AN IRISH MASS MEETING.
Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell, lately in Kilmainhaim Jail for the crime of
lifting up his voice in behalf of an oppressed people, represents Cork
in the British Parliament, and his constituents determined to give him a
reception.
In Catholic countries political demonstrations take place on Sunday,
always, the Catholic having attended services in the morning, devoting
the rest of the day to recreation and public business. And besides this
reason for Sunday demonstrations in any country under British rule, the
citizen does not have time enough on any other day to make any
demonstrations, political or otherwise. He has to earn his two meals of
potatoes a day, and his landlord has a mortgage upon the remainder of
his time. Sunday is his only day, and it is a blessed thing for him that
the Church of England stands between him and his landlord. Were not
labor on the Sabbath illegal, My Lord would raise his rent to the point
of making Sunday labor necessary.
I had always supposed that America was the country for demonstrations of
a public nature, and indeed we do get up some monsters in this way, but
the Irish, in 1881, did things, compared with which our largest are but
pigmies.
Early in the morning the city began filling with people. They came
singly and in pairs, and in processions. They came from down the river,
from up the river, from the east, west, north and south; they came in
steamboats, by rail, on horses and donkeys, in wagons and donkey carts,
and on foot. By nine o'clock Cork was swarming with people, literally
swarming.
Then came the most wonderful procession I ever saw or ever expect to
see. The trades and occupations of the city were in bodies with emblems,
flags and banners; the Land Leagues of the entire south of Ireland were
there with appropriate banners, and then came a swarming, seething,
boiling mass of humanity, without order, without form or coherence.
There were men, women and children, on foot, and in all sorts and
descriptions of vehicles, and bestriding every animal that permits its
back to be crossed. There were women with children in their arms, men
carrying their boys to save them from being crushed in the press; there
were old men, young men and boys, maids and matrons of all ages, all
sorts and conditions of people, in all sorts of garments; men and women
shod, men and women barefooted, and all in one inextricable jam.
If there was an idea in the way of a banner that was not in that
procession it escaped my notice; and if there was a form or manner of
decoration that was not in the seemingly endless mass of humanity that I
did not notice, it was because there was so much of it that one pair of
eyes could not take it all in.
The procession was fully ten miles long, and there were in it not less
than one hundred thousand people. I know that mass meetings are always
exaggerated, but there were actually that number in that monster
procession on that Sunday.
A very great deal is said about the intemperance of the Irish people. In
all this vast throng, this hive of human beings, there were but three
drunken men. Also, much is said about their tendency to brawls. There
was not a single fight. The procession was wild in enthusiasm, wild in
cheering and handkerchief-shaking, but there was not a blackened eye nor
a broken head. I never saw one-fourth the number of Americans together
that did not eventuate in a score or two of fights. Ireland certainly
behaved herself remarkably well on that occasion.
[Sidenote: "COME DOWN."]
There was one curious scene. A young man in Cork in the early days of
the Land League had been suspected of playing into the hands of the
government, for gain. Since the movement became overwhelmingly popular,
he shifted his course and tried to curry favor with the Leaguers, but
without success. They did not trust him. A carriage was set apart for
the use of the prominent Americans then in the city, and he, by sheer
impudence, forced himself upon them. He managed to get himself seated
upon the box of the carriage, making himself exceedingly conspicuous.
It was a kind of conspicuosity which the young Irishmen did not like.
They remembered his betrayal of the cause a few months before, and they
believed his present zeal was for effect and not honest. They would not
have him foist himself upon their American friends. There was no
violence, no obstreperousness. Ten of them, five upon each side, formed
beside the carriage, and they kept step as soldiers do, only instead of
the regular "Left!" "Left!" the words were "Come down!" "Come down!" He
tried to reason with them; he said all sorts of pretty things to them;
he assured them of his entire and utter devotion to the cause; but to
every word he uttered there came the one response, "Come down!" "Come
down!" He came. He might have resisted force, but the moral suasion in
the simple words "Come down!" was too much for him. He descended from
the carriage and slunk away in the crowd, and we saw no more of him.
Immediately the young men fell into rank, and the procession swept on.
It was their way of punishing one who was seeking for himself instead of
for the mass.
And that enormous mass of people paraded the streets all day, and in the
evening, in the fields outside the city, they waited patiently and
listened to speeches from the leaders of the people, every sentence
bringing a quick response.
As grand as was the demonstration, it was no mere man worship that was
at the bottom of it. It was not so much in honor of their leader; it was
a protest of a great people against a system which has already driven
out from the country two-thirds of the entire population, and which
would drive out the remainder were there means enough left to take them.
