When I recovered my consciousness, I was in my own room at Rayleigh
Court. I looked round, and gradually a recollection of all that had
happened dawned upon me. I thought of my journey down--the conversation
between Mr Jeeks and Shookers--the new light that had been thrown on the
behaviour of the once cherished, but now, for the second time, detested
Lucy Ashton; and I turned round on the bed, and wished to relapse into
insensibility for ever. A light step at the side of the couch attracted
my notice. "Thank God," I heard a voice say, "my boy will live!" It was
my father. I turned round, and opened my eyes. He took my hand, and
looked at me a long, long time, with an expression of interest and
affection that I had not seen for many years.
"You are better, Henry, but don't exert yourself to speak. The slightest
effort may be fatal; therefore, for my sake, for all our sakes, be
quiet."
He sat down, and put his finger on his lips.
"In a day or two, now that your health has taken a favourable turn, you
will be able to able as many questions as you choose. In the mean time
be perfectly composed, and all will be well."
My father was in mourning.
"You are dressed in black," I whispered.
"We have lost a relation," he answered, "a distant relation; and we must
pay him the compliment of a black coat--but hush! my dear boy; if you
utter another word I must leave the room."
Under the care and uninterrupted attentions of my father, I rapidly got
well. In a week I could sit up; in a fortnight I moved into the library.
The sun was clear and warm. I sat at the open window, and looked out
upon the park, and beyond it to the tops of the trees in the Wilderness.
It gave me a blow that I could scarcely bear. I rose up and tottered to
the sofa. The weekly newspaper was lying on the table. I took it up, and
the first paragraph that met my eyes was this--"Married at Verbena
Lodge, on Wednesday last, Alfred Shookers, Esq. of Singapore, to
Elizabeth, third daughter of Jeremiah Juffles, Esq., late of Ryleigh
Grange."
I thought I had banished her from my heart for ever; but the suddenness
of the announcement was too much for me. The paper fell from my hand,
and I fainted.
"Poor boy, the change is too much for him!" I heard my father say. "He
must not leave his room again till he is stronger."
I soon returned to my senses, and by a great effort recovered my spirits
at the same time. I laughed and talked, and listened well pleased to my
father's glowing picture of the possibility of our retrieving our
fortunes by a marriage. I promised him I would sacrifice myself on the
hymeneal altar for the good of my family; that I would marry the
ugliest, oldest widow he could fix on; that I was anxious to be a
benedict on favourable terms; and at all my protestations my father
laughed aloud, and patted me on the shoulder. I could not believe it was
the same man who had snubbed and bullied me all my life. All of a sudden
he looked at his watch.
"Excuse me, my dear boy," he said, "I have engaged to dine with poor
Jeeks at five o'clock."
"With whom?" I asked, shuddering at the sound of the name.
"With our neighbour, poor Jeeks," he said. "He has had a terrible
dispensation, and is very much softened and improved."
"What dispensation?"
"Ah! I forgot: I was not to let you know. His poor son! he never
recovered the accident. Two or three of Mr Shookers's teeth fastened in
his head. He has been dead these five weeks: a most promising young
man."
I was amazingly shocked at the intelligence.
"Is it for him we are in mourning?" I enquired.
My father nodded.
"Then he was our cousin, after all?"
"There certainly seems to have been a relationship in the _Temp._ of
some of the _Geos._, as he called it. At all events the acknowledgment
of it does not cost much, and poor old Jeeks is delighted. Good-by. Take
care of yourself."
And so saying, he left me to my cogitations.
When once a favourable crisis, as it is called, takes place, the
amendment in the health of a man of twenty-two is very speedy. I was
aided also by seeing my father in such spirits. From day to day I picked
up strength, and at the end of a week I felt I could venture out.
It was June again--the poet's leafy month of June--the anniversary of
the very day on which I had so heroically enacted the part of the Master
of Ravenswood against the pigs. I sauntered through the park; a fate was
upon me; and I directed my steps, by some secret impulse against which I
struggled in vain, to the Wilderness. "I may as well see the spot where
I was so deluded," I thought, and recognized every object--alas! with
what different feelings--as I drew near the trysting-tree.
"It was there," thought, "I saw Amy for the first time, as she was
flying for protection; it was there I rushed forward to save her; it was
there, under the oak"----As I directed my eyes to the spot, my heart
leaped as if I had seen a spirit; for there, on the identical turf, with
a work-basket on her lap, sat Lucy Ashton, or rather Mrs Shookers.
"So you've come at last!" she said. "Well, better late than never.
Here's your seat all ready. I have expected you a long time."
"Are you a woman, or a fiend in human shape?" I began.
"Oh! a fiend by all means, if you like; but what has kept you all this
time from Bushy Park? I am afraid your father won't give his consent;
you would have come to me sooner if he had. But come, sit down and tell
me all."
So saying, she went on with her knitting. She was lovelier than ever.
She was dressed in a black silk gown, and wore a long black mantilla
over her head. I had never heard any thing so musical as her voice, nor
seen any thing so beautiful as her smile.
"I shall certainly not be your dupe any longer," I said; "and, believe
me, the coquetry that might be captivating in Miss Elizabeth Juffles, is
simply disgusting in Mrs Shookers of Singapore."
"Had not you better send out your opinion by the next India mail? Betsy
has sailed by this time, and will just get out in time to receive your
letter."
"Then, if you are not Betsy Juffles, tell me, in Heaven's name, who and
what you are?"
"I'm a young girl of nineteen, who promised once to accept the hand of a
young gentleman of the name of Rayleigh, who told me a hundred times he
did not care about my family--that it was myself only he cared for: and
he even went down to tell his father of the resolution he had taken,
without making enquiry as to either my birth, parentage, or education. A
wild young man he was, and rather changeable; for sometimes he would
have made sonnets to my eyebrows, if he had had the gift of verse;
sometimes he would have stabbed me to the heart, if he had had a dagger;
sometimes I was his adorable Lucy Ashton; then his tantalizing Miss
Poggs; then his hated Betsy; whereas, all the time, I was nothing but
the selfsame anonymous but fascinating creature, who under all these
names, and in spite of all these variations in his humour, loved him
very truly, and has no doubt whatever of being his wife."
"You!--it would be safer to marry an incarnate demon!"
"Ah, safer perhaps; but not so respectable! Come, do sit down; what's
the use of ceremony among friends and neighbours? Has your father
consented to the match?"
"Do you think I asked him?"
"Why not? you don't like Gretna Green better, do you?"
