THROUGH KERRY ON HORSEBACK.
It was not two days but six that we spent, my guide and I, visiting
the County Kerry in all directions, examining the crops, asking about
prices, entering cottages and small farms, chatting with anyone that
we supposed capable of giving us information. The rather unexpected
conclusion I arrived at was that the agrarian crisis is more especially
felt in the richest districts, while it can hardly be said to exist in
the poorest parts. Kerry is, in that particular, a true copy of Ireland
on a small scale. It may, in fact, be divided into two perfectly distinct
regions—the plains of the north and the mountains of the south-west.
Those regions offer characteristics as marked in an economical as in a
geographical point of view.
Another conclusion drawn from my personal intercourse with the Irish
peasant was that nothing is to be got out of him by bullying and
everything by gentle means. If you arrive at an inn and proceed, as
do the English everywhere, to assume a harsh and arrogant tone, you
will experience the greatest difficulties in obtaining even meagre
fare in return for your money. They will pretend they have nothing in
the house, that they are not in the habit of receiving travellers, and
such like stories. If, on the contrary, you at once proclaim yourself
delighted with the country, its manners and its inhabitants; if you risk
a compliment to the hostess or a gentle pinch to the children’s cheek,
the whole house is yours. They will instantly wring the neck of the
solitary chicken promenading in front of the house; they will exhibit
clean table-linen; they will rush to the neighbour and borrow a salad
or some fruit; they will even unearth from some dark corner a bottle
of old port. If you give this impromptu supper only half the praise it
deserves, you may count on a luxurious breakfast for the next morning.
These poor people are thus made. Their heart is warm; their sensibilities
are quick. The least thing discourages them; the least thing electrifies
them. In contradiction to the Anglo-Saxon serf, who despises his master
if he treat him with gentleness, Paddy prefers a gracious word to all
the guineas in the kingdom. The philosophical reason for the failure of
the British in Ireland (and elsewhere) is perhaps chiefly to be found in
their general want of human sympathy. The Englishman speaks too often
like a slave-driver when he should speak like an elder brother.
* * * * *
THE PLAIN.
The plains of North Kerry must be classed among the best land in
the isle. This is not saying that they are first-class. But they
evidently only need some outlay in drainage and manure and a few modern
improvements in culture to rival our Normandy pastures. It is above
all a land of grazing fields and butter; the grass in the meadows is
green and luxuriant; the cows look strong and well. It is evident that
the least effort would be sufficient to make agricultural enterprise a
thriving business. But carelessness and want of thrift are plainly shown
on all sides. Everywhere dung hills, placed just in front of the cottage
doors, pour into the ditch the clearest of their virtue. The gardens are
ill-kept, the fields transformed into bog for want of a drain seventy
feet long. One sees oats so invaded by thistles that it must be a sheer
impossibility to get the grain out. In other fields oats rot standing,
because no one takes care to cut them in time. Nowhere is any sign shown
of vigorous enterprise or activity. Not only do routine and sloth reign
all over the country, but one might be tempted to believe in a general
conspiracy for wasting the gratuitous gifts of Mother Nature without any
profit to anybody.
Yet the country looks relatively rich. The peasantry have good clothes,
they despise potatoes, eat bread and meat, drink beer or tea, send
their children to school, and appear peculiarly wide awake to their own
interests. Are they really, as they declare, unable to pay their rents?
That is possible, for the principal products of the country—corn, oats,
barley, butter, beef, and mutton, wool and potatoes—have undergone for
the last three years a considerable depreciation, estimated at from 15 to
35 per cent. But this depreciation is evidently not felt by a diminution
of comfort for the rural populations, here at least. The contrary might
even be admitted. In any case there is evidently no question of a crisis
of famine such as has so often been seen in this island for the last
fifty years. The malady is something else. It is the malady of a people
to whom it has been repeated for half a century that the land they live
on has been stolen from them by strangers; a people who rightly or
wrongly believe this to be the case; a people who have entered, under the
direction of a central committee of politicians, on a regular struggle
with the landlords; who profit by all economical incidents, especially
the fall of prices, if not openly to denounce the treaty, at least to
refuse to execute its articles.
A few facts noted in passing will explain the situation better than all
discourses.
