He understood that King George III. was not a wise man, but that he
was a humane man. Ireland was not governed by King George III., but by
a gang of rapacious brigands. They constantly invoked the king's name,
but only to serve more fully their own selfish ends. By the king's
authority they carried out their policy of systematic outrage, until
he hated the very name of the king whom he always wished to love.
The chief business of the king's representatives was to plunder his
majesty's poorer subjects. For this purpose the country was parcelled
out and divided among a number of base and greedy adventurers, in
return for odious services. Each of these adventurers became king, or
landlord, in his own district, and lived on the wretched natives.
Every meskin of butter made on the farm, every pig reared in the
cabin, every egg laid by the hens that roosted in the kitchen, went to
support the land-king.
The cottages were mud hovels. The land was bog and barren waste. The
men and women were in rags. The children were hungry, pinched, and
bare-footed. But the landlord carried off everything, except the
potato crop, which was barely sufficient to sustain life.
The landlord was a very great man. He lived in London, near the king,
in more than royal splendor. Or he passed his time in some of the
great cities of Europe, spending as much on gay women as would have
clothed and fed all the starving children on his estate. In English
society his pleasantries were said to be most entertaining, regarding
the poverty, misery, and squalor of his tenants, whom he fleeced; but
he took care never to come near them, lest his fine sensibilities
should be shocked at their condition. His serious occupation was the
making of laws to increase his own power for rapacity, and to take
away from the people every vestige of rights that they might have
inherited.
"The landlord takes everything and gives nothing," was Hugh Bronte's
simple form of the fine modern phrase regarding landlords' privileges
and duties.
Hugh Bronte maintained that the landlord was a courteous gentleman,
graced with polished manners, and that if he had lived among his
people he might in time have developed a heart. At least, he could
hardly have kept up a gentlemanly indifference, in the presence of
squalor and misery. But he kept quite out of sight of his tenantry, or
he would not have made so much merriment about the pig, which was
being brought up among the children, to pay for his degrading
extravagances. The landlord's place among the people was taken by an
agent, an attorney, and a sub-agent. The agent was a local potentate,
whose will was law. The attorney's business was to make the law square
with the agent's acts. And the under agent was employed to do mean and
vile and inhuman acts, that neither the agent nor attorney could
conveniently do.
The duty of the three was to find out, by public inspection and by
private espionage, the uttermost farthing the tenants could pay, and
extract it from them legally. In getting the rent for the landlord
each got as much as he could for himself. The key of the situation was
the word "eviction."
Then Hugh told the story of his ancestors' farm. The Brontes had
occupied a piece of forfeited land, with well-defined obligations to a
chief, or landlord. Soon the landlord succeeded in removing all legal
restraints which in any way interfered with his absolute control of
the place. Remonstrance and entreaty were alike unavailing. The
alterations in title were made by the authority of "George III., by
the grace of God King of England!"
Hugh's great-grandfather drained the bog and improved the land, at
enormous expense. Every improvement was followed by a rise in the
rent. His grandfather built a fine house on the land, by money made in
dealing, and again the rent was raised, on the increased value given
to the place by the tenant's industry. Then, the vilest creature in
human form having ingratiated himself with the agent, by vile
services, the place was handed over to him, without one farthing of
compensation to the heirs of the man whose labor had made the place of
value. All these things were done in the name of George III., though
the king had no more to do with the nefarious transactions than the
child unborn.
From this conclusion Hugh Bronte proceeded to his fourth negative
proposition: