DUBLIN, _Friday, March 9th._--At 7.40 this morning I took the train for
Athy to visit the Luggacurren estates of Lord Lansdowne. Mr. Lynch, a
resident magistrate here, some time ago kindly offered to show me over
the place, but I thought it as well to take my chance with the people of
Athy who are reported to have been very hot over the whole matter here,
and so wrote to Mr. Lynch that I would find him at the Lodge, which is
the headquarters of the property.
Athy is a neat, well-built little town, famous of old as a frontier
fortress of Kildare. An embattled tower, flanked by small square
turrets, guards a picturesque old bridge here over the Barrow, the
bridge being known in the country as "Crom-a-boo," from the old war-cry
of the Fitz-Geralds. It is a busy place now; and there was quite a
bustle at the very pretty little station. I asked a friendly old porter
which was the best hotel in the town. "The best? Ah! there's only one,
and it's not the best--but there are worse--and it's Kavanagh's." I
found it easily enough, and was ushered by a civil man, who emerged from
the shop which occupies part of it, into a sort of reading-room with a
green table. A rather slatternly but very active girl soon converted
this into a neat breakfast-table, and gave me an excellent breakfast.
The landlord found me a good car, and off I set for the residence of
Father Maher, the curate of whom I had heard as one of the most fiery
and intractable of the National League priests in this part of Ireland.
My jarvey was rather taciturn at first, but turned out to be something
of a politician. He wanted Home Rule, one of his reasons being that then
they "wouldn't let the Americans come and ruin them altogether, driving
out the grain from the markets." About this he was very clear and
positive. "Oh, it doesn't matter now whether the land is good or bad,
America has just ruined the farmers entirely."
I told him I had always heard this achievement attributed to England.
"Oh! that was quite a mistake! What the English did was to punish the
men that stood up for Ireland. There was Mr. O'Brien. But for him there
wasn't a man of Lord Lansdowne's people would have had the heart to
stand up. He did it all; and now, what were they doing to him? They were
putting him on a cold plank-bed on a stone floor in a damp cell!"
"But the English put all their prisoners in those cells, don't they?" I
asked.
"And what of it, sir?" he retorted. "They're good enough for most of
them, but not for a gentleman like Mr. O'Brien, that would spill the
last drop of his heart's blood for Ireland!"
"But," I said, "they're doing just the same thing with Mr. Gilhooly, I
hear."
"And who is Mr. Gilhooly, now? And it's not for the likes of him to
complain and be putting on airs as if he was Mr. O'Brien!"
"Yes, it is a fine country for hunting!"
"Was it ever put down here, the hunting?"
"No, indeed! Sure, the people wouldn't let it be!"
"Not if Mr. O'Brien told them they must?" I queried.
"Mr. O'Brien; ah, he wouldn't think of such a thing! It brings money all
the time to Athy, and sells the horses."
As to the troubles at Luggacurren, he was not very clear. "It was a
beautiful place, Mr. Dunne's; we'd see it presently. And Mr. Dunne, he
was a good one for sport. It was that, your honour, that got him into
the trouble"--
"And Mr. Kilbride?"
"Oh, Mr. Kilbride's place was a very good place too, but not like Mr.
Dunne's. And he was doing very well, Mr. Kilbride. He was getting a good
living from the League, and he was a Member of Parliament. Oh, yes, he
wasn't the only one of the tenants that was doing good to himself. There
was more of them that was getting more than ever they made out of the
land."[24]
"Was the land so bad, then?" I asked.
"No, there was as good land at Luggacurren as any there was in all
Ireland; but," and here he pointed off to the crests of the hills in the
distance, "there was a deal of land there of the estate on the hills,
and it was very poor land, but the tenants had to pay as much for that
as for the good property of Dunne and Kilbride."
"Do you know Mr. Lynch, the magistrate?" I asked. "If you do, look out
for him, as he has promised to join me and show me the place."
"Oh no, sorr!" the jarvey exclaimed at once; "don't mind about him. Hell
have his own car, and your honour won't want to take him on ours."
"Why not?" I persisted, "there's plenty of room."
"Oh! but indeed, sir, if it wasn't that you were going to the priest's,
Father Maher, you wouldn't get a car at Athy--no, not under ten pounds!"
"Not under ten pounds," I replied. "Would I get one then for ten
pounds?"
