ends simultaneously, and when head and tail of the saurian meet the
first 1,500 acres will be reclaimed. The "slob" will be easy to drain,
and it is tolerably certain that within twelve months the first
instalment will be ready for cropping. It is a sight to make a
Dutchman's mouth water--a "polder" of surpassing excellence, but it
is viewed in a different light by enthusiastic wild duck shooters,
who, like the owner of a grouse moor, look upon drainage and
reclamation as the visible work of the devil. I do not think they need
be alarmed for some time to come, for, without exaggeration, I have
seen so many duck on the Fergus and the lower Shannon that I hesitate
to speak of figures and incur the fate of Messer Marco Polo, who, when
he spoke of the vast population of China, was nick-named by his
incredulous countrymen "Marco Millione." But when I say that I have
seen scores of flights a quarter of a mile long, that I have seen
reaches of water so full of ducks and other water fowl that they
looked like floating islands, I only give a faint idea of the quantity
I have beheld between Islandavanna and the abortive ocean steam-packet
port of Foynes.
Islandavanna is one of three stations of the reclamation works, and is
occupied by about a third of the four hundred and fifty men now at
work. In the summer seven hundred were employed, but the present
season is not so favourable for getting stone and pushing on
operations.
The electric light, however, will, it is hoped, help matters greatly,
and redress the balance of the "long nights and short days." By the
way, I saw at Islandavanna, or rather at the other end of the causeway
which connects it with the mainland, a man who once employed that
expression in the menacing manner I have previously alluded to, with
the effect of causing the foreman of the works to seek occupation in
another and far distant land. Owing to some disagreement the foreman
had dismissed or suspended this man, who had already been tried for
murder and acquitted. Hereat he took his gun to go snipe-shooting as
he said, walked about lanes and generally hovered about the place in
such threatening fashion that it was thought well to persuade the
foreman to go away. At the present moment Mr. Drinkwater and his
friend Mr. Johnstone, the civil engineer from whose plans the work is
carried out, are on the best terms with the workpeople; but the
process by which comfortable relations have been brought about has
been gradual. It is not pretended that when labour is required, and
there is money to pay for it, any prejudice is felt against the Saxon
as an employer. Far from it. A downright, straightforward Saxon, even
if he be a Protestant, is looked upon by the Irish working folk with
far less suspicion than one of their own class, and there is little
fear of their combining against him, for they are far more likely to
quarrel amongst themselves.
It is hardly possible to convey more than the faintest idea of the
rancour evolved by the jealousy of the Clare men against the Limerick
men, of the hatred of both against a Galway man, and of the aversion
of all three counties for Mayo and Donegal people. The citizens of the
petty republics of Greece and Italy never abhorred each other more
fervently. Now on large works with sub-contractors, gangers, artizans,
and labourers, by piece and by day, it is no easy matter to keep
matters going smoothly. It is needless to say that skilled artizans,
such as engine-men and the like, are not picked up in county Clare;
but no especial spite is felt against them. They are Englishmen, and
that is sufficient; but if a gang of Clare men be dismissed and one of
Limerick men taken on, there are signs of trouble in the air. Justice
must be done to county Clare. Are the children of the soil to want
bread while strangers eat it? For a Limerick man to the poor
untravelled folk of Clare Castle, of Kilrush, and of Kilbaha is a
stranger. Yet the small peasant cultivators on an islet near
Islandavanna flatly refused to work at the "slob." Smoking a pipe and
looking at a cow and calf grazing was a more congenial occupation, so
they preferred staying at home. The slob work was too hard entirely.
Now, this may appear incredible to those who have only seen the
awakened Irishmen who do a vast quantity of the hardest and roughest
kind of work in Great Britain and in the United States. In the latter
country it is a matter of notoriety, supported in my own case by the
evidence of my eyesight, that almost all the hard manual labour is
performed by Irishmen and negroes. But downright steady hard work is
just what the Western Irishman is not accustomed to at home. He will
work nobly for a spurt, but when the spurt is over he loves to loiter
and do as he likes.
