ENNIS, _Saturday, Feb. 18._--I found it unnecessary to go on to Paris,
and so returned to Ireland on Thursday night; we had a passage as over a
lake. In the train I met a lively Nationalist friend, whose acquaintance
I made in America. He is a man of substance, but not overburdened with
respect for the public men, either of his own party or of the Unionist
side. When I asked him whether he still thought it would be safe to turn
over Ireland to a Parliament made up of the Westminster members, of whom
he gave me such an amusing but by no means complimentary account, he
looked at me with astonishment:--
"Do you suppose for a moment we would send these fellows to a Parliament
in Dublin?"
He told me some very entertaining tales of the methods used by certain
well-meaning occupants of the Castle in former days to capture Irish
popularity, as, for example, one of a Vice-Queen who gave a fancy dress
ball for the children of the local Dublin people of importance, and had
a beautiful supper of tea and comfits, and cakes served to them, after
which she made her appearance, followed by servants bearing huge bowls
of steaming hot Irish potatoes, which she pressed upon the horrified and
overstuffed infants as "the true food of the country," setting them
herself the example of eating one with much apparent gusto, and a pinch
of salt!
"Now, fancy that!" he exclaimed; "for the Dublin aristocracy who think
the praties only fit for the peasants!"
Of a well-known and popular personage in politics, he told me that he
once went with him on a canvassing tour. It was in a county the
candidate had never before visited. "When we came to a place, and the
people were all out crying and cheering, he would whisper to me, 'Now
what is the name of this confounded hole?' And I would whisper back,
'Ballylahnich,' or whatever it was. Then he would draw himself up to the
height of a round tower, and begin, 'Men of Ballylahnich, I rejoice to
meet you! Often has the great Liberator said to me, with tears in his
voice, 'Oh would I might find myself face to face with the noble men of
Ballylahnich!"
"A great man he is, a great man!
"Did you ever hear how he courted the heiress? He walked up and down in
front of her house, and threatened to fight every man that came to call,
till he drove them all away!"
A good story of more recent date, I must also note, of a well-known
priest in Dublin, who being asked by Mr. Balfour one day whether the
people under his charge took for gospel all the rawhead and bloody-bones
tales about himself, replied, "Indeed, I wish they only feared and hated
the devil half as much as they do you!"
In a more serious vein my Nationalist friend explained to me that for
him "Home Rule" really meant an opportunity of developing the resources
of Ireland under "the American system of Protection." About this he was
quite in earnest, and recalled to me the impassioned protests made by
the then Mayor of Chicago, Mr. Carter Harrison, against the Revenue
Reform doctrines which I had thought it right to set forth at the great
meeting of the Iroquois Club in that city in 1883. "Of course," he
said, "you know that Mr. Harrison was then speaking not only for
himself, but for the whole Irish vote of Chicago which was solidly
behind him? And not of Chicago only! All our people on your side of the
water moved against your party in 1884, and will move against it again,
only much more generally, this year, because they know that the real
hope of Ireland lies in our shaking ourselves free of the British Free
Trade that has been fastened upon us, and is taking our life." I could
only say that this was a more respectable, if not a more reasonable,
explanation of Mr. Alexander Sullivan's devotion to Mr. Blaine and the
Republicans, and of the Irish defection from the Democratic party than
had ever been given to me in America, but I firmly refused to spend the
night between London and Dublin in debating the question whether Meath
could be made as prosperous as Massachusetts by levying forty per cent.
duties on Manchester goods imported into Ireland.
He had seen the reception of Mr. Sullivan, M.P., in London. "I believe,
on my soul," he said, "the people were angry with him because he didn't
come in a Lord Mayor's coach!"
When I told him I meant to visit Luggacurren, he said, a little to my
surprise, "That is a bad job for us, and all because of William
O'Brien's foolishness! He always thinks everybody takes note of whatever
he says, and that ruins any man! He made a silly threat at Luggacurren,
that he would go and take Lansdowne by the throat in Canada, and then he
was weak enough to suppose that he was bound to carry it out. He
couldn't be prevented! And what was the upshot of it? But for the
Orangemen in Canada, that were bigger fools than he is, he would have
been just ruined completely! It was the Orangemen saved him!"
I left Dublin this morning at 7.40 A.M. The day was fine, and the
railway journey most interesting. Before reaching Limerick we passed
through so much really beautiful country that I could not help
expressing my admiration of it to my only fellow-traveller, a most
courteous and lively gentleman, who, but for a very positive brogue,
might have been taken for an English guardsman.
"Yes, it is a beautiful country," he said, "or would be if they would
let it alone!"
I asked him what he specially objected to in the recent action of
Parliament as respects Ireland?
"Object?" he responded; "I object to everything. The only thing that
will do Ireland any good will be to shut up that talking-mill at
Westminster for a good long while!"
This, I told him, was the remedy proposed by Earl Grey in his recent
volume on Ireland.
"Is it indeed? I shall read the book. But what's the use? 'For judgment
it is fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.'"
This he said most cheerily, as if it really didn't matter much; and,
bidding me good-bye, disappeared at Limerick, where several friends met
him. In his place came a good-natured optimistic squire, who thinks
"things are settling down." There is a rise in the price of cattle.
"Beasts I gave £8 for three mouths ago," he said, "I have just sold for
£12. I call that a healthy state of things." And with this he also left
me at Ardsollus, the station nearest the famous old monastery of Quin.
At Ennis I was met by Colonel Turner, to whom I had written, enclosing a
note of introduction to him. With him were Mr. Roche, one of the local
magistrates, and Mr. Richard Stacpoole, a gentleman of position and
estate near Ennis, about whom, through no provocation of his, a great
deal has been said and written of late years. Mr. Stacpoole at once
insisted that I should let him take me out to stay at his house at
Edenvale, which is, so to speak, at the gates of Ennis. Certainly the
fame of Irish hospitality is well-founded! Meanwhile my traps were
deposited at the County Club, and I went about the town. I walked up to
the Court-house with. Mr. Roche, in the hope of hearing a case set down
for trial to-day, in which a publican named Harding, at Ennis--an
Englishman, by the way--is prosecuted for boycotting. The parties were
in Court; and the defendant's counsel, a keen-looking Irish lawyer, Mr.
Leamy, once a Nationalist member, was ready for action; but for some
technical reason the hearing was postponed. There were few people in
Court, and little interest seemed to be felt in the matter. The
Court-house is a good building, not unlike the White House at Washington
in style. This is natural enough, the White House having been built, I
believe, by an Irish architect, who must have had the Duke of Leinster's
house of Carton, in Kildare, in his mind when he planned it. Carton was
thought a model mansion at the beginning of this century; and Mr.
Whetstone, a local architect of repute, built the Ennis Court-house some
fifty years ago. It is of white limestone from quarries belonging to
Mr. Stacpoole, and cost when built about £12,000. To build it now would
cost nearly three times as much. In fact, a recent and smaller
Court-house at Carlow has actually cost £36,000 within the last few
years.
I was struck by the extraordinary number of public-houses in Ennis. A
sergeant of police said to me, "It is so all over the country." Mr.
Roche sent for the statistics, from which it appears that Ennis, with a
population of 6307, rejoices in no fewer than 100 "publics"; Ennistymon,
with a population of 1331, has 25; and Milltown Malbay, with a
population of 1400, has 36. At Castle Island the proportion is still
more astounding--51 public-houses in a population of 800. In Kiltimagh
every second house is a public-house! These houses are perhaps a legacy
of the old days of political jobbery.[19] No matter when or why granted,
the licence appears to be regarded as a hereditary "right" not lightly
to be tampered with; and of course the publicans are persons of
consequence in their neighbourhood, no matter how wretched it may be,
or how trifling their legitimate business. Three police convictions are
required to make the resident magistrates refuse the usual yearly
renewal of a licence; and if an application is made against such a
renewal, cause must be shown. The "publics" are naturally centres of
local agitation, and the publicans are sharp enough to see the advantage
to them of this. The sergeant told me of a publican here in Ennis, into
whose public came three Nationalists, bent not upon drinking, but upon
talking. The publican said nothing for a while, but finally, in a
careless way, mentioned "a letter he had just received from Mr. Parnell
on a very private matter." Instantly the politicians were eager to see
it. The publican hesitated. The politicians immediately called for
drinks, which were served, and after this operation had been three times
repeated, the publican produced the letter, began with a line or two,
and then said, "Ah, no! it can't be done. It would be a betrayal of
confidence; and you know you wouldn't have that! But it's a very
important letter you have seen!" So they went away tipsy and happy.
Only yesterday no fewer than twenty-three of these publicans from
Milltown Malbay appeared at Ennis here to be tried for "boycotting" the
police. One of them was acquitted; another, a woman, was discharged. Ten
of them signed, in open court, a guarantee not further to conspire, and
were thereupon discharged upon their own recognisances, after having
been sentenced with their companions to a month's imprisonment with hard
labour. The magistrate tells me that when the ten who signed (and who
were the most prosperous of the publicans) were preparing to sign, the
only representative of the press who was present, a reporter for _United
Ireland_, approached them in a threatening manner, with such an obvious
purpose of intimidation, that he was ordered out of the court-room by
the police. The eleven who refused to sign the guarantee (and who were
the poorest of the publicans, with least to lose) were sent to gaol.
