THE EARL OF ENNISKILLEN AND HIS TENANTS--CAUSES OF DISSATISFACTION--
SPREAD OF THE LAND LEAGUE AMONGST ENNISKILLEN ORANGEMEN--A SAMPLE
GRIEVANCE--THE AGENTS' COMMISSION--A LINK THAT NEEDS STRENGTHENING--THE
LANDLORD'S SIDE.
It seems a great pity that the attachment between the Earl of
Enniskillen and his tenants should suffer interruption or be in danger
of passing away. The Earl, now an old man, was much loved by his people,
until, in a day evil alike for him and for his tenants, he got a new
agent from the County Sligo. Of course, I am telling the tale as it was
told to me. Since this agent came on the property, re-valuation, rent
raising, vexatious office rules, have been the order of things on the
estate. The result of this new state of things, has been that the Land
League has spread among the tenants like wildfire. I did not feel
inclined to take these statements without a grain of salt. To hear of
the Land League spreading among Enniskillen Orangemen, among the Earl's
tenants, of dissatisfaction creeping in between these people
historically loyal and attached to a family who had been their chiefs
and landlords for centuries, was surprising to me.
To convince me that such was the case, I was requested to listen to one
of the Earl's tenants reciting the story of his grievances at the hands
of the Earl's agent. It was a sample case, I was told, and would explain
why the people joined the Land League. It was pleasant enough to have an
opportunity of going into the country and to have an opportunity of
seeing the farms and the style of living of the Fermanagh farmers, as
compared with the Donegal highlands.
The country out of Enniskillen is very pretty. May has now opened, the
hedges have leafed out and the trees are beginning lazily to unfold
their leaves. The roads are not near so good as the roads in Donegal,
which are a legacy from the dreary famine time, being made then. The
hedges are not by any means so trim and well kept as the hedges by the
wayside in Down or Antrim. The roads up to the farm houses are lanes,
such as I remember when I was a child. The nuisances of dunghills near
the doors of the farmhouses have been utterly abolished for sanitary
reasons, also whitewashing is an obligation imposed by the Government.
For these improvements I have heard the authorities both praised and
thanked. In these times of discontent, it is well to see the Government
thanked for anything. The country is hilly and the hills have a uniform
round topped appearance, marked off into fields that run up to the hill
tops and over them and down the other side. There are, of course,
mountains in the distance, wrapped in a thick veil of blue haze.
The house to which I was bound was, like most of the farm houses, long,
narrow, whitewashed, a room at each end and the kitchen in the middle. I
will now let the farmer tell his grievances in his own words. He is
about sixty years of age, a professor of religion of the Methodist
persuasion, an Orangeman, and a hereditary tenant of Lord Enniskillen,
and now an enthusiastic adherent of the Land League. "In 1844 I bought
this farm--two years before I was married. There is 17-1/2 acres. I paid
L184 as tenant right--that is, for the goodwill of it. The rent was L19
7s 4d. I should have gone to America then; it would have been better for
me. I have often rued that I did not go, but, you see, I was attached to
the place. My forbears kindled the first fire that ever was kindled on
the land I live on. I held my farm on a lease for three lives; two were
gone when I bought it. I have been a hard-working man, and a sober man.
There is not a man in the country has been a greater slave to work than
I have been. I drained this place (fetches down a map of the little
holding to show the drains). It is seamed with drains; 11 acres out of
17-1/2 acres are drained, the drains twenty-one feet apart and three
feet deep. Drew stone for the drains two miles, L100 would not at all
pay me for the drainage I have done. I built a parlor end to my house,
and a kitchen; also, a dairy, barn, byre, stable and pig house. Every
year I have bought and drawn in from Enniskillen from sixty to one
hundred loads of manure for my farm; this calculation is inside of the
amount. I have toiled here year after year, and raised a family in
credit and decency. When the last life in my lease died, my rent was
immediately raised to L27 10s. I paid this for a few years, and then the
seasons were bad, and I fell behind. It was not a fair rent, that was
the reason I was unable to pay it. I complained of the rent. I wanted it
fixed by arbitration; that was refused. I asked for arbitration to
decide what compensation I had a right to, and I would leave; that was
refused too. I was served with a writ of ejectment. The rent was lowered
a pound at two different times, but the law expenses connected with the
writ came to more than the reduction given. I had the privilege, along
with others, of cutting turf on a bog attached to the place at the time
I held the lease; that was taken from us. We had then to pay a special
rate for cutting turf, called turbary, in addition to our rent. So that
really I am struggling under a higher rent than before, while I have the
name of having my rent lowered: I once was able to lay by a little money
during the good times; that is all gone now. I am getting up in years.
If I am evicted for a rent I cannot pay, I cannot sell my tenant right;
I will be set on the world at my age without anything. I joined the Land
League. At the time of an election it was cast up to Lord Enniskillen
about taking from us the bog. It was promised to us that we should have
it back, in these words: 'If there is a turf there you will get it.'
After the election we petitioned for the bog, and were refused. We were
told our petition had a lie on the face of it. It is the present agent,
Mr. Smith, that has done all this. He is the cause of all the ill-
feeling between the Earl of Enniskillen and his tenants. He has raised
the rents L3,000 on the estate, I am told. He gets one shilling in the
pound off the rent; that is the way in which he is paid; so it is little
wonder that he raises the rents; it is his interest to do so."
I listened to this man tell his story with many strong expressions of
feeling, many a hand clench, and saw he was moved to tears; saw the
hereditary Enniskillen blood rise, the heart that once throbbed
responsive to the loyalty felt for the Enniskillen family now surging up
against them passionately. I thought sadly that the loss was more than
the gain. Gain L3,000--loss, the hearts that would have bucklered the
Earl of Enniskillen, and followed him, as their fathers followed his
fathers, to danger and to death. I decided in my own mind that Mr.
Smith's agency had been a dear bargain to the Enniskillen family. "The
beginning of strife is like the letting out of water; therefore, leave
off contention before it be meddled with."
After I had listened to the farmer's wrongs and heard of others who also
had a complaint to make, I was obliged to think that their case was not
yet so hard as the case of those who suffered from the
_eccentricities_ of Lord Leitrim. Still, it is a hard case when we
consider that the man's whole life and so much money also sunk in rent,
purchase, improvements, and when unable to pay a rent raised beyond the
possibility of paying, to lose all and begin life again without money or
youth and hope, at sixty years of age. People with exasperated minds are
driven to join the Land League, in hope that union will be strength, and
that ears deaf to petition of right will grant concessions to agitation.
I began to feel afraid that I was hearing too much on one side and too
little on the other, and I requested to be introduced to some who had
ranged themselves on the side of the landlords. I was, as a consequence,
introduced to several gentlemen at different times, but I got no light
on the subject from any of them. They were so very sure that everything
was just as it should be, and nothing short of treason would induce any
one to find fault. Still when the question was asked squarely, "Are
there no reasons for wishing for reform of the land laws?" the answer
was, "We would not go quite so far as that?" There was a vague
acknowledgment that, generally speaking, some reform was needed, and yet
every particular thing was defended as all right on the whole, or not
very far wrong.