It is no easy matter to found such a centre of industry as the works
on the Fergus, but it is to be sincerely hoped that many such attempts
will be made despite of discouragement. Experience has shown that the
neglected and, in many localities, degraded West is abundantly capable
of improvement. Mr. Drinkwater determined to take the only way
possible in these parts, that is, to feed and lodge his little army of
workpeople, to establish a club for them, to give them a reading-room,
to get porter for them at wholesale price--in short, to afford them
every inducement to prefer the new settlements on the Fergus to the
wretched huts and groggeries of Clare Castle and the surrounding
villages. He insists, moreover, that every man shall have his
half-pound of meat, either beef, mutton, or bacon, every day but
Friday.
There is no pretence of philanthropy in all this. It is done on the
ground that it is foolish to pay a man liberal wages, if he have to
walk several miles to work and home again, and be allowed to live on a
scant supply of potatoes and bread, washed down with too much of the
whisky of the country. An ill-fed man can no more work well than an
ill-fed horse, and inasmuch as the sooner the work is done the less
interest will be paid on the Government loan, it is obviously
important to get the work done as soon as possible. Hence high wages,
on the condition that a certain proportion shall be spent on food and
lodging, in a range of labourers' houses admirably built of iron lined
with wood, perfectly warmed and lighted, and kept wonderfully clean.
There are a store-house and a refectory, a cooking department and
dormitories, perfectly ventilated and swept and garnished every day.
Tea, beer, and other beverages except whisky can be obtained, and
there is an abundant supply of books and newspapers. Every facility
and encouragement is given to the priests to visit their people. In
short, the colony on the Fergus Reclamation Works is one of the most
extraordinary sights in the West of Ireland. As the entire work will
hardly be completed under five or six years, the influence of such a
community of people doing their work steadily and thoroughly ought to
be very valuable.
Such works, as well as the reclamation of mountain and bog suggested
and tried by Mr. Mitchell Henry for the benefit of peasant
cultivators, are absolutely required to quicken the industry of the
languishing West. The poor people here require to be taught many
things; notably to obey orders, to mind their own business, to hold
their tongues, and to wash themselves; but it is impossible to expect
four such virtues as obedience, industry, silence, and cleanliness to
be acquired all at once by people who have been neglected for
centuries. But there can be no radical defect in them, for they work
hard enough in America, and under strict taskmasters too, for a Yankee
farmer is like a Yankee skipper, inclined to pay good wages, but to
insist on the money being earned. So far as discipline is concerned
there is no better soldier or soldier-servant than a Western Irishman,
none more patient under difficulty and privation, none so full of
cheerfulness and resource. Probably the conditions of life are more
favourable elsewhere, as they may easily be. Here in county Clare
there seems to a perhaps too-hasty observer a complete want of social
homogeneity. What lamps of refinement and intellectual culture burn
here burn for each other only, and serve but to intensify the darkness
around.
In no part of Ireland that I have seen are class distinctions more
sharply defined. The landholding gentry are with but two or three
exceptions Protestants, and, with the exception of Lord Inchiquin, are
of English, Scotch, or Dutch descent, as such names as Vandeleur,
Crowe, Stacpoole, and Burton indicate. I am not aware of the landed
possessions of The O'Gorman Mahon, but I have already stated that his
nephew holds only a moderate estate, let by the way at about three
times the Government valuation--but not, I must add, necessarily,
rack-rented, for Griffiths is, for reasons fully explained by a score
of writers beside myself, a deceptive guide in grazing counties. The
gentry of the county, however, are nearly all Protestant, and it is
curious to note on Sunday at Ennis how the masters and their families
go to one church and their servants to another. I am not insinuating
that there is any sectarian squabbling. There is not, for the simple
reason that the two classes of gentry and tradesfolk are too far apart
to come into collision. On one side of a broad line stand the lords of
the soil, of foreign descent, of Protestant religion, of exclusive
social caste; on the other stand the people, the shop-keepers, the
greater farmers and the peasants, all of whom are Irish Roman
Catholics, and bound to each other by the ties of common religion,
common descent, and often of actual kinship. There is, excepting
perhaps a dozen professional men, no middle-class at all, through
which the cultivation of the superior strata could permeate to the
lower.
