A GLANCE AT MY STEWARDSHIP
Davitt called the generation after O'Connell's 'a soulless age of
pitiable cowardice.'
I should call the generation that was active in the early eighties 'a
cowardly age of pitiless brutality.'
Times had begun to mend in Ireland from 1850, and had continued to do so
until the ballot made the country a prey to self-seeking political
agitators.
Mr. Gladstone considered that if you gave a scoundrel a vote it made him
into a philanthropist, whereas events proved it made him an eager
accessory of murder, outrage, and every other crime.
Yet this happened after Fenianism had practically died out in the early
seventies.
I myself heard Mr. Gladstone say that landlords had been weighed in the
balance and had not been found wanting, for the bad ones were
exceptional.
None the less were they and their representatives delivered over to
their natural opponents, who were egged on by the Land League and by its
tacit or active supporters in the House of Commons.
Emphatically I repeat the assertion that neither Mr. Parnell nor the
Land League would have been formidable without the active help of Mr.
Gladstone.
Before 1870 Kerry used to be represented by gentlemen of the county. The
present members in 1904 are an attorney's clerk, an assistant
schoolmaster, a Dublin baker, and a fourth of about the same class.
This was no more foreseen by the landlords when the ballot was
introduced any more than we anticipated the way in which we were to be
plundered. Many considered that the confiscation of the Irish Church,
which had been established since the reign of Elizabeth, was an inroad
into the rights of property very likely to be followed up by further
aggressions, but we never looked for such a wholesale violation as
ensued.
By the Act of 1870 no tenant could be turned out without being paid a
sum averaging a fourth of the fee-simple in addition to being paid for
his improvements, and there the most observant of us thought the worst
had been reached.
When the Act of 1881 was passed, I met Lord Spencer, one of the authors
of it, and said to him:--
'This Act will have as much effect in settling Ireland as throwing a cup
of dirty water into the Thames would have in creating a flood.'
My words were soon proved right, for the tenants, having obtained half
the landlord's property by it, thought that by well working their voting
and shooting powers they would get the remainder.
I have been getting away from my own experiences to give my own
convictions. When you have meditated for twenty years amid the ruins of
what you had been building up all your life long and know that it is due
to Irish outrage and English misrule, there is a temptation to speak
plainly on breaking silence.
The year 1878 was a wet year and yielded a bad harvest; 1879 was worse.
The prosperity of Ireland depends on its harvest, and starvation is the
opportunity of the lying agitator.
On July 8, 1880, I gave evidence before the Royal Commission on
Agriculture, being mainly examined by the president, the Duke of
Richmond and Gordon, others on the board being Lord Carlingford, Mr.
Stansfeld, afterwards Lord, Mr. Joseph Cowen, and Mr. Mitchell Henry.
Here are some of my statements on a then experience of thirty-one
years:--
'The expenditure by landlords on farm buildings is as great in Ireland
as in Scotland.'
'In the exceptional state of things I strongly disapprove of
tenant-right in Ireland, which, as Lord Palmerston said, is landlord
wrong.'
'Small holdings are a very bad thing in Ireland where they are not mixed
with large holdings.'
'The distress in Kerry is considerable, but has been considerably
exaggerated.'
'Every tenant in Ireland has six months to redeem after he is evicted.'
'I have never known a man leave a farm unless compelled.'
'I contradict the statement that tenants make improvements which tend to
increase the letting value of the land.'
'You pay four times as much for spade tillage as for ploughing by
horse.'
'Bad farming in Ireland is due to want of education and to the enhanced
subdivision of the land. When the farmer gets higher up the social scale
he will have more sense than to make beggars of his children by
subdivision.'
'Distress has not produced the discontent.'
'Almost more land has been sold in Kerry than in any county in Ireland.'
Three months later, in my evidence before the Irish Land Act Commission,
in answer to the Chairman, I stated that in my opinion it was simply
impossible to arbitrate on rent. I had two tenants of my own whose
yearly rent was £20 and whose valuation was £20. One of them in 1880
sold £135 worth of pigs and butter, and the other man's children were
assisted in charity from my house, though both had equal means of
success.
I also pointed out that there were then 300,000 occupiers of land in
Ireland, whose holdings were under £8 Poor Law valuation, and these
occupiers when their potatoes failed had nothing but relief works,
starvation, or emigration. To give them their whole rent would not meet
the difficulty.
I submitted a scheme of purchase, in which Baron Dowse was greatly
interested, and I suggested that all holdings under £4 a year should be
ejected at Petty Sessions, because it was a great hardship for the
tenant of such a holding to have £2, 10s. costs put upon him.
I ended with:--
'There is a case in this county in connection with which there is likely
to be very considerable disturbance. A man had a farm put up for sale
and a Nationalist bought it at a very low figure, on the understanding
that he was to keep it for the man's family; but as soon as he got it he
turned Conservative and kept it.'
BARON DOWSE--'Turned what?'
MYSELF--'Conservative.'
BARON DOWSE--'Rogue, I would say. You would not say that Conservatives
are rogues?'
Since that was a debatable point on which the Commission had no
jurisdiction to inquire, I returned no answer.
As the distress was alluded to above, I may lighten the recent
seriousness of my observations by an anecdote on the topic.
In 1880 the Duchess of Marlborough organised a fund for supplying the
people with meal. The Dublin Mansion House did the same, but their meal
was of a coarser description.
A Blasquet Islander was asked how he was getting on, and made answer:--
'Illigant, glory be to the Saints. We're eating the Duchess, and feeding
two pigs on the Mansion House.'
This recalls the story of the Englishman who inquired of a Kerry man
which measure of English legislation had proved most beneficial for
Ireland.
'The Famine (of 1879) was the best, beyond a shadow of doubt,' was the
reply, 'for I fattened and sold ninety fine turkeys on the strength of
it.'
In 1880 some Kerry men did a very good stroke of business. They sent a
cargo of potatoes from Killorglin to Scotland and brought them back as
imported Champion seed, selling them for six times the original price.
About this period Mr. Leeson-Marshall, who had been away from Kerry and
coming back found some cottages near Milltown still only half built,
observed:--
'Good God, aren't those houses finished yet?'
'Well, sor,' was the reply, 'the contract's finished but the houses
aren't.'
And it has been my life-long experience that ninety-five per cent, of
all the penalties in contracts are worthless, as the contractors
themselves are only too well aware.
Being a land agent, I wish to provide some account from another pen of
my stewardship, for which said stewardship I was falsely called 'the
most rack-renting agent in Ireland.'
Out of Mr. Finlay Dun's book, from which I have previously quoted, I
condense the following from the chapter he devoted to the estates for
which I was agent.
He observes that in 1881 my firm had the supervision of eighty-eight
estates, upwards of three thousand farming tenants, and annually
collected rents to the value of a quarter of a million sterling. From
the particulars I furnished him he deduces:--
'So recently as the end of November the Lady Day rents had been well
paid up; old arrears had been reduced; on two estates in the Court of
Chancery £6000 had been collected with only a few shillings in default.
Dairy farmers prospering had been particularly well able to pay rents
and other claims. More recent rent collections, unfortunately, were not
so satisfactory. Tenants generally had earned the money, but had not
been allowed to pay it over.
'Many of the low-rented estates were badly farmed and the tenantry in
low water. On the higher rented, the struggle for existence had brought
out extra industry and energy and led to fair success.'
The following provided an apt illustration:--
'Mr. Gould Adams of Kilmachill had a small estate on the north side of a
hill rented at 20s. an acre; the rents were paid up, the tenants doing
well. On the southern aspect of the same hill, with better land, at the
devoutly desiderated Griffith's valuation, which was 16s. 4d., the
tenants were invariably hard up, some of them two years in arrears. All
tenants had free sale, averaging five years' rent.
'The larger proprietors, as a rule, were most helpful and liberal to
their tenants. Where improvements were not effected or initiated by the
landlords, they were seldom done at all. There had often been
considerable difficulty in overcoming the prejudice and "the
rest-and-be-thankful" spirit both of landlords and tenants.
'On Sir George Colthurst's Ballyvourney estate, twenty miles east of
Killarney, under Mr. Hussey's auspices about £30,000 had been expended
in draining, building, and roadmaking. The economic value of many
holdings had been doubled, although the rents had only been increased
five per cent., and subsequently the Commissioners fixed the rents at 25
per cent. less than they had been fifty years earlier.
'The extending village of Mill Street had been in great measure
reconstructed by his exertions.
'The Land League having enforced non-payment of rent, the obligation to
meet other debts was weakened. Although there was more money than usual
in the hands of the farming community, shopkeepers were not so willingly
and promptly paid as formerly. Want of security checked the improved
business which should have set in after a good harvest. The Land League
agitation generally originated with the publicans, small shopkeepers,
and bankrupt farmers, rather than with the actual land occupiers. For
peace and protection, many pay their subscription to the League and
allow their names to be enrolled. The intimidation and 'boycotting,'
which was so widely had recourse to, rendered it dangerous for either
farmers or tradesmen to make a stand against the mob. With Sam Weller it
was regarded expedient to shout with the biggest crowd.'
Thus wrote a critical visitor keenly surveying the situation in no
prejudiced spirit, having gone on a visit to Ireland to inquire into the
subjects of land tenure and estate management.
In his next chapter is a tribute to Lord Kenmare, 'a kind and
considerate landlord, united to his people by strong ties of race and
creed, residing for a great part of the year on his estates, ready with
purse and influence to advance the interests of his neighbourhood. On
his mansion and on the town of Killarney, since his accession to the
property in 1871, he has spent £100,000. At his own expense he has
erected a town hall, and improved and beautified Killarney. Within the
last twenty years £10,000 of arrears have been written off. From last
year's rents ten to twenty per cent, was deducted. During the last few
years of distress, £15,000 has been borrowed for draining and other
improvements; regular work has thus been found for the labourer; on such
outlay in many instances no percentage has been charged. Since 1870,
three hundred labourers have been comfortably housed and provided with
gardens or allotments varying from one to three pounds annually.'
I could not myself so tersely put the situation to-day as by quoting
this contemporary narrative, the facts for which I supplied.
Once more let me draw upon Mr. Finlay Dun. 'Unmindful of all this
consistent liberality, ungrateful for the great efforts to improve his
poorer neighbours, popular prejudice has been roused against Lord
Kenmare; it has been impossible to collect rents; threatening letters
have been sent to him. Mortified with the apparent fruitlessness of his
humane endeavours he has been compelled to leave Killarney House.
'His agent, Mr. Hussey, who for twenty years has been earnestly and
intelligently labouring to improve Irish agriculture, to bring more
capital to bear on it, to render it more profitable, and has, besides,
most energetically striven to elevate and house more decently the
labouring population, has also brought down on himself the odium of the
powers that be. For months he has had to travel armed and guarded by a
couple of constables; now he has thought it discreet to leave the
country.'
This, however, is erroneous. I only took a house for my family in London
for the winter, and was backwards and forwards between Kerry and the
metropolis.
Against all this let me set another quotation. In _New York Tablet_ for
1880, a letter from Daniel O'Shea, who stated that for a large number of
years he was a resident in Killarney.
'Among the most prominent tyrants was Lord Kenmare, who has so recently
surpassed himself and his antecedents in despotism. He is a lineal
descendant of the original land thief, Valentine Brown, who was a
special pet of 'the Virgin Queen' Bess, and strange to relate, this
descendant of that Brown is a much-favoured pet of John Brown's Queen.
Let me explain that he lives with the Queen in London where he holds the
position of chamberlain (_sic_) ... At Aghadoe House now resides that
ruthless Sam Hussey. Allow me to give you an outline of this heartless
fellow's antecedents. This Hussey is of English origin and was formerly
a cattle-dealer, and practised usury as far back as 1845. If all Ireland
were to be searched for a similar despot he would not be found. He is a
regular anti-Christ and Orangeman at heart, and, in fact, he acts as
agent for all the bankrupt landlords in Kerry. An English-Irish landlord
is an alien in heart, a despot by instinct, an absentee by inclination;
and all the foul confederacy of landlordism in Kerry is always in direct
opposition to the cause of Ireland.'
There is a copious mendacity about that effusion which makes me think
the real mission of the writer should have been to become an Irish
Member of Parliament. His powers of misrepresentation would have raised
him to an eminence among obstructionists.
After all, scurrilous denunciation never affected me. His life by Sir
Wemyss Reid reveals how Mr. W.E. Forster flinched under the vituperation
levelled at his head. But he was not an Irishman, least of all a Kerry
man, and so he never felt the fun of the fray, the grim earnest of the
fight which made me set my teeth and give as good as I received. Indeed,
I'll take my oath no man had the better of me, either in bandying words
or yet in acts, so long as they were open and above-board, but it has
always been the way of sedition and conspiracy to hit below the belt.