P. 9, line 1, for Englishman read Englishmen. 21,
omit Note A. at foot, and reference to it.
148. line 4 from foot, for three read five.
149. ,,11 „ for their read the.
271, „ 10, for p. 69 read p. 71.
274, ,, 5, for (Vol. i. p. 39 ; vol. ii. pp. 5, 200.)
read (Vol. i. p. 117 ; vol. ii. 5, 12, 66, 95, 200, 248.)
277, ,, 7, for Vol. i. read Vol. ii. 28:5,
,, 12, for p. 311 read. p. 312.
P. 38, line 4 from foot, for this volume read volume first.
46, last lino, omit Note J., and reference to it.
66, line 3 from foot, for this volume, Note F. read vol. i. Note E.
159, lines 11 and 1.2 from foot, for wis read is.
286, line 5, for five read main.
This statement as to the action of Lord Palmerston in connection with Mr. Gladstone's Newcastle speech of October 7th, 1862, made upon the authority of a British public man whose years and position entitle him to speak with confidence on such a subject, appeared to me of so much interest, that after sending it to the printer I caused search to be made for the speech referred to as made by Sir George Cornewall Lewis. My informant's statement was that Lord Palmerston insisted that Sir George Lewis should find or make an immediate opportunity of covering what Mr. Gladstone had said at Newcastle. He was angry about it, and his anger was increased by an article which Mr. Delane printed in the Times, intimating that Mr. Gladstone's speech was considered by many people to be a betrayal of Cabinet secrets. Sir George Lewis was far from well (he died the next spring), and reluctant to do what his chief wished; but he did
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it on the 17th of October 1862 in a speech at Hereford. Mr. Milner-Gibson was also put forward to the same end, and after Parliament met, in February 1863, Mr. Disraeli gave the Government a sharp lashing for sending one or two Ministers into the country in the recess to announce that the Southern States would be recognised, and then putting forward the President of the Board of Trade (Milner-Gibson) to attack the Southern States and the pestilent institution of slavery. Mr. Gladstone's speech at Newcastle, coming as it did from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, after the close of a session during which everybody knew that the Emperor of the French had been urging upon England the recognition of the Confederate States, and that Mr. Mason had been in active correspondence on that subject with Lord Russell, was taken at Newcastle, and throughout the country, to mean that the recognition was imminent. Mr. Gladstone even went so far as to say he rather rejoiced that the Confederates had not been able to hold Maryland, as that might have made them aggressive, and so made a settlement more difficult, it being, he said, as certain as anything in the future could be that the South must succeed in separating itself from the Union. This remark about Maryland distinctly indicated consultation as to what limits and boundaries
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between the South and the North should be re-cognised in the recognition, and on that account, it seems, was particularly resented by Earl Russell as well as by Lord Palmerston.
Sir George Cornewall Lewis's speech of October 17, 1862, was a most skilful and masterly attempt to protect the Cabinet against the consequences of what the Times, on the 9th of October, had treated as the "indiscretion or treason" of his colleague. But it did not save the Government from the scourge of Mr. Disraeli, or much mitigate the effect in America of Mr. Gladstone's performance at New-castle, which was a much more serious matter from the American point of view than any of the speeches recently delivered about "Home Rule" in the American Senate can be fairly said to be from the British point of view.
LONDON, August 8th, 1888.
THIS book is a record of things seen, and of con-versations had, during a series of visits to Ireland between January and June 1888.
These visits were made in quest of light, not so much upon the proceedings and the purposes of the Irish "Nationalists,"-with which, on both sides of the Atlantic, I have been tolerably familiar for many years past-as upon the social and economical results in Ireland of the processes of political vivisection to which that country has been so long subjected.
As these results primarily concern Great Britain and British subjects, and as a well-founded and reasonable jealousy exists in Great Britain of American intromission in the affairs of Ireland, it is proper for me to say at the outset, that the condition of Ireland interests me not because I believe, with Cardinal Manning, that upon the future of Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire, but because I know that America is largely responsible for the actual condition of Ireland, and because the future condition of Ireland, and of the British
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Empire, must gravely influence the future of my own country.
In common with the vast majority of my countrymen, who come with me of what may now not improperly be called the old American stock-by which I mean the three millions of English-speaking dwellers in the New World, who righteously resented, and successfully resisted, a hundred years ago, the attempt-not of the Crown under which the Colonies held their lands, but of the British Parliament in which they were unrepresented- to take their property without their consent, and apply it to purposes not passed upon by them, I have always felt that the claim of the Irish people to a proper control of matters exclusively Irish was essentially just and reasonable. The measure of that proper control is now, as it always has been, a question not for Americans, but for the people of Great Britain and of Ireland. If Lord Edward Fitzgerald and his associates had succeeded in expelling British authority from Ireland, and in founding an Irish Republic, we should probably have recognised that Republic. Yet an American minister at the Court of St. James's saw no impropriety in advising our Government to refuse a refuge in the United States to the defeated Irish exiles of '98.
It is undoubtedly the opinion of every Irish
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American who possesses any real influence with the people of his own race in my country, that the rights and liberties of Ireland can only be effectually secured by a complete political separation from Great Britain. Nor can the right of Irish American citizens, holding this opinion, to express their sympathy with Irishmen striving in Ireland to bring about such a result, and with Englishmen or Scotchmen contributing to it in Great Britain, be questioned, any more than the right of Polish citizens of the French Republic to express their sympathy with Poles labouring in Poland for the restoration of Polish nationality. It is perhaps even less open to question than the right of Americans not of Irish race, and of Frenchmen not of Polish race, to express such sympathies; and certainly less open to question than the right of Englishmen or Americans to express their sympathy with Cubans bent on sundering the last link which binds Cuba to Spain, or with Greeks bent on overthrowing the authority of the Sultan in Crete.
But for all American citizens of whatever race, the expression of such sympathies ceases to be legitimate when it assumes the shape of action transcending the limits set by local or by international law. It is of the essence of American constitutionalism that one community shall not lay hands upon the domestic affairs of another; and it is an undeniable
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fact that the sympathy of the great body of the American people with Irish efforts for self-government has been diminished, not increased, since 1848, by the gradual transfer of the head-quarters and machinery of those efforts from Ireland to the United States. The recent refusal of the Mayor of New York, Mr. Hewitt, to allow what is called the "Irish National flag" to be raised over the City Hall of New York is vastly more significant of the true drift of American feeling on this subject than any number of sympathetic resolutions adopted at party conventions or in State legislatures by party managers, bent on harpooning Irish voters. If Ireland had really made herself a "nation," with or without the consent of Great Britain, a refusal to hoist the Irish flag on the occasion of an Irish holiday would be not only churlish but foolish. But thousands of Americans, who might view with equanimity the disruption of the British Empire and the establishment of an Irish republic, regard, not only with disapprobation, but with resentment, the growing disposition of Irish agitators in and out of the British Parliament to thrash out on American soil their schemes for bringing about these results with the help of Irishmen who have assumed the duties by acquiring the rights of American citizenship. It is not in accordance with the American doctrine of "Home Rule" that "Home Rule" of any sort for
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Ireland should be organised in New York or in Chicago by expatriated Irishmen.
No man had a keener or more accurate sense of this than the most eloquent and illustrious Irishman whose voice was ever heard in America.
In the autumn of 1871 Father Burke of Tal-laght and San Clemente, with whom I had formed at Eome in early manhood a friendship which ended only with his life, came to America as the commissioned Visitor of the Dominican Order. His mission there will live for ever in the Catholic annals of the New World. But of one episode of that mission no man living perhaps knows so much as I, and I make no excuse for this allusion to it here, as it illustrates perfectly the limits between the lawful and the unlawful in the agitation of Irish questions upon American soil.
While Father Burke was in New York Mr. Froude came there, having been invited to deliver before a Protestant Literary Association a series of lectures upon the history of Ireland. My personal relations with Mr. Froude, I should say here, and my esteem for his rare abilities, go back to the days of the Nemesis of Faith, and I did not affect to disguise from him the regret with which I learned his errand to the New World. That his lectures would be brilliant, impressive, and interesting, was quite certain ; but it was equally certain, I thought, that
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they would do a world of mischief, by stirring up ancient issues of strife between the Protestant and the Catholic populations of the United States.
That they would be answered angrily, indiscreetly, and in a fashion to aggravate prejudices which ought to be appeased on both sides of the questions involved, was much more than probable. All this accordingly I urged upon Father Burke, begging him to find or make time in the midst of his engrossing duties for a systematic course of lectures in reply. What other men would surely say in heat and with virulence would be said by him, I knew, temperately, loftily, and wisely. Three strenuous objections he made. One was that his work as a Catholic missionary demanded all his thought and all his time ; another that he was not historically equipped to deal with so formidable an antagonist; and a third that America ought not to be a battle-ground of Irish contentions. It was upon the last that he dwelt most tenaciously ; nor did he give way until he had satisfied himself, after consulting with the highest authorities of his Church, and with two or three of the coolest and most judicious Irish citizens of New York, that I was right in believing that his appearance in the arena as the champion of Ireland, would lift an inevitable controversy high above the atmosphere of unworthy passion, and put it beyond the reach of political mischief-makers.
How nobly he did his work when he had become convinced that he ought to do it, is now matter of history. But it is a hundredfold more needful now than it was in 1871 and 1872, that the spirit in which he did it should be known and published abroad. In the interval between the delivery of two of his replies to Mr. Froude, Mr. Froude went to Boston. A letter from Boston informed me that upon Mr. Froude's arrival there, all the Irish servants of the friend with whom he was to stay had suddenly left the house, refusing to their employer the right to invite under his roof a guest not agreeable to them. I handed this letter, without a word, to Father Burke a few hours before he was to speak in the Academy of Music. He read it with a kind of humorous wrath; and when the evening came, he prefaced his lecture with a few strong and stirring words, in which he castigated with equal sense and severity the misconduct of his country-people, anticipating thus by many a year the spirit in which the supreme authority of his Church has just now dealt with the social plague of "boycotting," whereof the strike of the servant girls at Boston sixteen years ago was a precursory symptom.
Father Burke understood that American citizenship imposes duties where it confers rights. Nobody expects the European emigrant who abjures his foreign allegiance to divest himself of his native
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sympathies or antipathies. But American law, and the. conditions of American liberty, require him to divest himself of the notion that he retains any right actively to interfere in the domestic affairs of the country of his birth. For public and political purposes, the Irishman who becomes an American ceases to be an Irishman. When Mr. Gladstone's Government in 1881 seized and locked up indefinitely, on "suspicion" of what they might be about to do, American citizens of Irish birth, these "suspects" clamoured, arid had a right to clamour, for the intervention of the American Government to protect them against being dealt with as if they were Irishmen and British subjects. But by the abjuration of British allegiance which gave them this right to clamour for American protection, they had voluntarily made themselves absolute foreigners to Ireland, with no more legal or moral right to interfere in the affairs of that country than so many Chinamen or Peruvians.
Having said this, I ought, in justice to my fellow-citizens of Irish birth, to say that these elementary truths have too often been obscured for them by the conduct of public bodies in America, and of American public men.
No American public man of reputation, holding an executive office in the Federal Government, has ever thrust himself, it is true, so inexcusably into
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the domestic affairs of Great Britain and Ireland as did Mr. Gladstone into the domestic affairs of the United States when, speaking at Newcastle in the very crisis of our great civil war, he gave all the weight of his position as a Cabinet Minister to the assertion that Mr. Jefferson Davis had created not only an army and a navy, but a nation, and thereby compelled the Prime Minister of Great Britain to break the effects of this declaration by insisting that another Cabinet Minister, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, should instantly make a speech countering it, and covering the neutrality of the British Government.
Nor has either House of the Congress of the United States ever been guilty of the impertinence of adopting resolutions of sympathy with the Home Rule movement, or any other movement affecting directly the domestic affairs of the British Empire, though, within my own knowledge, very strong pressure has been more than once put upon the Foreign Affairs Committees of both Houses to bring this about.
But such resolutions have been repeatedly adopted by State Legislatures, and individual members, both of the Federal Senate and of the Federal Lower House, have discredited themselves, and brought such discredit as they could upon the Congress, by effusions of the same sort. The bad citizenship of
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Irish-American citizens, however, is not the less bad citizenship because they may have been led into it by the recklessness of State Legislatures-which have no responsibility for our foreign relations-or the sycophancy of public men. If it were proved to demonstration that Home Rule would be the salvation of Ireland, no American citizen would have any more right to take an active part in furthering it than to take an active part in dethroning the Czar of all the Russias. The lesson which Washington administered to Citizen Genet, when that meddlesome minister of the French Republic undertook to "boom" the rights of men by issuing letters of marque at Charleston, has governed the foreign relations of the United States ever since, and it is as binding upon every private citizen as upon every public servant of the Republic.
I must ask my readers, therefore, to bear it constantly in mind that all my observations and comments have been made from an American, not from a British or an Irish point of view. How or by whom Ireland shall be governed concerns me only in so far as the government of Ireland may affect the character and the tendencies of the Irish people, and thereby, through the close, intimate, and increasing connection between the Irish people and the people of the United States, may tend to affect the future of my country. This being my point of view,
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it will be apparent, I think, that I have at least laboured under no temptation to see things otherwise than as they were, or to state things otherwise than as I saw them.
With Arthur Young, who more clearly than any other man of his time saw the end from the beginning of the fatuous and featherheaded French Revolution of 1789, I have always been inclined to think "the application of theory to methods of government a surprising imbecility in the human mind:" and it will be found that in this book I have done little more than set down, as fully and clearly as I could, what I actually saw and heard in Ireland. My method has been as simple as my object. During each day as occasion served, and always at night, I made stenographic notes of whatever had attracted my attention or engaged my interest. As I had no case to make for or against any political party or any theory of government in Ireland, I took things great and small, and people high and low, as they came, putting myself in contact by preference, wherever I could, with those classes of the Irish people of whom we see least in America, and concerning myself, as to my notes, only that they should be made under the vivid immediate impress of whatever they were to record. These notes I have subsequently written out in the spirit in which I made them, in all cases taking what pains
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I could to verify statements of facts, and in many cases, where it seemed desirable or necessary, submitting the proofs of the pages as finally printed to the persons whom, after myself, they most concerned.
I have been more annoyed by the delay than by the trouble thus entailed upon me; but I shall be satisfied if those who may take the pains to read the book shall as nearly as possible see what I saw, and hear what I heard.
I have no wish to impress my own conclusions upon others who may be better able than I am accurately to interpret the facts from which these conclusions have been drawn. Such as they are, I have put them into a few pages at the end of the book.
It will be found that I have touched only incidentally upon the subject of Home Rule for Ireland. Until it shall be ascertained what "Home Rule for Ireland" means, that subject seems to me to lie quite outside the domain of rny inquiries. "Home Rule for Ireland "is not now a plan-nor so much as a proposition. It is merely a polemical phrase, of little importance to persons really interested in the condition of Ireland, however invaluable it may be to the makers of party platforms in my own country, or to Parliamentary candidates on this side of the Atlantic. It may mean anything or nothing, from Mr. Chamberlain's imperialist scheme of four Provincial Councils-which recalls the
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outlines of a system once established with success in New Zealand-to that absolute and complete separation in all particulars of the government of Ireland from the government of Great Britain, which has unquestionably been the aim of every active Irish organisation in the United States for the last twenty years, and which the accredited leader of the "Home Rule" party in the British Parliament, Mr. Parnell, is understood in America to have pledged himself that he will do anything to further and nothing to impede. On this point, what I took to be conclusive documentary evidence was submitted to me in New York several years ago by Mr. Sheridan, at a time when the fever-heat of British indignation excited by those murders in the Phoenix Park, for which I believe it is now admitted by the best informed authorities that Mr. Sheridan had no responsibility, was driving Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates into disavowals of the extreme men of their connection, which, but for Mr. Sheridan's coolness and consciousness of his well-assured domination over them, might have led to extremely inconvenient consequences to all concerned.1 But whatever "Home Rule" may or may not mean, I went to Ireland, not to find some achromatic meaning for a prismatic phrase, which is flashed at you fifty times
1 Appendix, Note A.
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in England or America where you encounter it once in Ireland, but to learn what I could of the social and economical condition of the Irish people as affected by the revolutionary forces which are now at work in that country.
I have watched the development of these forces too long and too closely to be under any illusion as to the real importance relatively with them of the so-called "Parliamentary" action of the Irish Nationalists.
The visits to Ireland, of which this book is a record, were made on my return from a sojourn in Rome during the celebration of the Jubilee of His Holiness Leo XIII. What I then and there learned convinced me that the Vatican was on the eve of grappling in Ireland with issues substantially identical with those which were forced, in my own country, two years ago, upon a most courageous and gifted member of the American Catholic hierarchy, the Archbishop of New York, by the open adhesion of an eminent Irish American ecclesiastic, the Rev. Dr. M'Glynn, to the social revolution of which Mr. Henry George is the best-equipped and most indefatigable apostle. Entertaining this conviction (which events have since shown to have been well-founded), I was anxious to survey on the
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spot the conditions under which the conflict so vigorously encountered by the Archbishop in New York must be waged by the Vatican in Ireland.
To suppose that the Vatican, in dealing with this conflict, either in Ireland or in America, is troubling itself about the balancing of political acrobats, British or American, upon the tight-rope of "Home Rule," is as absurd as it would have been to suppose that in 1885 the Vatican concerned itself with the subterranean intrigues which there is reason to believe the Irish Nationalists then sought to carry on with the wire-pullers of the two great British political parties. To get a correct perspective of the observations which I came from Rome this year to make in Ireland, my readers, as I have already said, must allow me to take them across the Atlantic, and must put aside as accessory and incidental the forensic and polemic phenomena of Irish politics, with which they are perhaps only too familiar.
It is as easy to go too far back as it is not to go back far enough in the study of such a revolutionary movement as that of which Ireland is just now the arena.
Many and sore are the historical grievances of the Irish people. That they are historical and not actual grievances would seem to be admitted by so sympathetic and minutely well-informed a writer
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as Dr. Sigerson, when he gives it as his opinion, that after the passage of the Land Act of 1870, "the concession in principle of the demands of the cultivators as tenants" had "abolished the class war waged between landlords and their tenantry."
The class war between the tenantry and their landlords, therefore, which is now undoubtedly waging in Ireland cannot be attributed to the historical grievances of the Irish people. The tradition and the memory of these historical grievances may indeed be used by designing or hysterical traders in agitation to inflame the present war. But the war itself is not the old war, nor can it be explained by recurring to the causes of the old war. It has the characteristics no longer of a defensive war, nor yet of a war of revenge absolutely, but of an aggressive war, and of a war of conquest. In his able work on "The Land Tenure and the Land Classes of Ireland," Dr. Sigerson, writing in 1871, looked forward to the peaceful co-existence in Ireland of two systems of land-holding, "whereby the country might enjoy the advantage of what is good in the 'landlord,' or single middleman system, and in the peasant proprietary or direct system."
What we now see in Ireland, after nearly twenty years of legislation, steadily tending to the triumph of equal rights, is an agitation threatening not only the "co-existence" of these two systems, but the very existence of each of these systems.
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To get at the origin and the meaning of this agitation we must be content, I believe, to go no further back than ten years, and to look for them, not in Ireland, but in America, not to Mr. Parnell and Mr, Gladstone primarily, but to Mr. Davitt and Mr. Henry George.
In a very remarkable letter written to Earl Grey in 1868, after the Clerkenwell explosions had brought the disestablishment of the Irish Protestant Church into Mr. Gladstone's scheme of "practical politics," the Archbishop of Westminster, not then a Cardinal, called the attention of Englishmen to the fact, not yet I fear adequately apprehended by them, that "the assimilating power of America upon the Irish people, if seven days slower than that of England in reaching Ireland, is sevenfold more penetrating and powerful upon the whole population." By this the Archbishop meant, what was unquestionably true, that even in 1868, only twenty years after the great Irish exodus to America began, the social and political ideas of America were exerting a seven-fold stronger influence upon the character and the tendencies of the Irish people than the social and political ideas of England. Thanks to the development of the cables and the
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telegraph since 1868, and to the enormous progress of America since that time in wealth and population, this "assimilating power" reaches Ireland much more rapidly, and exerts upon the Irish people a very much more drastic influence than in 1868. This establishes, of course, a return current westward, which is as necessary to be watched, and is as much neglected by American as the original eastward current is by British public men.
In this letter of 1868 to Earl Grey, the Archbishop of Westminster desiring, as an Englishman, to counteract, if possible, this influence which was drawing Ireland away from the British monarchy, and towards the American Republic, maintained that by two things the "heart of Ireland" might be won, and her affections enlisted with her interests in the support of the unity, solidity, and prosperity of the British Empire. One of these two things was "perfect religious equality between the Catholics and the Protestants of Ireland." The other was that the Imperial Legislature should by statute make it impossible for any landlord in Ireland to commit three wrongs,-"first, the wrong of abusing his rights by arbitrary eviction; secondly, by exacting an exorbitant rent; thirdly, by appropriating to his own use the improvements effected by the industry of his tenants."
Perfect religious equality has since been estab-
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lished between the Catholics and the Protestants of Ireland. The three wrongs which the Archbishop called upon the Imperial Legislature to make impossible to Irish landlords have since been made impossible by Statute.
Yet it is on all hands admitted that the "unity, solidity, and prosperity" of the British Empire have never been so seriously threatened in Ireland as during the last ten years. Was the Archbishop wrong, therefore, in his estimate of the situation in 1868? Or has the centripetal influence of remedial British legislation since 1868 failed to check a centrifugal advance "by leaps and bounds," in the "assimilating power" of America upon Ireland?
Just ten years ago, in 1878, Mr. Michael Davitt and Mr. John Devoy (the latter of whom had been commissioned in 1865 by the Fenian leader Stephens, as "chief organiser of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the British army"), being then together in America, promulgated, Mr. Davitt in a speech at Boston, and Mr. Devoy in a letter sent to the Freeman's Journal in Dublin, the outlines of a scheme for overthrowing British rule in Ireland by revolutionising the ownership of land in that country.
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The basis of this scheme had been laid thirty years before, in 1848, by Finton Lalor, John Mitchel, and the present Archbishop of Cashel, then a simple curate.
It was thus stated by Lalor in his paper, the Irish Felon:-
"The entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the sun and down to the centre of the earth, is vested, as of right, in the people of Ireland. The soil of the country belongs as of right to the entire people of the country, not to any one class, but to the nation."
This was a distinct denial of the right of private property in land. If true of Ireland and the Irish people this proposition was true of all lands and of all peoples. Lalor, though more of a patriot than of a philosopher, saw this plainly; and in one of the three numbers of his paper which appeared before it was suppressed by the British Government, he said "the principle I propose goes to the foundations of Europe, and sooner or later will cause Europe to uprise." Michael Davitt saw this as clearly in 1878 as Finton Lalor thirty years before. He had matured his plans in connection with this principle during the weary but not wasted years of his imprisonment as a Fenian at Dartmoor, a place, the name of which is connected in America with many odious memories of the second war between England and
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the United States; and going out to America almost immediately after his release on a ticket of leave, he there found the ideas of Finton Lalor and his associates of 1848, ripened and harvested in the mind of an American student of sociology, Henry George. Nowhere in the world has what a shrewd English traveller calls "the illegitimate development of private wealth" attained such proportions in modern times as in America, and especially in California. Nowhere, too, in the world is the ostentatious waste of the results of labour upon the antics of a frivolous plutocracy a more crying peril of our times than in America. Henry George, an American of the Eastern States, who went to the Pacific coast as a lad, had grown up with and watched the progress of this social disease in California; and when Davitt reached America in 1878, Henry George was preparing to publish his revolutionary hook on Progress and Poverty, which appeared in 1879. Dates are important from this point, as they will trace for the reader the formation of the strongest forces which, as I believe, are to-day at work to shape the future of Ireland, and, if Cardinal Manning is right, with the future of Ireland, the future of the British Empire.
The year 1878 saw the "Home Rule" movement in Irish politics brought to an almost ludicrous halt by the success of Mr. Parnell, then a young member of Parliament for Meath, in unhorsing the leader of
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that movement, Mr. Butt. As the Irish members then had no coherent purpose or policy, Mr. Parnell had, without much trouble, dominated and brigaded them to follow him blindly into a system of parliamentary obstruction, which there is reason to suppose was suggested to him by a friend who had studied the Congressional proceedings of the United States, the native country of his mother, and especially the tactics which had enabled Mr. Eandall of Pennsylvania, the leader of the Democratic minority in the House of Representatives, to check the so-called "Civil Bights Bill," sent down by the Seriate to that House, during a continuous session of forty-six hours and a half, with no fewer than severity-seven calls of the house, in the month of January 1875, some time before Mr. Parnell first took his seat in the House of Commons.
When Mr. Parnell, early in 1878, thanks to this system, had ousted Mr. Butt, and got himself elected as President of the Irish "Home Rule Confederation," he found himself, as an Irish friend of mine wrote to me at the time, in an awkward position. He had command of the "Home Rule" members at Westminster, but he had no notion what to do with them, and neither they nor he could see any way open to securing a permanent hold upon the Irish voters. Three bad harvests in succession had thrown the Irish tenants
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into a state which disinclined them to make sacrifices for any sentimental policy, but prepared them to lend their ears eagerly to Michael Davitt, when, on his return from the United States in the early spring of 1879, he proclaimed anew, at Irishtown in his native county of Mayo, the gospel of 1848 giving the land of Ireland to the people of Ireland. Clearly Mr. Davitt held the winning card. As he frankly put the case to a special correspondent, whom I sent to see him, and whose report I published in New York, he saw that "the only issue upon which Home Rulers, Nationalists, Obstructionists, and each and every shade of opinion existing in Ireland could be united was the Land Question," and of that question he took control. Naturally enough, Mr. Parnell, himself a landowner under the English settlement, shrank at first from committing himself and his fortunes to the leadership of Mr. Davitt. But no choice was really left him, and there is reason to believe that a decision was made easier to him by a then inchoate undertaking that he should be personally protected against the financial consequences to himself of the new departure, by a testimonial fund, such as was in fact raised and presented to him in 1883. In June 1879 he accepted the inevitable, and in a speech at Westport put himself with his parliamentary following and machinery at the service of the founder of the Irish Land League,
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uttering the keynote of Mr. Davitt's "new departure" in his celebrated appeal to the Irish tenants to "keep a firm grip of their homesteads." In the middle of October 1879, Mr. Davitt formally organised the Irish National Land League, "to reduce rack-rents and facilitate the obtaining of the ownership of the land of Ireland by the occupiers," and Mr. Parnell was made its first President. He was sent out to America in that capacity at the end of the year to explain to the Irish-American leaders the importance of supplying the new organisation with funds sufficient to enable it to take and keep the field at Westminster with a force of paid members not dependent for their support upon the Irish constituencies. It was obviously impossible either to guarantee any considerable number of Irishmen holding property against loss by a policy aimed at the foundations of property, or to count upon finding for every Irish seat a member of local weight and stake, imbued with the spirit of martyrdom.
Mr. Parnell landed at New York on the 1st of January 1880. An interview with him, written out on board of the steamer which took him to America by a correspondent detailed for that purpose, was published on the morning after his arrival. It made on the whole an unfavourable impression in America, which was not improved by an in-
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judicious quarrel into which he drifted with a portion of the American press, and which was distinctly deepened by his inexcusable misrepresentations of the conduct of Queen Victoria during the famine of 1847, and by his foolish attacks upon the management and objects of the Duchess of Marlborough's fund for the relief of Irish distress. The friends of Mr. Davitt in America, however, and the leaders of the most active Irish organisations there, came to the rescue, and as the two American parties were preparing their lines of battle for the Presidential conflict of 1880, Mr. Parnell was not only "put through" the usual course of "receptions" by Mayors and State legislatures, but invited on an "off-day" to address the House of Representatives at Washington. His tour, however, on the whole, harmed more than it helped the new Irish movement orr my side of the Atlantic, and when he was called back to take his part in the electoral contest precipitated by Lord Beaconsfield's dissolution of Parliament at Easter 1880, Mr. Davitt went out to America himself to do what his Parliamentary associate had not succeeded in doing. During this visit of Mr. Davitt to the United States, Mr. Henry George finally transferred his residence from San Francisco to New York, and made his arrangements to visit England and Ireland, and bring about a practical combination be-
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tween the advocates of "the land for the people" on both sides of the ocean. These arrangements he carried out in 1881-82, publishing in 1881, in America, his treatise on the Irish Land question, while Mr. Davitt, who had been arrested after his return to Europe by Mr. Gladstone's Government in February 1881, on a revocation of his tieket-of-leave, lay a prisoner at Portland. Mr. George himself, while travelling in Ireland with an academical English friend, came under "suspicion" in the eyes of one of Mr. Forster's officers, and was arrested, but at once released. During the protracted confinement of Mr, Davitt at Portland, the utter incapacity of Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates to manage the social revolution initiated by the founder of the Land League became fully apparent, not only to impartial, but even to sympathetic observers in America, long before it was demonstrated by the incarceration of Mr. Parnell in Kilmainham, the disavowal, under pressure, of the no-rent manifesto by Archbishop Croke, and the suppression of the Land League. In sequestrating Mr. Davitt, Mr. Forster, as was shown by the extraordinary scenes which in the House of Commons followed his arrest, had struck at the core of the revolution, and had the Irish Secretary not been deserted by Mr. Gladstone, under influences which originated at Kilmainham, and were reinforced by
xxxix
the pressure of the United Status Government in the spring of 1882, history might have had a very different tale to tell of the last six years in Ireland and in Great Britain.1
It was after the return of Mr. George from Ireland to New York in 1882 that the first black point appeared on the horizon, of the conflict, inevitable in the nature of things, between the social revolution and the Catholic Church, which assumed such serious proportions two years ago in America, and which is now developing itself in Ireland. Among the ablest and the most earnest converts in America to the doctrine of the new social revolution was the Rev. Dr. M'Glynn, a Catholic priest, standing in the front rank of his order in New York, in point alike of eloquence in the pulpit, and of influence in private life. Finding, like Michael Davitt, in the doctrine of Henry George an outcome and a confirmation of the principle laid down in 1846 for the liberation of Ireland by Finton Lalor, Dr. M'Glynn threw himself ardently into the advocacy of that doctrine,-so ardently that in August 1882 the Prefect of the Propaganda, Cardinal Simeoni, found it necessary to invite the attention of Car-
' Appendix, Note B.
xl
dinal M'Closkey, then Archbishop of New York, to speeches of Dr. M'Glynn, reported in the Irish World of New York, as "containing propositions openly opposed to the teachings of the Catholic Church."
It did not concern the Propaganda that these propositions ran on all-fours with the policy of the Irish Land League established by Mr. Davitt, and accepted by Mr. Parnell. What concerned the Propaganda in the propositions of Dr. M'Glynn at New York in 1882 was precisely what concerns the Propaganda in the programme of Mr. Davitt as mismanaged by Mr. Dillon in Ireland in 1888-the incompatibility of these propositions, and of that programme, with the teachings of the Church.
Upon receiving the instructions of the Propaganda in August 1882, Cardinal M'Closkey sent for Dr. M'Glynn, and set the matter plainly before him. Dr. M'Glynn professed regret for his errors, promised to abstain in future from political meetings, and begged the Cardinal to inform the authorities at Rome of his intention to walk more circumspectly. The submission of Dr. M'Glynn was approved at Home, but it was gently intimated to him that it needed to be crowned by public reparation for the scandal he had caused. He disregarded this pastoral hint, and when the Archbishop Coadjutor of New York, Dr. Corrigan, went to Eome in 1883 to
xli
represent the Cardinal, who was unequal to the journey, he found the Propaganda by no means satisfied with the attitude of Dr. M'Glynn. Two years after this, in October 1885, Cardinal M'Closkey died, and Dr. Corrigan succeeded him as Archbishop of New York.
Between the first admonition given to the sacerdotal ally of Mr. George in 1882 and this event much had come to pass in Ireland. The Land League suppressed by Mr. Forster had been suffered to reappear as the National League by Earl Spencer and Mr. Trevelyan. Sir William Harcourt's stringent and sweeping "Coercion Act" of July 11th, 1882, passed under the stress of the murders in the Phoenix Park, expiring by its own terms in July 1885, Mr. Gladstone found himself forced either to alienate a number of his Radical supporters by proposing a renewal of that Act, or to invite a catastrophe in Ireland by attempting to rule that country under "the ordinary law."
He elected to escape from the dilemma by inviting a defeat in Parliament on a secondary question of the Budget. He went out of power on the 9th of June 1885, leaving Lord Salisbury to send the Earl of Carnarvon as Viceroy to Ireland, and the Irish party in Parliament to darken the air on both sides of the Atlantic with portentous intimations of a mysterious compact, under which they were to
xlii
secure Home Rule for Ireland by establishing the Conservatives in their places at the general election in November.1
What came of all this I may briefly rehearse. Going out to America in November 1885, and returning to England in January 1886, I remained in London long enough to assure myself, and to publish in America my conviction of the utter hopelessness of Mr. Gladstone's "Home Rule" measure, the success of which would have made his government the ally and the instrument of Mr. Parnell in carrying out the plans of Mr. Davitt, Mr. Henry George, and the active Irish organisations of the United States. All this is matter of history.
The effect of Mr. Gladstone's speech of April 8, 1886, introducing his Home Rule Bill, upon the Irish in America was simply intoxicating. They saw him, as in a vision, repeating for the benefit of Ireland at Dublin, on a grander scale, the impressive scene of his surrender in 1858 at Corfu of the Protectorate of the Ionian Islands to Greece.
Upon thousands also of Americans, interested more or less intelligently in British affairs, but neither familiar, nor caring to be, with the details of the political situation in Great Britain, this appearance of the British Premier, as the champion of Home Rule for Ireland, denouncing the "base-
1 Appendix, Note C.
xliii
ness and blackguardism " of Pitt and his accomplices, the framers of the Union of 1800, naturally produced a very profound impression. What might be almost called a "tidal wave" of sympathy with the Irish National League, and with him. as its ally, made itself felt throughout the United States. Had I witnessed the drama from the far-off auditorium in New York, I might doubtless have shared the conviction of so many of my countrymen that we were about to behold the consummation tunefully anticipated so many years ago by John Quincy Adams, and-
"Proud of herself, victorious over fate,
See Erin rise, an independent state."
The moment seemed propitious for a resolute forward move in America of Mr. Henry George, and the other American believers in the doctrine of "the land for the people." It would have been more propitious had not the political managers of the Irish party, misapprehending to the last moment the drift of things in the British Parliament, and counting firmly upon a victory for Mr. Gladstone, either at Westminster or at the polls, insisted upon holding a great convention of the Irish in America at Chicago in August 1886. A proposition to do this had been made in the spring of 1885, and put off, in judicious deference to the disgust which many independent Americans of both parties then
xliv
felt at the course pursued by Mr. Parnell's friends, Mr. Egan and Mr. Sullivan in 1884, when these leaders openly led the Irish with drums beating and green flags flying out of the Democratic into the Republican camp.
As it was, however, Mr. Gladstone having gone out of power a second time, on the second day of June in 1886, the non-parliamentary and real leader in Ireland of the Irish revolutionary movement, Mr. Davitt, came overtly to the front, and crossed the Atlantic to ride the whirlwind and direct the storm at the Convention appointed to be held in Chicago on the 18th of August.
In New York he found Mr. Henry George quietly preparing to put the emotions of the moment to profit at the municipal election which was to occur in that city in November, and Dr. M'Glynn more enamoured than ever of the doctrine of "the land for the people," and more defiant than ever of the Propaganda and of his ecclesiastical superiors. It was resolved that Mr. George should come forward as a candidate for the mayoralty in November, and Dr. M'Glynn determined to take the field in support of him.
xlv
We now come to close quarters.
Dr. Corrigan, as I have said, had become the Archbishop of New York in October 1885. The Irish-American Convention met at Chicago, Mr. Davitt dominating its proceedings by his courageous and outspoken support of his defeated Parliamentary allies in England. The candidacy of Mr. Henry George had not yet been announced in New York. But Dr. M'Glynn resumed his practice of addressing public meetings in support of the doctrines of Mr. Davitt and of Henry George. The Archbishop's duty was plain. It was not pleasant. A Catholic prelate of Irish blood living in New York might have been pardoned for avoiding, if he could, an open intervention at such a moment, to prevent an able and popular priest from disobeying his ecclesiastical superiors in his zeal for a doctrine hostile to "landlordism," and cordially approved by the most influential of the Irish leaders. But on the 21st August 1886, while all the Irish men in New York were wild with excitement over the proceedings at Chicago, Archbishop Corrigan did his duty, and admonished Dr. M'Glynn to restrain his political ardour. The admonition was thrown away. A month later, the canvass of Mr. Henry George being then fully opened, Dr. M'Glynn
vol. i.
d
xlvi
sent Mr. George himself to wait upon the Archbishop with a note of introduction as his "very dear and valued friend," in the hope of inducing the Archbishop to withdraw his inhibition and allow him to speak at a great meeting, then about to be held, of the supporters of Mr. George.
The Archbishop replied in a firm but friendly note, forbidding Dr. M'Glynn "in the most positive manner" to attend the meeting referred to, or "any other political meeting whatever."
Dr. M'Glynn deliberately disobeyed this order, attended the meeting, and threw himself with ever increasing heat into the war against landlordism. On the 2d of October 1886, therefore, he was formally "suspended" from his priestly functions -nor has he ever since been permitted to resume them. Another priest presides over the great church of St. Stephen, of which he was the rector. More than once the door of repentance and return has been opened to him; but, I believe, he is still waging war in his own way, and beyond the precincts of the priesthood, both upon the right of private property in land and upon the Pope.
He is a man of vigorous intellect; and he has defined the issue between himself and the Church in language so terse and clear that I reproduce it here. It defines also the real issue of to-day between the Church speaking through the Papal Decree of
xlvii
April 20, 1888, and the National League of Ireland acting through the "Plan of Campaign."
No heed having been paid by Dr. M'Glynn to several successive intimations summoning him to go to Rome and explain his attitude, he finally, on the 20th of December 1886, wrote a letter in which, with a single skilful turn of his wrist, he took out the core of Henry George's doctrine as to land, which really is the core also of the Irish Plan of Campaign, and thus laid it before the Archbishop of New York:-
"My doctrine about land has been made clear in speeches, in reports of interviews, and in published articles, and I repeat it here. I have taught, and I shall continue to teach in speeches and writings, as long as I live, that land is rightfully the property of the people in common, and that private ownership of land is against natural justice, no matter by what civil or ecclesiastical laws it may be sanctioned; and I would bring about instantly, if I could, such change of laws all over the world as would confiscate private property in land without one penny of compensation to the miscalled owners."
There is no shuffling here. With logical precision Dr. M'Glynn strips Mr. George's doctrine of its technical disguise as a form of taxation, and presents it to the world as a simple Confiscation of Rents. Many acute critics of Progress and Poverty have
xlviii
failed to see that when Mr. George calls upon the State to take over to itself, and to its own uses, the whole annual rental value of the hare land of a country, the land, that is, irrespectively of improvements put upon it by man, he proposes not "a single tax upon land" at all, but an actual confiscation of the rental of the land-which for practical purposes is the land-to the uses of the State, without a levy, and without compensation to "the miscalled owners."
When a tax is levied, the need by the State levying it of a certain sum of money must first be ascertained by competent authority, legislative or executive, as the case may be, and the law-making power must then, according to a prescribed form, enact that to raise such a sum a certain tax shall be levied on designated property or occupations. If the exigencies of the State are held to require it, a tax may be levied upon property of more than its value, as in the case, for example, of the customs duty which was imposed in one of our "tariff revisions" upon plate glass imported into the United States by way of "protecting" a single plate-glass factory then existing in the United States. This was an abominable abuse of a constitutional power, but it was not "confiscation." What Henry George proposes is confiscation, as Dr. M'Glynn plainly sees and courageously says. What
xlix
he proposes is that the State shall compel the annual rental value of all land to be paid into the public treasury, without regard to the question whether the State does or does not need such a sum of money. That is confiscation pure and simple, the State, in the assumed interest of the State, proceeding against the private owners of land, or the "miscalled owners," to use Dr. M'Glynn's significant phrase, precisely as under the feudal system the State proceeded against the private property of rebels and traitors. No good reason can be shown why the process should not be applied to personalty and to debts as well as to land.
This was the doctrine indorsed at the polls in New York in November 1886 by 68,000 voters. Nor can there be much doubt that it would have been indorsed by the few thousand more votes needed to defeat Mr. Hewitt, the actual Mayor of New York, and to put Mr. Henry George into the Chief Magistracy of the first city of the New World, had not its teachers and preachers been confronted by the quiet, cool, and determined prelate who met it as plainly as it was put. "Your letter," said the Archbishop, "has brought the painful intelligence that you decline to go to Rome, and that you have taught, and will continue to teach, the injustice of private ownership of land, no matter by what laws of Church or State it may be sanctioned. In view
of such declarations, to permit you to exercise the holy ministry would be manifestly wrong."
In these few words of the Archbishop of New York, we have plainly affirmed in 1886 the principle underlying the Papal Decree of 1888 against the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting in Ireland. There is no question of parties or of politics in the one case or in the other. When Dr. M'Glynn talked about the private ownership of land in New York as "against natural justice," he flung himself not only against the Eighth Commandment and the teachings of the Catholic Church, touching the rights of property, but against the constitutions of the State of New York and of the United States. That "private property shall not be taken for public uses without just compensation" is a fundamental provision of the Constitution of the United States, which is itself a part of the Constitution of every State of the Union; and the right of private ownership in land is defined and protected beyond doubt or cavil in New York under the State Constitution. An Act passed in 1830 provides and declares that all lands within the State "are allodial, so that, subject only to the liability to escheat, the entire and absolute property is vested in the owners according to the nature of their respective estates."
By this Act "all feudal tenures of every description, with all their incidents," were "abolished."
li
Most of the "feudal incidents" of the socage tenure had been previously abolished by an Act passed in 1787, under the first Constitution of the State, adopted at Kingston in 1777, a year after the Declaration of American Independence; and socage tenure by fixed and determinate service, not military or variable by the lord at his will, had been adopted long before by an Act of the first Assembly of the Province of New York held in 1691 under the first Royal Governor, after the reconquest of the province from Holland, and in the reign of William and Mary. This Act provided that all lands should "be held in free and common socage according to the tenure of East Greenwich in England." It is an interesting circumstance that the right of private ownership in land, thus rooted in our history, should have been defended against a threatening revolutionary movement in New York by the courage and loyalty to the Constitution of his country as well as to his Church of a Catholic Archbishop. For this same Assembly of the Province of New York in 1693, in an Act "to maintain Protestant ministers and churches," enacted that "every Jesuit and popish priest" found in the Province after a certain day named, should be put into "perpetual imprisonment," with the proviso that if he escaped and was retaken he should suffer death. And even in the Constitution of 1777 the
lii
Protestantism of New York expressed its hostility, to the Catholic Church by exacting subjection "in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil."
The position of the Archbishop, both as a churchman and as a citizen, was impregnable. When Dr. M'Glynn advocated the plan of Henry George, he advocated at one and the same time the immoral seizure and confiscation of the whole income of many persons within the protection of the Constitution of New York, and the overthrow of the Constitution of that State and of the United States. It may be within the competency of the British Parliament to enact such a confiscation of rent without a revolution, there being not only no allodial tenure of land in Great Britain, but, it would appear, no limit to the power of a British Parliament over the lives, liberties, and property of British subjects, but the will of its members. But it is not within the competency of the Congress of the United States, or of the Assembly of New York, to do such a thing, the powers of these bodies being controlled and defined by written Constitutions, which can only be altered or amended in a prescribed manner and through prescribed and elaborate forms.
liii
By the middle of October 1886 it became clear that Mr. George, whose candidacy had at first been regarded with indifference by the party managers, both Democratic and Republican, in New York, would command a vote certainly larger than that of one of these parties, and possibly larger than that of either of them. To put him at the head of a poll of three parties would elect him. This was so apparent that he and his friends, including Dr. M'Glynn and Mr. Davitt, were warranted in expecting a victory.
It was hardly therefore by a mere coincidence that this precise time was selected for opening the war in Ireland against Rent. It is quite possible that if Mr. Dillon and his Parliamentary friends had been in less of a hurry to open this war before the return of Mr. Davitt from America, it might have been opened in a manner less "politically stupid," if not less "morally wrong." But, of course, if Mr. Henry George had been elected Mayor of New York, as he came so near to being in November 1886, and Mr. Davitt had returned to Ireland with the prestige of contributing to place him in the municipal chair of the most important city in the New World, Mr. Dillon and his Parliamentary friends would pro-
liv
bably have found it necessary to accept a much less conspicuous part in the conduct of the campaign.
It was on the 17th of October 1886 that Mr. John Dillon, M.P., first promulgated the "Plan of Campaign" at Portumna, in a speech which was promptly flashed under the Atlantic to New York, there to feed the flame, already fanned by the eloquence of Dr. M'Glynn, into a blaze of enthusiasm for the apostle of the New Gospel of Confiscation.
Had the "Plan of Campaign" then been met by the highest local authority of the Catholic Church in Ireland, as Henry George's doctrine of Confiscation was met in New York by Archbishop Corrigan, it might never have been necessary to issue the Papal Decree of April 1888. But while the Bishop of Limerick unhesitatingly denounced the "Plan of Campaign" as "politically stupid and morally wrong," the Archbishop of Dublin bestowed upon it what may be called a left-handed benediction. Admitting that it empowered one of the parties to a contract to "fix the terms on which that contract should continue in force," the Archbishop actually condoned the claim of this immoral power by the tenant, on the ground that the same immoral power had been theretofore exercised by the landlord! Peter having robbed Paul from January to. July, that is, Paul should be encouraged by his spiritual guides to rob Peter from July to January!
lv
That the Catholic Church should even seem for a time to speak with two voices on such a point as the moral quality of political machinery, or that speaking with one voice upon such a point in America, it should even seem to speak with another voice in Ireland, would clearly be a disaster to the Church and to civilisation. From the moment therefore, in 1886, when the issue between Dr, M'Glynn and the Archbishop of New York was defined, as I have shown, and the Irish National League, with a quasi-indorsement from the Archbishop of Dublin, had arrayed itself practically and openly on the side of Dr. M'Glynn and against the Archbishop of New York, interests far transcending those of any political party in Ireland, in Great Britain, or in the United States, were involved. Unfortunately for the immediate and decisive settlement by Rorne of the issue between Dr. M'Glynn and the Archbishop of New York, a certain vague but therefore more vexatious measure of countenance had been given, before that issue was raised, to the theories of Mr. Henry George by another American prelate, the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore, and by more than one eminent ecclesiastic in Europe. Of course this would have been impossible had these ecclesiastics penetrated, like Dr. M'Glynn, to the heart of Mr. George's contention, or discerned with the acumen of the
lvi
Archbishop of New York the fundamental difference between any imaginable exercise of the power of taxation by a Constitutional Government, and Mr. George's doctrine of the Confiscation of Eent. But this having occurred, it was inevitable that Eome, which has to deal with a world-wide and complex system of the most varied and delicate human affairs, should proceed in the matter with infinite patience and care. In January 1887 the Propaganda accordingly cabled thus to the Archbishop of New York,-Dr. M'Glynn persisting in his refusal to go to Rome-"for prudential reasons Propaganda has heretofore postponed action in the case of Dr. M'Glynn. The Sovereign Pontiff has now taken the matter into his own hands."
In the hands of his Holiness the matter was safe; and in the Papal Decree of April 20, 1888, we have at once the most conclusive vindication of the wisdom and courage shown by the Archbishop of New York in 1886, and the most emphatic condemnation of the attitude assumed in 1886 by the Archbishop of Dublin.
It must not be assumed that Mr. George has been finally defeated in America. On the contrary, he was never more active. A legacy left
lvii
to him by an Irish-American for the propagation of his doctrines has just been declared by the Vice-Chancellor of New Jersey, to be invalid on the ground that George's doctrines are "in opposition to the laws"; and this decision has bred an uproar in the press which is reviving popular attention all over the country to the doctrines and to their author. He is astute, persevering, as much in earnest as Mr. Davitt, and as familiar with the weak points in the political machinery of the United States as is Mr. Davitt with the weak points in the political machinery of Great Britain. This is a Presidential year. The election of 1888 will be decided, as was the election of 1884, in New York. The Democratic party go into the contest with a New York candidate, President Cleveland, who was presented to the Convention at St. Louis for nomination, not by an Irishman from New York, but by an Irishman from the hopelessly Eepublican State of Pennsylvania, and whose renomination, distasteful to the Democratic Governor of the State, was also openly opposed by the Democratic Mayor of the city of New York, Mr. Hewitt, Mr. George's successful competitor in the Municipal election of 1886. Leaving Dr. M'Glynn to uphold the Confiscation of Land against the Pope in New York, as Mr. Davitt, Mr. Dillon, and a certain number of Irish priests uphold the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting against the
lviii
Pope in Ireland, Mr. George supports President Cleveland, and in so doing cleverly makes a flank movement towards his "exclusive taxation of land," by promoting, under the cover of "Revenue Reform," an attack on the indirect taxation from which the Federal Eevenues are now mainly derived. Meanwhile the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore, who is also a political supporter of President Cleveland, has not yet been confronted by the supreme authority at Borne with such a final sentence upon the true nature of Mr. George's "exclusive taxation of land," as the clear-sighted Archbishop of New York is said to be seeking to obtain from the Holy Office. What the end will be I have little doubt. But for the moment, it will be seen, the situation in America is only less confused and troublesome than the situation in Ireland. It is confused and troubled too, as I have tried in this prologue to show, by forces identical in character with those which confuse and trouble the situation in Ireland.
Of the social conditions amid and against which those forces are working in America, I believe myself to have some knowledge.
To get an actual touch and living sense of the social conditions amid and against which they are working in Ireland was my object, I repeat, in making the visits, of which this book is a record. More than this I could not hope, in the time at my
lix
disposal, to do. With very much less than this, it appears to me, many persons, whose views of Irish affairs I had been inclined, before making these visits, to regard with respect, must have found it possible to rest content.
Dublin, Monday, Jan. 30, 1888.-I left London last night. The train was full of people going to attend levees and drawing-rooms about to be held at Dublin Castle.
Near Watford we lost half an hour by the breaking of a connecting-rod; but the London and North-Western is a model railway, and we ran alongside the pier at Holyhead exactly "on time." There is no such railway travelling in America, excepting on the Pennsylvania Central; and the North-Western sleeping-carriages, if less monumental and elaborate than ours, are better ventilated, and certainly not less comfortable.
I had expected to come upon unusual things and people in Ireland, but I had not expected to travel thither in company with an Irish Jacobite. Two of my fellow-passengers, chatting as they
VOL. I. A
2
smoked their cigarettes in the little vestibule between the cabins of the carriage, had much to say about Lord Ashburnham, and the "Order of the White Rose," and the Grand Mass to be celebrated to-morrow morning at the Church of the Carmelites
in London, in memory of Charles Edward Stuart, who died, at Rome in 1788, and now lies buried as Charles III., King of Great Britain and Ireland, in the vaults of the Vatican, together with his father "James III.," and his brother "Henry IX." One of the two was as hot and earnest about the "Divine Eight of Kings" as the parson who, less than forty years ago, preached a sermon to prove that the great cholera visitation of 1849 was a direct chastisement of the impiety of the Royal Mint in dropping the letters D. G. from the first florins of Queen Victoria issued in that year. He bewailed his sad fate in being called over to Ireland by family affairs at such a moment, and evidently did not know that the Mass in question had been countermanded by the Cardinal Archbishop.
The incident, odd enough in itself, interested me the more that yesterday, as it happens, the Cardinal had spoken with me of this curious affair.
He heard of it for the first time on Saturday, and, sending at once for the priest in charge of the
3
Carmelite Church, forbade the celebration. Later on in the evening, two strangers came to the Archbishop's house, and in great agitation besought him to allow the arrangements for the Mass to go on. He declined to do this, and sent them away impaled on a dilemma. "What you propose," said the Cardinal, "is either a piece of theatrical tomfoolery, in which case it is unfit to be performed in a church, or it is flat treason, in which case you should be sent to the Tower!"
They went away, like the Senatus of Augsburg from the presence of Napoleon-"tres mortifies et peu contents." After they had gone, the Cardinal remembered that for some time past queer documents had reached him through the post-office, setting forth the doctrine of Divine Eight, and the story of the Stuarts. One of these, which with the rest he had thrown into the fire, was an elaborate genealogical chart, designed to show that the crowns of Great Britain and Ireland ought rightfully to be worn by a certain princess in Bavaria!
If there is anything more in all this than a new variety of the "blue China craze," may it not be taken as a symptom of that vague but clearly growing dissatisfaction with the nineteenth century doctrine of government by mere majorities, which
4
is by no means confined to Europe? This feeling underlies the "National Association" for getting a preamble put into the Constitution of the United States, "recognising Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in Civil Government." There was such a recognition in the Articles of Confederation of 1781. Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia should have mentioned to His Holiness the existence of this Association, when he presented to Leo xiii., the other day at Rome, President Cleveland's curious Jubilee gift of an emblazoned copy of what a Monsignore of my acquaintance calls "the godless American Constitution."1
We made a quick quiet passage to Kingstown. These boats-certainly the best appointed of their sort afloat-are owned, I find, in Dublin, and managed exclusively by their Irish owners, to whom the credit therefore belongs of making the mail service between Holyhead and Kingstown as admirable, in
1 Since this was written fifteen Catholic bishops in England, headed by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, have united (April 12, 1888) in a public protest against the Optional Oaths Bill, in which they say: "To efface the recognition of God in our public legislature is an act which will surely bring evil consequences." Yet how can the recognition of God be more effectually "effaced" than by the unqualified assertion that the will of the people, or of a majority, is the one legitimate source of political authority?
5
all respects, as the mail services between Dover and the Continental ports are not.
I landed at Kingstown with Lord Ernest Hamilton, M.P. for North Tyrone, with whom I have arranged an expedition to Gweedore in Donegal, one of the most ill-famed of the "congested districts" of Ireland, and just now made a point of special interest by the arrest of Father M'Fadden, the parish priest of the place, for "criminally conspiring to compel and induce certain tenants not to fulfil their legal obligations."
I could understand such a prosecution as this in America, where the Constitution makes it impossible even for Congress to pass laws "impairing the validity of contracts." But as the British Parliament has been passing such laws for Ireland ever since Mr. Butt in 1870 raised the standard of Irish Land. Reform under the name of Home Rule, it seems a little absurd, not to say Hibernian, of the British authorities to prosecute Father M'Fadden merely for bettering their own instruction in his own way. I could better understand a prosecution of Father M'Fadden on such grounds by the authorities of his own Church.
A step from the boat at Kingstown puts you into the train for Dublin. Before we got into
6
motion, a weird shape as of one just escaped from the Wild West show of Buffalo Bill peered in at the window, inviting us to buy the morning papers, or a copy of "the greatest book ever published, 'Paddy at Home!'" This proved to be a translation of M. de Manclat Grancey's lively volume, Chez Paddy. The vendor, "Davy," is one of the "chartered libertines" of Dublin. He is supposed to be, and I dare say is, a warm Nationalist, but he has a keen eye to business, and alertly suits his cries to his customers. Recognising the Conservative member for North Tyrone, he promptly recommended us to buy the Irish Times and the Express as "the two best papers in all Ireland." But he smiled approval when I asked for the Freeman's Journal also, in which I found a report of a speech delivered yesterday by Mr. Davitt at Rath-keale, chiefly remarkable for a sensible protest against the ridiculous and rantipole abuse lavished upon Mr. Balfour by the Nationalist orators and newspapers. I am not surprised to see this. Mr. Davitt has the stuff in him of a serious revolutionary leader, and no such man can stomach the frothy and foolish vituperation to which parliamentary agitators are addicted, not in Ireland only. Unlike Mr. Parnell, who is forced to have
7
one voice for New York and Cincinnati, and another voice for Westminster, Mr. Davitt is free to be always avowedly bent on bringing about a thorough Democratic revolution in Ireland. I believe him to be too able a man to imagine, as some or the Irish agitators do, that this can be done without the consent of Democratic England, and he has lived too much in England, and knows the English democracy too well, I suspect, not to know that to abuse an executive officer for determination and vigour is the surest way to make him popular. Calling Mr. Forster "Buckshot" Forster did him no harm. On the contrary, the epithet might have helped him to success had not Mr. Gladstone given way behind him at the most critical moment of his grapple with the revolutionary organisation in Ireland. We hear a great deal about resistance to tyrants being obedience to God, but I fear that obedience to God is not the strongest natural passion of the human heart, and I doubt whether resistance to tyrants can often be promoted by putting about a general conviction that the tyrant has a thumping big stick in his hand, and may be relied upon to use it. Even Tom Paine had the wit to see that it was his "good heart" which brought Louis XVI. to the scaffold. Nobody who had not learned from the speeches
8
made in England, and the cable despatches sent to America, that freedom of speech and of the press has been brutally trampled under foot in Ireland by a "Coercion" Government would ever suspect it from reading the Dublin papers which I this morning bought.
As a Democratic journalist I had some practical knowledge of a true "Coercion" government in America a quarter of a century ago. The American editor who had ventured in 1862 to publish in a New York or Philadelphia newspaper a letter from Washington, speaking of the Unionist Government by President Lincoln, as the letter from London published to-day in the Freeman's Journal speaks of the Unionist Government of Lord Salisbury, would have found himself in one of the casemates of Fort Lafayette within twenty-four hours. Our Republi-can rulers acted upon the maxim laid down by Mr. Tilden's friend, Montgomery Blair,1 that "to await the results of slow judicial prosecution is to allow crime to be consummated, with the expectation of subsequent punishment, instead of preventing its accomplishment by prompt and direct interference." Perhaps Americans take their Government more
1 Mr. Blair was then a member of the Lincoln Cabinet, and its "fighting member."
9
seriously than Englishman do. Certainly we stand by it more sternly in bad weather. Even so good a Constitutionalist as Professor Parsons at Harvard, I remember, when a student asked him if he would not suspend the Habeas Corpus in the case of a man caught hauling down the American flag, promptly replied, "I would not suspend the Habeas Corpus; I would suspend the Corpus."
We found no "hansoms" at the Dublin Station, only "outside cars," and cabs much neater than the London four-wheelers. One of these brought us at a good pace to Maple's Hotel in Kildare Street, a large, old-fashioned but clean and comfortable house. My windows look down upon a stately edifice of stone erecting on Kildare Street for all sorts of educational and "exhibitional" purposes, with the help of an Imperial grant, I am told, and to be called the Leinster Hall. The style is decidedly composite, with colonnades and loggie and domes and porticos, and recalls the ancient Roman buildings depicted in that fresco of a belated slave-girl knocking at her mistress's door which with its companion pieces is fast fading away upon the walls of the "House of Livia" on the Palatine.
At one end of this street is the fashionable and hospitable Kildare Street Club; at the other
10
the Shelburne Hotel, known to all Americans. This seems to have been "furbished-up" since I last saw it. There, for the last time as it proved, I saw and had speech of my friend of many years, the prince of all preachers in our time, Father Burke of Tallaght and of San Clemente.
I had telegraphed to him from London that I should halt in Dublin for a day, on my way to America, to see him. He came betimes, to find me almost as badly-off as St. Lawrence upon his gridiron. The surgeon whom the hotel people had hastily summoned to relieve me from a sudden attack of that endemic Irish ecstasy, the lumbago, had applied what he called the "heroic treatment" on my telling him that I had no time to be ill, but must spend that day with Father Burke, dine that night with Mr. Irving and Mr. Toole, and go on the next day to America.
"What has this Inquisitor done to you?" queried Father Tom.
"Cauterised me with chloroform,"
"Oh! that's a modern improvement! Let me see-" and, scrutinising the results, he said, with a merry twinkle in his deep, dark eyes-"I see how it is! They brought you a veterinary!"
11
This was in 1878. On that too brief, delightful morning, we talked of all things-supralunar, lunar, and sublunary. Much of Wales, I remember, where he had been making a visit, "A glorious country," he said, "and the Welsh would have been Irish, only they lost the faith." Full of love for Ireland as he was, he was beginning then to be troubled by symptoms in the Nationalist movement, which could not be regarded with, composure by one who, in his youth at Rome, had seen, with me, the devil of extremes drive Italy down a steep place into the sea.
Five years afterwards I landed at Queenstown, in July 1883, intending to visit him at Tallaght. But when the letter which I sent to announce my coming reached the monastery, the staunchest soldier of the Church in Ireland lay there literally "dead on the field of honour." Chatham, in the House of Lords, John Quincy Adams, in the House of Representatives, fell in harness, but neither death so speaks to the heart as the simple and sublime self-sacrifice of the great Dominican, dragging himself from his dying bed into Dublin to spend the last splendour of his genius and his life for the starving children of the poor in Donegal.
12
What would I not give for an hour with him now!
After breakfast I went out to find Mr. Davitt, hoping he might suggest some way of seeing the Nationalist meeting on Wednesday night without undergoing the dismal penance of sitting out all the speeches. I wished also to ask him why at Rathkeale he talked about the Dunravens as "absentees." He was born in Lord Lucan's country, and may know little of Limerick, but he surely ought to know that Adare Manor was built of Irish materials, and by Irish workmen, under the eye of Lord Dunraven, all the finest ornamental work, both in wood and in stone, of the mansion, being done by local mechanics; and also that the present owners of Adare spend a large part of every year in the country, and are deservedly popular. He was not to be found at the National League headquarters, nor yet at the Imperial Hotel, which is his usual resort, as Morrison's is the resort of Mr. Parnell. So I sent him a note through the Post-Office.
"You had better seal it with wax," said a friend, in whose chambers I wrote it.
"Pray, why?"
13
"Oh! all the letters to well-known people that are not opened by the police are opened by the Nationalist clerks in the Post-Offices. 'Tis a way we've always had with us in Ireland!"
I had some difficulty in finding the local habitation of the "National League." I had been
told it was in O'Connell Street, and sharing the usual and foolish aversion of my sex to asking questions on the highway, I perambulated a good many streets and squares before I discovered that it has pleased the local authorities to unbaptize Sackville Street, "the finest thoroughfare in Europe," and convert it into "O'Connell Street." But they have failed so ignominiously that the National League finds itself obliged to put up a huge sign over its doorways, notifying all the world that the offices are not where they appear to be in Upper Sackville Street at all, but in "O'Connell Street." The effect is as ludicrous as it is instructive. Oddly enough, they have not attempted to change the name of another thoroughfare which keeps green the "pious and immortal memory" of William III., dear to all who in England or America go in fear and horror of the scarlet woman that sitteth upon the seven hills! There is
14
a fashion, too, in Dublin of putting images of little white horses into the fanlights over the doorways, which seems to smack of an undue reverence for the Protestant Succession and the House of Hanover.
What you expect is the thing you never find in Ireland. I had rather thoughtlessly taken it for granted the city would be agog with the great Morley reception which is to come off on Wednesday night. There is a good deal about it in the Freeman's Journal to-day, but chiefly touching a sixpenny quarrel which has sprung up between the Reception Committee and the Trades Council over the alleged making of contracts by the Committee with "houses not employing members of the regular trades."
For this the typos and others propose to "boycott" the Committee and the Eeception and the Liberators from over the sea. From casual conversations I gather that there is much more popular interest in the release, on Wednesday, of Mr. T. D. Sullivan, ex-Lord Mayor, champion swimmer, M.P., poet, and patriot. A Nationalist acquaintance of mine tells me that in Tullamore Mr. Sullivan has been most prolific of poetry. He has composed
15
a song which I am afraid will hardly please my Irish Nationalist friends in America:
"We are sons of Sister Isles, Englishmen- and Irishmen, On our friendship Heaven smiles; Tyrant's schemes and Tory wiles Ne'er shall make us foes again."
There is to be a Drawing-Boom, too, at the Castle on Wednesday night. One would not unnaturally gather from the "tall talk" in Parliament and the press that this conjuncture of a great popular demonstration in favour of Irish nationality, with a display of Dublin fashion doing homage to the alien despot, might be ominous of "bloody noses and cracked crowns." Not a bit of it! I asked my jarvey, for instance, on an outside car this afternoon, whether he expected a row to result from these counter currents of the classes and the masses. "A row!" he replied, looking around at me in amazement. "A row is it? and what for would there be ? Shure they 11 be through with the procession in time to see the carriages!"
Obviously he saw nothing in either show to offend anybody; though he could clearly understand that an intelligent citizen might be vexed
16
if he found himself obliged to sacrifice one of them in order to fully enjoy the other.
Lady Londonderry, it seems, is not yet well enough to cross the Channel; but the Duchess of Marlborough, who is staying here with her nephew the Lord-Lieutenant, has volunteered to assist him in holding the Drawing-Room, whereupon a grave question has arisen in Court circles as to whether the full meed of honours due to a Vice-Queen regnant ought to be paid also to an ex-Vice-Queen. This is debated by the Dublin dames as hotly as official women in Washington fight over the eternal question of the relative precedence due to the wives of Senators and "Cabinet Ministers." It will be a dark day for the democracy when women get the suffrage-and use it.
At luncheon to-day I met the Attorney-General, Mr. O'Brien, who, with prompt Irish hospitality, asked me to dine with him to-morrow night, and Mr. Wilson of the London Times, an able writer on Irish questions from the English point of view. Mr. Balfour, who was expected, did not appear, being detained by guests at his own residence in the Park.
I went to see him in the afternoon at the Castle,
17
and found him in excellent spirits; certainly the
mildest-mannered and most sensible despot who
ever trampled in the dust the liberties of a
free people. He was quite delightful about the
abuse which is now daily heaped upon him in
speeches and in the press, and talked about it in
a casual dreamy way which reminded me irre
sistibly of President Lincoln, whom, if in nothing
else, he resembles alike in longanimity and in
length of limb. He had seen Davitt's caveat, filed
at Rathkeale, against the foolishness of trying to
frighten him out of his line of country by calling
him bad names. "Davitt is quite right," he said," the
thing must be getting to be a bore to the people,
who are not such fools as the speakers take them
to be. One of the stenographers told me the other
day that they had to invent a special sign for the
phrase 'bloody and brutal Balfour,' it is used so
often in the speeches." About the prosecution of
Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, he knew nothing
beyond the evidence on which it had been ordered.
This he showed me. If the first duty of a govern
ment is to govern, which is the American if not
the English way of looking at it, Father M'Fadden
must have meant to get himself into trouble when
vol. i. B
18
he used such language as this to his people: "I am the law in Gweedore; I despise the recent Coercion Act; if I got a summons to-morrow, I would not obey it." From language like this to the attitude of Father M'Glynn in New York, openly flouting the authority of the Holy See itself, is but an easy and an inevitable step.
Neither "Home Rule" nor any other "Rule" can exist in a country in which men whose words carry any weight are suffered to take up such an attitude. It is just the attitude of the "Comeouters" in New England during my college days at Harvard, when Parker Pillsbury and Stephen Foster used to saw wood and blow horns on the steps of the meeting-houses during service, in order to free their consciences "and protest against the Sabbatarian laws."
To see a Catholic priest assume this attitude is almost as amazing as to see an educated Englishman like Mr. Wilfrid Blunt trying to persuade Irishmen that Mr. Balfour made him the confidant of a grisly scheme for doing sundry Irish leaders to death by maltreating them in prison.
I see with pleasure that the masculine instincts of Mr. Davitt led him to allude to this nonsense
19
yesterday at Rathkeale in a half contemptuous way. Mr. Balfour spoke of it to-day with generosity and good feeling. "When I first heard of it," he said, "I resented it, of course, as an outrageous imputation on Mr. Blunt's character, and denounced it accordingly. What I have since learned leads me to fear that he really may have said something capable of being construed in this absurd sense, but if he did, it must have been under the exasperation produced by finding himself locked up."
I heard the story of Mr. Balfour's meeting with Mr. Blunt very plainly and vigorously told, while I was staying the other day at Knoyle House, in the immediate neighbourhood of Clouds, where the two were guests under conditions which should be at least as sacred in the eyes of Britons as of Bedouins. In Wiltshire nobody seemed for a moment to suppose it possible that Mr. Blunt can have really deceived himself as to the true nature of any conversation he may have had with Mr. Balfour. This is paying a compliment to Mr. Blunt's common sense at the expense of his imagination. In any view of the case, to lie in wait at the lips of a fellow guest in the house of a common friend, for the counts of a political indictment
20
against him, is certainly a proceeding, as Davitt said yesterday of Mr. Blunt's tale of horror, quite "open to question." But, as Mr. Blunt himself has sung, " Tis conscience makes us sinners, not
our sin," and I have no doubt the author of the Poems of Proteus really persuaded himself that he was playing lawn tennis and smoking cigarettes in Wiltshire with a modern Alva, cynically vain of his own dark and bloody designs. Now that he finds himself struck down by the iron hand of this remorseless tyrant, why should he not cry aloud and warn, not Ireland alone, but humanity, against the appalling crimes meditated, not this time in the name of "Liberty," but in the name of Order?
What especially struck me in talking with Mr. Balfour to-day was his obviously unaffected interest in Ireland as a country rather than in Ireland as a cock-pit. It is the condition of Ireland, and not the gabble of parties at Westminster about the condition of Ireland, which is uppermost in his thoughts. This, I should say, is the best guarantee of his eventual success.