An important feature of this case is the conduct of Father White, the
parish priest of Milltown Malbay. In the open court, Colonel Turner
tells me, Father White admitted that he was the moving spirit of all
this local "boycott." While the court was sitting yesterday all the
shops in Milltown Malbay were closed, Father White having publicly
ordered the people to make the town "as a city of the dead." After the
trial was over, and the eleven who elected to be locked up had left in
the train, Father White visited all their houses to encourage the
families, which, from his point of view, was no doubt proper enough; but
one of the sergeants reports that the Father went by mistake into the
house of one of the ten who had signed the guarantee, and immediately
reappeared, using rather unclerical language. All this to an American
resembles a tempest in a tea-pot. But it is a serious matter to see a
priest of the Church assisting laymen to put their fellow-men under a
social interdict, which is obviously a parody on one of the gravest
steps the Church itself can take to maintain the doctrine and the
discipline of the Faith. What Catholics, if honest, must think of this
whole business, I saw curiously illustrated by some marginal notes
pencilled in a copy of Sir Francis Head's _Fortnight in Ireland_, at the
hotel in Gweedore. The author of the _Bubbles from the Brunnen_
published this book in 1852. At page 152 he tells a story, apparently on
hearsay, of "boycotting" long before Boycott. It is to the effect that,
in order to check the proselyting of Catholics by a combination of
Protestant missionary zeal with Protestant donations of "meal," certain
priests and sisters in the south of Ireland personally instructed the
people to avoid all intercourse of any sort with any Roman Catholic who
"listened to a Protestant clergyman or a Scripture Reader"; and Sir
Francis cites an instance--still apparently on hearsay--of a "shoemaker
at Westport," who, having seceded from the Church, found that not a
single "journeyman dared work for him"; that only "one person would sell
him leather"; and, "in short, lost his custom, and rapidly came to a
state of starvation."
On the margin of the pages which record these statements, certain
indignant Catholics have pencilled comments, the mildest of which is to
the effect that Sir Francis was "a most damnable liar." It is certainly
most unlikely that Catholics should have arrogated to themselves the
Church's function of combating heresy and schism in the fashion
described by Sir Francis. But without mooting that question, these
expressions are noteworthy as showing how just such proceedings, as are
involved in the political "boycottings" of the present day, must be
regarded by all honest and clear-headed people who call themselves
Catholics; and it is a serious scandal that a parish priest should lay
himself open to the imputation of acting in concert with any political
body whatever, on any pretext whatever, to encourage such proceedings.
I asked one of the sergeants how the publicans who had signed the
guarantee would probably be treated by their townspeople. He replied,
there was some talk of their being "boycotted" in their turn by the
butchers and bakers. "But it's all nonsense," he said, "they are the
snuggest (the most prosperous) publicans in this part of the country,
and nobody will want to vex them. They have many friends, and the best
friend they have is that they can afford to give credit to the country
people. There'll be no trouble with them at all at all!"
Walking about the town, I saw many placards calling for subscriptions in
aid of a newsvendor who has been impounded for selling _United Ireland_.
"It'll be a good thing for him," said a cynical citizen, to whom I spoke
of it, "a good deal better than he'd be by selling the papers." And, in
fact, it is noticeable all over Ireland how small the sales of the
papers appear to be. The people about the streets in Ennis, however,
seemed to me much more effervescent and hot in tone than the Dublin
people are--and this on both sides of the question. One very decent and
substantial-looking man, when I told him I was an American, assured me
that "if it was not for the soldiers, the people of Ennis would clear
the police out of the place." He told me, too, that not long ago the
soldiers of an Irish regiment here cheered for Home Rule in the
Court-house, "but they were soon sent away for that same." On the other
hand, a Protestant man of business, of whom I made some inquiries about
the transmission of an important paper to the United States in time to
catch to-morrow's steamer from Queenstown, spoke of the Home Rulers
almost with ferocity, and thought the "Coercion" Government at Dublin
ought to be called the "Concession" Government. He was quite indignant
that the Morley and Ripon procession through the streets of Dublin
should not have been "forbidden."
There are some considerable shops in Ennis, but the proprietor of one of
the best of them says all this agitation has "killed the trade of the
place." I am not surprised to learn that the farmers and their families
are beginning seriously to demand that the "reduction screw" shall be
applied to other things besides rent. "A very decent farmer," he says,
"only last week stood up in the shop and said it was 'a shame the
shopkeepers were not made to reduce the tenpence muslin goods to
sixpence!'"
This shopkeeper finds some dreary consolation for the present state of
things in standing at his deserted shop-door and watching the doors of
his brethren. He finds them equally deserted. In his own he has had to
dismiss a number of his attendants. "When a man finds he is taking in
ten shillings a day, and laying out three pounds ten, what can he do but
pull up pretty short?" As with the shopkeepers, so it is with the
mechanics. "They are losing custom all the time. You see the tenants are
expecting to come into the properties, so they spend nothing now on
painting or improvements. The money goes into the bank. It don't go to
the landlords, or to the shopkeepers, or the mechanics; and then we that
have been selling on credit, and long credit too, where are we?
Formerly, from one place, Dromoland, Lord Inchiquin's house, we used
regularly to make a bill of a hundred pounds at Christmas, for blankets
and other things given away. Now the house is shut up and we make
nothing!"
It is a short but very pleasant drive from Ennis to Edenvale--and
Edenvale itself is not ill-named. The park is a true park, with fine
wide spaces and views, and beautiful clumps of trees. A swift river
flows beyond the lawn in front of the spacious goodly house--a river
alive with wild fowl, and overhung by lofty trees, in which many pairs
of herons build. A famous heronry has existed here for many years, and
the birds are held now by Mr. and Mrs. Stacpoole as sacred as are the
storks in Holland. Where the river widens to a lake, fine terraced
gardens and espalier walls, on which nectarines, apricots, and peaches
ripen in the sun, stretch along the shore. Deer come down to the further
bank to drink, and in every direction the eye is charmed and the mind is
soothed by the loveliest imaginable sylvan landscapes.
EDENVALE, _Sunday, Feb. 19._--I was awakened at dawn by the clamour of
countless wild ducks, to a day of sunshine as brilliant and almost as
warm as one sees at this season in the south of France. Mrs. Stacpoole
speaks of this place with a kind of passion, and I can quite understand
it. Clearly this, again, is not a case of the absentee landlord draining
the lifeblood of the land to lavish it upon an alien soil! The demesne
is a sylvan sanctuary for the wild creatures of the air and the wood,
and they congregate here almost as they did at Walton Hall in the days
of that most delightful of naturalists and travellers, whose adventurous
gallop on the back of a cayman was the delight of all English-reading
children forty years ago, or as they do now at Gosford. Yet the crack of
the gun, forbidden in the precincts of Walton Hall, is here by no means
unknown--the whole family being noted as dead shots. I asked Mr.
Stacpoole this morning whether the park had been invaded by trespassers
since the local Nationalists declared war upon him. He said that his
only experience of anything like an attack befell not very long ago,
when his people came to the house on a Sunday afternoon and told him
that a crowd of men from Ennis, with dogs, were coming towards the park
with a loudly proclaimed intent to enter it, and go hunting upon the
property.
Upon this Mr. Stacpoole left the house with his brother and another
person, and walked down to the park entrance. Presently the men of Ennis
made their appearance on the highway. A very brief parley followed. The
men of Ennis announced their intention of marching across the park, and
occupying it.
"I think not," the proprietor responded quietly. "I think you will go
back the way you came. For you may be sure of one thing: the first man
who crosses that park wall, or enters that gate, is a dead man."
There was no show of weapons, but the revolvers were there, and this the
men of Ennis knew. They also knew that it rested with themselves to
create the right and the occasion to use the revolvers, and that if the
revolvers were used they would be used to some purpose. To their credit,
be it said, as men of sense, they suddenly experienced an almost
Caledonian respect for the "Sabbath-day," and after expressing their
discontent with Mr. Stacpoole's inhospitable reception, turned about and
went back whence they had come.
This morning an orderly from Ennis brought out news of the arrest
yesterday, at the Clare Road, of Mr. Lloyd, a Labour delegate from
London, on his return from an agitation meeting at Kildysart. Harding,
the Englishman I saw awaiting his trial yesterday, became bail for
Lloyd.
In the afternoon we took a delightful walk to Killone Abbey, a pile of
monastic ruins on a lovely site near a very picturesque lake. The ruins
have been used as a quarry by all the country, and are now by no means
extensive. But the precincts are used as a graveyard, not only by the
people of Ennis, but by the farmers and villagers for many miles around.
Nothing can be imagined more painful than the appearance of these
precincts. The graves are, for the most part, shallow, and closely
huddled together. The cemetery, in truth, is a ghastly slum, a
"tenement-house" of the dead. The dead of to-day literally elbow the
dead of yesterday out of their resting-places, to be in their turn
displaced by the dead of to-morrow. Instead of the crosses and the fresh
garlands, and the inscriptions full of loving thoughtfulness, which lend
a pathetic charm to the German "courts of peace"--instead of the
carefully tended hillocks and flower-studded turf which make the
churchyard of a typical old English village beautiful,--all here is
confusion, squalor, and neglect. Fragments of coffins and bones lie
scattered among the sunken and shattered stones. We picked up a skull
lying quite apart in a corner of the enclosure. A clean round bullet
hole in the very centre of the frontal bone was dumbly and grimly
eloquent. Was it the skull of a patriot or of a policeman? of a
"White-boy" or of a "landlord"?
One thing only was apparent from the conformation of the grisly relic.
It was the skull of a Celt. Probably, therefore, not of a land agent,
shot to repress his fiduciary zeal, but perhaps of some peasant
selfishly and recklessly bent on paying his rent.
While we wandered amid the ruins we came suddenly upon a woman wearing a
long Irish cloak, and accompanied by two well-dressed men. One of the
men started upon catching sight of Colonel Turner, who was of our party,
grew quite red for a moment, and then very civilly exchanged salutations
with him. The party walked quietly away on a lower road leading to
Ennis. When they had gone Colonel Turner told us that the man who had
spoken to him was a local Nationalist of repute and influence in Ennis.
"He would never have ventured to be civil to me in the town," he said. A
discussion arose as to the probable object of the party in visiting
these ruins. A gentleman who was with us half-laughingly suggested that
they might have been putting away dynamite bombs for an attack on
Edenvale. Colonel Turner's more practical and probable theory was that
they were looking about for a site for the grave of the Fenian veteran,
Stephen J. Meany, who died in America not long ago. He was a native, I
believe, of Ennis, and his remains are now on their way across the
Atlantic for interment in his birth-place. "Would a processional funeral
be allowed for him?" I asked. Colonel Turner could see no reason why it
should not be.