A large dairy farm, the finest I have yet seen in the country. The
buildings are new, the fields covered with thick dark grass. I number
sixty-five cows. All the dairy appointments are handsome and well-kept.
The farmer looks prosperous. Clearly he lives at ease, judging by
the furniture of the house, the quality of his clothes, by the very
liberality with which he receives us, and by the brandy which he offers
us (he is a friend of my guide). His rent is £100 a year. He does not
mean to pay his next term. (_I don’t think I will pay this gale._) His
landlord offers to him the sale of his land for a sum of eighteen years’
rent, according to the official plan. If he followed that system all he
would have to do would be to pay annually during forty-nine years the sum
of £78, less by nearly a third than the present farm rent; he would then
become a proprietor. He refuses. Why?
“Indeed?” he says, with a wink, “engage myself for forty-nine years!...
_Why! I shall have the land for nothing in two or three years!_...”
* * * * *
Another well-to-do farmer driving in a dog-cart with his two daughters.
The trap is new, the harness smart, the horse strong and well groomed.
The damsels wear Dublin hats and white woollen dresses not unfashionable
in cut.
“That’s what enrages the landlords,” my guide says to me; “it is to see
tenants come in this style to the Tralee races, cheerfully lose twenty
guineas upon a horse, then, when the time for paying the rent arrives,
coolly ask for a 40 per cent. reduction on their half-year’s rent....”
“... And in fact it must be enough to make a saint swear!...” he adds
philosophically. “But after all, the landlords might be content with the
60 per cent. they get ... I am sure they get it cheap enough ... they
may think themselves lucky to have even that much, as the interest of
confiscated land!...”
That notion of the land being held by its actual detentors through
confiscation, may be unfounded in some cases, or even in the majority
of cases, but none the less one finds it at the bottom of all Irish
syllogisms. And in such cases the real value of the premiss is of little
importance; what matters only is the conclusion drawn from it.
* * * * *
A few middling and small farmers.
_Maurice Macnamara_, Shinnagh: rent, £48 a year; seventeen cows, eight
pigs, two horses and one donkey; grass fields, oats, and potatoes; four
children, of which one is over twenty years of age. Was able to pay his
rent, but was forbidden to do so by the other tenants on the estate,
and was in consequence seized by order of the landlord. His neighbours
offered to help him to resist the execution. He begged to be left alone,
and the moment of the sale having come, he personally bought all his
cattle up to the sum due. Nett result of the operation: £11 to pay, over
and above the six months’ rent. Personal opinion of Maurice Macnamara: it
is better to pay £11 than to get a bullet through your head.
_John McCarthy_, Gwingullier: £16 annual rent, due in May and November;
two cows, one horse; oats and potatoes; nine children, the eldest
seventeen. Has paid nothing to his landlord since 1883; owes actually £48
to him, and as much to divers tradespeople or usurers. Does not know how
he shall get out of it.
_Patrick Murphy_, Colyherbeer, barony Trughanarkny; was evicted in
November from his holding of £28; owed eighteen months’ rent. Received
from his Landlord the offer of being reinstated in the farm on payment
of half the sum due, on condition that he would let his crops be sold.
Declined the offer, and is perfectly satisfied to receive from the League
relief to the amount of £2 a-week. Never saw himself so well off before.
_Margaret Callaghan_, a widow, close by the town of Kenmare: £8 16_s._
4_d._ rent; one pig, six hens; three small children; four acres of
potatoes, three acres waste. Has paid nothing for the last four years.
Owes about £20 to various tradespeople. Is not harshly pressed by her
landlord, and can practically be considered as owning her bit of ground.
Will die of hunger, with her children, the first year the harvest is bad.
* * * * *
Molahiffe, on the road to Tralee.
“This is Mr. Curtin’s house.”
“And who may Mr. Curtin be?”
“What! have you never heard of that affair?... He was killed last year by
the Moonlighters.”
“Killed?... Was he then a party man, a fierce Orangeman?”
