of the law is needed to abolish this "Coercion" is a matter as to which +authorities differ. I should be glad to believe with Colonel Saunderson +that "the Leaguers would not hold up the 'land-grabber' to execration, +and denounce him as they do, unless they knew in fact that the moment +the law is made supreme in Ireland the tenants would become just as +amenable to it as any other subjects of the Queen." But some recent +events suggest a doubt whether these "other subjects of the Queen" are +as amenable to the law as my own countrymen are. + +That the Church to which the great majority of the Irish people have for +so many ages, and through so many tribulations, borne steadfast +allegiance, has been shaken in its hold upon the conscience of Ireland +by the machinery of this odious and ignoble "Coercion," appears to me to +be unquestionable. That the head of that Church, being compelled by +evidence to believe this, has found it necessary to intervene for the +restoration of the just spiritual authority of the Church over the Irish +people all the world now knows--nor can I think that his intervention +has come a day or an hour too soon, to arrest the progress in Ireland of +a social disease which threatens, not the political interests of the +empire of which Ireland is a part alone, but the character of the Irish +people themselves, and the very existence among them of the elementary +conditions of a Christian civilisation. + +It would be unjust to the Irish people to forget that this demoralising +"Coercion" against which the Head of the Catholic Church has declared +war, seems to me to have been seriously reinforced by the Land +Legislation of the Imperial Parliament. + +No one denies that great reforms and readjustments of the Land Tenure in +Ireland needed to be made long before any serious attempt was made to +make them. + +But that such reforms and readjustments might have been made without +cutting completely loose from the moorings of political economy, appears +pretty clearly, not only from examples on the continent of Europe, and +in my own country, but from the Rent and Tenancy Acts carried out in +India under the viceroyalty of Lord Dufferin since 1885. The conditions +of these measures were different, of course, in each of the cases of +Oudh, Bengal, and the Punjab, and in none of these cases were they +nearly identical with the conditions of any practicable land measure for +Ireland. But two great characteristics seem to me to mark the Indian +legislation, which are not conspicuous in the legislation for Ireland. + +These are a spirit of equity as between the landlords and the tenants, +and finality. I do not see how it can be questioned that the landlords +of Ireland have been dealt with by recent British legislation as if they +were offenders to be mulcted, and that the tenants in Ireland have been +encouraged by recent British legislation to anticipate an eventual +transfer to them, on steadily improving terms, of the land-ownership of +the island. Mr. Davitt is perhaps the most popular Irishman living, and +I believe him to be sincerely convinced that the ownership of the land +of Ireland (and of all other countries) ought to be vested in the State. +But if the independence of Ireland were acknowledged by Great Britain +to-morrow, and all the actual landlords of Ireland were compelled +to-morrow to part with their ownership, such as it is, of the land, I +believe Mr. Davitt would be further from the recognition and triumph of +his principle of State-ownership than he is to-day with a British +Parliament hostile to "Home Rule," but apparently not altogether +unwilling to make the landlords of Ireland an acceptable burnt-offering +upon the altar of imperial unity. Probably he sees this himself, and the +existing state of things may not be wholly displeasing to him, as +holding out a hope that the flame which he has been helped by British +legislation to kindle in Ireland may already be taking hold upon the +substructions and outworks of the edifice of property in Great Britain +also. + +One thing at least is clear. + +The two antagonistic principles which confront each other in Ireland +to-day are the principles of the Agrarian Revolution represented by Mr. +Davitt, and the principle of Authority, represented in the domain of +politics by the British Government, and in the domain of morals by the +Vatican. With one or the other of these principles the victory must +rest. If the Irish people of all classes who live in Ireland could be +polled to-day, it is likely enough that a decisive majority of them +would declare for the principle of Authority in the State and in the +Church, could that over-riding issue be made perfectly plain and +intelligible to them. But how is that possible? In what country of the +world, and in what age of the world, has it ever been possible to get +such an issue made perfectly plain and intelligible to any people? + +In the domain of morals the principle of Authority, so far as concerns +Catholic Ireland, rests with a power which is not likely to waver or +give way. The Papal Decree has gone forth. Those who profess to accept +it will be compelled to obey it. Those who reject it, whatever their +place in the hierarchy of the Church may be, must sooner or later find +themselves where Dr. M'Glynn of New York now is. Catholic Ireland can +only continue to be Catholic on the condition of obedience, not formal +but real, not in matters indifferent, but in matters vital and +important, to the Head of the Catholic Church. + +In the domain of politics the principle of Authority rests with an +Administration which is at the mercy of the intelligence or the +ignorance, the constancy or the fickleness, the weakness or the +strength, of constituencies in Great Britain, not necessarily familiar +with the facts of the situation in Ireland, not necessarily enlightened +as to the real interests either of Great Britain or of Ireland, nor even +necessarily awake, with Cardinal Manning, to the truth that upon the +future of Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire. + +With two, three, four, or five years of a steady and cool administration +of the laws in Ireland, by an executive officer such as Mr. Balfour +seems to me to have shown himself to be--with a judicious abstinence of +the British Legislature from feverish and fussy legislation about +Ireland, with a prudent and persistent development of the material +resources of Ireland, and with a genuine co-operation of the people who +own land in Ireland with the people who wish to own land in Ireland, for +the readjustment of land-ownership, the principle of Authority in the +domain of politics may doubtless win in the conflict with the principle +of the Agrarian revolution. + +But how many contingencies are here involved! Meanwhile the influences +which imperil in Ireland the principle of Authority, in the domains +alike of politics and of morals, are at work incessantly, to undermine +and deteriorate the character of the Irish people, to take the vigour +and the manhood out of them, to unfit them day by day, not only for good +citizenship in the British Empire or the United States, but for good +citizenship in any possible Ireland under any possible form of +government. To arrest these influences before they bring on in Ireland a +social crash, the effects of which must be felt far beyond the +boundaries of that country, is a matter of primary importance, +doubtless, to the British people. It is a matter, too, of hardly less +than primary importance to the people of my own country. Unfortunately +it does not rest with us to devise or to apply an efficient check to +these influences. + +That rests with the people of Great Britain, so long as they insist that +Ireland shall remain an integral portion of the British dominions. I do +not see how they can acquit themselves of this responsibility, or escape +the consequences of evading it, solely by devising the most ingenious +machinery of local administration for Ireland, or the most liberal +schemes for fostering the material interests of the Irish people. Such +things, of course, must in due time be attended to. But the first duty +of a government is to govern; and I believe that Earl Grey has summed up +the situation in Ireland more concisely and more courageously than any +other British statesman in his outspoken declaration, that "in order to +avert the wreck of the nation, it is absolutely necessary that some +means or other should be found for securing to Ireland during the +present crisis a wiser and more stable administration of its affairs +than can be looked for under its existing institutions." + +I have heard and read a good deal in the past of the "Three F's" thought +a panacea for Irish discontent. Three other F's seem to me quite as +important to the future of Irish content and public order. These are, +Fair Dealing towards Landlords as well as Tenants; Finality of Agrarian +Legislation at Westminster; and last and most essential of all, Fixity +of Executive Tenure. + +The words I have just quoted of Earl Grey, show it to be the conviction +of the oldest living leader of English Liberalism that this last is the +vital point, the key of the situation. Let me bracket with his words, +and leave to the consideration of my readers, the following pregnant +passage from a letter written to me by an Irish correspondent who is as +devoted to Irish independence as is Earl Grey to imperial unity:-- + +"If the present Nationalist movement succeeds, it will have the effect +of putting the worst elements of the Irish nation in power, and keeping +them there irremoveably. We are to have an Executive at the mercy of a +House of Representatives, and the result will be a government, or series +of governments, as weak and vicious as those of France, with this +difference, that here all purifying changes such as seem imminent in +France will be absolutely prevented by the irresistible power of +England. The true model for us would be a constitution like yours in the +United States, with an Executive responsible to the nation at large, and +irremoveable for a term of years. But this we shall never get from +England. Shall we make use of Home Rule to take it for ourselves? + +"Many earnest and active Irish Unionists now say that if any bill +resembling Mr. Gladstone's passes, they will make separation, their +definite policy. If Home Rule comes without the landlords having been +bought out on reasonable terms, a class will be created in Ireland full +of bitter and most just hatred of England--a class which may very likely +one day play the part here which the persecuted Irish Presbyterians who +fled from the tyranny of the English Church in Ireland played in your +own Revolution beyond the Atlantic." + + +<p><hr /></p> + + +APPENDIX. + +NOTE F. + +THE "MOONLIGHTERS" AND "HOME RULE." + +(Vol. ii. p. 38.) + + +On Monday, the 1st of February 1886, the _Irish Times_ published the +following story from Tralee, near the scene of the "boycotting," +temporal and spiritual, of the unfortunate daughters of Mr. Jeremiah +Curtin, murdered in his own house by "moonlighters":-- + + "TRALEE, _Sunday_. + + "It was stated that the bishop had ordered Mass to be celebrated + for them--the Curtins--but this did not take place. At the village + of Firies a number of people had assembled. They stopped loitering + about the place in the forenoon, waiting for a meeting of the + National League, which was subsequently held. A threatening notice + was discovered posted up on the door of a house formerly used as a + forge. It ran as follows:-- + + "'NOTICE.--If we are honoured by the presence of the bloodthirsty + perjurers at Mass on any of the forthcoming Sundays, take good care + you'll stand up very politely and walk out. Don't be under the + impression that all the Moonlighters are dead, and that this notice + is a child's play, as Shawn Nelleen titled the last one. I'll be + sure to keep my word, as you will see before long, so have no + welcome for the Curtins, and, above all, let no one work for them + in any way. As you respect the Captain, and as you value your own + life, abide by this notice.'