b'AjUiAl M^ !Xud,uwi. 
 
 ^\/UTr. ^^l
 
 IN CASTLE AND CABIN 
 
 Talks in Ireland in 1887 
 
 GEORGE PELLEW, A.M., LL.B. 
 
 OF THE SUFFOLK BAR, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 THIRD EDITION 
 
 NEW YORK & LONDON 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 %,\t ^nitkirbochcr |1r£ss 
 
 1889
 
 COPYRIGHT BY 
 
 GEORGE PELLEV/ 
 i883 
 
 Press of 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Preface 
 
 IN TROD UCTION. 
 
 The Agrarian Agitation and the Land Acts .... I 
 
 PART I. 
 
 IN LEINSTER. 
 
 A Meeting of a Club in Dublin ...... 19 
 
 The Lord Mayor 24 
 
 A Unionist ......... 27 
 
 A Dublin Business Man 33 
 
 A Fenian • • 37 
 
 A Catholic Professor , . . . . . . .41 
 
 A Pessimistic Farmer ........ 44 
 
 A Prosperous Farmer ........ 45 
 
 Talks in West Meath 5° 
 
 In a Smoking-Room in County Carlow ..... 56 
 
 A County Carlow Landlord ....... 61 
 
 A Miller 67 
 
 A Nationalist Leader in County Kilkenny .... 68 
 
 A Kilkenny Manufacturer ....... 74 
 
 PART IL 
 
 IN MUNSTER. 
 
 A Cork Nationalist 78 
 
 A Boycotted Farmer in County Cork ..... 80 
 
 A " Plan of Campaign " Estate ...... 89 
 
 A Gentleman Farmer in County Cork ..... 96 
 
 An Estate in County Waterford ...... 98 
 
 2057984
 
 iv CONTENTS. 
 
 A Waterford Farmer 105 
 
 Tipperary Farmers ........ 106 
 
 A Tipperary Land Agent ....... 109 
 
 Driving with a Magistrate in Tipperary ..... 112 
 
 A Tipperary Landlord . . . . . . . .117 
 
 A Unionist Priest 127 
 
 National Leaguers at Killarney 132 
 
 Kerry Outrages 133 
 
 A Nationalist Editor in Kerry ...... 140 
 
 A Kerry Land Agent ........ 143 
 
 After Eviction — Herbartstown and Bodyke .... 147 
 
 PART III. 
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 
 
 Why Galway Wants Home Rule 155 
 
 Walking in Connemara ........ 158 
 
 W^hat They Say at Clifden 175 
 
 Jottings in Westport and Sligo . . . . . .187 
 
 Connaught Land-Leaguers ....... 183 
 
 Jottings in Westport and Sligo . . . . . .187 
 
 A Day with a Popular Land Agent ..... 195 
 
 A Day and a Night with Nationalists at Ballinasloe . . 203 
 
 A " Plan of Campaign " Town ...... 210 
 
 PART IV. 
 
 IN ULSTER. 
 
 Gweedore — an Eviction . . . . . . .219 
 
 About Falcarragh ......... 228 
 
 With a Drummer in Donegal ...... 232 
 
 A Manufacturer in County Tyrone ..... 240 
 
 Chance Acquaintances at Dungannon ..... 243 
 
 Some Belfast Merchants . . . . . . -251 
 
 Some Belfast Professional Men ...... 272 
 
 Some Country Nationalists . 282 
 
 Some Orangemen ......... 289 
 
 Conclusion 296
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 It is the general belief that a change in the social and 
 political condition of Ireland must soon be accomplished, 
 a change so fundamental as to be properly called a revo- 
 lution. The system of " landlordism " is to be superseded, 
 we are told, by " peasant proprietorship," the govern- 
 ment of Great Britain by Home Rule. Such changes 
 may, perhaps, be effected without bloodshed, but not, 
 certainly, without intense excitement. The excitement 
 that out of the ruins of the old parties has created two 
 new parties, the Home Rulers and the Unionists, and 
 that in Ireland nicknames the Unionists "traitors " and 
 the Home Rulers " rebels," must, to some degree, blind 
 men's eyes and deafen their ears. The questions about 
 to be solved in Ireland, the necessity or the reverse of 
 landlordism, and the proper limitation of local indepen- 
 dence, involve principles that are at the root of all society 
 and government, and claim the interest of serious-minded 
 citizens in any country. Especially do these questions 
 deserve the careful attention of the American people, 
 since Irish politics perpetually exercise no indirect in- 
 fluence on our own, and we cannot help being important 
 factors in Irish affairs. Books upon the subject are so 
 numerous that some excuse seems needed for the publi- 
 cation of another, but, as a rule, the books and articles 
 we read are the controversial statements of professed
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 partisans, so that place may, perhaps, still be found for 
 an uncolored record, however incomplete, of thought and 
 conduct in Ireland at the present time. 
 
 Last summer I spent rather over four months in Ire- 
 land, from the beginning of July to the early days of 
 November. Letters of introduction were, with the 
 greatest kindness, furnished me by W. E. H. Lecky the 
 Marquis of Sligo, Lady O'Hagan, Mrs. Penrose Fitzger- 
 ald, Sir Louis Mallet, Sir James Caird, and Sir George 
 Young, to representative Unionists, and to represen- 
 tative Nationalists by the Hon. W. R. Grace of New 
 York, John E. Ellis, M. P., Mrs. Green, A. P. Graves, 
 and Charles E. Mallet of London. In Ireland, the 
 Honorary Secretary of the Irish National League, Tim- 
 othy Harrington, M. P., most courteously gave me a cir- 
 cular-letter which secured me the hospitable and serious 
 attention of Nationalists from Kerry to Donegal. Every 
 person I met I tried to draw into conversation upon the 
 condition of the country, and the reasons that made 
 them desire Home Rule, or oppose it. Full notes were 
 taken of every conversation, however apparently unim- 
 portant, and, on reading them over, I found that they 
 contained records of talks with over two hundred people, 
 including officials, landlords, land agents, priests, farmers, 
 professional men, merchants, shopkeepers, commercial 
 travellers, and laborers. Four months is, perhaps, not 
 long enough to find out much about a country so vari- 
 ously interesting as Ireland. If I can, however, succeed 
 in making the reader feel as though he had seen and 
 heard what passed in my presence during those four 
 months, this little book may have been worth the reading. 
 It will, at least, suggest some of the difficulties to be met 
 by any statesman and by any nation that proposes finally
 
 PREFACE. VI 1 
 
 "and at once to solve the group of problems so long un- 
 fortunately known as " the Irish question." 
 
 To the kindness and interest of the ladies and gentle- 
 men I have mentioned I desire to acknowledge my in- 
 debtedness for a most delightful and instructive summer ; 
 and those who were my friends, acquaintances, and hosts 
 in Ireland will well know that, if I do not thank them 
 personally in this place, I am not the less grateful for 
 their kindness and hospitality. Whatever the event of 
 the future, may it bring them nothing but peace and 
 happiness ! 
 
 GEORGE PELLEW.
 
 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE AGRARIAN AGITATION AND THE LAND ACTS. 
 
 In the volume of the "State Papers " for 1557, there is 
 a despatch from the Lord Deputy to Queen Elizabeth, 
 recommending the appointment for Ireland of " Commis- 
 sioners to settle the rent " to be taken by landlords from 
 their tenants, and also of a " Commission to compound 
 for arrears." ' That the legislation of the last few years 
 in regard to the tenure of land in Ireland has been along 
 the lines suggested more than three hundred years ago, 
 proves that special and permanent conditions have iso- 
 lated the Irish people from the general tendency of civil- 
 ization, a tendency that has invariably been from " status " 
 to " contract," from perpetual state interference to the 
 greatest possible freedom of individual action. 
 
 " That condition of society in which the land suitable 
 for tillage can be regarded as a mere commodity, the 
 subject of trade, and can be let to the highest bidder in 
 an open market, has never, except under special circum- 
 stances, existed in Ireland." ^ This fact is the reason 
 for the existence of the "Irish Land Question." Under 
 
 ' T. M. Healy : " A Word for Ireland," iSS6, p. 7. 
 
 ^ " Report of the ' Bessborough ' Commission," 18S1, p. 4.
 
 2 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 the early tribal system the land was owned by the tribe 
 in common, with the exception of a certain portion that 
 was held by an elective chief for the time being. No 
 permanent interest in the land existed under this system, 
 " tanistry," as it was called, and no people has ever 
 become civilized till it has been discarded. Such indefi- 
 niteness of individual rights was abhorrent to English 
 notions of law and order, and wherever the conquering 
 power of England extended, the chiefs or their succes- 
 sors were held to be the owners of the soil, and the people 
 tenants at will or from year to year. This change, if it 
 had come about by imperceptible stages and naturally, as 
 in England, or even if it had been enforced throughout 
 the whole country and at once, would have been acqui- 
 esced in and would have made for civilization ; but the 
 conquest of Ireland was an intermittent and piecemeal 
 conquest, that for centuries kept the country in con- 
 fusion. Within the " pale " English law prevailed ; out- 
 side, anarchy mitigated by survivals of tribal customs. 
 Later came the period of " plantations." Under Eliza- 
 beth the vast property of the Desmonds was confiscated. 
 In the times of the first Stuarts, Ulster was planted. By 
 the "Act of Settlement," in 1653, Ireland was again dis- 
 tributed among adventurers and soldiers, and the natives 
 were removed beyond the Shannon. Under William III. 
 over a million acres were escheated, and " when he died 
 there did not remain in the hands of Catholics one sixth 
 of the lands which their grandfathers held " after the 
 passing of the Act of Settlement. During all these cen- 
 turies it is clear that the tenure of land was not regu- 
 lated by contract. When the original occupiers were 
 allowed to remain, they remained as serfs rather than as 
 tenants, and when they were replaced by others the new
 
 INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 settlers were selected for special reasons, military, re- 
 ligious, or political. 
 
 To this long continuance of social confusion are due 
 the facts that especially characterize the " Irish Land 
 Question " : the low standard of living among the peas- 
 antry ; the absence of improvements by the landlords ; 
 and the limitation of industry to agriculture. The 
 "potato," introduced in the early part of the seventeenth 
 century, soon became the popular crop of the country, 
 for " it was easily raised, the yield was great, and the 
 produce was too bulky to be carried away by plunderers," 
 Improvements by a landlord are the result of agree- 
 ment or contract, and as the tenants came in only by 
 custom or favor they were naturally neither expected 
 nor demanded. Moreover, in the tribal period the chiefs 
 certainly made no " improvements," building no fences 
 for their people, for the people were too little civilized to 
 need more than they could do themselves ; and in the 
 later period the new landlords made no " improvements," 
 for they were often needy adventurers, and even a rich 
 man would be beggared by building houses and fences 
 for a tenantry so numerous and with such small holdings. 
 Manufactures were naturally slow to arise in such a 
 society. Even in England, manufactures were confined 
 chiefly to the northern counties, to the neighborhood 
 of the large coal fields, and in Ireland coal of a good 
 quality is not to be found. Two manufactures only 
 attained prosperity, those of linen and of wool, for the 
 climate and soil of Ulster were peculiarly suited to the 
 growth of flax, and the wool of the Irish sheep was 
 unusually fine ; but the woollen industry was practically 
 destroyed by Act of Parliament under the influence of 
 the mistaken political economy of the eighteenth century.
 
 4 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 During the French and the Peninsular wars farming 
 became exceptionally profitable, and under the protective 
 tariff the Irish farmers enjoyed almost a monopoly, at 
 artificial prices, in supplying English markets. Between 
 1780 and 1846 flour mills sprang up like magic wherever 
 there was water-power, and great quantities of wheat and 
 wheaten flour were exported. In the south of Ireland 
 the grass-lands were broken up and planted with this 
 lucrative crop. 
 
 In 1795 the franchise was extended to Catholics, with 
 freeholds of the value of forty shillings a year, and as the 
 restrictions on the holding of land by Catholics had been 
 before this time repealed, all restraints on subdivision 
 were cast aside, and an enormous number of small hold- 
 ings replaced the comparatively large farms of earlier 
 times. For a while all went well. Meadow-land, and 
 even bog moor, was found capable of producing excel- 
 lent crops of the best wheat and the largest potatoes. 
 " But how were these enormous crops grown ? By 
 precipitating or rendering soluble the phosphates. How 
 was this done ? By skimming off and burning into 
 ashes the whole of the upper two inches of the surface 
 of the ancient grass lands, the very cream and marrow 
 of the land, where for years, and in many cases for centu- 
 ries, lay the accumulated vegetable matter of the soil."* 
 Land was let for this purpose for two or three guineas 
 per rood by the season, and at a merely nominal outlay 
 a crop was produced that would realize from ^8 to jQw 
 per acre. " Mountain bogs were prepared for potato 
 planting with equal simplicity ; the land was limed, 
 ploughed, and sown, and then all covered with guano 
 and clay. The gain was enormous, and the harvest left 
 
 ' William Pilkington : " Help for Ireland," 1887, p. 4. ^ Id.
 
 IN TR on UC TION. 5 
 
 the land, " which had hitherto been scarcely worth one 
 shilling per acre, in excellent order for sowing corn 
 crops or grass seeds, and permanently worth at least ^i 
 per acre."' The practice of land burning extended 
 over Ireland. " Three fourths of the arable land in the 
 provinces of Munster, Leinster, and Connaught have 
 been treated in this destructive manner." Life was easy, 
 and early marriages became the rule. In 1847 the popu- 
 lation had risen to nine millions, having more than 
 doubled in fifty years, while at the same time the food- 
 producing power of the land had decreased. The 
 neglect to use fresh seed predisposed the potatoes to dis- 
 ease. Partial famines occurred every few years during 
 the first half of the century, and in 1847 the potato crop 
 was a total failure. In 1851 the population of Ireland 
 was six millions and a half. 
 
 A condition suitable for freedom of contract in respect 
 to land, it was clear, had not yet been reached in Ireland, 
 for the farmers were ignorant and short-sighted, paying 
 fancy prices, fines, and bonuses gladly for the posses- 
 sion of land as for a share in a lottery, and the landlords 
 had complete control of the only means of subsistence. 
 
 In 1843 a commission, the " Devon " Commission, was 
 appointed to inquire " into the state of the law and 
 practice in respect to the occupation of land in Ireland," 
 and in 1845 its report was presented to Parliament. The 
 Ulster custom of " Tenant Right " was fully described, 
 by which a tenant is allowed to " obtain from his succes- 
 sor a sum of money, partly in remuneration of his ex- 
 penditure and partly as a price paid for the possession 
 of land which the new tenant would have no other 
 means of acquiring." On the 9th of June, 1845, Lord 
 ' Trench ; " Realities of Irish Life," London, ch. vii.
 
 6 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 Stanley introduced a bill " for the purpose of providing 
 compensation to tenants in Ireland, in certain cases, on 
 being dispossessed of their holdings, for such improve- 
 ments as they may have made during their tenancy," 
 and immediately afterwards Mr. Sharman Crawford 
 moved for leave to bring in a " Tenant Right Bill," but 
 both were rejected. The " famine " was followed by a 
 series of evictions on an enormous scale, and in 1850 
 there was organized " The Tenant League," to establish 
 the principles that " a fair valuation of rent be made 
 between landlord and tenant in Ireland " ; that " the 
 tenant should not be disturbed in his possession so long 
 as he paid such rent " ; and that " the tenant should 
 have a right to sell his interest, with all its incidents, at 
 the highest market value." ' 
 
 In 1848 the "Encumbered Estates Act" was passed 
 to facilitate the sale of estates heavily charged with in- 
 debtedness on the petition of owner or creditor, giving 
 the purchaser a simple and indefeasible form of title. 
 The properties of many old Irish families were sacrificed 
 under the Act, and purchased by business men, for the 
 most part Irish men, as an investment, who for the first 
 time dealt with the tenants upon principles of rigid con- 
 tract. " Although not blind to the hardships which often 
 attend this greater strictness," wrote Mr. Sullivan, " I 
 consider the new system has introduced few more val- 
 uable reforms than this, which enforces method, punc- 
 tuality, and precision in the half-yearly settlements 
 between landlord and tenant in Ireland."' 
 
 In 1870 an Act was passed giving tenants, in case of 
 capricious eviction, compensation for the disturbance, 
 and on leaving their holdings voluntarily or upon notice 
 
 'A. M. Sullivan: " New Ireland," ch. xiii. ^ Id., ch. xii.
 
 IN TR OD UC TION. y 
 
 from the landlord, compensation for improvements. By 
 the so-called " Bright clauses " the creation of a peasant 
 proprietary was encouraged by the loan by the Board of 
 Works of two thirds of the purchase money. For the 
 next five or six years the price of cattle was high, and 
 the competition for farms so great that rents rose enor- 
 mously, but were paid generally without complaint. In 
 1877 a series of bad seasons began, culminating with 
 a partial famine in 1879. The farmers were impover- 
 ished by forced sales upon a falling market, and in the 
 autumn the Land League was formed by Michael Davitt. 
 The Land Act had given the tenants compensation on 
 eviction, but what they wanted was " fixity of tenure " at 
 a "fair rent." The Land Act provided for "the con- 
 version of occupiers into owners by the slow process of 
 individual agreement " with the landlord, but the occu- 
 piers wanted to become owners at once. The League 
 then proposed the compulsory sale to the tenants of any 
 estate upon the tender of a sum equal to twenty years' 
 purchase of its " Poor Law " valuation, and meantime 
 urged every member to take no farm from which a ten- 
 ant had been evicted, to offer to pay a "fair rent" only, 
 equal to the " Poor Law " valuation, and if that was 
 refused, to pay no rent at all. The " valuation " referred 
 to was begun in 1S58 by Mr. Richard Griffith, as a 
 basis for the assessment of local rates. It varied greatly 
 in different parts of the country, and was considered at 
 the time to be, except in Ulster, twenty-five per cent, be- 
 low a fair letting value. 
 
 In 1881 the " Bessborough " Commission reported to 
 Parliament these important conclusions : " The farmer 
 bargains with his landlord, under sentence of losing his 
 living if the bargain goes off. . . . We grant that it would
 
 8 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 be inexpedient to interfere with freedom of contract be- 
 tween landlord and tenant, if freedom of contract really 
 existed, but freedom of contract, in the case of the majority 
 of Irish tenants, large or small, does not really exist.* 
 . . . The farmer should no longer be liable to the dis- 
 placement of his interest in his holding, either directly 
 by ejectment, or indirectly by the raising of his rent at 
 the discretion of the landlord. The landlord's right to 
 eject should, we think, be limited to certain stated cases, 
 and some way should be provided for the determination 
 of the fair amount of rent to be paid in cases of dispute.'"' 
 A Land Act was at once passed in accordance with these 
 views. "A great and noble measure," said Mr. Sullivan, 
 " a charter of freedom for the long-oppressed tenantry of 
 Ireland." ' 
 
 The Act created a Board of Land Commissioners with 
 power to fix a fair rent in the case of agricultural ten- 
 ancies, with certain exceptions, on the application of 
 either landlord or tenant, the rent then to remain un- 
 changed for a period of fifteen years. So long as the 
 tenant paid his rent and observed the covenants of his 
 lease he was not to be evicted, and he Avas allowed to 
 sell his tenant right, subject to the option of the landlord 
 to buy it at a price to be decided by the commissioners. 
 Still larger advances than before were also allowed to 
 tenants purchasing their holdings. These provisions in- 
 volved, in the words of the " Bessborough " Commission, 
 " a certain loss to the landlord, namely, that of his legal 
 reversion, considered as a piece of substantial property. 
 His greatest loss, however," is " that of sentiment — of the 
 sentiment of ownership." * This beneficent measure got 
 
 ' Report, p. 21. ' Id., p. 19. ' " New Ireland : A Sequel " ch. iv. 
 * Report, p. 20.
 
 IN TR OD UC TION. g 
 
 no fair play from the Land League. " Not merely was 
 it decried, denounced, and scorned, but its contents or 
 provisions were shamefully misrepresented. To say a 
 good word for it was rank heresy in the popular ranks. 
 To call it a mockery and a fraud was the orthodox pro- 
 fession of faith." ' Yet, "as a rule, the reductions given 
 under the Act averaged twenty per cent." " 
 
 At Tyrone Mr. Parnell announced the doctrine that 
 the landlords were justly entitled only to .the "prairie 
 value " of the land, its value as it was in an uncultivated 
 condition, as the logical deduction from the " Land Act," 
 founding himself on a declaration by John Bright that 
 "if the land of Ireland were stripped of the improve- 
 ments made upon it by the labor of the occupier, the 
 face of the country would be as bare and naked as an 
 American prairie." 
 
 The smallness of the reductions at first given by the 
 Land Commissioners and the frequent appeals made by 
 the landlords, grievously disappointed the hopes of the 
 farmers. The creation of a new salable interest in the 
 " tenant right " was soon found to be a mixed blessing. 
 The " tenant right " was at once used as a convenient 
 method for raising money, and this money was spent not 
 so much in " improvements " as in more expensive living. 
 The combination of " free sale " with " fair rent " was 
 found to be impracticable. The " land hunger " was given 
 freer play than ever before, with the difference that the 
 competitive price for a farm was given to the out-going 
 tenant instead of to the landlord, and the only persons 
 benefited were the tenants in occupation when the Act 
 was passed. Enormous prices were often paid for the 
 
 ' A. M. Sullivan: "New Ireland : A Sequel," ch. iii., p. 458. 
 " T. P. O'Connor : " The Parnell Movement," p.. 135.
 
 lO IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 tenant right. On the property of Captain Hill in Done- 
 gal, in 1883, ^60 were paid for the tenant right of a farm 
 rented for ten shillings a year, 120 times the rent — or, as 
 the phrase is, 120 years' purchase of the rent. Out of a 
 hundred cases of such sales that have been tabulated, in 
 forty-six, over twenty years' purchase was paid ; in thir- 
 teen, over thirty years' ; in ten, over forty years' ; and 
 in six, over fifty years' purchase was paid. In all cases 
 where over twenty-five years' purchase is paid for the 
 " tenant right," the practical result is more than to 
 double the rent of the new tenant, if the money could 
 have been invested at 4 per cent. Sales of tenant right 
 were accordingly promptly denounced by the League 
 as " land-grabbing." Boycotting and outrages prevailed 
 throughout the country, and in October after the passing 
 of the Land Act the Land League was suppressed, and 
 was at once succeeded by the "Irish National League." 
 
 In 1882, by the "Arrears Act," any tenant whose 
 rent did not exceed ^^30 a year was allowed to appeal to 
 the Land Commissioners for an extension of the time 
 within which to pay the arrears, and in hard cases the 
 landlord was compelled to wipe out the arrears upon 
 payment of one year's rent by the tenant and of another 
 by the government. 
 
 Since 1881 the prices of agricultural produce have 
 fallen continuously, with the exception of a sudden but 
 short-lived rise in cattle in 1883, in consequence of the 
 increasing severity of American competition. The Land 
 Commissioners gave larger and larger reductions in the 
 rent as time went by, but failed to satisfy the farmers. 
 " There was an average fall of 22.3 per cent, in the 
 prices of the nine chief articles of produce in 1885, com- 
 pared with the prices of the same articles in the six
 
 IN TR OD UC TION. 1 1 
 
 years ending 1878, while the judicial rents fixed up to 
 August, 1885, are only 19.4 percent, lower than the old 
 rents."' Leaseholders who were not entitled to go into 
 the land courts, and farmers whose rents were fixed in 
 the early days of the Act, when prices were high, were 
 bitterly discontented when they noticed the reductions 
 awarded to their luckier neighbors. By the end of 
 August, 1886, 176,800 "fair rents " had been fixed by 
 the Land Commissioners, but by that time there was 
 open rebellion against the rents fixed prior to 1885. In 
 October of 1886 the " Plan of Campaign," so called, was 
 formulated by Mr. Dillon at Woodford, on the property 
 of Lord Clanricarde. The " plan " itself was widely cir- 
 culated in the form of a broadside, and was briefly 
 described in United Irelandiox October 23d as follows : 
 " The tenantry on any one estate were advised to assemble 
 under the presidency either of the priest or any intelli- 
 gent and sturdy member of their body, in order to con- 
 sult, and, after consulting, decide by resolution on the 
 amount of abatement they would demand. Every one 
 present was to pledge himself to abide by the decision of 
 the majority, to hold no communication with the land- 
 lord or any of his agents, except in presence of the 
 body of the ten'antry, and to accept no settlement for 
 himself which was not given to every tenant on the 
 estate. Should the agent decline the abated rent offered, 
 it was to be deposited with a managing committee, to be 
 placed by them with a secretary, trustee, or trustees. 
 This money was then called the Estate Fund, and was 
 * absolutely at the disposal of the managing committee 
 for the purpose of the fight.' The employment of the 
 > Pierce Mahony, M. P., and John J. Clancy, M. P.: "The 
 Land Crisis," London, 1886.
 
 12 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 fund was to depend on the course the landlord would 
 pursue, but it was recommended that it should in general 
 be devoted to the support of the tenants who were dis- 
 possessed either by sale or ejectment. Dependence was 
 placed on the National League to take care, in the event 
 of loss of any deposited money through individual dis- 
 honesty, or in the event of the demands upon it out- 
 running the fund, the grants would be continued to 
 struggling tenants from funds otherwise obtained. There 
 were other details as to procedure in case of ejectment, 
 sale, distress, or bankruptcy proceedings of less interest, 
 and one paragraph stated 'that no landlord should get 
 one penny rent anywhere on any part of his estate, 
 wherever situated, so long as he has one tenant unjustly 
 evicted.'" 
 
 Nor was a ^' Purchase Act," generally known as Lord 
 Ashbourne's Act, given a fair trial, though it provided 
 for the advance of purchase money to tenants on easier 
 terms than ever before. Tbe " Plan of Campaign " was 
 conducted by Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien, M. P., on 
 their personal responsibility, but the opposition to " pur- 
 chase " was warmly instigated by the National League. 
 "The National League," said Mx. Dillon to the Bally- 
 haunis tenantry, '' intended to lay down a law, wherever 
 it had power, that no estate shall be bought on which ten- 
 ants have been evicted, until every tenant evicted since 
 1879 had been put back again in his holding. . . . On 
 estates where the rents were rack-rents, they should allow 
 no man to sell his interest ; for the man who sold his in- 
 terest on a rack-rented estate, and allowed a m.an of 
 means, a man of trade, to come in, was one of the tenants' 
 greatest enemies. The man of means would be the first 
 to go in by the back door and betray his .feUow-ten-
 
 IN TROD UCTION. 1 3 
 
 ants whenever they stood out for a reduction in their 
 rents." ' 
 
 The " Plan of Campaign " was at once adopted on the 
 properties of Lord Clanricarde in County Galway, of the 
 Marquis of Lansdowne at Luggacurran, in County Meath ; 
 of Mr. Brooke at Coolgreany, in County Wexford ; of 
 Colonel O'Callaghan at Bodyke, in County Clare ; of 
 Mr. Ponsonby at Youghal, and Lady Kingston at Mit- 
 chelstown, in County Cork ; and of the O'Grady at Her- 
 bartstown in County Limerick. The landlords generally 
 felt themselves aggrieved by the compulsory reductions 
 of their rent, and held the more firmly by the rights they 
 thought still left to them. An all-round reduction, even 
 in the case of non-judicial rents — rents not fixed by the 
 courts, — seemed to them unjust, and often ruinous. The 
 result of the " Plan " was a series of attempts at eviction, 
 more or less successful, by the landlords, and a cessation 
 of all payment of rent by the tenants on the estates 
 involved. 
 
 The " National League " itself disclaimed any respon- 
 sibility for the " Plan," but adopted practically the agra- 
 rian theories of the " Land League." The Land Law 
 Reform it proposed was thus stated in its Constitution : 
 
 " The creation of an occupying ownership or Peasant 
 Proprietary by an amendment of the Purchase Clauses 
 of the Land Act of 1881, so as to secure the advance by 
 the State of the whole of the purchase money, and the 
 extension of the period of repayment over sixty-three 
 years. 
 
 " The transfer, by compulsory purchase, to county 
 boards, of the land not cultivated by the owners, and not 
 in the occupation of tenants, for re-sale or re-letting to 
 
 ^ Freeman s Journal, Nov 15, 1S86.
 
 14 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 laborers and small fanners in plots of grazing common- 
 ages. 
 
 "The protection from the imposition of rent on im- 
 provements made by the tenant or his predecessors in 
 title, to be effected by an amendment of the Healy clause 
 of the Land Act of 1881. 
 
 '' The admission of leaseholders and other excluded 
 classes to all the benefits of the Land Act. . . . 
 
 " The levying of taxes (now raised off all farming 
 lands) upon grass lands, and the graduation of such 
 taxes, so as to place the greater part of the burden on 
 large farms. 
 
 " The breaking of all covenants compelling tenants not 
 to till their holdings." 
 
 In the meantime fresh interest was added to the dis- 
 cussion of the *' Land Question " by a letter by Sir James 
 Caird to the Times.^ "The land in Ireland," he said, 
 " is held by two distinct classes of tenants : the small 
 farmers who pay rent from ^\ to ^2^20, and the compar- 
 atively large farmers who pay rent from ^20 upwards. 
 Of the first class there are 538,000 holdings, averaging 
 ^6 each ; of the second class, 121,000 holdings, aver- 
 aging ;^56 each. ... If the present price of agricul- 
 tural produce continue, I should fear that from the land 
 held by the large body of poor farmers in Ireland any 
 economical rent has for the present disappeared." In 
 the autumn Sir James Caird was appointed a member of 
 the " Cowper " Commission, to inquire into the reason 
 for the failure of the Land Acts, and its report the fol- 
 lowing year was immediately followed by a new Act, 
 under which, throughout Ireland, the "judicial rents" 
 that were to remain untouched for fifteen years have been 
 
 ' March, 18S6.
 
 IN TR OD UC TION. 1 5 
 
 reduced, on an average, fifteen per cent., and which ad- 
 mitted leaseholders to have their leases broken and their 
 rents re-settled. 
 
 At the present time in Ireland the only tenants still 
 bound by their contracts with their landlords are tenants 
 of holdings not agricultural nor pastoral in character ; 
 tenants of demesne land, that is, land held by the owner 
 in connection with the mansion house or home farm and 
 let temporarily ; tenants of " town parks," that is, land 
 used in part for the accommodation of a town ; tenants 
 of land let mainly for pasture, of a valuation of ^50 or 
 over ; tenants who hold their land as laborers or servants ; 
 or who hold their land in conacre,^ or for temporary graz- 
 ing, or for a particular temporary purpose ; tenants of 
 cottage allotments, of not over half an acre ; and " ecclesi- 
 astical persons " occupying glebe lands. Every one else 
 may serve a notice on his landlord to have a fair rent 
 fixed by the Land Court, and in fixing the rent no rent 
 is charged on improvements, by him or his predecessors. 
 "Improvements" is taken to include tillage, manure, 
 etc., the benefit of which is unexhausted, and any work 
 which is suitable to the holding, and which adds to its 
 letting value. The presumption is taken to be that the 
 improvements were made by the tenants if made since 
 1870, or within twenty years before. Finally, in making 
 reductions, reference is to be had to the faU in prices 
 since the lease was made or the rent fixed.* 
 
 The tenant may have paid nothing to anybody on 
 coming into possession of his farm, but he has now, so 
 long as he . pays rent, an interest almost amounting to a 
 
 ' " A letting in conacre is merely the sale of a crop, with a license 
 to enter on the land for the purpose of planting, tilling, and takini; it 
 away." ^ Healy : "The Land Act of 18S7."
 
 1 6 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 joint-tenancy with the landlord, in perpetuity, which he 
 can sell for all it will fetch in open market. 
 
 It is, moreover, to be remembered that the rents usual 
 in Ireland, even before the Land Acts, were not, as a 
 rule, the full commercial rents, as were the rents demanded 
 for similar land in England and Scotland. Such is ex- 
 pressly stated in the Report of the " Bessborough Com- 
 mission." It is also to be remembered that the prices of 
 agricultural produce, though falling steadily, are still 
 higher than they were on the average in 1858. 
 
