"I paid over money to them, sir," he replied.
"Yes," I said, "but did you pay over all the amount of the rent, or how much of it?"
"Oh! I paid as much as I thought they would think I ought to pay!" he responded, with that sly twinkle of the peasant"s eye one sees so often in rural France.
"Oh! I understand," I said, laughing. "But if you come to terms now with Mr. Tener here, will you get that money back again?"
"Divil a penny of it!" he replied, with much emphasis.
Finally they got up together to take their leave, after a long whispered conversation together.
"And if we made it half the costs?"
"No!" said Mr. Tener good-naturedly but firmly; "not a penny off the costs."
"Well, we"ll see the men, sir, just quietly, and we"ll let you know what can be done"; and with that they wished us, most civilly, good-morning, and went their way.
We walked in the park for some time, and a wild, beautiful park it is, not the less beautiful for being given up, as it is, very much to the Dryads to deal with it as they list. It is as unlike a trim English park as possible; but it contains many very fine trees, and grand open sweeps of landscape. In a tangled copse are the ruins of an ancient Franciscan abbey, in one corner of which lie buried together, under a monumental mound of brickwork, the late Marquis of Clanricarde and his wife. The walls of the Castle, burned in 1826, are still standing, and so perfect that the building might easily enough have been restored. A keen-eyed, wiry old household servant, still here, told us the house was burned in the afternoon of January 6, 1826. There were three women-servants in the house--"Anna and Mary Meehan, and Mrs. Underwood, the housekeeper"; and they were getting the Castle ready for his Lordship"s arrival, so little of an "absentee" was the late Lord Clanricarde, then only one year married to the daughter of George Canning. The fires were laid on in the upper rooms, and Mrs. Underwood went off upon an errand. When she came back all was in flames.
The deer-park is full of deer, now become quite wild. We heard them crashing through the undergrowth on all sides. There must be capital fishing, too, in the lake, and in the river of which it is an expansion.
While they were getting the cars ready for a drive, came up another son of the soil. This man I found had only a small interest in the battle on the Clanricarde estates, holding his homestead of another landlord. But he admitted he had gone in a manner into the "combination," in that he had paid a certain, not very large, sum, which he named, to the trustees, "just for peace and quiet." He considered it gone, past recovery; and he named another man with a small holding, but doing a considerable business in other ways, who had "paid 10 or more just not to be bothered." Upon this Mr. Tener told me of a shopkeeper at Loughrea in a large way of business, a man with seven or eight thousand pounds, who, finding his goods about to be seized after the agent had turned a sharp strategic corner on him, and unexpectedly got into his shop, was about to own up to his defeat, and make a fair settlement, when the secretary of the League appeared, and requested a private talk with him.
In a quarter of an hour the tradesman reappeared looking rather sullen and crestfallen. He said he couldn"t pay, and must let the goods be taken. So taken they were, and duly put up under the process and sold.
He bought them in himself, paying all the costs.
Presently two cars appeared. We got upon one, Mr. Tener driving a spirited nag, and taking on the seat with him a loaded carbine-rifle.