One exception I noted to the general slovenliness of the graves. A new
and handsome monument had just been set up by a man of Ennis, living in
Australia, to the memory of his father and mother, buried here twenty
years ago. But this touching symbol of a heart untravelled, fondly
turning to its home, had been so placed, either by accident or by
design, as to block the entrance way to the vault of a family living, or
rather owning property, in this neighbourhood. Until within a year or
two past this family had occupied a very handsome mansion in a park
adjoining the park of Edenvale. But the heir, worn out with local
hostilities, and reduced in fortune by the pressure of the times and of
the League, has now thrown up the sponge. His ancestral acres have been
turned over for cultivation to Mr. Stacpoole. His house, a large fine
building, apparently of the time of James II., containing, I am told,
some good pictures and old furniture, is shut up, as are the model
stables, ample enough for a great stud; and so another centre of local
industry and activity is made sterile.
Near the ruins of Killone is a curious ancient shrine of St. John,
beside a spring known as the Holy Well. All about the rude little altar
in the open air simple votive offerings were displayed, and Mrs.
Stacpoole tells me pilgrims come here from Galway and Connemara to climb
the hill upon their knees, and drink of the water. Last year for the
first time within the memory of man the well went dry. Such was the
distress caused in Ennis by this news, that on the eve of St. John
certain pious persons came out from the town, drew water from the lake,
and poured it into the well!
As we walked away one of the party pointed to a rabbit fleeing swiftly
into a hole in one of the graves. "I was on this hill," he said, "one
day not very long ago when a funeral train came out from Ennis. As it
entered the precincts a rabbit ran rapidly across the grounds. Instantly
the procession broke up; the coffin was literally dropped to the
ground, and the bearers, the mourners, and the whole company united in a
hot and general chase of bunny. Of course, I need not say," he added,
"that there was no priest with them. The fixed charge of the priest for
a burial is twenty shillings, but there is usually no service at the
grave whatever."
This may possibly be a trace of the practices which grew up under the
Penal Laws against Catholics. When Rinuccini came to Ireland in the time
of the Civil War, he found the observances of the Church all fallen into
degradation through these laws. The Holy Sacrifice was celebrated in the
cabins, and not unfrequently on tables which had been covered
half-an-hour before with the remains of the last night's supper, and
would be cleared half-an-hour afterwards for the midday meal, and
perhaps for a game of cards.
Several guests joined us at dinner. One gentleman, a magistrate familiar
with Gweedore, told me he believed the statements of Sergeant Mahony as
to the income of Father M'Fadden to fall within the truth. While he
believes that many people in that region live, as he put it, "constantly
within a hair's-breadth of famine," he thinks that the great body of
the peasants there are in a position, "with industry and thrift, not
only to make both ends meet, but to make them overlap."
Mr. Stacpoole told us some of his own experiences nearer home. Not long
ago he was informed that the National League had ordered some decent
people, who hold the demesne lands of his neighbour, Mr. Macdonald
(already alluded to) at a very low rental, to make a demand for a
reduction, which would have left Mr. Macdonald without a penny of
income. To counter this Mr. Stacpoole offered to take the lands over for
pasture at the existing rental, whereupon the tenants promptly made up
their minds to keep their holdings in defiance of the League.
Last year a man, whom Mr. Stacpoole had regarded as a "good" tenant,
came to him, bringing the money to pay his rent. "I have the rint,
sorr," the man said, "but it is God's truth I dare not pay it to ye!"
Other tenants were waiting outside. "Are you such a coward that you
don't dare be honest?" said Mr. Stacpoole. The man turned rather red,
went and looked out of all the windows, one after another, lifted up the
heavy cloth of the large table in the room, and peeped under it
nervously, and finally walked up to Mr. Stacpoole and paid the money.
The receipt being handed to him, he put it back with his hand, eyed it
askance as if it were a bomb, and finally took it, and carefully put it
into the lining of his hat, after which, opening the door with a great
noise, he exclaimed as he went out, "I'm very, very sorry, master, that
I can't meet you about it!" This man is now as loud in protestation of
his "inability" to pay his rent as any of the "Campaigners." Mr.
Stacpoole thinks one great danger of the actual situation is that men
who were originally "coerced" by intimidation into dishonestly refusing
to pay just rents, which they were abundantly able to pay, are beginning
now to think that they will be, and ought to be, relieved by the law of
the land from any obligation to pay these rents.
It seems to be his impression that things look better, however, of late
for law and order. On Monday of last week at Ennis an example was made
of a local official, which, he thinks, will do good. This was a Poor-Law
Guardian named Grogan. He was bound over on Monday last to keep the
peace for twelve months towards one George Pilkington. Pilkington, it
appears, in contempt of the League, took and occupied, in 1886, a
certain farm in Tarmon West. For this he was "boycotted" from that time
forth. In December last he was summoned, with others, before the Board
of Guardians at Kilrush, to fix the rents of certain labourers'
cottages. While he sat in the room awaiting the action of the Board,
Grogan, one of its members, rose up, and, looking at Pilkington, said in
a loud voice, "There's an obnoxious person here present that should not
be here, a land-grabber named Pilkington." There was a stir in the room,
and Pilkington, standing up, said, "I am here because I have had notice
from the Guardians. If I am asked to leave the place, I shall not come
back." The Chairman of the Board upon this declared that "while the
ordinary business of the Board was transacting, Mr. Pilkington would be
there only by the courtesy of the Board;" and treating the allusions of
Grogan to Pilkington as a part of the business of the Board, he said, "A
motion is before the Board, does any one second it?" Another guardian,
Collins, got up, and said "I do." Thereupon the Chairman put it to the
vote whether Pilkington should be requested to leave. The ayes had it,
and the Chairman of the Board thereupon invited Pilkington to leave the
meeting which the Board had invited him to attend!
Grogan has now been prosecuted for the offence of "wrongfully, and
without legal authority, using violence and intimidation to and towards
George Pilkington of Tarmon West, with a view to cause the said
Pilkington to abstain from doing an act which he had a legal right to
do, namely, to hold, occupy, and work on a certain farm of land at
Tarmon West."
Plainly this case is one of a grapple between the two Governments which
have been and are now contending for the control of Ireland: the
Government of the Queen of Ireland, which authorises Pilkington to take
and farm a piece of land, and the Government of the National League,
which forbids him to do this. Is it possible to doubt which of the two
is the government of Liberty, as well as the government of Law?
It illustrates the demoralising influence upon society in Ireland of the
protracted toleration of such a contest as has been waging between the
authority of the Law and the authority of the League, that, when this
case came up for consideration ten days ago, an official here actually
thought it ought to be put off. Colonel Turner insisted it should be
dealt with at once; and so Mr. Grogan was proceeded against, with the
result I have stated.
The trees on this demesne are the finest I have so far seen in Ireland,
beautiful and vigorous pencil-cedars, ilexes, Scotch firs, and Irish
yews. There is one noble cedar of Lebanon here worth a special trip to
see. In conversation about the country to-night, Mr. Stacpoole mentioned
that tobacco was grown here, strong and of good quality, and he was much
interested, as I remember were also the charming châtelaine of Newtown
Anner and Mr. Le Poer of Gurteen four or five years ago, to learn how
immensely successful has been the tobacco-culture introduced into
Pennsylvania only a quarter of a century ago, as a consequence of the
Civil War. The climatic conditions here are certainly not more
unfavourable to such an experiment in agriculture than they were at
first supposed to be in the Pennsylvanian counties of York and
Lancaster. Of course the Imperial excise would deal with it as harshly
as it is now dealing with a similar experiment in England. But the Irish
tobacco-growers would not now have to fear such hostile legislation as
ruined the Irish linen industries in the last century. The
"Moonlighters" of 1888 lineally represent, if they do not simply
reproduce, the "Whiteboys" of 1760; and the domination of the "uncrowned
king" constantly reminds one of Froude's vivid and vigorous sketch of
the sway wielded by "Captain Dwyer" and "Joanna Maskell" from Mallow to
Westmeath, between the years 1762 and 1765. On that side of the quarrel
there seems to be nothing very new under the sun in Ireland. But the
spirit and the forms of the Imperial authority over the country have
unquestionably undergone a great change for the better, not only since
the last century, but since the accession of Queen Victoria.
Upon the question of land improvements, Mr. Stacpoole told me, to-night,
that he borrowed £1000 of the Government for drainage improvements on
his property here, the object of which was to better the holdings of
tenants. Of this sum he had to leave £400 undrawn, as he could not get
the men to work at the improvements, even for their own good. They all
wanted to be gangers or chiefs. It reminded me of Berlioz's reply to the
bourgeois who wanted his son to be made a "great composer." "Let him go
into the army," said Berlioz, "and join the only regiment he is fit
for." "What regiment is that?" "The regiment of colonels."
In the course of the evening a report was brought out from Ennis to
Colonel Turner. He read it, and then handed it to me, with an
accompanying document. The latter, at my request, he allowed me to keep,
and I must reproduce it here. It tells its own tale.
A peasant came to the authorities and complained that he was "tormented"
to make a subscription to a "testimonial" for one Austen Mackay of
Kilshanny, in the County Clare, producing at the same time a copy of the
circular which had been sent about to the people. It is a
cheaply-printed leaflet, not unlike a penny ballad in appearance, and
thus it runs:--
"_Testimonial to_ Mr. AUSTEN MACKAY, _Kilshanny_, _County Clare_.
"We, the Nationalists and friends of Mr. Austen Mackay, at a meeting
held in March 1887, agreed and resolved on presenting the long-tried and
trusted friend--the persecuted widow's son--with a testimonial worthy of
the fearless hero who on several occasions had to hide his head in the
caves and caverns of the mountains, with a price set on his body. First,
for firing at and wounding a spy in his neighbourhood, as was alleged
in '65, for which he had to stand his trial at Clare Assizes. Again, for
firing at and wounding his mother's agent and under-strapper while in
the act of evicting his widowed mother in the broad daylight of Heaven,
thus saved his mother's home from being wrecked by the robber agent, the
shock of which saved other hearths from being quenched; but the noble
widow's son was chased to the mountains, where he had to seek shelter
from a thousand bloodhounds.