 If, then, after having his rent reduced a tenant wishes 
 to buy his farm, and can agree with his landlord as to the 
 price, the government will advance him the whole of the 
 purchase money, which he can repay with interest at 3-^ 
 per cent., by annual instalments of 4 per cent, a year, be- 
 coming the owner of the farm at the end of forty-nine 
 years. These yearly payments will seldom amount to 
 more than three quarters of the rent he would otherwise 
 pay. The average price paid in such cases has been a 
 little over eighteen years' purchase of the rent, that is, if 
 the rent is ^100 a year, the price agreed on would be 
 _p/^T,8oo, 4 per cent, on which with interest would be ^{^74- 
 The government, then, pays the landlord ^1,800 and 
 charges the tenant ^74 a year for forty-nine years ; at 
 the end of that time the tenant owns the farm. 
 
 In addition to these special benefits, the condition of 
 the tenant has been considerably improved in other re- 
 spects during the present century. Since 1838, the 
 tithes, and later the rent charges which took their place, 
 have been assessed directly on the landlord instead of on 
 the tenant; since 1870, half the county cess, the chief 
 tax in the country, has been paid by the landlord, who 
 also has to pay in respect of holdings of over £\ valua-
 
 INTRODUCTION. 1 7 
 
 tion half the poor rates, the only remaining general tax, 
 and in respect of all other holdings, the whole of the poor 
 rates. 
 
 The Irish farmer, it was hoped by the landlords, would 
 be now contented. The " three F's," the nickname ap- 
 plied to the " Free Sale, Fair Rents, and Fixity of Ten- 
 ure," that had been the limit of the demands of the 
 Tenant Right League, had now been granted, the judicial 
 rents had been reduced, and the holders of leases expir- 
 ing within ninety-nine years from 1881, had been given 
 the privileges allowed tenants from year to year, and they 
 had been the chief supporters of the " Plan of Campaign." 
 Four hundred tenants on the " Kingston estate," and 
 five hundred on the " Ponsonby estate," went into the 
 court, and the latter received the other day 22 per cent, 
 reduction, instead of the 25 per cent, they demanded, and 
 their demands were finally granted in full by the landlord. 
 
 As early as October last the opinion of the popular 
 leaders was expressed by Mr. O'Brien at Mallow,* that 
 the " Plan " had been a success, and had been justified. 
 "Only 140 men were evicted out of the 30,000 tenants," 
 he declared, *' who, to my own knowledge, lodged their 
 money under the Plan of Campaign in Ireland. . . . But 
 that is not all, because I can state to you from facts with- 
 in my own knowledge that, within the last ten days, we 
 have received offers upon three or four of the great es- 
 tates, offers to reinstate one hundred and fifteen of the 
 one hundred and forty tenants, to reinstate every one of 
 them upon terms that the tenants would have jumi)ed at 
 twelve months ago, but they are in no hurry to jump at 
 them now. , . . I find the universal feeling prevail- 
 ing through the country that fifty per cent, of the rents is 
 ' Freeman s Journal, October 31, 1S87,
 
 I8 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 the very utmost that can be wrung this winter out of the 
 unfortunate tenants by swords — or by bayonets, for that 
 matter. . . . We clung to the new Land Act as long as 
 there was a shadow of hope of adequate redress for our 
 poor people under it. . . . They mauled it and they 
 mangled it to please the House of Lords, and now . . . 
 they have turned it into a downright curse and a down- 
 right mockery by appointing a lot of broken-down rack- 
 renters and bumbailiffs to administer it." Nothing, he 
 concluded, remained save to continue the " Plan." And 
 in respect to the "purchase clauses," the Act is also con- 
 demned. " The people," said Mr. Conybeare,' M. P., at 
 Westport, in County Mayo, September last, " the people 
 must not buy the land ; they will get it for nothing from 
 an Irish Parliament. The man who told them to give 
 the landlord the price of their own improvements was 
 their enemy. He was a wolf in sheep's clothing." The 
 Natio7i of August 27th, finally, gives this positive advice 
 to the people : " We have no hesitation in declaring 
 now that the farmer who pays a rent that his land has 
 not realized over and above all the cost of production 
 and family maintenance, is a fool, and that whoever 
 would assist him to pay it is no friend of Ireland." 
 
 This slight introduction is, perhaps, sufficient to make 
 intelligible the following conversations, which do not 
 represent, it is true, the relative number of the different 
 opinions I heard, but which do express with considerable 
 accuracy the various arguments and illustrations. 
 ' " The Western People," Ballina, October i, 1887.
 
 PART I.— IN LEINSTER. 
 
 A MEETING OF A CLUB IN DUBLIN. 
 
 The club was invited to meet one of the most dis- 
 tinguished of Irish patriots. Besides the guest of the 
 evening there were present a distinguished professor of 
 Trinity College, a well-known political economist, an 
 Irish representative of a large English woollen firm, an 
 Englishman intimate with the leaders of the Unionist 
 party in Parliament, several young members of the Prot- 
 estant Home Rule Association, some American visitors, 
 and twenty or thirty others. The subjects of discussion 
 were Gladstone's Home Rule Bill, and the settlement of 
 the Land Question. The guest of the evening, with his 
 bright eyes twinkling under a finely wrinkled brow, was 
 speaking slowly in a strained voice as I entered. The 
 Irish Parliament should, so soon as it was established, 
 buy out the landlords by an annuity of three per cent, on 
 a sum equal to twenty-one years' purchase of their 
 rentals. " This," said he, " would be only fair, and it 
 would keep with us a body of men, an educated class, 
 that the nation cannot afford to be without." " That 
 would be well enough," cried some one, "if we could 
 force the landlords to live here." Another objected 
 that, in competition with America, the country could not 
 afford the extra tax. 
 
 "American competition is exaggerated," suggested the 
 commercial traveller. " The American soil is decreasing
 
 20 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 yearly in fertility, while the Irish land is perennially fer- 
 tile. The substitution of a small charge for the present 
 rents would be an immediate boon to the farmer. With 
 the sense of security thrift would increase. Ireland is 
 now but half cultivated, and the present produce of al- 
 most every farmer might be easily doubled. The burden 
 will be lighter every year, and in a generation it will 
 cease for ever." 
 
 An American observed that it was true the fertility of 
 the Western prairies was soon exhausted. The farmer 
 there usually purchased with borrowed money or on 
 mortgage, and so had often heavy annual charges. The 
 cost of transportation had reached its lowest point. 
 Prices had fallen as low as they ever would. 
 
 " Do you call that just," cried out a sharp-voiced pro- 
 fessor, " when prices are temporarily low to deprive the 
 landlords of their estates at the depressed value ? I call 
 that robbery. How can you expect to raise a great 
 nation on a foundation of robbery and petty fraud ?" 
 The remonstrance was received with a smile. 
 
 The farmers, it was admitted, would for some years 
 have to struggle with low prices ; but our guest suggest- 
 ed that such a great revolution as was proposed could 
 not be accomplished without sacrifice and privation, and 
 that by the method he proposed the privation would be 
 only temporary. 
 
 Some one argued that the new tenant proprietors would 
 become landlords in their turn, and would let at extor- 
 tionate rents. ''There is a great difference," was the 
 reply, "between landlords and landlordism. The evils 
 of landlordism consist in the existence of an alien and 
 absentee class who take the whole, or as nearly as pos- 
 sible the whole, of the produce of the soil from the farm-
 
 IN LEINSTER. 21 
 
 er, and -whenever the harvest is below the average, turn 
 him out to starve. These evils are due chiefly to the 
 accumulation of property in the hands of a few through 
 primogeniture ; to the unjust laws that let the tenant be 
 deprived of the value of his improvements ; and to the 
 difficulty of getting new holdings through the expensive- 
 ness of conveyancing. Under the new system we should 
 have native landlords in sympathy with their tenants ; 
 primogeniture should be abolished by one of the first acts 
 of the new Parliament, which should also enforce fixity 
 of tenure at a fair rental." 
 
 "If you allowed 'free sale,'" exclaimed another, "you 
 would certainly bring back landlordism." 
 
 " Why so ? " asked a professor ; " in France land is 
 bought and sold as freely as any other commodity, and 
 yet, though there are landlords in France, there is no 
 landlordism. Abolished by the French Revolution, the 
 popular sentiment and the testamentary laws have pre- 
 vented its revival. May not such a great social revolu- 
 tion as ours have the same result ? " 
 
 Our guest summed up the matter with a judicial air : 
 " So long as human nature remains the same there un- 
 questionably will be landlords, and in spite of any laws 
 that may be devised, it will be possible for excessive rent 
 to be exacted from improvident or imwise tenants that 
 will reduce them to starvation. But with the extension 
 of education and the gradual rising of the standard of 
 living, there will be naturally developed intelligent habits 
 of self-protection that will prevent tenants generally 
 from making bargains absurdly opposed to their own 
 interests." 
 
 A member asked what was thought of the exclusion 
 of the Irish members from Westminster. "It is said,"
 
 22 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 was the answer, " that Ireland will lose her voice in the 
 government of the colonies ; but that is of no conse- 
 quence, for Parliament does not now govern the colonies. 
 It is said that Ireland will be deprived of all power in 
 determining the imperial policy for v/ar or peace, but no 
 great question of foreign policy has yet been determined 
 by the votes of the Irish members. We are losing 
 nothing of value. On the contrary, we shall need all our 
 best talent for the next few years in our Irish Parliament, 
 and cannot spare a hundred able and experienced 
 Irishmen for Westminster." 
 
 Some one suggested that the retention of the Irish 
 members was prompted by a latent wish to keep Ireland 
 within the taxable area of the empire. " If we are rep- 
 resented there, they will tax us ; if we are not, they will 
 not dare to." 
 
 '' Lord Salisbury and Lord Hartington," said the 
 Englishman, in answer to a question, " are as sincerely 
 anxious as Gladstone to provide a measure conciliatory 
 to Ireland." " The difference between them, " exclaimed 
 an Irishman, " is that Gladstone wants a Home-Rule 
 bill that will satisfy the Irish members, and his opponents 
 want a bill that will not satisfy them." ''Chamberlain," 
 said a professor, " has had to surrender his local-board 
 scheme for that very reason. I was at that great repre- 
 sentative meeting in the Rotundo in 1879, that asked for 
 a Parliament for local affairs substantially similar to 
 Gladstone's Parliament. The only evidence we have is 
 that that is what the Irish people want, and that has been 
 accepted by the whole Parnellite party." 
 
 Criticism was made of the anomaly proposed by Glad- 
 stone of a house with two orders instead of two houses. 
 " Instead of a system that has been tried with fair sue-
 
 IN LEINSTER. 23 
 
 cess throughout the world," said our guest, *' Gladstone 
 has substituted one that no one has ever tried anywhere." 
 " It existed in Scotland," said the professor. " The 
 most corrupt Parliament that ever was," was the retort. 
 " Also in the Irish Disestablished Church," he continued. 
 " That is not much in its favor." 
 
 The chairman suggested that the most important ques- 
 tion was as to the powers of the Parliament, though that 
 might seem a matter of detail. 
 
 *' No sooner shall we have a Parliament on College 
 Green," said a professor, "than there will arise more and 
 more serious questions between the two countries than 
 ever before. The Irish Parliament will insist on exceed- 
 ing its powers, by laws protecting trade and Romanizing 
 education, that will be vetoed by England. That will in- 
 crease national hatred. As for the home measures, they 
 will be absurd. For my part, let an Irish Parliament 
 rule India, and discuss the defences of Afghanistan, but 
 let them keep their hands off my and my friends' busi- 
 ness at home. Any thing but that." Everybody smiled 
 as the professor sat down and another professor rose. 
 "You must remember," said he, "that sovereignty is 
 single and absolute : you cannot give it and retain it ; 
 you cannot retain it and give it. If Mr. Gladstone's bill 
 amounts to any thing, it means that as to Irish affairs 
 the Irish Parliament is to have the sovereign power, and 
 no other body. Otherwise the bill gives merely a nomi- 
 nal sovereignty and will satisfy nobody." "Why do you 
 wish for a change of government ? " retorted his un- 
 abashed opponent. " A hundred years ago unjust and 
 barbarous laws were common everywhere, and Ireland 
 has been no worse off than any other country. England 
 has governed Ireland as well as she has governed her-
 
 24 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 self." "Your argument," was the answer, " seems to be 
 that since England has been unable to govern herself 
 well, she should continue to govern Ireland. The trouble 
 lies in this, that one country can never govern another 
 well." The hour was getting late, and the discussion 
 became informal and general when I departed, marvelling 
 at the extraordinary amiability with which these old 
 friends debated so frankly and clearly questions of such 
 exceeding importance. 
 
 THE LORD MAYOR. 
 
 "A good and useful land bill," said the Lord Mayor 
 of Dublin " would not be opposed by the Nationalists 
 simply from the idea that it would injure the cause of 
 Home Rule, though we would not postpone Home Rule 
 for any thing. The land question is difficult and dan- 
 gerous and many say it would be unfair to establish an 
 Irish Parliament until it is settled. It is very fortunate, 
 for instance, that the question of disestablishment has 
 been disposed of. But that is not my feeling. We 
 would face the question manfully and, I believe, wisely ; 
 and I would not postpone Home Rule for any thing. 
 
 *' What guaranties could be given for the payment of 
 purchase money ? A great cry was raised against the 
 imperial guaranty proposed by Gladstone, and it is 
 hard to see how the Conservatives can take it up again. 
 As to local guaranties, neither the grand juries nor the 
 unions could be made guaranteeing bodies. The grand 
 juries are a doomed institution and, instead of having 
 their powers enlarged, should be deprived of those they 
 have. The unions are absolutely unsuited for such a 
 purpose. If the landlords, the ex-officio guardians, vote 
 on the question, it will be considered unfair ; and if the
 
 IN LEINSTER. 2$ 
 
 elected guardians alone vote, no guaranty will ever be 
 given. There is no institution in the country capable 
 of guaranteeing the purchase money. A special body 
 might be constituted by the government, but there would 
 be great difficulties in so doing. No Castle board could 
 give a guaranty worth any thing ; and any board capa- 
 ble of guaranteeing would have to have legislative 
 power, and power to impose and collect taxes and to 
 issue debentures. However, one thing is certain, no 
 matter what boards are chosen or constituted, only the 
 land actually put into the court can or ought to be 
 available as a guaranty for the payment of the money 
 for the landlord's interest in that particular property. A 
 native Parliament ought to be able to do something more 
 than that, and it alone could give a real guaranty. 
 
 "With regard to the suggestion that demesne lands be 
 sold : we are fighting for a principle and can yield in 
 all such non-essentials. That is a theory, and may be 
 modified. The theory, moreover, would mean no inva- 
 sion of private rights. The clause in the National pro- 
 gramme is not to be construed literally. There will be 
 landlords here to the end of time. The old landlord 
 class was, however, a hostile class. The landlords were 
 not only spendthrifts, but were, till lately, debauchees. 
 They speak now against lawlessness, but it was they who 
 used to make the sheriffs swallow their latitats. Nature 
 herself now seems to have come to our relief, and put an 
 end to landlordism ; for the time has come when the 
 land will no longer support two classes of people. 
 
 " An Irish Parliament would give substantial justice 
 to all parties, for it would want peace, and it would be 
 the public interest that all classes should be represented 
 and reconciled. An extreme party could not carry
 
 26 IN CASTLE A AW CABIN. 
 
 through any wild project, for there would have to be 
 there representatives of the gentry and the merchants 
 It is often supposed that an Irish Parliament would con- 
 sist of the present Parnellite M. P.'s, and men of no 
 property. The Parnellite members are sent, however, to 
 Westminster not to legislate but to fight. In our Parlia- 
 ment the men who fought and won the battle will be 
 present, but the other classes will be there too. We are 
 a combative party in the Imperial Parliament, but in our 
 own we would want representative men of a different 
 type, men with practical experience of trade and com- 
 merce. We should have to get the element of stability 
 there ; and the first thing Parnell would do, if he had 
 the choosing of the members, would be to pick out and 
 put in just such men. 
 
 " Do you remember how the legislature was constituted 
 in Gladstone's bill ? In one house there were to be 
 twenty-eight Irish peers, and seventy-five members hav- 
 ing each a personal qualification of p{^2oo per a?imwi, 
 elected for a period of ten years, and by electors rated at 
 ^^25 per annum. This would be a very conservative 
 house. Then in the other house, the present sixteen 
 Unionists from the north of Ireland would be doubled ; 
 and these, with the Upper House, would make, in joint 
 debate, nearly one half of the whole Irish Parliament. 
 How is it possible that injustice should be committed by 
 such a body ? 
 
 " Now, although this particular bill has fallen through, 
 any scheme that will be entertained will and must pro- 
 vide for the inclusion in the Irish Parliament of a class 
 of people who are not now active in the National move- 
 ment, even were the scheme devised by the present Irish 
 members themselves.
 
 IN LEINSTER. 2/ 
 
 " Would a constitution like that of an American State 
 be accepted, with its bill of rights and conservative 
 limitations ? Certainly. We should be fools not to ac- 
 cept such a constitution. Give us the engine and you 
 may put on what brakes you like. The Irish people 
 would not accept a purely administrative body, but 
 would accept any fair measure of Home Rule." 
 
 A UNIONIST. 
 
 A gentleman who has filled many important public 
 positions, who is untiring in his efforts to promote every 
 plan for the improvement of education or the develop- 
 ment of Irish industries, is a strong Unionist. Yet a 
 leading Catholic Nationalist described him to me as 
 being, though a Protestant, " one of our most useful 
 citizens." The opinions of such a man deserve atten- 
 tion. 
 
 " The poverty of the Irish farmer," he said, " is largely 
 due to himself ; he sleeps all the winter, without doing a 
 stroke of work. He and his family do not knit socks, 
 make flannel cloth, or weave flax as they used to ; he 
 does n't drain the fields or improve the roads. A Swiss 
 farmer in his place would grow and work osiers, make 
 straw hats, or do wood-carving. Suppose a man with 
 five or six acres gets ^50 worth of produce. He sows 
 worthless seed, for the people eat the good potatoes and 
 sow the bad, instead of sowing the best. His method of 
 farming is so wasteful and negligent that his farm pro- 
 duces only half what it might. Remove the rent alto- 
 gether, in a family of five or six that would only save a 
 pound apiece. That would not help matters. It is far 
 more a question of diligence and restraint. 
 
 " They neglect the means of money-making at their
 
 28 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 hand. Irish butter, for instance, might always command 
 wholesale a price of a shilling a pound, instead of six- 
 pence, the usual price. The Irish farmer with few cows 
 churns twice a Aveek ; with many cows, every day. The 
 churn is very small. The churnings make successive 
 layers in the firkin ; this is over-salted from ignorance of 
 the market, water is added to make weight, and the 
 churns are seldom clean. The result is that the butter, 
 when it comes to market, is half rancid and is classed as 
 third-rate. The National Board of Education and the 
 papers are always urging the farmers to change their 
 methods. They might have cooperative butter factories 
 as in Belgium and Holland. Some have been started 
 and are successful ; but usually the farmers are too 
 suspicious of one another to work together. Or the land- 
 lord might start a factory, buying the cream from the 
 farmers and selling the butter. But many such factories 
 have been boycotted by the League, and the landlords 
 won't risk the necessary capital. With a better system, 
 the farmers of Ireland could make several million pounds 
 a year extra out of butter. 
 
 " The case is the same with other industries. The 
 Roman Catholic Archbishop of Ross said, in a recent 
 circular : * Apart from the training necessary to handle a 
 boat, there remains the utter want of knowledge and 
 manufacture of the necessary appliances. Take nets as 
 an example. . . . There is not at present one machine 
 for making nets in the whole of Ireland, while in the 
 small town of Peel, in the Isle of Man, there are three 
 large net factories, worked by machinery, affording em- 
 ployment for hundreds of men, women, and children. 
 There is scarcely one, in over a hundred miles of the 
 adjacent coast, competent to make a sail or rope for one
 
 IN LEINSTER. 29 
 
 of their fishing boats. As for fish-curing, one instance 
 will suffice. There is but one pilchard curing establish- 
 ment in Ireland, and that is situated at Baltimore.' Some 
 good will be done by the new Piscatorial School at Bal- 
 timore. 
 
 " The Nationalists always endeaver to conceal the fact 
 that the motive of religion is at the bottom of the Home- 
 Rule agitation. The enmity to the Queen is largely due 
 to the fact that she is a Protestant. The landlords are 
 Protestants, Saxons, and Conservatives, while the tenants 
 are Catholics, Celts, and Nationalists, so that party, race, 
 and creed all combine to set class against class. In the 
 schools the patrons are either Protestant or Catholic, 
 and as a rule the teachers and pupils are either all Prot- 
 estant or all Catholic. 
 
 " However, the power of the ecclesiastics will continue 
 only so long as they advance with the political sentiments 
 of the people. When Home Rule is granted, the priests 
 will all side with the Conservative faction of which Par- 
 nell will be the head. The party of disorder will work 
 heaven and earth to get the priests on their side, but will 
 fail, for a priest can go only a certain length. The 
 priests will not be able to save the country, for they have 
 lost enormously with the people since they have shown 
 that their morality has become the morality of a politi- 
 cian and not that of a man of God. 
 
 "We should have nothing to fear from a Grattan's 
 Parliament, but every thing to fear from a Parliament of 
 men chosen from the riff-raff of the people for the sole 
 purpose of annoying England in every way in their 
 power. The M. P.'s are clever, but so is every Irishman ; 
 and the best of them are such men as Tim Healy, who 
 is animated by a perfectly sincere hatred of the Saxon.
 
 30 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " What Ireland needs more than any thing else is 
 more general, thorough, and technical education. Half 
 the misery of the people comes from ignorance. At the 
 present time ;^8oo,ooo is paid by the Imperial govern- 
 ment for education in Ireland. Proper scientific and 
 artistic instruction would require ;^2oo,ooo more for 
 elementary education alone. The revenues of Ireland 
 were estimated by Gladstone at four millions a year. 
 Could a Home-Rule government afford to pay a million 
 for education ? 
 
 " The financial question is worth considering. The 
 police cost a million pounds. People say most of that 
 would be saved, as we shall not need so many police. 
 If, however, we abolish the Irish Constabulary, we shall 
 have to pay more for others to perform the many and 
 various duties, besides the police duties, of the Constabu- 
 lary. They are, for instance, revenue ofiicers, prevent- 
 ing fraudulent distillation, etc. They are officers of the 
 Registrar General, collecting the statistics of the country. 
 They put in operation the regulations under the Con- 
 tagious Diseases Act. Under fifty or more other Acts 
 of Parliament they are the acting agents. When, for in- 
 stance, the question of compulsory education was dis- 
 cussed, it was decided that such a measure would have 
 to be carried out by the Constabulary. 
 
 " The whole of the civil-service charges of the country 
 would probably come to at least another million. There 
 are some four thousand officials in Dublin. Many new 
 departments would be necessary to take over business 
 now transacted in London, such as, a Treasury and an 
 Audit Department, a Home Office, a Board of Trade, 
 and, pretty certainly, a Portfolio of Agriculture and 
 Commerce. Besides all these there would be the sala-
 
 IN LEINSTER. 3 1 
 
 ries of the Judiciary, and of J. P.'s, and other magistrates 
 who now act gratuitously. 
 
 " What would be cut down and saved in one way would 
 be more than counterbalanced by additional expenses. 
 
 " Home Rule, besides being dangerous, would be ex- 
 pensive. 
 
 " But as much local government as is possessed by 
 Scotland would be beneficial to Ireland. Irish industries 
 and trade should also be especially encouraged by the 
 government. The absence of wood is a great injury to 
 the country. There might then be a moderate bounty 
 paid for every acre planted with certain timber on certain 
 specified conditions ; for in planting timber one can get 
 no profit for the first thirty years, though afterwards it 
 is one of the most profitable crops. 
 
 *' I believe in protection for a limited time. 
 " The official liquidator in the Court of Bankruptcy 
 says that almost universally Irish tradesmen and shop- 
 keepers are so indebted to English manufacturers that 
 they dare not give orders to rising Irish firms. The 
 account is always carried forward, jT^Zo or ^'loo, from 
 year to year at about the same amount, showing that the 
 English manufacturers are interested in keeping Irish 
 firms in debt. The Irish manufacturers might assume 
 the debts, but that would require a large capital and a 
 spirit of enterprise not often seen in Ireland. 
 
 " The power to levy duties was omitted in Gladstone's 
 bill, in order to secure the votes of the Lancashire towns, 
 Manchester and Birmingham, — but Gladstone's bill is 
 withdrawn. 
 
 " Any country that has not got superior facilities for 
 producing a sufficient number of articles cheaper than 
 any other country, will cease to exist under free trade
 
 32 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 as a commercial community, because it can produce 
 nothing to exchange. Ireland is in that position, or 
 nearly so ; it has no external facilities, it is badly off 
 for minerals, and even as a grazing or agricultural 
 country it is undersold by America. There is only a 
 limited amount of finishing grazing land in Ireland, 
 chiefly in Meath and Dublin ; most of the grass land 
 would produce only inferior cattle. The cultivation of 
 grain for export has almost ceased. Nothing but pro- 
 tection can save us from American grain. 
 
 " Manufactures require coal and iron, and having to 
 import them raises the cost of production here. Coal is 
 perhaps as cheap here as it is in Kent, but then Kent is 
 not a manufacturing county. 
 
 "Finally, Irish labor is not cheap labor, because the 
 people drink and are lazy. 
 
 " The one thing that might make up for these disad- 
 vantages would be a superior technical education, as in 
 parts of Switzerland, Germany, and France. 
 
 " Five times more carriage-makers, twenty times more 
 cabinet-makers than now were employed here fifty years 
 ago. The tanning trade was once enormous, it is now 
 dying out. Has Ireland derived any corresponding ben- 
 efit from getting cheaper furniture and cheaper carriages ? " 
 
 " If you had had protection, would you not have had 
 a more serious famine here in 1879 ? " I suggested. 
 
 " We can form a fair idea in October," he answered, " of 
 the corn grown that year, and there is always in the coun- 
 try a supply of corn for a year ahead. We should have six 
 months then to prepare for a famine, and that would be 
 time enough. Then, too, the only parts of the country 
 where famine threatened in 1879 were where there was 
 no corn and the people lived on potatoes. As our indus-
 
 IN LEINSTER. 33 
 
 tries increase and the standard of living rises, the danger 
 of famine will decrease." 
 
 A DUBLIN BUSINESS MAN. 
 
 If great business ability and unusual shrewdness in 
 judging human nature give value to the opinions of a 
 private citizen on public matters, these opinions should 
 be specially valuable. 
 
 " The whole question is one of ^. s. d., of the almighty 
 dollar, and to call it a question of politics or of political 
 economy is all nonsense. 
 
 " I remember when a shilling, thirteen pence, and even 
 fourteen pence was paid for a quartern loaf in the days 
 before the corn laws. Then when the duty on corn was 
 taken off, the landlord class expected to be ruined. 
 There was less to be divided among the different sharers 
 in the produce, so the landlords lost part of their 
 plunder. 
 
 " The farmers afterwards took up cattle, and for a 
 time * growing meat ' seemed to be an industry eternally 
 profitable. But the introduction of the refrigerating 
 process in transportation has completely revolutionized 
 this business. Prices may be expected to fall still lower 
 in the future, for until now, in cattle at least, home stock 
 has been superior in quality to the imported ; but of late 
 years the high-cost home breeds have been exported and 
 domesticated in America and New Zealand, and cattle 
 are now being imported identical with the best domestic 
 cattle. Under free trade there has been gradually 
 brought about an equalization in prices throughout the 
 world for articles of the same quality, now there is com- 
 ing about an equalization in their quality. The profit 
 has gone from the produce of the land and therefore
 
 34 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 from the land itself, and the question now is between 
 the landlords and the farmers as to who shall be the 
 sufferers. 
 
 " These two classes, the landlords and the farmers, are 
 fighting for the control of the government. In the past 
 the grand jury may be said to have been the government 
 of the country. The grand jury is something of the nature 
 of a shire parliament — the equivalent, in some ways, of 
 the town meeting. It represents the landlord class, passes 
 all rates, and has the powers generally which in England 
 are divided among the grand Jury, the vestry, and 
 various other local boards. 
 
 " Ireland and England were once in much the same 
 condition. England has fought her way out of this 
 oligarchical system, but Ireland remains unchanged. 
 Why ? On account of her religion. 
 
 " While the governing classes of England were gradu- 
 ally persuaded to yield more power to the people, be- 
 cause they were of the same religion and could have 
 confidence in them, it was not so here. Here there 
 existed an hereditary warfare between the classes, on 
 account largely of their being of different religions ; one 
 or other it was felt must be uppermost, and the one which 
 got on top wished to keep there. The bulk of the land- 
 lords were Protestants, and always took on themselves 
 the office of holding the country for the British crown. 
 It is the interest of the landlords to make themselves the 
 medium for advising the government in Irish questions, 
 and they have done so with a view to their own profit. 
 It is the interest of the priests that their people should 
 share in the government and should have sufficient 
 worldly wealth. There has been a regular fight between 
 the priests and the landlords.
 
 IN LEINSTER. 35 
 
 " The election for Parliament was, till within two 
 years, so arranged as to give the Protestant interests pre- 
 dominance. Only for a short interval in O'Connell's 
 time was there an Irish party of any importance in Par- 
 liament, and they gained Catholic emancipation. 
 
 " Under the last Reform Bill eighty-nine Nationalist 
 M. P.'s were returned, and it is hard to see how any com- 
 promise can be effected with them short of Home Rule. 
 Gladstone has formulated a possible bill which, in case 
 of his death, will be a rallying point. 
 
 " The great difficulty consists in an unascertainable 
 factor, the control the Catholic clergy can exercise over 
 a Home-Rule Parliament. If they exert much influence, 
 the result will be bad, because clerical domination is 
 always bad for a country, and Catholic clerical domination 
 worst of all. The Protestants have effaced themselves, 
 and made of their clergy simply paid professional 
 teachers, but this is not yet true of the Catholics. 
 
 " The Catholic priests have followed the popular move- 
 ment, but in order to get control of it, though some are 
 still rather conservative. All Archbishop Walsh's prede- 
 cessors were conservative in the sense of being opposed 
 to agitation, but the bishops now, like Croke and Duggan, 
 have taken the popular side vehemently. 
 
 " I have asked many Protestants whether, if all the 
 Irish were Protestants, they would object to Home Rule. 
 Most of them would welcome Home Rule in that case. 
 The Protestant Irishman does not object to govern him- 
 self, but he does object to being swamped by a Catholic 
 majority. That is the difficulty in a nutshell. The poor- 
 est are uneducated, and the uneducated are Catholics. 
 Gladstone tried to secure the country against this dan- 
 ger by the provision that one third of the legislature
 
 36 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 could hang up a bill for three years, as the Protestants 
 could probably return a minority of one third. 
 
 " It is an Irish trait to try to get a thing no matter who 
 suffers. Before the last rising, it was said the Fenians 
 had settled by lot among themselves what property each 
 should have. There is a feeling abroad now among the 
 uneducated classes that a revolution would be the occa- 
 sion for a resharing of property. 
 
 " It is easy for Parnell to be in opposition ; but when 
 his party comes to govern and keep order, the section that 
 looks for spoils by the change will have to be dealt with. 
 The American phrase has been adopted here, * To the vic- 
 tors belong the spoils.' There will have to be a readjust- 
 ment of social order, and control of the managing priests 
 — this will be the first work of the Home-Rule Parliament. 
 
 " The goal the country has set its mind upon is self- 
 government and a legislative Parliament. That would 
 satisfy them. The educated Catholics all realize that to 
 continue part of the British Empire would be more to 
 their advantage in a civil sense than to be an indepen- 
 dent republic. 
 
 " Those who cry for the green flag and for an Irish 
 nation are in the van. But you must have a van to any 
 movement, and you must make a bid in advance of what 
 you expect to get, in order to get any thing. Men igno- 
 rant of politics and the science of government are 
 infatuated with the zeal of nationality, and seek the ex- 
 hibition of its maximum development. These are the 
 tail of the party, that will have to be beaten back when 
 civil order comes to be established. 
 
