BELFAST, _Monday, June 25._--I left Dublin yesterday at 4 P.M., in a
train which went off at high pressure as an "express," but came into
Belfast panting and dilatory as an "excursion." The day was fine, and
the line passes through what is reputed to be the most prosperous part
of Ireland. In this part of Ireland, too, the fate of the island has
been more than once settled by the arbitrament of arms; and if
Parliamentary England throws up the sponge in the wrestle with the
League, it is probable enough that the old story will come to be told
over again here.
At Dundalk the Irish monarchy of the Braces was made and unmade. The
plantation of Ulster under James I. clinched the grasp not so much of
England as of Scotland upon Ireland, and determined the course of events
here through the Great Rebellion. The landing of the Duke of Schomberg
at Carrickfergus opened the way for the subjugation of Jacobite Ireland
by William of Orange. The successful descent of the French upon the same
place in February 1760, after the close of "the Great Year," in which
Walpole tells us he came to expect a new victory every morning with the
rolls for breakfast, and after Hawke had broken the strength of the
great French Armada off Belleisle, and done for England the service
which Nelson did for her again off Trafalgar in 1805, shows what might
have happened had Thurot commanded the fleet of Conflans. In this same
region, too, the rout of Munro by Nugent at Ballinahinch practically
ended the insurrection of 1798.
There are good reasons in the physical geography of the British Islands
for this controlling influence of Ulster over the affairs of Ireland,
which it seems to me a serious mistake to overlook.
The author of a brief but very hard-headed and practical letter on the
pacification of Ireland, which appeared in the _Times_ newspaper in
1886, while the air was thrilling with rumours of Mr. Gladstone's
impending appearance as the champion of "Home Rule," carried, I
remember, to the account of St. George's Channel "nine-tenths of the
troubles, religious, political, and social, under which Ireland has
laboured for seven centuries." I cannot help thinking he hit the nail on
the head; and St. George's Channel does not divide Ulster from Scotland.
From Donaghadee, which has an excellent harbour, the houses on the
Scottish coast can easily be made out in clear weather. A chain is no
stronger than its weakest link, and it is as hard to see how, even with
the consent of Ulster, the independence of Ireland could be maintained
against the interests and the will of Scotland, as it is easy to see why
Leinster, Munster, and Connaught have been so difficult of control and
assimilation by England. To dream of establishing the independence of
Ireland against the will of Ulster appears to me to be little short of
madness.
At Moira, which stands very prettily above the Ulster Canal, a small
army of people returning from a day in the country to Belfast came upon
us and trebled the length of our train. We picked up more at Lisburn,
where stands the Cathedral Church of Jeremy Taylor, the "Shakespeare of
divines." Here my only companion in the compartment from Dublin left me,
a most kindly, intelligent Ulster man, who had very positive views as to
the political situation. He much commended the recent discourse in
Scotland of a Presbyterian minister, who spoke of the Papal Decree as
"pouring water on a drowned mouse," a remark which led me to elicit the
fact that he had never seen either Clare or Kerry; and he was very warm
in his admiration of Mr. Chamberlain. He told me, what I had heard from
many other men of Ulster, that the North had armed itself thoroughly
when the Home Rule business began with Mr. Gladstone. "I am a Unionist,"
he said, "but I think the Union is worth as much to England as it is to
Ireland, and if England means to break it up it is not the part of
Irishmen who think and feel as I do to let her choose her own time for
doing it, and stand still while she robs us of our property and turns us
out defenceless to be trampled under foot by the most worthless
vagabonds in our own island." He thinks the National League has had its
death-blow. "What I fear now," he said, "is that we are running straight
into a social war, and that will never be a war against the landlords in
Ireland; it'll be a war against the Protestants and all the decent
people there are among the Catholics."
He was very cordial when he found I was an American, and with that
offhand hospitality which seems to know no distinctions of race or
religion in Ireland urged me to come and make him a visit at a place he
has nearer the sea-coast. "I'll show you Downpatrick," he said, "where
the tombs of St. Patrick and St. Bridget and St. Columb are, the saints
sleeping quite at their ease, with a fine prosperous Presbyterian town
all about them. And I'll drive you to Tullymore, where you'll see the
most beautiful park, and the finest views from it all the way to the
Isle of Man, that are to be seen in all Ireland." He was very much
interested in the curious story of the sequestration of the remains of
Mr. Stewart of New York, who was born, he tells me, at Lisburn, where
the wildest fabrications on the subject seem to have got currency. That
this feat of body-snatching is supposed to have been performed by a
little syndicate of Italians, afterwards broken up by the firmness of
Lady Crawford in resisting the ghastly pressure to which the widow and
the executors of Mr. Stewart are believed to have succumbed, was quite a
new idea to him.
From Moira to Belfast the scenery along the line grows in beauty
steadily. If Belfast were not the busiest and most thriving city in
Ireland, it would still be well worth a visit for the picturesque charms
of its situation and of the scenery which surrounds it. At some future
day I hope to get a better notion both of its activity and of its
attractions than it would be possible for me to attempt to get in this
flying visit, made solely to take the touch of the atmosphere of the
place at this season of the year; for we are on the very eve of the
battle month of the Boyne.
Mr. Cameron, the Town Inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary, met me
at the station, in accordance with a promise which he kindly made when I
saw him several weeks ago at Cork; and this morning he took me all over
the city. It is very well laid out, in the new quarters especially, with
broad avenues and spacious squares. In fact, as a local wag said to me
to-day at the Ulster Club, "You can drive through Belfast without once
going into a street"--most of the thoroughfares which are not called
"avenues" or "places" being known as "roads." It is, of course, an
essentially modern city. When Boate made his survey of Ireland two
centuries ago, Belfast was so small a place that he took small note of
it, though it had been incorporated by James I. in 1613 in favour of the
Chichester family, still represented here. In a very careful _Tour in
Ireland_, published at Dublin in 1780, the author says of Belfast, "I
could not help remarking the great number of Scots who reside in this
place, and who carry on a good trade with Scotland." It seems then to
have had a population of less than 20,000 souls, as it only touched that
number at the beginning of this century. It has since then advanced by
"leaps and bounds," after an almost American fashion, till it has now
become the second, and bids fair at no distant day to become the first,
city in Ireland. Few of the American cities which are its true
contemporaries can be compared with Belfast in beauty. The quarter in
which my host lives was reclaimed from the sea marshes not quite so long
ago, I believe, as was the Commonwealth Avenue quarter of Boston, and
though it does not show so many costly private houses perhaps as that
quarter of the New England capital, its "roads" and "avenues" are on the
whole better built, and there is no public building in Boston so
imposing as the Queen's College, with its Tudor front six hundred feet
in length, and its graceful central tower. The Botanic Gardens near by
are much prettier and much better equipped for the pleasure and
instruction of the people than any public gardens in either Boston or
New York. These American comparisons make themselves, all the conditions
of Belfast being rather of the New World than of the Old. The oldest
building pointed out to me to-day is the whilom mansion of the Marquis
of Donegal, now used as offices, and still called the Castle.