"By no means--my intentions are changed."
"But you forget that I am neither Betsy Juffles nor Miss Poggs; I am
nothing but Lucy Ashton."
"I wish you had never been any thing else," I said, beginning to soften;
for who could resist such a voice and such eyes?
"Well, I tell you I am _not_ changed--will that not satisfy you? Imagine
that all that has passed since we parted here is a dream; that Verbena
Lodge has no existence, and that Mr Dobble is an ass! Won't you sit down
beside me, Edgar?"
I threw myself upon the turf, and she went on.
"I grant I have been a little capricious, Edgar, but there were reasons
for it, believe me."
"What reason could there be for all these mysteries?"
"Why, in the first place, it was very amusing; in the next place, you
did not know your own mind; in the next place, it was romantic; in the
next place, I wanted to try you if your love was really sincere."
"And you found it wanting," I said in a tone of self-reproach.
"Not a bit," she replied, with a look that showed she knew my heart a
great deal better than I did myself.
"At this moment I believe your affection for me rises triumphant above
the horrors of Betsy Juffles or Miss Poggs; and so I think I shall
reward you at last with an open explanation of who I am."
"No, dearest Lucy Ashton!" I said, taking her hand, "not before I swear
that it is yourself only I care for--that I love you more than words can
tell."
"Then you'll marry the gal of course," said a voice; and at the same
moment the head of old Mr Jeeks was popped round from the other side of
the tree. I sprang to my feet in a moment; and beside Mr Jeeks, scarcely
able to restrain his laughter, stood my father.
"Matters have certainly gone too far," he said in his usual grave and
sombre tones, "for either party to recede."
"Nobody wants it, I'm sure," replied old Jeeks.
"And I have no wish of the kind," returned my father.
"Then, if the young ones are agreed, I don't see what there is to forbid
the bans," remarked Mr Jeeks.
"The sooner the better," returned the other; while, in a state of
intense wonder, I looked at the speakers.
"What is the meaning of all this?" I asked Lucy Ashton, who had returned
very sedulously to her knitting.
"The truth is this, Henry," said my father; "my friend and relative, Mr
Jeeks, having lost his only son, has determined on making his eldest
daughter Harriet, the young lady before you, the heiress of his house.
By marrying her to you, the object of his ambition--the reunion, namely,
of the divided portions of our ancestral estate--is gained; and as it
appears you have no personal objection to the fair Harriet herself, I
don't see why the addition of the Rayleigh manors should make her
disagreeable."
A month settled every thing to the satisfaction of all parties. Mr Jeeks
has settled himself in London; my father resides in Hartley Mead; and
every day my wife and I go over to see the progress of the alterations
and improvements we are making in the old house, which we are restoring
to its original grandeur under the superintendence of Mr Barry.
IRELAND.--THE LANDLORD AND TENANT QUESTION.
Unfortunately for the cause of truth, and the welfare of that country,
Ireland has lately become the stock in trade of every political writer:
"monster pamphlets" and "monster paragraphs" succeed each other with
astonishing rapidity--all alike remarkable for the "monstrous"
assertions they contain, and for the "monstrous" ignorance they display
of the subject on which they profess to enlighten us.
English tourists, Scotch agents, and German adventurers, flock like
birds of prey, and swarm over the devoted country. They go there, not
for the purpose of enquiring into the real state of things, or the real
causes of the admitted misery of the people; but in order to write what
will be most productive to themselves--not with the philanthropic or
patriotic motive of endeavouring to elucidate a subject of so much
importance; but with the determination to compile as many pages as they
can, in as short a given period as possible. They draw the most absurd
caricatures; and, pandering to the prevailing public opinion, they
relate only what tends to strengthen it in its errors, and to misdirect
and mislead those who consult them for information, or rely on them as
authorities. Their numerous errors are detected and pointed out by the
newspapers, according as they tell against the political interests of
their respective parties. There is but one topic on which they are all
agreed--that is, in their unanimous and unsparing abuse of the Irish
landlords; and, however much they may be condemned as disentitled to
belief on other subjects, on this their assertions are taken, by all
parties, as authorities "true as holy writ."
It requires no witch to tell us that Ireland is in a condition in which
she ought not to be; but it does require some industry, and an intimate
knowledge of the habits and character of the people, to assign this
state of things to the proper causes. In their love for the marvellous,
most writers on Ireland have overlooked facts; they have not
condescended to enquire into particulars, or to use that unquestionable
information which is actually in existence. We therefore propose to
supply this omission, and to state the case of the landlord and tenant
question as it really is; and, although many acts of oppression and
harshness may have been perpetrated by individuals, we trust we shall be
able to show, from authentic documents, that nothing can be more unjust
than the exaggerated charges brought against the present Irish landlords
as regards the exorbitance of their rents, and nothing more fallacious
than to attribute the misery of the people to the want of tenure, or due
security in the occupation of their lands. The last census, taken by the
police under the direction of government, gives us the actual rental of
Ireland as returned by the occupiers themselves. This information is
therefore derived from a source on which little doubt can be thrown; and
although we may justly suspect (from the desire of the Irish peasant to
make the most of his miseries) that the rent may have been in many
instances exaggerated, we may rest perfectly assured that in no instance
was it underrated. Founded on the results of this enquiry, a very useful
and instructive sheet (entitled _Ireland at a Glance_) has been compiled
and published, in which, amongst other statistical information, the
average rent of land in each county is given, and on the correctness of
which we may safely rely. Had the conduct of the Irish aristocracy, some
forty or fifty years ago, attracted but a small portion of the public
attention that has latterly been bestowed upon it, no doubt great good
would have been effected. _Then_, unquestionably, the landlord could do
almost any thing; _then_, no doubt, he could with impunity set the law
at defiance. The Catholic, degraded as he was, durst not complain; but
the establishment of the petty sessions courts, and the agitation which
preceded emancipation, altered the matter altogether. The Catholic
Association employed active and intelligent attorneys. Those men were
everywhere: the petty sessions courts were regularly attended by them;
for the slightest transgression of the law the magistrate was hauled up;
and the poor man was shown that he had only to bring his case fairly
before the tribunals to obtain justice. While the Association existed,
he was fully protected at its expense: by the time it was dissolved, he
had acquired a thorough knowledge of his own rights; and he had ready
agents in the country attorneys, who were always at hand, and always but
too happy, for their own interest, to undertake any cause in which they
anticipated success. This, so far as the administration of justice was
concerned, the publicity of their proceedings, and the unwillingness of
men to expose themselves to actions for the misconduct of some members
of their body, effectually checked magisterial delinquency: where any
violation of the law did occur, there could be no doubt as to the
punishment.