"It's a deal of money, ten pounds, sorr, and you wouldn't have a poor
man throw away ten pounds?"
"Certainly not, nor ten shillings either. Is it a question of principle,
or a question of price?"
The man looked around at me with a droll glimmer in his eye: "Ah, to be
sure, your honour's a great lawyer; but he'll come pounding along with
his big horse in his own car, Mr. Lynch; and sure it'll be quicker for
your honour just driving to Father Maher's."
There was no resisting this, so I laughed and bade him drive on.
"Whose house is that?" I asked, as we passed a house surrounded with
trees.
"Oh! that's the priest, Father Keogh--a very good man, but not so much
for the people as Father Maher, who has everything to look after about
them."
We came presently within sight of a handsome residence, Lansdowne Lodge,
the headquarters of the estate. Many fine cattle were grazing in the
fields about it.
"They are Lord Lansdowne's beasts," said my jarvey; "and it's the
emergency men are looking after them."
Nearly opposite were the Land League huts erected on the holding of an
unevicted tenant--a small village of neat wooden "shanties." On the
roadway in front of these half-a-dozen men were lounging about. They
watched us with much curiosity as we drove up, and whispered eagerly
together.
"They're some of the evicted men, your honour," said my jarvey, with a
twinkle in his eye; and then under his breath, "They'll be thinking your
honour's came down to arrange it all. They think everybody that comes is
come about an arrangement."
"Oh, then, they all want it arranged!"
"No; not all, but many of them do. Some of them like it well enough
going about like gentlemen with nothing to do, only their hands in their
pockets."
We turned out of the highway here and passed some very pretty cottages.
"No, they're not for labourers, your honour," said my jarvey; "the
estate built them for mechanics. It's the tenants look after the
labourers, and little it is they do for them."
Then, pointing to a ridge of hills beyond us, he said: "It was
Kilbride's father, sir, evicted seventeen tenants on these hills--poor
labouring men, with their families, many years ago,--and now he's
evicted himself, and a Member of Parliament!"
Father Maher's house stands well off from the highway. He was not at
home, being "away at a service in the hills," but would be back before
two o'clock. I left my name for him, with a memorandum of my purpose in
calling, and we drove on to see the bailiff of the estate, Mr. Hind. On
the way we met Father Norris, a curate of the parish, in a smart trap
with a good horse, and had a brief colloquy with him. Mr. Hind we found
busy afield; a quiet, staunch sort of man. He spoke of the situation
very coolly and dispassionately. "The tenants in the main were a good
set of men--as they had reason to be, Lord Lansdowne having been not
only a fair landlord, but a liberal and enterprising promoter of local
improvements." I had been told in Dublin that Lord Lansdowne had offered
a subscription of £200 towards establishing creameries, and providing
high-class bulls for this estate. Similar offers had been cordially met
by Lord Lansdowne's tenants in Kerry, and with excellent results. But
here they were rejected almost scornfully, though accompanied by offers
of abatement on the rents, which, in the case of Mr. Kilbride, for
example, amounted to 20 per cent.
"How did this happen, the tenants being good men as you say?" I asked of
Mr. Hind.
"Because they were unable to resist the pressure put on them by the two
chief tenants, Kilbride and Dunne, with the help of the League. Kilbride
and Dunne both lived very well." My information at Dublin was that Mr.
Kilbride had a fine house built by Lord Lansdowne, and a farm of seven
hundred acres, at a rent of £760, 10s. Mr. Dunne, who co-operated with
him, held four town lands comprising 1304 acres, at a yearly rent of
£1348, 15s. Upon this property Lord Lansdowne had expended in drainage
and works £1993, 11s. 9d., and in buildings £631, 15s. 4d., or in all
very nearly two years' rental. On Mr. Kilbride's holdings Lord Lansdowne
had expended in drainage works £1931, 6s. 3d., and in buildings £1247,
19s. 5d., or in all more than four years' rental. Mr. Kilbride held his
lands on life leases. Mr. Dunne held his smallest holding of 84 acres on
a yearly tenure; his two largest holdings, one on a lease for 31 years
from 1874, and the other on a life lease, and his fourth holding of 172
acres on a life lease.
Where does the hardship appear in all this to Mr. Dunne or Mr. Kilbride?