This stands near Donegal Square, a fine site, disfigured by a quadrangle
of commonplace brick buildings, occupied as a sort of Linen Exchange,
concerning which a controversy rages, I am told. They are erected on
land granted by Lord Donegal to encourage the linen trade, and the
buildings used to be leased at a rental of £1 per window. The present
holders receive £10 per window, and are naturally loath to part with so
good a thing, though there is an earnest desire in the city to see these
unsightly structures removed, and their place taken by stately municipal
buildings more in key with the really remarkable and monumental private
warehouses which already adorn this Square. Mr. Robinson, one of the
partners of a firm which has just completed one of these warehouses, was
good enough to show us over it. It is built of a warm grey stone, which
lends itself easily to the chisel, and it is decorated with a wealth of
carving and of architectural ornaments such as the great burghers of
Flanders lavished on their public buildings. The interior arrangements
are worthy of the external stateliness of the warehouse. Pneumatic tubes
for the delivery of cash--a Scottish invention--electric lights, steam
lifts, a kitchen at the top of the lofty edifice heated by steam from
the great engine-room in the cellars, and furnishing meals to the
employees, attest the energy and enterprise of the firm. The most
delicate of the linen fabrics sold here are made, I was informed, all
over the north country. The looms, three or four of which are kept going
here in a great room to show the intricacy and perfection of the
processes, are supplied by the firm to the hand-workers on a system
which enables them, while earning good wages from week to week, to
acquire the eventual ownership of the machines. The building is crowned
by a sort of observatory, from which we enjoyed a noble prospect
overlooking the whole city and miles of the beautiful country around. A
haze on the horizon hid the coast of Scotland, which is quite visible
under a clear sky. The Queen's Bridge over the Lagan, built in 1842
between Antrim and Down, was a conspicuous feature in the panorama. Its
five great arches of hewn granite span the distance formerly traversed
by an older bridge of twenty-one arches 840 feet in length, which was
begun in 1682, and finished just in time to welcome Schomberg and King
William.
The not less imposing warehouse of Richardson and Co., built of a
singularly beautiful brown stone, and decorated with equal taste and
liberality, adjoins that of Robinson and Cleaver. The banks, the public
offices, the clubs, the city library, the museum, the Presbyterian
college, the principal churches, all of them modern, all alike bear
witness to the public spirit and pride in their town of the good people
of Belfast. With more time at my disposal I would have been very glad to
visit some of the flax-mills called into being by the great impulse
which the cotton famine resulting from our Civil War gave to the linen
manufactures of Northern Ireland, and the famous shipyards of the Woolfs
on Queen's Island, As things are, it was more to my purpose to see some
of the representative men of this great Protestant stronghold.
I passed a very interesting hour with the Rev. Dr. Hanna, who is reputed
to be a sort of clerical "Lion of the North," and whom I found to be in
almost all respects a complete antitype of Father M'Fadden of Gweedore.
Dr. Hanna is not unjustly proud of being at the head of the most
extensive Sunday-school organisation in Ireland, if not in the world;
and I find that the anniversary parade of his pupils, appointed for
Saturday, June 30th, is looked forward to with some anxiety by the
authorities here. He tells me that he expects to put two thousand
children that day into motion for a grand excursion to Moira; but
although he speaks very plainly as to the ill-will with which a certain
class of the Catholics here regard both himself and his organisation, he
does not anticipate any attack from them. With what seems to me very
commendable prudence, he has resolved this year to put this procession
into the streets without banners and bands, so that no charge of
provocation may be even colourably advanced against it. This is no
slight concession from a man so determined and so outspoken, not to say
aggressive, in his Protestantism as Dr. Hanna; and the Nationalist
Catholics will be very ill-advised, it strikes me, if they misinterpret
it.
He spoke respectfully of the Papal decree against Boycotting and the
Plan of Campaign; but he seems to think it will not command the respect
of the masses of the Catholic population, nor be really enforced by the
clergy. Like most of the Ulstermen I have met, he has a firm faith, not
only in the power of the Protestant North to protect itself, but in its
determination to protect itself against the consequences which the
northern Protestants believe must inevitably follow any attempt to
establish an Irish nationality. Dr. Hanna is neither an Orangeman nor a
Tory. He says there are but three known Orangemen among the clerical
members of the General Assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church, which
unanimously pronounced against Mr. Gladstone's scheme of Home Rule, and
not more than a dozen Tories. Of the 550 members of the Assembly, 538,
he says, were followers of Mr. Gladstone before he adopted the politics
of Mr. Parnell; and only three out of the whole number have given him
their support. In the country at large, Dr. Hanna puts down the
Unionists at two millions, of whom 1,200,000 are Protestants, and
800,000 Catholics; and he maintains that if the Parliamentary
representatives were chosen by a general vote, the Parnellite 80 would
be cut down to 62; while the Unionists would number 44. He regards the
Parnellite policy as "an organised imposture," and firmly believes that
an Irish Parliament in Dublin would now mean civil war in Ireland. He
had a visit here last week, he says, from an American Presbyterian
minister, who came out to Ireland a month ago a "Home Ruler"; but, as
the result of a trip through North-Western Ireland, is going back to
denounce the Home Rule movement as a mischievous fraud.
When I asked him what remedy he would propose for the discontent stirred
up by the agitation of Home Rule, this Presbyterian clergyman replied
emphatically, "Balfour, Balfour, and more Balfour!"
This on the ground, as I understood, that Mr. Balfour's administration
of the law has been the firmest, least wavering, and most equitable
known in Ireland for many a day.
Later in the day I had the pleasure of a conversation with the Rev. Dr.
Kane, the Grand Master of the Orangemen at Belfast. Dr. Kane is a tall,
fine-looking, frank, and resolute man, who obviously has the courage of
his opinions. He thinks there will be no disturbances this year on the
12th of July, but that the Orange demonstrations will be on a greater
scale and more imposing than ever. He derides the notion that
"Parnellism" is making any progress in Ulster. On the contrary, the
concurrence this year of the anniversary of the defeat of the Great
Armada with the anniversary of the Revolution of 1688 has aroused the
strongest feelings of enthusiasm among the Protestants of the North, and
they were never so determined as they now are not to tolerate anything
remotely looking to the constitution of a separate and separatist
Government at Dublin.
BELFAST, _Tuesday, June 26._--Sir John Preston, the head of one of the
great Belfast houses, and a former Mayor of the city, dined with us last
night, and in the evening Sir James Haslett, the actual Mayor, came in.
I find that in Belfast the office of Mayor is served without a salary,
and is consequently filled as a rule by citizens of "weight and
instance." In Dublin the Lord Mayor receives £3000 a year, with a
contingent fund of £1500, and the office is becoming a distinctly
political post. The face of Belfast is so firmly set against the
tendency to subordinate municipal interests to general party exigencies,
that the Corporation compelled Mr. Cobain, M.P., who sits at Westminster
now for this constituency, to resign the post which he held as treasurer
and cashier of the Corporation when he became a candidate for a seat in
Parliament. I am not surprised, therefore, to learn that the city rates
and taxes are much lower in the commercial than they are in the
political capital of Ireland.