Had the conduct of the Irish proprietors (in their character of
landlords) been taken to task at the same period, no question they were
deeply to be condemned. _Then_, and always before, the practice of the
landlord was--to lease large tracts at an easy rent to the most solvent
person he could find, or to set in copartnership, (that is, by creating
a joint tenancy in all the inhabitants of any particular town-land,
making the rich accountable for the debt of the poor.) His only object
was to secure his income; so that was accomplished, he cared little for
the welfare of the inhabitants, or the cultivation of the estate. The
peace came--prices fell,--the middlemen not occupying, were in most
cases unable to pay their rents when they could not enforce them from
those in possession, whom they had ruined by their extortion; the
consequence was, they were too happy to abandon their interests, and
leave the landlord to deal with the paupers they had created. In a few
years after the peace, the middleman system had ceased to exist; the
owner of the soil, coming into immediate contact with the tenantry, saw
the monstrous injustice and the destructive tendencies of the
copartnership plan--and it was discontinued. Yet such is the passion for
legislation, that both systems are now about to be disinterred, to be
taken from the oblivion to which their own iniquities long since
consigned them, and to be set up in the preamble of an act of
Parliament, in order that Mr Sharman Crawfurd may have the opportunity
of again prostrating them by legislative enactments. We are certain
that, for the last ten years, no instance can be shown in which any
landlord set, or any tenant took, land on determinable leases, for the
purpose of subletting; or any single instance in which the landlords
practised, or permitted, the copartnership system on their estates; and
yet the public time is to be wasted, and the public attention to be
occupied, by the introduction of laws to restrain practices which are no
longer in operation. It is true, some of those leases where the
middleman held on very easy terms, and was able to pay the rent himself
during the great depression, are still in existence; but they are daily
dropping out: and it is the treatment of those properties, when they
come upon the owners' hands, that has latterly attracted so much
attention. From 1818, a total revolution in the management of land took
place in Ireland: the proprietors became in most instances the managers
of their own estates; and, as each year advanced, the necessity of
attending strictly to their duties became more manifest to them. From
1830 to 1843, more was done, and is still continuing to be done, in
improving or in endeavouring to improve, the condition of the people,
than was ever done before. The large owners of land employed Scotch
stewards to instruct their tenantry in the most improved system of
husbandry; and their neighbours profited by the example. Green-cropping
increased in a most astonishing degree; agricultural societies were
formed in almost every county; and the country was advancing steadily
and rapidly in the march of prosperity, when the baneful agitation again
started into existence. To disconnect the peasantry from the landlords,
who could not be induced to join in the senseless and mischievous cry
for Repeal, now became the object of the agitators: the most unjust
charges were made against the gentry; and even their exertions to
promote the growth of turnips, or to teach the people the proper mode of
cultivation, were turned into ridicule and treated with contempt, in the
public speeches of some of the Roman Catholic bishops. The floodgates of
abuse were thrown open; the most incredible acts of violence and
atrocity were imputed to them; generalities were dealt in--except in a
few instances, in which it was fondly believed the facts would have
borne out the assertions. But when investigation fully exonerated the
accused from the charges brought against them, still the agitators
persevered: the accusations being general, it was not the duty of any
individual to contradict them. From their frequent reassertion, the
English press accorded them credit; the English newspapers became the
advocates of those they believed to be oppressed; no story was too
ridiculous to obtain insertion; anonymous correspondents heaped obloquy
on the best and most pains-taking landlords; while any attempt at their
vindication was sure to be discountenanced--a tyrannical act of one man
was seized on, and blazoned forth as proof positive of the guilt of all.
The conduct of the Irish landlords was assailed just at the time when it
was commencing to become meritorious; and they were almost literally
deprived (by public opinion) of all control, just at the period when
(for the first time) they were exercising the influence which their
position ought to give them, for the benefit and the advantage of the
people.
From the manner in which the laws regulating the connexion between
landlord and tenant in Ireland are spoken of, and from the frequent
demands made for their alteration and improvement, one would naturally
suppose that they differed essentially from those which regulate the
connexion between the same parties in this country. Yet such is not the
fact: so far as the law goes, it is the same on both sides the Channel.
By law, the Irish landlord can only eject a tenant holding by lease
after he owes a year's rent; and then the tenant has six months for
redemption. He can only put out a tenant-at-will by giving him six
months' notice, (the six months to expire on or before the day on which
the tenancy commenced;) and afterwards by ejecting him, if he refuse to
give up possession. He can only distrain after the rent becomes due.
Those powers the law also gives to the English landlord: so far as
legislative enactments go, the landlords of both countries stand
precisely in the same position. But the English proprietor can do much
which the Irish one durst not attempt: he may prevent the fences on his
estate from being torn down, or the trees and hedge-rows he has planted
from being cut: he may prevent his land from being damaged by bad
husbandry, or a succession of the same crops being taken from it until
it is rendered useless;--all this he may do by enforcing his covenants,
and no one blames him. An Irish landlord may put the most stringent
clauses in his leases; but he cannot use the power which their
enforcement would give him: public opinion, (always in favour of the
delinquent,) and the dread of the assassin, restrain him. The late Mr
Hall let a farm in fine condition: the tenant, contrary to his
engagements, tore up the land, burned it, and set it in con-acre. The
unfortunate gentleman endeavoured to prevent this violation of an
agreement. He went to the ground and threatened to put his covenant in
force; and, for doing so, he was murdered in the open day in the
presence of numbers of people: the assassins were allowed quietly to
walk off; and it was only when one of the hired murderers, tempted by a
large reward, peached on his accomplices in crime, that any of them were
brought to justice.
There is an act of Parliament in force in Ireland for the prevention of
burning land, which imposes heavy penalties; yet it cannot stop this
mischievous practice--and why? Because, by having recourse to it, the
tenant (until he quite exhausts the soil) can raise better crops with
more ease to himself; it is a much less troublesome process than that of
collecting manure from the scourings of his ditches or his moor land, or
burning lime; and it enables him to spend the winter months in idleness
and amusement, when he ought to be providing for his next year's crops.
