COMMISSIONS
I have probably given evidence to as many Commissions as any living man,
for I have been before seven, and never once was asked a question that
posed me.
I enjoyed the experience of being asked about what I knew by those who
knew nothing on the subject, and if the legal mind was a little more
obtuse than the civil, well, it was only the choice between a grey
donkey and a black.
The earliest Commission I gave evidence before was one on Agriculture.
Professor Bohnamy Price was one of the Commissioners, and he knew what
he was talking about, others being Lord Carlingford, the Duke of
Buccleuch, and the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, who presided. The peers
were all used to big parks, obsequious bailiffs, and huge demesnes. I
think they metaphorically picked up their coat tails and stepped
carefully away from the Irish potato patches and acres of turf.
It was alleged that prosperity of nations was a good deal owing to
tenant-right.
'I do not think so,' said I, 'because Donegal and Kerry have
approximately the same value and area, same number of miles of road and
sea frontage. There is extreme tenant-right in Donegal and none in
Kerry, yet the prosperity of the farmers in Kerry is extremely superior
to those of Donegal.'
'There is too much tenant-right in Donegal,' said Mr. Chichester
Fortescue, who was examining me.
'Not if it is a good thing,' I replied, 'for then you could not have too
much.'
Mr. Shaw Lefevre's Commission on the housing of the working classes in
Ireland was very uninteresting. 'Oxen are stalled, pigs are styed or
take possession of the cabin, but what is done for the Irish labourers?'
asked a passionate mob-orator, and in many cases it might have been
answered that a good deal more has been done for them than the idle
ruffians deserve. I had no difficulty in showing that landlords were
always willing to give assistance in housing labourers, and when an
ex-mayor of Cork on the Commission seemed to doubt my assertions, I
might have retorted that though he was used to factory hands, yet he had
never bothered himself how they lived out of work time.
The Duke of Devonshire was on this board. He has obtained his great and
honourable reputation by conscientiously slumbering through many duties.
His tastes are for racing and shooting, but from sheer patriotism he has
devoted himself to politics with all the energy of his lethargic manner,
which successfully conceals abnormal common-sense. It was he, more than
any other man, who saved Ireland from Home Rule, though as an Irish
landlord he has not come much to the fore, because his vast English
estates are immeasurably more important than those situated round
Lismore. This picturesque town was once called the abode of saints, but
only antiquarians remember that its university was once so important
that Alfred the Great went there to study, and that in the old castle
Henry II held a Parliament. The Cavendishs rebuilt the latter, and both
in appearance and position it much resembles Warwick Castle. It has not
very many bedrooms, and when the King was first expected, among various
extensive alterations, a bathroom was put up. The Duke has generally
visited Lismore twice a year, and has never stood unduly on his dignity,
but been approachable by all, and reasonable about everything, which has
also been characteristic of his political views.
Lord Bessborough presided over a Commission on Irish Land Laws. He was a
very kind, very lean man, who was wont in old age to walk about London
wrapped in a black cape, and was idolised at Harrow, where twenty
generations of boys knew him and his brothers and valued their unabated
interest in school cricket. Baron Dowse, a judge I have already
mentioned, the O'Conor Don, and Mr. Shaw, were the members who put
questions to me. I remember the O'Conor Don was much impressed when I
mentioned I had made six tours in Scotland, and had been in Holland, in
Belgium, in France, in Germany, in Italy, and just before in Spain, to
inquire into the state of agriculture. I said that if a man persisted in
farming badly I would serve him with notice to quit even if he paid his
rent, and I pointed out that there were three hundred thousand occupiers
of land in Ireland whose holdings were under £8 Poor Law valuation, and
these occupiers, when their potatoes fail, have nothing to fall back
upon but relief work, starvation, or emigration, and I further laid
before the Commission a purchase scheme. There would be twenty years'
purchase-money to be lent by the State, two years' purchase to be found
by the tenant and two years more at the end of ten years. Thus the
landlord would get a price for his property that would induce him to
sell (reductions had not then been wholesale) and the tenant would get a
lease for ever with abolition of rent at the end of thirty-five years by
paying a fine of two years' rent down and two more at the end of ten
years.
They would not have it. Who ever expected that Justice would lift the
bandage from her eyes for the sake of fair play to the landlord?
Lord Salisbury had a Commission on the working of the Land Act of 1881.