Both Sir John Preston and Sir James Haslett have visited America. Sir
John went there to represent the linen industries of Ireland, and to
urge upon Congress the propriety of reducing our import duties upon
fabrics which the American climate makes it practically imposssible to
manufacture on our side of the water. Senator Sherman, who twenty years
ago had the candour to admit that the wit of man could not devise a
tariff so adjusted as to raise the revenue necessary for the Government
which should not afford adequate incidental protection to all legitimate
American industries, gave Sir John reason to hope that something might
be done in the direction of a more liberal treatment of the linen
industries. But nothing practical came of it. Sir John ought to have
known that our typical American Protectionist, the late Horace Greeley,
really persuaded himself, and tried to persuade other people, that with
duties enough clapped on the Asiatic production, excellent tea might be
grown on the uplands of South Carolina!
In former years Sir John Preston used to visit Gweedore every year for
sport and recreation. He knew Lord George Hill very well, "as true and
noble a man as ever lived, who stinted himself to improve the state of
his tenants." He threw an odd light on the dreamy desire which had so
much amused me of the "beauty of Gweedore" to become "a dressmaker at
Derry," by telling me that long ago the gossips there used to tell
wonderful stories of a Gweedore girl who had made her fortune as a
milliner in the "Maiden City."
This morning Mr. Cameron, who as Town Inspector of the Royal Irish
Constabulary will be responsible for public peace and order here during
the next critical fortnight, held a review of his men on a common beyond
the Theological College. About two hundred and fifty of the force were
paraded, with about twenty mounted policemen, and for an hour and a
half, under a tolerably warm sun, they were put through a regular
military drill. A finer body of men cannot be seen, and in point of
discipline and training they can hold their own, I should say, with the
best of her Majesty's regiments. Without such discipline and training it
would not be easy for any such body of men to pass with composure
through the ordeal of insults and abuse to which the testimony of
trustworthy eye-witnesses compels me to believe they are habitually
subjected in the more disturbed districts of Ireland. As to the
immediate outlook here, Mr. Cameron seems quite at his ease. Even if
ill-disposed persons should set about provoking a collision between "the
victors and the vanquished of the Boyne" his arrangements are so made,
he says, as to prevent the development of anything like the outbreaks of
former years.
On the advice of Sir John Preston I shall take the Fleetwood route on my
return to London to-night.
This secures one a comfortable night on board of a very good and
well-equipped boat, from which you go ashore, he tells me, into an
excellent station of the London and North-Western Railway at Fleetwood,
on the mouth of the Wyre on the Lancashire coast. Twenty years ago this
was a small bathing resort called into existence chiefly by the
enterprise of a local baronet whose name it bears. Its present
prosperity and prospective importance are another illustration of the
vigour and vitality of the North of Ireland, which is connected through
Fleetwood with the great manufacturing regions of middle and northern
England, as it is through Larne with the heart of Scotland.
While it is as true now of the predominantly Catholic south of Ireland
as it was when Sir Robert Peel made the remark forty years ago, that it
stands "with its back to England and its face to the West," this
Protestant Ireland of the North faces both ways, drawing Canada and the
United States to itself through Moville and Derry and Belfast, and
holding fast at the same time upon the resources of Great Britain
through Glasgow and Liverpool. One of the best informed bankers in
London told me not long ago, that pretty nearly all the securities of
the great company which has recently taken over the business of the
Guinnesses have already found their way into the North of Ireland and
are held here. With such resources in its wealth and industry, better
educated, better equipped, and holding a practically impregnable
position in the North of Ireland, with Scotland and the sea at its back,
Ulster is very much stronger relatively to the rest of Ireland than La
Vendée was relatively to the rest of the French Republic in the last
century. In a struggle for independence against the rest of Ireland it
would have nothing to fear from the United States, where any attempt to
organise hostilities against it would put the Irish-American population
in serious peril, not only from the American Government, but from
popular feeling, and force home upon the attention of the
quickest-witted people in the world the significant fact that while the
chief contributions, so far, of America to Southern Ireland, have been
alms and agitation, the chief contributions of Scotland to Northern
Ireland have been skilled agriculture and successful activity. It is
surely not without meaning that the only steamers of Irish build which
now traverse the Atlantic come from the dockyards, not of Galway nor of
Cork, the natural gateways of Ireland to the west, but of Belfast, the
natural gateway of Ireland to the north.
EPILOGUE.
Not once, but a hundred times, during the visits to Ireland recorded in
this book, I have been reminded of the state of feeling and opinion
which existed in the Border States, as they were called, of the American
Union, after the invasion of Virginia by a piratical band under John
Brown, and before the long-pending issues between the South, insisting
upon its constitutional rights, and the North, restive under its
constitutional obligations, were brought to a head by the election of
President Lincoln.
All analogies, I know, are deceptive, and I do not insist upon this
analogy. But it has a certain value here. For to-day in Ireland, as then
in America, we find a grave question of politics, in itself not
unmanageable, perhaps, by a race trained to self-government, seriously
complicated and aggravated, not only by considerations of moral right
and moral wrong, but by a profound perturbation of the material
interests of the community.
I well remember that after a careful study of the situation in America
at the time of which I speak, Mr. Nassau Senior, a most careful and
competent observer, frankly told me that he saw no possible way in which
the problem could be worked out peacefully. The event justified this
gloomy forecast.
It would be presumptuous in me to say as much of the actual situation in
Ireland; but it would be uncandid not to say that the optimists of
Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee had greater
apparent odds in their favour in 1861 than the optimists of Ireland seem
to me to have in 1888.
Ireland stands to-day between Great Britain and the millions of the
Irish race in America and Australia very much as the Border States of
the American Union stood in 1861 between the North and the South. There
was little either in the Tariff question or in the Slavery question to
shake the foundations of law and order in the Border States, could they
have been left to themselves; and the Border States enjoyed all the
advantages and immunities of "Home Rule" to an extent and under
guarantees never yet openly demanded for Ireland by any responsible
legislator within the walls of the British Parliament. But so powerful
was the leverage upon them of conflicting passions and interests beyond
their own borders that these sovereign states, well organised,
homogeneous, prosperous communities, much more populous and richer in
the aggregate in 1861 than Ireland is to-day, practically lost the
control of their own affairs, and were swept helplessly into a terrific
conflict, which they had the greatest imaginable interest in avoiding,
and no interest whatever in promoting.