If an English tenant cannot meet his engagements, he surrenders his land
as a matter of course: if an Irish tenant be turned out, even after
owing many years' rent, he considers himself an ill-used man, (and so do
his neighbours too;) and no man complains so loudly of the extortion of
his landlord as he who pays no rent at all. The Irish landlord has the
advantage of being able to bring his ejectment at the courts of
quarter-sessions, and at less expense than it can be done in this
country, provided the rent be under L50 a-year. But this may be
considered, and with justice, of equal benefit to the tenant: if he
redeem within the six months allowed by law, the costs the landlord can
put upon him will only amount to L2, 10s; whereas, with the superior
courts, it would be at least L14. Yet some of the patriotic Irish
journals have required, as an improvement in the law, that ejectment at
quarter-sessions should be abolished, and that the landlord should, in
every case, be sent to the superior courts for redress. To make such an
alteration in the law would be unjust towards the landlord--as it would
compel him to expend a large sum in regaining possession of his land, in
addition to the loss of his rent, (if he had a pauper to deal with;) and
it would be injurious to the interests of the tenant, as t would give a
tyrannical and oppressive landlord the power of overwhelming the poor
but honest man, who only wanted time to redeem, by the load of law-costs
he would be enabled to put upon him.
Having shown that the law gives the Irish landlord no power incompatible
with justice, or unnecessary for the due maintenance of his rights--in
fact that, in respect of it, he is much more restricted than the
mercantile man--we are at a loss to see how the law can be altered, and
at the same time the rights of property be preserved. It may be said,
the Irish tenant has no claim at the termination of his lease for any
improvements he may have effected; neither has the English tenant, if he
possess a lease. Although, in point of fact, so far as the small Irish
farmer is concerned, this is quite an ideal grievance; for he never
makes any improvement, or if he does, and pays his rent, he is never
disturbed--still an amendment in the law in this respect, may stimulate
to industry, and may be effected with advantage to all parties. Against
the gentlemen farmers, injustice of this kind may sometimes be
perpetrated, and therefore legislation on the subject would be of use;
but the poor man who meets his engagements, is never, unless under
extraordinary circumstances, removed; and where such is the case, he is
almost invariably amply remunerated. Solitary instances of contrary
conduct pursued towards him, may no doubt be adduced; but they are too
few in any way to account for the present state of dissatisfaction so
universally prevalent.
The Irish landlord, then, has no power which he can legally employ for
the oppression of his tenant, which is not possessed by all other
British landlords. If he violate the law, of course the legal tribunals
will afford redress. And are we to be told that that redress would not
be sought for; that the wardens and priests, the leading agitators, or
the people themselves, would not report their sufferings; and that the
power, and influence, and money of the Association, would not be used in
their defence?
The outcry raised by Mr O'Connell and his supporters against the
landlords, on account of the number of persons "turned out, and left to
die by the road-side,"[30] will, we have no doubt, turn out (if
possible) to be more unfounded than even his other assertions. The
present Commission has ample powers to ascertain this fact at least: and
we will venture to assert, that not one instance of starvation will have
been proven before it; and that out of the hundreds of thousands who
were reported to have been mercilessly turned adrift to perish at the
backs of ditches, forty-nine fiftieths will be found well and hearty,
and in the occupation of those lands from which they were said to have
been expelled. That ejectment-processes were served, and decrees
obtained, which, if followed up and enforced, would have put many
persons out of possession, we do not deny; but nine-tenths of those are
compromised by the payment of part of the rent before the day of trial
comes on, and of the decrees obtained, the great majority are never put
in execution. Accurate information on this point can easily be obtained
from the sheriffs and clerks of the peace for the different counties;
those officers have been amongst the first witnesses examined before
Lord Devon. We would only ask the public to suspend its judgment, and
those well-meaning but mistaken individuals, who, though they reject Mr
O'Connell and the priests as authorities on most other subjects, take
their assertions on this as proven facts, to reserve their indignation
and wrath until the result of this testimony can be known.
Ejectment-processes are the most effective and the cheapest means by
which the landlord can enforce the payment of the rent due, and as such
they are generally had recourse to: before they can be acted on, _at
least three months_ must have elapsed after the year's rent (which is
the least sum they can be issued for) has become due.
Perhaps nothing has contributed more to foment, certainly nothing has
assisted more to continue, the agrarian disturbances in Ireland, than
the statements, made so flippantly by journalists and pamphleteers, of
the great excess of rent exacted in Ireland over that paid by the
English tenantry. Those writers have invariably assumed the truth of the
assertions made in this particular; yet nothing can be further from the
fact.
There is no statistical account of England recently published, that we
can discover, which would give us any correct idea of the present
average rent of land in this country;[31] but we think, from all the
information we have been able to acquire, by enquiries directed to
competent and well-informed persons, that it cannot be set down at less
than 25s. an acre. From the last Irish census we learn, that Ireland
contains 20,399,608 statute acres, and that the estimated rental is
L12,715,478--yielding a trifle over 12s. as the average rent.[32] When
it is taken into consideration that the English tenant pays
tithes--which, in many localities, amount to more than the entire
average rent produced by Irish ground; that he pays the poor-rates, and
that he is heavily taxed with turnpikes and other local assessments: and
that the Irish tenant pays no tithe, and only half the poor-rates; that
no turnpikes exist, except solitary ones in the neighbourhood of cities
or very large towns; that, in fact, the only tax he pays is the county
cess, varying in different counties from tenpence to one and sixpence
the acre half-yearly; and that this assessment is being considerably
reduced by the new grand-jury enactments, under which the towns and
gentlemen's houses are valued and taxed;--when, we say, all those things
are taken into consideration, and besides, that the land in Ireland is
naturally better and more productive than the English soil, we think we
have satisfactorily disposed of one grave charge against the Irish
landlords; and that we have shown that it cannot be the exorbitance of
the pecuniary burdens under which he groans, that causes the vast
difference between the social condition of the Irish and the English
occupier.
It will no doubt be said--"Ah, but the English tenant is housed, and his
farm kept in repair, by the landlord, while the Irishman is obliged to
do all this himself!" This is true; but certainly the outlay of the
Irish tenant on his farm, makes but a small addition to his other
engagements. Gates and fences he has, comparatively speaking, none; and,
if they be erected for him, they are soon suffered to go to ruin. He
requires few outhouses; for in the poor and disturbed districts (and it
is those which we are now attending to) he uses his domicile as a
receptacle for his pig and his cow, as a matter of choice; we say as a
matter of choice--for, if he had the inclination, _all_ writers admit he
has abundance of unoccupied time to construct habitations for them. Now,
though it is a just cause of regret that we do not see better homesteads
and better fences in Ireland, still we cannot admit that the tenant's
being obliged to keep such as exist in repair, can be any great hardship
in a pecuniary point of view, as he lays out scarcely any thing on them:
he does not even expend his own labour on their improvement; and his
time, which might be profitably occupied in this way, is wasted in
useless idleness, in swelling the train, or cheering the ferocious
sentiments, of some mercenary agitator.