“Mr. Curtin?... Not a bit in the world. He was one of the most peaceable,
the most Irish at heart, the most esteemed man in this part of the
country. His misfortune was to own two rifles. The Moonlighters wanted
those weapons. One night they came and demanded them. The ladies of the
family were ready to give them up, when Mr. Curtin arrived and looked as
if he were going to resist. At once a gun exploded in the passage, and he
fell stone dead.... That was a warning to everybody. Since that time no
one disobeys the moonlighters. But all the same it is unfortunate that
the victim should have been Mr. Curtin.”
These _Moonlighters_ are the direct descendants of the Whiteboys of
olden times. They band together and gather at night for the purpose of
invading a farm, a solitary house. They are always masked, but sometimes
in a very elementary fashion, by pulling down their hat or cap over the
face and making two holes through it for the eyes. Normally they ought to
search only for arms and to take only arms. But everything degenerates,
and the use of force often leads to the abuse of it. The Moonlighters
not unfrequently demand a supper, a sum of money, not to speak of the
company of some farm-wench to whom they may take a fancy. This impartial
offering of violence to house and inmates might lead them far, were they
not certain of the discretion of the victims. But the terror they inspire
secures impunity to them.
Though everybody in a district knows perfectly well who the intruders
are, and though they have often been recognized in spite of the mask, no
one dares to reveal their name. They are all too well aware that in case
of denunciation a nocturnal bullet will come unerringly to the offender.
Besides, a sort of poetical halo and a political mantle of immunity
surrounds men who may sometimes, indeed, carry their zeal a little too
far, but are after all soldiers in the good cause. The “legitimate”
industry of the Moonlighters allows their excesses to be forgotten. A
sort of general complicity covers and favours their expeditions.
That complicity goes sometimes to great lengths—for instance the length
of non-admitting the intervention of the police in a house where the
Moonlighters are performing. The constables perambulating the country
hear screams, desperate appeals for help in a farmhouse. They rush to it
headlong and knock at the door. At once silence reigns. They are asked
from the inside of the house what they want.
“We heard screams. Do you not want protection?”
“What business is that of yours?” is the answer. “Go on your way, and do
not come interfering and preventing honest folks enjoying the possession
of their house undisturbed!...”
The unlucky constables can only beat a retreat and go their round, often
to meet shortly with the Moonlighters, who will laugh at them, having
comfortably finished their business.
Before the judges the same thing occurs. Not a witness will give
evidence. And if by chance a witness does speak, the jury take care to
correct this grave breach of etiquette in their verdict.
The witness, as well as the juryman, has often received a warning.
Working alone in the fields, or following a lonely path, he has suddenly
seen a little puff of white smoke going up from the bushes some feet in
front of him, and he has heard a bullet whizzing over his head. It was a
Moonlighter telling him:—
“Be silent, or thou art a dead man.”
Castleisland. A small town of little interest, after the pattern of most
Irish boroughs. We stop for lunch at a tavern of rather good appearance,
and clearly very popular with the natives. The innkeeper smokes a cigar
with us. Is he satisfied with the state of affairs? Yes and no. Certainly
he cannot complain—trade in liquor is rather brisk. But there are too
many places where one can buy drink in the town—no less than fifty-one.
“And do they all prosper?”
“Nearly all.”
“What may their average receipts be?”
“I should say about £400 a year.”
£400 multiplied by fifty-one gives £20,400, more than 510,000 francs. And
there is not in this place any other industry than agriculture, while
statistics I have this moment in my pocket inform me that the aggregate
rental of Castleisland is not above £14,000. It is then evident that,
times good, times bad, they drink every year here £6,000 worth more
in beer and spirits than they would pay in rent to the landlords, if
they chose to pay. This seems to be conclusive, as far as Castleisland
is concerned. But is there really any reason why the tenants of this
district should turn total abstainers for the special purpose of paying
the claret and champagne bills of half-a-dozen absentees? Here is the
whole problem in a nutshell.
Tralee. The big town of the county, what we should call in France the
_chef-lieu_, the seat of the assizes. They are opened precisely at this
moment. There are on the rolls three men charged with agrarian murder. I
proposed to go and be present at the trials, when I heard that the three
cases were to be remanded to the next session, the representative of the
Crown having come to the conclusion that the jury would systematically
acquit the prisoners, as is so often the case in Ireland.
The Chairman of the Assizes, Mr. Justice O’Brien, seized this occasion to
declare, that in the course of an already long career he had never met
with a jury having so little regard for their duty. “It must be known
widely,” he added, “the law becomes powerless when the course of justice
is systematically impeded by the very jurymen, as we see it in this
country; in which case there is no longer any security for persons or
property.”
To which the people in Kerry answer that they do not care a bit for
English law; what they want is good Irish laws, made in Dublin by an
Irish Parliament.
“It is quite true that we have no security here for persons or property,”
a doctor of the town said to me in the evening. “The outrages were at
first exclusively directed against the landlords, rightly or wrongly
accused of injustice and harshness in their dealings with their tenants;
but for the last two or three years the field of nocturnal aggression
has enlarged greatly—a shot now serves to settle any personal quarrel
and even trade accounts. In the beginning the jury at least made a
distinction between the different motives that actuated the accused.
Now they always acquit them, _because they no longer dare to find them
guilty_.... What will you have?... Jurymen are but men. They prefer
sending a ruffian at large to paying with their life a too subtle
distinction between crimes of an agrarian character and those of another
sort. A lump of lead is the most irresistible of arguments. One may
assert that presently law has lost all influence in Kerry. It is rapine
that reigns, hardly tempered by the decrees of the National League, which
of course means only legitimate resistance to the landlords, and by the
fund of righteousness possessed at heart by the nation. But let things go
on thus only for two years more, we shall have gone back to the savage
state.”
“Some people tell me, however, that raiding for money is never seen in
this part of Ireland.”
“Raiding for money never seen! I would rather say it is the latest
development of moonlighting. Any one who covets a piece of his
neighbour’s land, who wishes to influence his vote for a board of
guardians, who is animated by any motive of vulgar greed or spite, has
only to set the Moonlighters in motion. The machinery is at hand.”
“Could you really give me a few recent instances of moonlighting for
money?”
“Of course I could. There is one Daniel Moynihan, at Freemount, near
Rathmore: in October, 1886, a party of six men with blackened faces
entered his house at night, and breaking open a box, carried away all
his money. In January, 1887, at Ballinillane, three men armed with guns
entered Daniel Lyne’s house and asked for money, threatening to shoot him
if he refused; they took away £6. At Faha, in March, 1887, a party of
six armed men visited the house of Mr. E. Morrogh Bernard; they demanded
money, and got what was in the house.”[2]
“You don’t say the League has anything to do with such obvious cases of
non-political moonlighting, do you? It is a well-known fact that the
organization discountenances moonlighting as well as all other violent
practices.”
“It does in a manner, but at the same time, by forming in each district
a kind of police of the League, an executive body ready for action, it
singles out to malignant persons men who may be ready for a private job.”
There is obviously considerable exaggeration, or, rather, distortion of
facts, in the above statement, as in everything relating to the League
on one side or the other. The truth is probably that ruffians, when they
want a job in the house-breaking line, ask for nobody’s permission, but
are only too glad to take moonlighting as a pretence; and thus, common
breaches of the law which in ordinary times would go by their proper
name, are now ascribed to Moonlighters. The bulk of the population, which
is thoroughly honest, has only words of contempt and hatred for what,
in justice, should rather be called a deviation than a development of
moonlighting.
* * * * *
Nine o’clock at night. In a hollow on the road to Milltown, a man tries
to hide himself behind some shrubs; but perceiving that we do not belong
to the neighbourhood he shows himself. He is a constable clad in
uniform, the black helmet on his head, a loaded gun on his shoulder.
“Why do you seek to avoid attention?”
“Because we are watching that farm-house there on the height, my comrades
and I; we have received information to the effect that some men propose
to attack it one of these nights; now, we must try not to be seen by the
people on the farm, for they would hasten to tell their assailants.”
“What! these people would denounce you to those who come to rob them?”
“Just so. We have to protect them against their will. Oh! it is indeed a
nice trade to be a constable in Ireland!” &c. &c.