"The same true widow's son nobly guarded his mother's homestead and that
of others from the foul hands of the exterminators. This is the same
widow's son who bravely reinstated the evicted, and helped to rebuild
the levelled houses of many; for this he was persecuted and convicted at
Cork Assizes, and flung into prison to sleep on the cold plank beds of
Cork and Limerick gaols. Many other manly and noble services did he
which cannot be made known to the public. At that meeting you were
appointed collector with other Nationalists of Clare at home and abroad.
This is the widow's son, Austen Mackay, whom we, the Committee to this
testimonial, hope and trust every Irishman in Clare will cheerfully
subscribe, that he may be enabled in his present state of health to get
into some business under the protection of the Stars and Stripes, where
he is a citizen of."
"Subscriptions to be sent to Henry Higgins, Ennis.
"Treasurers: Daniel O'Loghlen, Lisdoonvarna; James Kennedy, Ennistymon."
Then follow, with the name of the Society, the names of the committee.
In behalf of the Stars and Stripes, "where he is a citizen of," I thanked
Colonel Turner for this interesting contribution to the possible future
history of my country, there being nothing to prevent the election of
any heir of this illustrious "widow's son," born to him in America, to
the Presidency of the Republic. The use of this phrase, the "widow's
son," by the way, gives a semi-masonic character to this curious
circular.
One officer says in his report upon this Committee: "All the persons
named are well known to their respective local police, and, except one,
have little or no following or influence in their respective localities.
They are all members of the National League." The same officer subjoins
this instructive observation: "I beg to add that I find no matter how
popular a man may be in Clare, start a testimonial for him, and from
that time forth his influence is gone."
Can it be possible that the "testimonial," which, as the papers tell me,
is getting up all over Ireland for Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, can have been
"started" with a sinister eye to this effect, by local patriots jealous
of any alien intrusion into their bailiwick? I am almost tempted to
suspect this, remembering that a Nationalist with whom I talked about
Mr. Blunt in Dublin, after lavishing much praise upon his disinterested
devotion to the cause of Ireland, moodily remarked, "For all that, I
don't believe he will do us any good, for he comes of the blood of
Mountjoy, I am told!"
EDENVALE, _Monday, Feb. 20._--This morning Colonel Turner called my
attention to the report in the papers of a colloquy between the Chief
Secretary for Ireland and Mr. J. Redmond, M.P., in the House, on the
subject of last week's trials at Ennis. In speaking of the boycotting at
Milltown Malbay of a certain Mrs. Connell, Mr. Balfour described the
case as one of barbarous inhumanity shown to a helpless old woman. Mr.
Redmond denying this, asserted that he had seen the woman Connell a
fortnight ago in Court, and that so far from her being a decrepit old
woman, she was only fifty years of age, hale and hearty, but
disreputable and given to drink; he also said she was drunk at the
trial, so drunk that the Crown prosecutor, Mr. Otter, was obliged to
order her down from the table.
"What are the facts?" I asked. "Mr. Balfour speaks from report and
belief, Mr. Redmond asserts that he speaks from actual observation."
"The facts," said Colonel Turner quietly, "are that Mr. Balfour's
statement is accurate, and that Mr. Redmond, speaking from actual
observation, asserts the thing that is not."
"Where is this old woman?" I asked. "Would it be possible for me to see
her?"
"Certainly; she is at no great distance, and I will with pleasure send a
car with an officer to bring her here this afternoon!"
"Meanwhile, how came the old woman into Court? and what is her
connection with the cases of boycotting last week tried?"
"Those cases arose out of her case," said Colonel Turner; "the publicans
last week arraigned, 'boycotted' a fortnight ago the police and
soldiers who were called in to keep the peace during the trial of the
dealers who 'boycotted' her.
"Her case was first publicly made known by a letter which appeared in
the Dublin _Express_ on the 28th of January. That day a line was sent to
me from Dublin ordering an inquiry into it. I endorsed upon the order,
'Please report. I imagine this is greatly exaggerated.' This was on
January 30th. The next day, January 31st, I received a full report from
Milltown Malbay. Here it is,"--taking a document from a portfolio and
handing it to me--"and you may make what use you like of it."
It is worth giving at length:--
"James Connell, ex-soldier, and his mother, Hannah Connell, of
Fintamore, in this sub-district are boycotted, and have been since
July last. James Connell held a farm and a garden from one Michael
Carroll, a farmer, who was evicted from his holding for non-payment
of three years' rent, July 14, 1886. After the period of redemption,
six months, had passed, the agent made Connell a tenant for his
house and garden, giving him in addition about half an acre (Irish)
of the evicted farm which adjoins his house. In consequence Connell
was regarded by the National League here as a 'land-grabber.' About
the same time the agent also appointed him a rent-warner.
"On the 22d June last Connell received a letter through the
Post-Office threatening him if he did not give up his place as a
rent-warner. I have no doubt the letter was written by (here a
resident was named). On the 10th, and again on the 17th, of July,
Connell was brought before indoor meetings of the National League
here for having taken the half acre of land, when he through fear
declared he had not done it.
"At the first meeting the Rev. J.S. White, P.P., suggested that in
order to test whether Connell had taken the land, Carroll, the
evicted tenant, should go and cut the meadowing on it, which he did,
when Connell interfered and prevented him. At the next meeting
Carroll brought this under notice, and Connell was thereupon
boycotted. Immediately afterwards the men who had been engaged
fishing for Connell refused to fish, saying that if they fished for
him the sale of the fish would be boycotted, which was true.
"Since then Connell has been deprived of his means of livelihood,
and no one dare employ him. He, however, through his mother, was
able to procure the necessaries of life until about the 22d of
November last, when his mother was refused goods by the tradesmen
with whom she had dealt, owing to a resolution passed at a meeting
of the 'suppressed' branch of the League here, to the effect that
any person supplying her would be boycotted. December 23d she came
into Milltown Malbay for goods, and was refused. The police
accompanied her, but no person would supply her. On the 2d of
January she came again, when one trader supplied her with some
bread, but refused groceries. The police accompanied her to several
traders, who all refused. Ultimately she was supplied by the
post-mistress. On the 7th of January she came, and the police
accompanied her to several traders, all of whom refused her even
bread. Believing she wanted it badly, we, the police, supplied her
with some. On these three occasions she was followed by large
numbers of young people about the street, evidently to frighten and
intimidate her, and their demeanour was so hostile that we were
obliged to disperse them and protect her home. On a subsequent
occasion she stated that stones were thrown at her. Since then she
has not come here for goods, and, in my opinion, it would not be
safe for her to do so without protection. She and her son are now
getting goods from Mrs. Moroney's shop at Spanish Point, which she
opened a few years ago to supply boycotted persons.
"The Connells find it hard to get turf, and are obliged to bring it
a distance in bags so that it may not be observed. As for milk, the
person who did supply them privately for a considerable time
declined some weeks ago to do so any longer. They are now really
destitute, as any little money Connell had saved is spent, and,
although willing and anxious to work, no person will employ him.
Summonses have been issued against the tradesmen for refusing to
supply Hannah Connell on the occasions already referred to. I have
only to add that I have from time to time reported fully the
foregoing facts with regard to the persecution of this poor man and
his aged mother; and I regret to say that boycotting and
intimidation never prevailed to a greater extent here than at
present. Connell's safety is being looked after by patrols from this
and Spanish Point station."
Three things seem to me specially noteworthy in this tale of cowardly
and malignant tyranny. The victims of this vulgar Vehmgericht are
neither landlords nor agents. They are a poor Irish labourer and his
aged mother. The "crime" for which these poor creatures are thus
persecuted is simply that one of them--the man--chose to obey the law of
the land in which he lives, and to work for his livelihood and that of
his mother. And the priest of the parish, instead of sheltering and
protecting these hunted creatures, is presented as joining in the hunt,
and actually devising a trap to catch the poor frightened man in a
falsehood.
Upon this third point, a correspondence which passed between Father
White and Colonel Turner, after the conviction of the boycotters of Mrs.
Connell, and copies of which the latter has handed to me at my request,
throws an instructive light.
When the report of January 31st reached him, Colonel Turner ordered the
tradespeople implicated in the persecution to be proceeded against. Six
of them were put on their trials on the 3d and 4th of February. All the
shops in Milltown Malbay were closed, by order of the local League,
during the trial, and the police and the soldiers called in were refused
all supplies.
On the 4th, one of the persons arraigned was bound over for
intimidation, and the five others were sentenced to three months'
imprisonment with hard labour.
A week later, February 11th, Colonel Turner addressed the following
letter to Father White, twenty-six publicans of Milltown Malbay having
meanwhile been prosecuted for boycotting the police and the soldiers:--
"DEAR SIR,--I write to you as a clergyman who possesses great
influence with the people in your part of the country, to put it to
you whether it would not be better for the interests of all
concerned if the contemptible system of petty persecution, called
boycotting, were put an end to in and about Milltown Malbay, which
would enable me to drop prosecutions. If it is not put a stop to, I
am determined to stamp it out, and restore to all the ordinary
rights of citizenship.
"But I should very greatly prefer that the people should stop it
themselves, and save me from taking strong measures, which I should
deplore. The story of a number of men combining to persecute a poor
old woman is one of the most pitiful I ever heard.--I am, sir, yours
truly,
ALFRED TURNER."
As the cost of the extra policemen sent to Milltown Malbay at this time
falls upon the people there, this letter in effect offered the priest an
opportunity to relieve his parish of a burden as well as to redeem its
character.
The next day Father White replied:--
"DEAR SIR,--No one living is more anxious for peace in this district
than I. During very exciting times I have done my best to keep it
free from outrage, and with success, except in one mysterious
instance.[20] There is but one obstacle to it now. If ever you can
advise Mrs. Moroney to restore the evicted tenant, whose rent you
admitted was as high as Colonel O'Callaghan's, I can guarantee on
the part of the people the return of good feelings; or, failing
that, if she and her employees are content with the goods which she
has of all kinds in her own shop, there need be no further trouble.
"I have a promise from the people that the police will be supplied
for the future. This being so, if you will kindly have prosecutions
withdrawn, or even postponed for say a month, it will very much
strengthen me in the effort I am making to calm down the feeling.
