PORTUMNA, GALWAY, _Feb. 28._--I left Cork by an early train to-day, and
passing through the counties of Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Queen's, and
King's, reached this place after dark on a car from Parsonstown. The day
was delightfully cool and bright. I had the carriage to myself almost
all the way, and gave up all the time I could snatch from the constantly
varying and often very beautiful scenery to reading a curious pamphlet
which I picked up in Dublin entitled _Pour I'Irlande._ It purports to
have been written by a "Canadian priest" living at Lurgan in Ireland,
and to be a reply to M. de Mandat Grancey's volume, _Chez Paddy._ It is
adorned with a frontispiece representing a monster of the Cerberus type
on a monument, with three heads and three collars labelled respectively
"Flattery," "Famine," and "Coercion." On the pedestal is the
inscription--"1800 to 1887. Erected by the grateful Irish to the English
Government." The text is in keeping with the frontispiece. In a passage
devoted to the "atrocious evictions" of Glenbehy in 1887, the agent of
the property is represented as "setting fire with petroleum" to the
houses of two helpless men, and turning out "eighteen human beings into
the highway in the depth of winter." Not a word is said of the agent's
flat denial of these charges, nor a word of the advice given to the
agent by Sir Redvers Buller that the mortgagee ought to level the
cottages occupied by trespassers, nor a word about Father Quilter's
letter to Colonel Turner, branding his flock as "poor slaves" of the
League, and turning them over to "Mr. Roe or any other agent" to do as
he liked with them, since they could not, or would not, keep their
plighted faith given through their own priest.
This sort of ostrich fury is common enough among the regular drumbeaters
of the Irish agitation. But it is not creditable to a "Canadian priest."
Still less creditable is his direct arraignment of M. de Mandat
Grancey's good faith and veracity upon the strength of what he describes
as M. de Mandat Grancey's amplification and distortion of a story told
by himself. This was a tale of a priest called out to confess one of his
parishioners. The penitent accused himself of killing one man, and
trying to kill several others. The priest, as the dreadful tale went on,
made a tally on his sleeve, with chalk, of the crimes recited. "Good
heavens! my son," he cried at last, "what had all these men done to you
that you tried to send them all into eternity? Who were they?"
"Oh, Father, they were all bailiffs or tax-collectors!"
"You idiot!" exclaimed the confessor, angrily rubbing at his sleeve,
"why didn't ye tell me that before instead of letting me spoil my best
cassock?"
As I happened to have the book of M. de Mandat Grancey in my
despatch-box, I compared it with the attack made upon it. The results
were edifying. In the first place, M. de Mandat Grancey does not
indicate the Canadian priest as his authority. He says that he heard the
story, apparently at a dinner-table in France, from a _curé Irlandais_,
who was endeavouring to impress upon his hearers "the sympathy of the
clergy with the Land League." The "Canadian priest" now comes forward
and makes it a count in his indictment against M. de Mandat Grancey that
he is described as an "Irish curate," when he is in fact neither an
Irishman nor a curate. What was more natural than that an ecclesiastic,
claiming to live in Ireland, and telling stories in France about the
sympathy of the Irish clergy with the Land League, should be taken by
one of his auditors to be an Irish _curé_, particularly as the French
_curé_ is, I believe, the equivalent of the Irish "parish priest"?
In the next place, the "Canadian priest" declares that the story "is as
old as the Round Towers of Ireland," and that M. de Mandat Grancey
represents him as making himself the hero of the tale. As a matter of
fact, M. de Mandat Grancey does nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he
expressly says that the _curé Irlandais_, who told the story, gave it to
his hearers as having occurred not to himself at all, but "to one of his
colleagues." Furthermore he is at the pains to add (_Chez Paddy_, p. 43)
that the story, which was not to the taste of some of the French
ecclesiastics who heard it, was related "as a simple pleasantry."
"But," he adds, and this I suspect is the sting which has so exasperated
the "Canadian priest," "he gave us to understand at the same time that
this pleasantry struck the keynote of the state of mind of many Irish
priests, and, he said, that he was himself the President of the League
in his district."
In connection with Colonel Turner's statements as to the conduct of
Father White at Milltown Malbay, and with the accounts given me of the
conduct of Father Sheehan at Lixnaw, this side-light upon the relations
of a certain class of the Irish clergy with the most violent henchmen of
the League, is certainly noteworthy. I happen to have had some
correspondence with friends of mine in Paris, who are friends also of M.
de Mandat Grarncey, about his visit to Ireland before he made it, and I
am quite certain that he went there, to put the case mildly, with no
prejudices in favour of the English Government or against the
Nationalists. Perhaps the extreme bitterness shown in the pamphlet of
the "Canadian priest" may have been born of his disgust at finding that
the sympathy of French Catholics with Catholic Ireland draws the line at
priests who regard the assassination of "bailiffs and tax-collectors" as
a pardonable, if not positively amusing, excess of patriotic zeal.
It was late when I reached Parsonstown, known of old in Irish story as
Birr, from St. Brendan's Abbey of Biorra, and now a clean prosperous
place, carefully looked after by the chief landlord of the region, the
Earl of Rosse, who, while he inherits the astronomical tastes and the
mathematical ability of his father, is not so absorbed in star-gazing as
to be indifferent to his terrestrial duties and obligations. I have
heard nothing but good of him, and of his management of his estates,
from men of the most diverse political views. But I think it more
important to get a look at the Clanricarde property, about which I have
heard little but evil from anybody. The strongest point I have heard
made in favour of the owner is, that he is habitually described by that
dumb organ of a down-trodden people, _United Ireland_, as "the most vile
Clanricarde."
I found a good car at the railway station, and set off at once for
Portumna. Parsonstown was called by Sir William Petty, in his _Survey of
Ireland_, the _umbilicus Hiberniæ_. It is the centre of Ireland, as a
point near Newnham Paddox is of England, and the famous or infamous "Bog
of Allan" stretches hence to Athlone. Our way fortunately took us
westward. A light railway was laid down some years ago from Parsonstown
to Portumna, but it did not pay, and it has now been abandoned.
"What has become of the road?" I asked my jarvey.
"Oh! they just take up the rails when they like, the people do."
"And what do they do with them?"
"Is it what they do with them? Oh; they make fences of them for the
beasts."
He was a dry, shrewd old fellow, not very amiably disposed, I was sorry
to find, towards my own country.
"Ah! it's America, sorr, that's been the ruin of us entirely."
"Pray, how is that?"