On Mr. Kilbride's holdings, for instance, Lord Lansdowne expended over
£3000, for which he added to the rent £130 a year, or about 4 per cent.,
while he himself stood to pay 6-1/2 per cent, on the loans he made from
the Board of Works for the expenditure. In the same way it was with Mr.
Dunne's farms. They were mostly in grass, and Lord Lansdowne laid out
more than £2500 on them, borrowed at the same rate from the Board, for
which he added to the rent only £66 a year, or about 2-1/2 per cent. Mr.
Kilbride was a Poor-Law Guardian, and Mr. Dunne a Justice of the Peace.
The leases in both of these cases, and in those of other large tenants,
seem to have been made at the instance of the tenants themselves, and
afforded security against any advance in the rental during a time of
high agricultural prices. And it would appear that for the last quarter
of a century there has been no important advance in the rental. In 1887
the rental was only £300 higher than in 1862, though during the interval
the landlord had laid out £20,000 on improvements in the shape of
drainage, roads, labourers' cottages, and other permanent works.
Moreover, in fifteen years only one tenant has been evicted for
non-payment of rent.
"Was there any ill-feeling towards the Marquis among the tenants?" I
asked of Mr. Hind.
"Certainly not, and no reason for any. They were a good set of men, and
they would never have gone into this fight, only for a few who were in
trouble, and I'm sure that to-day most of them would be thankful if they
could settle and get back. The best of them had money enough, and didn't
like the fight at all."
All the trouble here seems to have originated with the adoption of the
Plan of Campaign.
Lord Lansdowne, besides this estate in Queen's County, owns property in
a wild, mountainous part of the county of Kerry. On this property the
tenants occupy, for the most part, small holdings, the average rental
being about £10, and many of the rentals much lower. They are not
capitalist farmers at all, and few of them are able to average the
profits of their industry, setting the gains of a good, against the
losses of a bad, season. In October 1886, while Mr. Dillon was
organising his Plan of Campaign, Lord Lansdowne visited his Kerry
property to look into the condition of the people. The local Bank had
just failed, and the shopkeepers and money-lenders were refusing credit
and calling in loans. The pressure they put upon these small farmers,
together with the fall in the price of dairy produce and of young stock
at that time, caused real distress, and Lord Lansdowne, after looking
into the situation, offered, of his own motion, abatements varying from
25 to 35 per cent, to all of them whose rents had not been judicially
fixed under the Act of 1881, for a term of fifteen years.
As to these, Lord Lansdowne wrote a letter on the 21st of October 1886
(four days after the promulgation of the Plan of Campaign at Portumna on
the Clanricarde property), to his agent, Mr. Townsend Trench. This
letter was published. I have a copy of it given to me in Dublin, and it
states the case as between the landlords and the tenants under judicial
rents most clearly and temperately.
"It might, I think," says the Marquis, "be very fairly argued, that the
State having imposed the terms of a contract on landlord and tenant,
that contract should not be interfered with except by the State.
"The punctual payment of the 'judicial rent' was the one advantage to
which the landlords were desired to look when, in 1881, they were
deprived of many of the most valuable attributes of ownership.
"It was distinctly stipulated that the enormous privileges which were
suddenly and unexpectedly conferred upon the tenants were to be enjoyed
by them conditionally upon the fulfilment on their part of the statutory
obligations specified in the Act. Of those, by far the most important
was the punctual payment of the rent fixed by the Court for the judicial
term.
"This obligation being unfulfilled, the landlord might reasonably claim
that he should be free to exercise his own discretion in determining
whether any given tenancy should or should not be perpetuated.
"In many cases [such cases are probably not so numerous on my estate as
upon many others] the resumption of the holding, and the consolidation
of adjoining farms, would be clearly advantageous to the whole
community. In the congested districts the consolidation of farms is the
only solution that I have seen suggested for meeting a chronic
difficulty.
"I have no reason to believe that the Judicial Rents in force on my
estate are such that, upon an average of the yield and prices of
agricultural produce, my tenants would find it difficult to pay them."
In spite of all these considerations Lord Lansdowne instructed Mr.
Trench to grant to these tenants under judicial leases an abatement of
20 per cent. on the November gale of 1886. This abatement, freely
offered, was gladly accepted. There had been no outrages or disturbances
on the Kerry properties, and the relations of the landlord with his
tenants, before and after this visit of Lord Lansdowne to Kerry, and
these reductions which followed it, had been, and continued to be,
excellent.