Regarding Mrs. Connell, the head-constable was told by me that she
was to get goods, and she did get bread, till the police went round
with her. This upset my arrangements, as I had induced the people to
give her what she might really want. In fact she was a convenience
to Mrs. Moroney for obvious reasons, and her son is now in her
employment in place of Kelly, who has been dismissed since his very
inconvenient evidence. It is, and was, well known they were not
starving as they said, they having a full supply of their accustomed
food.--Thanking you for your great courtesy, I am, dear sir, truly
yours,
"J. White."
On the 14th Colonel Turner replied:--
"My dear Sir,--We cannot adjourn the cases. But if those who are
prosecuted are prepared to make reparation by promising future good
conduct in Court, I can then see my way to interfere, and to prevent
them from suffering imprisonment.
"These cases have nothing whatever to do with Mrs. Moroney.[21] They
are simply between the defendants and the police and other
officials, who were at Milltown Malbay that day. I am greatly
pleased at your evident wish to co-operate with me in calming down
the ill-feeling which unfortunately exists, and I am satisfied that
success will attend our efforts."
On Thursday and Friday last, as I have recorded, the cases came on of
the twenty-six publicans charged. Between February 4th, when the
offences were committed, and the 17th of February, one of these
publicans had died, one had fled to America, and there proved to be an
informality in the summons issued against a third. Twenty-three only
were put upon their trial. As I have stated, one was acquitted and the
others were found guilty, and sentenced to be imprisoned. In accordance
with his promise made to Father White, Colonel Turner offered to relieve
them all of the imprisonment if they would sign an undertaking in Court
not to repeat the offence. Ten, the most prosperous and substantial of
the accused, accepted this offer and signed, as has been already stated.
One, a woman, was discharged without being required to sign the
guarantee, the other eleven refused to sign, and were sent to prison.
Father White, whose own evidence given at the trial, as his letter to
Colonel Turner would lead one to expect, had gone far to prove the
existence of the conspiracy, encouraged the eleven in their attitude.
This was his way of "co-operating" with Colonel Turner to "calm down the
ill-feeling which exists"!
During the morning Mrs. Stacpoole sent for the clerk and manager of the
estate, and asked him to show me the books. He is a native of these
parts, by name Considine, and has lived at Edenvale for eighteen years.
In his youth he went out to America, but there found out that he had a
"liver," an unpleasant discovery, which led him to return to the land of
his birth, and to the service of Mr. Stacpoole. He is perfectly familiar
with the condition of the country here, and as the accounts of this
estate are kept minutely and carefully from week to week, he was able
this morning to show me the current prices of all kinds of farm produce
and of supplies in and about Ennis--not estimated prices, but prices
actually paid or received in actual transactions during the last ten
years. I am surprised to see how narrow has been the range of local
variations during that time; and I find Mr. Considine inclined to think
that the farmers here have suffered very little, if at all, from these
fluctuations, making up from time to time on their reduced expenses what
they have lost through lessened receipts. The expenses of the landlord
have however increased, while his receipts have fallen off. In 1881
Edenvale paid out for labour £466, 0s. 1-1/2d., in 1887 £560, 6s.
3-1/2d., though less labour was employed in 1887 than in 1881. The wages
of servants, where any change appears, have risen. In 1881 a gardener
received £14 a year, in 1888 he receives 15s. a week, or at the rate of
£39 a year. A housemaid receiving £12 a year in 1881, receives now £17 a
year. A butler receiving in 1881 £26 a year, now receives £40 a year. A
kitchen maid receiving in 1881 £6, now receives £10, 10s. a year.
Meanwhile, the Sub-Commissioners are at this moment cutting down the
Edenvale rents again by £190, 3s. 2d., after a walk over the property in
the winter. Yet in July 1883 Mr. Reeves, for the Sub-Commission,
"thought it right to say there was no estate in the County Clare so
fairly rented, to their knowledge, or where the tenants had less cause
for complaint." In but one case was a reduction of any magnitude made by
the Commission of 1883, and in one case that Commission actually
increased the rent from £11, 10s. to £16. In January 1883 the rental of
this property was £4065, 5s. 1d. The net reduction made by the
Commissioners in July 1883 was £296, 14s. 0-1/2d.
After luncheon a car came up to the mansion, bringing a stalwart,
good-natured-looking sergeant of police, and with him the boycotted old
woman Mrs. Connell and her son. The sergeant helped the old woman down
very tenderly, and supported her into the house. She came in with some
trepidation and uneasiness, glancing furtively all about her, with the
look of a hunted creature in her eyes. Her son, who followed her, was
more at his ease, but he also had a worried and careworn look. Both were
warmly but very poorly clad, and both worn and weatherbeaten of aspect.
The old woman might have passed anywhere for a witch, so wizened and
weird she was, of small stature, and bent nearly double by years and
rheumatism. Her small hands were withered away into claws, and her head
was covered with a thick and tangled mat of hair, half dark, half grey,
which gave her the look almost of the Fuegian savages who come off from
the shore in their flat rafts and clamour to you for "rum" in the
Straits of Magellan. Her eyes were intensely bright, and shone like hot
coals in her dusky, wrinkled face. It was a raw day, and she came in
shivering with the cold. It was pathetic to see how she positively
gloated with extended palms over the bright warm, fire in the
drawing-room, and clutched at the cup of hot tea which my kind hostess
instantly ordered in for her.
This was the woman of whom Mr. Redmond wrote to Mr. Parnell that she was
"an active strong dame of about fifty." When Mr. Balfour, in Parliament,
described her truly as a "decrepit old woman of eighty," Mr. Redmond
contradicted him, and accused her of being "the worse for liquor" in a
public court.
"How old is your mother?" I asked her son.
"I am not rightly sure, sir," he replied, "but she is more than eighty."
"The man himself is about fifty," said the sergeant; "he volunteered to
go to the Crimean War, and that was more than thirty years ago!"
"I did indeed, sir," broke in the man, "and it was from Cork I went. And
I'd be a corpse now if it wasn't for the mercy of God and the
protection. God bless the police, sir, that protected my old mother,
sir, and me. That Mr. Redmond, sir, they read me what he said, and sure
he should be ashamed of his shadow, to get up there in Parliament, and
tell those lies, sir, about my old mother!" I questioned Connell as to
his relations with Carroll, the man who brought him before the League.
He was a labourer holding a bit of ground under Carroll. Carroll refused
to pay his own rent to the landlord. But he compelled Connell to pay
rent to him. When Carroll was evicted, the landlord offered to let
Connell have half an acre more of land. He took it to better himself,
and "how did he injure Carroll by taking it?" How indeed, poor man! Was
he a rent-warner? Yes; he earned something that way two or three times
a year; and for that he had to ask the protection of the police--"they
would kill him else." What with worry and fright, and the loss of his
livelihood, this unfortunate labourer has evidently been broken down
morally and physically. It is impossible to come into contact with such
living proofs of the ineffable cowardice and brutality of this business
of "boycotting" without indignation and disgust.
While Connell was telling his pitiful tale a happy thought occurred to
the charming daughter of the house. Mrs. Stacpoole is a clever amateur
in photography. "Why not photograph this 'hale and hearty woman of
fifty,' with her son of fifty-three?" Mrs. Stacpoole clapped her hands
at the idea, and went off at once to prepare her apparatus.
While she was gone the sergeant gave me an account of the trial, which
Mr. Redmond, M.P., witnessed. He was painfully explicit. "Mr. Redmond
knew the woman was sober," he said; "she was lifted up on the table at
Mr. Redmond's express request, because she was so small and old, and
spoke in such a low voice that he could not hear what she said. Connell
had always been a decent, industrious fellow--a fisherman. But for the
lady, Mrs. Moroney, he and his mother would have starved, and would
starve now. As for the priest, Father White, Connell went to him to ask
his intercession and help, but he could get neither."
The sergeant had heard Father White preach yesterday. "It was a curious
sermon. He counselled peace and forbearance to the people, because they
might be sure the wicked Tory Government would very soon fall!"
Presently the sun came out with golden glow, and with the sun came out
Mrs. Stacpoole. It was a job to "pose" the subjects, the old woman
evidently suspecting some surgical or legal significance in the
machinery displayed, and her son finding some trouble in making her
understand what it meant. But finally we got the tall, personable
sergeant, with his frank, shrewd, sensible face, to put himself between
the two, in the attitude as of a guardian angel; the camera was nimbly
adjusted, and lo! the thing was done.
Mrs. Stacpoole thinks the operation promises a success. I suppose it
would hardly be civil to send a finished proof of the group to Mr. J.
Redmond, M.P.
APPENDIX.
NOTE A.
MR. GLADSTONE AND THE AMERICAN WAR. (Prologue, p. xxix.)
This statement as to the action of Lord Palmerston in connection with
Mr. Gladstone's Newcastle speech of October 7th, 1862, made upon the
authority of a British public man whose years and position entitle him
to speak with confidence on such a subject, appeared to me of so much
interest, that after sending it to the printer I caused search to be
made for the speech referred to as made by Sir George Cornewall Lewis.
My informant's statement was that Lord Palmerston insisted that Sir
George Lewis should find or make an immediate opportunity of covering
what Mr. Gladstone had said at Newcastle. He was angry about it, and his
anger was increased by an article which Mr. Delane printed in the
_Times_, intimating that Mr. Gladstone's speech was considered by many
people to be a betrayal of Cabinet secrets. Sir George Lewis was far
from well (he died the next spring), and reluctant to do what his chief
wished; but he did it on the 17th of October 1862 in a speech at
Hereford. Mr. Milner-Gibson was also put forward to the same end, and
after Parliament met, in February 1863, Mr. Disraeli gave the
Government a sharp lashing for sending one or two Ministers into the
country in the recess to announce that the Southern States would be
recognised, and then putting forward the President of the Board of Trade
(Milner-Gibson) to attack the Southern States and the pestilent
institution of slavery. Mr. Gladstone's speech at Newcastle, coming as
it did from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, after the close of a
session during which everybody knew that the Emperor of the French had
been urging upon England the recognition of the Confederate States, and
that Mr. Mason had been in active correspondence on that subject with
Lord Russell, was taken at Newcastle, and throughout the country, to
mean that the recognition was imminent. Mr. Gladstone even went so far
as to say he rather rejoiced that the Confederates had not been able to
hold Maryland, as that might have made them aggressive, and so made a
settlement more difficult, it being, he said, as certain as anything in
the future could be that the South must succeed in separating itself
from the Union. This remark about Maryland distinctly indicated
consultation as to what limits and boundaries between the South and the
North should be recognised in the recognition, and on that account, it
seems, was particularly resented by Earl Russell as well as by Lord
Palmerston.