I have seen and heard nothing in Ireland to warrant the very common
impression that the country, as a whole, is either misgoverned or
ungovernable; nothing to justify me in regarding the difficulties which
there impede the maintenance of law and order as really indigenous and
spontaneous. The "agitated" Ireland of 1888 appears to me to be almost
as clearly and demonstrably the creation of forces not generated in, but
acting upon, a country, as was the "bleeding Kansas" of 1856. But the
"bleeding Kansas" of 1856 brought the great American Union to the verge
of disruption, and the "agitated Ireland" of 1888 may do as much, or
worse, for the British Empire. There is, no doubt, a great deal of
distress in one or another part of Ireland, though it has not been my
fortune to come upon any outward and visible signs of such grinding
misery as forces itself upon you in certain of the richest provinces of
that independent, busy, prosperous, Roman Catholic kingdom of Belgium,
which on a territory little more than one-third as large as the
territory of Ireland, maintains nearly a million more inhabitants, and
adds to its population, on an average, in round numbers, as many people
in four years as Ireland loses in five.
I have seen peasant proprietors in Flanders and Brabant who could give
the ideal Irish agent of the Nationalist newspapers lessons in
rack-renting, though I am not at all sure that they might not get a hint
or two themselves from some of the small farmers who came in my way in
Ireland.
Like all countries, mainly agricultural, too, Ireland has suffered a
great deal of late years from the fall in prices following upon a period
of intoxicating prosperity. Whether she has suffered more relatively
than we should have suffered from the same cause in America, had we been
foolish enough to imitate the monometallic policy of Germany in 1873, is
however open to question; and I have an impression, which it will
require evidence to remove, that the actual organisation known as the
National Land League could never have been called into being had the
British Government devoted to action upon the Currency Question, before
1879, the time and energy which it has expended before and since that
date in unsettling the principles of free contract, and tinkering at the
relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland.
But I am trenching upon inquiries here beyond the province of this book.
Fortunately it is not necessary to my object in printing these volumes
that I should either form or formulate any positive opinions as to the
origin of the existing crisis in Ireland. Nor need I volunteer any
suggestions of my own as to the methods by which order may best be
maintained and civil government carried on in Ireland. It suffices for
me that I close this self-imposed survey of men and things in that
country with a conviction, as positive as it is melancholy, that the
work which Mr. Redmond, M.P., informed us at Chicago that he and his
Nationalist colleagues had undertaken, of "making the government of
Ireland by England impossible," has been so far achieved, and by such
methods as to make it extremely doubtful whether Ireland can be governed
by anybody at all in accordance with any of the systems of government
hitherto recognised in or adopted for that country. I certainly can see
nothing in the organisation and conduct, down to this time, of the party
known as the party of the Irish Nationalists, I will not say to
encourage, but even to excuse, a belief that Ireland could be governed
as a civilised country were it turned over to-morrow to their control. A
great deal has been done by them to propagate throughout Christendom a
general impression that England has dismally failed to govern Ireland in
the past, and is unlikely hereafter to succeed in governing Ireland. But
even granting this impression to be absolutely well founded, it by no
means follows that Ireland is any more capable of governing herself than
England is of governing her. The Russians have not made a brilliant
success of their administration in Poland, but the Poles certainly
administered Poland no better than the Russians have done. With an Irish
representation in an Imperial British Parliament at Westminster,
Ireland, under Mr. Gladstone's "base and blackguard" Union of 1800, has
at least succeeded in shaking off some of the weightiest of the burdens
by which, in the days of Swift, of Grattan, and of O'Connell, she most
loudly declared herself to be oppressed. Whether with a Parliament at
Dublin she would have fared as well in this respect since 1800 must be a
matter of conjecture merely--and it must be equally a matter of
conjecture also whether she would fare any better in this respect with a
Parliament at Dublin hereafter. I am in no position to pronounce upon
this--but it is quite certain that nothing is more uncommon than to find
an educated and intelligent man, not an active partisan, in Ireland
to-day, who looks forward to the reestablishment, in existing
circumstances, of a Parliament at Dublin with confidence or hope.
How the establishment of such a Parliament would affect the position of
Great Britain as a power in Europe, and how it would affect the fiscal
policy, and with the fiscal policy the well-being of the British people,
are questions for British subjects to consider, not for me.
That the processes employed during the past decade, and now employed to
bring about the establishment of such a Parliament, have been, and are
in their nature, essentially revolutionary, subversive of all sound and
healthy relations between man and man, inconsistent with social
stability, and therefore with social progress and with social peace,
what I have seen and heard in Ireland during the past six months compels
me to feel. Of the "Coercion," under which the Nationalist speakers and
writers ask us in America to believe that the island groans and
travails, I have seen literally nothing.
Nowhere in the world is the press more absolutely free than to-day in
Ireland. Nowhere in the world are the actions of men in authority more
bitterly and unsparingly criticised. If public men or private citizens
are sent to prison in Ireland, they are sent there, not as they were in
America during the civil war, or in Ireland under the "Coercion Act" of
1881, on suspicion of something they may have done, or may have intended
to do, but after being tried for doing, and convicted of having done,
certain things made offences against the law by a Parliament in which
they are represented, and of which, in some cases, they are members.
To call this "Coercion" is, from the American point of view, simply
ludicrous. What it may be from the British or the Irish point of view is
another affair, and does not concern me. I may be permitted, however, I
hope without incivility, to say that if this be "Coercion" from the
British or the Irish point of view, I am well content to be an American
citizen. Ours is essentially a government not of emotions, but of
statutes, and most Americans, I think, will agree with me that the sage
was right who declared it to be better to live where nothing is lawful
than where all things are lawful.
The "Coercion" which I have found established in Ireland, and which I
recognise in the title of this book, is the "Coercion," not of a
government, but of a combination to make a particular government
impossible. It is a "Coercion" applied not to men who break a public
law, or offend against any recognised code of morals, but to men who
refuse to be bound in their personal relations and their business
transactions by the will of other men, their equals only, clothed with
no legal authority over them. It is a "Coercion" administered not by
public and responsible functionaries, but by secret tribunals. Its
sanctions are not the law and honest public opinion, but the base
instinct of personal cowardice, and the instinct, not less base, of
personal greed. Whether anything more than a steady, firm administration
of the law is needed to abolish this "Coercion" is a matter as to which
authorities differ. I should be glad to believe with Colonel Saunderson
that "the Leaguers would not hold up the 'land-grabber' to execration,
and denounce him as they do, unless they knew in fact that the moment
the law is made supreme in Ireland the tenants would become just as
amenable to it as any other subjects of the Queen." But some recent
events suggest a doubt whether these "other subjects of the Queen" are
as amenable to the law as my own countrymen are.
That the Church to which the great majority of the Irish people have for
so many ages, and through so many tribulations, borne steadfast
allegiance, has been shaken in its hold upon the conscience of Ireland
by the machinery of this odious and ignoble "Coercion," appears to me to
be unquestionable. That the head of that Church, being compelled by
evidence to believe this, has found it necessary to intervene for the
restoration of the just spiritual authority of the Church over the Irish
people all the world now knows--nor can I think that his intervention
has come a day or an hour too soon, to arrest the progress in Ireland of
a social disease which threatens, not the political interests of the
empire of which Ireland is a part alone, but the character of the Irish
people themselves, and the very existence among them of the elementary
conditions of a Christian civilisation.