 " As to protection : the question is too broad to dis- 
 cuss, but two facts often overlooked need to be remem- 
 bered.
 
 IN LEINSTER. 37 
 
 ''With Home Rule and a peasant proprietary for a 
 long time there will be no surplus agricultural produce 
 to export, because the people will live better and will 
 not require to sell so much of their produce to pay rent. 
 What is now a surplus they will consume themselves. 
 Take the rent roll of the country, the wealth of the 
 people will in time be increased by that sum, and they 
 will be in a position to be large purchasers. The incre- 
 ment of the landlord will become the purchasing power 
 of the peasant proprietor. 
 
 " Then too our home industries depend very largely 
 on imported material. It is not generally known but is 
 a fact, that the wool of the Irish sheep is too coarse to 
 make any cloth but frieze ; and it is an every-day occur- 
 rence for wool to be imported from Australia via London, 
 or the Yorkshire district, to mix with Irish wool to make 
 fine tweeds.' The linen trade, too, could not exist with- 
 out free importation of foreign flax." 
 
 A FENIAN. 
 
 " I am not a Democrat," he began to my surprise, " nor 
 a believer in universal suffrage. It has amazed me that 
 the English Conservatives should not have fought to the 
 end against the last Reform Bill. There was no demand 
 for it. Nothing has happened yet, for the newly enfran- 
 chised millions have n't learnt their power, but when 
 they do learn it, there is no change that they may not make. 
 
 " I can understand the position of the Unionists. 
 What I blame the government for is, not for coercing, 
 
 ' "An unmitigated lie," said a farmer when I read him this sen- 
 tence : "This thick blue serge I am now wearing was made en- 
 tirely from the wool of my own sheep. And Blarney tweeds are the 
 finest in the world."
 
 38 2N CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 but for coercing foolishly. They must either concede or 
 coerce. The English have not governed Ireland at all 
 for the last three or four years. It is the National 
 League that has governed Ireland. If England wishes 
 to govern Ireland again, it must then first destroy the 
 League. The new Coercion Act, like all previous ones, 
 is bound to fail. It does n't coerce enough. There can 
 be no efficient half-way measure. The only logical thing 
 for the Unionists to do, is to govern this country as a 
 crown colony and to exclude our men from Parliament. 
 
 " I am not in sympathy with the agrarian movement. 
 The tenants' party is unreasonable and unjust, and the 
 landlords are fools. Walsh is a very influential man, 
 and might have helped them to checkmate the other 
 side, if they had accepted his suggestion for a confer- 
 ence. At such a meeting landlords and tenants might 
 have got to appreciate each other's position in a way 
 impossible by any number of letters. Even if no agree- 
 ment were had, the conference would do some good. If 
 a spirit of yielding is shown, something is shown that is 
 good, and mutual understanding often leads to eventual 
 agreement. 
 
 " The land question is inferior to the other, but it may 
 save us trouble if it is settled first. The one important 
 thing is separation as complete as possible, for perfect 
 separation is impossible owing to the numerical superi- 
 ority of England and to our geographical situation. No 
 one ever thought of fighting England without foreign 
 aid. In case, however, of war between England and 
 America or Russia, ninety-nine out of a hundred of us 
 would be on the side of America or of Russia or of the 
 Devil himself if it would only injure or cripple England. 
 
 "Home Rule is what we want. The English know
 
 IN LEINSTER. 39 
 
 nothing about Irish affairs. Even Gladstone does not 
 really know any thing about Ireland. John Bright is the 
 only English public man who ever did know any thing 
 about us, and he has now turned against us. In the 
 same way the English can't understand the Americans, 
 nor you the English, although you have the same cus- 
 toms and speak the same language. The whole trouble 
 rises from one country governing another. That is op- 
 posed to all justice and to all the teaching of history. 
 No country ever governed another well. If Ireland were 
 a part of England as Yorkshire is, would the Irish people 
 have been allowed to die of starvation during the famine 
 by hundreds of thousands ? 
 
 " Our party is now not a transacting party. Parnell is 
 the leader of the Irish people. All the various conflict- 
 ing parties rely on him. His death would be almost as 
 fatal to our cause as the death of Gladstone, for if Par- 
 nell died to-morrow the man would lead who is the most 
 unfit to do so — Dillon. Dillon is a narrow fanatic and 
 could never lead Davitt. In talking with Parnell the 
 first thing I noticed was that he was a first-rate listener, 
 and the second thing was that every thing he said led to 
 action, to something to be done. He has will, a fright- 
 ful will. O'Brien's position is Dillon's. They have the 
 Plan of Campaign business, and O'Brien's power is very 
 great with the people from a sympathetic point of view, 
 but if Parnell put down his foot he would yield at once. 
 Whether Dillon would 1 do not know. Davitt's follow- 
 ing is very big among the farmers, ten times bigger than 
 Dillon's or O'Brien's. He is the only power in Ireland 
 independent of Parnell. As for us, we are non-trans- 
 acting at present, but complications might arise in which 
 we would again be a power.
 
 40 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " Home Rule is what we want. Even after it is granted, 
 hatred of England will not die out at once, but in the 
 course of a generation it will cease from want of nourish- 
 ment. The Imperial Parliament may give us a Parlia- 
 ment in words subject to itself, but if the Home-Rule 
 Parliament is a subject Parliament in fact, it will be no 
 cure at all for the discontent of Ireland. In the case of 
 Home Rule following or coincident with peasant pro- 
 prietorship, we shall of course suffer two great losses. 
 The landlords would take their money ; they would also 
 take themselves, and that would be a very serious loss, 
 since they are the only cultivated class. 
 
 ** It is said that if we had Home Rule we should per- 
 secute the Protestant minority. We would not, and the 
 guaranties are : first, that the Protestants are a million 
 and a half out of five millions, and they have most of the 
 property and the best education ; secondly, that of the 
 Catholics many are only nominally Catholics, they were 
 born so, but have ceased to feel strong interest in re- 
 ligion ; and, thirdly, that there are many Catholics who, 
 though sincerely religious, are more or less conservative 
 in politics. All these classes would make together about 
 two millions and a half, or half .the Irish people, who 
 would be opposed to any thing like persecution. 
 
 "Education, again, would prevent the Irish from 
 blindly following the priest. The average Irishman now 
 only listens to the priest on matters about which he 
 does n't know or care much. Then, too, the priests have 
 taken part in this movement from sympathy with the 
 farmer rather than as priests. Ninety-nine out of a hun- 
 dred are sons of tenant farmers. Sons of gentlemen, or 
 of professional men, become Jesuits but not priests. 
 
 " Emigration would do Ireland no good. Home Rule
 
 IN LEINSTER. 4I 
 
 would greatly check emigration. Emigration means to 
 take the able-bodied and the best and to leave in the 
 country only the weakest and the least courageous. 
 Emigration should be encouraged only from a surplus 
 population, and Ireland is at present only half-culti- 
 vated. 
 
 "Under Home Rule the Irish instead of being a 
 wholly agricultural people might be induced to take up 
 many domestic manufactures. Ireland may never be- 
 come a manufacturing country like England, since it has 
 no coal, but it might well become manufacturing to the 
 extent that France is. 
 
 " As for us, we are happier now than we ever hoped 
 to be. For the first time a great English party has taken 
 up our cause and offers us practically what we wish. The- 
 orists must be sensible, and no honest man would for an 
 ideal end run the risk of a war." 
 
 A CATHOLIC PROFESSOR. 
 
 The Professor is a foreigner who has lived in Dublin 
 for more than twenty years, taking no part in politics, 
 but watching with the keen interest of a student of his- 
 tory and a teacher of religion the kaleidoscope of Irish 
 agitation. 
 
 " The secret of the agrarian distress," he said, " is 
 a violation of the principles of political economy, aris- 
 ing from the sentimental Celtic attachment to the soil 
 which leads the people to disregard their obvious inter- 
 ests. In County Tipperary there is little agrarian agita- 
 tion, because the farms are large and the land good. 
 But the Irish have the same peculiar race sentiments 
 that still make Brittany the most backward part of
 
 42 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 France. The peasants there will refuse the most lucra- 
 tive positions in a town for the sake of keeping before 
 their eyes till they die the gray stones around which as 
 children they pastured their sheep. 
 
 " If Brittany were an island it would give the French 
 government the same trouble that Ireland gives to the 
 English government. The same is true of the Welsh. 
 The poorer the soil, the more the Celts seem to be 
 attached to it. Their poverty arises from their insisting 
 on living on farms too small to support them comfortably. 
 This would not be cured by peasant proprietorship, nor 
 even by the systematic division of all the land in Ireland 
 among the farmers, for even then each man would not 
 have land enough to yield him at the present rate of 
 prices more than the bare means of subsistence. A com- 
 parison with France is misleading, for land there is ex- 
 ceptionally good, and the people are the most industri- 
 ous and frugal in the world. 
 
 *' The spirit of nationalism should not be encouraged 
 simply because it is national. Races are formed in the 
 beginning like species of animals or plants, by localiza- 
 tion. For a long time in the course of civilization it is 
 necessary that special social qualities should be devel- 
 oped, for adaptation to the purely material environment 
 of the country is essential. As time goes on the horizon 
 of a people broadens. The influences of soil and climate 
 become relatively less important. It is no longer a ques- 
 tion of the survival of the fittest among a few tribes in a 
 small district, but of the survival of the fittest among the 
 nations of the world. The highest civilization then 
 requires the reunion in one nation of many local quali- 
 ties. One should prune off from the trunk of nation- 
 ality those offshoots that have ceased to be productive,
 
 IN LEINSTER. 43 
 
 not because they are national, but because they disqual- 
 ify for the battle of modern life ; and those offshoots 
 only should be encouraged that are productive, not 
 because they are national, but because they qualify for 
 that battle. It is deplorable then that such things as 
 the Celtic language and the Celtic love of the soil should 
 be fostered, as is now done by so many able and honest 
 priests and statesmen. They are disqualifications for the 
 battle of life. The glorification of the Celtic race as such 
 is equally vain. As Sir John Lubbock has shown, it is 
 almost absurd to talk of a pure Celtic race. The Eng- 
 lish and Irish are mixtures in different proportions of the 
 same races. Even the study of early Irish history, largely 
 legendary, is of little practical service to-day. 
 
 '* The question of Home Rule, so far as it means more 
 than local self-government applicable to the whole of 
 Great Britain, becomes then, comparatively simple. It 
 is desired for the sake of perpetuating national qualities 
 simply because they are national ; and for the purpose 
 of isolating a community that is too much isolated and 
 peculiar already. Moreover, what is to be done now-a- 
 days in the world cannot best be done by a small nation. 
 In dealing with other nations unity is necessary. In 
 domestic matters large means and an absence of local 
 prejudice are necessary to advance wisely the civilization 
 of the people. Finally, how can a Home-Rule govern- 
 ment sustain itself with benefit to Ireland without money 
 and without credit ? 
 
 " Of the social confusion of the day, I could say much. 
 It is enough that I knew of children not long ago dying 
 in Clonmel of scarlatina, because the father was boy- 
 cotted, and the apothecaries did not dare to put up the 
 doctor's prescriptions."
 
 44 1^ CASTLE AND CABIN 
 
 A PESSIMISTIC FARMER. 
 
 "I am a tenant farmer," he began, "but for a dozen 
 years I was manager of a country bank. This agricul- 
 tural crisis would have come on long ago if it had not 
 been for the action of the banks. I was dining with a 
 landlord in 1879, who was boasting of how well his rents 
 were paid ; at that moment I knew that my bank had 
 advanced money to practically all his tenants. At last 
 the banks suddenly stopped giving the farmers credit, 
 and that helped to bring on the crisis. 
 
 " No matter what reductions the tenants may get, so 
 long as these bills are hanging over their heads, the re- 
 ductions will do them no good. Until the banks com- 
 pound with these poor wretches they will get no relief. 
 
 " The farmers don't want peasant proprietorship, be- 
 cause then they will have to pay all the rates themselves — 
 the large holders all the county cess instead of half, and 
 the small holders all instead of none. They are in debt 
 and without capital, and unless the government comes to 
 their aid they cannot work their farms to advantage even 
 when they own them. It is true there is more money in 
 the country than there ever was, and that in the National 
 Bank alone there are deposited eight million pounds, but 
 it is not in circulation in Ireland. 
 
 " The whole number of agricultural tenants in Ireland 
 is about five hundred thousand ; of these one third have 
 holdings of under ^4 valuation, and another third have 
 holdings of underlie valuation. It is preposterous to 
 make these men proprietors. They would starve. 
 
 " Gladstone's Purchase Bill would simply have left the 
 landlords for twenty-five years to squabble over the dis- 
 tribution of the purchase money among the chargees on 
 the property. It was utterly impracticable. You must
 
 IN LEINSTER. 45 
 
 remember too that there is some injustice in any scheme 
 of compulsory land purchase. What do you say to the 
 not infrequent case where a man had land in his own 
 possession ten years ago and has since let it to tenants ? 
 " English rule is hated in this country, and I am not 
 surprised. Look at the Under Secretaryship just vacant. 
 Why should the government put in a military officer with 
 no knowledge of the country — a man from India, when 
 hundreds of able Irishmen are available, men like Sir 
 Thomas Butler, if you want a landlord ? Even if a Land 
 Purchase Bill is passed, the agitation for Home Rule will 
 still continue." 
 
 A PROSPEROUS FARMER. 
 
 Not far from Dublin is a low, one-story, rambling, 
 thatched farm-house. About the house stretch on every 
 side extensive level fields. Crops that are the wonder 
 and pride of the whole country-side yearly rejoice the 
 heart and overflow the barns of the sturdy, thrifty farmer 
 of this rich alluvial land. He was standing in front of 
 the creeper-grown porch, with his daughter's St. Bernard 
 beside him, when I first met him — a massive man, dressed 
 in thick blue serge of the wool of his own sheep, with a 
 magnificent Landor-like forehead towering over a face 
 that was one large smile. 
 
 In the morning we walked over the farm. The large 
 cattle-sheds were built in an original manner, the win- 
 dows sloping upwards through the thick walls and widen- 
 ing towards the inside, so as to avoid draughts and se- 
 cure ventilation. The cows had their horns all cut out, 
 to keep them from always " pucking and punting " one 
 another. 
 
 We turned across the fields. " Beautiful land is the
 
 46 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 Irish land," he said. " On an average neither England 
 nor Scotland can compare with the land of Ireland. 
 Their first-class land is far inferior to our first-class land ; 
 and our second-class land is equal to their first. Cali- 
 fornia wheats don't have the same amount of gluten as 
 our dark-colored Irish wheat. We are not afraid of any 
 other country under the sun. 
 
 " I never had finer crops of wheat or potatoes in spite 
 of the drought. We get three tons of straw to the acre. 
 
 " Look at that crop of wheat ; " he cried, " it is as thick 
 as grass in a field. The land is teeming with it ; it could 
 hold no more of it." 
 
 On his land he usually has in succession, four white 
 crops, one green crop heavily manured, and two hay 
 crops. " Off that field, since breaking up the lea, I have 
 had one crop of wheat, which was too rank and long ; 
 three crops of oats to reduce the land, the first of which 
 was too long, the second too light, and the third excel- 
 lent ; then one crop of potatoes ; one crop of wheat — a 
 magnificent crop, so strong and heavy that it strained the 
 self-binder; and the crop of oats we are now looking at." 
 From another field in two years he took a crop of pota- 
 toes which realized thirty pounds an acre, one of cab- 
 bages of the same value, and one of wheat which brought 
 in twenty-three pounds an acre. One twelve-acre field 
 grew five crops of grass in one year. He raises forty or 
 forty-five tons of turnips to the acre, and has not an acre 
 of land under tillage from which he does not expect to 
 realize twenty pounds over the cost of cultivation. 
 Ninety acres he has let at different times for five pounds 
 an acre, and there is plenty of land in the neighborhood 
 for which four or five pounds is paid willingly. 
 
 I asked him what rent he paid. " Here 's a piece of
 
 IN LEINSTER. 47 
 
 one hundred and eighty acres. In 1827 it was let for 
 ^jTioo a year, when the landlord took it up and relet all 
 but forty acres to my people for ^128. The lease ter- 
 minated last year, when the landlord reduced the rent to 
 ^82, and agreed to pay half the cess, thus practically re- 
 ducing the rent to ^73 or ;^74-" 
 
 A farmer so prosperous and so intelligent might natu- 
 rally be expected to have little cause of complaint with 
 the government. He is, however, a strong Nationalist. 
 Why, may be best explained in his own words : 
 
 " We cannot compete on the whole with American 
 products ; we must then be protected by a duty. The 
 agricultural classes cannot be permitted to die out. They 
 recruit all the other classes. We were nine millions, we 
 are now five millions, and have lost those four million 
 laborers and their products. Every laborer sent away 
 takes a pound a week, and that is trained by America. 
 The laborer is also a consumer of domestic industries, 
 and, by his removal, another pound a week may be said 
 to be lost by England and gained by America. 
 
 ** The protected nation succeeds best. For this rea- 
 son the Germans and not the English supply the colonies 
 with most of their imports of manufactures, and America 
 supplies England with more than two thirds of the 
 breadstuffs it consumes. 
 
 " Reciprocal trade is the great thing, prices will not 
 rise till then. 
 
 " I want Home Rule, in the first place because it would 
 mean a policy of protection." 
 
 We took a delightful drive through the valley, and 
 back along the Wicklow hills. Here and t'.ere the 
 lofty walls of some gentleman's demesne cut oi the view ; 
 again we clattered along the ill-paved streets of a little
 
 48 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 village, and near every village were the ruins of deserted 
 mills and melancholy rows of cottages, with broken 
 window-panes, of long-forgotten mill-hands. " There 
 were fourteen or fifteen paper-mills here," he murmured, 
 " in my boyhood ; now they are all obliterated, simply 
 because the great thinkers of the world decided that 
 there should be no tax upon knowledge, and so news- 
 papers were sold for a penny instead of sixpence. All 
 this looks well, but it does n't work. . . . There 
 were, even up to three years ago, ten or twelve flour- 
 mills in the neighborhood in operation ; but now all are 
 ruined by American competition." 
 
 In the good old times things were very different, and 
 I half forgot the jolting of the car, as he slowly recalled 
 some of the familiar figures of the past. " My grand- 
 father, C, was a farmer with plenty of land. He sup- 
 plemented his farm work by dealing in timber. He 
 would buy twenty or thirty acres of oak wood and strip 
 the bark, dry it, and sell it in Dublin. Of the timber he 
 would select what was good enough for ship-building, 
 and the debris he made into charcoal. He had two 
 sons and five daughters. He and his two sons were 
 weavers, and all his daughters carders, and the family 
 wove and carded the wool of their own sheep and sold 
 the flannel and dressed themselves in it — coats, jackets, 
 and trousers were all home-made. They had plenty of 
 money to spare for every thing. Now there is not a 
 weaver in Wicklow. 
 
 " My great-grandfather, K., was also a farmer in Wick- 
 low with a hundred acres, but he was a hatter besides, 
 and kept fifty men at work supplying woollen hat frames 
 for the English army. I remember him well, and he re- 
 membered when the 0"Tooles held Wicklow.
 
 IN LEINSTER. 49 
 
 " Nothing at that time was imported but tea and sugar. 
 This state of things Home Rule would bring again." 
 
 In the porch of the farm-house we sat talking till late. 
 A sincere Catholic, he is not bigoted. We had driven in 
 the morning through a miserable little village, with the 
 ruins of an old church and a bishop's palace, and he ex- 
 claimed : " Wherever the church predominates, the wealth 
 of the country ceases to exist." His opinion about the 
 disestablishment of the Irish Church is then, perhaps, 
 fairly impartial. " I never knew any thing more farcical. 
 After the disestablishment, the tithing charges were abso- 
 lutely enforced by the commissioners, while previously 
 they had been discretionary with the incumbents. As 
 to the actual payment of the tithes, which was what we 
 complained of, they have not been abolished, but are 
 merely paid to different persons. The clergy, too, came 
 off very well. A man, ninety years old, with a stipend 
 of ^4,000 a year, receiving twenty-two years' purchase 
 of the ;^4,ooo, and his successor getting nothing — that 
 was one of the ludicrous sights I saw. I wonder the 
 clergymen of England don't at once get disestablished, 
 and put their money in their breeches' pockets and walk 
 away with it." 
 
 Curiously bitter he was against the landlords. " They 
 are vampires and parasites, feeding on the blood, bones, 
 and sweat of the people." In spite of the vampires he 
 has flourished, but the cause of his hatred is not per- 
 sonal. " One third of the produce of the country," he 
 said, " passes annually into the hands of the landlords and 
 is spent in England ; and if the land comes into the hands 
 of the people, it will be more than twice as productive." 
 
 " The subserviency of the Catholics and the intoler- 
 ance of the aristocrats, will be slow to pass away, but
 
 50 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 I see the people becoming more self-reliant and inde- 
 pendent every da)\ 
 
 " The Catholics of Ireland do not wish to be separated 
 from England. What we want is to rid ourselves of the 
 monopoly of England, the centralization of England. 
 We want to keep the fruits of our own industry to bene- 
 fit our own country, and not have them spent elsewhere. 
 I should be very sorry, indeed, to see Ireland separated 
 from England. Indeed, its position forbids it. 
 
 " The Parnellite party has not always used unobjec- 
 tionable methods, but remember, you cannot make war 
 with rose-water. There are some extremists ; they exist, 
 however, in all countries, and not merely in Ireland — 
 people who wish to get up a scramble. The government 
 of the people by the people will exert more influence than 
 the British government ever can, and the Irish will then 
 become the most loyal people in the empire." 
 
 A very sweet Irish voice interrupted us. " The Cath- 
 olic Church," she suggested, " is the greatest friend to 
 England in this country, for the clergy are horribly 
 afraid of republicanism and of any thing unknown." 
 
 "Yes," said her father, "and the Irish race is by 
 nature conservative and aristocratic. Their leaders in 
 the past were all gentlemen, and that is one reason for 
 Parnell's success. They would never pay so much re- 
 spect to one of themselves. Finally, I firmly believe that 
 an Irish Parliament would insist on just compensation to 
 the landlords. It might be difficult to constitute the 
 proper machinery, but it would be done." 
 
 TALKS IN WEST MEATH. 
 
 Of the smaller towns in Ireland none has in the stran- 
 ger's eyes such an air of prosperity as Athlone. The rea-
 
 IN LEINSTER. 5 I 
 
 son is not far to seek : it is one of the few manufacturing 
 towns outside of Ulster. " Here there is very little pov- 
 erty," said the parish priest, Father McKeogh, "because 
 there is a fine factory here, Gleeson and Smith's Tweed 
 Manufactory, which employs five or six hundred hands ; 
 and then in the suburbs the people make a fair living by 
 selling vegetables. Six or seven miles off, there are 
 grazing farms extending for miles, and at present the 
 graziers are not very well off. 
 
 "Home Rule," he continued, "will benefit Athlone, 
 because an Irish Parliament will establish woollen facto- 
 ries with government money and thus utilize the mag- 
 nificent water power of Shannon. 
 
 " I think if the land question were settled. Home 
 Rule, however, would become of less importance, and 
 the farmers would not be so enthusiastic about it. Home 
 Rule to-morrow, with the land question still unsettled, 
 would be a very serious matter. A fair Land Purchase 
 Act would be taken up by the farmers." 
 
 " Why did they not take advantage of Lord Ash- 
 bourne's Act ? " I asked. 
 
 " Many think," he replied," that if they got Home Rule 
 they would get the land on their own terms. 
 
 " The temperance question is one of the most im- 
 portant matters to-day. If we can make the people tem- 
 perate, that will be so much money in their pocket, and 
 they will be the more fit for Home Rule." The good 
 father then showed me the rooms of the League of the 
 Cross. The society has only been started for two or 
 three years, and already numbers two or three hundred 
 members in Athlone and hundreds more in Galway, 
 Castlebar, Ballinasloe, and other towns throughout the 
 country. A skittle alley, a billiard-room, and a band-
 
 52 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 room belong to the League, and the cartoons of the 
 Weekly Freemaji and United Ireland that cover the walls 
 sufficiently attest the political preferences of the young 
 men of Athlone. 
 
 Over one of the great woollen-mills I was shown by a 
 partner. Coal from Wales is used, and not the water- 
 power of the Shannon that flows past it. There are 
 ninety-two looms and four hundred workmen. The wool 
 is taken just as it comes from the farmers, cleaned, dyed, 
 spun into thread, and woven into cloth. The average 
 output is eleven thousand yards a week, at a cost price 
 of a halfpenny a yard. 
 
 " The government," said he, " in the past let the exac- 
 tions of the landlords run on till the bulk of the tenants 
 were stripped. Farmers of under a hundred acres now 
 I don't think have much on their backs. In West Meath 
 they are fairly prosperous, and in Roscommon ; but I have 
 watched them growing poorer year by year. The land- 
 lords about here have had the name of being moderate, 
 and some are resident : but even the moderate men have 
 not been fair. The tenants, or their forefathers, have 
 reclaimed the land. I have known land not worth a 
 shilling an acre reclaimed and drained, the stones picked 
 or blasted out, and the walls, barns, and outhouses built, 
 all by the tenants, and then their rent raised from one 
 shilling to thirty shillings an acre. 
 
 " The Irish nation will be more generous, I think, to 
 the landlords than an English Parliament. If they think 
 the British taxpayers will pay them a guaranty in any 
 contingency, I fear they are mistaken ; but the question 
 will probably not be left to an English Parliament to 
 settle. 
 
 " The first thing for a Home-Rule Parliament to do
 
 IN LEINSTER. 53 
 
 Will be to secure a better system of education, technical 
 and industrial education. The tenants have never learnt 
 any thing but agriculture : the landlords, who were draw- 
 ing all the surplus capital from the country, gave nothing 
 in return ; they should have taught the people by found- 
 ing schools and starting factories. I would have indus- 
 trial schools. England has not the same need of them, 
 for every manufactory is a technical school in itself. 
 
 " English competition, it is true, would destroy any 
 rising industry here, unless we had exceptional oppor- 
 tunities for education. Protection, I do not believe in. 
 It is preposterous to have any thing that would raise the 
 price of food ; though a small tax on flour might be per- 
 mitted. As to duties on manufactured articles, I don't 
 believe in that at all. Without protection, we here in 
 Athlone have the world at our command ; with protec- 
 tion, we should be shut up in Ireland. 
 
 " There can be no great manufacturing centres here as 
 in England, but in every village or town there is surplus 
 labor that can be got for very little and only needs to be 
 utilized. All our own wool ought to be manufactured on 
 the spot, and all kinds of hosiery, flannels, and carpets. 
 It can be done perfectly well ; I am doing it myself ; and 
 if we could make as much more we could sell it all. We 
 sell as much out of Ireland as in it ; in England, Scot- 
 land, and America ; and we have been busier than ever 
 since the Home-Rule movement began and the Dublin 
 Exhibition was held. 
 
 "This mill was started in 1S59 by an Englishman and 
 an Irishman, who lost all they had by it. The failure 
 was due to the lack of technically educated hands ; but 
 some few did get educated and formed the nucleus for 
 another start which ended in a second failure.
 
 54 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " I learnt the business in a mill that has since failed for 
 ^^50,000, and left a mill that is now in Chancery to come 
 here in 1870. Both failures were due to lack of educa- 
 tion. Here after a hard struggle we forged ahead. 
 
 " There is enough capital in Ireland to start industries, 
 and nothing is needed from the government but the col- 
 lection of information and the diffusion of technical edu- 
 cation. The means of transit also need improving. Such 
 matters cannot be attended to by an English Parliament 
 There is no use in tinkering with local bodies. I am, 
 therefore, a Home Ruler. 
 
 "The Roman Catholic Church would be a guaranty 
 against socialism, and I say this though I am a Presby- 
 terian. The Irish people are essentially a most conser- 
 vative people, and that is a fortunate thing, for there has 
 been enough to justify a revolution. Our market is 
 England, and must always be on account of our want of 
 coal, and separation, therefore, would be ruin. That is 
 a false cry." 
 
 It was a great change from the neatness and bustle of 
 Athlone to the dirt and sluggishness of Mullingar. Few 
 people seemed moving in the streets except an occasional 
 half-drunken soldier. At the hotel a drummer could 
 not restrain his lamentations. " An hotel like this," he 
 shouted, " ought to be thronged on Saturday night ; now 
 we two are the only people in the place. I remember 
 when during the few weeks before Christmas there were 
 thousands of country people in Dublin buying, six hun- 
 dred where you find one now. Only fifteen years ago, I 
 remember when the ships were ranged along the Liffey, 
 with their prows out in the river ; now they lie there 
 alongside the shore. Commercials now are few, and 
 there are none now at places where I used to meet six or
 
 IN- LEINSTER. 55 
 
 a dozen. I don't believe my employers make any thing 
 above my travelling expenses, and how they manage to 
 keep me going I don't see. 
 
 " These things make me feel the need of Home Rule. 
 I used to oppose it, but was converted by this argument 
 of a merchant in the North : ' The people of Ireland are 
 quite upset now, and their trade is gone in consequence. 
 There is no plan suggested that will settle them but 
 Home Rule. Therefore, Home Rule is absolutely 
 necessary.' " 
 
 There was a shouting outside and the tramping of 
 many men on the pavement. Hayden, the editor of the 
 West Meath Exaniine7'^ was being taken to prison for 
 having obstructed the police at an eviction. The people 
 cheered and dispersed gradually as he was rapidly driven 
 away. 
 
 "This arrest," said the Secretary of the League, as 
 he stood at the door of his bakery, "is the most exciting 
 thing that has happened here for months. There is no 
 political excitement here nor outrages, and there have 
 been few, if any, evictions in the neighborhood." 
 
 The president of the League, Father O'Reilley, de- 
 scribed the county as entirely a grazing county. "This 
 town exists," he continued, " solely by supplying the 
 graziers and farmers who come to the fairs and markets. 
 
 " Here and there you find little strips of civilization in 
 this country, where there is some manufacturing, but 
 such is not the case in West Meath. The trouble is that 
 under free trade manufacturers have been driven out 
 by the English and Americans. 
 
 "The holdings of the graziers in this county average 
 probably two hundred or two hundred and fifty acres, 
 and those of the farmers about thirty acres. These
 
 56 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 graziers are chiefly Catholics, but I don't think they are 
 very earnest in the cause of Home Rule. They adopt 
 that cry from fear of offending their neighbors, for really 
 we have as much objection to them as to the landlords. 
 They are all practically land-grabbers. Some own four 
 or five hundred acres ; and many are sons of poor farm- 
 ers, who have gradually bid in from the landlords farm 
 after farm of their neighbors, and then have turned the 
 whole into pasture land. I don't think they are genuine 
 Home Rulers." 
 
 " Land Purchase here, then," I suggested, " would 
 have rather special and undesirable effects." 
 
 "Yes," he answered, "but these matters are too hard 
 to discuss. You should wait and see the Bishop." 
 
 IN A SMOKING-ROOM IN COUNTY CARLOW. 
 
 From the windows we looked out over a broad vel- 
 vety lawn that sloped down to a large deer park, and in 
 the distance was a steep mountain-side, down which was 
 falling in the humid air a column of smoke, like a water- 
 fall, from a peat bog and plantation lately fired by an 
 incendiary. Few men in Ireland can boast of a more 
 ancient, or more purely Irish descent than the owner of 
 this vast demesne, which his ancestors have held since 
 prehistoric times. A few years ago he was the idol of 
 the people, to him they used to come to decide their dis- 
 putes and to make matches for their children ; now he 
 is hated for his open defiance of the National League. 
 Yet the rents on the estate are the old customary rents of 
 the last century. A neighboring secretary of the League, 
 whose father had been a tenant of his called him a gen- 
 erous landlord ; and a car-driver in Kilkenny who had
 
 IN LEINSTER. 5/ 
 
 been born on his property repeated: "A good landlord 
 he was ; I knew that in bad years he often gave the ten- 
 ants receipts for their rents in full." Many years ago he 
 used to be spoken of as "the tenants' friend," and was 
 one of the first to advocate in Parliament compensation 
 for disturbance by the landlord. Why should such a 
 man be pursued with curses and hatred by the whole 
 Nationalist press ? The reason, perhaps, was given me 
 by the man most competent in Ireland to give a reason, 
 one now in jail. 
 
