several celebrated Protestant churches indebted to them for funds. A
distiller gave twenty thousand pounds and a brewer ten thousand pounds
to assist in building or renewing an Episcopal cathedral in Cork. It is
said to have cost Guinness, the great brewer, two hundred thousand pounds
to remodel St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Dublin and to build the
appurtenant houses. And a distiller gave a great sum to repair Christ
Church in the same city.
To return to my farmer, Collins, in whose house I saw no intoxicating
liquor drunk. He rented seventy acres, of which twenty were bog, nearly
worthless; the peat for burning being all cut from the bog land in
this neighborhood. (Nor is the county Cork, taken altogether, a rich
agricultural tract. Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary, 1837, gave the
acreage at about one million seven hundred thousand, of which about seven
hundred thousand acres were bog and mountain.)
Collins’s lease was for thirty-one years, of which six remained. He has
built the part of the house in which we live, having slate-roofed it. He
has also built a stone stable and a small dairy, with slate roofs. The
landlord gave him almost nothing toward these improvements, not even the
flooring of the loft. The stone Collins got off the place. When he came
here the walls of the fields were mostly of clay or mud, and he has built
stone ones. In this neighborhood the walls are mostly built of stone. In
some cases they are covered with earth, and grass and other plants are
growing on them. “These walls,” I said to him, “must take up a great deal
of room. That one beside your house is a yard across the top.”
* * * * *
I have given Collins’s rent at about one hundred and seventy dollars
for seventy acres. Land sold in fee simple, apparently a rare thing,
generally brings twenty times the annual rental. Yet, as a lawyer in
Cork informed me, the average value here now, under present depressing
circumstances, is not over seventy-five dollars per acre.
I have spoken of some of Collins’s land as of inferior quality. His
report of its produce, I therefore infer, is above the average crop.
He says that on this land wheat ought to bring fifteen hundred-weight
per acre, the hundred-weight of one hundred and twelve pounds. (This
is twenty-eight bushels, which would be considered a fair crop in the
wheat-growing region of Pennsylvania.)
Collins says that on land of best quality in good years wheat is expected
to bring twenty-five hundred-weight. On his own land oats frequently
brings fourteen hundred-weight to the acre, or about forty-three bushels.
This land produces about one and one-half tons of hay, and better land
about two tons per acre. A patch of potatoes is called a potato-garden,
even if it contain several acres. The manner in which potatoes are
planted was strange to my eye. The land is laid out in beds about four
feet wide. Between those beds are deep trenches one and a half feet wide.
These beds or ridges are made by turning six sods in with the plough.
There are four rows of potatoes to a bed. These are hand-weeded, and
never hoed. The people manure as heavily as they can for potatoes; and
then, without additional manure, put the land into wheat. Barn-yard,
guano, and artificial manures are used. On Collins’s soil potatoes turn
out about five tons to the acre, or about one hundred and eighty-six
bushels. Potatoes have degenerated in Ireland; but of late a new kind,
the Champion, has encouraged the people much. At an exposition in Cork in
1880, some farmers claimed to have raised from thirteen to fifteen tons
per acre, or about five hundred bushels. Turnips are manured, sowed in
drills or rows in May and June, thinned, hoed, and hand-weeded. They turn
out twelve tons to the acre. Two men can fork out an acre in a day, and
two men can top an acre a day, leaving the tops on the ground.
Domestic animals sell high for food. Beeves sometimes weigh thirteen and
fourteen hundred-weight, and bring about three pounds per hundred-weight.
Good fat calves of three months sell for five pounds. Fat sheep, weighing
dressed about one hundred and twenty pounds, will bring three pounds,
or near fifteen dollars. Mrs. Collins had an exceptional pig, supposed
to be a fine bacon pig, lean and fat well mixed, or a “ribbon” pig. (An
Irishman is said to have fed his pig one day and starved him the next,
that there might be a streak of fat and streak of lean.) That pig of Mrs.
Collins’s weighed when dressed one hundred and eighty-two pounds, and she
got four pounds and ten shillings for it, or about twenty cents a pound.
In view of such prices the saying of my Cork landlady is not strange:
“May the Lord of heaven spare us the American meat! It keeps the market
within our reach.”