But the tale of Kerry reached Luggacurren; and certain of the tenants on
the latter estate were moved by it to demand for the Queen's County
property identical treatment with that accorded to the very differently
situated property in Kerry.
The leaders of the Luggacurren movement, I gather from Mr. Hind, never
pretended inability to pay their rents. They simply demanded abatements
of 35 per cent. on non-judicial, and 25 per cent. on judicial, rents as
their due, on the ground that they should be treated like the tenants in
Kerry: and the Plan of Campaign being by this time in full operation in
more than one part of Ireland, they threatened to resort to it if their
demand was refused. Lord Lansdowne at once declared that he would not
repeat at Luggacurren his concession made in Kerry as to the rents
judicially fixed; but he offered on a fair consideration of the
non-judicial rents to make abatements on them ranging from 15 to 25 per
cent.
The offer was refused, and the war began. On the 23d of March 1887 Mr.
Kilbride was evicted. One week afterwards, on the 29th of March, he got
up in the rooms of the National League in Dublin, and openly declared
that "the Luggacurren evictions differed from most other evictions in
this, that they were able to pay the rent. It was a fight," he
exultingly exclaimed, "of intelligence against intelligence; it was
diamond cut diamond!" In other words, it was a struggle, not for
justice, but for victory.
On all these points, and others furnished to me at Dublin touching this
estate, much light was thrown by the bailiff, who had not been concerned
in the evictions. He told me what he knew, and then very obligingly
offered to conduct me to the lodge, where we should find Mr. Hutchins,
who has charge now of the properties taken up by Mr. Kavanagh's Land
Corporation. My patriotic jarvey from Athy made no objection to my
giving the bailiff a lift, and we drove off to the lodge. On the way the
jarvey good-naturedly exclaimed, "Ah! there comes Mr. Lynch," and even
offered to pull up that the magistrate might overtake us.
We found Mr. Hutchins at home, a cool, quiet, energetic, northern man,
who seems to be handling the difficult situation here with great
firmness and prudence. Mrs. Hutchins, who has lived here now for nearly
a year--a life not unlike that of the wife of an American officer on the
Far Western frontier--very amicably asked me to lunch, and Mr. Hutchins
offered to show me the holdings of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Kilbride. Mr. Lynch
proposed that we should all go on my car, but I remembered the protest
of the jarvey, and sending him to await me at Father Maher's, I drove
off with Mr. Hutchins. As we drove along, he confirmed the jarvey's hint
as to the difference between the views and conduct of the parish priest
and the views and conduct of his more fiery curate. This is a very
common state of affairs, I find, all over Ireland.
The house of Mr. Dunne is that of a large gentleman farmer. It is very
well fitted up, but it was plain that the tenants had done little or
nothing to make or keep it a "house beautiful." The walls had never been
papered, and the wood-work showed no recent traces of the brush. "He
spent more money on horse-racing than on housekeeping," said a shrewd
old man who was in the house. In fact, Mr. Dunne, I am told, entered a
horse for the races at the Curragh after he had undergone what Mr.
Gladstone calls "the sentence of death" of an eviction!
Some of the doors bore marks of the crowbar but no great mischief had
been done to them or to the large fine windows. The only serious damage
done during the eviction was the cutting of a hole through the roof. An
upper room had been provisioned to stand a siege, and so scientifically
barricaded with logs and trunks of trees that after several vain
attempts to break through the door the assailants climbed to the roof,
and in twenty minutes cut their way in from without. The dining and
drawing rooms were those of a gentleman's residence, and one of the
party remembered attending here a social festivity got up with much
display.
A large cattle-yard has been established on this place, with an
original, and, as I was assured, most successful weighing-machine by the
Land Corporation. We found it full of very fine-looking cattle, and Mr.
Hutchins seems to think the operation of managing the estate as a kind
of "ranch" decidedly promising. "I am not a bit sorry for Mr. Dunne," he
said, "but I am very sorry for other quiet, good tenants who have been
deluded or driven into giving up valuable holdings to keep him and Mr.
Kilbride company, and give colour to the vapourings of Mr. William
O'Brien."