Sir George Cornewall Lewis's speech of October 17, 1862, was a most
skilful and masterly attempt to protect the Cabinet against the
consequences of what the _Times_, on the 9th of October, had treated as
the "indiscretion or treason" of his colleague. But it did not save the
Government from the scourge of Mr. Disraeli, or much mitigate the effect
in America of Mr. Gladstone's performance at Newcastle, which was a much
more serious matter from the American point of view than any of the
speeches recently delivered about "Home Rule" in the American Senate
can be fairly said to be from the British point of view.
NOTE B.
MR. PARNELL AND THE DYNAMITERS. (Prologue, p. xxxiii.)
The relation of Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates to what is
called the extreme and "criminal" section of the Irish American
Revolutionary Party can only be understood by those who understand that
it is the ultimate object of this party not to effect reforms in the
administration of Ireland as an integral part of the British Empire, but
to sever absolutely the political connection between Ireland and the
British Empire. Loyal British subjects necessarily consider this object
a "criminal" object, just as loyal Austrian subjects considered the
object of the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 to be a "criminal" object.
But the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 did not accept this view of their
object. On the contrary, they held their end to be so high and holy that
it more or less sanctified even assassination when planned as a means to
that end. Why should the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 be judged by one
standard and the Irish Revolutionists of 1888 by another?
If Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates were to declare in
unequivocal terms their absolute loyalty to the British Crown, and their
determination to maintain in all circumstances the political connection
between Great Britain and Ireland, they might or might not retain their
hold upon Mr. Davitt and upon their constituents in Ireland, but they
would certainly put themselves beyond the pale of support by the great
Irish American organisations. Nor do I believe they could retain the
confidence of those organisations if it were supposed that they really
regarded the most extreme and violent of the Irish Revolutionists, the
"Invincibles" and the "dynamiters" as "criminals," in the sense in which
the "Invincibles" and the "dynamiters" are so regarded by the rest of
the civilised world. Can it, for example, be doubted that any English or
Scottish public man who co-operates with Mr. Parnell and his
Parliamentary associates would instantly hand over to the police any
"Invincible" or "dynamiter" who might come within his reach? And can it
for a moment be believed that Mr. Parnell, or any one of his
Parliamentary associates, would do this? There are thousands of Irish
citizens in the United States who felt all the horror and indignation
expressed by Mr. Parnell at the murders in the Phoenix Park, but I
should be very much surprised to learn that any one of them all ever
did, or ever would do, anything likely to bring any one of the authors
of these murders to the bar of justice. Mr. Parnell and his
Parliamentary associates are held and bound by the essential conditions
of their political existence to treat with complaisance the most extreme
and violent men of their party. Nor is this true of them alone.
There is no more respectable body of men in the United States than the
Hibernian Society of Philadelphia. This society was instituted in 1771,
five years before the declaration of American Independence. It is a
charitable and social organisation only, with no political object or
colour. It is made up of men of character and substance. Its custom has
always been to celebrate St. Patrick's Day by a banquet, to which the
most distinguished men of the country have repeatedly been bidden.
Immediately after the inauguration of Mr. Cleveland as President, on
the 4th of March 1885, Mr. Bayard, the new Secretary of State of the
United States, was invited by this Society to attend its one hundred and
fourteenth banquet. It will be remembered that, on the 30th of May 1884,
London had been startled and shocked by an explosion of dynamite in St.
James's Square, which shattered many houses and inflicted cruel injuries
upon several innocent people. It was not so fatal to life as that
explosion at the Salford Barracks, which Mr. Parnell treated as a
"practical joke." But it excited lively indignation on both sides of the
Atlantic, and Mr. Bayard, who at that time was a Senator of the United
States, sternly denounced it and its authors on the floor of the
American Senate. What he had said as a Senator he thought it right to
repeat as the Foreign Secretary of the United States in his reply to the
invitation of the Hibernian Society in March 1885. This reply ran as
follows:--
"WASHINGTON, D.C., _March_ 9, 1885.
"NICHOLAS J. GRIFFIN, Esq., _Secretary of the Hibernian Society of
Philadelphia._
"Dear Sir,--I have your personal note accompanying the card of
invitation to dine with your ancient and honourable Society on their
one hundred and fourteenth anniversary, St. Patrick's Day, and I
sincerely regret that I cannot accept it. The obvious and many
duties of my public office here speak for themselves, and to none
with more force than to American citizens of Irish blood or birth
who are honestly endeavouring to secure liberty by maintaining a
government of laws, and who realise the constant attention that is
needful.
"In the midst of anarchical demonstrations which we witness in other
lands, and the echoes of which we can detect even here in our own
free country, where base and silly individuals seek to stain the
name of Ireland by associating the honest struggle for just
government with senseless and wicked crimes, there are none of our
citizens from whom honest reprobation can be more confidently
expected than from such as compose your respected and benevolent
Society. Those who worthily celebrate the birthday[22] of St.
Patrick will not forget that he drove out of Ireland the reptiles
that creep and sting.
"The Hibernian Society can contain no member who will not resent the
implication that sympathy with assassins can dwell in a genuine
Irish heart, which will ever be opposed to cruelty and cowardice,
whatever form either may take.
"Present to your Society my thanks for the kind remembrance, and
assure them of the good-will and respect with which I am--Your
obedient servant,
T.F. BAYARD."
What was the response of this Society, representing all the best
elements of the Irish American population of the United States, to this
letter of the Secretary of State, the highest executive officer of the
American Government after the President, upon whom under an existing law
the succession of the chief magistracy now devolves in the event of the
death or disability of the President and the Vice-President?
_The letter was not read at the banquet._
But it was given to the press by the officers of the Society, and the
most influential Irish American newspaper in the United States did not
hesitate to describe it as an "insulting letter," going to show that its
author was "an Englishman in spirit who will not allow any opportunity
to go by, however slight, without testifying his sympathy with the
British Empire and his antipathy for its foes."
This was capped by an American political journal which used the
following language: "Lord Granville himself would hardly strike a more
violent attitude against the dynamite section of the Irish people. When
Lord Wolseley, whom it is proposed to make Governor-General of the
Soudan, is offering a reward for the head of Ollivier Pain, it is hardly
in good taste for an American Secretary of State to condemn so bitterly
a class of Irishmen which, while it includes bad men no doubt, also
includes men who are moved by as worthy motives as Lord Wolseley."
In the face of this testimony to the "solidarity" of all branches of the
Irish revolutionary movement in America, how can Mr. Parnell, or any
other Parliamentary Irishman who depends upon Irish American support, be
expected by men of sense to condemn in earnest "the dynamite section of
the Irish people"?
NOTE C.
THE AMERICAN "SUSPECTS" OF 1881. (Prologue, p. xlvii.)
In his recently published and very interesting _Life of Mr. Forster_,
Mr. Wemyss Reid alludes to some action taken by the United States
Government in the spring of 1882 as one of the determining forces which
brought about the abandonment at that time by Mr. Gladstone of Mr.
Forster's policy in Ireland. Without pretending to concern myself here
with what is an essentially British question as between Mr. Forster and
Mr. Gladstone, it may be both proper and useful for me to throw some
light, not, perhaps, in the possession of Mr. Reid, upon the part taken
in this matter by the American Government. Sir William Harcourt's
"Coercion Bill" was passed on the 2d of March 1881, two days before the
inauguration of General Garfield as President of the United States. Mr.
Blaine, who was appointed by the new President to take charge of the
Foreign Relations of the American Government, received, on the 10th of
March, at Washington, a despatch written by Mr. Lowell, the American
Minister in London, on the 26th of February, being the day after the
third reading in the Commons of the "Coercion Bill." In this despatch
Mr. Lowell called the attention of the American State Department to a
letter from Mr. Parnell to the Irish National Land League, dated at
Paris, February 13, 1881, in which Mr. Parnell attempted to make what
Mr. Lowell accurately enough described as an "extraordinary" distinction
between "the American people" and "the Irish nation in America."
"This double nationality," said Mr. Lowell, "is likely to be of great
practical inconvenience whenever the 'Coercion Bill' becomes law." By
"this double nationality" in this passage, the American Minister, of
course, meant "this claim of a double nationality;" for neither by Great
Britain nor by the United States is any man permitted to consider
himself at one and the same time a citizen of the American republic and
a subject of the British monarchy. Nor was he quite right in
anticipating "great practical inconvenience" from this "claim," upon
which neither the British nor the American Government for a moment
bestowed, or could bestow, the slightest attention.
The "great practical inconvenience" which, first to the American
Legation in England, then to the United States Government at Washington,
and finally to the Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone, did, however, arise from
the application of Sir William Harcourt's Coercion Act of 1881 to
American citizens in Ireland, had its origin not in Mr. Parnell's
preposterous idea of an Irish nationality existing in the United States,
but in the failure of the authorities of the United States to deal
promptly and firmly with the situation created for American citizens in
Ireland by the administration of Sir William Harcourt's Act.
As I have said, Sir William Harcourt's Act became law on the 2d of
March 1881, two days before the inauguration of President Garfield at
Washington. Without touching the question of the relations between Great
Britain and Ireland, and between the British Parliament and the Irish
National Land League, it was clearly incumbent upon the Secretary of
State of the United States, who entered upon his duties three days after
Sir William Harcourt's Bill went into force in Ireland, to inform
himself minutely and exactly as to the possible effects of that Bill
upon the rights and interests of American citizens travelling or
sojourning in that country. This was due not only to his own Government
and to its citizens, but to the relations which ought to exist between
his own Government and the Government of Great Britain. It was no affair
of an American Secretary of State either to impede or to further the
execution of "Coercion Acts" in Ireland against British subjects. But it
was his affair to ascertain without delay the nature and the measure of
any new and unusual perils, or "inconveniences," to which American
citizens in Ireland might be exposed in the execution there by the
British authorities of such Acts.