It was the wail of a starving people, a naked people, a robbed, outraged
and oppressed people. It was a protest against bayonet rule, a protest
against carbines and ball cartridges, an appeal for the right to live
upon the ground upon which they
[Illustration: AFFIXING NOTICE OF EVICTION UNDER PROTECTION OF THE
POLICE.]
[Sidenote: AN EVICTION.]
were born. Had they arms probably they would make this protest in
another form, and there never was a cause in which arms could be taken
up so justly, but unfortunately they have not. The British government
allows the Irishman to bear nothing more deadly than the spade, and all
the arms that are in Ireland are used to compel him to use that
implement for British greed.
[Illustration: EVICTION.]
I was present at an eviction near Skibbereen. An eviction is a very
simple thing. The landlord desires to possess himself of the land which
a tenant holds, having been born upon it, his father and his grandfather
for many generations back. When the land passed into the hands of the
present alleged owners it was worthless, but several generations have
toiled upon it, until it has been "reclaimed," as they term it, and made
into good soil, which will yield crops. The landlord has raised the rent
regularly, keeping the tenant and his family down to the potato and
stirabout point, until it is impossible for him to pay. There is no
question of a desire to pay--paying is a physical impossibility, unless
the tenant has a son in America, and even in that case the rent is
raised to the point of absorbing the boy's wages. Just as the crop is
ripening the landlord gets out a process of eviction, a bailiff, backed
by thirty constabularly, go to the house, the warrant is served, the
tenant knows exactly what is to happen, and he goes out without a word.
But the mother, not so well versed in English law, does make a protest.
As wretched as the cabin is, as poor as are her surroundings, it is the
only home she has. In this wretched cabin her children were born, this
is her home, and no woman relinquishes that without a protest. But she
might as well whistle against the north wind. There is no pity nor mercy
in these beasts, to say nothing of justice.
First the poor furniture is pitched out into the road, then the children
are thrown out after the furniture, and then the woman is hustled out,
the door is nailed up, and the family are by the roadside in the cold or
rain. Pat or Mick, as the case may be, is offered another farm, farther
up the mountain, a piece of land, bog and rock, which he may go on and
convert into smiling fields only to be evicted from that when his
landlord sees fit, or he may die by the roadside.
[Illustration: THE EVICTION WE SAW.]
In the village of Kenmare, there were thirteen families one cold wet
morning, out on the roadside, men, women and children, some of the
latter being only two months old, their only protection being blankets
made of potato sacks stretched upon four sticks driven into the cold
clay, and their only bed, leaves, which were wet with the rain. The
mothers were boiling their potatoes, contributed by neighbors almost as
poor as themselves, in pots suspended from extemporized tripods, the
fuel being leaves and twigs.
[Sidenote: WHAT HAPPENS.]
[Illustration: EVICTED--SCENE IN GALWAY.]
What became of them? I do not know. I presume some of the children died
from exposure, but that was nothing to the landlord or his agent. They
were too young to work, and really stood in the way of the mother and
father paying their rent. Possibly the father working in the mines in
Wales, got money enough before the children were all dead to enable them
to get into some kind of a shelter.
It is only necessary for me to say that they were there, and there
because they could not pay an unmerciful rent unmercifully exacted and
relentlessly pursued.
[Illustration: FARMING IN COUNTY MAYO.]
[Sidenote: BOYCOTTING.]
An English landlord's agent would levy upon a child's coffin for
arrearages of rent, and the British government would give him thirty
soldiers to protect the bailiff in serving the process. They wish it
distinctly understood that rent must be paid though the heavens fall.
Rent is My Lord's living and the agent's also. Where mercy is shown to
one tenant others might expect it, and so the rule must be inexorable.
"Boycotting" is a system devised by Mr. James Redpath, of America. It is
this: The landlord, when he has made up his mind that he wants to rob a
tenant of the land he once owned, and which he has, does not evict him
in the Spring. He waits till the tenant has dug up the ground, planted
it and tended it, and it is ready for the harvest. He wants to steal the
crops as well as the land, and so just before harvest he gets out his
process, and accompanied by the everlasting thirty constables, armed
with carbines, he makes his descent. The process is served, the tenant
and his family are pitched out into the street, and the place taken
possession of.
Prior to the Land League, the villain had no difficulty in employing
labor to secure the crop, thus giving the agent his percentage of the
robbery, and enabling My Lord to indulge in fresh extravagances in
London or Paris, or wherever he might be. But the Land League steps in
now, and My Lord's agent cannot find a man who will put a sickle into
the ground. No matter what price he offers, or how sorely the laborer
needs work, or how cheaply he would be glad to work for any one else, he
will not work for this man at any price. Consequently the crops rot on
the ground, and if the robbed tenant gets no benefit from his labor, My
Lord in Paris, and his agent at home, do not.