Lord Dunraven, Lord Pembroke, and Lord Cairns were on it, the latter
being chairman. He was so austere that, when he was made Lord
Chancellor, it was said he had swallowed the mace and could not digest
it. His law may have been profound, but it was never relieved by a gleam
of humour, and his ecclesiastical proclivities were of the lowest Church
type. For some time he nominated Tory bishops, and it was declared he
was so evangelical that he would have suggested any clergyman for a
vacant bishopric who promised to forego the ecclesiastical gaiters. His
horror of Anthony Trollope's novels was notorious, especially his
dislike of Mrs. Proudie and her attendant divines.
I said the working of the Land Act was ruin to Irish landlords, and
cited a case. A Kerry gentleman had an estate of £1200 rent roll, with a
mortgage of £8000 which involved charges of £400 a year, a jointure
tithes and head rent took £400 more. The Commissioners by so cutting
down the rent by £400 made a clean sweep of what that landlord had to
live on. Fortunately, he had his mother's fortune of £40,000, which his
grandfather had wisely provided should not be invested in Irish lands,
having, in fact, established a contingency in case his grandson should
be dispossessed of the property he had held for generations, by a
Government truckling to blustering 'no-renters.'
Before Lord Cowper's Commission on the same subject, I said much the
same thing over again and realised that Royal Commissions are most
valuable for the purpose of shelving pregnant topics. The only good
derived from these official inquiries is that the witnesses get their
expenses and the Government printers have a lucrative contract.
There is a story told of a witness who was being brought over to London
to give evidence.
'Patrick,' said the priest, 'you'll be having to mind what you're saying
over there. Perjury won't help you no more than I can, my poor fellow.'
'What happens if I get a bit wide of the truth then, father?'
'You won't get your expenses, my son.'
'Holy Mother, to think of that! I'll be so careful that I won't know how
many legs the blessed pig has that's round the cabin all day long.'
Sir Edward Fry's Commission had none of the tinsel of big names nor the
tawdriness of aristocratic apathy. Sir Edward meant to find the truth,
and so did his colleagues--all practical men. What they did was to
strike against the hard rock of party government which was too adamant
to receive the evidence sown by these gardeners. Dr. Anthony Traill, who
was one of the Commissioners, has in this very year of grace been made
Provost of Trinity, and from what I saw of him I am certain he will be
the apostle of fair play between undergraduates and dons.
I answered over five hundred questions and rammed home one or two
points. For instance, I expressed my disapproval of a system by which a
man who is a sub-Commissioner at the hearing on the first term may
become the Court valuer on the next.
In valuation, it is wrong that men from the north should be sent to
value in the south, or _vice versâ_, and to prove that I cited the
example of my tenant, Anne Delane. Her rent was fixed first term in 1883
for £34, 10s. In 1896, for second term, the sub-Commissioner fixed it at
£23, 10s., and on appeal it was raised to £25. Mr. O'Shaughnessy, who
was one of the sub-Commissioners on the first term, acted as a Court
valuer on the second. On the first time he allowed £103, 6s. 9d. for
drains and buildings, and on the second omitted it.
In the case of Hoffman, who held a farm at a rent of £30, I reduced it
to £20 in 1881. In 1896 he went into court, and the County Court judge
reduced it to £15, and on appeal he got it again reduced to £13.
On land which came into my own hands after 1881, I was able to get rents
over 50 per cent. in excess of those fixed by the sub-Commissioners. In
the case of Patrick Quill, the farm on which the rent was cut down from
£20 to £16 was sold for £300 with a charge of £9 on it.
In the case of Michael Callaghan, Colonel Hickson expended £300 and
Callaghan £100 on the farm, for which the rent was £70, and he sold his
interest for £700.
This perpetual wrangling and litigation is ruinous, for every man is
farming down his land and letting it deteriorate as fast as he can; and
there is a most marked difference in the county between those who have
bought their land and those who are tenants. When a judicial rent was
fixed and a tenant came into Court for a second judicial rent, I think
the landlord should have been at liberty to stop him by tendering the
farmer twenty years' purchase; that would give him a reduction of 20 per
cent, and make him a proprietor in the course of time.
In 1850 at Milltown Fair, yearlings were selling for 30s. apiece. The
same cattle now are selling for £5, and Kerry is a great stock-breeding
country.
It is very hard to define a landlord, and you will hear of some being
landlords who do not get a shilling from their estates. Under these
circumstances they would be like the fox in Æsop's fable who had lost
his own tail.
To show how the Land Act works, on the Harenc estate I was offered
twenty-seven years' purchase before the Act for a holding, and at the
time of the Commission they offered me sixteen years' purchase on
two-thirds of the rent.
One other Commission besides that of the _Times_ remains to be
mentioned. Lord Balfour of Burleigh, a dour Scot with a lot of gumption
in his head, was chairman of one on Imperial _versus_ local taxation. My
easy task was to show the excess of the latter in Kerry, which is the
highest taxed county in the three kingdoms.