Having shown, as correctly as it is possible to do, the relative amount
of rents paid in England and in Ireland, let us compare the amount of
rents paid in each of the Irish provinces. For this purpose we shall
take a maritime and an inland county from each.
Maritime. L s. d. Inland. L s. d.
Ulster--Down, average rent, 0 16 0 Tyrone, average rent, 0 14 6
Munster--Clare, do. do. 0 11 0 Tipperary, do. do. 0 17 8-1/2
Leinster--Wexford, do. 0 14 0 Longford, do. do. 0 12 3
Connaught--Mayo, do. 0 8 6 Roscommon, do. 0 13 0
It is well known that the quality of the land in the north of Ireland is
far inferior to that in either of the other provinces: yet we see, in
the maritime counties, that the rich and fertile lands of Clare and
Wexford are let much cheaper than the northern counties; and that Mayo,
inhabited by unquestionably the poorest and most miserable population in
Ireland, is rented at nearly half the amount paid by the independent
yeomanry of Down; while, amongst the inland counties, the splendid
plains of Roscommon, and the productive lands of Longford, yield less
income than the cold and, comparatively speaking, sterile soil of
Tyrone. Now, it is not too much (indeed it is under the mark) to say,
that _two acres_ in any of those counties we have quoted, in Leinster,
Munster, or Connaught, will feed more cattle, and grow more corn, than
_three acres_ in either of the northern ones; and yet the tenantry in
the north, who pay those comparatively high rents, are contented, and
the landlords are considered good.[34] Those statements are founded not
on our own opinions, but on incontrovertible facts; and, after having
read them, we would ask any dispassionate man if the disturbed condition
of the west and south of Ireland can be, with any justice, attributed to
the rents imposed by the landlords. In the north, where the highest
rents are charged, the people are well housed and well clothed, the
ground well tilled, and the rents as well paid as in any part of
England. Here, if a tenant wishes to dispose of his right in even a
tenancy-at-will, he gets some ten or twelve years' purchase for it; and
the answers to Lord Devon's enquiries were, in many instances, that the
interference of the commission was not required. While in the south and
west, from whence the loudest complaints against the landowners proceed;
where the peasant exists in rags, and the gentlemen in a state of
semi-starvation; where the people are idle, and their ground untilled;
where squalid misery offends the eye and merciless murders shock the
feelings; where the terror of the assassin supersedes the power of the
landlord, and protects the tenant against all law; there, in the
counties so overwhelmed with poverty and debased by crime, the lands
are held on terms (the relative value being taken into consideration) by
_the half easier_ than in the prosperous and peaceable province of
Ulster.
Dublin, Limerick, Meath, and Tipperary, do average a trifle more than
the northern counties; but the one is the metropolitan county, and the
quality of the land in the others is so superior to any in England or
Ireland, that even at the small advance of two shillings an acre, they
may justly be considered as more cheaply rented than any other counties.
To understand a people properly, their national character must be
attentively studied; and this can only be done by a long residence and a
close connexion with them. We cannot therefore be much surprised, that
those who undertake to write on a country which they have never seen, or
to prescribe remedies for the defects in the social condition of a
people amongst whom they have never resided, should be led into grievous
mistakes, and that they should be unsafe guides to direct the enquiries
of others. Employment, hard work, large wages, and good living, form the
objects of the Englishman and the Scotchman's ardent desire; while
coarse food, bad lodging, and half clothing, are quite agreeable to the
Irishman, if they be combined with independence--in other words, if by
using them he may avoid labour, and enjoy those amusements to which he
is passionately addicted, and in which he indulges unrestrainedly. We
firmly believe, that if a choice of roast beef and loaf bread,
accompanied by the labour necessary to earn them, were offered to "Pat"
at home, or potatoes and milk, with liberty to frequent the horse-races,
cock-fights, and dances, in his neighbourhood, he would unhesitatingly
accept the latter. This may seem strange to an Englishman; but there is
no accounting for taste. That the potato is coarse food, cannot be
doubted; that it is wholesome, is abundantly proved by the stalwart men
who subsist on it, and by the ruddy health of the chubby, merry urchins
who have, perhaps, never tasted any thing else. Pity it is that the
former should be so negligent of, or so indifferent to, their own
advantage; or that the latter should have been (until lately) suffered
to grow up in that ignorance which almost secures a continuance in the
same courses which proved the bane and misfortune of their fathers. No
peasant in Europe devotes so much of his time to amusement as does the
Irishman. Go to the places of public amusement, or to the fairs and
markets, in the busiest and most hurried seasons, and how many thousands
will you see, who have no earthly business there but to meet their
friends, to laugh and to chat, and (before Father Mathew reformed them)
to drink and to fight!
To suppose, as some influential writers here do, that there is no
alternative between the possession of land and absolute starvation, is
one of those imaginary fictions often conjured up by those who wish to
indulge in what they believe to be powerful, and wish to be pathetic,
appeals to the feelings; but it betrays great ignorance of the subject
on which they propound their opinions. The condition of the rural
labourer, constantly employed by the gentleman or wealthy farmer, is
generally _much_ superior to that of the small landholder. Those men are
bound by agreements which they must fulfill--they work continually; and
although their wages are in some instances nominally very low, and in
all much lower than we could wish, still their allowances--in
house-rent, grazing, and con-acre--enable them not only to live
comfortably, but sometimes to amass considerable sums of money. You
always see good pigs, and very often more than two good cows, at their
doors. It may not be amiss to say, that, in _all_ instances, they get
the feeding of those cows for a rent varying from one guinea per year,
when the nominal wages are low, to three shillings a-year, when tenpence
a-day is given; thus, at the very highest price, getting for three
shillings that accommodation for which Mr Cobden charges his workman
twelve pounds! Yet the great object of those men is to get land and
become farmers, although they almost invariably suffer by the change.
They were before compelled to work to meet their engagements; having
become their own masters, they in very many instances neglect their
business, and devote the time which ought to be employed in the
cultivation of their farms, to the discussion of politics and to the
attendance on popular assemblies.