It would be unjust to the Irish people to forget that this demoralising
"Coercion" against which the Head of the Catholic Church has declared
war, seems to me to have been seriously reinforced by the Land
Legislation of the Imperial Parliament.
No one denies that great reforms and readjustments of the Land Tenure in
Ireland needed to be made long before any serious attempt was made to
make them.
But that such reforms and readjustments might have been made without
cutting completely loose from the moorings of political economy, appears
pretty clearly, not only from examples on the continent of Europe, and
in my own country, but from the Rent and Tenancy Acts carried out in
India under the viceroyalty of Lord Dufferin since 1885. The conditions
of these measures were different, of course, in each of the cases of
Oudh, Bengal, and the Punjab, and in none of these cases were they
nearly identical with the conditions of any practicable land measure for
Ireland. But two great characteristics seem to me to mark the Indian
legislation, which are not conspicuous in the legislation for Ireland.
These are a spirit of equity as between the landlords and the tenants,
and finality. I do not see how it can be questioned that the landlords
of Ireland have been dealt with by recent British legislation as if they
were offenders to be mulcted, and that the tenants in Ireland have been
encouraged by recent British legislation to anticipate an eventual
transfer to them, on steadily improving terms, of the land-ownership of
the island. Mr. Davitt is perhaps the most popular Irishman living, and
I believe him to be sincerely convinced that the ownership of the land
of Ireland (and of all other countries) ought to be vested in the State.
But if the independence of Ireland were acknowledged by Great Britain
to-morrow, and all the actual landlords of Ireland were compelled
to-morrow to part with their ownership, such as it is, of the land, I
believe Mr. Davitt would be further from the recognition and triumph of
his principle of State-ownership than he is to-day with a British
Parliament hostile to "Home Rule," but apparently not altogether
unwilling to make the landlords of Ireland an acceptable burnt-offering
upon the altar of imperial unity. Probably he sees this himself, and the
existing state of things may not be wholly displeasing to him, as
holding out a hope that the flame which he has been helped by British
legislation to kindle in Ireland may already be taking hold upon the
substructions and outworks of the edifice of property in Great Britain
also.
One thing at least is clear.
The two antagonistic principles which confront each other in Ireland
to-day are the principles of the Agrarian Revolution represented by Mr.
Davitt, and the principle of Authority, represented in the domain of
politics by the British Government, and in the domain of morals by the
Vatican. With one or the other of these principles the victory must
rest. If the Irish people of all classes who live in Ireland could be
polled to-day, it is likely enough that a decisive majority of them
would declare for the principle of Authority in the State and in the
Church, could that over-riding issue be made perfectly plain and
intelligible to them. But how is that possible? In what country of the
world, and in what age of the world, has it ever been possible to get
such an issue made perfectly plain and intelligible to any people?
In the domain of morals the principle of Authority, so far as concerns
Catholic Ireland, rests with a power which is not likely to waver or
give way. The Papal Decree has gone forth. Those who profess to accept
it will be compelled to obey it. Those who reject it, whatever their
place in the hierarchy of the Church may be, must sooner or later find
themselves where Dr. M'Glynn of New York now is. Catholic Ireland can
only continue to be Catholic on the condition of obedience, not formal
but real, not in matters indifferent, but in matters vital and
important, to the Head of the Catholic Church.
In the domain of politics the principle of Authority rests with an
Administration which is at the mercy of the intelligence or the
ignorance, the constancy or the fickleness, the weakness or the
strength, of constituencies in Great Britain, not necessarily familiar
with the facts of the situation in Ireland, not necessarily enlightened
as to the real interests either of Great Britain or of Ireland, nor even
necessarily awake, with Cardinal Manning, to the truth that upon the
future of Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire.
With two, three, four, or five years of a steady and cool administration
of the laws in Ireland, by an executive officer such as Mr. Balfour
seems to me to have shown himself to be--with a judicious abstinence of
the British Legislature from feverish and fussy legislation about
Ireland, with a prudent and persistent development of the material
resources of Ireland, and with a genuine co-operation of the people who
own land in Ireland with the people who wish to own land in Ireland, for
the readjustment of land-ownership, the principle of Authority in the
domain of politics may doubtless win in the conflict with the principle
of the Agrarian revolution.
But how many contingencies are here involved! Meanwhile the influences
which imperil in Ireland the principle of Authority, in the domains
alike of politics and of morals, are at work incessantly, to undermine
and deteriorate the character of the Irish people, to take the vigour
and the manhood out of them, to unfit them day by day, not only for good
citizenship in the British Empire or the United States, but for good
citizenship in any possible Ireland under any possible form of
government. To arrest these influences before they bring on in Ireland a
social crash, the effects of which must be felt far beyond the
boundaries of that country, is a matter of primary importance,
doubtless, to the British people. It is a matter, too, of hardly less
than primary importance to the people of my own country. Unfortunately
it does not rest with us to devise or to apply an efficient check to
these influences.
That rests with the people of Great Britain, so long as they insist that
Ireland shall remain an integral portion of the British dominions. I do
not see how they can acquit themselves of this responsibility, or escape
the consequences of evading it, solely by devising the most ingenious
machinery of local administration for Ireland, or the most liberal
schemes for fostering the material interests of the Irish people. Such
things, of course, must in due time be attended to. But the first duty
of a government is to govern; and I believe that Earl Grey has summed up
the situation in Ireland more concisely and more courageously than any
other British statesman in his outspoken declaration, that "in order to
avert the wreck of the nation, it is absolutely necessary that some
means or other should be found for securing to Ireland during the
present crisis a wiser and more stable administration of its affairs
than can be looked for under its existing institutions."
I have heard and read a good deal in the past of the "Three F's" thought
a panacea for Irish discontent. Three other F's seem to me quite as
important to the future of Irish content and public order. These are,
Fair Dealing towards Landlords as well as Tenants; Finality of Agrarian
Legislation at Westminster; and last and most essential of all, Fixity
of Executive Tenure.
The words I have just quoted of Earl Grey, show it to be the conviction
of the oldest living leader of English Liberalism that this last is the
vital point, the key of the situation. Let me bracket with his words,
and leave to the consideration of my readers, the following pregnant
passage from a letter written to me by an Irish correspondent who is as
devoted to Irish independence as is Earl Grey to imperial unity:--
"If the present Nationalist movement succeeds, it will have the effect
of putting the worst elements of the Irish nation in power, and keeping
them there irremoveably. We are to have an Executive at the mercy of a
House of Representatives, and the result will be a government, or series
of governments, as weak and vicious as those of France, with this
difference, that here all purifying changes such as seem imminent in
France will be absolutely prevented by the irresistible power of
England. The true model for us would be a constitution like yours in the
United States, with an Executive responsible to the nation at large, and
irremoveable for a term of years. But this we shall never get from
England. Shall we make use of Home Rule to take it for ourselves?