Fruit did not seem plentiful in the county Cork. “The children would
pluck gooseberries,” was a reason given for not having them. A certain
priest was supposed to have strawberries and gooseberries in his
garden, but probably fruit-loving children did not disturb those of his
reverence. When a retired lawyer took me into his garden he unlocked the
gate. He had cut down an old orchard and would not plant another, because
the neighboring children would get at the fruit. Thus, the saying of the
domestic, “Nothing do ever be taken,” does not seem to apply to fruit.
* * * * *
I had several conversations with Collins. He freely expressed his
disapproval or dislike of the British government. Working farmers rarely
or never subscribe for a paper, but often buy one at a market-town.
Collins had got one in Cork, and wished me to see a speech in it. He said
that it alluded to a manufacturer at Blarney who took a prize at our
Centennial.
“What would you think,” said Collins, “when people manufactured goods
that they could not send them right off from here to market, but must
send them to Liverpool, and have them unloaded and carted there, and then
sent back, causing that expense? Would you think that was just?”
“That is not so now?” I asked.
“Indeed it is; that manufacturer’s goods must all be sent that way; and
would you think that was justice?”
“It is pretty hard on him,” I answered.
“And is it justice?” he insisted. “You shall have the paper and read the
speech.”
In Cork I called to see Mr. Mahony, the manufacturer referred to,
who told me that there is no government regulation to hamper their
manufactures in any way. It is doubtless a matter of convenience to ship
from a great port like Liverpool, vessels not caring to stop and take on
small quantities at Queenstown.[167]
* * * * *
As Collins, his wife, and I were riding on the cart, going to the
market-town for butter, I asked whether he expected that there would be a
time when there would be no rents to pay. He answered that he did not.
“I understood you to say the other evening that you did,” I continued.
“No,” he replied; “there has been a proposition for the government to
take the lands, and the people to pay rent for thirty years——”
“And then the land be theirs?” I interrupted.
“Yes” he answered; “but they will never grant that. More moderate things
they have refused. All we want is reduced rents, as the people can no
longer pay high ones.”
On our return journey I had an admirable opportunity to talk with him as
he walked by the wagon. I had called on a magistrate in the market-town,
a Protestant gentleman, who had seemed very ignorant or uncommunicative.
He had, however, suggested over-population as a reason for the condition
of Irish affairs. This magistrate bore a military title. I handed to him
the introduction given me at Cork by the “Riverend Lawrence O’Byrne.”
Collins had suggested an officer of the market as suitable to introduce
me. But I was in haste, and carried the letter. The magistrate said that
he did not know the person. “No,” said Collins, on my return, “you were
wrong in two things. You said you were from Philadelphia, and they are
afraid of the Americans, or do not like them, and Father O’Byrne is not
their kind of man.”
I told Collins that some papers in America had said that their
magistrates should be elected, as with us in some States. He replied
that they are appointed from the aristocracy, the land-holding class,
and, of course, in cases of dispute between landlords and tenants, their
sympathies are with their own class.
“If you were in America we should say that your head is level,” I said;
but I had to interpret the slang.
“There has been a change in Ireland,” he added, “within some years.
Formerly the wealthy classes and the learned could make _jupes_ of the
Irish people, but of late years there has been more education, and the
people see things differently. Ireland was a dark country before the
Catholic emancipation. Before the passage of that act no Catholic could
hold office in this country. Now many places are open to them in the
excise and elsewhere.”
Collins intimated that the English are wrong in fearing the Catholic
priests, for they counsel the people to peaceful measures, and they
are the only persons who have sufficient authority over them to quiet
them down. I spoke of Father Murphy and of priests who had presided at
Land-League meetings.
“Yes,” said Collins, “when peaceful measures were advised.”
I replied that the government would not trust them because it thought
that the people might become excited and burst from the priests’ control,
and because they feared that the priests might deceive them. The remark
did not please Collins. He said that the people were excited at the
report of Father Murphy’s arrest because they are so united to their
priests. “One is already in prison,” he said, “Father Sheehey; and many
meetings have been held to petition the government to release him and
other leaders of the Land-League movement.”