To say that the Irish are unemployed, not from inclination, but from
necessity, is absurd;[35] this may sometimes be the case in the towns
where the worst class of agricultural labourers reside--men who will not
be employed while others can be had. A stranger meets able-bodied men
walking about; he is told, and he sees, that there are no resident
gentry in the neighbourhood to afford them work; he compassionates their
condition; concocts a paragraph, and imputes the misery he witnesses to
absenteeism. Let them accompany the idler to his home, and inspect his
farm: he will find, out of a holding of from three to four Irish acres,
perhaps an acre on which there was no attempt made at all to raise a
crop, independent of untilled headlands, amounting to at least fifth of
the ground under cultivation in each field. Why does he not employ
himself on this land? If he has a lease, there can be no excuse; but
even supposing him but tenant-at-will, it can in this instance be no
justification. The land unused is not waste land, requiring an
expenditure of labour and money, for which he might afterwards reap no
advantage from the cupidity of his landlord. This is no such land: it is
good, sound, arable land--perhaps the very best he has; and waste,
purely and solely for the want of expending on it the labour necessary
to prepare it for crop. He pays for it--yet he won't work it: he
complains of want of employment, and he walks about with plenty to
engage him beneficially for his own interests at home: he takes
con-acre, for which he pays high, while he could raise his food on his
own farm, if he only took the trouble of collecting manure, or devoting
his time to its improvement.
Adjoining mountains and bogs, where the poorest class of the population
generally reside, and where there is abundance of ground attached
rent-free to each farm, and capable of being rendered profitable at a
very little expense--in fact, without any other outlay than the labour
required to open drains, and level it--we see scarcely any efforts made
at improvement. A Scotchman, or an Englishman, would consider the
possession of the land rent-free for three or five years, according to
the difficulty of the undertaking, as a sufficient recompense for his
trouble; although his time is much more valuable, on account of the
higher rate of wages paid him. But an Irishman will consider a
twenty-one years' lease as too short a tenure, to justify him in
expending the time which he wastes gossiping with his neighbours, or
sunning himself at the backs of the ditches, in the profitable
employment of adding to what ought to be, if he had industry, his
already too small holding. Here is a case in which we conceive
legislation might operate much good. If every man who reclaimed ground
which did not before pay rent, was guaranteed its possession by law for
ten years after the first crop, at a nominal rent of one shilling the
acre, it might be an inducement to the tenant to labour: it could be no
loss to the landlord, as, if still left in a state of nature it would be
useless to him, and after the expiration of the time guaranteed the
tenant as remuneration for his trouble, the benefit would be his
exclusively. In the case of a tenant-at-will, an arrangement could
easily be effected, by which the tenant, if removed from the farm before
the expiration of the stipulated term, might receive a just and
reasonable compensation for the improvements which he had effected, or
an allowance for the loss of the crops which, had he remained, he would
still have been entitled to: and thus, without any government outlay,
encouragement would be given for the reclamation of that part of the
Irish waste lands which would be worth the trouble or expense of
cultivation.
We are gravely told, in well-rounded and high-sounding sentences, that
"in Ireland famine urges men to take land at any price--they must have
it or die;" and that, "when a piece of ground falls out of lease, it
becomes a bone of contention amongst some twenty or thirty miserable
competitors, who outbid each other, to the great delight and profit of
the ruthless and exulting landlord, and to their own utter ruin." If any
one takes time to reflect on what he reads in every day's newspaper, he
must at once perceive that this statement can have no foundation in
fact; if a landlord remove a tenant for non-payment of rent, he finds it
difficult to get another to succeed him, (in the disturbed districts it
is almost impossible to get any man to do so.) Such is the dread of
taking land, from the occupation of which others have been expelled,
even on account of owing the most unreasonable arrears, that farms
frequently remain waste for years, without any person daring to bid for
them. Now if public opinion, and the dread of the punishment which is
sure to follow, operate so powerfully in favour of the really blamable
person, as to keep his land untenanted, how much more influence will
they possess in restraining any man from seeking to obtain the land of
another, if that other be unobjectionable in character, solvent in
circumstances, and still in possession? Such a thing is never heard of.
The landlord, if he were bad enough, might try to induce men to act so;
but he could not effect it. If death pursue the man who undertakes to
rent unoccupied ground, as in most instances it does, how much more
certain would it be to overtake him whose conduct was the means of
driving from his home a solvent and industrious person? If a landlord
distrain for rent, he can find no bidders for the crops or cattle; how
much more difficult will it be for him to obtain bidders for land? We
have frequently heard the bad cultivation of the land in Ireland
attributed to the constant shifting of the tenantry: we are quite
convinced the result of the enquiry now instituted will show how
unfounded this supposition is, and that the shifting or removal of the
tenants, will be found to be a matter of much more rare occurrence in
Ireland than in England. That scarcity and want are periodically
experienced in Ireland, is but too true. Those visitations (which, thank
God, are not frequent) arise from the failure of the potato crops, and
generally occur in those districts most densely populated, and
consequently worst tilled; in fact, they are greatly to be attributed to
the neglect of the people themselves; who will not take the trouble of
using those precautions against rot, which ought always to be adopted on
a moist soil or in a mountainous country: but to talk of persons dying
in Ireland of starvation is absurd, and bespeaks an utter ignorance of
the national character. There are poor-houses; and besides, in Ireland,
the hungry man may enter without hesitation, and share without apology
in the meal of his more wealthy neighbour; and lodging, humble though it
be, is never denied to the houseless or the destitute. Those who accuse
Irishmen, of any class or party, of hard-heartedness or inhumanity, had
better look at home. In _their_ country we never hear of verdicts of
"death from starvation" being returned by coroners' juries; or of the
weak and the unfortunate being compelled to seek for shelter in the
hollows of decayed trees, or to sleep like brute beasts in the open
parks, exposed to the cold and the inclemency of winter. The gentry may
neglect their duties in other respects: as regards the performance of
charitable acts, they are faultless; the middleman may be exacting--but
he is hospitable; and the men who make those groundless charges, would
be not a little astonished did they see the multitudes that are still
fed (poor-laws notwithstanding) at the BIG House of the Irish gentleman.
We have said that failures of the crops, and scarcity, occur much more
frequently in the densely populated parts of the country than in any
others, and that those failures arise in a great measure from the
neglect of the people themselves. Parts of Mayo, Galway, and Donegal,
are the localities most subject to those visitations. In those counties
the most miserable class of the peasantry exist; and nothing, we think,
can prove more conclusively, that their misfortunes and their
wretchedness cannot with justice be attributed to the misconduct of
their landlords, but rather to their own, _than the undisputed fact,
that in those districts in which the people are worst off, the land is
set at the lowest rent; and that where the greatest quantity of waste
land is unreclaimed, and where that which is under cultivation is worst
managed and least attended to, there, invariably, is to be found the
greatest amount of unemployed labourers_. It may be said they know no
better mode of cultivation than what they practise. They do; those are
the very men who go, and have from their youth been in the habit of
going, to England and Scotland, where they see the benefits arising from
a good system of agriculture. They fully appreciate, but won't practise
it. The truth is--and this is one of the great sources of Irish
misery--that by the constant agitation of which (under one shape or
another) he is almost always the victim, the Irish peasant is induced to
consider himself as the worst treated of God's creatures; by it he is
kept in a continual state of dependence on anticipated events, which
leads him to expect the amelioration of his condition by means of
political convulsions, rather than by patient and persevering industry.
We need scarcely say how much the sympathy expressed for his situation,
and the abuse heaped on his landlord, tend to confirm the Irish peasant
in his bad habits. Articles from the English press, and not extracts
from the gospel, form the texts of the sermons which are delivered for
his instruction: the object of the preacher is not to remove his
prejudices, or to eradicate his faults; but to excite his animosities,
and to extract his shillings: when peace and mercy are inculcated, it is
not because they are commanded, but because they may be expedient.
In those parts in which there are no resident gentry to employ them, to
set them an example, and to enforce a respect for the laws, the
peasantry indulge in idleness, and engage in politics. They work at home
only when it suits their convenience or inclination, and from others
they can only procure work (at prices for which they will work) in the
harvest and spring. In summer, after they have planted their crops, and
made their turf, and set the milk of their cow, (if they have one,) they
shut up their houses, send their wives and their families to beg, and
betake themselves to England or Scotland to reap the harvest. There,
until of late years, they earned the almost incredible sums of L16,
sometimes of L20--latterly, competition and other causes have reduced
the amount to, on the average, between L4 and L5. Out of this, on their
return, they pay the rent of the con-acre which they have taken, while a
third of their own holding is waste. With the balance and their oats
they pay the landlord, in those cases in which he is so fortunate as to
get any rent; and having secured an abundance of potatoes, they sit down
to enjoy themselves for the winter. During the night they play cards for
geese, turkeys, and herrings; attend dances, where they are enrolled and
sworn into secret societies; and devote some hours to the wrecking of
the houses, or the castigation of the persons, of those who are
obnoxious to them. In the daytime, you find them at the places of public
resort or amusement, or lazily and listlessly strolling about those
miserable abodes--in whose floors you frequently find stepping-stones to
carry you from the entrance to the space occupied by the fire, and
before whose doors are those stagnant pools and heaps of filth, so
disgusting to every traveller. Could they not remove those? Is it the
landlord's fault that they don't? Does he wish their houses to be in
such a condition, or encourage them to keep their own persons and those
of their children in such a state of dirt and nastiness? Not at all. He
does his best to prevail on them to adopt a different system; but his
interference in their domestic matters is always looked on as an
unjustifiable intrusion; in short, as a sort of minor grievance, and a
petty act of oppression. Perhaps it is to be attributed to their
poverty? Water, at least, is cheap and abundant in Ireland.
Such is a true and accurate account of the "tenor of those men's lives"
and habits; and it is a continuance of this state of things that those
who attack the Irish landlords so indiscriminately are, in reality,
advocating.
Now, let us suppose that a tract of two thousand acres, set perhaps by
the grandfather of the preset owner, and inhabited by a class of
tenantry such as we have described, comes on a landlord's hands. It has
been let and relet--tied up in settlements--and, until the termination
of the lease, there may have been three or four intermediate landlords
between the occupant and the proprietor. The present possessor comes to
deal with an estate, ruined and almost worthless from mismanagement,
over which he could exercise no control, and peopled by a pauper and
surplus tenantry, for whose creation he is in noways accountable. This
is exactly the condition of those estates, and the position of those
landlords, whose treatment and whose acts have been latterly so much
commented on. And we will now ask those who blame others so much,
candidly to tell us what they would advise to be done--what, if placed
in such a situation, they would do themselves. They will, no doubt, at
once say, "Remove some, give them the means of going to the colonies,
and make the rest comfortable." Why, that is exactly what the landlords
have been endeavouring to do, and for which they have been denounced.
This is just what Lord Lorton, Colonel Windham, and others, did; and for
doing which they were designated "miscreants." If the tenantry were
removed, even to better their own condition, the dues of the priest, and
the physical force at the command of the agitator, would be
lessened--and this would never answer. "Well, then, if this mode of
management be not popular, leave all on the land, build them comfortable
houses, and insist on a proper mode of cultivation. In Belgium and
France men live on smaller portions of land in comfort, why should they
not in Ireland? Lay out money in affording them employment, pay them for
draining and sewering--the benefit will be ultimately yours." The answer
is obvious. It would require more money than the property is worth to
build good houses for all; and, if built, they would soon go to ruin
from the habits of the people. If they possessed the land in fee, the
occupants, from their numbers, could not exist upon it. The landlord
cannot make them emulate the Belgian or the Frenchman in industry. The
produce of the orchards he may plant will be stolen, and the trees
broken and destroyed, to obtain the fruit. They will not exert
themselves to raise many things which are sources of profit to the poor
man in this and other countries; or if they did, they would have no
market--they would obtain no price for them. And why? Because their own
misconduct prevents the establishment of any manufactures, or the outlay
of any money amongst them. Who will carry his machinery to a country
where--though he may be a good master and a kind friend, though he may
give occupation to hundreds and diffuse wealth among thousands--his
spindles may be stopped at the beck of a priest, and his machinery left
to rust at the dictate of Mr O'Connell. Independent men do not wish to
lose all self-control--to sacrifice all right of private judgment; and
he who dares to assert his own opinions, or to defy the behests of the
"Liberator," has no business to betake himself to Ireland. As to giving
employment in sewering and draining--which would benefit the estate--it
is not every man who can afford to set his land at a cheap rate, and
afterwards to expend his income for the immediate benefit of the
occupier. But even this has been attempted. Lord Lansdowne tried to
accomplish it on his Irish estate; but the steward he sent to
superintend the work was noticed to quit, and driven out of the country,
by the very persons for whose benefit those improvements were
planned--by the very men who were to be paid for their execution. Under
such circumstances as we have stated, in many instances the fear of
death compels the landlord to abandon all idea of improvement. He must
submit to sacrifice his rent, because those in possession can't or won't
pay him; and, if he removes them, he can find no one to succeed them:
and, in addition to his other consolations, he has the pleasure of
seeing himself described as a monster more ruthless than any Russian
despot; while some hut, the erection of which he _dared not have
prevented_, is described, perhaps sketched and stuck in a book, as an
incontrovertible proof of the miserable condition to which his rapacity
and neglect have reduced his unhappy dependents.