--Signed, 'A MOONLIGHTER.' + + "The above notice was written on tea paper in large legible style, + and evidently by an intelligent person. Groups were perusing it + during the day. A force of police marched through the village and + back, but did not observe this document, as it is still posted on + the door of the house." + +The "bloodthirsty perjurers" here mentioned were the daughters who had +dared to demand and to promote the punishment of the assassins of their +father! For this crime these daughters were to be excommunicated by the +people of Firies, and denied the consolations of religion in their deep +sorrow, even in defiance of the order of the Catholic bishop. + +As the advent of Mr. Gladstone to power in alliance with Mr. Parnell was +then imminent, Mr. Sheehan, M.P., wrote a letter to the parish priest of +Firies, the Rev. Mr. O'Connor, begging him in substance to put the +brakes--for a time--upon the wheels of the local rack, lest the outcries +of the young women subjected to this moral torture should interfere with +the success of the new alliance. This, in plain English, is the only +possible meaning of the letter which I here reprint from a leaflet +issued by an Irish society:-- + + "The Rev. Father O'Connor, P.P., has received the following letter + from Mr. Sheehau, M.P., in reference to this matter, under date + + "'House of Commons, _January 26th._ + + "'REV. DEAR SIR,--At this important juncture in our history, I am + sorry to see reports of the Firies display. Nothing that has taken + place yet in the South of Ireland has done so much harm to the + National cause. If they persist they will ruin us. To-morrow + evening will be most important in Parliamentary history. Our party + expect the defeat of the Government and resumption of power by Mr. + Gladstone. If we succeed in this, which we are confident of, the + future of our country will be great, and, although an appeal to the + constituencies must be made, the Irish party in those few days have + made an impression in future that no Government can withstand. The + Salisbury Government want to appeal to the country on the integrity + of the empire, and, of course, for the last few days have tried all + means to lead to this by raking up the Curtin case and all judicial + cases, which _must be avoided for a short time_, as our stoppage to + the Eviction Act will cover all this.--Yours faithfully, J.D. + SHEEHAN.'" + +This letter was read, the leaflet informs us, by the Rev. Mr. O'Connor, +at the National Schools and other places. + + + +NOTE G. + +THE PONSONBY PROPERTY. + +(Vol. ii. pp. 59-66.) + + +The account which the Rev. Canon Keller gave me of "The Struggle for +Life on the Ponsonby Estate," in a tract bearing that title, and +authorised by him to be published by the National League, is so +circumstantial and elaborate that, after reading it carefully, I took +unusual pains to obtain some reply to it from the representatives of the +landlord implicated. These finally led to a visit from Mr. Ponsonby +himself, who was so kind as to call upon me in London on the 15th of +May, with papers and documents. I give in the following colloquy the +results of this interview, putting together with the allegations of +Canon Keller the answers of Mr. Ponsonby, and leave the matter in this +form to the judgment of my readers. + +_Q_. Canon Keller, I see, describes you, Mr. Ponsonby, as "a retired +navy officer, and an absentee Irish landlord." He says your estate is +now "universally known as the famous Ponsonby Estate," and that it is +occupied "by from 300 to 400 tenants, holding farms varying in extent +from an acre and a half to over two hundred acres." Are these statements +correct? + +_A_. I am a retired navy officer certainly, and perhaps I may be called +an "absentee Irish landlord." I lived on my property for some time, and +I have always attended to it. I succeeded to the estate in 1868, and +almost my first act was to borrow L2000 of the Board of Works for +drainage purposes--the tenants agreeing to pay half the interest. As a +matter of fact some never paid at all, and I afterwards wiped out the +claims against them. There are about 300 tenants on the property, and +the average holdings are of about 36 acres, at an average rental of L30 +a holding. There are, however, not a few large farms. + +_Q_. Canon Keller says that "in the memory of living witnesses, and far +beyond it, the Ponsonby tenants have been notoriously rack-rented and +oppressed"; and that they have been committed to the "tender mercies of +agents, seeing little or nothing of their landlord, and experiencing no +practical sympathy from that quarter." How is this? + +_A_. I wish to believe Canon Keller truthful when he knows the truth. He +certainly does not know the truth here. He is a newcomer at Youghal, +having come there in November 1885, and hardly so much of an authority +about "the memory of living witnesses and far beyond it" as the tenants +on the estate, who, when I went there first with my wife, presented to +me, May 25, 1868, an address of welcome, referring in very different +terms to the history of the estate and of my family connection with it. +Here is the original address, and a copy of it--the latter being quite +at your service. + +This original address is very handsomely engrossed, and is signed by +fifty tenants. Among the names I observed those of Martin Loughlin, +Peter McDonough, Michael Gould, William Forrest, and John Heaphey, all +of whom are cited by Canon Keller in his tract as conspicuous victims of +the oppression and rack-renting which he says have prevailed upon the +Ponsonby estates time out of mind. It was rather surprising, therefore, +to find them joining with more than forty other tenants to sign an +address, of which I here print the text:-- + + To C.W. TALBOT PONSONBY, Esq. + + Honoured Sir,--The Tenantry of your Estates near Youghal have heard + with extreme pleasure of the arrival of yourself and lady in the + neighbourhood, and have deputed us to address you on their behalf. + + Through us they bid you and Mrs. Ponsonby welcome, and respectfully + congratulate you on your accession to the Estates. + + The name of Ponsonby is traditionally revered in this part of the + country, being associated in the recollections and impressions of + the people with all that is exalted, honourable, and generous. It + has been matter of regret that the heads of the family have not + (probably from uncontrollable causes) visited these Estates for + many years, but the tenantry have never wavered in their sentiments + of respect towards them. + + We will not disguise from you the conviction generally entertained + that the improvement of landed property, and the condition of its + occupiers, is best promoted under the personal observation and + supervision of the proprietor, and your tenantry on that account + hail with satisfaction the promise your presence affords of future + intercourse between you and them. + + Again, on the part of your Tenants and all connected with your + Estates, tendering you and your lady a most hearty welcome, and + sincerely wishing you and her a long and happy career--We subscribe + ourselves, Honoured Sir, Respectfully yours, + + YOUGHAL, _May_ 1868. + +_Q_. Did Canon Keller ever see this address, may I ask, Mr. Ponsonby? + +_A_. I believe not; and I may as well say at once that I suppose he has +taken for gospel all the stories which any of the tenants under the +terrorism which has been established on the place think it best to pour +into his listening ear. As I have said, he is quite a new man at +Youghal, and when he first came there he was a quiet and not at all +revolutionary priest. You saw him, and saw how good his manners are, and +that he is a well-educated man. But on Sunday, November 7, 1886, a great +meeting was held at Youghal. It was a queer meeting for a Sunday, being +openly a political meeting, with banners and bands, to hear speeches +from Mr. Lane, M.P., Mr. Flynn, M.P., and others. The Rev. Mr. Keller +presided, and a priest from America, Father Hayes of Georgetown, Iowa, +in the United States, was present. It was ostensibly a Home Rule +meeting, but the burden of the speeches was agrarian. Mr. Lane, M.P., +made a bitter personal attack on another Nationalist member, Sir Joseph +M'Kenna of Killeagh, calling him a "heartless and inhuman landlord;" and +my property was also attended to by Mr. Lane, who advised my tenants +openly not to accept my offer of 20 per cent. reduction, but to demand +40 per cent. Father Hayes in his speech bade "every man stand to his +guns," and wound up by declaring that if England and the landlords +behaved in America as they behaved in Ireland, the Americans "would pelt +them not only with dynamite, but with the lightnings of Heaven and the +fires of hell, till every British bull-dog, whelp, and cur would be +pulverised and made top-dressing for the soil." Canon Keller afterwards +expressed disapproval of this speech of Hayes, and this coming to the +knowledge of Hayes in America, Hayes denounced Keller for not daring to +do this at the time in his presence. Since then Canon Keller has been +much more violent in tone. + +_Q_. I don't want to carry you through a long examination, Mr. Ponsonby, +but I see typical cases here, about which I should like to ask a +question or two. Here, is Callaghan Flavin, for instance, described by +Canon Keller as one of eight tenants who "had to retreat before the +crowbar brigade," and who "deserved a better fate." Canon Keller says he +is assured by a competent judge that Flavin's improvements, "full value +for L341, 10s.," are now "the landlord's property." What are the facts +about Mr. Flavin? + +_A_. Mr. Flavin's farm was held by his cousin, Ellen Flavin of Gilmore, +who, on the 7th of February 1872, surrendered it to the landlord on +receiving from me a sum of L172, 10s. 6d. I obtained a charging order +under section 27 of the Land Act, entitling me to an annuity of L8, 12s. +6d. for thirty-five years from July 3, 1872. It was let to Callaghan +Flavin in preference to other applicants, July 3, 1872; and in 1873, at +his request, I obtained a loan from the Board of Works for the thorough +draining of a portion of the farm. Thirteen acres were drained at a cost +of L84, 6s. 3d., for which the tenant promised to pay 5 per cent. +interest, which I eventually forgave him. There was no house on the +farm. He took it without one, and I did not want one there. He built a +house himself without consulting my agent, and then wanted me to make +him an allowance for it. I told him he had thirty-one years to enjoy it +in, and must be content with that. About the same time he took another +farm of mine at a rent of L35. Since I came into my property in 1868 I +have laid out upon it in drainage, buildings, and planting--here are the +accounts, which you may look at--over L15,000, including about L8000 of +loans from the Board of Works. In the drainage the tenants got work for +which they were paid. I gave them slates for the buildings, with timber +and stone from the estate, and they supplied the labour. There is no +case in which the outlays for improvements came from the tenants--not a +single one. I repeat it, Canon Keller's tract is a tissue of fictions. + +What nonsense it is to talk about the "traditional rack-renting" of a +property held by the Ponsonbys for two hundred years, the tenants on +which could welcome me when I came into it with the language of the +address you have here seen! + +I never evicted tenants for less than three years' arrears, till what +Canon Keller calls the "crowbar