"It's the storms they send; and then the grain; and now they tell me
it's the American beasts that's spoiling the market altogether for
Ireland."
"Is that what your member tells you?"
"The member, sorr? which member?"
"The member of Parliament for your district, I mean. What is his name?"
"His name? Well, I'm not sure; and I don't know that I know the man at
all. But I believe his name is Mulloy."
"Does he live in Portumna?"
"Oh no, not at all. I don't know at all where he lives, but I believe
it's in Tullamore. But what would he know about America? Sure, any one
can see it's the storms and the grain that is the death of us in
Ireland."
"But I thought it was the landlords and the rents?"
"Oh, that's in Woodford and Loughrea; not here at all. There'll be no
good till we get a war."
"Get a war? with whom? What do you want a war for?"
"Ah! it was the good time when we had the Crimean war--with the wheat
all about Portumna. I'll show you the great store there was built. It's
no use now. But we'll have a war. My son, he's a soldier now. He went
out to America. But he didn't like it."
"Why not?" I asked.
"Oh, he didn't like it. He could get no work, but to be a porter, and it
was too hard. So he came back in three months' time, and then he 'listed
for a soldier. He's over in England now. He likes it very well. He's
getting very good pay. They pay the soldiers well. There's a troop of
Hussars here now. They bring a power of money to the place."
"What do they do with the wheat lands now?"
"Oh, they're for sheep; they do very well. Were you ever in Australia,
sorr?" pointing to a place we were passing. "There was a man came here
from Australia with a pot of money, and he bought that place; but he
thought he was a bigger man than he was, and now he's found himself out.
I think he would have done as well to stay in Australia where he was."
In quite a different vein he spoke of the landlord of another large
seat, and of the way in which the people, some of them, had
misbehaved--breaking open the graves of the family on the place, "and
tossing the coffins and the bones about, and all for what?"
The view as we crossed the long and very fine bridge over the Shannon
after dusk was very striking. It was not too dark to make out the course
of the broad gleaming river, and the lights of the town made it seem
larger, I daresay, than it really is. As we drove up the main street I
told my jarvey to take me to the Castle.
"To the Castle, is it?" he replied, looking around at me with an
astonished air.
"Yes," I said, "I am going to see Mr. Tener, the agent, who lives there,
doesn't he?"
"Oh, the new agent? Oh yes; I believe he's a very good man."
"You don't expect to be 'boycotted' for going to the Castle, do you?"
"And why should I be? But I haven't been inside of the Castle gates for
twenty years. And--here they are!" he cried out suddenly, pulling up his
horse just in time to avoid driving him up against a pair of iron gates
inhospitably closed. It was by this time pitch dark. Not a light could
we see within the enclosure. But presently a couple of shadowy forms
appeared behind the iron gates; the iron gates creaked on their hinges,
a masculine voice bade us drive in, and a policeman with a lantern
advanced from a thicket of trees. All this had a fine martial and
adventurous aspect, and my jarvey seemed to enjoy it as much as I.
We got directions from the friendly policeman as to the roads and the
landmarks, and after once nearly running into a clump of trees found
ourselves at last in an open courtyard, where men appeared and took
charge of the car, the horse, and my luggage. We were in a quadrangle of
the out-buildings attached to the old residence of the Clanricardes,
which had escaped the fire of 1826. The late Marquis for a long time
hesitated whether to reconstruct the castle on the old site (the walls
are still standing), or to build an entirely new house on another site.
He finally chose the latter alternative, chiefly, I am told, under the
advice of his oldest son, the late Lord Dunkellin, one of the most
charming and deservedly popular men of his time. He was a great friend
and admirer of Father Burke, whom he used to claim as a Galway cousin,
and with whom I met him in Rome not long before his death in the summer
of 1867. His brother, the present Marquis, I have never met, but Mr.
Tener, his present agent here, who passed some time in America several
years ago, learning from him that I wished to see this place, very
courteously wrote to me asking me to make his house my headquarters. I
found my way through queer passages to a cheery little hall where my
host met me, and taking me into a pleasant little parlour, enlivened by
flowers, and a merrily blazing fire, presented me to Mrs. Tener.
Mr. Tener is an Ulster man from the County Cavan. He went with his wife
on their bridal trip to America, and what he there saw of the peremptory
fashion in which the authorities deal with conspiracies to resist the
law seems not unnaturally to have made him a little impatient of the
dilatory, not to say dawdling, processes of the law in his own country.
He gave me a very interesting account after dinner this evening of the
situation in which he found affairs on this property, an account very
different from those which I have seen in print. He is himself the owner
of a small landed property in Cavan, and he has had a good deal of
experience as an agent for other properties. "I have a very simple
rule," he said to me, "in dealing with Irish tenants, and that is
neither to do an injustice nor to submit to one." It was only, he said,
after convincing himself that the Clanricarde tenants had no legitimate
ground of complaint against the management of the estate, not removable
upon a fair and candid discussion of all the issues involved between
them and himself, that he consented to take charge of the property. That
to do this was to run a certain personal risk, in the present state of
the country, he was quite aware.
But he takes this part of the contract very coolly, telling me that the
only real danger, he thinks, is incurred when he makes a journey of
which he has to send a notice by telegraph--a remark which recalled to
me the curious advice given me in Dublin to seal my letters, as a
protection against "the Nationalist clerks in the post-offices." The
park of Portumua Castle, which is very extensive, is patrolled by armed
policemen, and whenever Mr. Tener drives out he is followed by a police
car carrying two armed men.
"Against whom are all these precautions necessary?" I asked. "Against
the evicted tenants, or against the local agents of the League?"
"Not at all against the tenants," he replied, "as you can satisfy
yourself by talking with them. The trouble comes not from the tenants at
all, nor from the people here at Portumna, but from mischievous and
dangerous persons at Loughrea and Woodford. Woodford, mind you, not
being Lord Clanricarde's place at all, though all the country has been
roused about the cruel Clanricarde and his wicked Woodford evictions.
Woodford was simply the headquarters of the agitation against Lord
Clanricarde and my predecessor, Mr. Joyce, and it has got the name of
the 'cockpit of Ireland,' because it was there that Mr. Dillon, in
October 1886, opened the 'war against the landlords' with the 'Plan of
Campaign.' It is an odd circumstance, by the way, worth noting, that
when these apostles of Irish agitation went to Lord Clanricarde's
property nearer the city of Gralway, and tried to stir the people up,
they failed dismally, because the people there could understand no
English, and the Irish agitators could speak no Irish! Nobody has ever
had the face to pretend that the Clanricarde estates were 'rack-rented.'