 " In contests between parties," he said, " individuals 
 must suffer. If this gentleman were a good landlord and 
 not a tyrannous one as I believe, he would still have to 
 lose in this contest. It is enough that he belongs to a 
 landlords' association." 
 
 " Why should you blame the landlords for doing in 
 self-defence exactly what you are doing?" I enquired. 
 
 "Well, let them," was the answer. "If they do there 
 must be war between the two organizations, and we '11 see 
 which will win. We are fighting landlordism to the death." 
 
 And yet this landlord is resident, native, benevolent, 
 and public-spirited. Outside the demesne gates the 
 neatest and most comfortable laborers' cottages line the 
 roadside. " But for the good lady at the great house," 
 said a laborer's wife to me, " I could not have got through 
 the winter " ; and the same good lady draws herself the 
 most delicate designs for the lace-work of the tenants' 
 daughters. 
 
 In the smoking-room a little company sat talking late 
 into the night. 
 
 "I have eight hundred tenants," our host was saying. 
 " The average size of a farm on my estate is about four- 
 teen acres. Many of the tenants go away as laborers in
 
 58 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 the autumn, and some have plots of only two or three 
 acres. 
 
 " The only practicable scheme of land-purchase would 
 be to give the landlord an option to sell under the act, 
 and then, on his consenting to sell, to make purchase 
 obligatory on the part of the tenants. Otherwise the 
 tenants will hold off in the hope of something better 
 turning up. 
 
 " How far such a scheme would be taken advantage of 
 by the landlords would depend on the amount of the 
 purchase price. A fair price cannot be calculated by 
 reference solely to the rent or to the value of the tenant 
 right. The tenant right is no evidence of the value of 
 the land, for a small holding fetches more in proportion 
 than a large one, because there are more who want it and 
 who could work it. And, as to the rent, obviously a 
 rack-renter ought not to get so many years' purchase of 
 his rental as a generous landlord. 
 
 " A purchase act, however general, will be, I fear, of 
 but temporary benefit, for the landlords of fifty years 
 hence will differ from the present landlords only in being 
 of peasant extraction and of inferior education. Native 
 landlords, will not, probably, be better than the present 
 ones ; for almost all the worst cases of rack-renting have 
 been on properties held by middlemen, themselves farm- 
 ers. Immense quantities of land, too, will in fifty years 
 have passed into the hands of money-lenders, ' gombeen 
 men.' A gentleman I knew, fifty years ago let a town- 
 land to five or six tenants at 2S. 2d. an acre. A year or 
 so ago only one of the original tenants was represented 
 in that townland. All the rest of the property was held 
 by a money-lender, and the other fifth or sixth had been 
 divided between the five children of the original tenant.
 
 IN LEINSTER. 59 
 
 " In order then to effect any good, a purchase bill 
 must contain a clause forfeiting the land to the creditor, 
 and forfeiting all previously paid instalments, in case 
 of subletting before the purchase money has been paid 
 completely. 
 
 " Some years ago a ten^ant of mine, Mrs. C , sub- 
 let a plot of land to a carpenter, who proceeded to build 
 a house on it. At once she took steps to evict him and 
 let the house and land to another. The carpenter began 
 to take up the flooring and carried some of the planks 
 away, but was stopped by the caretaker. The carpenter 
 assaulted the caretaker and was arrested, and so the case 
 came to my notice. That is the way the farmers will 
 treat one another." 
 
 " The present movement," said a landlord from the 
 neighborhood, " is largely a socialistic one for the divi- 
 sion of our property among the people. I heard of evi- 
 dence some time ago that some estates had been raffled 
 for." " Yes," said a distinguished ecclesiastic, " we 
 knew it in 1867. In Cork there are said to be repre- 
 sentatives of every property in the south of Ireland, who 
 are recognized as descendants of the original owners, 
 and are impatiently waiting for the revolution. I fre- 
 quently meet the man who is to get my glebe." 
 
 " I know the name of the fellow who is to get my 
 property," interrupted our host. " He was in the Fenian 
 movement. I should not mind so much if I knew he 
 would keep the place up." 
 
 "During election time we can hardly show our faces," 
 said a clergyman, " they insult us and the ladies of the 
 family in such indescribably indecent language." 
 
 " The President of the League in always bal- 
 ances up against my dog-cart in drunken friendliness on
 
 So IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 fair day," said a landlord, " yet he has called me a nar- 
 row-minded and bigoted magistrate. 'G ,' I said 
 
 once, ' why do you tell such lies about me ? ' ' Shure,' 
 said he, * every thing 's fair in political times.' ' But you 
 know it 's untrue.' ' Ah, shure your Honor, they did n't 
 believe it, they knew the difference.' Then they go and 
 elect as doctors for the dispensaries the greatest black- 
 guards, who have n't even a diploma." 
 
 " Look at the number of bankrupt Nationalist Unions," 
 cried out the clergyman ; "they can't even manage their 
 own local affairs." 
 
 " They are very ignorant and priest-ridden," said our 
 
 host. " When I was canvassing for , I went to 
 
 the house of a farmer to ask him to vote for me. His 
 wife came to the door and with tears in her eyes said : 
 
 " For , your Honor, don't ask Ned to vote for 
 
 you. Father says if he does my baby will be born 
 
 with horns on its head.' It is chiefly through the women 
 that the priests work ; and then the priests stand by the 
 polls and mark each man as he goes past. Take any 
 parish, take this, and how many liberal-minded Catho- 
 lics would you find here ? Not five. In West Meath not 
 fifty. A few in Dublin, fewer in Cork, and very few in 
 Belfast. Be sure that Home Rule when it comes will 
 mean the rule of Archbishop Walsh." 
 
 "During the Franco-Prussian war," said another, 
 " while France was supposed to be succeeding, our lives 
 we thought not worth a moment's purchase : but Sedan 
 settled the Irish question for many years. Home Rule 
 meant civil war. Only the soldiers keep Belfast down. 
 The Scotch would pour into the north and the Irish- 
 Americans into the south." " It would be a case of 
 the Kilkenny cats," said the landlord; "before two
 
 IN LEINSTER. 6 1 
 
 years were over there would not be a tail left in Ireland. 
 England would have to come in, and whichever side 
 England took would win. Why begin the fray ? The 
 London Companies are already leaving the north of 
 Ireland, depriving the people of vast sums they spent in 
 charities. I greatly fear the exodus has begun." 
 
 A COUNTY CARLOW LANDLORD. 
 
 From the hospitable house where we happened to be 
 staying I made many little trips in County Carlow with a 
 descendant of one of those ancient Norman families that 
 were said three centuries ago to have become more Irish 
 than the Irish. He is seldom out of Ireland, for his du- 
 ties on agricultural societies, local boards, the union, 
 grand jury, and the bench are enough with his home 
 farm to keep him busy from January to December. His 
 popularity with all the people was delightful to see. 
 " Good luck to your Honor ! " " Fine day, your Honor ! " 
 the farmers shouted as they jolted past us, and for every 
 one he had a kind word and a good-natured joke. 
 
 " I own six thousand acres," he said, " and have had 
 no evictions for six years, except in the case of a man 
 who settled, and I allowed him to sell out, which he did 
 for ^i8o. 
 
 " It cost me jQ^ijS^o some time ago to take up a farm 
 of 192 Irish acres, and four years ago I paid ^1,050 
 to take up a farm of a hundred acres all in grass. 
 
 " There's H., a schoolmaster, his rent is ^11 loi-. for 
 II acres. His brother had the farm, but died in debt. 
 I took it up and was going to sell it to a neighbor. H. 
 wrote to ask me to take him on and I did so. He pro- 
 ceeded to build an expensive house on it, far too good, 
 and now he owes me ;,{^23 rent. The other day he
 
 62 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 served me with a notice to go into court and have the 
 rent fixed. Now that rent has not been raised since 
 1820, and no one knows for how long before. 
 
 " I went over my rent roll a short time ago. I had 
 complete rent rolls of 1841 and 1881, and I found the 
 rental had increased only seven and a half per cent, since 
 1841. 
 
 " The tenants' improvements are much talked about. 
 It is usual here for the tenants to make improvements 
 that in England are made by the landlord, but there is 
 no injustice in this, for rents in Ireland are much lower 
 than they are in England. Virtually we pay for the im- 
 provements through asking less than the commercial rent 
 of the land. 
 
 " As a rule, when a tenant builds a house, he draws 
 the slates and does the labor, and we pay for the timber 
 and the slates. Bills for timber and slates are taken by 
 many of us as cash. 
 
 "All rent is now called rack-rent. Between 1850 and 
 1857, under the Encumbered Estates Act, many specula- 
 tors bought Irish land, with the intention of selling 
 again. Adair, of Glenveigh, was one of that class ; he 
 began with only ;^2,ooo, and went on buying land, raising 
 the rents, and selling again at an enormous advance. 
 But land owned by old families is invariably let at a rate 
 much less than the market price. It is the jobbers who 
 have rack-rented. I have never let at the highest market 
 price." 
 
 Soon we came to the farm, chiefly pasture, with a low, 
 neat house not far from the road. " This, a hundred 
 and one acres, the rent of which was ^178, and the 
 valuation ;^i27, I took up in 1883 from a tenant for 
 ^1,050. It came down to me from father and son
 
 IN LEINSTER. 63 
 
 through ten generations. I then borrowed money from 
 the Board of Works and rebuilt the house on the old 
 foundations. The farm was very much run down when 
 I took it, so I spent ;z^3oo in draining it, and have spent 
 more than I have made so far. In October last I bought 
 fifty yearling bullocks for ^^286. They have had nothing 
 but hay and grass, and I expect to sell them in October 
 for;^5oo or ^550. The only farm hands I keep are a 
 steward and a herd, each of whom gets lo^'. a week, grass 
 for a cow and donkey, and three roods. I sold some 
 fifteen months' colts the other day for ;z^37 loi-. Meadow- 
 ing hay I sell for from 50^'. to 70^-. an acre. Altogether, I 
 have three hundred Irish acres of grass and tillage, and 
 four hundred of wood and waste, and I make from it a 
 little more than I should if I let it. 
 
 " Not half of my rents are falling in. The May and 
 June rents, which I have usually had paid by this time, 
 have n't been paid. 
 
 " We retrench as much as we can. I have had to dis- 
 charge a carpenter and a mason I had in constant em- 
 ployment for twenty-five years, as well as two hands in 
 the garden and four on the farm. There are many like 
 myself, who have n't a common copper except what comes 
 from the land, and we never know whether we shall have 
 any thing in a year's time. Why should we be put in 
 this pinch simply because of an exigency of the govern- 
 ment ? 
 
 " Free sale, of course, operates as a second rent on the 
 purchasing tenant, but the tenants don't think of it as 
 such, because they never look on money as a fund ; 
 they never think of investing money for the sake of 
 interest. The League soon saw that the tenants selling 
 and getting high prices for their tenant right prevented
 
 64 IJ^ CASTLE AND CABIN: 
 
 the courts from reducing the rents, so they denounced 
 sale as land-grabbing. It is their interest to keep a 
 broken man in possession of a farm, in order to depre- 
 ciate its value. I know lots of men who are in difficulty, 
 who would gladly sell and invest their money in a smaller 
 farm, much to the benefit of everybody, but they are not 
 allowed to. 
 
 " The land question is taken up by the priests and Par- 
 nellites for different purposes, and by both as a means to 
 an end : by the former, in order to expropriate the 
 minority who now own the land, who are Protestants ; 
 and by the latter, in order to secure a Home-Rule Parlia- 
 ment. The young and more rabid priests are leading 
 the movement, and the older and better educated are 
 following, so as to keep on the crest of the wave. 
 
 " In a system of land purchase, county guaranties will 
 only be good if the country continues under the im- 
 perial government." 
 
 " Who will leave the country if a peasant proprietary 
 is established ?" I asked. 
 
 " I and many others like me," he said, " would not 
 go away, and many would go with regret only because 
 they could not afford to keep their places. The smaller 
 proprietors would be unable to remain. There are an 
 enormous number of small landlords who purchased 
 Irish land as a good investment, and a great many of 
 them will have to go, since they have often retained no 
 land at all in their own hands, except one house each 
 and a garden plot. The large landlords have great de- 
 mesnes which they can cultivate, and their grand houses 
 and demesnes they would be loath to leave and unable to 
 abandon, for they certainly could not sell them. Those 
 who have no residence here do not live here now, and
 
 IN LEINSTER. 65 
 
 as to them there will be no change. Those who have 
 residences here now and live in them will remain if they 
 possibly can." 
 
 " Even peasant proprietorship will not cure all agra- 
 rian distress. The careful man will purchase from the 
 improvident, and the government can never keep a sharp 
 enough look-out on the individual farmer to prevent him 
 from subletting. 
 
 *' The people also are extremely illogical. This sum- 
 mer on the Board of Guardians every one wanted to 
 keep the rates down, as it was going to be a very hard 
 year. I warned them that in a hard year more paupers 
 would come upon the Union than in a good year, and 
 that that contingency must be provided for. Now, out- 
 door relief has increased enormously, and the Union is in 
 debt over ;^2oo. 
 
 " If we are to have Home Rule, it will not do to trust 
 the present electorate, but one must provide for the 
 presence of representatives of capital and commerce, of 
 the legal and medical professions, on important boards 
 and committees. The merchants of Dublin could be 
 trusted, but they are so few in proportion as to be prac- 
 tically disfranchised. 
 
 " I would n't trust the people with the administration 
 of the criminal law, for at present they are too demoral- 
 ized to have regard for law, and if they could, would 
 remove a judge who did not decide according to their 
 notions. 
 
 ** I would n't trust them with what might be called the 
 incidence of taxation, but only with its collection ; for 
 if they could, they would throw the burden on unpopular 
 persons and classes. 
 
 " The people, I think, are not at heart disloyal when
 
 ^ IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 they are let alone. The O'Connell movement was aided 
 by the desire for Catholic emancipation, which no one 
 with a sense of justice could oppose ; and the National- 
 ist movement is aided by the agrarian agitation, 
 
 '* The leaders of the agitation, however, go to danger- 
 ous lengths. This is from a letter written to me by a 
 tanner, a prominent leaguer : ' We like our nobility and 
 gentry when they promote employment and add to the 
 general prosperity of the country, and we desire to have 
 them always living in our midst, feeling themselves — as 
 they are — quite as secure as if they were surrounded by 
 all the armed forces of the British dominions ; taking 
 their proper places, not at the tail of an English oligarchy, 
 but at the head of the Irish people ; the nobility of an 
 Irish self-sustaining, independent nation, and bound to 
 England only by the golden link of the crown and by 
 ties of affection and affinity.' Home Rule is opposed by 
 most on religious grounds. My gardener and steward are 
 Protestants, and they are more afraid of Catholic ascend- 
 ancy than I am ; they think their lives would not be 
 safe. 
 
 "You ask me what changes in the laws are most 
 needed. I am in favor of a duty on flour, dead meat, 
 and manufactured articles. Law costs in the Land 
 Courts should be reduced. They are absurdly high. On 
 January 9, 1882, there were nineteen cases on trial before 
 the subcommissioners at Mayo ; six cases were dismissed. 
 Of the remaining thirteen, the original rent was £,\o'] 
 i8j., the reduction ^40 xds. 6d. The total of the solici- 
 tors' charges was ^32 10s. : and of the fees to counsel, 
 
 "The poor-rate is assessed unfairly. It has always 
 been assessed on land only, but why should it not be
 
 IN LEINSTER. 6/ 
 
 assessed on income ? A farmer living in a house worth 
 ;!^3o, and making ^loo a year, ought not to pay, as he 
 does, the same poor-rate as a trader living in a similar 
 house, and making ^i,ooo a year." 
 
 A MILLER. 
 
 Throughout Ireland one sees by every river-side de- 
 serted, ruined mills ; but in County Carlow some giant 
 water-wheels are turning still. In one of the largest 
 of these mills the machinery is elaborate and of the 
 newest designs, chiefly of American invention and manu- 
 facture. The wheat used is American and Black Sea, 
 only ten per cent, being Irish. The output is a thousand 
 sacks a week, and is all sold within a radius of fifty 
 miles ; for it does n't pay to send flour to the seaboard. 
 "I am not a landlord," said the miller, "and the farmers 
 speak frankly before me. In their hearts they don't 
 want Home Rule, and are sick of the National League, 
 Unless a man wants to get a slap at a neighbor, he would 
 rather be rid of the League. The only people who gain 
 by it are particular shop-keepers who are secretaries or 
 treasurers of the local branches. 
 
 " A majority of the people are for Gladstone's bill, but 
 a good system of local self-government twenty years ago 
 would have saved us all this trouble. In the union the 
 Nationalists are a majority, and they obstruct business 
 and take every opportunity of insulting us. * The voice 
 of the people is against landlords and Protestants, and I 
 go with the voice,' said my gardener to me when I was a 
 candidate for office. 
 
 " There would be protection here in a moment, if there 
 was the power, for nine tenths of all classes favor it. 
 You do meet an odd free-trader now and then, but I
 
 68 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 rarely come across one. All manufactured articles, I 
 think, should be taxed, — flour, for instance, but not 
 wheat. 
 
 "I don't believe in Home Rule. An Irish govern- 
 ment would be practically bankrupt ; it could n't borrow 
 money even at twelve per cent. There would also be 
 much petty persecution of the Protestants. The Irish 
 are less religious than they were, but they are more 
 bigoted ; their antipathy to Protestants rests on the idea 
 that every Protestant is a friend of England, while they 
 wish to get rid of England altogether. The motives of 
 the leaders are largely selfish. Is n't it much pleasanter 
 
 for to get three hundred pounds a year to go to 
 
 Westminster and bait Lord Hartington, than to earn 
 twelve shillings a week as a stone cleaver ? 
 
 " It is human nature to wish to get every thing as cheap 
 as possible, and that is the case with the farmers and the 
 land. The Irish farmers have found out that the Land 
 Commissioners will reduce the rent enormously on an 
 uncultivated farm in bad order, and they act accordingly. 
 Still every one knows that the last five years have been 
 very bad, and this is the worst of all. As to coercion, 
 what the papers say is all nonsense. The matter with 
 Ireland is that we have license here instead of liberty." 
 
 A NATIONALIST LEADER IN COUNTY KILKENNY. 
 
 My companion was a self-made man in an old sleepy 
 town. We walked up and down the long promenade by 
 the river's side, fringed with trees, and crowded with 
 young men and girls strolling in their Sunday clothes. 
 As soon as we could find a comfortable bench a little 
 apart from the line of people, who were perpetually 
 saluting us, my companion composed himself to talk
 
 IN LEINSTER. 69 
 
 " Look at that weed-grown ditch," he said, pointing to 
 an old embankment at our feet. "That was to have 
 been a canal, leading to the sea, to bring provisions to 
 the town. ;^25,ooo was spent on it, but it was never 
 finished. The canal was planned by the Irish Parlia- 
 ment a hundred years ago. Now it is a ditch full of 
 rushes. 
 
 " There used to be a manufactory of blankets here ; 
 there were a thousand hand-looms ; there were hatters, 
 boot-makers and glove-makers here. These have all van- 
 ished off the face of the earth, before English competi- 
 tion. It is like the large shop crippling the smaller 
 shops. Home Rule would have kept these industries 
 alive by wise enouragement. As it is, the agitation for 
 home manufactures has at last created a demand for 
 Irish woollens, and the woollen factory has recently been 
 restored. 
 
 " It is natural to think that protection would help to 
 restore our industries, but there are other means. 
 
 " At present there is great need of technical education. 
 That ruined flour-mill below us I should like to turn 
 into a paper-mill, but I don't know how to make paper. 
 We are not a travelling people and know nothing about 
 the trade and the methods of manufacture in use by the 
 rest of the world. We depend solely on the produce of 
 the land. I would have a technical school in each prov- 
 ince, to teach chemistry, political economy, etc., and 
 also to be a centre of commercial information about the 
 needs of different markets and the current prices. 
 
 " The Protestants fear Catholic oppression. There is, 
 however, little bigotry here. Sir J. Gray, M.P. for Kil- 
 kenny six years ago, was a Protestant. , who has 
 
 been town clerk of for fifty years, is a Protest-
 
 70 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 ant, appointed by the old Catholic corporation, at a time 
 when a Catholic would not be tolerated in office in 
 a Protestant town. A few months ago he was retired 
 on pension by a Catholic board. A Protestant was 
 appointed sessional clerk for the county. I believe 
 that, so far from a Home-Rule government being a gov- 
 ernment by ecclesiastics, after Home Rule has been 
 granted the power of the priests will begin to wane. 
 When the people have got the power into their own 
 hands and have acquired the habit of thinking for them- 
 selves, they will ignore the priest in politics, — and though 
 the majority of the Nationalist party at present are co- 
 operating with the priests in this agitation, still, they are 
 not men who will allow the priests to govern them. 
 They are using the priests for their own purposes. It 
 was the tyranny of the English government that gave the 
 priests their power in the past, for the people had only 
 the priests to look to for guidance. Take away the 
 English government and let the people govern them- 
 selves, and the priests will at once lose their political 
 power. The best proof of this is that in all countries 
 where the priests have once had political influence, they 
 have lost it, as in France and Italy. 
 
 " I pledge my word, though a good Catholic, that I 
 think there would be more chance, if there were any 
 chance, of making Ireland Protestant, by granting Home 
 Rule than by leaving things as they are. The priests, I 
 don't think, care a halfpenny ticket about Home Rule, 
 but they have to follow the agitation. Religious bigotry 
 will decline. Beyond a doubt, in the event of Home 
 Rule, this place will be very much Americanized, and 
 America is certainly not a priest-ridden country. 
 
 " There is intimidation in the country at present, but
 
 IN LEINSTER. 7 1 
 
 a Home-Rule government could put down intimidation 
 in three days, not so much by putting people in jail as 
 by creating a popular sentiment against it. 
 
 " There is not much socialism in Ireland, for it is 
 opposed by the Church, and the farmers so soon as they 
 get the land will become conservative. Men will always 
 try to improve their position, and the laborers individu- 
 ally may try to get land, but that they will agitate gen- 
 erally against the farmers, I don't believe. It is quite 
 possible that the farmers might not be so keen about 
 Home Rule if they got the land first ; but the traders in 
 the towns will have still to be reckoned with. 
 
 "Absenteeism works great evils in County Kilkenny. 
 Lord Ormond draws some ^20,000 a year from the 
 county and spends it elsewhere, and yet he has never 
 asked a favor from his town that has not been granted, 
 in one case a grant of land, and at another time riparian 
 rights. Now, however, the object of the agitation is, of 
 course, to make the life here disagreeable to the land- 
 lords. 
 
 " The Land Acts have not finally settled the land 
 question. The courts at first gave miserably small re- 
 ductions. The costs of the courts are excessive. On 
 one property, the Shea estate, it will take five years for 
 the reductions to pay off the costs. 
 
 " To-day the crops are poor even where land is good. 
 Oats and barley are a quarter crop. Fifty per cent, re- 
 duction is necessary this year. 
 
 " The evils of absenteeism and the evils of landlordism 
 can be got rid of only by a comprehensive system of 
 land purchase, and that is possible only by Home Rule. 
 
 " A bill has been suggested making the purchase com- 
 pulsory on the tenants of any estate on the option of the
 
 72 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 landlord, the purchase money to be guaranteed by county 
 boards. Such a bill would be ridiculous. The onus of cul- 
 tivation is now on the landlord ; for a landlord has either 
 to cultivate the land himself or to get some one else to 
 cultivate it for him. Such an onus in a bad year is a 
 burden, and ought not to be transferred to the tenant 
 without his voluntary consent. 
 
 " Again, any such guaranty would be absurd. Sup- 
 pose the price fixed be exorbitant ; is it just that the 
 county should be liable ? Those on whose shoulders the 
 taxes are to be imposed ought to have a voice in fixing 
 the amount of the taxes. If a county board is to be 
 taxed as a guaranteeing board, it ought to have the power 
 of determining the amount of the guaranty, or tax, or 
 price of purchase. A special elective board would have 
 to be created for the purpose, for a grand jury is neither 
 elective nor representative. 
 
 " The only alternative, if the government pass a Pur- 
 chase Bill and determine by officials the amount to be 
 paid, is for them to give an imperial guaranty. The 
 very meaning of ' guaranty ' is that the guarantor has a 
 fund over and above the sum guaranteed, something be- 
 sides the actual thing guaranteed. If the imperial gov- 
 ernment pay too much for the land, they have other re- 
 sources ; but a county board would have nothing over 
 and above the land of the county, and the value of that 
 or a possibly exorbitant price for that, is what it is pro- 
 posed to guaranty. How can you get a guaranty out 
 of impoverished land in Connemara, so much rushes, 
 bog, and rock? 
 
 "Why should the government exact a county guaran- 
 ty ? Why not make six counties the unit of guaranty, 
 for the larger the area the stronger and the less onerous 
 would be the guaranty ?
 
 IN LEINSTER. 73 
 
 " Again, the imperial government confiscated my an- 
 cestors' property, and gave it to others. Now that they 
 restore it to me, why should they make me assume a 
 heavy obligation ? 
 
 " The only other kind of guaranty I can think of be- 
 sides an imperial guaranty is a guaranty by a Home- 
 Rule Parliament. If an imperial guaranty is impossible, 
 the land question can be settled only by an Irish 
 Parliament. 
 
 *' It might be made a condition of granting Home Rule 
 that the Home-Rule Parliament should settle the land 
 question and guaranty to the landlords a certain yearly 
 percentage equal to the current price of money on the 
 value of their property, according to a valuation previous- 
 ly made, until such time as the purchase money has been 
 paid in full. That would be a fair plan, and the only 
 practicable one ; and I don't believe there is any proba- 
 bility that a Home-Rule Parliament would ever break a 
 condition of such a sort precedent to Home Rule itself. 
 
 "We have come round again to Home Rule. Glad- 
 stone's bill is open to criticism. I am certainly in favor 
 of keeping our representatives in Parliament. It will be 
 better for the imperial government for us to have a voice 
 in imperial affairs ; it will give Irishmen a chance to 
 work and speak in England, and will tend to preserve 
 amity. The obstruction which was, I admit, vicious in 
 the past will cease when the causes of it are removed. 
 
 " Then, no matter how parties may change and shift in 
 Ireland under Home Rule, it will make no difference to 
 England so long as hatred of England does not increase ; 
 and that, I believe, will not be the case, for Home Rule 
 is not an opening wedge for separation. That, indeed, 
 would be impossible, for a few men with sticks in their 
 hands are not an army and cannot make a revolution."
 
 74 I^ CASTLE AND CAB IX. 
 
 A KILKENNY MANUFACTURER. 
 
 This is a man of great energy of character, which has 
 built up a large and prosperous business, and won him 
 the admiration and love of the people. Although a 
 Protestant and not active in public life, he has been pub- 
 licly honored by a Nationalist and Catholic corporation. 
 Every one speaks Avell of him. How does such a man 
 regard the political and social questions of the day ? As 
 we strolled through his long green-houses, he tried to de- 
 scribe to me his state of mind, — one that seems to be 
 characteristic of the more thoughtful, serious, and con- 
 scientious business men throughout Ireland. 
 
 ''Home Rule," he said, "means throwing the entire 
 political power of the country into the hands of the 
 Catholic priests. The lower orders will do exactly what 
 the priests tell them. The influence of the priests in pol- 
 itics is, however, not so great as it will be. In a move- 
 ment like this, the great political feeling that is excited 
 for the moment excludes all others, and the religious 
 feeling is suppressed ; but so soon as the political ques- 
 tion is settled, the religious feeling, which is now only 
 latent, will predominate. I regret this, not so much be- 
 cause it will be injurious to the Protestants, as because 
 it will be fatal to the country, for no country can be 
 properly governed by a body of ecclesiastics. 
 
 " An infallible church, however, must be a persecuting 
 church : it can allow nothing to stand up against it. 
 They might take our churches from us, but they might 
 do infinitely more serious damage by petty persecution. 
 It would be quite possible to make the country too hot 
 for a Protestant to live in it. There are many liberal 
 Catholics, but in the practical working of Home Rule 
 would not they be thrust aside ? Archbishop Walsh said
 
 IN LEINSTER. 75 
 
 once that it was infamous that in the CathoHc city of 
 Dublin the finest site should be occupied by a Protestant 
 university." 
 
 I referred to the popular discontent, and the apparent 
 inefficacy of the land acts to check it. ''They are all 
 mere stop-gaps," said he. "What other remedy is there 
 but Home Rule ? I cannot suggest any, Gladstone's 
 speech was an able argument, but T have been and am of 
 the opinion that Home Rule is not workable ; that things 
 would come either to a separation, for the people are 
 more or less in favor of separation, or to the restoration 
 of the present conditions ; and meantime the country 
 would be kept in hot water, by which I mean that there 
 would be no place for a business man in it. I would, how- 
 ever, certainly be a Home Ruler, if I could convince 
 myself that the country would settle down under it. 
 
 " I am afraid that Irish discontent is a permanent evil. 
 In 1782 the Irish Parliament became practically inde- 
 pendent, the country may have prospered, but ten years 
 afterwards it was in a state of rebellion, and the rebellion 
 would have effected a revolution, if it had not been sub- 
 dued by force of arms. 
 
 " If the bulk of the people were agreed on this subject 
 as they are in the South and West, there might be some 
 hope ; but the better and more energetic classes of the 
 North are against it to a man. 
 
 "It is true that, business will never prosper till the 
 political question is settled. What chiefly affects busi- 
 ness is confidence or the want of it. Would the country 
 at large have sufficient confidence in a Home-Rule gov- 
 ernment ? The whole thing is a gigantic experiment, 
 and it is very difficult to know beforehand how it will 
 turn out.
 
 *l6 JN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " The welfare of England is largely our welfare. If 
 England were reduced to a third-rate power to-morrow 
 and its wealth dispersed, we should seriously suffer here. 
 But whether a Home-Rule Parliament might not interfere 
 with English success at a critical moment, I really cannot 
 decide. 
 
 " Peasant proprietorship would be beneficial to busi- 
 ness, for there would then be no absentees, and all the 
 money got from the land, after the purchase money was 
 paid, would be spent in the country. I don't think na- 
 tionalization of the land will take place under Home 
 Rule, because of the influence of the Catholic clergy, 
 and of the land hunger, which is as great as ever it was. 
 The insecurity of tenure was what specially impoverished 
 the country, and if the people would only settle down 
 peaceably, without Home Rule, the country would pros- 
 per, but that they will not do. 
 
 " The proclamation of the League was unwise. It 
 ought to have been suppressed at first. It is the nature 
 of things to culminate, and then to decline, and the 
 League was beginning to decline. The best way of 
 treating it would have been to despise it. The League 
 has never been in violent opposition to the law. The 
 people here were never very enthusiastic about it ; those 
 most so were some workingmen who had been out in 
 the Fenian movement. As to Home Rule, however, the 
 people almost to a man are in favor of it. The franchise 
 is now almost manhood suffrage, and men of the lower 
 classes always like to do things in a flock ; they don't 
 like to be on the losing side, and always vote for the 
 man they expect to win. It would require the Duke 
 of Wellington and the whole English army to put this 
 movement down. The English government here is now
 
 IN LEINSTER. J J 
 
 only nominal, and Home Rule is safe to come sooner or 
 later. 
 
 " Some advantages may come with it. There is a 
 great deal of capital lying idle here, that a bounty sys- 
 tem could make operative, besides tempting more. Pro- 
 tection, generally, however, would be impracticable on 
 account of the laborers who would be unwilling to pay 
 more for food or clothing. The falling off in business, 
 however, I do not attribute wholly to the agitation, but 
 partly to the general depression. The telegraph and 
 railways, again, would make rebellion very difficult. 
 
 " But, in spite of this, I must say that it is my firm con- 
 viction that we shall get Home Rule ; that in ten, twenty, 
 or more years, there will be either such anarchy here or 
 so general a rebellion for complete separation that the 
 English government must interfere and put us back 
 where we are now, and that this series of movements and 
 counter-movements will be continued ad infinitum. Of 
 the Land Acts I have little more hope, for, as I have 
 said before, they are mere stop-gaps, — and, besides, the 
 Irish land-hunger and thriftlessness will create a new 
 class of landlords, who again will have to be expropri- 
 ated." 
 
 "You seem painfully pessimistic," I could not help re- 
 marking as I shook hands. 
 
 " 1 wish I could be otherwise," he replied, "but I am 
 simply stating, as frankly as possible, my honest thoughts, 
 so far as I know them. And in spite of all, there will be 
 no unreasonable opposition to Home Rule here ; we will 
 give it a fair trial. Mr. Jones in New Ross recently 
 transferred a large factory for dressing skins to England, 
 but I don't think I would transfer my business even if I 
 could, as I couldn't,"
 
 PART IL— IN MUNSTER. 
 
 A CORK NATIONALIST. 
 
 A YOUNG solicitor at the office of the League I asked 
 about the alleged excesses caused by the Plan of Cam- 
 paign. " The tenant farmers," he said, "have enor- 
 mous respect for the word ' rent.' A money-lender here 
 told me the other day that they raise money at extraordi- 
 nary rates to meet their rent. 
 
 " ' No rent ' is not the meaning of the people, though 
 the cry might not be so unjust as it seems to be. The 
 judicial reduction of rents is in some sort a measure of 
 what the landlords have taken in excess of their just 
 dues. The excess that the tenants have thus been shown 
 to have paid would at a moderate compensation amount 
 to ten years' purchase of their farms. So we might 
 argue that no more rent is due. Thousands of pounds, 
 moreover, is now owing to shopkeepers, and those debts 
 are as just obligations as the rent. The farmers, how- 
 ever, would be glad to settle. Many of them purchased 
 under Lord Ashbourne's Act at prices far in excess of 
 the value of the land. 
 
 " Cork County is free from crime. The East Riding 
 is quite free and the West Riding nearly so. At the last 
 assizes in the city only four petty bills were presented by 
 the grand jury. There are only four or five places where 
 there is any outrage or boycotting, and that is where the 
 landlords are fighting the Plan of Campaign. There are 
 
 78
 
 IN MUNSTER. 79 
 
 outrages at Millstreet, but there is the only priest in the 
 county who speaks against the League. It is a bad thing 
 when the priest is not in sympathy with the people, for then 
 he cannot restrain them. If the League is suppressed, a 
 great deterrent of crime will cease to operate, for the peo- 
 ple will then be acting for themselves, without their leaders 
 and priests working with them and directing them." 
 
 " Is the Plan of Campaign just," I asked, " in insisting 
 on all the tenants being given the same reduction, no 
 matter how different their circumstances ? " 
 
 " While twenty can pay their rents," was the answer, 
 " forty often cannot. If the twenty, who perhaps have 
 large means, pay, the forty small tenants are evicted, at 
 the mercy of the landlord. It then is an act of charity 
 on the part of the twenty to throw in their lot with their 
 neighbors. On the Luggacurran estate one tenant had 
 an estate rated at ;^90o a year, and another at ^1,400. 
 They were the first to suffer. They were able to pay, not 
 out of their profits, but out of capital which the rest did n't 
 have. 
 
 " Free trade is not worth discussing, but there used to 
 be any number of mills about Cork which have long 
 ceased to exist. When these mills were burnt down it 
 was not worth while to rebuild them. One was burnt 
 lately here, and another two years ago at Midleton. 
 Neither has been rebuilt. Only two mills are now oper- 
 ating here. Forty years ago my father was a great buyer 
 of wheat hefe for export to Glasgow, now American flour 
 is delivered here almost cheaper than the domestic grain. 
 
 " There used to be a great export trade in provisions 
 here. Now it is gone, except the export of butter. The 
 leather trade is also failing, and there are only two or 
 three tanneries where there used to be fifty.
 
 8o IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " To some extent, perhaps, this loss of trade is due to 
 the decline in population. 
 
 " What particular benefits do I expect from Home 
 Rule ? The Irish Parliament would foster the fisheries 
 by grants more wisely and energetically than the English 
 government. For instance, small protection harbors and 
 piers are needed along the coast. Now we cannot com- 
 pete with English, Scotch, or French fishermen. 
 
 "There would be a body of clever men anxiously 
 studying and encouraging Irish industries. So much 
 intelligence applied to one object would be sure to 
 have some influence for good. Judicious bounties 
 would start manufactures. There would be a great 
 saving in the expense of private legislation. The in- 
 creased economy and the wise encouragement of trade 
 might fairly be expected to bring back some of the pros- 
 perity Ireland enjoyed under the old Parliament, when 
 all the finer public buildings in Dublin were erected." 
 
 I asked whether it might not be dangerous to have the 
 judges appointed by a Dublin Parliament in view of the 
 violence of local prejudice. " On the contrary/' said 
 he, " the fair administration of justice would then be the 
 interest of everybody." 
 
 A BOYCOTTED FARMER IN COUNTY CORK. 
 
 In the list of boycotted persons published by the Cork 
 Defence Union my attention was caught by the case of 
 J. McCarthy, for the cause assigned for the boycotting 
 was that he " took a neighboring farm which had been 
 vacant for two years previously." One fine morning I 
 drove out to see him, in the townland of Barracharang, 
 fifteen Irish miles from Cork. His house, a square, low 
 wooden building, is at the end of a long muddy lane, sur-
 
 IN MUNSTER. 8 1 
 
 rounded by a morass of sodden manure. A man with 
 goatee and lean cheeks like a typical Yankee, with an 
 honest voice and keen, clear eyes, John McCarthy wel- 
 comed us with the enthusiastic warmth of one who sel- 
 dom sees a friendly face. 
 
 ''When we took this farm last April four years," he 
 began, " there was no boycotting. The farm was not 
 considered an ' evicted ' farm, for the tenants had gone 
 to law with one another and had reduced themselves 
 to nothing when Mrs. Longfield evicted them. The law- 
 suit began in 1872, and every one from here to Cork 
 knows that the farm was vacant for years before we took 
 it. Six or eight of the neighbors bid for the farm, but I 
 was preferred as I had been a tenant of Mrs. Longfield's 
 son. For many months the people were friendly. Then 
 Callaghan, one of the former tenants, complained that he 
 would have got the farm if we had n't interfered. Then 
 a great meeeting was held at Donoughmore ; they had 
 two M. P.'s down here, J. C. Flynn and Dr. Tanner, who 
 told them lots of lies, told them that we were land-grab- 
 bers. Mr. Flynn called on every one to boycott us, and 
 not to speak to us. Dr. Tanner, who admitted to me 
 that this was not a ' grabbed farm,' did nothing but de- 
 nounce land-grabbing. The people made up an effigy 
 of me, painted it, put a pipe in its mouth, set it on a don- 
 key, marched it up and down the village at the time 
 of the meeting, and then threw it down and battered it 
 to bits. They called us traitors. 
 
 " In August I offered for sale a lot of meadowing. 
 Suddenly notices were put up warning people not to 
 buy it, and I did n't sell a pound of the forty acres. 
 On August 7th one of the two smiths in Donoughmore 
 lefused to work for me, and the other was threatened
 
 82 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 and soon boycotted me too. All the local tradesmen 
 boycotted me. The next year the League pressed my 
 men to leave me. They were hooted and threatened. 
 June 13th they left me, and for some weeks we had 
 no help at all. In September I hired a neighbor's boy 
 for twelve months, and before two weeks were out shots 
 were fired into the windows of this room, the bedroom, 
 and the kitchen. The bullets made these holes in the 
 shutters. No one was arrested, though we could give 
 a strong guess at the parties. The day after I let the 
 boy go. That day, a Sunday, I was hooted at mass, and 
 stones were fired at me as I left the chapel. The Sunday 
 after my wife was bedaubed with rotten eggs in the chapel- 
 yard. The next Sunday my brother and his wife were 
 bedaubed with rotten eggs and hit with stones, and neither 
 she nor this woman have been to chapel since. 
 
 " In October or November I went to Macroom fair 
 with some cattle. I sold them, and the purchaser after 
 paying a deposit drove them into a yard. Two fellows 
 warned the man the cattle were boycotted, and they were 
 at once turned out of the yard. They were returned to 
 me and I brought them home again. From that day to 
 this we have sold no cattle at any fair or market. On a 
 Patrick's day I sent a lot of pigs to Kanturk. At mid- 
 night four men, one the secretary of the League, and an- 
 other one of the committeemen, started from here and 
 got to Kanturk before my boys did. The boys thought 
 they had better bring the pigs back. 
 
 " For a time we were in a great hobble, for my butter 
 was boycotted. I cannot get a tailor, carpenter, or black- 
 smith nearer than Cork, and even in Cork tradespeople 
 who used to give us credit now refuse it. Our letters 
 have to be left at the police barracks, for no one dared to
 
 IN MUNSTER. 83 
 
 bring us letters from the place the post-boy leaves them. 
 Laborers I can get only through the Cork Defence Union. 
 Our neighbors visit us only on the sly, at night and in dis- 
 guise ; for if they were seen speaking to us they say they 
 would be called before the League. 
 
 " Those two young chaps were confirmed last July. 
 They were often assaulted on their way to chapel, and on 
 the day of the Bishop's visitation one was brutally beaten, 
 and his face cut with a stone. I presented him next 
 morning to the Bishop, and he threatened to excommu- 
 nicate any one who molested people in their religious 
 duties. 
 
 " We have suffered as much as any persons in County 
 Cork. Boycotting is worse than the plague. We would 
 have given up the farm before but we hoped the League 
 would be suppressed, and we believed that in twelve 
 months after that we would have quiet again. To this 
 day half the people say and think that we are wronged, 
 but no one dares to speak to us openly for fear of the 
 League. This June two years, I went to the League 
 rooms in Donoughmore, before the committee, and of- 
 fered to give up the farm if they would let me have the 
 laborers to save the crops. The chairman said that the 
 rule was that I must give up the farm presently and with- 
 out conditions ; that was the order of the central board. 
 But for the Defence Union and that little party of land- 
 lords I and my family would be in the workhouse. 
 
 " There is a good deal of boycotting in the neighbor- 
 hood. The police of Donoughmore are boycotted. No- 
 tices boycotting them were pasted even on the donkeys' 
 backs. The young women are forbidden to speak to a 
 policeman — if a girl does so, she is boycotted. The Ca- 
 tholic curate about a year ago denounced a young man
 
 84 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 for throwing eggs at a respectable farmer. The people 
 said that the farmer's daughter had held a policeman's 
 head while he was having a tooth drawn ; and the curate 
 was boycotted. The priests get turf, hay, and oats from 
 the farmers, and they all refused to give him any. Two 
 or three years ago the parish priest was boycotted be- 
 cause he would n't join the League. One day he took 
 two loads of corn to a farmer's hay-yard to be threshed, 
 and in the evening the neighbors carted it all back to 
 him, just as it was. They generally refused to go to his 
 stations too. 
 
 " Timothy Harlehy, who has a farm next mine of 
 some sixty acres, was evicted May last by his landlord, 
 Mr. French. For several nights he slept out-of-doors 
 and his wife at a neighbor's. He then was put back as 
 caretaker. The people then boycotted Harlehy, because 
 I suppose he did n't care to go on sleeping for ever in 
 the open air. They burnt his hay rick. They broke his 
 mowing machine by spiking the meadow with bits of 
 iron. His brother-in-law took off a cartload of Har- 
 lehy's corn to his barn to thresh. Two or three nights 
 afterwards two shots were fired into the bedroom of the 
 laborer who carted the corn. The m.an explained that 
 the corn had been taken in payment of a debt, and even 
 then there was a great fight in the League about taking 
 his boycott off. Another man, Barratt, helped Harlehy 
 in threshing. Barratt's corn happened to be stacked in 
 the field, and the next day the bindings were cut and the 
 corn scattered. 
 
 " We have been under police protection ever since our 
 house was fired into — two policemen sleep here every 
 night, and we feel uneasy if they are late. People don't 
 care if they kill a man about here, for they know nothing 
 will happen to them if they do.
 
 IN MUNSTER. 85 
 
 " Some six years ago I joined the League. A thresh- 
 ing machine was promised me by the owner, and he re- 
 fused to let me have it unless I joined. I was afraid, and 
 I went in with another farmer, also under compulsion. 
 
 " Half the people have been coerced into joining the 
 League. The respectable farmers don't attend the 
 League meetings here, and the parish priest does not 
 control it. If one of the members has a spite against 
 you, there is no doubt but that you will be boycotted for 
 one reason or another. The farmers are getting cool 
 about the League. It has been necessary, but is neces- 
 sary no longer now that the Land Acts have been 
 passed. 
 
 " The land is very poor in this townland. The crops 
 are miserable. Nothing is good here but Champions. 
 Rent is too high here. I am paying fourteen shillings 
 an acre. Some of the land is boggy and not worth four 
 shillings an acre, but some of the arable land would stand 
 you over a pound. I don't believe there is a man who 
 can make his present rent. But the landlord is a good 
 man and does not press us. We were given 25 per cent, 
 last gale day, but that is not enough. If we were pressed 
 every man would be evicted. There is not a tenant but 
 owes from two to three or four years' rent ; yet the land- 
 lord is popular. He came down here yesterday, and the 
 village band turned out to meet him, and the people drew 
 his carriage down to Donoughmore Cross. 
 
 " There are talking against the landlords a good many 
 Land Leaguers who if they were in their places would be 
 much worse. A little while ago, before Captain Stokes, R. 
 
 M., one D , a National Leaguer, sued a laborer for 
 
 thirteen shillings, arrears of rent, and settled the case in 
 court for half his manure, which he took and laid out on 
 his own farm. They will exact the last farthing.
 
 86 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " There are two sides to every question. What do 
 farmers give to the poor ? How many laborers do they 
 employ ? Will they, when they become proprietors, 
 give as much and employ as many as the large land- 
 lords ? This country at any rate will never be without 
 landlords. These may be hunted out, but there will 
 be new ones and worse. If this property were owned by 
 one of our neighboring farmers, more people would be 
 evicted than are now. The farmers are sharp about 
 money matters. Croften here, who was the secretary 
 of the League and is now the postmaster, owed seven 
 years' rent when the Arrears Act was passed. He went 
 into court and had the arrears wiped off, and has n't paid 
 a halfpenny since. 
 
 "Bad as they are here," said McCarthy, as I turned to 
 go, " they are much worse elsewhere. I don't even con- 
 demn boycotting absolutely. A man who goes behind 
 another's back and takes his farm, might be fairly boy- 
 cotted ; but then the people ought to make sure of the 
 facts." 
 
 Something that Mrs. McCarthy said showed that she 
 had some opinions of her own about the reason for their 
 being so persistently boycotted. Her eyes twinkled 
 when I asked her to tell me what she thought about it. 
 "Well," she said, with a little hesitation, "the leaders of 
 the League here are the poorest and lowest of the people. 
 Chief among them are some young men belonging to a 
 wrangling family named B . Their father had a law- 
 suit with a neighbor sixteen or seventeen years ago, and, 
 when the suit went against him, hung himself. A friendly 
 
 farmer told us that one of the B boys said we had 
 
 called them the hangman's sons. We would never have 
 said such a thing, and we would n't say so now. But
 
 IN MUNSTER. 8/ 
 
 there was a boy in our house who might have said some- 
 thing of the sort. Then, when Callaghan said he would 
 
 have got the land if we had n't taken it, the B s were 
 
 glad to turn his talk against us, and boycotted us out of 
 spite." 
 
 I drove on to Donoughmore, a wretched little village, 
 and called on Father Murphy, the Catholic curate. " I 
 know nothing about the merits of McCarthy's case," said 
 he, " and wonder how you came to hear of it. This 
 movement began with the tenants pledging themselves 
 not to take a farm from which another had been evicted 
 unjustly. Then the principle was extended to all evic- 
 tions. This may explain why McCarthy was not boy- 
 cotted at first. The principle was not definitely formu- 
 lated for some time. 
 
 "I know he has been boycotted very hard. His 
 brother and his brother's wife, as well as his personal 
 family, were not allowed to come to church, and have 
 since been annoyed coming and going. Other members 
 of the congregation were not allowed to sit in the gallery 
 with them, and some who did so were insulted. McCarthy 
 was reputed a good, honest man till he took the farm. 
 
 '' No clergyman is permitted to attend a political meet- 
 ing without the permission of the parish priest, and in 
 this parish the clergy take no part in the League. 
 
 '' In the matter of boycotting, I distinguish between 
 active and passive boycotting, and discountenance active 
 boycotting only. 
 
 " Home Rule we all want, because the Irish are a na- 
 tion, and a nation ought to govern itself. Moreover, the 
 imperial Parliament has been drawing the money out of 
 the country. A home Parliament would develop our 
 industries by advancing money and by giving bonuses."
 
 88 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 I then tried to find Bat Callaghan's public-house. We 
 had to ask the way. At one house the driver got down 
 and knocked at the door. A woman opened it, and, at 
 sight of a tall man in a long, rough coat, ran back, shriek- 
 ing hysterically in great terror. Finally I found Cal- 
 laghan, an old man, with drooping lip and shaking hand. 
 " I bought the land," he said slowly, " from a woman who 
 had no right to sell her son's part, but I knew nothing of 
 it. The son sued me, and went from post to pillar. At 
 last, I was only entitled to one third of the farm, though 
 I kept possession of the whole of it." 
 
 " My father," the daughter explained, " had paid no 
 rent for the ten years when he was in possession, and the 
 others paid nothing. Then the landlord evicted them all, 
 and got the whole into his hand. We were evicted several 
 times, and put back again. It was twelve months from 
 the last eviction when McCarthy took the farm. My 
 mother acted as caretaker for a time, living here and 
 going over there once in a while. For a year or two there 
 were no crops on the place. For some years we let the 
 neighbors feed their cattle off it." 
 
 " The landlord," said Callaghan, " asked me to bid for 
 the farm, and I offered ^60, three pounds less than the 
 old rent. I am glad I did not get it, for I could n't have 
 paid the money, nor could the cousin who was going to 
 take the farm in my name. McCarthy offered the old 
 rent." 
 
 " They are boycotted ! " shrieked Mrs. Callaghan glee- 
 fully. " When they went to mass they were pelted with 
 stones and eggs. No one will speak to them or sit in the 
 same gallery with them. Oh, they are boycotted ! As 
 for us, we are as much after the old farm as we were the 
 day we left."
 
 IN MUNSTER. 89 
 
 " McCarthy came here," suggested the daughter, " and 
 offered us money for my father's good-will, but we 
 would n't take it." 
 
 " Did you see the place," asked the old man, " covered 
 with stumps of trees ? The landlord gave McCarthy 
 and a few others leave to cut wood there. Then all the 
 neighbors went in, and every man had his tree, the whole 
 country-side, and all the trees were cut down in one night." 
 In a few minutes the ruined wood, with the trees sawn off 
 four or five feet from the ground, loomed weirdly before 
 us in the moonlight as my car galloped on to Cork. 
 
 A PLAN OF CAMPAIGN ESTATE. 
 
 Half-way from Fermoy to Mitchelstown we caught the 
 first glimpse of the gleaming white towers of Mitchels- 
 town Castle. " Ha ! ha ! " shouted the driver, " we '11 
 soon have the green flag floating there, with the harp 
 without the crown." Soon we were in the little town, a 
 town celebrated in the old posting days, but now deca- 
 dent and wellnigh lifeless. The post-car stops in a 
 square, where on the broad green a gayly dressed party 
 are playing tennis. The old ladies from the " College " 
 opposite, where, by the generosity of an old Lord King- 
 ston, twenty-six ladies in reduced circumstances enjoy 
 half a house each and a pound a week, are sunning 
 themselves near the tennis nets. A tennis tournament 
 in " a plan of campaign " town. What a contrast ! Upon 
 the green open the great gates of the demesne, and the 
 broad road leads slowly up to the castle, more splendid 
 than many a palace, with its Gothic entrance flanked by 
 lofty towers, with its gallery a hundred and fifty feet 
 long, and eighty bedrooms. On the gravel-walk pea- 
 cocks are jauntily strutting.
 
 go IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 The estate is, as is well known, one of the most 
 heavily indebted in Ireland. The building of the castle 
 cost fabulous sums in the first quarter of the century, 
 and the hospitality of Lord Kingston, the friend of 
 George IV., was magnificent but ruinous. In 1845 or 
 1846 the mortgage on the property was foreclosed, and 
 the story of the seizure and the fortnight's siege of the 
 castle is one of the most romantic episodes in the ro- 
 mance of " New Ireland." In 1850 the estate was sold 
 under the Encumbered Estates Act, and for a time con- 
 trolled by a land company. Some years ago the mort- 
 gages were consolidated into a single mortgage of some 
 ^^240,000 to the Representative Body of the Church of 
 Ireland, and the interest, a little less than ;^9,5oo, con- 
 sumes yearly three quarters of the entire rental. The 
 rents are in the main identical with those in force at the 
 beginning of the century, and average less than those 
 fixed by the agent of the Court of Chancery in 1845-6. 
 
 Such was the state of affairs when in November, 1886, 
 the tenants combined to demand an all-round reduction 
 of 25 per cent, a reduction which if granted would have 
 swept away the entire surplus above the mortgage inter- 
 est. Lady Kingston, acting in the absence of her hus- 
 band, offered to give reductions of from 10 to 30 per 
 cent., according to individual necessities, — and the plan 
 of campaign was adopted. 
 
 Early in the spring a public auction was held of all 
 the cattle on the estate. The object, of course, was to 
 leave nothing for the landlord to distrain. A violent 
 speech was made by Mr. Mandeville, M. P., threatening 
 those tenants who still held aloof from the combination. 
 From that time on severe boycotting prevailed. The 
 night of February 5th placards were posted throughout
 
 IN MUNSTER. 9 1 
 
 the country-side. This is what they said : " Boycott ! 
 Boycott ! ! Boycott ! ! ! Fellow-countrymen, be not de- 
 ceived, boycotting is not done away with. Disregard 
 the language of cowardice, no matter by whom uttered. 
 Stand firmly by your homes, by your wives, and little 
 ones. Strike at your tyrants ! All your hopes and for- 
 tunes are centred in this fight. Strike ' now or never, 
 now and forever,' at every one who assists Anna King- 
 ston, Lady Kingston, to recover oppressive rents, or who 
 pays them. Boycott that disgrace to her sex — Anna 
 Kingston, the grass widow, the hard-hearted. Boycott 
 Frend, the agent, the pig-headed representative of the 
 Church Body, who dismissed the laborers. Boycott 
 Bulldog Maria O'Grady, solicitor, who betrayed every 
 client who had the misfortune to be associated with him. 
 Boycott Benson, the insolent whelp, whose insolence 
 and extortion all of you have experienced. Strike at the 
 outposts of the castle ; you know who they are. Boy- 
 cott Jim Neill, the hangman, and family ; Neddy Kelly, 
 the ex-farmer ; Dicky FitzGibbon, Clerk of the Union, 
 the only land-grabber in the district, and his brood of 
 upstarts ; gombeen-man Coache, and his apostate wife, 
 the only associate of Benson, and all bailiffs on the 
 estate, — shun them. Let others, too, take warning and 
 beware of their fate, or their turn will surely come. By 
 order of the Vigilance Committee. N. B. — John Cough- 
 Ian, of Hemingstown, has paid his rent. Boycott him and 
 his shorthorns, and dairy farms. Dairymen, beware ! " 
 The shopkeepers in town, who had been chiefly sup- 
 ported by the castle, wrote humble letters begging to be 
 excused from filling the orders of Lady Kingston. So 
 many were the boycotted people, that opposite the green 
 a shop was opened by Lady Kingston for their benefit ;
 
 92 JN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 every thing was kept there, from pork to pepper, soda to 
 stockings, and young ladies ran in and out with a most 
 amusing air of proprietorship. " Bulldog Maria O'Grady " 
 was boycotted. *" The reason I have n't been to my 
 office lately," he said, "is that my servant has been sent 
 off to America, and I have no one to tidy it up. In 
 January the Leaguers announced that they would n't let 
 me, my clerk, servants, or their children go to the parish 
 church, and the priest, through Father Sexton, re- 
 quested me not to go for the sake of peace. Two old 
 clients of mine, one a shopkeeper and the other a seeds- 
 man, have been punished by fine and boycotting for em- 
 ploying me. They threatened to boycott O'Brien, a 
 magistrate, for employing me, and he, for business rea- 
 sons, purchased his peace with them." Benson, "the in- 
 solvent whelp," was boycotted. "They broke the skull 
 of the bailiff with an iron hammer, making a fearful 
 wound. The sheriff swore he saw a certain man strike 
 him, and the man was tried but acquitted." Dicky Fitz- 
 Gibbon and his " brood of upstarts " were boycotted. 
 *' His daughter, a pretty girl, fifteen or sixteen years old, 
 on her way to church, was pursued by a hooting mob, and 
 when she took refuge in a shop the shopkeeper put her 
 out. All his servants have left him, and his children are 
 not allowed to go to school." 
 
 " The tenant right on the estate brings as high a price 
 ;is ever. For instance, February ii, 1885, James Moore 
 sold to his son on his marriage thirty-four statute acres, 
 the rent of which was ;^2i, for ^^275, and a covenant to 
 oupport him ; January 29, 1885, Mary M. sold to Patrick 
 Clifford, ten acres and two roods, rented for seven 
 guineas, for ;^i5o ; in 1886, a small house, held under 
 lease, paying lo^-. a year ground rent, was sold for ;!^5oo ;
 
 IN MUNSTER. 93 
 
 April 2 2d, Thornton sold to Roach, a small cottage and 
 nine acres, held under lease, and paying ^5 a year rent, 
 for ^365 and costs, £\o ; June i, 1887, John Quinlan 
 sold to Daniel Wallace, a small plot of half an acre, paying 
 \os. rent, for ^200 and costs, p^i2." The amount of the 
 costs surprised me. "What the landlord and tenant," 
 said Mr, O'Grady, " used to settle between themselves is 
 now, owing to the recent legislation, transacted through 
 the lawyers and the court. So that now the costs amount 
 to pounds instead of shillings. ^5 is the usual charge 
 for drawing an instrument ; the fees are about ^5 ; and 
 £2 for my perusal, on account of the landlord. The office 
 never charges for drawing such instruments, so by boy- 
 cotting me the tenants double their costs. 
 
 " The people are demoralized. They dodge their own 
 priests if they can. Near Fermoy they nailed up the 
 chapel every Sunday for five or six months. The priests 
 lose money hand over hand, for the people are becoming 
 independent of them through the influence of returning 
 American Irish. 
 
 " Home Rule is a hollow sham. Six hundred thousand 
 farmers support it because of the land agitation, and the 
 needy classes because they have nothing to lose, and see 
 before them a magnificent prize — the revenues of Ireland. 
 Under Home Rule there will be ten years of chaos and 
 terrorism, and then decent men will gradually come to 
 the front again. 
 
 " There is enormous distress here, but it does not 
 * touch the farming class, but only the laborers and the 
 servants. The laborers are very badly off. Several 
 hundred used to find employment on this one estate. 
 The landlords to-morrow, with ;;{^20o or ^300, could get 
 hundreds of laborers to tear the roofs off the farmers' 
 heads."
 
 94 
 
 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 With Canon O'Regan I had some talk about the state 
 of affairs. " Suppose the Kingstons cannot afford to 
 grant reductions that richer landlords give, why should 
 the people suffer ? That great palace there was built out 
 of the earnings of the farmers. Why should the people 
 starve to enable Lady Kingston to live there ? Money was 
 squandered recklessly in the past, it is just that the pres- 
 ent should pay for it." Yet there is something touching 
 in the thought of that gentle, sad-voiced lady in that 
 noble castle, for the last time perhaps, watching the pea- 
 cocks strutting on the gravel, or for the last time stroll- 
 ing through the vast conservatories. 
 
 In the village the people speak with curious hatred of 
 the Kingstons, for whom even A. M. Sullivan felt com- 
 passion. They repeat dreadful traditions of impossible 
 cruelties in the eighteenth century, and refer vaguely to 
 a curse that the estate shall never pass from father to son 
 for more than two generations, a curse that at least is 
 verified by the facts. 
 
 It seemed strange to carry these thoughts to a brilliant 
 ball, and even then they could not be forgotten, for our 
 hostess had herself her own troubles with her tenants, 
 who had only just consented to an arrangement ; and 
 many ladies were present who had been reduced to gen- 
 teel beggary by the failure of family charges that were 
 expected to endure forever. As the party broke up in 
 the early morning, a report spread suddenly that a bailiff 
 had been shot, and a policeman wounded ; and as we 
 walked home we passed a burning hay-rick, surrounded by 
 a crowd of jeering rowdies, that no one tried to save. It 
 was said to belong to a widow who had brought back her 
 cows from the place where they had been concealed by 
 order of the League. On arriving at the castle, we found
 
 IN MUNSTER. 95 
 
 that all the windows had been smashed in the beautiful 
 house of an absentee neighbor, and that a successful 
 raid had been made by the Kingston bailiff, who had 
 driven sixty-two of the tenants' cattle into the demesne. 
 The next day we sat up half the night in the long billiard- 
 room, with all the arms that could be mustered, expecting 
 an attack to recover the cattle. *' The poor, deluded 
 tenants ! " said a lady ; " it is necessary to seize their cows 
 to give them an opportunity to pay their rents with 
 safety." Such are some of the excitements of life on a 
 " Plan of Campaign " estate ; they recalled the border 
 warfare of the days of " Marmion " and the " Lady of the 
 Lake." 
 
 A few weeks later and a great meeting of Galtee 
 farmers, with blackthorns in their hands, refused to be 
 dispersed by the police, drove them to the barracks, and 
 left two young men dying in the streets. Gladstone 
 wrote the telegram : " Remember Mitchelstown ! " and 
 William O'Brien, in a fortified farmer's house, entered by 
 a ladder, pointed his own moral of that famous aphorism : 
 " I say, God bless you and guard you, and more power to 
 your strong arms. . . . Before that watchword the 
 walls of Dublin Castle and the walls of Mitchelstown 
 Castle will go down and crumble in the dust." ' 
 
 A few more months and the Land Commissioners 
 granted a general reduction of twenty-two per cent, on 
 the rents of the Mitchelstown tenants under judicial 
 leases fixed in 1881 and 1882 ; and, on the tenants still 
 holding out, their demands were finally acceded to ; 
 evicted tenants were reinstated, and the proprietors an- 
 nounced their intention to offer the estate for sale. This 
 is the final consummation, so long delayed, of " the ruin 
 ' September 24, 1887.
 
 96 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 of that noble house, the wreck of that princely fortune, 
 once the boast of Southern Ireland." ' These landlords 
 were not rack- renters, they were not absentees, they made 
 the town of Mitchelstown beautiful, and their own estate 
 they were perpetually improving ; they built almshouses 
 and a church, and a town-hall, and yet they are driven 
 from the country with execrations. 
 
 A GENTLEMAN FARMER IN COUNTY CORK. 
 
 A handsome sunburnt, athletic man appeared one day 
 at luncheon. The owner of an estate of some five 
 thousand acres, he has but few tenants and is trying to 
 farm most of it himself. It is a dairy district, and the 
 profits seem to be reasonably remunerative. " Take," he 
 said, " a farm of twenty acres. That will support at a 
 low valuation eight cows (wet and dry, /. ^., winter and 
 summer) on hay and grass. Those cows ought to pro- 
 duce three firkins of butter each, three and a half would 
 be usual. That is worth, at 50.^., icy. less than has been 
 refused by some of my tenants this year — ^7 \os. If you 
 allow a calf to each cow, the farmer would make a fur- 
 ther sum at present prices of ;^3 each. Two pigs at 
 least can be kept for each cow, selling for 30^-. each, after 
 being fed on buttermilk and potatoes. The gross re- 
 ceipts would then be ;^io8. In addition to this there 
 would be potatoes grown for family use and a little oats 
 for straw to make manure, which I don't charge for. 
 The rent of the farm would probably be, with the pres- 
 ent reduction, ;^2o, a pound an acre. The taxes would 
 be half the rates at \s. in the pound, or ^2. So the net 
 income of the farmer would be about ;^ 85 or ^86. 
 
 " The farmers spend too much money on funerals, 
 
 ' A. M. Sullivan : " New Ireland," Chap. XII.
 
 IN MUNSTEK. 97 
 
 fairs, meetings, drink, and shop goods. Much harm is 
 also caused by their peculiar marriage customs. If my 
 son were to marry a daughter of yours, for instance, I 
 should have to give my son a farm, twenty acres and ten 
 cows, perhaps, and you would give with your daughter 
 an equivalent in- money — ;^2oo. But that money, in- 
 stead of going into the bride's pocket or her husband's, 
 goes to me as the father-in-law. The father gets the mar- 
 riage portion of the girl. In seven years hence, when 
 the son is probably the father of seven children, they are 
 all dependent on the farm and ten cows, and the rent has 
 to be met all the same. The result is too often bank- 
 ruptcy without any fault on the part of the landlord. 
 
 " Then the priest tax is heavy. It is not unusual to 
 hear the farmer saying after a priest has left the parish ; 
 * He was a devil of a fellow, and knocked the heart out 
 of us.' They get about ten per cent, of the girl's mar- 
 riage portion, and are paid large fees at christenings and 
 funerals. * That was a great funeral,' said a farmer to 
 me one day, ' four priests at £,2, a head.' All the ten- 
 ants on an estate are apt to be related to one another. 
 The priests encourage their parishioners to marry among 
 themselves, for they get a percentage on both fortunes. 
 
 '' I have given reductions in the last three years, even 
 on judicial rents, whenever it seemed necessary. There 
 is no mistake about it, some of the judicial rents are too 
 high. I have seen the rents upheld on farms where the 
 tenant was thriving with hard labor on poor land, and 
 reduced on farms where the tenant was improvident on 
 better land. Some of the land was valued in June and 
 some in December, but it is impossible to judge the value 
 of land in winter. That was the case with my property. 
 Land should be valued in summer when the crops arp
 
 98 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 growing. The result has been great inequality in the 
 fairness of judicial rents. 
 
 " Eviction, of course, is sometimes necessary. I ex- 
 plain my reasons as clearly as possible to my tenants. 
 ' If I let this man have his land for nothing, I tell them, 
 ' I can't make you pay.' The dangerous man to evict is 
 the man who has nothing ; the man who has money does 
 not care to risk his neck. It is bad policy to turn out 
 the poor. 
 
 '* The national movement is led by a body of very 
 clever men, but they have countenanced outrages be- 
 cause their object is to make things so uncomfortable for 
 us that we must either join in or be crushed. When the 
 tenants are made proprietors, the owners of the large es- 
 tates will have to leave the country, but men like myself 
 will remain. I am half farmer, half landlord, and suc- 
 ceeding, so I cannot be hurt much." 
 
 AN ESTATE IN COUNTY WATERFORD. 
 
 For miles in every direction the land is the Duke's. 
 The beautiful castle that overpeers the Blackwater is va- 
 cant, but the evils of absenteeism are averted by a wise 
 and almost princely generosity. The railroad from Fer- 
 moy to Lismore was built by the Duke, and he gave to 
 the people the long, graceful Lismore bridge. 
 
 With one thoroughly familiar with the estate I spent a 
 
 day in driving over it. " John D lives there," he 
 
 said. " The rent is ^£26 2s. for two small holdings, and 
 last Lady-day his arrears were ;^i78. We have had a 
 decree against him for twelve months past. He has paid 
 only one year's rent in six years, and that on threat of 
 eviction. I visited him personally to induce him to join 
 the landlord in having his arrears wiped off under the
 
 IN MUNSTER. 99 
 
 Arrears Act, and he promised, but did not. A national- 
 ist guardian said they were anxious to have an eviction 
 on the Duke's property, and had a League hut all ready 
 to put up for him. 
 
 *' Here 's a farm that belonged to Michael Flynn, who 
 paid about ^{^340 for 352 acres in two farms. He paid 
 punctually and made money, dying thirteen or fourteen 
 years ago. His grandson inherited it and a good sum of 
 money ; drank, gambled, soon ran up ^600 arrears, and 
 sold off his stock. As he was impoverishing the prop- 
 erty, doing no good to any one, the Duke evicted him, 
 let the arrears go, and gave him about^ioo to emigrate. 
 For three years the farm was then worked from the 
 ofifice. Expensive improvements were made, laborers' 
 cottages were built and fences. A steward was hired 
 to work it. One year the old rent above expenses was 
 cleared ; the next year ;!^io2 was carried forward, and 
 the third year there was no balance. Three years ago a 
 woman took it in excellent condition for ^300. In three 
 months she married Gallagher, and died with her first 
 child. The first half-year's rent she paid, and he paid 
 the second. He was given twenty per cent, reduction. 
 Then he put up his stock at auction to avoid paying the 
 third half-year's rent when it was long due. We had had 
 a judgment against him for a long time, and distrained 
 the morning of the auction. He paid then out of de- 
 posit receipts amounting to over twice the rent, and the 
 same day auctioned off all the stock, and has bought 
 none since. The place is now ruined. The laborers' 
 cottages have the windows broken and the doors off their 
 hinges. The fences are down ; he has ploughed up 
 three fields without sowing any seed in them. He is a 
 tough customer."
 
 lOO IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 I spoke to a laborer in one of the fields. 
 
 " The place is in a worse state now," he said, " than 
 when young Flynn left it." 
 
 " On the Duke's property," continued my companion, 
 "the buildings and drainage are fully half paid for by the 
 landlord. There has not, however, been much reclama- 
 tion of land in Tipperary and the south — none worth 
 speaking of since the famine." 
 
 We passed a Land League hut thirty feet by fourteen, 
 with two rooms and one window, built of corrugated iron 
 sheathing lined partly with wood. Here lives vigorous, 
 
 voluble, aged Mrs. M and her decrepit husband. 
 
 *' I had those 315 acres," she said. " The valuation was 
 ^212 \os. I sunk ^1,400 my father left me in the farm, 
 and was evicted for;^5oo, though there was not a year's 
 rent due. Six illegitimate daughters own it, and evicted 
 me on July ist, when there were a hundred acres of corn 
 on it. 
 
 " I have nine children, one in Scotland, one in France, 
 three in America. They support me, for I can't do any 
 thing for myself. 
 
 " We stay here near the farm in the hope of getting it 
 again, and we shall stay here till we do. One of my sons 
 will buy it for us at a fair valuation. 
 
 " The Duke's agent is our best friend and has helped 
 us." 
 
 I rejoined my kind host and companion, who, as we 
 drove on, spoke frankly from his practical experience of 
 many years. 
 
 " There 's a farm on the estate that has a characteristic 
 history. It was let to the widow Fenton for ^13 a year. 
 The rent was reduced to ;^it \os. ; and the valuation 
 was ^11. She sold her tenant-right to Willoughby of
 
 IN MUNSTER. lOI 
 
 VVicklow for £ 125. The interest on this sum practically 
 raised the new tenant's rent to ^16 10^. The neighbors 
 threatened him, and he forfeited his instalment of the 
 purchase money and went away. The farm was put up 
 again and was bought by Mrs. Brien, a widow, for ^i 10. 
 She lived there for a while, but was threatened ; and af- 
 ter being annoyed persistently by ghosts, she sold it to a 
 neighbor for ^95. There were other changes, but it 
 finally passed into the hands of a neighbor, who probably 
 had had his eye on it all along. Every farm could be 
 sold, if free sale were really allowed by the people them- 
 selves ; but Parnell makes a great pomt of boycotting 
 free sale, ^i i an acre could be got for almost any farm 
 after the passing of the Act of 1881. 
 
 "As to land purchase, I think things will come to such 
 a pass between landlords and tenants that if the land- 
 lords can get passably fair terms, or even any terms not 
 amounting to absolute confiscation, it may be for their 
 benefit ; but even then it may not be for the good of the 
 country. The loss of the landlord's expenditure may be 
 a serious blow. In congested districts such a transfer of 
 property would only perpetuate poverty. 
 
 " The Nationalists have set themselves to bring about 
 the extermination of the landlords and the sale of the 
 land for its prairie value ; that is, on confiscation terms. 
 With this view they hindered the success- of Lord Ash- 
 bourne's Act ; otherwise many would have purchased 
 who would have been worthy proprietors. The induce- 
 ments were great, for by paying twenty or thirty per cent, 
 less than his present rent, a man could own the land in 
 forty-nine years. There has, however, been dangled be- 
 fore the farmers the notion that in time they will get the 
 land for nothing. Now no good can be done by making
 
 102 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 an insolvent tenant a proprietor against his will. A bad 
 or thriftless tenant is apt to make a bad or thriftless 
 owner. The ownership of land should be the reward of 
 a man's own industry. Land purchase is unquestionably 
 no remedy for the distressed districts and a very doubt- 
 ful benefit for the others. A large addition to the num- 
 ber of proprietors would certainly be a great advantage, 
 but it ought not to be indiscriminate. 
 
 " It is rather a strong argument against Home Rule, or 
 even any extension of local self-government, that the 
 Nationalists don't use well half the time what power they 
 have. 
 
 " The Union is run by the Nationalists, and is 
 
 not very efficient. One division has mortgaged itself as 
 far as it can for erecting laborers' cottages, and the object 
 in most cases is merely to spite the landlord or to annoy 
 a farmer who is not a member of the League. One of 
 the last votes, overruled by the Local Government Board, 
 was to put three cottages, taking up an acre and a half, 
 on the plot of land belonging to the bailiff, who has only 
 four acres altogether, and those within the town limits, 
 though the object of the act was to prevent the influx of 
 laborers into the towns. 
 
 " The Duke always used to give seventy-five per cent, 
 of the cost of building laborers' cottages, though the rule 
 was generally here to contribute only half towards other 
 improvements. The farmers could hardly be induced 
 to put up cottages or any thing they did not need for 
 themselves. 
 
 " The Unions also get into debt to the banks, because 
 they insist on keeping the rates too low to meet their 
 liabilities. They say the people cannot pay the neces- 
 sary rates ; but it seems to me that if you incur a debt
 
 IN MUNSTER. IO3 
 
 you should pay it. They are also very lax in the matter 
 of out-door relief. They say : * Oh, he 's very poor, and 
 if he comes into the house it will cost more than to give 
 him a small sum and keep him out.' The fact is, that 
 coming into the house acts as a test of a man's poverty ; 
 no one would object to taking public money and living 
 as he is accustomed to live. The pittances, too, are often 
 so small as not to keep a worthy but proud person from 
 starvation. 
 
 " I should, however, favor a very liberal scheme of 
 local self-government. It is a substantial grievance that 
 we cannot establish railroads without the expense of a 
 journey to London and a hearing before a parliamentary 
 committee, though the Nationalists make no outcry 
 about this. The Board of Trade can give, temporary 
 orders, under a recent act for the establishment of tram- 
 ways, etc. This power should be enlarged to cover 
 railroads. 
 
 " The grand-jury system should be made representa- 
 tive. 
 
 " The preservation of the Union is, however, essential 
 to the prosperity of England and Ireland ; and it is 
 essential to the preservation of the Union that the im- 
 perial government should have the appointment and 
 control of the magistrates, the judges, and the police ; in 
 a word, of the executive of the country. The brutality 
 of the people is greater than that of any other civilized 
 people, for here only is public sympathy given to crimi- 
 nals. On the Sunday morning here, when the news 
 came that Carey had given information about the Phoenix 
 Park murderers, each man's face was as black as a 
 thunder-cloud, as though a great public calamity had 
 happened ; and when it was moved in the Board of
 
 104 ^^ CASTLE AND CABIJST. 
 
 Guardians to adjourn out of sympathy with the Duke's 
 
 bereavement, Mr. , a Nationalist, spoke against it, 
 
 saying that the Duke had not shownany sympathy for 
 him when he was arrested as a suspect, and he did not 
 see why he should show any sympathy for the Duke for 
 the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish. 
 
 " My belief is so strong in the tenacity and back-bone 
 of the North that I am convinced of their power, in the 
 event of Home Rule, to hold their own, if not to conquer 
 the rest of the island." 
 
 " I can see nothing that can come from Home Rule," 
 interrupted a friend, " but utter fiscal smash and a row. 
 Behind the farmers are a vast army of laborers and loaf- 
 ers, who outnumber the farmers, and the probability is 
 that they will agitate against the farmers when the latter 
 become proprietors, as the farmers have done against 
 their landlords, for land which they will be very loath to 
 give them." 
 
 " On this estate for the present," continued the other, 
 " all is quiet. There has been no combination against 
 rent, but there is great carelessness and indifference as 
 to whether they pay or not, and an absence of the exer- 
 tion to work they made in former years. Within a year, 
 
 however, the agent met X. Y., of B , near the bank. 
 
 * I have n't been to the office,' he said, ' because they are 
 dogging me to see if I do go ; but I have paid the rent 
 to to pay you.' " 
 
 Ten or twelve fields I passed of fair land, but yellow 
 with weeds. " Premiums were offered," I was told, on 
 making some comment, " for autumn cleaning of the 
 fields ; but only two or three farmers could be induced 
 to do so ; though the horses are idle in the autumn, and 
 though in spring there is no time for cleaning before the
 
 IN MUNSTER, lOj 
 
 early crops are planted. It is also impossible to make 
 the farmers get their crops in early enough. When it 's 
 fair, they think it will stay fair forever ; and when it 
 rains, they think the rain will never stop." 
 
 A WATERFORD FARMER. 
 
 The farm-house was a comfortable two-story building, 
 and the dining-room in which we sat was neat and well 
 furnished. The farmer spoke slowly and impressively 
 between long puffs at his short pipe. " I own a hundred 
 and four acres," he said. " The poor-law valuation is 
 j£,\2(>, and the rent is ^132, less twenty-five per cent. 
 
 " Twenty-four acres are in oats, six in turnips, four or 
 five in potatoes, and the rest chiefly grass. The oats are 
 very light this year, and so short that they are hard to 
 cut with a machine. The turnips are a total failure ; the 
 potatoes very bad ; the mangels not half a crop ; and 
 the hay rather over half. I keep sixteen or seventeen 
 dairy cows, three horses, and occasionally sheep. 
 
 " I used to buy cattle and exchange them after feed- 
 ing, but cannot this year. Sheep used to pay fairly, but 
 I cannot venture on them this year ; the grass is so short, 
 and hand-feeding so expensive. I used to make a good 
 profit on calves in the spring, but cannot this year on ac- 
 count of the poor crops of turnips and oats. I send my 
 milk to the creamery at Tallow, getting back the butter- 
 milk, and payment according to the prices in the English 
 market. Last year I made about jQ^ a cow for the but- 
 ter, gross receipts. Now there seems to be no feeding 
 quality in the grass, and I don't see how to carry my 
 cows through the winter. 
 
 " I keep careful accounts of income and expenses. I 
 have two servants whom I pay ^\o in cash and board.
 
 I06 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 I work with three hands generally. By the year I pay a 
 laborer ;^i3 and perquisites, coals, potatoes, etc., and 
 board. Extra labor during harvest, etc., probably comes 
 to jQ\^ more. Before the last two years, 1 used to spend a 
 good deal of mon ey in fencing, ditching, and other improve- 
 ments. This year I put out about ;^ 2 an acre of potatoes 
 and turnips for artificial manure. Seed corn we usually 
 grow ourselves, but other seed costs me ^,^5 a year, or 
 about 10^. an acre. The county cess and poor-rates 
 come to about ^15 a year, and the priest tax is some 
 ;^5 or ^6. I have five children, and I and my wife live 
 very economically. I come straight home from fairs, 
 and am very slow in changing a pound. If the times 
 were good, people could make a living as they used to ; 
 but this year I am sure I shall lose something very large. 
 Fifty per cent, reduction would not be sufficient to carry 
 me through. Twenty per cent, is the average given here. 
 The Duke is also very good in allowing for improvements 
 and for losses of cattle. I should like to live off the 
 land as an industrious working man wishing to improve 
 his farm. I don't understand Home Rule or Land Pur- 
 chase well enough to give an opinion, but I should think 
 that if they came about we would be in a better position 
 for improving our land. What is ruining the country 
 now is the absence of capital." 
 
 TIPPERARY FARMERS. 
 
 A farmer, who is to some degree employed by a land- 
 lord, but who seemed more than usually honest and ca- 
 pable, I beguiled one morning into saying what he 
 thought about peasant proprietorship. The amount of 
 land needed to support a family in comfort seemed an 
 inquiry worth making.
 
 IN MUNSTER. \Q'J 
 
 "You need," he said, " fifty or sixty acres about here 
 to get a comfortable living out of the land, about a hun- 
 dred English acres ; but even with that one would be 
 worse off without capital than with capital and less land. 
 Ten pounds an acre is needed for good farming, or at 
 least ^5. 
 
 " The opinions of the neighboring farmers I know 
 well. What they want is to get their land cheap, if pos- 
 sible for next to nothing. They don't want any reason- 
 able purchase scheme, for, as a tenant farmer told me, 
 whom I urged to buy under Lord Ashbourne's Act, as he 
 had plenty of money — ' I would have been delighted to 
 buy the place at higher terms twenty years ago, but now 
 we hope to get it for much less by waiting. Besides, it 
 would be like paying the rates — we would have to pay; 
 and if we got behind, the government would make no 
 
 allowance, as Mr. would.' Yes, they would always 
 
 prefer a good landlord to the government for their cred- 
 itor. The real trouble in the past has been that so many 
 landlords were not accessible. 
 
 " In a few months after peasant proprietorship has 
 become established, I am afraid the farmers will be 
 shooting each other, and in six months they will be in 
 the hands of the Jews. In the struggle for land they 
 would buy from one another at enormous prices, and 
 would borrow the money at very high rates. Of late 
 years there has been more shooting of tenant farmers 
 than of landlords. If they want a piece of land and 
 cannot get it, they will coerce the owner to sell at their 
 own terms, by force if necessary. Despotism, tempered 
 by assassination, will be the result in no little time of 
 peasant proprietorship." 
 
 Another farmer, an old man of Scotch birth, was talk-
 
 108 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 ing one evening to me and a journalist. " There were 
 two farms held by two brothers," the journalist was say- 
 ing, " on Lord Bantry's property, at C , on the shores 
 
 of Bantry Bay, a wild, mountainous region. Their name 
 was Harrington, or Sullivan, I forget which. The rental 
 was originally about £,2-. One brother improved and 
 spent a lot of money in fencing and draining, and his 
 rent was raised gradually to £,AtO. The other brother 
 made no improvements ; and when asked a short time 
 ago why he did not follow his brother's example, * Shure, 
 I shall be fined if I improve,' said he. ' Pat pays ^40, 
 but I am still paying only ;j^27.' " 
 
 " It was much the same thing in Scotland," interrupted 
 the farmer. " I have seen the farmers there slowly work- 
 ing up the side of a mountain. So soon as one bit was 
 cultivated, the rent would be raised, until they were 
 driven up to the very top. 
 
 " The Purchase Acts are much talked of, but to my 
 knowledge tenants have been forced to purchase at ex- 
 orbitant prices, just as they used to be forced to take 
 leases. On the Marquis of Waterford's property, near 
 Carrick on Suir, in this county, the tenants have been 
 forced to buy at twenty years' purchase. Most of them 
 were in arrears and were writted, and then, three months 
 ago, they were given the alternative of purchasing. What 
 have those men to fall back on ? The average rent was 
 2,0s. an acre, but I don't believe much of the land was 
 worth \os. The rest of the tenants have joined the Plan 
 of Campaign ; and perhaps the others may be able to 
 break their agreements. 
 
 ** Free-trade in breadstuffs is what has ruined the 
 country. 
 
 " Cattle have gone down fifty per cent. What is the
 
 JN MUNSTER. IO9 
 
 good of landlords offering reductions of ten or twenty 
 per cent. ? The country is all burnt up this year, and 
 what are we to do ? " 
 
 One afternoon, while driving, I stopped and entered 
 the tiny house, or rather hut, of a farmer near Cahir. 
 He told me he had eleven acres ; one acre and a half in 
 potatoes, another acre and a half in oats, three in hay, 
 and he keeps two cows. He has made no profit on milk 
 this year, because of the drought. Oats are not bad, but 
 the price is very low. The rent is ^11 18^., and was 
 settled by agreement out of court some five years ago, 
 and no reduction has been made since then. " We have 
 neglected the shopkeepers to pay our rent. We have 
 five children," said he ; and his wife added, from a dingy 
 corner : " My husband lost four years out of his health, 
 and I had to sell the horse at Clonmel fair for ^^20, and 
 we have gone without a horse ever since." 
 
 By the roadside one day I noticed a little wooden box 
 of a house, like a toy house. It was one of the laborers' 
 cottages, built under the recent act. There were two 
 rooms below, and a trap-door leading to a garret by a 
 ladder. The laborer's wife was in. She had her seven 
 young children with her, and said her husband got usu- 
 ally one shilling a day, sometimes as little as four shil- 
 lings a week, and sometimes as much as eight shillings. 
 
 When I asked the car-driver about laborers' wages, he 
 said : " Ordinary laborers get usually 6s. or %s. a week ; 
 and last year, for the two weeks' season of potato digging 
 they got 2S. Gd. a day. A ploughman gets from ^12 to 
 £-i.Z^ year," 
 
 A TIPPERARY LAND AGENT. 
 
 " The Plan of Campaign," he said, " is a widespread 
 scheme to ruin the landlords as a class. In the case of a
 
 no IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 good but weak landlord, or one who is encumbered, or 
 averse to a row, the leaders have no mercy on him. 
 Even at this late day the landlords and tenants would 
 come to terms if they were allowed to fight the question 
 out without the interference of third parties ; but, as 
 a rule, pressure is brought to bear by the tenant organi- 
 zations on the tenants, or in special cases on the land- 
 lord by a landlord association, as by the Cork Defence 
 Union at Youghal. Landlord and tenant are like two 
 boys fighting, both wanting to run away but neither 
 daring to. Whenever the tenants show a disposition to 
 give way, a big meeting is called, and swells come from 
 Dublin to start the excitement again. A few days ago 
 Lady Kingston made some seizures, and a few tenants 
 paid their rent. Instantly a big meeting was held, and 
 down came William O'Brien by express. Condon, M. P., 
 is kept there all the time, watching the estate as a cat 
 does a mouse. 
 
 " There is great intimidation practised on any one who 
 is lukewarm in joining the League. A popular form of 
 punishment is for the Union to put a laborer's cottage 
 
 on a man's farm. On property cottages were 
 
 erected on the holdings of many tenants for which there 
 was no other possible reason. As a rule the larger 
 farmers should be selected ; here they picked out only 
 small farmers. 
 
 " I have had a few cases, but not many, of payment in 
 secret. The tenants go much together, and are loath to 
 act independently. One tenant, after paying me, came 
 back and asked me, when the ejectment cases came on 
 in court, to have his name called with the rest, and so I 
 did. 
 
 " There is a property belonging to an estate in chan-
 
 IN MUNSTER. Ill 
 
 eery of which I have charge. A tenant was paying ;^3oo 
 a year for a farm there on which he had nothing but a 
 herd's hut, as he Hved on another farm forty miles off. 
 I evicted him for non-payment of rent, and there was no 
 sympathy for him, as he was very litigious ; but the farm 
 is boycotted to this day, and the grass withering on it. 
 I made two attempts to sell it at auction, and two to sell 
 at private sale. No one will bid, though hay is scarce. 
 One or two offers were made privately, but withdrawn. 
 We have lost over ;^8oo by this transaction, and without 
 the slightest fault on our part. 
 
 " As a large landowner in Somersetshire said to me, * I 
 suppose, if I were to call my tenants together, and ask 
 them if it was their wish I should continue to own the 
 land, they would vote no, and would vote to divide it 
 among themselves.' That would be the condition of the 
 Irish landlords before a Home-Rule Parliament. Life 
 and property would be insecure under Home Rule. They 
 might succeed here in time, but there would be chaos 
 meanwhile. The land question is blocking the way of 
 Home Rule. 
 
 " Land purchase on any large scale is impossible with- 
 out an imperial guaranty. The grand jury, of which I 
 am a member, recently voted to guarantee the interest, 
 at four per cent., on a few thousand pounds to build a 
 light railroad, the government making some contribution. 
 We cannot raise a single pound now, and many of the 
 counties are probably in a similar fix. Much less would 
 any land bonds be taken without an imperial guaranty. 
 
 " Another difficulty in the working of a local board to 
 purchase through is the want of courage and public 
 support to enable it to evict, if necessary, in order to 
 secure payment.
 
 112 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " The various Land Acts would have succeeded in 
 pacifying the farmers, if they had been given an honest 
 trial, but that the League prevented. No evictions would 
 have happened if the League had allowed free sale of the 
 tenant right. Not sticking to that one clause of free sale 
 has been the end of every thing. The League wants to 
 keep up evictions. Meanwhile, the land is occupied by 
 vagabonds, who are exhausting it, as well as paying no 
 rent. 
 
 " Finally, I am in favor of greater local self-govern- 
 ment. The associated cess payers on the grand jury 
 should be made elective. Otherwise the grand-jury sys- 
 tem is a great anomaly." 
 
 DRIVING WITH A MAGISTRATE IN TIPPERARY. 
 
 Early in the morning the magistrate called for me to 
 drive with him sixteen Irish miles to petty sessions at 
 Mullamahone. He himself is the ideal of a country 
 magistrate — a bluff, hearty, earnest, sensible gentleman, of 
 an old Norman family that has lived in Ireland for over 
 five hundred years ; intensely honorable, hating nothing 
 more than deceit or falsehood. 
 
 A broad valley stretched on each side of the road, and 
 in the distance towered the gloomy masses of Slieve- 
 naman. The farms we passed seemed but poorly cul- 
 tivated, but here and there a steam reaping-machine 
 puffing by the roadside showed that modern methods 
 were being slowly introduced. These machines are gen- 
 erally used in Tipperary, and are hired out by the richer 
 farmers to their neighbors at icy. a day. 
 
 The country was full of reminiscences to my compan- 
 ion. "We drove over a hundred head of cattle once 
 from that field into Clonmel." "In that field, three or
 
 IN MUNSTER. II3 
 
 four years ago, we seized twenty milch cows." And he 
 explained : " It used to be a part of our duty to be pres- 
 ent, when required, at distraints for rent, but is so no 
 longer." 
 
 Soon we were changing horses in the decayed little 
 town of Fethard, where, in one short street, I counted 
 fifteen ruined cottages. 
 
 Passing out of Fethard, we saw a large, apparently de- 
 serted farm. " One Meagher used to live there as tenant 
 of some four hundred acres. Six years ago he was 
 evicted with great violence. A number of neighbors 
 joined him in resisting the officers, and eighteen out of 
 twenty-three were convicted. For some time the farm 
 lay vacant, then a stranger took it who was boycotted so 
 severely that he had to go, and now it is leased for a 
 nominal sum to the Land Corporation." 
 
 Mullamahone is a poor little village with two long 
 streets, famous, if at all, for being the scene of a rising in 
 1848. The court-room was in the upper story of a 
 rickety barn-like building. Three magistrates were on 
 the bench. The cases were chiefly liquor cases and un- 
 important. Two men were on trial for drunkenness, and 
 an excuse was pleaded that startled the court : that in 
 the spring there had been a terrible outbreak of conta- 
 gious fever, and so frightened were the people that no one 
 could be found for a long time to bury one poor girl who 
 died of it. These men volunteered, after first making 
 themselves drunk from fear of the infection, and then 
 left the coffin lying for several hours at the church-door. 
 " Discharged." Another case I noticed was of malicious 
 cutting of a tree by a tenant with a hand-saw. '' My 
 grandfather planted those trees," said the tenant, while 
 the bailiff, an old man, swore that the trees were orna-
 
 114 ^^ CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 mental ash trees along the road. " Four shillings com- 
 pensation, loj. fine, and 3^. costs, or seven days," was 
 the order of the court. 
 
 As we drove back : " In South Tipperary," said he, 
 " intemperance has decidedly decreased. The fines have 
 diminished seventy-five per cent, in a few years. In 
 Clogheen there is usually but one * drunk ' where there 
 used to be thirty, and at the last session at Cahir there 
 was not one. This reform is due to the efforts of indi- 
 vidual priests." 
 
 One landlord in the neighborhood I heard everywhere 
 spoken of with great enthusiasm, Lord Lismore. " He 's 
 a man," cried the driver, " who can walk from one end of 
 Ireland to the other without a stick." *' He has made 
 enormous reductions," said the magistrate, " but the ten- 
 ants are most ungrateful, and are not paying him a cent. 
 He did every thing to improve the horn-stock and pigs in 
 the neighborhood. Indeed, the excellence of the breed 
 of pigs throughout the south of Ireland is due to him." 
 
 " Four years ago, for about eighteen months, there was 
 great disturbance on Lord Lismore's property for some 
 eighteen months, and we had to bring the cavalry out day 
 and night to encourage the well-affected. Cogherty's 
 house here was set fire to twice, four years ago, and two 
 other tenants of Lord Lismore have had their houses 
 fired, all good rent-payers. 
 
 ** Irish ofiicials are accused of every crime, but they do 
 their duty according to their lights, usually according to 
 common-sense. 
 
 " The government is blamed for not having tried to 
 settle the land question sooner ; but what really held 
 back the land question was the question of disestablish- 
 ment of the Irish Church, a great anomaly. Now matters
 
 IN MUNSTER. II5 
 
 are come to such a pass that peasant proprietorship is 
 inevitable. Gladstone created the dual ownership : that 
 is on all sides held to be impracticable, and the only way 
 to get out of it is to deprive one dual owner of his prop- 
 erty. The landlord is asked to go to the wall : the gov- 
 ernment has taken half his property, and now is going to 
 take the other half. 
 
 " The landlords are reviled now, but they have gener- 
 ally been kind and even generous. Lady Margaret 
 Charteris spent ;^3,ooo in building an aqueduct for the 
 town of Cahir. Lord Sligo did the same at Westport. 
 It was a rule of Lord Sligo's that whatever the people 
 subscribed towards a public improvement he would 
 double. Most Irish landlords always gave the land for 
 chapels free, and sometimes for convents. Railroads 
 here are very expensive, partly from the great wear and 
 tear of the cattle traffic, and to them the landlords have 
 subscribed largely out of public spirit. Many thousand 
 pounds have been spent in this way by my own relations, 
 and the Duke of Devonshire gave over ^^100,000 towards 
 building the Lismore and Fermoy R. R. 
 
 *' In Ireland the people never combine voluntarily to 
 make any public improvement ; they are always afraid of 
 some getting more good from it than the rest. 
 
 " Old Lord Waterpark had a hobby for improving his 
 property, and sank an enormous amount of money in it. 
 This is not taken into account now, and though the 
 father lived in the most economical way for years to save 
 the property, his son is now almost bankrupt. 
 
 " Many cases even of apparently cruel rent-raising are 
 probably not as they seem to be. On Lord Sligo's estate, 
 during the famine year, a large farm was given up in a 
 very impoverished condition. The rent had been ^'80.
 
 Il6 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 He let it to a tenant on condition that he should pay \s. 
 the first year, £^^o the second year, jP^da the third year, 
 and after that the full rental. The parish priest brought 
 the tenant before the Bessborough Commission, and re- 
 mained in the room while he swore his rent had been 
 raised four times in seven years. 
 
 '* All good feeling between landlord and tenant has 
 now been swept away, and it will never recover. 
 
 " The parish priest here is a brother of one tenant and 
 the uncle of another, and so with most of the clergy ; and 
 they are all tenants themselves, so you cannot expect 
 them to oppose the people in this movement. 
 
 " The Irish are not independent by nature : the land- 
 lords were the masters, and they usually used to keep a 
 tenant going in an irregular, unbusiness-like way, and he 
 in return used to give at least one vote to his landlord. 
 Then the priests struggled with the landlords for the vote 
 and got it, becoming the masters in their turn. Now the 
 priests have been succeeded by the agitators, who are the 
 hardest and most exacting masters of all, and the most 
 expensive, but the League dues are now being objected 
 to, and the agitation would cease but for American 
 money." 
 
 "You don't fear persecution under Home Rule?" I 
 asked. " That depends on what you mean by persecution," 
 he replied. "We never get justice in any lawsuit as it 
 is, and even under the present government we never get 
 any appointment except by competitive examination. 
 What will become of us at the mercy of people so bigoted 
 that the law cannot be enforced against a priest, and a 
 woman in this town refused to sue the parish priest for 
 her wages — * If I do that,' said she, ' he '11 curse me and 
 I '11 rot.'
 
 IN MUNSTER. 11/ 
 
 " What is needed is more industry. In Wexford, Car- 
 low, and even here, eggs are sold in large numbers to 
 eggers for the English market. If a better breed of 
 fowls were kept, the profits would be enormously in- 
 creased. Butter from the Cahir creamery sold for is. 
 2d. a pound in Manchester during May, instead of dd., 
 which is all the farmers usually get. These creameries 
 might be indefinitely increased, and profitably to all con- 
 cerned, for we pay nearly seven per cent, interest." 
 
 A TIPPERARY LANDLORD. 
 
 For some days my host was one of the most genial, 
 witty, and popular of Irish landlords. He is a learned 
 man, a student and writer ; he has sat in Parliament, as 
 did his father before him ; he is a conscientious magis- 
 trate ; he is perpetually improving his large property. His 
 house is like the ideal English country-house, with a 
 broad lawn sloping gradually towards the banks of the 
 loveliest of Irish rivers. Pictures by old masters and 
 family portaits lean from the walls. The library is 
 crammed with old and rare books. His active, clever 
 wife teaches the tenants' daughters to Avork embroidery, 
 designs the patterns, and gets the work, when finished, 
 sold. To the younger children she offers prizes for 
 flowers and collections of every sort, and her influence 
 for good was proved by the happy faces of the neatly 
 dressed children who gathered round the long tables in 
 the garden at the annual flower show. The shadow of im- 
 pending fate rests lightly here, but it is not absent. 
 
 '* Shall we have to leave our pleasant homes we love so 
 well — this house, this garden ? We shall try to get the 
 land near us into our own hands and farm it ourselves. 
 Then we are told our friends and neighbors will be
 
 Il8 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 forced to go away, and soon we shall be left alone and 
 be unable to live here in peace. I am glad that Ave our- 
 selves are comparatively young. For the old, you have 
 no idea how sad these changes are. My grandfather be- 
 gan to build a beautiful house in a small country town. 
 When my father took the property he had little money 
 and spent all he had for years in finishing and furnishing 
 the house. The rest of his life he has passed on the 
 estate, devoting himself to improving the neighborhood. 
 He built almshouses, and started an agricultural society 
 to encourage a knowledge of scientific farming. When 
 this agitation began the Land Leaguers tried to make 
 trouble between him and his tenants ; they called him 
 a tyrant and insulted him in the town council. Now the 
 poor old man is quite heart-broken." 
 
 One of the most beautiful and distinguished of Irish- 
 women was the centre of a little group of courtiers on 
 the afternoon of the flower show, speaking with charming 
 animation. What are they saying ? 
 
 " The people about here say I lost so much by that 
 field, when they mean 'I laid out so much on it.'" 
 
 " Lord V , when on the Land Commission, was so 
 
 disgusted by the absurd demands of one farmer that he 
 cried out, ' I want to know if you expect to be compen- 
 sated for the damage done by Noah's flood.'" "Did 
 you hear Morris' retort to Lady Aberdeen when she 
 said, 'I supposed you were all Home Rulers here.' 
 ' There 's not one in the room, except your ladyship and 
 maybe one or two of the waiters.' " " My mother found 
 a cottage on the place where all the family and the calf 
 lived in one room. She built them a second room, and 
 in a few weeks found the calf in the new room and the 
 rest huddled together in the other one as before."
 
 IN MUNSTER. II9 
 
 "Home Rule is an absolute experiment, with an off 
 chance of doing some good and a great probability of 
 absolutely ruining every one." " Wellington said : ' Peo- 
 ple good at making excuses are good for nothing else ! ' 
 It is so with the Irish. With them it is always the gov- 
 ernment, the weather, or the soil." " The farmers openly 
 rejoice that Providence has again interfered to prevent 
 them from paying their rents. They are glad it is a bad 
 year." 
 
 The last words I heard were spoken by a beautiful and 
 distinguished lady, a true Irishwoman, of large posses- 
 sions and high position. 
 
 " Is it right," said she, "that we who have always been 
 loyal to the government should be handed over to the 
 tender mercies of these men ? They are Catholics, and 
 no doubt many have preached to them what was said by 
 a priest at Waterford : ' The portion of the landlords is 
 dynamite in this world and hell fire in the next.' If 
 Home Rule comes, we shall be driven from our homes 
 like the Huguenots ; but we shall not go to England. We 
 shall cherish till death an unrelenting hatred of England, 
 a country that we once trusted and served, and that sac- 
 rificed us." 
 
 The many talks I had with my kind host and friend 
 were so interesting that it may be well to group them in 
 a single statement. 
 
 " The Nationalists," he said one day, " often base the 
 claims of the tenants on their descent from the origi- 
 nal owners of the soil. There is no such historical con- 
 tinuity. The greater part of the tenants on my estate 
 (I have about three hundred) are not Tipperary men, 
 but are descendants of families brought here by ray 
 ancestors from other parts of Ireland. Murphy, for
 
 I20 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 instance, is a common name on my estate, and the Mur- 
 phys all came from Wexford. That dairymaid is a 
 Devereux, a Norman and a Wexford family. The ten- 
 ants represent only to a limited extent the old state of 
 affairs. The landlord's title is often far older than theirs. 
 What they do represent is the religion of the past. It 
 would be quite exceptional for the tenant to be the de- 
 scendant of the original inhabitants of the land, and who 
 the original inhabitants were in any barony or parish we 
 know almost to a man. 
 
 *' This is the not uncommon, indeed is the typical, 
 history of an Irish estate, especially of an estate in Tip- 
 perary. About 1780, a year of great change in the south 
 of Ireland, the land was growing out of a pastoral into an 
 agricultural state, on account of the high price of wheat, 
 A Tipperary landlord had a lot of grass land and found 
 it would pay him to break up the pasture. He brought 
 men from a distance and settled them on it. The land, 
 we will say, paid \os. an acre as grazing land. A man 
 offered 15.?., and was accepted. He set to work, built a 
 farm-house, made fences, grubbed up the furze-bushes, 
 and, in rare cases, dug drains. Twenty years later, during 
 the Peninsular war, prices rose greatly and the competi- 
 tion for land was intense. A man could now pay 25^. as 
 easily as he could pay 10.$-. in the earlier period. The 
 landlord in the meantime had done nothing, but was 
 neither grasping nor unkind. After a while this farm 
 comes into the hands of a man who does n't want to 
 work it for some reason, and is anxious to get out of it. 
 He feels he cannot go out without any thing. He comes 
 now to the landlord and says : ' Your Honor, I don't 
 feel up to the work, and I would be greatly obliged to 
 your Honor if you would let my sister's cousin take the
 
 IN MUiVS Vi:/?. 121 
 
 land.' 'AVilling to oblige you, "Pat, you scoundrel,' re- 
 plies his Honor, ' and what will your sister's cousin pay 
 me?' 'Thirty shillings,' says 1'at. The cousin comes 
 in and under the rose gives Pat some money. With the 
 rising prices the ncAv tenant would be as well off as the 
 original tenant at loi-. And so on to the famine time. 
 
 " In this way ' tenant right ' sprang up. It implies 
 that the landlord made no outlay, and the custom be- 
 came gradually acknowledged as a just one. On certain 
 estates that sort of thing was put down as much as pos- 
 sible, for the landlord could always bring in a stranger, 
 but the people lived in a comfortable way together, and 
 where there was any relationship between the outgoing 
 and the incoming tenant the custom existed. It was 
 spreading, as every one who knows will admit, before 
 1870. 
 
 " The real reason for the over-renting was the immense 
 competition. It was made a frightful grievance if you 
 did not over-rent and give the land to the highest bidder. 
 
 '' This state of things made the people false as well as 
 poor. The Celt is naturally imaginative, but he got into 
 the habit of promising every thing in the world to get 
 possession of the land, and it was very difficult to get 
 him out when once in. 
 
 " My estate is a fair example of an Irish property. We 
 have never altered our rents ; they are the old customary 
 rents, and the tenants have always been allowed to sell 
 their interests. Before 1870 from five to ten years' pur- 
 chase was commonly paid by the new tenant for the good- 
 will, and a much larger amount for a small farm, because 
 there is greater competition for small farms and less 
 money is required to work them." 
 
 A returned Ausualian whom I met accidentally had
 
 122 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 complained bitterly of my host as a tyrant who had de- 
 stroyed a flourishing village at the demesne gate. One 
 day at dinner I mentioned the story. " There was once," 
 said he, " a large distillery here, which created around it 
 a little village of operatives. The property had been let 
 to the distillers in the last century under a hundred years' 
 lease. The small tenants used to pay a head rent to me, 
 but they were only laborers in the distillery. Thirty 
 years ago the distillery was removed to Dublin, and ten 
 years ago the lease fell in. By that time, out of the two 
 thousand people all but two hundred had disappeared, 
 and those who remained were simply paupers with pig- 
 sties, unable to pay any rent to any one, and doing 
 nothing when I got rid of them If you can find any in- 
 justice there I am willing to argue the question. 
 
 '* In the last few years I have evicted only one man. 
 The tenant of a farm near my house had his rent fixed 
 by the court in 1881 at;^ii2 and his tenant right at ^650. 
 Last spring he owed a year's rent. On Lady-day he said: 
 ' Forgive me the year's rent ; pay me ^650, and I will go 
 out.' I was advised that it would not be safe for me to 
 take up the farm without an eviction, for the tenant right 
 might be still liable for the man's debts. Then I went 
 through the form of an eviction. He removed most of 
 his goods and furniture himself, and helped the officer to 
 turn out the rest. I bought all the produce on the land, 
 hay, and manure, for ;^ 100, my steward's valuation. If he 
 had sold his interest I don't believe it would have fetched 
 iQ^oo, and out of that I should have had a claim for 
 £\\2. And yet the League denounced this proceeding 
 and called me a tyrant. 
 
 "The only reason why the present national movement 
 has greater success than the old movements, is that now
 
 IN MUNSTER. 1 23 
 
 the leaders are working the agrarian question, O'Con- 
 nell dared not do so, and Fenianism failed because it did 
 not. It was, however, boldly taken up by Parnell in 1878, 
 and he has admitted that he would never have * taken off 
 his coat ' for the tenants except as a means to an end." 
 
 " The continuance of the stream of Nationalism in Ire- 
 land is due to Romanism simply. The people remain as 
 a body Catholics ; and Catholics never can be loyal to a 
 Protestant government. Romanism is an ijnperium in im- 
 perio. The spirit of Nationalism has died out in Scot- 
 land, because Scotland is Protestant ; and its religion 
 was the chief cause of Russia's difficulty in assimilating 
 Poland. If Ireland had a peasant proprietary it would 
 be quieter, but not loyal, Ireland will never be loyal in 
 the sense in which England is loyal. 
 
 " Mill says the difficulty is that Ireland is big enough 
 to wish for nationality, but not big enough to be a 
 nation. Such special attachment to Ireland is not in 
 itself a bad thing, and it would never have caused 
 serious difficulty if it had not been accentuated by the 
 desire to rob. 
 
 " I believe that if the land question were settled, the 
 local sentiment would be satisfied by a very moderate 
 scheme of Home Rule. Farmers have said to me hun- 
 dreds of times : ' What do we care for Home Rule ? 
 What we want is to get land for the value'; by which 
 expression they mean 'for a very small rent.' Local 
 feeling may be satisfied by a great many things, however, 
 but national feeling can be satisfied only by indepen- 
 dence. It might be willing to have the same queen as 
 England, but it would never admit of the slightest exer- 
 cise of power in Ireland by the imperial Parliament. 
 The national sentiment, however, may be reduced to so
 
 124 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 small a factor that it may be disregarded, and that I 
 think is both possible and practicable. 
 
 " Before the famine Ireland gained by protection, by a 
 high duty on corn ; for Ireland produced more than she 
 consumed, while England consumed more than she pro- 
 duced. The people now want protection, which means 
 bread dearer for Irishmen and not a whit dearer for 
 any one else. As for a duty on manufactures that is 
 unnecessary, for the chief market for Blarney tweeds is 
 America in spite of a duty of sixty per cent. What an 
 Irishman sees is that under protection forty years ago 
 he got a bounty ; but what he does not see is that now 
 protection would simply make him eat his own guts. 
 What the people apparently want is to have a separate 
 Ireland and to have the advantage of protection through- 
 out Great Britain as well. 
 
 " Three quarters of Ireland is much more like Eng- 
 land than it is like Connaught. The specially bad part 
 is about an eighth of the country, the western fringe of 
 it. In my mind's eye the western fringe is brown, rock 
 and heather. Then there is another eighth a little less 
 infertile. 
 
 " Irish land is more valuable than is often supposed. 
 It is unjust to compare an Irish farm with particular 
 farms in England that are now vacant. It is the heavy 
 wheat lands in the east of England which will produce 
 nothing but wheat, and are expensive to cultivate, usu- 
 ally chalk lands, that don't pay now. Their history is 
 curious. They used to be sheep lands, and then when 
 the price of wheat was high at the time of the French 
 wars they were cultivated and paid well as long as wheat 
 was high, now you cannot get back the good fine grass 
 which was the product of centuries.
 
 IN MUNSTER. 12$ 
 
 "Prime grass lands in Ireland fetch now almost as 
 much as ever. I let much of my land on grazing leases 
 for nearly j[^\ an acre. There is a great future for grass 
 land. Prime cattle will always pay. The present depres- 
 sion in the meat market is only temporary. It is not the 
 foreign competition that is the cause of the depression, 
 for the consumption in England is so enormous that the 
 foreign importation bears but a small proportion to the 
 whole. The trouble is that times are bad, and the people 
 are out of employment and cannot afford meat. For 
 the same reason the inferior parts of the meat are not 
 brought to market, and so the profit is further lessened. 
 The people who would eat the worse parts cannot afford 
 to eat any. American meat does not compete with fine 
 domestic joints, but only with the inferior. Meat will 
 always pay, but it must be made the chief thing, and 
 other business abandoned. For instance, every bit of 
 grain I grow 1 consume. I give oats to the horses, 
 barley to the cattle, and if I grew wheat I would give 
 that also to the cattle. Irish graziers have not con- 
 ducted their business wisely. The Irish farmer never 
 fattens a beast, but sells it when it is only a year or 
 two old. Just as he ceases to be a burden on the 
 land, he is sold, and is fattened in England. The result 
 has been a progressive deterioration of the grass land. 
 It needs to be restored by top dressing, or by feeding on 
 imported food such as oil cake. With wise management 
 the land will soon improve. 
 
 " The just price for good land under any compulsory 
 bill should be about twenty years' purchase of a fairly 
 high rent, calculated at twenty per cent, off, and payable 
 in a lump sum. But no fair price is likely to satisfy the 
 Irish leaders. They are only satisfied when they are
 
 126 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 robbing, and then at the moment of robbery. When it is 
 done, they are sorry they did not take more. 
 
 *' Land purchase, I think, should be compulsory at 
 the instance of the landlord on the entire body of ten- 
 ants on his estate. The estate should then be valued by 
 a court, taking into account not merely the rental but 
 all the circumstances, at a capital sura, say ;^ioo,ooo. 
 All the chargees and mortgagees of the property should 
 be made parties to the proceeding. Stock of the face 
 value of ;j^ 100,000 should then be issued by a local body, 
 the grand jury of the county, or a special board, and 
 guaranteed by the government, negotiable and bearing 
 interest. This stock should then be divided proportion- 
 ally between all the parties in interest. The only par- 
 ties then left to be dealt with would be the local authori- 
 ties, the imperial government, and the new proprietors. 
 The local authorities would collect the yearly instalments 
 of the purchase money in the same way and by the same 
 officers as the local rates are now collected, and thus 
 meet the interest on the stock, and with the surplus form 
 a sinking fund for its redemption. On default in the pay- 
 ment of the interest the imperial government should have 
 the power to levy on any of the local rates or other county 
 property in the same way as they now levy on account of 
 unpaid instalments of county loans." 
 
 "What objection do you have to Home Rule?" I 
 asked one day. 
 
 ** Only the objection a man has to being robbed and 
 murdered," he replied, *' I want some reasonable guaran- 
 ty for the protection of our property and for the integ- 
 rity of our throats. This is not due to any exaggerated 
 fear. These men are a set of scoundrels, and they, the 
 leaders of the League, would be our rulers. — the League
 
 IN MUNSTER. 12/ 
 
 which bases its power en midnight outrages and terror- 
 ism as great as ever was in France under the Reign of 
 Terror. The men who won the battle would have the 
 power, and would use it without scruple, to crush all 
 classes and individuals opposed to them. Home Rule 
 would probably result in civil war in the north, and then 
 there would be retaliation upon us in the south, who are 
 too few to fight. There is, of course, bluster on both 
 sides, but the north would then have something to fight 
 for. In a revolution the extremists always have things 
 for a time their own way. We know the party, and know 
 that under Home Rule they would repeat every mistake 
 that has been made from the time of Abraham down, at 
 vast expense. If this country were farther off from 
 England, there might be more to be said for autonomy, 
 but now it is and can be only a farm for England. How 
 can it be improved as a farm, is the question. The Na- 
 tionalists wish to reclaim more wild land. What I want 
 is to have the land already under tillage ploughed two 
 inches deeper all over. But the people are too lazy to 
 do this." 
 
 A UNIONIST PRIEST. 
 
 "For some years after I came here in 1872," said the 
 priest, " when I went about asking the people about their 
 relations with the landlords, I heard very few complaints. 
 The rents were usually raised here by the tenants them- 
 selves, who would go behind a neighbor's back to the 
 agent and offer a larger rent. The landlords were hu- 
 man, and could not help saying : ' You must pay me more, 
 for I am offered more by your neighbor.' I interfered 
 on many occasions, and told the agent that the old ten- 
 ant had made the improvements that justified the in-
 
 128 IN C/iSTLi AN J} CA.^fN 
 
 crease, so that to charge him more, or let the farm to 
 another, was to rob the old tenant of h^s improvements. 
 
 " Two years before the agitation began butter was 
 often as high as i6os. a hundredweight ; cows were ex- 
 ceedingly valuable, selling for ^i8 or ^20 a head^wbile 
 they sell now, and used to sell previously, for £\?. 
 Fancy prices were put on grazing land ; and even shop 
 keepers speculated in farms. 
 
 " That property over there, for instance, used to belong- 
 to a Captain L , who was hurt in a hunting accident. 
 
 and died of blood poisoning, leaving a widow and thret 
 little children. The trustees put the estate into chancer)^, 
 and the court had it offered for sale in lots. A number 
 of people came to bid. Many offered any rent the agent 
 might fix, and some even offered 5^. an acre more thap 
 any one else should offer. Proposals were required in 
 writing, and I gave many who asked me for certificates 
 of solvency letters to the agent. The agent, an official 
 of the court, met the farmers one day in this house, and 
 told them he had to receive all the offers made and for- 
 ward them to the court, but that the rent offered was, in 
 his opinion, absurdly high, and more than the land wa.'^ 
 worth. I said I had already told every one that the land 
 was originally bog mountain that Captain L had im- 
 proved at great expense ; but the farmers assured me 
 they could make the rent and a good profit as well. Ii> 
 two years prices tumbled, and I spoke to the agent my- 
 self and got a reduction of twenty-five or thirty per cent., 
 and since then fifteen per cent, more has been allowed. 
 
 "In 1878 and 1879, a cry was raised to pay no more 
 than Griffith's valuation. Young fellows went about from 
 house to house dressed up as bashi-bazouks, by precon- 
 certed arrangement, to coerce the people in fun to adopt
 
 IN MUNSTER. 1 29 
 
 Griffith's valuation. Many farmers got their own chil- 
 dren to write notices warning them to pay at their peril 
 no more than the valuation, signed with a skull and 
 cross-bones. Then the farmers would go to the agent and 
 say : 'I would willingly pay more, but I don't dare to.' 
 
 " At that time and before five policemen were enough 
 to keep order in the town. Soon these young fellows 
 who went round masquerading were impressed by the 
 secret societies and became regular moonlighters. The 
 League was started, and I believe that all the secret 
 society men are Leaguers, though all the Leaguers are not 
 secret-society men. The oath of the secret societies is, 
 as I know, to take up arms, when called on, for the Irish 
 Republic. Soon after the League was established two 
 bailiffs were murdered near the town, many more were 
 wounded, cattle were injured, and hay ricks were burned. 
 Then a great terror began to prevail throughout the 
 country. A company of soldiers was drafted here, and 
 the police increased to eighty or a hundred. 
 
 "Tenants anxious to pay would often pay the land- 
 lord through third persons and would refuse to take re- 
 ceipts. Fifty or sixty times since 1881 or 1882 farmers 
 have paid me the rent to my own cheek, asking me to 
 pay over to the landlord the full rent, if necessary, and 
 to get them what abatement I could. This was to avoid 
 the vengeance of the League. You can have no idea of 
 the degi-ee of terrorism created by the League. I could 
 never sanction the League, as a priest. 
 
 " The agitation has caused much indirect loss to the 
 country. In 1875 there were some 60,000 visitors at 
 Killarney ; now there are very few. Shooting, fishmg, 
 and hunting are boycotted, and yet such sports brought 
 into Limerick ^25,000 or more a year.
 
 I30 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " The landlords are evidently blamed before the world, 
 many of them justly. The chief rack-renters were pur- 
 chasers under the Encumbered Estates Act. They had 
 often borrowed the purchase money and had to raise the 
 rents to meet the interest. Fines of ^loo or;;^2oo were 
 also sometimes exacted on marriages, transfers, or giving 
 leases. In North Kerry, take the Locke estate for ex- 
 ample : the last of the family to hold it was a Miss 
 Locke, who married an Italian count. The land had 
 been let at a very low figure, and the tenants refused to 
 take leases when they could, as happened also on Lord 
 Kenmare's property. The property was bought under 
 the Encumbered Estates Act by various country gentle- 
 men in Kerry who had saved money, and they soon 
 quadrupled the rents. 
 
 '' Yet the old landlords usually dealt fairly with their 
 tenants, for they had large properties and were not crip- 
 pled. On the Kenmare estate, before the Land Act, 
 ;^7oo of arrears were cleared off in one year by a stroke 
 of the pen. The kindest men have come off worst, for 
 they had most arrears. Lord Kenmare's mere labor bill 
 was sometimes ^^300 a week. Up to the time of the 
 agitation he had spent ;^6o,ooo in improvements for 
 which he had never demanded a penny, and yet he has 
 been treated as badly as any one. 
 
 " A striking thing in Kerry is the apparent anomaly 
 that the cheaper a man gets his land the more idle he is 
 apt to be. There is one townland in this parish let at 
 2S. 6d. an Irish acre to one man for ninety-nine years. 
 He divided it between his five or six children, and so far 
 as I can see no improvement has been made by the 
 tenants, and they are about the poorest in the parish. 
 There are others who pay heavier rents who work harder 
 and are much better off.
 
 IN MUNSTER. 13I 
 
 " There is a great want of practical knowledge among 
 the farmers. They keep no accounts and never know 
 how they stand. The women might make good butter 
 if they took pains ; but it is carelessly made, and the 
 farmers often keep the butter during the summer for the 
 price to rise, and by the time they sell it it has deterio- 
 rated. 
 
 "In 1S72 the potatoes were not worth taking out of 
 the ground. I had to send to Killarney for potatoes fit 
 to eat, and when I inquired about the seed, I found they 
 had been growing potatoes from the same seed for 
 twenty years. I got seed from Dublin and raised excel- 
 lent potatoes ; but when I told the people that they 
 should change the soil and change the seed every two or 
 three years, they would n't understand, and said I man- 
 aged the land better than they did. One year I took 
 a field on the road to the station. The year before it 
 had n't paid. I took it for a smart rent, to raise a good 
 oat crop, for the oats are as bad here as the potatoes, for 
 the same reason. I got oats from Cork, and the oats I 
 raised were better than the seed. The field was by the 
 road, where every one could see it, and I drew the peo- 
 ple's attention to it. Then they began to think I was a 
 little touched in my head on the subject of seed. In 
 1879 the potatoes failed. I got champions for seed, and 
 planted champions and some of the old potatoes in the 
 same field. The champions alone survived ; but then it 
 was too late. 
 
 " It is important to dispel the ignorance of the farmers. 
 I would have agricultural teachers, to travel about and 
 teach something of practical farming. There should 
 be an agricultural school, where farmers' sons could go, 
 in a central place. Glasnevin is not central enough.
 
 132 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 What teaching there is now is too theoretical. Attach an 
 acre or two to every national school. 
 
 " A small duty on flour would answer all the Irish need 
 of protection. This would start the flour mills. Beyond 
 this I would not interfere with free trade, for if there had 
 been free trade in 1848 there would have been nothing 
 like a famine. 
 
 '' Peasant proprietorship would satisfy the people. 
 The farmers would then cease to agitate for Home Rule. 
 I would have a measure of compulsory sale and pur- 
 chase, and in estimating the value of the land, I would 
 look neither at the valuation nor the rent, but simply at 
 the condition of the land, allowing for unexhausted im- 
 provements. 
 
 " Finally, let the government help the people along the 
 coast to make nets and build boats. Then the sea would 
 be their farm." 
 
 NATIONAL LEAGUERS AT KILLARNY. 
 
 The secretary of the League at Killarney is a respect- 
 able auctioneer, and he invited me at once to a commit- 
 tee meeting in the evening. The room was like a lodge 
 room, but there was no secrecy or formality about the 
 proceedings. The only business was the distribution of 
 some money subscribed by the central board for eleven 
 laborers discharged by Lord Kenmare for refusing to 
 work on the farm of an evicted tenant. Five members 
 were present, earnest, quiet-looking men of the type of 
 the average Odd-Fellows in a Massachusetts country 
 town. Their meetings, they said, were in no sense secret 
 and they had no pass-words or grips. They were essen- 
 tially not what the government was trying to make of 
 them, a secret society. They neither did nor thought
 
 IN MUNSTER. 1 33 
 
 any thing that might not be published in a newspaper. 
 They wished to win national autonomy and worked for 
 it all they could. The local branches had no initiative, 
 but whenever there was any doubt about the propriety of 
 any action, they referred the matter to the central board. 
 Their part was to foster every spark of independence 
 among the people. 
 
 The outrages in Kerry were the doing of persons who 
 acted on their own behalf, and the League now con- 
 demned them, though when moonlighting first began it 
 was difficult not to sympathize with some outrages that 
 were excited by injustice. It was essential that the ten- 
 ants should join in refusing to pay exorbitant rents. 
 There were some years ago a number of old-fashioned 
 farmers who believed that landlordism was part of the 
 system of the universe, and that rents must be paid at 
 any sacrifice. Some young farmers' son?, more liberally 
 educated than their fathers, found that these old men 
 could only be influenced by terror, and then they organ- 
 ized these moonlight excursions. Individually Leaguers 
 sympathized at first with these young fellows, but now 
 they are absolutely opposed to any outrage, as they feel 
 sure of getting their ends by legal methods. 
 
 Only a few days before, the League had been pro- 
 claimed, and my companions felt some curiosity to know 
 what the proclamation meant. " We may be imprisoned," 
 they said, '' but we will meet as long as we are free." 
 
 KERRY OUTRAGES. 
 
 About Killarney " moonlighting " still continues. 
 " Near here," said a gentleman who fortunately finds 
 scholarship more lucrative than his small property, 
 " Fleming wanted a farm that a widow had given up.
 
 134 I^ CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 When he apphed at the office, they told him it had been 
 given to Murphy. A day or two later some relations of 
 Fleming met Mrs. Murphy and said : ' Well, he has the 
 land, perhaps he wont enjoy it long.' Within a week 
 Murphy was shot. 
 
 " Sheehan, a Leaguer, with one brother a priest and 
 another at Stonyhurst, bought an interest in a farm. A 
 neighbor envied it and offered more, and finally got a 
 band of moonlighters and fired into Sheehan's house ; 
 but the man still sticks on, and is protected by police. 
 
 " About this time last year, Cornelius Murphy bought 
 an interest in a farm from Moynihan, near Kantuck, in 
 County Cork. The deed was drawn and signed in the 
 presence of the P. P. of Banteen ; the money was paid, 
 the farm stocked and ploughed. The end of January, 
 Moynihan summoned Murphy to give the farm up, as some 
 one else had offered more for it. I asked the priest if 
 there was any thing in the deed to justify such a claim. 
 He replied: 'Nothing in the world.' On March 13th, 
 masked men called on Murphy, late at night, turned him 
 and his wife out of bed, and made him swear, with three 
 pistols pointed at his head, to give the farm up the next 
 day. A few weeks afterwards I got a letter from one 
 Cahill, a returned American, asking to be recognized as 
 tenant, since Moynihan had surrendered the farm. Mur- 
 phy also wrote me, April nth, saying : ' I wish to inform 
 your honor that I gave up Moynihan farm as the Rev. 
 Father Mowery has settled the matter. It did not pay 
 me, but I thought better to get out of danger — there is 
 nothing so good as a quite life, and so long as I would 
 hold that place I would not have much pace of mind 
 and dealing with these people.' " 
 
 A professional man in Kerry illustrated the prevailing
 
 IN MUNSTER. 1 35 
 
 terrorism when he said : " It would be, I believe, a mat- 
 ter of life and death with me if I told you now the whole 
 truth about the country. Before 1879, you could n't 
 with p^ioo have bribed a Kerryman born at home to as- 
 sassinate any one ; but the other day I said to an intel- 
 ligent P. P., in his Bishop's presence : * Now one could 
 probably find a dozen men within ten miles who would 
 assassinate any one for half a crown.' * I fear,' said he, 
 ' that is absolutely true.' 
 
 ''The law now is not equal to the punishment of the 
 graver offences. If six moonlighters were seen crossing 
 a field in open daylight, not a man would dare for any 
 money to tell the police. 
 
 " I asked a man the other day, What is it Murphy did 
 that made them shoot him ? ' ' Well,' said he, glancing 
 cautiously around, ' I think it was pure blackguardism ; 
 the Divil got hold of them.' ' Is there any sympathy for 
 him ? ' ' Shure, your honor, there is, but if I met a 
 neighbor I could n't trust him, and would say, if he asked 
 me, the Divil meant him.' 
 
 " After the imprisonment of Parnell, and the no-rent 
 manifesto, many men were visited at night and asked to 
 produce their pass-books. Then, if they were found to 
 have paid any rent, they were ordered to stand up with 
 their faces to the wall, and their legs were peppered with 
 shot. Sometimes their calves were shot away, and many 
 were crippled for life. 
 
 " Murphy was killed by having his leg shot off above 
 the ankle. 
 
 " Leahy, for outbidding another for a farm of Lord 
 Kenmare's was shot and frightfully bayonetted before 
 his wife's face. No evidence was given at the trial. 
 
 " Donaghue, within a mile of Killarney, was shot in the
 
 136 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 legs, four years ago, for buying out a broken-down 
 tenant farmer, part of the money going to pay for arrears 
 of rent. 
 
 " Rehilly was murdered near the workhouse in Killar- 
 ney, on his way home, in December, 1885, about five 
 o'clock in the afternoon, because he had been the care- 
 taker of an evicted farm. 
 
