ENGLAND, IRELAND, SCOTLAND--ROYALTY AND NOBILITY.
This will be found to be a mixed chapter, but I respectfully desire
every American to read it very carefully, and to give it some thought
after reading it. In America, where one man is as good as another, we
have so much that is good that we do not appreciate the blessings we
enjoy; we do not realize how much a free government is worth. I am going
to put upon paper some few governmental facts, to the end of showing my
countrymen what a good government is worth to them, and what a bad
government costs the people who groan under it.
In a late number of that especial organ of king-worshipers, the London
_Illustrated News_, there is a beautiful engraving, entitled "The
Princess of Wales and Her Daughter, in the Garden of Sandringham." It is
a lovely picture. The garden itself is a study, with its wonderful
shrubbery, and flowers, and statuary; a garden that falls but little
short of being a Paradise. And the Princess of Wales and her six or
eight daughters are just as lovely--by the way, as the British
Parliament gives every child born in the royal family a princely estate
and an enormous allowance to start with, the royal family all have large
families--the Princess herself is arrayed in gorgeous morning costume,
with a hat trimmed with ostrich feathers, with a parasol with silken
fringe upon it a foot deep, and everything comporting. The children are
likewise gorgeously arrayed, and one of them is teaching a pug dog how
to sit up, the said pug costing the British people at least an hundred
guineas. The entire party are in as jolly a state as can be imagined.
Now I like such scenes as this immensely. I like to see comfort and even
luxury. Had the husband of this fortunate woman and the father of these
happy children been, early in life, a shoemaker, a tailor, a lawyer, a
merchant, or anything under heaven, and had by his own labor and his own
skill accumulated the means for all this luxury, I should insist upon
his right to enjoy it because he had earned it, and had given the world
something for it. But how did this woman get it? Why is she with a
parasol with silken fringe a foot deep, her children in silks and
satins, while just as good children, and just as good women, in Ireland,
are shoeless, stockingless and almost naked! What title has she to the
gardens at Sandringham, and by what right does she starve the peasantry
of Ireland that she may thus disport herself and her children?
Simply this: She is the wife a dissolute middle-aged man, whose stupid
mother was the niece of a stupid uncle, who was the son or brother or
something or other of the worst kind of a man in the world, who happened
to be the son of a king who was half a lunatic and half an idiot--the
same who attempted by hireling soldiery to subjugate America--who became
a king because he was the descendant of a race of pirates, who by arms
wrested from the people of the countries they invaded, all their rights,
and assumed to own the land.
Have these people from first to last ever added one penny to the wealth
of the world? Is there any one thing they have ever done to push forward
the progress of the nations? Not a thing. On the contrary, they have
been the dead weights; they have been the blocks in the way. They simply
live, and eat, and drink, and wear and disport themselves in the gardens
at Sandringham and an hundred other gardens; they have castles, and
servants, and special trains, and all that sort of thing, and hundreds
of Guinea pug dogs; and to support all this, with the horde of nobility
hanging upon them, and their retainers, the men of Ireland are starving,
and the women of Ireland are going shoeless, stockingless, and well nigh
naked.
[Sidenote: A DIRE WISH.]
I am not especially cruel in my nature, but were the royal family of
England to invite the royal family of Prussia, and the Czar of Russia,
and the King of Italy, and the Sultan of Turkey, and all the kings of
the world, with all their nobles, to an excursion on the German ocean,
and were the ships all to go down to the bottom of the sea, and make an
end of the whole business at once, I should thank Heaven more fervently
than I ever did before in my life. Royalty is larceny in the first
degree. It is larceny all the way down, according to the amount of the
spoil.
[Illustration: THE PROPER END OF ROYALTY.]
I did not confine my observations of land troubles to Ireland alone,
though it is in Ireland that there is the worst condition of affairs,
for the reason that there is a vital difference between the ruling
classes of England and the entire Irish people, in race and religion,
and that makes a great deal more difference in the British Empire than
anywhere else on the footstool.