There have been many personal attacks made upon Mr. Joyce and upon Lord
Clanricarde, and Mr. Joyce has brought that well-known action against
the Marquis for libel, and all this answers with the general public as
an argument to show that the tenants on the Clanricarde property must
have had great grievances, and must have been cruelly ground down and
unable to pay their way. I will introduce you, if you will allow me, to
the Catholic Bishop here, and to the resident Protestant clergyman, and
to the manager of the bank, and they can help you to form your own
judgment as to the state of the tenants. You will find that whatever
quarrels they may have had with their landlord or his agent, they are
now, and always have been, quite able to pay their rents, and I need not
tell you that it is no longer in the power of a landlord or an agent to
say what these rents shall be."[10]
"Mr. Dillon in that speech of his at Woodford (I have it here as
published in _United Ireland_), you will see, openly advised, or rather
ordered, the tenants here to club their rents, or, in plain English, the
money due to their landlord, with the deliberate intent to confiscate to
their own use, or, in their own jargon, 'grab,' the money of any one of
their number who, after going into this dishonest combination, might
find it working badly and wish to get out of it. Here is his own
language:"--
I took the speech as reported in the _United Ireland_ of October 23rd,
1886, and therein found Mr. Dillon, M.P., using these words:--"If you
mean to fight really, you must put the money aside for two
reasons--first of all because you want the means to support the men who
are hit first; and, secondly, because you want to prohibit traitors
going behind your back. There is no way to deal with a traitor except to
get his money under lock and key, and if you find that he pays his rent,
and betrays the organisation, what will you do with him? I will tell you
what to do with him. _Close upon his money, and use it for the
organisation_. I have always opposed outrages. _This is a legal plan,
and it is ten times more effective_."
Not a word here as to the morality of the proceeding thus recommended;
but almost in the same breath in which he bade his ignorant hearers
regard his plan as "legal," Mr. Dillon said to them, "_this must be done
privately, and you must not inform the public where the money is
placed_!"
Why not, if the plan was "legal"? Mr. Dillon, I believe, is not a
lawyer, but he can hardly have deluded himself into thinking his plan of
campaign "legal" in the face of the particular pains taken by his
leader, Mr. Parnell, to disclaim all participation in any such plans. A
year before Mr. Dillon made this curious speech, Mr. Parnell, I
remember, on the 11th of October 1885, speaking at Kildare, declared
that he had "in no case during the last few years advised any
combination among tenants against even rack-rents," and insisted that
any combination of the sort which might exist should be regarded as an
"isolated" combination, "confined to the tenants of individual estates,
who, of their own accord, without any incitement from us, on the
contrary, kept back by us, without any urging on our part, without any
advice on our part, but stung by necessity, and the terrible realities
of their position, may have formed such a combination among themselves
to secure such a reduction of rent as will enable them to live in their
own homes." From this language of Mr. Parnell in October 1885 to Mr.
Dillon's speech in October 1886, urging and advising the tenants to
organise, exact contributions from every member of the organisation, and
put these contributions under the control of third parties determined to
confiscate the money subscribed by any member who might not find the
organisation working to his advantage, is a rather long step! It covers
all the distance between a cunning defensive evasion of the law, and an
open aggressive violation of the law--not of the land only, but of
common honesty. One of two things is clear: either these combinations
are voluntary and "isolated," and intended, as Mr. Parnell asserts, to
secure such a reduction of rents as will enable the tenants, and each of
them, to live peacefully and comfortably at home, and in that case any
member of the combination who finds that he can attain his object better
by leaving it has an absolute right to do this, and to demand the return
of his money; or they are part of a system imposed upon the tenants by a
moral coercion inconsistent with the most elementary ideas of private
right and personal freedom. This makes the importance of Mr. Dillon's
speech, that by his denunciation of any member who wishes to withdraw
from this "voluntary" combination as a "traitor," and by his order to
"close upon the money" of any such member, "and use it for the
organisation," he brands the "organisation" as a subterranean despotism
of a very cheap and nasty kind. The Government which tolerates the
creation of such a Houndsditch tyranny as this within its dominions
richly deserves to be overthrown. As for the people who submit
themselves to it, I do not wonder that in his more lucid moments a
Catholic priest like Father Quilter feels himself moved to denounce them
as "poor slaves." Of course with a benevolent neutral like myself, the
question always recurs, Who trained them to submit to this sort of
thing? But I really am at a loss to see why a parcel of conspirators
should be encouraged in the nineteenth century to bully Irish farmers
out of their manhood and their money, because in the seventeenth century
it pleased the stupid rulers of England, as the great Duke of Ormond
indignantly said, to "put so general a discountenance upon the
improvement of Ireland, as if it were resolved that to keep it low is to
keep it safe."
On going back to the little drawing-room after dinner we found Mrs.
Tener among her flowers, busy with some literary work. It is not a gay
life here, she admits, her nearest visiting acquaintance living some
seven or eight miles away--but she takes long walks with a couple of
stalwart dogs in her company, and has little fear of being molested.
"The tenants are in more danger," she thinks, "than the landlords or the
agents"--nor do I see any reason to doubt this, remembering the Connells
whom I saw at Edenvale, and the story of the "boycotted" Fitzmaurice
brutally murdered in the presence of his daughter at Lixnaw on the 31st
of January, as if by way of welcome to Lord Ripon and Mr. Morley on
their arrival at Dublin.
PORTUMNA, _Feb. 29th._--Early this morning two of the "evicted" tenants,
and an ex-bailiff of the property here, came by appointment to discuss
the situation with Mr. Tener. He asked me to attend the conference, and
upon learning that I was an American, they expressed their perfect
willingness that I should do so. The tenants were quiet, sturdy,
intelligent-looking men. I asked one of them if he objected to telling
me whether he thought the rent he had refused to pay excessive, or
whether he was simply unable to pay it.
"I had the money, sir, to pay the rent," he replied, "and I wanted to
pay the rent--only I wouldn't be let."
"Who wouldn't let you?" I asked.
"The people that were in with the League."
"Was your holding worth anything to you?" I asked.
"It was indeed. Two or three years ago I could have sold my right for a
matter of three hundred pounds."
"Yes!" interrupted the other tenant, "and a bit before that for six
hundred pounds."
"Is it not worth three hundred pounds to you now?"
"No," said Mr. Tener, "for he has lost it by refusing the settlement I
offered to make, and driving us into proceedings against him, and
allowing his six months' equity of redemption to lapse."
"And sure, if we had it, no one would be let to buy it now, sir," said
the tenant. "But it's we that hope Mr. Tener here will let us come back
on the holdings--that is, if we'd be protected coming back."
"Now, do you see," said Mr. Tener, "what it is you ask me to do? You ask
me to make you a present outright of the property you chose foolishly to
throw away, and to do this after you have put the estate to endless
trouble and expense; don't you think that is asking me to do a good
deal?"
The tenants looked at one another, at Mr. Tener, and at me, and the
ex-bailiff smiled.
"You must see this," said Mr. Tener, "but I am perfectly willing now to
say to you, in the presence of this gentleman, that in spite of all, I
am quite willing to do what you ask, and to let you come back into the
titles you have forfeited, for I would rather have you back on the
property than strangers--"
"And, indeed, we're sure you would."
"But understand, you must pay down a year's rent and the costs you have
put us to."
"Ah! sure you wouldn't have us to pay the costs?"
"But indeed I will," responded Mr. Tener; "you mustn't for a moment
suppose I will have any question about that. You brought all this
trouble on yourselves, and on us; and while I am ready and willing to
deal more than fairly, to deal liberally with you about the arrears--and
to give you time--the costs you must pay."
"And what would they be, the costs?" queried one of the tenants
anxiously.
"Oh, that I can't tell you, for I don't know," said Mr. Tener, "but they
shall not be anything beyond the strict necessary costs."
"And if we come back would we be protected?"
"Of course you will have protection. But why do you want protection?
Here you are, a couple of strong grown men, with men-folk of your
families. See here! why don't you go to such an one, and such an one,"
naming other tenants; "you know them well. Go to them quietly and sound
them to see if they will come back on the same terms with you; form a
combination to be honest and to stand by your rights, and defy and break
up the other dishonest combination you go in fear of! Is it not a shame
for men like you to lie down and let those fellows walk over you, and
drive you out of your livelihood and your homes?"
The tenants looked at each other, and at the rest of us. "I think," said
one of them at last, "I think ---- and ----," naming two men, "would come
with us. Of course," turning to Mr. Tener, "you wouldn't discover on us,
sir."
"Discover on you! Certainly not," said Mr. Tener. "But why don't you
make up your minds to be men, and 'discover' on yourselves, and defy
these fellows?"
"And the cattle, sir? would we get protection for the cattle? They'd be
murdered else entirely."
"Of course," said Mr. Tener, "the police would endeavour to protect the
cattle."
Then, turning to me, he said, "That is a very reasonable question. These
scoundrels, when they are afraid to tackle the men put under their ban,
go about at night, and mutilate and torture and kill the poor beasts. I
remember a case," he went on, "in Roscommon, where several head of
cattle mysteriously disappeared. They could be found nowhere. No trace
of them could be got. But long weeks after they vanished, some lads in a
field several miles away saw numbers of crows hovering over a particular
point. They went there, and there at the bottom of an abandoned
coal-shaft lay the shattered remains of these lost cattle. The poor
beasts had been driven blindfold over the fields and down into this pit,
where, with broken limbs, and maimed, they all miserably died of
hunger."
"Yes," said one of the tenants, "and our cattle'd be driven into the
Shannon, and drownded, and washed away."
"You must understand," interposed Mr. Tener "that when cattle are thus
maliciously destroyed the owners can recover nothing unless the remains
of the poor beasts are found and identified within three days."
The disgust which I felt and expressed at these revelations seemed to
encourage the tenants. One of them said that before the evictions came
off certain of the National Leaguers visited him, and told him he must
resist the officers. "I consulted my sister," he said, "and she said,
'Don't you be such a fool as to be doing that; we'll all be ruined
entirely by those rascals and rogues of the League.' And I didn't
resist. But only the other day I went to a priest in the trouble we are
in, and what do you think he said to me? He said, 'Why didn't you do as
you were bid? then you would be helped,' and he would do nothing for us!
Would you think that right, sir, in your country?"
"I should think in my country," I replied, "that a priest who behaved in
that way ought to be unfrocked."
"Did you pay over all your rent into the hands of the trustees of the
League?" I asked of one of these tenants.
"I paid over money to them, sir," he replied.
"Yes," I said, "but did you pay over all the amount of the rent, or how
much of it?"
"Oh! I paid as much as I thought they would think I ought to pay!" he
responded, with that sly twinkle of the peasant's eye one sees so often
in rural France.
"Oh! I understand," I said, laughing. "But if you come to terms now with
Mr. Tener here, will you get that money back again?"
"Divil a penny of it!" he replied, with much emphasis.
Finally they got up together to take their leave, after a long whispered
conversation together.
"And if we made it half the costs?"
"No!" said Mr. Tener good-naturedly but firmly; "not a penny off the
costs."
"Well, we'll see the men, sir, just quietly, and we'll let you know what
can be done"; and with that they wished us, most civilly, good-morning,
and went their way.
We walked in the park for some time, and a wild, beautiful park it is,
not the less beautiful for being given up, as it is, very much to the
Dryads to deal with it as they list. It is as unlike a trim English park
as possible; but it contains many very fine trees, and grand open sweeps
of landscape. In a tangled copse are the ruins of an ancient Franciscan
abbey, in one corner of which lie buried together, under a monumental
mound of brickwork, the late Marquis of Clanricarde and his wife. The
walls of the Castle, burned in 1826, are still standing, and so perfect
that the building might easily enough have been restored. A keen-eyed,
wiry old household servant, still here, told us the house was burned in
the afternoon of January 6, 1826. There were three women-servants in the
house--"Anna and Mary Meehan, and Mrs. Underwood, the housekeeper"; and
they were getting the Castle ready for his Lordship's arrival, so little
of an "absentee" was the late Lord Clanricarde, then only one year
married to the daughter of George Canning. The fires were laid on in the
upper rooms, and Mrs. Underwood went off upon an errand. When she came
back all was in flames.
The deer-park is full of deer, now become quite wild. We heard them
crashing through the undergrowth on all sides. There must be capital
fishing, too, in the lake, and in the river of which it is an expansion.
While they were getting the cars ready for a drive, came up another son
of the soil. This man I found had only a small interest in the battle on
the Clanricarde estates, holding his homestead of another landlord. But
he admitted he had gone in a manner into the "combination," in that he
had paid a certain, not very large, sum, which he named, to the
trustees, "just for peace and quiet." He considered it gone, past
recovery; and he named another man with a small holding, but doing a
considerable business in other ways, who had "paid £10 or more just not
to be bothered." Upon this Mr. Tener told me of a shopkeeper at Loughrea
in a large way of business, a man with seven or eight thousand pounds,
who, finding his goods about to be seized after the agent had turned a
sharp strategic corner on him, and unexpectedly got into his shop, was
about to own up to his defeat, and make a fair settlement, when the
secretary of the League appeared, and requested a private talk with him.
In a quarter of an hour the tradesman reappeared looking rather sullen
and crestfallen. He said he couldn't pay, and must let the goods be
taken. So taken they were, and duly put up under the process and sold.
He bought them in himself, paying all the costs.
Presently two cars appeared. We got upon one, Mr. Tener driving a
spirited nag, and taking on the seat with him a loaded carbine-rifle.
Two armed policeman followed us upon the other, keeping at such a
distance as would enable them easily to cover any one approaching from
either side of the roadway. It quite took me back to the delightful days
of 1866 in Mexico, when we used to ride out to picnics at the Rincon at
Orizaba armed to the teeth, and ready at a moment's notice to throw the
four-in-hand mule-wagons into a hollow square, and prepare to receive
cavalry. As it seems to be perfectly well understood that the regular
price paid for shooting a designated person (they call it "knocking" him
in these parts) is the ridiculously small sum of four pounds, and that
two persons who divide this sum are always detailed by the organisers of
outrage to "knock" an objectionable individual, it is obvious that too
much care can hardly be taken by prudent people in coming and going
through such a country. Fortunately for the people most directly
concerned to avoid these unpleasantnesses a systematic leakage seems to
exist in the machinery of mischief. The places where the oaths of this
local "Mafia" are administered, for instance, are well known. A roadside
near a chapel is frequently selected--and this for two or three obvious
reasons. The sanctity of the spot may be supposed to impress the
neophyte; and if the police or any other undesirable people should
suddenly come upon the officiating adepts and the expectant acolyte, a
group on the roadside is not necessarily a criminal gathering--though I
do not see why, in such times, our old American college definition of a
"group" as a gathering of "three or more persons" should not be adopted
by the authorities, and held to make such a gathering liable to
dispersion by the police, as our "groups" used to be subject to
proctorial punishment. Mills are another favourite resort of the
law-breakers. Mr. Tener tells me that a large mill between this place
and Loughrea is a great centre of trouble, not wholly to the
disadvantage of the astute miller, who finds it not only brings grist to
his mill, but takes away grist from another mill belonging to a couple
of worthy ladies, and once quite prosperous. It is no uncommon thing, it
appears, for the same person to be put through the ceremony of swearing
fidelity more than once, and at more than one place, with the not
unnatural result, however, of diminishing the pressure of the oath upon
his conscience or his fears, and also of alienating his affections, as
he is expected to pay down two shillings on each occasion. Once a
member, he contributes a penny a week to the general fund. It seems also
to be an open secret who the disbursing treasurers are of this fund,
from whom the members, detailed to do the dark bidding of the
"organisation," receive their wage. "A stout gentleman with sandy hair
and wearing glasses" was the description given to me of one such
functionary. When so much is known of the methods and the men, why is it
that so many crimes are committed with virtual impunity? For two
sufficient reasons. Witnesses cannot be got to testify, or trusted, if
they do testify, to speak the truth; and it is idle to expect juries of
the vicinage in nine cases out of ten will do their duty. Political
cowardice having made it impossible to transfer the venue in cases of
Irish crime, as to which all the authorities were agreed about these
points, from Ireland into Great Britain, it is found that even to
transfer the trial of "Moonlighters" from Clare or Kerry into Wicklow,
for example, has a most instructive effect, opening the eyes of the
people of Wicklow to a state of things in their own island, of which
happily for themselves they were previously as ignorant as the people of
Surrey or of Middlesex. This explains the indignant wish expressed to me
some time ago in a letter from a priest in another part of Ireland, that
"martial law" might be proclaimed in Clare and Kerry to "stamp out the
Moonlighters, those pests of society." That in Clare and Kerry priests
should be found not only disposed to wink at and condone the proceedings
of these "pests of society," but openly to co-operate with them under
the pretext of a "national" movement, is surely a thing equally
intolerable by the Church and dangerous to the cause of Irish autonomy.
This I am glad to say is strongly felt, and has been on more than one
occasion very vigorously stated by one of the most eminent and estimable
of Irish ecclesiastics, the Bishop-Coadjutor of Clonfert, upon whom I
called this morning. Dr. Healy, who is a senator of the Royal University
of Ireland, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, presides over that
part of the diocese of Clonfort which includes Portumna and Woodford. He
lives in a handsome and commodious, but simple and unpretentious house,
set in ample grounds well-planted, and commanding a wide view of a most
agreeable country. We were ushered into a well-furnished study, and the
bishop came in at once to greet us with the most cordial courtesy. He is
a frank, dignified, unaffected man, and in his becoming episcopal
purple, with the gold chain and cross, looked every inch a bishop. I was
particularly anxious to see Dr. Healy, as a type of the high-minded and
courageous ecclesiastics who, in Ireland, have resolutely refused to
subordinate their duties and their authority as ecclesiastics to the
convenience and the policy of an organisation absolutely controlled by
Mr. Parnell, who not only is not a Catholic, but who is an open ally and
associate of the bitterest enemies of the Catholic Church in France and
in England. Protestant historians affirm that Pope Innocent was one of
the financial backers of William of Orange when he set sail from Holland
to crush the Catholic faith in Great Britain and Ireland, and drive the
Catholic house of Stuart into exile. But it was reserved for the
nineteenth century to witness the strange spectacle of men, calling
themselves Irishmen and Catholics, deliberately slandering and assailing
in concord with a non-Catholic political leader the consecrated pastors
and masters of the Church in Ireland. When in order to explain what they
themselves concede to be "the absence from the popular ranks of the best
of the priesthood," Nationalist writers find it necessary to denounce
Cardinal Cullen and Cardinal M'Cabe as "anti-Irish "; and to sneer at
men like Dr. Healy as "Castle Bishops," it is impossible not to be
reminded of the three "patriotic" tailors of Tooley Street.
Bishop Healy looks upon the systematic development of a substantial
peasant proprietary throughout Ireland as the economic hope of the
country, and he regards therefore the actual "campaigning" of the
self-styled "Nationalists" as essentially anti-national, inasmuch as its
methods are demoralising the people of Ireland, and destroying that
respect for law and for private rights which lies at the foundation of
civil order and of property. In his opinion, "Home Rule," to the people
in general, means simply ownership of the land which they are to live
on, and to live by. How that ownership shall be brought about peaceably,
fairly, and without wrong or outrage to any man or class of men is a
problem of politics to be worked out by politicians, and by public men.
That men, calling themselves Catholics, should be led on to attempt to
bring this or any other object about by immoral and criminal means is
quite another matter, and a matter falling within the domain, not of the
State primarily, but of the Church.
As to this, Bishop Healy, who was in Rome not very long ago, and who,
while in Rome, had more than one audience of His Holiness by command,
has no doubt whatever that the Vatican will insist upon the abandonment
and repudiation by Catholics of boycotting, and "plans of campaign," and
all such devices of evil. Nor has the Bishop any doubt that whenever the
Holy Father speaks the priests and the people of Ireland will obey.
To say this, of course, is only to say that the Bishop believes the
priests of Ireland to be honest priests, and the people of Ireland to be
good Catholics.
If he is mistaken in this it will be a doleful thing, not for the
Church, but for the Irish priests, and for the Irish people. No Irishman
who witnessed the magnificent display made at Rome this year, of the
scope and power of the Catholic Church, can labour under any delusions
on that point.
From the Bishop's residence we went to call upon the Protestant rector
of Portumna, Mr. Crawford. The handsome Anglican church stands within an
angle of the park, and the parsonage is a very substantial mansion. Mr.
Crawford, the present rector, who is a man of substance, holds a fine
farm of the Clanricarde estate, at a peppercorn rent, and he is tenant
also of another holding at £118 a year, as to which he has brought the
agent into Court, with the object, as he avers, of setting an example to
the other tenants, and inducing them, like himself, to fight under the
law instead of against it. He is not, however, in arrears, and in that
respect sets a better example, I am sorry to say, than the Catholic
priest, Father Coen, who made himself so conspicuous here on the
occasion of the much bewritten Woodford evictions. The case of Father
Coen is most instructive, and most unpleasant. He occupies an excellent
house on a holding of twenty-three acres of good laud, with a garden--in
short, a handsome country residence, which was provided by the late Lord
Clanricarde, expressly for the accommodation of whoever might be the
Catholic priest in that part of his estate. For all this the rent is
fixed at the absurd and nominal sum of two guineas a year! Yet Father
Coen, who now enjoys the mansion, and has a substantial income from the
parish, is actually two years and a half in arrears with this rent! This
fact Mr. Tener mentioned to the Bishop, whose countenance naturally
darkened. "What am I to do in such a case, my lord?" asked Mr. Tener.
"Do?" said the Bishop, "do your plain duty, and proceed against him
according to law." But suppose he were proceeded against and evicted, as
in America he certainly would be, who can doubt that he would instantly
be paraded, before the world, on both sides of the Atlantic as a
"martyr," suffering for the holy cause of an oppressed and down-trodden
people, at the hands of a "most vile" Marquis, and of a remorse-less and
blood-thirsty agent?[11] Mr. Crawford, a tall, fine-looking man, talked
very fully and freely about the situation here. He came to Portumna
about eight years ago; one of his reasons for accepting the position
here offered him being that he wished to take over a piece of property
near Woodford from his brother-in-law, who found he could not manage it.
As a practical farmer, and a straightforward capable man of business, he
has gradually acquired the general confidence of the tenants here. That
they are, as a rule, quite able to pay the rents which they have been
"coerced" into refusing to pay, he fully believes. He told me of cases
in which Catholic tenants of Lord Clanricarde came to him when the
agitation began about the Plan of Campaign, and begged him privately to
take the money for their rents, and hold it for them till the time
should come for a settlement.
The reason for this was that they did not wish to be obliged to give
over the money into the "Trust" created by the Campaigners, and wanted
it to be safely put beyond the reach of these obliging "friends." One
very shrewd tenant came to him and begged him to buy some beasts, in
order that he might pay his rent out of the proceeds. The man owed £15
to the Clanricarde property. Mr. Crawford did not particularly want to
buy his beasts, but eventually agreed to do so, and gave him £50 for
them. The man went off with the money, but he never paid the rent! Mr.
Crawford discovering this called him to account, and refused to grant
him some further favour which he asked. The result is that the
"distressed tenant" now cuts Mr. Crawford when he meets him, and is the
prosperous owner of quite a small herd of cattle.
Mr. Crawford's opinion of the mischief done by the methods and spirit of
the National League in this place is quite in accord with the opinions
of the Bishop-Coadjutor. Power without responsibility, which made the
Cæesars madmen, easily turns the heads of village tyrants, and there is
something positively grotesque in the excesses of this subterranean
"Home Rule." Mr. Crawford told me of a case here, in which a tenant
farmer, whom he named, came to him in great wrath, not unmingled with
terror, to say that the League had ordered him, on pain of being
boycotted, to give up his holding to the heirs of a woman from whom,
twenty years ago, he had bought, for £100 in cash, the tenant-right of
her deceased husband! There was no question of refunding the £100. He
was merely to consider himself a "land-grabber," and evict himself for
the benefit of those heirs who had never done a stroke of work on the
property for twenty years, and who had no shadow of a legal or moral
claim on it, except that the oldest of them was an active member of the
local League!
Nor was this unique.
In another case, the children of a tenant, who died forty years ago,
came forward and called upon the League to boycott an old man who had
been in possession of the holding during nearly half a century. In a
third case, a tenant-farmer, some ten years ago, had in his employ as
herd a man who fell ill and died. He put into the vacant place an
honest, capable young fellow, who still holds it, and has faithfully and
efficiently served him. Only the other day this tenant-farmer was warned
by the League to expect trouble, unless he dismissed this herd, and put
into his place the son, now grown to man's estate, of the herd who died
ten years ago!
It is amusing, if not instructive, to find the hereditary principle,
just now threatened in its application to the British Senate, cropping
out afresh as an element in the regeneration of Irish agriculture and
the land tenure of Ireland!
On our way back to the Castle we called on Mr. Place, the manager of the
Portumna Branch of the Hibernian Bank, who lives in the town. He was
amusing himself, after the labour of the day in the bank, with some
amateur work as a carpenter, but received us very cordially. He said
there was no doubt that the deposits in the bank had increased
considerably since the adoption of the Plan of Campaign on the
Clanricarde property. Money was paid into the bank continually by
persons who wished the fact of their payments kept secret; and he knew
of more than one case in which tenants, whose stock had been seized by
the agent for the rents, were much delighted at the seizure, since it
had paid off their rents, and so enabled them to retain their holdings
and keep out of the grasp of the League, even though to do this they had
undergone a forced sale and been muleted in costs.