Two armed policeman followed us upon the other, keeping at such a distance as would enable them easily to cover any one approaching from either side of the roadway. It quite took me back to the delightful days of 1866 in Mexico, when we used to ride out to picnics at the Rincon at Orizaba armed to the teeth, and ready at a moment"s notice to throw the four-in-hand mule-wagons into a hollow square, and prepare to receive cavalry. As it seems to be perfectly well understood that the regular price paid for shooting a designated person (they call it "knocking" him in these parts) is the ridiculously small sum of four pounds, and that two persons who divide this sum are always detailed by the organisers of outrage to "knock" an objectionable individual, it is obvious that too much care can hardly be taken by prudent people in coming and going through such a country. Fortunately for the people most directly concerned to avoid these unpleasantnesses a systematic leakage seems to exist in the machinery of mischief. The places where the oaths of this local "Mafia" are administered, for instance, are well known. A roadside near a chapel is frequently selected--and this for two or three obvious reasons. The sanct.i.ty of the spot may be supposed to impress the neophyte; and if the police or any other undesirable people should suddenly come upon the officiating adepts and the expectant acolyte, a group on the roadside is not necessarily a criminal gathering--though I do not see why, in such times, our old American college definition of a "group" as a gathering of "three or more persons" should not be adopted by the authorities, and held to make such a gathering liable to dispersion by the police, as our "groups" used to be subject to proctorial punishment. Mills are another favourite resort of the law-breakers. Mr. Tener tells me that a large mill between this place and Loughrea is a great centre of trouble, not wholly to the disadvantage of the astute miller, who finds it not only brings grist to his mill, but takes away grist from another mill belonging to a couple of worthy ladies, and once quite prosperous. It is no uncommon thing, it appears, for the same person to be put through the ceremony of swearing fidelity more than once, and at more than one place, with the not unnatural result, however, of diminishing the pressure of the oath upon his conscience or his fears, and also of alienating his affections, as he is expected to pay down two shillings on each occasion. Once a member, he contributes a penny a week to the general fund. It seems also to be an open secret who the disbursing treasurers are of this fund, from whom the members, detailed to do the dark bidding of the "organisation," receive their wage. "A stout gentleman with sandy hair and wearing gla.s.ses" was the description given to me of one such functionary. When so much is known of the methods and the men, why is it that so many crimes are committed with virtual impunity? For two sufficient reasons. Witnesses cannot be got to testify, or trusted, if they do testify, to speak the truth; and it is idle to expect juries of the vicinage in nine cases out of ten will do their duty. Political cowardice having made it impossible to transfer the venue in cases of Irish crime, as to which all the authorities were agreed about these points, from Ireland into Great Britain, it is found that even to transfer the trial of "Moonlighters" from Clare or Kerry into Wicklow, for example, has a most instructive effect, opening the eyes of the people of Wicklow to a state of things in their own island, of which happily for themselves they were previously as ignorant as the people of Surrey or of Middles.e.x. This explains the indignant wish expressed to me some time ago in a letter from a priest in another part of Ireland, that "martial law" might be proclaimed in Clare and Kerry to "stamp out the Moonlighters, those pests of society." That in Clare and Kerry priests should be found not only disposed to wink at and condone the proceedings of these "pests of society," but openly to co-operate with them under the pretext of a "national" movement, is surely a thing equally intolerable by the Church and dangerous to the cause of Irish autonomy.
This I am glad to say is strongly felt, and has been on more than one occasion very vigorously stated by one of the most eminent and estimable of Irish ecclesiastics, the Bishop-Coadjutor of Clonfert, upon whom I called this morning. Dr. Healy, who is a senator of the Royal University of Ireland, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, presides over that part of the diocese of Clonfort which includes Portumna and Woodford. He lives in a handsome and commodious, but simple and unpretentious house, set in ample grounds well-planted, and commanding a wide view of a most agreeable country. We were ushered into a well-furnished study, and the bishop came in at once to greet us with the most cordial courtesy. He is a frank, dignified, unaffected man, and in his becoming episcopal purple, with the gold chain and cross, looked every inch a bishop. I was particularly anxious to see Dr. Healy, as a type of the high-minded and courageous ecclesiastics who, in Ireland, have resolutely refused to subordinate their duties and their authority as ecclesiastics to the convenience and the policy of an organisation absolutely controlled by Mr. Parnell, who not only is not a Catholic, but who is an open ally and a.s.sociate 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 a.s.sailing in concord with a non-Catholic political leader the consecrated pastors and masters of the Church in Ireland. When in order to explain what they themselves concede to be "the absence from the popular ranks of the best of the priesthood," Nationalist writers find it necessary to denounce Cardinal Cullen and Cardinal M"Cabe as "anti-Irish "; and to sneer at men like Dr. Healy as "Castle Bishops," it is impossible not to be reminded of the three "patriotic" tailors of Tooley Street.
Bishop Healy looks upon the systematic development of a substantial peasant proprietary throughout Ireland as the economic hope of the country, and he regards therefore the actual "campaigning" of the self-styled "Nationalists" as essentially anti-national, inasmuch as its methods are demoralising the people of Ireland, and destroying that respect for law and for private rights which lies at the foundation of civil order and of property. In his opinion, "Home Rule," to the people in general, means simply ownership of the land which they are to live on, and to live by. How that ownership shall be brought about peaceably, fairly, and without wrong or outrage to any man or cla.s.s of men is a problem of politics to be worked out by politicians, and by public men.
That men, calling themselves Catholics, should be led on to attempt to bring this or any other object about by immoral and criminal means is quite another matter, and a matter falling within the domain, not of the State primarily, but of the Church.
