CORK, _Thursday, Feb. 23d._--We left Tralee this morning. It was
difficult to recognise the events yesterday witnessed by us at Glenbehy
in the accounts which we read of them to-day when we got the newspapers.
As these accounts are obviously intended to be read, not in Ireland,
where nobody seems to take the least interest in Irish affairs beyond
his own bailiwick, but in England and America, it is only natural, I
suppose, that they should be coloured to suit the taste of the market
for which they are destined. It is astonishing how little interest the
people generally show in the newspapers. The Irish make good journalists
as they make good soldiers; but most of the journalists who now
represent Irish constituencies at Westminster find their chief field of
activity, I am told, not in Irish but in British or in American
journals. Mr. Roche, R.M., who travelled with us as far as Castle
Island, where we left him, was much less moved by the grotesque accounts
given in the local journals of his conduct yesterday than by Mr.
Gladstone's "retractation" of the extraordinary attack which he made the
other day upon Mr. Roche himself, and four other magistrates by name.
"The retractation aggravates the attack," he said.
When one sees what a magistrate now represents in Ireland, it certainly
is not easy to reconcile an inconsiderate attack upon the character and
conduct of such an officer with the most elementary ideas of good
citizenship.
After Mr. Roche left us, a gentleman in the carriage, who is interested
in some Castle Island property, told us that nothing could be worse than
the state of that region. Open defiance of the moral authority of the
clergy is as rife there, he says, as open defiance of the civil
authorities. The church was not long ago broken into, and the sacred
vestments were defiled; and, but the other day, a young girl of the
place came to a magistrate and asked him to give her a summons against
the parish priest "for assaulting her." The magistrate, a Protestant,
but a personal friend of the priest, esteeming him for his fidelity to
his duties, asked the girl what on earth she meant. She proceeded with
perfect coolness to say that the priest had impertinently interfered
with her, "assaulted her," and told her to "go home," when he found her
sitting in a lonely part of the road with her young man, rather late at
night! For this, the girl, professing to be a Catholic, actually wanted
the Protestant magistrate to have her parish priest brought into his
court! He told the girl plainly what he thought of her conduct,
whereupon she went away, very angry, and vowing vengeance both against
the priest and against him.
This same gentleman said that at the Bodyke evictions, of which so much
has been heard, the girls and women swarmed about the police using
language so revoltingly obscene that the policemen blushed--such
language, he said, as was never heard from decent Irishwomen in the days
of his youth.
Of this business of evictions, he said, the greatest imaginable
misrepresentations are made in the press and by public speakers. "You
have just seen one eviction yourself," he said, "and you can judge for
yourself whether that can be truly described in Mr. Gladstone's language
as a 'sentence of death.' The people that were put out of these burned
houses you saw, houses that never would have needed to be burned, had
Harrington and the other Leaguers allowed the people to keep their
pledges given Sir Redvers Buller, those very people are better off now
than they were before they were evicted, in so far as this, that they
get their food and drink and shelter without working for it, and I'm
sorry to say that the Government and the League, between them, have been
soliciting half of Ireland for the last six or eight years to think that
sort of thing a heaven upon earth. An eviction in Ireland in these days
generally means just this, that the fight between a landlord and the
League has come to a head. If the tenant wants to be rid of his holding,
or if he is more afraid of the League than of the law, why, out he goes,
and then he is a victim of heartless oppression; but if he is
well-to-do, and if he thinks he will be protected, he takes the eviction
proceedings just for a notice to stop palavering and make a settlement,
and a settlement is made. The ordinary Irish tenant don't think anything
more of an eviction than Irish gentlemen used to think of a duel; but
you can never get English people to understand the one any more than the
other!"
The fine broad streets which Cork owes to the filling up and bridging
over of the canals which in the last century made her a kind of Irish
Venice, give the city a comely and even stately aspect. But they are not
much better kept and looked after than the streets of New York. And they
are certainly less busy and animated than when I last was here, five
years ago. All the canals, however, are not filled up or bridged over.
From my windows, in a neat comfortable little private hotel on
Morrison's Quay, I look down upon the deck of a small barque, moored
well up among the houses. The hospitable and dignified County Club is
within two minutes' walk of my hostelry, and the equally hospitable and
more bustling City Club, but a little farther off, at the end of the
South Mall. At luncheon to-day a gentleman who was at Kilkenny with Mr.
Gladstone on the occasion of his visit to that city told me a story too
good to be lost. The party were eight in number, and on their return to
Abbeyleix they naturally looked out for an empty railway carriage. The
train was rather full, but in one compartment my informant descried a
dignitary, whom he knew, of the Protestant Church of Ireland, its only
occupant. He went up and saluted the Dean, and, pointing to his
companions, asked if he would object to changing his place in the train,
which would give them a compartment to themselves. The Dean courteously,
and indeed briskly, assented, when he saw that Mr. Gladstone was one of
the party.
After the train moved off, Mr. Gladstone said, "Was not that gentleman
who so kindly vacated his place for us a clergyman?"
"Yes." "I hope he won't think I have disestablished him again!"
At the next station, my informant getting out for a moment to thank the
Dean again for his civility, and chat with him, repeated Mr. Gladstone's
remark.
"Oh!" said the Dean; "you may tell him I don't mind his disestablishing
me again; for he didn't disendow me; he didn't confiscate my ticket!"
With this gentleman was another from Kerry, who tells me there is a
distinct change for the better already visible in that county, which he
attributes to the steady action of the Dublin authorities in enforcing
the law.
"The League Courts," he said, "are ceasing to be the terror they used to
be."
I asked what he meant by the "League Courts," when he expressed his
astonishment at my not knowing that it was the practice of the League to
hold regular Courts, before which the tenants are summoned, as if by a
process of the law, to explain their conduct, when they are charged with
paying their rents without the permission of the Local League. In his
part of Kerry, he tells me, these Courts used not very long ago to sit
regularly every Sunday. The idea, he says, is as old as the time of the
United Irishmen, who used to terrorise the country just in the same way.
A man whom he named, a blacksmith, acted as a kind of "Law Lord," and to
him the chairmen of the different local "Courts" used to refer cases
heard before them![5]
All this was testified to openly two years ago, before Lord Cowper's
Commission, but no decisive action has ever been taken by the Government
to put a stop to the scandal, and relieve the tenants from this open
tyranny. These Courts enforced, and still enforce, their decrees by
various forms of outrage, ranging "from the boycott," in its simplest
forms up to direct outrages upon property and the person.