And it is on record, under his own hand, in a despatch to the American
Minister in London, dated May 26, 1881, that Mr. Blaine had not so much
as seen a copy of Sir William Harcourt's Coercion Act at that date,
three months after it had gone into effect; three months after many
persons claiming American citizenship had been arrested and imprisoned
under it; and two months after his own official attention had been
called by the American Minister in London, in an elaborate despatch, to
the arrest under it of one such person, a man of Irish birth, who based
his claim of American citizenship upon allegations of military service
during the Civil War, of residence and citizenship in New York, and of
the granting to him, by an American Secretary of State, of a citizen's
passport. And when he did finally take the trouble to look at this Act,
Mr. Elaine seems to have examined it so cursorily, and with such slight
attention, that he overlooked a provision made in it, under which, had
its true force and meaning been perceived by him, the State Department
of the United States might, in the early summer of 1881, have secured
for American citizens in Ireland the consideration due to them as the
citizens of a friendly State. A curious despatch from Mr. Sackville
West, the British Minister at Washington, to Earl Granville, published
in a British Blue-book now in my possession, plainly intimates that in
the summer of 1881 the American Secretary of State had given the British
Minister to understand that no representations made to him or to his
Government by the Government of the United States touching
American-Irish "suspects" need be taken at all seriously. The whole
diplomatic correspondence on this subject which went on between the two
Governments while Mr. Blaine was Secretary of State, from the 4th of
March 1881 to the 20th of December 1881, was of a sort to lull the
British Government into the belief that "suspects" might be freely and
safely arrested and locked up all over Ireland, with no more question of
their nationality than of any evidence to establish their guilt or their
innocence. During the whole of that time the State Department at
Washington seems to have substantially remained content with the
declaration of Earl Granville, in a letter sent to the American Legation
on the 8th of July 1881, four months after the Coercion Act went into
effect, that "no distinction could be made in the circumstances between
foreigners and British subjects, and that in the case of British
subjects the only information given was that contained in the warrant."
No fault can be found with the British Government for standing by this
declaration so long as it thus seemed to command the assent of the
Government of the United States.
But when Mr. Frelinghuysen was called into the State Department by
President Arthur in December 1881, to overhaul the condition into which
our foreign relations had been brought by his predecessor, he found that
in no single instance had Mr. Blaine succeeded in inducing the British
Government, either to release any American citizen arrested under a
general warrant without specific charges of criminal conduct, and on
"suspicion" in Ireland, or to order the examination of any such citizen.
The one case in which an American citizen arrested under the Coercion
Act in Ireland during Mr. Blaine's tenure of office had been liberated
when Mr. Frelinghuysen took charge of the State Department, was that of
Mr. Joseph B. Walsh, arrested at Castlebar, in Mayo, March 8, 1881, and
discharged by order of the Lord-Lieutenant, October 21, 1881, not
because he was an American citizen, nor after any examination, but
expressly and solely on the ground of ill-health.
When Mr. Frelinghuysen became Secretary of State in December 1881 the
Congress of the United States was in session. So numerous were the
American "suspects" then lying in prison in Ireland, some of whom had
been so confined for many months, that the doors of Congress were soon
besieged by angry demands for an inquiry into the subject. A resolution
in this sense was adopted by the House of Representatives, and
forwarded, through the American Legation in London, to the British
Foreign Office. Memorials touching particular cases were laid before
both Houses of the American Congress. On the 10th of February 1882, Mr.
Bancroft Davis, the Assistant-Secretary of State, instructed the
American Minister at London to take action concerning one such case, and
to report upon it. The Minister not moving more rapidly than he had been
accustomed to do under Mr. Blaine, Mr. Davis grew impatient, and on the
2d of March 1882 (being the anniversary of the adoption of the Coercion
Act in England) the American Secretary of State cabled to the Minister
in London significantly enough, "Use all diligence in regard to the late
cases, especially of Hart and M'Sweeney, and report by cable."
Mr. Lowell replied the next day, giving the views in regard to Hart of
the American Vice-Consul, and of the British Inspector of Police at
Queenstown, and adding an expression of his own opinion that neither
Hart nor M'Sweeney was "more innocent than the majority of those under
arrest."
This was an unfortunate despatch. It roused the American Secretary of
State into responding instantly by cable in the following explicit and
emphatic terms: "Referring to the cases of O'Connor, Hart, M'Sweeney,
M'Enery, and D'Alton, American citizens imprisoned in Ireland, say to
Lord Granville that, without discussing whether the provisions of the
Force Act can be applied to American citizens, the President hopes that
the Lord-Lieutenant will be instructed to exercise the powers intrusted
to him by the first section to order early trials in these and all other
cases in which Americans may be arrested."
There was no mistaking the tone of this despatch. It was instantly
transmitted to the British Foreign Secretary, who replied the same day
that "the matter would receive the immediate attention of Her Majesty's
Government."
The reference made to the Coercion Act by Mr. Frelinghuysen touched a
plain and precise provision, that persons detained under the Act
"should not be discharged or tried by any court without the direction of
the Lord-Lieutenant." Had the Coercion Act received from Mr. Blaine in
March 1881 the attention bestowed upon it in March 1882 by Mr.
Frelinghuysen, this provision might have been used to obviate the
dangerous accumulation of injustice to individuals, and of international
irritation, resulting from the application to possibly innocent foreign
citizens in Ireland of the despotic powers conferred by that Act upon
Mr. Gladstone's Government, powers as nearly as possible analogous with
those which Mr. Gladstone himself, years before, had denounced in
unmeasured terms when they were claimed and exercised by the Government
of Naples in dealing with its own subjects.
After the consideration by Her Majesty's Government of this despatch of
the United States Government, it is understood in America that Mr.
Forster, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, was invited to communicate with
the Lord-Lieutenant, and request him to exercise his discretion in the
sense desired, and that Mr. Forster positively refused to do this.
How this may be I do not pretend to say. But as no satisfactory reply
was made to the American despatch, and as public feeling in the United
States grew daily more and more determined that a stop should be put to
the unexplained arrest and the indefinite detention of American citizens
in Ireland, the American Secretary of State made up his mind towards the
end of the month of March to repeat his despatch of March 3d in a more
terse and peremptory form. As a final preliminary to this step, however,
Mr. Frelinghuysen was induced to avail himself of the unusual and
officious intervention of his most distinguished living predecessor in
the State Department, Mr. Hamilton Fish. After measuring the gravity of
the situation, Mr. Fish at the end of March sent a despatch to an
eminent public man, well known on both sides of the Atlantic, and now
resident in London, with authority to show it personally to Mr.
Gladstone, to the effect that if any further delay occurred in complying
with the moderate and reasonable demand of the American Government for
the immediate release or the immediate trial of the American "suspects,"
the relations between Great Britain and the United States would be very
seriously "strained."
This despatch was at once communicated to Mr. Gladstone. Within the
week, the liberation was announced of six American "suspects." Within a
fortnight, Mr. Parnell, Mr. O'Kelly, and Mr. Dillon, it is understood,
imprisoned members of Parliament, were offered their liberty if they
would consent to a sham exile on the Continent for a few weeks, or even
days; and within a month Mr. Forster, in his place in Parliament, was
imputing to his late chief and Premier the negotiation of that
celebrated "Treaty of Kilmainham," which was repudiated with equal
warmth by the three Irish members already named, and by Mr. Gladstone.
NOTE D.
THE PARNELLITES AND THE ENGLISH PARTIES.
(Prologue, p. 1.)
As I am not writing a history of English parties, I need not discuss
here the truth or falsehood of this contention. But I cannot let it pass
without a word as to two cases which came under my own observation, and
which aggravate the inherent improbability of the tale. In November 1885
I went to America, and on my way passed through Stockport, where my
friend, Mr. Jennings, long my correspondent in England, was then
standing as a Conservative candidate. I attended one of his meetings and
heard him make an effective speech, much applauded, which turned
exclusively upon imperial and financial issues. That he had no
understanding whatever with the "managers" of the Irish vote in
Stockport, I have the best reason to believe. But he was assured by them
that the Irish intended to vote for him; and at a subsequent time he was
rashly assailed in the House of Commons by an Irish member with the
charge that he had broken faith with the Irish who elected him. It was
an unlucky assault for the assailant, as it gave Mr. Jennings an
opportunity, which he promptly improved, to show that he owed nothing to
the Irish voters of Stockport. Whether they voted for him in any number
in 1885 was more than doubtful; while in 1886 they voted solidly against
him, with the result of swelling his majority from 369 to 518 votes.
In January 1886 I returned to Europe, and going on a visit into
Yorkshire, there met a prominent Irish Nationalist, who told me that he
had come into the north of England expressly to regiment the Irish
voters, and throw their votes for the Conservative candidates, on the
ground that it was necessary to make the Liberals fully understand their
power. He had fully expected in this way to elect a Conservative member
for the city of York. Great was his chagrin, therefore, when he found
the Liberal candidate returned. Upon investigation he discovered, as he
told me, that the catastrophe was due to the activity of a local Irish
priest, _who was a devoted Fenian_, utterly opposed to the Parliamentary
programme, and who had exerted his authority over the local Irish to
bring them to the polls for the Liberal candidate.
Sir Frederick Milner, Bart., the defeated Conservative candidate for
York, afterwards told me that the local priest referred to here was a
most excellent man, and that so far from playing the part thus ascribed
to him, he took the trouble, as a matter of fair dealing, to see his
parishioners on the morning of the election and warn them against
believing a pamphlet which was sedulously circulated among the Irish
voters on the night before the polling, with a message to the effect
that Sir Frederick despised the Irish, and wanted nothing to do with
them or their votes. Sir Frederick has no doubt, from his knowledge of
what occurred during the canvass, that direct instructions were sent by
Mr. Parnell or his agents to the Irish voters in York to throw their
votes against the Radical candidates. These latter brought down a Home
Rule lecturer to counteract the effect of these instructions, and the
pamphlet above referred to was an eleventh-hour blow in the same
interest. It was successful; the Irish votes, some 500 in number, being
polled early in the morning under the impression produced by it. The
moral of this incident would seem to be, not that there was any real
understanding in 1885 between the Parnellites and the English
Conservatives at all, but simply that the English Radical wirepullers
are more alert and active than either the Irish Parnellites or the
English Conservatives. It is interesting, too, as it illustrates the
deep dread and distrust of the "Fenians" in which the Parnellites
habitually go.