Then follow professional complaints that throw a curious light on
the relations between police and population. The unhappy constables
are _boycotted_ personally and as a body. Nobody speaks to them. It
is next to impossible for them to procure the first necessaries of
life. Government has to distribute rations to them as to soldiers on a
campaign. If they want a conveyance, a cart to transport a detachment
of the public force where their presence is wanted, nobody—even among
the principal interested—will give means of transport either for gold or
silver. The Government have had to give the constabulary special traps
that are constantly to be met on the roads, and that one recognizes by
their blood-red colour.
That police corps, _the Irish Constabulary Force_, is very numerous, and
entails great expense—more than one million and a half sterling per year.
The cost would hardly be half a million if the Irish police were on the
same footing as the English force; that fact alone can give an adequate
idea of the real state of things. Besides, numerous auxiliaries, called
_Emergency men_, are always ready to give their help to the regular corps.
Be they soldiers or policemen, Great Britain keeps nearly 50,000 armed
men in Ireland. The male adult and able population of the island being
under 500,000 men, of whom 200,000 at least are opposed to the agrarian
and autonomist movement, one can assume that there is on an average one
armed soldier or constable for every six unarmed Irishmen.
* * * * *
On the dusty road before us are slowly walking five cows in rather an
emaciated condition. Those beasts strike me by an odd appearance which
I am unable to make out at first. When I am close to them I see what it
is: _they have no tails_. The absence of that ornament gives the poor
animals the awkwardest and most absurd look.
I turn to my guide, who is laughing in his sleeve.
“Look at their master!” he whispers in a low voice.
“Well?”
“The cows have no tails, and the man has no ears....”
It is true. The unlucky wretch vainly endeavoured to hide his head, as
round as a cheese, under the brim of his battered old hat; he did not
succeed in hiding his deformity.
“By Jove! who arranged you in this guise, you and your cows?” I said to
the poor devil, stopping before him.
He made a few grimaces before explaining; but the offer of a cigar, that
rarely misses its effect, at last unloosed his tongue. He then told me
that the Moonlighters had come with a razor to cut his ears, a week after
having cut the tails of his cows as a warning.
“And what could have been the motive of such cowardly, barbarous
mutilation?”
He had accepted work on a _boycotted_ farm, though the League had
expressly forbidden it; in other words, he was what the Irish call a
“land-grabber.”
“Where are you going with your cows?”
“To sell them at Listowel, if I may, which is not certain.”
“Why is it not certain? Because they are unprovided with a tail? At the
worst that would only prevent them being made into ox-tail soup,” I say,
trying to enliven the conversation by an appropriate joke.
“That’s not it,” answers the man. “But the interdict applies to the sale
of the cows as well as to having any intercourse with me. I am forbidden
to buy anything, and anyone speaking to me is fined two shillings.”
He seemed to think this perfectly natural and even just, like the Leper
of the “Cité d’Aoste,” or like common convicts when one talks to them of
their punishment.
“I gambled and I lost—so much the worse for me!...” all his resigned
attitude seemed to say.
“Perhaps they don’t know it yet in Listowel!” he resumed with a sigh, and
hopefully pushed on with his cows.
* * * * *
“Have there been many cases of such agrarian mutilation in the country?”
I ask MacMahon.
“No,” said my guide. “Perhaps half a dozen or so within the year.[3]
They used to be much more numerous, but somehow they seem to go out of
fashion under the sway of the League. But there are still other ways
of annoying the enemy; fires are very frequent, so are blows, personal
injuries, and even murder, threatening letters, and, above all, verbal
intimidation.”
Such proceedings, I understand, are altogether disowned by the chiefs
of the League, who only patronise _boycotting_. Let a farmer, small or
great, decline to enter the organisation, or check it by paying his rent
to the landlord without the reduction agreed to by the tenantry, or take
the succession of an evicted tenant on his holding, or commit any other
serious offence against the law of land war, he is at once boycotted.
That is to say, he will no longer be able to sell his goods, to buy the
necessaries of life, to have his horses shod, his corn milled, or even
to exchange one word with a living soul, within a circuit of fifteen to
twenty miles round his house. His servants are tampered with and induced
to leave him, his tradespeople are made to shut their door in his face,
his neighbours compelled to cut him. It is a kind of excommunication,
social, political and commercial; an interdict sometimes aggravated with
direct vexations. People come and play football on his oat fields, his
potatoes are rooted out, his fish or cattle poisoned, his game destroyed.