brigade," by which he means the officers +of the law, had to be put into action to meet the "Plan of Campaign" in +May last. I did not proceed against the tenants because they could not +pay. I selected the tenants who could pay, and who were led, or, I +believe in most cases, "coerced," into refusing to pay by agitators with +Mr. Lane, M.P., to inspire them, and Canon Keller, P.P., to glorify them +in a tract. + +_Q_. What were your personal relations with the tenants when you were at +Inchiquin? + +_A_. Always most friendly; and even the other day when I was there, +while none of them would speak to me when they were all together, those +I met individually touched their hats, and were as civil as ever. I +believe they would all be thankful to have things as they were, and I +have never refused to meet and treat with them on fair individual terms. + +In November 1885 my offer of an abatement of 15 per cent. being refused, +a few tenants, I believe, clubbed their rents, and for the sake of peace +I then offered 20 per cent., which they accepted and paid. In October +1886 I hoped to prevent trouble by making the same offer of 20 per cent. +abatement on non-judicial and 10 per cent. on judicial rents. One man +took the latter abatement and paid. Then another tenant demanded 40 per +cent. My agent said he would give them time, and also take money on +account, the effect of which would be to put me out of court, and +prevent my getting an order of ejectment if I wanted to for the balance. +I thought this fair, and approved it, but I refused to make a 40 per +cent. all-round abatement, authorising my agent, however, to make what +abatements he liked in special cases. My words were, "I don't limit you +on the amount of abatement you give, or as to the number of tenants you +may choose so to treat." If this was not a fair free hand, what would +be? My agent afterwards told me he had no chance to make this known. The +fact is they meant to force the Plan on the tenants and me, and to +prevent any settlement but a "victory for the League!" + +In my original notes of my conversation with Father Keller at Youghal, I +found the name of one tenant whom he introduced to me, and who certainly +told me that his holdings amounted to some L300 a year, and that they +had been in his family for "two hundred years," set down as Doyle--I so +printed it with the statements made. But Father Keller, to whom I +submitted my proofs, and who was so good as to revise them, struck out +the name of Doyle, and inserted that of Loughlin, putting the rental +down at L94 (vol. ii. p. 71). Of course I accept this correction. But on +my mentioning the matter to Mr. Ponsonby by letter, he replies to me +(July 27th) as follows:-- + + "Maurice Doyle is a son of Richard Doyle, who died in 1876, leaving + his widow to carry on his farm of 74 acres 1 rood, in the townland + of Ballykitty, which he held in 1858 at a rental of L50, 11s. In + 1868 this was reduced to L48, 11s. In September 1871 he took in + addition a farm of 159 acres 2 roods at L130, in Burgen and + Ballykitty. He afterwards got a lease for thirty-one years of this + larger farm, with a portion of his earlier holding, for L155. This + left him to pay L21, 11s. for the residue of the earlier holding as + in 1858. But at his request, in 1876, the year of his death, I + reduced this to L17. + + "In March 1879, by the death of Mr. Henry Hall, in whose family it + had been for certainly a century, the Inchiquin farm of 213 acres, + valued at L258, 10s., came on my hands. This farm was valued in + 1873 by one valuer at L384, 10s., and by another at L390, 10s. In + an old lease I find that this farm was let at L3 an acre. Mr. Henry + Hall to the day of his death held it at L306, 7s. 6d., under a + lease which I made a lease for life. For this farm Mrs. Richard + Doyle applied, agreeing to take it on a 31 years' lease, at L370 a + year. I let it to her, and she became the lease-holder, putting in + her son Maurice Doyle to take charge of it, though not as the + tenant. He was an active Land Leaguer from the moment he got into + the place, and in 1886 he was a leader in promoting the Plan of + Campaign. Proceedings had to be taken against his mother in order + to eject him, as she was the tenant, not he. I objected to this, + for I always have had the greatest regard for her. Had she been let + alone she would have paid her rent as she had always done. But Mr. + Lane and his allies saw it would never do to let Maurice Doyle + retain his place on his mother's holding. All this will show you + that Maurice Doyle did not inherit the Inchiquin farm. The only + inherited holding of his mother is the farm of 74 acres 1 rood in + the townland of Ballykitty, held by his father in 1858. I have no + doubt you saw Doyle at Youghal, by the description you gave me, and + you remembered his name at once. He was a thickset heavy-looking + man, florid, with a military moustache, the last time I saw him. + His mother is one of the 'rack-rented' tenants you hear of, having + been able in ten years to increase her acreage from 74 acres to 376 + acres, and her rental from L48, 11s. to L542!" + + +As to the general effect of all this business upon the tenants, and upon +himself, Mr. Ponsonby spoke most feelingly. "The tenants are ruined +where they might have been thriving. My means of being useful to them or +to myself are taken away. My charges, though, all remain. I have to pay +tithes for Protestant Church service, of which I can't have the benefit, +the churches being closed; and the other day I had a notice that any +property I had in England would be held liable for quit-rents to the +Crown on my property in Ireland, of which the Government denies me +practically any control or use!" + + + +NOTE G2. + +THE GLENBEHY EVICTION FUND. + +(Vol. ii. p. 12.) + + +In the _London Times_ of September 15 appears the following letter from +the Land Agent whom I saw at Glenbehy, setting forth the effect of this +"Glenbehy Eviction Fund" upon the morals of the tenants and the peace of +the place:-- + + _To the Editor of the Times._ + + "Sir,--Although nearly eighteen months have elapsed since the + evictions on the Glenbehy estate, after which the above-named fund + was started and largely subscribed to by the sympathetic British + public, I think it only fair to throw a little light on the manner + in which this fund has been expended, and the effects which are + still felt in consequence of the money not yet being exhausted. + + "It was generally supposed that the tenants then evicted were in + such poor circumstances as to be unable to settle, whereas, as a + matter of fact, they were, and are, with a few exceptions, the most + well-to-do on the estate, having, for the most part, from five to + fifteen head of cattle, in addition to sheep, pigs, etc. + + "Among the tenants evicted at that time many had not paid rents + since 1879, and had been in illegal occupation since 1884, from + which latter date the landlord was responsible for taxes, provided + it is proved that sufficient distress cannot be made of the lands. + These tenants were offered a clear receipt to May 1, 1886, if they + paid half a year's rent, which would scarcely have paid the cost of + proceedings, and the landlord would therefore have been put to + actual loss. These people, though well able to settle, are given to + understand that as soon as they do so their participation in the + eviction fund will cease, and thus it will be seen that a direct + premium is being paid to dishonesty. + + "In one case a widow woman was summoned for being on the farm from + which she was at that time evicted. Finding out that one of her + children was ill, I applied to the magistrate at the hearing of the + case only to impose a nominal fine. In consequence she was fined + one penny, but sooner than pay this she went to gaol, though she + had several head of cattle and, prior to her eviction, a very nice + farm. The case of this woman fairly illustrates the combination + which has existed to avoid the fulfilment of obligations. + + "The amount of fines paid for similar offences comes, in several + instances, to nearly what I require to effect a settlement. Some of + the tenants actually wrote to the late agent on this estate begging + him to evict them in order that they might come in for a share of + the money raised for the relief of distress, and this clearly shows + beyond dispute that the well-meaning subscribers to the fund will + be more or less responsible for any further evictions to which it + may be necessary to resort. I may mention that the parish priest is + one of the trustees for the money which is thus being used for the + purpose of preventing settlements and keeping the place in a + continual state of turmoil. + + "Judge Currane, at the January sessions held at Killarney this + year, ruled in about fifty ejectment cases on this estate that + tenants owing one and a half to nine years' rent should pay half a + year's rent and costs within a week, a quarter of a year's rent by + June 1, and a quarter of a year's rent by October 1; arrears to be + cancelled. Some of these, owing to non-compliance with the Judge's + ruling, may have to be evicted, and their eviction will be what is + termed the unrooting of peasants' houses and the ejectment of + overburdened tenants for not paying impossible rents. + + "I confess I am at a loss to understand how Mr. Parnell's Arrears + Act would have improved matters or have averted what one of your + contemporaries calls a "painful scandal."--I am, Sirs, yours, &c., + + "D. TODD-THORNTON, J.P., Land Agent. + + "Glenbehy, Killarney." + + + +NOTE G. + +HOME RULE AND PROTESTANTISM. + +(Vol. ii. p. 68.) + + +I fear that all the "Nationalist" clergy in Ireland are not as careful +as Father Keller to avoid giving occasion for this impression that Irish +autonomy would be followed by a persecution of the Protestants. But a +little more than three years ago, for example, the following circular +was issued by the Bishop of Ossory, and affixed to the door of the +churches in his diocese. Who can wonder that it should have been +regarded by Protestants in that diocese as a direct stirring up of +bitter religious animosities against them? Or that, emanating directly +as it did from a bishop of the Church, it should be represented as +emanating indirectly from the Head of the Church himself at Rome? + + "_Kilkenny, April 16th, 1885._ + + "REV. DEAR SIR,--May I ask you to read the following circular for + the people at each of the Masses on Sunday, 19th April? + + "The course to be adopted for the future by the Priest of the Parish + to whom notice of a Mixed Marriage is given by the Minister, or the + Registrar, is as follows:--he makes the following entry on the book + of Parochial announcements, and reads it three consecutive Sundays + from the Altar:-- + + "'The Priests of the Parish have received the following notice of a + marriage to be celebrated between a Catholic and a Protestant. [Here + read Registrar's notice in full.] We have now to inform you that the + law of the Catholic Church regarding such marriages is: that the + Catholic party contracting marriage before a Registrar or other + unauthorised person is, by the very fact of so doing, + Excommunicated; and the witnesses to such marriage are also + Excommunicated.' + + "I should be very much obliged if, as occasion may require, you + would explain the effects of this Excommunication from the Altar. + + "You will please take notice that the Registrar or Minister is bound + legally to send the notice of marriage referred to above, and also, + that in reading it out _in the form, and with the accompanying + remarks above_, you incur no legal penalty. + + "I feel sure that with your accustomed zeal you will do everything + in your power to prevent abuses in regard to the Sacrament of + Matrimony, which is great in Christ and the Church, and to induce + the faithful to prepare for receiving it by Prayer, by works of + Charity, and by approaching the Sacrament of Penance to purify their + souls.