But the English or Scotch farmer has not so happy a time of it as he
might have, and England will have just as violent a land agitation as
Ireland within a very few years. The average Englishman has a vast
veneration for royalty and nobility, and all that sort of thing, for he
ascribes to the "system" what he himself has done to make Britain great,
but his wife and children are nearer to him than Her Majesty or My Lord,
and he is beginning to ask why he is yearly getting worse off, while Her
Majesty and My Lord are living even more luxuriously and expensively
than ever?
When a strong, vigorous race of men get to asking themselves this
question, it is high time that Her Majesty and My Lord begin to look out
for themselves. The French peasantry and the French artisans made it
very warm for the "Divine Righters" several times, and finally they have
a republic that will endure; not the best republic in the world, but a
very good attempt at one; as good as we could expect from Frenchmen.
Farming in England doesn't pay much better than in Ireland, and the
reason for it, as in Ireland, is summed up in the one word, rent. In
Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and Cambridgeshire, there
are hundreds upon hundreds of farms vacant, and doing nothing, the
reason being the insecurity of tenant farmers and the rottenness of land
ownership. It all comes from the fact that in England as in Ireland, the
fee simple of the land is in the hands of the few, and that the few
owners regard the tenants as so many cows to be milked for their
infernal extravagancies, and that they are so stupid that they cannot be
made to understand that there is a point beyond which the tenant cannot
go, and that when that point is reached something must break.
[Sidenote: LAND TROUBLES IN ENGLAND.]
One farm I saw was a good piece of land of two hundred and eighty acres.
It lies as dead as Julius Cæsar, and is growing up to thistles. Why?
Because the rent is four hundred pounds a year, or two thousand dollars.
It has been screwed up to that point by successive owners, till the
closest labor and the most starving economy will not pay the rent. It
would not pay it anywhere on the globe.
In Nottinghamshire the "Noble" proprietors are having their farms left
upon their hands for the same reasons, and they are attempting to farm
them by their agents, practically evicting the skilled labor which was
born upon the soil and is best fitted to cultivate it.
These owners are those whose debts compel them to get something out of
their land. They either attempt to farm them themselves, or they make
leases at a rent just low enough to induce their tenants to continue.
[Illustration: MEATH LADS AT CROSSAKEEL.]
But there is another class that is not so merciful--or rather who are
not compelled to be just, and the English nobleman is never just except
upon compulsion. These are the drones who are actually rich, and have an
income from some plunder outside of their lands. They will not make
leases at all, for fear of losing the game! They want this beautiful
land to grow up into shelter for hares and birds and all that sort of
thing, for the sake of the pleasure of shooting in the season. The
distress of the evicted tenant--eviction by reason of exorbitant rent
is as certain as eviction for non-payment--is nothing to them. They must
have their preserves of game; they must have their sport.
The process is the same in England as it is in Ireland. The landlord
puts his estates in the hands of an agent, selecting for the purpose a
man with a heart of flint and a face of brass, one who knows no mercy,
and who would not do a kind act were he paid for it.
The tenant appeals to him for a reduction, but he might as well ask
mercy of a tiger. Then in his despair goes to the landlord.
"My good sir," says the landlord, beaming upon him benevolently, "I know
nothing about these things. The matter is entirely in the hands of Mr.
Smithson, my agent. Go to him."
"But I have been to him and he will do nothing."
"Really I regret it. But Mr. Smithson knows all about it--I don't. If
he, with a knowledge of the situation--that is what he is there for--can
do nothing, I cannot. I am not to be expected to know anything about it,
nor can I meddle with business that is his."
And the poor devil of a tenant, with the prospect of starving on the
land or emigrating from the only place on earth which to him is a home,
goes away sadly, and My Lord or the Rev., as the case may be, drops his
agent a note, saying:--"Jobson was here to get a reduction of his rent.
He will stay, and can be made to pay. Be firm with him."
Then the agent tells Jobson that lowering the rent is out of the
question--and Jobson stays, for he does not want to leave. He buys his
artificial manures and his fertilizers from the agent, for he can get
credit nowhere else, the agent has a handsome commission from the
manufacturer, and so between the agent and the landlord, the
manufacturer and the usurer, and the rest of them, Jobson works fourteen
hours a day only in the end to either lie down and die or by the help of
friends get away to America.