When a man thinks of the vast amount of information buried beyond all
probable excavation in the Blue Books of the last fifty years, he may
well break into Carlyle-like diatribes against the waste of the whole
thing--which is paid for out of the taxpayer's pocket.
Alluding to all these Commissions reminds me that there were three Land
Commissioners--Mr. Bewlay, who was very deaf; Mr. FitzGerald, who was
rather hasty; and Mr. Wrench, who consistently absented himself to
attend the Congested Board.
So they were respectively, though not respectfully, called, 'The judge
who could not hear, the judge who would not hear, and the judge who is
not here.' This was one of the witticisms of my clever friend, Mr.
Robert Martin--'Bally-hooley'-one of the very few men who can write a
good Irish song, and sing it well, into the bargain.
I appeared in the witness-box in the case of O'Donnell _v._ the _Times_.
I suppose people buy newspapers to obtain information, or else to get a
pennyworth of lies to induce equanimity in bearing the income-tax, the
weather, and all other ills that an unnatural Government is responsible
for; and I further suppose a halfpenny paper has to condense its
inaccuracies, and serve them up in tabloid form for mental indigestion.
However, that is as it may be; anyhow, I had a hearty laugh at the
_Star_, which wrote:--
'A look round the Court again this morning brought the strange
impression which one now always feels on entering the Court. The space
is so comparatively small, but one feels as though it were all Ireland
in microcosm. You see representatives of every class in the terrible
conflict of war, of rival passions, hatred, and traditions. This man
with the large nose, the large and disfigured face, is Mr. Hussey, and
those scars that you see, and the distortion of the features, are
perchance marks left by some desperate and homicidal tenant avenging his
wrongs.'
That 'perchance' is good, considering my riding misadventure in County
Cork, of which I gave an account earlier.
As for the Parnell Commission, it was the outcome of superb patriotism
on the part of the _Times_. That great organ, in the spirit of purest
devotion to the best interests of England and Ireland, honestly
attempted to expose treachery, and to denounce treason. Hundreds of
columns of the valuable space at their daily disposal, as well as
thousands of pounds earned by the highest journalism of any country,
were freely lavished in this tremendous denunciation, known as
'Parnellism and Crime.' The crime of Pigott eventually saved Parnell and
his followers. But the last word on that has not yet been spoken.
Another pen than mine may, perchance before long, tell the whole truth
about that tragic episode, and explain what is still an unsolved riddle
in all dispassionate minds. Without challenging and exciting the
strongest racial prejudices, it will be impossible to lift the veil, and
I have no intention of affording even the slightest preliminary peep
behind the scenes of that dramatic affair. The wheels of God grind
slowly, and they ground exceeding small almost before the absurd
exultation of Nationalist relief over the Pigott episode had abated. It
is almost time to treat the whole affair from the historical point of
view, and then the idol of Home Rule will be pulverised. However, that
is another story in which I have no chapter to write.
My own share in the Parnell Commission was on November 29, 1888, on the
twenty-third day. I was examined by the Attorney-General, the present
Lord Chief Justice, and the most popular and most honourable of men. At
that very time, I have heard, he sang each Sunday in the surpliced choir
of a Kensington church, and I suppose he is the very best chairman of a
committee or of a public meeting of our own or any other time. A
Parnellite once said he had the unctuousness of a retired grocer, but
was contradicted by a more reverent English Radical, who said, 'No, he
has the unction of grace,' whereas, the truth is, he has the platform
manner with him always.
I told the Court I had been a Kerry magistrate for the previous
thirty-seven years, and, after deposing to the earlier state of my
property, I insisted that moonlighting and 'land-grabbing' were unknown
terms before 1880. My examination under the Attorney-General was, in
fact, too practical and useful to provide amusement for latter day
readers.
My cross-examination was begun by Sir Charles Russell, who led off with
a sneer about my being the most popular man in the county, and, when I
adhered to other statements, he added, 'Well, a very popular man. I will
not put you on too high a pinnacle.' (Laughter.) Then for an hour and a
half he plied me with the best balanced statistical questions I ever
heard put in a hostile spirit, and without a note I could answer every
one. After considerable hesitation I admitted on consideration that
there was in Kerry one farmer benefiting by the Act of 1870. I have
never heard since that he was caught and exhibited as the solitary
outward and visible sign of the inward and legal benefit of the
legislative force of Imperial Parliament.