"This dual Government business," he said, "can only end in a duel
between the two Governments, and it must be a duel to the death of one
or the other."
To-night at dinner I had a most interesting conversation with Mr.
Colomb, Assistant Inspector-General of the Constabulary, who is here
engaged with Mr. Cameron of Belfast, and Colonel Turner, in
investigating the affair at Mitchelstown. Mr. Colomb was at Killarney at
the time of the Fenian rising under "General O'Connor" in 1867--a rising
which was undoubtedly an indirect consequence of our own Civil War in
America. Warning came to two magistrates, of impending trouble from
Cahirciveen. Upon this Mr. Colomb immediately ordered the arrest of all
passengers to arrive that day at Killarney by the "stage-car" from that
place. When the car came in at night, it brought only one person--"an
awful-looking ruffian he was," said Mr. Colomb, "whom, by his
square-toed shoes, we knew to be just arrived from your side of the
water."
He was examined, and said he was a commercial traveller, and that he had
only one letter about him, a business letter, addressed to "J. D.
Sheehan."
"Have you any objection to show us that letter?"
"Certainly not," he replied very coolly, and, taking it out of his
pocket, he walked toward a table on which stood a candle, as if to read
it. A gentleman who was closely watching him, caught him by the wrist,
just as he was putting the letter to the flame, and saved it. It was
addressed to J. D. Sheehan, Esq., Killarney [Present], and ran as
follows:
"_Feb. 12th, Morning_.
"MY DEAR SHEEHAN,--I have the honour to introduce to you Captain
Mortimer Moriarty. He will be of great assistance to you, and I
have told him all that is to be done until I get to your place. The
Private _Spys_ are very active this morning. Unless they smell a
rat all will be done without any trouble.
"Success to you. Hoping to meet soon,--Yours as ever.
"(Signed) JOHN J. O'CONNOR."[6]
Despatches were at once sent off to the authorities at different points.
They were all transmitted, except to Cahirciveen, the wires to which
place were found to have been cut. Mr. Colomb--who had a force of but
seventeen men in the town of Killarney--saw the uselessness of trying to
communicate with the officer at Cahirciveen, but was so strongly urged
by the magistrates that he unwillingly consented to endeavour to do so,
and a mounted orderly was sent. Just after this unfortunate officer had
passed Glenbehy (the scene of the eviction I have just witnessed) he was
shot by some of O'Connor's party, whom he tried to pass in the dark, and
who were marching on Killarney, and fell from his horse, which galloped
off. He managed to crawl to a neighbouring cottage, where he was not
long after found by "General O'Connor" and some of his followers. The
wounded man was kindly treated by O'Connor, who had him examined for
despatches, but prevented one of his men from shooting him dead, as he
lay on the ground, and had his wounds as well attended to as was
possible. There was no response in the country to the Kerry rising, such
as it was, because the intended seizure of Chester Castle by the Fenians
failed, but O'Connor was not captured, though great efforts were made to
seize him. How he escaped is not known to this day.
At that time, as always in emergencies, Mr. Colomh says the Constabulary
behaved with exemplary coolness, courage, and fidelity. His position
gives him a very thorough knowledge of the force, which is almost
entirely recruited from the body of the Irish people. Of late years not
a few men of family, reduced in fortune, have taken service in it. Among
these has been mentioned to me a young Irishman of title, and of an
ancient race, who is a sergeant in the force, and who recently declined
to accept a commission, as his increased expenses would make it harder
for him to support his two sisters. Another constable in the ranks
represents a family illustrious in the annals of England four centuries
ago.
As to the _morale_ of the force, he cites one eloquent fact. Out of a
total of more than 13,000 men, the cases of drunkenness, proved or
admitted, average no more than fourteen a week! On many days absolutely
no such cases occur. This is really amazing when one thinks how many of
the men are isolated on lonely posts all over the island, exposed to all
sorts of weather, and cut off from the ordinary resources and amusements
of social life.
CORK, _Friday, Feb. 24th._--This morning after breakfast I met in the
South Mall a charming ecclesiastic, whose acquaintance I made in Rome
while I was attending the great celebration there in 1867 of St. Peter's
Day. Father Burke introduced me to him after the Pontifical Mass at San
Paolo fuori le Mure; and we had a delightful symposium that afternoon. I
walked with him to his lodgings, talking over those "days long
vanished," and the friend whose genius made them, like the suppers of
Plato, "a joy for ever." He is sorely troubled now by the attitude of a
portion of the clergy in his part of Ireland, which is one almost of
open hostility, he says, to the moral authority of the Church, and
indicates the development of a class of priests moving in the direction
of the "conventional priests," by whom the Church was disgraced during
the darkest days of the French Revolution of 1793.
Almost more mischievous than these men, he thinks, who must eventually
go the way of their kind in times past, are the timid priests, for the
most part parish priests, who go in fear of their violent curates, and
of the politicians who tyrannise their flocks. He showed me a letter
written to him last week by one of these, whose parish is just now in a
tempest over the Plan of Campaign. Certainly a most remarkable letter.
In it the writer frankly says, "There is no justification for the Plan
of Campaign on this property.
"I assented to putting it in force here," he goes on, "because I did not
at the time know the facts of the case, and took them on trust from
persons who, I find, have practised upon my confidence. What am I to do?
I am made to appear as a consenting party now, and, indeed, an assisting
agent in action, which I certainly was led to believe right and
necessary, but which upon the facts I now see involves much injustice
to ---- (naming the landlord), and I fear positive ruin to worthy men and
families of my people. I shall be grateful and glad of your counsel in
these most distressing circumstances."
"What can any one do to help such a man?" said my friend. "The
rebellious and unruly in the Church, be they priests or laymen, can only
in the end damage themselves. _Tu es Petrus_; and revolt, like schism,
is a devil which only carries away those of whom it gets possession out
of the Church and into the sea. But a weak sentinel on the wall or at
the gate who drops his musket to wipe his eyes, that is a thing for
tears!"
He asked me to come and see him if possible in his own county, and he
has promised to send me letters to-day for priests who will he glad to
tell me what they know only too well of the pressure put upon the better
sort of the people by the organised idlers and mischief-makers in Clare
and Kerry.