It was his opinion that the tenants on the Clanricarde property, who are
not in arrears, would gladly accept a twenty-five per cent. reduction,
and do very well by accepting it. But they are constrained into a
hostile attitude by the tenants who are in arrears, some of them for
several years (as, for example, Father Coen), although I find, to my
astonishment, that in Ireland the landlord has no power to distrain for
more than a twelvemonth's rent, no matter how far back the arrears may
run.
Mr. Place seems to think it would be well to put all the creditors of
the tenants on one footing with the landlords. The shopkeepers and other
creditors, he thinks, in that event would see many things in quite a new
light.
What is called the new Castle of Portumna is a large and handsome
building of the Mansard type, standing on an eminence in the park, at
some distance from the original seat. The building was finished not long
before the death of his father, the late Marquis. It has never been
occupied, save by a large force of police quartered in it not very long
ago by Mr. Tener in readiness for an expedition against the Castle of
Cloondadauv, to the scene of which he promises to drive me to-morrow on
my way back to Dublin. It is thoroughly well built, and might easily be
made a most delightful residence. The views which it commands of the
Shannon are magnificent, and there are many fine trees about it.
The old man who has charge of it is a typical Galway retainer of the old
school. The "boys," he says, once tried to "boycott" him because he was
the pound-master; but he showed fight, and they let him alone. He
pointed out to me from the top of the house, in the distance, the
residences of Colonel Hickie, and of the young Lord Avonmore, who lately
succeeded on the death of his brother in the recent Egyptian expedition.
The place is now shut up, and the owners live in France.
We visited too the Portumna Union before driving home. The buildings of
this Union are extensive for the place, and well built, and it seems to
be well-ordered and neatly kept--thanks, in no small degree, I suspect,
to the influence of the Sisters who have charge of the hospital, but
whose benign spirit shows itself not only in the flower-garden which
they have called into being, but in many details of the administration
beyond their special control.
The contrast was very striking between the atmosphere of this
unpretending refuge of the helpless and that of certain of the
"laicised" hospitals of France, which I not long ago visited, from which
the devoted nuns have been expelled to make way for hired nurses. I made
a remark to this effect to the clerk of the Union, Mr. Lavan, whom we
found in his office.
"Oh, yes," he said, "I have no doubt of that. We owe more than I can say
to the Sisters, but I don't know how long we should have them here if
the local guardians could have their way."
In explanation of this, he went on to tell me that these local
guardians, who are elected, are hostile to the whole administration,
because of its relations with the Local Government Board at Dublin,
which controls their generous tendency to expend the money of the
ratepayers. By way of expressing their feelings, therefore, they have
been trying to cut down, not only the salary of the clerk, but that of
the Catholic chaplain of the Union; and as there is a good deal of
irreligious feeling among the agitators here, it is his impression that
they would make things disagreeable for the Sisters also were they in
any way to get the management into their own hands. That there cannot be
much real distress in this neighbourhood appears from two facts. There
are now but 130 inmates of this Union, out of a population of 12,900,
and the outlay for out-of-door relief averages between eight and ten
pounds a week.
In the quiet, neat chapel two or three of the inmates were kneeling at
prayers; and others whom we saw in the kitchen and about the offices had
nothing of the "workhouse" look which is so painful in the ordinary
inmates of an English or American almshouse.
"The trouble with the place," said Mr. Lavan, "is that they like it too
well. It takes an eviction almost to get them out of it."
We sat down with Mr. Lavan in his office, and had an interesting talk
with him.
He is the agent of Mr. Mathews, who lives between Woodford and Portumna.
Mr. Mathews is a resident landlord, he says, who has constantly employed
and has lived on friendly terms with his tenants, numbering twenty, who
hold now under judicial rents. On these judicial rents two years ago
they were allowed a further reduction of 15 per cent. Last year they
were allowed 20 per cent. This year he offered them a reduction of 25
per cent., which they rejected, demanding 35 per cent.
This demand Mr. Lavan considers to be unreasonable in the extreme, and
he attributes it to the influence of the National Leaguers here, whose
representatives among the local guardians constantly vote away the money
of the ratepayers in "relief to evicted tenants who have ample means and
can in no respect be called destitute." In his opinion the effect of the
Nationalist agitation here has been to upset all ideas of right and
wrong in the minds of the people where any question arises between
tenants and landlords. He told a story, confirmed by Mr. Tener, of a
bailiff, whom he named, on the Clanricarde property here, who was
compelled two years ago to resign his place in order to prevent the
"boycotting" of his mother who keeps a shop on the farm. He was
familiar, too, with the details of a story told me by one of the
Clanricarde tenants, a farmer near Loughrea who holds a farm at £90 a
year. This man was forced to subscribe to the Plan of Campaign. The
agent proceeded against him for the rent due, and he incurred costs of
£10. His sheep and crop were then seized.
He begged the local leaders to "permit" him to pay his rent, as he was
able to do it _without drawing out the funds in their hands_! They
refused, and so compelled him to allow his property to be publicly sold,
and to incur further costs of £10. "His farm lies so near the town that
he did not dare to risk the vengeance of the local ruffians."
Mr. Lavan gave me the name also of another man who is now actually under
a "boycott," because he has ventured to resist the modest demand made by
the son of a man whose tenant-right he bought, paying him £100 for it,
twenty years ago, that he shall give up his farm without being
reimbursed for his outlay made to purchase it! In other words, after
twenty years' peaceable possession of a piece of property, bought and
paid for, this tenant-farmer is treated as a "land-grabber" by the
self-installed "Nationalist" government of Ireland, because he will not
submit to be robbed both of the money which he paid for his
tenant-right, and of his tenant-right!
Obviously in such a case as this the "war against landlordism" is simply
a war against property and against private rights. Priests of the
Catholic Church who not only countenance but aid and abet such
proceedings certainly go even beyond Dr. M'Glynn. Dr. M'Glynn, so far as
I know, stops at the confiscation of all private property in rent by the
State for the State. But here is simply a confiscation of the property
of A for the benefit of B, such as might happen if B, being armed and
meeting A unarmed in a forest, should confiscate the watch and chain of
A, bought by A of B's lamented but unthrifty father twenty years before!