As to this, Bishop Healy, who was in Rome not very long ago, and who, while in Rome, had more than one audience of His Holiness by command, has no doubt whatever that the Vatican will insist upon the abandonment and repudiation by Catholics of boycotting, and "plans of campaign," and all such devices of evil. Nor has the Bishop any doubt that whenever the Holy Father speaks the priests and the people of Ireland will obey.
To say this, of course, is only to say that the Bishop believes the priests of Ireland to be honest priests, and the people of Ireland to be good Catholics.
If he is mistaken in this it will be a doleful thing, not for the Church, but for the Irish priests, and for the Irish people. No Irishman who witnessed the magnificent display made at Rome this year, of the scope and power of the Catholic Church, can labour under any delusions on that point.
From the Bishop"s residence we went to call upon the Protestant rector of Portumna, Mr. Crawford. The handsome Anglican church stands within an angle of the park, and the parsonage is a very substantial mansion. Mr.
Crawford, the present rector, who is a man of substance, holds a fine farm of the Clanricarde estate, at a peppercorn rent, and he is tenant also of another holding at 118 a year, as to which he has brought the agent into Court, with the object, as he avers, of setting an example to the other tenants, and inducing them, like himself, to fight under the law instead of against it. He is not, however, in arrears, and in that respect sets a better example, I am sorry to say, than the Catholic priest, Father Coen, who made himself so conspicuous here on the occasion of the much bewritten Woodford evictions. The case of Father Coen is most instructive, and most unpleasant. He occupies an excellent house on a holding of twenty-three acres of good laud, with a garden--in short, a handsome country residence, which was provided by the late Lord Clanricarde, expressly for the accommodation of whoever might be the Catholic priest in that part of his estate. For all this the rent is fixed at the absurd and nominal sum of two guineas a year! Yet Father Coen, who now enjoys the mansion, and has a substantial income from the parish, is actually two years and a half in arrears with this rent! This fact Mr. Tener mentioned to the Bishop, whose countenance naturally darkened. "What am I to do in such a case, my lord?" asked Mr. Tener.
"Do?" said the Bishop, "do your plain duty, and proceed against him according to law." But suppose he were proceeded against and evicted, as in America he certainly would be, who can doubt that he would instantly be paraded, before the world, on both sides of the Atlantic as a "martyr," suffering for the holy cause of an oppressed and down-trodden people, at the hands of a "most vile" Marquis, and of a remorse-less and blood-thirsty agent?[11] Mr. Crawford, a tall, fine-looking man, talked very fully and freely about the situation here. He came to Portumna about eight years ago; one of his reasons for accepting the position here offered him being that he wished to take over a piece of property near Woodford from his brother-in-law, who found he could not manage it.
As a practical farmer, and a straightforward capable man of business, he has gradually acquired the general confidence of the tenants here. That they are, as a rule, quite able to pay the rents which they have been "coerced" into refusing to pay, he fully believes. He told me of cases in which Catholic tenants of Lord Clanricarde came to him when the agitation began about the Plan of Campaign, and begged him privately to take the money for their rents, and hold it for them till the time should come for a settlement.
The reason for this was that they did not wish to be obliged to give over the money into the "Trust" created by the Campaigners, and wanted it to be safely put beyond the reach of these obliging "friends." One very shrewd tenant came to him and begged him to buy some beasts, in order that he might pay his rent out of the proceeds. The man owed 15 to the Clanricarde property. Mr. Crawford did not particularly want to buy his beasts, but eventually agreed to do so, and gave him 50 for them. The man went off with the money, but he never paid the rent! Mr.
Crawford discovering this called him to account, and refused to grant him some further favour which he asked. The result is that the "distressed tenant" now cuts Mr. Crawford when he meets him, and is the prosperous owner of quite a small herd of cattle.
Mr. Crawford"s opinion of the mischief done by the methods and spirit of the National League in this place is quite in accord with the opinions of the Bishop-Coadjutor. Power without responsibility, which made the Caeesars madmen, easily turns the heads of village tyrants, and there is something positively grotesque in the excesses of this subterranean "Home Rule." Mr. Crawford told me of a case here, in which a tenant farmer, whom he named, came to him in great wrath, not unmingled with terror, to say that the League had ordered him, on pain of being boycotted, to give up his holding to the heirs of a woman from whom, twenty years ago, he had bought, for 100 in cash, the tenant-right of her deceased husband! There was no question of refunding the 100. He was merely to consider himself a "land-grabber," and evict himself for the benefit of those heirs who had never done a stroke of work on the property for twenty years, and who had no shadow of a legal or moral claim on it, except that the oldest of them was an active member of the local League!