To-day at the City Club, I made the acquaintance of the Town-Clerk of
Cork, Mr. Alexander M'Carthy, a staunch Nationalist and Home Ruler, who
holds his office almost by a sort of hereditary tenure, having been
appointed to it in 1859 in succession to his father. He gave me many
interesting particulars as to the municipal history and administration
of Cork, and showed me some of the responses he is receiving to a kind
of circular letter sent by the municipality to the town governments of
England, touching the recent proceedings against the Mayor. So far these
responses have not been very sympathetic. He invited me to lunch here
with him to-morrow, and visit some of the most interesting points in and
around the city. Here, too, I met Colonel Spaight, Inspector of the
Local Government Board, who gives me a startling account of the increase
of the public burdens. Twenty years ago there were no persons whatever
seeking outdoor relief in Cork. This year, out of a total population of
145,216, there are 3775 persons here receiving indoor relief, and 4337
receiving outdoor relief, making in all 8112, or nearly 6 per cent. of
the inhabitants. This proportion is swelled by the influx of people from
other regions seeking occupation here, which they do not find, or simply
coming here because they are sure of relief. This state of things
illustrates not so much the decay of industry in Cork as the development
of a spirit of mendicancy throughout Ireland. In the opinion of many
thoughtful people, this began with the Duchess of Marlborough's Fund,
and with the Mansion House Fund. Colonel Spaight remembers that in
Strokestown Union, Roscommon, when the guardians there received a supply
of one hundred tons of seed potatoes, they distributed eighty tons, and
were then completely at a loss what to do with the remaining twenty
tons. Mr. Parnell and Mr. O'Kelly, however, came to Roscommon, and the
latter made a speech out of the hotel window to the people, advising
them to apply for more, and take all they could get. "With a stroke of a
pen," he said, "we'll wipe out the seed rate!" Whereupon the
applications for seed rose to six hundred tons!
The Labourers Act, passed by the British Parliament for the benefit of
the Irish labourers, who get but scant recognition of their wants and
wishes from the tenant farmers, is not producing the good results
expected from it, mainly because it is perverted to all sorts of
jobbery. Only last week Colonel Spaight had to hand in to the Local
Government Board a report on certain schemes of expenditure under this
Act, prepared by the Board of Guardians of Tralee. These schemes
contemplated the erection of 196 cottages in 135 electoral divisions of
the Union. This meant, of course, so much money of the ratepayers to be
turned over to local contractors. Colonel Spaight on inspection found
that of the 196 proposed cottages, the erection of 61 had been forbidden
by the sanitary authorities, the notices for the erection of 23 had been
wrongly served, 20 were proposed to be erected on sites not adjoining a
public road, and no necessity had been shown for erecting 40 of the
others. He accordingly recommended that only 32 be allowed to be
erected! For a small town like Tralee this proposition to put up 196
buildings at the public expense where only 32 were needed is not bad. It
has the right old Tammany Ring smack, and would have commanded, I am
sure, the patronising approval of the late Mr. Tweed.
I mentioned it to-night at the County Club, when a gentleman said that
this morning at Macroom a serious "row" had occurred between the local
Board of Guardians there and a great crowd of labourers. The labourers
thronged the Board-room, demanding the half-acre plots of land which had
been promised them. The Guardians put them off, promising to attend to
them when the regular business of the meeting was over. So the poor
fellows were kept waiting for three mortal hours, at the end of which
time they espied the elected Nationalist members of the Board subtly
filing out of the place. This angered them. They stopped the fugitives,
blockaded the Board-room, and forced the Guardians to appoint a
committee to act upon their demands.
It is certainly a curious fact that, so far, in Ireland I have seen no
decent cottages for labourers, excepting those put up at their own
expense on their own property by landlords.
I dined to-night at the County Club with Captain Plunkett, a most
energetic, spirited, and well-informed resident magistrate, a brother of
the late Lord Louth,--still remembered, I dare say, at the New York
Hotel as the only Briton who ever really mastered the mystery of
concocting a "cocktail,"--and an uncle of the present peer. We had a
very cheery dinner, and a very clever lawyer, Mr. Shannon, gave us an
irresistible reproduction of a charge delivered by an Irish judge famous
for shooting over the heads of juries, who sent twelve worthy citizens
of Galway out of their minds by bidding them remember, in a case of
larceny, that they could not find the prisoner guilty unless they were
quite sure "as to the _animus furandi_ and the _asportavit_."
_Saturday, Feb. 25._--I had an interesting talk this morning at the
County Club with a gentleman from Limerick on the subject of
"boycotting." I told him what I had seen at Edenvale of the practice as
applied to a forlorn and helpless old woman, for the crime of standing
by her "boycotted" son. "You think this an extreme case," he said, "but
you are quite mistaken. It is a typical case certainly, but it gives you
only an inadequate idea of the scope given to this infernal machinery.
The 'boycott' is now used in Ireland as the Inquisition was used in
Spain,--to stifle freedom of thought and action. It is to-day the chief
reliance of the National League for keeping up its membership, and
squeezing subscriptions out of the people. If you want proof of this,"
he added, "ask any Nationalist you know whether members of the League in
the country allow farmers who are not members to associate with them in
any way. I can cite you a case at Ballingarry, in my county, where last
summer a resolution of the League was published and put on the Chapel
door, that members of the National League were thenceforth to have no
dealings or communication with any person not a member. This I saw with
my own eyes, and it was matter of public notoriety."
I lunched at the City Club with Mr. M'Carthy. Sir Daniel O'Sullivan,
formerly Mayor of Cork, whose views of Home Rule seem to differ widely
from those of his successor, now incarcerated here, was one of the
company. In the course of an animated but perfectly good-natured
discussion of the Land Law question between two other gentlemen present,
one of them, a strong Nationalist, smote his Unionist opponent very
neatly under the fifth rib. The latter contending that it was monstrous
to interfere by law with the principle of freedom of contract, the
Nationalist responded, "That cannot be; it must be right and legitimate
to do it, for the Imperial Parliament has done it four times within
seventeen years!"
I walked with Mr. M'Carthy to his apartments, where he showed me many
curious papers and volumes bearing on municipal law and municipal
history in Ireland. Among these, two most elaborate and interesting
volumes, being the Council Books of Cork, Youghal, and Kinsale, from
1610 to 1659, 1666 to 1687, and 1690 to 1800. The records for the years
not enumerated have perished, that is, for the first five or six years
after the Restoration, and for the years just preceding and just
following the fall of James II. These volumes take one back to the
condition of Southern Ireland immediately after English greed and
intrigue had sapped the foundations of the peace which followed the
submission of the great Earl of Tyrone, and brought about the flight to
the Continent of that chieftain, and of his friend and ally, the Earl of
Tyrconnell.
They give us no picture, unfortunately, of the closing years of
Elizabeth's long struggle to establish the English power, or of the
occupation of Kinsale by the Spanish in the name of the Pope. But there
is abundant evidence in them of the theological hatred which so
embittered the conflict of races in Ireland during the seventeenth
century.
It was a relief to turn from these to a solemn controversy waged in our
own times between Cork and Limerick over a question of municipal
precedence, in which Mr. M'Carthy did battle for the City of the Galley
and the Towers[7] against the City of the Gateway and Cathedral dome.
The truth seems to be that King John gave charters to both cities, but
to Cork twelve years earlier than to Limerick. Speaking of this contest,
by the way, with a loyalist of Cork to-night, I observed that it was
almost as odd to find such a question hotly disputed between two
Nationalist cities as to see the champions of Irish independence
marching under the banner of the harp, which was invented for Ireland by
Henry VIII.
"I don't know why you call Cork a Nationalist city," he replied, "for
Parnell and Maurice Healy were returned for it by a clear minority of
the voters. If all the voters had gone to the polls, they would both
have been beaten."
A curious statement certainly, and worth looking into. Mr. M'Carthy gave
me also much information as to the working of the municipal system here,
and a copy of the rules which govern the debates of the Town Council.
One of these might be adopted with advantage in other assemblies, to
wit, "that no member be permitted to occupy the time of the Council for
more than ten minutes."
There is an important difference between the parliamentary and the
municipal constituencies of Cork. The former constituency comprises all
residents within the borough boundaries occupying premises of the
rateable value of £10 a year. The municipal constituency consists of no
more than 1800 voters, divided among the seven wards which make up the
city under the "3d and 4th Victoria," and which contain about 13,000 of
the 15,116 Parliamentary voters of the borough. The same thing is true
in the main of nine out of the eleven municipal boroughs of Ireland
including Dublin. The 3d and 4th Victoria was amended for Dublin in
1849, so as to give that city the municipal franchise then existing in
England, but no move in that direction was made for Cork, Waterford,
Limerick, or any other municipal borough. The Nationalists have taken no
interest in the question. Perhaps they have good reason for this, as in
Belfast, where the municipal franchise has been widely extended since
the present Government came into power, the democratic electorate has
put the whole municipal government into the hands of the Unionists. The
day being cool, though fine, Mr. M'Carthy got an "inside car," and we
went off for a drive about the city. The environs of Cork are very
attractive. We visited the new cemetery grounds which are very neatly
and tastefully laid out. There was a conflict over them, the owners of
family vaults staunchly standing out against the "levelling" tendency of
a harmonious city of the dead. But all is well that ends well, and now
two handsome stone chapels, one Catholic and one Protestant, keep watch
and ward over the silent sleepers, standing face to face near the grand
entrance, and exactly alike in their architecture. A very pretty drive
took us to the water-works, which are extensive, well planned, and
exceedingly well kept. They are awaiting now the arrival from America of
some great turbine wheels, but the engines are of English make. In the
city we visited the new Protestant cathedral of St. Finbar, a very fine
church, which advantageously replaces a "spacious structure of the Doric
order," built here in the reign of George II., with the proceeds of a
parliamentary tax on coals. Despite his name, I imagine that admirable
prelate, Dr. England, the first Catholic bishop of my native city in
America, must have been a Corkonian, for he it was, I believe, who put
the cathedral of Charleston under the invocation of St. Finbar, the
first bishop of Cork. The church stands charmingly amid fine trees on a
southern branch of the river Lea. We visited also two fine Catholic
churches, one of St. Vincent de Paul, and the other the Church of St.
Peter and St. Paul, a grandly proportioned and imposing edifice.
It was at vespers that we entered it, and found it filled with the
kneeling people. This noble church is rather ignobly hidden away behind
crowded houses and shops, and the contrast was very striking when we
emerged from its dim religious space and silence into the thronged and
rather noisy streets. There is a statue here of Father Mathew; but what
I have seen to-night makes me doubt whether the present generation of
Corkonians would have erected it.
At dinner a gentleman gave us a most interesting account of the
picturesque home which a man of taste, and a lover of natural history,
has made for himself at the remote seaside village of Belmullet, in
Mayo, the seat of the Mayo quarries, in which Mr. Davitt takes so much
interest. The sea brings in there all sorts of wreckage, and the house
is beautifully finished with mahogany and other rare woods, just as I
remember finding in a noble mansion in South Wales, near a dangerous
head-land, some magnificent doors and wainscotings made of that most
beautiful of the Central American woods, nogarote, which I never saw in
the United States, excepting in a superb specimen of it sent home by
myself from Corinto. This colonist of Mayo employs all the people he can
get in the fisheries there, which are very rich; and the ducks and wild
geese are so numerous that he sometimes sends as far as to Wicklow for
men to capture and sell them for him. He was once fortunate enough to
trap a pair of the snow geese of the Arctic region, but Belmullet, in
other respects a primeval paradise, is cursed with the small boy of
civilisation; and one of these pests of society slew the goose with a
stone. The widowed gander consoled himself by contracting family ties
with the common domestic goose of the parish, and all his progeny, in
other particulars indistinguishable from that familiar bird, bear the
black marks distinctive of the Arctic tribe.
Belmullet, this gentleman tells me, boasts a very good little inn, kept
by a Mrs. Deehan, which was honoured by a visit from Lord Carnarvon with
his wife and daughters during the Earl's Viceroyalty. This was in the
course of a private and personal, not official tour, during which, Lord
Carnarvon says, he was everywhere received with the greatest courtesy by
all sorts and conditions of the people. It is an interesting
illustration of the temper in which certain priests in Ireland deal with
matters of State, that when Lord Carnarvon politely invited the parish
priest of Belmullet to come to see him, that functionary declined to do
so. Upon this the placable Viceroy sent to know whether the priest would
receive the visit he refused to pay. The priest replied that he never
declined to receive any gentleman who wished to see him; and the Viceroy
accordingly called upon him, to the edification of the people, who
afterwards listened very respectfully to a little speech which His
Excellency made to them from a car. It is rather surprising that these
incidents have never been adduced in proof of Lord Carnarvon's
determination to take the Home Rule wind out of the sails of the
Liberals!