Probably no more difficult social condition ever presented itself. To
show how completely the members of what ought to be a middle-class, I
mean the large tenant-farmers, are identified with the peasant class,
I may add that many of them, working with a capital of many thousands
of pounds, are subscribers to the Land League, and that many are not
paying their rent. Lord Inchiquin enjoys a good reputation as a
landlord; but his tenants refuse to pay more than Griffiths's
valuation, and I hear that other great landlords in the county are not
much more fortunate. What is most singular of all is that the
middlemen, who are subletting and subdividing their holdings at
tremendous rack-rents, are among the most prominent in refusing to pay
the chief landlord. They see a great immediate advantage to themselves
in the present movement, for they give but short credit to their
tenants, while they enjoy the full benefit of a "hanging gale," or
owing always half a year's rent, according to the custom of this
county.
ENNIS, COUNTY CLARE, _November 28th._
The first news which greeted me on Friday night was, that, at a
meeting of magistrates on Wednesday morning, Mr. Richard Stacpoole had
been persuaded to accept police protection, and that two men living at
Ballygoree, near Ballyalla, had been taken out of their houses on
Thursday night and severely taken to task for having committed the
atrocity of paying their rent. The poor fellows urged, in extenuation,
that they had the money, that they owed it, and that their holdings
were not "set" at an extravagant price. All this availed them nothing.
They were compelled to kneel down in the midst of the muddy road, in
the dead of the night, and to solemnly swear never to behave so
wickedly again, after which six guns were fired in a volley over their
heads, and they were allowed to regain their houses.
The event which had drawn me back to Ennis was a meeting of the
magistrates of Clare, specially called to consider the state of the
county. A large attendance was looked for, and Saturday being market
day in Ennis, two more things were certain--the first, that the town
would be full of people, and the second, that the people would be full
of whisky. A great crowd assembled to greet the magistrates on their
arrival, but, owing to the meeting taking place two hours before the
published time, a grand opportunity of hooting the more unpopular
justices of the peace was lost, and the "makings of a shindy"
evaporated in some sporadic groaning. There was a very large
attendance of magistrates. Lord Inchiquin, the Lord-Lieutenant of the
county, was present, as well as Mr. Burton, of Carnelly; Mr. T. Crowe,
of Dromore; Colonel Macdonell; Mr. Hall, of Cluny, who has outlived
sundry attempts at assassination; Mr. Dawson, of Bunratty; Mr. Hewett;
and thirty-eight other magistrates. The formal business of the day was
got through without speechifying, and after some little consultation
the following resolutions were adopted:--
First Resolution--That the state of lawlessness and intimidation
at present existing in this county is such that the law is
utterly unable to cope with it, and urgently demands the
attention of her Majesty's Government.
Second Resolution--That the landowners, having hitherto shown the
greatest forbearance, will doubtless now be compelled to take
legal proceedings to enforce the payment of rent, in order to
meet their own pressing obligations, and as this can only be
done at the imminent risk of life we consider that the general
peace of the county will very shortly be seriously endangered.
Third Resolution--That with a view to the maintenance of law and
order we respectfully call on her Majesty's Government
immediately to summon Parliament, in order to obtain such
extraordinary powers as shall enable them to deal effectively
with a conspiracy unprecedented in character, which aims at
the total disorganization of society.