[Sidenote: THE COST OF "SPORT."]
I know one tenant who, dissatisfied with an agent's apology for serious
and unreasonable raising of his rent, determined to see the duke
himself. At the interview His Grace said he really knew nothing about
the matter; he had put the re-valuing into the hands of the most
eminent man recommended to him; and, in short, if the tenant did not
feel comfortable, it was open to him to leave and let another man come
in at the new terms. Now this was the cruel truth, but only part of the
truth. The tenant could not quit without tremendous sacrifice of his
property--to say nothing of his home-love and other feelings. So he
answered, "Your Grace, I cannot leave without ruinous loss; I have
farmed well for many years; I can get nothing else at my time of life;
and hence your power to oppress me."
All England is dotted with unoccupied farms, and these blotches upon the
fair face of nature are becoming more frequent every year.
There are in England about five hundred packs of hounds, numbering about
eighty each, or forty thousand in all. The hunting horses number about
one hundred and fifteen thousand, and the yearly cost of these hunting
establishments is estimated at more than forty-five million dollars.
[Illustration: A MAYO FARMER.]
These estimates do not include the original cost of the establishments,
it is merely the annual expense. The first cost goes up into hundreds of
thousands, for enormous prices are paid for good hunters and the better
breeds of hounds.
And this hunting is no joke to the farmer. The horsemen and the hounds
go across the country, and it matters little to them what damage is done
to crops, grounds and animals. The tenant has no rights that the
landlord is bound to respect, and he must submit to whatever burdens are
imposed upon him.
It may be necessary to keep up the "good old English customs," and to
encourage "manly sports," but are not the stomachs of the tenants and
the stomachs of the tenant's children worthy of some consideration? And
then if killing game is a sport to be encouraged to keep up English
manliness, why not give the tenantry, who, after all, do the fighting, a
shy at it? Why keep all the good things for the nobility? John Hodge
could improve his markmanship and his manhood by having an occasional
shot at a deer, or a hare, and the deer or hare would not be an
unacceptable addition to his remarkably short commons at table. But were
John to presume to be seen with a gun in his hand he would be shot at by
a burly game keeper, and if not killed would be arrested, tried,
convicted and transported. What is My Lord's amusement is John Hodge's
crime.
Inasmuch as the British government is for one class only, that class
takes mighty good care of itself. Men in favor with the ruling classes
are pensioned for life, and in many cases the pension goes beyond life,
and is handed down to descendants on more pleas than is comprehensible.
The army, the navy, the law departments, the State departments,
the--well, if there is a department in the English government that is
not like a comet, the pension tail ten times as long as the department
nucleus, I have not found it.
The list of pensioners set in very small type, two columns to the page,
occupy twenty-two large pages. And this enormous list is made up not of
the common soldiers and sailors, but entirely of what are called
gentlemen pensioners--men who were foisted into office as the younger
sons of the nobility, or "sisters, cousins and aunts," and after a few
years of loafing about the government offices retired upon life
pensions.
A fair sample of these pensions is that of the Duke of Schomberg. The
duke was killed at the battle of the Boyne, in the year 1690, and a
pension of six thousand pounds or thirty thousand dollars per annum was
given his heirs. It is estimated that this family, the heirs of a
foreign mercenary, has received from the British government the enormous
sum of six hundred and eighty thousand pounds, or in American money
three million four hundred thousand dollars! And this for his being a
favorite of William of Orange, a Dutch King!
[Sidenote: THE ROYAL FAMILY.]
Rev. J. Smith, whoever he may be, served at the Lord knows what,
twenty-three years, at a yearly salary of three hundred and sixty-four
pounds, and was retired at fifty-six years of age with the comfortable
pension for life of two hundred and thirty-one pounds annually! And so
on you go, wading through twenty-two closely printed pages, two columns
to the page, of just such cases, the yearly allowance for these
excrescencies footing up for the year 1879 the enormous sum of one
million three hundred and thirteen thousand two hundred and fifty-eight
pounds! It is a good thing to be the favorite of a duke.