No direct legislation can affect the social condition of Ireland; before
you can hope to benefit the country, _you must establish tranquillity,
and inspire the peasantry with a due respect for the law, and a just
estimate of the rights of private property_. The question is--by what
means are those things to be accomplished? You may give land at a lower
price than it now brings, but you will not thereby cause any perceptible
change in the habits of the people. They may be wealthier, but they will
not be cleanlier. Their rents may be better paid, but the peasant will
still live on the potato. The filthy cabin will exist, and the cow and
the pig will feed at the same board, and occupy the same apartment as
the owner, until you elevate the moral and social feelings of the man,
and teach him to require as a necessary what he now looks on as a
superfluous luxury.
Much of the poverty of the Irish peasantry has been attributed to the
con-acre system. But if this system were not found, by the persons who
practise it, to be more beneficial, and less laborious, than raising
crops from their own land, it would not be persevered in. In those
counties in which con-acres are scarce, the cry is, that the people are
starved, because they can't have them. Where they are abundant, they are
impoverished by the prices they pay for them. The Terryalt system, in
the south, originated in the gentlemen farmers refusing to break up
their land, and in the people assembling in mobs, digging the ground,
thereby rendering it unfit for pasture, and compelling the owners to let
it for potatoes. It may be said, how could they avoid doing this? They
had no land to raise potatoes on, and they must have them or die. This
is not the case. The only persons who could be so circumstanced are the
day-labourers; and to them it must, personally, be a matter of
indifference what land was, or was not broken: for, by their agreements,
those gentlemen and farmers who employ them, are bound to provide them
with potato land; consequently they would not risk their lives to
procure what was already guaranteed them. Those agrarian disturbances
originated with small farmers, whose own farms were not half cultivated;
or tradesmen, who would not have been so anxious to procure con-acres,
if they did not find them in general a much cheaper mode of procuring
their staple commodity than by having recourse to the markets. The first
use a servant boy or girl makes of their earnings, is to plant
con-acres, not for subsistence, but for sale. Half an acre of potatoes
is generally the foundation of the fortune. The rent paid for potato
ground has been enormously magnified. Mr Wiggins sets it down at L12 per
acre. It may let for this price (the _plantation acre_) in the immediate
vicinity of Dublin, Belfast, or some other large cities; where, from the
contiguity of the market, the produce of a good acre will be worth from
L40 to L60, according to the rate of prices. But, in the rural
districts, such a price is never heard of; and it is only by the prices
in those districts that the condition of the people can be affected.
From L5 to L7 and L8 will be found the usual prices; and we should be
glad to know what English farmer would give upwards of _one acre three
roods_ of his best land, well tilled and highly manured, at such a
price, the renter only holding it for one crop, and paying no taxes
whatever. The average produce per acre of good con-acre will be, at
least, twenty tons of eating or marketable potatoes, independent of a
large quantity fit for seed, and for the feeding of pigs; the value of
those latter will greatly over-pay the expense of seed, planting, and
digging. And taking the price at 1s. per 112 lbs., the renter will have
L20 worth of potatoes for L8; a clear profit of L12 on the acre. It, of
course, occasionally does occur, that from failure of the seed, rot, or
other casualties, the crop may not be worth the rent; in this case an
abatement, sufficient to satisfy him, is made to the holder, or it is
left on the landlord's hands. Potatoes being a perishable crop, and a
species of food which cannot be preserved beyond a season, their price
fluctuates more than that of any other kind of provisions. Last year the
price in this "country of famine" was 4d. for 112 lbs.; in general the
prices vary from 1s. (seldom less) to 2s., and sometimes 3s., the 112
lbs.
In Ireland, good con-acres are looked on by the peasantry as a certain
source of wealth; here they are considered as a main cause of their
poverty. Who are the best judges--the people who use, or those who read
about them? But whatever may be the merit or demerit of the con-acre
system, (and we are none of its advocates,) it is unjust to charge its
practice on the landlords. They have nothing whatever to do with it; it
is a mode of dealing between one class of tenantry and another. The
assertion in the "Cry from Ireland," that the peasant _gives his manure,
and pays 18s. an acre besides_, is too ridiculous to require
confutation.
But suppose the rents in Ireland were exorbitant, who would be to
blame?--the landlords who accepted them, or the people who _swore_ to
their extraordinary moderation? Let us look to the registry
courts:--[36]
"There the landlords were found opposing the admission of their
tenantry to the register, and stating on oath that they considered
the rents received by them as the full value of the land--_while
the tenants, and their neighbours, and the liberal 'valuators,'
were proving 'that it was let by those rack-renting and heartless
men' grossly under its value_. And indeed, when the small extent of
the farms whose occupiers claimed the right to vote is taken into
consideration, this must appear true; for it sometimes required _to
prove the land worth thirty shillings the acre more than the rent
paid, to bring the annual profit up to the requisite ten pounds_.
"That the rents were not considered as too high, we have not only
the testimony of the freeholders themselves, but of other
_'competent persons,' employed by the registry association, who,
before the claimant was placed on the register, were obliged
solemnly to swear, in public court, 'that the land was in most
instances worth, and that a solvent tenant could afford to pay for
it_, DOUBLE THE RENT _imposed on the occupier by the landlord.'_ We
say, in almost every instance, _double the rent_; for when it is
considered that many have registered from seven to eight acres, it
would be necessary to do so in order to bring the value up to the
required L10; and yet those men who have so sworn, and those
leaders who have encouraged and induced them so to swear, and who
have procured and paid others to corroborate their testimony on
oath, are the persons who so lustily proclaim the extortion of the
landlords! _If what they have sworn, and what their priests have
encouraged them to swear, be true, their landlords must be
indulgent and merciful indeed._ If the contrary, not only have they
been guilty of perjury for their own injury; but those who assisted
and abetted them must have been aware that they were encouraging
them to commit a grievous sin."
_At that time_ it was Mr O'Connell's object to attain political power,
by proving the lands were set at a _cheap_ rate; _now_ it is his object
to obtain popularity, by declaring that they are set at a rate far too
dear. Which of his assertions are we to believe?