Nor was this unique.
In another case, the children of a tenant, who died forty years ago, came forward and called upon the League to boycott an old man who had been in possession of the holding during nearly half a century. In a third case, a tenant-farmer, some ten years ago, had in his employ as herd a man who fell ill and died. He put into the vacant place an honest, capable young fellow, who still holds it, and has faithfully and efficiently served him. Only the other day this tenant-farmer was warned by the League to expect trouble, unless he dismissed this herd, and put into his place the son, now grown to man"s estate, of the herd who died ten years ago!
It is amusing, if not instructive, to find the hereditary principle, just now threatened in its application to the British Senate, cropping out afresh as an element in the regeneration of Irish agriculture and the land tenure of Ireland!
On our way back to the Castle we called on Mr. Place, the manager of the Portumna Branch of the Hibernian Bank, who lives in the town. He was amusing himself, after the labour of the day in the bank, with some amateur work as a carpenter, but received us very cordially. He said there was no doubt that the deposits in the bank had increased considerably since the adoption of the Plan of Campaign on the Clanricarde property. Money was paid into the bank continually by persons who wished the fact of their payments kept secret; and he knew of more than one case in which tenants, whose stock had been seized by the agent for the rents, were much delighted at the seizure, since it had paid off their rents, and so enabled them to retain their holdings and keep out of the grasp of the League, even though to do this they had undergone a forced sale and been muleted in costs.
It was his opinion that the tenants on the Clanricarde property, who are not in arrears, would gladly accept a twenty-five per cent. reduction, and do very well by accepting it. But they are constrained into a hostile att.i.tude by the tenants who are in arrears, some of them for several years (as, for example, Father Coen), although I find, to my astonishment, that in Ireland the landlord has no power to distrain for more than a twelvemonth"s rent, no matter how far back the arrears may run.
Mr. Place seems to think it would be well to put all the creditors of the tenants on one footing with the landlords. The shopkeepers and other creditors, he thinks, in that event would see many things in quite a new light.
What is called the new Castle of Portumna is a large and handsome building of the Mansard type, standing on an eminence in the park, at some distance from the original seat. The building was finished not long before the death of his father, the late Marquis. It has never been occupied, save by a large force of police quartered in it not very long ago by Mr. Tener in readiness for an expedition against the Castle of Cloondadauv, to the scene of which he promises to drive me to-morrow on my way back to Dublin. It is thoroughly well built, and might easily be made a most delightful residence. The views which it commands of the Shannon are magnificent, and there are many fine trees about it.
The old man who has charge of it is a typical Galway retainer of the old school. The "boys," he says, once tried to "boycott" him because he was the pound-master; but he showed fight, and they let him alone. He pointed out to me from the top of the house, in the distance, the residences of Colonel Hickie, and of the young Lord Avonmore, who lately succeeded on the death of his brother in the recent Egyptian expedition.
The place is now shut up, and the owners live in France.
We visited too the Portumna Union before driving home. The buildings of this Union are extensive for the place, and well built, and it seems to be well-ordered and neatly kept--thanks, in no small degree, I suspect, to the influence of the Sisters who have charge of the hospital, but whose benign spirit shows itself not only in the flower-garden which they have called into being, but in many details of the administration beyond their special control.
The contrast was very striking between the atmosphere of this unpretending refuge of the helpless and that of certain of the "laicised" hospitals of France, which I not long ago visited, from which the devoted nuns have been expelled to make way for hired nurses. I made a remark to this effect to the clerk of the Union, Mr. Lavan, whom we found in his office.
"Oh, yes," he said, "I have no doubt of that. We owe more than I can say to the Sisters, but I don"t know how long we should have them here if the local guardians could have their way."