After dinner to-night Mr. Tener gave me some interesting and edifying
accounts of his experience in other parts of Ireland.
Some time ago, before the Plan of Campaign was adopted, one of his
tenants in Cavan came to him with a doleful story of the bad times and
the low prices, and wound up by saying he could pay no more than half a
year's rent.
"Now his rent had been reduced under the Land Act," said Mr, Tener, "and
I had voluntarily thrown off a lot of arrears, so I looked at him
quietly and said, 'Mickey, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You have
been very well treated, and you can perfectly well pay your rent. Your
wife would be ashamed of you if she knew you were trying to get out of
it.'"
"Ah no, your honour!" he briskly replied; "indade she would approve it.
If you won't discover on me, I'll tell you the truth. It was the wife
herself, she's a great schollard, and reads the papers, that tould me
not to pay you more than half the rent--for she says there's a new Act
coming to wipe it all out. Will you take the half-year?"
"No, I will not. Don't be afraid of your wife, but pay what you owe,
like a man. You've got the money there in your pocket."
This was a good shot. Mickey couldn't resist it, and his countenance
broke into a broad smile.
"Ah no! I've got it in two pockets. Begorra, it was the wife herself
made up the money in two parcels, and she put one into each pocket, to
be sure--and I wasn't to give your honour but one, if you would take it.
But there's the money, and I daresay it's all for the best."
On another occasion, when he was collecting the rents of a property in
the county of Longford, one tenant came forward as the spokesman of the
rest, admitted that the rents had been accepted fairly after a reduction
under the Land Act, expressed the general wish of the tenants to meet
their obligations, and wound up by asking a further abatement, "the
times were so bad, and the money couldn't be got, it couldn't indeed!"
Mr. Tener listened patiently--to listen patiently is the most essential
quality of an agent in Ireland--and finally said:--
"Very well, if you haven't got the money to pay in full, pay
three-quarters of it, and I'll give you time for the rest."
"Thank your honour!" said Pat, "and that'll be thirty pounds--and here
it is in one pound notes, and hard enough to get they are, these times!"
So Mr. Tener took the money, counted the notes twice over, and then,
writing out a receipt, handed it to the tenant.
"All right, Pat, there's your receipt for thirty-nine pounds, and I'm
glad to see ten-pound notes going about the country in these hard
times!"
By mistake the "distressful" orator had put one ten-pound note into his
parcel! He took his receipt, and went off without a word. But the
combination to get an "abatement" broke down then and there, and the
other tenants came forward and put down their money.
These incidents occurred to Mr. Tener himself. Not less amusing and
instructive was a similar mistake on a larger scale made by an
over-crafty tenant in dealing with one of Mr. Tener's friends a few
years ago in the county of Leitrim. This tenant, whom we will call
Denis, was the fugleman also of a combination. He was a cattle dealer as
well as a farmer, and having spent a couple of hours in idly eloquent
attempts to bring about a general abatement of the rents, he lost his
patience.
"Ah, well, your honour!" he said, "I can't stay here all day talking
like these men, I must go to the fair at Boyle. Will you take a
deposit-receipt of the bank for ten pounds and give me the pound change?
that'll just be the nine pounds for the half-year's rent. But all the
same, yer honour, those men are all farmers, and it's not out of the
farm at all I made the ten pounds, it's out of the dealing!"
"But you couldn't deal without a farm, Denis, for the stock," said the
agent, as he glanced at the receipt. He hastily turned it over, and went
on, "Just indorse the receipt, and I'll consider your proposition."
The receipt was indorsed, and at once taken off by the agent's clerk to
the bank to bring back pound-notes for it, while the agent quietly
proceeded to fill out the regular form of receipt for a full year's
rent, eighteen pounds. Denis noted what he supposed of course to be the
agent's blunder, but like an astute person held his peace. The clerk
came back with the notes. Denis took up his receipt, and the agent
quietly began handing him note after note across the table.
"But, your honour!" exclaimed Denis, "what on earth are ye giving me all
this money for?"
"It's your change," said the agent, quite imperturbably. "You gave me a
bank receipt for one hundred pounds. I have given you a receipt for your
full year's rent, and here are eighty-two pounds in notes, and with it
eighteen shillings in silver--that's five per cent. reduction. I would
have made it ten per cent., only you were so very sharp, first about not
having the money, and then about the full receipt!"
In an instant all eyes were fastened upon Denis. Ichabod! the glory had
departed. The chorus went up from his disenchanted followers:--
"Ah, glory be to God, you were not bright enough for the agent, Denis!"
And so that day the agent made a very full and handsome collection--and
there was a slight reduction in the deposit-accounts of the local bank!
In the evening Mr. Tener gave me the details of some cases of direct
intimidation with the names of the tenants concerned. One man, whose
farm he visited, told him he had paid his rent not long before to the
previous agent. "Well," said Mr. Tener, "show me your receipt!" On this
the tenant said that he dare not keep the receipt about him, nor even in
the house, lest it should be demanded by the emissaries of the League,
who went round to keep the tenants up to the "Plan of Campaign," and
that it was hidden in his stable. And he went out to the stable and
brought it in.
This, he had reason to believe, was not an uncommon case.[12] The same
man, wishing to take a grass farm which the people hoped the agent would
consent to have "cut up" was asked to give two names on a
promissory-note to pay the rent. He demurred to this, and after a parley
said, "Would a certificate do?" upon which he pulled out an old
tobacco-box, and carefully unfolded from it a bank certificate of
deposit for a hundred pounds sterling! This tenant held eleven Irish, or
more than seventeen English, acres, and his yearly rent was £11, 16s.
6d.
The people before this agitation began were generally quiet, thrifty,
and industrious. They were great sheep-raisers. An old law of the Irish
Parliament had exempted sheep, but not cattle or crops, from distraint,
with an eye to encouraging the woollen interest in Ireland.
As to the sale of tenant-right in Ireland, he told me a curious story.
One woman, a widow, whom he named, owed two year' rent on a holding in
Ulster at £4 a year. She was abundantly able to pay, but for her own
reasons preferred to be evicted, and, finally, by an understanding with
him, offered her tenant-right for sale. A man who had made money in
iron-mines in the County of Durham was a bidder, and finally offered
£240 for the holding. It was knocked down to him. He then saw the agent,
who told him he had paid too much. The woman was then appealed to, and
she admitted that the agent was right. But it was shown that others had
offered £200, and the woman finally agreed to take, and received, that
amount in gold, being fifty years' purchase!