CORK, _Sunday, Feb. 26._--I went out to-day with Mr. Cameron to see
Blarney Castle and St. Anne's Hill. Nothing can be lovelier than the
country around Cork and the valley of the Lea. A "light railway," of the
sort authorised by the Act of 1883, takes you out quickly enough to
Blarney, and the train was well filled. The construction of these
railways is found fault with as aggravating instead of relieving those
defects in the organisation and management of the Irish railways, which
are so thoroughly and intelligently exposed in the Public Works Report
of Sir James Allport and his fellow-commissioners. A morning paper
to-day points this out sharply.
In the days of King William III. Blarney Castle must have been a
magnificent stronghold. It stands very finely on a well-wooded height,
and dominates the land for miles around. But it held out against the
victor of the Boyne so long that, when he captured it, he thought it
best, in the expressive phrase of the Commonwealth, to "slight" it,
little now remaining of it but the gigantic keep, the walls of which are
some six yards thick, and a range of ruined outworks stretching along
and above a line of caverns, probably the work of the quarrymen who got
out the stone for the Castle ages ago. The legend of the Blarney Stone
does not seem to be a hundred years old, but the stone itself is one of
the front battlements of the grand old tower, which has more than once
fallen to the ground from the giddy height at which it was originally
set. It is now made fast there by iron clamps, in such a position that
to kiss it one should be a Japanese acrobat, or a volunteer rifleman
shooting for the championship of the world. There are many and very fine
trees in the grounds about the Castle, and there is a charming garden,
now closed against the casual tourist, as it has been leased with the
modern house to a tenant who lives here. In the leafy summer the place
must be a dream of beauty. An avenue of stately trees quite overarching
the highway leads from Blarney to St. Anne's Hill, the site of which, at
least, is that of an ideal sanatorium. We walked thither over hill and
dale. The panorama commanded by the buildings of the sanatorium is one
of the widest and finest imaginable, worthy to be compared with the
prospect from the Star and Garter at Richmond, or with that from the
terrace at St. Germain.
Several handsome lodges or cottages have been built about the extensive
grounds. These are comfortably furnished and leased to people who prefer
to bring their households here rather than take up their abode in the
hotel, which, however, seems to be a very well kept and comfortable sort
of place, with billiard and music rooms, a small theatre, and all kinds
of contrivances for making the country almost as tedious as the town.
The establishment is directed now by a German resident physician, but
belongs to an Irish gentleman, Mr. Barter, who lives here himself, and
here manages what I am told is one of the finest dairy farms and dairies
in Ireland. Our return trip to Cork on the "light railway," with a warm
red sunset lighting up the river Lea, and throwing its glamour over the
varied and picturesque scenery through which we ran, was not the least
delightful part of a very delightful excursion.
After we got back I spent half-an-hour with a gentleman who knows the
country about Youghal, which I propose to visit to-morrow, and who saw
something of the recent troubles there arising out of the Plan of
Campaign, as put into effect on the Ponsonby property.
He is of the opinion that the Nationalists were misled into this contest
by bad information as to Mr. Ponsonby's resources and relations. They
expected to drive him to the wall, but they will fail to do this, and
failing to do this they will be left in the vocative. He showed me a
curious souvenir of the day of the evictions, in the shape of a
quatrain, written by the young wife of an evicted tenant. This young
woman, Mrs. Mahoney, was observed by one of the officers, as the
eviction went on, to go apart to a window, where she stood for a while
apparently writing something on a wooden panel of the shutter. After the
eviction was over the officer remembered this, and going up to the
window found these lines pencilled upon the panel:--
"We are evicted from this house,
Me and my loving man;
We're homeless now upon the world!
May the divil take 'the Plan'!"
CORK, _Monday, Feb. 27._--A most interesting day. I left alone and early
by the train for Youghal, having sent before me a letter of introduction
to Canon Keller, the parish priest, who has recently become a
conspicuous person through his refusal to give evidence about matters,
his knowledge of which he conceives to be "privileged," as acquired in
his capacity as a priest.
I had many fine views of the shore and the sea as we ran along, and the
site of Youghal itself is very fine. It is an old seaport town, and once
was a place of considerable trade, especially in wool.
Oliver dwelt here for a while, and from Youghal he embarked on his
victorious return to England. He seems to have done his work while he
was here "not negligently," like Harrison at Naseby Field, for when he
departed he left Youghal a citadel of Protestant intolerance. Even under
Charles II they maintained an ordinance forbidding "any Papist to buy or
barter anything in the public markets," which may be taken as a piece of
cold-blooded and statutory "boycotting." Then there was no parish priest
in Youghal; now it may almost be said there is nobody in Youghal but the
parish priest! So does "the whirligig of time bring in his revenges"!
At Youghal station a very civil young man came up, calling me by name,
and said Father Keller had sent him with a car to meet me. We drove up
past some beautiful grounds into the main street. A picturesque
waterside town, little lanes and narrow streets leading out of the main
artery down to the bay, and a savour of the sea in the place, grateful
doubtless to the souls of Raleigh and the west country folk he brought
over here when he became lord of the land, just three hundred years ago.
Edmund Spenser came here in those days to see him, and talk over the
events of that senseless rising of the Desmonds, which gave the poet of
the "Faerie Queen" his awful pictures of the desolation of Ireland, and
made the planter of Virginia master of more than forty thousand acres of
Irish land.
We turned suddenly into a little narrow wynd, and pulled up, the driver
saying, "There is the Father, yer honour!" In a moment up came a tall,
very fine-looking ecclesiastic, quite the best dressed and most
distinguished-looking priest I have yet seen in Ireland, with features
of a fine Teutonic type, and the erect bearing of a soldier. I jumped
down to greet him, and he proposed that we should walk together to his
house near by. An extremely good house I found it to be, well placed in
the most interesting quarter of the town. Having it in my mind to drive
on from Youghal to Lismore, there to make an early dinner, see the
castle of the Duke of Devonshire, and return to Cork by an evening
train, I had to decline Father Keller's cordial hospitalities, but he
gave me a most interesting hour with him in his comfortable study.
Father Keller stands firmly by the position which earned for him a
sentence of imprisonment last year, when he refused to testify before a
court of justice in a bankruptcy case, on the ground that it might
"drift him into answers which would disclose secrets he was bound in
honour not to disclose." He does not accept the view taken of his
conduct, however, by Lord Selborne, that, in the circumstances, his
refusal is to be regarded as the act of his ecclesiastical superiors
rather than his own. He maintains it as his own view of the sworn duty
of a priest, and not unnaturally therefore he looks upon his sentence as
a blow levelled at the clergy; nor, as I understood him, has he
abandoned his original contention, that the Court had no right to summon
him as a witness. It was impossible to listen to him on this subject,
and doubt his entire good faith, nor do I see that he ought to be held
responsible for the interpretation put by Mr. Lane, M.P., and others
upon his attitude as a priest, in a sense going to make him merely a
"martyr" of Home Rule. I did not gather from what he said that, in his
mind, the question of his relations with the Nationalists or the Plan of
Campaign entered into that affair at all, but simply that he believed
the right and the duty of a priest to protect, no matter at what cost to
himself, secrets confided to him as a priest, was really involved in his
consent or refusal to answer, when he was asked whether he was or was
not on a certain day at the "Mall House" in Youghal. Of course from the
connection of this refusal in this particular case with the Nationalist
movement, Nationalists would easily glide into the idea that he refused
to testify in order to serve their cause.
As to the troubles on the Ponsonby estate, Father Keller spoke very
freely. He divided the responsibility for them between the
untractableness of the agent, and the absenteeism of the owner. It was
only since the troubles began, he said, that he had ever seen Mr.
Ponsonby, who lived in Hampshire, and was therefore out of touch with
the condition and the feelings of the people here. In a personal
interview with him he had found Mr. Ponsonby a kindly disposed
Englishman, but the estate is heavily encumbered, and the agent who has
had complete control of it forced the tenants, by his hard and fast
refusal of a reasonable reduction more than two years ago, into an
initial combination to defend themselves by "clubbing" their rents. That
was before Mr. Dillon announced the Plan of Campaign at all.
"It was not till the autumn of 1886," said Father Keller, "that any
question arose of the Plan of Campaign here,[8] and it was by the
tenants themselves that the determination was taken to adopt it. My part
has been that of a peace-maker throughout, and we should have had peace
if Mr. Ponsonby would have listened to me; we should have had peace, and
he would have received a reasonable rental for his property. Instead of
this, look at the law costs arising out of bankruptcy proceedings and
sheriff's sales and writs and processes, and the whole district thrown
into disorder and confusion, and the industrious people now put out of
their holdings, and forced into idleness."
As to the recent evictions which had taken place, Father Keller said
they had taken him as well as the people by surprise, and had thus led
to greater agitation and excitement. "But the unfortunate incident of
the loss of Hanlon's life," he said, "would never have occurred had I
been duly apprised of what was going on in the town. I had come home
into my house, having quieted the people, and left all in order, as I
thought, when that charge of the police, for which there was no
occasion, and which led to the killing of Hanlon, was ordered. I made my
way rapidly to the people, and when I appeared they were brought to
patience and to good order with astonishing ease, despite all that had
occurred."
As to the present outlook, it was his opinion that Mr. Ponsonby, even
with the Cork Defence Union behind him, could not hold out. "The Land
Corporation were taking over some parts of the estate, and putting
Emergency men on them--a set of desperate men, a kind of _enfants
perdus_," he said, "to work and manage the land;" but he did not believe
the operation could be successfully carried out. Meanwhile he
confidently counted upon seeing "the present Tory Government give way,
and go out, when it would become necessary for the landlords to do
justice to the rack-rented people. Pray understand," said Father Keller,
"that I do not say all landlords stand at all where Mr. Ponsonby has
been put by his agent, for that is not the case; but the action of many
landlords in the county Cork in sustaining Mr. Ponsonby, whose estate is
and has been as badly rack-rented an estate as can be found, is, in my
judgment, most unwise, and threatening to the peace and happiness of
Ireland."[9]
I asked whether, in his opinion, it would be possible for the Ponsonby
tenants to live and prosper here on this estate, could they become
peasant proprietors of it under Lord Ashbourne's Act, provided they
increased in numbers, as in that event might be expected. This he
thought very doubtful so far as a few of the tenants are concerned.
"Would you seek a remedy, then," I asked, "in emigration?"
"No, not in emigration," he replied, "but in migration."
I begged him to explain the difference.
"What I mean," he said, "is, that the people should migrate, not out of
Ireland, but from those parts of Ireland which cannot support them into
parts of Ireland which can support them. There is room in Meath, for
example, for the people of many congested districts."
"You would, then, turn the great cattle farms of Meath," I said, "into
peasant holdings?"
"Certainly."
"But would not that involve the expropriation of many people now
established in Meath, and the disturbance or destruction of a great
cattle industry for which Ireland has especial advantages?"
To this Father Keller replied that he did not wish to see Ireland
exporting her cattle, any more than to see Ireland exporting her sons
and daughters. "I mean," he said, quite earnestly, "when they are forced
to export them to pay exorbitant rents, and thus deprive themselves of
their capital or of a fair share of the comforts of life. I should be
glad to see the Irish people sufficient to themselves by the domestic
exchange of their own industries and products." At the same time he
begged me to understand that he had no wish to see this development
attended by any estrangement or hostile feeling between Ireland and
Great Britain. "On the contrary," he said, "I have seen with the
greatest satisfaction the growth of such good feeling towards England as
I never expected to witness, as the result of the visits here of English
public men, sympathising with the Irish tenants. I believe their visits
are opening the way to a real union of the Democracies of the two
countries, and to an alliance between them against the aristocratic
classes which depress both peoples." This alliance Father Keller
believed would be a sufficient guarantee against any religious contest
between the Catholics of Ireland and the Protestants of Great Britain.
"I was much astounded," he said, "the other day, to hear from an English
gentleman that he had met a Protestant clergyman who told him he really
believed that a persecution of the Protestants would follow the
establishment of Home Rule in Ireland. I begged him to consider that Mr.
Parnell was a Protestant, and I assured him Protestants would have
absolutely nothing to fear from Home Rule."
Reverting to his idea of re-distributing the Irish population through
Ireland, under changed conditions, social and economical, I asked him
how in Meath, for example, he would meet the difficulty of stocking with
cattle the peasant holdings of a new set of proprietors not owning
stock. He thought it would be easily met by advances of money from the
Treasury to the peasant proprietors, these advances to be repaid, with
interest, as in the case of Lady Burdett Coutts, and the advances made
by her to the fishermen now under the direction of Father Davis at
Baltimore.
I was struck by the resemblance of these views to the Irish policy
sketched for me by my Nationalist fellow-traveller of the other night
from London. "The evil that men do lives after them"--and when one
remembers how only a hundred years ago, and just after the establishment
of American Independence ought to have taught England a lesson, the
Irish House of Commons had to deal with the persistent determination of
the English manufacturers to fight the bogey of Irish competition by
protective duties in England against imports from Ireland, it is not
surprising that Irishmen who allow sentiment to get the upper hand of
sense should now think of playing a return game. England went in fear
then not only of Irish beasts and Irish butter, but of Irish woollens,
Irish cottons, Irish leather, Irish glass. Nay, absurd as it may now
seem, English ironmasters no longer ago than in 1785 testified before a
Parliamentary Committee that unless a duty was clapped on Irish
manufactures of iron, the Irish ironmasters had such advantages through
cheaper labour and through the discrimination in their favour under the
then existing relations with the new Republic of the United States that
they would "ruin the ironmasters of England."
In Ireland, as in America, the benign spirit of Free Trade is thwarted
and intercepted at every turn by the abominable ghost of British
Protection. What a blessing it would have been if the meddlesome
palaverers of the Cobden Club, American as well as English, could ever
have been made to understand the essentially insular character of
Protection and the essentially continental character of Free Trade!
It should never be forgotten, and it is almost never remembered, that
when the Treaty of Versailles was making in 1783 the American
Commissioners offered complete free trade between the United States and
all parts of the British Dominions save the territories of the East
India Company. The British Commissioner, David Hartley, saw the value of
this proposition, and submitted it at London. But King George III. would
not entertain it.
When I rose to leave him Father Keller courteously insisted on showing
me the "lions" of Youghal. A most accomplished cicerone he proved to be.
As we left his house we met in the street two or three of the "evicted"
tenants, whom he introduced to me. One of these, Mr. Loughlin, was the
holder of farms representing a rental of £94. A stalwart, hearty,
rotund, and rubicund farmer he was, and in reply to my query how long
the holdings he had lost had been in his family, he answered, "not far
from two hundred years." Certainly some one must have blundered as badly
as at Balaklava to make it necessary for a tenant with such a past
behind him to go out of his holdings on arrears of a twelvemonth. Father
Keller gave me, as we left Mr. Loughlin and his friend, a leaflet in
which he has printed the story of "the struggle for life on the Ponsonby
estate," as he understands it.
A minute's walk brought us to Sir Walter Raleigh's house, now the
property of Sir John Pope Hennessey. It was probably built by Sir Walter
while he lived here in 1588-89, during the time of the great Armada; for
it is a typical Elizabethan house, quaintly gabled, with charming Tudor
windows, and delightfully wainscoted with richly carved black oak. A
chimney-piece in the library where Sir John's aged mother received us
most kindly and hospitably is a marvel of Elizabethan woodwork. The
shelves are filled with a quaint and miscellaneous collection of old and
rare books. I opened at random one fine old quarto, and found it to
contain, among other curious tracts, models of typography, a Latin
critical disquisition by Raphael Regini on the first edition of
Plutarch's Life of Cicero, "_nuper inventâ diu desideraiâ _"--a
disquisition quite aglow with the cinquecento delight in discovery and
adventure. In the grounds of this charming house stand four very fine
Irish yews forming a little hollow square, within which, according to a
local legend, Sir Walter sat enjoying the first pipe of tobacco ever
lighted in Ireland, when his terrified serving-maid espying the smoke
that curled about her master's head hastily ran up and emptied a pail of
water over him. In the garden here, too, we are told, was first planted
the esculent which better deserves to be called the Curse of Ireland
than does the Nine of Diamonds to be known as the Curse of Scotland. The
Irish yew must have been indigenous here, for the name of Youghal,
Father Keller tells me, in Irish signifies "the wood of yew-trees." A
subterranean passage is said to lead from Sir Walter's dining-room into
the church, but we preferred the light of day.
The precincts of the church adjoin the grounds and garden, and with
these make up a most fascinating poem in architecture. The churches of
St. Mary of Youghal and St. Nicholas of Galway have always been cited to
me as the two most interesting churches in Ireland. Certainly this
church of St. Mary, as now restored, is worth a journey to see. Its
massive tower, with walls eight feet thick, its battlemented chancel,
the pointed arches of its nave and aisles, a curious and, so far as I
know, unique arch in the north transept, drawn at an obtuse angle and
demarcating a quaint little side-chapel, and the interesting monuments
it contains, all were pointed out to me with as much zest and
intelligent delight by Father Keller as if the edifice were still
dedicated to the faith which originally called it into existence. It
contains a fine Jacobean tomb of Richard, the "great Earl of Cork," who
died here in September 1643. On this monument, which is in admirable
condition, the effigy of the earl appears between those of his two
wives, while below them kneel his five sons and seven daughters, their
names and those of their partners in marriage inscribed upon the marble.
It was of this earl that Oliver said: "Had there been an Earl of Cork in
every province, there had been no rebellion in Ireland." Several Earls
of Desmond are also buried here, including the founder of the church,
and under a monumental effigy in one of the transepts lies the wonderful
old Countess of Desmond, who having danced in her youth with Richard
III. lived through the Tudor dynasty "to the age of a hundred and ten,"
and, as the old distich tells us, "died by a fall from a cherry-tree
then."
In the churchyard is a hillock, bare of grass, about a tomb. There lies
buried, according to tradition, a public functionary who attested a
statement by exclaiming, "If I speak falsely, may grass never grow on my
grave." One of his descendants is doubtless now an M.P. Mr. Cameron had
kindly written from Cork to the officer in charge of the constabulary
here asking him to get me a good car for Lismore. So Father Keller very
kindly walked with me through the town to the "Devonshire Arms," a very
neat and considerable hotel, in quest of him. On the way he pointed out
to me what remains of a house which is supposed to have served as the
headquarters of Cromwell while he was here, and a small chapel also in
which the Protector worshipped after his sort. Off the main street is a
lane called Windmill Lane, where probably stood the windmill from which
in 1580 a Franciscan friar, Father David O'Neilan, was hung by the feet
and shot to death by the soldiers of Elizabeth because he refused to
acknowledge the spiritual supremacy of the Queen. He had been dragged
through the main street at the tail of a horse to the place of
execution. His name is one of many names of confessors of that time
about to be submitted at Rome for canonisation. We could not find the
officer I sought at the hotel, but Father Keller took me to a livery-man
in the main street, who very promptly got out a car with "his best
horse," and a jarvey who would "surely take me over to Lismore inside of
two hours and a half." He was as good as his master's word, and a
delightful drive it was, following the course of Spenser's river, the
Awniduffe, "which by the Englishman is called Blackwater." Nobody now
calls it anything else. The view of Youghal Harbour, as we made a great
circuit by the bridge on leaving the town, was exceedingly fine. Lying
as it does within easy reach of Cork, this might be made a very pleasant
summer halting-place for Americans landing at Queenstown, who now go
further and probably fare worse. One Western wanderer, with his family,
Father Keller told me, did last year establish himself here, a Catholic
from Boston, to whom a son was born, and who begged the Father to give
the lad a local name in baptism, "the oldest he could think of."
I should have thought St. Declan would have been "old" enough, or St.
Nessan of "Ireland's Eye," or Saint Cartagh, who made Lismore a holy
city, "into the half of which no woman durst enter," sufficiently
"local," but Father Keller found in the Calendar a more satisfactory
saint still in St. Goran or "Curran," known also as St. Mochicaroen _de
Nona_, from a change he made in the recitation of that part of the Holy
Office.
The drive from Youghal to Lismore along the Blackwater, begins,
continues, and ends in beauty. In the summer a steamer makes the trip by
the river, and it must be as charming in its way as the ascent of the
Dart from Dartmouth to Totness, or of the Eance from Dinard to St.
Suliac. My jarvey was rather a taciturn fellow, but by no means
insensible to the charms of his native region. About the Ponsonby estate
and its troubles he said very little, but that little was not entirely
in keeping with what I had heard at Youghal. "It was an old place, and
there was no grand house on it. But the landlord was a kind-man."
"Father Keller was a good man too. It was a great pity the people
couldn't be on their farms; and there was land that was taken on the
hills. It was a great pity. The people came from all parts to see the
Blackwater and Lismore; and there was money going." "Yes, he would be
glad to see it all quiet again. Ah yes! that was a most beautiful place
there just running out into the Blackwater. It was a gentleman owned it;
he lived there a good deal, and he fished. Ah! there's no such river in
the whole world for salmon as the Blackwater; indeed, there is not!
Everything was better when he was a lad. There was more money going, and
less talking. Father Keller was a very good man; but he was a new man,
and came to Youghal from Queenstown."
We passed on our way the ruins of Dromaneen Castle, the birthplace of
the lively old Countess of Desmond, who lies buried at Youghal. Here,
too, according to a local tradition, she met her death, having climbed
too high into a famous cherry-tree at Affane, near Dromaneen, planted
there by Sir Walter Raleigh, who first introduced this fruit, as well as
the tobacco plant and the potato, into Ireland. At Cappoquin, which
stands beautifully on the river, I should have been glad to halt for the
night, in order to visit the Trappist Monastery there, an offshoot of La
Meilleraye, planted, I think, by some monks from Santa Susanna, of
Lulworth, after Charles X. took refuge in the secluded and beautiful
home of the Welds. The schools of this monastery have been a benediction
to all this part of Ireland for more than half a century.
Lismore has nothing now to show of its ancient importance save its
castle and its cathedral, both of them absolutely modern! A hundred
years ago the castle was simply a ruin overhanging the river. It then
belonged to the fifth Duke of Devonshire, who had inherited it from his
mother, the only child and heiress of the friend of Pope, Richard,
fourth Earl of Cork, and third Earl of Burlington. It had come into the
hands of the Boyles by purchase from Sir Walter Ealeigh, to whom
Elizabeth had granted it, with all its appendages and appurtenances. The
fifth Duke of Devonshire, who was the husband of Coleridge's "lady
nursed in pomp and pleasure," did little or nothing, I believe, to
restore the vanished glories of Lismore; and the castle, as it now
exists, is the creation of his son, the artistic bachelor Duke, to whom
England owes the Crystal Palace and all the other outcomes of Sir Joseph
Paxton's industry and enterprise. His kinsman and successor, the present
Duke, used to visit Lismore regularly down to the time of the atrocious
murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish, and many of the beautiful walks and
groves which make the place lovely are due, I believe, to his taste and
his appreciation of the natural charms of Lismore. I dismissed my car at
the "Devonshire Arms," an admirable little hotel near the river, and
having ordered my dinner there, walked down to the castle, almost within
the grounds of which the hotel stands. It is impossible to imagine a
more picturesque site for a great inland mansion. The views up and down
the Blackwater from the drawing-room windows are simply the perfection
of river landscape. The grounds are beautifully laid out, one secluded
garden-walk, in particular, taking you back to the inimitable Italian
garden-walks of the seventeenth century. In the vestibule is the sword
of state of the Corporation of Youghal, a carved wooden cradle for which
still stands in the church at that place, and over the great gateway are
the arms of the great Earl of Cork, but these are almost the only
outward and visible signs of the historic past about the castle. Seen
from the graceful stone bridge which spans the river, its grey towers
and turrets quite excuse the youthful enthusiasm with which the Duke of
Connaught, who made a visit here when he was Prince Arthur, is said to
have written to his mother, that Lismore was "a beautiful place, very
like Windsor Castle, only much finer."
Lismore Cathedral was almost entirely rebuilt by the second Earl of Cork
three or four years after the Restoration, and has a handsome marble
spire, but there is little in it to recall the Catholic times in which
Lismore was a city of churches and a centre of Irish devotion.
The hostess of the "Devonshire Arms" gave me some excellent salmon,
fresh from the river, and a very good dinner. She bewailed the evil days
on which she has fallen, and the loss to Lismore of all that the Castle
used to mean to the people. Lady Edward Cavendish had spent a short time
here some little time ago, she said, and the people were delighted to
have her come there. "It would be a great thing for the country if all
the uproar and quarrelling could be put an end to. It did nobody any
good, least of all the poor people."
From Lismore I came back by the railway through Fermoy.