It is quite possible that these resolutions may produce some
astonishment in England, especially now that it is well known that
nothing beyond a special emergency will induce the Government to adopt
coercive measures. But things said and done in the West of Ireland are
apt to be somewhat after date. Still the resolutions of the Clare
magistrates have their value as giving a tolerably clear idea of what
may be designated the landlord mind. Minute subdivisions set aside,
there are at least four ways of looking at the subject of the day in
this part of Ireland. There is the view of a great landlord who,
because he helped his people with food during the potato famine and
with money to emigrate with afterwards, and has spent a little money
here and there out of a huge income, thinks he has amply discharged
his duty to his tenants. It is true that he began by charging them 4
and 5 per cent, respectively on building and drainage improvements, a
tolerably round percentage; but it is fair to admit that for several
years past he has not charged more than 2½ per cent, for such
improvements as he has made. The great landlords of this county are
less attacked than others by popular orators, mainly because their
rents are not exorbitantly high in the first place. The land is let on
lease for terms as long sometimes as sixty-four years, and is
sometimes underlet at greatly increased prices to the ultimate
tenants, whose precarious condition brings the "head" landlord into
undeserved odium. The great landholders and their agents maintain that
to quote Griffiths against a landlord who has spent money in
improvements since that valuation was made, and let his farms so low
that other people can relet them at a profit, is a manifest absurdity.
Another practical view of the landlord mind is that it is foolish to
go on borrowing money under the Act of 1879 during the present
uncertain condition of tenure and impossibility of getting in rents.
Hence the Scariff drainage works, for which 34,000l. was to be
borrowed by the owners of the property affected by the scheme, have
been suddenly abandoned, and will not be carried any further, at least
during the present winter. One consequence of this decision will be to
throw a large number of people out of employ, who must either leave
Clare or ask for relief.
The first order of the landlord mind, however, is, to do it justice,
not affected very seriously by the present crisis. The great
landholders of Clare and Limerick are not in a heavily mortgaged or
downright insolvent condition. Like the wealthy manufacturer during a
strike, they do not care either to employ or to threaten harsh
measures against their tenants. There is time enough for the present
agitation to subside, as others have subsided, and if the Government
should wish to acquire their land and disestablish "landlordism," as
Mr. Parnell suggests, so much the better, especially since it has
become manifest by the example of the Marquis of Conyngham's estate
that purchasers, other than tenants, are hardly to be found for Irish
property. And--as the agent of a great absentee landholder observed to
me--of what avail would it be to proceed to ulterior measures against
the tenants? Granted that all the weary delays of the local courts
were got rid of by a Dublin writ, what would be the consequence? The
tenant would, unless he chose to spend his own ready money to defend
his case in Dublin, be swiftly ejected--that is, if sufficient police
were requisitioned to make any attempt at resistance absurd. The
landlord would get his own after a fashion; but unless he chose to
keep a force of police on his farms the dispossessed tenants would be
reinstated and their houses rebuilt by the mob; and nothing would be
got in the shape of rent. As no person in the possession of his senses
would take any farm from which a tenant had been evicted, the landlord
would have only one course to pursue. He must farm his land himself,
and then he would be "isolated" or "Boycotted." Nobody would work for
him; nobody would buy anything from his farms.
Everybody in Ennis knows the case of Littleton, whose farm is now
under "taboo," and whose oats no man dare buy, and the similar case of
a draper who had sold some material to a man working on the
"Boycotted" farm, and was compelled to take it back. "There is nothing
now," added another informant, "but to touch your hat to tenants, for
they have left off doing so to you. And it is folly to talk of
reprisals, or of persevering in hunting and going armed to the meet.
Suppose an affray occurred and I shot a tenant, I should be most
assuredly identified, tried, convicted, and severely punished, if not
hanged. But if a tenant shot me it would be difficult to identify him,
more difficult to arrest him, and downright impossible to convict him.
Since Lord O'Hagan's Jury Act it is quite impossible to get
convictions against the lower orders--witness the memorable instance
of Mr. Creagh, when the assassin's gun burst and blew his finger off.
The prisoner and his finger were both in court, there was no manner of
doubt, and yet the jury acquitted him."
Thus far the greater landowner or his agents. The tone is one of
patient, if not amused, endurance, mingled, of course, with profound
contempt for the _personnel_ of the Land League. But the smaller and
resident landlord is of much more inflammable stuff. A strike against
rent-paying signifies to him an end of all supplies. Whether he have
two thousand or five thousand a year in land--for I omit the little
"squireen" class as of no importance on either side of the
question--he has almost certainly settlements and probably mortgages
on his estate. Now, mortgagees in Dublin or London are not at all
ready to take into account the difficulty of collecting rents in
Connaught, and insist on being paid.