--Yours faithfully in Christ, + + [Image: Cross] A. BROWNRIGG." + + + "MY DEAR BRETHREN,--We have been very much pained to learn, within + the past month, that marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics + have increased very much in this city of Kilkenny. Many + _evil-disposed_ persons, utterly unmindful of the prohibitions of + the Church, and regardless of the dreadful consequences they bring + on themselves, have not hesitated to enter into those _unholy + matrimonial alliances_ called "Mixed Marriages," which the Catholic + Church has always _hated and detested_. Those misguided Catholics, + who do not deserve the name, have not blushed to go, in some + instances, before the Protestant Minister, in other instances, + before the Public Registrar, to ask them to assist at their marriage + with a Protestant. By contracting marriage in this way, they run a + great risk of bringing on themselves and on their children, should + they have any, the _maledictions_ of Heaven instead of the blessings + of religion. In order to put a stop to this growing abuse, and to + prevent it from spreading like a contagion to other parts of the + Diocese, we beg to remind the faithful of certain regulations which, + for the future, shall have force in the Diocese of Ossory in + reference to the Catholics, who so far forget themselves as to + contract such marriages. + + "1. In the first place, any one who contracts a "Mixed Marriage" + without a dispensation from the Holy See and before a Protestant + Minister or a Registrar is, by the very fact, guilty of a most + grievous mortal sin by violating a solemn law of the Church in a + most grave matter. + + "2. The Catholic who assists as witness at such marriage also + commits a most grievous sin by co-operating in an unlawful act. + + "3. Both the Catholic party contracting the marriage and the + Catholic witnesses to it cannot be absolved by any priest in the + Diocese of Ossory, unless by the Bishop or by those to whom he + grants special faculties. + + "4. In order more effectually to deter people from entering into + _those detestable marriages_, the penalty of _Excommunication_ + is hereby attached to that sin both for the Catholic _contracting_ + party as also for the Catholic _witnesses_ to such marriage. + + "5. The notice which the Protestant Rector or the Registrar is + legally bound in such cases to send to the Parish Priest of the + Catholic party, will be read from the Altar for three consecutive + Sundays, and thus the _crime_ of the offending party brought out + into open light before his or her fellow-parishioners. + + "6. For the rest, we hope the sense of decency and religion of the + Catholic people and their Pastors shall be no more hurt by any + Catholic entering into those marriages, so full of, misery and evil + of every kind for themselves, their children, and society at + large.--Yours faithfully in Christ, + + [Image: Cross] ABRAHAM, Bishop of Ossory. + + + +NOTE H. + +TULLY AND THE WOODFORD EVICTIONS. + +(Vol. ii. p. 149.) + + +Since the first edition of this book was published certain "evictions" +mentioned in it as impending on the Clanricarde estates have been +carried out. I have no reason to suppose that there was more or less +reason for carrying out these evictions than there usually is, not in +Ireland only, but all over the civilised world, for a resort by the +legal owners of property to legal means of recovering the possession of +it from persons who fail to comply with the terms on which it was put +into their keeping. Whether this failure results from dishonesty or from +misfortune is a consideration not often allowed, I think, to affect the +right of the legal owner of the property concerned to his legal remedy +in any other country but Ireland, nor even in Ireland in the case of any +property other than property in land. But as what I learned on the spot +touching the general condition of the Clanricarde tenants, and touching +the conduct and character of Lord Clanricarde's agent, Mr. Tener, led me +to take a special interest in these evictions, I asked him to send me +some account of them. In reply he gave me a number of interesting +details. + +The only serious attempt at resisting the execution of the law was made +by "Dr." Tully, one of the leading local "agitators," to the tendency of +whose harangues judicial reference was made during the investigation +into the case of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt. Tully had a holding of seventeen +acres at a rent of L2, 10s., the Government valuation being L4. He +earned a good livelihood as a boat-builder, and he had put up a slated +house on his holding. But in November 1884 he chose to stop paying the +very low rent at which he held his place, and he has paid no rent since +that time. As is stated in a footnote on page 153, vol. ii. of this +book, a decree was granted against Tully by Judge Henn for three years' +rent due in May 1887, and his equity of redemption having expired July +9, 1888, this recourse was had to the law against him. + +As the leading spirit of the agitation, Tully had put a garrison into +his house of twelve men and two women. He had dug a ditch around it, +taken out the window-sashes, filled up the casements and the doorways +with stones and trunks of trees. Portholes had been pierced under the +roof, through which the defenders might thrust red-hot pikes, +pitchforks, and other weapons, and empty pails of boiling water upon the +assailants. A brief parley took place. Tully refused to make any offer +of a settlement unless the agent would agree to reinstate all the +evicted tenants, to which Mr. Tener replied that he would recognise no +"combination," but was ready to deal with every tenant fairly and +individually. Finally the Sheriff ordered his men to take the place. +Ladders were planted, and while some of the constables, under the +protection of a shield covered with zinc, a sort of Roman _testudo_, +worked at removing the earthern ramparts, others nimbly climbed to the +roof and began to break in from above. In their excitement the garrison +helped this forward by breaking holes through the roof themselves to get +at the attacking party, and in about twenty minutes the fortress was +captured, and the inmates were prisoners. Two constables were burned by +the red-hot pikes, the gun of another was broken to pieces by a huge +stone, and a fourth was slightly wounded by a fork. One of the defenders +got a sword-cut; and Tully was brought forth as one too severely wounded +to walk. Upon investigation, however, the surgeon refused to certify +that he was unable to undergo the ordinary imprisonment in such cases +made and provided. + +The collapse of the resistance at this central point was followed by a +general surrender. + +After the capture of Tully's house, Mr. Tener writes to me, "I found it +being gutted by his family, who would have carried it away piecemeal. +They had already taken away the flooring of one of the rooms." Thereupon +Mr. Tener had the house pulled down, with the result of seeing a +statement made in a leading Nationalist paper that he was "evicting the +tenants and pulling down their houses." + +"Yesterday," Mr. Tener writes to me on the 9th of September, "I walked +twenty-five miles, visiting thirty farms about Portumna. Except in two +or three cases, the tenants have ample means, and part of the live stock +alone on the farms, exclusive of the crops, would suffice to pay all the +rents I had demanded. On the farms recently 'evicted,' I found treble +the amount of the rent due in live stock alone." + +As to one case of these recent evictions, I found it stated in an Irish +journal that a young man, who had been ill of consumption for two years, +the son of a tenant, was removed from the house, the local physician +refusing to certify that he was unfit for removal, and that he died a +few days afterwards. The implication was obvious, and I asked Mr. Tener +for the facts. + +He replied, "This young man, John Fahey, was in consumption, but did not +appear to be in any danger. Dr. Carte, an Army surgeon, examined him, +and said there was no immediate danger. The day was fine and he walked +about wrapped in a comfortable coat, and talked with me and others. His +father, a respectable man, made no attempt to defend his house; and at +his request, after the crowd had gone away, my man in charge permitted +the invalid and the family to reoccupy the house temporarily because of +his illness. There was no inquest, and no need of any, after his death. +His father, Patrick Fahey, had means to pay, but told me he 'could not,' +which meant he 'dared not.' I went to him personally twice, and sent him +many messages. But the terror of the League was upon the poor man. + +"An interesting case is that of Michael Fahey, of Dooras. In 1883 his +rent was judicially reduced about 5 per cent., from L33 to L31, 5s. His +house and all about it is substantial and comfortable. His father, about +thirty years ago, fought for a whole night and bravely beat off a party +of 'Terry-Alts,' the 'Moonlighters' of that day. For his courage the +Government presented him with a gun, of which the son is very proud. +Pity he did not inherit the pluck with the gun of his parent! + +"I had been privately told that this tenant would pay; but that he would +first produce a doctor's certificate that his old mother could not be +moved. He did give the Sheriff a carefully worded document to show this, +but it was so vague that I objected to its being received by the +Sheriff. Upon this (not before! mark the craft of even a well-disposed +Irish tenant in those evil days), I was asked to go into the house. I +went in and entered the parlour. There the tenant told me he would pay +the year's rent and the costs, amounting to L50. He had risen from his +seat to fetch the money, when, lo! Father Egan (the priest upon whose +head the widow of the murdered Finlay called down the curse of God in +the open street of Woodford) appeared in the doorway. He had come in on +a pretence of seeing the old mother of the tenant, who had (for that +occasion) taken to her bed. The bedroom lay beyond the parlour, and was +entered from it. The tenant actually shook with fear as Father Egan +passed through, and I thought all hope of a settlement gone, when +suddenly the officer of the police came in, passed into the bedroom, and +told Father Egan he must withdraw. This Father Egan refused to do, +whereupon the officer said very quietly, 'I shall remove you forthwith +if you do not go out quietly.' Upon this Father Egan hastily left. The +tenant then went into the bedroom and soon reappeared with the L50 in +bank-notes, which he paid me. All this was dramatic enough. But the +comedy was next performed in front of the house, where all could see it, +of handing to the Sheriff the alleged doctor's certificate, and of my +saying aloud that 'in the circumstances' I had no objection to his +receiving it! After this all the forces proceeded to take their luncheon +on the green bank sloping down to the Shannon in front of the +farm-house. There is a fine orchard on the place, and it recalled to me +some of the farms I saw in Virginia. + +"I had gone into the house again, and was standing near the fire in the +kitchen, where some of my escort were taking their luncheon. It is a +large kitchen, and perhaps a dozen people were in it, when in came +Father Egan again and called to the tenant Fahey, 'Put out those +policemen, and do not suffer one of them to remain.' + +"The sergeant instantly said, 'We are here on duty, Father Egan, and if +you dare to try to intimidate this tenant, I shall either put you out or +arrest you.' + +"'Yes,' I