In a disturbed region in another part of the county Cork I was told of
a priest who had refused to join the League. The members would not
send their children to the national school under his supervision, and
the people thus opposed to him did not call him Canon Desmond, but only
Desmond. On the other hand, I was told of two influential priests lately
sent out of Cork by the bishop for being too active in the Land League.
They were placed in country curacies—promotion backward—on account of
the influence of a wealthy Catholic clique, which does not in politics
hold to the Conservative, late Lord Beaconsfield party, “like the
Protestants,” but holds to the Liberal party, which is midway between the
Conservatives and Land-Leaguers. It was added that one of these priests
had gone to Rome to lay his case before the pope, not having been able to
get the archbishop to interfere. The archbishop did not think it prudent
to entertain the complaint.
Another of Collins’s remarks may seem unjust to the government. He said
that men’s constitutions have changed. They are no longer able to live on
potatoes. They must have Indian meal and bread and tea. “I think I would
have been dead,” he said, “if I had been kept on potatoes; and when men’s
constitutions are altered, any laws the government can make cannot have
effect.” But it is free trade in Great Britain and Ireland that makes
bread and tea cheap.
The great domestic manufactories of the people demand a word. Collins
wore to market one day a gray frieze coat (there pronounced frize).
Calling at the house, I found an old woman engaged in spinning wool for
the boys’ clothing,—wool that had been beautifully carded at a factory.
Collins’s coat seemed to be black and white wool mixed, but the frieze
is often dyed blue or red, and is also used for women’s petticoats. The
question of the want of manufactures is a great and somewhat puzzling
one. At Dublin it was surprising to find that even the matches in my
chamber were marked London. The want of coal has been given as one
reason of the want of manufactories, but there is great and abundant
water-power. The want of capital is also given as a cause of the lack
of manufactures, and if we look into this point we come to two of the
open sores of Ireland,—absent capitalists and want of national unity. In
Guy’s Almanac may be found a list of landholders of one thousand acres
and upwards in the county Cork, leaseholders of over ninety years being
put down as absolute owners. There are three hundred and seventy-five
of these landholders, of whom about two hundred have residences in the
county, and the remainder are entirely non-resident,—nearly fifty per
cent.! As regards the want of capital, I asked a Protestant banker why
they did not combine and form companies to manufacture. He replied,
“As soon as eight Irishmen combine to do a thing, nine will combine to
oppose them.” The want of unity is owing, at least in part, to their
being still two nations, if I may be allowed to say so, the conquerors
and the conquered. Methodists and Quakers born in Ireland may be heard
speaking contemptuously of the Irish. A woman of Scotch Presbyterian
origin remarked, “It’s a common saying, it’s a blessed land and a cursed
people.” A Friend in Dublin said to me that the Protestants of the North
are as bitter as the Catholics, “and more blamable, as they have the
Scriptures.” And I find the statement in my note-book that those who
desired to be considered the “upper ten,” and Protestants from country
localities, speak very contemptuously of the Land League. Finally, the
laws are unequal, the qualification for voters being higher in Ireland
than in England.
On manufactures an Irish gentleman said to me, “There are lots of
American shoes brought to Cork. Blacksmith’s tools, agricultural
implements, and carpenter’s tools are brought to this country from
America. There’s a finish and a style about them that they don’t do
here.” A Catholic manufacturer attributed the want of manufactures to
the lack of skill and knowledge in the people; but does this account for
the decline in manufactures? As lately as 1837 there were one hundred
thousand hides tanned yearly at Cork. It had seven iron-foundries, five
factories of spades and shovels, numerous and extensive paper-mills, and
two large houses making flint-glass.[168] But where are most of them
now? My sprightly little landlady at Cork, a Catholic, expressed in very
simple terms a natural reason for this decline, saying, “We want energy,
for there’s not an atom of trade that the English did not spoil. There
was a cotton-factory here in Cork, and the English sent their goods in
and sold them a half-penny lower. They put their foot upon these things,
bless them! They have crushed us out of the market in various ways. There
is a little screed of linen manufacture in the North, but I believe that
they cannot make it as good in England.”
However, Mr. Mahony, a successful manufacturer of tweeds at Blarney, says
that manufactures are reviving in Ireland. He thinks that three hundred
power-looms have been established within fifteen years. There is also
ship-building in the north.