“But supposing that instead of bearing meekly such indignities, he shows
a bold front, shoulders his gun and keeps watch?”
“Then his business is settled. Some day or other, he will receive a
bullet in his arm, if not in his head.”
* * * * *
It will not perhaps be unnecessary to explain here the origin of that
word _boycott_, so frequently used during the late few years. Everybody
knows that on the British side of the Channel, but the French reader is
not bound to remember it so exactly.
In September, 1881, at a mass meeting held in Clare County, Mr. Parnell
almost without being aware of the importance of his words, advised his
friends, to exclude from the pale of social life whoever should eject
a tenant for reason of an unpaid rent, or take the succession of the
evicted farmer.
The first application of that new penalty fell upon a certain Captain
Boycott, a retired officer, who had applied himself to agriculture.
Having had occasion to evict an obdurate defaulter, he saw himself within
a few days forsaken by his servants, tabooed by his neighbours, reduced
to dig out his own potatoes, and generally to become his own valet.
The affair produced great sensation. The whole press talked about it.
Legions of reporters flocked to the spot to follow the phases of the
war waged between Captain Boycott and his opponents. Upon a memorable
occasion a regular army of Orangemen, 7000 strong, they say, came over
from Ulster to give a lift to him and help him to get in the harvest
which threatened to rot standing. But the place became too hot for
Captain Boycott. He was obliged to give way at last and leave his place
in Connaught. (By the way, he ultimately returned there, and is now quite
popular.)
In the meanwhile his name, used as a proverb, or rather as a _verb_,
has come to describe a way of intimidation, which at the hands of the
League is a redoubtable weapon, more powerful than a hundred batteries of
100-ton guns.
* * * * *
“Could you show me anybody who is actually under boycott?”
“Could I? That will not be difficult. There! Mr. Kennedy, beyond that
clump of trees. He has been boycotted eighteen months.”
“Do you think I might call on him?”
“Certainly. But I shall ask leave to wait for you outside the gate, sir,
on account of the League of course.——You may laugh at its verdict, not I.”
Ten minutes later, I was at Mr. Kennedy’s gate. A little country house
rather decayed, in the middle of grounds which no gardener has seen for
at least two years. Nobody in sight. I try the bell-rope. It remains in
my hand. I am then reduced to an energetic tattoo on the plate which
shuts the lower part of the gate.
Attracted by the unusual noise, a tall white-haired man makes his
appearance at an upper window. Surprised at first, and even somewhat
alarmed, he listens to my request, is reassured, and even comes to unbar
the door. As I had hoped, he is not sorry to unloose his tongue a little,
and with the best grace possible tells me the whole affair.
“Yes, I am boycotted for having, single among all his tenants, paid to
my landlord the entire rent of those meadows you see yonder. How do I
take my situation? Well, as a philosopher. At the beginning, I thought
it inconvenient to be deprived of new bread, to do without meat, and
worse still, to be left without servants. But I have learnt by degrees
to accommodate myself to my new condition. I have made provisions for
a siege. I have found a few servants, strangers to the district, and
made my arrangements to send my butter to Cork by rail. On the whole,
there is not much to complain of. I should, of course, prefer things
to follow their usual course. It is tedious at times to find oneself
out of the pale of humanity. But you end by discovering that solitude
has its advantages. You develop accomplishments up to that time latent
in you. For instance, I shoe my horses myself; I have learnt to set a
window pane, to sweep a chimney. My daughters have improved in cooking.
We eat a great many chickens; now and then we kill a sheep; when we want
butcher-meat, we must send rather far for it. The same for beer, wine,
and many other commodities. It _is_ inconvenient—no more.”
* * * * *
At Listowel; a market day. Great animation on the market-place; tongues
are busy; whisky seems to be flowing freely at every tap-room and
tavern. But not much business is done, as far as I can judge. My guide
calls my attention to two interesting phenomena that I should not,
perhaps, have noticed otherwise.