interposed, looking at the sergeant, 'you are certainly here +on duty, and in the name of the law, and it is sad to see a clergyman +here in the interest of an illegal, criminal, and rebellious movement, +and of the immoral Plan of Campaign.' + +"'Oh!' exclaimed Father Egan, 'the opinion of the agent of the Marquis +of Clanricarde is valuable, truly!' + +"'I give you,' I said, 'not my opinion, but the opinion of Dr. Healy and +Dr. O'Dwyer, bishops of your Church, and men worthy of all respect and +reverence. And I am sorry to know that some ecclesiastics deserve no +respect, but that at their doors lies the main responsibility for the +misery and the crime which afflict our unhappy country. I feel sure a +just God will punish them in due time.' + +"Father Egan made no reply, but paused a moment, and then walked out of +the house. + +"At the next house, that of Dennis Fahey, we found a still better +dwelling. Here we had another mock certificate, but we received the rent +with the costs." + + + +NOTE H2. + +BOYCOTTING THE DEAD. + +(Vol. ii. p. 151.) + + +The following official account sent to me (July 24) of an affair in +Donegal, the result of the gospel of "Boycotting" taught in that region, +needs and will bear no comment. + +Patrick Cavanagh came to reside at Clonmany, County Donegal, about two +months ago, as caretaker on some evicted farms. He died on Wednesday +evening, June 20th, having received the full rites of the Roman Catholic +Church. The people had displayed no ill-will towards him during his +brief residence at Clonmany, and on the evening of his death his body +was washed and laid out by some women. On Thursday two townsmen dug his +grave, where pointed out by Father Doherty, P.P. + +The first symptom of change of feeling was that on Thursday every +carpenter applied to had some excuse for not making a coffin for the +body of deceased. On Friday morning the grave was found to be filled +with stones, and a deputation waited on Father Doherty to protest +against Cavanagh's burial in the chapel graveyard. He told them to go +home and mind their business. About 10.30 A.M. on Friday the chapel bell +was rung--not tolled or rung as for service, but faster. The local +sergeant of police went to the cemetery; when he arrived there the +tolling ceased. He then went to Father Doherty, who told those present +that their conduct was such as to render them unfit for residence +anywhere but in a savage country. He told them to go to their homes, and +advised them to allow the corpse to be buried in the grave he had marked +out. After Father Doherty had left, the people condemned his +interference, and said they would not allow any stranger to be buried in +the graveyard. When Constable Brady put it to those present that their +real objection did not lie in the fact that Cavanagh had been a +stranger, he was not contradicted. + +The body was ultimately buried at Carndonagh on Saturday, several people +remaining in the graveyard at Clonmany all through the night (Friday) +till the body was taken to Carndonagh for burial. + +At Carndonagh Petty Sessions, on the 18th July 1888, Con. Doherty and +Owen Doherty, with five others, were prosecuted for unlawful assembly on +the occasion above referred to. The first two named, who were the +ringleaders, were convicted, and sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment +each with hard labour; the charges against the remainder were dismissed. + + + +NOTE I. + +POST-OFFICE SAVINGS BANKS. + +(Vol. i. p. 117; vol. ii. pp. 5, 12, 66, 95, 200, 248.) + + +As the Post-Office Savings Banks represent the smaller depositors, and +command special confidence among them even in the disturbed districts, I +print here an official statement showing the balances due to depositors +in the undermentioned offices, situated in certain of the most disturbed +regions I visited, on the 31st December of the years 1880 and 1887 +respectively:-- + + +-----------------+-----------------+---------------+ + | OFFICE. | 1880. | 1887. | + +-----------------+-----------------+---------------+ + | | L s. d. | L s. d. | + | Bunbeg, | 1,270 6 7 | 1,206 18 2 | + | Falcarragh, | 62 15 10 | 494 10 8 | + | Gorey, | 3,690 14 4 | 5,099 5 7 | + | Inch, |[A] 8 11 0 | 209 7 5 | + | Killorglin, | 282 15 9 | 1,299 2 6 | + | Loughrea, | 5,500 19 9 | 6,311 4 11 | + | Mitchelstown, | 1,387 13 2 | 2,846 9 3 | + | Portumna, | 2,539 10 11 | 3,376 5 4 | + | Sixmilebridge, | 382 17 10 | 934 13 4 | + | Stradbally, | 1,812 14 8 | 2,178 18 2 | + | Woodford, | 259 14 6 | 1,350 17 11 | + | Youghal, | 3,031 0 7 | 7,038 7 2 | + +-----------------+-----------------+---------------+ + [A] This Office was not opened for Savings Bank + business until the year 1881, the amount shown + being balance due on the 31st December 1882. + +It appears from this table that the deposits in these Savings Banks +increased in the aggregate from L20,329, 15s. 11d. in 1880 to L32,347, +9s. 7d. in 1887, or almost 60 per cent, in seven years. They fell off in +only one case, at Bunbeg, and there only to a nominal amount. At Youghal +they much more than doubled, increasing about 133 per cent. Yet in all +these places the Plan of Campaign has been invoked "because the people +were penniless and could not pay their debts!" + + + +NOTE K. + +THE COOLGREANY EVICTIONS. + +(Vol. ii. p. 216.) + + +Captain Hamilton sends me the following graphic account of this affair +at Coolgreany:-- + +In the _Freeman's Journal_ of the 16th December 1886, it is reported +that a meeting of the Brooke tenantry, the Rev. P. O'Neill in the chair, +was held at Coolgreany on the Sunday previous to the 15th December 1886, +the date on which the "Plan of Campaign" was adopted on the estate, at +which it was resolved that if I refused the terms offered they would +join the "Plan." + +I had no conference at Freeman's house or anywhere else at any time with +two parish priests. On the 15th December 1886, when seated in Freeman's +house waiting to receive the rents, four priests, a reporter of the +_Freeman's Journal_, some local reporters, and four of the tenants +rushed into the room; and the priests in the rudest possible manner (the +Rev. P. Farrelly, one of them, calling me "Francy Hyne's hangman," and +other terms of abuse) informed me that unless I re-instated a former +Roman Catholic tenant in a farm which he had previously held, and which +was then let to a Protestant, and gave an abatement of 30 per cent., no +rent would be paid _me_ that day. Dr. Dillon, C.C., was not present on +this occasion, or, if so, I do not remember seeing him. + +On my asking if I had no alternative but to concede to their demand, the +Rev. Mr. Dunphy, parish priest, replied, "None other; do not think, sir, +we have come here to-day to do honour to you." + +The Rev. P. O'Neill spoke as he always does, in a more gentlemanly and +conciliatory manner, and I therefore, as the confusion in the room was +great, offered to discuss the matter with him, the Rev. O'Donel, C.C., +and the tenants, if the other priests, who were strangers to me, and the +reporters would leave the room. This the Rev. Mr. Dunphy declared they +would not do, and I accordingly refused further to discuss the matter. + +After they left the house, one of the tenants, Mick Darcy, stepped +forward and said, "Settle with us, Captain." I replied, "Certainly, if +you come back with me into the house." The Rev. Mr. Dunphy took him by +the collar of his coat and threw him against the wall of the house, then +turning to me with his hand raised said, "You shall not do so; we, who +claim the temporal as well as spiritual power over _you_ as well as +these poor creatures, will settle this matter with you." + +The tenants were then taken down to the League rooms, where two M.P.s, +Sir Thomas Esmonde and Mr. Mayne, were waiting to receive the rents, +which, one by one, they were ordered in to pay into the war-chest of the +"Plan of Campaign." + +I have I fear written too much of this commencement of the war on the +estate which has since led to over seventy of the tenants and their +families being ejected, and has brought ruin on nearly all who joined +it. I have considerable experience as a land agent, but I know of no +estate where the tenants were more respectable, better housed, or, as a +body, in better circumstances than on the Brooke estate. They had a +kind, indulgent landlord, and they knew it; and nothing but the belief +that, led by their clergy, they were foremost in a battle fighting for +their country and religion, would have induced them to put up with the +great hardships and loss they have undoubtedly had to suffer. + + + +NOTE L. + +A DUCAL SUPPER IN IRELAND IN 1711. + +(Vol. ii. p. 283.) + + +The following entry I take from the Expense-Book of the Duke of Ormond, +under date of August 23, 1711:-- + +His Grace came to Kilkenny, half an hour after 10 at night. + +HIS GRACE'S TABLE. + +Pottage. Sautee Veal. +5 Pullets, Bacon and Collyflowers. +Pottage Meagre. +Pikes with White Sauce. +A Turbot with Lobster Sauce. +Umbles. +A Hare Hasht. +Buttered Chickens, G. +Hasht Veal and New Laid Eggs. +Removes. +A Shoulder and Neck of Mutton. +Haunch of Venison. + +_Second Course._ + +Lobsters. +Tarts, an Oval Dish. +Crabbs Buttered. +4 Pheasants, 4 Partridges, 4 Turkeys. +Ragoo Mushrooms. +Kidney Beans. Ragoo Oysters. +Fritters. +Two Sallets. + + + +NOTE M. + +LETTER FROM MR. O'LEARY. + +(Vol. ii. p. 291.) + + +In the first edition of this book I credited Mr. O'Leary with making +this pungent remark about figs and grapes, because I found it jotted +down in my original memoranda as coming from him. In a private note he +assures me that he does not think it was made by him, and though this +does not agree with my own recollection, I defer, of course, to his +impression. And this I do the more readily that it affords me an +opportunity for printing the following very characteristic and +interesting letter sent to me by him for publication should I think fit +to use it. + +As the most important support given by the Irish in America to the +Nationalists is solicited by their agents on the express ground that +they are really labouring to establish an Irish Republic, this outspoken +declaration of Mr. O'Leary, that he does not believe they "expect or +desire" the establishment of an Irish Republic, will be of interest on +my side of the water:-- + + "DUBLIN, _Sept._ 9, '88. + + "My Dear Sir,--I am giving more bother about what you make me say + in your book than the thing is probably worth, especially seeing + that what you say about me and my present attitude towards men and + things here is almost entirely correct. + + "It is proverbially hard to prove a negative, and my main reason + for believing I did not say the thing about figs and grapes is that + I never could remember the whole of any proverb in conversation; + but I am absolutely certain I never said that 'some of them (the + National Leaguers) expect to found an Irish republic on robbery, + and to administer it by falsehood. We don't.' Most certainly I do + not expect to found anything on robbery, or administer anything by + falsehood, but I do not in the least believe that the National + League either expects or desires to found an Irish republic at all! + Neither do I believe that the Leaguers will long retain the + administration of such small measure of Home Rule, as I now (since + the late utterances of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Gladstone) believe we + are going to get. My fault with the present people is not that they + are looking, or mean to look, for too much, but that they may be + induced, by pressure from their English Radical allies, to be + content with too little. It is only a large and liberal measure of + Home Rule which will ever satisfy the Irish people, and I fear + that, if the smaller fry of Radical M.P.'s are allowed to have a + strong voice in a matter of which they know next to nothing, the + settlement of the Irish question will be indefinitely postponed.