* * * * *
I talked with another working farmer. He had a tidy place near Cork,
perhaps the neatest farm-house I saw, although there was no floor and no
window in the principal room. Two hearty children and a domestic were
present. The wife had been confined that morning, and the husband’s
breath indicated potations. “Such,” said my landlady, who accompanied
me, “do not employ a physician, but a ‘knowledgable woman.’ She is not
recommended for skill in her profession, but ‘she is lucky.’ Had we gone
into the room where the baby was, it would have been insisted on that we
should take a glass of punch or we’d take away the beauty of the baby.”
Dan Donovan, the father, said that he had sixty-five acres, all tillable,
for which he paid the landlord one hundred and forty-two pounds yearly.
He was also obliged to pay twelve pounds a year to the widow of the man
who rented the farm before him. His taxes amounted to about twenty-five
pounds, if not more, making the whole outlay in money about eight hundred
and fifty dollars a year for sixty-five acres. He had been there about
four years, and was only a yearly tenant, but he had manured the farm
and put it in heart. That he was one of the very thriving farmers was
evidenced by his stock of eight cows, eight calves, a pair of horses and
a foal, a pair of donkeys, and twelve pigs. He employed more hands than
an American would employ on so small a farm,—four “boys” or laborers at
six shillings a week and their diet and lodging, which cost him as much
more. He told us that he could not get ahead at all. “I am in debt to
my master. He’s a very intelligent man and fond of me. When I paid last
year’s rent the landlord promised some abatement this year.”
Donovan is a voter. To a person of experience I mentioned how many hands
Donovan employed. He answered, “He cannot get along with less, as he
hauls manure from the city and hand-weeds.” The speaker himself has four
persons hand-weeding grain-fields, “taking out thistles and dock-roots
that a previous tenant left as a boon.”
On another walk I saw two men beside the road, one of them a remarkably
neat old man, a farmer. They confirmed what I had heard, that very few
around there could afford to save their hay and straw and feed cattle
during the winter to manure their farms. “How do they manage, then?” I
asked.
“Like that man,” pointing to a handsome field opposite; “let land at five
pounds an acre to those who have manure-pits.”
Such, I understand, are men who, having donkey-carts, go around Cork
gathering from houses the offal and garbage to throw into these pits.
I have said that Donovan was a voter, and this brings up the most serious
complaint that the Irish have against the British government,—the
inequality of the suffrage. This inequality does not exist in country
districts. In counties in both countries the payment of an annual rent
of twelve pounds entitles a man to vote for members of Parliament. But
as Ireland is much poorer, doubtless the number of these voters is less.
The inequality spoken of exists in boroughs. In England those living
in towns have household suffrage, and even the lodger franchise; but in
Irish towns the parliamentary voter must pay four pounds rent.
I have seen an estimate that in England two men out of five are voters;
and in Ireland only one out of five is a voter. As to the operation of
this high property qualification, we may observe that the county of
Cork, having a population in 1871 of over five hundred thousand, returns
under fifteen thousand votes. The city, having within the parliamentary
boundary nearly ninety-eight thousand, gives under five thousand votes!
But here is an illustration of the old rotten borough system of England:
The county of Cork, with over fourteen thousand voters, elects two
members at large. The city of Cork, with over four thousand six hundred
voters, elects two members, while four boroughs in the county elect
each a member; Bandon having four hundred and thirty voters, Mallow two
hundred and ninety-three, Youghal two hundred and eighty-nine, Kinsale
one hundred and ninety-four.
If, now, we come to teachers as voters, I hear that of the teachers of
Ireland not more than one-twentieth can vote for members. This probably
refers to teachers of national schools, nearly resembling our public
schools.
* * * * *
I boarded some days at a castle, the residence of a gentleman who
formerly belonged to one of the learned professions. Had his tenants
been paying rent, it is possible that I should not have been received
as a boarder. To this castle I went by rail. On the way I saw soldiers,
of course, but they were so common that I hardly noticed them. The
castle was a handsome stone building in a grove. The wall of the old
part measured six feet in the embrasures of the windows. The new part
measured three feet. I was shown into a great parlor, barely furnished,
with a turf fire in the grate. It was in June. I call my host Mr. Loftus.