[Illustration: MAYO PEASANTRY.]
The Royal family have a remarkably soft thing of it. Her Royal Highness,
the Princess Royal, receives a yearly allowance of eight thousand
pounds, the Prince of Wales receives the snug sum of forty thousand
pounds, which he manages to squander in questionable ways (this does not
include the grants Parliament has made at divers and sundry times to pay
his debts), the Princess of Wales ten thousand pounds, Prince Alfred ten
thousand pounds from his marriage and fifteen thousand pounds from his
majority--twenty-five thousand pounds in all--Prince Arthur fifteen
thousand pounds, Princess Alice six thousand pounds, Princess Louise,
she of Canada, six thousand pounds, Princess Mary five thousand pounds,
Prince Leopold fifteen thousand pounds, Princess Augusta three thousand
pounds, Duke of Cambridge twelve thousand pounds, and in addition the
last mentioned fraud has princely pay as field marshal, general,
colonel, and no one knows what else.
Whoever chooses may figure up what all this costs the people of Great
Britain. I have not the patience.
And bear in mind the fact that this does not represent any portion of
what these absorbers take out of the people. This is merely pin money
for the female leeches and pocket money for the male! In addition to
this they have enormous estates all over England, Ireland, Scotland and
Wales; they have offices beyond number, with a salary attached to each,
and they have allowances for everything under heaven. If the tax-payer
breathes it costs him something, for the nobility have revenues based
upon everything.
The Royal household is a curiosity. There's the Lord Steward, who draws
two thousand pounds a year; the Lord Treasurer and Comptroller, nine
hundred pounds each; Master of the Household, twenty one hundred and
fifty-eight pounds; Secretary of the Board of Green Cloth, whatever that
may be, three hundred pounds; Paymaster, five hundred pounds; Lord
Chamberlain, two thousand pounds; Keeper of the Privy Purse, two
thousand pounds; Assistant Keeper of the Privy Purse, one thousand
pounds. It takes two men to keep the privy purse, and it is large enough
to require it. Then there are eight Lords in waiting, who get for
waiting seven hundred and two pounds each, and there are grooms in
waiting, grooms of the privy chamber, extra grooms in waiting, four
gentlemen ushers, one "Black Rod," whatever he may do I don't know, but
for being a "Black Rod" he gets two thousand pounds a year. Then there's
a clerk of the closet, mistress of the robes, ladies of the bed-chamber,
and bed-chamber women, maids of honor, and poet laureate, and examiner
of plays.
The poet laureate gets five hundred pounds a year for writing a very bad
ode in praise of Her Majesty on each birthday, which must be a very
bitter pill for him, he being actually a poet. But he does not give the
worth of the money, for there is absolutely nothing in the Queen of
England to praise. Mr. Tennyson has a very hard place.
[Sidenote: THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD.]
The Master of the Horse receives two thousand five hundred pounds, the
Master of the Buck-hounds one thousand seven hundred pounds, Hereditary
Grand Falconer one thousand two hundred pounds, (by the way kings don't
falcon any more), then there are eight Equerries in Ordinary at seven
hundred pounds each, which is certainly cheap; five Pages of Honor at
one hundred and twenty pounds each, and a Master of the Tennis Court,
which is a sort of a ten pins, I suppose, at one hundred and thirty-two
pounds.
These, understand, are only a few of the people belonging to the Royal
household. There are over a thousand persons, male and female, attached
thereto, all receiving magnificent salaries, for real or imaginary
services to Her Majesty.
[Illustration: INHABITANTS OF A BOG VILLAGE.]
The Queen receives, exclusive of the vast income of her estates, for the
running of her household and pensions for the dead-beats who get too old
to show themselves, the enormous sum of four hundred and seven thousand
pounds, or, in American money, two million thirty-five thousand dollars
per annum! And this represents but a portion of the swindle, as
constantly allowances are being made and annuities granted which do not
show upon paper, and can only be reached by the most ferret-like
acuteness and perseverance.
Ninety per cent. of all this mummery, for which the people of England
have to pay in good hard cash, is the most absurd and utter nonsense.