--I + remain, faithfully yours, + + "JOHN O'LEARY." + + + +NOTE N + +BOYCOTTING PRIVATE OPINION. + +(Vol. ii. p. 293.) + + +This case of Mr. Taylor is worth preserving _in extenso_ as an +illustration of that spirit in the Irish journalism of the day, against +which Mr. Rolleston and his friends protest as fatal to independence, +manliness, and truth. I simply cite the original attack made upon Mr. +Taylor, the replies made by himself and his friends, and the comments +made upon those replies by the journal which assailed him. They all tell +their own story. + + (_UNITED IRELAND_, JUNE 16.) + + Mr. John F. Taylor owes everything he has or is to the Irish + National Party; nor is he slow to confess it where the + acknowledgment will serve his personal interests. His sneers are + all anonymous, and, like Mr. Fagg, the grateful and deferential + valet in _The Rivals_, "it hurts his conscience to be found out." + There is no honesty or sincerity in the man. His covert gibes are + the spiteful emanation of personal disappointment; his lofty + morality is a cloak for unscrupulous self-seeking. He has always + shown himself ready to say anything or do anything that may serve + his own interests. In the general election of 1885 he made frantic + efforts to get into Parliament as a member of the Irish Party. He + ghosted every member of the party whose influence he thought might + help him--notably the two men, Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien, at whom + he now sneers, as he fondly believes, in the safe seclusion of an + anonymous letter of an English newspaper. During the period of + probation his hand was incessant on Mr. Dillon's door-knocker. The + most earnest supplications were not spared. All in vain. Either his + character or his ability failed to satisfy the Irish leader, and + his claim was summarily rejected. Since then his wounded vanity has + found vent in spiteful calumny of almost every member of the Irish + Party--whenever he found malice a luxury that could be safely + indulged in. + + "His next step was a startling one. We have absolute reason to + know, when the last Coercion Act was in full swing, this + pure-souled and disinterested patriot begged for, received, and + accepted a very petty Crown Prosecutorship under a Coercion + Government. As was wittily said at the time, he sold his + principles, not for a mess of pottage, but for the stick that + stirred the mess. Strong pressure was brought to bear on him, and + he was induced for his own sake, after many protests and with much + reluctance, to publicly refuse the office he had already privately + accepted. Mr. Taylor professes to model himself on Robert Emmet and + Thomas Davis; it is hard to realise Thomas Davis or Robert Emmet as + a Coercion Crown Prosecutor in the pay of Dublin Castle. Since then + there has been no more persistent caviller at the Irish policy and + the Irish Party in company where he believed such cavilling paid. + When Home Rule was proposed by Mr. Gladstone, he had a thousand + foolish sneers for the measure and its author. When the Bill was + defeated, he elected Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Goschen, and Mr. T.W. + Russell as the gods of his idolatry. Such a nature needs a patron, + and Mr. Webb, Q.C., the Tory County Court Judge who doubled the + sentence on Father M'Fadden, was the patron to be selected. It is + shrewdly suspected that he supplied most of the misguiding + information for Dr. Webb's coercion pamphlet, and it is probable + that Dr. Webb gives him a lift with his weekly letter to the + _Manchester Guardian._ + + + (_UNITED IRELAND_, JUNE 23.) + + MR. JOHN F. TAYLOR. + + _To the Editor of "United Ireland."_ + + Sir,--You would not, I am sure, allow intentional misstatements to + appear in your columns, and I ask you to allow me space to correct + three erroneous observations made about myself in your current + issue-- + + 1. The first statement is to the effect that I owe everything I + have, or that I am, to the Irish National Party. I owe absolutely + nothing to the Irish Party, except an attempt to boycott me on my + circuit, which, fortunately for me, has failed. + + 2. The second is to the effect that I made "frantic efforts" (these + are the words, I think) to enter Parliament, and besieged Mr. + Dillon's house during the time when candidates were being chosen. I + saw Mr. Dillon exactly twice, both occasions at Mr. Davitt's + request. Mr. Davitt urged me to allow my name to go forward as a + candidate, and it was at his wish and solicitation that I saw Mr. + Dillon. + + 3. It is further said that I begged a Crown Prosecutorship. + Fortunately, Mr. Walker and The M'Dermot are living men, and they + know this to be absolutely untrue. I was offered such an + appointment, and, contrary to my own judgment, I allowed myself to + be guided by Mr. Davitt, who thought the matter would be + misunderstood in the state of things then existing. I believe I am + the only person that ever declined such an offer. + + As to general statements, these are of no importance, and I shall + not trouble you about them.--Yours very truly, + + JOHN F. TAYLOR. + + _P.S._--The introduction of Dr. Webb's name was a gratuitous + outrage, Dr. Webb and I never assisted each other in anything + except in the defence of P.N. Fitzgerald. J.F.T. + + + _To the Editor of "United Ireland."_ + + Dear Sir,--As my name has been introduced into the controversy + between yourself and Mr. Taylor, I feel called upon to substantiate + the two statements wherein my name occurs in Mr. Taylor's letter of + last week. It was at my request that he called upon Mr. John + Dillon, M.P. I think I accompanied him on the occasion, and unless + my memory is very much at fault, Mr. Dillon was not unfriendly to + Mr. Taylor's proposed candidature. This visit occurred some three + months after Mr. Taylor had, on my advice, declined the Crown + Prosecutorship for King's County, a post afterwards applied for by + and granted to a near relative of one of the most prominent members + of the Irish Party. With Mr. Taylor's general views on the present + situation, or opinions upon parties or men, I have no concern. But, + in so far as the circumstances related above are dealt with in your + issue of last week, I think an unjust imputation has been made + against him, and in the interests of truth and fair play I feel + called upon to adduce the testimony of facts as they + occurred.--Yours truly, + + MICHAEL DAVITT. + + Ballybrack, Co. Dublin, + + June 19, 1888. + + + _To the Editor of "United Ireland."_ + + Sir,--As this is, I believe, the first time I have sought to + intrude upon your columns, I hope you will allow me some slight + space in the interests of fair-play and freedom of speech. Those + interests seem to me to have been quite set at naught in the + attack, or rather series of attacks, upon Mr. Taylor in your last + issue. Mr. Taylor's views upon many matters are not mine. He is far + more democratic in his opinions than I see any sufficient reason + for being, and he is very much more of what is called a land + reformer than I am; but on an acquaintance of some years I have + ever found him an honourable and high-minded gentleman, and as good + a Nationalist, from my point of view, as most of the members of the + Irish Parliamentary Party whom I either know or know of. Of some of + the charges made against Mr. Taylor, such as the seeking for Crown + Prosecutorships and the like, I am in no position to speak, save + from my knowledge of his character, but I understand Mr. Davitt + knows all about these things, and I suppose he will tell what he + knows. But of the main matter, and I think the chief cause of your + ire, I am quite in a position to speak. I have read at least a + score of Mr. Taylor's letters to the _Manchester Guardian_, and I + have always found them very intelligently written, and invariably + characterised by a spirit of fairness and moderation; indeed, the + chief fault I found with them was that they took too favourable a + view of the motives, if not the acts, of many of our public men, + but notably of Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien. You may, of course, + fairly say that I am not the best judge of either the acts or the + motives of these gentlemen, and I freely grant you that I may not, + for my way of looking upon the Irish question is quite other than + theirs; but what I must be excused for holding is that both I and + Mr. Taylor have quite as good a right to our opinions as either of + these gentlemen, or as any other member of the Irish Parliamentary + Party. But this is the very last right that people are inclined to + grant to each other in Ireland just now. Personally I care very + little for this, but for Ireland's sake I care much. Some twenty + years ago or so I was sent into penal servitude with the almost + entire approval, expressed or implied, of the Irish Press. Some + short time after the same Press found out that I and my friends had + not sinned so grievously in striving to free Ireland. But men and + times and things may change again, and, though I am growing old, I + hope still to live long enough to be forgiven for my imperfect + appreciation of the blessings of Boycotting, and the Plan of + Campaign, and many similar blessings. It matters little indeed how + or when I die, so that Ireland lives, but her life can only be a + living death if Irishmen are not free to say what they believe, and + to act as they deem right.--Your obedient servant, + + JOHN O'LEARY. + + June 18, 1888. + + + _To the Editor of "United Ireland."_ + + Dear Sir,--I observe that in your last issue, amongst other things, + you state that Mr. Taylor accepted a Crown Prosecutorship in 1885. + I happen to know the precise facts. Mr. Taylor was offered the + Crown Prosecutorship of the King's County, and some of us strongly + advised him to accept it. There were no political prosecutions + impending at the time, and it seemed to me that a Nationalist who + would do his work honestly in prosecuting offenders against the + ordinary law might strike a blow against tyranny by refusing to + accept a brief, if offered, against men accused of political + offences or prosecuted under a Coercion Act. I know that a similar + view was entertained by the late Very Rev. Dr. Kavanagh of Kildare, + and many others. However, we failed to influence Mr. Taylor further + than to make him say that he would do nothing in the matter until + Mr. Davitt was consulted. I, for one, called on Mr. Davitt, and + pressed my views upon him; but he was decided that no Nationalist + could identify himself in the smallest way with Castle rule in + Ireland. This settled the question, and Mr. Taylor declined the + post, which was subsequently applied for by Mr. Luke Dillon, who + now holds it.