Mr. Lockwood, to whom, as artist, I had been serving as a model,
evidently preferred to handle me with pencil rather than with questions,
for he was almost as brief as Mr. Reid. It is my view that they both had
consigned me to petrification under Sir Charles Russell, and finding me
alive and kicking, thought me too tough to expire under such _coups de
grace_ as they could inflict.
We came to banter when Mr. Michael Davitt suggested that the young men
of Castleisland took part in nocturnal raids because there was no such
social inducement to keep them quiet, as a music-hall or a theatre; but
I told him there ought to have been no inducement to them to shoot their
neighbours, and that Castleisland was past redemption.
He blandly alluded to my popularity with the tenants before 1880; but I
only said that I got on fairly well with them, for I do not think that
any agent was ever really popular.
'Relatively?' insidiously.
'Yes.'
Then came this curious question, put with a gentleness that would have
aroused the suspicion of a babe:--
'Did you ever say, in reply to a question put to you by Mr. Townsend
Trench as to why you were not shot, that you had told the tenants that
if anything happened to you he would succeed you as agent?'
'Yes, I did say so; but it is not original, because it is what Charles
II. said to James II.'
This historic reference, which elicited laughter in Court, did not seem
intelligible to my questioner, but some better informed person probably
soon quoted it to him:--
'Depend on it, brother James, they will never shoot me to make you
king.'
From the kid-glove amenities of Mr. Davitt to the aggressive harshness
of Mr. Biggar was a sharp contrast. He heckled me vigorously, and I
retorted to him pretty hotly. A great deal had been expected of this
cross-examination, but the general opinion was that I gave rather better
than I received. Coolness is the despair of cross-examiners, and I think
mine made more impression on the Court than the impulsiveness of a dozen
inaccurate Nationalists.
Mr. Biggar asked:--
'You said you were popular in the district up to 1880?'
I retorted with emphasis:--
'I never had a serious threat until you mentioned my name in
Castleisland, and then people told me, 'Get police protection at once,
or you will be shot!'
That made the Court laugh. Mr. Biggar did not appreciate the humour. He
returned to the charge viciously:--
'Did not some of your sympathisers light a bonfire in 1878 at
Castleisland on account of the triumphs of your buying the Harenc
estate? and did not the population of Castleisland, who knew your
character, scatter that bonfire, and put it out?'
'I heard they had a row over it. There were nine bonfires lighted in
Kerry after I succeeded. I was fairly popular until you held up my name
as a subject for murder in Castleisland. You said Hussey might be a very
bad man, but you would take care of one thing--that if any person was
charged with shooting him, or any other agent, they would be defended,
which meant they would be paid.'
Mr. Biggar did not appear to relish the line he was on, and shunted to
another topic; but he could not shake my view that the rents of 1880
were, on the average, twenty-five per cent. lower than in 1840.
'You bought the Harenc estate over the heads of the tenants?'
'No, I did not.'
'You spoke about an address which you received from the tenants when you
were a candidate for Tralee?'
'Yes.'
Then, with the snarl of a wild beast, Mr. Biggar blurted out:--
'Have you any idea whether this was got up by the bailiffs on your
property?'
'I am quite certain it was not, because I had no bailiffs on the
property. I gave an immense deal of employment, and I believe that had
something to do with it.'
Mr. Biggar presently sat down, having made less of me than he and his
friends hoped.
On re-examination, the Attorney-General observed:--
'You say one of the bonfires, lighted when you succeeded, was put out. I
suppose the Irish people are not very averse to a row at times?'
'Oh no.'
'And bonfires do produce rows at times?'
'Certainly.'
'Your popularity did not depend on one bonfire?'
'No.'
Nor did my life, fortunately, depend on the good will of Messrs.
Parnell, Biggar, and their associates.
With reference to my freedom in telling the truth, an application was
made against me, in July 1891, for an attachment of the Land Court. It
ended abortively, and permitted me to continue with perfect impunity to
give in letters to the _Times_ evidence I was debarred from giving in
Court.
I certainly did not miss a chance of pointing out the proper path to the
Commissioners, and I have taken an even affectionate interest in every
department of the Land Commission. Sarcastically, a Home Rule paper
politely christened me as the fatherly patron of the Court, and informed
me that my own conscience had given up communication with me, in
consequence of the many snubs it had received.
The intimate knowledge of my most private affairs that this purports to
represent proves the empty-headedness of the writer, and when he added
that the strong indictment rebounded off my hide because I had heard
myself a hundred times denounced in language equally eloquent, I can
only agree that he was a mere lisping babe in comparison with some
adjectival denunciators who, to their regret, find I am still alive and
equal to them all.