"Many earnest and active Irish Unionists now say that if any bill
resembling Mr. Gladstone's passes, they will make separation, their
definite policy. If Home Rule comes without the landlords having been
bought out on reasonable terms, a class will be created in Ireland full
of bitter and most just hatred of England--a class which may very likely
one day play the part here which the persecuted Irish Presbyterians who
fled from the tyranny of the English Church in Ireland played in your
own Revolution beyond the Atlantic."
<p><hr /></p>
APPENDIX.
NOTE F.
THE "MOONLIGHTERS" AND "HOME RULE."
(Vol. ii. p. 38.)
On Monday, the 1st of February 1886, the _Irish Times_ published the
following story from Tralee, near the scene of the "boycotting,"
temporal and spiritual, of the unfortunate daughters of Mr. Jeremiah
Curtin, murdered in his own house by "moonlighters":--
"TRALEE, _Sunday_.
"It was stated that the bishop had ordered Mass to be celebrated
for them--the Curtins--but this did not take place. At the village
of Firies a number of people had assembled. They stopped loitering
about the place in the forenoon, waiting for a meeting of the
National League, which was subsequently held. A threatening notice
was discovered posted up on the door of a house formerly used as a
forge. It ran as follows:--
"'NOTICE.--If we are honoured by the presence of the bloodthirsty
perjurers at Mass on any of the forthcoming Sundays, take good care
you'll stand up very politely and walk out. Don't be under the
impression that all the Moonlighters are dead, and that this notice
is a child's play, as Shawn Nelleen titled the last one. I'll be
sure to keep my word, as you will see before long, so have no
welcome for the Curtins, and, above all, let no one work for them
in any way. As you respect the Captain, and as you value your own
life, abide by this notice.'--Signed, 'A MOONLIGHTER.'
"The above notice was written on tea paper in large legible style,
and evidently by an intelligent person. Groups were perusing it
during the day. A force of police marched through the village and
back, but did not observe this document, as it is still posted on
the door of the house."
The "bloodthirsty perjurers" here mentioned were the daughters who had
dared to demand and to promote the punishment of the assassins of their
father! For this crime these daughters were to be excommunicated by the
people of Firies, and denied the consolations of religion in their deep
sorrow, even in defiance of the order of the Catholic bishop.
As the advent of Mr. Gladstone to power in alliance with Mr. Parnell was
then imminent, Mr. Sheehan, M.P., wrote a letter to the parish priest of
Firies, the Rev. Mr. O'Connor, begging him in substance to put the
brakes--for a time--upon the wheels of the local rack, lest the outcries
of the young women subjected to this moral torture should interfere with
the success of the new alliance. This, in plain English, is the only
possible meaning of the letter which I here reprint from a leaflet
issued by an Irish society:--
"The Rev. Father O'Connor, P.P., has received the following letter
from Mr. Sheehau, M.P., in reference to this matter, under date
"'House of Commons, _January 26th._
"'REV. DEAR SIR,--At this important juncture in our history, I am
sorry to see reports of the Firies display. Nothing that has taken
place yet in the South of Ireland has done so much harm to the
National cause. If they persist they will ruin us. To-morrow
evening will be most important in Parliamentary history. Our party
expect the defeat of the Government and resumption of power by Mr.
Gladstone. If we succeed in this, which we are confident of, the
future of our country will be great, and, although an appeal to the
constituencies must be made, the Irish party in those few days have
made an impression in future that no Government can withstand. The
Salisbury Government want to appeal to the country on the integrity
of the empire, and, of course, for the last few days have tried all
means to lead to this by raking up the Curtin case and all judicial
cases, which _must be avoided for a short time_, as our stoppage to
the Eviction Act will cover all this.--Yours faithfully, J.D.
SHEEHAN.'"
This letter was read, the leaflet informs us, by the Rev. Mr. O'Connor,
at the National Schools and other places.
NOTE G.
THE PONSONBY PROPERTY.
(Vol. ii. pp. 59-66.)
The account which the Rev. Canon Keller gave me of "The Struggle for
Life on the Ponsonby Estate," in a tract bearing that title, and
authorised by him to be published by the National League, is so
circumstantial and elaborate that, after reading it carefully, I took
unusual pains to obtain some reply to it from the representatives of the
landlord implicated. These finally led to a visit from Mr. Ponsonby
himself, who was so kind as to call upon me in London on the 15th of
May, with papers and documents. I give in the following colloquy the
results of this interview, putting together with the allegations of
Canon Keller the answers of Mr. Ponsonby, and leave the matter in this
form to the judgment of my readers.
_Q_. Canon Keller, I see, describes you, Mr. Ponsonby, as "a retired
navy officer, and an absentee Irish landlord." He says your estate is
now "universally known as the famous Ponsonby Estate," and that it is
occupied "by from 300 to 400 tenants, holding farms varying in extent
from an acre and a half to over two hundred acres." Are these statements
correct?
_A_. I am a retired navy officer certainly, and perhaps I may be called
an "absentee Irish landlord." I lived on my property for some time, and
I have always attended to it. I succeeded to the estate in 1868, and
almost my first act was to borrow £2000 of the Board of Works for
drainage purposes--the tenants agreeing to pay half the interest. As a
matter of fact some never paid at all, and I afterwards wiped out the
claims against them. There are about 300 tenants on the property, and
the average holdings are of about 36 acres, at an average rental of £30
a holding. There are, however, not a few large farms.
_Q_. Canon Keller says that "in the memory of living witnesses, and far
beyond it, the Ponsonby tenants have been notoriously rack-rented and
oppressed"; and that they have been committed to the "tender mercies of
agents, seeing little or nothing of their landlord, and experiencing no
practical sympathy from that quarter." How is this?
_A_. I wish to believe Canon Keller truthful when he knows the truth. He
certainly does not know the truth here. He is a newcomer at Youghal,
having come there in November 1885, and hardly so much of an authority
about "the memory of living witnesses and far beyond it" as the tenants
on the estate, who, when I went there first with my wife, presented to
me, May 25, 1868, an address of welcome, referring in very different
terms to the history of the estate and of my family connection with it.
Here is the original address, and a copy of it--the latter being quite
at your service.
This original address is very handsomely engrossed, and is signed by
fifty tenants. Among the names I observed those of Martin Loughlin,
Peter McDonough, Michael Gould, William Forrest, and John Heaphey, all
of whom are cited by Canon Keller in his tract as conspicuous victims of
the oppression and rack-renting which he says have prevailed upon the
Ponsonby estates time out of mind. It was rather surprising, therefore,
to find them joining with more than forty other tenants to sign an
address, of which I here print the text:--
To C.W. TALBOT PONSONBY, Esq.
Honoured Sir,--The Tenantry of your Estates near Youghal have heard
with extreme pleasure of the arrival of yourself and lady in the
neighbourhood, and have deputed us to address you on their behalf.
Through us they bid you and Mrs. Ponsonby welcome, and respectfully
congratulate you on your accession to the Estates.