--Faithfully yours, + + JAMES A. POOLE. + + 29 Harcourt Street. + + + + EDITORIAL NOTE. + + _"United Ireland," June 23._ + + We devote a large portion of our space to-day to the apparently + organised defence of Mr. J.F. Taylor and his friends, and we are + quite content to rest upon their letters the justification for our + comments. When a gentleman who avows himself a disappointed + aspirant for Parliamentary honours, and who owns his regret that he + did not become a petty Castle placeman, is discovered writing in an + important English Liberal paper, venomous little innuendos at the + expense of sorely attacked Irish leaders which excite the + enthusiasm of the _Liarish Times_, it was high time to intimate to + the _Manchester Guardian_ the source from which its Irish + information is derived. The case against Mr. Taylor as a + criticaster is clinched by the fact that his cause is espoused by + Mr. John O'Leary. The Irish public are a little weary of Mr. + O'Leary's querulous complaints as an _homme incompris_. So far as + we are aware, the only ground he himself has for complaining of + want of toleration is that he possibly considers the good-humoured + toleration for years invariably extended to his opinions on men and + things savours of neglect. His idea of toleration with respect to + others seems to be toleration for everybody except the unhappy + wretches who may happen to be for the moment doing any practicable + service in the Irish cause. + + + + +NOTE O. + +BOYCOTTING BY "CROWNER'S QUEST LAW." + +(Vol. ii. p. 312.) + + +The following circumstantial account of this deplorable case of Ellen +Gaffney preserved here, as I find it printed in the _Irish Times_ of +February 27, 1888. + +"In the Court of Queen's Bench, on Saturday, the Lord Chief-Justice (Sir +Michael Morris, Bart.), Mr. Justice O'Brien, Mr. Justice Murphy, and Mr. +Justice Gibson presiding, judgment was delivered in the case of Ellen +Gaffney. The original motion was to quash the verdict of a coroner's +jury held at Philipstown on August 27th and September 1st last, on the +body of a child named Mary Anne Gaffney. + +"The Lord Chief-Justice said it appeared that Mary Anne Gaffney, the +child on whose body the inquest was held, was born on the 23d July, and +that she died on the 25th August, 1887. A Dr. Clarke, who had been very +much referred to in the course of the proceedings, called upon the local +sergeant of the police, and directed his attention to the body, but the +sergeant having inspected the body, came to the conclusion that there +was no need for an inquest. The doctor considered differently, and the +sergeant communicated with the Coroner on the 26th August, and on the +next day that gentleman arrived in Philipstown. He had a conference +there with Dr. Clarke and with a reverend gentleman named Father Bergin, +and subsequently proceeded to hold an inquest upon the child in a +public-house--a most appropriate place apparently for the transactions +which afterwards occurred there. The investigation, if it might be so +called, was proceeded with upon that 27th of August. Very strong +affidavits had been made on the part of Mrs. Gaffney--who applied to +have the inquisition quashed--her husband, and some of the constabulary +authorities as to the line of conduct pursued upon that occasion. Ellen +Gaffney and her husband were taken into custody on the day the inquest +opened by the verbal direction of the Coroner, who refused to complete +the depositions given by the former on the ground that she was not +sworn. That did not take him out of the difficulty, for if she was not +sworn she had a right to be sworn, and the Coroner had no right to +prevent her. The inquest was resumed on the 1st September in the +court-house at Philipstown--the proper place--and a curious letter was +read from the Coroner, the effect of which was that he did not consider +that there was any ground for detaining the man Gaffney in custody, but +the woman was brought before a justice of the peace and committed for +trial. She was in prison from August 27th until the month of December, +when the lucky accident of a winter assize occurred, else she might be +there still. At the adjourned inquest the Coroner proceeded to read over +the depositions taken on the former day, and it was sworn by four +witnesses, whom he (the Lord Chief-Justice) entirely credited, that the +Coroner read these depositions as if they were originals, whereas an +unprecedented transaction had occurred. The Coroner had given the +original depositions out of his own custody, and given them to a +reverend gentleman who was rather careless of them, as was shown by the +evidence of a witness named Greene, who deposed that he saw a car on the +road upon which sat two clergymen, and he found on the road the original +depositions which, presumably, one of the clergymen had dropped. The +depositions were handed to a magistrate and afterwards returned to the +police at Philipstown, who had possession of them on the resumption of +the inquest. If the case stood alone there it was difficult to +understand how a Coroner could come into court and appear by counsel to +resist the quashing of an inquisition in regard to which at the very +door such gross personal misconduct was demonstrated. No doubt, he said, +he did not read them as originals but as copies, and it was strange, +that being so, that he did not inform the jury of what had become of +them, and he complained now of not being told by the police of their +recovery--not told of his own misconduct. On the 1st September, Ellen +Gaffney applied by a solicitor--Mr. Disdall, and as a set-off the +Coroner permitted a gentleman named O'Kearney Whyte to appear--for whom? +Was it for the constituted authorities or for the next-of-kin? No, but +for the Rev. Father Bergin, who was described as president of the local +branch of the National League, and the Coroner (Mr. Gowing) alleged as +the reason why he allowed him to appear and cross-examine the witnesses +and address the jury and give him the right of reply like Crown counsel +was, that Ellen Gaffney stated that she had been so much annoyed by +Father Bergin that she attributed the loss of her child to him--that it +was he who had murdered the child. It was asserted that Father Bergin +sat on the bench with the Coroner and interfered during the conduct of +the inquest, and having to give some explanation of that Mr. Gowing's +version was certainly a most amusing one. He said it was the habit to +invite to a seat on the bench people of a respectable position in +life--which, of course, a clergyman should be in--and that he asked +Father Bergin to sit beside him in that capacity. But see the dilemma +the Coroner put himself in. According to his own statement he had +previously allowed this reverend gentleman to interfere, and to be +represented by a solicitor because he was incriminated, inculpated, or +accused, and it certainly was not customary to invite any one so +situated to occupy a seat on the bench. He (the Lord Chief Baron) did +not believe that Father Bergin was incriminated in any way, but that was +the Coroner's allegation, and such was his peculiar action thereafter. +The Coroner further stated that no matter whether he read the originals +or the copies of the first day's depositions, it was on the evidence of +September 1st that the jury acted. If that was so he placed himself in a +further dilemma, for there was no evidence before the jury at all on the +second day upon which they could bring a verdict against Ellen Gaffney. +In regard to the recording and announcing of the verdict it appeared +that the jury were 19 in number, and after their deliberations the +foreman declared that 13 were for finding a verdict one way and 6 for +another; that Mr. Whyte dictated the verdict to the Coroner, and the +Coroner asked the 13 men if that was what they agreed to. Mr. Whyte's +statement was that the jury, through the foreman, stated what their +verdict was; that he wrote it down, and that the Coroner asked him for +what he had written, and used it himself. But in addition to that, when +the jury came in the Coroner and Mr. Whyte divided them--placed them +apart while the verdict was being written--and then said to the 13 men, +"Is that what you agree to?" Such apparent misconduct it was hardly +possible to conceive in anybody occupying a judicial position as did the +Coroner, and especially a Coroner who had an inquisition quashed before. +What he had mentioned was sufficient to call forth the emphatic decision +of the court quashing the proceedings, which, however, were also +impeached on the grounds of its insufficiency and irregularity, and of +the character of the finding itself. It was not until the Coroner had +been threatened with the consequences of his contempt that he made a +return to the visit of _certiorari_, and it was then found that out of +ten so-called depositions only one contained any signature--that of Dr. +Clarke's, which was one of those lost by the clergyman, and not before +the jury on the 1st September. He (the Lord Chief-Justice) had tried to +read the documents, but in vain--they were of such a scrawling and +scribbling character, but, as he had said, all were incomplete and +utterly worthless except the one which was not properly before the jury. +Then, what was the finding on this inquisition, which should have been +substantially as perfect as an indictment? "That Mary Anne Gaffney came +by her death, and that the mother of this child, Ellen Gaffney, is +guilty of wilful neglect by not supplying the necessary food and care to +sustain the life of this child." Upon what charge could the woman have +been implicated on that vague finding? He (his Lordship) could +understand its being contended that that amounted argumentatively to a +verdict of manslaughter; but the Coroner issued his warrant and sent +this woman to prison as being guilty of murder, and she remained in +custody, as he had already remarked, until discharged by the learned +judge who went the Winter Assizes in December. Upon all of these grounds +they were clearly of opinion that this inquisition should be quashed, +and Mr. Coroner Gowing having had the self-possession to come there to +show cause against the conditional order, under such circumstances, must +bear the costs of that argument. + +Mr. Fred. Moorhead, who, instructed by Mr. O'Kearney Whyte, appeared for +the Coroner, asked whether the Court would require, as was usual when +costs were awarded against a magistrate, an undertaking from the other +side-- + +The Lord Chief-Justice.--That is not to bring an action against the +Coroner, you mean? + +Mr. Moorhead.--Yes, my Lord. I think it is a usual undertaking when +costs are awarded in such a case. I think you ought-- + +The Lord Chief-Justice.--Well, I don't know that we ought, but we most +certainly will not. (Laughter.) + +Mr. David Sherlock, who (instructed by Mr. Archibald W. Disdall) +appeared for Ellen Gaffney.--Rest assured, we certainly will bring an +action. + + +THE END. + + * * * * * + + + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] I have the authority of Mr. Hennessey, "the best living +Irish scholar, and a Kerryman to boot," for this spelling. I am quite +right, he says, in stating that the people there pronounce the names of +Glenbeigh and Rossbeigh as Glenbehy and Rossbehy in three syllables. +"Bethe," pronounced "behy," is the genitive of "beith," the birch, of +which there were formerly large woods in Ireland. Glenbehy and Rossbehy +mean the "Glen," and the "Ross" or "wooded point" of the birch. + +[2] A letter received by me from a Protestant Irish gentleman, +long an ardent Nationalist, seems to confirm this. He writes to me (June +15), + + "There is a noble river here, with a convenient line of quays for + unloading merchandise. But every sack that is landed must be carried + out of the ship on men's backs. The quay labourers won't allow a + steam crane to be set up. If it is tried there is a riot and a + tumult, and no Limerick tradesman can purchase anything from a + vessel that uses it, on pain of being boycotted. The result is that + the labourers are masters of the situation, and when they catch a + vessel with a cargo which it is imperative to land quickly, they + wait till the work is half done, and then strike for 8s. a day! If + other labourers are imported, they are boycotted for 'grabbing + work,' and any one who sells provisions to them is boycotted." + +[3] An interesting account of this gentleman, and of his +connection with the earlier developments of the Irish agitation, given +to me by Mr. Colomb of the R.I.C., will be found at p.38, and in the +Appendix, Note F. + +[4] See Appendix, Note F. + +[5] The name of this blacksmith's son learned in the Law of the +League is given in Lord Cowper's Report (2. 