Even their rancour, however, has moderated slightly just of late, for
they are as afraid to foreclose on unsaleable property as the
mortgagor is of losing his claim on it for ever. But the settlements
must be paid, and as no rents are coming in, dowagers are obdurate,
and the landlord lives well up to his means, times are hard just now
in county Clare.
It is not exactly "tyranny" which inclines the lesser landlord to get
the rent out of his tenant, but his own need, which drives him to
extreme measures. In bitterness of spirit he bewails his dulness in
not following the example of some of his peers in getting rid of their
tenantry and farming their land themselves, like Colonel Barnard in
King's County. He also envies the lot of Mr. "Tom" Crowe, of Dromore,
who, without acquiring the name of an "exterminator" or a "tyrant,"
has succeeded in shaking off the load of teeming population and the
abomination of "duty work" by degrees, and has now a magnificent farm
of his own which might bear the inspection of Mr. Clare Read himself,
and of all Norfolk to boot. Mr. Crowe, too, has not gone through the
ordeal of being shot at like Colonel Barnard, and if not specially
loved by the people, has no kind of quarrel with them. Mr. Burton, of
Carnelly, who owns 9,669 acres in Clare, has been fortunate in getting
some rent, mainly in consequence of his tact in driving round one day
to collect it himself and taking his tenants by surprise. But Mr.
Burton is an exception, both in tact and fortune, to the majority of
landlords of the second rank. Colonel Vandeleur has been very
unfortunate, like all landholders encumbered with what would be called
small farmers in England. The few really large farmers in Clare, as a
rule, have paid up either openly or privately, and in sentiment are
quite with the landlord class. The lesser landlords are talking of
nothing but Dublin writs, and declare that the so-called peace of the
county is only unbroken because no attempt is made to execute the law.
The farmers are of course peaceful enough so long as they are
permitted to send a rich harvest to market, to pocket the proceeds,
and to pay no rent. "But," said a small landholder to me, "is this law
and order? Because I know it is hopeless at this moment to recover my
rent, and therefore abstain from proceedings, does it follow that the
peace would not be broken were I to put the law into operation?" I am
sorry for this gentleman, for I know that he is what is called in
commerce a "weak holder," or one who can afford neither to conduct his
business with a firm hand nor to throw it aside till better times. He
must go on, for he has mortgages and settlements on his estates; and,
admitted that his tenants would go away to-morrow without any trouble,
he could not spare what they owe him, and assuredly would not find new
tenants for his farms. He of course is for the immediate suspension of
the Habeas Corpus Act, and declares that to be the most merciful
solution of the immediate difficulty. To him the "Three F's" appear
altogether diabolical, and he proposes the substitution of "Three
D's"--Disarmament, Disfranchisement, and a Dictator, the more military
the better.
From the medium and smaller farmers, who with the whisky dealers and
the majority of the other tradespeople form the opposite camp, I hear
that no measure that the Government can pass before the present
Parliament will be acceptable to what is called the Irish people. It
is now averred that the extension of the borough franchise to counties
must be carried before a Parliament adequate to deal with the Irish
question is formed. This appears a strong demand, and one likely to
protract the present distracted state of the country. But I hear, on
the best authority, that the Land League and the associated farmers
can wait. They are in no hurry. England can take her own time and they
will wait patiently, meanwhile of course paying no rent, nor any other
debts which may prove inconvenient.
Having passed their resolutions, the magistrates drive off quietly
enough--but by daylight. Within the last three weeks the County Club
sittings have been earlier than usual, the members thinking it at
least as well to get home before dark. The valedictory wish expressed
here just now is of itself ominous. It is not "Good-bye" or
"Good-night," but "Safe home."
X.
PALLAS AND THE PALLADIANS.
LIMERICK.