The name of Ponsonby is traditionally revered in this part of the
country, being associated in the recollections and impressions of
the people with all that is exalted, honourable, and generous. It
has been matter of regret that the heads of the family have not
(probably from uncontrollable causes) visited these Estates for
many years, but the tenantry have never wavered in their sentiments
of respect towards them.
We will not disguise from you the conviction generally entertained
that the improvement of landed property, and the condition of its
occupiers, is best promoted under the personal observation and
supervision of the proprietor, and your tenantry on that account
hail with satisfaction the promise your presence affords of future
intercourse between you and them.
Again, on the part of your Tenants and all connected with your
Estates, tendering you and your lady a most hearty welcome, and
sincerely wishing you and her a long and happy career--We subscribe
ourselves, Honoured Sir, Respectfully yours,
YOUGHAL, _May_ 1868.
_Q_. Did Canon Keller ever see this address, may I ask, Mr. Ponsonby?
_A_. I believe not; and I may as well say at once that I suppose he has
taken for gospel all the stories which any of the tenants under the
terrorism which has been established on the place think it best to pour
into his listening ear. As I have said, he is quite a new man at
Youghal, and when he first came there he was a quiet and not at all
revolutionary priest. You saw him, and saw how good his manners are, and
that he is a well-educated man. But on Sunday, November 7, 1886, a great
meeting was held at Youghal. It was a queer meeting for a Sunday, being
openly a political meeting, with banners and bands, to hear speeches
from Mr. Lane, M.P., Mr. Flynn, M.P., and others. The Rev. Mr. Keller
presided, and a priest from America, Father Hayes of Georgetown, Iowa,
in the United States, was present. It was ostensibly a Home Rule
meeting, but the burden of the speeches was agrarian. Mr. Lane, M.P.,
made a bitter personal attack on another Nationalist member, Sir Joseph
M'Kenna of Killeagh, calling him a "heartless and inhuman landlord;" and
my property was also attended to by Mr. Lane, who advised my tenants
openly not to accept my offer of 20 per cent. reduction, but to demand
40 per cent. Father Hayes in his speech bade "every man stand to his
guns," and wound up by declaring that if England and the landlords
behaved in America as they behaved in Ireland, the Americans "would pelt
them not only with dynamite, but with the lightnings of Heaven and the
fires of hell, till every British bull-dog, whelp, and cur would be
pulverised and made top-dressing for the soil." Canon Keller afterwards
expressed disapproval of this speech of Hayes, and this coming to the
knowledge of Hayes in America, Hayes denounced Keller for not daring to
do this at the time in his presence. Since then Canon Keller has been
much more violent in tone.
_Q_. I don't want to carry you through a long examination, Mr. Ponsonby,
but I see typical cases here, about which I should like to ask a
question or two. Here, is Callaghan Flavin, for instance, described by
Canon Keller as one of eight tenants who "had to retreat before the
crowbar brigade," and who "deserved a better fate." Canon Keller says he
is assured by a competent judge that Flavin's improvements, "full value
for £341, 10s.," are now "the landlord's property." What are the facts
about Mr. Flavin?
_A_. Mr. Flavin's farm was held by his cousin, Ellen Flavin of Gilmore,
who, on the 7th of February 1872, surrendered it to the landlord on
receiving from me a sum of £172, 10s. 6d. I obtained a charging order
under section 27 of the Land Act, entitling me to an annuity of £8, 12s.
6d. for thirty-five years from July 3, 1872. It was let to Callaghan
Flavin in preference to other applicants, July 3, 1872; and in 1873, at
his request, I obtained a loan from the Board of Works for the thorough
draining of a portion of the farm. Thirteen acres were drained at a cost
of £84, 6s. 3d., for which the tenant promised to pay 5 per cent.
interest, which I eventually forgave him. There was no house on the
farm. He took it without one, and I did not want one there. He built a
house himself without consulting my agent, and then wanted me to make
him an allowance for it. I told him he had thirty-one years to enjoy it
in, and must be content with that. About the same time he took another
farm of mine at a rent of £35. Since I came into my property in 1868 I
have laid out upon it in drainage, buildings, and planting--here are the
accounts, which you may look at--over £15,000, including about £8000 of
loans from the Board of Works. In the drainage the tenants got work for
which they were paid. I gave them slates for the buildings, with timber
and stone from the estate, and they supplied the labour. There is no
case in which the outlays for improvements came from the tenants--not a
single one. I repeat it, Canon Keller's tract is a tissue of fictions.
What nonsense it is to talk about the "traditional rack-renting" of a
property held by the Ponsonbys for two hundred years, the tenants on
which could welcome me when I came into it with the language of the
address you have here seen!
I never evicted tenants for less than three years' arrears, till what
Canon Keller calls the "crowbar brigade," by which he means the officers
of the law, had to be put into action to meet the "Plan of Campaign" in
May last. I did not proceed against the tenants because they could not
pay. I selected the tenants who could pay, and who were led, or, I
believe in most cases, "coerced," into refusing to pay by agitators with
Mr. Lane, M.P., to inspire them, and Canon Keller, P.P., to glorify them
in a tract.
_Q_. What were your personal relations with the tenants when you were at
Inchiquin?
_A_. Always most friendly; and even the other day when I was there,
while none of them would speak to me when they were all together, those
I met individually touched their hats, and were as civil as ever. I
believe they would all be thankful to have things as they were, and I
have never refused to meet and treat with them on fair individual terms.
In November 1885 my offer of an abatement of 15 per cent. being refused,
a few tenants, I believe, clubbed their rents, and for the sake of peace
I then offered 20 per cent., which they accepted and paid. In October
1886 I hoped to prevent trouble by making the same offer of 20 per cent.
abatement on non-judicial and 10 per cent. on judicial rents. One man
took the latter abatement and paid. Then another tenant demanded 40 per
cent. My agent said he would give them time, and also take money on
account, the effect of which would be to put me out of court, and
prevent my getting an order of ejectment if I wanted to for the balance.
I thought this fair, and approved it, but I refused to make a 40 per
cent. all-round abatement, authorising my agent, however, to make what
abatements he liked in special cases. My words were, "I don't limit you
on the amount of abatement you give, or as to the number of tenants you
may choose so to treat." If this was not a fair free hand, what would
be? My agent afterwards told me he had no chance to make this known. The
fact is they meant to force the Plan on the tenants and me, and to
prevent any settlement but a "victory for the League!"
In my original notes of my conversation with Father Keller at Youghal, I
found the name of one tenant whom he introduced to me, and who certainly
told me that his holdings amounted to some £300 a year, and that they
had been in his family for "two hundred years," set down as Doyle--I so
printed it with the statements made. But Father Keller, to whom I
submitted my proofs, and who was so good as to revise them, struck out
the name of Doyle, and inserted that of Loughlin, putting the rental
down at £94 (vol. ii. p. 71). Of course I accept this correction. But on
my mentioning the matter to Mr. Ponsonby by letter, he replies to me
(July 27th) as follows:--
"Maurice Doyle is a son of Richard Doyle, who died in 1876, leaving
his widow to carry on his farm of 74 acres 1 rood, in the townland
of Ballykitty, which he held in 1858 at a rental of £50, 11s. In
1868 this was reduced to £48, 11s. In September 1871 he took in
addition a farm of 159 acres 2 roods at £130, in Burgen and
Ballykitty. He afterwards got a lease for thirty-one years of this
larger farm, with a portion of his earlier holding, for £155. This
left him to pay £21, 11s. for the residue of the earlier holding as
in 1858. But at his request, in 1876, the year of his death, I
reduced this to £17.