18,370) as Michael Healy. +While these pages are in the printer's hands the London papers chronicle +(May 25, 1888) the arrest of a person described to me as this +magistrate's brother, Jeremiah Healy, on a charge of robbing and setting +fire to the Protestant church at Killarney! + +[6] Mr. Colomb sends me, June 30, the following interesting +note:--The letter of which I gave you a copy was produced in evidence at +Kerry Summer Assizes, 1867. J. D. Sheehan, Esq., M.P., is the same man +who was arrested on the 12th February 1867, and to whom the foregoing +letter, ordering the rising in Killarney, is addressed. He was kept in +custody for some time, and eventually released, it is believed, on the +understanding that he was to keep out of Ireland. He came back in 1873 +or 1874 and married the proprietress of a Hotel at Killarney. His +connection with the Glenbehy evictions is referred to on page 10, and in +Note F of the Appendix I give an interesting account, furnished me by +Mr. Colomb, of his activity in connection with the case of the Misses +Curtin at Firies. + +[7] In the time of Henry VIII. these cities waged actual war +with each other, like Florence and Pisa, by sea and land. Limerick was +then called "Little London." + +[8] It was on the 17th October 1886 that Mr. Dillon first +promulgated the Plan of Campaign at all at Portumna. + +[9] Mr. Ponsonby's account of this affair will be found in the +Appendix, Note G. The Post-Office Savings Bank deposits at Youghal, +which were L3031, 0s. 7d. in 1880, rose to L7038, 7s. 2d. in 1887. + +[10] As to the ability of these tenants to pay their way, one +fact which I have since ascertained sufficiently supports Mr. Tener's +contention. The deposits in the Postal Savings Banks of the three purely +agricultural towns of Portumna, Woodford, and Loughrea, which in 1880, +throwing off the shillings and pence, were respectively, L2539, L259, +and L5500, rose in 1887 to L3376, L1350, and L6311, an increase of +nearly L3000. + +[11] Mr. Tener, to whom I sent proofs of these pages, writes to +me (July 18): "I shall soon execute the decree of the County-Court Judge +Henn against Father Coen for L5, 5s., being two and a half year's +rent." + +[12] At a hearing of cases before Judge Henn some time after I +left Portumna, the Judge was reported in the papers as "severely" +commenting upon the carelessness with which the estate-books were kept, +tenants who were proceeded against for arrears producing "receipts" in +court. I wrote to Mr. Tener on this subject. Under date of June 5th he +replied to me: "Judge Henn did not use the severe language reported. +There was no reporter present but a local man, and I have reason to +believe the report in the _Freeman's Journal_ came from the lawyer of +the tenants, who is on the staff of that journal. But the tenants are +drilled not to show the receipts they hold, and to take advantage of +every little error which they might at once get corrected by calling at +the estate office. In no case, however, did any wrong occur to any +tenant." + +[13] The town and estate proper of Woodford belong to Sir Henry +Burke, Bart. The nearest point to Woodford of Lord Clamicarde's property +is distant one mile from the town. And on the so-called Woodford estate +there are not "316 tenants," as stated in publications I have seen, but +260. + +[14] Martin Kenny, the "victim" of this eviction, is the tenant +to whom the Rev. Mr. Crawford (_vide_ page 118) gave L50 for certain +cattle, in order that he (Kenny) might pay his rent But, although he got +the L50, he nevertheless suffered himself to be evicted; no doubt +fearing the vengeance of the League should he pay. + +[15] The valuation for taxes of this holding is L7, 15s. for +the land, and L5 for the presbytery house. The church is exempt. + +[16] Of "Dr." Tully Mr. Tener wrote to me (July 18): + + "Tully has the holding at L2, 10s. a year, being 50 per cent, under + the valuation of the land for taxes, which is L3, 15s. As the total + valuation with the house (built by him) is only L4, he pays no + poor-rates. He was in arrears May 1, 1887, of three years for L7, + 10s. Lord Clanricarde offered him, with others, 20 per cent, + abatement, making for him 70 per cent, under the valuation--and he + refused!" + +Since then (on Saturday Sept. 1), Tully has been evicted after a +dramatic "resistance," of which, with instructive incidents attending +it, Mr. Tener sends me an account, to be found in the Appendix, Note H. + +[17] Note H2. + +[18] Mr. Tener writes to me (July 18): + + "At Allendarragh, near the scene of Finlay's murder, Thomas Noonan, + who lately was brave enough to accept the post of process-server + vacated by that murder, was shot at on the 13th instant. It was on + the highway. He heard a heavy stone fall from a wall on the road and + turned to see what caused it. He distinctly saw two men behind the + wall with guns, and saw them fire. One shot struck a stone in the + road very near him--the other went wide. His idea is that one gun + dislodged the stone on which it had been laid for an aim, and that + its fall disturbed the aim and saved him. He fully identifies one of + the men as Henry Bowles, a nephew of 'Dr.' Tully, who lives with + Tully, and Bowles, after being arrested and examined at Woodford, + has been remanded, bail being refused, to Galway Jail. Before this + shooting Noonan had served a notice from me upon Tully, against whom + I have Judge Henn's decree for three years' rent, and whose equity + of redemption expired July 9th." + +[19] I have since learned that my jarvey was well informed. Sir +Henry Burke actually paid Mr. Dillon L160 for the maintenance of his +tenants while out of their farms. This, two other landlords, Lords +Dunsandle and Westmeath, refused to do, but, like Sir Henry, they both +paid all the costs, and accepted a "League" reduction of 5s. 6d. and 6s. +in the pound (June 9, 1888). + +[20] Down to the date at which I write this note (June 9), Mr. +Seigne has kindly, but without results, endeavoured to get for me some +authentic return made by a small tenant-farmer of his incomings and +outgoings. + +[21] Note I. + +[22] Note K. + +[23] While these pages are going through the press a Scottish +friend sends me the following extract from a letter published in the +_Scotsman_ of July 25:-- + + "In the same way I, in August last, when in Wicklow, ascertained as + carefully as I could the facts as to the Bodyke evictions; and being + desirous to learn now if that estate was still out of cultivation, + as I had found it in August, I wrote the gentleman I have referred + to above. His reply is as follows:-- + + "'I can answer your question as far as the Brooke estate is + concerned. None of the tenants are back in their farms, nor + are they likely to be. The landlord has the land partly + stocked with cattle; but I may say the land is nearly waste; + the gates, fences, and farmsteads partly destroyed. I was at + the fair of Coolgreany about three weeks ago, and the country + looked quite changed; the weeds predominating in the land + that the tenantry had under cultivation when they were + evicted from their farms. The landlord has done nothing to + lay the land down with grass seed, consequently the land is + waste. The village of Coolgreany is on the property, and + there was a good monthly fair held there, but it is very much + gone down since the disagreement between the landlord and + tenant. The tenants, speaking generally, in allowing + themselves to be evicted and not redeeming before six months, + are giving up all their improvements to the landlord, no + matter what they may be worth. I have got quite tired of the + vexed question, and may say I have given up reading about + evictions, and pity the tenant who is foolish enough to allow + any party to advise him so badly as to allow himself to be + evicted.' + + "Those who read this testimony of a candid witness, and remember the + cordial footing on which Mr. Brooke stood with his tenantry in + Bodyke before Mr. Billon appeared amongst them, may well ask what + good his interference did to the now impoverished tenantry of + Bodyke, or to the district now deserted or laid waste.--I am, etc., + + A RADICAL UNIONIST." + +[24] In curious confirmation of this opinion expressed to me by +a man of the country in March, I find in the _Dublin Express_ of July +19th this official news from the Athy Vice-Guardians: + + "At the meeting of the Vice-Guardians of the Athy Union yesterday, a + letter was read from Mr. G. Finlay, Auditor, in which he stated that + the two sureties of Collector Kealy, of the Luggacurren district, + had been evicted from their holdings by Lord Lansdowne, and were not + now in possession of any lands there. They were allowed outdoor + relief to the extent of L1 a week each on the ground of destitution. + The Auditor continued: 'The Collector tells me that they both + possess other lands, and have money in bank. The Collector is + satisfied that they are as good, if not better, securities for the + amount of his bond now than at the time they became sureties for + him. The Clerk of the Union concurs in this opinion.' + + "It was ordered to bring the matter under the notice of the Board." + +[25] _Explanatory Note attached to First Edition._--After this +chapter had actually gone to press, I received a letter from the friend +who had put me into communication with the labourers referred to in it, +begging me to strike out all direct indications of their whereabouts, on +the ground that these might lead to grave annoyance and trouble for +these poor men from the local tyrants. + +I do not know that I ought to regret the annoyance thus caused to my +publisher and to me, as no words of mine could emphasise so clearly the +nature and the scope of the odious, illegal, or anti-legal "coercion" +established in certain parts of Ireland as the asterisks which mark my +compliance with my friend's request. What can be said for the freedom of +a country in which a man of character and position honestly believes it +to be "dangerous" for poor men to say the things recorded in the text of +this chapter about their own feelings, wishes, opinions, and interests? + +[26] It may be well to say here that whatever prominence Mr. +O'Donovan Rossa has had among the Irish in America has been largely, if +not chiefly, due to the curious persistency of Sir William Harcourt, +when a Minister, in making him the ideal Irish-American leader. In and +out of Parliament, Sir William Harcourt continually spoke of Mr. Rossa +as of a kind of Irish Jupiter Tonans, wielding all the terrors of +dynamite from beyond the Atlantic. This was a source of equal amusement +to the Irish-American organisers in America and satisfaction to Mr. +Rossa himself. I remember that when a question arose of excluding Mr. +Rossa from an important Irish-American convention at Philadelphia, as +not being the delegate of any recognised Irish-American body, Mr. +Sullivan told me that he should recommend the admission of Mr. Rossa to +the floor without a right to deliberative action, expressly because his +presence, when reported, would be a cause of terror to Sir William +Harcourt. + +[27] See Appendix, Note M. + +[28] Note N. + +[29] Note O. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of +2) (1888), by William Henry Hurlbert + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRELAND, VOL. 2 *** + +***** This file should be named 14511.txt or 14511.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/5/1/14511/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Robert Ledger and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +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 + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/14511.zip b/old/14511.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..cca36c0 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14511.zip |