NOTE E.
THE "BOYCOTT" AT MILTOWN-MALBAY.
(Vol. i. p. 209.)
Father White of Miltown-Malbay, taking exception to the statement made
by me, upon the authority of Colonel Turner, that he was "the moving
spirit" of the local "boycott" of policemen and soldiers at that place,
addressed a note to Colonel Turner on the 5th of September, in which he
desired to know whether Colonel Turner, had given me grounds for making
this statement. To this note Colonel Turner tells me he returned at once
the following reply, which he kindly forwards to me for publication:--
"ENNIS, _6th September_ 1888.
"REV. SIR,--I am in receipt of your letter of yesterday, and in
reply thereto beg to state that I informed Mr. Hurlbert that you
said 'in open court' that you had directed (I believe from the
altar) that the town was to be 'made as a city of the dead' during
the trials of 23 publicans who were charged for conspiracy in
boycotting the forces of the Crown who had been employed in
preserving the peace on the occasion of a former trial--this you
said you did in the interests of peace. The magistrates, however,
took a different view, viz., that it was done with the object of
preventing the military and police from obtaining any supplies,
which they were unable to do; and that their view was the correct
one was proved by the fact that half of the accused pleaded guilty
to the offence, and on promise of future good behaviour were allowed
out on their own recognisances. That the people followed your
instructions on that day, coupled with the fact that in your letter
to the _Freeman's Journal_, dated 17th March of this year, you
stated that you offered me peace all round on certain conditions,
thereby showing that at least you consider yourself possessed of
authority to bring about a state of peace or otherwise, probably led
Mr. Hurlbert, to whom I showed a copy of this letter, to infer that
you admitted that you were the moving spirit of all this 'local
boycott,' while you only did so in the particular case above
mentioned. Whether Mr. Hurlbert is correct in drawing the inference
he does as to your being the moving spirit, and as to your conduct,
may perhaps be gathered from the numerous numbers of _United
Ireland_ and other papers which he saw giving reports of illegal
meetings of the suppressed branch of the Miltown-Malbay National
League, at which you were stated to have presided, and at some of
which condemnatory resolutions were passed, and also from the fact
that you are reported to have presided at a meeting on Sunday, April
8, which was held at Miltown-Malbay in defiance of Government
proclamation.--I am, dear Sir, yours faithfully,
ALFRED E. TURNER.
"Rev. P. White, P.P., Miltown-Malbay."
On further investigation of his records, Colonel Turner found it
necessary to follow up this letter with another, a copy of which,
through his courtesy, I subjoin:--
"ENNIS, _10th September_ 1888.
"REV. SIR,--A slight inaccuracy has been pointed out to me in my
letter to you of the 6th inst., which I hasten to correct. It
occurred in transcribing my letter from the original draft. I should
have said that I told Mr. Hurlbert that you stated in open court, at
the trial of 23 publicans charged with boycotting the forces of the
Crown on the occasion of a former trial, that you had told the
people (I believe from the altar) that the town was to be made as a
city of the dead during the former trial; and that in consequence
the soldiers and police could get nothing to eat or drink in Miltown
that day.
"I also told him that this boycotting of the police was by no means
new, since on the 13th March 1887, at a meeting of the
Miltown-Malbay branch of the League at which you are reported to
have presided, in _United Ireland_ of 19/3/87, the following
resolution was unanimously adopted:--
"'That from this day any person who supplies the police while
engaged in work which is opposed to the wishes of the people with
drink, food, or cars, be censured by this branch, and that no
further intercourse be held with them.'
"I regret that through inadvertence I have had to trouble you with a
second letter.--I am, Rev. Sir, yours faithfully,
"ALFRED E. TURNER.
"Rev. P. White, P.P."
[1] Vol. ii. p. 376.
[2] Vol. ii. p. 364-370.
[3] The exasperation of the local agitators under the cool and
determined treatment of Mr. Tener may be measured by the facts stated in
the following communication received by me from Mr. Tener on the 20th of
September. I leave them to speak for themselves:--
"POLICE BARRACKS, WOODFORD, _17th Sept._ 1888.
"DEAR MR. HURLBERT,--I enclose you _a printed_ placard found posted
up in Woodford district on Sunday morning the 9th inst. It alludes
to _tenants_ who had paid me their rent,--and broken the 'unwritten
law of the League.' All the men named are now in great danger. The
police force of the district has been increased--for their
protection; but the police are very anxious about their safety!
"I send you also a _pencil_ copy taken from a more _perfect_ placard
which the police preserve. John White or Whyte is the tenant whose
name I already have given you. He is the tall dark man whom you saw
(with an ex-bailiff) at Portumna. He was then an "Evicted Tenant."
He has since been, on payment of his rent, restored to his farm by
me. And now, as you see in the placard, he is held up to the
vengeance of the "League of Hell," as P.J. Smyth called it.--Yours,
etc.
"ED. TENER.
"_P.S._--The evictions were finished on the 1st of September, and on
the 9th (_after_ it became known that the men whose names are in the
placard had paid) the placard was issued."
_(Placard.)_
"IRISHMEN!--Need we say in the face of the desperate Battle the
People are making for their Hearths and Homes that the time has come
for every HONEST MAN, trader and otherwise, to extend a helping hand
to the MEN in the GAP. You may ask, How will that be done? The
answer is plain.
"Let those who have become traitors to their neighbours and their
Country be shunned as if they were possessed by a devil. Let no man
buy from them or sell to them, let no man work for them. Leave them
to Tener and his Emergency gang. The following are a few of the
greatest traitors and meanest creatures that ever walked--John
Whyte, of Dooras; Fahey (of the hill) of Dooras; big Anthony
Hackett, of Rossmore; Tom Moran, of Rossmore! Your Country calls on
you to treat them as they deserve. Bravo Woodford! Remember Tom
Larkin!--'GOD SAVE IRELAND!'"
[4] Appendix, Note A.
[5] Appendix, Note B.
[6] Appendix, Note C.
[7] Appendix, Note D.
[8] Since this was written fifteen Catholic bishops in England,
headed by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, have united (April 12,
1888) in a public protest against the Optional Oaths Bill, in which they
say: "To efface the recognition of God in our public legislature is an
act which will surely bring evil consequences." Yet how can the
recognition of God be more effectually "effaced" than by the unqualified
assertion that the will of the people, or of a majority, is the one
legitimate source of political authority?
[9] Mr. Blair was then a member of the Lincoln Cabinet, and its
"fighting member."
[10] Mr. Quill stated that the Savings-Banks deposits increased
in Ireland during 1887 eight per cent. more than in thrifty Scotland,
and _forty per cent._ more than in England and Wales!
[11] This was the Provost's last appearance in public. He died
rather suddenly a few weeks afterwards.
[12] In the Census of 1880 it appears that of 255,741 farms in
Illinois, 59,624 were held on the métayer system, pronounced by Toubeau
the worst of systems, and 20,620 on a money rental.
[13] I have since learned that Father M'Fadden sold another
holding, rental 6s. 8d., for £80. He has three more holdings from
Captain Hill, at 15s., 6s. 8d., and 11s. 2d., for which he was in
arrears for two years in April 1887, when ejectment decrees were
obtained against him. For his house holding he pays 2s. a year! So he
was really fighting his own battle as a tenant in the Plan of Campaign.
[14] Yet of Connemara, Cardinal Manning, in his letter to the
Archbishop of Armagh, August 31, 1873, cites the "trust-worthy" evidence
of "an Englishman who had raised himself from the plough's tail," and
who had gone "to see with his own eyes the material condition of the
peasantry in Ireland." It was to the effect that in abundance and
quality of food, in rate of wages, and even if the comfort of their
dwellings, the working men of Connemara were better off than the
agricultural labourers of certain English counties.
[15] For this holding, of 10 Irish acres, I have since learned
the widow O'Donnell pays 10s. a year. She is in the receipt of outdoor
relief, there being fever in the house (May 1888).
[16] This "townland" is a curious use of a Saxon term to
describe a Celtic fact. The territory of an Irish sept seems to have
been divided up into "townlands," each townland consisting of four, or
in some cases six, groups of holdings, occupied by as many families of
the "sept." The chief of the "sept" divided up each "townland"
periodically among these groups, while the common fields were cut up
among the families as they increased and multiplied according to the
system--against which Lord George Hill battled at Gweedore--known as
"rimdale" or "rundeal," from the Celtic, "ruindioll," a "partition" or
"man's share." This is quite unlike the Russian "mir" or collective
village, and not more like the South Slav "zadruga" which makes each
family a community, the land belonging to all, as, according to M.
Eugene Simon, it does in China. But it is as inconsistent with Henry
George's State ownership of the land or the rents as either of those
systems.
[17] From a question just asked (July 12) in the House of
Commons, and answered by the Postmaster-General, I gather that this
"local question" has been further complicated by the removal of Mr.
Sweeney, the sub-postmaster, under an official regulation.
[18] The incident occurred in Clare. See p. 45.
[19] Or they may date back to the Parliament of Grattan, who
wrote to Mr. Guinness that he regarded the brewery of Ireland as "the
actual nurse of the people, and entitled to every encouragement, favour,
and exemption."
[20] This refers, I am told, to the murder, in open daylight,
in 1881, of an old man, Linnane, who acted as a "caretaker" for Mrs.
Moroney. It should gratify Father White to know that, as I am now
informed (May 21, 1888), a clue has just been found to the assassins,
who appear to have received the same price for doing their work that was
paid the murderers of Fitzmaurice.
[21] Mrs. Moroney, so often referred to here, is the widow of a
gentleman formerly High Sheriff and Deputy-Lieutenant for the County
Clare, who died in 1870. She lives at Milton House, and has fought the
local League steadily and successfully.