The cases of some of these tenants were instructive. One poor man,
Knowles, had gone out to America, and regularly sent home money to his
family to pay the rent. They found other uses for it, and when the storm
came he was two years and a half in arrears. In another instance, two
brothers held contiguous holdings, and were in a manner partners. One
was fonder of Athy than of agriculture; the other a steady husbandman.
Four years' arrears had grown up against the one; only a half-year's
gale against the other. Clearly this difference originated outside of
the fall of prices! In a third case, a tenant wrote to Mr. Trench
begging to have something done, as he had the money to pay, and wanted
to pay, but "didn't dare."
From Mr. Dunne's we drove to Mr. Kilbride's, another ample, very
comfortable house--not so thoroughly well fitted up with bathroom and
other modern appurtenances as Mr. Dunne's perhaps--but still a very good
house. It stands on a large green knoll, rather bare of trees, and
commands a fine sweep of landscape.
Mr. Hutchins drove me to the little road which leads up past the "Land
League village" to the house of Father Maher, and there set me down.
I walked up and found the curate at home--a tall, slender, well-made
young priest, with a keen, intelligent face. He received me very
politely, and, when I showed him the card of an eminent dignitary of the
Church, with cordiality.
I found him full of sympathy with the people of his parish, but neither
vehement nor unfair. He did not deny that there were tenants on Lord
Lansdowne's estate who were amply able to pay their rents; but he did
most emphatically assert that there were not a few of them who really
could not pay their rents.
"I assure you," he said, "there are some of them who cannot even pay
their dues to their priest, and when I say that, you will know how
pinched and driven they must indeed be." It was in view of these tenants
that he seemed to justify the course of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Kilbride.
"They must all stand or fall together." He had nothing to say to the
discredit of Lord Lansdowne; but he spoke with some bitterness of the
agent, Mr. Townsend Trench, as having protested against Lord Lansdowne's
making reductions here while he had himself made the same reductions on
the neighbouring estate of Mrs. Adair.
"In truth," he said, "Mr. Trench has made all this trouble worse all
along. He is too much of a Napoleon"--and with a humorous twinkle in his
eye as he spoke--"too much of a Napoleon the Third.
"I was just reading his father's book when you came in. Here it is," and
he handed me a copy of Trench's _Realities of Irish Life_.
"Did you ever read it? This Mr. Trench, the father, was a kind of
Napoleon among agents in his own time, and the son, you see, thinks it
ought to be understood that he is quite as great a man as his father.
Did you never hear how he found a lot of his father's manuscripts once,
and threw them all in the fire, calling out as he did so, 'There goes
some more of my father's vanity?'"
About his people, and with his people, Father Maher said he "felt most
strongly." How could he help it? He was himself the son of an evicted
father.
"Of course, Father Maher," I said, "you will understand that I wish to
get at both sides of this question and of all questions here. Pray tell
me then, where I shall find the story of the Luggacurren property most
fully and fairly set forth in print?"
Without a moment's hesitation he replied, "By far the best and fairest
account of the whole matter you will get in the Irish correspondence of
the London _Times_."
How the conflict would end he could not say. But he was at a loss to see
how it could pay Lord Lansdowne to maintain it.
He very civilly pressed me to stay and lunch with him, but when I told
him I had already accepted an invitation from Mr. Hutchins, he very
kindly bestirred himself to find my jarvey.
I hastened back to the lodge, where I found a very pleasant little
company. They were all rather astonished, I thought, by the few words I
had to say of Father Maher, and especially by his frank and sensible
recommendation of the reports in the London _Times_ as the best account
I could find of the Luggacurren difficulty. To this they could not
demur, but things have got, or are getting, in Ireland, I fear, to a
point at which candour, on one side or the other of the burning
questions here debated, is regarded with at least as much suspicion as
the most deliberate misrepresentation. As to Mr. Town send Trench, what
Father Maher failed to tell me, I was here told: That down to the time
of the actual evictions he offered to take six months' rent from the
tenants, give them a clean book, and pay all the costs. To refuse this
certainly looks like a "war measure."
But for the loneliness of her life here, Mrs. Hutchins tells me she
would find it delightful. The country is exceedingly lovely in the
summer and autumn months.
When my car came out to take me back to Athy, I found my jarvey in
excellent spirits, and quite friendly even with Mr. Hutchins himself. He
kept up a running fire of lively commentaries upon the residents whose
estates we passed.