I was in one cottage over the bay from Glengariff, in a cabin in which
three men were sitting listlessly, waiting for work. They had nothing to
eat but the everlasting potatoes, and would have given their lives,
almost, for something to do that would keep the pot boiling, even though
there was nothing but potatoes in it.
Enter My Lord's agent.
"Come, men. I want you for a few days."
"Yis, sor, what is it?"
"I want you on Captain ----'s place. I will give you two shillings a
day."
Ten pence a day is good wages.
"Is it on Mickey Doolan's farrum?"
"Yes."
"We don't want wurruk. We're rich, and are enjoyin' ourselves."
Mickey Doolan was the evicted tenant, and had the agent offered them a
thousand pounds an hour he could not have got a stroke from one of them.
This is boycotting. The process was first tried upon a Captain Boycott,
hence the term. It was an invention of Mr. James Redpath, as I said, and
a very clever one it is.
To prevent the evicted tenant from taking another farm, and reclaiming
it for the benefit of My Lord and his agent, the Land League makes him
the princely allowance of three shillings a week, on which he supports
his family, and it finds him some sort of a shelter. My Lord and his
agent have the privilege of getting in the crops themselves, else they
rot in the field.
There is no violence, no shooting or mobbing--only passive resistance.
The British government cannot compel a man to labor, and there is left
the Irish the blessed boon of dying from starvation. Possibly the
government will make labor compulsory--it would not be worse than most
of the laws for the government of the unhappy island now in force. But
so far the Irishman need not labor for an unjust landlord unless he
chooses to, and that means he need not labor for any of them.
There is no such thing as a just landlord in Ireland. Ireland is a cow
to be milked, and just enough potatoes are given her to make the milk.
[Sidenote: ONE LANDLORD WHO WAS KILLED.]
You hear a great deal in America about shooting landlords. How many
landlords have been shot? It is much to the discredit of the Irish race
that more have not been; but the melancholy fact is, only a very few
have been put out of the way by buck-shot. When I look over the meagre
list I blush for the Irish. It is something in the way of an offset to
know that they are not permitted to have arms, and it may be plead in
extenuation that the police and soldiery are all pervading; but,
nevertheless, it does seem as though a few more might be picked off. If
they cannot have fire-arms, there are at least pitch-forks and stones.
Clearly, the Irish are not so public-spirited as they should be.
[Illustration: MY LORD'S AGENT.]
One was shot, some years ago, and a great to-do was made about it. In
this case, as in most of the others, it was not a question of rent. My
Lord had visited his estates to see how much more money could be screwed
out of his tenants, and his lecherous eye happened to rest upon a very
beautiful girl, the eldest daughter of a widow with seven children. Now,
this beautiful girl was betrothed to a nice sort of a boy, who, having
been in America, knew a thing or two. My Lord, through his agent, who is
always a pimp as well as a brigand, ordered Kitty to come to the castle.
Kitty, knowing very well what that meant, refused.
"Very good," says the agent, "your mother is in arrears for rent, and
you had better see My Lord, or I shall be compelled to evict her."
Kitty knew what that meant, also. It meant that her gray-haired mother,
her six helpless brothers and sisters, would be pitched out by the
roadside, to die of starvation and exposure; and so Kitty, without
saying a word to her mother or any one else, went to the castle, and
was kept there three days, till My Lord was tired of her, when she was
permitted to go.
[Illustration: THE KIND OF A GIRL MY LORD WANTS.]
She went to her lover, like an honest girl, and told him she would not
marry him, but refused to give any reason.
[Sidenote: HOW HE WAS KILLED.]
Finally, the truth was wrenched out of her, and Mike went and found a
shot-gun that had escaped the watchful eye of the royal constabulary,
and he got powder, and shot, and old nails, and he lay behind a hedge
under a tree for several days. Finally, one day My Lord came riding by,
all so gay, and that gun went off, and "subsequent events interested him
no more." There was a hole, a blessed hole, clear through him, and he
never was so good a man before, because there was less of him.
Then Mike went to Kitty and told her to be of good cheer, and not be
cast down; that the little difference between him and My Lord had been
happily settled, and that they would be married as soon as possible. And
they were married, and I had the pleasure of taking in my hand the very
hand that fired the blessed shot, and of seeing the wife to avenge whose
cruel wrongs the shot was fired.