The weakest point of the modem English system of government by Cabinets surely is the evanescent
21
tenure by which every Minister holds his place. Not only has the Cabinet itself no fixed term of office, being in truth but a Committee of the Legislature clothed with executive authority, but any member of the Cabinet may be forced by events or by intrigues to leave it. In this way Mr. Forster, when he filled the place now held by Mr. Balfour, found himself driven into resigning it by Mr. Gladstone's indisposition or inability to resist the peremptory pressure put upon the British Premier at a critical moment by our own Government in the spring of 1882. Mr. Balfour is in no such peril, perhaps. He is more sure, I take it, of the support of Lord Salisbury and his colleagues than Mr. Forster ever was of the support of Mr. Gladstone; and the "Coercion" law which it is his duty to administer contains no such sweeping and despotic clause as that provision in Mr. Gladstone's "Coercion Act" of 1881, under which persons claiming American citizenship were arrested and indefinitely locked up on "suspicion," until it became necessary for our Government, even at the risk of war, to demand their trial or release.1 But if Mr. Balfour were Chief Secretary for Ire-
1 Note A.
22
land "on the American plan"; if he held his office, that is, for a fixed term of years, and cared nothing for a renewal of the lease, he could not be more pre-occupied than he seems to he with simply getting his executive duty done, or less pre-occupied than he seems to be with what may be thought of his way of getting it done. If all executive officers were of this strain, Parliamentary government might stand in the dock into which Prince Albert put it with more composure, and await the verdict with more confidence. Surely if Ireland is ever to govern herself, she must learn precisely the lesson which Mr. Balfour, I believe, is trying to teach her-that the duty of executive officers to execute the laws is not a thing debateable, like the laws themselves, nor yet determinable, like the enactment of laws, by taking the yeas and the nays. How well this lesson shall be taught must depend, of course, very much upon the quality of the men who make up the machine of Government in Ireland. That the Irish have almost as great a passion for office-holding as the Spanish, we long ago learned in New York, where the percentage of Irish office-holders considerably exceeds the percentage of Irish citizens. And as all the witnesses agree that the Irish Government
23
has for years been to an inordinate degree a Government by patronage, there must doubtless be some reasonable ground for the very general impression that "the Castle" needs overhauling. It is not true, however, I find, although I have often heard it asserted in England, that the Irish Government is officered by Englishmen and Scotchmen exclusively. The murdered Mr. Burke certainly was not an Englishman; and there is an apparent predominance of Irishmen in the places of trust and power. That things at the Castle cannot be nearly so bad, moreover, as we in America are asked to believe, would seem to be demonstrated by the affectionate admiration with which Lord Spencer is now regarded by men like Mr. O'Brien, M.P., who only the other day seemed to regard him as an unfit survival of the Cities of the Plain. If what these men then said of him, and of the Castle generally, was even very partially true-or if being wholly false, these men believed it to be true-every man of them who now touches Lord Spencer's hand is defiled, or defiles him.
But that concerns them. Their present attitude makes Lord Spencer a good witness when he declares that the Civil servants of the Crown in
24
Ireland, called "the Castle," are "diligent, desire to do their duty with impartiality, and to hold an even balance between opposing interests in Ireland," and maintains that they "will act with impartiality and vigour if led by men who know their own minds, and desire to be firm in the Government of the country." All this being true, Mr. Balfour ought to make his Government a success.
Mr. Balfour introduced me to Sir West Eidgway, the successor of Sir Redvers Buller, who has been rewarded for the great services he did his country in Asia, by being flung into this seething Irish stew. He takes it very composedly, though the climate does not suit him, he says; and has a quiet workmanlike way with him, which impresses one favourably at once.
All the disorderly part of Ireland (for disorder is far from being universal in Ireland) comes under his direct administration, being divided into five divisions on the lines originally laid down in 1881 by Mr. Forster. Over each of these divisions presides a functionary styled a "Divisional Magistrate." The title is not happily chosen, the powers of these officers being rather like those confided to a French Prefect than like those which are associated in
25
England and America with the title of a "magi-
strate." They have no judicial power, and nothing
to do with the trial of offenders. Their business is
to protect life and property, and to detect and bring
to justice offenders against the law. They can only
be called Magistrates as the Executive of the United
States is sometimes called the "Chief Magistrate."
One of the most conspicuous and trusted of these Divisional Magistrates, I find, is Colonel Turner, who was Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, under Lord Aberdeen. He is now denounced by the Irish Nationalists as a ruthless tyrant. He was then denounced by the Irish Tories as a sympathiser with Home Rule. It is probable, therefore, that he must be a conscientious and loyal executive officer, who understands and acts upon the plain lines of his executive duty.
I dined to-night at the Castle, not in the great hall or banqueting-room of St. Patrick, which was designed by that connoisseur in magnificence, the famous Lord Chesterfield, during his Viceroyalty, but in a very handsome room of more moderate dimensions. Much of the semi-regal state observed at the Castle in the days of the Georges has been put down with the Battle-Axe Guards of the Lord-
26
Lieutenant, and with the basset-tables of the "Lady-Lieutenant," as the Vice-queen used to be called. At dinner the Viceroy no longer drinks to the pious and immortal memory of William III., or to the "1st of July 1690." No more does the band play "Lillibullero," and no longer is the pleasant custom maintained, after a dinner to the city authorities of Dublin, of a "loving cup" passed around the table, into which each guest, as it passed, dropped a gold piece for the good of the household. Only so much ceremonial is now observed as suffices to distinguish the residence of the Queen's personal representative from that of a great officer of State, or an opulent subject of high rank.
Dublin Castle indeed is no more of a palace than it is of a castle. Its claim to the latter title rests mainly on the fine old "Bermingham" tower of the time of King John; its claim to the former on the Throne Room, the Council Chamber, and the Hall of St. Patrick already mentioned. This last is a very stately and sumptuous apartment. Just twenty years ago the most brilliant banquet modern Dublin has seen was given in this hall by the late Duke of Abercorn to the Prince and Princess of Wales, to celebrate the installation of the Prince as a Knight
27
of St Patrick. It is a significant fact, testified to by all the most candid Irishmen I have ever known, that upon the occasion of this visit to Ireland in 1868 the Prince and Princess were received with unbounded enthusiasm by the people of all classes. Yet only the year before, in 1867, the explosion of some gunpowder at Clerkenwell by a band of desperadoes, to the death and wounding of many Innocent people, had brought the question of the disestablishment of the Irish Church, in the mind of Mr. Gladstone, within the domain of "practical politics"! By parity of reasoning, one would think, the reception of the heir-apparent and his wife in Ireland ought to have taken that question out of the domain of "practical, politics."
The Prince of Wales, it is known, brought away from this visit an impression that the establishment of a prince of the blood in Ireland, or a series of royal visits to Ireland, would go far towards pacifying the relations between the two Islands. Mr. Gladstone thought his Disestablishment would quite do the work. Events have shown that Mr. Gladstone made a sad mistake as to the effect of his measure. The pains which, I am told, were taken by Mr. Deasy, M. P., and others to organise hostile demonstrations
28
at one or two points in the south of Ireland, during
a subsequent visit of the Prince and Princess, would
seem to show that in the opinion of the Nationalists
themselves, the impression of the Prince was more
accurate than were the inferences of the Premier.
There Is nothing froward or formidable in the aspect of Dublin Castle. It has neither a portcullis nor a drawbridge. People go in and out of it as freely as through the City Hall in New York. There is a show of sentries at the main entrance, and in one of the courts this morning the picturesque band of a Scotch regiment was playing to the delectation of a small but select audience of urchins and little girls. A Dublin mob, never so little in earnest and led by a dozen really determined men. ought to be able to make as short work of it as the hordes of the Faubourgs in Paris made of the Bastille, with its handful of invalids, on that memorable 14th of July, about which so many lies have passed into history, and so much effervescent nonsense is still annually talked and printed.
The greater part of the Castle as it existed when the Irish Parliaments sat there under Elizabeth, and just before the last Catholic Viceroy made Protestantism penal, and planned the transformation of
29
Ireland into a French province, was burned in the time of James II. The Earl of Arran then reported to his father that "the king had lost nothing but six barrels of gunpowder, and the worst castle in the worst situation in Christendom."
Here, as at Ottawa, a viceregal dinner-table is set off by the neat uniforms and skyblue facings of the aides-de-camp and secretaries. For some mysterious reason Lord Spencer put these officers into chocolate coats with white facings. But the new order soon gave place to the old again.
At the dinner to-night was Lord Ormonde, who is returning to London, but kindly promised to make arrangements for showing me at Kilkenny Castle the muniment room of the Butlers, which contains one of the most valuable private collections of charters and State papers in the realm.
Tuesday, Jan. 31.-I lunched to-day with Sir Michael Morris, the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, whom I had last seen in Rome at the Jubilee Mass of His Holiness. Sir Michael is one of the recognised lights of social life and of the law in Dublin. While he was in Rome some one highly commended him in the presence of that staunch Nationalist the Archbishop of Dublin, who assented so far as to say,
30
"Yes, yes, there are worse fellows in Dublin than that Morris!" It would he hard to find a more typical Irishman of the better sort than Sir Michael, a man more sure, in the words of Sheridan, to "carry his honour and his brogue unstained to the grave."
The brogue of Sir Michael, it is said, made his fortune in the House of Commons. It has hardly the glow which made the brogue of Father Burke a memory as of music in the ears of all who heard it, and differs from that miraculous gift of the tongue as a ripe wine of Bordeaux differs from a ripe wine of Burgundy. But to the ordinary brogue of the street and the stage, it is as is a Brane Mouton Roths-child of 1868 to the casual Medoc of a Parisian restaurant. "Do you know Father Healy?" said one of the company to whom I spoke of it; "he was at a wedding with Sir Michael. As the happy pair drove off under the usual shower of rice and old slippers, Sir Michael said to the Father, 'How I wish I had something to throw after her!' 'Ah, throw your brogue after her,' replied the Father."
This brogue comes to Sir Michael lawfully enough. He belongs to one of the fourteen tribes of Galway. His father, Mr. Martin Morris, was High Sheriff of the County of Galway City in 1841,
31
being the first Catholic who had served that office since the time of Tyrconnel. His mother was a Blake of Galway, and the family seat, Spiddal, came to them through a Fitzpatrick. "Remember these things," said one of the guests to rne, a Catholic from the south of Ireland, "and remember that Sir Michael, like myself, and, so far as I know, like every Irish Catholic in this room to-day, is a thoroughgoing Unionist, who would think it midsummer madness to hand Ireland over to the 'Home Rule' of the 'uncrowned king,' Mr. Parnell, who hasn't a drop, I believe, of Irish blood in his veins, and who, whatever else he may be, is certainly not a Catholic. Didn't Parnell vote at first against religion and in favour of Bradlaugh? and didn't he do this to force the bargain for the clerical franchise at the Parliamentary conventions?"
"But there are some good Catholics, are there not," I answered, "and some good Christians, and of Irish blood too, among the associates of Mr. Parnell?"
"Associates!" he exclaimed; "if you know anything of Mr. Parnell, you must know that he has no associates. He has followers, and he has instruments, but he has no associates. The only Irish-
32
men whom he has really taken counsel with, or treated, I was about to say, with ordinary civility, were Egan and Brennan. His manner with them was always conspicuously different from his cold and almost contemptuous bearing towards the men whom he commands in Parliament, and Egan, who directs his forces in your country, rewards him by calling him 'the great and gifted leader of our race!' 'Our race' indeed! Parnell comes of the conquering race in Ireland, and he never forgets it, or lets his subordinates forget it. I was in Galway when he came over there suddenly to quell the revolt organised by Healy. The rebels were at white-heat before he came. But he strode in among them like a huntsman among the hounds- marched Healy off into a little room, and brought him out again in ten minutes, cowed and submissive, but filled, as anybody can see, ever since, with a dull smouldering hate which will break out one of these days, if a good and safe opportunity offers."
"How do you account, then," I asked, "for the support which all these men give Mr. Parnell?"
"For the support which they give him!" exclaimed my new acquaintance, "for the support they give him! Bless your heart, my dear sir, it is
33
he gives them the support! Barring Biggar, who, to do him justice, is as free with his pocket as he is with his tongue-and no man can say more for anybody than that-barring Biggar and M'Kenna and McCarthy, and perhaps a dozen more, all these men are nominated by Mr. Parnell, and draw salaries from the body he controls; they are paid members, like the working-men members. Support indeed!"
"But the constituencies," I urged, "surely the voters must know and care something about their representatives?
The gentleman from the south of Ireland laughed aloud. "Very clear it is," he said, "that you have made your acquaintance with my dear countrymen in America, or in England perhaps-not in Ireland. Look at Thurles, in January '85! The voters selected O'Ryan; Parnell ordered him off, and made them take O'Connor! The voters take their members to-day from the League-that is, from Mr. Parnell, just as they used to take them from the landlords. What Lord Clanricarde said in Galway, when he made all those fagot votes by cutting up his farms, that he could return his grey mare to Parliament if he liked, Mr. Parnell can say with just as much truth to-day of any Nationalist
vol. i. c 34
seat in the country. I tell you, the secret of his power is that he understands the Irish people, and how to ride them. He is a Protestant-ascendency man by blood, and he is fighting the unlucky devils of landlords to-day by the old 'landlord' methods that came to him with his mother's milk-that is rightly speaking, I should say, with his father's," and here he burst out laughing at his own bull- "for his mother, poor lady, she was an American."
"Thank you," I said.
"Oh, no harm at all! But did you ever know her? An odd woman she was, and is."
"Her father," I replied, "was a gallant American sailor of Scottish blood."
"Oh yes, and is it true that he got a great hatred of England from being captured in the Chesapeake by the English Captain Broke ? I always heard that."
I explained that there were historical difficulties in the way of accepting this legend, and that Commodore Stewart's experiences, during the war of 1812, had been those of a captor, not of a captive.
"Well, a clever woman she is, only very odd. She was a great terror, I remember, to a worthy Protestant parson, near Avondale; she used to come at him quite unexpectedly with such a power of
35
theological discussion, and put him beside himself with questions he couldn't answer."
"Very likely," I replied, "but she has transferred her interest to politics now; and she had the good sense, at the Chicago Convention in 1886, to warn the physical-force men against showing their hand too plainly in support of her son."
A curious conversation, as showing the personal bitterness of politics here. It reminded me of Dr. Duche's description in his famous letter to Washington of the party which carried the Declaration of Independence through the Continental Congress. But it had a special interest for me as confirming the inferences I have often drawn as to Mr. Parnell's relations with his party, from his singular and complete isolation among them. I remember the profound astonishment of my young friend Mr. D--, of New York, who, as the son of, perhaps, the most conspicuous and influential American advocate of Home Rule, had confidently counted upon seeing Mr. Parnell in London, when he found that the most important member of the Irish Parliamentary party, in point of position, was utterly unable to get at Mr. Parnell for him, or even to ascertain where Mr. Parnell could be reached by letter.
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Though a staunch Unionist, Sir Michael is no blind admirer of things as they are, nor even a thick-and-thin partisan of English rule in Ireland. "If you will have the Irish difficulty in a nutshell," he is reported to have said to a prosy British politician, "here it is: It is simply a very dull people trying to govern a very bright people."
He has quick and wide intellectual sympathies, or, as he put it to a lawyer who was kindly enlightening him about some matters of scientific notoriety, "I don't live in a cupboard myself." His own terse summing up of the Irish difficulty could hardly be better illustrated than by the current story of the discomfiture of an English Treasury official, who came into his official chambers to complain of the expenditure for fuel in the Court over which he presides. The Lord Chief-Justice looked at him quietly while he set forth Ms errand, and then, ringing a bell on his table, said to the servant who responded: "Tell Mary the man has come about the coals."
At Sir Michael's I had some conversation also with Mr. Justice Murphy, who won a great reputation in connection with those murders in the Phoenix Park, which went near to breaking the heart and hope of poor Father Burke, and with
37
Lord and Lady Ashbourne, whom I had not seen since I met them some years ago under the hospitable roof of Lord Houghton. Lord Ashbourne was then Mr. Gibson, Q.C. He is now the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and the author of the Land Purchase Act of 1881, which many well-informed and sensible men regard as the Magna Charta of peace in Ireland, while others of equal authority assure me that by reversing the principle of the Bright clauses in the Act of 1871 it has encouraged the tenants to expect an eventual concession of the land-ownership to them on merely nominal terms.
Naturally enough, he is carped at and reviled almost as much by his political friends as by his political foes. In the time of Sir Michael Hicks Beach I remember hearing Lord Ashbourne denounced most bitterly by a leading Tory light as "a Home Ruler in disguise, who had bedevilled the Irish Question by undertaking to placate the country if it could be left to be managed by him and by Lord Carnarvon."
The disguise appears to me quite impenetrable, and after my talk with him, I remembered a characteristic remark about him made to me by Lord Houghton after he had gone away: "A very
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clever man with a very clever wife. He ought to be on our side, but he has everything the Tories lack, so they have stolen him, and will make much of him, and keep him. But one of these days he will do them some great service, and then they'll never forgive him!"
Lord Ashhourne went off early to look up some fine old wooden mantelpieces and wainscotings in the "slums" of Dublin. A brisk trade it seems has for some time been driven in such relics of the departed splendour of the Irish capital. In the last century, when Dublin was further from London than London now is from New York, the Irish landlords were more fond of living in Dublin than a good many of the Irish Nationalists I know now are. In this way the Iron Duke came to be born in Dublin, where his father and mother had a handsome town house, whereas when they went up to London they used to lodge, according to old Lady Cork, "over a pastry-cook's in Oxford Street." In those days there must have been a good many fine solidly built and well decorated mansions in Dublin, of a type not unlike that of the ample rather stately and periwigged houses, all British brick without, and all Santo Domingo mahogany
39
within, which, in my schoolboy days, used to give such a dignified old-world air to Third and Fourth Streets in Philadelphia. It is among such of these as are still standing, and have come to vile uses, that the foragers from London now find their harvest.
From the Chief-Justice's I went with Lord Ernest Hamilton to a meeting of the Irish Unionists. Admission was by tickets, and the meeting evidently "meant business." I suppose Presbyterian Ulster was largely represented: but Mr. Smith Barry of Fota Island, near Cork, one of the kindest and fairest, as well as one of the most determined and resolute, of the southern Irish landlords, was there, and the most interesting speech I heard was made by a Catholic lawyer of Dublin, Mr. Quill, Q.C., who grappled with the question of distress among the Irish tenants, and produced some startling evidence to show that this distress is by no means so great or so general as it is commonly assumed to be.1 Able speeches were also made by Mr. T. W. Russell, M.P. for Tyrone, and by Colonel Saunderson, the champion of Ulster at Westminster. Both of these members, and especially
1 Mr. Quill stated that the Savings-Banks deposits increased in Ireland during 1887 eight per cent. more than in thrifty Scotland, and forty per cent. more than in England and Wales!
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Colonel Saunderson, "went for" their Nationalist colleagues with an unparliamentary plainness of speech which commanded the cordial sympathy of their audience. "Is it possible," asked Colonel Saunderson, "that you should ever consent, on any terms, to be governed by such--, well, by such wretches as these?" to which the audience gave back an unanimous "Never," neither thundered nor shouted, but growled, like Browning's "growl at the gates of Ghent,"-a low deep growl like the final notice served by a bull-dog, which I had not heard since the meetings which, at the North, followed the first serious fighting of the Civil War. I was much struck, too, by the prevalence among the audience of what may be called the Old Middle State type of American face and head. A majority of these men might have come straight from those slopes of the Alleghany which, from Pennsylvania down to the Carolinas, were planted so largely by the only considerable Irish emigrations known to our history, before the great year of famine, 1847, the Irish emigrations which followed the wars against the woollen industries in the seventeenth century, and the linen industries in the eighteenth. A staunch, doggedly Protestant people, loving the New England
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Puritans and the Anglicans of Eastern Yirginia little better than the Maryland Catholics, but contributing more than their full share of traditional antipathy to that extreme dislike and dread of the Roman Church which showed itself half-a-century ago in the burning of convents, and thirty years ago gave life and fire to the Know-Nothing movement. Even so late as at the time of Father Burke's grand and most successful mission to America, I remember how much astonished and impressed he was by the vigour and the virulence of these feelings. One of the bishops, he told me, in a great diocese tried (though of course in vain) to dissuade him on this account from wearing his Dominican dress. These anti-Catholic passions are much stronger in America to-day than it always suits our politicians to remember, though to forget it may some day be found very dangerous. Even now two of the ablest prelates of the most liberal of the Protestant American bodies, Bishop Cleveland Coxe of Western New York, and Bishop Beckwith of Georgia, the latter of whom I met the other day in Rome on his return from Palestine, are promoting what looks very much like a crusade against the plan for establishing a Catholic University at Washington.
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Bishop Cleveland Coxe's denunciations of what he calls "the alien Church," point straight to a revival of the "Native American" movement; and I fear that President Cleveland's gift of a copy of the Constitution to Leo xiii. will hardly make American Catholics forget either the hereditary anti-Catholic feeling which led him, when Governor of New York, to imperil the success of the Democratic party by his dogged resistance to the Catholic demand for the endowment of Catholic schools and protectories, or the scandalous persecution (it can be called by no other name) of Catholics in Alaska, which was carried on in the name and under the patronage of his sister, Miss Cleveland, by a local missionary of the Presbyterian Church, to the point of the removal by the President of a Federal judge, who dared to award a Catholic native woman from Vancouver the custody of her own child.
It is hard to imagine a greater misfortune for the Church in Ireland, and for both the Church and the Irish race in America, than the identification of the Home Rule movement with the Church, and its triumph, after being so identified, and with the help of British sympathisers and professional politicians, over the resistance of Protestant Ireland.
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This dilemma of the Church in Ireland, plainly seen at Rome, as I know, to-day, was forcibly presented in the speech of Colonel Saunderson.
The chair at this Loyalist meeting was filled by the Provost of Trinity, Dr. Jellett, a man of winning and venerable aspect, a kind of "angelic doctor," indeed, whose musical and slightly tremulous voice gave a singular pathos and interest to his brief but very earnest speech.1
To-night I dined with the Attorney-General, Mr. O'Brien. Among the company were the Chief-Baron Palles, whose appointment dates back to Mr. Gladstone's Administration of 1873, but who is now an outspoken opponent of Home Rule; Judge O'Brien, an extremely able man, with the face of an eagle; Mr. Carson, Q.C.; and other notabilities of the bench and bar. My neighbours at table were a charming and agreeable bencher of the King's Inn, Mr. Atkinson, Q.C., a leader of the Irish bar, and Mr. T. W. Russell, M.P., who told me some amusing things of one of his colleagues, an ideal Orangeman, who writes blood-curdling romances in the vein of La Tosca, and goes in fear of the
1 This was the Provost's last appearance in public. He died rather suddenly a few weeks afterwards.
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re-establishment of the Holy Office in Dublin and London. In view of the clamours about the severity of the bench in Ireland, it was edifying to find an Irish Judge astonished by the drastic decisions of our Courts in regard to the anarchists who were hanged at Chicago, after a thorough and protracted review of the law in their cases. He thought no Court in Great Britain or Ireland could have dealt with them thus stringently, it being understood that the charge of murder against them rested on their connection, solely as provocative instigators to violence, with the actual throwing of the bombs among the police.
Some good stories were told by the lawyers; one of a descendant of the Irish Kings, a lawyer more remarkable for his mental gifts than for his physical graces.
A peasant looking him carefully over at Cork whispered to a neighbour, "And is he really of the ould blood of the Irish kings now, indeed?"
"He is indeed!"
"Well, then, I don't wonder the Saxons conquered the Island!"
Of the Home Rule movement one of the lawyers said to me, "The whole thing is a business opera-
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tion mainly-a business operation with the people who see in it the hope of appeasing their land hunger-and a business operation for the agitators who live by it. Its main strength, outside of the priests, who for one reason or another countenance or foment it, is in the small country solicitors. The five hundred thousand odd Irish tenants are the most litigious creatures alive. They are always after the local lawyer with half-a-crown to fight this, that, or the other question with some neighbour or kinsman, usually a kinsman. So the solicitors know the whole country."
"When the League has chosen a spot in which to work the 'Plan of Campaign,' the local attorney whips up the tenants to join it. The poorer tenants are the most easily pushed into the plan, having least to lose by it. But the lawyer takes the well-to-do tenants in hand, and promises them that if they yield to the patriotic pressure of the League, and come to grief by so doing, the landlord will at all events have to pay the costs of the proceedings. It is this promise which finally brings down most of them. To enjoy the luxury of a litigation without paying for it tempts them almost as strongly as the prospect of getting the land without paying for
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it. You will find that the League always insists, when things come to a settlement, that the landlord shall pay the costs. If the landlord through poverty of spirit or of purse succumbs to this demand, the League scores a victory. If the landlord resists, it is a bad job for the League. The local lawyer is discredited in the eyes of his clients, and if he is to get any fees he must come down upon his clients for them. Naturally his clients resent this. If Mr. Balfour keys up the landlords to stand out manfully against paying for all the trouble and loss they are continually put to, he will take the life of the League so far as Ireland is concerned. As things now stand, it is almost the only thriving industry in Ireland!"
Wednesday, Feb. 1.-This morning I called with Lord Ernest Hamilton upon Sir Bernard Burke, the Ulster King-at-Arms, and the editor or author of many other well-known publications, and especially of the "Peerage," sometimes irreverently spoken of as the "British Bible."
Sir Bernard's offices are in the picturesque old "Bermingham" tower of the castle. There we found him wearing his years and his lore as lightly as a flower, and busy in an ancient chamber, converted
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by him into a most cosy modern study. He received us with the most cordial courtesy, and was good enough to conduct us personally through Ms domain.
Many of the State papers formerly kept here have been removed to the Four Courts building. But Sir Bernard's tower is still filled with documents of the greatest historical interest, all admirably docketed and arranged on the system adopted at the Hotel Soubise, now the Palace of the Archives in Paris.
These documents, like the tower itself, take us back to the early days when Dublin was the stronghold of the Englishry in Ireland, and its citizens went in constant peril of an attack from the wild and "mere Irish" in the hills. The masonry of the tower is most interesting. The circular stone floors made up of slabs held together without cement, like the courses in the towers of Sillustani, by their exact adjustment, are particularly noteworthy. High up in the tower Sir Bernard showed us a most uncomfortable sort of cupboard fashioned in the huge wall of the tower, and with a loophole for a window. In this cell the Red Hugh O'Donnell of Tyrconnel was kept as a prisoner for several years under Elizabeth. He was young and lithe, however, and after his friends had tried in vain to buy him out, a happy thought
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one day struck him. He squeezed himself through the loophole, and, dropping unhurt to the ground, escaped to the mountains. There for a long time he made head against the English power. In 1597 he drove Sir Conyers Clifford from before the castle of Ballyshannon, with great loss to the English, and when he could no longer keep the field, he sought refuge in Spain. He was with the Spanish, as Prince of Tyrconnel, at the crushing defeat of Kin-sale in 1601. Escaping again, he died, poisoned, at Simancas the next year.
Sir Bernard showed us, among other curious manuscripts, a correspondence between one Higgins, a trained informer, and the Castle authorities in 1798. This correspondence shows that the revolutionary plans of the Nationalists of 1798 were systematically laid before the Government.
When one thinks how very much abler were the leaders of the Irish rebellion in 1798 than are the present heads of the Irish party in Parliament, how much greater the provocations to rebellion given the Irish people then were than they are now even alleged to be-how little the Irish people in general have now to gain by rebellion, and how much to lose, it is hard to resist a suspicion that
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it must be even easier now than it was in 1798 for the Government to tap the secrets of the organi-sations opposed to it.
Sir Bernard showed us also a curious letter written by Henry Grattan to the founder of the great Guinness breweries, which have carried the fame of Dublin porter into the uttermost parts of the earth. The Guinnesses are now among the wealthiest people of the kingdom, and Ireland certainly owes a great deal to them as "captains of industry," but they are not Home Rulers.
At the Kildare Street Club in the afternoon I talked with two Irish landlords from the north of Ireland, who had come up to take their womenkind to the Drawing-Room.
I was struck by their indifference to the political excitements of the day. One of them had forgotten that the Ripon and Morley reception was to take place to-night. The other called it "the love-feast of Voltaire and the Vatican." Both were much more fluent about hunting and farming. I asked if the hunting still went on in their part of the island.
"It has never stopped for a moment," he replied.
"No," added the other, "nor ever a dog poisoned.
VOL. I. D
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They were poisoned, whole packs of them, in the papers, but not a dog really. The stories were printed just to keep up the agitation, and the farmers winked at it so as not to be 'bothered.'"
Both averred that they got their rents "fairly well," but both also said that they farmed much of their own land. One, a wiry, energetic, elderly man, of a brisk presence and ruddy complexion, said he constantly went over to the markets in England. "I go to Norwich," he said, "not to Liverpool. Liverpool is only a meat-market, and overdone at that. Norwich is better for meat and for stores." Both agreed this was a great year for the potatoes, and said Ireland was actually exporting potatoes to America. One mentioned a case of two cargoes of potatoes just taken from Dundrum for America, the vessel which took them having brought over six hundred tons of hay from America.
They were breezy, out-of-door men, both of them. One amused us with a tale of espying, the other day, two hounds, a collie dog, a terrier, and eighteen cats all amicably running together across a farmyard, with their tails erect, after a dairymaid who was to feed them. The other capped this with a story of a pig on his own place, which follows one of his
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farm lads about like a dog,-"the only pig," he said, "I ever saw show any human feeling!" The gentleman who goes to Norwich thought the English landlords were in many cases worse off than the Irish. "Ah, no!" interfered the other, "not quite; for if the English can't get their rents, at least they keep their land, but we can neither get our rents nor keep our land!" They both admitted that there had been much bad management of the land in Ireland, and that the agents had done the owners as well as the tenants a great deal of harm in the past, but they both maintained stoutly that the legislation of late years had been one-sided and shortsighted. "The tenants haven't got real good from it," said one, "because the claims of the landlord no longer check their extravagance, and they run more in debt than ever to the shopkeepers and traders, who show them little mercy." Both also strenuously insisted on the gross injustice of leaving the landlords unrelieved of any of the charges fixed upon their estates, while their means of meeting those charges were cut down by legislation.
"You have no landlords in America," said one, "but if you had, how would you like to be saddled with heavy tithe charges for a Disestablished Church
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at the same time that your tenants were relieved of their dues to you?"
I explained to him that so far from our having no landlords in America, the tenant-farmer class is increasing rapidly in the United States, while it is decreasing in the Old World, while the land laws, especially in some of our older Western States, give the landlords such absolute control of their tenants that there is a serious battle brewing at this moment in Illinois1 between a small army of tenants and their absentee landlord, an alien and an Irishman, who holds nearly a hundred thousand acres in the heart of the State, lives in England, and grants no leases, except on the condition that he shall receive from Ms tenants, in addition to the rent, the full amount of all taxes and levies whatsoever made upon the lands they occupy.
"God bless my soul!" exclaimed the gentleman who goes to Norwich, "if that is the kind of laws your American Irish will give us with Home Rule, I'll go in for it to-morrow with all my heart!"
1 In the Census of 1880 it appears that of 255,741 farms in Illinois, 59,624 were held on the metayer system, pronounced by Toubeau the worst of systems, and 20,620 on a money
rental.
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After an early dinner, I set out with Lord Ernest to see the Morley-Ripon procession. It was a good night for a torchlight parade-the weather not too chill, and the night dark. The streets were well filled, but there was no crowding-no misconduct, and not much excitement. The people obviously were out for a holiday, not for a "demonstration." It was Paris swarming out to the Grand Prix, not Paris on the eve of the barricades; very much such a crowd as one sees in the streets and squares of New York on a Fourth of July night, when the city fathers celebrate that auspicious anniversary with fireworks at the City Hall, and not in the least such a crowd as I saw in the streets of New York on the 12th of July 1871, when, thanks to General Shaler and the redoubtable Colonel "Jim Fiske," a great Orange demonstration led to something very like a massacre by chance medley.
Small boys went about making night hideous with tom-toms, extemporised out of empty fig-drums, and tooting terribly upon tin trumpets. There was no general illumination, but here and there houses were bright with garlands of lamps, and rockets ever and anon went up from the house-tops.
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We made our way to the front of a mass of people near one of the great bridges, over which the procession was to pass on its long march from Kingstown to the house of Mr. Walker, Q.C., in Rutland Square, where the distinguished visitors were to meet the liberated Lord Mayor, with Mr. Dwyer Gray, and other local celebrities. A friendly citizen let us perch on his outside car.
The procession presently came in sight, and a grand show it made-not of the strictly popular and political sort, for it was made up of guilds and other organised bodies on foot and on horseback, inarching in companies-but imposing by reason of its numbers, and of the flaring torches. Of these there were not so many as there should have been to do justice to the procession. The crowd cheered from time to time, with that curious Irish cheer which it is often difficult to distinguish from groaning, but the only explosive and uproarious greeting given to the visitors in our neighbourhood came from a member of "the devout female sex," a young lady who stood up between two friends on the top of a car very near us, and imperilled both her equilibrium and theirs by wildly waving her handkerchief in the air, and crying out at the top of a
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somewhat husky voice, "Three cheers for Meck-lenburg Street! Three cheers for Mecklenburg Street!"
This made the crowd very hilarious, but as Lord Ernest's local knowledge did not enable him to enlighten me as to the connection between Mecklenburg Street and the liberation of Ireland, I must leave the mystery of their mirth unsolved till a more convenient season.
At Rutland Square the crowd was tightly packed, but perfectly well-behaved, and the guests were enthusiastically cheered. But even before they had entered the house of Mr. Walker it began to break up, and long files of people wended their way to see "the carriages" hastening with their lovely freight to the Castle. Thither Lord Ernest has just gone, arrayed in a captivating Court costume of black velvet, with cut-steel buttons, sword, and buckles-just the dress in which Washington used to receive his guests at the White House, and in which Senator Seward, I remember, insisted in 1860 on getting himself presented by Mr. Dallas to Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace.
sion house, county tyrone, Feb. 3d.-Hearing nothing from Mr. Davitt yesterday, I gave up the idea of attending the Ripon-Morley meeting last night. As I have come to Ireland to hear what people living in Ireland have to say about Irish affairs, I see no particular advantage in listening to imported eloquence on the subject, even from so clever a man as his books prove Mr. Morley to be, and from so conscientious a man as an acquaintance, going back to the days when he sat with Kingsley at the feet of Maurice, makes me believe Lord Eipon to be. How much either of them knows about Ireland is another matter. A sarcastic Nationalist acquaintance of mine, with whom I conversed about the visitors yesterday, assured me it had been arranged that Lord Eipon should wear the Star of the Garter, "so the people might know him from Morley." When I observed
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that Dublin must have a short memory to forget so soon the face of a Chief Secretary, he replied: "Forget his face? Why, they never saw his face! It's little enough he was here, and indoors he kept when here he was. He shook hands last night with more Irishmen than ever he spoke to while he was Chief Secretary; for he used to say then, I am told, in the Reform Club, that the only way to get along with the Irish was to have nothing to do with them!"
There was a sharp discussion, I was told, in the private councils of the Committee yesterday as to whether the Queen should be "boycotted," and the loyal sentiments usual in connection with her Majesty's name dropped from the proceedings. I believe it was finally settled that this might put the guests into an awkward position, both of them having worn her Majesty's uniform of State as public servants of the Crown.
During the day I walked through many of the worst quarters of Dublin. I met fewer beggars in proportion than one encounters in such parts of London as South Kensington and other residential regions not over-frequented by the perambulating policemen; but I was struck by the number of
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persons-and particularly of women-who wore that most pathetic of all the liveries of distress, "the look of having seen better days." In the most wretched streets I traversed there was more squalor than suffering-the dirtiest and most ragged people in them showing no signs of starvation, or even of insufficient rations; and certainly in the most dismal alleys and by-streets, I came upon nothing so revolting as the hives of crowded misery which make certain of the tenement house quarters of New York more gruesome than the Cour des Miracles itself used to be.
This morning at 7.25 a.m. I left Dublin with Lord Ernest Hamilton for Strabane. My attention was distracted from the reports of the great meeting by the varied and picturesque beauty of the landscape, through which we ran at a very respectable rate in a very comfortable carriage. We passed Dundalk, where Edward Bruce got himself crowned king of Ireland, after his brother Eobert had won a throne in Scotland.
These masterful Normans, all over Europe from Apulia to Britain, worked out the problem of "satisfied nationalities" much more successfully and simply than Napoleon III. in our own day. If
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Edward Brace broke down where Robert succeeded, the causes of his failure may perhaps be worth considering even now by people who have set themselves the task in our times of establishing "an Irish nationality." Leaving out the Crom-wellian English of Tipperary and the South, and the Scotch who have done for Ulster, what he aimed at for all Ireland, they have very much the same materials to deal with as those which he dismally failed to fashion.
Drogheda stands beautifully in a deep valley through which flows the Boyne Water, spanned by one of the finest viaducts in Europe. Here, two years after the discovery of America, Poyning's Parliament enacted that all laws passed in Ireland must be subject to approval by the English Privy Council. I wonder nobody has proposed a modification of this form of Home Rule for Ireland now. Earl Grey's recent suggestion that Parliamentary government be suspended for ten years in Ireland, which I heard warmly applauded by some able lawyers and business men in Dublin, involves like this an elimination of the Westminster debates from the problem of government in Ireland. As we passed Drogheda, Father Burke's magnificent
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presence and thrilling voice came back to me out of the mist of years, describing with an indignant pathos, never to be forgotten, the fearful scenes which followed the surrender of Sir Arthur Ashton's garrison, when "for the glory of God," and "to prevent the further effusion of blood," Oliver ordered all the officers to be knocked on the head, and every tenth man of the soldiers killed, and the rest shipped as slaves to the Barbadoes. But how different was the spirit in which the great Dominican recalled these events from that in which the "popular orators," scattering firebrands and death, delight to dwell upon them!
At Strabane station we found a handsome outside car waiting on us, and drove off briskly for this charming place, the home of one of the most active and prosperous manufacturers in Ireland. A little more than half way between the station and Sion House, Mr. Herdman met us afoot. We jumped off and walked up with him. Sion House, built for him by his brother, an accomplished architect, is a handsome Queen Anne mansion. It stands on a fine knoll, commanding lovely views on all sides. Below it, and beyond a little stream, rise the extensive flax-mills which are the life of the place,
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under the eye and within touch of the hand of the master. These works were established here by Mr. Herdman's father, after he had made a vain attempt to establish them at Ballyshannon in Donegal, half a century ago. As all salmon fishers know, the water-power is admirable at Eallyshannon, where the Erne pours in torrents down a thirty feet fall. But the ignorance and indolence of the people made Ballyshannon quite impossible, with this result, that while the Erne still flows unvexed to the sea, and the people of Ballyshannon live very much as they lived in 1835, here at Sion the Mourne enables 1100 Irish operatives to work up £90,000 worth of Irish flax every year into yarn for the Continent, and to divide among themselves some £20,000 a year in wages.
After luncheon we walked with Mr. Herdman through the mills and the model village which has grown up around them. Everywhere we found order, neatness, and thrift. The operatives are almost all people of the country, Catholics and Protestants in almost equal numbers. "I find it wise," said Mr. Herdman, "to give neither religion a preponderance, and to hold my people of both religions to a common standard of fidelity and
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efficiency." The greatest difficulty he has had to contend with is the ineradicable objection of some of the peasantry to continuous industry. He told us of a strapping lass of eighteen who came to the mills, but very soon gave up and went back to the parental shebeen in the mountains rather than get up early in the morning to earn fourteen shillings a week.
Three weeks of her work would have paid the year's rent of the paternal holding.
In the village, which is regularly laid out, is a reading-room for the workpeople. There are cricket clubs, and one of the mill buildings (just now crammed with bales of flax) has been fitted up by Mr. Herdman as a theatre. There is a drop-curtain representing the Lake of Como, and the flies are flanked by life-size copies in plaster of the Apollo Belvidrre and the Medicean Venus. This is a development I had hardly looked to see in Ulster.
After we had gone over the works thoroughly. Mr. Herdman took us back, on a transparent pretext of enlightened curiosity touching certain qualities of spun flax, to give us a glimpse of the "beauty of Sion"-a well-grown graceful girl of fifteen or
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sixteen summers. She concentrated her attention, as soon as we appeared, upon certain mysterious bobbins and spindles, with an exaggerated determination which proved how completely she saw through our futile and frivolous devices. Mr. Herd-man told us, as we came away discomfited, a droll story of the ugliest girl ever employed here-a girl so preternaturally ugly that one of his best blacksmiths having been entrapped into offering to marry her, lost heart of grace on the eve of the sacrifice, and, taking ship at Deny for America, fled from Sion for ever.
In the evening came, with other guests, Dr. Webb, Q.C., Regius Professor of Laws and Public Orator of Trinity at Dublin, well known both as a Grecian capable of composing "skits" as clever as the verses yclept Homerstotle-in which the Saturday Review served up the Donnelly nonsense about Bacon and Shakespeare-and as a translator of Faust. He was abused by the Loyalists at Dublin, in 1884, for his defence of P. N. Fitzgerald, the leader who beat Parnell and Archbishop Croko so badly at Thurles the other day; and he is in a fair way now to be denounced with equal fervour by the Nationalists as a County Court
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judge in Donegal. He finds this post no sinecure. "I do as much work in five days," he said to-night, "as the Superior Judges do in five weeks."
He is a staunch Unionist, and laughs at the notion that the Irish people care one straw for a Parliament in Dublin. "Why should they?" he said. "What did any Parliament in Dublin ever do to gratify the one real passion of the Irish peasant- his hunger for a bit of land? So far as the Irish people are concerned, Home Rule means simply agrarian reform. Would they get that from a Parliament in Dublin? If the British Parliament evicts the landlords and makes the tenants lords of the land, they will be face to face with Davitt's demand for the nationalising of the land. Do you suppose they will like to see the lawyers and the politicians organising a labour agitation against the 'strong farmers'? The last thing they want is a Parliament in Dublin. Lord Ashbourne's Act carries in its principle the death-warrant of the 'National League.'"
Some excellent stories were told in the picturesque smoking-room after dinner, one of a clever and humorous, sensible and non-political priest, who, being taken to task by some of his brethren
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for giving the cold shoulder to the Nationalist movement, excused himself by saying, "I should like to be a patriot; but I can't be. It's all along of the rheumatism which prevents me from lying out at nights in a ditch with a rifle." The same priest being reproached by others of the cloth with a fondness for the company of some of the resident landlords in his neighbourhood, replied, "It's in the blood, you see. My poor mother, God rest her soul! she always had a liking for the quality. As for my dear father, he was just a blundering peasant like the rest of ye!"
gweedore, Saturday, 4th Feb.-A good day's work to-day!
We left our hospitable friends at Sion House early in the morning. The sun was shining brightly; the air so soft and bland that the thrashes were singing like mad creatures in the trees and the shrubbery; and the sky was more blue than Italy. "A foine day it is, sorr," said our jarvey as we took our seats on the car. There is some point in the old Irish sarcasm that English travellers in Ireland only see one side of the country, because they travel through it on the outside car. But to make this point tell,
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four people must travel on the car. In that case
they must sit two on a side, each pair facing one
side only of the landscape. It is a very different
business when you travel on an outside car alone,
with the driver sitting on one side of it, or with
one companion only, when the driver occupies the
little perch in front between the sides of the car.
When you travel thus, the outside car is the best
thing in the world, after a good roadster, for taking
you rapidly over a country, and enabling you to
command all points of the horizon. Double up one
leg on the seat, let the other dangle freely, using the
step as a stirrup, and you go rattling along almost
as if you were on horseback.
We drove through a long suburb of Strabane
into the busiest quarter of the busy little place.
The names on the shops were predominantly
Scotch -Maxwells, Stewarts, Hamiltons, Elliotts.
I saw but one Celtic name, M'Ilhenny, and one
German, Straub. I changed gold for enormous
Bank of Ireland notes at a neat local bank, and
the cheery landlord of the Abercorn Arms gave
us a fresh car to take us on to Letterkenny, a drive
of some twenty miles.
The car came up like a small blizzard, flying
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about at the heels of an uncanny little grey mare. Lord Ernest knew the beast well, and said she was twenty-five years old. She behaved like an unbroken filly at first, but soon striking her pace, turned out a capital goer, and took us on without turning a hair till her work was done. The weather continued to be good, but clouds rolled up around the horizon.
"It'll always be bad weather," said our saturnine jarvey, "when the Judges come to hold court, and never be good again till they rise."
Here is a consequence of alien rule in Ireland, never, so far as I know, brought to the notice of Parliament.
"Why is this?" I asked; "is it because of the time of the year they select?"
"The time of year, sorr?" he replied, glancing compassionately at me. "No, not at all; it's because of the oaths!"
We reached Letterkenny in time for a very good luncheon at "Hegarty's," one of the neatest little inns I have ever found in a place of the size. It stands on the long main street which is really the town. At one end of this street is a very pretty row of picturesque ivy-clad brick cottages, built
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by a landlord whose property and handsome park bound the town on the west; and the street winds alongside the slope of a hill rising from the bank of the Swilly river. A fair was going on. The little market-place was alive with bustling, chattering, and chaffering country-folk. Smartly-dressed young damsels tripped in and out of the neat well-filled shops, and in front of a row of semidetached villas, like a suburban London terrace, on the hill opposite "Hegarty's," a German band smote the air with discordant fury. Decidedly a lively, prosperous little town is Letterkenny, nor was I surprised to learn from a communicative gentleman, nursing his cane near the inn-door, that advantage would be taken of the presence of the Hussars sent to keep order at Dunfanaghy, to "give a ball."
"But I thought all the country was in arms about the trials at Dunfanaghy," I said.
"In arms about the trials at Dunfanaghy? Oh no; they'll never be locked up, Father M'Fadden and Mr. Blane. And the people here at Letterkenny, they've more sinse than at Dunfanaghy. Have you heard of the champagne?"
Upon this he proceeded to tell me, as a grand
69
joke, that Father M'Fadden and Mr. Blane, M.P., having declined to accept the tea offered them by the authorities during their detention, they had been permitted to order what they liked from the local hotel-keeper. After the trial was over, and they were released on bail to prosecute their appeal, the hotel-keeper demanded of the authorities payment of his bill, including two bottles of champagne ordered to refresh the member for Armagh!
A conspicuous, smart, spick-and-span house on the main street, built of brick and wood, with a verandah, and picked out in bright colours, was pointed out to me by this amiable citizen as the residence of a "returned American." This was a man, he said, who had made some money in America, but got tired of living there, and had come back to end his days in his native place. He was a good man, my informant added, "only he puts on too many airs."
A remarkably handsome, rosy-faced young groom, a model of manhood in vigour and grace, presently brought us up a wagonette with a pair of stout nags, and a driver in a suit of dark-brown frieze, whose head seemed to have been driven down be-
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tween his shoulders. He never lifted it up all the way to Gweedore, but he proved to be a capital jarvey notwithstanding, and knew the country as well as his horses.
Not long after leaving the town by a road which passes the huge County Asylum (now literally crammed, I am told, with lunatics), we passed a ruined church on the banks of a stream, Here the country people, it seems, halt and wash their feet before entering Letterkenny, failing which ceremony they may expect a quarrel with somebody before they get back to their homes. This wholesome superstition doubtless was established ages ago by some good priest, when priests thought it their duty to be the preachers and makers of peace. We soon left the wooded country of the Swilly and began to climb into the grand and melancholy Highlands of Donegal. The road was as fine as any in the Scottish Highlands, and despite the keen chill wind, the glorious and ever-changing panoramas of mountain and strath through which we drove were a constant delight, until, just as we came within full range of Muckish, the giant of Donegal, the weather finally broke down into driving mists and blinding rain.
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We pulled up near a picturesque little shebeen, to water the horses and get our Highland wraps well about us. Out came a hardy, cheery old farmer. He swept the heavens with the eye of a mountaineer, and exclaimed:-"Ah! it's a coorse day intirely, it is." "A coorse day intirely" from that moment it continued to be.
Happily the curtain had not fallen before we caught a grand passing glimpse of the romantic gorge of Glen Veagh, closed and commanded in the shadowy distance by the modern castle of Glen-veagh, the mountain home of my charming countrywoman, Mrs. Adair.
Thanks to its irregular serpentine outline, and to the desolate majesty of the hills which environ it, Lough Veagh, though not a large sheet of water, may well be what it is reputed to be, a rival of the finest lochs in Scotland. No traces are now discernible on its shores of the too celebrated evictions of Glen Veagh. But from the wild and rugged aspect of the surrounding country it is probable enough that these evictions were to the evicted a blessing in disguise, and that their descendants are now enjoying, beyond the Atlantic, a measure of prosperity and of happiness which neither their
72
own labour nor the most liberal legislation could ever have won for them here. We caught sight, as we drove through Mrs. Adair's wide and rocky domain, of wire fences, and I believe it is her intention to create here a small deer forest. This ought to be as good a stalking country as the Scottish Highlands, provided the people can be got to like "stalking" stags better than landlords and agents.
Long before we reached Glen Veagh we had bidden farewell, not only to the hedges and walls of Tyrone and Eastern Donegal, but to the "ditches," which anywhere but in Ireland would be called "embankments," and entered upon great stone-strewn wastes of land seemingly unreclaimed and irreclaimable. Huge boulders lay tossed and tumbled about as if they had been whirled through the air by the cyclones of some prehistoric age, and dropped at random when the wild, winds wearied of the fun. The last landmark we made out through the gathering storm was the pinnacled crest of Errigal. Of Dunlewy, esteemed the loveliest of the Donegal lakes, we could see little or nothing as we hurried along the highway, which follows its course down to the Clady, the river of Gweedore: and we blessed the memory of Lord George Hill
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when suddenly turning from the wind and the rain into what seemed to be a mediaeval courtyard flanked by trees, we pulled up in the bright warm light of an open doorway, shook ourselves like Newfoundland dogs, and were welcomed by a frank, good-looking Scottish host to a glowing peat fire in this really comfortable little hotel, the central pivot of a most interesting experiment in civilisation.
gweedoee, Sunday, Feb. 5th.-A morning as soft and bright almost as April succeeded the stormy night. Errigal lifted his bold irregular outlines royally against an azure sky. The sunshine glinted merrily on the swift waters of the Clady, which flows almost beneath our windows from Dunlewy Lough to the sea. The birds were singing in the trees, which all about our hotel make what in the West would be called an "opening" in the wide and woodless expanse of hill and bog.
This hotel was for many years the home of Lord George Hill, who built it in the hope of making Gweedore, what in England or Scotland it would long ago have become, a prosperous watering-place. Now that a battle-royal is going on between Lord
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George's son and heir and the tenants on the estate, organised by Father M'Fadden under the "Plan of Campaign," it is important to know something of the history of the place.
Is this a case of the sons of the soil expropriated by an alien and confiscating Government to enrich a ruthless invader? I was told by a Nationalist acquaintance in Dublin that the owner of Gweedore is a near kinsman of the Marquis of Londonderry, and that the property came to him by inheritance under an ancient confiscation of the estates of the O'Donnels of Tyrconnel. All of this I find is embroidery.
The "Carlisle" room, which our landlord has assigned to us, contains a number of books, the property of the late Lord George, and ample materials are here for making out the annals of Gweedore. Lord George, it seems, was a posthumous son of the fourth Marquis of Downshire, and a nephew of that Marchioness of Salisbury who was burned to death with the west wing of Hatfield House half a century ago. He inherited nothing in Donegal, nor was any provision made for him under his father's will. His elder brothers made up and settled upon him a sum of twenty thousand pounds.
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He entered the Army, and being quartered for a time at Letterkenny, shot and fished all about Donegal. He found the people here kindly and friendly, but in a deplorable state of ignorance and of destitution. Their holdings under sundry small proprietors were entirely unimproved, and as their families increased, these holdings were cut up by themselves into even smaller strips under the system known as "rundale,"-each son as he grew up taking off a slice of the paternal holding, putting up a hut with mud, and scratching the soil after his own rude fashion. This custom, necessarily fatal to civilisation, doubtless came down from the traditional times when the lands of a sept were held in common by the sept, before the native chieftains had converted themselves into landlords, and defeated Sir John Davies's attempt to convert their tribal kinsmen into peasant proprietors.
Whatever its origin, it had reduced Gweedore, or "Tullaghobegly," fifty years ago to barbarism. Nearly nine thousand people then dwelt here with never a landlord among them. There was no "Coercion" in Gweedore, neither was there a coach nor a car to be found in the whole district. The nominal owners of the small properties into which
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the district was divided knew little and cared less about them. The rents were usually "made by the tenants,"-a step in advance, it will be seen, of the system which the collective wisdom of Great Britain has for the last twenty years been trying to establish in Ireland. But they were only paid when it was convenient. An agent of one of these properties who travelled fourteen miles one day to collect some rents gave it up and drove back again, because the "day was too bad" for him to wander about in the mountains on the chance of finding the tenants at home and disposed to give him a trifle on account. On most of the properties there were arrears of eight, ten, and twenty years' standing.
There was one priest in the district, and one National School, the schoolmaster, with a family of nine persons, receiving the munificent stipend of eight pounds a year. These nine thousand people, depending absolutely upon tillage and pasture, owned among them all one cart and one plough, eight saddles, two pillions, eleven bridles, and thirty-two rakes! They had no means of harrowing their lands but with meadow rakes, and the farms were so small that from four to ten farms could be harrowed in a day with one rake.
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Their beds were of straw, mountain grass, or green and dried rushes. Among the nine thousand people there were but two feather-beds, and but eight beds stuffed with chaff. There were but two stables and six cow-houses in the whole district. None of the women owned more than one shift, nor was there a single bonnet among them all, nor a looking-glass costing more than threepence.
The climate and the scenery took the fancy of Lord George. He made up his mind to see what could be done with this forgotten corner of the world, and to that end bought up as he could the small and scattered properties, till he had invested the greater part of his small fortune, and acquired about twenty thousand acres of land. Of this, little was fit for cultivation, even with the help of capital and civilised management. There was not a road in the district, nor a drain.
Lord George came and established himself here. He went to work systematically to improve the country, reclaiming bog-lands, building roads, and laying out the property into regular farms. He went about among the people himself, trying to get their confidence, and to let them know what he wanted to do for them, and with their help.
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For a long time they wouldn't believe him to be a lord at all, "because he spoke Irish"; and the breaking up of the rundale system, under which they had lived in higgledy-piggledy laziness, exasperated them greatly. Of the first man who took a
fenced and well-defined farm from Lord George, and went to work on it, the others observed that he would come to no good by it, because he would "have to keep a maid just to talk to his wife." Men could not be got for any wages to work at draining, or at making the "ditches" or embankments to delineate the new holdings; and when Lord George found adventurous "tramps" willing to earn a few shillings by honest work of the kind, conspiracies were formed to undo by night what was done by day. However, Lord George persevered.
There was not a shop, nor a dispensary, nor a doctor, nor a warehouse, nor a quay for landing goods in this whole populous and sea-washed region. He put up storehouses, built a little harbour at Bunbeg, established a dispensary, got a doctor to settle in the district, and finally put up the hotel in which we are. He advanced money to tenants disposed to improve their holdings. Finding the women, as
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usual, more thrifty and industrious than the men, and gifted with a natural aptitude for the loom and the spindle, he introduced the weaving of woollen yarn into stout frieze stuffs and foot-gear for both sexes. This was in 1840, and in 1854 Gweedore hand-knit socks and stockings were sold to the amount of £500, being just about the annual estimated rents of all the properties bought by Lord George at the time when he bought them in 1838 ! But with this difference : The owners from whom Lord George bought the properties got their £500 very irregularly, when they got it at all; whereas the wives and daughters of the tenants, who made the socks and stockings, were paid their £500 in cash.
Clearly in Gweedore I have a case not of the children of the soil despoiled and trampled upon by the stranger, but of the honest investment of alien capital in Irish land, and of the administration by the proprietor himself of the Irish property so acquired for the benefit alike of the owner and of the occupiers of the land.
That the deplorable state in which he found the people was mainly due to their own improvidence and gregarious incapacity is also tolerably clear.
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On the west coast of Norway, dear to the heart of the salmon-fisher, you find people living under conditions certainly no more favourable than here exist. North of the Hardanger Fjord, the spring opens only in June. The farmers grow only oats and barley; but they have no market except for the barley, and live chiefly by the pasturage. It is as rocky a region as Donegal. But the Norsemen never try to make the land do more than it is capable of doing. With them the oldest son takes the farm and works it. The juniors are welcome to work on the farm if they like for their brother, but they are not allowed to cut it up. There is no rundale in Norway; and when the cadets see that there is no room for them they quietly "pull up stakes," and go forth to seek a new home, no matter where.
For fourteen years Lord George Hill spent on Gweedore all the rents he received from it, and a great deal more. During that time the relations between the people and their new landlord seem to have been, in the main, most friendly, notwithstanding his constant efforts to break up their old habits, or, to use their own language, to "bother them." But there were no "evictions"; rents were not raised
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even where the tenants were visibly able to pay better rents ; prizes were given annually for the best and neatest cottages, for the best crops of turnips (neither turnips, parsnips, nor carrots were there at Gweedore when Lord George bought the estate), for the best pigs (there was not a pig in Gweedore in 1838 !), for calves and colts, for the best fences, the best ordered tillage farms, the best labourers' cottages, the best beds and bedding, the best butter, the best woollen goods made on the estate. The old rundale plan of dividing up the land among the children was put a stop to, and every tenant was encouraged not to make his holding smaller, but to add to and enlarge it. A corn-mill, saw-mill, and flax-mill were established. In 1838 there was not a baker within ten miles. In 1852 the local baker was driving a good business in good bread. The tenant's wife, for whom in 1838 a single shift was a social superiority, in 1852 went shopping at Bunbeg for the latest fashions from Derry or Dublin.
Whatever "landlordism" may mean elsewhere in Ireland, it is plain enough that in the history of Gweedore it has meant the difference between savage squalor and civilisation.
Lord George Hill died in 1879, the year in which
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the Land League began its operations. He be-queathed this property to his son, Captain Hill, by whom the management of it has been left to agents. After Lord George's death two tracts of mountain pasture, reserved by him to feed imported sheep, were let to the tenants, who by that time had come to own quite a considerable number, some thousands, of live stock, cattle, horses, and sheep.
Concurrently with this concession to the tenants
the provisions made by Lord George against the
subdivision of holdings began to give way. Father
M'Fadden, combining the position of President of
the National League with that of parish priest,
seems to have favoured this tendency, and to have
encouraged the putting up of new houses on reduced
holdings to accommodate an increasing population.
A flood which in August 1880 damaged the chapel
and caused the death of five persons gave him an
opportunity of bringing before the British public the
condition of the people in a letter to the London
Times, which elicited a very generous response,
several hundred pounds, it is said, having been sent
to him from London alone. Large contributions of
relief were also made to Gweedore from the Duchess
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of Marlborough's Fund, and Gweedore became a standing butt of British benevolence. Two results seem to have followed, naturally enough,-a growing indisposition on the part of the tenants to pay rent, and a rapid rise in the value of tenant rights. With the National League standing between them and the landlord, with the British Parliament legislating year after year in favour of the Irish tenant and against the Irish landlord, and with the philanthropic public ready to respond to any appeal for help made on their behalf, the tenants at Gweedore naturally became a privileged class. In no other way at least can I explain the extraordinary fact that tenant rights at Gweedore have been sold, according to Lord Cowper's Blue-book of 1886, during the period of the greatest alleged distress and congestion in this district, at prices representing from forty to a hundred-and-thirty years' purchase of the landlord's rent!
In this Blue-book the Rev. Father M'Fadden appears as receiving no less than £115 sterling for the tenant-right sold by him of ground, the head rent of which is £1, 2s. 6d. a year. The worst enemy of Father M'Fadden will hardly suspect him, I hope, of taking such a sum as this from
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a tenant farmer for the right to starve to death by inches.1
A shrewd Galway man, now here, who seems to know the region well, and likes both the scenery and the people, tells me that the troubles which have now culminated in the arrest of Father M'Fadden have been aggravated by the vacillation of Captain Hill, and by the foibles of his agent, Colonel Dopping, who not long ago brought clown Mr. Gladstone with his unloaded rifle. That the tenants as a body have been, or now are, unable to pay their rent he does not believe. On the contrary, he thinks them, as a body, rather well off. Certainly I have seen and spoken with none of them about the roads to-day who were not hearty-looking men, and in very good case. Colonel Dopping, according to my Galwegian, is not an Englishman, but a Longford Irishman of good family, who got his training in India as an official of the Woods and Forests in Bengal. "He is not a bad-hearted man, nor
1 I have since learned that Father M'Fadden sold another holding, rental 6s. 8d., for £80. He has three more holdings from Captain Hill, at 15s., 6s. 8d., and 11s. 2d., for which he was in arrears for two years in April 1887, when ejectment decrees were obtained against him. For his house holding he pays 2s. a year! So he was really fighting his own battle as a tenant in the Plan of Campaign.
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unkind," said my Galwegian, "but he is too much of a Bengal tiger in his manner. He went into the cottages personally and lectured the people, and that they never will stand. They don't require or expect you to believe what they say-in fact they have little respect for you if you do-but they like to have the agent pretend that he believes them, and then go on and show that he don't. But he must never lose his temper about it. Colonel Dopping, I have heard, argued with an old woman one day who was telling him more yarns than were ever spun into cloth in Gweedore, till she picked up her cup of tea and threw it in his face. He flounced out of the cottage, and ordered the police to arrest her. That did him more harm than if he had shot a dozen boys." "What with the temper of Colonel Dopping and the vacillation of Captain Hill, who is always of the mind of the last man that speaks to him, Father M'Fadden has had it all his own way. Captain Hill's claim was for £1800 of arrears, long arrears too, and £400 of costs. How much the people paid in under the Plan of Campaign nobody knows but Father M'Fadden. But he is a clever padre, and he played Captain Hill till he finally gave up the costs, and settled for £1450."
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"And this sum represents what?"
"It represents in round numbers about two years' income from an estate in which Captain Hill's father must have invested, first and last, more nearly £40,000 than £20,000 of money that never came out of it."
"That doesn't sound like a very good operation. But isn't the question, Whether the tenants have earned this sum, such as it is, out of the land let to them by Captain Hill?"
"No, not exactly, I think. You must remember there are some twelve hundred families living here on land bought with Lord George's money, and enjoying all the advantages which the place owes to his investment and his management, much more than to any labour or skill of theirs. You must look at their rents as accommodation rents. Suppose they cam the rent in Scotland, or England, or Tyrone, or wherever you like, the question is, What do they get for it from Captain Hill? They get a holding with land enough to grow potatoes on, and with as much free fuel as ever they like, and with free pasture for their beasts, and all this they get on the average, mind you, for no more than ten shillings a year! Why, there was a time, I can
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assure you, when the women here earned the value of all the Hill rents by knitting stockings and making woollen stuffs. You see the stuffs lying here in this window that they make even now, and good stuffs too. But before the League boycotted the agency here, the agency ten years ago used to pay out £900 in a year, where it pays less than £100 to the women for their work."
"Why did the League do this?"
"Why? Why, because it wanted to control the work itself, and to know just what it brings into the place. You must remember Father M'Fadden is the President of the League, and the people will do anything for him. I have heard of one old woman who sat up of nights last year knitting socks to send up to London, to pay the Christinas dues to the Father,-six shillings' worth."
"And are these stuffs here in the hotel made for the agency you speak of?"
"Oh no; these are just made by women that know the hotel, and Mr. Robinson here, he kindly takes in the stuffs. You see the name of every woman on every one of them that made it, and the price. If a stranger buys some, he pays the money to Mr. Robinson, and so it goes to the women, and no commission charged."
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The "stuffs" are certainly excellent, very evenly woven; and the patterns, all devised, I am told, by the women themselves, very simple and tasteful. The only dyes used are got by the women also from the sea-weeds and the kelp, which must be counted among the resources of the place. The browns and ochres thus produced are both soft and vivid; while nothing can be better than a peculiar warm grey, produced by a skilful mingling of the undyed wools.
"What, then, causes the distress for which the name of Gweedore is a synonym?" I asked.
"It doesn't exist," responded my Galwegian; "that is, there is no such distress in Gweedore as you find in Connemara, for instance;l but what distress there is in Gweedore is due much more to the habits the people have been getting into of late years, and to the idleness of them, than to any pressure of the rents you hear about, or
1 Yet of Connemara, Cardinal Manning, in his letter to the Archbishop of Armagh, August 31, 1873, cites the "trustworthy" evidence of "an Englishman who had raised himself from the plough's tail," and who had gone "to see with his own eyes the material condition of the peasantry in Ireland." It was to the effect that in abundance and quality of food, in rate of wages, and even in the comfort of their dwellings, the working men of Connemara were better off than the agricultural labourers of certain English counties.
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even to the poverty of the soil. Go down to the store at Bunbeg, and see what they buy and go in debt for! You won't find in any such place as Bunbeg in England such things. And even this don't measure it; for, you see, two-thirds of them are not free to deal at Bunbeg."
"Why not? Is Bunbeg 'boycotted'?" "No, not at all. But they are on the books of the 'Gombeen man'-Sweeney of Dungloe and Burtonport. They're always in debt to him for the meal; and then he backs the travelling tea-pedlars, and the bakers that carry around cakes, and all these run up the accounts all the time. Tot up what these people lay out for tea at four shillings a pound-and they won't have cheap tea-and what they pay for meal, and what they pay for interest, and the 'testimonials,'-they paid for the monument here to O'Donnell, the Donegal man that murdered Carey,-and the dues to the priest, and you'll find the £700 or so they don't pay the landlord going in other directions three and four times over."
"Then they are falling back into all the old laziness, the men sauntering about, or sitting and smoking, while the women do all the work."
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The maid having told us Mass would be performed at noon, I walked with Lord Ernest a mile or so up the road to Derrybeg, to see the people thronging down from the hills; the women in their picturesque fashion wearing their bright shawls drawn over their heads. But the maid had deceived us. The Mass was fixed for eleven, and I suspect her of being a Protestant in disguise.
On the way back we met Mr. Burke, the resident magistrate. He has a neat house here, with a garden, and had come over from Dunfanaghy to see his wife. He meant to return before dark. The country was quiet enough, he said; but there were some troublesome fellows about, keeping up the excitement over the arrest at Father M'Fad-den's trial of Father Stephens-a young priest recently from Liverpool, who has become the curate of quite another Father M'Fadden-the parish priest of Falcarragh, and is giving his local superior a great deal of trouble by his activity in connection with the "Plan of Campaign." Mr. Wybrants Olphert of Ballyconnell, the chief landlord of Falcarragh, has been "boycotted," on suspicion of promoting the arrest of the two priests. Five policemen have been put into his house. At
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Falcarragh, where six policemen are usually stationed, there are now forty. Mr. Burke evidently thinks, though he did not say so, that Father Stephens has been spoiled of his sleep by the laurels of Father M'Fadden of Gweedore. He is to be tried at Dunfanaghy on Tuesday, and there are now 150 troops quartered there-Rifles and Hussars.
"Are they not boycotted?" I asked.
"No. The people rather enjoy the bustle and the show, not to speak of the money the soldiers spend."
Lord Ernest, who knows Mr. Olphert, sent him over a message by Mr. Burke that we would drive over to-morrow, and pay our respects to him at Ballyconnell. From this Mr. Burke tried to dissuade us, but what he told us naturally increased our wish to go.
After luncheon I ordered a car, and drove to Derrybeg, to call there on Father M'Fadden, Lord Ernest, who has already seen him, agreeing to call there for me on his return from a walk. We passed much reclaimed bogland, mostly now in grass, and looking fairly well; many piles of turf and clusters of cottages, well-built, but not very
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neatly kept. From each, as we passed, the inevitable cur rushed out and barked himself hoarse. Then came a waste of bog and boulders, and then a long, neat stone wall, well coped with unhewn stone, which announced the vicinity of Father M'Fadden's house, quite the best structure in the place after the chapel and the hotel. It is of stone, with a neat side porch, in which, as I drove up, I descried Father M'Fadden, in his trim well-fitting clerical costume, standing and talking with an elderly lady. I passed through a handsome iron wicket, and introduced myself to him. He received me with much courtesy, and asked me to walk into his well-furnished comfortable study, where a lady, his sister, to whom he presented me, sat reading by the fire.
I told Father M'Fadden I had come to get his view of methods and things at Gweedore, and he gave it to me with great freedom and fluency. He is a typical Celt in appearance, a M'Fadden Eoe, sanguine by temperament, with an expression at once shrewd and enthusiastic, a most flexible persuasive voice. All the trouble at Gweedore, he thought, came of the agents. "Agents had been the curse both of Ireland and of the landlord.
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The custom being to pay them by commissions on the sums collected, and not a regular salary, the more they can screw either out of the soil, or out of any other resources of the tenants, the better it is for them. At Gweedore the people earn what they can, not out of the soil, but out of their labour exported to Scotland, or England, or America. Only yesterday," he continued, turning to his neat mahogany desk and taking up a letter, "I received this with a remittance from America to pay the rent of one of my people."
"This was in connection," I asked, "with the 'Plan of Campaign ' and your contest here?"
"Yes," he replied; "and a girl of my parish went over to Scotland herself and got the money due there for another family, and brought it back to me here. You see they make me a kind of savings-bank, and have done so for a long time, long before the 'Plan of Campaign' was talked about as it is now."
This was interesting, as I had heard it said by a Nationalist in Dublin that the "Plan of Campaign" was originally suggested by Father M'Fadden. He made no such claim himself, however, and I made no allusion to this aspect of the matter. "I
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have been living here for fifteen years, and they listen to me as to nobody else."
In these affairs with the agents, he had always told his people that "whenever a settlement came to be made, cash alone in the hand of the person representing them could make it properly." "Cash I must have," he said, "and hold the cash ready for the moment. When I had worked out a settlement with Captain Hill, I had a good part of the money in my hand ready to pay down. £1450 was the sum total agreed upon, and after the further collection, necessitated by the settlement, there was a deficit of about £200. I wrote to Professor Stuart," he added, after a pause, "that I wanted about £200 of the sum-total. But more has come in since then. This remittance from America yesterday, for example."
"Do they send such remittances without being asked for them?" I inquired.
"Yes; they are now and again sending money, and some of them don't send, but bring it. Some of them go out to America now as they used to go to England-just to work and earn some money, and come back.
"If they get on tolerably well they stay for a
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while, but they find America is more expensive than Ireland, and if, for any cause, they get out of work there, they come back to Ireland to spend what they have. Naturally, you see," said Father M'Fadden, "they find a certain pleasure to be seen by their old friends in the old place, after borrowing the four pounds perhaps to take them to America, coming back with the money jingling in their pockets, and in good clothes, and with a watch and a chain-and a high hat. And there is in the heart of the Irishman an eternal longing for his native land constantly luring him back to Ireland. All do not succeed, though, in your country," he said. "We hear of two out of ten perhaps who do very well. They take care we hear of that. The rest disappear, and are never heard of again."
"Then you do not encourage emigration?" I, asked, "even although the people cannot earn their living from the soil?"
Father M'Fadden hesitated a moment, and then replied, "No, for things should be so arranged that they may earn their living, not out of the country, but on the soil at home. It is to that I want to bring the condition of the district."
At this point Lord Ernest Hamilton came up
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and knocked at the door. He was most courteously received by Father M'Fadden. To my query why the Courts could not intervene to save the priests from taking all this trouble on themselves between the owners and the occupiers of the land, Father M'Fadden at first replied that the Courts had no power to intervene where, as in many cases in Gweedore, the holdings are subdivided.
"The Courts," he said, "may not be, and I do not think they are, all that could be desired, though they undoubtedly do supply a more or less impartial arbitrator between the landlord and the tenant. It is an improvement on the past when the landlords fixed the rents for themselves."
I did not remind him of what Lord George Hill tells us, that in the olden time at Gweedore the tenants fixed their own rents-and then did not pay them-but I asked him how this could be said when the tenant clearly must have accepted the rent, no matter who fixed it. "Oh!" said Father M'Fadden, "that may be so, but the tenant was not free, he was coerced. With all his life and labour represented in the holding and its improvements, he could not go and give up his holding. It's a stand-and-deliver business with him-the landlord puts a pistol to his head!"
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"But is it not true," I said, "that under the new Land Bill the Land Commissioner's Court has power to fix the rents judicially without regard to landlord or tenant during fifteen years?"
"Yes, that is so," said Father M'Fadden. "Under Mr. Gladstone's Act of '81, and under the later Act of the present Government, the rents so fixed from '81 to '86 inclusive are subject to revision for three years; but the people have no confidence in the constitution of the Courts, and, as a matter of fact, the improvements of the tenants are confiscated under the Act of '81, and the reductions allowed under the Act of '87 are incommensurate with the fall in prices by 100 per cent. And there still remains the burden of arrears. I feel that I must stand between my people and obligations which they are unable to meet. To that end I take their money, and stand ready to use it to relieve them, when the occasion offers. That is my idea of my work under the 'Plan of Campaign'; and, furthermore, I think that by doing it I have secured money for the landlord which he couldn't possibly have got in any other way."
This struck me as a very remarkable statement, nor can I see how it can be interpreted otherwise
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than as an admission that if the people had the money to pay their rents, they couldn't be trusted to use it for that purpose, unless they put it into the control of the priest or of some other trustee.
Reverting to what he had said of the necessity for some change in the conditions of life and labour here, I asked if, in his opinion, the people could live out of the land if they got the ownership of it.
In existing circumstances he thought they could not.
Was he in favour, then, of Mr. Davitt's plan of Land Nationalisation ?
"Well, I have not considered the question of Nationalisation of the land."
To rny further question, What remedies he would himself propose for a state of things in which it was impossible for the people to live out of the land either as occupiers or as owners-emigration being barred, Father M'Fadden, without looking at Lord Ernest, replied, "Oh, I think abler men who draw up Parliamentary Acts and live in public life ought to devise remedies, and that is a matter which would be best settled by a Home Government."
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The glove was well delivered, but Lord Ernest did not lift it.
"But, Father M'Fadden," I said, "I am told you are a practical agriculturist and engineer, and that you have contrived to get excellent work done by the people here, dividing them off into working squads, and assigning so many perches to so many -surely then you must understand better than a dozen members of Parliament what they can be got to do?"
He smiled at this, and finally admitted that he had a plan of his own. It was that the Government should advance sums for reclaiming the land. "The people could live on part of their earnings while thus employed, and invest the surplus in sheep to be fed on the hill pastures. When the reclamation was effected the families could be scattered out, and the holdings increased. In this district alone there are 350 holdings of reclaimable land of 20 acres each, the reclamation of which, according to a competent surveyor, "would pay well." And the district could be improved by creating employment on the spot, establishing factories, developing fisheries, giving technical education, and encouraging cottage industries, which are so vigor-
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ously reviving in this district owing to the benevolent efforts of the Donegal Industrial Fund,"
Father M'Fadden spoke freely and without undue heat of his trial, and gave us a piquant account of his arrest.
This was effected at Armagh, just as he was getting into an early morning train. A sergeant of police walked up as the train was about to start, and asked,-
"Are you not Father M'Fadden of Gweedore?"
"What interest have you in my identity?" responded the priest.
"Only this, sir," said the officer, politely exhibiting a warrant.
"I had been in Armagh the previous day," said Father M'Fadden, "attending the month's memory of the late deceased Primate of All Ireland, Dr. M'Gettigan, and stayed at a private residence, that of Surgeon-Major Lavery, not suspecting that while enjoying the genial hospitality of the Surgeon-Major my steps were dogged by a detective, and that gentleman's house watched by police."
Of the trial Father M'Fadden spoke with more bitterness. His eyes glowed as he exclaimed, "Can you imagine that they refused me bail, when bail
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had been allowed to such a felon as Arthur Orton? Why should I have been locked up over two Sundays, for ten days, when I offered to pledge my honour to appear?" He made no other complaint of the magistrate, and none of the prosecutor, Mr. Ross. He praised his own lawyer, too, but he strongly denounced the stenographer who took down his speech, or the parts of it which I told him I had seen in Dublin.
"Why, just think of it," he exclaimed; "it took the clerk just eight minutes to read the report given by that stenographer of a speech which it took me an hour and twenty minutes to deliver! I do not speak from the lips, I speak from the heart, and consequently rather rapidly; and a stenographer who can take down 190 words a minute has told me I run ahead of him!"
I suggested that the report, without pretending even to be a full summary of his speech, might be accurate as to phrases and sentences pronounced by him.
"Yes, as to phrases," he answered, "that might be; but the phrases may be taken out of their true connection, and strung together in an untruthful, yet telling way. Even my words were not fully
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set down," he said, with some heat. "I was made to call a man 'level,' when I said in the American way that he was 'level-headed.'" A propos of this, I am told that the American word "spree" has become Hibernian, and is used to describe meetings of the National League and "other political entertainments."
When I told Father M'Fadden I had just come from Rome, where, as I had reason to believe, the Vatican was anxious to get evidence from others than Archbishop Walsh and Monsignore Kirby, of the Irish College, as to the attitude of the priests in Ireland towards the laws of the United Kingdom, he said he knew that "some Italian prelates neither understood nor approved the 'Plan of Campaign,' nor is the Irish Land question understood at Rome;" but this did not seem to disturb him much, as he was quite sure that in the end the "Plan of Campaign" would be legalised by the British Government. "I think I see plainly," he said, "that Lord Ernest's government is fast going to pieces, though I can't expect him to admit it!" Lord Ernest laughed good-naturedly, and said that Father M'Fadden saw more in Donegal than he (Lord Ernest) was able to see
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in Westminster. Upon my asking him whether the "Plan of Campaign" did not in effect abrogate the moral duty of a man to meet the legal obligations he had voluntarily incurred, Father M'Fadden advanced his own theory of the subject, which was that, "if a man can pay a fair year's rent out of the produce of his holding, he is bound to pay it. But if the rent be a rack-rent, imposed on the tenant against his will, or if the holding does not produce the rent, then I don't think that is a strict obligation in conscience."
In America, the courts, I fear, would make short work of this theory of Father M'Fadden. If a tenant there cannot pay his first quarter's rent (they don't let him darken his soul by a year's liabilities) they promptly and mercilessly put him out.
Interesting as was our conversation with the parish priest of Gweedore, I felt that we might be trespassing too far upon his kindness and his time. So we rose to go. He insisted upon our going into the dining-room, where, as he told us, he had hospitably entertained sundry visiting statesmen from England, and there offered us a glass of the excellent wine of the country. He excused
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himself from joining us as being "almost a teetotaller."
On our return to the hotel I met the Galwegian strolling about. When I told him of Father M'Fadden's courteous hospitality, he said, "I am very glad you took that glass he offered. I really believe his quarrel with Captain Hill dates back to Hill's declining that same courtesy under Father M'Fadden's roof."
gweedore, Monday, Feb. 6.-Another very beautiful morning-as a farmer said with whom I chatted on my morning stroll, "A grand day, sorr!" Errigal, which in this mountain atmosphere seems almost to hang over our hotel, but is in reality three or four miles away, stood out superbly against a clear azure sky, wreaths of soft luminous mist floating like a divine girdle half way up his bare volcanic peak.
I walked up to the Bunbeg road with Lord Ernest to call upon some peasants whom he knows. In one stone cabin, very well built and plastered, standing sidewise to the road, with doors on either side, we found the house apparently in charge of a little girl of nine or ten years, a weird but pretty
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child with very delicate well-cut features, who lay couchant upon her doubled-up arm on a low bed in a corner of the main room, and peered at us over her elbow with sparkling inquisitive eyes.
By her side sat a man with his cap on, who might have been the "young Pretender," or the "old Kaiser," so far as his looks went towards indicating his age. He never rose or welcomed us, being, as we afterwards found out, only a visitor like ourselves, and a kinsman of Mrs. M'Donnell, the head of the house. "Mrs. M'Donnell," he said, "is gone to the store at Bunbeg."
This main room rose perhaps ten feet in height to the open roof. It had one large and well-glazed window. When Lord George Hill came here there were not ten square feet of window-glass in the whole parish outside of the Church, the national school, and the residence of the chief police-officer.
Windows when there were any were closed with dried sheepskins, through which the cats ran in and out as freely as through the curious tunnel which the kindly Master of Blantyre has constructed at Sheba's Cross for their special benefit.
There were two beds in the main room ; rather high than low, one of rushes, on which lay the
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child of whom I have spoken, and one of greater pretensions vacant in another corner.
The door stood wide open, but the cabin was warm and comfortable, and a peat fire smouldered, sending up, to me, most agreeable odours. An inner room seemed to be a sort of granary, full of hay and straw. There the cow is kept at night. "It's handy if you want a drink of milk," said the visitor. In comparison with the dwellings of small farmers in Eastern France or in Southern Italy this Donegal cabin was not only clean but attractive. It was more squalid perhaps, but less dreary than the extemporised and flimsy dwellings of settlers in the extreme Far West of the United States, and I should say decidedly a more wholesome habitation than the hermetically sealed and dismal wooden houses of hundreds of struggling farmers in the older Eastern States. I am sure my old friend Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, who made the only thorough surveys of agricultural life in the United States before the Civil War, would have pronounced it in all respects superior, so far as health and comfort go, to the average home of the average "poor buccra," between the Chesapeake and the Sabine. I am afraid a great deal of not wholly innocuous non-
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sense has been written and spoken about this part of the United Kingdom by well-meaning philanthropists who have gauged the condition of the people here by their own standards of comfort and enjoyment. Most things in this life of ours are relative. I well remember hearing an American millionaire, who began life in New York as the patentee of a mouse-trap, express his profound compassion for a judge of the Supreme Court condemned to live "upon a pittance of eight thousand dollars a year."
These dwellers in the cabins of Donegal are millionaires, so far as those essentials of life are concerned, which we call room and air and freedom to move and breathe, in comparison with hundreds and thousands of their own race in the slums of New York and Chicago and Liverpool and London.
Mrs. M'Donnell's cousin, however, took dark views of things. The times "were no good at all."
The potatoes, I had heard, were doing well this year.
"No! they wouldn't keep the people; indeed, they wouldn't. There would have to be relief."
"Why not manure the land?"
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"Manure? oh yes, the sea-stuff was good manure, but the people couldn't get it. They had no boats; and it cost eighteenpence a load to haul it from Bunbeg. No! they couldn't get it off the rocks. At the Eosses they might; the Rosses were not so badly off as Derrybeg or Gweedore, for all they might say."
"But Father M'Fadden had urged me," I said, "to see the Rosses, because the people there were worse off than any of the people."
"Well, Father M'Fadden was a good man; he was a friend of the people; and they were bad indeed at the Rosses, but they could get the sea-stuff there, and hadn't to pay for cartage. And indeed, if you put the sea-stuff on the bogland, the land was better in among the rocks at the Rosses than was the bogland, it was indeed: the stuff did no good at all the first year. The second and the third it gave good crops-but then you must burn it
-and by the fourth year and the, fifth it was all ashes, and no good at all! This was God's truth, it was; and there must be relief."
"But could the people earn nothing in Scotland or in Tyrone?"
"Oh no, they could earn nothing at all. They could pay no rent."
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So he sat there, a Jeremiah among the potsherds, quite contented and miserable-well and hearty in a ragged frieze coat, with his hat over his eyes.
While we talked, a tall lusty young beggar-girl wandered in and out unnoticed. Chickens pecked and fluttered about, and at intervals the inevitable small dog suddenly barked and yelped.
On our way back we met the elder daughter of Mrs. M'Donnell, a girl of sixteen, the "beauty of Gweedore." A beauty she certainly is, and of a type hardly to have been looked for here.
Her lithe graceful figure, her fine, small, chiselled features, her shapely little head rather defiantly set on her sloping shoulders, her fair complexion and clear hazel eyes, her brown golden hair gathered up behind into a kind of tress, all these were Saxon rather than Celtic. Her trim neat ankles were bare, after the mountain fashion, but she was prettily dressed in a well-fitting dark blue gown, wore a smartly trimmed muslin apron, with lace about her throat, and carried over her arm a new woollen shawl, very tasteful and quiet in colour. She greeted us with a self-possessed smile.
"No," she had not been shopping with her
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mother. The shawl was a present from one of her cousins. Did we not think it very pretty? She was only out for a walk, and had no notion where her mother might be. A stalwart red-bearded man who lounged and loitered behind her on the road was "only a friend," she said, "not a relation at all!" Nor did she show, I am sorry to say, any compassion for the evident uneasiness with which, from a distance, he regarded her long and affable parley with two strangers.
We asked her whether she expected and wished to live in Gweedore, or would like to follow elsewhere some calling or trade. "Oh yes," she unhesitatingly replied, "I should like to be a dressmaker in Derry; but," she added pensively, "it's no use my thinking about it, for I know I shouldn't be let!"
"Wouldn't you like Dublin as well?" I asked.
"Perhaps; but I shouldn't be let go to Dublin either!"
Would she like to go to America?
"No!" she didn't think much of "the Americans who came back," and America must be "a very hard country for work, and very cold in the winter."
Now this was a widow's daughter, living in such
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a cabin as I have described, and upon a small holding in a parish reputed to be the most "distressful "in Donegal!1
Returning to the hotel we found our car ready for Falcarragh. Our driver was a quiet, sensible fellow, who did not seem to care sixpence about the great Nationality question, though he knew the country very well.
Iron was visible in the rocks as we drove along, and we passed some abandoned mining works, "lead and silver mines;" he said, "they were given up long before his time." We got many fine views of the mountains Errigal, Aghla More, and Muckish. Lough Altan, a wild tarn, lies between Errigal and Aghla More.
The peasants we met stared at us curiously, but were very civil, even at a place bearing the ominous name of Bedlam, against which Mr. Burke had warned us as the most troublesome on the way. All the countryside was there attending a fair, and we drove through throngs of red-shawled, barelegged women, ponies, horses, cattle, and sheep.
1 For this holding, of 10 Irish acres, I have since learned the widow O'Donnell pays 10s. a year. She is in the receipt of outdoor relief, there being fever in the house (May 1888).
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Of Tory Island, with its famous tower, dating back to the fabled "Fomorians," we had some grand glimpses. The white surf, flashing and leaping high in the air on the nearer islets accented and gave life to the landscape.
In one glorious landlocked bay, we saw not a single boat riding. Our driver said, "The fishermen all live on Tory Island, and send their fish to Sligo. The people on the mainland don't like going out in the boats."
Lord Ernest tells me there is a movement to have a telegraph station set up on Tory Island, to announce the Canadian steamers coming into Moville for Deny.
We found Falcarragh, or "Cross-Roads," a large clean-looking village, consisting of one long and broad street, through which horses and cattle were wandering in numbers, apparently at their own sweet will.
Ballyconnell House, the seat of Mr. Wybrants Olphert, is the manor house of the place. As we drew near, no signs appeared of the dreadful "Boycott." The great gates of the park stood hospitably open, and we drove in unchallenged past a pretty ivy-clad lodge, and through low, but
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thickly planted groves. A huge boulder, ruddy with iron ore, bears the uncanny and unspellable name of the "Clockchinnfhaelaidh," or "Stone of Kinfaele." Upon this stone, tradition tells us, Balor, a giant of Tory Island, chopped off the head of an unreasonable person named Mackinfeale, for complaining that Balor, under some prehistoric "Plan of Campaign," had driven away his favourite cow, Glasgavlan.
Ballyconnell House, a substantial mansion of the Georgian era, stands extremely well. Over a fine sloping lawn in front, you have a glorious view of the sea, and of a very fine headland, known as "the Duke's Head," from the really remarkable resemblance it bears to the profile of Wellington. The winds have such power here that there are but few well-grown trees, and those near the house. About them paraded many game-hens, spirited birds, looking like pheasants. These, as we learned, never sleep save in the trees.
The "boycotted" lord of the manor came out to greet us-a handsome, stalwart man of some seventy years, with a kindly face, and most charming manners. His family, presumably of Dutch origin, has been established here since Charles II.
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He himself holds 18,133 acres here, valued at £1802 a year ; and he is a resident landlord in the fullest sense of the term. For fifty years he has lived here, during all which time, as he told us to-day, he has "never slept for a week out of the country." His furthest excursions of late years have been to Raphoe, where he has a married daughter. "Absenteeism "clearly has nothing to do with the quarrel between Mr. Olphert and his tenants, or with the "boycotting " of Ballyconnell.
The dragoons from Dunfanaghy had just ridden away as we came up. They had come over in full fig to show themselves, and to encourage the respectable Catholics of Falcarragh, who side with their parish priest, Father M'Fadden of Glena, and object to the vehement measures promoted by his young curate, Father Stephens, recently of Liverpool. The people had received them with much satisfaction. "They had never seen the cavalry before, and were much delighted!"
Before we sat down to luncheon young Mr. Olphert came in. It was curious to see this quiet, well-bred young gentleman throw down his belt and his revolver on the hall table, like his gloves and his umbrella. "Quite like the Far
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West," I said. "And we are as far in the West as we can get," he replied laughingly.
Our luncheon was excellent-so good, in fact, that we felt a kind of remorse as if we had selfishly quartered ourselves upon a beleaguered garrison. But Mr. Olphert said he had no fear of being starved out. Personally he was, and always had been, on the best terms with the people of Falcarragh. The older tenants, even now, if he met them walking in the fields when no one was in sight, would come up and salute him, and say how "disgusted" they were with what was going on. It was the younger generation who were troublesome-more troublesome, he added, to their own parish priest than they were to him. Three or four years ago a returned American Irishman, an avowed unbeliever, but an active Nationalist and one of Mr. Forster's "suspects," had come into the neighbourhood and done his worst to break up the parish. He used to come to Falcarragh on a Sunday, and get up on a stone outside the chapel while Father M'Fadden was saying Mass or preaching, and harangue such people as would listen to him, and caricature the priest and the sermon going on within sound of his own voice. "I am myself
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a Protestant," said Mr. Olphert, "but I have a great respect for priests who do their duty; and the conduct of Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, in countenancing this man, who tried to overthrow the authority of Father M'Fadden of Glena, excited my indignation. As to what is going on now," said Mr. Olphert, "it is to Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, and to Father Stephens here, that the trouble is chiefly to be charged." This tallies with what I heard at Gweedore from my Galwegian acquaintance. He thought Mr. Olphert, and Mr. Hewson, the agent, ought to have made peace on the terms which Father Stephens said he was willing to accept for the tenants, these being a reduction of 3s. 4d. in the pound, if Mr. Olphert would extend the reduction to the whole year. My Galwegian thought this reasonable, because in this region the rent, it appears, is only collected once a year. With this impartial temper, my Galwegian still maintained that but for the two priests-the parish priest of Gweedore and the curate of Falcarragh-there need have been no trouble at Falcarragh. There had been no "evictions." When the tenants first went to Mr. Olphert they asked a reduction of 4s. in the pound on the non-judicial rents, and this Mr.
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Olphert at once agreed to give them. The tenants had regularly paid their rents for ten years before. That they are not going down in the world would appear from the fact that the P. 0. Savings Banks' deposits at Falcarragh, which stood at £62, 15s. 10d. in 1880, rose in 1887 to £494, 10s. 8d. A small number of them had gone into Court and had judicial rents fixed; and it was on the contention promoted by the two priests, through these judicial tenants, he said, that all the difficulty hinged. Father M'Fadden of Glena, who thought the quarrel unjustifiable and silly, had an interview with Mr. Blane, M.P., and with Father Stephens, and tried to arrange it all. He would have succeeded, my Galwegian thought, had not the agent, Mr. Hewson, obstinately fought with the obstinate curate, Father Stephens, over the suggestion made by the latter, that the terms granted on the fine neighbouring estate of Mr. Stuart of Ards-a man of wealth, who lives mainly at Brighton, though Ards is one of the loveliest places in Ireland- should be extended by Mr. Olphert for a whole year to his own people, who had never asked for anything of the kind!
Mr. Olphert said he knew Gweedore well. He
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owns; a "townland"1 there, on which he has thirty-five tenants, none of them on a holding at more more than £4 a year. Father M'Fadden of Gwee-dore, he said, finding that the people on Mr. Olphert's townland were going back to the "Rundale" practices, tried to induce Mr. Olphert to return all these subdivisions as "tenancies." This he refused to do. As to the resources of the peasantry, he thought them greater than they appeared to be. "This conies to light," said Mr. Olphert, "whenever there is a tenant-right for sale. There is never any lack of money to buy it, and at a round good price." The people also, he thinks, spend a great deal on what they regard as luxuries,
1 This "townland" is a curious use of a Saxon term to describe a Celtic fact. The territory of an Irish sept seems to have been divided up into "townlands," each townland consisting of four, or in some cases six, groups of holdings, occupied by as many families of the "sept." The chief of the "sept" divided up each "townland" periodically among these groups, while the common fields were cut up among the families as they increased and multiplied according to the system-against which Lord George Hill battled at Gweedore- known as "rundale" or "rundeal," from the Celtic, "ruin-dioll," a "partition" or "man's share." This is quite unlike the Russian "mir" or collective village, and not more like the South Slav "zadruga" which makes each family a community, the land belonging to all, as, according to M. Eugene Simon, it does in China. But it is as inconsistent with Henry George's State ownership of the land or the rents as either of those systems.
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and particularly on tea. "A cup of tea could not be got for love or money in Gweedore, when Lord George Hill carne there. You might as well have asked for a glass of Tokay."
Now they use and abuse it in the most deleterious way imaginable. They buy the tea at exorbitant rates, often at five shillings a pound, and usually on credit, paying a part of one bill on running up another, put it into a saucepan or an iron pot, and boil, or rather stew, it over the fire, till they brew a kind of hell-broth, which they imbibe at odd moments all day long! Oddly enough, this is the way in which they prepare tea in Cashmere and other parts of India, with this essential difference, though, that the Orientals mitigate the astringency of the herb with milk and almonds and divers ingredients, tending to make a sort of "compote" of it. Taken as it is taken here, it must have a tremendous effect on the nerves. Mr. Olphert thinks it has had much to do with the increase of lunacy in Ireland of late years. From his official connection with the asylum at Letterkenny, he knows that while it used to accommodate the lunatics of three counties, it is now hardly adequate to the needs of Donegal alone.
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Everything about Ballyconnell House is out of key with the actual military conditions of life here. It is essentially what Tennyson calls "an ancient home of ordered peace." In the ample hall hang old portraits and trophies of the chase. The large and handsome library, panelled in rich dark wood, is filled full of well-bound books. Prints, busts, the thousand and one things of "bigotry and virtue" which mark the dwelling-place of educated and thoughtful people are to be seen on every side. Mr. Olphert showed us a cabinet full of bronzes, picked up on the strand of the sea. Among these were brooches, pins, clasps, buckles, two very fine bronze swords, and a pair of bronze links engraved with distinctly Masonic emblems, such as the level, the square, and the compasses. When were these things made, and by what people?
So far as I know, Masonry in the British Islands cannot be historically traced back much, if at all, beyond the Revolution of 1688.
Mr. Olphert and his son walked about the place with us. They have no fears of an attack, but think it wise to keep a force of police on the premises. The only demonstration yet made of any kind against the house was the march from
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Falcarragh some time ago of a mob of young men, who promptly withdrew on catching sight of half-a-dozen policemen within the park gates. As to getting his work done, some of his people had steadily refused to acknowledge the "boycott," and they were now strengthened by the attitude of those who had surrendered to the pressure, and were now sullen and angry with the League which had given them nothing to do, and no supplies.
At Falcarragh we met a person who knew much about the late Lord Leitrim who was murdered in this neighbourhood on the highway some years ago. He spoke freely of the murderer by name, as if it were matter of common notoriety. Of the murdered man, he said that he had made himself extremely unpopular and odious, not so much by certain immoralities freely alleged at the time of his death, as by vexatious meddling with the prejudices and whims of his tenants. "He used to go into the houses and pull down cartoons and placards, if he saw them put up on the walls." "No! he had no party feeling in the matter; he used to pull down William III. and the Pope with an equal hand." It seems that in this region, too, a local legend has grown up of the birth at a place called Cashelmore of a "Queen of France." The case is worth noting
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as throwing light on the genesis and accuracy of local traditions. The "Queen of France" referred to proves, on inquiry, to have been Miss Patterson, who married Jerome Bonaparte, brother of the first Emperor, afterwards created by him King of Westphalia! This was the lady so well known in America as Mrs. Patterson Bonaparte of Baltimore, who died at a great age only a few years ago. I have no reason to suppose that she was born at Cashelmore at all or in Ireland. But her father, reputed in the time of Washington to be the richest man in the United States, who came from the North of Ireland and settled in Baltimore as a merchant, may very well have been born there.
To my great regret Father M'Fadden of Glena, or Falcarragh, was absent from home. As we drove homeward we met on the way a young lady on a smart jaunting-car, with a servant in livery. This was the daughter, our driver told us, of Mr. Griffiths, the Protestant clergyman, past whose residence our road lay. His church stands high upon a commanding cliff, and is a feature in the landscape. We met the parson himself also, walking with a friend. The road from Bedlam to Derry-beg goes by a region of the "Rosses," reputed the
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most woe-begone part of the Gweedore district. This is the scene of a curious tale told about Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, by his ill-wishers in these parts, to the effect that he advises English Members of Parliament and other "sympathising" visitors who come here to make a pilgrimage to "the Rosses," where, no matter at what time of day they appear, they invariably find sundry of the people sitting in their huts and eating stewed seaweed out of iron pots. I cannot vouch for this tale, but certainly I have seen no people here of either sex, or of any age, who look as if they lived on stewed seaweed. Another person at Falcarragh told us, as an illustration of the influence exerted by Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, in this parish, over which he has no proper authority, that, in obedience to an intimation from him, the persons whose seats in the chapel had been occupied on two successive Sundays by the policemen now stationed here, yesterday refused to allow the policemen to occupy them, the only exception being in the case of a man who had been arrested at the same time with Father Stephens, and who had been so well treated by the police, that he felt bound to repay their courtesy by offering one of them his seat.
dungloe, Tuesday, Feb. 7.-We rose early this morning at Gweedore; the sun shining so brightly that we were forced to drop the window-shades at breakfast, while I read my letter from Koine, telling me of the bitter cold there, and of a slight snow-fall last week. Here the birds were singing, and the air was as soft and exhilarating as that of an April morning in the Highlands of Mexico or Costa Rica.
Our host gave us a capital car, with a staunch nag and a wide-awake jarvey, thanks to all which I found the thirteen miles drive to this place too short. No doubt it will be a great thing for Donegal when "light railways" are laid down here. But I pity the traveller of the future here, if he is never to know the delight of traversing these wild and picturesque wastes in such weather as we have had to-day, on a car, well-balanced by a single
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pleasant companion, drinking, as he goes, deep draughts of the Atlantic air! Truly on a jaunting-car "two are company and three are none." You have almost the free companionship of a South American journey in the saddle, jumping off to walk, when you like, more freely still.
We drove near the house of the "beauty of Gweedore," but she was not visible, though we met her mother (by no means a pulchra mater) as we crossed the Clady at Bryan's Bridge.
We soon passed from the bogland into a wilderness of granite. Our jarvey, however, maintained that there was "better land among the stones than any bogland could be." He was a shrewd fellow, and summed up the economical situation, I thought, better than some of his betters, when he said of the whole region that "it will fatten four, feed five, and starve six."
It may well fatten six, though, I should say, if the natural wealth of this vast granite range can be properly turned to account. On every side of us lay vast blocks of granite of all hues and grades, all absolutely unworked, but surely not unworkable. We stopped and picked up many specimens, some of them almost as rich in colour as porphyry. Of
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lakes and lakelets supplying water-power the name too, is legion.
Beyond Annagary we caught a glimpse of the Isle of Arran, the scene, a few years ago, of so much suffering, and that of a kind I should think as much beyond the control of legislation as the misery and destruction which have overtaken successive attempts to establish settlements on Anti-costi in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
This town of Dungloe sprawls along the shore of the sea. It is reputed the most ill-favoured town in Donegal, and it certainly is not a dream of beauty. But it blooms all over with evidences of the prosperity of that interesting type of Irish civilisation, the "Gombeen man," of whom I had heard so much at Gweedore. Over the doorways of most of the shops appear the names of various members of the family of Sweeney, all of them, I am told, brought here and established within a few years past by the head of the sept, who is not only the great "Gombeen man" of the region, but a leading local member of the National League, and Her Majesty's Postmaster. The Sweeneys, in fact, commercially speaking, dominate Dungloe, their only visible rivals being a returned Irish
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American, who has built himself a neat two-story house and shop just at the entrance of the village, and our own host, Mr. Maurice Boyle, whose extremely neat little inn just faces a large shop, the stronghold of the Chief of the Sweeneys. I am sorry to find that this important citizen of Dungloe is not now here. We went into his chief establishment to make some purchases, and found it full of customers, chiefly women, neatly dressed after the Donegal fashion, and busily chaffering with the shopgirls and shopmen, who had their hands full, exhibiting goods such as certainly would not be found in any New York or New England village of this sort. When we secured the attention of the chief shopman, a nattily dressed, dark-haired young man who would not have discredited the largest "store" in Grand Street or the Bowery of New York, we asked him to show us some of the home-made woollen goods of the country. These, he assured us, had no sale in Dungloe, and he did not keep them. But he showed us piles of handsome Scottish tweeds at much higher prices. Now as this is an exclusively agricultural region, it is evident that the tenants must be able to make it worth a trader's while to keep on hand such goods
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as we here found, and therefore that they cannot be exactly on "the ragged edge" of things.
Mr. Sweeney is also the proprietor of the chief "hotel" of Dungloe; our host, Mr. Boyle, being in fact supposed to be "boycotted" for entertaining officers of the police. This "boycott," however, has entailed no practical inconvenience upon us; and Mr. Boyle's pretty and plucky daughters, who manage his house for him, laughed scornfully at the notion of being "bothered" by it.
After luncheon we took a car and drove out to Burtonport, on the Roads of Arranmore, to visit the parish priest there, Father Walker, and Mr. Hammond, the agent of the Conyngham estates.
We passed near a large inland lake, Lough Meela, and the seaward views along the coast were very fine. With peace and order this corner of Ireland might easily become the chosen site of the most delightful seaside homes in the United Kingdom. The Recorder of Cork has discovered this, and passes a great part of the year here. This Donegal coast is no further from the great centres of British wealth and population than are Mount Desert and the other summer resorts of Maine and New Hampshire from New York and Philadelphia; and the
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islands which break the great roll of the Atlantic here cannot well be more nearly in "a state of nature" than were the Isles of Shoals, for example, in my college days, long after Mr. Lowell first wandered there with the transcendental Thaxters to celebrate the thunders of the surf at Appledore.
The wonderful granitic formations we had seen on the way from Gweedore stretch all along the coast to the Eoads of Arranmore. At Burtonport they lie on the very water's edge. At a place called Lickeena, masses of beautiful salmon- and rose-coloured granite actually trend into the tidewater, and at Burtonport proper is a promontory of that richly-mottled granite which I had supposed to be the peculiar heritage of Peterhead, and which is now largely exported from Scotland to the United States. Why should not this Irish granite be shipped directly from Donegal to America, there to be built up into cathedrals, and shaped into monuments for the Exiles of Erin? All these formations which we have seen present themselves in great cubical blocks, so jointed that they may be detached without blasting, with great comparative ease, and with little of the waste which results from the squaring of shapeless masses. At the same
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time, as we saw while coming from Gweedore, the many lakes of this region offer all the water-power necessary for polishing-works, columnar lathes, and the general machinery used in developing such quarries. Without being an expert in granites, I have seen enough of the granite works at home to feel quite sure that a moderate and judiciously managed investment here ought to return a handsome result. If the National League is as well off as it is reputed to be, it might go into this business, open a new and remunerative industry to the people of a "congested" district, and earn dividends large enough to enable it to pay the expenses of the war against England at Westminster, without drawing on the savings of the servant-girls in America. The only person likely to suffer would be the "Gombeen man," if the peasantry earned enough to pay off their debts to him, and stop the flow of interest into his coffers.
At Burtonport we found the "Gombeen man," of Dungloe, represented by a very large "store." He runs steamers between this place and various ports on the Scottish and Irish coasts, bringing in goods and taking out the crops which his debtors turn over to him.
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This Burtonport "store" towers high above the modest home of the parish priest, Father Walker. To our great regret he was absent on parochial duty, but his niece very kindly welcomed us into his modest study, where we left a note begging him to honour us with his company at dinner in Dungloe.
Mr. Hammond, too, was absent, so after paying our respects to his wife, we drove back to Dungloe, and walked about the village till dark, chatting with the good-natured, civil people. The local sensation here they tell us is not the trial of the priests at Dunfanaghy, but a "row" breeding between the chief of the Sweeneys and one of his brethren over the possession of Her Majesty's Post-office. It seems there is an official regulation or custom that the post-office once established in a particular building shall not be moved thence without positive cause shown. The head of the Sweeneys, having completed his new and grand establishment, wishes to move the post-office thither; but the brother to whom he confided the office in the older building, where he left it while making the change of his own business, now desires to keep the office where it is, and, I suppose, to become postmaster him-
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self!1 A trivial matter enough, but not without edification for students of the actual situation in this most curious country.
About seven o'clock Father Walker made his appearance-a fine-looking, dignified, most amiable man. He is a teetotaller, which we esteemed a stroke of good fortune, a bottle of port wine which we obtained, despite the "boycott," from the Gombeen shop, proving to be of such a quality that it might have been concocted in the last century, expressly to discredit the Methuen treaty.
Father Walker is the President of the National League branch.
Like Father M'Fadden at Gweedore, he speaks of the landlords in this part of Donegal as really owning, not so much farms as residential grounds for tenants who export their thews and sinews to Scotland and other countries, and live by that traffic mainly. It is a common practice here, he tells me, for the children, who are very sharp and bright, to be taken by their parents into Tyrone
1 From a question just asked (July 12) in the House of Commons, and answered by the Postmaster-General, I gather that this "local question" has been further complicated by the removal of Mr. Sweeney, the sub-postmaster, under an official regulation.
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and other parts of the North, and put out to live with the people there, who prize them, and pay very good wages, I asked him if he thought the official estimate I had seen of the proportion of these "migratory labourers" to the whole population of Ulster, as about one-tenth of one per cent., an under-statement. He thought it was an understatement for this part of the county of Donegal, but to be explained, perhaps, by the fact that so much of the migration is merely from one county into another, and not out of the kingdom. He agreed that the practice goes on upon a much more extensive scale in the County Mayo, where more than thirteen per cent. of all the adult male population are said to belong to the category of migratory labourers. The Irish population of England seems to be recruited at regular seasons in this way, very much as is the Albanian population of Constantinople.
Father Walker was full of information about the granite quarries, and much interested in the prospect of their development. He told us that a practical engineer from Liverpool had, not, long ago, been here seeking a lease of the quarries-or, in other words, of the quarrying rights over sixty or
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seventy miles of Donegal-from the agent of Lord Conyngham. This engineer had come to Donegal on a sporting expedition last year, and gone back full of the capabilities of the granite region. Father Walker had been told by him that similar quarries also exist in the County Mayo at Belmullet, where preparations are now making, he thinks, to develop them, though on a smaller scale than would be both practicable and desirable here.
In Mayo, as in Donegal, labour must be plentiful enough, and the comparatively unskilled labour required in such quarries would be particularly abundant here. It would be a great thing, Father Walker thought, to introduce here the custom of a regular pay-day, and with it gradually habits of exactness and economy, not easily developed without it.
He gave me also, at my request, some valuable information as to the stipends of the Catholic clergy, and the sources from which they are derived. This subject has been agitated in the local press of this part of Ireland in connection with estimates of Father M'Fadden's income at Gweedore, which Father M'Fadden declares, I believe, to be greatly exaggerated. Father Walker has been parish priest
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at Burtonport for about nine years. In all that time the highest sum. reached in one year by the stipend has been £560; this sum having to be divided between the parish priest, who received £280, and two curates receiving £140 each. The annual stipend, however, has more than once fallen below £480, and Father Walker thinks £520 a fair average, giving £260 to the parish priest, and £130 each to his curates. Where there are only two priests in a parish, as is the case, for example, in each of the parishes of Gweedore and Falcarragh, the parish priest receives two-thirds, and the curate one-third of the stipend.
The sources of this stipend are various, and in speaking upon this point Father Walker desired me to note that he could only speak positively of the rules of this particular diocese, as they do not cover in their entirety the usages of other provinces, or even of other dioceses in this province of Ireland. One general and invariable rule indeed exists throughout Ireland, which is that every parish priest is bound to offer the Holy Sacrifice, pro populo, for the whole people, without fee or reward, on all Sundays and Holy Days, making in all some eighty-seven times a year.
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In the diocese of Raphoe, to which Burtonport belongs, there are four recognised methods by which the revenues of the priests are raised. The first is an annual fixed stipend of four shillings for each household or family. "Sometimes," said Father Walker, "but rarely, the better-off families give more than this; and not unfrequently the poorer families fail to give anything under this head." The second is a fixed stipend of one pound upon the occasion of a marriage. "Sometimes, but not often, this sum is exceeded by generous and prosperous parishioners." The third is a standard stipend of two shillings for a baptism. "This also suffers, but on rare occasions," said the good priest, "a favourable exception. I mention the exceptions as well as the rules," said the good Father, "in order to make grateful allusion to the donors."
The fourth and last consists of the offerings at interments. "These vary very much indeed, but they constitute an important, and, I may say, a necessary item in the incomes of the clergy."
Besides these four forms of stipend, the priests derive a revenue from "those who ask them to offer the Holy Sacrifice 'for their special intention.'" In such cases it is customary to offer a sum, usually of
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two shillings, but sometimes of half-a-crown, which is intended both as a remuneration for the priest, and to cover the cost of altar requisites.
Father Walker estimates the families in his own parish in round numbers at about thirteen hundred, and in Gweedore and Falcarragh at about nine hundred each. We had some conversation about the great fisheries, which one would think ought to exist, but do not exist, on this coast, such fishing as is done here by the natives being on a very limited scale. Father Walker tells me that formerly £80,000 worth of herring were taken on this coast, though he is not sure that Donegal fishermen took them. But of late years he thinks the herring have deserted these waters. He admits, however, that the people have no liking for the sea. "Going over once," he said, "to Arranmore from the mainland in a boat with a priest of the country, the water was a little rough, and the poor man nearly pinched a piece out of my arm holding on to me!" Father Walker himself thought the trip across the "sound" to Tory Island rather a ticklish piece of business. Yet the natives make it sometimes in their little corraghs or canvas boats, which would seem to show that some of them must be capable of seamanship. Most of these
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islands, notably Arranmore, Father Walker thought quite incapable of supporting the people who dwell on them, without constant help from the mainland. Is it not an open question whether an age which countenances the condemnation of private property in houses declared unfit for human habitation ought to hesitate at dealing in the same spirit with nurseries of chronic penury and intermittent famine? On one of these islands, known as Scull Island, Father Walker tells me great quantities of human bones are found in circular graves or trenches, very shallow, and going all around the island. There are legends of great battles fought on the little island, and of pestilences, to account for these. But it is likely enough that the island was simply used as a cemetery by the dwellers on the shore at some early date. Father Walker when he was last there had brought away some of these relics. One he allowed us, the beautifully formed jawbone of a young child, apparently ten or twelve years old, with exquisite pearly teeth. The chin was not in the least prognathous, but very well formed. In this district of Dungloe, too, the women weave and knit as well as at Gweedore; and Father Walker, before he left us for his home, after a most agreeable evening, promised
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to send me some specimens of their handiwork. He is sure that with a proper organisation this industry might be so developed as to materially relieve the people here from the pressure of their debts to the dealers of all kinds, a pressure much more severe than that of the rent. According to the dealers themselves, no tenant really in debt to them can now expect to work himself free of the burden under four or five years. It is obvious how much power, political as well as social, is thus lodged in the hands of the dealers, and especially of the "Gombeen men."
baron's court, Wednesday, Feb. 8.-Since last night I have travelled from one extreme to the other of Irish life-from the desolation of the Rosses of Donegal to the grandly wooded, picturesque, and beautiful demesne of Baron's Court. We made an early start from Dungloe on a capital car for Letter-keuny, where we were to strike the railway for Strabane and Newtown-Stewart. The morning was clear, but cold. On leaving Dungloe we drove directly into a region of reclaimed land, where improvements of various kinds seemed to be going on.
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All this our jarvey informed us, with a knowing look, belonged to Mr. Sweeney.
"Was he a squire of this country?" I asked innocently.
"A squire of this country, sorr? He is just Mr. Sweeney, the Gombeen man; he and his brothers, they all came here from where I don't know."
An energetic man, certainly, Mr. Sweeney, and not likely, I should think, to allow the National League, to push matters here to the point of nationalising the land of Donegal, if he can prevent it. In the highway we met, two or three miles out of Dungloe, a very trim dainty little lady, in a long, well-fitting London waterproof ulster, with a natty little umbrella in her hand, walking merrily towards the town. How weatherwise she was soon appeared, the rain coming up suddenly, and coining down sharply, in the whirling way it has among the hills everywhere. The scenery was desolate, but grand. Countless little lochs give sparkle and life to it. Everywhere the granite. About Doocharry, a romantic little spot, where Lord Cloncurry has a fishing-box in the heart of a glorious landscape, masses crop out of a rich red granite, finer in colour than any we had previously seen. In that
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neighbourhood the wastes of Donegal take on an aspect which recalls, though upon quite a different key in colour, the inimitable beauty of those treeless North-western highlands of Scotland, upon which Nature has lavished all the wealth of her palette. Vast spaces of brown and red and gold shimmer away under the softly luminous mountain atmosphere to the dark blues and purples of the hills. We passed Glen Veagh again, but from quite a different point of view, which gave us a beautiful picture of Lough Veagh in its length, and of the smiling pastoral landscape upon its further shore.
As we drew near the eastern boundary of Donegal, hedges and civilised agriculture reappeared. With these we came upon mud cottages, such as I had not seen in Donegal, being the huts provided for their labourers by the tenant-farmers, whose comfortable stone-houses and out-buildings stood well back under the long ranges of the hills.
We passed through much striking scenery, perhaps the finest point being a magnificent Gap in the hills, guarded and defined by three colossal headlands, one of them a vast long rampart, the other two gigantic counterscarps. The immediate approach to Letterkenny, too, from the west is charming,
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passing in full view of the extensive and beautiful park and the large mansion of Colonel Stewart of the Guards, and skirting the well-kept estate of Mr. Boyd, the owner of the ivy-clad cottages which so took my fancy the other day.
In the Ulster settlement under King James I. a patent for Letterkenny was issued to one of the Craw-fords. Then, as the records tell us, "Sir George Marburie dwelt there, and there were forty houses all inhabited by British tenants. A great market town, and standeth well for the King's service."
Again we found a fair going on-this time attended by swarms of peddlers vending old clothes and all sorts of small wares, bread-cartmen, and tea-vendors. These latter aver that it is easier to sell tea in the "congested" districts at 4s. 6d. than at 2s. 6d. The people have no test of its quality but its price!
The town was gay with soldiers and police- whose advent had created such a demand for bread and meat, a man told us, that all the butchers and bakers in Letterkenny and Dun-fanaghy were at their wits' ends to meet it. "But they don't complain of that!" We reached New-town-Stewart by railway after dark. As we
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passed Sion the mills were all lighted up, giving it the look of an English or New England town. A New England snow-storm, too, awaited us at our journey's end; and, after a wild drive of several miles through the whirling white mists, it was a delectable thing to find ourselves welcomed in a hall full of light and warmth and flowers by merry children and lively dogs, the guard of honour of the most gracious and charming of hostesses.
baron's court, Thursday, Feb. 9.-Among a batch of letters received this morning I find one from a most estimable and accomplished priest in the West of Ireland, to whom I wrote from Dublin announcing my intention of visiting the counties of Clare and Kerry. "I shall be very glad," he says, "to learn that no evil hath befallen you during your visit to that solitary plague-spot, where dwell the disgraceful and degraded 'Moonlighters.' Would not 'martial law,' if applied to that particular spot, suffice to stamp out these insensate pests of society?" This language, strong, but not too strong in view of the hideous murder last week near Lixnaw of a farmer in the presence of his daughter for the
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atrocious crime of taking a farm "boycotted" by the National League, shows that the open alliance between this organisation and the criminal classes in certain parts of Ireland is beginning (not a day too soon) to arouse the better order of priests in Ireland to the peril of playing with edged tools. For my correspondent is not only a priest, but a Nationalist. I have sent him in reply a letter received by me, also to-day, touching the conduct in connection with the Lixnaw murder of a priest, a curate, I think, comparatively new to the place, who, standing by the corpse of the murdered man, endeavoured, so my informant states, to make his unfortunate daughter give up the names of the murderers, the effect of which would have been to put them on their guard, and "under the protection of that public conspiracy of silence, which is the shield of all such criminals in these parts!" Baron's Court is a very large, stately mansion, lacking elevation perhaps like Blenheim, but imposing by its mass and the area it covers. It was rebuilt almost entirely by the late Duke of Abercorn, who also made immense plantations here which cover the country for miles around. His grandfather, the handsome Marquis of the days of
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the Prince Regent, came here a great deal towards
the end of his life, but did little towards making
the mansion worthy of its site. Two very good portraits of him here show that he deserved his reputation as the finest-looking man of his day, a reputation attested by a diamond ring, the history of which is still preserved in the family. A fine though irregular pearl given by Philip of Spain to his hapless spouse, Mary Tudor, is another of the heirlooms of Baron's Court; but the ring and the note left by Mary Stuart to Claud Hamilton, Lord Paisley, mysteriously disappeared during the long minority of the late Duke under the trusteeship of the fourth Earl of Aberdeen, and have since, it is said, come into the possession of the Duke of Hamilton.
Of the three castles given to Lord Claud Hamilton by James I., to enable him to hold this country, one which stood at Strabane has disappeared, the memory of it surviving only in the name of Castle Street in that town. The ivy-clad ruins of another adorn a height in this beautiful park. They are "bosomed high in tufted trees," and overlook one of three most lovely lakes, stretching in a shining chain through the length of the demesne.
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Another ruined tower of the time of King John stands on an island in one of these lakes. When the Ulster settlement was made, these lands with all the countryside were held by the O'Kanes. With the other Celtic and Catholic inhabitants, they were driven by the masterful invaders into the mountains and bogs. There still remain their descendants, still Celtic and still Catholic, and still dreaming of the day when they shall descend into the low country and drive the Protestant Scotch and English from the "fat lands" which they occupy. In this way the racial and religious animosities are kept alive, which have died out in Tipperary and Waterford, for example, where the Cromwellian English have become more Irish and often more Catholic than the Irish themselves.
I took a long drive and walk with Lord Ernest this afternoon through the park, which rivals Curraghmore in extent. It is nowhere divided from the lands of the adjoining tenants, and with great liberality is thrown open to the people, not only of Newtown-Stewart and Strabane, but of all the country. Parties, sometimes of seven hundred people, from Belfast come down to pass the day in these sylvan solitudes, and it is to be recorded to
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the praise of Ireland that these visitors always behave with perfect good sense and good feeling.
The "terrible trippers" of the English midlands, as I once heard an old verger in a northern Cathedral call them, who chip off relics from monuments, pull up flowers by the roots, and scatter sandwich papers and empty gingerbeer bottles broadcast over well-rolled lawns, are not known, Lord Ernest tells me, in this island. As he neatly puts it, the Irishman, no matter what his station in life may be, or how great a blackguard he may really be, always instinctively knows when he ought to behave like a gentleman, and knows how to do so. In the lakes were hundreds of wild fowl. The sky was a sky of Constable,-silvery-white cloud floating athwart a dome of clear Italian blue. The soil here must be extraordinarily fertile. The woods and groves are dense beyond belief. Cut down what you like, the growth soon overtakes you, as lush almost as in the tropics.
There was a great cyclone here a year or two ago, which prostrated in a night over a hundred thousand trees. You see the dentated gaps left by this disaster in the great circle of firs and birches on the surrounding hills, but they make hardly a serious
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break in the thoroughly sylvan character of the landscape. We visited the centre of the devastation, where I found myself in what seemed to be a backwoods clearing in America. An enterprising Scot, Kirkpatrick by name, has taken a contract under the Duke, built himself a neat wooden cabin and stables, set up a small saw-mill driven by steam, and is hard at work turning the fallen trees into timber, and making a very good thing of it, both for the Duke and for himself. He has one or two of his own people with him, but employs the labour of the country, and has no fear of disturbance. He thinks, however, that he must get "a good wicked dog" to frighten away the tramps, who sometimes stray into his woodland, and put the enterprise in peril by smoking and drowsing under haystacks.
Near this clearing is a model village, the houses scrupulously neat, with trees and flowers, and here we met the Duchess with her devoted dog walking briskly along to visit one of her people, a wonderful old man, bearing the ancient name of the O'Kanes, and three years older than the Kaiser William. Until six months ago this veteran was an active carpenter, coming and going about his work at ninety-six like a man in middle age. Then he went
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to bed with a bad cold, and will probably never rise again. In all his life he never has touched meat or soup, and when they are now offered him rejects them angrily. He has lived, and preferred to live, entirely on oatmeal in the form of cakes and porridge, and on potatoes; so I make a present of him as a glorious example to the vegetarians. As in so many other cases, his memory of recent events is dim and clouded-of events long past, clear and photographic: the negatives taken in youth quite perfect, the lenses which now take, dimmed and fractured.
He perfectly recollects, for example, the assembling here of the recruits going out to the Continent before the battle of Waterloo, and can give their names and describe the peculiarities of stalwart lads long since crumbled into dust around Mont St. Jean. With the curious unconcern about death which marks his people, this expectant emigrant into the unknown world chats about his departure as if it were for Dublin, and his kinsfolk chat with him.
"Ye'll be going soon!"
"Oh yes, I shan't trouble ye more than an hour
or two more."
In quite another part of the domain we came
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upon a Covenanter-a true, authentic Covenanter, who might have walked out of Old Mortality; the name of him, Keyes. He greeted Lord Ernest cheerily enough, nodded to me in a not unfriendly way, and at once broke into exhortation: "It's a very short life we live; man that is horn of woman is of few clays, and full of trouble. Well for them that are the children of light-if seeing the light they sin not against it"; and so on with amazing volubility.
There are eighty-five of these Covenanters here. They touch not nor have touched the accursed thing. To them all parties and all governments are alike evil. The Whigs persecuted the Solemn League and Covenant-so did the Tories. Nationalists and Unionists are to them alike abominable, sold under sin. Withal they are shrewd, canny, successful farmers-and, as I inferred from sundry incidents, before Lord Ernest confided the fact to me, not averse from a "right gude williewaught" now and then.
Mr. Keyes, I thought, was not a blue-ribbon man, nor a ribbon-man of any kind.
The Duchess told me afterwards she had vainly endeavoured more than once to get these people to vote at elections.
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We had a sprinkling of such people, and very good people in quiet times they were, in the Shenan-doah Valley during the Civil War, to whom Federals and Confederates were alike anathema.
We wound up our drive to-day just beyond "the Duke's seat," a little rustic bench put up by the late Duke on a hill range which commands a magnificent view over the whole domain of hill and forest and lakes, and far away to the mountains of Munterlony. There, in the bogs and woods James Hamilton, "lord baron of Strabane," with "other rebels, unknown, in his company," hid himself till, after the fall of Charlemont in August 1650, he was captured by a party of the Commonwealth's men-whereby, as the record here runs, "all and singular his manors, towns, lands, and so forth were forfeited to the Commonwealth of England." Under this pressure he sought "protection," and got it a fortnight later from Cromwell's General, Sir Charles Coote, whose descendants still nourish in Wicklow. But on the 31st of December 1650 he "broke the said protection, and joined himself with Sir Phelim O'Neill, being then in rebellion."
Troublous times those, and a "lord baron, of Strabane" needed almost the alacrity in turning
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his coat of a harlequin or a modern politician! It is a comfort to know that at last, on the 16th of June 1655, he found rest, dying at Ballyfathen, "a Roman Catholic and a papist recusant." As we came back into the gardens and grounds, Lord Ernest showed me, imbedded in the earth, a huge anchor presented to the present Duke by the Corporation of Waterford, as having belonged to the French 28-gun frigate, on which in 1689 James II. and Lord Abercorn sailed away from Ireland for France. I believe that because of its weight the present First Lord of the Admiralty avers that it is no anchor at all, but a buoy fixture. It might have been ten times as heavy, and yet not have availed to keep James from getting to sea at that particular time. baron's court, Friday, Feb. 10.-Here also, in County Tyrone, the Irish women show their skill in women's work. Mrs. Dixon, the English wife of the house-steward of Baron's Court, has charge of a woollen industry founded here, after a discourse on thrift, delivered at a temperance meeting of the people by the then Marquis of Hamilton, had stirred the, country up to consider whether the peasant women might not possibly find some better and more profitable way of passing their winter even-
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ings than in sitting huddled around a peat fire with their elbows on their knees, gossiping about their neighbours. Lord Hamilton cited the women of Gweedore as proofs that such a way might by searching be found.
The Duke and Duchess found the funds, the stewardess invested them in buying the necessary yarn and knitting-needles, and the Marchioness of Hamilton acted as corresponding clerk and business agent of the new industry. The clothing department of the British army lent a listening ear to the business proposals made to it, and the work began. From that time on it has been the main substantial resource against suffering and starvation of the families of some three hundred labourers in the hill country near Baron's Court.
These labourers work for the small farmers from April to November; and between the autumn and the spring their wives and daughters knit, and by the Baron's Court machinery are enabled to dispose of, nearly twenty thousand pairs of woollen socks. The yarns are brought from Edinburgh to the store-house at Baron's Court. Thither every Wednesday come the knitters. Mrs. Dixon weighs the hanks of yarn, and gives them out.
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On the following Wednesday the knitters reappear, each with her bale of stockings or socks. These are again weighed, and the knitters receive their pay according to the weight, quality, and size of the goods. In some families there are four, five, or six knitters. All these people, with four or five exceptions, are small cottars living on wretched little mountain farms, not on the Duke of Aber-corn's property; and but for this industry they would be absolutely without employment all the winter through.
Some of them come from a distance of twelve or fourteen miles, and but for this resource would literally starve. They are nearly all of them Catholics, and the Protestants here being Unionists, they are probably Nationalists. About three hundred knitters in all are employed. In the year 1886-87 the orders given for Baron's Court work enabled Mrs. Dixon to pay out regularly about five pounds a week, not including casual private orders. For the current year the orders have been much larger, and the expenditure proportionally greater. Mrs. Dixon's storehouse was full of goods to-day. The long knickerbocker stockings which she showed us were remarkably good, some in "cross-gartered"
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patterns, handsomer, I thought, than similar goods in the Scottish Highlands-and all of them staunch and well-proportioned.
For socks such as are supplied to the volunteers and the troops the War Office pays 8 3/4d. a pair.
It was pleasant to learn from Mrs. Dixon that these people thoroughly appreciate the spirit which prompted and still directs this enterprise. Last spring when the Duchess was thought for a time to be hopelessly ill, a young girl came down to Baron's Court weeping bitterly. On her arm was a basket, in which were two young chanticleers crowing lustily. The poor girl said these were all she had, and she had brought them "to make soup for the Duchess, for she heard that was what the great people lived on, and it might save her life."
This afternoon I went over by the railway to Derry with Lord Ernest to attend a meeting there. The "Maiden City" stands picturesquely on the Foyle, and has a fine, though not large, cathedral of St. Colomb, restored only last year, of which it may be noted that the work never was undertaken while the Protestant Church of Ireland was established by law, and has been successfully carried out since the disendowment of that Church.
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The streets were white with snow, but the meeting in the old Town Hall was largely attended. It was, in fact, a sort of Orange symposium-tea being served at long tables, and the platform decorated with a pianoforte. The Mayor of the city presided, and between the speeches, songs, mostly in the Pyramus or condoling vein, were sung by a local tenor of renown. It was very like an American tea-fight in the country, and the audience were unquestionably enthusiastic. They quite cheered themselves hoarse when Lord Ernest Hamilton reminded them that he had made his first political speech in that hall on a "memorable occasion," when, being an as yet unfledged Parliamentarian, he had taken a hand in a successful attempt to prevent the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr. Dawson, from making a speech in Derry. One of my neighbours, a merchant in the city, told me that a project is afoot for tearing down the old hall in which we met "to enlarge the street." but he added that "the people of Deny were too proud of their history to allow it!"
I understood him to say it is one of the very few buildings in Derry which witnessed the famous siege, and the breaking of the boom.
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We left the "revel" early, caught a fast train to Newtown-Stewart, and returned here an hour ago through a driving snowstorm, most dramatically arranged to enhance the glow and genial charm of our welcome.
baron's court, Saturday, Feb. llth.-All the world was white with snow this morning. Alas! for the deluded birds we have been listening to for days past; thrushes, larks, and as, I believe, blackbirds, though there is a tradition in these parts that no man ever heard the blackbird sing before the 15th of February. I suspect it grew out of the date of St. Valentine's Day. We had some lovely music, however, within doors this morning; and, in spite of the snow and the chill wind, a little fairy of a girl, with her groom, went off like mad across country on her pony, "Guinea Pig," to fetch the mails from Newtown-Stewart.
Not long after breakfast came in from Letter-kenny Sergeant Mahony of the constabulary, on whose testimony Father M'Fadden was convicted. We had heard at Letterkenny that he was now on leave at Belfast, and Lord Ernest had kindly
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arranged matters so that he should come here and tell us his story of Gweedore.
An admirable specimen he is of a most admirable body of men. He is as thoroughly Celtic in aspect as he is by name-a dark Celt, with a quiet resolute face, and a wiry well-built frame.
Nothing could be better than his manner and bearing, at once respectful and self-respectful: that mariner of a natural gentleman one so often sees in the Irish peasant. He is a devout Catholic, but no admirer of Father M'Fadden.
As to his evidence, he explains very clearly that he was not sent to report Father M'Fadden's speech at all, but to note and take down and report language used in the speech of a sort to excite the people against the law. He was selected for this duty for three reasons: he is a Donegal man who has lived at Gweedore for sixteen years; he is a fair stenographer; and he speaks Irish, in which language Father M'Fadden made his speech.
"I speak Irish quite as well as he does," said the Sergeant quietly, "and he knows I do. What I did was to put down in English words what I heard said in Irish. This I had to do because I have no stenographic signs for the Irish words." He tells me he taught himself stenography.
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"As for Father M'Fadden," he said, "he told the people that 'he was the law in Gweedore, and they should heed no other.' He spoke the truth, too, for he makes himself the law in Gweedore. He dislikes me because I am a living proof that he is not the only law in Gweedore!" Of the business shrewdness and ability of Father M'Fadden, Sergeant Mahony expressed a very high opinion, though hardly in terms which would have gratified such an eccclesiastic as the late Cardinal Barnabo. Possibly Cardinal Cullen might have relished them no better. "Certainly he has the finest house in Gweedore, sir, and what's more he made it the finest himself."
"Do you mean that he built it?"
"He did, indeed; and did you not notice the beautiful stone fences he is putting up all about it, and the four farms he has?"
"Then he is certainly a man of substance?"
"And of good substance, sir! The Government, they gave him a hundred pounds towards the house. But it was the flood that was the blessed thing for him and made a great man of him!"
"The flood?" I asked, with some natural astonishment; "the flood? What flood?"
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"And did you never hear of the great flood of Gweedore? It was in August 1880. You will mind the water that comes down behind the chapel? Well, there was a flood, and it swelled, and it swelled, and it burst the small pipe there behind the chapel: too small it was entirely for carrying off the great water, and nobody took notice of it, or that there was anything wrong, and so the water was piled up behind the chapel, and at Mass on the Sunday, while the chapel was full, the walls gave way, and the water rushed in, and was nine feet deep. There were five people that couldn't get out in time, and were drowned-two old people and three children, young people. It was a great flood. And Father M'Fadden wrote about it-oh, he is a clever priest with the pen-and they made a great subscription in London for the poor people and the chapel. I can't rightly say how much, but it was in the papers, a matter of seven hundred pounds, I have heard say. And it was all sent to Father M'Fadden."
"And it was spent, of course," I said, "on the repairs of the chapel, or given to the relatives of the poor people who were drowned."
"Oh, no doubt; very likely it was, sir! But the repairs of the chapel - there isn't a mason
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in Donegal but will tell you a hundred pounds would not be wanted to make the chapel as good as it ever was. And. for the people that were drowned-two of them were old people, as I said to you, sir, that had no kith or kin to be relieved, and for the others they were of well-to-do people that would not wish to take anything from the parish."
"What was done with it, then?"
"Oh! that I can't tell ye. It was spent for the people some way. You must ask Father M'Fadden. He is the fund in Gweedore, just as he is the law in Gweedore. Oh! they came from all parts to see the great ruin of the flood at Gweedore. They did, indeed. And some of them, it was poor sight they had; they couldn't see the big rift in the walls, when Father M'Fadden pointed it out to them. 'Whisht! there it is!' he would say, pointing with his finger. Then they saw it!"
I asked him at what figure he put the income of Father M'Fadden from his parish. Without a moment's hesitation he answered, "It's over a thousand pounds a year, sir, and nearer twelve hundred than eleven." I expressed my surprise at this, the whole rental of Captain Hill, the landlord, falling, as I had understood, below rather than above £700
vol. I. l
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a year; and Gweedore, as Father Walker had told me, containing fewer houses than Burtonport.
"Fewer houses, mayhap," said the sergeant, "though I'm not sure of that; but if fewer they pay more. There's but one curate-poor man, he does all the parish work, barring the high masses, and a good man he is, but he gets £400 a year, and that is but a third of the income!"
I asked by what special stipends the priest's income at Gweedore could be thus enhanced. "Oh, it's mainly the funeral-money that helps it up," he replied. "You see, sir, since Father M'Fadden came to Gweedore it's come to be the fashion."
"The fashion?" I said.
"Yes, sir, the fashion. This is the way it is, you sue. When a poor creature comes to be buried-no matter who it is, a pauper, or a tenant, or any one- the people all go to the chapel; and every man he walks up and lays his offering for the priest on the coffin; and the others, they watch him. And, you see, if a man that thinks a good deal of himself walks up and puts down five shillings, why, another man that thinks less of him, and more of himself, he'll go up and make it a gold ten-shilling piece, or perhaps even a sovereign! I've known Father
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MTadden, sir, to take in as much as £15 in a week in that way."
Sergeant Mahony told us a curious tale, too, of the way in which Father M'Fadden dealt with the people of the neighbouring parish of Falcarragh. He would go down to the parish boundary, if he wanted to address the people of Falcarragh, and stand over the line, with one foot in each parish!
At our request Sergeant Mahony made some remarks in Irish; very wooing and winning they were in sound. Before he left Baron's Court he promised to make out and send me a schedule of the parochial income at Gweedore, under the separate heads of the sources whence it is derived.
Obviously Sergeant Mahony would make a good "devil's advocate" at the canonization of Father M'Fadden. But, all allowances made for this, one thing would seem to be tolerably clear. Of the three personages who take tribute of the people of Gwee-dore, the law intervenes in their behalf with only one -the landlord. The priest and the "Gombeen man" deal with them on the old principle of "freedom of contract." But it is by no means so clear which of the three exacts and receives the greatest tribute.
We leave Baron's Court in an hour for Dublin, whence I go on alone to-night into Queen's County.
abbeyleix, Sunday, Feb. 12.-Newtown-Stewart, through which I drove yesterday afternoon with Lord Ernest to the train, is a prettily situated town, with the ruins of a castle in which James II. slept for a night on his flight to France. He was cordially received, and by way of showing his satisfaction left the little town in flames when he departed. Here appears to be a case, not of rack-renting, but of absenteeism. The town belongs to a landlord who lives in Paris, and rarely, if ever, comes here. There are no improvements-no sanitation-but the inhabitants make no complaint. "Absenteeism" has its compensations as well as its disadvantages. They pay low rents, and are little troubled; the landlord drawing, perhaps, £400 a year for the whole place. The houses are small, though neat enough in appearance, but the town has a sleepy, inert look. On the railway between Dundalk and Newry, we passed a spot known by the ominous
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name of "The Hill of the Seven Murders," seven agents having been murdered there since 1840! I suppose this must be set down to the force of habit. At Newry a cavalry officer whom Lord Ernest knew got into our carriage. He was full of hunting, and mentioned a place to which he was going as a "very fine country."
"From the point of view of the picturesque?" I asked.
"Oh no! from the point of view of falling off your horse!"
At Maple's Hotel I found a most hospitable telegram, insisting that I should give up my intention of spending the night at Maryborough, and come on to this lovely place in my host's carriage, which would be sent to meet me at that station. I left Kingsbridge Station in Dublin about 7 P.M. We had rather a long train, and I observed a number of people talking together about one of the carriages before we started; but there was no crowd at all, and nothing to attract special attention. As we moved out of the station, some lads at the end of the platform set up a cheer. We ran on quietly till we reached Kildare. There quite a gathering awaited our arrival on the platform, and
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as we slowed up, a cry went up from among them of, "Hurrah for Mooney! hurrah for Mooney!" The train stopped just as this cry swelled most loudly, when to my surprise a tall man in the gathering caught one or two of the people by the shoulder, shaking them, and called out loudly, "Hurrah for Gilhooly-you fools, hurrah for Gil-hooly!"
This morning I learned that I had the honour, unwittingly, of travelling from Dublin to Maryborough with Mr. Gilhooly, M.P., who appears to have been arrested in London on Friday, brought over yesterday by the day train, and sent on at once from Dublin to his destined dungeon.
An hour's drive through a rolling country, showing white and weird under its blanket of snow in the night, brought us to this large, rambling, delightful house, the residence of Viscount de Vesci. Mr. Gladstone came here from Lord Meath's on his one visit to Ireland some years ago. I find the house full of agreeable and interesting people; and the chill of the drive soon vanished under the genial influences of a light supper, and of pleasant chat in the smoking-room. A good story was told there, by the way, of Archbishop Walsh, who being
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rather indiscreetly importuned to put his autograph on a fan of a certain Conservative lady well known in London, and not a little addicted to lion-hunting, peremptorily refused, saying, "no, nor any of the likes of her!" And another of Father Nolan, a well-known priest, who died at the age of ninety-seven. When some one remonstrated with him on his association with an avowed unbeliever in Christianity, like Mr. Morley, Father Nolan replied, "Oh, faith will come with time!" The same excellent priest, when he came to call on Mr. Gladstone, here at Abbeyleix:, on his arrival from the Earl of Meath's, pathetically and patriarchally adjured Mm, on his next visit to Ireland, "not to go from one lord's house to another, but to stay with the people." This was better than the Irish journal which, finding itself obliged to chronicle the fact that Mr. Gladstone, with his wife and daughter, was visiting Abbeyleix, gracefully observed that he "had been entrapped into going there!" Some one lamenting the lack of Irish humour and spirit in the present Nationalist movement, as compared with the earlier movements, Lord de Vesci cited as a solitary but refreshing instance of it, the incident which occurred the other day at an eviction in 168
Kerry,1 of a patriotic priest who chained himself to a door, and put it across the entrance of the cabin to keep out the bailiffs!
It is discouraging to know that this delightful act was bitterly denounced by some worthy and well-meaning Tory in Parliament as an "outrage"!
Despite the snow the air this morning, in this beautiful region, is soft and almost warm, and all the birds are singing again. The park borders upon and opens into the pretty town of Abbeyleix, the broad and picturescpue main thoroughfare of which, rather a rural road than a street, is adorned with a fountain and cross, erected in memory of the late Lord de Vesci. There is a good Catholic chapel here (the ancient abbey which gave the place its name stood in the grounds of the present mansion), and a very handsome Protestant Church.
It is a curious fact that two of the men implicated in the Phoenix Park murders had been employed, one, I believe, as a mason, and one as a carver, in the construction of this church. Both the chapel and the church to-day were well attended. I am told there has been little real trouble here, nor has the Plan of Campaign been adopted here. Sometimes
1 The incident occurred in Clare. See p. 45.
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Lord de Vesci finds threatening images of coffins and guns scratched in the soil, with portraits indicating his agent or himself; but these mean little or nothing. Lady de Vesci, who loves her Irish home, and has done and is doing a good deal for the people here, tells me, as an illustration of the sort of terrorism established by the local organisations, that if she meets two of the labourers on the place together, they always pretend to be very busy and not to see her. But if she meets one alone, he greets her just as respectfully as ever.
The women here do a great deal of embroidery and lace work, in which she encourages them, but this industry has suffered what can only be a temporary check, from the change of fashion in regard to the wearing of laces. Why the loveliest of all fabrics made for the adornment of women should ever go "out of fashion" would be amazing if anything in the vagaries of that occult and omnipotent influence could be. The Irish ladies ought to circulate Madame de Flavigny's exquisite Lime, d'Heures, with its incomparable illustrations by Carot and Meaulle, drawn from the lace work of all ages and countries, as a tonic against despair in respect to this industry. In one of
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the large rooms of her own house, Lady de Vesci has established and superintends a school of carving for the children of poor tenants. It has proved a school of civilisation also. The lads show a remarkable aptitude for the arts of design, and of their own accord make themselves neat and trim as soon as they begin to understand what it is they are doing. They are always busy at home with their drawings and their blocks, and some of them are already beginning to earn money by their work.
What I have seen at Aclare Manor near Limerick, where the late Earl of Dunraven. educated all the workmen employed on that mansion as stone-cutters and carvers, suffices to show that the people of this country have not lost the aptitudes of which we see so many proofs in the relics of early Irish art.
Among the guests in the house is a distinguished officer, Colonel Talbot, who saw hard service in Egypt, and in the advance on Khartoum, with camels across the desert-a marvellous piece of military work. I find that he was in America in 1864-65, with Meade and Hunt and Grant before Petersburg, being in fact the only foreign officer then present. He there formed what seem to me very sound and
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just views as to the ability of the Federal commanders in that closing campaign of the Civil War, and spoke of Hunt particularly with much admiration. Of General Grant he told me a story so illustrative of the simplicity and modesty which were a keynote in his character that I must note it. The day before the evacuation of Petersburg by the Confederates, Grant was urged to order an attack upon the Confederate positions. He refused to do so. The next day the Confederates were seen hastily abandoning them. Grant watched them quietly for a while, and then putting down his glass, said to one of the officers who had urged the assault, "You were right, and I was wrong. I ought to have attacked them."
It is provoking to know that the notes taken by this British officer at that time, being sent through the Post Office by him some years ago to Edinburgh for publication, were lost in the transmission, and have never been recovered. Curiously enough, however, he thinks he has now and then discerned indications in articles upon the American War, published in a newspaper which he named, going to show that his manuscripts are in existence somewhere.
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abbeyleix, Monday, Feb. 13.-To-day, in company with Lord de Vesci and a lady, I went over to Kilkenny. We left and arrived in a snowstorm, but the trip was most interesting. Kilkenny, chiefly known in America, I fear, as the city of the cats, is a very picturesque place, thanks to its turrets and towers. It has two cathedrals, a Round Tower (one of these in Dublin was demolished in the last century!), a Town Hall with a belfry, and looming square and high above the town, the Norman keep of its castle. The snow enlivened rather than diminished the scenic effect of the place. Bits of old architecture here and there give character to the otherwise commonplace streets. Notable on the way to the castle is a bit of mediaeval wall with Gothic windows, and fretted with the scutcheon in stone of the O'Sheas. The connection of a gentleman of this family with the secret as well as the public story of the Par-nellite movement may one day make what Horace Greeley used to call "mighty interestin' reading." A dealer in spirits now occupies what is left of the old Parliament House of Kilkenny, in which the rival partisans of Preston and O'Neill outfought the legendary cats, to the final ruin of the cause of the
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Irish confederates, and the despair of the loyal legate of Pope Innocent.
Of Kilkenny Castle, founded by Strongbow, but two or three towers remain. The great quadrangle was rebuilt in 1825, and much of it again so late as in 1860. There is little, therefore, to recall the image of the great Marquis who, if Einuccini read him aright, played so resolutely here two centuries and a half ago for the stakes which Edward Brace won and lost at Dundalk. The castle of the Butlers is now really a great modern house.
The town crowds too closely upon it, but the position is superb. The castle windows look down upon the Nore, spanned by a narrow ancient bridge, and command, not only all that is worth seeing in the town, but a wide and glorious prospect over a region which is even now beautiful, and in summer must be charming.
Over the ancient bridge the enterprise of a modern brewer last week brought a huge iron vat, so menacingly ponderous that the authorities made him insure the bridge for a day.
Within the castle, near the main entrance, are displayed some tapestries, which are hardly shown to. due advantage in that position. They were made
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here at Kilkenny in a factory established by Piers Butler, Earl of Ormonde, in the sixteenth century, and they ought to be sent to the Irish Exhibition of this year in London, as proving what Irish art and industry well directed could then achieve. They are equally bold in design and rich in colour. The blues are especially fine.
The grand gallery of the castle, the finest in the kingdom, though a trifle narrow for its length, is hung with pictures and family portraits. One of the most interesting of these is a portrait of the black Earl of Ormonde, a handsome swarthy man, evidently careful of his person, who was led by that political flirt, Queen Elizabeth, to believe that she meant to make him a visit in Ireland, and, perhaps, to honour him with her hand. He went to great expenses thereupon. At a parley with his kinsman, the Irish chieftain O'Moore of Abbeyleix, this black earl was traitorously captured, and an ancient drawing representing this event hangs beneath his portrait.
The muniment room, where, thanks to Lord Ormonde's courtesy, we found everything prepared to receive us, is a large, airy, and fire-proof chamber, with well-arranged shelves and tables for consult
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ing the records. These go back to the early Norrnan days, long before Edward III. made James Butler Earl of Ormonde, upon his marriage with Alianore of England, granddaughter of Edward I. The Butlers came into Ireland with Henry II., and John gave them estates, the charters of some of which, with the seals annexed, are here preserved. There are fine specimens of the great seals also of Henry iii., and of his sons Edward I. and Edmund Crouchback, and of the Tudor sovereigns, as well as many private seals of great interest. The wax of the early seals was obviously stronger and better than the wax since used. Of Elizabeth, who came of the Butler blood through her mother, one large seal in yellow wax, attached to a charter dated Oct. 24, 1565, is remarkable for the beauty of the die. The Queen sits on the obverse under a canopy; on the reverse she rides in state on a pacing steed as in her effigy at the Tower of London. The seals of James I. follow the design of this die. Two of these are particularly fine. At the Restoration something disappears of the old stateliness. A seal of Charles II., of 1660, very large and florid in style, shows the monarch sitting very much at his ease, with one knee thrown negligently over the other.
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Many of the private letters and papers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, during which Kilkenny, as it had been often before, was a great centre of Irish politics and intrigues, have been bound up in volumes, and the collection has been freely drawn upon by historians. But it would obviously bear and reward a more thorough coordination and examination than it has ever yet received.
There is a curious Table Book here preserved of Charles I. while at Oxford in 1644, from which it appears that while the colleges were melting up their plate for the King, his Majesty fared better than might have been expected. His table was served with sixty pounds of mutton a day; and he wound up his dinner regularly with "sparaguss" so long as it lasted, and after it went out with artichokes.
An Expense Book, too, of the great Marquis, after he became the first Duke of Ormonde, Colonel Blood's Duke, kept at Kilkenny in 1668 throws some interesting light on the cost of living and the customs of great houses at that time. The Duke, who was in some respects the greatest personage in the realm, kept up his state here at a weekly cost of
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about £50, a good deal less-allowing for the fall in
the power of the pound sterling-than it would now
cost him to live at a fashionable London hotel. He
paid £9,10s. a week for the keep of nineteen horses,
18 shillings board wages for three laundry-maids,
and £1, 17s. 4d. for seven dozen of tallow-candles.
The wines served at the ducal table were Burgundy,
Bordeaux, "Shampane," Canary, "Renish," and Port-
aport, the last named at a shilling a bottle, while he
paid no more than £3, 18s. for six dozen bottles of
Bordeaux, and £1, 1s. for a dozen and a half of
"Shampane." This of course was not the sparkling
beverage which in our times is the only con
tribution of Champagne to the wine markets of the
world, for the Ay Mousseux first appears in history
at the beginning of the eighteenth century. It was
the red wine of Champagne, which so long contested
the palm with the vintages of Burgundy. St. Evre-
mond, who with the Comte d'Olonne and, the
great gourmets of the seventeenth century thought
Champagne the best, as the Faculty of Paris also
pronounced it the most wholesome of wines,
loubtless introduced his own religion on the sub-
ect into England-but the entry in the Duke's
Expense Book of 1668 is an interesting proof that
vol. I. m
178
the duel of the vintages was even then going as it finally went in favour of Burgundy. While the Duke got his Champagne for 1s. 2d. a bottle, he had to pay twenty shillings a dozen, or 1s. 8d. a bottle, for five dozen of Burgundy. He got his wines from Dublin, which then, as long before, was the most noted wine mart of Britain. The English princes drew their best supplies thence in the time of Richard II.
From the castle we drove through the snow to the Cathedral of St. Canice, a grand and simple Norman edifice of the twelfth century, now the Church of the Protestant bishop. An ancient Round Tower of much earlier date stands beside it like a campanile, nearly a hundred feet in height.
There is a legend that Rinuccini wanted to buy and carry away one of the great windows of this Cathedral, in which mass was celebrated while he was here. The Cathedral contains some interesting monuments of the Butlers, and there are many curiously channelled burial slabs in the floor, like some still preserved in the ruins of Abbeyleix. Lord de Vesci pointed out to me several tombs of families of English origin once powerful here, but now sunk into the farmer class.
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On one of these I think it was that we saw a remarkably well-preserved effigy of a lady, wearing a plaited cap under a "Waterford cloak"-one of the neatest varieties of the Irish women's cloak- a garment so picturesque at once, and so well adapted to the climate, that I am not surprised to learn from Lady de Vesci that it is very fast going out of fashion. This morning before we left Abbeyleix she showed us two such cloaks, types from two different provinces, each in its way admirable. Put on and worn about the room by two singularly stately and graceful ladies, they fell into dines and folds which recalled the most exquisitely beautiful statuettes of Tanagra; and all allowance made for the glamour lent them by these two 'daughters of the gods, divinely tall," it was im-possible not to see that no woman could possibly look commonplace and insignificant in such a garment. Yet Lady de Vesci says that more than once she has known peasant women, to whom such cloaks had been presented, cut off the characteristic and useful hood, and trim the mangled robe with gawdry lace. So it is all over the world! Women who are models for an artist when they wear some garment indigenous to their country and appropriate
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to its conditions, prefer to make guys of themselves in grotesque travesties of the latest "styles" from London and Paris and Dublin!
Kilkenny boasts that its streets are paved with marble. It is in fact limestone, but none the worse for that. The snow did not improve them. So without going on a pilgrimage to the Kilkenny College, at which Swift, Congreve, and Farquhar, -an odd concatenation of celebrities-were more or less educated, we made our way to the Imperial Hotel for luncheon. The waiter was a delightful Celt. Upon my asking him whether the house could furnish anything distantly resembling good Irish whisky, he produced a bottle of alleged Scotch whisky, which he put upon the table with a decisive air, exclaiming, "And this, yer honour, is the most excellent whisky in the whole world, or I'm not an Irishman!"
Urged by the cold we tempered it with hot water and tasted it. It shut us up at once to believe the waiter a Calrnuck or a Portuguese-anything, in short, but an Irishman. It is an extraordinary fact that, so far, the whisky I have found at Irish hotels has been uniformly quite execrable. I am almost tempted to think that the priests
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sequestrate all the good whisky in order to discourage the public abuse of it, for the "wine of the country" which they offer one is as uniformly excellent.
Kilkenny ought to be and long was a prosperous town. In 1702, the second Duke of Ormonde made grants (at almost nominal ground-rents) of the ground upon which a large portion of the city of Kilkenny was then standing, or upon which houses have since been built.
These grants have passed from hand to hand, and form the "root of title" of very many owners of house property in Kilkenny. The city is the centre of an extensive agricultural region, famous, according to an ancient ditty, for "fire without smoke, air without fog, water without mud, and land without bog"; but of late it has been undeniably declining. For this there are many reasons. The railways and the parcel-post diminish its importance as a local emporium. The almost complete disappearance of the woollen manufacture, the agricultural depression which has made the banks and wholesale houses "come down" upon the small dealers, and the "agitation," bankrupting or exiling the local gentry, have all conspired to the same result.
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From Abbeyleix station we walked back to the house through the park under trees beautifully silvered with the snow. At dinner the party was joined by several residents of the county. One of them gave me his views of the working of the "Plan of Campaign." It is a plan, he maintains, not of defence as against unjust and exacting landlords, but of offence against "landlordism," not really promoted, as it appears to be, in the interest of the tenants to whose cupidity it appeals, but worked from Dublin as a battering engine against law arid order in Ireland. Every case in which it is applied needs, he thinks, to be looked into on its own merits. It will then be found precisely why this or that spot has been selected by the League for attack. At Luggacurren, for instance, the "Plan of Campaign" has been imposed upon the tenants because the property belongs to the Marquis of Lansdowne, who happens to be Governor-General of Canada, so that to attack him is to attack the Government. The rents of the Lansdowne property at Luggacurren, this gentleman offers to prove to me, are not and never have been excessive; and Lord Lansdowne has expended very large sums on improving the property, and for the benefit of
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the tenants. Two of the largest tenants having got into difficulties through reckless racing and other forms of extravagance found it convenient to invite the league into Luggacurren, and compel other tenants in less embarrassed circumstances to sacrifice their holdings by refusing to pay rents which they knew to be fair, and were abundantly able and eager to pay. At Mitchelstown the "Plan of Campaign" was aimed again, not at the Countess of Kingston, the owner, but at the Disestablished Protestant Church of Ireland, the trustees of which hold a mortgage of a quarter of a million sterling on the estates. On the Clanricarde property in Galway the "Plan of Campaign" has been introduced, my informant says, because Lord Clanricarde happens to be personally unpopular. "Go down to Portumna and Woodford," he said, "and look into the matter for yourself. You will find that the rents on the Clanricarde estates are in the main exceptionally fair, and even low. The present Marquis has almost never visited Ireland, I believe, and he is not much known even in London, People who dislike him for one reason or another readily believe anything that is said to his disadvantage as a landlord. Most people who don't like the cut of
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Dr. Fell's whiskers, or the way in which he takes soup, are quite disposed to listen to you if you tell them he beats his wife or plays cards too well. The campaigners are shrewd fellows, and they know this, so they start the 'Plan of Campaign' on the Portumna properties, and get a lot of English windbags to come there and hobnob with some of the most mischievous and pestilent parish priests in all Ireland-and then you have the dreadful story of the 'evictions,' and all the rest of it. Lord Clan-ricarde, or his agent, or both of them, getting out of temper, will sit down and do some hasty or crabbed or injudicious thing, or write a provoking letter, and forthwith it is enough to say 'Clanri-carde,' and all common sense goes out of the question, to the great damage, not so much of Lord Clanricarde-for he lives in London, and is a rich man, and, I suppose, don't mind the row-but of landlords all over Ireland, and therefore, in the long-run, of the tenants of Ireland as well."
At Luggacurren, this gentleman thinks, the League is beaten. There are eighty-two tenants there, evicted and living dismally in what is called the Land League village, a set of huts erected near the roadside, while their farms are carried on for
185
the owner by the Land Corporation. As they were most of them unwilling to accept the Plan, and were intimidated into it for the benefit of the League, and of the two chief tenants, Mr. Dunn and Mr. Kilbride, men of substance who had squandered their resources, the majority of the evicted are sore and angry.
"At first each man was allowed £3 a month by the League for himself and his family. But they found that Mr. Kilbride, who has been put into Parliament by Mr. Parnell for Kerry, a county with which he has no more to do than I have with the Isle of Skye, was getting £5 a week, and so they revolted, and threatened to bolt if their subsidy was not raised to £4 a month."
"And this they get now? Out of what funds ?"
"Out of the League funds, or, in other words, out of their own and other people's money, foolishly put by the tenants into the keeping of the League to 'protect' it! They give it the kind of 'protection ' that Oliver gave the liberties of England: once they get hold of it, they never let go!"
I submitted that at Gweedore Father M'Fadden had paid over to Captain Hill the funds confided to him.
186
"No doubt; but there the landlord gave in, and the more fool he!"
With another guest I had an interesting conversation about the Ulster tenant-right, which got itself more or less enacted into British law only in 1870, and of which Mr. Froude tells me he sought in vain to discover the definite origin. "The best lawyers in Ireland" could give him no light on this point. He could only find that it did not exist apparently in 1770, but did exist apparently twenty years later. The gentleman with whom I talked to-night tells me that the custom of Ulster was really once general throughout Ireland, and is called the "Ulster" custom, only because it survived there after disappearing elsewhere. There is a tradition too, he says, in Ulster that the recognition of this tenant-right as a binding custom there is really due to Lord Castlereagh. It would be a curious thing, could this be verified, to find Lord Castlereagh, whose name has been execrated in Ireland for fourscore years, recommending and securing a century ago that recognition of the interest of the Irish tenant in his holding, which, in our time, Mr. Gladstone, just now the object of Irish adulation, was, with much difficulty and
187
reluctance, brought to accord in the Compensation for Disturbances clause of his Act of 1870!
Of this clause, too, I ana told to-night that the scale of compensation fixed for the awards of the Court in the third section of it was devised (though Mr. Gladstone did not know this) by an Irish member in the interest of the "strong farmers," who wish to root out the small farmers. There is an apparent confirmation of this story in the fact that under this section the small farmers, under £10, may be awarded against the landlord seven years' rent as compensation for disturbance, while the number of years to be accounted for in the award diminishes as the rental increases, a discrimination not unlikely to strengthen the preference of the landlords for the large farm system.
dublin, Tuesday, Feb. 14th.-I left Abbeyleix this morning for Dublin, in company with Mr. and Mrs. Henry Doyle. Mr. Doyle, C.B., a brother of that inimitable master of the pencil, and most delightful of men, Richard Doyle, is the Director of the Irish National Gallery. He was kind enough to come and lunch with me at Maple's, after which we went together to the Gallery. It occupies the upper floors of a stately and handsome building in Merrion Square, in front of which stands a statue of the founder, Mr. William Dargan, who defrayed all the expenses of the Dublin Exhibition in 1853, and declined all the honours offered to him in recognition of his public spirited liberality, save a visit paid to his wife by Queen Victoria. The collection now under Mr. Doyle's charge was begun only in 1864, and the Government makes it an annual grant of no more than £2500, or about one-half the current
189
price, in these days, of a fine Gainsborough or Sir Joshua! "They manage these things better in France," was evidently the impression of a recent French tourist in Ireland, M. Daryl, whose book I picked up the other day in Paris, for after mentioning three or four of the pictures, and gravely affirming that the existence here of a gallery of Irish portraits proves the passionate devotion of Dublin to Home Rule, he dismisses the collection with the verdict that "ce ne vaut pas le diable" Nevertheless it already contains more really good pictures than the Musee either of Lyons or of Marseilles, both of them much larger and wealthier cities than Dublin. Leaving out the Three Maries of Perugino at Marseilles, and at Lyons the Ascension, which was once the glory of San Pietro di Perugia, the Moses of Paul Veronese, and Palma Giovanni's Flagellation, these two galleries put together cannot match Dublin with its Jan Steen, most characteristic without being coarse, its Ter-burg, a life-size portrait of the painter's favourite model, a young Flemish gentleman, presented to him as a token of regard, its portrait of a Venetian personage by Giorgione, with a companion portrait by Gian Bellini, its beautiful Italian landscape by
190
Jan Both, its flower-wreathed head of a white bull by Paul Potter, its exquisitely finished "Vocalists " by Cornelis Begyn, its admirable portrait of a Dutch gentleman by Murillo, and its two excellent Jacob Ruysdaels. A good collection is making, too, of original drawings, and engravings, and a special room is devoted to modern Irish art. I wish the Corcoran Gallery (founded, too, by an Irishman!) were half as worthy of Washington, or the Metropolitan Museum one-tenth part as worthy of New York!
The National Gallery in London has loaned some pictures to Dublin, and Mr. Doyle is getting together, from private owners, a most interesting gallery of portraits of men and women famous in connection with Irish history. The beautiful Gunnings of the last century, the not less beautiful and much more brilliant Sheridans of our own, Burke, Grattan, Tom Moore, Wellington, Curran, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, O'Connell, Peg Woffing-ton, Canning, and Castlereagh, Dean Swift, Laurence Sterne are all here-wits and statesmen, soldiers and belles, rebels and royalists, orators and poets. Two things strike one in this gallery of the "glories of Ireland." The great majority of the faces are of the
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Anglo-Irish or Scoto-Irish type; and the collection owes its existence to an accomplished public officer, who bears an Irish name, who is a devout Catholic, and who is also an outspoken opponent of the Home Rule contention as now carried on.
The gallery is open on liberal conditions to students. Mr. Doyle tells me that a young sister of Mr. Parnell was at one time an assiduous student here. He used to stop and chat with her about her work as he passed through the gallery. One day he met her coining out. "Mr. Doyle," she said, "are you a Home Ruler?" "Certainly not," he replied good-naturedly. Whereupon, with an air of melancholy resignation, the young lady said, "Then we can never more be friends!" and therewith flitted forth.
A small room contains some admirable bits of the work of Richard Doyle, among other things a weird and grotesque, but charming cartoon of an elfish procession passing through a quaint and picturesque mediaeval city. It is a conte fantastique in colour- a marvel of affluent fancy and masterly skill.
I found here this morning letters calling me over to Paris for a short time, and one also from Mr, Davitt, in London, explaining that my note to him
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through the National League had never reached him, and that he had gone to London on his woollen business. I have written asking him to meet me to-morrow in London, and I shall cross over tonight.
london, Wednesday, Feb. 15th.-Mr. Davitt spent an hour with me to-day, and we had a most interesting conversation. His mind is just now full of the woollen enterprise he is managing, which promises, he thinks, in spite of our tariff, to open the American markets to the excellent woollen goods of Ireland. He has gone into it with all his usual earnestness and ability. This is not a matter of politics with him, but of patriotism and of business, He tells me he has already secured very large orders from the United States. I hope he is not surprised, as I certainly am not, to find that the Parliamentarian Irish party give but a half-hearted and lukewarm support to such enterprises as this. Perhaps he has forgotten, as I have not, the efforts which a certain member of that party made in 1886 to persuade an Irish gentleman from St. Louis, who had brought over a considerable sum of money for the relief of the distress in North-Western Ireland, into turning
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it over to the League, on the express ground that the more the people were made to feel the pinch of the existing order of things, the better it would be for the revolutionary movement.
The Irish Woollen Company will, nevertheless, be a success, I believe, and a success of considerably more value to Ireland than the election of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt as M.P. for Deptford would be.
As to this election, Mr. Davitt seems to feel no great confidence. He has spoken in support of Mr. Blunt's candidacy, and is hard at work now to promote it. But he is not sanguine as to the result, as on all questions, save Home Rule for Ireland, Mr. Blunt's views and ideas, he thinks, antagonise the record of Mr. Evelyn and the local feeling at Deptford. I was almost astonished to learn from Mr. Davitt that Mr. Blunt, by the way, had told him at Ballybrack, long before he was locked up, how Mr. Balfour meant to lock up and kill four men, the "pivots" of the Irish movement, to wit, Mr. O'Brien, Mr. Harrington, Mr. Dillon, and Mr. Davitt himself. But I was not at all astonished to learn that Mr. Blunt told him all this most seriously, and evidently believed it.
"How did you take it?" I asked.
vol. i. N
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"Oh, I only laughed," said Mr. Davitt, "and told him it would take more than Mr. Balfour to kill me, at any rate by putting me in prison. As for being locked up, I prefer Cuninghame Graham's way of taking it, that he meant ' to beat the record on oakum!'"
If all the Irish "leaders" were made of the same stuff with Mr. Davitt, the day of a great Democratic revolution, not in Ireland only, but in Great Britain, might be a good deal nearer than anything in the signs of the times now shows it to be. Mr. Parnell and the National League are really nothing but the mask of Mr. Davitt and the Land League. Mr. Forster knew what he was about when he proclaimed the Land League in October 1881, six months or more after he had arrested and locked up Mr. Davitt in Portland prison. This was shown by the foolish No-Kent manifesto which Mr. Parnell and his associates issued from Kilmainham shortly after their incarceration, and without the counsel or consent at that time of Mr. Davitt-a manifesto which the Archbishop of Cashel, despite his early sympathies and connection with the agrarian agitation of 1848, found it expedient promptly to disavow. It would have been still more clearly shown had not Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Forster parted company under
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the restiveness of Mr. Gladstone's Radical followers, and the pressure of the United States Government in the spring of 1882. But after the withdrawal of Mr. Forster, and the release of Mr. Davitt, the English lawyers and politicians who led Lord Spencer and Sir George Trevelyan into allowing the Land League to be revived under the transparent alias of the National League, gave Mr. Davitt an opportunity, of which he promptly availed himself, to regain the ground lost by the blundering of the men of Kilmainham. From that time forth I have always regarded him as the soul of the Irish agitation, of the war against "landlordism" (which is incidentally, of course, a war against the English influence in Ireland), and of the movement towards Irish independence. Whether the agitation, the war, and the movement have gone entirely in accordance with his views and wishes is quite another matter.
I have too good an opinion of his capacity to believe that they have; and when the secret history of the Chicago Convention comes to be written, I expect to find such confirmation therein of my notions on this subject as I could neither ask nor, if I asked, could expect to get from him.
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Meanwhile the manliness and courage of the man must always command for him the respect, not to say the admiration, oven of those who most sternly condemn his course and oppose his policy.
Born the child of an evicted tenant, in the times when an eviction meant such misery and suffering as are seldom, if ever, now caused by the process- bred and maimed for life in an English factory- captured when hardly more than a lad in Captain M'Cafferty's daring attempt to seize Chester Castle, and sent for fifteen years by Lord Chief-Justice Cockburn into penal servitude of the most rigorous kind, Michael Davitt might have been expected to be an apostle of hate not against the English Government of Ireland alone, but against England and the English people. The truculent talk of too many of his countrymen presents Ireland to the minds of thoughtful men as a flagrant illustration of the truth so admirably put by Aubrey de Vere that "worse than wasted weal is wasted woe." But woe has not been wasted upon Michael Davitt, in this, that, so far as I know (and I have watched his course now with lively personal interest ever since I made his acquaintance on his first visit to America), ho has never made revenge and retaliation upon Eng-
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land either the inspiration or the aim of his revolutionary policy. I have never heard him utter, and never heard of his uttering, in America, such malignant misrepresentations of the conduct of the English people and their sovereign during the great famine of 1847, for example, as those which earned for Mr. Parnell in 1880 the pretty unanimous condemnation of the American press. How far he went with Mr. Parnell on the lines of that speech at New Ross, in which murder was delicately mentioned as "an unnecessary and prejudicial measure of procedure" in certain circumstances, I do not know. But he can hardly have gone further than certain persons calling themselves English Liberals went when the assassins of Napoleon III. escaped to England. And he has a capacity of being just to opponents, which certainly all his associates do not possess. I was much struck to-day by the candour and respect with which he spoke of John Bright, whose name came incidentally into our conversation. He seemed to feel personally annoyed and hurt as an Irishman, that Irishmen should permit themselves to revile and abuse Mr. Bright because he will not go with them on the question of Home Rule, in utter oblivion of the great services
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rendered by him to the cause of the Irish people "years before many of those whose tongues now wag against him had tongues to wag." I was tempted to remind him that not with Irishmen only is gratitude a lively sense of favours to come.
I find Mr. Davitt quite awake to the great importance of the granite quarries of Donegal. He is bestirring himself in connection with some men of Manchester, in behalf of the quarries at Belmullet in Mayo, which, if I am not mistaken, is his native county. This bent of his mind towards the material improvement of the condition of the Irish people, and the development of the resources of Ireland, is not only a mark of his superiority to the rank and file of the Irish politicians-it goes far to explain the stronger hold which he undoubtedly has on the people in Ireland, "Home Rule," as now urged by the Irish politicians, certainly excites much more attention and emotion in America and England than it seems to do in Ireland. It seems so simple and elementary to John Bull and Brother Jonathan that people should be suffered to manage their own affairs! Yet the North would not suffer the South to do this-and what would become of India if England turned it over in fragments to the native races? The Land
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Question, on the contrary, touches the "business and bosom" of every Irishman in Ireland, while it is so complicated with historical conditions and incidents as to be troublesome and therefore uninteresting to people not immediately affected by it. If I am right in my impressions the collapse of the National League will hardly weaken the hold of Mr. Davitt on the Irish people in Ireland, and it may even strengthen his hold on the agrarian movement in Wales, England, and Scotland, unless he identifies himself too completely in that collapse with his Parliamentary instruments. On the other hand, the triumph of the National League on its present lines of action would diminish the value for good or evil of any man's hold upon the Irish people, for the obvious reason that by driving out of Ireland, and ruining, the class of "landlords" and capitalists, it would leave the country reduced to a dead level of peasant-holdings, saddled with a system of poor-rates beyond the ability of the peasant-holders to carry, and at the mercy, therefore, of the first bad year. The "war against the landlords," as conducted by the National League, would end where the Irish difficulty began, in a general surrender of the people to "poverty and potatoes."
Ennis, Saturday, Feb. 18.-I found it unnecessary to go on to Paris, and so returned to Ireland on Thursday night; we had a passage as over a lake. In the train I met a lively Nationalist friend, whose acquaintance I made in America. He is a man of substance, but not overburdened with respect for the public men, either of his own party or of the Unionist side. When I asked him whether he still thought it would be safe to turn over Ireland to a Parliament made up of the Westminster members, of whom he gave me such an amusing but by no means complimentary account, he looked at me with astonishment:-
"Do you suppose for a moment we would send these fellows to a Parliament in Dublin?"
He told me some very entertaining tales of the methods used by certain well-meaning occupants of the Castle in former clays to capture Irish popularity,
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as, for example, one of a Vice-Queen who gave a fancy dress ball for the children of the local Dublin people of importance, and had a beautiful supper of tea and comfits, and cakes served to them, after which she made her appearance, followed by servants bearing huge bowls of steaming hot Irish potatoes, which she pressed upon the horrified and overstuffed infants as "the true food of the country," setting them herself the example of eating one with much apparent gusto, and a pinch of salt!
"Now, fancy that!" he exclaimed; "for the Dublin aristocracy who think the praties only fit for the peasants!"
Of a well-known and popular personage in politics, he told me that he once went with him on a canvassing tour. It was in a county the candidate had never before visited. "When we came to a place, and the people were all out crying and cheering, he would whisper to me, 'Now what is the name of this confounded hole?' And I would whisper back, 'Ballylahnich,' or whatever it was. Then he would draw himself up to the height of a round tower, and begin, 'Men of Ballylahnich, I rejoice to meet you! Often has the great Liberator said to me, with tears in his voice, 'Oh
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would I might find myself face to face with the noble men of Ballylahnich!"
"A great man he is, a great man!
"Did you ever hear how he courted the heiress? He walked up and down in front of her house, and threatened to fight every man that came to call, till he drove them all away!"
A good story of more recent date, I must also note, of a well-known priest in Dublin, who being asked by Mr. Balfour one day whether the people under his charge took for gospel all the rawhead and bloody-bones tales about himself, replied, "Indeed, I wish they only feared and hated the devil half as much as they do you!"
In a more serious vein my Nationalist friend explained to me that for him "Home Rule" really meant an opportunity of developing the resources of Ireland under "the American system of Protection." About this he was quite in earnest, and recalled to me the impassioned protests made by the then Mayor of Chicago, Mr. Carter Harrison, against the Revenue Reform doctrines which I had thought it right to set forth at the great meeting of the Iroquois Club in that city in 1883. "Of course," he said, "you know that Mr. Harrison was then
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speaking not only for himself, but for the whole Irish vote of Chicago which was solidly behind him? And not of Chicago only! All our people on your side of the water moved against your party in 1884, and will move against it again, only much more generally, this year, because they know that the real hope of Ireland lies in our shaking ourselves free of the British Free Trade that has been fastened upon us, and is taking our life." I could only say that this was a more respectable, if not a more reasonable, explanation of Mr. Alexander Sullivan's devotion to Mr. Blaine and the Republicans, and of the Irish defection from the Democratic party than had ever been given to me in America, but I firmly refused to spend the night between London and Dublin in debating the question whether Meath could be made as prosperous as Massachusetts by levying forty per cent. duties on Manchester goods imported into Ireland.
He had seen the reception of Mr. Sullivan, M. P., in London. "I believe, on my soul," he said, "the people were angry with him because he didn't come in a Lord Mayor's coach!"
When I told him I meant to visit Luggacurren, he said, a little to my surprise, "That is a bad job
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for us, and all because of William O'Brien's foolishness! He always thinks everybody takes note of whatever he says, and that ruins any man! He made a silly threat at Luggacurren, that he would go and take Lansdowne by the throat in Canada, and then he was weak enough to suppose that he was bound to carry it out. He couldn't be prevented! And what was the upshot of it? But for the Orangemen in Canada, that were bigger fools than he is, he would have been just ruined completely ! It was the Orangemen saved him!"
I left Dublin this morning at 7.40 A.M. The day was fine, and the railway journey most interesting. Before reaching Limerick we passed through so much really beautiful country that I could not help expressing my admiration of it to my only fellow-traveller, a most courteous and lively gentleman, who, but for a very positive brogue, might have been taken for an English guardsman.
"Yes, it is a beautiful country," he said, "or would be if they would let it alone!"
I asked him what he specially objected to in the recent action of Parliament as respects Ireland?
"Object?" he responded; "I object to everything. The only thing that will do Ireland any
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good will be to shut up that talking-mill at Westminster for a good long while!"
This, I told him, was the remedy proposed by Earl Grey in his recent volume on Ireland.
"Is it indeed? I shall read the book. But what's the use? 'For judgment it is fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.'"
This he said most cheerily, as if it really didn't matter much; and, bidding me good-bye, disappeared at Limerick, where several friends met him. In his place came a good-natured optimistic squire, who thinks "things are settling down." There is a rise in the price of cattle. "Beasts I gave £8 for three months ago," he said, "I have just sold for £12. I call that a healthy state of things." And with this he also left me at Ardsollus, the station nearest the famous old monastery of Quin.
At Ennis I was met by Colonel Turner, to whom I had written, enclosing a note of introduction to him. With him were Mr. Eoche, one of the local magistrates; and Mr. Richard Stacpoole, a gentleman of position and estate near Ennis, about whom, through no provocation of his, a great deal has been said and written of late years. Mr. Stacpoole at once insisted that I
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should let him take me out to stay at his house at Edenvale, which is, so to speak, at the gates of Ennis. Certainly the fame of Irish hospitality is well-founded! Meanwhile my traps were deposited at the County Club, and I went about the town. I walked up to the Court-house with Mr. Roche, in the hope of hearing a case set down for trial to-day, in which a publican named Harding, at Ennis-an Englishman, by the way- is prosecuted for boycotting. The parties were in Court; and the defendant's counsel, a keen-looking Irish lawyer, Mr. Leamy, once a Nationalist member, was ready for action; but for some technical reason the hearing was postponed. There were few people in Court, and little interest seemed to be felt in the matter. The Court-house is a good building, not unlike the White House at Washington in style. This is natural enough, the White House having been built, I believe, by an Irish architect, who must have had the Duke of Leinster's house of Carton, in Kildare, in his mind when he planned it. Carton was thought a model mansion at the beginning of this century; and Mr. Whetstone, a local architect of repute, built the Ennis Courthouse some fifty years ago. It is of white lime-
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stone from quarries belonging to Mr. Stacpoole, and cost when built about £12,000. To build it now would cost nearly three times as much. In fact, a recent and smaller Court-house at Carlow has actually cost £36,000 within the last few years.
I was struck by the extraordinary number of public-houses in Ennis. A sergeant of police said to me, "It is so all over the country." Mr. Roche sent for the statistics, from which it appears that Ennis, with a population of 6307, rejoices in no fewer than 100 "publics"; Ennistymon, with a population of 1331, has 25; and Milltown Malbay, with a population of 1400, has 36. At Castle Island the proportion is still more astounding-51 public-houses in a population of 800. In Kil-timagh every second house is a public-house! These houses are perhaps a legacy of the old days of political jobbery.1 No matter when or why granted, the licence appears to be regarded as a hereditary "right" not lightly to be tampered with; and of course the publicans are persons of consequence in their neighbourhood, no matter how
1 Or they may date back to the Parliament of Grattan, who wrote to Mr. Guinness that he regarded the brewery of Ireland as "the actual nurse of the people, and entitled to every encouragement, favour, and exemption."
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wretched it may be, or how trifling their legitimate business. Three police convictions are required to make the resident magistrates refuse the usual yearly renewal of a licence; and if an application is made against such a renewal, cause must be shown. The "publics" are naturally centres of local agitation, and the publicans are sharp enough to see the advantage to them of this. The sergeant told me of a publican here in Ennis, into whose public came three Nationalists, bent not upon drinking, but upon talking. The publican said nothing for a while, but finally, in a careless way, mentioned "a letter he had just received from Mr. Parnell on a very private matter." Instantly the politicians were eager to see it. The publican hesitated. The politicians immediately called for drinks, which were served, and after this operation had been three times repeated, the publican produced the letter, began with a line or two, and then said, "Ah, no! it can't be done. It would be a betrayal of confidence; and you know you wouldn't have that! But it's a very important letter you have seen!" So they went away tipsy and happy. Only yesterday no fewer than twenty-three of these publicans from Milltown Malbay appeared
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at Ennis here to be tried for "boycotting" the police. One of them was acquitted; another, a woman, was discharged. Ten of them signed, in open court, a guarantee not further to conspire, and were thereupon discharged upon their own recognisances, after having been sentenced with their companions to a month's imprisonment with hard labour. The magistrate tells me that when the ten who signed (and who were the most prosperous of the publicans) were preparing to sign, the only representative of the press who was present, a reporter for United Ireland, approached them in a threatening manner, with such an obvious purpose of intimidation, that he was ordered out of the court-room by the police. The eleven who refused to sign the guarantee (and who were the poorest of the publicans, with least to lose) were sent to gaol.
An important feature of this case is the conduct of Father White, the parish priest of Milltown Malbay. In the open court, Colonel Turner tells me, Father White admitted that he was the moving spirit of all this local "boycott." While the court was sitting yesterday all the shops in Milltown Malbay were closed, Father White having publicly ordered the people to make the town "as a city of the
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dead." After the trial was over, and the eleven who elected to be locked up had left in the train, Father White visited all their houses to encourage the families, which, from his point of view, was no doubt proper enough; but one of the sergeants reports that the Father went by mistake into the house of one of the ten who had signed the guarantee, and immediately reappeared, using rather unclerical language. All this to an American resembles a tempest in a tea-pot. But it is a serious matter to see a priest of the Church assisting laymen to put their fellow-men under a social interdict, which is obviously a parody on one of the gravest steps the Church itself can take to maintain the doctrine and the discipline of the Faith. What Catholics, if honest, must think of this whole business, I saw curiously illustrated by some marginal notes pencilled in a copy of Sir Francis Head's Fortnight in Ireland, at the hotel in Gweedore. The author of the Bubbles from the Brunnen published this book in 1852. At page 152 he tells a story, apparently on hearsay, of "boycotting" long before Boycott. It is to the effect that, in order to check the proselyting of Catholics by a combination of Protestant missionary zeal with Protestant
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donations of "meal," certain priests and sisters in the south of Ireland personally instructed the people to avoid all intercourse of any sort with any Roman Catholic who "listened to a Protestant clergyman or a Scripture Reader"; and Sir Francis cites an instance-still apparently on hearsay-of a "shoemaker at Westport," who, having seceded from the Church, found that not a single "journeyman dared work for him"; that only "one person would sell him leather"; and, "in short, lost his custom, and rapidly came to a state of starvation."
On the margin of the pages which record these statements, certain indignant Catholics have pencilled comments, the mildest of which is to the effect that Sir Francis was "a most damnable liar." It is certainly most unlikely that Catholics should have arrogated to themselves the Church's function
of combating heresy and schism in the fashion described by Sir Francis. But without mooting that question, these expressions are noteworthy as showing how just such proceedings, as are involved in the political "boycottings" of the present day, must be regarded by all honest and clear-headed people who call themselves Catholics; and it is a serious scandal that a parish priest should lay Mm-
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self open to the imputation of acting in concert with any political body whatever, on any pretext whatever, to encourage such proceedings.
I asked one of the sergeants how the publicans who had signed the guarantee would probably be treated by their townspeople. He replied, there was some talk of their being "boycotted" in their turn by the butchers and bakers. "But it's all nonsense," he said, "they are the snuggest (the most prosperous) publicans in this part of the country, and nobody will want to vex them. They have many friends, and the best friend they have is that they can afford to give credit to the country people. There'll be no trouble with them at all at all!"
Walking about the town, I saw many placards calling for subscriptions in aid of a news-vendor who has been impounded for selling United Ireland. "It'll be a good thing for him," said a cynical citizen, to whom I spoke of it, "a good deal better than he'd be by selling the papers." And, in fact, it is noticeable all over Ireland how small the sales of the papers appear to be. The people about the streets in Ennis, however, seemed to me much more effervescent and hot in tone than the
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Dublin people are-and this on both sides of the question. One very decent and substantial-looking man, when I told him I was an American, assured me that "if it was not for the soldiers, the people of Ennis would clear the police out of the place." He told me, too, that not long ago the soldiers of an Irish regiment here cheered for Home Rule in the Court-house, "but they were soon sent away for that same." On the other hand, a Protestant man of business, of whom I made some inquiries about the transmission of an important paper to the United States in time to catch to-morrow's steamer from Queenstown, spoke of the Home Rulers almost with ferocity, and thought the "Coercion" Government at Dublin ought to be called the "Concession" Government. He was quite indignant that the Morley and Ripon procession through the streets of Dublin should not have been "forbidden."
There are some considerable shops in Ennis, but the proprietor of one of the best of them says all this agitation has "killed the trade of the place." I am not surprised to learn that the farmers and their families are beginning seriously to demand that the "reduction screw" shall be applied to other things besides rent. "A very decent farmer,"
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he says, "only last week stood up in the shop and said it was 'a shame the shopkeepers were not made to reduce the tenpence muslin goods to sixpence!'"
This shopkeeper finds some dreary consolation for the present state of things in standing at his deserted shop-door and watching the doors of his brethren. He finds them equally deserted. In his own he has had to dismiss a number of his attendants. "When a man finds he is taking in ten shillings a day, and laying out three pounds ten, what can he do but pull up pretty short?" As with the shopkeepers, so it is with the mechanics. "They are losing custom all the time. You see the tenants are expecting to come into the properties, so they spend nothing now on painting or improvements. The money goes into the bank. It don't go to the landlords, or to the shopkeepers, or the mechanics; and then we that have been selling on credit, and long credit too, where are we ? Formerly, from one place, Dromoland, Lord Inchiquin's house, we used regularly to make a bill of a hundred pounds at Christmas, for blankets and other things given away. Now the house is shut up and we make nothing!"
It is a short but very pleasant drive from Ennis
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to Edenvale-and Edenvale itself is not ill-named. The park is a true park, with fine wide spaces and views, and beautiful clumps of trees. A swift river flows beyond the lawn in front of the spacious, goodly house-a river alive with wild fowl, and overhung by lofty trees, in which many pairs of herons build. A famous heronry has existed here for many years, and the birds are held now by Mr. and Mrs. Stacpoole as sacred as are the storks in Holland. Where the river widens to a lake, fine terraced gardens and espalier walls, on which nectarines, apricots, and peaches ripen in the sun, stretch along the shore. Deer come down to the further bank to drink, and in every direction the eye is charmed and the mind is soothed by the loveliest imaginable sylvan landscapes.
edenvale, Sunday, Feb. 19.-I was awakened at dawn by the clamour of countless wild ducks, to a day of sunshine as brilliant and almost as warm as one sees at this season in the south of France. Mrs. Stacpoole speaks of this place with a kind of passion, and I can quite understand it. Clearly this, again, is not a case of the absentee landlord draining the lifeblood of the land to lavish it upon an alien
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soil! The demesne is a sylvan sanctuary for the wild creatures of the air and the wood, and they congregate here almost as they did at Walton Hall in the days of that most delightful of naturalists and travellers, whose adventurous gallop on the back of a cayman was the delight of all English-reading children forty years ago, or as they do now at Gosford. Yet the crack of the gun, forbidden in the precincts of Walton Hall, is here by no means unknown-the whole family being noted as dead shots. I asked Mr. Stacpoole this morning whether the park had been invaded by trespassers since the local Nationalists declared war upon him. He said that his only experience of anything like an attack befell not very long ago, when his people came to the house on a Sunday afternoon and told him that a crowd of men from Ennis, with dogs,
were coming towards the park with a loudly proclaimed intent to enter it, and go hunting upon the property.
Upon this Mr. Stacpoole left the house with his brother and another person, and walked down to the park entrance. Presently the men of Ennis made their appearance on the highway. A very brief parley followed. The men of Ennis announced
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their intention of marching across the park, and occupying it.
"I think not," the proprietor responded quietly. "I think you will go back the way you came. For you may be sure of one thing: the first man who crosses that park wall, or enters that gate, is a dead man."
There was no show of weapons, but the revolvers were there, and this the men of Ennis knew. They also knew that it rested with themselves to create the right and the occasion to use the revolvers, and that if the revolvers were used they would be used to some purpose. To their credit, be it said, as men of sense, they suddenly experienced an almost Caledonian respect for the "Sabbath-day," and after expressing their discontent with Mr. Stacpoole's inhospitable reception, turned about and went back whence they had come.
This morning an orderly from Ennis brought out news of the arrest yesterday, at the Clare Road, of Mr. Lloyd, a Labour delegate from London, on his return from an agitation meeting at Kildysart. Harding, the Englishman I saw awaiting his trial yesterday, became bail for Lloyd.
In the afternoon we took a delightful walk to
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Killone Abbey, a pile of monastic ruins on a lovely site near a very picturesque lake. The ruins have been used as a quarry by all the country, and are now by no means extensive. But the precincts are used as a graveyard, not only by the people of Ennis, but by the farmers and villagers for many miles around. Nothing can be imagined more painful than the appearance of these precincts. The graves are, for the most part, shallow, and closely huddled together. The cemetery, in truth, is a ghastly slum, a "tenement-house" of the dead. The dead of to-day literally elbow the dead of yesterday out of their resting-places, to be in their turn displaced by the dead of to-morrow. Instead of the crosses and the fresh garlands, and the inscriptions full of loving thoughtfulness, which lend a pathetic charm to the German "courts of peace" -instead of the carefully tended hillocks and flower-studded turf which make the churchyard of a typical old English village beautiful,-all here is confusion, squalor, and neglect. Fragments of coffins and bones lie scattered among the sunken and shattered stones. We picked up a skull lying quite apart in a corner of the enclosure. A clean round bullet hole in the very centre of the frontal
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bone was dumbly and grimly eloquent. Was it the skull of a patriot or of a policeman? of a "White-boy" or of a "landlord"?
One thing only was apparent from the conformation of the grisly relic. It was the skull of a Celt. Probably, therefore, not of a land agent, shot to repress his fiduciary zeal, but perhaps of some peasant selfishly and recklessly bent on paying his rent.
While we wandered amid the ruins we came suddenly upon a woman wearing a long Irish cloak, and accompanied by two well-dressed men. One of the men started upon catching sight of Colonel Turner, who was of our party, grew quite red for a moment, and then very civilly exchanged salutations with him. The party walked quietly away on a lower road leading to Ennis. When they had gone Colonel Turner told us that the man who had spoken to him was a local Nationalist of repute and influence in Ennis. "He would never have ventured to be civil to me in the town," he said. A discussion arose as to the probable object of the party in visiting these ruins. A gentleman who was with us half-laughingly suggested that they might have been putting away dynamite bombs for an
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attack on Eden vale. Colonel Turner's more practical and probable theory was that they were looking about for a site for the grave of the Fenian veteran, Stephen J. Meany, who died in America not long ago. He was a native, I believe, of Ennis, and his remains are now on their way across the Atlantic for interment in his birth-place. "Would a processional funeral be allowed for him?" I asked. Colonel Turner could see no reason why it should not be.
One exception I noted to the general slovenliness of the graves. A new and handsome monument had just been set up by a man of Ennis, living in Australia, to the memory of his father and mother, buried here twenty years ago. But this touching symbol of a heart untravelled, fondly turning to its home, had been so placed, either by accident or by design, as to block the entrance way to the vault of a family living, or rather owning property, in this neighbourhood. Until within a year or two past this family had occupied a very handsome mansion in a park adjoining the park of Edenvale. But the heir, worn out with local hostilities, and reduced in fortune by the pressure of the times and of the League, has now thrown up the sponge. His
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ancestral acres have been turned over for cultivation to Mr. Stacpoole. His house, a large fine building, apparently of the time of James II., containing, I am told, some good pictures and old furniture, is shut up, as are the model stables, ample enough for a great stud; and so another centre of local industry and activity is made sterile.
Near the ruins of Killone is a curious ancient shrine of St. John, beside a spring known as the Holy Well. All about the rude little altar in the open air simple votive offerings were displayed, and Mrs. Stacpoole tells me pilgrims come here from Galway and Connemara to climb the hill upon their knees, and drink of the water. Last year for the first time within the memory of man the well went dry. Such was the distress caused in Ennis by this news, that on the eve of St. John certain pious persons came out from the town, drew water from the lake, and poured it into the well!
As we walked away one of the party pointed to a rabbit fleeing swiftly into a hole in one of the graves. "I was on this hill," he said, "one day not very long ago when a funeral train came out from Ennis. As it entered the precincts a rabbit ran rapidly across the grounds. Instantly the proces-
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sion broke up; the coffin was literally dropped to the ground, and the bearers, the mourners, and the whole company united in a hot and general chase of bunny. Of course, I need not say," he added, "that there was no priest with them. The fixed charge of the priest for a burial is twenty shillings, but there is usually no service at the grave whatever."
This may possibly be a trace of the practices which grew up under the Penal Laws against Catholics. When Rinuccini came to Ireland in the time of the Civil War, he found the observances of the Church all fallen into degradation through these laws. The Holy Sacrifice was celebrated in the cabins, and not unfrequently on tables which had been covered half-an-hour before with the remains of the last night's supper, and would be cleared half-an-hour afterwards for the midday meal, and perhaps for a game of cards.
Several guests joined us at dinner. One gentleman, a magistrate familiar with Gweedore, told me he believed the statements of Sergeant Mahony as to the income of Father M'Fadden to fall within the truth. While he believes that many people in that region live, as he put it, "constantly within a hair's-breadth of famine," he thinks that the great body of
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the peasants there are in a position, "with industry and thrift, not only to make both ends meet, but to make them overlap."
Mr. Stacpoole told us some of his own experiences nearer home. Not long ago he was informed that the National League had ordered some decent people, who hold the demesne lands of his neighbour, Mr. Macdonald (already alluded to) at a very low rental, to make a demand for a reduction, which would have 1 Mr. Macdonald without a penny of income. To counter this Mr. Stacpoole offered to take the lands over for pasture at the existing rental, whereupon the tenants promptly made up their minds to keep their holdings in defiance of the League.
Last year a man, whom. Mr. Stacpoole had regarded as a "good" tenant, came to him, bringing the money to pay his rent. "I have the rint, sorr," the man said, "but it is God's truth I dare not pay it to ye!" Other tenants were waiting outside. "Are you such a coward that you don't dare be honest?" said Mr. Stacpoole. The man turned rather red, went and looked out of all the windows, one after another, lifted up the heavy cloth of the large table in the room, and peeped under it nervously, and finally walked up to Mr. Stacpoole and
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paid the money. The receipt being handed to him, he put it back with his hand, eyed it askance as if it were a bomb, and finally took it, and carefully put it into the lining of his hat, after which, opening the door with a great noise, he exclaimed as he went out, "I'm very, very sorry, master, that I can't meet you about it!" This man is now as loud in protestation of his "inability" to pay his rent as any of the "Campaigners." Mr. Stacpoole thinks one great danger of the actual situation is that men who Avere originally "coerced" by intimidation into dishonestly refusing to pay just rents, which they were abundantly able to pay, are beginning now to think that they will be, and ought to be, relieved by the law of the land from any obligation to pay these rents.
It seems to be his impression that things look better, however, of late for law and order. On Monday of last week at Ennis an example was made of a local official, which, he thinks, will do good. This was a Poor-Law Guardian named Grogan. He was bound over on Monday last to keep the peace for twelve months towards one George Pilkington. Pilkington, it appears, in contempt of the League, took and occupied, in 1886, a certain farm in Tarmon
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West. For this he was "boycotted" from that time forth. In December last he was summoned, with others, before the Board of Guardians at Kilrush, to fix the rents of certain labourers' cottages. While he sat in the room awaiting the action of the Board, Grogan, one of its members, rose up, and, looking at Pilkington, said in a loud voice, "There's an obnoxious person here present that should not be here, a land-grabber named Pilkington." There was a stir in the room, and Pilkington, standing up, said, "I am here because I have had notice from the Guardians. If I am asked to leave the place, I shall not come back." The Chairman of the Board upon this declared that "while the ordinary business of the Board was transacting, Mr. Pilkington would be there only by the courtesy of the Board;" and treating the allusions of Grogan to Pilkington as a part of the business of the Board, he said, "A motion is before the Board, does any one second it?" Another guardian, Collins, got up, and said "I do." Thereupon the Chairman put it to the vote whether Pilkington should be requested to leave. The ayes had it, and the Chairman of the Board thereupon invited Pilkington to leave the meeting which the Board had invited him to attend!
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Grogan has now been prosecuted for the offence of "wrongfully, and without legal authority, using violence and intimidation to and towards George Pilkington of Tarmon West, with a view to cause the said Pilkington to abstain from doing an act which he had a legal right to do, namely, to hold, occupy, and work on a certain farm of land at Tarmon West."
Plainly this case is one of a grapple between the two Governments which have been and are now contending for the control of Ireland: the Government of the Queen of Ireland, which authorises Pilkington to take and farm a piece of land, and the Government of the National League, which forbids him to do this. Is it possible to doubt which of the two is the government of Liberty, as well as the government of Law?
It illustrates the demoralising influence upon society in Ireland of the protracted toleration of such a contest as has been waging between the authority of the Law and the authority of the League, that, when this case came up for consideration ten days ago, an official here actually thought it ought to be put off. Colonel Turner insisted it should be dealt with at once; and so
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Mr, Grogan was proceeded against, with the result I have stated.
The trees on this demesne are the finest I have so far seen in Ireland, beautiful and vigorous pencil-cedars, ilexes, Scotch firs, and Irish yews. There is one noble cedar of Lebanon here worth a special trip to see. In conversation about the country to-night, Mr. Stacpoole mentioned that tobacco was grown here, strong and of good quality, and he was much interested, as I remember were also the charming chatelaine of Newtown Anner and Mr. Le Poer of Gurteen four or five years ago, to learn how immensely successful has been the tobacco-culture introduced into Pennsylvania only a quarter of a century ago, as a consequence of the Civil War. The climatic conditions here are certainly not more unfavourable to such an experiment in agriculture than they were at first supposed to be in the Penn-sylvanian counties of York and Lancaster. Of course the Imperial excise would deal with it as harshly as it is now dealing with a similar experiment in England. But the Irish tobacco-growers would not now have to fear such hostile legislation as ruined the Irish linen industries in the last century. The "Moonlighters" of 1888 lineally represent, if they
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do not simply reproduce, the "Whiteboys" of 1760; and the domination of the "uncrowned king" constantly reminds one of Froude's vivid and vigorous sketch of the sway wielded by "Captain Dwyer" and "Joanna Maskell" from Mallow to Westmeath, between the years 1762 and 1765. On that side of the quarrel there seems to be nothing very new under the sun in Ireland. But the spirit and the forms of the Imperial authority over the country have unquestionably undergone a great change for the better, not only since the last century, but since the accession of Queen Victoria.
Upon the question of land improvements, Mr. Stacpoole told me, to-night, that he borrowed £1000 of the Government for drainage improvements on his property here, the object of which was to better the holdings of tenants. Of this sum he had to leave £400 undrawn, as he could not get the men to work at the improvements, even for their own good. They all wanted to be gangers or chiefs. It reminded me of Berlioz's reply to the bourgeois who wanted his son to be made a "great composer." "Let him go into the army," said Berlioz, "and join the only regiment he is fit for." "What regiment is that?" "The regiment of colonels."
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In the course of the evening a report was brought out from Ennis to Colonel Turner. He read it, and then handed it to me, with an accompanying document. The latter, at my request, he allowed me to keep, and I must reproduce it here. It tells its own tale.
A peasant came to the authorities and complained that he was "tormented" to make a subscription to a "testimonial" for one Austen Mackay of Kil-shanny, in the County Clare, producing at the same time a copy of the circular which had been sent about to the people. It is a cheaply-printed leaflet, not unlike a penny ballad in appearance, and thus it runs:-
"Testimonial to Mr. austen mackay, Kilshanny, County Clare.
"We, the Nationalists and friends of Mr. Austen Mackay, at a meeting held in March 1887, agreed and resolved on presenting the long-tried and trusted friend-the persecuted widow's son-with a testimonial worthy of the fearless hero who on several occasions had to hide his head in the caves and caverns of the mountains, with a price set on his body. First, for firing at and wounding a spy
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in his neighbourhood, as was alleged in '65, for which he had to stand his trial at Clare Assizes. Again, for firing at and wounding his mother's agent and under-strapper while in the act of evicting his widowed mother in the broad daylight of Heaven, thus saved his mother's home from being wrecked by the robber agent, the shock of which saved other hearths from being quenched; but the noble widow's son was chased to the mountains, where he had to seek shelter from a thousand bloodhounds.
"The same true widow's son nobly guarded his mother's homestead and that of others from the foul hands of the exterminators. This is the same widow's son who bravely reinstated the evicted, and helped to rebuild the levelled houses of many; for this he was persecuted and convicted at Cork Assizes, and flung into prison to sleep on the cold plank beds of Cork and Limerick gaols. Many other manly and noble services did he which cannot be made known to the public. At that meeting you were appointed collector with other Nationalists of Clare at home and abroad. This is the widow's son, Austen Mackay, whom we, the Committee to this testimonial, hope and trust every Irishman in Clare will cheerfully subscribe, that he may be
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enabled in his present state of health to get into some business under the protection of the Stars and Stripes, where he is a citizen of."
''Subscriptions to be sent to Henry Higgins, Ennis.
"Treasurers: Daniel O'Loghlen, Lisdoonvarna; James Kennedy, Ennistymon."
Then follow, with the name of the Society, the names of the committee.
In behalf of the Stars and Stripes, "where he is a citizen of," I thanked Colonel Turner for this interesting contribution to the possible future history of my country, there being nothing to prevent the election of any heir of this illustrious "widow's son," born to him in America, to the Presidency of the Eepublic. The use of this phrase, the "widow's son," by the way, gives a semi-masonic character to this curious circular.
One officer says in his report upon this Committee: "All the persons named are well known to their respective local police, and, except one, have little or no following or influence in their respective localities. They are all members of the National League." The same officer subjoins this instructive observation: "I beg to add that I find
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no matter how popular a man may be in Clare, start a testimonial for him, and from that time forth Ms influence is gone."
Can it be possible that the "testimonial," which, as the papers tell me, is getting up all over Ireland for Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, can have been "started" with a sinister eye to this effect, by local patriots jealous of any alien intrusion into their bailiwick? I am almost tempted to suspect this, remembering that a Nationalist with whom I talked about Mr. Blunt in Dublin, after lavishing much praise upon his disinterested devotion to the cause of Ireland, moodily remarked, "For all that, I don't believe he will do us any good, for he comes of the blood of Mountjoy, I am told!"
edenvale, Monday, Feb. 20.-This morning Colonel Turner called my attention to the report in the papers of a colloquy between the Chief Secretary for Ireland and Mr. J. Redmond, M.P., in the House, on the subject of last week's trials at Ennis. In speaking of the boycotting at Milltown Malbay of a certain Mrs. Connell, Mr. Balfour described the case as one of barbarous inhumanity shown to a helpless old woman. Mr. Redmond denying this,
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asserted that he had seen the woman Connell a fortnight ago in Court, and that so far from her being a decrepit old woman, she was only fifty years of age, hale and hearty, but disreputable and given to drink; he also said she was drunk at the trial, so drunk that the Crown prosecutor, Mr. Otter, was obliged to order her down from the table.
"What are the facts?" I asked. "Mr. Balfour speaks from report and belief, Mr. Redmond asserts that he speaks from actual observation."
"The facts," said Colonel Turner quietly, "are that Mr. Balfour's statement is accurate, and that Mr. Redmond, speaking from actual observation, asserts the thing that is not."
"Where is this old woman?" I asked. "Would it be possible for me to see her?"
"Certainly; she is at no great distance, and I will with pleasure send a car with an officer to bring her here this afternoon!"
"Meanwhile, how came the old woman into Court? and what is her connection with the cases of boycotting last week tried?"
"Those cases arose out of her case," said Colonel Turner; "the publicans last week arraigned, 'boy-
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cotted' a fortnight ago the police and soldiers who were called in to keep the peace during the trial of the dealers who 'boycotted' her.
"Her case was first publicly made known by a letter which appeared in the Dublin Express on the 28th of January. That day a line was sent to me from Dublin ordering an inquiry into it. I endorsed upon the order, 'Please report. I imagine this is greatly exaggerated.' This was on January 30th. The next day, January 31st, I received a full report from Milltown Malbay. Here it is,"-taking a document from a portfolio and handing it to me-"and you may make what use you like of it."
It is worth giving at length:-
"James Connell, policeman, and his mother, Hannah Connell, of Fintamore, in this sub-district are boycotted, and have been since July last. James Connell held a farm and a garden from one Michael Carroll, a farmer, who was evicted from his holding for non-payment of three years' rent, July 14, 1886. After the period of redemption, six months, had passed, the agent made Connell a tenant for his house and garden, giving him in addition about half an acre (Irish) of the evicted farm which adjoins his house. In consequence Connell was regarded by the National League here as a 'land-grabber.' About the same time the agent also appointed him a rent-warner.
"On the 22d June last Connell received a letter through the Post-Office threatening him if he did not give up his place as a rent-warner. I have no doubt the letter was written by (here a resident was named). On the 10th, and again on the 17th, of July, Connell was brought before indoor meetings of the
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National League here for having taken the half acre of land when he through fear declared he had not done it.
"At the first meeting the Rev. J. S. White, P.P., suggested that in order to test whether Connell had taken the land Carroll, the evicted tenant, should go and cut the meadowing on it, which he did, when Connell interfered and prevented him. At the next meeting Carroll brought this under notice, and Connell was thereupon boycotted. Immediately afterwards the men who had been engaged fishing for Connell refused to fish, saying that if they fished for him the sale of the fish would be boycotted, which was true.
"Since then Connell has been deprived of his means of livelihood, and no one dare employ him. He, however through his mother, was able to procure the necessaries of life until about the 22d of November last, when his mother was refused goods by the tradesmen with whom she had dealt, owing to a resolution passed at a meeting of the 'suppressed' branch of the League here, to the effect that any person supplying her would be boycotted. December 23d she came into Milltown Malbay for goods, and was refused. The police accompanied her, but no person would supply her. On the 2d of January she came again, when one trader supplied her with some bread, but refused groceries. The police accompanied her to several traders, who all refused. Ultimately she was supplied by the post-mistress. On the 7th of January she came, and the police accompanied her to several traders, all of whom refused her even bread. Believing she wanted it badly, we, the police, supplied her with some. On these three occasions she was followed by large numbers of young people about the street, evidently to frighten and intimidate her, and their demeanour was so hostile that we were obliged to disperse them and protect her home. On a subsequent occasion she stated that stones were thrown at her. Since then she has not come here for goods, and, in my opinion, it would not be safe for her to do so without protection. She and her son are now getting goods from Mrs. Moroney's shop at Spanish Point, which she opened a few years ago to supply boycotted persons.
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"The Connells find it hard to get turf, and are obliged to bring it a distance in bags so that it may not be observed. As for milk, the person who did supply them privately for a considerable time declined some weeks ago to do so any longer. They are now really destitute, as any little money Connell had saved is spent, and, although willing and anxious to work, no person will employ him. Summonses have been issued against the tradesmen for refusing to supply Hannah Connell on the occasions already referred to. I have only to add that I have from time to time reported fully the foregoing facts with regard to the persecution of this poor man and his aged mother; and I regret to say that boycotting and intimidation never prevailed to a greater extent here than at present. Connell's safety is being looked after by patrols from this and Spanish Point station."
Three things seem to me specially noteworthy in this tale of cowardly and. malignant tyranny. The victims of this vulgar Vehmgericht are neither landlords nor agents. They are a poor Irish labourer and his aged mother. The "crime" for which these poor creatures are thus persecuted is simply that one of them-the man-chose to obey the law of the land in which he lives, and to work for his livelihood and that of his mother. And the priest of the parish, instead of sheltering and protecting these hunted creatures, is presented as joining in the hunt, and actually devising a trap to catch the poor frightened man in a falsehood.
Upon this third point, a correspondence which
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passed between Father White and Colonel Turner, after the conviction of the boycotters of Mrs. Connell, and copies of which the latter has handed to me at my request, throws an instructive light.
When the report of January 31st reached him, Colonel Turner ordered the tradespeople implicated in the persecution to be proceeded against. Six of them were put on their trials on the 3d and 4th of February. All the shops in Milltown Malbay were closed, by order of the local League, during the trial, and the police and the soldiers called in were refused all supplies.
On the 4th, one of the persons arraigned was bound over for intimidation, and the five others were sentenced to three months' imprisonment with hard labour.
A week later, February 11th, Colonel Turner addressed the following letter to Father White, twenty-six publicans of Milltown Malbay having meanwhile been prosecuted for boycotting the
police and the soldiers:-
"dear sir,-I write to you as a clergyman who possesses great influence with the people in your part of the country, to put it to you whether it would not be better for the interests of all concerned if the contemptible system of petty persecution, called boycotting, were put an end to in and about
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Milltown Malbay, which would enable me to drop prosecutions. If it is not put a stop to, I am determined to stamp it out, and restore to all the ordinary rights of citizenship.
"But I should very greatly prefer that the people should stop
it themselves, and save me from taking strong measures, which
I should deplore. The story of a number of men combining
to persecute a poor old woman is one of the most pitiful I
ever heard.-I am, sir, yours truly, alfred turner."
As the cost of the extra policemen sent to Mill-town Malbay at this time falls upon the people there, this letter in effect offered the priest an opportunity to relieve his parish of a burden as well as to redeem its character.
The next day Father White replied:-
"dear sir,-No one living is more anxious for peace in this district than I. During very exciting times I have done my best to keep it free from outrage, and with success, except in one mysterious instance.1 There is but one obstacle to it now. If ever you can advise Mrs. Moroney to restore the evicted tenant, whose rent you admitted was as high as Colonel O'Callaghan's, I can guarantee on the part of the people the return of good feelings ; or, failing that, if she and her employees are content with the goods which she has of all kinds in her own shop, there need be no further trouble.
"I have a promise from the people that the police will be supplied for the future. This being so, if you will kindly have
1 This refers, I am told, to the murder, in open daylight, in 1881, of an old man, Linnane, who acted as a "caretaker" for Mrs. Moroney. It should gratify Father White to know that, as I am now informed (May 21, 1888), a clue has just been found to the assassins, who appear to have received the same price for doing their work that was paid the murderers of Fitzmaurice.
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the prosecutions withdrawn, or even postponed for say a month, it will very much strengthen me in the effort I am making to calm down the feeling. Regarding Mrs. Connell, the head-constable was told by me that she was to get goods, and she did get bread, till the police went round with her. This upset my arrangements, as I had induced the people to give her what she might really want. In fact she was a convenience to Mrs. Moroney for obvious reasons, and her son is now in her employment in place of Kelly, who has been dismissed since his very inconvenient evidence. It is, and was, well known they were not starving as they said, they having a full supply of their accustomed food.-Thanking you for your great courtesy, I am, dear sir, truly yours,
"J. white."
On the 14th Colonel Turner replied:-
"my dear sir,-We cannot adjourn the cases. But if those who are prosecuted are prepared to make reparation by promising future good conduct in Court, I can then see my way to interfere, and to prevent them from suffering imprisonment. "These cases have nothing whatever to do with Mrs. Moroney.1 They are simply between the defendants and the police and other officials, who were at Milltown Malbay that day. I am greatly pleased at your evident wish to co-operate with me in calming down the ill-feeling which unfortunately exists, and I am satisfied that success will attend our efforts."
On Thursday and Friday last, as I have recorded, the cases came on of the twenty-six publicans charged. Between February 4th, when the offences were committed, and the 17th of February, one of
1 Mrs. Moroney, so often referred to here, is the widow of a gentleman formerly High Sheriff and Deputy-Lieutenant for the County Clare, who died in 1870. She lives at Milton House, and has fought the local League steadily and successfully.
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these publicans had died, one had fled to America, and there proved to be an informality in the summons issued against a third. Twenty-three only were put upon their trial. As I have stated, one was acquitted and the others were found guilty, and sentenced to be imprisoned. In accordance with his promise made to Father White, Colonel Turner offered to relieve them all of the imprisonment if they would sign an undertaking in Court not to repeat the offence. Ten, the most prosperous and substantial of the accused, accepted this offer and signed, as has been already stated. One, a woman, was discharged without being required to sign the guarantee, the other eleven refused to sign, and were sent to prison. Father White, whose own evidence given at the trial, as his letter to Colonel Turner would lead one to expect, had gone far to prove the existence of the conspiracy, encouraged the eleven in their attitude.
This was his way of "co-operating" with Colonel Turner to "calm down the ill-feeling which exists"!
During the morning Mrs. Stacpoole sent for the clerk and manager of the estate, and asked him to show me the books. He is a native of these parts, by name Considine, and has lived at Edenvale for
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eighteen years. In his youth he went out to America, but there found out that he had a "liver," an unpleasant discovery, which led him to return to the land of his birth, and to the service of Mr. Stacpoole. He is perfectly familiar with the condition of the country here, and as the accounts of this estate are kept minutely and carefully from week to week, he was able this morning to show me the current prices of all kinds of farm produce and of supplies in and about Ennis-not estimated prices, but prices actually paid or received in actual transactions during the last ten years. I am surprised to see how narrow has been the range of local variations during that time; and I find Mr. Con-sidine inclined to think that the farmers here have suffered very little, if at all, from these fluctuations, making up from time to time on their reduced expenses what they have lost through lessened receipts. The expenses of the landlord have however increased, while his receipts have fallen off. In 1881 Edenvale paid out for labour £466, Os. 1 1/2d., in 1887 £560, 6s. 3 1/2d., though less labour was employed in 1887 than in 1881. The wages of servants, where any change appears, have risen. In 1881 a gardener received £14 a year, in 1888 he
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receives 15s. a week, or at the rate of £39 a year. A housemaid receiving £12 a year in 1881, receives now £17 a year. A butler receiving in 1881 £26 a year, now receives £40 a year. A kitchenmaid receiving in 1881 £6, now receives £10, 10s. a year. Meanwhile, the Sub-Commissioners are at this moment cutting down the Edenvale rents again by £190, 3s. 2d., after a walk over the property in the winter. Yet in July 1883 Mr. Reeves, for the Sub-Commission, "thought it right to say there was no estate in the County Clare so fairly rented, to their knowledge, or where the tenants had less cause for complaint." In but one case was a reduction of any magnitude made by the Commission of 1883, and in one case that Commission actually increased the rent from £11, 10s. to £16. In January 1883 the rental of this property was £4065, 5s. 1d. The net reduction made by the Commissioners in July 1883 was £296, 14s. 0 1/2d.
After luncheon a car came up to the mansion, bringing a stalwart, good-natured-looking sergeant of police, and with him the boycotted old woman Mrs. Connell and her son. The sergeant helped the old woman down very tenderly, and supported her into the house. She came in with some trepidation and uneasiness, glancing furtively all about
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her, with the look of a hunted creature in her eyes. Her son, who followed her, was more at his ease but he also had a worried and careworn look. Both were warmly but very poorly clad, and both worn and weatherbeaten of aspect. The old woman might have passed anywhere for a witch, so wizened and weird she was, of small stature, and bent nearly double by years and rheumatism. Her small hands were withered away into claws, and her head was covered with a thick and tangled mat of hair, half dark, half grey, which gave her the look almost of the Fuegian savages who come off from the shore in their flat rafts and clamour to you for "rum" in the Straits of Magellan. Her eyes were intensely bright, and shone like hot coals in her dusky, wrinkled face. It was a raw day, and she came in shivering with the cold. It was pathetic to see how she positively gloated with extended palms over the bright warm fire in the drawing-room, and clutched at the cup of hot tea which my kind hostess instantly ordered in for her.
This was the woman of whom Mr. Eedmond wrote to Mr. Parnell that she was "an active strong dame of about fifty." When Mr. Balfour, in Parliament, described her truly as a "decrepit old woman of eighty," Mr. Redmond contradicted him, and
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accused her of being "the worse for liquor" in a public court.
"How old is your mother?" I asked her son.
"I am not rightly sure, sir," he replied, "but she is more than eighty."
"The man himself is about fifty," said the sergeant; "he volunteered to go to the Crimean War, and that was more than thirty years ago!"
"I did indeed, sir," broke in the man, "and it was from Cork I went. And I 'd be a corpse now if it wasn't for the mercy of God and the protection. God bless the police, sir, that protected my old mother, sir, and rne. That Mr. Redmond, sir, they read me what he said, and sure he should be ashamed of his shadow, to get up there in Parliament, and tell those lies, sir, about my old mother!"
I questioned Connell as to his relations with Carroll, the man who brought him before the League. He was a labourer holding a bit of ground under Carroll. Carroll refused to pay his own rent to the landlord. But he compelled Connell to pay rent to him. When Carroll was evicted, the landlord offered to let Connell have half an acre more of land. He took it to better himself, and "how did he injure Carroll by taking it?" How indeed, poor man! Was he a rent-warner? Yes; he
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earned something that way two or three times a year; and for that he had to ask the protection of the police-"they would kill him else." What with worry and fright, and the loss of his livelihood, this unfortunate labourer has evidently been broken down morally and physically. It is impossible to come into contact with such living proofs of the ineffable cowardice and brutality of this business of "boycotting" without indignation and disgust.
While Connell was telling his pitiful tale a happy thought occurred to the charming daughter of the house. Mrs. Stacpoole is a clever amateur in photography. "Why not photograph this 'hale and hearty woman of fifty,' with her son of fifty-three?" Mrs. Stacpoole clapped her hands at the idea, and went off at once to prepare her apparatus.
While she was gone the sergeant gave me an account of the trial, which Mr. Redmond, M.P., witnessed. He was painfully explicit. "Mr. Redmond knew the woman was sober," he said; "she was lifted up on the table at Mr. Redmond's express request, because she was so small and old, and spoke in such a low voice that he could not hear what she said. Connell had always been a decent, industrious fellow-a fisherman. But for the lady,
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Mrs.Moroney, he and his mother would have starved, and would starve now. As for the priest, Father White, Connell went to him to ask his intercession and help, but he could get neither."
The sergeant had heard Father White preach yesterday. "It was a curious sermon. He counselled peace and forbearance to the people, because they might be sure the wicked Tory Government would very soon fall!"
Presently the sun came out with golden glow, and with the sun came out Mrs. Stacpoole. It was a job to "pose" the subjects, the old woman evidently suspecting some surgical or legal significance in the machinery displayed, and her son finding some trouble in making her understand what it meant. But finally we got the tall, personable sergeant, with his frank, shrewd, sensible face, to put himself between the two, in the attitude as of a guardian angel; the camera was nimbly adjusted, and lo! the thing was done.
Mrs. Stacpoole thinks the operation promises a success. I suppose it would hardly be civil to send a finished proof of the group to Mr. J. Redmond, M.P.
the relation of Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates to what is called the extreme and "criminal" section of the Irish American Revolutionary Party can only be understood by those who understand that it is the ultimate object of this party not to effect reforms in the administration of Ireland as an integral part of the British Empire, but to sever absolutely the political connection between Ireland and the British Empire. Loyal British subjects necessarily consider this object a "criminal" object, just as loyal Austrian subjects considered the object of the Italian Eevolutionists of 1848 to be a "criminal" object. But the Italian Eevolutionists of 1848 did not accept this view of their object. On the contrary, they held their end to be so high and holy that it more or less sanctified even assassination when planned as a means to that end. Why should the Italian Eevolutionists of 1848 be judged by one standard and the Irish Eevolutionists of 1888 by another?
If Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates were to declare in unequivocal terms their absolute loyalty to the British Crown, and their determination to maintain in all circumstances the political connection between Grreat Britain and Ireland, they might or might not retain their hold upon Mr. Davitt and upon
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their constituents in Ireland, but they would certainly put themselves beyond the pale of support by the great Irish American organisations. Nor do I believe they could retain the confidence of those organisations if it were supposed that they really regarded the most extreme and violent of the Irish Eevolutionists, the "Invincibles" and the "dynamiters" as "criminals," in the sense in which the "Invincibles" and the "dynamiters" are so regarded by the rest of the civilised world. Can it, for example, be doubted that any English or Scottish public man who co-operates with Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates would instantly hand over to the police any "Invincible" or "dynamiter" who might come within his reach? And can it for a moment be believed that Mr. Parneil, or any one of his Parliamentary associates, would do this? There are thousands of Irish citizens in the United States who felt all the horror and indignation expressed by Mr. Parneil at the murders in the Phoenix Park, but I should be very much surprised to learn that any one of them all ever did, or ever would do, anything likely to bring any one of the authors of these murders to the bar of justice. Mr. Parneil and his Parliamentary associates are held and bound by the essential conditions of their political existence to treat with complaisance the most extreme and violent men of their party. Nor is this true of them alone.
There is no more respectable body of men in the United States than the Hibernian Society of Philadelphia. This society was instituted in 1771, five years before the declaration of American Independence. It is a charitable and social organisation only, with no political object or colour. It is made up of men of character and substance. Its custom has always been to celebrate St. Patrick's Day by a banquet, to which the most distinguished men of the country have re-
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peateclly been bidden. Immediately after the inauguration of Mr. Cleveland as President, on the 4th of March 1885, Mr. Bayard, the new Secretary of State of the United States, was invited by this Society to attend its one hundred and fourteenth banquet. It will be remembered that, on the 30th of May
1884. London had been startled and shocked by an explosion of dynamite in St. James's Square, which shattered many houses and inflicted cruel injuries upon several innocent people. It was not so fatal to life as that explosion at the Salford Barracks, which Mr. Parnell treated as a "practical joke." But it excited lively indignation on both sides of the Atlantic, and Mr. Bayard, who at that time was a Senator of the United States, sternly denounced it and its authors on the floor of the American Senate. What he had said as a Senator he thought it right to repeat as the Foreign Secretary of the United States in his reply to the invitation of the Hibernian Society in March
1885. This reply ran as follows:-
"washington, D.C., March 9, 1885.
"nicholas J. griffin, Esq., Secretary of the Hibernian Society of Philadelphia.
"dear Sir,--I have your personal note accompanying the card of invitation to dine with your ancient and honourable Society on their one hundred and fourteenth anniversary, St. Patrick's Day, and I sincerely regret that I cannot accept it. The obvious and many duties of my public office here speak for themselves, and to none with more force than to American citizens of Irish blood or birth who are honestly endeavouring to secure liberty by maintaining a government of laws, and who realise the constant attention that is needful.
"In the midst of anarchical demonstrations which we witness in other lands, and the echoes of which we can detect even here in our own free country, where base and silly individuals seek to stain the name of Ireland by associating the honest struggle for just government with senseless and wicked crimes,
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there are none of our citizens from whom honest reprobation can be more confidently expected than from such as compose your respected and benevolent Society. Those who worthily celebrate the birthday1 of St. Patrick will not forget that he drove out of Ireland the reptiles that creep and sting.
"The Hibernian Society can contain no member who will not resent the implication that sympathy with assassins can dwell in a genuine Irish heart, which will ever be opposed to cruelty and cowardice, whatever form either may take.
"Present to your Society my thanks for the kind remem
brance, and assure them of the good-will and respect with
which I am-Your obedient servant, T. F. bayard."
What was the response of this Society, representing all the best elements of the Irish American population of the United States, to this letter of the Secretary of State, the highest executive officer of the American Government after the President, upon whom under an existing law the succession of the chief magistracy now devolves in the event of the death or disability of the President and the Vice-President?
The letter was not read at the banquet.
But it was given to the press by the officers of the Society, and the most influential Irish American newspaper in the United States did not hesitate to describe it as an "insulting letter," going to show that its author was "an Englishman in spirit who will not allow any opportunity to go by, however slight, without testifying his sympathy with the British Empire and his antipathy for its foes."
This was capped by an American political journal which used the following language: "Lord Granville himself would hardly strike a more violent attitude against the dynamite section of the Irish people. When Lord Wolseley, whom it is proposed to make Governor-General of the Soudan, is offering a reward
1 As Secretary Bayard is not a Catholic, this misapprehension of the meaning of a Saint's Day may be pardoned.
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for the head of Ollivier Pain, it is hardly in good taste for an American Secretary of State to condemn so bitterly a class of Irishmen which, while it includes bad men no doubt, also includes men who are moved by as worthy motives as Lord Wolseley."
In the face of this testimony to the "solidarity" of all branches of the Irish revolutionary movement in America, how can Mr. Parnell, or any other Parliamentary Irishman who depends upon Irish American support, be expected by men of sense to condemn in earnest "the dynamite section of the Irish people"?
in his recently published and very interesting Life of Mr. Forster, Mr. Wemyss Reid alludes to some action taken by the United States Government in the spring of 1882 as one of the determining forces which brought about the abandonment at that time by Mr. Gladstone of Mr. Forster's policy in Ireland. Without pretending to concern myself here with what is an essentially British question as between Mr. Forster and Mr. Gladstone, it may be both proper and useful for me to throw some light, not, perhaps, in the possession of Mr. Eeid, upon the part taken in this matter by the American Government. Sir William Harcourt's "Coercion Bill" was passed on the 2d of March 1881, two days before the inauguration of General Garfield as President of the United States. Mr. Blame, who was appointed by the new President to take charge of the Foreign Relations of the American Government, received, on the 10th of March, at Washington, a despatch written by Mr. Lowell, the American Minister
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in London, on the 26th of February, being the day after the third reading in the Commons of the "Coercion Bill." In this despatch Mr. Lowell called the attention of the American State Department to a letter from Mr. Parnell to the Irish National Land League, dated at Paris, February 13, 1881, in which Mr. Parnell attempted to make what Mr. Lowell accurately enough described as an "extraordinary" distinction between "the American people" and "the Irish nation in America."
"This double nationality," said Mr. Lowell, "is likely to be of great practical inconvenience whenever the 'Coercion Bill' becomes law." By "this double nationality" in this passage, the American Minister, of course, meant "this claim of a double nationality;" for neither by Great Britain nor by the United States is any man permitted to consider himself at one and the same time a citizen of the American republic and a subject of the British monarchy. Nor was he quite right in anticipating "great practical inconvenience" from this "claim," upon which neither the British nor the American Government for a moment bestowed, or could bestow, the slightest attention.
The "great practical inconvenience" which, first to the American Legation in England, then to the United States Government at Washington, and finally to the Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone, did, however, arise from the application of Sir William Harcourt's Coercion Act of 1881 to American citizens in Ireland, had its origin not in Mr. Parnell's preposterous idea of an Irish nationality existing in the United States, but in the failure of the authorities of the United States to deal promptly and firmly with the situation created for American citizens in Ireland by the administration of Sir William Harcourt's Act.
As I have said, Sir William Harcourt's Act became
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law on the 2d of March 1881, two days before the inauguration of President Garfield at Washington. Without touching the question of the relations between Great Britain and Ireland, and between the British Parliament and the Irish National Land League, it was clearly incumbent upon the Secretary of State of the United States, who entered upon his duties three days after Sir William Harcourt's Bill went into force in Ireland, to inform himself minutely and exactly as to the possible effects of that Bill upon the rights and interests of American citizens travelling or sojourning in that country. This was due not only to his own Government and to its citizens, but to the relations which ought to exist between his own Government and the Government of Great Britain. It was no affair of an American Secretary of State either to impede or to further the execution of "Coercion Acts" in Ireland against British subjects. But it was his affair to ascertain without delay the nature and the measure of any new and unusual perils, or "inconveniences," to which American citizens in Ireland might be exposed in the execution there by the British authorities of such Acts.
And it is on record, under his own hand, in a despatch to the American Minister in London, dated May 26, 1881, that Mr. Blaine had not so much as seen a copy of Sir William Harcourt's Coercion Act at that date, three months after it had gone into effect; three months after many persons claiming American citizenship had been arrested and imprisoned under it; and two months after his own official attention had been called by the American Minister in London, in an elaborate despatch, to the arrest under it of one such person, a man of Irish birth, who based his claim of American citizenship upon allegations of military service during the Civil War, of residence and citizen-
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ship in New York, and of the granting to him, by an American Secretary of State, of a citizen's passport. And when he did finally take the trouble to look at this Act, Mr. Blaine seems to have examined it so cursorily, and with such slight attention, that he overlooked a provision made in it, under which, had its true force and meaning been perceived by him, the State Department of the United States might, in the early summer of 1881, have secured for American citizens in Ireland the consideration due to them as the citizens of a friendly State. A curious despatch from Mr. Sack-ville West, the British Minister at Washington, to Earl Granville, published in a British Blue-book now in my possession, plainly intimates that in the summer of 1881 the American Secretary of State had given the British Minister to understand that no representations made to him or to his Government by the Government of the United States touching American-Irish "suspects" need be taken at all seriously. The whole diplomatic correspondence on this subject which went on between the two Governments while Mr. Blaine was Secretary of State, from the 4th of March 1881 to the 20th of December 1881, was of a sort to lull the British Government into the belief that "suspects" might be freely and safely arrested and locked up all over Ireland, with no more question of their nationality than of any evidence to establish their guilt or their innocence. During the whole of that time the State Department at Washington seems to have substantially remained content with the declaration of Earl Granville, in a letter sent to the American Legation on the 8th of July 1881, four months after the Coercion Act went into effect, that "no distinction could be made in the circumstances between foreigners and British subjects, and that in the case of British subjects the only information given was that contained in the warrant."
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No fault can be found with the British Government for standing by this declaration so long as it thus seemed to command the assent of the Government of the United States.
But when Mr. Frelinghuysen was called into the State Department by President Arthur in December 1881, to overhaul the condition into which our foreign relations had been brought by his predecessor, he found that in no single instance had Mr. Blaine succeeded in inducing the British Government, either to release any American citizen arrested under a general warrant without specific charges of criminal conduct, and on "suspicion" in Ireland, or to order the examination of any such citizen. The one case in which an American citizen arrested under the Coercion Act in Ireland during Mr. Blaine's tenure of office had been liberated when Mr. Frelinghuysen took charge of the State Department, was that of Mr. Joseph B. Walsh, arrested at Castlebar, in Mayo, March 8, 1881, and discharged by order of the Lord-Lieutenant, October 21, 1881, not because he was an American citizen, nor after any examination, but expressly and solely on the ground of ill-health.
When Mr. Frelinghuysen became Secretary of State in. December 1881 the Congress of the United States was in session. So numerous were the American "suspects" then lying in prison in Ireland, some of whom had been so confined for many months, that the doors of Congress were soon besieged by angry demands for an inquiry into the subject. A resolution in this sense was adopted by the House of Representatives, and forwarded, through the American Legation in London, to the British Foreign Office. Memorials touching particular cases were laid before both Houses of the American Congress. On the 10th of February 1882, Mr. Bancroft Davis, the Assistarit-
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Secretary of State, instructed the American Minister at London to take action concerning one such case, and to report upon it. The Minister not moving more rapidly than he had been accustomed to do under Mr, Blaine, Mr. Davis grew impatient, and on the 2d of March 1882 (being the anniversary of the adoption of the Coercion Act in England) the American Secretary of State cabled to the Minister in London significantly enough, "Use all diligence in regard to the late cases, especially of Hart and M'Sweeney, and report by cable."
Mr. Lowell replied the next day, giving the views in regard to Hart of the American Vice-Consul, and of the British Inspector of Police at Queenstown, and adding an expression of his own opinion that neither Hart nor M'Sweeney was "more innocent than the majority of those under arrest."
This was an unfortunate despatch. It roused the American Secretary of State into responding instantly by cable in the following explicit and emphatic terms : "Referring to the cases of O'Connor, Hart, M'Sweeney, M'Enery, and D'Alton, American citizens imprisoned in Ireland, say to Lord Granville that, without discussing whether the provisions of the Force Act can be applied to American citizens, the President hopes that the Lord-Lieutenant will be instructed to exercise the powers intrusted to him by the first section to order early trials in these and all other cases in which Americans may be arrested."
There was no mistaking the tone of this despatch. It was instantly transmitted to the British Foreign Secretary, who replied the same day that "the matter would receive the immediate attention of Her Majesty's Government."
The reference made to the Coercion Act by Mr. Frelinghuysen touched a plain and precise provision,
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that persons detained under the Act "should not be discharged or tried by any court without the direction of the Lord-Lieutenant." Had the Coercion Act received from Mr. Blaine in March 1881 the attention bestowed upon it in March 1882 by Mr. Frelinghuysen, this provision might have been used to obviate the dangerous accumulation of Injustice to individuals, and of international irritation, resulting from the application to possibly innocent foreign citizens in Ireland of the despotic powers conferred by that Act upon Mr. Gladstone's Government, powers as nearly as possible analogous with those which Mr. Gladstone himself, years before, had denounced in unmeasured terms when they were claimed and exercised by the Government of Naples in dealing with its own subjects.
After the consideration by Her Majesty's Government of this despatch of the United States Government, it is understood in America that Mr. Forster, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, was invited to communicate with the Lord-Lieutenant, and request him to exercise his discretion in the sense desired, and that Mr. Forster positively refused to do this.
How this may be I do not pretend to say. But as no satisfactory reply was made to the American despatch, and as public feeling in the United States grew daily more and more determined that a stop should be put to the unexplained arrest and the indefinite detention of American citizens in Ireland, the American Secretary of State made up his mind towards the end of the month of March to repeat his despatch of March 3d in a more terse and peremptory form. As a final preliminary to this step, however, Mr. Frelinghuysen was induced to avail himself of the unusual and officious intervention of his most distinguished living predecessor in the State Department, Mr. Hamilton Fish. After measuring the gravity of
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the situation, Mr. Fish at the end of March sent a despatch to an eminent public man, well known on both sides of the Atlantic, and now resident in London, with authority to show it personally to Mr, Gladstone, to the effect that if any further delay occurred in complying with the moderate and reasonable demand of the American Government for the immediate release or the immediate trial of the American "suspects," the relations between Great Britain and the United States would be very seriously "strained."
This despatch was at once communicated to Mr. Gladstone. Within the week, the liberation was announced of six American "suspects." Within a fortnight, Mr. Parnell, Mr. O'Kelly, and Mr. Dillon, it is understood, imprisoned members of Parliament, were offered their liberty if they would consent to a sham exile on the Continent for a few weeks, or even days; and within a month Mr. Forster, in his place in Parliament, was imputing to his late chief and Premier the negotiation of that celebrated "Treaty of Kilmain-ham," which was repudiated with equal warmth by the three Irish members already named, and by Mr. Gladstone.
As I am not writing a history of English parties, I need not discuss here the truth or falsehood of this contention. But I cannot let it pass without a word as to two cases which came under my own observation, and which aggravate the inherent improbability of the tale. In November 1885 I went to America, and on
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my way passed through Stockport, where my friend, Mr. Jennings, long my correspondent in England, was then standing as a Conservative candidate. I attended one of his meetings and heard him make an effective speech, much applauded, which turned exclusively upon imperial and financial issues. That he had no understanding whatever with the "managers" of the Irish vote in Stockport, I have the best reason to believe. But he was assured by them that the Irish intended to vote for him; and at a subsequent time he was rashly assailed in the House of Commons by an Irish member with the charge that he had broken faith with the Irish who elected him. It was an unlucky assault for the assailant, as it gave Mr. Jermings an opportunity, which he promptly improved, to show that he owed nothing to the Irish voters of Stockport. Whether they voted for him in any number in 1885 was more than doubtful; while in 1886 they voted solidly against him, with the result of swelling his majority from 369 to 518 votes.
In January 1886 I returned to Europe, and going on a visit into Yorkshire, there met a prominent Irish Nationalist, who told me that he had come into the north of England expressly to regiment the Irish voters, and throw their votes for the Conservative candidates, on the ground that it was necessary to make the Liberals fully understand their power. He had fully expected in this way to elect a Conservative member for the city of York. Great was his chagrin, therefore, when he found the Liberal candidate returned. Upon investigation he discovered, as he told me, that the catastrophe was due to the activity of a local Irish priest, who was a devoted Fenian, utterly opposed to the Parliamentary programme, and who had exerted his authority over the local Irish to bring them to the polls for the Liberal candidate.
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Sir Frederick Milner, Bart., the defeated Conservative candidate for York, afterwards told me that the local priest referred to here was a most excellent man, and that so far from playing the part thus ascribed to him, he took the trouble, as a matter of fair dealing, to see his parishioners on the morning of the election and warn them against believing a pamphlet which was sedulously circulated among the Irish voters on the night before the polling, with a message to the effect that Sir Frederick despised the Irish, and wanted nothing to do with them or their votes. Sir Frederick has no doubt, from his knowledge of what occurred during the canvass, that direct instructions were sent by Mr. Parnell or his agents to the Irish voters in York to throw their votes against the Radical candidates. These latter brought down a Home Rule lecturer to counteract the effect of these instructions, and the pamphlet above referred to was an eleventh-hour blow in the same interest. It was successful; the Irish votes, some 500 in number, being polled early in the morning under the impression produced by it. The moral of this incident would seern to be, not that there was any real understanding in 1885 between the Parnellites and the English Conservatives at all, but simply that the English Radical wirepullers are more alert and active than either the Irish Parnellites or the English Conservatives. It is interesting, too, as it illustrates the deep dread and distrust of the "Fenians" in which the Parnellites habitually go.
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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 blood
thirsty 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!
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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. Sheehan, 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 impres
sion 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.
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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
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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 rny 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 M'Donough, 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.
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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 Eev. Mr. Keller presided, and a priest from America, Father Hayes of Georgetown, Iowa, in the United States, was present. It was ostensibly a
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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 yon 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
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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
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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 rny 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
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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 clown at £94 (vol. ii. p. 69). 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, lls. 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, lls. for the residue of the earlier holding as in 1S58. 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. Bub Mr. Lane and his allies saw it would
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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 Bally-kitty, 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!"
the following official account sent to me (July 24) of an affair in Donegal, the result of the gospel of "Boycotting" taught in that region, needs and will bear no comment.
Patrick Cavanagh came to reside at Clonmany, County Donegal, about two months ago, as caretaker on some evicted farms. He died on Wednesday evening, June 20th, having received the full rites of the Roman Catholic Church. The people had displayed
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no ill-will towards him during his brief residence at Clonrnany, and on the evening of his death his body was washed and laid out by some women. On Thursday two townsmen dug his grave, where pointed out by Father Doherty, P.P.
The first symptom of change of feeling was that on Thursday every carpenter applied to had some excuse for not making a coffin for the body of deceased. On Friday morning the grave was found to be filled with stones, and a deputation waited on Father Doherty to protest against Cavanagh's burial in the chapel graveyard. He told them to go home and mind their business. About 10.30 A.M. on Friday the chapel bell was rung -not tolled or rung as for service, but faster. The local sergeant of police went to the cemetery; when he arrived there the tolling ceased. He then went to Father Doherty, who told those present that their conduct was such as to render them unfit for residence anywhere but in a savage country. He told them to go to their homes, and advised them to allow the corpse to be buried in the grave he had marked out. After Father Doherty had left, the people condemned his interference, and said they would not allow any stranger to be buried in the graveyard. When Constable Brady put it to those present that their real objection did not lie in the fact that Cavanagh had been a stranger, he was not contradicted.
The body was ultimately buried at Carndonagh on Saturday, several people remaining in the graveyard at Clonmany all through the night (Friday) till the body was taken to Carndonagh for burial.
At Carndonagh Petty Sessions, on the 18th July 1888, Con. Doherty and Owen Doherty, with five others, were prosecuted for unlawful assembly on the occasion above referred to. The first two named, who were the ringleaders, were convicted, and sentenced to
vol. I. S
274
six weeks' imprisonment each with hard labour; the charges against the remainder were dismissed.
As the Post-Office Savings Banks represent the smaller depositors, and command special confidence among them even in the disturbed districts, I print here an official statement showing the balances due to depositors in the undermentioned offices, situated in certain of the most disturbed regions I visited, on the 31st December of the years 1880 and 1887 respectively:-
* This Office was not opened for Savings Bank business until the year 1881, the amount shown being balance due on the 31st December 1882.
It appears from this table that the deposits in these Savings Banks increased in the aggregate from £20,329, 15s. 11d. in 1880 to £32,347, 9s. 7d. in 1887, or
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almost 60 per cent. in seven years. They fell off in only one case, at Bunbeg, and there only to a nominal amount. At Youghal they much more than doubled, increasing about 133 per cent. Yet in all these places the Plan of Campaign has been invoked "because the people were penniless and could not pay their debts!"
captain hamilton sends me the following graphic account of this affair at Coolgreariy:-
In the Freeman's Journal of the 16th December 1886. it is reported that a meeting of the Brooke tenantry, the Rev. P. O'Neill in the chair, was held at Coolgreany on the Sunday previous to the 15th December 1886, the date on which the "Plan of Campaign" was adopted on the estate, at which it was resolved that if I refused the terms offered they would join the "Plan."
I had no conference at Freeman's house or anywhere else at any time with two parish priests. On the 15th December 1886, when seated in Freeman's house waiting to receive the rents, four priests, a reporter of the Freeman's Journal, some local reporters, and four of the tenants rushed into the room; and the priests in the rudest possible manner (the Rev. P. Farrelly, one of them, calling me "Francy Hyne's hangman," and other terms of abuse) informed me that unless I re-instated a former Roman Catholic tenant in a farm which he had previously held, and which was then let to a Protestant, and gave an abatement of 30 per cent., no rent would be paid me that day. Dr. Dillon, C.C., was not present on this occasion, or, if so, I do not remember seeing him.
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On my asking if I had no alternative hut to concede to their demand, the Eev. Mr. Dunphy, parish priest, replied, "None other; do not think, sir, we have come here to-day to do honour to you."
The Eev. P. O'Neill spoke as he always does, in a more gentlemanly and conciliatory manner, and I therefore, as the confusion in the room was great, offered to discuss the matter with him, the Rev. O'Donel, C.C., and the tenants, if the other priests, who were strangers to me, and the reporters would leave the room. This the Eev. Mr. Dunphy declared they would not do, and I accordingly refused further to discuss the matter.
After they left the house, one of the tenants, Mick Darcy, stepped forward and said, "Settle with us, Captain." I replied, "Certainly, if you come back with me into the house." The Eev. Mr. Dunphy took him by the collar of his coat and threw him against the wall of the house, then turning to rne with his hand raised said, "You shall not do so; we, who claim the temporal as well as spiritual power over you as well as these poor creatures, will settle this matter with you."
The tenants were then taken down to the League
rooms, where two M.P.s, Sir Thomas Esmonde and Mr. Mayne, were waiting to receive the rents, which, one by one, they were ordered in to pay into the war-chest of the "Plan of Campaign."
I have I fear written too much of this commencement of the war on the estate which has since led to over seventy of the tenants and their families being ejected, and has brought ruin on nearly all who joined it. I have considerable experience as a land agent, but I know of no estate where the tenants were more respectable, better housed, or, as a body, in better circumstances than on the Brooke estate. They had a kind, indulgent landlord, and they knew it; and nothing but
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the belief that, led by their clergy, they were foremost in a battle fighting for their country and religion, would have induced them to put up with the great hardships and loss they have undoubtedly had to suffer.
the following entry I take from the Expense-Book of the Duke of Ormond, under date of August 23, 171:-
His Grace came to Kilkenny, half an hour after 10 at night.
His grace's table.
Pottage. Sautee Veal. 5 Pullets, Bacon and Collyflowers
Pottage Meagre.
Pikes with White Sauce.
A Turbot with Lobster Sauce.
Umbles.
A Hare Hasht.
Buttered Chickens, 6.
Hasht Veal and New Laid Eggs.
Removes.
A Shoulder and Neck of Mutton. Haunch of Venison.
Second Course.
Lobsters. Tarts, an Oval Dish.
Crabbs Buttered. 4 Pheasants, 4 Partridges, 4 Turkeys.
Eagoo Mushrooms. Kidney Beans. Eagoo Oysters.
Fritters. Two Sallets.
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this case of Mr. Taylor is worth preserving in extenso as an illustration of that spirit in the Irish journalism of the day, against which Mr. Rolleston and his friends protest as fatal to independence, manliness, and truth. I simply cite the original attack made upon Mr. Taylor, the replies made by himself and his friends, and the comments made upon those replies by the journal which assailed him. They all tell their own story.
Mr. John F. Taylor owes everything he has or is to the Irish National Party; nor is he slow to confess it where the acknowledgment will serve his personal interests. His sneers are all anonymous, and, like Mr. Fagg, the grateful and deferential valet in The Rivals, "it hurts his conscience to be found out." There is no honesty or sincerity in the man. His covert gibes are the spiteful emanation of personal disappointment; his lofty morality is a cloak for unscrupulous self-seeking. He has always shown himself ready to say anything or do anything that may serve his own interests. In the general election of 1885 he made frantic efforts to get into Parliament as a member of the Irish Party. He ghosted every member of the party whose influence he thought might help him-notably the two men, Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien, at whom he now sneers, as he fondly believes, in the safe seclusion of an anonymous letter of an English newspaper. During the period of probation his hand was incessant on Mr. Billon's door-knocker. The most earnest supplications were not spared. All in vain. Either his character or his ability failed to satisfy the Irish leader, and his claim was summarily rejected. Since then his wounded vanity has found vent in spiteful calumny of almost every member of the Irish Party-whenever he found malice a luxury that could be safely indulged in.
"His next step was a startling one. We have absolute
279
reason to know, when the last Coercion Act was in full swing, this pure-souled and disinterested patriot begged for, received, and accepted a very petty Crown Prosecutorship under a Coercion Government. As was wittily said at the time, he sold his principles, not for a mess of pottage, but for the stick that stirred the mess. Strong pressure was brought to bear on him, and he was induced for his own sake, after many protests and with much reluctance, to publicly refuse the office he had already privately accepted. Mr. Taylor professes to model himself on Robert Emmet and Thomas Davis; it is hard to realise Thomas Davis or Robert Emmet as a Coercion Crown Prosecutor in the pay of Dublin Castle. Since then there has been no more persistent caviller at the Irish policy and the Irish Party in company where he believed such cavilling paid. When Home Rule was proposed by Mr. Gladstone, he had a thousand foolish sneers for the measure and its author. When the Bill was defeated, he elected Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Goschen, and Mr. T. W. Russell as the gods of his idolatry. Such a nature needs a patron, and Mr. Webb, Q.C., the Tory County Court Judge who doubled the sentence on Father M'Fadden, was the patron to be selected. It is shrewdly suspected that he supplied most of the misguiding information for Dr. Webb's coercion pamphlet, and it is probable that Dr. Webb gives him a lift with his weekly letter to the Manchester Guardian.
mr. john F. taylor. To the Editor of "United Ireland."
sir,-You would not, I am sure, allow intentional misstate-ments to appear in your columns, and I ask you to allow me space to correct three erroneous observations made about myself in your current issue-
1. The first statement is to the effect that I owe everything I have, or that I am, to the Irish National Party. I owe absolutely nothing to the Irish Party, except an attempt to boycott me on my circuit, which, fortunately for me, has failed.
2. The second is to the effect that I made "frantic efforts" (these are the words, I think) to enter Parliament, and be-sieged Mr. Dillon's house during the time when candidates were being chosen. I saw Mr. Dillon exactly twice, both occasions at Mr. Davitt's request. Mr. Davitt urged me to
280
allow my name to go forward as a candidate, and it was at his wish and solicitation that I saw Mr. Dillon.
3. It is further said that I begged a Crown Prosecutorship. Fortunately, Mr. Walker and The M'Dermot are living men, and they know this to be absolutely untrue. I was offered such an appointment, and, contrary to my own judgment, I allowed myself to be guided by Mr. Davitt, who thought the matter would be misunderstood in the state of things then existing. I believe I am the only person that ever declined such an offer.
As to general statements, these are of no importance, and I shall not trouble you about them.-Yours very truly,
john F. taylor.
P.S.-The introduction of Dr. Webb's name was a gratuitous outrage, Dr. Webb and I never assisted each other in anything except in the defence of P. N. Fitzgerald. J. F. T.
dear sir,-As my name has been introduced into the con
troversy between yourself and Mr. Taylor, I feel called upon
to substantiate the two statements wherein my name occurs in
Mr. Taylor's letter of last week. It was at my request that
he called upon Mr. John Dillon, M.P. I think I accompanied
him on the occasion, and unless my memory is very much at
fault, Mr. Dillon was not unfriendly to Mr. Taylor's proposed
candidature. This visit occurred some three months after Mr.
Taylor had, on my advice, declined the Crown Prosecutorship
for King's County, a post afterwards applied for by and granted
to a near relative of one of the most prominent members of
the Irish Party. With Mr. Taylor's general views on the
present situation, or opinions upon parties or men, I have no
concern. But, in so far as the circumstances related above are
dealt with in your issue of last week, I think an unjust imputa
tion has been made against him, and in the interests of truth
and fair play I feel called upon to adduce the testimony of facts
as they occurred.-Yours truly, michael davitt.
Ballybrack, Co. Dublin, June 19, 1888.
sir,-As this is, I believe, the first time I have sought to intrude upon your columns, I hope you will allow me some 281
slight space in the interests of fair-play and freedom of speech. Those interests seem to me to have been quite set at naught in the attack, or rather series of attacks, upon Mr. Taylor in your last issue. Mr. Taylor's views upon many matters are not mine. He is far more democratic in his opinions than I see any sufficient reason for being, and he is very much more of what is called a land reformer than I am; but on an acquaintance of some years I have ever found him an honourable and high-minded gentleman, and as good a Nationalist, from my point of view, as most of the members of the Irish Parliamentary Party whom I either know or know of. Of some of the charges made against Mr. Taylor, such as the seeking for Crown Prosecutorships and the like, I am in no position to speak, save from my knowledge of his character, but I understand Mr. Davitt knows all about these things, and I suppose he will tell what he knows. But of the main matter, and I think the chief cause of your ire, I am quite in a position to speak. I have read at least a score of Mr. Taylor's letters to the Manchester Guardian, and I have always found them very intelligently written, and invariably characterised by a spirit of fairness and moderation ; indeed, the chief fault I found with them was that they took too favourable a view of the motives, if not the acts, of many of our public men, but notably of Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien. You may, of course, fairly say that I am not the best judge of either the acts or the motives of these gentlemen, and I freely grant you that I may not, for my way of looking upon the Irish question is quite other than theirs; but what I must be excused for holding is that both I and Mr. Taylor have quite as good a right to our opinions as either of these gentlemen, or as any other member of the Irish Parliamentary Party. But this is the very last right that people are inclined to grant to each other in Ireland just now. Personally I care very little for this, but for Ireland's sake I care much. Some twenty years ago or so I was sent into penal servitude with the almost entire approval, expressed or implied, of the Irish Press. Some short time after the same Press found out that I and my friends had not sinned so grievously in striving to free Ireland. But men and times and things may change again, and, though I am growing old, I hope still to live long enough to be forgiven for my imperfect appreciation of the blessings of Boycotting, and the Plan of Campaign, and many similar blessings. It matters little indeed how or when I die, so that Ireland lives, but her life can only be a living death if Irishmen are not free to say
282
what they believe, and to act as they deem right.-Your
obedient servant, john o'leary.
June 18, 1888.
dear SlR,-I observe that in your last issue, amongst other
things, you state that Mr. Taylor accepted a Crown Prosecu-
torship in 1885. I happen to know the precise facts. Mr.
Taylor was offered the Crown Prosecutorship of the King's
County, and some of us strongly advised him to accept it.
There were no political prosecutions impending at the time,
and it seemed to me that a Nationalist who would do his work
honestly in prosecuting offenders against the ordinary law
might strike a blow against tyranny by refusing to accept a
brief, if offered, against men accused of political offences or
prosecuted under a Coercion Act. I know that a similar view
was entertained by the late Very Rev. Dr. Kavanagh of Kil-
dare, and many others. However, we failed to influence Mr.
Taylor further than to make him say that he would do nothing
in the matter until Mr. Davitt was consulted. I, for one,
called on Mr, Davitt, and pressed my views upon him; but he
was decided that no Nationalist could identify himself in the
smallest way with Castle rule in Ireland. This settled the
question, and Mr. Taylor declined the post, which was subse
quently applied for by Mr. Luke Dillon, who now holds it.-
Faithfully yours, james A. poole,
29 Harcourt Street.
"United Ireland" June 23.
We devote a large portion of our space to-day to the apparently organised defence of Mr. J. F. Taylor and his friends, and we are quite content to rest upon their letters the justification for our comments. When a gentleman who avows himself a disappointed aspirant for Parliamentary honours, and who owns his regret that he did not become a petty Castle placeman, is discovered writing in an important English Liberal paper, venomous little innuendos at the expense of sorely attacked Irish leaders which excite the enthusiasm of the Liarish Times, it was high time to intimate to the Manchester Guardian the source from which its Irish information is derived. The case against Mr. Taylor as a criticaster is clinched by the fact that his cause is espoused by Mr. John
283
O'Leary. The Irish public are a little weary of Mr. O'Leary's querulous complaints as an homme incompris. So far as we are aware, the only ground he himself has for complaining of want of toleration is that he possibly considers the good-humoured toleration for years invariably extended to his opinions on men and things savours of neglect. His idea of toleration with respect to others seems to be toleration for everybody except the unhappy wretches who may happen to be for the moment doing any practicable service in the Irish cause.
the following circumstantial account of this deplorable case of Ellen Gaffney preserved here, as I find it printed in the Irish Times of February 27, 1888.
"In the Court of Queen's Bench, on Saturday, the Lord Chief-Justice (Sir Michael Morris, Bart.), Mr. Justice O'Brien, Mr. Justice Murphy, and Mr. Justice Gibson presiding, judgment was delivered in the case of Ellen Gaffney. The original motion was to quash the verdict of a coroner's jury held at Philipstown on August 27th and September 1st last, on the body of a child named Mary Anne Gaffney.
"The Lord Chief-Justice said it appeared that Mary Anne Gaffney, the child on whose body the inquest was held, was born on the 23d July, and that she died on the 25th August, 1887. A Dr. Clarke, who had been very much referred to in the course of the proceedings, called upon the local sergeant of the police, and directed his attention to the body, but the sergeant having inspected the body, came to the conclusion that there was no need for an inquest. The doctor considered differently, and the sergeant communicated with the Coroner on the 26th August, and
284
on the next day that gentleman arrived in Philipstown. He had a conference there with Dr. Clarke and with a reverend gentleman named Father Bergin, and subsequently proceeded to hold an inquest upon the child in a public-house-a most appropriate place apparently for the transactions which afterwards occurred there. The investigation, if it might be so called, was proceeded with upon that 27th of August. Very strong affidavits had been made on the part of Mrs. Gaffney -who applied to have the inquisition quashed-her husband, and some of the constabulary authorities as to the line of conduct pursued upon that occasion. Ellen Gaffney and her husband were taken into custody on the day the inquest opened by the verbal direction of the Coroner, who refused to complete the depositions given by the former on the ground that she was not sworn. That did not take him out of the difficulty, for if she was not sworn she had a right to be sworn, and the Coroner had no right to prevent her. The inquest was resumed on the 1st September in the court-house at Philipstown-the proper place-and a curious letter was read from the Coroner, the effect of which was that he did not consider that there was any ground for detaining the man Gaffney in custody, but the woman was brought before a justice of the peace and committed for trial. She was in prison from August 27th until the month of December, when the lucky accident of a winter assize occurred, else she might be there still. At the adjourned inquest the Coroner proceeded to read over the depositions taken on the former day, and it was sworn by four witnesses, whom he (the Lord Chief-Justice) entirely credited, that the Coroner read these depositions as if they were originals, whereas an unprecedented transaction had occurred. The Coroner had given the original depositions out of his own custody, and given them to a
285
reverend gentleman who was rather careless of them, as was shown by the evidence of a witness named Greene, who deposed that he saw a car on the road upon which sat two clergymen, and he found on the road the original depositions which, presumably, one of the clergymen had dropped. The depositions were handed to a magistrate and afterwards returned to the police at Philipstown, who had possession of them on the resumption of the inquest. If the case stood alone there it was difficult to understand how a Coroner could come into court and appear by counsel to resist the quashing of an inquisition in regard to which at the very door such gross personal misconduct was demonstrated. No doubt, he said, he did not read them as originals but as copies, and it was strange, that being so, that he did not inform the jury of what had become of them, and he complained now of not being told by the police of their recovery-not told of his own misconduct. On the 1st September, Ellen Gaffney applied by a solicitor-Mr. Disdall, and as a set-off the Coroner permitted a gentleman named O'Kearney Whyte to appear-for whom? Was it for the constituted authorities or for the next-of-kin? No, but for the Rev. Father Bergin, who was described as president of the local branch of the National League, and the Coroner (Mr. Gowing) alleged as the reason why he allowed him to appear and cross-examine the witnesses and address the jury and give him the right of reply like Crown counsel was, that Ellen Gaffney stated that she had been so much annoyed by Father Bergin that she attributed the loss of her child to him-that it was he who had murdered the child. It was asserted that Father Bergin sat on the bench with the Coroner and interfered during the conduct of the inquest, and having to give some explanation of that Mr. Gowing's version was certainly a most amusing one. He said it
286
was the habit to invite to a seat on the bench people of a respectable position in life-which, of course, a clergyman should be in-and that he asked Father Bergin to sit beside him in that capacity. But see the dilemma the Coroner put himself in. According to his own statement he had previously allowed this reverend gentleman to interfere, and to be represented by a solicitor because he was incriminated, inculpated, or accused, and it certainly was not customary to invite any one so situated to occupy a seat on the bench. He (the Lord Chief Baron) did not believe that Father Bergin was incriminated in any way, but that was the Coroner's allegation, and such was his peculiar action thereafter. The Coroner further stated that no matter whether he read the originals or the copies of the first day's depositions, it was on the evidence of September 1st that the jury acted. If that was so he placed himself in a further dilemma, for there was no evidence before the jury at all on the second day upon which they could bring a verdict against Ellen Gaffney. In regard to the recording and announcing of the verdict it appeared that the jury were 19 in number, and after their deliberations the foreman declared that 13 were for finding a verdict one way and 6 for another; that Mr. Whyte dictated the verdict to the Coroner, and the Coroner asked the 13 men if that was what they agreed to. Mr. Whyte's statement was that the jury, through the foreman, stated what their verdict was; that he wrote it down, and that the Coroner asked him for what he had written, and used it himself. But in addition to that, when the jury came in the Coroner and Mr. Whyte divided them-placed them apart while the verdict was being written-and then said to the 13 men, "Is that what you agree to?" Such apparent misconduct it was hardly possible to conceive in anybody
287
occupying a judicial position as did the Coroner, and especially a Coroner who had an inquisition quashed before. What he had mentioned was sufficient to call forth the emphatic decision of the court quashing the proceedings, which, however, were also impeached on the grounds of its insufficiency and irregularity, and of the character of the finding itself. It was not until the Coroner had been threatened with the consequences of his contempt that he made a return to the visit of certiorari, and it was then found that out of ten so-called depositions only one contained any signature -that of Dr. Clarke's, which was one of those lost by the clergyman, and not before the jury on the 1st September. He (the Lord Chief-Justice) had tried to read the documents, but in vain-they were of such a scrawling and scribbling character, but, as he had said, all were incomplete and utterly worthless except the one which was not properly before the jury. Then, what was the finding on this inquisition, which should have been substantially as perfect as an indictment? "That Mary Anne GafFney came by her death, and that the mother of this child, Ellen Gaffney, is guilty of wilful neglect by not supplying the necessary food and care to sustain the life of this child." Upon what charge could the woman have been implicated on that vague finding? He (his Lordship) could understand its being contended that that amounted argumentatively to a verdict of manslaughter; but the Coroner issued his warrant and sent this woman to prison as being guilty of murder, and she remained in custody, as he had already remarked, until discharged by the learned judge who went the Winter Assizes in December. Upon all of these grounds they were clearly of opinion that this inquisition should be quashed, and Mr. Coroner Gowing having had the self-possession to come there to show cause against the conditional order,
288
under such circumstances, must bear the costs of that argument.
Mr. Fred. Moorhead; who, instructed by Mr. O'Kearney Whyte, appeared for the Coroner, asked whether the Court would require, as was usual when costs were awarded against a magistrate, an undertaking from the other side--
The Lord Chief-Justice.-That is not to bring an action against the Coroner, you mean?
Mr. Moorhead.-Yes, my Lord. I think it is a usual undertaking when costs are awarded in such a case. I think you ought--
The Lord Chief-Justice.-Well, I don't know that we ought, but we most certainly will not. (Laughter,)
Mr. David Sherlock, who (instructed by Mr. Archibald W. Disdall) appeared for Ellen Gaffney.-Rest assured, we certainly will bring an action.
Rossbehy,1 Feb. 21.-We are here on the eve of battle! An "eviction" is to be made to-morrow on the Gleubehy1 estate of Mr. Winn, an uncle of Lord Headley, so upon the invitation of Colonel Turner, who has come to see that all is done decently and in order, I left Ennis with him at 7.40 A.M. for Limerick; the "city of the Liberator" for "the city of the Broken Treaty." There we breakfasted at the Artillery Barracks.
The officers showed us there the new twelve-pounder gun with its elaborately scientific machinery, its Scotch sight, and its four-mile range. I compared notes about the Trafalgar Square riots of February 1886 with an Irish officer who happened to have
1 I have the authority of Mr. Hennessey, "the best living Irish scholar, and a Kerryman to boot," for this spelling. I am quite right, he says, in stating that the people there pronounce the names of Glenbeigh and Rossbeigh as Glenbehy and Rossbehy in three syllables. "Bethe," pronounced "behy," is the genitive of "beith," the birch, of which there were formerly large woods in Ireland. Glenbehy and Rossbehy mean the "Glen," and the "Ross" or " wooded point" of the birch.
2
been on the opposite side of Pall Mall from me at the moment when the mob, getting out of the hand of my socialistic friend Mr. Hyndman, and advancing towards St. James' Street and Piccadilly was broken by a skilful and very spirited charge of the police. He gave a most humorous account of his own sensations when he first came into contact with the multitude after emerging from St. Paul's, where, as he put it, he had left the people "all singing away like devils." But I found he quite agreed with me in thinking that there was a visible nucleus of something like military organisation in the mob of that day, which was overborne and, as it were, smothered by the mere mob element before it came to trying conclusions with the police.
On our way to Limerick, Colonel Turner caught sight, at a station, of Father Little, the parish priest of Six Mile Bridge, in County Clare, and jumping out of the carriage invited him to get in and pursue his journey with us, which he very politely did. Father Little is a tall fine-looking man of a Saxon rather than a Celtic type, and I daresay comes of the Cromwellian stock. He is a staunch and outspoken Nationalist, and has been made rather prominent of late by his championship of certain of his
3
parishioners in their contest with their landlord, Mr. H, V. D'Esterre, who lives chiefly at Bournemouth in England, but owns 2833 acres in County Clare at Rosmanagher, valued at £1625 a year. More than a year ago one of Father Little's parishioners, Mr. Frost, successfully resisted a large force of the constabulary bent on executing a process of ejectment against him obtained by Mr. D'Esterre,
Frost's holding was of 33 Irish, or, in round numbers, about 50 English, acres, at a rental of £117, 10s., on which he had asked but had not obtained an abatement. The Poor-Law valuation of the holding was £78, and Frost estimated the value of his and his father's improvements, including the homestead and the offices, or in other words his tenant-right, at £400. The authorities sent a stronger body of constables and ejected Frost. But as soon as they had left the place Frost came back with his family, on the 28th Jan. 1887, and re-occupied it. Of course proceedings were taken against him immediately, and a small war was waged over the Frost farm until the 5th of September last, when an expedition was sent against it, and it was finally captured, and Frost evicted with
VOL. II. A
4
his family. Upon this last occasion Father Little (who gave me a very temperate but vigorous account of the whole affair) distinguished himself by a most ingenious and original attempt to "hold the fort." He chained himself to the main doorway, and stretching the chains right and left secured them to two other doors. It was of this refreshing touch of humour that I heard the other day at Abbeyleix as happening not in Clare but in Kerry.
Since his eviction Frost has been living, Father Little tells me, in a wooden hut put up for him on the lands of a kinsman of the same name, who is also a tenant of Mr. D'Esterre, and who has since been served by his landlord with a notice of ejectment for arrears, although he had paid up six months' dues two months only before the service. Father Little charged the landlord in this case with prevarication and other evasive proceedings in the course of his negotiations with the tenants; and Colonel Turner did not contest the statements made by him in support of his contention that the Ros-managher difficulty might have been avoided had the tenants been more fairly and more considerately dealt with. It is strong presumptive evidence against the landlord that a kinsman, Mr. Robert
5
D'Esterre, is one of the subscribers to a fund raised by Father Little in aid of the evicted man Frost. On the other hand, as illustrating the condition of the tenants, it is noteworthy that the Post-Office Savings Bank's deposits at Six-Mile Bridge rose from £382, 17s. l0d. in 1880 to £934, 13s. 4d. in 1887.
After breakfast we took a car and drove rapidly about the city for an hour. With its noble river flowing through the very heart of the place, and broadening soon into an estuary of the Atlantic, Limerick ought long ago to have taken its place in the front rank of British ports dealing with the New World. In the seventeenth century it was the fourth city of Ireland, Boate putting it then next after Dublin, Galway, and Waterford. Belfast at that time, he describes as a place hardly comparable "to a small market-town in England." To-day Limerick has a population of some forty thousand, and Belfast a population of more than two hundred thousand souls. This change cannot be attributed solely, if at all, to the "Protestant ascendency," nor yet to the alleged inferiority of the Northern over the Southern Irish in energy and thrift. For in the seventeenth century Limerick
6
was more important than Cork, whereas it had so far fallen behind its Southern competitor in the eighteenth century that it contained in 1781 but 3859 houses, while Cork contained 5295. To-day its population is about half as large as that of Cork. It is a very well built city, its main thoroughfare, George Street, being at least a mile in length, and a picturesque city also, thanks to the island site of its most ancient quarter, the English Town, and to the hills of Clare and Killaloe, which close the prospect of the surrounding country. But the streets, though many of them are handsome, have a neglected look, as have also the quays and bridges. One of my companions, to whom I spoke of this, replied, "if they look neglected, it's because they are neglected. Politics are the death of the place, and the life of its publics."1
As we approached the shores of the Atlantic from Limerick, the scenery became very grand and
1 A letter received by me from a Protestant Irish gentleman, long an ardent Nationalist, seems to confirm this. He writes to me (June 15), "There is a noble river here, with a convenient line of quays for unloading merchandise. But every sack that is landed must be carried out of the ship on men's backs. The quay labourers won't allow a steam crane to he set up. If it is tried there is a riot and a tumult, and no Limerick tradesman can purchase anything from a vessel that uses it, on
7
beautiful. On the right of the railway the country rolled and undulated away towards the Stacks, amid the spurs and slopes of which, in the wood of Clonlish, Sanders, the Nuncio sent over to organise Catholic Ireland against Elizabeth, miserably perished of want and disease six years before the advent of the great Armada. To the south-west rose the grand outlines of the Macgillicuddy's Reeks, the highest points, I believe, in the South of Ireland. We established ourselves at the County Kerry Club on our arrival in Tralee, which I found to be a brisk prosperous-looking town, and quite well built. A Nationalist member once gave me a gloomy notion of Tralee, by telling me, when I asked him. whether he looked forward with longing to a seat in the Parliament of Ireland, that "when he was in Dublin now he always thought of London, just as when he used to be in Tralee he always thought of Dublin." But he did less than justice to the town upon the Lee. We left it at half-past
pain of being boycotted. The result is that the labourers are masters of the situation, and when they catch a vessel with a cargo which it is imperative to land quickly, they wait till the work is half done, and then strike for 8s. a day! If other labourers are imported, they are boycotted for 'grabbing work,' and any one who sells provisions to them is boycotted."
8
four in the train for Killorglin. The little station there was full of policemen and soldiers, and knots of country people stood about the platform discussing the morrow. There had been some notion that
the car-drivers at Killorglin might "boycott" the authorities. But they were only anxious to turn an honest penny by bringing us on to this lonely but extremely neat and comfortable hostelry in the hills.
We left the Sheriff and the escort to find their way as best they could after us.
Mrs. Shee, the landlady here, ushered us into a very pretty room hung with little landscapes of the country, and made cheery by a roaring fire. Two or three officers of the soldiers sent on here to prevent any serious uproar to-morrow dined with us.
The constabulary are in force, but in great good humour. They have no belief that there will be any trouble, though all sorts of wild tales were flying about Tralee before we left, of English members of Parliament coming clown to denounce the "Coercion" law, and of risings in the hills, and I know not what besides. The agent of the Winn property, or of Mr. Head of Eeigate in Surrey, the mortgagee of the estate, who holds a power of attorney from Mr. Winn, is here, a quiet, intelligent
9
young man, who has given me the case in a nutshell.
The tenant to be evicted, James Griffin, is the son and heir of one Mrs. Griffin, who on the 5th of April 1854 took a lease of the lands known as West Lettur from the then Lord Headley and the Hon. R. Winn, at the annual rent of £32, 10s. This rent has since been reduced by a judicial process to £26. In 1883 James Griffin, who was then, as he is now, an active member of the local branch of the National League, and who was imprisoned under Mr. Gladstone's Act of 1881 as a "suspect," was evicted, being then several years in arrears. He re-entered unlawfully immediately, afterwards, and has remained in West Lettur unlawfully ever since, actively deterring and discouraging other tenants from paying their rents. He took a great part in promoting the refusal to pay which led to the famous evictions of last year. As to these, it seems the tenants had agreed, in 1886, to accept a proposition from Mr. Head, remitting four-fifths of all their arrears upon payment of one year's rent and costs. Mr. Sheehan, M.P., a hotel-keeper in Killar-ney, intervened, advising the tenants that the Dublin Parliament would soon be established, and would abolish "landlordism," whereupon they re-
10
fused to keep their agreement.1 Sir Redvers Buller, who then filled the post now held by Sir West Eidgway, seeing this alarming deadlock, urged Mr. Head to go further, and offer to take a half-year's rent and costs. If the tenants refused this Sir Eedvers advised Mr. Head to destroy all houses occupied by mere trespassers, such as Griffin, who, if they could hold a place for twelve years, would acquire a title under the Statute of Limitations. A negotiation conducted by Sir Eedvers and Father Quilter, P.P., followed, and Father Quilter, for the tenants, finally, in writing, accepted Mr. Head's offer, under which, by the payment of £865, they would be rid of a legal liability for £6177. The League again intervened with bribes and threats, and Father Quilter found himself obliged to write to Colonel Turner a letter in which he said, "Only seventeen of the seventy tenants have sent on their rents to Mr. Eoe (the agent). Though promising that they would accept the terms, they have withdrawn at the last moment from fulfilment. . . . I shall never again during my time in Glenbehy
1 An interesting account of this gentleman, and of his connection with the earlier developments of the Irish agitation, given to me by Mr. Colomb of the R.I.C., will be found at p. 38, and in a note in the Appendix.
11
interfere between a landlord and his tenants. I have poor slaves who will not keep their word. Now let Mr. Roe or any other agent in future deal with Glenbeighans as he likes." The farms lie at a distance even from this inn, and very far therefore from Killorglin, and the agent, knowing that the tenants would be encouraged by Griffin and by Mr. Harrington, M.P., and others, to come back into their holdings as soon as the officers withdrew, ordered the woodwork of several cottages to be burned in order to prevent this. This burning of the cottages, which were the lawful property of the mortgagee, made a great figure in the newspaper reports, and "scandalised the civilised world." The present agent thinks it was impolitic on that account, but he has no doubt it was a good thing financially for the evicted tenants. "You will see the shells of the cottages to-morrow," he said, "and you will judge for yourself what they were worth." But the sympathy excited by the illustrations of the cruel conflagration and the heartrending descriptions of the reporters, resulted in a very handsome subscription for the benefit of the tenants of Glenbehy. General Sir William Butler, whose name came so prominently before the public in connection with
12
his failure to appear and give evidence in a recent cause celebre, and whose brother is a Resident Magistrate in Kerry, was one of the subscribers. The fund thus raised has been since administered by two trustees, Father Quilter, P.P., and Mr. Shee, a son of our brisk little landlady here, who maintain out of it very comfortably the evicted tenants. Not long ago a man in Tralee tried to bribe the agent into having him evicted, that he might make a claim on this fund! At Killorglin the Post-Office Savings Bank deposits, which stood at £282, 15s. 9d. in 1880, rose in 1887 to £1299, 2s. 6d. James Griffin, despite, or because, of the two evictions through which he has passed, is very well off. He owns a very good horse and cart, and seven or eight head of cattle. His arrears now amount to about £240, and on being urged yesterday to make a proposition which might avoid an eviction, he gravely offered to pay £8 of the current half-year's rent in cash, and the remaining £5 in June, the landlord taking on himself all the costs and giving him a clean receipt! This liberal proposition was declined. The zeal of her son in behalf of the evicted tenants does not seem to affect the amiable anxiety of our trim and energetic hostess to make things agreeable here to the minions of the alien
13
despotism. The officers both of the police and of the military appear to be on the best of terms with the whole household, and everything is going as merrily as marriage bells on this eve of an eviction.
tralee, Wednesday evening, Feb. 22.-We rose early at Mrs. Shee's, made a good breakfast, and set out for the scene of the day's work. It was a glorious morning for Washington's birthday, and I could not help imagining the amazement with which that stern old Virginian landlord would have regarded the elaborate preparations thought necessary here in Ireland in the year of our Lord 1888, to eject a tenant who owes two hundred and forty pounds of arrears on a holding at twenty-six pounds a year, and offers to settle the little unpleasantness by paying thirteen pounds in two instalments!
We had a five miles' march of it through a singularly wild and picturesque region, the hills which lead up to the Macgillicuddy's Keeks on our left, and on the right the lower hills trending to the salt water of Dingle Bay. Our start had been delayed by the non-appearance of the Sheriff, in aid of whom all this parade of power was made; but it turned out afterwards that he had gone on without stopping to let Colonel Turner know it.
14
The air was so bracing and the scenery so fine that we walked most of the way. Two or three cars drove past us, the police and the troops making way for them very civilly, though some of the officers thought they were taking some Nationalist leaders and some English "sympathisers" to Glenbehy. One of the officers, when I commented upon this, told me they never had much trouble with the Irish members, "Some of them," he said, "talk more than is necessary, and flourish about; but they have sense enough to let us go about our work without foolishly trying to bother us. The English are not always like that." And he then told me a story of a scene in which an English M.P., we will call Mr. Gargoyle, was a conspicuous actor. Mr. Gargoyle being present either at an eviction or a prohibited meeting, I didn't note which, with two or three Irish members, all of them were politely requested to step on one side and let the police march past. The Irish members touched their hats in return to the salute of the officer, and drew to one side of the road. But Mr. Gargoyle defiantly planted himself in the middle of the road. The police, marching four abreast, hesitated for a moment, and then suddenly dividing into two columns
15
marched on. The right-hand man of the first double file, as he went by, just touched the M.P. with his shoulder, and thereby sent him up against the left-hand man of the corresponding double file, who promptly returned the attention. And in this manner the distinguished visitor went gyrating through the whole length of the column, to emerge at the end of it breathless, hatless, and bewildered, to the intense and ill-suppressed delight of his Irish colleagues.
Our hostess's son, the trustee of the Eviction Fund, was on one of the cars which passed us, with two or three companions, who proved to be "gentlemen of the Press." We passed a number of cottages and some larger houses on the way, the inmates of which seemed to be minding their own business and taking but a slight interest in the great event of the day. We made a little detour at one of the finest points on the road to visit "Winn's Folly," a modern mediseval castle of considerable size, upon a most enchanting site, with noble views on every side, quite impossible to be seen through its narrow loopholed and latticed windows. The castle is extremely well built, of a fine stone from the neighbourhood, and with a very small expenditure might
16
be made immediately habitable. But no one has ever lived in it. It has only been occupied as a temporary barrack by the police when sent here, and the largest rooms are now littered with straw for the use of the force. At the beginning of the century, and for many years afterwards, Lord and Lady Headley lived on the estate, and kept a liberal house. Their residence was on a fine point running out into the bay, but, I am told, the sea has now invaded it, and eaten it away. In 1809 the acreage of this Glenbehy property was 8915 Irish acres or 14,442 English acres, set down under Bath's valuation at £2299, 17s. 6d. Between 1830 and 1860 the rental averaged £5000 a year, and between these years £17,898, 14s. 5d. were expended by the landlord in improvements upon the property. This castle, which we visited, must have involved since then an outlay of at least £10,000 in the place.
The present Lord Headley, only a year or two ago, went through the Bankruptcy Court, and the Hon. Rowland Winn, his uncle, the titular owner of Glenbehy, is set down among the Irish landlords as owning 13,932 Irish acres at a rental of £1382.
After we passed the castle we began to hear the blowing of rude horns from time to time on the
17
distant hills. These were signals to the people of our approach, and gave quite the air of an invasion to our expedition. We passed the burned cottages of last year just before reaching Mr. Griffin's house at West Lettur. They were certainly not large cottages, and I saw but three of them. We found the Sheriff at West Lettur. The police and the soldiers drew a cordon around the place, within which no admittance was to be had except on business ; and the myrmidons of the law going into the house with the agent held a final conference with the tenant, of which nothing came but a renewal of his previous offer. Then the work of eviction began. There was no attempt at a resistance, and but for the martial aspect of the forces, and an occasional blast of a horn from the hills, or the curious noises made from time to time by a small concourse of people, chiefly women, assembled on the slope of an adjoining tenancy, the proceedings were as dull as a parish meeting. What most struck me about the affair was the patience and good-nature of the officers. In the two hours and a half which we spent at West Lettur a New York Sheriff's deputies would have put fifty tenants with all their bags and baggage out of as many houses
18
into the street. In fact it is very likely that at least that number of New York tenants were actually so ousted from their houses during this very time.
The evicted Mr. Griffin was a stout, stalwart man of middle age, comfortably dressed, with the air rather of a citizen than of a farmer, who took the whole thing most coolly, as did also his women-kind. All of them were well dressed, and they superintended the removal and piling up of their household goods as composedly as if they were simply moving out of one house into another. The house itself was a large comfortable house of the country, and it was amply furnished.
I commented on Griffin's indifference to the bailiff, a quiet, good-natured man.
"Oh, he's quite familiar," was the reply; "it's the third time he's been evicted! I believe's going to America."
"Oh! he will do very well," said a gentleman who had joined the expedition like myself to see the scene. "He is a shrewd chap, and not troubled by bashfulness. He sat on a Board of Guardians with a man I knew four years ago, and one day he read out his own name, 'James Griffin,' among a list of applicants for relief at Cahirciveen. The
19
chairman looked up, and said, 'Surely that is not your name you are reading, is it?' 'It is, indeed,' replied Griffin, 'and I am as much in need of relief as any one!' Perhaps you'll be surprised to hear he didn't get it. This is a good holding he had, and he used to do pretty well with it-not in his mother's time only of the flush prices, but in his own. It was the going to Kilmainham that spoiled him."
"How did that spoil him?"
"Oh, it made a great man of him, being locked up. He was too well treated there. He got a liking for sherry and bitters, and he's never been able to make his dinner since without a nip of them. Mrs. Shee knows that well."
To make an eviction complete and legal here, everything belonging to the tenant, and every live creature must be taken out of the house. A cat may save a house as a cat may save a derelict ship. Then the Sheriff must "walk" over the whole holding. All this takes time. There was an unobtrusive search for arms too going on all the time. Three ramrods were found hidden in a straw-bed- two of which showed signs of recent use. But the guns had vanished. An officer told me that not long ago two revolvers were found in a corner of the
VOL. II. B
20
thatch of a house; but the cartridges for them were only some time afterwards discovered neatly packed away in the top of a bedroom wall. It is not the ownership of these arms, it is the careful concealment of them which indicates sinister intent. One of the constables brought out three "Moonlighters' swords" found hidden away in the house. One of these Colonel Turner showed me. It was a reversal of the Scriptural injunction, being a ploughshare beaten into a weapon, and a very nasty weapon of offence, one end of it sharpened for an ugly thrust, the other fashioned into quite a fair grip. While I was examining this trophy there was a stir, and presently two of the gentlemen who had passed us on Mr. Shee's car came rather suddenly out of the house in company with two or three constables.
They were representatives, they said, of the Press, and as such desired to be allowed to remain. Colonel Turner replied that this could not be, and, in fact, no one had been suffered to enter the house except the law-officers, the agent, and the constables. So the representatives of the Press were obliged to pass outside of the lines, one of the constables declaring that they had got into the house through a hole in the back wall!
21 Shortly after this incident there arose a considerable noise of groaning and shouting- from the hillside beyond the highway, and presently a number of people, women and children predominating, appeared coming down towards the precincts of the house. They were following a person in a clerical dress, who proved to be Father Quilter, the parish priest, who had denounced his people to Colonel Turner as "poor slaves" of the League! A colloquy followed between Father Quilter and the policemen of the cordon. This was brought to a close by Mr. Roche, the resident magistrate, who went forward, and finding that Father Quilter wished to pass the cordon, politely but firmly informed him that this could not be done. "Not if I am the bearer of a telegram for the lawyer?" asked Father Quilter, in a loud and not entirely amiable tone. "Not on any terms whatever," responded the magistrate. Father Quilter still maintaining his ground, the women crowded in around and behind him, the men bringing up the rear at a respectable distance, and the small boys shouting loudly. For a moment faint hopes arose within me that I was about to witness one of the exciting scenes of which I have more than once
22
read. But only for a moment. The magistrate ordered the police to advance. As they drew near the wall with an evident intention of going over it into the highway, Father Quilter and the women fell back, the boys and men retreated up the opposite hill, and the brief battle of Glenbehy was over.
A small messenger bearing a telegram then emerged from the crowd, and showing his telegram, was permitted to pass. Father Quilter, in a loud voice, commented upon this, crying out, "See now your consistency! You said no one should pass, and you let the messenger corne in!" To this sally no reply was returned. After a little the priest, followed by most of the people, went up the hill to the holding of another tenant, and there, as the police came in and reported, held a meeting. From time to time cries were heard in the distance, and ever and anon the blast of a horn came from some outlying hill.
But no notice was taken of these things by the police, and when the tedious formalities of the law had all been gone through with, a squad of men were put in charge of the house and the holding, the rest of the army re-formed for the march back, our cars came up, and we left West Lettur.
23
Seeing a number of men come down the hill, as the column prepared to move, Mr. Roche, making his voice tremendous, after the fashion of a Greek chorus, commanded the police to arrest and handcuff any riotous person making provocative noises. This had the desired effect, and the march back began in silence. When the column was fairly in the road, "boos" and groans went up from knots of men higher up the hill, but no heed was taken of these, and no further incident occurred. I shall be curious to see whether the story of this affair can possibly be worked up into a thrilling narrative.
We lunched at Mrs. Shee's, where no sort of curiosity was manifested about the proceedings at West Lettur, and I came back here with Colonel Turner by another road, which led us past one of the loveliest lakes I have ever seen-Lough Caragh. Less known to fame than the much larger Lake of Killarney, it is in its way quite worthy of comparison with any of the lesser lakes of Europe. It is not indeed set in a coronal of mountains like Orta, but its shores are well wooded, picturesque, and enlivened by charming seats-now, for the most part, alas!-abandoned by their owners. We had a pleasant club dinner here this evening, after which
24
came in to see me Mr. Hussey, to whom I had sent a letter from Mr. Froude. Few men, I imagine, know this whole region better than Mr. Hussey. Some gentlemen of the country joined in the conversation, and curious stories were told of the difficulty of getting evidence in criminal cases. What Froude says of the effect of the prohibitive and protection policy in Ireland upon the morals of the people as to smuggling must be said, I fear, of the effect of the Penal Laws against Catholics upon their morals as to perjury. It is not surprising that the peasants should have been educated into the state of mind of the Irishman in the old American story, who, being solicited to promise his vote when he landed in New York, asked whether the party which sought it was for the Government or against it. Against it, he was told, "Then begorra you shall have my vote, for I'm agin the Government whatever it is." One shocking case was told of a notorious and terrible murder here in Kerry. An old man and his son, so poor that they lay naked in their beds, were taken out and shot by a party of Moonlighters for breaking a boycott. They were left for dead, and their bodies thrown upon a dunghill. The boy, however, was
25
still alive when they were found, and it was thought he might recover. The magistrates questioned him as to his knowledge of the murderers. The boy's mother stood behind the magistrate, and when the question was put, held up her finger in a warning manner at the poor lad. She didn't wish him to "peach," as, if he lived, the friends of the murderers would make it impossible for them to keep their holding and live on it. The lad lied, and died with the lie on his lips. Who shall sit in judgment on that wretched mother and her son? But what rule can possibly be too stern to crush out the terrorism which makes such things possible?
And what right have Englishmen to expect their dominion to stand in Ireland when their party leaders for party ends shake hands with men who wink at and use this terrorism? It has so wrought upon the population here, that in another case, in which the truth needed by justice and the fears of a poor family trembling for their substance and their lives came thus into collision, an Irish Judge did not hesitate to warn the jury against allowing themselves to be influenced by "the usual family lie "!
A magistrate told us a curious story, which
26
recalls a case noted by Sir Walter Scott, about the detection of a murderer, who lay long in wait for a certain police sergeant, obnoxious to the "Moonlighters," and finally shot him dead in the public street of Loughrea, after dark on a rainy night, as he was returning from the Post-Office on one side of the street to the Police Barracks on the other. The town and the neighbouring country were all agog about the matter, but no trace could be got until the Dublin detectives came down three days after the murder. It had rained more or less every one of these days, and the pools of water were still standing in the street, as on the night of the murder. One of the Dublin officers closely examining the highway saw a heavy footprint in the coarse mud at the bottom of one of these pools. He had the water drawn off, and made out clearly, from the print in the mud, that the brogan worn by the foot which made it had a broken sole-piece turned over under the foot. By this the murderer was eventually traced, captured, tried, and found guilty.
Mr. Morphy, I find, is coming down from Dublin to conduct the prosecution in the case of the Crown against the murderers of Fitzmaurice, the old man,
27
so brutally slain the other day near Lixnaw, in the presence of his daughter, for taking and farming a farm given up by his thriftless brother. "He will find," said one of the company, "the mischief done in this instance also by prematurely pressing for evidence. The girl Honora, who saw her father murdered, never ought to have been subjected to any inquiry at first by any one, least of all by the local priest. Her first thought inevitably was that if she intimated who the men were, they would be screened, and she would suffer. Now she is recovering her self-possession and coming round, and she will tell the truth."
"Meanwhile," said a magistrate, "the girl and her family are all 'boycotted,' and that, mark you, by the priest, as well as by the people. The girl's life would be in peril were not these scoundrels cowards as well as bullies. Two staunch policemen-Irishmen and Catholics both of them-are in constant attendance, with orders to prevent any one from trying to intimidate or to tamper with her. A police hut is putting up close to the Fitzmaurice house. The Nationalist papers haven't a word to say for this poor girl or her murdered father. But they are always putting in some sly word in behalf
28
of Moriarty and Hayes, the men accused of the murder.
"Furthermore," said another guest, "these two men are regularly supplied while in prison with special meals by Mrs. Tangney. Who foots the bills? That is what she won't tell, nor has the Head-Constable so far been able accurately to ascertain. All we know is that the friends of the prisoners haven't the money to do it."
Late in the evening came in a tall fine-looking Kerry squire, who told us, a propos of the Fitz-maurice murder, that only a day or two ago a very decent tenant of his, who had taken over a holding from a disreputable kinsman, intending to manage it for the benefit of this kinsman's family, came to him and said he must give it up, as the Moonlighters had threatened him if he continued to hold it.
A man of substance in Tralee gave me some startling facts as to the local administration here. In Tralee Union, he said, there were in 1879 eighty-seven persons receiving outdoor relief, at a cost to the Union of £30, 17s. 11d., being an average per head of 7s. 1d., and 1879 was a very bad year, the worst since the great famine year, 1847. A Nationalist Board was elected in 1880,
29
and a Nationalist chairman in 1884. 1884 was a very good year, but in that year no fewer than 3434 persons received outdoor relief, at a cost of £2534, 13s. 10d., making an average per head of 14s. 9d.! And at the present time £5000 nominal worth of dishonoured cheques of the authorities were flying all over the county!
"On whom," I asked, "does the burden fall of these levies and extravagances?"
"On the landlords, not on the tenants," he promptly replied. "The landlord pays the whole of the rates on all holdings of less than £4 a year, and on all land which is either really or technically in his own possession. He also pays one-half of the rates on all the rest of his property."
"Then, in a case like that of Griffin's, evicted at Glenbehy, with arrears going back to 1883, who would pay the rates?"
"The landlord of course!"
cork, Thursday, Feb. 23d.-We left Tralee this morning. It was difficult to recognise the events yesterday witnessed by us at Glenbehy in the accounts which we read of them to-day when we got the newspapers.
As these accounts are obviously intended to be read, not in Ireland, where nobody seems to take the least interest in Irish affairs beyond his own bailiwick, but in England and America, it is only natural, I suppose, that they should be coloured to suit the taste of the market for which they are destined. It is astonishing how little interest the people generally show in the newspapers. The Irish make good journalists as they make good soldiers; but most of the journalists who now represent Irish constituencies at Westminster find their chief field of activity, I am told, not in Irish but in British or in American journals. Mr. Eoche, E.M., who travelled with us as far as Castle Island, where we
31
left him, was much less moved by the grotesque accounts given in the local journals of his conduct yesterday than by Mr. Gladstone's "retractation" of the extraordinary attack which he made the other day upon Mr. Roche himself, and four other magistrates by name.
"The retractation aggravates the attack," he said.
When one sees what a magistrate now represents in Ireland, it certainly is not easy to reconcile an inconsiderate attack upon the character and conduct of such an officer with the most elementary ideas of good citizenship.
After Mr. Roche left us, a gentleman in the carriage, who is interested in some Castle Island property, told us that nothing could be worse than the state of that region. Open defiance of the moral authority of the clergy is as rife there, he says, as open defiance of the civil authorities. The church was not long ago broken into, and the sacred vestments were defiled; and, but the other day, a young girl of the place came to a magistrate and asked him to give her a summons against the parish priest "for assaulting her." The magistrate, a Protestant, but a personal friend of the priest, esteeming him for his fidelity to his duties, asked the girl what
32
on earth she meant. She proceeded with perfect coolness to say that the priest had impertinently interfered with her, "assaulted her," and told her to "go home," when he found her sitting in a lonely part of the road with her young man, rather late at night! For this, the girl, professing to be a Catholic, actually wanted the Protestant magistrate to have her parish priest brought into his court! He told the girl plainly what he thought of her conduct, whereupon she went away, very angry, and vowing vengeance both against the priest and against him.
This same gentleman said that at the Bodyke evictions, of which so much has been heard, the girls and women swarmed about the police using language so revoltingly obscene that the policemen blushed-such language, he said, as was never heard from decent Irishwomen in the days of his youth.
Of this business of evictions, he said, the greatest
imaginable misrepresentations are made in the press and by public speakers. "You have just seen one eviction yourself," he said, "and you can judge for yourself whether that can be truly described in Mr. Gladstone's language as a 'sentence of death.' The people that were put out of these burned houses
33
you saw, houses that never would have needed to be burned, had Harrington and the other Leaguers allowed the people to keep their pledges given Sir Redvers Buller, those very people are better off now than they were before they were evicted, in so far as this, that they get their food and drink and shelter without working for it, and I'm sorry to say that the Government and the League, between them, have been soliciting half of Ireland for the last six or eight years to think that sort of thing a heaven upon earth. An eviction in Ireland in these clays generally means just this, that the fight between a landlord and the League has come to a head. If the tenant wants to be rid of his holding, or if he is more afraid of the League than of the law, why, out he goes, and then he is a victim of heartless oppression; but if he is well-to-do, and if he thinks he will be protected, he takes the eviction proceedings just for a notice to stop palavering and make a settlement, and a settlement is made. The ordinary Irish tenant don't think anything more of an eviction than Irish gentlemen used to think of a duel; but you can never get English people to understand the one any more than the other!"
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The fine broad streets which Cork owes to the filling up and bridging over of the canals which in the last century made her a kind of Irish Venice, give the city a comely and even stately aspect. But they are not much better kept and looked after than the streets of New York. And they are certainly less busy and animated than when I last was here, five years ago. All the canals, however, are not filled up or bridged over. From my windows, in a neat comfortable little private hotel on Morrison's Quay, I look down upon the deck of a small barque, moored well up among the houses. The hospitable and dignified County Club is within two minutes' walk of my hostelry, and the equally hospitable and more bustling City Club, but a little farther off, at the end of the South Mall. At luncheon to-day a gentleman who was at Kilkenny with Mr. Gladstone on the occasion of his visit to that city told me a story too good to be lost. The party were eight in number, and on their return to Abbeyleix they naturally looked out for an empty railway carriage. The train was rather full, but in one compartment my informant descried a dignitary, whom he knew, of the Protestant Church of Ireland, its only occupant.
35
He went up and saluted the Dean, and, pointing to his companion, asked if he would object to changing his place in the train, which would give them a compartment to themselves. The Dean courteously, and indeed briskly, assented, when he saw that Mr. Gladstone was one of the party.
After the train moved off, Mr. Gladstone said, "Was not that gentleman who so kindly vacated his place for us a clergyman?"
"Yes." "I hope he won't think I have disestablished him again!"
At the next station, my informant getting out for a moment to thank the Dean again for his civility, and chat with him, repeated Mr. Gladstone's remark.
"Oh!" said the Dean; "you may tell him I don't mind his disestablishing me again; for he didn't disendow me; he didn't confiscate my ticket!"
With this gentleman was another from Kerry, who tells me there is a distinct change for the better already visible in that county, which he attributes to the steady action of the Dublin authorities in enforcing the law.
"The League Courts," he said, "are ceasing to be the terror they used to be."
I asked what he meant by the "League Courts,"
vol. 11. C
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when he expressed his astonishment at my not knowing that it was the practice of the League to hold regular Courts, before which the tenants are summoned, as if by a process of the law, to explain their conduct, when they are charged with paying their rents without the permission of the Local League. In his part of Kerry, he tells me, these Courts used not very long ago to sit regularly every Sunday. The idea, he says, is as old as the time of the United Irishmen, who used to terrorise the country just in the same way. A man whom he named, a blacksmith, acted as a kind of "Law Lord," and to him the chairmen of the different local "Courts" used to refer cases heard before them!1
All this was testified to openly two years ago, before Lord Cowper's Commission, but no decisive action has ever been taken by the Government to put a stop to the scandal, and relieve the tenants from this open tyranny. These Courts enforced, and still enforce, their decrees by various forms of outrage,
1 The name of this blacksmith's son learned in the Law of the League is given in Lord Cowper's Report (2. 18,370) as Michael Healy. While these pages are in the printer's hands the London papers chronicle (May 25, 1888) the arrest of a person described to me as this magistrate's brother, Jeremiah Healy, on a charge of robbing and setting fire to the Protestant church at Killarney!
37
ranging "from the boycott," in its simplest forms, up to direct outrages upon property and the person.
"This dual Government business," he said, "can only end in a duel between the two Governments, and it must be a duel to the death of one or the other."
To-night at dinner I had a most interesting conversation with Mr. Colomb, Assistant Inspector-General of the Constabulary, who is here engaged with Mr. Carneron of Belfast, and Colonel Turner, in investigating the affair at Mitchelstown. Mr. Colomb was at Killarney at the time of the Fenian rising under "General O'Connor" in 1867-a rising which was undoubtedly an indirect consequence of our own Civil War in America. Warning came to two magistrates, of impending trouble from Cahir-civeen. Upon this Mr. Colomb immediately ordered the arrest of all passengers to arrive that day at Killarney by the "stage-car" from that place. When the car came in at night, it brought only one person -"an awful-looking ruffian he was," said Mr. Colomb, "whom, by his square-toed shoes, we knew to be just arrived from your side of the water."
He was examined, and said he was a commercial traveller, and that he had only one letter about him, a business letter, addressed to "J. D. Sheehan."
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"Have you any objection to show us that letter?" "Certainly not," he replied very coolly, and, taking it out of his pocket, he walked toward a table on which stood a candle, as if to read it. A gentleman who was closely watching him, caught him by the wrist, just as he was putting the letter to the flame, and saved it. It was addressed to J. D. Sheehan, Esq., Killarney [Present], and ran as follows:
Feb. 12th, Morning.
"my dear sheehan,-I have the honour to introduce to you Captain Mortimer Moriarty. He will be of great assistance to you, and I have told him all that is to be done until I get to your place. The Private Spys are very active this morning. Unless they smell a rat all will be done without any trouble.
"Success to you. Hoping to meet soon,-Yours as ever. " (Signed) john J. O'CONNOR."1
1 Mr. Colomb sends me, June 30, the following interesting note:-The letter of which I gave you a copy was produced in evidence at Kerry Summer Assizes, 1867. J. D. Sheehan, Esq., M.P., is the same man who was arrested on the 12th February 1867, and to whom the foregoing letter, ordering the rising in Killarney, is addressed. He was kept in custody for some time, and eventually released, it is believed, on the understanding that he was to keep out of Ireland. He came back in 1873 or 1874 and married the proprietress of a Hotel at Killarney. His connection with the Glenbehy evictions is referred to on page 10, and in a note at the end of this volume I give an interesting account, furnished me by Mr. Colomb, of his activity in connection with the case of the Misses Curtin at Firies.
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Despatches were at once sent off to the authorities at different points. They were all transmitted, except to Cahirciveen, the wires to which place were found to have been cut. Mr. Colomb- who had a force of but seventeen men in the town of Killarney-saw the uselessness of trying to communicate with the officer at Cahirciveen, but was so strongly urged by the magistrates that he unwillingly consented to endeavour to do so, and a mounted orderly was sent. Just after this unfortunate officer had passed Glenbehy (the scene of the eviction I have just witnessed) he was shot by some of O'Connor's party, whom he tried to pass in the dark, and who were marching on Killarney, and fell from his horse, which galloped off. He managed to crawl to a neighbouring cottage, where he was not long after found by "General O'Connor" and some of his followers. The wounded man was kindly treated by O'Connor, who had him examined for despatches, but prevented one of his men from shooting him dead, as he lay on the ground, and had his wounds as well attended to as was possible. There was no response in the country to the Kerry rising, such as it was, because the intended seizure of Chester Castle by the Fenians failed, but O'Cormor
40
was not captured, though great efforts were made to seize him. How he escaped is not known to this day.
At that time, as always in emergencies, Mr. Colomb says the Constabulary behaved with exemplary coolness, courage, and fidelity. His position gives him a very thorough knowledge of the force, which is almost entirely recruited from the body of the Irish people. Of late years not a few men of family, reduced in fortune, have taken service in it. Among these has been mentioned to me a young Irishman of title, and of an ancient race, who is a sergeant in the force, and who recently declined to accept a commission, as his increased expenses would make it harder for him to support his two sisters. Another constable in the ranks represents a family illustrious in the annals of England four centuries ago.
As to the moral of the force, he cites one eloquent fact. Out of a total of more than 13,000 men, the cases of drunkenness, proved or admitted, average no more than fourteen a week! On many days absolutely no such cases occur. This is really amazing when one thinks how many of the men are isolated on lonely posts all over the island, exposed
41
to all sorts of weather, and cut off from the ordinary resources and amusements of social life.
cork, Friday, Feb. 24th.-This morning after breakfast I met in the South Mall a charming ecclesiastic, whose acquaintance I made in Rome while I was attending the great celebration there in 1867 of St. Peter's Day. Father Burke introduced me to him after the Pontifical Mass at San Paolo fuori le Mure; and we had a delightful symposium that afternoon. I walked with him to his lodgings, talking over those "days long vanished," and the friend whose genius made them, like the suppers of Plato, "a joy for ever." He is sorely troubled now by the attitude of a portion of the clergy in his part of Ireland, which is one almost of open hostility, he says, to the moral authority of the Church, and indicates the development of a class of priests moving in the direction of the "conventional priests," by whom the Church was disgraced during the darkest days of the French Eevolution of 1793.
Almost more mischievous than these men, he thinks, who must eventually go the way of their kind in times past, are the timid priests, for the most part parish priests, who go in fear of their violent curates, and of the politicians who tyrannise their
42
flocks. He showed me a letter written to him last week by one of these, whose parish is just now in a tempest over the Plan of Campaign. Certainly a most remarkable letter. In it the writer frankly says, "There is no justification for the Plan of Campaign on this property.
"I assented to putting it in force here," he goes on, "because I did not at the time know the facts of the case, and took them on trust from persons who, I find, have practised upon my confidence. What am I to do? I am made to appear as a consenting party now, and, indeed, an assisting agent in action, which I certainly was led to believe right and necessary, but which upon the facts I now see involves much injustice to -- (naming the landlord), and I fear positive ruin to worthy men and families of my people. I shall be grateful and glad of your counsel in these most distressing circumstances."
"What can any one do to help such a man?" said my friend. "The rebellious and unruly in the Church, be they priests or laymen, can only in the end damage themselves. Tu es Petrus; and revolt, like schism, is a devil which only carries away those of whom it gets possession out of the Church and
43
into the sea. But a weak sentinel on the wall or at the gate who drops his musket to wipe his eyes, that is a thing for tears!"
He asked me to come and see him if possible in his own county, and he has promised to send me letters to-day for priests who will be glad to tell me what they know only too well of the pressure put upon the better sort of the people by the organised idlers and mischief-makers in Clare and Kerry.
To-day at the City Club, I made the acquaintance of the Town-Clerk of Cork, Mr. Alexander M'Carthy, a staunch Nationalist and Home Euler, who holds his office almost by a sort of hereditary tenure, having been appointed to it in 1859 in succession to his father. He gave me many interesting particulars as to the municipal history and administration of Cork, and showed me some of the responses he is receiving to a kind of circular letter sent by the municipality to the town governments of England, touching the recent proceedings against the Mayor. So far these responses have not been very sympathetic. He invited me to lunch here with him to-morrow, and visit some of the most interesting points in and around the city. Here, too, I met Colonel Spaight, Inspector
44
of the Local Government Board, who gives me a startling account of the increase of the public burdens. Twenty years ago there were no persons whatever seeking outdoor relief in Cork. This year, out of a total population of 145,216, there are 3775 persons here receiving indoor relief, and 4337 receiving outdoor relief, making in all 8112, or nearly 6 per cent. of the inhabitants. This proportion is swelled by the influx of people from other regions seeking occupation here, which they do not find, or simply coming here because they are sure of relief. This state of things illustrates not so much the decay of industry in Cork as the development of a spirit of mendicancy throughout Ireland. In the opinion of many thoughtful people, this began with the Duchess of Marlborough's Fund, and with the Mansion House Fund. Colonel Spaight remembers that in Strokestown Union, Ros-common, when the guardians there received a supply of one hundred tons of seed potatoes, they distributed eighty tons, and were then completely at a loss what to do with the remaining twenty tons. Mr. Parnell and Mr. O'Kelly, however, came to Eoscommon, and the latter made a speech out of the hotel window to the people, advising them to apply for more, and
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take all they could get. "With a stroke of a pen," he said, "we'll wipe out the seed rate!" Whereupon the applications for seed rose to six hundred tons !
The Labourers Act, passed by the British Parliament for the benefit of the Irish labourers, who get but scant recognition of their wants and wishes from the tenant farmers, is not producing the good results expected from it, mainly because it is perverted to all sorts of jobbery. Only last week Colonel Spaight had to hand in to the Local Government Board a report on certain schemes of expenditure under this Act, prepared by the Board of Guardians of Tralee. These schemes contemplated the erection of 196 cottages in 135 electoral divisions of the Union. This meant, of course, so much money of the ratepayers to be turned over to local contractors. Colonel Spaight on inspection found that of the 196 proposed cottages, the erection of 61 had been forbidden by the sanitary authorities, the notices for the erection of 23 had been wrongly served, 20 were proposed to be erected on sites not adjoining a public road, and no necessity had been shown for erecting 40 of the others. He accordingly recommended that only 32 be allowed to be erected! For a small town like Tralee this proposition to put
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up 196 buildings at the public expense where only 32 were needed is not bad. It has the right old Tammany Ring smack, and would have commanded, I am sure, the patronising approval of the late Mr. Tweed.
I mentioned it to-night at the County Club, when a gentleman said that this morning at Macroom a serious "row" had occurred between the local Board of Guardians there and a great crowd of labourers. The labourers thronged the Board-room, demanding the half-acre plots of land which had been promised them. The Guardians put them off, promising to attend to them when the regular business of the meeting was over. So the poor fellows were kept waiting for three mortal hours, at the end of which time they espied the elected Nationalist members of the Board subtly filing out of the place. This angered them. They stopped the fugitives, blockaded the Board-room, and forced the Guardians to appoint a committee to act upon their demands.1
It is certainly a curious fact that, so far, in Ireland I have seen no decent cottages for labourers, excepting those put up at their own expense on their own property by landlords.
1 Note J.
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I dined to-night at the County Club with Captain Plunkett, a most energetic, spirited, and well-informed resident magistrate, a brother of the late Lord Louth,-still remembered, I dare say, at the New York Hotel as the only Briton who ever really mastered the mystery of concocting a "cocktail,"- and an uncle of the present peer. We had a very cheery dinner, and a very clever lawyer, Mr. Shannon, gave us an irresistible reproduction of a charge delivered by an Irish judge famous for shooting over the heads of juries, who sent twelve worthy citizens of Galway out of their minds by bidding them remember, in a case of larceny, that they could not find the prisoner guilty unless they were quite sure "as to the animus furandi and the asportavit."
Saturday, Feb. 25.-I had an interesting talk this morning at the County Club with a gentleman from Limerick on the subject of "boycotting." I told him what I had seen at Edenvale of the practice as applied to a forlorn and helpless old woman, for the crime of standing by her "boycotted" son. "You think this an extreme case," he said, "but you are quite mistaken. It is a typical case certainly, but it gives you only an inadequate idea of
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the scope given to this infernal machinery. The 'boycott' is now used in Ireland as the Inquisition was used in Spain,-to stifle freedom of thought and action. It is to-day the chief reliance of the National League for keeping up its membership, and squeezing subscriptions out of the people. If you want proof of this," he added, "ask any Nationalist you know whether members of the League in the country allow farmers who are not members to associate with them in any way. I can cite you a case at Ballingarry, in my county, where last summer a resolution of the League was published and put on the Chapel door, that members of the National League were thenceforth to have no dealings or communication with any person not a member. This I saw with my own eyes, and it was matter of public notoriety."
I lunched at the City Club with Mr. M'Carthy. Sir Daniel O'Sullivan, formerly Lord Mayor of Cork, whose views of Home Rule seem to differ widely from those of his successor, now incarcerated here, was one of the company. In the course of an animated but perfectly good-natured discussion of the Land Law question between two other gentlemen present, one of them, a strong Nationalist,
49
smote his Unionist opponent very neatly under the fifth rib. The latter contending that it was monstrous to interfere by law with the principle of freedom of contract, the Nationalist responded "That cannot be; it must be right and legitimate to do it, for the Imperial Parliament has done it four times within seventeen years!"
I walked with Mr. M'Carthy to his apartments, where he showed me many curious papers and volumes bearing on municipal law and municipal history in Ireland. Among these, two most elaborate and interesting volumes, being the Council Books of Cork, Youghal, and Kinsale, from 1610 to 1659, 1666 to 1687, and 1690 to 1800. The records for the years not enumerated have perished, that is, for the first five or six years after the Restoration, and for the years just preceding and just following the fall of James II. These volumes take one back to the condition of Southern Ireland immediately after English greed and intrigue had sapped the foundations of the peace which followed the submission of the great Earl of Tyrone, and brought about the flight to the Continent of that chieftain, and of his friend and ally, the Earl of Tyrconnell.
They give us no picture, unfortunately, of the
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closing years of Elizabeth's long struggle to establish the English power, or of the occupation of Kinsale by the Spanish in the name of the Pope. But there is abundant evidence in them of the theological hatred which so embittered the conflict of races in Ireland during the seventeenth century.
It was a relief to turn from these to a solemn controversy waged in our own times between Cork and Limerick over a question of municipal precedence, in which Mr. M'Carthy did battle for the City of the Galley and the Towersl against the City of the Gateway and Cathedral dome. The truth seems to be that King John gave charters to both cities, but to Cork twelve years earlier than to Limerick. Speaking of this contest, by the way, with a loyalist of Cork to-night, I observed that it was almost as odd to find such a question hotly disputed between two Nationalist cities as to see the champions of Irish independence marching under the banner of the harp, which was invented for Ireland by Henry VIII.
"I don't know why you call Cork a Nationalist
1 In the time of Henry VIII. these cities waged actual warwith each other, like Florence and Pisa, by sea and land.Limerick was then called "Little London."
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city," he replied, "for Parnell and Maurice Healy were returned for it by a clear minority of the voters. If all the voters had gone to the polls, they would both have been beaten."
A curious statement certainly, and worth looking into. Mr. M'Carthy gave me also much information as to the working of the municipal system here, and a copy of the rales which govern the debates of the Town Council. One of these might be adopted with advantage in other assemblies, to wit, "that no member be permitted to occupy the time of the Council for more than ten minutes."
There is an important difference between the parliamentary and the municipal constituencies of Cork. The former constituency comprises all residents within the borough boundaries occupying premises of the rateable value of £10 a year. The municipal constituency consists of no more than 1800 voters, divided among the seven wards which make up the city under the "3d and 4th Victoria," and which contain about 13,000 of the 15,116 Parliamentary voters of the borough. The same thing is true in the main of nine out of the eleven municipal boroughs of Ireland including Dublin. The 3d and 4th Yictoria was amended for Dublin in
vol. ii. d
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1849, so as to give that city the municipal franchise then existing in England, but no move in that direction was made for Cork, Waterford, Limerick, or any other municipal borough. The Nationalists have taken no interest in the question. Perhaps they have good reason for this, as in Belfast, where the municipal franchise has been widely extended since the present Government came into power, the democratic electorate has put the whole municipal government into the hands of the Unionists. The day being cool, though fine, Mr. M'Carthy got an "inside car," and we went off for a drive about the city. The environs of Cork are very attractive. We visited the new cemetery grounds which are very neatly and tastefully laid out. There was a conflict over them, the owners of family vaults staunchly standing out against the "levelling" tendency of a harmonious city of the dead. But all is well that ends well, and now two handsome stone chapels, one Catholic and one Protestant, keep watch and ward over the silent sleepers, standing face to face near the grand entrance, and exactly alike in their architecture. A very pretty drive took us to the water-works, which are extensive, well planned, and exceedingly well
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kept. They are awaiting now the arrival from America of some great turbine wheels, but the engines are of English make. In the city we visited the new Protestant cathedral of St. Finbar, a very fine church, which advantageously replaces a "spacious structure of the Doric order," built here in the reign of George II., with the proceeds of a parliamentary tax on coals. Despite his name, I imagine that admirable prelate, Dr. England, the first Catholic bishop of my native city in America, must have been a Corkonian, for he it was, I believe, who put the cathedral of Charleston under the invocation of St. Finbar, the first bishop of Cork. The church stands charmingly amid fine trees on a southern branch of the river Lea. We visited also two fine Catholic churches, one of St. Vincent de Paul, and the other the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, a grandly proportioned and imposing edifice.
It was at vespers that we entered it, and found it filled with the kneeling people. This noble church is rather ignobly hidden away behind crowded houses and shops, and the contrast was very striking when we emerged from its dim religious space and silence into the thronged and rather noisy streets. There is a statue here of Father Mathew; but what
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I have seen to-night makes me doubt whether the present generation of Corkonians would have erected it.
At dinner a gentleman gave us a most interesting account of the picturesque home which a man of taste, and a lover of natural history, has made for himself at the remote seaside village of Belmullet, in Mayo, the seat of the Mayo quarries, in which Mr. Davitt takes so much interest. The sea brings in there all sorts of wreckage, and the house is beautifully finished with mahogany and other rare woods, just as I remember finding in a noble mansion in South Wales, near a dangerous headland, some magnificent doors and wainscotings made of that most beautiful of the Central American woods, nogarote, which I never saw in the United States, excepting in a superb specimen of it sent home by myself from Corinto. This colonist of Mayo employs all the people he can get in the fisheries there, which are very rich; and the ducks and wild geese are so numerous that he sometimes sends as far as to Wicklow for men to capture and sell them for him. He was once fortunate enough to trap a pair of the snow geese of the Arctic region, but Belmullet, in other respects a
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primeval paradise, is cursed with the small boy of civilisation; and one of these pests of society slew the goose with a stone. The widowed gander consoled himself by contracting family ties with the common domestic goose of the parish, and all his progeny, in other particulars indistinguishable from that familiar bird, bear the black marks distinctive of the Arctic tribe.
Belmullet, this gentleman tells me, boasts a very good little inn, kept by a Mrs. Deehan, which was honoured by a visit from Lord Carnarvon with his wife and daughters during the Earl's Viceroyalty. This was in the course of a private and personal, not official tour, during which, Lord Carnarvon says, he was everywhere received with the greatest courtesy by all sorts and conditions of the people. It is an interesting illustration of the temper in which certain priests in Ireland deal with matters of State, that when Lord Carnarvon politely invited the parish priest of Belmullet to come to see him, that functionary declined to do so. Upon this the placable Viceroy sent to know whether the priest would receive the visit he refused to pay. The priest replied that he never declined to receive any gentleman who wished to see him; and the Vice-
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roy accordingly called upon him, to the edification of the people, who afterwards listened very respectfully to a little speech which His Excellency made to them from a car. It is rather surprising that these incidents have never been adduced in proof of Lord Carnarvon's determination to take the Home Rule wind out of the sails of the Liberals!
cork, Sunday, Feb. 26.-I went out to-day with Mr. Carneron to see Blarney Castle and St. Anne's Hill. Nothing can be lovelier than the country around Cork and the valley of the Lea. A "light railway," of the sort authorised by the Act of 1883, takes you out quickly enough to Blarney, and the train was well filled. The construction of these railways is found fault with as aggravating instead of relieving those defects in the organisation and management of the Irish railways, which are so thoroughly and intelligently exposed in the Public Works Eeport of Sir James Allport and his fellow-commissioners. A morning paper to-day points this out sharply.
In the days of King William III. Blarney Castle must have been a magnificent stronghold. It stands very finely on a well-wooded height, and
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dominates the land for miles around. But it held out against the victor of the Boyne so long that, when he captured it, he thought it best, in the expressive phrase of the Commonwealth, to "slight" it, little now remaining of it but the gigantic keep, the walls of which are some six yards thick, and a range of ruined outworks stretching along and above a line of caverns, probably the work of the quarrymen who got out the stone for the Castle ages ago. The legend of the Blarney Stone does not seem to be a hundred years old, but the stone itself is one of the front battlements of the grand old tower, which has more than once fallen to the ground from the giddy height at which it was originally set. It is now made fast there by iron clamps, in such a position that to kiss it one should be a Japanese acrobat, or a volunteer rifleman shooting for the championship of the world. There are many and very fine trees in the grounds about the Castle, and there is a charming garden, now closed against the casual tourist, as it has been leased with the modern house to a tenant who lives here. In the leafy summer the place must be a dream of beauty. An avenue of stately trees quite overarching the highway leads from Blarney to St. Anne's Hill, the
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site of which, at least, is that of an ideal sanatorium. We walked thither over hill and dale. The panorama commanded by the buildings of the sanatorium is one of the widest and finest imaginable, worthy to be compared with the prospect from the Star and Garter at Richmond, or with that from the terrace at St. Germain.
Several handsome lodges or cottages have been built about the extensive grounds. These are comfortably furnished and leased to people who prefer to bring their households here rather than take up their abode in the hotel, which, however, seems to be a very well kept and comfortable sort of place, with billiard and music rooms, a small theatre, and all kinds of contrivances for making the country almost as tedious as the town. The establishment is directed now by a German resident physician, but belongs to an Irish gentleman, Mr. Barter, who lives here himself, and here manages what I am told is one of the finest dairy farms and dairies in. Ireland. Our return trip to Cork on the "light railway," With a warm red sunset lighting up the river Lea, and throwing its glamour over the varied and picturesque scenery through which we ran, was not the least delightful part of a very delightful excursion.
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After we got back I spent half-an-hour with a gentleman who knows the country about Youghal, which I propose to visit to-morrow, and who saw something of the recent troubles there arising out of the Plan of Campaign, as put into effect on the Ponsonby property.
He is of the opinion that the Nationalists were misled into this contest by bad information as to Mr. Ponsonby's resources and relations. They expected to drive him to the wall, but they will fail to do this, and failing to do this they will be left in the vocative. He showed me a curious souvenir of the day of the evictions, in the shape of a quatrain, written by the young wife of an evicted tenant. This young woman, Mrs. Mahoney, was observed by one of the officers, as the eviction went on, to go apart to a window, where she stood for a while apparently writing something on a wooden panel of the shutter. After the eviction was over the officer remembered this, and going up to the window found these lines pencilled upon the panel:-
"We are evicted from this house,
Me and my loving man; We're homeless now upon the world! May the divil take 'the Plan'!"
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cork, Monday, Feb. 27.-A most interesting day. I left alone and early by the train for Youghal, having sent before me a letter of introduction to Canon Keller, the parish priest, who has recently become a conspicuous person through his refusal to give evidence about matters, his knowledge of which he conceives to be "privileged," as acquired in his capacity as a priest.
I had many fine views of the shore and the sea as we ran along, and the site of Youghal itself is very fine. It is an old seaport town, and once was a place of considerable trade, especially in wool.
Oliver dwelt here for a while, and from Youghal he embarked on his victorious return to England. He seems to have done his work while he was here "not negligently," like Harrison at Naseby Field, for when he departed he left Youghal a citadel of Protestant intolerance. Even under Charles II. they maintained an ordinance forbidding "any Papist to buy or barter anything in the public markets," which may be taken as a piece of cold-blooded and statutory "boycotting." Then there was no parish priest in Youghal; now it may almost be said there is nobody in Youghal but the
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parish priest! So does "the whirligig of time bring in his revenges"!
At Youghal station a very civil young man came up, calling me by name, and said Father Keller had sent him with a car to meet me. We drove up past some beautiful grounds into the main street. A picturesque waterside town, little lanes and narrow streets leading out of the main artery down to the bay, and a savour of the sea in the place, grateful doubtless to the souls of Raleigh and the west country folk he brought over here when he became lord of the land, just three hundred years ago. Edmund Spenser came here in those days to see him, and talk over the events of that senseless rising of the Desmonds, which gave the poet of the "Faerie Queen" his awful pictures of the desolation of Ireland, and made the planter of Virginia master of more than forty thousand acres of Irish land.
We turned suddenly into a little narrow wynd, and pulled up, the driver saying, "There is the Father, yer honour!" In a moment up came a tall, very fine-looking ecclesiastic, quite the best dressed and most distinguished-looking priest I have yet seen in Ireland, with features of a fine Teutonic
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type, and the erect bearing of a soldier. I jumped down to greet him, and he proposed that we should walk together to his house near by. An extremely good house I found it to be, well placed in the most interesting quarter of the town. Having it in my mind to drive on from Youghal to Lismore, there to make an early dinner, see the castle of the Duke of Devonshire, and return to Cork by an evening train, I had to decline Father Keller's cordial hospitalities, but he gave me a most interesting hour with him in his comfortable study. Father Keller stands firmly by the position which earned for him a sentence of imprisonment last year, when he refused to testify before a court of justice in a bankruptcy case, on the ground that it might "drift him into answers which would disclose secrets he was bound in honour not to disclose." He does not accept the view taken of his conduct, however, by Lord Selborne, that, in the circumstances, his refusal is to be regarded as the act of his ecclesiastical superiors rather than his own. He maintains it as his own view of the sworn duty of a priest, and not unnaturally therefore he looks upon his sentence as a blow levelled at the clergy; nor, as I understood him, has he abandoned his original contention, that the Court had no right
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to summon him as a witness. It was impossible to listen to him on this subject, and doubt his entire good faith, nor do I see that he ought to be held responsible for the interpretation put by Mr. Lane, M.P., and others upon his attitude as a priest, in a sense going to make him merely a "martyr" of Home Rule. I did not gather from what he said that, in his mind, the question of his relations with the Nationalists or the Plan of Campaign entered into that affair at all, but simply that he believed the right and the duty of a priest to protect, no matter at what cost to himself, secrets confided to him as a priest, was really involved in his consent or refusal to answer, when he was asked whether he was or was not on a certain day at the "Mall House" in Youghal. Of course from the connection of this refusal in this particular case with the Nationalist movement, Nationalists would easily glide into the idea that he refused to testify in order to serve their cause.
As to the troubles on the Ponsonby estate, Father Keller spoke very freely. He divided the responsibility for them between the untractableness of the agent, and the absenteeism of the owner. It was only since the troubles began, he said, that he
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had ever seen Mr. Ponsonby, who lived in Hampshire, and was therefore out of touch with the condition and the feelings of the people here. In a personal interview with him he had found Mr. Ponsonby a kindly disposed Englishman, hut the estate is heavily encumbered, and the agent who has had complete control of it forced the tenants, by his hard and fast refusal of a reasonable reduction more than two years ago, into an initial combination to defend themselves by "clubbing" their rents. That was before Mr. Dillon announced the Plan of Campaign at all.
"It was not till the autumn of 1886," said Father Keller, "that any question arose of the Plan of Campaign here,1 and it was by the tenants themselves that the determination was taken to adopt it. My part has been that of a peacemaker throughout, and we should have had peace if Mr. Ponsonby would have listened to me; we should have had peace, and he would have received a reasonable rental for his property. Instead of this, look at the law costs arising out of bankruptcy proceedings and sheriff's sales and writs and
1 It was on the 17th October 1886 that Mr. Dillon first promulgated the Plan of Campaign at all at Portumna.
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processes, and the whole district thrown into disorder and confusion, and the industrious people now put out of their holdings, and forced into idleness."
As to the recent evictions which had taken place, Father Keller said they had taken him as well as the people by surprise, and had thus led to greater agitation and excitement. "But the unfortunate incident of the loss of Hanlon's life," he said, "would never have occurred had I been duly apprised of what was going on in the town. I had come home into my house, having quieted the people, and left all in order, as I thought, when that charge of the police, for which there was no occasion, and which led to the killing of Hanlon, was ordered. I made my way rapidly to the people, and when I appeared they were brought to patience and to good order with astonishing ease, despite all that had occurred."
As to the present outlook, it was his opinion that Mr. Ponsonby, even with the Cork Defence Union behind him, could not hold out. "The Land Corporation were taking over some parts of the estate, and putting Emergency rnen on them-a set of desperate men, a kind of enfants perdus," he said, "to work and manage the land;" but he did not believe the operation could be successfully
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carried out. Meanwhile he confidently counted upon seeing "the present Tory Government give way, and go out, when it would become necessary for the landlords to do justice to the rack-rented people. Pray understand," said Father Keller, "that I do not say all landlords stand at all where Mr. Ponsonby has been put by his agent, for that is not the case; but the action of many landlords in the county Cork in sustaining Mr. Pon-sonby, whose estate is and has been as badly rack-rented an estate as can be found, is, in my judgment, most unwise, and threatening to the peace and happiness of Ireland."l
I asked whether, in his opinion, it would be possible for the Ponsonby tenants to live and prosper here on this estate, could they become peasant proprietors of it under Lord Ashbourne's Act, provided they increased in numbers, as in that event might be expected. This he thought very doubtful so far as a few of the tenants are concerned.
"Would you seek a remedy, then," I asked, "in emigration?"
1 Mr. Ponsonby's account of this affair will be found in the Appendix to this volume, Note F. The Post-Office Savings Bank deposits at Youghal, which were £3031, Os. 7d. in 1880, rose to £7038, 7s. 2d. in 1887.
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"No, not in emigration," he replied, "but in migration."
I begged him to explain the difference.
"What I mean," he said, "is, that the people should migrate, not out of Ireland, but from those parts of Ireland which cannot support them into parts of Ireland which can support them. There is room in Meath, for example, for the people of many congested districts."
"You would, then, turn the great cattle farms of Meath," I said, "into peasant holdings?"
"Certainly."
"But would not that involve the expropriation of many people now established in Meath, and the disturbance or destruction of a great cattle industry for which Ireland has especial advantages?"
To this Father Keller replied that he did not wish to see Ireland exporting her cattle, any more than to see Ireland exporting her sons and daughters. "I mean," he said, quite earnestly, "when they are forced to export them to pay exorbitant rents, and thus deprive themselves of their capital or of a fair share of the comforts of life. I should be glad, to see the Irish people sufficient to themselves by the domestic exchange of their own industries and
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products." At the same time he begged me to understand that he had no wish to see this development attended by any estrangement or hostile feeling between Ireland and Great Britain. "On the contrary," he said, "I have seen with the greatest satisfaction the growth of such good feeling towards England as I never expected to witness, as the result of the visits here of English public men, sympathising with the Irish tenants. I believe their visits are opening the way to a real union of the Democracies of the two countries, and to an alliance between them against the aristocratic classes which depress both peoples." This alliance Father Keller believed would be a sufficient guarantee against any religious contest between the Catholics of Ireland and the Protestants of Great Britain.
"I was much astounded," he said, "the other day, to hear from an English gentleman that he had met a Protestant clergyman who told him he really believed that a persecution of the Protestants would follow the establishment of Home Rule in Ireland. I begged him to consider that Mr. Parnell was a Protestant, and I assured him Protestants would have absolutely nothing to fear from Home Rule."
Reverting to his idea of re-distributing the Irish
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population through Ireland, under changed conditions, social and economical, I asked him how in Meath, for example, he would meet the difficulty of stocking with cattle the peasant holdings of a new set of proprietors not owning stock. He thought it would be easily met by advances of money from the Treasury to the peasant proprietors, these advances to be repaid, with interest, as in the case of Lady Burdett Coutts, and the advances made by her to the fishermen now under the direction of Father Davis at Baltimore.
I was struck by the resemblance of these views to the Irish policy sketched for me by my Nationalist fellow-traveller of the other night from London. "The evil that men do lives after them"-and when one remembers how only a hundred years ago, and just after the establishment of American Independence ought to have taught England a lesson, the Irish House of Commons had to deal with the persistent determination of the English manufacturers to fight the bogey of Irish competition by protective duties in England against imports from Ireland, it is not surprising that Irishmen who allow sentiment to get the upper hand of sense should now think of playing a return game. England
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went in fear then not only of Irish beasts and Irish butter, but of Irish woollens, Irish cottons, Irish leather, Irish glass. Nay, absurd as it may now seem, English ironmasters no longer ago than in 1785 testified before a Parliamentary Committee that unless a duty was clapped on Irish manufactures of iron, the Irish ironmasters had such advantages through cheaper labour and through the discrimination in their favour under the then existing relations with the new Eepublic of the United States that they would "ruin the ironmasters of England."
In Ireland, as in America, the benign spirit of Free Trade is thwarted and intercepted at every turn by the abominable ghost of British Protection. What a blessing it would have been if the meddlesome palaverers of the Cobden Club, American as well as English, could ever have been made to understand the essentially insular character of Protection and the essentially continental character of Free Trade!
It should never be forgotten, and it is almost never remembered, that when the Treaty of Versailles was making in 1783 the American Commissioners offered complete free trade between the United States and all parts of the British Dominions
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save the territories of the East India Company. The British Commissioner, David Hartley, saw the value of this proposition, and submitted it at London. But King George III. would not entertain it.
When I rose to leave him Father Keller courteously insisted on showing me the "lions" of Youghal. A most accomplished cicerone he proved to be. As we left his house we met in the street two or three of the "evicted" tenants, whom he introduced to me. One of these, Mr. Loughlin, was the holder of farms representing a rental of £94. A stalwart, hearty, rotund, and rubicund farmer he was, and in reply to my query how long the holdings he had lost had been in his family, he answered, "not far from two hundred years." Certainly some one must have blundered as badly as at Balaklava to make it necessary for a tenant with such a past behind him to go out of his holdings on arrears of a twelvemonth. Father Keller gave me, as we left Mr. Loughlin and his friend, a leaflet in which he has printed the story of "the struggle for life on the Ponsonby estate," as he understands it.
A minute's walk brought us to Sir Walter Raleigh's house, now the property of Sir John Pope Hennessey.
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It was probably built by Sir Walter while he lived here in 1588-89, during the time of the great Armada; for it is a typical Elizabethan house, quaintly gabled, with charming Tudor windows, and delightfully wainscoted with richly carved black oak. A chimney-piece in the library where Sir John's aged mother received us most kindly and hospitably is a marvel of Elizabethan woodwork. The shelves are filled with a quaint and miscellaneous collection of old and rare books. I opened at random one fine old quarto, and found it to contain, among other curious tracts, models of typography, a Latin critical disquisition by Raphael Regini on the first edition of Plutarch's Life of Cicero, "nuper inventa diu desiderata,"-a disquisition quite aglow with the cinquecento delight in discovery and adventure. In the grounds of this charming house stand four very fine Irish yews forming a little hollow square, within which, according to a local legend, Sir Walter sat enjoying the first pipe of tobacco ever lighted in Ireland, when his terrified serving-maid espying the smoke that curled about her master's head hastily ran up and emptied a pail of water over him. In the garden here, too, we are told, was first planted the esculent which better deserves to be called the
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Curse of Ireland than does the Nine of Diamonds to be known as the Curse of Scotland. The Irish yew must have been indigenous here, for the name of Youghal, Father Keller tells me, in Irish signifies "the wood of yew-trees." A subterranean passage is said to lead from Sir Walter's dining-room into the church, but we preferred the light of day.
The precincts of the church adjoin the grounds and garden, and with these make up a most fascinating poem in architecture. The churches of St. Mary of Youghal and St. Nicholas of Galway have always been cited to me as the two most interesting churches in Ireland. Certainly this church of St. Mary, as now restored, is worth a journey to see. Its massive tower, with walls eight feet thick, its battlemented chancel, the pointed arches of its nave and aisles, a curious and, so far as I know, unique arch in the north transept, drawn at an obtuse angle and demarcating a quaint little side-chapel and the interesting monuments it contains, all were pointed out to me with as much zest and intelligent delight by Father Keller as if the edifice were still dedicated to the faith which originally called it into existence. It contains a fine Jacobean tomb of Richard, the "great Earl of Cork," who died here in
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September 1643. On this monument, which is in admirable condition, the effigy of the earl appears between those of his two wives, while below them kneel his five sons and seven daughters, their names and those of their partners in marriage inscribed upon the marble. It was of this earl that Oliver said: "Had there been an Earl of Cork in every province, there had been no rebellion in Ireland." Several Earls of Desmond are also buried here, including the founder of the church, and under a monumental effigy in one of the transepts lies the wonderful old Countess of Desmond, who having danced in her youth with Richard III. lived through the Tudor dynasty "to the age of a hundred and ten," and, as the old distich tells us, "died by a fall from a cherry-tree then."
In the churchyard is a hillock, bare of grass, about a tomb. There lies buried, according to tradition, a public functionary who attested a statement by exclaiming, "If I speak falsely, may grass never grow on my grave." One of his descendants is doubtless now an M.P. Mr. Cameron had kindly written from Cork to the officer in charge of the constabulary here asking him to get me a good car for Lismore. So Father Keller very kindly walked with
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me through the town to the "Devonshire Arms," a very neat and considerable hotel, in quest of him. On the way he pointed out to me what remains of a house which is supposed to have served as the headquarters of Cromwell while he was here, and a small chapel also in which the Protector worshipped after his sort. Off the main street is a lane called Windmill Lane, where probably stood the windmill from which in 1580 a Franciscan friar, Father David O'Neilan, was hung by the feet and shot to death by the soldiers of Elizabeth because he refused to acknowledge the spiritual supremacy of the Queen. He had been dragged through the main street at the tail of a horse to the place of execution. His name is one of many names of confessors of that time about to be submitted at Rome for canonisation. We could not find the officer I sought at the hotel, but Father Keller took me to a liveryman in the main street, who very promptly got out a car with "his best horse," and a jarvey who would "surely take me over to Lismore inside of two hours and a half." He was as good as his master's word, and a delightful drive it was, following the course of Spenser's river, the Awniduffe, "which by the Englishman is called Blackwater."
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Nobody now calls it anything else. The view of Youghal Harbour, as we made a great circuit by the bridge on leaving the town, was exceedingly fine. Lying as it does within easy reach of Cork, this might be made a very pleasant summer halting-place for Americans landing at Queenstown, who now go further and probably fare worse. One Western wanderer, with his family, Father Keller told me, did last year establish himself here, a Catholic from Boston, to whom a son was born, and who begged the Father to give the lad a local name in baptism, "the oldest he could think of."
I should have thought St. Declan would have been "old" enough, or St. Nessan of "Ireland's Eye," or Saint Cartagh, who made Lismore a holy city, "into the half of which no woman durst enter," sufficiently "local," but Father Keller found in the Calendar a more satisfactory saint still in St. Coran or "Curran," known also as St. Mochicaroen de Nona, from a change he made in the recitation of that part of the Holy Office.
The drive from Youghal to Lismore along the Blackwater, begins, continues, and ends in beauty. In the summer a steamer makes the trip by the river, and it must be as charming in its way
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as the ascent of the Dart from Dartmouth to Totness, or of the Eance from Dinard to St. Suliac. My jarvey was rather a taciturn fellow, but by no means insensible to the charms of his native region. About the Ponsonby estate and its troubles he said very little, but that little was not entirely in keeping with what I had heard at Youghal. "It was an old place, and there was no grand house on it. But the landlord was a kind man." "Father Keller was a good man too. It was a great pity the people couldn't be on their farms; and there was land that was taken on the hills. It was a great pity. The people came from all parts to see the Blackwater and Lismore; and there was money going." "Yes, he would be glad to see it all quiet again. Ah yes! that was a most beautiful place there just running out into the Blackwater. It was a gentleman owned it; he lived there a good deal, and he fished. Ah! there's no such river in the whole world for salmon as the Blackwater; indeed, there is not! Everything was better when he was a lad. There was more money going, and less talking. Father Keller was a very good man; but he was a new man, and came to Youghal from Queenstown."
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We passed on our way the ruins of Dromaneen Castle, the birthplace of the lively old Countess of Desmond, who lies buried at Youghal. Here, too, according to a local tradition, she met her death, having climbed too high into a famous cherry-tree at Affane, near Dromaneen, planted there by Sir Walter Raleigh, who first introduced this fruit, as well as the tobacco plant and the potato, into Ireland. At Cappoquin, which stands beautifully on the river, I should have been glad to halt for the night, in order to visit the Trappist Monastery there, an offshoot of La Meilleraye, planted, I think, by some monks from Santa Susanna, of Lulworth, after Charles x. took refuge in the secluded and beautiful home of the Welds. The schools of this monastery have been a benediction to all this part of Ireland for more than half a century.
Lismore has nothing now to show of its ancient importance save its castle and its cathedral, both of them absolutely modern! A hundred years ago the castle was simply a ruin overhanging the river. It then belonged to the fifth Duke of Devonshire, who had inherited it from his mother, the only child and heiress of the friend of Pope, Richard, fourth Earl of Cork, and third Earl of Burlington.
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It had come into the hands of the Boyles by purchase from Sir Walter Raleigh, to whom Elizabeth had granted it, with all its appendages and appurtenances. The fifth Duke of Devonshire, who was the husband of Coleridge's "lady nursed in pomp and pleasure," did little or nothing, I believe, to restore the vanished glories of Lismore; and the castle, as it now exists, is the creation of his son, the artistic bachelor Duke, to whom England owes the Crystal Palace and all the other outcomes of Sir Joseph Paxton's industry and enterprise. His kinsman and successor, the present Duke, used to visit Lismore regularly down to the time of the atrocious murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish, and many of the beautiful walks and groves which make the place lovely are due, I believe, to his taste and his appreciation of the natural charms of Lismore. I dismissed my car at the "Devonshire Arms," an admirable little hotel near the river, and having ordered my dinner there, walked down to the castle, almost within the grounds of which the hotel stands. It is impossible to imagine a more picturesque site for a great inland mansion. The views up and down the Blackwater from the drawing-room windows are simply the perfection of
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river landscape. The grounds are beautifully laid out, one secluded garden-walk, in particular, taking you back to the inimitable Italian garden-walks of the seventeenth century. In the vestibule is the sword of state of the Corporation of Youghal, a carved wooden cradle for which still stands in the church at that place, and over the great gateway are the arms of the great Earl of Cork, but these are almost the only outward and visible signs of the historic past about the castle. Seen from the graceful stone bridge which spans the river, its grey towers and turrets quite excuse the youthful enthusiasm with which the Duke of Connaught, who made a visit here when he was Prince Arthur, is said to have written to his mother, that Lismore was "a beautiful place, very like Windsor Castle, only much finer."
Lismore Cathedral was almost entirely rebuilt by the second Earl of Cork three or four years after the Restoration, and has a handsome marble spire, but there is little in it to recall the Catholic times in which Lismore was a city of churches and a centre of Irish devotion.
The hostess of the "Devonshire Arms" gave me some excellent salmon, fresh from the river, and a
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very good dinner. She bewailed the evil days on which she has fallen, and the loss to Lismore of all that the Castle used to mean to the people. Lady Edward Cavendish had spent a short time here some little time ago, she said, and the people were delighted to have her come there. "It would be a great thing for the country if all the uproar and quarrelling could be put an end to. It did nobody any good, least of all the poor people."
From Lismore I came back by the railway through Fermoy.
Portumna, galway, Feb. 28.-I left Cork by an early train to-day, and passing through the counties of Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Queen's, and King's, reached this place after dark on a car from Parsonstown. The day was delightfully cool and bright. I had the carriage to myself almost all the way, and gave up all the time I could snatch from the constantly varying and often very beautiful scenery to reading a curious pamphlet which I picked up in Dublin entitled Pour I'lrlande. It purports to have been written by a " Canadian priest" living at Lurgan in Ireland, and to be a reply to M. de Mandat Grancey's volume, Chez Paddy. It is adorned with a frontispiece representing a monster of the Cerberus type on a monument, with three heads and three collars labelled respectively "Flattery," "Famine," and "Coercion." On the pedestal is the inscription-" 1800 to 1887. Erected by the grateful Irish to the English
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Government." The text is in keeping with the frontispiece. In a passage devoted to the "atrocious evictions" of Glenbehy in 1887, the agent of the property is represented as "setting fire with petroleum" to the houses of two helpless men, and turning out "eighteen human beings into the highway in the depth of winter." Not a word is said of the agent's flat denial of these charges, nor a word of the advice given to the agent by Sir Eedvers Buller that the mortgagee ought to level the cottages occupied by trespassers, nor a word about Father Quilter's letter to Colonel Turner, branding his flock as "poor slaves" of the League, and turning them over to "Mr. Roe or any other agent" to do as he liked with them, since they could not, or would not, keep their plighted faith given through their own priest.
This sort of ostrich fury is common enough among the regular drumbeaters of the Irish agitation. But it is not creditable to a "Canadian priest." Still less creditable is his direct arraignment of M. de Mandat Grancey's good faith and veracity upon the strength of what he describes as M. de Mandat Grancey's amplification and distortion of a story told by himself. This was a tale of a
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priest called out to confess one of his parishioners. The penitent accused himself of killing one man, and trying to kill several others. The priest, as the dreadful tale went on, made a tally on his sleeve, with chalk, of the crimes recited. "Good heavens ! my son," he cried at last, "what had all these men done to you that you tried to send them all into eternity? "Who were they?"
"Oh, Father, they were all bailiffs or tax-collectors!"
"You idiot!" exclaimed the confessor, angrily rubbing at his sleeve, "why didn't ye tell me that before instead of letting me spoil my best cassock?"
As I happened to have the book of M. de Mandat Grancey in my despatch-box, I compared it with the attack made upon it. The results were edifying. In the first place, M. de Mandat Grancey does not indicate the Canadian priest as his authority. He says that he heard the story, apparently at a dinner-table in France, from a cure Irlandais, who was endeavouring to impress upon his hearers "the sympathy of the clergy with the Land League." The "Canadian priest" now comes forward and makes it a count in his indictment against M. de Mandat Grancey that he is described as an "Irish
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curate," when he is in fact neither an Irishman nor a curate. What was more natural than that an ecclesiastic, claiming to live in Ireland, and telling stories in France about the sympathy of the Irish clergy with the Land League, should be taken by one of his auditors to be an Irish cure, particularly as the French cure is, I believe, the equivalent of the Irish "parish priest" ?
In the next place, the "Canadian priest" declares that the story "is as old as the Round Towers of Ireland," and that M. de Mandat Grancey represents him as making himself the hero of the tale. As a matter of fact, M. de Mandat Grancey does nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he expressly says that the cure Irlandais, who told the story, gave it to his hearers as having occurred not to himself at all, but "to one of his colleagues." Furthermore he is at the pains to add (Chez Paddy, p. 43) that the story, which was not to the taste of some of the French ecclesiastics who heard it, was related "as a simple pleasantry." "But," he adds, and this I suspect is the sting which has so exasperated the "Canadian priest," "he gave us to understand at the same time that this pleasantry struck the keynote of the state of mind of many Irish priests, and, he
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said, that he was himself the President of the League in his district."
In connection with Colonel Turner's statements as to the conduct of Father White at Milltown Malbay, and with the accounts given me of the conduct of Father Sheehan at Lixnaw, this side-light upon the relations of a certain class of the Irish clergy with the most violent henchmen of the League, is certainly noteworthy. I happen to have had some correspondence with friends of mine in Paris, who are friends also of M. de Mandat Grancey, about his visit to Ireland before he made it, and I am quite certain that he went there, to put the case mildly, with no prejudices in favour of the English Government or against the Nationalists. Perhaps the extreme bitterness shown in the pamphlet of the "Canadian priest" may have been born of his disgust at finding that the sympathy of French Catholics with Catholic Ireland draws the line at priests who regard the assassination of "bailiffs and tax-collectors" as a pardonable, if not positively amusing, excess of patriotic zeal.
It was late when I reached Parsonstown, known of old in Irish story as Birr, from St. Brendan's Abbey of Biorra, and now a clean prosperous place,
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carefully looked after by the chief landlord of the region, the Earl of Rosse, who, while he inherits the astronomical tastes and the mathematical ability of his father, is not so absorbed in star-gazing as to be indifferent to his terrestrial duties and obligations. I have heard nothing but good of him, and of his management of his estates, from men of the most diverse political views. But I think it more important to get a look at the Clanricarde property, about which I have heard little but evil from anybody. The strongest point I have heard made in favour of the owner is, that he is habitually described by that dumb organ of a down-trodden people, United Ireland, as "the most vile Clanricarde."
I found a good car at the railway station, and set off at once for Portumna. Parsonstown was called by Sir William Petty, in his Survey of Ireland, the umbilicus Hiberniae. It is the centre of Ireland, as a point near Newnham Paddox is of England, and the famous or infamous "Bog of Allan" stretches hence to Athlone. Our way fortunately took us westward. A light railway was laid down some years ago from Parsonstown to Portumna, but it did not pay, and it has now been abandoned.
"What has become of the road?" I asked my jarvey.
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"Oh! they just take up the rails when they like, the people do."
"And what do they do with them?"
"Is it what they do with them? Oh, they make fences of them for the beasts."
He was a dry, shrewd old fellow, not very amiably disposed, I was sorry to find, towards my own country.
"Ah! it's America, sorr, that's been the ruin of us entirely."
"Pray, how is that?"
"It's the storms they send; and then the grain; and now they tell me it's the American beasts that's spoiling the market altogether for Ireland."
"Is that what your member tells you?"
"The member, sorr? which member?"
"The member of Parliament for your district, I mean. What is his name?"
"His name? Well, I'm not sure; and I don't know that I know the man at all. But I believe his name is Mulloy."
"Does he live in Portumna?"
"Oh no, not at all. I don't know at all where he lives, but I believe it's in Tullamore. But what would he know about America? Sure, any one can
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see it's the storms and the grain that is the death of us in Ireland."
"But I thought it was the landlords and the rents?"
"Oh, that's in Woodford and Loughrea; not here at all. There 11 be no good till we get a war."
"Get a war? with whom? What do you want a war for?"
"Ah! it was the good time when we had the Crimean war-with the wheat all about Portumna. I'11 show you the great store there was built. It's no use now. But we '11 have a war. My son, he's a soldier now. He went out to America. But he didn't like it."
"Why not?" I asked.
"Oh, he didn't like it. He could get no work, but to be a porter, and it was too hard. So he came back in three months' time, and then he listed for a soldier. He's over in England now. He likes it very well. He's getting very good pay. They pay the soldiers well. There's a troop of Hussars here now. They bring a power of money to the place."
"What do they do with the wheat lands now?"
"Oh, they're for sheep; they do very well. Were you ever in Australia, sorr?" pointing to a
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place we were passing. "There was a man came here from Australia with a pot of money, and he bought that place; but he thought he was a bigger man than he was, and now he's found himself out. I think he would have done as well to stay in Australia where he was."
In quite a different vein he spoke of the landlord of another large seat, and of the way in which the people, some of them, had misbehaved-breaking open the graves of the family on the place, "and tossing the coffins and the bones about, and all for what?"
The view as we crossed the long and very fine bridge over the Shannon after dusk was very striking. It was not too dark to make out the course of the broad gleaming river, and the lights of the town made it seem larger, I daresay, than it really is. As we drove up the main street I told rny jarvey to take me to the Castle.
"To the Castle, is it?" he replied, looking around at me with an astonished air.
"Yes," I said, "I am going to see Mr. Tener, the agent, who lives there, doesn't he?"
"Oh, the new agent? Oh yes; I believe he's a very good man."
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"You don't expect to be 'boycotted' for going to the Castle, do you?"
"And why should I be? But I haven't been inside of the Castle gates for twenty years. And--here they are!" he cried out suddenly, pulling up his horse just in time to avoid driving him up against a pair of iron gates inhospitably closed. It was by this time pitch dark. Not a light could we see within the enclosure. But presently a couple of shadowy forms appeared behind the iron gates; the iron gates creaked on their hinges, a masculine voice bade us drive in, and a policeman with a lantern advanced from a thicket of trees. All this tad a fine martial and adventurous aspect, and my jarvey seemed to enjoy it as much as I.
We got directions from the friendly policeman as to the roads and the landmarks, and after once nearly running into a clump of trees found ourselves at last in an open courtyard, where men appeared and took charge of the car, the horse, and my luggage. We were in a quadrangle of the outbuildings attached to the old residence of the Clanri-cardes, which had escaped the fire of 1826. The late Marquis for a long time hesitated whether to reconstruct the castle on the old site (the walls are
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still standing), or to build an entirely new house on another site. He finally chose the latter alternative, chiefly, I am told, under the advice of his oldest son, the late Lord Dunkellin, one of the most charming and deservedly popular men of his time. He was a great friend and admirer of Father Burke, whom he used to claim as a Galway cousin, and with whom I met him in Rome not long before his death in the summer of 1867. His brother, the present Marquis, I have never met, but Mr. Tener, his present agent here, who passed some time in America several years ago, learning from him that I wished to see this place, very courteously wrote to me asking me to make his house nay headquarters. I found my way through queer passages to a cheery little hall where my host met me, and taking me into a pleasant little parlour, enlivened by flowers, and a merrily blazing fire, presented me to Mrs. Tener.
Mr. Tener is an Ulster man from the County Cavan. He went with his wife on their bridal trip to America, and what he there saw of the peremptory fashion in which the authorities deal with conspiracies to resist the law seems not unnaturally to have made him a little impatient of the dilatory, not to say dawdling, processes of the law in his
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own country. He gave me a very interesting account after dinner this evening of the situation in which he found affairs on this property, an account very different from those which I have seen in print. He is himself the owner of a small landed property in Cavan, and he has had a good deal of experience as an agent for other properties. "I have a very simple rule," he said to me, "in dealing with Irish tenants, and that is neither to do an injustice nor to submit to one." It was only, he said, after convincing himself that the Clanricarde tenants had no legitimate ground of complaint against the management of the estate, not removable upon a fair and candid discussion of all the issues involved between them and himself, that he consented to take charge of the property. That to do this was to run a certain personal risk, in the present state of the country, he was quite aware.
But he takes this part of the contract very coolly, telling me that the only real danger, he thinks, is incurred when he makes a journey of which he has to send a notice by telegraph-a remark which recalled to me the curious advice given me in Dublin to seal rny letters, as a protection against "the Nationalist clerks in the post-offices." The park of Portumna Castle, which is very extensive, is patrolled
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by armed policemen, and whenever Mr. Tener drives out he is followed by a police car carrying two armed men.
"Against whom are all these precautions necessary?" I asked. "Against the evicted tenants, or against the local agents of the League?"
"Not at all against the tenants," he replied, "as you can satisfy yourself by talking with them. The trouble comes not from the tenants at all, nor from the people here at Portumna, but from mischievous arid dangerous persons at Loughrea and Woodford. Woodford, mind you, not being Lord Clanricarde's place at all, though all the country has been roused about the cruel Clanricarde and his wicked Woodford evictions. Woodford was simply the headquarters of the agitation against Lord Clanricarde and my predecessor, Mr. Joyce, and it has got the name of the 'cockpit of Ireland,' because it was there that Mr. Dillon, in October 1886, opened the 'war against the landlords' with the 'Plan of Campaign.' It is an odd circumstance, by the way, worth noting, that when these apostles of Irish agitation went to Lord Clanricarde's property nearer the city of Galway, and tried to stir the people up, they failed dismally, because the people there could understand no English, and the Irish agitators could
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speak no Irish! Nobody has ever had the face to pretend that the Clanricarde estates were 'rack-rented.' There have been many personal attacks made upon Mr, Joyce and upon Lord Clanricarde, and Mr. Joyce has brought that well-known action against the Marquis for libel, and all this answers with the general public as an argument to show that the tenants on the Clanricarde property must have had great grievances, and must have been cruelly ground down and unable to pay their way. I will introduce you, if you will allow me, to the Catholic Bishop here, and to the resident Protestant clergyman, and to the manager of the bank, and they can help you to form your own judgment as to the state of the tenants. You will find that whatever quarrels they may have had with their landlord or his agent, they are now, and always have been, quite able to pay their rents, and I need not tell you that it is no longer in the power of a landlord or an agent to say what these rents shall be."1 "Mr. Dillon in that speech of his at Woodford
1 As to the ability of these tenants to pay their way, one fact which I have since ascertained sufficiently supports Mr. Tener's contention. The deposits in the Postal Savings Banks of the three purely agricultural towns of Portumna, Woodford, and Loughrea, which in 1880, throwing off the shillings and pence, were respectively, £2539, £259, and £5500, rose in 1887 to £3376, £1350, and £6311, an increase of nearly £3000.
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(I have it here as published in United Ireland), you will see, openly advised, or rather ordered, the tenants here to club their rents, or, in plain English, the money due to their landlord, with the deliberate intent to confiscate to their own use, or, in their own jargon, 'grab,' the money of any one of their number who, after going into this dishonest combination, might find it working badly and wish to get out of it. Here is his own language:"-
I took the speech as reported in the United Ireland of October 23rd, 1886, and therein found Mr. Dillon, M.P., using these words:-"If you mean to fight really, you must put the money aside for two reasons-first of all because you want the means to support the men who are hit first; and, secondly, because you want to prohibit traitors going behind your back. There is no way to deal with a traitor except to get his money under lock and key, and if you find that he pays his rent, and betrays the organisation, what will you do with him? I will tell you what to do with him. Close upon Us money, and use it for the organisation. I have always opposed outrages. This is a legal plan, and it is ten times more effective."
Not a word here as to the morality of the proceeding thus recommended; but almost in the
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same breath in which he bade his ignorant hearers regard his plan as "legal," Mr. Dillon said to them, "this must be done privately, and you must not inform the public where the money is placed!"
Why not, if the plan was "legal"? Mr. Dillon, I believe, is not a lawyer, but he can hardly have deluded himself into thinking his plan of campaign "legal" in the face of the particular pains taken by his leader, Mr. Parnell, to disclaim all participation in any such plans. A year before Mr. Dillon made this curious speech, Mr. Parnell, I remember, on the 11th of October 1885, speaking at Kildare, declared that he had "in no case during the last few years advised any combination among tenants against even rack-rents," and insisted that any combination of the sort which might exist should be regarded as an "isolated" combination, "confined to the tenants of individual estates, who, of their own accord, without any incitement from us, on the contrary, kept back by us, without any urging on our part, without any advice on our part, but stung by necessity, and the terrible realities of their position, may have formed such a combination among themselves to secure such a reduction of rent as will enable them to live in their own homes." From this language of Mr. Parnell in October 1885 to
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Mr. Dillon's speech in October 1886, urging and advising the tenants to organise, exact contributions from every member of the organisation, and put these contributions under the control of third parties determined to confiscate the money subscribed by any member who might not find the organisation working to his advantage, is a rather long step ! It covers all the distance between a cunning defensive evasion of the law, and an open aggressive violation of the law-not of the land only, but of common honesty. One of two things is clear: either these combinations are voluntary and "isolated," and intended, as Mr. Parnell asserts, to secure such a reduction of rents as will enable the tenants, and each of them, to live peacefully and comfortably at home, and in that case any member of the combination who finds that he can attain his object better by leaving it has an absolute right to do this, and to demand the return of his money; or they are part of a system imposed upon the tenants by a moral coercion inconsistent with the most elementary ideas of private right and personal freedom. This makes the importance of Mr. Dillon's speech, that by his denunciation of any member who wishes to withdraw from this "voluntary" combination as a "traitor," and by his order to "close upon the
99
money" of any such member, "and use it for the organisation," he brands the "organisation" as a subterranean despotism of a very cheap and nasty kind. The Government which tolerates the creation of such a Houndsditch tyranny as this within its dominions richly deserves to be overthrown. As for the people who submit themselves to it, I do not wonder that in his more lucid moments a Catholic priest like Father Quilter feels himself moved to denounce them as "poor slaves." Of course with a benevolent neutral like myself, the question always recurs, Who trained them to submit to this sort of thing? But I really am at a loss to see why a parcel of conspirators should be encouraged in the nineteenth century to bully Irish farmers out of their manhood and their money, because in the seventeenth century it pleased the stupid rulers of England, as the great Duke of Ormoncl indignantly said, to "put so general a discountenance upon the improvement of Ireland, as if it were resolved that to keep it low is to keep it safe."
On going back to the little drawing-room after dinner we found Mrs. Tener among her flowers, busy with some literary work. It is not a gay life here, she admits, her nearest visiting acquaintance living
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some seven or eight miles away-but she takes long walks with a couple of stalwart dogs in her company, and has little fear of being molested. "The tenants are in more danger," she thinks, "than the landlords or the agents"-nor do I see any reason to doubt this, remembering the Connells whom I saw at Edenvale, and the story of the "boycotted " Fitzmaurice brutally murdered in the presence of his daughter at Lixnaw on the 31st of January, as if by way of welcome to Lord Ripon and Mr. Morley on their arrival at Dublin.
portumna, Feb. 29th.-Early this morning two of the "evicted" tenants, and an ex-bailiff of the property here, came by appointment to discuss the situation with Mr. Tener. He asked me to attend the conference, and upon learning that I was an American, they expressed their perfect willingness that I should do so. The tenants were quiet, sturdy, intelligent-looking men. I asked one of them if he objected to telling me whether he thought the rent he had refused to pay excessive, or whether he was simply unable to pay it.
"I had the money, sir, to pay the rent," he
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replied, "and I wanted to pay the rent-only I
wouldn't be let."
"Who wouldn't let you?" I asked.
"The people that were in with the League."
"Was your holding worth anything to you?" I
asked.
"It was indeed. Two or three years ago I could have sold my right for a matter of three hundred pounds."
"Yes!" interrupted the other tenant, "and a bit before that for six hundred pounds."
"Is it not worth three hundred pounds to you now?"
"No," said Mr. Tener, "for he has lost it by refusing the settlement I offered to make, and driving us into proceedings against him, and allowing his six months' equity of redemption to lapse."
"And sure, if we had it, no one would be let to buy it now, sir," said the tenant. "But it's we that hope Mr. Tener here will let us come back on the holdings-that is, if we 'd be protected coming back."
"Now, do you see," said Mr. Tener, "what it is you ask me to do? You ask me to make you a present outright of the property you chose foolishly to throw away, and to do this after you have put
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the estate to endless trouble and expense; don't you think that is asking me to do a good deal?"
The tenants looked at one another, at Mr. Tener, and at me, and the ex-bailiff smiled.
"You must see this," said Mr. Tener, "but I am perfectly willing now to say to you, in the presence of this gentleman, that in spite of all, I am quite willing to do what you ask, and to let you come back into the titles you have forfeited, for I would rather have you back on the property than strangers-"
"And, indeed, we're sure you would."
"But understand, you must pay down a year's rent and the costs you have put us to."
"Ah! sure you wouldn't have us to pay the costs?"
"But indeed I will," responded Mr. Tener; "you mustn't for a moment suppose I will have any question about that. You brought all this trouble on yourselves, and on us; and while I am ready and willing to deal more than fairly, to deal liberally with you about the arrears-and to give you time- the costs you must pay."
"And what would they be, the costs?" queried one of the tenants anxiously.
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"Oh, that I can't tell you, for I don't know," said Mr. Tener, "but they shall not be anything beyond the strict necessary costs."
"And if we come back would we be protected?"
"Of course you will have protection. But why do you want protection? Here you are, a couple of strong grown men, with men-folk of your families. See here! why don't you go to such an one, and such an one," naming other tenants; "you know them well. Go to them quietly and sound them to see if they will come back on the same terms with you; form a combination to be honest and to stand by your rights, and defy and break up the other dishonest combination you go in fear of? Is it not a shame for men like you to lie down and let those fellows walk over you, and drive you out of your livelihood and your homes?"
The tenants looked at each other, and at the rest of us. "I think," said one of them at last, "I think--and--," naming two men, "would come with us. Of course," turning to Mr. Tener, "you wouldn't discover on us, sir."
"Discover on you! Certainly not," said Mr. Tener. "But why don't you make up your minds to be men, and 'discover' on yourselves, and defy these fellows?"
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"And the cattle, sir? would we get protection for the cattle ? They'd be murdered else entirely."
"Of course," said Mr. Tener, "the police would endeavour to protect the cattle."
Then, turning to me, he said, "That is a very reasonable question. These scoundrels, when they are afraid to tackle the men put under their ban, go about at night, and mutilate and torture and kill the poor beasts. I remember a case," he went on, "in Roscommon, where several head of cattle mysteriously disappeared. They could be found nowhere. No trace of them could be got. But long weeks after they vanished, some lads in a field several miles away saw numbers of crows hovering aver a particular point. They went there, and there at the bottom of an abandoned coal-shaft lay the shattered remains of these lost cattle. The poor beasts had been driven blindfold over the fields and down into this pit, where, with broken limbs, and maimed, they all miserably died of hunger."
"Yes," said one of the tenants, "and our cattle'd be driven into the Shannon, and drownded, and washed away."
"You must understand," interposed Mr. Tener "that when cattle are thus maliciously destroyed
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the owners can recover nothing unless the remains of the poor beasts are found and identified within three days."
The disgust which I felt and expressed at these revelations seemed to encourage the tenants. One of them said that before the evictions came off certain of the National Leaguers visited him, and told him he must resist the officers. "I consulted my sister," he said, "and she said, 'Don't you be such a fool as to be doing that; we'll all be ruined entirely by those rascals and rogues of the League.' And I didn't resist. But only the other day I went to a priest in the trouble we are in, and what do you think he said to me? He said, 'Why didn't you do as you were bid ? then you would be helped,' and he would do nothing for us! Would you think that right, sir, in your country?"
"I should think in my country," I replied, "that a priest who behaved in that way ought to be unfrocked."
"Did you pay over all your rent into the hands of the trustees of the League?" I asked of one of these tenants.
"I paid over money to them, sir," he replied.
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"Yes," I said, "but did you pay over all the amount of the rent, or how much of it?
"Oh! I paid as much as I thought they would think I ought to pay!" he responded, with that sly twinkle of the peasant's eye one sees so often in rural France.
"Oh! I understand," I said, laughing. "But if you come to terms now with Mr. Tener here, will you get that money back again?"
"Divil a penny of it!" he replied, with much emphasis.
Finally they got up together to take their leave, after a long whispered conversation together.
"And if we made it half the costs?"
"No!" said Mr. Tener good-naturedly but firmly; " not a penny off the costs."
"Well, we'11 see the men, sir, just quietly, and we 11 let you know what can be done"; and with that they wished us, most civilly, good-morning, and went their way.
We walked in the park for some time, and a wild, beautiful park it is, not the less beautiful for being given up, as it is, very much to the Dryads to deal with it as they list. It is as unlike a trim English park as possible; but it contains many
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very tine trees, and grand open sweeps of landscape. In a tangled copse are the ruins of an ancient Franciscan abbey, in one corner of which lie buried together, under a monumental mound of brickwork, the late Marquis of Clanricarde and his wife. The walls of the Castle, burned in 1826, are still standing, and so perfect that the building might easily enough have been restored. A keen-eyed, wiry old household servant, still here, told us the house was burned in the afternoon of January 6, 1826. There were three women-servants in the house-"Anna and Mary Meehan, and Mrs. Underwood, the housekeeper"; and they were getting the Castle ready for his Lordship's arrival, so little of an "absentee" was the late Lord Clanricarde, then only one year married to the daughter of George Canning. The fires were laid on in the upper rooms, and Mrs. Underwood went off upon an errand. When she came back all was in flames.
The deer-park is full of deer, now become quite wild. We heard them crashing through the undergrowth on all sides. There must be capital fishing, too, in the lake, and in the river of which it is an expansion.
While they were getting the cars ready for a
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drive, came up another son of the soil This man I found had only a small interest in the battle on the Clanricarde estates, holding his homestead of another landlord. But he admitted he had gone in a manner into the "combination," in that he had paid a certain, not very large, sum, which he named, to the trustees, "just for peace and quiet." He considered it gone, past recovery; and he named another man with a small holding, but doing a considerable business in other ways, who had "paid £10 or more just not to be bothered." Upon this Mr. Tener told me of a shopkeeper at Loughrea in a large way of business, a man with seven or eight thousand pounds, who, finding his goods about to be seized after the agent had turned a sharp strategic corner on him, and unexpectedly got into his shop, was about to own up to his defeat, and make a fair settlement, when the secretary of the League appeared, and requested a private talk with him. In a quarter of an hour the tradesman reappeared looking rather sullen and crestfallen. He said he couldn't pay, and must let the goods be taken. So taken they were, and duly put up under the process and sold. He bought them in himself, paying all the costs.
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Presently two cars appeared. We got upon one, Mr. Tener driving a spirited nag, and taking on the seat with him a loaded carbine-rifle. Two armed policeman followed us upon the other, keeping at such a distance as would enable them easily to cover any one approaching from either side of the roadway. It quite took me back to the delightful days of 1866 in Mexico, when we used to ride out to picnics at the Rincon at Orizaba armed to the teeth, and ready at a moment's notice to throw the four-in-hand mule-wagons into a hollow square, and prepare to receive cavalry. As it seems to be perfectly well understood that the regular price paid for shooting a designated person (they call it "knocking" him in these parts) is the ridiculously small sum of four pounds, and that two persons who divide this sum are always detailed by the organisers of outrage to "knock" an objectionable individual, it is obvious that too much care can hardly be taken by prudent people in coining and going through such a country. Fortunately for the people most directly concerned to avoid these unpleasantnesses a systematic leakage seems to exist in the machinery of mischief. The places where the oaths of this local "Mafia" are admin-
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istered, for instance, are well known. A roadside near a chapel is frequently selected-and this for two or three obvious reasons. The sanctity of the spot may be supposed to impress the neophyte; and if the police or any other undesirable people should suddenly come upon the officiating adepts and the expectant acolyte, a group on the roadside is not necessarily a criminal gathering-though I do not see why, in such times, our old American college definition of a "group" as a gathering of "three or more persons" should not be adopted by the authorities, and held to make such a gathering liable to dispersion by the police, as our "groups" used to be subject to proctorial punishment. Mills are another favourite resort of the law-breakers. Mr. Tener tells me that a large mill between this place and Loughrea is a great centre of trouble, not wholly to the disadvantage of the astute miller, who finds it not only brings grist to his mill, but takes away grist from another mill belonging to a couple of worthy ladies, and once quite prosperous. It is no uncommon thing, it appears, for the same person to be put through the ceremony of swearing fidelity more than once, and at more than one place, with the not unnatural result, however, of
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diminishing the pressure of the oath upon his conscience or his fears, and also of alienating his affections, as he is expected to pay down two shillings on each occasion. Once a member, he contributes a penny a week to the general fund. It seems also to be an open secret who the disbursing treasurers are of this fund, from whom the members, detailed to do the dark bidding of the "organisation," receive their wage. "A stout gentleman with sandy hair and wearing glasses" was the description given to me of one such functionary. When so much is known of the methods and the men, why is it that so many crimes are committed with virtual impunity? For two sufficient reasons. Witnesses cannot be got to testify, or trusted, if they do testify, to speak the truth; and it is idle to expect juries of the vicinage in nine cases out of ten will do their duty. Political cowardice having made it impossible to transfer the venue in cases of Irish crime, as to which all the authorities were agreed about these points, from Ireland into Great Britain, it is found that even to transfer the trial of "Moonlighters" from Clare or Kerry into Wicklow, for example, has a most instructive effect, opening the eyes of the people of Wicklow to a state of things
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in their own island, of which happily for themselves they were previously as ignorant as the people of Surrey or of Middlesex. This explains the indignant wish expressed to me some time ago in a letter from a priest in another part of Ireland, that "martial law" might be proclaimed in Clare and Kerry to "stamp out the Moonlighters, those pests of society." That in Clare and Kerry priests should be found not only disposed to wink at and condone the proceedings of these "pests of society," but openly to co-operate with them under the pretext of a "national" movement, is surely a thing equally intolerable by the Church and dangerous to the cause of Irish autonomy. This I am glad to say is strongly felt, and has been 011 more than one occasion very vigorously stated by one of the most eminent and estimable of Irish ecclesiastics, the Bishop-Coadjutor of Clonfert, upon whom I called this morning. Dr. Healy, who is a senator of the Royal University of Ireland, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, presides over that part of the diocese of Clonfert, which includes Portumna and Woodford. He lives in a handsome and commodious, but simple and unpretentious house, set in ample grounds well-planted, and commanding a wide view
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of a most agreeable country. We were ushered into a well-furnished study, and the bishop came in at once to greet us with the most cordial courtesy. He is a frank, dignified, unaffected man, and in his becoming episcopal purple, with the gold chain and cross, looked every inch a bishop. I was particularly anxious to see Dr. Healy, as a type of the high-minded and courageous ecclesiastics who, in Ireland, have resolutely refused to subordinate their duties and their authority as ecclesiastics to the convenience and the policy of an organisation absolutely controlled by Mr. Parnell, who not only is not a Catholic, but who is an open ally and associate of the bitterest enemies of the Catholic Church in France and in England. Protestant historians affirm that Pope Innocent was one of the financial backers of William of Orange when he set sail from Holland to crush the Catholic faith in Great Britain and Ireland, and drive the Catholic house of Stuart into exile. But it was reserved for the nineteenth century to witness the strange spectacle of men, calling themselves Irishmen and Catholics, deliberately slandering and assailing in concord with a non-Catholic political leader the consecrated pastors and masters of the Church in Ireland. When in
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order to explain what they themselves concede to be "the absence from the popular ranks of the best of the priesthood," Nationalist writers find it necessary to denounce Cardinal Cullen and Cardinal M'Cabe as "anti-Irish"; and to sneer at men like Dr. Healy as "Castle Bishops," it is impossible not to be reminded of the three "patriotic" tailors of Tooley Street.
Bishop Healy looks upon the systematic development of a substantial peasant proprietary throughout Ireland as the economic hope of the country, and he regards therefore the actual "campaigning" of the self-styled "Nationalists" as essentially anti-national, inasmuch as its methods are demoralising the people of Ireland, and destroying that respect for law and for private rights which lies at the foundation of civil order and of property. In his opinion, "Home Rule," to the people in general, means simply ownership of the land which they are to live on, and to live by. How that ownership shall be brought about peaceably, fairly, and without wrong or outrage to any man or class of men is a problem of politics to be worked out by politicians, and by public men. That men, calling themselves Catholics, should be led on to attempt
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to bring this or any other object about by immoral and criminal means is quite another matter, and a matter falling within the domain, not of the State primarily, but of the Church.
As to this, Bishop Healy, who was in Rome not very long ago, and who, while in Eorne, had more than one audience of His Holiness by command, has no doubt whatever that the Vatican will insist upon the abandonment and repudiation by Catholics of boycotting, and "plans of campaign," and all such devices of evil. Nor has the Bishop any doubt that whenever the Holy Father speaks the priests and the people of Ireland will obey.
To say this, of course, is only to say that the Bishop believes the priests of Ireland to be honest priests, and the people of Ireland to be good Catholics.
If he is mistaken in this it will be a doleful thing, not for the Church, but for the Irish priests, and for the Irish people. No Irishman who witnessed the magnificent display made at Rome this year, of the scope and power of the Catholic Church, can labour under any delusions on that point.
From the Bishop's residence we went to call upon the Protestant rector of Portumna, Mr. Crawford.
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The handsome Anglican church stands within an angle of the park, and the parsonage is a very substantial mansion. Mr. Crawford, the present rector, who is a man of substance, holds a fine farm of the Clanricarde estate, at a peppercorn rent, and he is tenant also of another holding at £118 a year, as to which he has brought the agent into Court, with the object, as he avers, of setting an example to the other tenants, and inducing them, like himself, to fight under the law instead of against it. He is not, however, in arrears, and in that respect sets a better example, I am sorry to say, than the Catholic priest, Father Coen, who made himself so conspicuous here on the occasion of the much bewritten Woodford evictions. The case of Father Coen is most instructive, and most unpleasant. He occupies an excellent house on a holding of twenty-three acres of good land, with a garden-in short, a handsome country residence, which was provided by the late Lord Clanricarde, expressly for the accommodation of whoever might be the Catholic priest in that part of his estate. For all this the rent is fixed at the absurd and nominal sum of two guineas a year! Yet Father Coen, who now enjoys the mansion, and has a substantial income from the parish, is actually two
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years and a half In arrears with this rent! This fact Mr. Tener mentioned to the Bishop, whose countenance naturally darkened. "What am I to do in such a case, my lord?" asked Mr. Tener. "Do?" said the Bishop, "do your plain duty, and proceed against him according to law." But suppose he were proceeded against and evicted, as in America he certainly would be, who can doubt that he would instantly be paraded, before the world, on both sides of the Atlantic as a "martyr," suffering for the holy cause of an oppressed and down-trodden people, at the hands of a "most vile" Marquis, and of a remorseless and blood-thirsty agent?1 Mr. Crawford, a tall, fine-looking man, talked very fully and freely about the situation here. He came to Portumna about eight years ago; one of his reasons for accepting the position here offered him being that he wished to take over a piece of property near Woodford from his brother-in-law, who found he could not manage it. As a practical farmer, and a straightforward capable man of business, he has gradually acquired the general confidence of the tenants here.
1 Mr. Tener, to whom I sent proofs of these pages, writes to me (July 18): "I shall soon execute the decree of the County-Court Judge Henn against Father Coen for £5, 5s., being two and a half year's rent."
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That they are, as a rule, quite able to pay the rents which they have been "coerced" into refusing to pay, he fully believes. He told me of cases in which Catholic tenants of Lord Clanricarde came to him when the agitation began about the Plan of Campaign, and begged him privately to take the money for their rents, and hold it for them till the time should come for a settlement.
The reason for this was that they did not wish to be obliged to give over the money into the "Trust" created by the Campaigners, and wanted it to be safely put beyond the reach of these obliging "friends." One very shrewd tenant came to him and begged him to buy some beasts, in order that he might pay his rent out of the proceeds. The man owed £15 to the Clanricarde property. Mr. Crawford did not particularly want to buy his beasts, but eventually agreed to do so, and gave him £50 for them. The man went off with the money, but he never paid the rent! Mr. Crawford discovering this called him to account, and refused to grant him some further favour which he asked. The result is that the "distressed tenant" now cuts Mr. Crawford when he meets him, and is the prosperous owner of quite a small herd of cattle.
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Mr. Crawford's opinion of the mischief done by the methods and spirit of the National League in this place is quite in accord with the opinions of the Bishop-Coadjutor. Power without responsibility, which made the Caesars madmen, easily turns the heads of village tyrants, and there is something positively grotesque in the excesses of this subterranean "Home Rule." Mr. Crawford told me of a case here, in which a tenant farmer, whom he named, came to him in great wrath, not unmingled with terror, to say that the League had ordered him, on pain of being boycotted, to give up his holding to the heirs of a woman from whom, twenty years ago, he had bought, for £100 in cash, the tenant-right of her deceased husband ! There was no question of refunding the £100. He was merely to consider himself a "land-grabber," and evict himself for the benefit of those heirs who had never done a stroke of work on the property for twenty years, and who had no shadow of a legal or moral claim on it, except that the oldest of them was an active member of the local League!
Nor was this unique.
In another case, the children of a tenant, who died forty years ago, came forward and called upon the
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League to boycott an old man who had been in possession of the holding during nearly half a century. In a third case, a tenant-farmer, some ten years ago, had in his employ as herd a man who fell ill and died. He put into the vacant place an honest, capable young fellow, who still holds it, and has faithfully and efficiently served him. Only the other day this tenant-farmer was warned by the League to expect trouble, unless he dismissed this herd, and put into his place the son, now grown to man's estate, of the herd who died ten years ago!
It is amusing, if not instructive, to find the hereditary principle, just now threatened in its application to the British Seriate, cropping out afresh as an element in the regeneration of Irish agriculture and the land tenure of Ireland !
On our way back to the Castle we called on Mr. Place, the manager of the Portumna Branch of the Hibernian Bank, who lives in the town. He was amusing himself, after the labour of the day in the bank, with some amateur work as a carpenter, but received us very cordially. He said there was no doubt that the deposits in the bank had increased considerably since the adoption of the Plan of Campaign 011 the Clanricarde property.
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Money was paid into the bank continually by persons who wished the fact of their payments kept secret; and he knew of more than one case in which tenants, whose stock had been seized by the agent for the rents, were much delighted at the seizure, since it had paid off their rents, and so enabled them to retain their holdings and keep out of the grasp of the League, even though to do this they had undergone a forced sale and been mulcted in costs.
It was his opinion that the tenants on the Clanri-carde property, who are not in arrears, would gladly accept a twenty-five per cent. reduction, and do very well by accepting it. But they are constrained into a hostile attitude by the tenants who are in arrears, some of them for several years (as, for example, Father Coen), although I find, to my astonishment, that in Ireland the landlord has no power to distrain for more than a twelvemonth's rent, no matter how far back the arrears may run.
Mr. Place seems to think it would be well to put
all the creditors of the tenants on one footing with
the landlords. The shopkeepers and other creditors,
he thinks, in that event would see many things in
quite a new light.
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What is called the new Castle of Portumna is a large and handsome building of the Mansard type, standing on an eminence in the park, at some distance from the original seat. The building was finished not long before the death of his father, the late Marquis. It has never been occupied, save by a large force of police quartered in it not very long ago by Mr. Tener in readiness for an expedition against the Castle of Cloondadauv, to the scene of which he promises to drive me to-morrow on my way back to Dublin. It is thoroughly well built, and might easily be made a most delightful residence. The views which it commands of the Shannon are magnificent, and there are many fine trees about it.
The old man who has charge of it is a typical
Galway retainer of the old school. The "boys," he
says, once tried to "boycott" him because he was
the pound-master; but he showed fight, and they let
him alone. He pointed out to me from the top of
the house, in the distance, the residences of Colonel
Hickie, and of the young Lord Avonmore, who
lately succeeded on the death of his brother in the
recent Egyptian expedition. The place is now shut
up, and the owners live in France.
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After dinner to-night Mr. Tener gave me some interesting and edifying accounts of his experience in other parts of Ireland.
Some time ago, before the Plan of Campaign was adopted, one of his tenants in Cavan came to him with a doleful story of the bad times and the low prices, and wound up by saying he could pay no more than half a year's rent.
"Now his rent had been reduced under the Land Act," said Mr. Tener, "and I had voluntarily thrown off a lot of arrears, so I looked at him quietly and said, 'Mickey, you ought to he ashamed of yourself. You have been very well treated, and you can perfectly well pay your rent. Your wife would be ashamed of you if she knew you were trying to get out of it.'"
"Ah no, your honour!" he briskly replied; "in-dade she would approve it. If you won't discover on me, I'11 tell you the truth. It was the wife herself, she's a great schollard, and reads the papers, that tould me not to pay you more than half the rent-for she says there's a new Act coining to wipe it all out. Will you take the half-year?"
"No, I will not. Don't be afraid of your wife
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but pay what you owe, like a man. You 've got the money there in your pocket."
This was a good shot. Mickey couldn't resist it, and his countenance broke into a broad smile.
"Ah no! I've got it in two pockets. Begorra, it was the wife herself made up the money in two parcels, and she put one into each pocket, to be sure-and I wasn't to give your honour but one, if you would take it. But there's the money, and I daresay it's all for the best."
On another occasion, when he was collecting the rents of a property in the county of Longford, one tenant came forward as the spokesman of the rest, admitted that the rents had been accepted fairly after a reduction under the Land Act, expressed the general wish of the tenants to meet their obligations, and wound up by asking a further abatement, "the times were so bad, and the money couldn't be got, it couldn't indeed!"
Mr. Tener listened patiently-to listen patiently is the most essential quality of an agent in Ireland -and finally said:-
"Very well, if you haven't got the money to pay in full, pay three-quarters of it, and I'11 give you time for the rest."
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"Thank your honour!" said Pat, "and that'll be thirty pounds-and here it is in one-pound notes, and hard enough to get they are, these times!"
So Mr. Tener took the money, counted the notes twice over, and then, writing out a receipt, handed it to the tenant.
"All right, Pat, there 's your receipt for thirty-nine pounds, and I'm glad to see ten-pound notes going about the country in these hard times!"
By mistake the "distressful" orator had put one ten-pound note into his parcel! He took his receipt, and went off without a word. But the combination to get an "abatement" broke down then and there, and the other tenants came forward and put down their money.
These incidents occurred to Mr. Tener himself. Not less amusing and instructive was a similar mistake on a larger scale made by an over-crafty tenant in dealing with one of Mr. Teller's friends a few years ago in the county of Leitrim. This tenant, whom we will call Denis, was the fugleman also of a combination. He was a cattle dealer as well as a farmer, and having spent a couple of hours in idly eloquent attempts to bring about a general abatement of the rents, he lost his patience.
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"Ah, well, your honour!" he said, "I can't stay here all day talking like these men, I must go to the fair at Boyle. Will you take a deposit-receipt of the bank for ten pounds and give me the pound change? that'll just be the nine pounds for the half-year's rent. But all the same, yer honour, those men are all farmers, and it's not out of the farm at all I made the ten pounds, it's out of the dealing!"
"But you couldn't deal without a farm, Denis, for the stock," said the agent, as he glanced at the receipt. He hastily turned it over, and went on, "Just indorse the receipt, and I'll consider your proposition."
The receipt was indorsed, and at once taken off by the agent's clerk to the bank to bring back pound-notes for it, while the agent quietly proceeded to fill out the regular form of receipt for a full year's rent, eighteen pounds. Denis noted what he supposed of course to be the agent's blunder, but like an astute person held his peace. The clerk came back with the notes. Denis took up his receipt, and the agent quietly began handing him note after note across the table.
"But, your honour!" exclaimed Denis, "what on earth are ye giving me all this money for?"
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"It's your change," said the agent, quite im-perturbably. "You gave me a bank receipt for one hundred pounds. I have given you a receipt for your full year's rent, and here are eighty-two pounds in notes, and with it eighteen shillings in silver-that's five per cent, reduction. I would have made it ten per cent., only you were so very sharp, first about not having the money, and then about the full receipt!"
In an instant all eyes were fastened upon Denis. Ichabod! the glory had departed. The chorus went up from his disenchanted followers:-
"Ah, glory be to God, you were not bright enough for the agent, Denis!"
And so that day the agent made a very full and handsome collection-and there was a slight reduction in the deposit-accounts of the local bank!
In the evening Mr. Tener gave me the details of some cases of direct intimidation with the names of the tenants concerned. One man, whose farm he visited, told him he had paid his rent not long before to the previous agent. "Well," said Mr. Tener, "show me your receipt!" On this the tenant said that he dare not keep the receipt about him, nor even in the house, lest it should be demanded
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by the emissaries of the League, who went round to keep the tenants up to the "Plan of Campaign," and that it was hidden in his stable. And he went out to the stable and brought it in.
This, he had reason to believe, was not an uncommon case.1 The same man, wishing to take a grass farm which the people hoped the agent would consent to have "cut up" was asked to give two names on a promissory-note to pay the rent. He demurred to this, and after a parley said, "Would a certificate do?" upon which he pulled out an old tobacco-box, and carefully unfolded from it a bank certificate of deposit for a hundred pounds sterling! This tenant held eleven Irish, or more than seventeen English, acres, and his yearly rent was £11, 16s. 6d.
1 At a hearing of cases before Judge Henn some time after I left Portumna, the Judge was reported in the papers as "severely" commenting upon the carelessness with which the estate-books were kept, tenants who were proceeded against for arrears producing "receipts" in court. I wrote to Mr. Tener on this subject. Under date of June 5th he replied to me: "Judge Henn did. not use the severe language reported. There was no reporter present but a local man, and I have reason to believe the report in the Freeman's Journal came from the lawyer of the tenants, who is on the staff of that journal. But the tenants are drilled not to show the receipts they hold, and to take advantage of every little error which they might at once get corrected by calling at the estate office. In no case, however, did any wrong occur to any tenant."
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The people before this agitation began were generally quiet, thrifty, and industrious. They were great sheep-raisers. An old law of the Irish Parliament had exempted sheep, but not cattle or crops, from distraint, with an eye to encouraging the woollen interest in Ireland.
As to the sale of tenant-right in Ireland, he told me a curious story. One woman, a widow, whom he named, owed two years' rent on a holding in Ulster at £4 a year. She was abundantly able to pay, but for her own reasons preferred to be evicted, and, finally, by an understanding with him, offered her tenant-right for sale. A man who had made money in iron-mines in the County of Durham was a bidder, and finally offered £240 for the holding. It was knocked down to him. He then saw the agent, who told him he had paid too much. The woman was then appealed to, and she admitted that the agent was right. But it was shown that others had offered £200, and the woman finally agreed to take, and received, that amount in gold, being fifty years' purchase!
Dublin, Thursday, March 1.-This has been a crowded day. I left Portumna very early on a car with Mr. Tener, intending to visit the scene of his latest collision with the "National" government of Ireland on my way to Loughrea. It was a bright spring morning, more like April in Italy than like March in America, and the country is full of natural beauty. We made our first halt at the derelict house of Martin Kenny, one of the "victims" of the famous "Woodford evictions," so called, as I have said, because Woodford is the nearest town.1 The eviction here took place October 21st, 1887. The house has been dismantled by the neighbours since that time, each man carrying off a door, or a shutter,
1 The town and estate proper of Woodford belong to Sir Henry Burke, Bart. The nearest point to Woodford of Lord Clanricarde's property is distant one mile from the town. And on the so-called Woodford estate there are not "316 tenants," as stated in publications I have seen, but 260.
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or whatever best suited him. One of the constables who followed us as Mr. Tener's body-guard had been present at the eviction. He came into the house with us, and very graphically described the performance. The house was still full of heavy stones taken into it, partly to block the entrances, and partly as ammunition; and trunks of trees used as chevaux de frise still protruded through the door and the window. These trees had been cut down by the garrison in the woodlands here and there all over the property. I asked if the law in Ireland punished depredations of this sort, and was informed that trees planted by tenants, if registered by them within a certain time, are the property of the tenants. This would astonish our landlords in America, where the tenant who sticks so much as a sunflower into his garden-patch makes a present of it to his landlord.1
I asked if the place made a long defence. Mr. Tener and the constable both laughed, and the
1 Martin Kenny, the "victim" of this eviction, is the tenant to whom the Rev. Mr. Crawford (vide page 118) gave 50 for certain cattle, in order that he (Kenny) might pay his rent But, although he got the 50, he nevertheless suffered himself to be evicted; no doubt fearing the vengeance of the League should he pay.
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former told me that when the storming party arrived shortly after daybreak, they found the house garrisoned only by some small boys, who had been left there to keep watch. The men were fast asleep at some other place. The small boys ran away as fast as possible to give the alarm, but the police went in, and in a jiffey pulled to pieces the elaborate defences prepared to repel them. Father Coen, the constable said, got to Kenny's house an hour after it was all over, with a mob of people howling and groaning. But the work had been done, and other work also at the Castle of Cloondadauv, to which we next drove.
This place takes its truly awe-inspiring name from a ruined Norman tower standing on a picturesque promontory of no great height, which juts out into the lovely lake here made by the Shannon, At no great expense this tower might be so restored as to make an ideal fishing-box. It now simply adorns the holding formerly occupied by Mr. John Stanislaus Burke, a former tenant of Lord Clanri-carde. The story of its capture in September is worth telling.
Some days before the evictions were to come off, a meeting was held at Woodford or Loughrea, at
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which one of the speakers rather incautiously and exultingly told his hearers that the defence in 1886 of the tenant's house known as "Fort Saunders" had been a grand and gallant affair indeed, but that next time "the exterminators would have to storm a castle"!
This put Mr. Tener at once on his guard, and as Mr. Burke of Cloondadauv was set down for eviction, it didn't require much cogitation to fix upon the fortress destined to be "stormed."
When the previous evictions were made, the agent and the public forces had marched from Portumna by the highway to Woodford, so that, of course, their advent was announced by the scouts and sentinels of the League from hill to hill long before they reached the scene of action, and abundant time was given to the agitators for organising a "reception." Mr. Tener profited by the experience of his predecessors. He contrived to get his force of constabulary through the town of Portumna and into the new castle there without attracting any popular attention a day or two before he intended to act. He allowed it also to be known that on the 21st of October he meant to attend certain cases in the court at Loughrea at 11 o'clock
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A.M. As early rising is not a popular virtue here, the townspeople all took it for granted that Cloondadauv would be safe from disturbance by the hosts of Clanricarde for that day at least.
But Mr. Tener had brought up certain large boats to Portumna, and put them on the lake. Rousing his men before dawn, he soon had them all embarked, and on their way swiftly and silently by the river and the lake to Cloondadauv. They reached the promontory by daybreak, and as soon as the hour of legal action had arrived they were landed, and surrounded the "castle." The ancient portal was found to be blocked with heavy stones and trunks of trees, nor did any adit appear to be available, till a young gentleman who had accompanied the party as a volunteer, discovered, in one wall of the tower, at some little height from the ground, the vent of one of those conduits not infrequently found running down through the walls of old castles, which were used sometimes as waste-ways for rubbish from above, and sometimes to receive water-pipes from below. Looking up into this vent, he saw a rope hanging free within it. Upon this he hauled resolutely, and finding it firmly attached above, came to the
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conclusion that it must have been fixed there by the garrison as a means of access to the interior.
Like an adventurous young tar, he bade his comrades stand by, and nimbly "swarmed" up the rope, without thought or care of what might await him at the top. In a few moments his shouts from above proclaimed the capture of the stronghold. It was absolutely deserted; the garrison, confident that no attack would that day be made, had gone off to the nearest village. The interior of the castle was found filled with munitions of war, in the shape of huge beams and piles of stones laboriously carried up the winding stairs, and heaped on all the landing-places in readiness for use. On the flat roof of the castle was established a sort of furnace for heating water or oil, to be poured down upon the besiegers ; and crowbars lay there in readiness to loosen out and dislodge the battlements, and topple them over upon the assailants.
The officers soon made their way all over the building, and thence proceeded to the residence of Mr. Burke near by, a large and very commodious house. All the formalities were gone through with, a detachment of policemen was put in charge, the rest of the forces set out on their return to Por-
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tumna; and Mr. Tener was well on his way to keep his appointment at Loughrea before the organised "defenders" of Cloondadauv, hastily called out of their comfortable beds or from their breakfast-tables had realised the situation, and got the populace into motion. A mass meeting was held in the neighbourhood, and many speeches were made. But the castle and the farm-house and the holding all remain in the hands of a cool, quiet, determined-looking young Ulsterman, who tells me that he is getting on very well, and feels quite able with his police-guard to protect himself. "Once in a while," he said. "they come here from Loughrea with English Parliament-men, and stand outside of the gate, and call me 'Clanricarde's dog,' and make like speeches at me; but I don't mind them, and they see it, and go away again."
Of Mr. Burke, the evicted tenant here, Mr. Crawford, the Protestant clergyman at Portumna, told me that he was abundantly able to pay his rent. The whole debt for which Burke was evicted was £115; and Mr. Crawford said he had himself offered Burke £300 for the holding. Burke would have gladly taken this, but "the League wouldn't let him." When his right was put up for sale at
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Galway for £5, he did not dare to buy it in, and he is now living with his wife and children on the League funds. Lord Clanricarde's agent offered to take him back and restore his right if he would pay what he owed; but he dared not accept. This farm comprises over one hundred and ten English acres, which Burke held at a rent -fixed by the Land Court-of £77, the valuation for taxes being £83.
To call the eviction of such a tenant in such circumstances from such a holding a "sentence of death," is making ducks and drakes of the English language. Mr. Crawford's opinion, founded upon a thorough personal knowledge of the region, is that there is no exceptional distress in this part of Ireland, and that over-renting has nothing to do with such distress as does exist here. The case of a man named Egan, one of the "victims" of the Woodford evictions of 1886, certainly bears out this view of the matter. Egan, who was a tenant, not at all of Lord Clanricarde, but of a certain Mrs. Lewis, had occupied for twenty years a holding of about sixteen Irish acres, or more than twenty English acres. This he held at a yearly rental of £8, 15s., being 9d. over the valuation.
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In August 1886 he was evicted for refusing to pay one year's rent then due. At that time the crops standing on the land were valued by him at £60, 13s. He also owned six beasts. In other words, this man, when he was called upon to pay a debt of £8, 15s., had in his own possession, beside the valuable tenant-right of his holding, more than a hundred pounds sterling of merchantable assets. He refused to pay, and he was evicted.
This was in August 1886. But such are the ideas now current in Ireland as to the relations of landlord and tenant, that immediately after his eviction Egan sent his daughter to gather some cabbages off the farm as if nothing had happened. The Emergency men in charge actually objected, and sent the damsel away. Thereupon Egan, on the 6th of September, served a legal notice on Mrs. Lewis, his landlady, requiring her either to let him take all the crops on the farm, or to pay him their value, estimated by him, as I have said, at £60, 13s. Two days after this, on the 8th of September, more than a hundred men came to the place by night and removed the greater portion of the crops. Not wishing a return of these visitors, Mrs. Lewis, on the 16th of September, sent word to Egan to come
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and take away what was left of the crops; one of the horses employed in the nocturnal harvest of September 8th having been seized by the police and identified as belonging to Egan. Egan did not respond; but in July 1887 he brought an action against his landlady to recover £100 sterling for her "detention of his goods," and her "conversion of the same to her own use"!
The ease was heard by the Eecorder at Kilmain-ham, and the facts which I have briefly recited were established by the evidence. The daughter of this extraordinary "victim" Egan appeared as a witness, so "fashionably dressed" as to attract a remark on the subject from the defendant's counsel. To this she replied that "her brothers in America sent her money."
"If your brothers in America sent you money for such purposes," not unnaturally observed the Recorder, "why did they allow your father to sacrifice crops worth £60 for the non-payment of £8, 15s.?"
"They were tired of that," said the young lady airily; "the land wasn't worth the rent!"
That is to say, a farm which yielded a crop of £60, and pastured several head of cattle, was not
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worth £8, 15s. a year. Certainly it was not worth £8, 15s. a year if the tenant under the operation of the existing or the impending laws of Great Britain in Ireland could get, or hope to get it for the half of that rent, or for no rent at all.
But this being thus, on what grounds are the rest of mankind invited to regard this excellent man as a "victim" worthy of sympathy and of material aid? How had he come to be in arrears of a year in August 1886? The proceedings at Kilmainham tell us this.
In November 1885 he had demanded, with other tenants of Mrs. Lewis, a reduction of 50 per cent. This would have given him his holding at a rental of £4, 7s. 6d. Mrs. Lewis refused the concession, and a month afterwards an attempt was made to blow up her son's house with dynamite. Between that time and August 1886, all the efforts of her son, who was also her agent, to collect her dues by seizing beasts, were defeated by the driving away of the cattle, so that no remedy but an eviction was left to her. I take it for granted that Mrs. Lewis had a family to maintain, and debts of one sort and another to pay, as well as Mr. Egan-but I observe this material difference between her position and
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his during the whole of this period of "strained relations" between herself and her tenant, that whereas she lay completely out of the enjoyment of the rent clue her, being the interest on her capital, represented in her title to the land, Mr. Egan remained in the complete enjoyment and use of the land. Clearly the tenant was in a better position than the landlord, and as we are dealing not with the history of Ireland in the past, but with the condition of Ireland at present, it appears to me to be quite beside the purpose to ask my sympathies for Mr. Egan on the ground that a century or half a century ago the ancestors of Mr. Egan may have been at the mercy of the ancestors of Mrs. Lewis. However that may have been, Mr. Egan seems to me now to have had legally much the advantage of Mrs. Lewis. Not only this. Both legally and materially Mr. Egan, the tenant-farmer at Woodford, seems to me to have had much the advantage of thousands of his countrymen living and earning their livelihood by their daily labour in such a typical American commonwealth, for example, as Massachusetts. I have here with me the Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Massachusetts. From this I learn that in 1876 the average yearly
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wages earned by workmen in Massachusetts were $482.72, or in round numbers something over £96. Out of this amount the Massachusetts workman had to feed, clothe, and house himself, and those dependent on him.
His outlay for rent alone was on the average $109.07, or in round numbers rather less than £22, making 22 1/2 per cent. of his earnings.
How was it with Mr. Egan ? Out of his labour on his holding he got merchantable crops worth £60 sterling, or in round numbers $300, besides producing in the shape of vegetables and dairy stuff, pigs and poultry, certainly a very large proportion of the food necessary for his household, and raising and fattening beasts, worth at a low estimate £20 or $100 more. And while thus engaged, his outlay for rent, which included not only the house in which he lived, but the land out of which he got the returns of his labour expended upon it, was £8, 15s., or considerably less than one-half the outlay of the Massachusetts workman upon the rent of nothing more than a roof to shelter himself and his family. Furthermore, the money thus paid out by the Massachusetts workman for rent was simply a tribute paid for accommodation had and enjoyed,
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while out of every pound sterling paid as rent by the Irish tenant there reverted to his credit, so long
as he continued to fulfil his legal obligations, a certain proportion, calculable, valuable, and saleable, in the form of his tenant-right.
I am not surprised to learn that the Recorder dismissed the suit brought by Mr. Egan, and gave costs against him. But the mere fact that in such circumstances it was possible for Egan to bring such a suit, and get a hearing for it, makes it quite clear that Americans of a sympathetic turn of mind can very easily find much more meritorious objects of sympathy than the Irish tenant-farmers of Galway without crossing the Atlantic in quest of them.
From Cloondadauv to Loughrea we had a long but very interesting drive, passing on the way, and at no great distance from each other, Father Coen's neat, prosperous-looking presbytery of Bal-linakill, and the shop and house of a local boat-builder named Tully, who is pleasantly known in the neighbourhood as "Dr. Tully," by reason of his recommendation of a very particular sort of "pills for landlords." The presbytery is now occupied by Father Coen, who finds it becoming his position as the moral teacher and guide of his
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people to be in arrears of two and a half years with the rent of his holding, and who is said to have entertained Mr. Blunt and other sympathising statesmen very handsomely on their visit to Loughrea and Woodford,1 "Dr." Tully being one of the guests invited to meet them.2 Not far from this presbytery, Mr. Tener showed me the scene of one of the most cowardly murders which have disgraced this region. Of Loughrea, the objective of our drive this morning, Sir George Trevelyan, I am told, during his brief rule in Ireland, found it necessary to say that murder had there become an institution. Woodford, previously a dull and law-abiding spot, was illuminated by a lurid light of modern progress about three years ago, upon the transfer thither in the summer of 1885 of a priest from Loughrea, familiarly known as "the firebrand priest."
In November of that year, as I have already
1 The valuation for taxes of this holding is £7, 15s. for the land, and £5 for the presbytery house. The church is exempt.
2 Of "Dr." Tully Mr. Tener writes to me (July 18): "Tully has the holding at £2, 10s. a year, being 50 per cent, under the valuation of the land for taxes, which is £3, 15s. As the total valuation with the house (built by him) is only £4, he pays no poor-rates. He was in arrears May 1, 1887, of three years for £7, 10s. Lord Clanricarde offered him, with others, 20 per cent, abatement, making for him 70 per cent. under the valuation-and he refused!"
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compelled him to allow his property to be publicly sold, and to incur further costs of £10. "His farm lies so near the town that he did not dare to risk the vengeance of the local ruffians."
Mr. Lavan gave me the names of these tenants, and the name also of another man who is now actually under a "boycott," because he has ventured to resist the modest demand made by the son of a man whose tenant-right he bought, paying him £lOO for it, twenty years ago, that he shall give up his farm without being reimbursed for his outlay made to purchase it! In other words, after twenty years' peaceable possession of a piece of property, bought and paid for, this tenant-farmer is treated as a "land-grabber" by the self-installed "Nationalist" government of Ireland, because he will not submit to be robbed both of the money which he paid for his tenant-right, and of his tenant-right!
Obviously in such a case as this the "war against landlordism" is simply a war against property and against private rights. Priests of the Catholic Church who not only countenance but aid and abet such proceedings certainly go even beyond Dr. M'Glynn. Dr. M'Glynn, so far as I know, stops at the confiscation of all private property in rent
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by the State for the State. But here is simply a confiscation of the property of A for the benefit of B, such as might happen if B, being armed and meeting A unarmed in a forest, should confiscate the watch and chain of A, bought by A of B's lamented but unthrifty father twenty years before!
My drive from Loughrea to Woodlawn was delightful. It took me over a long stretch of the best hunting country of Galway, and my jarvey was a Galwegian of the type dear to the heart of Lever. He was a "Nationalist" after his fashion, but he did not hesitate to come rattling up through the town to the Estate Office to take me up; and after we got fairly off upon the highway, he spoke with more freedom than respect of all sorts and conditions of men in and about Loughrea.
"He's a sharp little man, that Mr. Tener," he said, "and he gave the boys a most beautiful beating at Burke's place."
This was said with genuine gusto, and not at all in the querulous spirit of the delightful member of Parliament who complained at Westminster with unconscious humour that the agent and the police in that case had "dishonourably" stolen a march on the defenders of Cloondadauv!
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"But we've beaten them entirely," he said, with equal zest, "at Marble Hill. Sir Henry has agreed to pay all the costs, and the living expenses too, of the poor men that were put out.1 I didn't ever think we'd get that; but ye see the truth is," he added confidentially, "he must have the money, Sir Henry -he's lying out of a deal, and then there 's heavy charges on the property. A fine property it is indeed!"
"In fact," I said, "you put Sir Henry to the wall. Is that it?"
"Well, it's like that. But we shan't get that out of Clanricarde, I'm thinking. He's got a power o' money they tell me; and he's that of the ould Burke blood, he won't mind fighting just as long as you like!"
As we drove along, he pointed out to me several fine stretches of hunting country, and, to my surprise, informed me that only the other day "there was as fine a meet as ever you saw, more than a
1 I have since learned that my jarvey was well informed. Sir Henry Burke actually paid Mr. Dillon £160 for the maintenance of his tenants while out of their farms. This, two other landlords, Lords Dunsandle and Westmeath, refused to do, but, like Sir Henry, they both paid all the costs, and accepted a "League" reduction of 5s. 6d. and 6s. in the pound (June 9, 1888).
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hundred ladies and gentlemen-a grand sight it was."
I asked if the hunting had not been "put down by the League."
"Oh, now then, sir, who'd be wanting to put down the hunting here in Galway?-and Ballinasloe? Were you ever at Ballinasloe? just the grandest horse fair there is in the whole wide world!"
I insisted that I had always heard a great deal about the opposition of the League to hunting.
"Oh, that'll be some little lawyer fellow," he replied, "like that Healy, that can't sit on a horse! It's the grandest country in all the world for riding over. What for wouldn't they ride over it?"
"Were there many went out to America from about Loughrea?"
"Oh, yes; they were always coming and going. But as many came back."
"Why?"
"Oh, they didn't like the country. It wasn't as good a country, was it, as old Ireland? And they had to work too hard; and then some of them got money, and they'd like to spend it in the old place."
The country about Woodlawn is very picturesque and well wooded, and for a long distance we fol-
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lowed the neatly-kept stone walls of the large and handsome park of Lord Ashtown.
"The most beautiful and biggest trees in all Ireland, sorr," said the jarvey, "and it's a great pity, it is, ye can't stay to let me drive you all over it, for the finest part of the park is just what you can't see from this road. Oh, her ladyship would never object to any gentleman driving about to see the beauties of the place. She is a very good woman, is her ladyship. She gave work the last Christmas to thirty-two men, and there wasn't another house in the country there that had work for more than ten or twelve. A very good woman she is, indeed."
"Yes, that wis a very handsome church, it wis indeed. It wis the Protestant Church. Lord Ash-town built it; he was a very good man too, and did a power of good-building and making roads, and giving work to the people. He was buried there in that Castle, over the station-Trench's Castle, they called it."
"All that lumber there by the station?" "That came out of the Ashtown woods. They were always cutting down the trees; there was so many of them you might be cutting for years-you would never get to the end of them."
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Woodlawn Station is one of the neatest and prettiest railway stations I have seen in Ireland- more like a picturesque stone cottage, green and gay with flowers, than like a station. The station-master's family of cheery well-dressed lads and lasses went and came about the bright fire in the waiting-room in a friendly unobtrusive fashion, chatting with the policeman and the porter and the passengers. It was hard to believe one's-self within an easy drive of the "cockpit of Ireland."
BORRIS, Friday, March 2d-This is the land of the Kavanaghs, and a lovely, picturesque, richly-wooded land it is. I left Dublin with Mr. Gyles by an afternoon train; the weather almost like June, We ran from the County of Dublin into Kildare, and from Kildare into Carlow, through hills; rural scenery quite unlike anything I have hitherto seen in Ireland. At Bagnalstown, a very pretty place, with a spire which takes the eye, our host joined us, and came on with us to this still more attractive spot. Borris has been the seat of Ms family for many centuries. The MacMorroghs of Leinster, whom the Kavanaghs lineally represent, dwelt here long before Dermot MacMorrogh, finding his elective throne in Leinster too hot to hold him, went off into Aquitaine, to get that famous "letter of marque" from Henry II. of England, with the help of which this king without a kingdom induced Eichard de Clare, an earl without an earldom, to lend him a
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hand and bring the Normans into Ireland. Many of this race lie buried in the ruins of St. Mullen's Abbey, on the Barrow, in this county. But none of them, I opine, ever did such credit to the name as its present representative, Arthur MacMorrogh Kavanagh.
I had some correspondence with Mr. Kavanagh several years ago, when he sent me, through my correspondent for publication in New York, a very striking statement of his views on the then condition of Irish affairs-views since abundantly vindicated; and like most people who have paid any attention to the recent history of Ireland, I knew how wonderful an illustration his whole career has been of what philosophers call the superiority of man to his accidents, and plain people the power of the will. But I knew this only imperfectly. His servant brought him up to the carriage and placed him in it. This it was impossible not to see. But I had not talked with him for five minutes before it quite passed out of ray mind. Never was there such a justification of the paradoxical title which Wilkinson gave to his once famous book, The Human Body, and its Connexion with Man,-never such a living refutation of the theory that it is the
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thumb which differentiates man from the lower animals. Twenty times this evening I have been reminded of the retort I heard made the other day at Cork by a lawyer, who knows Mr. Kavanagll well, to a priest of "Nationalist" proclivities, who knows him not at all. Some allusion having been made to Boms, the lawyer said to me, "You will see at Borris the best and ablest Irishman alive." On this the priest testily and tartly broke in, "Do you mean the man without hands or feet?"
"I mean," replied the lawyer, very quietly, "the man in whom all that has gone in you or me to arms and legs has gone to heart and head!"
Borris House stands high in the heart of an extensive and nobly wooded park, and commands one of the finest landscapes I have seen in Ireland. As we stood and gazed upon it from the hall door, the distant hills were touched with a soft purple light such as transfigures the Apennines at sunset.
"You should see this view in. June," said Mrs, Kavanagh, "we are all brown arid bare now."
Brown and bare, like most other terms, are relative. To the eye of an American this whole region now seems a sea of verdure, less clear and fresh, I can easily suppose, than it may be in the early
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summer, but verdure still. And one must get into the Adirondacks, or up among the mountains of Western Virginia, to find on our Atlantic slope such trees as I have this evening seen. One grand ilex near the house could hardly be matched in the Villa d'Este.
The house is stately and commodious, and more ancient than it appears to be,-so many additions have been made to it at different times. It has passed through more than one siege, and in the '98 Mr. Kavanagh tells me the townspeople of Borris came up here and sought refuge. There are vast caverns under the house and grounds, doubtless made by taking out from the hill the stone used in building this house, and the fortresses which stood here before it. In these all sorts of stores were kept, and many of the people found shelter.
I need not say that there is a banshee at Borris- though no living witness, I believe, has heard its warning wail. But as we sat in the beautiful library, and watched the dying light of day, a lady present told us a tale more gruesome than many of those in which the "psychical" inquirers delight. She was sitting, she said, in an upper room of an ancient mansion here in Carlow, in which she
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lives, when, from the lawn below, there came up to her a low, sad, shrill cry-the croon of a woman, such as one hears from the mourners sitting among the turbaned tombstones of the hill of Eyoub at Constantinople. It startled her, and she held her breath and listened. She was alone, as she knew, in that part of the house, and the hall door below was unlocked, as is the fashion still in Ireland, despite all the troubles and turmoils. Again the sound came, and this time nearer to the house. Could it be the banshee 1 Again and again it rose and died away, each time nearer and nearer. Then, as she listened, all her nerves strung to the keenest publicity, it came again, and now, beyond a doubt, within the hall below.
With an effort she rose from her chair, opened a door leading into a corridor running aside from the main stairway, and fled at full speed towards the wing in which she knew that she would find some of the maids. As she sped along she heard the cry again and again far behind her, as from a creature slowly and steadily mounting the grand stairway towards the room which she had just quitted.
She found the maids, who fell into a terrible fright when she told her story and dared not budge.
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So the bells were violently rung till the butler and footman appeared. To the first she said simply, "There is a mad woman in this house-go and find her!"
"The man looked at me," she said, "as I spoke with a curious expression in his face as of one who thought, 'yes, there is a mad woman in the house, and she is not far to seek!' "
But the lady insisted, and the men finally went off on their quest. In the course of half an hour it was rewarded. The mad woman-a dangerous creature-who had wandered away from an asylum in the neighbourhood, was found curled up and fast asleep in the lady's own bed !
Fancy a delicate woman going alone into her bedroom at midnight to be suddenly confronted by an apparition of that sort!
borris, March 3d.-After a stroll on the lawn this morning, the wide and glorious prospect bathed in the light of a really soft spring day, I had a conversation with Mr. Kavanagh about the Land Corporation, of which he is the guiding spirit. This is a defensive organisation of the Irish landlords against the Land League. When a landlord has been driven into
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evicting his tenants, the next step, in the "war against landlordism," is to prevent other tenants from taking the vacated lands and cultivating them. This is accomplished by "boycotting" any man who does this as a "land-grabber."
The ultimate sanction of the "boycott" being "murder," derelict farms increased under this system very rapidly; and the Eleventh Commandment of the League, "Thou shalt not pay the rent which thy neighbour hath refused to pay," was in a fair way to dethrone the Ten Commandments of Sinai throughout Ireland, even before the formal adoption in 1886 of the "Plan of Campaign."
Mr. Gladstone would perhaps have hit the facts more accurately, if, instead of calling an eviction in Ireland a "sentence of death," he had called the taking of a tenancy a sentence of death. Mr. Hussey at Lixnaw had two tenants, Edmond and James Fitzmaurice. Edmond Fitzmaurice was "evicted" in May 1887; but he was taken into the house of a neighbour, made very comfortable, and still lives. James Fitzmaurice took, for the sake of the family, the land from which Edmond was evicted, and for this he was denounced as a "land-grabber," boycotted, and finally shot dead in the presence of his daughter.
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At a meeting in Dublin in the autumn of 1885, a parish priest, the Rev. Mr. Cantwell, described it as a "cardinal virtue" that "no one should take a farm from which another had been evicted," and called upon the people who heard him to "pass any such man by unnoticed, and treat him as an enemy in their midst." Public opinion and the law, if not the authorities of his church would make short work of any priest who talked in this fashion in New York. But in Ireland, and under the British Government, it seems they order things differently. So it occurred one day to the landlords thus assailed, as it did to the sea-lions of the Cape of Good Hope when the French sailors attacked them, that they might defend themselves.
To this end the Land Corporation was instituted, with a considerable capital at its back, and Mr. Kavanagh at its head. The "plan of campaign" of this Corporation is to take over from the landlords derelict lands and cultivate them, stocking them where that is necessary.
It is in this way that the derelict lands on the Ponsonby property at Youghal are now worked. But Mr. Kavanagh tells me that the men employed by the Corporation, of whom Father Keller spoke
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as a set of desperadoes or "enfants perdus" are really a body of resolute and capable working men farmers. Many, but by no means all of them, are Protestants and Ulstermen; and that they are up to their work would seem to be shown by the fact stated to me, that in no case so far have any of them been deterred and driven off from the holdings confided to them. A great part of the Lugga-curren property of Lord Lansdowne is now worked by the Corporation; and Mr. Kavanagh was kind enough to let me see the accounts, which indicate a good business result for the current year on that property. This is all very interesting. But what a picture it presents of social demoralisation! And what is to be the end of it all? Can a country be called civilised in which a farmer with a family to maintain, having the capital and the experience necessary to manage successfully a small farm, is absolutely forbidden, on pain of social ostracism, and eventually on pain of death, by a conspiracy of his neighbours, to take that farm of its lawful owner at what he considers to be a fair rent? And how long can any civilisation of our complex modern type endure in a country in which such a state of things tolerated by the alleged Government of that country
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has to be met, and more or less partially mitigated, by deviating to the cultivation of farms rendered in this way derelict large amounts of capital which might be, and ought to be, far more profitably employed in other ways?
Mr. Kavanagh, after serving the office of High Sheriff thirty years ago, first for Kilkenny, and then for Carlow, sat in Parliament for fourteen years, from 1866 to 1880, as an Irish county member. He has a very large property here in Carlow, and property also in Wexford, and in Kilkenny, and was sworn into the Privy Council two years ago. If the personal interests and the family traditions of any man alive can be said to be rooted in the Irish soil, this is certainly true of his interests and his traditions. How can the peace and prosperity of Ireland be served by a state of things which condemns an Irishman of such ties and such training to expend his energies and his ability in defending the elementary right of Paddy O'Rourke to take stock and work a ten-acre farm on terms that suit himself and his landlord?
In the afternoon we took a delightful walk through the woods, Mr. Kavanagh going with us on horseback. Every hill and clump of trees on this
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large domain he knows, and he led us like a master of woodcraft through all manner of leafy byways to the finest points of view. The Barrow flows past Borris, making pictures at every turn, and the banks on both sides are densely and beautifully wooded. We came in one place upon a sawmill at work in the forest, and Mr. Kavanagh showed us with pride the piles of excellent lumber which he turns out here. But he took a greater pride in a group, sacred from the axe, of really magnificent Scotch firs, such as I had certainly not expected to find in Ireland. Nearer the mansion are some remarkable Irish yews. The gardens are of all sorts and very extensive, but we found the head-gardener bitterly lamenting the destruction by a fire in one of the conservatories of more than six thousand plants just prepared for setting out.
There are many curious old books and papers here, and a student of early Irish history might find matter to keep him well employed for a long time in this region. It was from this region and the race which ruled it, of which race Mr. Kavanagh is the actual representative, that the initiative came of the first Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. Strongbow made what, from the Anglo-Norman point of view,
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was a perfectly legitimate bargain, with a dispossessed prince to help him to the recovery of his rights on the understanding that these rights, when recovered, should pass in succession to himself through the only daughter of the prince, whom he proposed to marry. It does not appear that Strong-bow knew, or that Dermot MacMorrogh cared to tell him, how utterly unlike the rights of an Anglo-Norman prince were those of the elective life-tenant of an Irish principality. FitzStephen, the son by her second marriage of Nesta, the Welsh royal mistress of Henry Beauclerk, and his cousin, Maurice Fitzgerald, the leaders into Ireland of the Geraldines, were no more clear in their minds about this than Strongbow, and it is to the original muddle thus created that Professor Richey doubtless rightly refers the worst and most troublesome complications of the land question in Ireland. The distinction between the King's lieges and the "mere Irish," for example, is unquestionably a legal distinction, though it is continually and most mischievously used as if it were a proof of the race-hatred borne by the Normans and Saxons in Ireland from the first against the Celts. The O'Briens, the O'Neills, the O'Mullaghlins, the O'Connors, and the M'Morroghs,
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"the five bloods," as they are called, were certainly Celts, but whether in virtue of their being, or claiming to be, the royal races respectively of Munster, of Ulster, of Meath, of Connaught, and of Leinster, or from whatever other reason, these races were "within the king's law," and were never "mere Irish" from the first planting of the Anglo-Norman power in Ireland. The case of a priest, Shan O'Kerry, "an Irish enemy of the king," presented "contrary to the form of statute" to the vicarage of Lusk, in the reign of Edward IV. (1465), illustrates this. An Act of Parliament was passed to declare the aforesaid "Shan O'Kerry," or "John of Kever-non," to be "English born, and of English nation," and that he might "hold and enjoy the said benefice."
There is a genealogy here of the M'Morroghs and Kavanaghs, most gorgeously and elaborately gotten up many years ago for Mr. Kavanagh's grandfather, which shows how soon the Norman and the native strains of blood become commingled. When one remembers how much Norman blood must have gone even into far-off Connaught when King John, in the early part of the thirteenth century, coolly gave away that realm of the O Connors to the
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De Burgos, and how continually the English of the Pale fled from the exactions inflicted upon them by their own people, and sought refuge "among the savage and mere Irish," one cannot help thinking that the "Race Question" has been "waked for at least all it is worth" by philosophers bent on unravelling the 'snarl' of Irish affairs. If this genealogy may be trusted, there was little to choose between the ages which immediately preceded and the ages which followed the Anglo-Norman invasion in the matter of respect for human life. Celtic chiefs and Norman knights "died in their boots" as regularly as frontiersmen in Texas. One personage is designated in the genealogy as "the murderer," for the truly Hibernian reason, so far as appears, that he was himself murdered while quite a youth, and before he had had a chance to murder more than three or four of his immediate relatives. It was as if the son of Geoffrey Plantagenet and the Lady Constance should be branded in history as "Arthur, the Assassin."
borris, March 4th.-This is a staunch Protestant house, and Mr. Kavanagh himself reads a Protestant service every morning. But there is little or
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nothing apparently in this part of Ireland of the bitter feeling about and against the Catholics which exists in the North. A very lively and pleasant Catholic gentleman came in to-day informally and joined the house party at luncheon. We all walked out over the property afterwards, visiting quite a different region from that which we saw yesterday -different but equally beautiful and striking, and this Catholic gentleman cited several cases which had fallen within his own knowledge of priests who begin to feel their moral control of the people slipping away from them through the operation of the "Plan of Campaign." I told him what I had heard in regard to one such priest from my ecclesiastical friend in Cork. "It does not surprise me at all," he said, "and, indeed, I not very long ago read precisely such another letter from a priest in a somewhat similar position. I read it with pain and shame as a Catholic," he continued, "for it was simply a complete admission that the priest, although entirely convinced that his parishioners were making most unfair demands upon their landlord to whom the letter was addressed, felt himself entirely powerless to bring them to a sense of their misconduct." Had this priest given in his ad-
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hesion to the Plan of Campaign?" I asked. "Yes," was the reply, "and it was this fact which had broken his hold on the people when he tried to bring them to abandon their attitude under the Plan. His letter was really nothing more nor less than an appeal to the landlord, and that landlord a Protestant, to help him to get out of the hole into which he had put himself."
Of the tenants and their relation to the village despots who administer the Plan of Campaign, this gentleman had many stories also to tell of the same tenor with all that I have hitherto heard on this subject. Everywhere it is the same thing. The well-to-do and well-disposed tenants are coerced by the thriftless and shiftless. "I have the agencies of several properties," he said, "and in some of the best parts of Ireland. I have had little or no trouble on any of them, for I have one uniform method. I treat every tenant as if he were the only man I had to deal with, study his personal ways and character, humour him, and get him on my side against himself. You can always do this with an Irishman if you will take the trouble to do it. Within the past years I have had tenants come and tell me they were in fear the Plan of Campaign
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would be brought upon them, just as if it were a kind of potato disease, and beg me to agree to take the rent from them in that case, and just not discover on them that they had paid it before it was due!"