"Would you think now, your honour," he said, pointing with his whip to
one large mansion standing well among good trees, "that that's the
snuggest man there is about Athy? But he is; and it's no wonder! Would
you believe it, he never buys a newspaper, but he walks all the way into
Athy, and goes about from the bank to the shops till he finds one, and
picks it up and reads it. He's mighty fond of the news, but he's fonder,
you see, of a penny!
"There now, your honour, just look at that house! It's a magistrate he
is that lives there; and why? Why, just to be called 'your honour,' and
have the people tip their hats to him. Oh! he delights in that, he does.
Why, you might knock a man, or put him in the water, you might, indeed,
but if you came before Mr.----, and you just called him 'your honour'
often enough, and made up to him, you'd be all right! You've just to go
up to him with your hat in your hand, looking up at him, and to say,
'Ah! now, your honour'" (imitating the wheedling tone to perfection),
"and indeed you'd get anything out of him--barring a sixpence, that is,
or a penny!
"Ah! he's a snug one, too!" And with that he launched a sharp thwack of
the whip at the grey mare, and we went rattling on apace.
At the very pretty station of Athy we parted the best of friends. "Wish
you safe home, your honour." The kindly railway porter, also, who had
recommended Kavanagh's Hotel, was anxious to know how I found it, and so
busied himself to get me a good carriage when the train came in, that I
feel bound to exempt Athy from the judgment passed by Sir James
Allport's committee against the "amenities of railway travelling in
Ireland."
DUBLIN, _Saturday, March 10._--I called by appointment to-day upon Mr.
Brooke, the owner of the Coolgreany estate, at his counting-house in
Gardiner's Row. It is one of the spacious old last-century houses of
Dublin; the counting-room is installed with dark, old-fashioned mahogany
fittings, in what once was, and might easily again be made, a
drawing-room. Pictures hang on the walls, and the atmosphere of the
whole place is one of courtesy and culture rather than of mere modern
commerce. One of the portraits here is that of Mr. Brooke's
granduncle--a handsome, full-blooded, rather testy-looking old warrior,
in the close-fitting scarlet uniform of the Prince Regent's time.
"He ought to have been called Lord Baltimore," said Mr. Brooke
good-naturedly; "for he fought against your people for that city at
Bladensburg with Ross."
"That was the battle," I said, "in which, according to a popular
tradition in my country, the Americans took so little interest that they
left the field almost as soon as it began."
Another portrait is of a kinsman who was murdered in the highway here in
Ireland many years ago, under peculiarly atrocious circumstances, and
with no sort of provocation or excuse.
Mr. Brooke confirmed Dr. Dillon's statement that he had ordered out of
his counting-house two tenants who came into it with a peculiarly brazen
proposition, of which I must presume Dr. Dillon was ignorant when he
cited the fact as a count against the landlord of Coolgreany. I give the
story as Mr Brooke tells it. "The Rent Audit," he says, "at which my
tenants were idiots enough to join the Plan of Campaign occurred about
the 12th December 1886, when, as you know, I refused to accept the terms
which they proposed to me. I heard nothing more from them till about the
middle of February 1887, when coming to my office one day I found two
tenants waiting for me. One was Stephen Maher, a mountain man, and the
other Patrick Kehoe. 'What do you want?' I asked. Whereupon they both
arose, and Pat Kehoe pointed to Maher. Maher fumbled at his clothes, and
rubbed himself softly for a bit, and then produced a scrap of paper.
'It's a bit of paper from the tenants, sir,' he said. A queer bit of
paper it was to look at--ruled paper, with a composition written upon it
which might have been the work of a village schoolmaster. It was neither
signed nor addressed! The pith of it was in these words,--'in
consequence of the manner in which we have been harassed, our cattle
driven throughout the country, and our crops not sown, we shall be
unable to pay the half-year's rent due in March, in addition to the
reduction already claimed!' I own I rather lost my temper at this!
Remember I had already plainly refused to give 'the reduction already
claimed,' and had told them not once, but twenty times, that I would
never surrender to the 'Plan of Campaign'! I am afraid my language was
Pagan rather than Parliamentary--but I told them plainly, at least, that
if they did not break from the Plan of Campaign, and pay their debts,
they might be sure I would turn the whole of them out! I gave them back
their precious bit of paper and sent them packing.