Like falconry and all that business, it has gone out of date. In the old
times kings kept buck-hounds and flew falcons, and such offices were
necessary, that is, if kings were ever necessary, which I deny, but it
has all gone, never to return. But the offices remain--and the salaries.
They are kept up to make places for illegitimate children of lords, for
poor relations of royalty and nobility, and for favorites whose fathers
or themselves have done dirty work for the government.
In the name of all that's good, what does the Queen of England want of
eight ladies of the bed-chamber, and thirteen women of the bed-chamber?
Can't she unhook her dress and corset, untie the fastenings of her
skirts, peel off her clothes, draw on her woolen night-cap over her
foolish old head, and turn in the same as other women? What does she
want of all these people about her? I can understand that it would take
that number and more to make the ancient nuisance presentable in the
morning, but why tax the people of Great Britain forty-four thousand
pounds a year for this service?
And then when it is taken into account that the entire royal family have
each all this humbuggery, to a less extent, it can be figured up what a
very expensive thing royalty is, and how wise the American people were
to bundle the whole business off the continent at the time they did.
One thousand people at salaries ranging from one hundred to ten thousand
dollars a year, to take care of one rickety old woman, who is mortal the
same as is the humblest of those ground into the dust by her and hers,
and who has no more title to the place she occupies than a thief has to
your watch.
[Sidenote: THE PALACE AND THE WORKHOUSE.]
Ireland swarms with soldiers, and, for that matter, every nook and
corner of the British Empire is scarlet with military. Royalty and
nobility, having no reason for existence, have to be maintained by brute
force. Royalty and nobility do not pay for this expenditure; a
subjugated people pay for their own debasement. To every pound of the
expenditure in the British Empire, sixteen shillings four and one-eighth
pence go to the war debt and the support of the army, leaving three
shillings seven and seven-eighth pence for all other purposes
whatsoever. Military power is the basis of despotism everywhere. Germany
groans under it; Russia sweats under it; and wherever a king is
tolerated you will find bayonets and artillery in most uncomfortable
plenty. Some day, let it be hoped, the kings and nobles will experience
the delight of looking down the muzzles of these arms themselves.
Up to the time of the disestablishment of the Irish Church, the Irish
were compelled to support the archbishops and bishops of a church whose
religion is as foreign to them as Buddhism, paying therefor the sum of
one hundred and two thousand eight hundred and twenty-five pounds per
annum, and to other attaches, for curacies and all that business, a vast
amount more. This immense amount of money was a tax yearly upon a
starved and overworked people, to keep in luxurious idleness a parcel of
drones whose only functions in life were to eat, sleep and hunt; who
were of no earthly use to the people who supported them, either in a
temporal or a spiritual way. There is one English church at Glengariff,
in a parish in which there are only six Protestants, the rector, his
wife, two children, and two servants. The rector has as fine a house as
there is in the country-side, the cost of which and its support is a
burden on a people struggling for their daily bread.
Pauperism is a certain consequence of royalty and nobility. The Queen of
England cannot have one thousand men and women about her person under
pay without taking bread from the mouths of many people, and the luxury
of a noble must find an echo in the other extreme, the workhouse.
The number of adult paupers in England and Wales in 1880, exclusive of
vagrants, was seven hundred and eleven thousand seven hundred and twelve
and the cost to the labor of the country to relieve them footed up eight
millions eight hundred and nineteen thousand six hundred and
seventy-eight pounds.
This does not include Ireland and Scotland, but England, the most
prosperous part of the British Empire. The English writers on political
economy ascribe this appalling pauperism to every cause but the right
one. Wipe out royalty, nobility, and landlordism, and give the people a
chance to earn their bread, and this army would be reduced to almost
nothing.
Crime goes on hand in hand with pauperism. In 1879 the United Kingdom
had the enormous number of one million four hundred and ninety thousand
four hundred and thirty-nine committals for crime. This does not include
the cases of drunkenness or kindred offences which come before
magistrates and are summarily disposed of.
[Illustration: DUBLIN.]
[Sidenote: HOW THE NOBILITY ARE EMPLOYED.]