"In March 1879, by the death of Mr. Henry Hall, in whose family it
had been for certainly a century, the Inchiquin farm of 213 acres,
valued at £258, 10s., came on my hands. This farm was valued in
1873 by one valuer at £384, 10s., and by another at £390, 10s. In
an old lease I find that this farm was let at £3 an acre. Mr. Henry
Hall to the day of his death held it at £306, 7s. 6d., under a
lease which I made a lease for life. For this farm Mrs. Richard
Doyle applied, agreeing to take it on a 31 years' lease, at £370 a
year. I let it to her, and she became the lease-holder, putting in
her son Maurice Doyle to take charge of it, though not as the
tenant. He was an active Land Leaguer from the moment he got into
the place, and in 1886 he was a leader in promoting the Plan of
Campaign. Proceedings had to be taken against his mother in order
to eject him, as she was the tenant, not he. I objected to this,
for I always have had the greatest regard for her. Had she been let
alone she would have paid her rent as she had always done. But Mr.
Lane and his allies saw it would never do to let Maurice Doyle
retain his place on his mother's holding. All this will show you
that Maurice Doyle did not inherit the Inchiquin farm. The only
inherited holding of his mother is the farm of 74 acres 1 rood in
the townland of Ballykitty, held by his father in 1858. I have no
doubt you saw Doyle at Youghal, by the description you gave me, and
you remembered his name at once. He was a thickset heavy-looking
man, florid, with a military moustache, the last time I saw him.
His mother is one of the 'rack-rented' tenants you hear of, having
been able in ten years to increase her acreage from 74 acres to 376
acres, and her rental from £48, 11s. to £542!"
As to the general effect of all this business upon the tenants, and upon
himself, Mr. Ponsonby spoke most feelingly. "The tenants are ruined
where they might have been thriving. My means of being useful to them or
to myself are taken away. My charges, though, all remain. I have to pay
tithes for Protestant Church service, of which I can't have the benefit,
the churches being closed; and the other day I had a notice that any
property I had in England would be held liable for quit-rents to the
Crown on my property in Ireland, of which the Government denies me
practically any control or use!"
NOTE G2.
THE GLENBEHY EVICTION FUND.
(Vol. ii. p. 12.)
In the _London Times_ of September 15 appears the following letter from
the Land Agent whom I saw at Glenbehy, setting forth the effect of this
"Glenbehy Eviction Fund" upon the morals of the tenants and the peace of
the place:--
_To the Editor of the Times._
"Sir,--Although nearly eighteen months have elapsed since the
evictions on the Glenbehy estate, after which the above-named fund
was started and largely subscribed to by the sympathetic British
public, I think it only fair to throw a little light on the manner
in which this fund has been expended, and the effects which are
still felt in consequence of the money not yet being exhausted.
"It was generally supposed that the tenants then evicted were in
such poor circumstances as to be unable to settle, whereas, as a
matter of fact, they were, and are, with a few exceptions, the most
well-to-do on the estate, having, for the most part, from five to
fifteen head of cattle, in addition to sheep, pigs, etc.
"Among the tenants evicted at that time many had not paid rents
since 1879, and had been in illegal occupation since 1884, from
which latter date the landlord was responsible for taxes, provided
it is proved that sufficient distress cannot be made of the lands.
These tenants were offered a clear receipt to May 1, 1886, if they
paid half a year's rent, which would scarcely have paid the cost of
proceedings, and the landlord would therefore have been put to
actual loss. These people, though well able to settle, are given to
understand that as soon as they do so their participation in the
eviction fund will cease, and thus it will be seen that a direct
premium is being paid to dishonesty.
"In one case a widow woman was summoned for being on the farm from
which she was at that time evicted. Finding out that one of her
children was ill, I applied to the magistrate at the hearing of the
case only to impose a nominal fine. In consequence she was fined
one penny, but sooner than pay this she went to gaol, though she
had several head of cattle and, prior to her eviction, a very nice
farm. The case of this woman fairly illustrates the combination
which has existed to avoid the fulfilment of obligations.
"The amount of fines paid for similar offences comes, in several
instances, to nearly what I require to effect a settlement. Some of
the tenants actually wrote to the late agent on this estate begging
him to evict them in order that they might come in for a share of
the money raised for the relief of distress, and this clearly shows
beyond dispute that the well-meaning subscribers to the fund will
be more or less responsible for any further evictions to which it
may be necessary to resort. I may mention that the parish priest is
one of the trustees for the money which is thus being used for the
purpose of preventing settlements and keeping the place in a
continual state of turmoil.
"Judge Currane, at the January sessions held at Killarney this
year, ruled in about fifty ejectment cases on this estate that
tenants owing one and a half to nine years' rent should pay half a
year's rent and costs within a week, a quarter of a year's rent by
June 1, and a quarter of a year's rent by October 1; arrears to be
cancelled. Some of these, owing to non-compliance with the Judge's
ruling, may have to be evicted, and their eviction will be what is
termed the unrooting of peasants' houses and the ejectment of
overburdened tenants for not paying impossible rents.
"I confess I am at a loss to understand how Mr. Parnell's Arrears
Act would have improved matters or have averted what one of your
contemporaries calls a "painful scandal."--I am, Sirs, yours, &c.,
"D. TODD-THORNTON, J.P., Land Agent.
"Glenbehy, Killarney."
NOTE G.
HOME RULE AND PROTESTANTISM.
(Vol. ii. p. 68.)
I fear that all the "Nationalist" clergy in Ireland are not as careful
as Father Keller to avoid giving occasion for this impression that Irish
autonomy would be followed by a persecution of the Protestants. But a
little more than three years ago, for example, the following circular
was issued by the Bishop of Ossory, and affixed to the door of the
churches in his diocese. Who can wonder that it should have been
regarded by Protestants in that diocese as a direct stirring up of
bitter religious animosities against them? Or that, emanating directly
as it did from a bishop of the Church, it should be represented as
emanating indirectly from the Head of the Church himself at Rome?
"_Kilkenny, April 16th, 1885._
"REV. DEAR SIR,--May I ask you to read the following circular for
the people at each of the Masses on Sunday, 19th April?
"The course to be adopted for the future by the Priest of the Parish
to whom notice of a Mixed Marriage is given by the Minister, or the
Registrar, is as follows:--he makes the following entry on the book
of Parochial announcements, and reads it three consecutive Sundays
from the Altar:--