This gentleman is a pessimist as to the future. "I am a youngish man still," he said, "and a single man, and I am glad of it. I don't believe the English will ever learn how to govern this country, and I am sure it can never govern itself. Would your people make a State of it?"
To this I replied that with Cuba and Canada and Mexico, all still to be digested and assimilated, I thought the deglutition of Ireland by the great Republic must be remitted to a future much too remote to interest either of us.
"I suppose so," he said in a humorously despondent tone; "and so I see nothing for people who think as I do, but Australia or New Zealand!"
Mr. Kavanagh sees the future, I think, in colouring not quite so dark. As a public man, familiar for years with the method and ways of British Parliaments, he seems to regard the possible future legislation of Westminster with more anxiety and alarm than the past or present agitations in Ireland.
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The business of banishing political economy to Jupiter and Saturn, however delightful it may be to the people who make laws, is a dangerous one to the people for whom the laws are made. While he has very positive opinions as to the wisdom of the concession made in the successive Land Acts for Ireland, which have been passed since 1870, he is much less disquieted, I think, by those concessions, than by the spirit by which the legislation granting them has been guided. He thinks great good has been already done by Mr. Balfour, and that much more good will be done by him if the Irish people are made to feel that clamorous resistance to the law will no longer be regarded at Westminster as a sufficient reason for changing the law. That is as much as to say that party spirit in Great Britain is the chief peril of Ireland to-day. And how can any Irishman, no matter what his state in his own country may be, or his knowledge of Irish affairs, or his patriotic earnestness and desire for Irish prosperity, hope to control the tides of party spirit in England or Scotland?
Of the influence upon the people in Ireland of the spirit of recent legislation for Ireland, the story of the troubles on the O'Grady estate, as Mr.
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Kavanagh tells it to me, is a most striking illustration. "The O'Grady of Kilballyowen," as his title shows, is the direct representative, not of any Norman invader, but of an ancient Irish race. The O'Gradys were the heads of a sept of the "mere Irish"; and if there be such a thing-past, present, or future-as an "Irish nation," the place of the O'Gradys in that nation ought to be assumed. Mr. Thomas De Courcy O'Grady, who now wears the historic designation, owns and lives on an estate of a little more than 1000 acres, in the Golden Vein of Ireland, at Killmallock, in the county of Limerick. The land is excellent, and for the last half-century certainly it has been let to the tenants at rents which must be considered fair, since they have never been raised. In 1845, two years before the great famine, the rental was £2142. This rental was paid throughout the famine years without difficulty; and in 1881 the rental stood at £2108.
There has never been an eviction on the estate until last year, when six tenants were evicted. All of these lived in good comfortable houses, and were prosperous dairy-farmers. Why were they evicted?
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In October 1886, during the candidacy at New York of the Land Reformer, Mr. George, Mr. Dillon, M.P., propounded the "Plan of Campaign" at Portumna in Galway. The March rents being then due on the estate of The O'Grady in Limerick, his agent, Mr. Shine, was directed to continue the abatements of 15 per cent. on the judicial rents, and of 25 per cent. on all other rents, which had been cheerfully accepted in 1885. But there was a priest at Kilballyowen, Father Ryan, who wrought upon the tenants until they demanded a general abatement of 40 per cent. This being refused, they asked for 30 per cent. on the judicial rents, and 40 per cent, on the others. This also being refused, Father Ryan had his way, and the "Plan of Campaign" was adopted. The O'Grady's writs issued against several of the tenants were met by a "Plan of Campaign" auction of cattle at Herbertstown in December 1886, the returns of which were paid into "the Fund." For this, one of the tenants, Thomas Moroney, who held, besides a a farm of 37 Irish acres, a "public," and five small houses, at Herbertstown, and the right to the tolls on cattle at the Herbertstown farm, valued at from £50 to £60 a year, and who held all these at a
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yearly rent of £85, was proceeded against. Judge Boyd pronounced him a bankrupt.
In the spring of 1887, after The O'Grady had been put to great costs and trouble, the tenants made a move. They offered to accept a general abatement of 17 1/2 per cent., "The O'Grady to pay all the costs."
Here is the same story again of the small solicitors behind the "Plan of Campaign" promoting the strife, and counting on the landlords to defray the charges of battle!
The O'Grady responded with the following circular:-
KlLLBALLYOWEN, BRUIT, Co. LlMERICK,
13th August 1887.
To my Tenants on Kilballyowen and Her-bertstown Estate, Co. Limerick.
my friends,-Pending the evictions by the Sheriff on my estate, caused by your refusal to pay judicial rents on offers of liberal abatements, I desire to remind you of the following facts:-
I am a resident landlord; my ancestors have dwelt amongst you for over 400 years; every tenant is personally known to me, and the most friendly relations have always existed between us.
I am not aware of there ever having been an eviction by the Sheriff on my estate.
Farming myself over 400 acres, and my late agent (Mr. Shine), a tenant farmer living within four miles
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of my property, I have every opportunity of realising and knowing your wants.
On the passing of the Land Act of 1881, I desired you to have any benefit it could afford you, and as you nearly all held under lease-which precluded you from going into court-I intimated to you my wish, and offered you to allow your lands to be valued at my expense, or to let you go into court and get your rents fixed by the sub-commissioners.
You elected to have a valuation made, and Mr. Edmond Moroney was agreed on as a land-valuer, possessing the confidence of tenants and landlord.
I may mention, up to then I had not known Mr. Moroney personally.
In 1883 Mr. Moroney valued your holdings, and, as a result, his valuation was accepted (except in three or four cases), and judicial agreements signed by you, at rents ascertained by Mr. Moroney's valuation.
The late Patrick Hogan objected to Mr. Moroney's valuation of his farm, and went into court, and had his rent fixed by the County Court Judge.
Thomas Moroney would not allow Mr. Edmond Moroney to value his holding, nor would he go into court, his reason no doubt being he should disclose the receipts of the amount of the tolls of the fairs.
The rents were subsequently paid on Mr. Moroney's valuation with punctuality.
In 1885, recognising the fall in prices of stock and produce, and at the request of my late agent, Mr. Shine, I directed him to allow you 15 per cent. on all judicial rents, or rents abated on Mr. Moroney's valuation, and 25 per cent. on all other rents, when you paid punctually and with thanks.
In October last, when calling in the March 1886 rents, at the instance of Mr. Shine, I agreed to con-
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tinue the abatement of 15 per cent. and 25 per cent., which, when intimated to you, were refused, and a meeting held, demanding an all-round abatement of 40 per cent.
This I considered unreasonable and unjust, and I refused to give it.
The Plan of Campaign was then most unjustly adopted on the estate, and you refused to pay your rents.
Thomas Moroney was elected as a test case to try the legality of the sale and removal of your property to avoid payment of your rent. His tenancy was a mixed holding of house property in the village of Herbertstown, the tolls of the fairs, and 37 acres of land, at a rent of £85, and a Poor-Law valuation of £73, 5s., made as follows:-
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I subsequently took proceedings against six other tenants, who refused payment of rent, and removed their cattle off the land to avoid payment, and having got judgment against them, the Sheriff sold out four of their farms, and writs of possession on the title were taken out against them, and are now lodged with the Sheriff for execution. I have also got judgments for possession against two other tenants for non-payment of rent, also lodged with the Sheriff. One the widow of Patrick Hogan, who got his rent fixed in the County Court, and the other Mrs. Denis Ryan, whose farm on her marriage I assented to be put in settlement for her protection, Mr. Shine, my agent, consenting to act as one of her trustees, whose name, with his co-trustee, Mr. Thomas FitzGerald, appear as defendants, they having signed her judicial agreement.
The following are the names of the above tenants, the extent of their holdings, the rent, the Poor-Law valuation, and the average rent per Irish acre:-
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After putting me to the cost of these proceedings, and giving me every opposition and annoyance, amongst such, compelling my agent (by threats of boycotting) to resign, boycotting myself and household, preventing my servants from attending chapel, and driving my labourers away, negotiations for a settlement were opened, and you offered to accept an all-round abatement of 17 1/2 per cent. and to pay up one year's rent, provided I paid all costs, including the costs in Moroney's case; this of course I refused, but with a desire to aid you in coming to a settlement, and to prevent the loss to the tenants of the farms under eviction on the Title, I offered to allow the 17 1/2 per cent. all round on payment of one year's rent and costs, and to give time for payment of the costs as stated in my Solicitor's letter of the 2d June 1887 to Canon Scully.
This offer was refused, and the writs for possession have been lodged with the Sheriff.
I never commenced these proceedings in a vindictive spirit, or with any desire to punish any of you for your ungracious conduct, but simply to protect my property from unjust and unreasonable demands.
You will owe two years' rent next month (September), and I now write you this circular letter to point out to each, individually, the position of the tenants under eviction, and even at this late hour to give them an opportunity of saving their holdings, to enable them to do so, and with a view to settlement, I am now prepared to allow 20 per cent. all round, on payment of a year's rent and costs.
Under no circumstance will I forego payment of costs, as they must be paid in full.
If this money be paid forthwith, I will arrange with my brother, the purchaser, to restore the four holdings purchased by him at sheriff's sale to the late tenants.
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After this offer I disclaim any responsibility for the result of the evictions, and the loss attendant thereon, as it now remains with you to avert same.
All the evictions have since been carried out, and the Land Corporation men are at work upon the estate! Whom has all this advantaged? The tenants? -Certainly not. The O'Grady?-Certainly not. The peace and order of Ireland?-Certainly not. But it has given the National League another appeal to the intelligent "sympathies" of England and America. It has strengthened the revolutionary element in Irish society. It has "driven another nail into the coffin" of Irish landlordism and of the private ownership of land throughout Great Britain.
Such at least is the opinion of Mr. Kavanagh. If I were an Englishman or a Scotchman, I should be strongly inclined to take very serious account of this opinion in forecasting the future of landed property in England or Scotland.
grenane house, thomastown, March 5th.-The breakfast-room at Borris this morning was gay with pink coats. A meet was to come off at a place between Borris and Thomastown, and bidding farewell to my cordial host and hostess, I set out at 11 o'clock for a flying visit to this quaint and charming house of Mr. Seigne, one of the best known and most highly esteemed agents in this part of Ireland.
My jarvey from Borris had an unusually neat and well-balanced car. When I praised it he told me it was "built by an American," not an Irish American, I understood him to say, but a genuine Yankee, who, for some mysterious reason, has established himself in this region, where he has prospered as a cart and car builder ever since. "Just the best cars in all Ireland he builds, your honour!" Why don't he naturalise them in America ?
All the way was charming, the day very bright, and even warm, and the hill scenery picturesque at every turn. We looked out sharply for the hunt,
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but in vain. My jarvey, who knew the whole country, said they must have broken cover somewhere on the upper road, and we should miss them entirely. And so we did.
The silting up of the river Nore has reduced Thomastown or Ballymacanton, which was its Irish name, from its former importance as an emporium for the country about Kilkenny. The river now is not navigable above Inistiogue. But two martial square towers, one at either end of a fine bridge which spans the stream here, speak of the good old times when the masters of Thomas-town took toll and tribute of traders and travellers. The lands about the place then belonged to the great monastery of Jerpoint, the ruins of which are still the most interesting of their kind in this part of Ireland. They have long made a part of the estate of the Butlers. We rattled rapidly through the quiet little town, and whisking out of a small public square into a sort of wynd between two houses, suddenly found ourselves in the precincts of Grenane House. The house takes its name from the old castle of Grenane, an Irish fortress established here by some native despot long before Thomas Fitz-Anthony the Norman came into the
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land. The ruins of this castle still stand some half a mile away. "We call the place Candahar," said Mr. Seigne, as he came up with two ladies from the meadows below the house, "because you come into it so suddenly, just as you do into that Oriental town." But what a charming occidental place it is! It stands well above the river, the slope adorned with many fine old trees, some of which grow, and grow prosperously, in the queerest and most improbable forms, bent double, twisted, but still most green and vigorous. They have no business under any known theory of arboriculture to be beautiful, but beautiful they are. The views of the bridge, of the towers, and of the river, from this slope would make the fortune of the place in a land of peace and order.
A most original and delightful lady of the country lunched with us,-such a character as Miss Edgeworth or Miss Austen might have drawn Shrewd, humorous, sensible, fearless, and ready with impartial hand to box the ears alike of Trojan and of Tyrian. She not only sees both sides of the question in Ireland as between the landlords and the tenants, but takes both sides of the question. She holds lands by inheritance, which make her keenly
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alive to the wrongs of the landlords, and she holds farms as a tenant, which make her implacably critical as to their claims. She mercilessly demolished in one capacity whatever she advanced in the other, and all with the most perfect nonchalance and good faith. This curiously dual attitude reminded me of the confederate General, Braxton Bragg, of whom his comrades in the old army of the United States used to say that he once had a very sharp official correspondence with himself. He happened to hold a staff appointment, being also a line officer. So in his quality of a staff officer, he found fault with himself in his capacity as a line officer, reprimanded himself sharply, replied defiantly to the reprimand, and eventually reported himself to himself for discipline at head-quarters. She told an excellent story of a near kinsman of hers who, holding a very good living in the Protestant Irish Church, came rather unexpectedly by inheritance into a baronetcy, upon which his women-folk insisted that it would be derogatory to a baronet to be a parson. "Would you believe it, the poor man was silly enough to listen to their cackle, and resign seven hundred a year!"
"That didn't clear him," I said, "of the cloth, did it?"
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"Not a bit, of course, poor foolish man. He was just as much a parson as ever, only without a parsonage. Men are fools enough of themselves, don't you think, without needing to listen to women?"
Mr. Seigne comes of a French Protestant stock long ago planted in Ireland, and his Gallic blood doubtless helps him to handle the practical problems daily submitted in these days to an Irish land-agent- problems very different, as he thinks, from those with which an Irish agent had to deal in the clays before 1870. The Irish tenant has a vantage-ground now in his relations with his landlord which he never had in the olden time, and this makes it more important than it ever was that the agent should have what may be called a diplomatic taste for treating with individuals, finding out the bent of mind of this man and of that, and negotiating over particulars, instead of insisting, in the English fashion, on general rules, without regard to special cases. I have met no one who has seemed to me so cool and precise as Mr. Seigne in his study of the phenomena of the present situation. I asked him whether he could now say, as Mr. Senior did a quarter of century ago, that the Irish tenants were
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less improvident, and more averse from running into debt than the English.
"I think not," he replied; "on the contrary, in some parts of Ireland now the shopkeepers are kept on the verge of bankruptcy by the recklessness with which the tenants incurred debts immediately after the passing of the Land Act of 1870-a time when shopkeepers, and bankers also, almost forced credit upon the farmers, and made thereby 'bad debts' innumerable. Farmers rarely keep anything like an account of their receipts and expenses. I know only one tenant-farmer in this neighbourhood who keeps what can be called an account, showing what ho takes from his labour and spends on his living."1 "They save a great deal of money often," he says, "but almost never in any systematic way. They spend much less on clothes and furniture, and the outward show of things, than English people of the same condition do, and they do not stint themselves in meat and drink as the French peasants do. In fact, under the operation of existing circumstances, they are getting into the way of improving
1Down to the date at which I write this note (June 9), Mr. Seigne has kindly, but without results, endeavoured to get for me some authentic return made by a small tenant-farmer of his incomings and outgoings.
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their condition, not so much by sacrifices and savings, as by an insistence on rent being fixed low enough to leave full margin for improved living.
"I had a very frank statement on this point," said Mr. Seigne, "not long ago from a Tipperary man. When I tried to show him that his father had paid a good many years ago the very same rent which he declares himself unable to pay now, he admitted this at once. But it was a confession and avoidance. 'My father could pay the rent, and did pay the rent,' he said, ' because he was content to live so that he could pay it. He sat on a boss of straw, and ate out of a bowl. He lived in a way in which I don't intend to live, and so he could pay the rent. Now, I must have, and I mean to have, out of the land, before I pay the rent, the means of living as I wish to live; and if I can't have it, I'll sell out and go away; but I'll be--if I don't fight before I do that same!' "
"What could you reply to that?" I asked.
"Oh," I said, "'that's square and straightforward. Only just let me know the point at which you mean to fight, and then we'll see if we can agree about something.'"
"The truth is," said Mr. Seigne, "that there is a
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pressure upward now from below. The labourers don't want to live any longer as the farmers have always made them live; and so the farmers, having to consider the growing demands of the labourers, and meaning to live better themselves, push up against the landlord, and insist that the means of the improvement shall come out of him."
He then told mo an instructive story of his calling upon a tenant-farmer, at whose place he found the labourers sitting about their meal of pork and green vegetables. The farmer asked him into another room, where he saw the farmer's family making their meal of stirabout and milk and potatoes.
"I asked you in here," said the farmer, "because we keep in here to ourselves. I don't want those fellows to see that we can't afford to give ourselves what we have to give them,"-this with strong language indicating that he must himself be given a way to advance equally with the progressive labourer, or ho would know the reason why!
This afternoon Mr. Seigne drove me over through a beautiful country to "Woodstock, near Inistiogue, the seat of the late Colonel Tighe, the head of the family of which the authoress of "Psyche" was an ornament.
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It is the finest place in this part of Ireland, and one of the finest I have seen in the three kingdoms, a much more picturesque and more nobly planted place indeed than its namesake in England. The mansion has no architectural pretensions, being simply a very large and, I should think, extremely comfortable house of the beginning of this century. The library is very rich, and there are some good pictures, as well as certain statues in the vestibule, which would have no interest for the Weissnichtwo professor of Sartor Resartus, but are regarded with some awe by the good people of Inistiogue.
The park would do no discredit to a palace, and if the vague project of establishing a royal residence in Ireland for one of the British Princes should ever take shape, it would not be easy, I should say, to find a demesne more befitting the home of a prince than this of the Tighes. At present it serves the State at least as usefully, being the "plea-saunce" of the people for miles around, who come here freely to walk and drive.
It stretches for miles along the Nore, and is crowned by a gloriously wooded hill nearly a thousand feet in height. The late Colonel Tighe, a most accomplished man, and a passionate lover of trees,
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made it a kind of private Kew Gardens. He planted long avenues of the rarest and finest trees, araucarias, Scotch firs, oaks, beeches, cedars of Lebanon; laid out miles of the most varied and delightful drives, and built the most extensive conservatories in Ireland.
The turfed and terraced walks among those conservatories are indescribably lovely, and the whole place to-day was vocal with innumerable birds. Picturesque little cottages and arbours are to be found in unexpected nooks all through the woodlands, each commanding some green vista of forest aisles, or some wide view of hill and champaign, enlivened by the winding river. From one of those to-day we looked out over a landscape to which Turner alone or Claude could have done justice, the river, spanned by a fine bridge, in the middle distance, and all the region wooded as in the days of which Edmund Spenser sings, when Ireland
" Flourished in fame,
Of wealth and goodnesse far above the rest Of all that bears the British Islands' name."
Over the whole place broods an indefinable charm. You feel that this was the home at once and the work of a refined and thoughtful spirit. And so
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indeed it was. Here for the greater part of the current century the owner lived, making the development of the estate and of this demesne his constant care and chief pleasure. And here still lives his widow, with whom we took tea in a stately quiet drawing-room. Lady Louisa Tighe was in Brussels with her mother, the Duchess of Richmond, on the eve of Waterloo. She was a child then of ten years old, and her mother bade them bring her down into the historic ball-room before the Duke of Wellington left it. The duke took up his sword. "Let Louisa buckle it for you," said her mother, and when the little girl had girded it on, the great captain stooped, took her up in his arms, and kissed her. "One never knows what may happen, child," he said good-naturedly; and taking his small gold watch out of his fob, he bade her keep it for him.
She keeps it still. For more than sixty years it has measured out in this beautiful Irish home the hours of a life given to good works and gracious usefulness. To-day, with all the vivacity of interest in the people and the place which one might look for in a woman of twenty, this charming old lady of eighty-three, showing barely threescore years in her carriage, her countenance, and her voice, entertained
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us with minute and most interesting accounts of the local industries which flourish here mainly through her sympathetic and intelligent supervision. We seemed to be in another world from the Ireland of Chicago or Westminster!
Mr. Seigne drove me back here by a most picturesque road leading along the banks of the Nore, quite overhung with trees, which in places dip their branches almost into the swift deep stream. "This is the favourite drive of all the lovers hereabouts," he said, "and there is a spice of danger in it which makes it more romantic. Once, not very long ago, a couple of young people, too absorbed in their love-making to watch their horse, drove off the bank. Luckily for them they fell into the branches of one of these overhanging trees, while the horse and car went plunging into the water. There they swung, holding each other hand in hand, making a pretty and pathetic tableau, till their cries brought some anglers in a boat on the river to the rescue."
We spoke of Lady Louisa, and of the watch of Waterloo. "That watch had a wonderful escape a few years ago," said Mr. Seigne.
Lady Louisa, it seems, had a confidential butler
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whom she most implicitly trusted. One day it was found that a burglary had apparently been committed at Woodstock, and that with a quantity of jewelry the priceless watch had vanished. The butler was very active about the matter, and as no trace could be found leading out of the house, he intimated a suspicion that the affair might possibly have some connection with a guest not long before at the house. This angered Lady Louisa, who thereupon consulted the agent, who employed a capable detective from Dublin. The detective came down to Inistiogue as a commercial traveller, wandered about, made the acquaintance of Lady Louisa's maid, of the butler, and of other people about the house, and formed his own conclusions. Two or three days after his arrival he walked into the shop of a small jeweller in a neighbouring town, and affecting a confidential manner, told the jeweller he wanted to buy "some of those things from Wood-stock." The man was taken by surprise, and going into a backshop produced one very fine diamond, and a number of pieces of silver plate, of the disappearance of which the butler had said nothing to his mistress. This led to the arrest of the butler, and to the discovery that for a long time
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he had been purloining property from the house and selling it. Many cases of excellent claret had found their way in this fashion to a public-house which had acquired quite a reputation for its Bordeaux with the officers quartered in its neighbourhood. The wine-bins at Woodstock were found full of bottles of water. Much of the capital port left by Colonel Tighe had gone-but the hock was untouched. "Probably the butler didn't care for hock," said Mr. Seigne. The Waterloo watch was recovered from a very decent fellow, a travelling dealer, to whom it had been sold: and many pieces of jewelry were traced up to London. But Lady Louisa could not be induced to go up to London to identify them or testify.
dublin, Tuesday, March 6.-It is a curious fact, which I learned to-day from the Registrar-General, that the deposits in the Post-office Savings Banks have never diminished in Ireland since these banks were established.1 These deposits are chiefly made, I understand, by the small tenants, who are less represented by the deposits in the General Savings Banks than are the shopkeepers
1 Note G.
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and the cattle-drovers. In the General Savings Banks the deposit line fluctuates more; though on the whole there has been a steady increase in these deposits also throughout Ireland.
Of the details of the dealings of the private banks it is very hard to get an accurate account. One gentleman, the manager of a branch of one important bank, tells me that a great deal of money is made by usurers out of the tenants, by backing their small bills. This practice goes back to the first establishment of banks in Ireland. Formerly it was not an uncommon thing for a landlord to offer his tenants a reduction, say, of twenty per cent., on condition of their paying the rent when it fell due. Such were the relations then between landlord and tenants, and so little was punctuality expected in such payments that this might be regarded as a sort of discount arrangement. The tenant who wished to avail himself of such an offer would go to some friendly local usurer and ask for a loan that he might avail himself of it. "One of these usurers, whom I knew very well," said the manager, "told me long ago that he found these operations very profitable. His method of procedure was to agree to advance the rent to the tenant at ten per
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cent., payable at a near and certain date. This would reduce the landlord's reduction at once, of course, for the tenant, to ten per cent., but that was not to be disdained; and so the bargain would be struck. If the money was repaid at the fixed date, it was not a bad thing for the usurer. But it was almost never so repaid; and with repeated renewals the usurer, by his own showing, used to receive eventually twenty, fifty, and, in some cases, nearly a hundred per cent. for his loan."
It is the opinion of this gentleman that, under the "Plan of Campaign," a good deal of money-making is done in a quiet way by some of the "trustees," who turn over at good interest, with the help of friendly financiers, the funds lodged with them, being held to account to the tenants only for the principal. "Of course," he said, "all this is doubtless at least as legitimate as any other part of the 'Plan,' and I daresay it all goes for 'the good of the cause.' But neither the tenants nor the landlords get much by it!"
dublin, Thursday, March 8.-At eight o'clock this morning I left the Harcourt Street station for Inch, to take a look at the scene of the Coolgreany evictions of last summer. These evictions came of the adoption of the Plan of Campaign, under the direction of Mr. Dillon, M.P., on the Wexford property of Mr. George Brooke of Dublin. The agent of Mr. Brooke's estate, Captain Hamilton, is the honorary director of the Property Defence Association, so thet we have here obviously a grapple between the National League doing the work, consciously or unconsciously, of the agrarian revolutionists, and a combination of landed proprietors fighting for the rights of property as they understand them.
We ran through a beautiful country for the greater part of the way. At Bray, which is a favourite Irish watering-place, the sea broke upon us bright and full of life; and the station itself was more like a considerable English station than any
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I have seen. Thence we passed into a richly-wooded region, with neat, well-kept hedges, as far as Rathdrum and the "Sweet Vale of Avoca." The hills about Shillelagh are particularly well forested, though, as the name suggests, they must have been cut for cudgels pretty extensively for now a great many years. We came again on the sea at the fishing port of Arklow, where the stone walls about the station were populous with small ragamuffins, and at the station of Inch T found a car waiting for me with Mr. Holmes, a young English Catholic officer, who had most obligingly offered to show me the place and the people. We had hardly got into the roadway when we overtook a most intelligent-looking, energetic young priest, walking briskly on in the direction of our course. This was Dr. Dillon, the curate of Arklow. We pulled up at once, and Mr. Holmes, introducing me to him, wo bogged him to take a seat with us. He excused himself as having to join another priest with whom he was going to a function at Inch; but he was good enough to walk a little way with us, and gave me an appointment for 2 P.M. at his own town of Arklow, where I could catch the train back to Dublin. We drove on rapidly and called on
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Father O'Neill, the parish priest. We found him in full canonicals, as he was to officiate at the function this morning, and with him were Father Dunphy, the parish priest of Arklow, and two or three more robed priests.
Father O'Neill, whose face and manner are those of the higher order of the continental clergy, briefly set forth to me his view of the transactions at Coolgreany. He said that before the Plan of Campaign was adopted by the tenants, Mr. William O'Brien, M.P., had written to him explaining what the effect of the Plan would be, and urging him to take whatever steps he could to obviate the necessity of adopting it, as it might eventually result to the disadvantage of the tenants. "To that end," said Father O'Neill, "I called upon Captain Hamilton, the agent, with Dr. Dillon of Arklow, but he positively refused to listen to us, and in fact ordered us, not very civilly, to leave his office."
It was after this he said that he felt bound to let the tenants take their own way. Eighty of them joined in the "Plan of Campaign" and paid the amount of the rent due, less a reduction of 30 per cent., which they demanded of the agent, into the hands of Sir Thomas Esmonde, M.P., Sir Thomas
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being a resident in the country, and Mr. Mayne, M.P. Writs of ejectment were obtained against them afterwards, and in July last sixty-seven of them were evicted, who are now living in "Land League huts," put up on the holdings of three small tenants who were exempted from the Plan of Campaign, and allowed to pay their rents subject to a smaller reduction made by the agent, in order that they might retain their land as a refuge for the rest.
All this Father O'Neill told us very quietly, in a gentle, undemonstrative way, but he was much interested when I told him I had recently come from Rome, where these proceedings, I was sure, were exciting a good deal of serious attention. "Yes," he said, "and Father Dunphy who is here in the other room, has just got back from Eome, where he had two audiences of the Holy Father."
"Doubtless, then," I said, he will have given his Holiness full particulars of all that took place here."
"No doubt," responded Father O'Neill, "and he, tells me the Holy Father listened with great attention to all he had to say-though of course, he expressed no opinion about it to Father Dunphy."
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As the time fixed for the function was at hand, we were obliged to leave without seeing Father Dunphy.
From the Presbytery we drove to the scene of the evictions. These evictions were in July. Mr. Holmes witnessed them, and gave me a lively account of the affair. The "battle" was not a very tough one. Mr. Davitt, who was present, stood under a tree very quietly watching it all. "He looked very picturesque," said Mr. Holmes, "in a light grey suit, with a broad white beaver shading his dark Spanish face; and smoked his cigar very composedly." After it was over, Dr. Dillon brought up one of the tenants, and presented him to Mr. Davitt as "the man who had resisted this unjust eviction." Mr. Davitt took his cigar from his lips, and in the hearing of all who stood about sarcastically said, "Well, if he couldn't make a better resistance than that he ought to go up for six months!" The first house we carne upon was derelict-all battered and despoiled, the people in the neighbourhood here, as elsewhere, regarding such houses as free spoil, and carrying off from time to time whatever they happen to fancy. Near this house we met an emergency man, named
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Bolton, an alert, energetic-looking native of Wick-low. He has four brothers; and is now at work on one of the "evicted" holdings.
I asked if he was "boycotted," and what his relations were with the people.
He laughed in a shrewd, good-natured way. "Oh, I'm boycotted, of course," he said; "but I don't care a button for any of these people, and I 'd rather they wouldn't speak to me. They know I can take care of myself, and they give me a good wide berth. All I have to object to is that they set fire to an outhouse of mine, and cut the ears of one of my heifers, and for that I want damages. Otherwise I'm getting on very well; and I think this will be a good year, if the law is enforced, and these fellows are made to behave themselves."
Near Bolton's farm we passed the holding of a tenant named Kavanagh, one of the three who were "allowed" to pay their rents. Several Land League huts are on his place, and the evicted people who occupy them put their cattle with his. He is a quiet, cautious man, and very reticent. But it seemed to me that he was not entirely satisfied with the "squatters" who have been quartered upon him. And it appears that he has taken another holding
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In Carlow. From his place we drove to Ballyfad, where a large house, at the end of a good avenue of trees, once the mansion of a squire, but now much dilapidated, is occupied as headquarters by the police. Here we found Mr. George Freeman, the bailiff of the Coolgreany property, a strong, sturdy man, much disgusted at finding it necessary to go about protected by two policemen. That this was necessary, however, he admitted, pointing out to us the place where one Kinsella was killed not very long ago. The son of this man Kinsella was formerly one of Mr. Brooke's gamekeepers, and is now, Mr. Freeman thinks, in concert with another man named Eyan, the chief stay of the League in keeping up its dominion over the evicted tenants.
Many of these tenants, he believes, would gladly pay their rents now, and come back if they dared.
"Every man, sir," he said, "that has anything to lose, would be glad to come back next Monday if he thought his life would be safe. But all the lazy and thriftless ones are better off now than they ever were; they get from £4 to £6 a month, with nothing to do, and so they're in clover, and they naturally don't like to have the industrious, well-
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to-do tenants spoil their fun by making a general settlement."
"Besides that," he added, "that man Kinsella and his comrade Ryan are the terror of the whole of them. Kinsella always was a curious, silent moody fellow. He knows every inch of the country, going over it all the time by night and day as a gamekeeper, and I am quite sure the Parnellite men and the Land Leaguers are just as much afraid of him and Ryan as the tenants are. He don't care a bit for them; and they've no control of him at all."
Mr. Freeman said he remembered very well the occasion referred to by Father O'Neill, when Captain Hamilton refused to confer with Dr. Dillon and himself.
"Did Father O'Neill tell you, sir," he said, "that Captain Hamilton was quite willing to talk with him and Father O'Donel, the parish priests, and with the Coolgreany people, but he would have nothing to say to any one who was not their priest, and had no business to be meddling with the matter at all?"
"No; he did not tell me that."
"Ah! well, sir, that made all the difference. Father Dunphy, who was there, is a high-tempered
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man, and he said he had just as much right to represent the tenants as Captain Hamilton to represent the landlord, and that Captain Hamilton wouldn't allow. It was the outside people made all the trouble. In June of last year there was a conference at my house, and all that time there was a Committee sitting at Coolgreany, and the tenants would not be allowed to do anything without the Committee."
"And who made the Committee?"
"Oh, they made themselves, I suppose, sir. There was Sir Thomas Esrnonde-he was a convert, you know, of Father O'Neill-and Mr. Mayne and Mr. John Dillon. And Dr. Dillon of Arklow, he was as busy as he could be till the evictions were made in July. And then he was in retreat. And I believe, sir, it is quite true that he wanted the Bishop to let him come out of the retreat just to have a hand in the business."
The police sergeant, a very cool, sensible man, quite agreed with the bailiff as to the influence upon the present situation of the ex-gamekeeper Kinsella, and his friend Eyan. "If they were two Invincibles, sir," he said, "these member fellows of the League couldn't be in greater fear of them than they are.
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They say nothing, and do just as they please. That Kinsella, when Mr. John Dillon was down here, just told him before a lot of people that he 'wanted no words and no advice from him,' and he's just in that surly way with all the people about."
As to the Brooke estate, I am told here it was bought more than twenty years ago with a Landed Estates Court title from Colonel Forde, by the grandfather of Mr. Brooke. He paid about £75,000 sterling for it. His son died young, and the present owner came into it as a child, Mr. Vesey being then the agent, who, during the minority, spent a great deal on improving the property. Captain Hamilton came in as agent only a few years ago. While the Act of 1881 was impending, an abatement was granted of more than twenty per cent. In 1882 the tenants all paid except eleven, who went into Court and got their rents cut down by the Sub-Commissioners. There were appeals; and in 1885, after Court valuations, the rents cut down by the Sub-Commissioners were restored in several cases. There never was any rack-renting on the estate at all. There are upon it in all more than a hundred tenants, twelve of whom are Protestants, holding a little less in all than one-fourth of the property.
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There are fifteen judicial tenants, twenty-one lease-holders, and seventy-seven hold from year to year.
The gross rental is a little over £2000 a year of which one-half goes to Mr. Brooke's mother, Mr. Brooke himself is a wealthy man, at the head of the most important firm of wine-merchants in Ireland, and he has repeatedly spent on the property more than he took out of it.
The house of Sir Thomas Esmonde, M.P., was pointed out to me from the road. "Sir Thomas is to marry an heiress, sir, isn't he, in America?" asked an ingenuous inquirer. I avowed my ignorance on this point. "Oh, well, they say so, for anyway the old house is being put in order for now the first time in forty years."
We reached Arklow in time for luncheon, and drove to the large police barracks there. These were formerly the quarters of the troops. Arklow was one of the earliest settlements of the Anglo-Normans in Ireland under Henry ii., and once rejoiced in a castle and a monastery both now obliterated; though a bit of an old tower here is said to have been erected in his time. The town lives by fishing, and by shipping copper and lead ore to
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South Wales. The houses are rather neat and well kept; but the street was full of little ragged, merry mendicants.
We went into a small branch of the Bank of Ireland, and asked where we should find the hotel. We were very civilly directed to "The Register's Office over the way." This seemed odd enough. But reaching it we were further puzzled to see the sign over the doorway of a "coach-builder"! However, we rang the bell, and presently a maid-servant appeared, who assured us that this was really the hotel, and that we could have "whatever we liked" for luncheon. We liked what we found we could get-chops, potatoes, and parsnips; and without too much delay these were neatly served to us in a most remarkable room, ablaze with mural ornaments and decorations, upon which every imaginable pigment of the modern palette seemed to have been lavished, from a Nile-water-green dado to a scarlet and silver frieze. There were five times as many potatoes served to us as two rnen could possibly eat, and not one of them was half-boiled. But otherwise the meal was well enough, and the service excellent. Beer could be got for us, but the house had no licence, Lord Carysfort, the owner of the
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property, thinking, so our hostess said, that "there were too many licences in the town already." Lord Carysfort is probably right; but it is not every owner of a house, or even of a lease in Ireland, I fear, who would take such a view and act on it to the detriment of his own property.
Dr. Dillon lives in the main square of Arklow in a very neat house. He was absent at a funeral in the handsome Catholic church near by when we called, but we were shown into his study, and he presently came in.
His study was that of a man of letters and of politics. Blue-books and statistical works lay about in all directions, and on the table were the March numbers of the Nineteenth Century, and the Contemporary Review.
"You are abreast of the times, I see," I said to him, pointing to these periodicals.
"Yes," he replied, "they have just come in; and there is a capital paper by Mr. John Morley in this Nineteenth Century."
Nothing could be livelier than Dr. Dillon's interest in all that is going on on both sides of the Atlantic, more positive than his opinions, or more terse and clear than his way of putting them. He
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agreed entirely with Father O'Neill as to the pressure put upon the Coolgreany tenants, not so much by Mr. Brooke as by the agent, Captain Hamilton; but he thought Mr. Brooke also to blame for his treatment of them.
"Two of the most respectable of them," said Dr. Dillon, "went to see Mr. Brooke in Dublin, and he wouldn't listen to them. On the contrary, he absolutely put them out of his office without hearing a word they had to say."1
I found Dr. Dillon a strong disciple of Mr. Henry George, and a firm believer in the doctrine of the "nationalisation of the land." "It is certain to come," he said, "as certain to come in Great Britain as in Ireland, and the sooner the better. The movement about the sewerage rates in London," he added, "is the first symptom of the land war in London. It is the thin edge of the wedge to break down landlordism in the British metropolis."
He is watching American politics, too, very closely, and inclines to sympathise with President Cleveland. Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia, he tells rne, in his passage through Ireland the other day, did not hesitate to express his conviction that President Cleveland would be re-elected.
1 Note H.
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Dr. Dillon was so earnest and so interesting
that the time slipped by very fast, until a casual glance at my watch showed me that we must make great haste to catch the Dublin train.
We left therefore rather hurriedly, but before reaching the station we saw the Dublin train go careering by, its white pennon of smoke and vapour curling away along the valley.
I made the best of it, however, and letting Mr. Holmes depart by a train which took him home, I found a smart jarvey with a car, and drove out to Glenart Castle, the beautiful house of the Earl of Carysfort. This is a very handsome modern house, built in a castellated style of a very good whitish grey marble, with extensive and extremely well-kept terraced gardens and conservatories.
It stands very well on one high bank of the river, a residence of the Earl of Wicklow occupying the other bank. My jarvey called my attention to the excellence of the roads, on which he said Lord Carysfort has spent "a deal of money," as well as upon the gardens of the new Castle. The head-gardener, an Englishman, told me he found the native labourers very intelligent and willing both to learn and to work Evidently here is another centre of useful
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and civilising influences, not managed by an "absentee."1
1 While these pages are going through the press a Scottish friend sends me the following extract from a letter published in the Scotsman of July 25:-" In the same way I, in August last, when in Wicklow, ascertained as carefully as I could the facts as to the Bodyke evictions; and being desirous to learn now if that estate was still out of cultivation, as I had found it in August, I wrote the gentleman I have referred to above. His reply is as follows:-
"'I can answer your question as far as the Brooke estate is concerned. None of the tenants are back in their farms, nor are they likely to be. The landlord has the land partly stocked with cattle; but I may say the land is nearly waste; the gates, fences, and farmsteads partly destroyed. I was at the fair of Coolgreany about three weeks ago, and the country looked quite changed; the weeds predominating in the land that the tenantry had under cultivation when they were evicted from their farms. The landlord has done nothing to lay the land down with grass seed, consequently the land is waste. The village of Coolgreany is on the property, and there was a good monthly fair held there, but it is very much gone down since the disagreement between the landlord and tenant. The tenants, speaking generally, in allowing themselves to be evicted and not redeeming before six months, are giving up all their improvements to the landlord, no matter what they may be worth. I have got quite tired of the vexed question, and may say I have given up reading about evictions, and pity the tenant who is foolish enough to allow any party to advise him so badly as to allow himself to be evicted.'
"Those who read this testimony of a candid witness, and
remember the cordial footing on which Mr. Brooke stood with
his tenantry in Bodyke before Mr. Dillon appeared amongst
them, may well ask what good his interference did to the now
impoverished tenantry of Bodyke, or to the district now deserted
or laid waste.-I am, etc., A Radical unionist."
Dublin, Friday, March 9th.-At 7.40 this morning I took the train for Athy to visit the Lugga-curren estates of Lord Lansdowne. Mr. Lynch, a resident magistrate here, some time ago kindly offered to show me over the place, but I thought it as well to take my chance with the people of Athy, who are reported to have been very hot over the whole matter here, and so wrote to Mr. Lynch that I would find him at the Lodge, which is the headquarters of the property.
Athy is a neat, well-built little town, famous of old as a frontier fortress of Kildare. An embattled tower, flanked by small square turrets, guards a picturesque old bridge here over the Barrow, the bridge being known in the country as "Crom-a-boo," from the old war-cry of the Fitz-Geralds. It is a busy place now ; and there was quite a bustle at the very pretty little station. I asked a friendly old porter which was the best hotel in the town. "The
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best? Ah! there's only one, and it's not the best-but there are worse-and it's Kavanagh's." I found it easily enough, and was ushered by a civil man, who emerged from the shop which occupies part of it, into a sort of reading-room with a green table. A rather slatternly but very active girl soon converted this into a neat breakfast-table, and gave me an excellent breakfast. The landlord found me a good car, and off I set for the residence of Father Maher, the curate of whom I had heard as one of the most fiery and intractable of the National League priests in this part of Ireland.
My jarvey was rather taciturn at first, but turned out to be something of a politician. He wanted Home Rule, one of his reasons being that then they "wouldn't let the Americans come and ruin them altogether, driving out the grain from the markets." About this he was very clear and positive. "Oh, it doesn't matter now whether the land is- good or bad, America has just ruined the farmers entirely."
I told him I had always heard this achievement attributed to England. "Oh! that was quite a mistake! What the English did was to punish the men that stood up for Ireland. There was Mr. O'Brien. But for him there wasn't a man of Lord Lansdowne's
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people would have had the heart to stand up. He did it all; and now, what were they doing to him? They were putting him on a cold plank-bed on a stone floor in a damp cell!"
"But the English put all their prisoners in those cells, don't they?" I asked.
"And what of it, sir?" he retorted. "They're good enough for most of them, but not for a gentleman like Mr. O'Brien, that would spill the last drop of his heart's blood for Ireland!"
"But," I said, "they're doing just the same thing with Mr. Gilhooly, I hear."
"And who is Mr. Gilhooly, now? And it's not for the likes of him to complain and be putting on airs as if he was Mr. O'Brien!"
"Yes, it is a fine country for hunting!"
"Was it ever put down here, the hunting?"
"No, indeed! Sure, the people wouldn't let it be!"
"Not if Mr. O'Brien told them they must?" I queried.
"Mr. O'Brien; ah, he wouldn't think of such a thing! It brings money all the time to Athy, and sells the horses."
As to the troubles at Luggacurren, he was not very clear. "It was a beautiful place, Mr. Dunne's; we'd
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see it presently. And Mr. Dunne, he was a good one for sport. It was that, your honour, that got him into the trouble"-
"And Mr. Kilbride?"
"Oh, Mr. Kilbride's place was a very good place too, but not like Mr. Dunne's. And he was doing very well, Mr. Kilbride. He was getting a good living from the League, and he was a Member of Parliament. Oh, yes, he wasn't the only one of the tenants that was doing good to himself. There was more of them that was getting more than ever they made out of the land."1
"Was the land so bad, then?" I asked.
1 In curious confirmation of this opinion expressed to me by a man of the country in March, I find in the Dublin Express of July 19th this official news from the Atby Vice-Guardians:
"At the meeting of the Vice-Guardians of the Athy Union yesterday, a letter was read from Mr. G. Finlay, Auditor, in which he stated that the two sureties of Collector Kealy, of the Luggacurren district, had been evicted from their holdings by Lord Lansdowne, and were not now in possession of any lands there. They were allowed outdoor relief to the extent of £1 a week each on the ground of destitution. The Auditor continued: 'The Collector tells me that they both possess other lands, and have money in bank. The Collector is satisfied that they are as good, if not better, securities for the amount of his bond now than at the time they became sureties for him. The Clerk of the Union concurs in this opinion.'
"It was ordered to bring the matter under the notice of the Board."
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"No, there was as good land at Luggacurren as any there was in all Ireland; but," and here he pointed off to the crests of the hills in the distance, "there was a deal of land there of the estate on the hills, and it was very poor land, but the tenants had to pay as much for that as for the good property of Dunne and Kilbride."
"Do you know Mr. Lynch, the magistrate?" I asked. "If you do, look out for him, as he has promised to join me and show me the place."
"Oh no, sorr!" the jarvey exclaimed at once; "don't mind about him. He'll have his own car, and your honour won't want to take him on ours."
"Why not?" I persisted, "there's plenty of room."
"Oh! but indeed, sir, if it wasn 't that you were going to the priest's, Father Maher, you wouldn't get a car at Athy-no, not under ten pounds!"
"Not under ten pounds," I replied. "Would I get one then for ten pounds?"
"It's a deal of money, ten pounds, sorr, and you wouldn't have a poor man throw away ten pounds?"
"Certainly not, nor ten shillings either. Is it a question of principle, or a question of price?"
The man looked around at me with a droll
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glimmer in his eye: "Ah, to be sure, your honour's a great lawyer; but he'll come pounding along with his big horse in his own car, Mr. Lynch; and sure it'll be quicker for your honour just driving to Father Maher's."
There was no resisting this, so I laughed and bade him drive on.
"Whose house is that?" I asked, as we passed a house surrounded with trees.
"Oh! that's the priest, Father Keogh-a very good man, but not so much for the people as Father Maher, who has everything to look after about them."
We came presently within sight of a handsome residence, Lansdowne Lodge, the headquarters of the estate. Many fine cattle were grazing in the fields about it.
"They are Lord Lansdowne's beasts," said my jarvey; "and it's the emergency men are looking after them."
Nearly opposite were the Land League huts erected on the holding of an unevicted tenant-a small village of neat wooden "shanties." On the roadway in front of these half-a-dozen men were lounging about. They watched us with much curiosity as we drove up, and whispered eagerly together.
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"They're some of the evicted men, your honour," said my jarvey, with a twinkle in his eye; and then under his breath, "They'll be thinking your honour's came down to arrange it all. They think everybody that comes is come about an arrangement."
"Oh, then, they all want it arranged!"
"No; not all, but many of them do. Some of them like it well enough going about like gentlemen with nothing to do, only their hands in their pockets."
We turned out of the highway here and passed some very pretty cottages.
"No, they're not for labourers, your honour," said my jarvey; "the estate built them for mechanics. It's the tenants look after the labourers, and little it is they do for them."
Then, pointing to a ridge of hills beyond us, he said: "It was Kilbride's father, sir, evicted seventeen tenants on these hills-poor labouring men, with their families, many years ago,-and now he's evicted himself, and a Member of Parliament!"
Father Maher's house stands well off from the highway. He was not at home, being "away at a service in the hills," but would be back before two o'clock. I left my name for him, with a memo-
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randum of my purpose in calling, and we drove on to see the bailiff of the estate, Mr. Hind. On the way we met Father Norris, a curate of the parish, in a smart trap with a good horse, and had a brief colloquy with him. Mr. Hind we found busy afield; a quiet, staunch sort of man. He spoke of the situation very coolly and dispassionately. "The tenants in the main were a good set of men-as they had reason to be, Lord Lansdowne having been not only a fair landlord, but a liberal and enterprising promoter of local improvements." I had been told in Dublin that Lord Lansdowne had offered a subscription of £200 towards establishing creameries, and providing high-class bulls for this estate. Similar offers had been cordially met by Lord Lansdowne's tenants in Kerry, and with excellent results. But here they were rejected almost scornfully, though accompanied by offers of abatement on the rents, which, in the case of Mr. Kilbride, for example, amounted to 20 per cent.
"How did this happen, the tenants being good men as you say?" I asked of Mr. Hind.
"Because they were unable to resist the pressure put on them by the two chief tenants, Kilbride and Dunne, with the help of the League. Kilbride and
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Dunne both lived very well." My information at Dublin was that Mr. Kilbride had a fine house built by Lord Lansdowne, and a farm of seven hundred acres, at a rent of £760, 10s. Mr. Dunne, who co-operated with him, held four town lands comprising 1304 acres, at a yearly rent of £1348, 15s. Upon this property Lord Lansdowne had expended in drainage and works £1993, 11s. 9d., and in buildings £631, 15s. 4d., or in all very nearly two years' rental. On Mr. Kilbride's holdings Lord Lansdowne had expended in drainage works £1931, 6s. 3d., and in buildings £1247, 19s. 5d., or in all more than four years' rental. Mr. Kilbride held his lands on life leases. Mr. Dunne held his smallest holding of 84 acres on a yearly tenure; his two largest holdings, one on a lease for 31 years from 1874, and the other on a life lease, and his fourth holding of 172 acres on a life lease.
Where does the hardship appear in all this to Mr. Dunne or Mr. Kilbride?
On Mr. Kilbride's holdings, for instance, Lord Lansdowne expended over £3000, for which he added to the rent £130 a year, or about 4 per cent., while he himself stood to pay 6 1/2 per cent. on the loans he made from the Board of Works
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for the expenditure. In the same way it was with Mr. Dunne's farms. They were mostly in grass, and Lord Lansdowne laid out more than
£2500 on them, borrowed at the same rate from the Board, for which he added to the rent only £66 a year, or about 2 1/2 per cent. Mr. Killbride was a Poor-Law Guardian, and Mr. Dunne a Justice of the Peace. The leases in both of these cases, and in those of other large tenants, seem to have been made at the instance of the tenants themselves, and afforded security against any advance in the rental during a time of high agricultural prices. And it would appear that for the last quarter of a century there has been no important advance in the rental. In 1887 the rental was only £300 higher than in 1862, though during the interval the landlord had laid out £20,000 on improvements in the shape of drainage, roads, labourers' cottages, and other permanent works. Moreover, in fifteen years only one tenant has been evicted for non-payment of rent.
"Was there any ill-feeling towards the Marquis among the tenants?" I asked of Mr. Hind.
"Certainly not, and no reason for any. They were a good set of men, and they would never have gone into this fight, only for a few who were in
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trouble, and I'm sure that to-day most of them would be thankful if they could settle and get back. The best of them had money enough, and didn't like the fight at all."
All the trouble here seems to have originated with the adoption of the Plan of Campaign.
Lord Lansdowne, besides this estate in Queen's County, owns property in a wild, mountainous part of the county of Kerry. On this property the tenants occupy, for the most part, small holdings, the average rental being about £10, and many of the rentals much lower. They are not capitalist farmers at all, and few of them are able to average the profits of their industry, setting the gains of a good, against the losses of a bad, season. In October 1886, while Mr. Dillon was organising his Plan of Campaign, Lord Lansdowne visited his Kerry property to look into the condition of the people. The local Bank had just failed, and the shopkeepers and money-lenders were refusing credit and calling in loans. The pressure they put upon these small farmers, together with the fall in the price of dairy produce and of young stock at that time, caused real distress, and Lord Lansdowne, after looking into the situation, offered, of his own motion, abatements
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varying from 25 to 35 per cent. to all of them whose rents had not been judicially fixed under the Act of 1881, for a term of fifteen years.
As to these, Lord Lansdowne wrote a letter on the 21st of October 1886 (four days after the promulgation of the Plan of Campaign at Portumna on the Clanricarde property), to his agent, Mr. Townsend Trench. This letter was published. I have a copy of it given to me in Dublin, and it states the case as between the landlords and the tenants under judicial rents most clearly and temperately.
"It might, I think," says the Marquis, "be very fairly argued, that the State having imposed the terms of a contract on landlord and tenant, that contract should not be interfered with except by the State.
"The punctual payment of the 'judicial rent' was the one advantage to which the landlords were desired to look when, in 1881, they were deprived of many of the most valuable attributes of ownership.
"It was distinctly stipulated that the enormous privileges which were suddenly and unexpectedly conferred upon the tenants were to be enjoyed by them conditionally upon the fulfilment on their part of the statutory obligations specified in the Act.
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Of those, by far the most important was the punctual payment of the rent fixed by the Court for the judicial term.
"This obligation being unfulfilled, the landlord might reasonably claim that he should be free to exercise his own discretion in determining whether any given tenancy should or should not be perpetuated.
"In many cases [such cases are probably not so numerous on my estate as upon many others] the resumption of the holding, and the consolidation of adjoining farms, would be clearly advantageous to the whole community. In the congested districts the consolidation of farms is the only solution that I have seen suggested for meeting a chronic difficulty.
"I have no reason to believe that the Judicial Rents in force on my estate are such that, upon an average of the yield and prices of agricultural produce, my tenants would find it difficult to pay them."
In spite of all these considerations Lord Lans-downe instructed Mr. Trench to grant to these tenants under judicial leases an abatement of 20 per cent. on the November gale of 1886. This abatement, freely offered, was gladly accepted. There
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had been no outrages or disturbances on the Kerry properties, and the relations of the landlord with his tenants, before and after this visit of Lord Lansdowne to Kerry, and these reductions which followed it, had been, and continued to be, excellent.
But the tale of Kerry reached Luggacurren; and certain of the tenants on the latter estate were moved by it to demand for the Queen's County property identical treatment with that accorded to the very differently situated property in Kerry.
The leaders of the Luggacurren movement, I gather from Mr. Hind, never pretended inability to pay their rents. They simply demanded abatements of 35 per cent. on non-judicial, and 25 per cent. on judicial, rents as their due, on the ground that they should be treated like the tenants in Kerry: and the Plan of Campaign being by this time in full operation in more than one part of Ireland, they threatened to resort to it if their demand was refused. Lord Lansdowne at once declared that he would not repeat at Luggacurren his concession made in Kerry as to the rents judicially fixed; but he offered on a fair consideration of the non-judicial rents to make abatements on them ranging from 15 to 25 per cent.
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The offer was refused, and the war began. On the 23d of March 1887 Mr. Kilbride was evicted. One week afterwards, on the 29th of March, he got up in the rooms of the National League in Dublin, and openly declared that "the Luggacurren evictions differed from most other evictions in this, that they were able to pay the rent. It was a fight," he exultingly exclaimed, "of intelligence against intelligence; it was diamond cut diamond!" In other words, it was a struggle, not for justice, but for victory.
On all these points, and others furnished to me at Dublin touching this estate, much light was thrown by the bailiff, who had not been concerned in the evictions. He told me what he knew, and then very obligingly offered to conduct me to the lodge, where we should find Mr. Hutchins, who has charge now of the properties taken up by Mr. Kavanagh's Land Corporation. My patriotic jarvey from Athy made no objection to my giving the bailiff a lift, and we drove off to the lodge. On the way the jarvey good-naturedly exclaimed, "Ah! there comes Mr. Lynch," and even offered to pull up that the magistrate might overtake us.
We found Mr. Hutchins at home, a cool, quiet,
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energetic, northern man, who seems to be handling the difficult situation here with great firmness and prudence. Mrs. Hutchins, who has lived here now for nearly a year-a life not unlike that of the wife of an American officer on the Far Western frontier- very amicably asked me to lunch, and Mr. Hutchins offered to show me the holdings of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Kilbride. Mr. Lynch proposed that we should all go on my car, but I remembered the protest of the jarvey, and sending him to await me at Father Maher's, I drove off with Mr. Hutchins. As we drove along, he confirmed the jarvey's hint as to the difference between the views and conduct of the parish priest and the views and conduct of his more fiery curate. This is a very common state of affairs, I find, all over Ireland.
The house of Mr. Dunne is that of a large gentleman farmer. It is very well fitted up, but it was plain that the tenants had done little or nothing to make or keep it a "house beautiful." The walls had never been papered, and the wood-work showed no recent traces of the brush. "He spent more money on horse-racing than on housekeeping," said a shrewd old man who was in the house. In fact, Mr. Dunne, I am told, entered a horse for the
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races at the Curragh after he had undergone what Mr. Gladstone calls "the sentence of death" of an eviction!
Some of the doors bore marks of the crowbar, but no great mischief had been done to them or to the large fine windows. The only serious damage done during the eviction was the cutting of a hole through the roof. An upper room had been provisioned to stand a siege, and so scientifically barricaded with logs and trunks of trees that after several vain attempts to break through the door the assailants climbed to the roof, and in twenty minutes cut their way in from without. The dining and drawing rooms were those of a gentleman's residence, and one of the party remembered attending here a social festivity got up with much display.
A large cattle-yard has been established on this place, with an original, and, as I was assured, most successful weighing-machine by the Land Corporation, We found it full of very fine-looking cattle, and Mr. Hutchins seems to think the operation of managing the estate as a kind of "ranch" decidedly promising. "I am not a bit sorry for Mr. Dunne," he said, "but I am very sorry for other quiet, good tenants who have been deluded or driven into giving
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up valuable holdings to keep him. and Mr. Kilbride company, and give colour to the vapourings of Mr. William O'Brien."
The cases of some of these tenants were instructive. One poor man, Knowles, had gone out to America, and regularly sent home money to his family to pay the rent. They found other uses for it, and when the storm came he was two years and a half in arrears. In another instance, two brothers held contiguous holdings, and were in a manner partners. One was fonder of Athy than of agriculture; the other a steady husbandman. Four years' arrears had grown up against the one; only a half-year's gale against the other, Clearly this difference originated outside of the fall of prices! In a third case, a tenant wrote to Mr. Trench begging to have something done, as he had the money to pay, and wanted to pay, but "didn't dare."
From Mr. Dunne's we drove to Mr. Kilbride's, another ample, very comfortable house-not so thoroughly well fitted up with bathroom and other modern appurtenances as Mr. Dunne's perhaps-but still a very good house. It stands on a large green knoll, rather bare of trees, and commands a fine sweep of landscape.
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Mr. Hutchins drove me to the little road which leads up past the "Land League village" to the house of Father Maher, and there set me down.
I walked up and found the curate at home-a tall, slender, well-made young priest, with a keen, intelligent face. He received me very politely, and, when I showed him the card of an eminent dignitary of the Church, with cordiality.
I found him full of sympathy with the people of his parish, but neither vehement nor unfair. He did not deny that there were tenants on Lord Lans-downe's estate who were amply able to pay their rents; but he did most emphatically assert that there were not a few of them who really could not pay their rents.
"I assure you," he said, "there are some of them who cannot even pay their dues to their priest, and when I say that, you will know how pinched and driven they must indeed be." It was in view of these tenants that he seemed to justify the course of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Kilbride. "They must all stand or fall together." He had nothing to say to the discredit of Lord Lansdowne; but he spoke with some bitterness of the agent, Mr. Townsend Trench, as having protested against Lord Lansdowne's mak-
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ing reductions here while he had himself made the same reductions on the neighbouring estate of Mrs. Adair.
"In truth," he said, "Mr. Trench has made all this trouble worse all along. He is too much of a Napoleon"-and with a humorous twinkle in his eye as he spoke-"too much of a Napoleon the Third.
"I was just reading his father's book when you came in. Here it is," and he handed me a copy of Trench's Realities of Irish Life.
"Did you ever read it? This Mr. Trench, the father, was a kind of Napoleon among agents in his own time, and the son, you see, thinks it ought to be understood that he is quite as great a man as his father. Did you never hear how he found a lot of his father's manuscripts once, and threw them all in the fire, calling out as he did. so, 'There goes some more of my father's vanity?'"
About his people, and with his people, Father Maher said he "felt most strongly." How could he help it? He was himself the son of an evicted father.
"Of course, Father Maher," I said, "you will understand that I wish to get at both sides of this
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question and of all questions here. Pray tell me then, where I shall find the story of the Lugga-curren property most fully and fairly set forth in print?"
Without a moment's hesitation he replied, "By far the best and fairest account of the whole matter you will get in the Irish correspondence of the London Times."
How the conflict would end he could not say. But he was at a loss to see how it could pay Lord Lansdowne to maintain it.
He very civilly pressed me to stay and lunch with him, but when I told him I had already accepted an invitation from Mr. Hutchins, he very kindly bestirred himself to find my jarvey.
I hastened back to the lodge, where I found a very pleasant little company. They were all rather astonished, I thought, by the few words I had to say of Father Maher, and especially by his frank and sensible recommendation of the reports in the London Times as the best account I could find of the Luggacurren difficulty. To this they could not demur, but things have got, or are getting, in Ireland, I fear, to a point at which candour, on one side or the other of the burning questions here
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debated, is regarded with at least as much suspicion as the most deliberate misrepresentation. As to Mr. Townsend Trench; what Father Maher failed to tell me, I was hero told: That down to the time of the actual evictions ho offered to take six months' rent from the tenants, give them a clean book, and pay all the costs. To refuse this certainly looks like a "war measure."
But for the loneliness of her life here, Mrs. Hutchins tells me she would find it delightful. The country is exceedingly lovely in the summer and autumn months.
When my car came out to take me back to Athy, I found my jarvey in excellent spirits, and quite friendly even with Mr. Hutchins himself. He kept up a running fire of lively commentaries upon the residents whoso estates we passed.
"Would you think now, your honour," he said, pointing with his whip to one large mansion standing well among good trees, "that that's the snuggest man there is about Athy? But he is; and it's no wonder! Would you believe it, he never buys a newspaper, but he walks all the way into Athy, and goes about from the bank to the shops till he finds one, and picks it up and reads it. He's
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mighty fond of the news, but he's fonder, you see, of a penny!
"There now, your honour, just look at that house! It's a magistrate he is that lives there; and why? Why, just to be called 'your honour,' and have the people tip their hats to him. Oh! he delights in that, he does. Why, you might knock a man, or put him in the water, you might, indeed, but if you came before Mr.--, and you just called him 'your honour' often enough, and made up to him, you 'd be all right! You've just to go up to him with your hat in your hand, looking up at him, and to say, 'Ah! now, your honour'" (imitating the wheedling tone to perfection), "and indeed you'd get anything out of him-barring a sixpence, that is, or a penny!
"Ah! he's a snug one, too!" And with that he launched a sharp thwack of the whip at the grey mare, and we went rattling on apace.
At the very pretty station of Athy we parted the best of friends. "Wish you safe home, your honour." The kindly railway porter, also, who had recommended Kavanagh's Hotel, was anxious to know how I found it, and so busied himself to get me a good carriage when the train came in, that I feel bound to exempt Athy from the judgment
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passed by Sir James Allport's committee against the "amenities of railway travelling in Ireland."
dublin, Saturday, March 10.-I called by appointment to-day upon Mr. Brooke, the owner of the Coolgreany estate, at his counting-house in Gardiner's Row. It is one of the spacious old last-century houses of Dublin; the counting-room is installed with dark, old-fashioned mahogany fittings, in what once was, and might easily again be made, a drawing-room. Pictures hang on the walls, and the atmosphere of the whole place is one of courtesy and culture rather than of mere modern commerce. One of the portraits here is that of Mr. Brooke's granduncle-a handsome, full-blooded, rather testy-looking old warrior, in the close-fitting scarlet uniform of the Prince Eegent's time.
"He ought to have been called Lord Baltimore," said Mr. Brooke good-naturedly; "for he fought against your people for that city at Bladensburg with Ross."
"That was the battle," I said, "in which, according to a popular tradition in my country, the Americans took so little interest that they left the field almost as soon as it began."
Another portrait is of a kinsman who was mur-
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dered in the highway here in Ireland many years ago, under peculiarly atrocious circumstances, and with no sort of provocation or excuse.
Mr. Brooke confirmed Dr. Dillon's statement that he had ordered out of his counting-house two tenants who came into it with a peculiarly brazen proposition, of which I must presume Dr. Dillon was ignorant when he cited the fact as a count against the landlord of Coolgreany. I give the story as Mr Brooke tells it. "The Bent Audit," he says, "at which my tenants were idiots enough to join the Plan of Campaign occurred about the 12th December 1886, when, as you know, I refused to accept the terms which they proposed to me. I heard nothing more from them till about the middle of February 1887, when coming to my office one clay I found two tenants waiting for me. One was Stephen Maher, a mountain man, and the other Patrick Kehoe. 'What do you want?' I asked Whereupon they both arose, and Pat Kehoe pointed to Maher. Maher fumbled at his clothes, and rubbed himself softly for a bit, and then produced a scrap of paper. 'It's a bit of paper from the tenants, sir,' he said. A queer bit of paper it was to look at-ruled paper, with a composition written
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upon it which might have been the work of a village schoolmaster. It was neither signed nor addressed! The pith of it was in these words,-'in consequence of the manner in which we have been harassed, our cattle driven throughout the country, and our crops not sown, we shall be unable to pay the half-year's rent due in March, in addition to the reduction already claimed!' I own I rather lost my temper at this! Remember I had already plainly refused to give 'the reduction already claimed,' and had told them not once, but twenty times, that I would never surrender to the 'Plan of Campaign'! I am afraid my language was Pagan rather than Parliamentary-but I told them plainly, at least, that if they did not break from the Plan of Campaign, and pay their debts, they might be sure I would turn the whole of them out! I gave them back their precious bit of paper and sent them packing.
"One of them, I have told you, was a mountain man, Stephen Maher. He is commonly known among the people as 'the old fox of the mountain,' and he is very proud of it!
"This old Stephen Maher," said Mr. Brooke, "is renowned in connection with a trial for murder, at
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which he was summoned as a witness. When he was cross-examined by Mr. Molloy, Q.C., he fenced and dodged about with that distinguished counsellor for a long time, until getting vexed by the lawyer's persistency, he exclaimed, 'Now thin, Mr. Molloy, I 'd have ye to know that I had a cliverer man nor iver you was, Mr. Molloy, at me, and I had to shtan' up to him for three hours before the Crowner, an' he was enable to git the throoth out of me, so he was! so he was!'"
Neither did Dr. Dillon mention the fact that one of the demands made of Captain Hamilton, Mr. Brooke's agent, in December 1886, was that a Protestant tenant named Webster should be evicted by Mr. Brooke from a farm for which he had paid his rent, to make room for the return thither of a Roman Catholic tenant named Lenahan, previously evicted for non-payment of his rent.
When Mr. Brooke's grandfather bought the Cool-greany property in 1864, he adopted a system of betterments, which has been ever since kept up on the estate. Nearly every tenant's house on the property has been slated, and otherwise repaired by the landlord, nor has one penny ever been added on that account to the rents.
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In the village of Coolgreany all the houses on one side of the main street were built in this way by the landlord, and the same thing was done in the village of Croghan, where twenty tenants have a grazing right of three sheep for every acre held on the Croghan Mountain, pronounced by the valuers of the Land Court to be one of the best grazing mountains in Ireland.
Captain Hamilton became the agent of the property in 1879, on the death of Mr. Vesey. One of his earliest acts was to advise Mr. Brooke to grant an abatement of 25 per cent. in June 1881, while the Land Act was passing. At the same time, he cautioned the tenants that this was only a temporary reduction, and advised them to get judicial rents fixed.
The League advised them not to do this, but to demand 25 per cent. reduction again in December 1881. This demand was rejected, and forty writs were issued. The tenants thereupon in January
1882 came in and paid the full rent, with the costs,.
Eleven tenants after this went into Court, and in
1883 the Sub-Commissioners cut down their rents. In five cases Mr. Brooke appealed. What was the result before the Chief Commissioner? The rent
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of Mary Green, which had been £43, and had been cut down by the Sub-Commissioners to £39, was restored to £43; the rent of Mr. Kavanagh, cut down from £57 to £52, was restored to £55; the rent of Pat Kehoe (one of the two tenants "ejected" from Mr. Brooke's office as already stated), cut down from £81 to £70, was restored to £81; the rent of Graham, cut down from £38 to, £32, 10s., was restored to £38. Other reductions were maintained.
This appears to be the record of "rack-renting" on the Coolgreany property.
There are 114 tenants, of whom 15 hold under judicial rents; 22 are leaseholders, and 77 are non-judicial yearly tenants. There are 12 Protestants holding in all a little more than 1200 acres. All the rest are Catholics, 14 of these being cottier tenants. The estate consists of 5165 acres. The average is about £24, and the average rental about £26, 10s. The gross rental is £2614, of which £1000 go to the jointure of Mr. Brooke's mother, and £8QO are absorbed by the tithe charges, half poor-rates and other taxes. During the year 1886, in which this war was declared against him, Mr. Brooke spent £714 in improvements upon the property: so in
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that year his income from Coolgreany was practically nil.
What in these circumstances would have been the position of this landlord had he not possessed ample means not invested in this particular estate? And what has been the result to the tenants of this conflict into which it seems clear that they were led, less to protect any direct interest of their own than to jeopardise their homes and their livelihood for the promotion of a general agrarian agitation? It is not clear that they are absolutely so far out of pocket, for I find that the Post-Office Savings Bank deposits at Inch and Gorey rose from £3699, 5s. 4d. in 1880 to £5308, 13s. in 1887, showing an increase of £1609, 7s. 8d. But they are out of house and home and work, entered pupils in that school of idleness and iniquity which has been kept by one Preceptor from the beginning of time.
after this chapter had actually gone to press, I received a letter from the friend who had put me into communication with the labourers referred to in it, begging me to strike out all direct indications of their whereabouts, on the ground that these might lead to grave annoyance and trouble for these poor men from the local tyrants.
I do not know that I ought to regret the annoyance thus caused to my publisher and to me, as no words of mine could emphasise so clearly the nature and the scope of the odious, illegal, or anti-legal "coercion" established in certain parts of Ireland as the asterisks which mark my compliance with my friend's request, What can be said for the freedom of a country in which a man of character and position honestly believes it to be "dangerous" for poor men to say the things recorded in the text of this chapter about their own feelings, wishes, opinions, and interests? CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