The family were Protestant and Conservative, holding to the Church of
Ireland, as the Episcopal Church is called since its disestablishment.
The tenants of Mr. Loftus sent a delegation to him. They offered rent on
the basis of Griffith’s valuation, which Mr. Loftus declined. He offered
to allow them about one-fourth of the proposed reduction, or over sixteen
per cent. on the rate of rent. But they went away without accepting his
offer. Not to receive his rents was inconvenient for him, to say the
least, as he had annuities to pay and bills to meet. Here I may add that
a lawyer in Cork told me that the present unsettled state of affairs
puts everybody on his guard against spending money, and so the laborers
suffer. Some landlords have gone without their rent for two years,
perhaps longer. Thus the bottom seems to be dropping out of society.
Another peculiarity in Irish affairs is the subletting of land; thus I
heard of a farmer who has three landlords above him. To begin at the top,
Mr. Prior lets land to the Osbornes, who get it from him on a perpetual
lease for two shillings and sixpence per acre. The Osbornes let land to
Daniel McBride, who has bought out a lease, but who has to pay also ten
shillings and three pence per acre. Daniel McBride has other occupations,
and does not work the land himself, but rents to a farmer, who takes a
portion of the land, and pays McBride seventeen shillings per acre. As
said farmer holds thirty-six acres, possibly he has one or two laborers’
houses which he rents out to men who would thus have four landlords above
them.
To return to Mr. Loftus, the gentleman with whom I boarded. He spoke
to me of the condition of the laborers in this district, which is but
a poor one. It is natural for the aristocracy to look at this point,
when farmers who are refusing them rent are themselves receiving rent
from laborers. “The farmers of this country,” said Mr. Loftus, “are the
worst in the world. They drive the laborers very hard, and treat them
badly. Often they do not give them a house fit to put a pig into. The
houses are roofed with sods, as they want the straw for farming purposes.
Nearly all the poor people lie on straw beds, and it is hard to get straw
from the farmers. They allow the laborer about one-fourth of an acre
for his potato-patch, and charge him rent of from two pounds to four
pounds, sometimes in advance. The laborer’s wages may be counted at one
shilling a day the year round, and as his wife works in harvest, we may
reckon hers at sixpence a day for six months. I speak only of my own
neighborhood. I do not know the rates in others. There is near here a
cluster of about a dozen cabins, all upon one farm. They are mud-walled
and wretchedly roofed. A quarter of an acre of miserable boggy land is
set apart for each tenant, and there is a large pool of stagnant water
opposite each house. The tenant pays in advance three pounds and ten
shillings yearly. The farmer sometimes makes the whole rent of his farm
by what he receives from these people. I think the place a nuisance, and
liable to breed a fever. None of these houses have windows, and many
have no doors, except bunches of furze. The walls are propped up on the
outside with pieces of bogwood to keep them from tumbling down.”
The laborer, having no outbuildings, must necessarily protect his
precious domestic animals under his own roof. Most laborers have a goat,
and the poorest have poultry, but since the potato famine pigs have not
been kept as before. Sometimes, however, there is a donkey.
“The children of the laborer,” said Mr. Loftus, “go to the national
school until they are about twelve years old. In most cases they go
winter and summer without shoes and stockings. The laborer takes great
pride and pleasure in being able to send his children to school. Laborers
go to mass on Sunday, and in the afternoon may often be seen in the
house, or beside a ditch, reading a newspaper. After mass they play ball
in parties against each other, or have a fiddler and dance on the green
or under trees. And they play cards, especially in Dublin county, where
you can see them on Sundays playing on the banks of the ditches,”—i.e.,
under shelter of a wall.
“What games do they play?” I asked.
“Forty-five and spoil five,” he replied.
The laborer has no political privileges. Unless he pays a rent of over
five pounds he pays no poor-rates, and no other taxes except the county
or grand jury cess, and for malicious injuries, such as burnings. He
pays this tax, but is not allowed to vote. “Would you put us under the
Papists?” once cried an Irish Protestant on the question of universal
suffrage.