"One of them, I have told you, was a mountain man, Stephen Maher. He is
commonly known among the people as 'the old fox of the mountain,' and he
is very proud of it!
"This old Stephen Maher," said Mr. Brooke, "is renowned in connection
with a trial for murder, at which he was summoned as a witness. When he
was cross-examined by Mr. Molloy, Q.C., he fenced and dodged about with
that distinguished counsellor for a long time, until getting vexed by
the lawyer's persistency, he exclaimed, 'Now thin, Mr. Molloy, I'd have
ye to know that I had a cliverer man nor iver you was, Mr. Molloy, at
me, and I had to shtan' up to him for three hours before the Crowner,
an' he was onable to git the throoth out of me, so he was! so he was!'"
Neither did Dr. Dillon mention the fact that one of the demands made of
Captain Hamilton, Mr. Brooke's agent, in December 1886, was that a
Protestant tenant named Webster should be evicted by Mr. Brooke from a
farm for which he had paid his rent, to make room for the return thither
of a Roman Catholic tenant named Lenahan, previously evicted for
non-payment of his rent.
When Mr. Brooke's grandfather bought the Coolgreany property in 1864, he
adopted a system of betterments, which has been ever since kept up on
the estate. Nearly every tenant's house on the property has been slated,
and otherwise repaired by the landlord, nor has one penny ever been
added on that account to the rents.
In the village of Coolgreany all the houses on one side of the main
street were built in this way by the landlord, and the same thing was
done in the village of Croghan, where twenty tenants have a grazing
right of three sheep for every acre held on the Croghan Mountain,
pronounced by the valuers of the Land Court to be one of the best
grazing mountains in Ireland.
Captain Hamilton became the agent of the property in 1879, on the death
of Mr. Vesey. One of his earliest acts was to advise Mr. Brooke to grant
an abatement of 25 per cent. in June 1881, while the Land Act was
passing. At the same time, he cautioned the tenants that this was only a
temporary reduction, and advised them to get judicial rents fixed.
The League advised them not to do this, but to demand 25 per cent.
reduction again in December 1881. This demand was rejected, and forty
writs were issued. The tenants thereupon in January 1882 came in and
paid the full rent, with the costs.
Eleven tenants after this went into Court, and in 1883 the
Sub-Commissioners cut down their rents. In five cases Mr. Brooke
appealed. What was the result before the Chief Commissioner? The rent of
Mary Green, which had been £43, and had been cut down by the
Sub-Commissioners to £39, was restored to £43; the rent of Mr. Kavanagh,
cut down from £57 to £52, was restored to £55; the rent of Pat Kehoe
(one of the two tenants "ejected" from Mr. Brooke's office as already
stated), cut down from £81 to £70, was restored to £81; the rent of
Graham, cut down from £38 to £32, 10s., was restored to £38. Other
reductions were maintained.
This appears to be the record of "rack-renting" on the Coolgreany
property.
There are 114 tenants, of whom 15 hold under judicial rents; 22 are
leaseholders, and 77 are non-judicial yearly tenants. There are 12
Protestants holding in all a little more than 1200 acres. All the rest
are Catholics, 14 of these being cottier tenants. The estate consists of
5165 acres. The average is about £24, and the average rental about £26,
10s. The gross rental is £2614, of which £1000 go to the jointure of Mr.
Brooke's mother, and £800 are absorbed by the tithe charges, half
poor-rates and other taxes. During the year 1886, in which this war was
declared against him, Mr. Brooke spent £714 in improvements upon the
property: so in that year his income from Coolgreany was practically
_nil_.
What in these circumstances would have been the position of this
landlord had he not possessed ample means not invested in this
particular estate? And what has been the result to the tenants of this
conflict into which it seems clear that they were led, less to protect
any direct interest of their own than to jeopardise their homes and
their livelihood for the promotion of a general agrarian agitation? It
is not clear that they are absolutely so far out of pocket, for I find
that the Post-Office Savings Bank deposits at Inch and Gorey rose from
£3699, 5s. 4d. in 1880 to £5308, 13s. in 1887, showing an increase of
£1609, 7s. 8d. But they are out of house and home and work, entered
pupils in that school of idleness and iniquity which has been kept by
one Preceptor from the beginning of time.