In explanation of this, he went on to tell me that these local guardians, who are elected, are hostile to the whole administration, because of its relations with the Local Government Board at Dublin, which controls their generous tendency to expend the money of the ratepayers. By way of expressing their feelings, therefore, they have been trying to cut down, not only the salary of the clerk, but that of the Catholic chaplain of the Union; and as there is a good deal of irreligious feeling among the agitators here, it is his impression that they would make things disagreeable for the Sisters also were they in any way to get the management into their own hands. That there cannot be much real distress in this neighbourhood appears from two facts. There are now but 130 inmates of this Union, out of a population of 12,900, and the outlay for out-of-door relief averages between eight and ten pounds a week.
In the quiet, neat chapel two or three of the inmates were kneeling at prayers; and others whom we saw in the kitchen and about the offices had nothing of the "workhouse" look which is so painful in the ordinary inmates of an English or American almshouse.
"The trouble with the place," said Mr. Lavan, "is that they like it too well. It takes an eviction almost to get them out of it."
We sat down with Mr. Lavan in his office, and had an interesting talk with him.
He is the agent of Mr. Mathews, who lives between Woodford and Portumna.
Mr. Mathews is a resident landlord, he says, who has constantly employed and has lived on friendly terms with his tenants, numbering twenty, who hold now under judicial rents. On these judicial rents two years ago they were allowed a further reduction of 15 per cent. Last year they were allowed 20 per cent. This year he offered them a reduction of 25 per cent., which they rejected, demanding 35 per cent.
This demand Mr. Lavan considers to be unreasonable in the extreme, and he attributes it to the influence of the National Leaguers here, whose representatives among the local guardians constantly vote away the money of the ratepayers in "relief to evicted tenants who have ample means and can in no respect be called dest.i.tute." In his opinion the effect of the Nationalist agitation here has been to upset all ideas of right and wrong in the minds of the people where any question arises between tenants and landlords. He told a story, confirmed by Mr. Tener, of a bailiff, whom he named, on the Clanricarde property here, who was compelled two years ago to resign his place in order to prevent the "boycotting" of his mother who keeps a shop on the farm. He was familiar, too, with the details of a story told me by one of the Clanricarde tenants, a farmer near Loughrea who holds a farm at 90 a year. This man was forced to subscribe to the Plan of Campaign. The agent proceeded against him for the rent due, and he incurred costs of 10. His sheep and crop were then seized.
He begged the local leaders to "permit" him to pay his rent, as he was able to do it _without drawing out the funds in their hands_! They refused, and so compelled him to allow his property to be publicly sold, and to incur further costs of 10. "His farm lies so near the town that he did not dare to risk the vengeance of the local ruffians."
Mr. Lavan gave me the name also of another man who is now actually under a "boycott," because he has ventured to resist the modest demand made by the son of a man whose tenant-right he bought, paying him 100 for it, twenty years ago, that he shall give up his farm without being reimbursed for his outlay made to purchase it! In other words, after twenty years" peaceable possession of a piece of property, bought and paid for, this tenant-farmer is treated as a "land-grabber" by the self-installed "Nationalist" government of Ireland, because he will not submit to be robbed both of the money which he paid for his tenant-right, and of his tenant-right!
Obviously in such a case as this the "war against landlordism" is simply a war against property and against private rights. Priests of the Catholic Church who not only countenance but aid and abet such proceedings certainly go even beyond Dr. M"Glynn. Dr. M"Glynn, so far as I know, stops at the confiscation of all private property in rent by the State for the State. But here is simply a confiscation of the property of A for the benefit of B, such as might happen if B, being armed and meeting A unarmed in a forest, should confiscate the watch and chain of A, bought by A of B"s lamented but unthrifty father twenty years before!
After dinner to-night Mr. Tener gave me some interesting and edifying accounts of his experience in other parts of Ireland.
Some time ago, before the Plan of Campaign was adopted, one of his tenants in Cavan came to him with a doleful story of the bad times and the low prices, and wound up by saying he could pay no more than half a year"s rent.
"Now his rent had been reduced under the Land Act," said Mr, Tener, "and I had voluntarily thrown off a lot of arrears, so I looked at him quietly and said, "Mickey, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You have been very well treated, and you can perfectly well pay your rent. Your wife would be ashamed of you if she knew you were trying to get out of it.""
"Ah no, your honour!" he briskly replied; "indade she would approve it.
If you won"t discover on me, I"ll tell you the truth. It was the wife herself, she"s a great schollard, and reads the papers, that tould me not to pay you more than half the rent--for she says there"s a new Act coming to wipe it all out. Will you take the half-year?"