The principal business of the aristocracy of England is to make places
for themselves and their sons and nephews. No matter how large the
plunder of the tenantry, the landed aristocracy must have government
employment for their surplus children, for they cannot all stay on the
acres originally stolen from the people. And so British arms conquer
other lands, or British diplomacy, which is a lie backed by a
man-of-war, "acquires" it, and immediately a full staff of officials is
sent out, all under magnificent salaries, to stay just long enough to be
retired upon a fat pension. If possible, the expense of governing the
"acquired" possession is squeezed out of the unfortunate natives; if
not, the home government makes up the deficiency.
Cyprus, an island made almost barren by years of Turkish misrule and
oppression, is now in the hands of the English, with a commander-in-chief
at fifteen thousand pounds a year, and a complete staff, the cost of
which is not less than seventy thousand pounds per annum, to say nothing
about the armament necessary to be kept there.
The island of Maritius, a speck in the Indian Ocean, thirty-six miles
long and twenty miles broad, furnishes sinecures for the scions of
English nobility to the tune of eleven thousand six hundred pounds per
year, and three little islands off the Malayan Peninsula are governed by
a parcel of "Sirs" and "Hons." at an annual cost of twenty-one thousand
two hundred and ten pounds.
These are only samples. England has such harbors of refuge for her
surplus nobility everywhere, and the cost of supporting these locusts is
a crushing tax upon the labor of the country. The items of pauperism and
crime are easily accounted for.
Some of her stolen dependencies, however, are made to pay very well. The
total receipts from British India for the year 1879, (customs, taxes,
etc.), were sixty-five million one hundred and ninety-nine thousand six
hundred and sixty-two pounds, while the expenditures for the same year
were sixty-three million one hundred and sixty-five thousand three
hundred and fifty-six pounds. India is so worked as to support a vast
army of officials and leave a balance of two million pounds for profit
besides. But the real profit is much larger. The manufacturers and
merchants of England compel the down-trodden natives to buy their goods
at their own prices, and a never failing stream of wealth flows from
India to England. India was a successful piece of brigandage, and has
always paid very well.
Other steals have been successful--in fact they all have been. These
younger sons, legitimate and illegitimate, have to be supported some
how, by the labor of the country, and to transfer even a portion of
their cost to the people of other countries is a saving of just that
much from the people at home. But where is the necessity of supporting
them at all? What necessity is there for their existence?
The peers of the realm number four hundred and eighty-seven, and of this
number four hundred and two own, or at least get rent for, fourteen
million one hundred and twenty-nine thousand nine hundred and thirty-one
acres of land, which bring them a rental annually of eleven million six
hundred and seventy-nine thousand eight hundred and thirty-nine pounds.
In addition to this enormous income the most of them have appointments
of various kinds, all of which make the position of peer a very
comfortable one.
They have a very pleasant life of it. They all have a castle on their
estates in the country, and in the season guests made up of the same
class, with a few poets, novelists and painters to supply the intellect
and make variety, indulge in all sorts of festivities, and in town, in
the season, their houses are constantly filled, at no matter what
expense. Then they each have a membership in all the clubs, and between
their country houses, and their town houses, and their clubs, they take
pleasure and cultivate gout till death, which has no more respect for
them than it has for their oppressed tenants, takes them to a place
where there is no difference between a duke and a laborer.
[Sidenote: MY LORD.]
Gout, by the way, is the fashionable English disease, and a nobleman or
a squire of an old family would rather have it than not. It is a sort of
mark of gentility, about as essential to his position as his family
tree, and no matter how they suffer under it, they bear it with
fortitude as one of the evils incident to their rank--an evil that
emphasizes their dignity. When Dickens sent Sir Leicester Deadlock into
the next world _via_ the family gout, he did not satirize at all. The
starved Irish never have the gout, nor do the working people who clamor
for some measure of right. The Jack Cades never were so afflicted; only
your noble, who toils not, neither does he spin, who goes to bed every
night full of every flesh that exists, every wine that is pressed, to
say nothing of more potent beverages. It is an accompaniment of "gentle
birth," and very liberal living--living so liberal as to be only
possible by those who have other people's unrequited labor to live upon.