The first is a man in breeches, with bare calves, a _shillelagh_ under
his arm, who seems to be a farmer in a small way. He approaches a
wheel-barrow filled with big hob-nailed shoes, which a woman is dragging,
and falls to examining them, evidently intent on buying a pair. Almost
at the same moment, a boy of fifteen or sixteen comes to the other side
of the woman and whispers something in her ear. She nods. At once the
customer, turning very red in the face, lets go the pair of shoes and
turns away. MacMahon says the man is a newly boycotted man and the boy an
agent of the League, whose function consists in reporting the interdict
to those who have not heard of it as yet.
The other phenomenon is more remarkable. It is a stout gentleman in a
shooting-jacket, carrying a double-barrelled gun of the latest model, and
followed by a constable who also carries his regulation gun. The stout
gentleman stops before a door where a smart _outside car_ with a servant
in livery is waiting for him. He takes his seat; the constable jumps
on after him. Is the stout gentleman under a writ of _habeas corpus_,
I wonder, and is he going to be taken into the county jail? Not a bit
of it. He is simply a landowner under threat of death, who has thought
fit to indulge in a body-guard. He and the constable are henceforth
inseparable.
* * * * *
A large tract of uncultivated land. It was farmed at £60 a year. The
farmer was a sporting man, fond of races and the like. To simplify his
work he had the whole property converted into pasture. But his expensive
mode of living obliged him now and then to sell a few head of cattle. The
hour came when he had not one calf left, and he found himself utterly
incapable of paying his rent. He was evicted. Sure not to find another
tenant, on account of the law laid down by the League that every evicted
farm should be left unoccupied, the landlord had recourse to the only
sort of _métayage_ known in Ireland. (_Métayage_, it should be explained,
is the kind of farming used in most French provinces, where the owner of
the land enters into yearly partnership with his tenant, and advances the
necessary capital in the shape of manure, seed, beasts of burden, and
machinery, on the understanding that the crops be shared equally between
himself and the tenant.) To return to my Kerry landlord: he set up on
his meadows a caretaker, with a salary of twenty-five shillings a week
and forty cows to keep. At the end of the first month the tails of ten
cows had been chopped off, while two of them had died from suspicious
inflammation of the bowels. It became necessary to put the cows, and
the caretaker as well, under the protection of a detachment of police.
Cost: two pounds a week for each constable. Nett loss at the end of the
half-year: £60. The landlord wisely judged that it would be much better
to send his cows to the slaughter-house, to pay off caretaker and police,
and to forget that he ever was a landowner.
In the same district, another farm gone waste. The tenant did not pay.
He was evicted, but had another holding close by, where he encamped, and
from that vantage-ground sent the following ultimatum to his _ci-devant_
landlord:—“The hay I have left on my late farm is worth £30. I demand
fifteen for allowing you to mow and sell it; you shall not see a shilling
of it on any other terms.” Fury of the landlord. Then he cools down,
thinks better of it, offers ten pounds. The evicted tenant declines the
offer; a whole army would not have brought him round. Meanwhile, the hay
got rotten.
By the road-side near Castlemaine, is a row of barracks, where men,
women, and children are huddled together. Those are _League-huts_,
that is to say, a temporary shelter which the League offers to ejected
tenants, for having, upon its command, declined to pay their rent. The
cabins from which the poor wretches have been turned out, although they
had, as a rule, built them themselves, are within shooting distance, on
the right hand. They bear evident traces of having been fired by the
sheriff’s officers in order to make them uninhabitable, and they present
the desolate aspect of homesteads adjoining a field of battle. Walls
broken by the crowbar, doors ajar, rubbish and ruins everywhere. Is it
politic on the part of the landlords to add the horrors of fire to those
of eviction? Hardly so, the outsider will think. It adds nothing to
the majesty of the law to wage war with inanimate things. The exercise
of a right ought never to assume the appearance of an act of revenge.
Wrongly or rightly, eviction by itself always bears an odious character;
but to see the house you have built with your own hands burnt to the
ground will ever seem to cry for vengeance to Heaven. And, after all,
who is the gainer by such violence? The League. It takes care to retain
the victims of eviction within sight of the scene of their woes, feeds
them, harbours them, exhibits them as in an open museum, by the side of
their destroyed homes. And it is a permanent, practical lesson for the
passer-by, a realistic drama where the landlord appears torch in hand,
while the League dries the tears of the afflicted and allows them £2 a
week. That is the usual pay for one family.