"Vengeance is mine!" is written. In these cases it is well to facilitate
the vengeance a trifle by means of a shot-gun. I object to keeping such
a man as My Lord out of fire and brimstone a minute. Give the devil his
due, and never let the note he holds go to protest.
An immense reward was offered for information leading to the conviction
of the noble man who fired the shot, but, though every man, woman and
child in a radius of twenty miles knew exactly who did it, no one was
found base enough to lodge information against him.
You see the Irish all have daughters and they are all comely, and if
shooting lords for such crimes comes to be a rule, the lords will turn
their lecherous eyes elsewhere. There are worse things in the world than
shot-guns. That particular one should be wreathed with flowers, and hung
up in the church of that Parish. There is much moral suasion in a
shot-gun loaded with rusty nails.
I entered one cabin in the Galtees which rather eclipsed anything in the
way of misery that I had seen. It was the smallest and the most wretched
of any I had investigated, and there was a refinement of wretchedness
about the whole arrangement that to an American would seem impossible.
The children were the thinnest that I had ever seen. It was poverty
condensed--it was wretchedness boiled down. It was the very essence of
misery.
"What rent do you pay for this place?"
"Three pounds a year, sor!"
Then with an inflection in my voice that had something of sarcasm, I
suppose, in it, I asked:--
"Is that all?"
"Oh, no sor, I pay a pound a year, poor rate!"
Think of it! To pay a poor rate implies that somebody is poorer than the
payer. Here was a family living in a pig style, and paying fifteen
dollars a year for the privilege, who, with a starving and almost naked
family, was compelled in addition to this monstrous rental to contribute
an additional five dollars per year for the support of the poor!
[Illustration: THE WOMAN WHO PAID THE POOR RATE.]
This would be humorous were it not ghastly. Had she intended it as a
joke it would have been a good one, but unfortunately it was no joke.
The British government is not jocular. The wretched woman was actually
paying a tax to support the poor! What must be the condition of the poor
if such as she were paying to support them?
I was in the postoffice at Cork, when a middle-aged woman came in and
received a letter. She opened it and read it, or rather read a few
lines. The letter dropped to the floor, and she staggered and would have
fallen but for the friendly wall against which she leaned.
"What is the matter?"
"Oh, sor, Patsey is dead--_and who'll pay the rint_!"
[Sidenote: PATSEY'S DEAD.]
Here it was again! Patsey was her son, a boy of nineteen, who by the aid
of an uncle who had fortunately escaped from the clutches of the British
government, years ago, had been taken to America. He had found
employment and had been regularly sending money to his mother to pay the
rent of the miserable cabin she existed in. She had not heard from him
for six weeks and had been worried about him. This letter was from his
room-mate, and it conveyed the intelligence that he had been sick for
six weeks, and that his sickness had terminated in death. Poor Patsey
was dead and buried.
What kind of an infamy is it that will not permit a mother to mourn the
death of her first born without connecting it with "rint?" This one
could not, for as dearly as she loved Patsey, there were six others just
as dear to her, to whom Patsey was the life. It was Patsey in America
who shielded the others from starvation. What kind of an infernalism is
it that grips the hearts of women, that lays its icy iron finger upon
the tenderest chords in a mother's heart?
"Patsey's dead--who'll pay the rint!"
Death and rent! A most proper combination. Rent _is_ death.
Tibbitts is here, but I am sorry to say that that not altogether
exemplary young man is paying a great deal more attention to Irish
whisky than he is to Irish troubles.
He came in very much intoxicated last night at twelve o'clock, and I
reproved him for the condition he was in.
"It's my (hic) mother that did it," he replied. "My mother in Oshkosh."
"Your mother, you--well, that is too much!"
"True, 'shoor you. She wrote me a long letter, which I got this mornin'.
(Hic.) R'ligious letter, and a mighty (hic) good one. (Hic.) Great
woman, mother. She said man in state of nature (hic) was wicked as
sparks fly upward. Struck me (hic) as true. What was duty? To get out of
state of nature. (Hic.) Man full of Irish whisky is not in state (hic)
nature--entirely unnatural. Ergo--man drunk not bein' in state of
nature, not sinner. See? Logic. Have too much regard (hic) for mother's
feelings to be in state of nature. Never will be, so long as the old
(hic) man comes down."
I don't think he ever will be. Clearly, it is my duty to have the young
man sent home as soon as possible.
While I am informed that Irish whisky is less destructive of the tissues
than English gin or British brandy, or the vile compound they call ale,
it will intoxicate, and I do not accept Mr. Tibbitt's logic. His getting
outside of whisky does not enable him to get outside of himself.
[Illustration: _Conemara Women._]