An Englishman dearly loves a lord. There is a cringing servility, a
hat-off reverence for noble birth, in England, that to an American is
about the most disgusting thing he sees. My Lord may be a thin-haired,
weak-legged, half-witted being, capable of nothing under heaven but
billiards and horses, loaded to the guards with vices, and only not
possessing all of them because of his lack of ability to master them. He
may be the most infernal cumberer of the earth in existence, but if he
is of noble birth, if he has the proper handle to his name, he is bowed
to, deferred to in every possible way. A London tradesman had rather be
swindled by a nobleman than paid honestly by a common man, and for one
to have permission to put over his door, "Plumber (for instance) to His
Royal Highness the Prince of Wales," is to put him in the seventh heaven
of ecstacy. The farm population of England show outward deference, but
they don't feel it, and the Irish have so intimate an acquaintance with
them that they refuse even lip service and ignore the "hat-off"
requirement altogether. This lack of respect for the nobility in Ireland
is considered one of the most alarming signs of the times.
I saw a sample of this bowing to royalty, in Scotland. I happened to be
doing Holyrood Castle at the same time His Majesty Kalakeau, King of the
Sandwich Islands, was in Edinburgh. Now King K. may be a very good man,
but in appearance he is an ordinary looking man of half negro blood, and
not a very remarkable mulatto at that. Our Fred Douglas would cut up
into a thousand of him.
He is a sort of a two-for-a-penny king; but he is a king for all that,
and so all the dignitaries of Edinburgh, the mayor, the principal
citizens, a duke or two, and a half dozen right honorables showed him
the city, and escorted him, and lunched him, and banquetted him. They
brought him to Holyrood, and the entire lot of them formed in two ranks,
and, with hats in hand, bowed reverently as this king of a few thousand
breechless, semi-civilized savages, passed to his carriage. And they
glared ferociously upon the few Americans who, not just _au fait_ in
such matters, and not knowing precisely who the distinguished colored
man was, stood with their hats on their heads, inasmuch as it was
raining. Had it been the King of the Fijis, and had it been raining hot
pitchforks, these snobs would have stood with uncovered and bowed heads,
simply because he was a king. To these people, "there is a divinity
which doth hedge a king," no matter what kind of a king it is. They do
the same thing for that venerable old stupidity, Victoria Guelph,
precisely as they did it for that amiable imbecility, Albert, her
husband, and are doing it every day for those embryo locusts, their
children. Burns wrote:--
"Rank is but the guinea's stamp,
A man's a man for a' that."
[Illustration: THEY GLARED FEROCIOUSLY UPON THE AMERICANS.]
[Sidenote: LIVING IN IRELAND.]
But this class of Scotch have forgotten Burns. Possibly they never
understood him. But Burns was wrong. Kalakeau may be a man, but the
snobs who toadied to him so meekly, are not, and never can be.
"Look upon that picture, and then upon this!" I have shown how the
English oppressor lives. Let us go, by actual figures, taken from
official sources, for a few actual facts as to the Irish tenant. The
Parish of Glencolumbkille, in County Donegal, is a fair sample of the
west coast. In this parish there are eight hundred families. In the
famine of 1880, seven hundred of these families were on the relief list,
and on to the end of the famine (if famine may be said to ever end in
Ireland), four hundred families had absolutely nothing but what the
relief committees gave them.
The committees were able to give each of these families per head per
week seven pounds of Indian meal, costing five pence farthing, up to
about five dollars and fifty cents per year.
These people all said that if they got half as much more, ten and
one-half pounds, it would be as much as they would use in times of
plenty.
Your pencil and figures will show you that this would be equivalent in
good years, to an expenditure per head for food for every individual, of
one pound thirteen shillings and sixpence a year, or for the average
family of say four and one-half, seven pounds thirteen shillings and
sixpence per year.
This is the cost of food for the average family per year when the times
are good.
When potatoes are cheaper than Indian meal potatoes are eaten, but one
or the other constitutes the sole food of the people. As the cost is
always about the same, the figures are not changed in either case.
To this you want to add about three pounds a year for "luxuries." Luxury
in an Irish cabin means an ounce of tobacco a week for the man of the
house, and the remainder of the three pounds goes for tea. I admit this
is an extravagance, this tobacco and tea, and I doubt not that a
commission will be appointed by Parliament to devise ways and means to
extinguish the dudheen of the man and abolish the teapot of the woman.
This three pounds a year, thus squandered, would enable the landlords to
have a great many more comforts than they now enjoy. I presume the Earl
of Cork could build another yacht on what his tenantry squander in tea
and tobacco.
Add to this one pound for clothing (an extravagant estimate) for each
member of the family, and you have the entire cost of the existence of
the Donegal family, twelve pounds three shillings six and three-quarters
pence, or, in American money, fifty-seven dollars and sixty-one cents!
The clothing provided by this pound a year means for the man of the
house a pair of brogans, which he must have to work at all, a couple of
shirts, a pair of corduroy trowsers, and a second-hand coat of some
kind. The women and children wear no shoes or stockings, and their
clothing I have described before. Of bed-clothing they have nothing to
speak of. A few potato sacks, or gunny bags, or anything else that
contributes anything of warmth, makes up that item.
The Queen and the Princess of Wales sleep on down and under silk, and
the Queen has one thousand people about her person. My Lord has his
yacht in the harbor, and the humblest seaman on board sleeps under
woolen and has meat three times a day.
Some day there will be a Board of Equalization from whose decision there
will be no appeal. Then I would rather be the Donegal peasant's wife
than the Queen. Despite the fact that she sent one hundred pounds to the
starving Irish, she won't need silken covering to keep her warm.
To pay the rent and provide this fifty-eight dollars for food and
clothing consumes the entire time of every member of the household. The
land will not pay it--it is impossible to get it off the soil. So the
man of the house plants his crops and leaves them for the women and
children to care for, and he goes off to England or Wales, and works in
mines, or in harvest fields in the season, or at anything to make some
little money to fill the insatiable maw of the landlord, and to keep
absolute starvation from the house.
Then the boy in America sends his stipend, which helps--provided his
remittances can be kept from the lynx-eyed agent, who would raise the
rent in a minute if he knew that remittances were coming.
[Sidenote: WOMEN'S WORK.]
But the work of caring for the crops is not all the women
[Illustration: BOG VILLAGE, COUNTY ROSCOMMON.]
and children do. They knit and sew, every minute of the spare time they
have from field work, making thereby from two to three cents a day. This
knitting is done for dealers who furnish the material and pay for the
work, and to get the material journeys of twenty to forty miles, and
the same distance back again to deliver the finished work, have to be
performed.
In brief, there is not a moment to be lost, nor an opportunity wasted to
make a penny. The penny not earned makes the difference between enough
food to sustain life, bare as life is of everything that makes it
desirable, and absolute pinching, merciless hunger. No matter at what
sacrifice, the penny must be earned and religiously applied either for
rent or food. Clothing is always a secondary consideration--a place to
stay in and food to keep life in the body, these are the first.
What is the amount paid the drones of England in the form of pensions?
How much does the Queen receive? How much do the little Princes and
Princesses cost the Nation? How much the Dukes and Dukelings, the Right
Honorables and the Generals and Colonels, and the Secretaries and all
that? "Look upon this picture and then upon that!" A nobility rioting in
extravagance--a whole people starving!
And yet there are those who believe the people of Great Britain have no
grievances, but should settle down contentedly and in quiet!
If there is an American who does not hate royalty, nobility, and
aristocracy, in no matter what form they come to view, he either wants
to be an aristocrat himself, or is grossly ignorant of what this triplet
of infamy means. If there is an American who does not sympathize with
the common people of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, he is either
a heartless man or does not know the condition of the laboring classes
of that unhappy Empire. And if there is an American who reads these
pages, and does not from this time out, make politics just as much a
part of his business as planting his crops, that American does not know
what is good for him. Government is the most important matter on this
earth. Good or bad government makes the difference between
nobility-ridden England and free America.