 " Brown, a farmer near here, purchased his own and a 
 neighboring farm, which he sublet. His neighbor did n't 
 pay, and Brown threatened to eject him. A few days 
 later Brown was shot while working in a field in the mid- 
 dle of the day. His two brothers in Mollahiffe are to 
 this day not allowed to see or help the widow. 
 
 " Curtin was a personal friend of mine. He was a cul- 
 tivated man, and had been educated by the Jesuits. In 
 1848 he lived in Limerick, and harbored O'Gorman after 
 the rising. At the time of the celebrated Blennerhasset 
 election he was a tenant of Lord Kenmare's, and was the 
 only one of the tenants who refrained from voting for 
 'the landlord's man. He was always generous to his 
 neighbors, lending money and machines. In the autumn 
 of 1875, Curtin, then a member of the League here, 
 headed a deputation of tenants to Lord Kenmare to ask 
 for a reduction. Lord Kenmare referred them to the 
 trustees in whose hands the property was, and the trus- 
 tees said that, since the Land Act, they could only make 
 a reduction on the order of a Land Court. Curtin then 
 was one of the first to pay rent. Soon after he was 
 visited by masked men who demanded arms. He refused, 
 ordered them to go, shot and killed one, Casey, a neigh- 
 bor's son, and was shot himself. The next Sunday 
 Casey was buried near Muckross Abbey, and Curtin, the 
 same day, at Mollahiffe. Scarcely a man went to Cur-
 
 IN MUNSTER. 1 37 
 
 tin's funeral, while the whole ccuntry-side attended 
 Casey's, and the curate who officiated there told me the 
 whole congregation rose to leave the church the minute 
 he began to regret the death of Curtin, and to avoid a 
 scandal he turned back to the altar and went on with the 
 service. All over Castleisland that Sunday placards 
 were posted warning the people not to pay rent if they 
 would escape the fate of Curtin of Mollahiffe. Mrs. 
 Curtin and her daughters prosecuted, and a brother of 
 Casey was convicted at Christmas. Meantime I often 
 heard the people cursing : ' May the Lord sweep them off 
 the face of the earth for attacking the poor moonlighters ! ' 
 
 " If Curtin had done like ]\Ir. Kilbride of Luggacurran, 
 who, though a rich man, allowed himself to be evicted at 
 a loss of six or seven thousand pounds, he would be 
 alive to-day." 
 
 Through a boggy country, with the fields separated by 
 trenches cleanly cut like gashes in new cheese, past 
 thatched huts with great piles of peat silhouetted in- 
 tensely black against their whitewashed walls, 1 drove 
 to Mollahiffe. Girls on the road hooded their faces with 
 their arms, and hooted when we asked the way to Mrs. 
 Curtin's. By the large iron gateway a policeman was 
 pacing, and a few yards within was the house, comforta- 
 ble to look at, densely ivy-grown. 
 
 " I can never live here in peace," said Mrs. Curtin, 
 " but they won't let me go. I tried to sell it at auction, 
 but notices were posted that any purchaser would get the 
 same treatment as old Curtin. 
 
 " Laborers will not work for us ; one we engaged last 
 year went off, saying he had been brought before the 
 League and forbidden to stay. The smith won't work 
 for me, nor the carpenter ; they say they would be glad
 
 138 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 to, but are afraid of the 'night-boys.' For doing a rew 
 jobs for us, as it was, the smith had his windows broken. 
 The baker still supplies us, but his house has been fired, 
 his windows smashed, and his gates unhinged. The 
 neighbors won't buy of us ; they say they would only be 
 buying trouble for themselves. In June I bought some 
 cattle in Milltown, but the farmer who sold them has 
 been accused by a cobbler, the president of the League. 
 A fortnight ago an outhouse was burned, uninsured, /(?r 
 110 company will insure us. Some months ago Mr. Spring, 
 a neighbor, bought a calf from me. Tuesday last it was 
 found by the roadside with its throat slit. He borrowed 
 a turf ' rail' from us about the same time. Ten days ago, 
 at night, it was broken up and the pieces thrown into the 
 river. Three or four weeks ago, near the church, my 
 driver, a faithful servant, was beaten and left for dead 
 on the road. The other night the house next door was 
 fired into ; and the next Sunday notices were posted 
 warning the woman there not to let her daughter talk to 
 our policemen. 
 
 " Our servants are asked sometimes whether they got 
 any of the blood-money, and often, going to chapel, they 
 have the door banged in their faces. 
 
 " Whenever the backs of the police are turned, the 
 people thrust out their tongues at us and spit at us. 
 
 " We have had to hear mass in the sacristy ever since 
 the murder. The people broke up our bench in the 
 church. Father Pat got us a new one in Cork, for no 
 one would make it nearer. The driver who brought it 
 out was beaten, and finally forced to go to America ; and 
 the new pew was torn from its place and broken to bits 
 in the churchyard. 
 
 " The reason for all this was our prosecuting my hus-
 
 IN MUNSTER. 1 39 
 
 band's murderers. If I had n't happened to recognize 
 some of them, I should never have suspected them to 
 be neighbors. I thought no one who knew him would 
 hurt him. I had made him join the League, for they 
 said they would boycott any one who did n't. The last 
 words he said, as he lay in the doorway, were : * Go 
 home, boys, now ! ' " 
 
 In the centre of a large untidy farmyard is the high 
 thatched hut of Mrs. Casey. She looked like an old 
 chieftain, with pale delicate face surrounded by the stiff 
 frill of her white cap, as she sat by the peat-fire watch- 
 ing the bubbles rising in an immense iron pot hanging 
 from the crane. 
 
 " For the death of Curtin," she said in a clear, strong 
 voice, "three Sullivans, two Caseys, Darley, Spring, 
 MacMahon, Clifford, and others were arrested. The 
 Curtins swore black, brown, and white against Darley 
 and my sons, and laid low one of widoAv Sullivan's. 
 
 " Curtin's people had got blood-money before : his 
 grandfather in '98 was an informer. 
 
 " If those boys did that thing, they merely went for 
 arms ; a foolish thing, but it has been done throughout 
 Ireland, and is done to-day. 
 
 " As long as I am alive, and my children, and their 
 children live, will we try to root the Curtins out of the 
 land. Now, I will, I will do it. Was n't a young man 
 more than equal to that old codger ? 
 
 " Yet I am better off than she is. I can go out to-day, 
 and I won't have peelers about mc, and I won't be 
 hooted and booed. 
 
 " My oldest boy went insane and I am sick, so, as 
 long as I live, the Curtins shall have my good wishes. 
 
 " The Land Acts are no good to us. What 's the
 
 I40 JN CASTLE AND CABIN, 
 
 good of going into court, when, if you get a reasonable 
 reduction, the landlord can appeal ? 
 
 " We pay the same for that gravel pit there as for any 
 thing else. My landlord has made over ^600 out of it. 
 
 " The rates, the county cess, and the peeler-tax are 
 are now more than the rent. A firkin of butter is sell- 
 ing for half price, and there 's no price for any thing. I 
 hope I won't die till I 've seen some good sights." 
 
 A NATIONALIST EDITOR IN KERRY. 
 
 Mr. D. Harrington is a brother of the member of Par- 
 liament and the Secretary of the League, and is the 
 popular editor of the Kerry Sentinel, a man of consider- 
 able force of character. 
 
 '* There have been outrages committed in Tralee and 
 Castleisland. Miss Thompson of Feenit was obliged 
 to have police protection, and an agent of Lord Ken- 
 mare's was murdered not many years ago ; but over 
 the fellows who commit the outrages the League has 
 no control, though a few of them may be Leaguers. 
 Each town has its own set of rowdies, but there is 
 no connection between them. Most of the outrages 
 are due to private motives. For instance, some of the 
 landlords are very immoral men. Wives and daughters 
 are sometimes sent with the rent to the great house 
 for reasons that are not generally known. When Mr. 
 Stead was here I gave him copies of some of this evi- 
 dence. Every thing, however, is twisted into an agrarian 
 crime. I have just paid as a rate-payer the last instal- 
 ment granted the widow of a man who, I believe, was 
 killed in a street brawl. 
 
 " This county is purely agricultural, and the poverty 
 of the tenant farmers causes general distress. The
 
 IN MUNSTER. I4I 
 
 tradespeople suffer as much as the landlords. Our 
 books show ;^ 1,400 of debts, of which we shall scarcely 
 get one pound. Of course, for the time, no improve- 
 ments are being made, and the land is deteriorating. 
 The farmers are waiting till the land question is settled. 
 They would be very glad to settle it, but the movement 
 has gone so far that they won't be satisfied with any but 
 a proper settlement. The terms under Lord Ashbourne's 
 Act were usually made too high. I advised the tenants 
 to be very careful about going in under it. Before they 
 purchase they should have a fair rent fixed as a basis. 
 The courts are doing that very reasonably, and no new 
 machinery is needed. The reductions given by the 
 courts have been generally greater than those demanded 
 under the Plan of Campaign. The Plan has not been 
 adopted on a single property here, and we have paid for 
 >t adopting it. 
 
 "■ The flatlands in Kerry are in the hands of graziers, 
 and are turned into sheep walks, while the people are 
 scratching the sides of the mountains. If all were thrown 
 into agricultural land and implements were given the 
 people, we could compete with America. The last re- 
 source is a duty on American corn and flour." 
 
 "But isn't it wrong," I asked, "for a man to refuse 
 either to pay rent or to give up his farm ? " 
 
 " Not if half of the land is his," replied Mr. Harring- 
 ton. " To evict a man and to burn his house is a crime 
 for which a landlord should be prosecuted, for he has 
 destroyed the property of another. 
 
 " Home rule will come, there 's no doubt about that. 
 Would n't it be wiser for the landlords even now to 
 throw in their lot with the people and not talk about tak- 
 ing their money and leaving the country ? If they stayed
 
 142 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 with us, they would soon become leaders of the people 
 instead of men like my brothers. But they are blind 
 and deaf, and persist in raising dishonest cries about 
 persecution of the Protestants. As to Catholic oppres- 
 sion. H , a Protestant and Conservative, is Clerk 
 
 of the Crown and Peace here. His son Richard is So- 
 licitor to the Board of Guardians, which is Nationalist to 
 a man. His second son is Deputy Sheriff. The Dep- 
 uty Sub-sheriff is also of the same party. The Secretary 
 of the Grand Jury is a brother of the Knight of Kerry. 
 He makes probably ^900 a year. Such men do not 
 want Home Rule. Yet there are a hundred thousand 
 men like myself, who would not care for Home Rule, 
 and would not welcome it, if it meant the oppression of 
 our Protestant fellow-countrymen. 
 
 " It is the English manufacturers who are the chief 
 opponents of Home Rule, because they are afraid of the 
 development of Irish manufactures. Parnell said at one 
 time that we would want protection for two or three 
 years. Free trade unquestionably is a great evil. But 
 one great benefit Home Rule would bring, would be that 
 wealthy Irishmen would return from America and Aus- 
 tralia, and settle down here and start industries as they 
 never would except under Home Rule. It is true we 
 have no coal-fields ; but I can get coal here in Tralee 
 cheaper than I could in Kent. 
 
 " This * physical force ' business is the merest folly. 
 We have had the greatest difficulty in restraining the 
 more violent men. I would go so far as this that if 
 pushed to the wall I would sell my life as dearly as pos- 
 sible ; but I believe we shall win all we want without 
 shedding one drop of blood. Davitt is a brave man and 
 self-sacrificing, but this movement needs a cool head like
 
 IN MUNSTER. I43 
 
 Pamell's. It is easy for Americans to talk of fighting, 
 for they have nothing to lose." 
 
 A KERRY LAND AGENT. 
 
 One of the best-hated men in Ireland was my host for 
 a night, in a police-protected country house on the ro- 
 mantic coast of Kerry. As I watched him laughing 
 merrily, as his daughter sang the magnificent mock- 
 heroic chorus of " The Ballyhooly Horse," it was star- 
 tling to reflect that this apparently amiable, scholarly 
 gentleman was nearly blown up by dynamite in his own 
 house not many years ago, and that his name is a by- 
 word and a curse throughout the county. 
 
 " Gladstone's Land Bill," he said, " is the cause of the 
 present hopeless confusion. By that act the letting of land 
 ceased to be a commercial transaction, and now the motto 
 of the people is ' work as you like, you are bound to live.' 
 In Kerry there never was any custom like the Ulster 
 Tenant Right before, though the landlord often allowed 
 a tenant to nominate his successor, but that was a very 
 different thing, for the landlord then could make sure of 
 the accession of an improving, industrious man. 
 
 "The agitation is purely agrarian and communistic. 
 It is spreading all over Europe, but in France is checked 
 by the number of small proprietors, always a conservative 
 body. It is the result of distress, and the distress is due 
 to over-population. In Kenmare a man had a farm pay- 
 ing ;^io a year. He wished to divide it between his two 
 sons. I told him that was against the rules of the estate, 
 and, besides, would impoverish his sons. He insisted. 
 To test him, I said he would have to pay me £l down 
 for the privilege. ' Certainly,' he replied ; but of course 
 I did n't allow it. Another tenant of mine got a judicial
 
 144 ^^ CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 rent fixed at ^30. The penalty for subdivision was a 
 heavy forfeit. He came to me and said : ' For God's 
 sake, let me keep my two sons.' The best-farmed land 
 in Great Britain is East Lothian. Five sixths of that is 
 in tillage, and yet the population is less per acre than 
 several counties in Ireland that are wholly grass land. 
 
 " The dishonesty of the Paruellites was shown by 
 their opposition to a clause proposed by Gladstone in 
 the Land Bill of 188 1, granting a million pounds for as- 
 sisting emigration. Parnell wants the people at home in 
 order to force the hand of the government. What 
 would be thought of a popular leader in New York who 
 refused the offer of a philanthropist to give poor people 
 tickets to New Mexico, where there is plenty of work 
 and grub ? My son goes to New Mexico to farm, why 
 should my tenant object to having his son go there ? 
 
 " Applicants for government aid for emigration are 
 required to present a certificate of their respectability 
 from the parish priest. A Protestant clergyman asked 
 me the other day if he might sign such certificates, as the 
 parish priest had given out that he would not sign any. 
 
 "Another reason for Irish distress is their bad farm- 
 ing. In Scotland there are about a million acres devoted 
 to agriculture, to four million in Ireland, and yet Scot- 
 land produces more cereals. In Scotland a pair of 
 horses to sixty acres of tillage is the usual allowance. 
 Here on a farm I own, of fifty-three acres, there are fif- 
 teen horses. What the farmer does with them I can't 
 imagine. 
 
 " The distress is increased by the farmers squandering 
 their money on drink. One railroad company brought 
 to Tralee, in 1886, sixty thousand dollars' worth of 
 whiskey, and the two companies together about a hun-
 
 IN MUNSTER. 1 45 
 
 dred thousand dollars' worth. "Whiskey used to be six 
 shillings a gallon, but now more is drunk when it is ten 
 shillings. 
 
 " It is now the shirts against the shirtless ; and if a 
 general Land Purchase Bill were passed, the question of 
 Home Rule would be dropped, for then most of the 
 voters would have something to lose. 
 
 " Nothing could be more advantageous to the tenant 
 than the purchase clauses of Lord Ashbourne's Act. 
 Suppose a man is paying ^100 a year ; he could visually 
 buy his farm for ^1,800, the interest on which, at four 
 per cent., is ;^72, a reduction at once of about thirty 
 per cent. He should be willing to have those clauses 
 extended and to have the rents fixed as a basis for pur- 
 chase by the present land courts. The landlords in 
 general have paid twenty-one years' purchase for their 
 property. I did, and that to the government, under the 
 Encumbered Estates Act. We should expect to be paid at 
 least eighteen years' purchase. The Nationalists say : 
 ' You bought a stone horse, and should take the conse- 
 sequences ' ; but the government said to me when I 
 bought : ' We are selling in order to simplify titles.' They 
 might recompense me. AVhat right has the government 
 to give me over to the rabble ? They should at least buy 
 my property first before giving me over ; for if I stayed 
 here, within a year my throat would be cut. When they 
 tried to blow up my house with dynamite, there were six- 
 teen people in the house, yet all those lives were to be 
 sacrificed ; and not a single priest, when I met them, 
 except Father John, of my own parish, expressed any 
 disapproval. 
 
 " The melancholy thing about the present agitation is 
 that it strikes at the good as well as the bad landlords,
 
 146 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 and at the best most severely, since they are the most 
 yielding. Mr. Oliver and Lord Cork have the two cheap- 
 est-let properties in Kerry, and yet one was shot at and 
 the other has to have police protection. In six years, 
 during which I was Lord Kenmare's agent, he spent 
 more money in improving his Kerry property than he 
 took out of it. An estate under my charge in 1840 was 
 subject to a rental of ^2,376, which was well and punctu- 
 ally paid. At that time there was no railroad within a 
 hundred and fifty miles of it. Now it has a railroad 
 station on it ; and although the landlord has expended 
 considerable sums on improving it, the rental has been 
 reduced by the Land Commissioners to ;^ 1,892. During 
 the same period the rental of Orkney has increased from 
 ^19,332 to ^56,850, or 194 per cent.; and yet, the 
 present M. P. for Orkney has complained about Irish 
 rack-rents. The landlords will turn at last, for twelve 
 years' purchase will leave them nothing above their 
 charges ; and their charges, including mortgages, family 
 charges, duties to the government, tithes, and interest on 
 drainage loans, are undiminished. I invested ^2^50,000 
 in Irish land ; now if any one will offer me ^30,000, I 
 will take it and be off. 
 
 " It is said that the tenants are weighed down by ar- 
 rears hanging over them from the famine times ; but by 
 the Arrears Act of 18S2 a tenant could come into court, 
 and on the payment of one year's rent, all arrears prior 
 to the judicial rent fixed for the current year were wiped 
 off, the government paying the landlord a second year's 
 rent. For this purpose a million pounds were granted. 
 In many cases I took one year's rent from the govern- 
 ment, and forgave the tenant every thing. 
 
 " My plan for meeting the Home-Rule agitators is this :
 
 IN MUNSTER. 1 47 
 
 * You want Home Rule, do you ? Then pay your share 
 of the national debt ; pay off any loyalists who wish to 
 leave the country ; appoint the President of the United 
 States and the Emperor of Germany commissioners to 
 value the property of the loyalists, and then pay them 
 and let them go.' Let every one who refuses to agree to 
 this be disfranchised. 
 
 " In every thing Ireland is the poorest country in the 
 world, and England the richest. Should these countries 
 be kept apart and by themselves ? No ; jumble them 
 up, toss them up together as you would a pancake. 
 There are twelve thousand police in Ireland, all Irish- 
 men. I would establish them in England, and have 
 twelve thousand Englishmen as policemen here. I would 
 send all the dispensary doctors to England, and have all 
 English doctors here ; and I would have the courts amal- 
 gamated, Irish judges sitting in England and EngUsh 
 judges here. 
 
 " One change in the direction of local self-government 
 I should approve of : Judges or Commissioners of Pub- 
 lic Works should be appointed to go on circuit through 
 the counties, in order to save the expense of our going 
 to London. In many ways less centralization would be 
 a good thing, for the typical Irishman gives his soul to 
 the priest and his body to the government to take care 
 of." 
 
 AFTER EVICTION. HERBARTSTOWN AND BODVKE. 
 
 At the end of August several evictions took place on 
 the property of the O'Grady at Herbartstown, in County 
 Limerick. The excitement was intense. The defenders 
 of one house poured hot water and tar on the officers, and 
 tried to hook them with a hot iron rod. " The resistance
 
 148 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 offered on that occasion," urged the counsel for those 
 who were arrested, '' was not offered from the point of 
 view of its being a legal defence, but its aim and object 
 was to attract public attention to what was going on, and 
 to make a protest against what those people might con- 
 sider an unjust eviction." ' An aged, bedridden woman, 
 Mrs. Moloney, it was reported, was cruelly turned out of 
 her home and had to be carried a mile or more through 
 the bitter weather. A few days afterwards, an Irish 
 member referred in Parliament to her death from the 
 exposure, and arraigned the government for permitting 
 such brutality. The effect of these evictions on English 
 opinion was said to be greater than that of all the speeches 
 of Mr, Gladstone. The week following I drove there 
 from Limerick. 
 
 The road to Herbartstown passes through excellent 
 lands. Luxuriant hedges prove the richness of the soil. 
 Here and there a " boycotted " farm breaks the succes- 
 sion of emerald fields, with its patch of black rag-weeds 
 and white thistles. It is market day at Hospital, and a 
 cartful of pigs jolts past us, closely followed by a com- 
 pany of pig-jobbers in a covered car. By the side of the 
 road that leads up to the village of Herbartstown is a 
 field that seemed one mass of weeds. Whose farm is 
 that ? I asked of a neighbor standing in a doorway. 
 " Tom Moroney's," he answered. " It was one of the 
 best in the town." 
 
 McGuire, a blacksmith, the secretary of the League, 
 took me to see Mrs. Moroney, whose husband was in 
 prison for contempt of court. Her house is the finest in 
 the village, a large double stone house, one half of it a 
 spirit-grocery. All the furniture had been moved away, 
 ' Cork Herald, September 8, 1887.
 
 IN MUNSTER. 1 49 
 
 except a few chairs and tables. The front door was for- 
 tified with a mass of large iron weights, and with an 
 enormous log of wood that was leaning against it with 
 one end on the stairs. 
 
 " The state of affairs can be put in a few words," said 
 McGuire. " Three years ago the landlord agreed to 
 revalue the property, and persuaded the tenants to accept 
 his own valuer. Moroney and two small tenants refused ; 
 and one of them went into court and got a much larger 
 reduction than that allowed by the valuer. For some 
 years the tenants were allowed fifteen and twenty per 
 cent, off, but a year ago the agent said he had no author- 
 ity to continue the reduction. Subsequently he offered 
 fifteen per cent, all round, and finally fifteen to judicial 
 lease-holders and twenty-five per cent, to the others. 
 The tenants demanded thirty and forty per cent, respec- 
 tively, and adopted the ' Plan.' 
 
 " O'Grady served every one with writs, and drove 
 Moroney into bankruptcy. It was difficult to find out 
 Moroney's assets, for after the ' Plan ' was adopted all 
 the tenants sold off their cattle and put the money into 
 the * Campaign fund.' Moroney and Father Ryan re- 
 fused to testify about this ' fund,' and were imprisoned 
 for contempt of court. This house was sold at auction 
 by the court to a Mr. Bullen for ^50, and Mrs. Moroney 
 is now holding it only as a caretaker, expecting to be 
 evicted at any moment. 
 
 " O'Grady made successive offers to the people up to 
 the day of the evictions, but we were pledged not to pay 
 a penny of costs, no matter what abatements were given. 
 They went to Mrs. Ryan, and said : ' Won't you make 
 some settlement if Mrs. Hogan does ? ' * No, I won't, 
 not a penny,' she said. It was a matter of principle.
 
 150 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 O'Grady offered even to take payment by Instalments, at 
 first of ^5 a year, and then of ^i a year, but nobody 
 listened to him. 
 
 " There were thirteen people to be evicted, most of 
 them in the village, but all except the six actually evicted 
 were protected by the new Land Act. Every one be- 
 lieves that if the town people had been attacked, there 
 would have been murder done, for every house is barri- 
 caded. 
 
 '' Moroney has twenty acres, this house, and five small 
 houses, besides the fair ground. The rent is ;^85. The 
 fair ground used to be rented for ;^4o, and now is rented 
 for ;^25 ; and Moroney takes the tolls. This house was. 
 built by Moroney nine years ago, at a cost of over ^600, 
 and all that O'Grady gave towards it was ^18. The 
 other houses are very old, and were probably built by 
 Moroney's ancestors. This rent is enormous, but the 
 farmers, if they are to stand at all, need to pay no rent. 
 
 "The evictions were brutal. Poor old Mrs. Moloney 
 was taken from her bed and carried to her step-brother's 
 house, at the risk of her life." 
 
 " She need only have been lifted for a minute over 
 the threshold," I suggested, "for did n't O'Grady offer 
 to take her back as caretaker?" "Why," explaimed 
 McGuire, " if she had gone back she would only have 
 cost O'Grady a penny a week, now he has to pay emer- 
 gency men one or two pounds a week, and last week 
 there were hundreds of cattle going through these farms, 
 for they don't really take care of any thing. Our object, 
 when the landlord goes against us, is to put him to as 
 much expense as possible. It is necessary to punish him. 
 Besides, we are afraid of a caretaker coming to terms 
 with the agent."
 
 IN MUNSTER. 151 
 
 The prospects of the campaign seem decidedly bright 
 for the tenants. Not a penny will they pay until their 
 terms are granted, and Moroney and the evicted people 
 reinstated. It is difficult to put Moroney back, for his 
 house has been sold to another man. " That 's O'Grady's 
 look-out," cried McGuire, gleefully. " Now we have him 
 at our mercy. He is in a box. But he '11 get no rent 
 from any tenant till Moroney is back." 
 
 "Then the property is mortgaged for nearly fifty 
 thousand pounds. O'Grady handled only ^5 or ^6 
 out of all the rental of Herbartstown. The encum- 
 brancers will have to foreclose, and then put the estate 
 up for sale, and there will be no one to buy it but the 
 tenants." 
 
 " The result will be," I hinted, " that you will buy the 
 land yourselves pretty cheaply ? " 
 
 " Yes, that is what we all expect." 
 
 In an inner room of a cottage larger than usual I found 
 Mrs. Moloney, a very aged woman, covered with a patch- 
 work counterpane. " I am well enough to-day," she 
 whispered. " That was a dreadful day. I did n't 
 know what was happening ; and now I can't see the old 
 home. I tried to make the rent. Perhaps it would have 
 been better to have gone back as caretaker. I am quite 
 comfortable here. They do every thing for me." As 
 the old lady is now in the house where she was born, 
 and where she can be better taken care of than before, 
 her removal the distance of a single field was not per- 
 haps an act of extraordinary cruelty. 
 
 The saddest thing to see was the rank growth of weeds 
 in the fields. The thistles, some three or four feet high, 
 were seeding, and the rag-weeds were like a miniature 
 forest. " Why do you let the land get in such a state ? "
 
 152 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 I asked of a young fellow. " Ever since we sold off all 
 our cattle last November," he said, "it has not been 
 worth while to do any thing." 
 
 Twenty miles from Limerick, on the side opposite to 
 Herbartstown, is Bodyke. For some distance fine trees 
 overarch the road, and as soon as the woods are passed 
 the country opens up flat and boggy. " A great place," 
 said my boy driver, " for catching linnets, finches, and 
 rabbits " ; and a moment afterwards we met a bird- 
 catcher with three cages full. Here and there small 
 thatched huts are almost hidden behind ricks of hay and 
 straw and long piles of peat. Around us are low, long- 
 rolling hills, flecked with every color from orange to 
 bluish black, closely spotted with gray heaps of stone 
 and chequered with bare stone walls ; beyond rise 
 higher hills, golden brown against a silvery sky ; and in 
 the valley are long peat dikes and one tiny patch of 
 emerald grass, with two cows and a few solitary sheep. 
 Each successive amphitheatre of hills is more barren and 
 more stony than the last. Stones lie on every side as 
 thick as in an ancient graveyard or a glacier moraine, and 
 where the stones are fewer there is bog. At last we 
 swing suddenly to the left, and are in Bodyke, with its 
 four two-storied, thatched spirit-groceries, and the white 
 police barracks with its tiled roof. 
 
 The feelings of the striking tenants were perhaps ex- 
 pressed most intelligently by a bright-looking, middle- 
 aged woman, as she sat in the cosy kitchen of a neat cot- 
 tage, Mrs. Dogherty, a teacher in the National School. 
 " We have two farms," she said, " and this house in the 
 village. One of the farms belongs to Colonel O'Cal- 
 laghan, — a farm of five and a half acres, of which two 
 acres are snipe bog, and the rest arable land. The rent
 
 IN MUNSTER. 153 
 
 used to be ;z£"i2, which we got reduced by the court 
 three years ago to ^7 xos. Two years ago we all asked 
 for 25 per cent, reduction, which was refused, and then 
 we joined the ' Plan.' I and my husband could pay the 
 rent, but we are bound in honor to our neighbors to pay 
 nothing till the Colonel gives in. A year ago we were 
 served with ejectment papers, and random evictions 
 were made, but we were not touched. Lately we have 
 been writted again. 
 
 " Landlords could do any thing they chose till evic- 
 tions became difficult. The worst that has been said of 
 the Colonel is not bad enough. Every word of Mr. 
 Norman's pamphlet about Bodyke is true. The greater 
 part of this parish was starving in order to pay their 
 rents, and but for the Plan of Campaign many of the 
 tenants would not be living now. Eighteen or twenty 
 could have paid their exorbitant rents, but the rest 
 could n't make the rent out of the land, and got along 
 only by going out as laborers and teamsters. 
 
 '' As it is, the Colonel will have to give in to our de- 
 mands, grant us our abatement of 25 per cent., restore 
 the evicted tenants, and refund enough to make good 
 all losses caused by the evictions." 
 
 Eviction used to be spoken of as "a sentence of 
 death." It is so no longer. " The evicted tenants have 
 continued to occupy their farms ever since the evictions, 
 but the police are watching them, and they fear being 
 turned out again. They have got in some crops, and are 
 supported by the ' Campaign Fund,' by regular allow- 
 ances from the League, and by public subscriptions. 
 The poorer tenants," the good lady continued, " are 
 certainly better off than they ever were before." 
 
 It is perhaps worth while noting that even in Bodyke
 
 154 I^ CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 there is no general strike against paying rent. " Mr, 
 Stackpole, a son-in-law of the Colonel, is a large land- 
 owner here, and he has settled with his tenants for a re- 
 duction of 15 per cent." Mrs. Dogherty holds a farm of 
 fifteen or sixteen acres from Dr. CoUinan, of Ennis, and 
 the house she lives in belongs to the Colonel's sister, and 
 she is paying rent to both. 
 
 The suppression of the League in Bodyke was said to 
 have stimulated outrages. A week before my visit a 
 baker was found shot dead under his cart, and the night 
 before two hundred feet of turf was burned to the 
 ground, the woman who owned it being suspected of 
 supplying the emergency men. 
 
 As we drove back through the rain the car-boy sang 
 unending mournful songs in a low voice, " to kape the 
 baste in good humor." The streaming road shone like 
 silver in the diffused misty moonlight, and a man march- 
 ing moodily by his heavily laden " assen car" loomed up 
 like a peasant caught by Millet against a shaft of sunset 
 light.
 
 PART III.— IN CONNAUGHT, 
 
 WHY GALWAY WANTS HOME RULE. 
 
 In the town of Galway, the first thing that struck me 
 was that there was no longer there a branch of the 
 League. " There is no League in this part of the coun- 
 try," said a leading Nationalist, a stout, round-faced 
 publican, "for the people are so poor they cannot pay 
 their subscriptions. They were willing but unable to 
 pay. Most of the people in the town," he added signifi- 
 cantly, *' are Liberal-Unionists." 
 
 At the Bridge Mills the proprietor, Mr. Lynch, was 
 sitting in the flour-sprinkled little office, surrounded by 
 a little company of enthusiastic Nationalists. " This is 
 a wool-growing country," he said, " with the greatest 
 water power in the United Kingdom. Independently of 
 Home Rule, factories would start up here of their own 
 accord, if our people were only energetic ; under Home 
 Rule they certainly would. 
 
 " Centralization is a great evil. The bill to construct 
 tramways in Galway had to be passed in London. To 
 build a bridge across the little river over which you are 
 sitting, we had to go to London and spend some fifty 
 pounds there. If we had Home Rule we should improve 
 hourly. Galway is the natural port of the country for 
 ships sailing to the United States, and a Home Rule 
 Parliament would build it up as a shipping and steamer 
 station. A few years ago the mail packet subsidy was 
 
 155
 
 156 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 taken away from us, and hundreds have been starving 
 ever since. Parliament, too, has never given us the pier 
 and breakwater we were promised. Heretofore we 
 would rather have been under a government of Thugs 
 than of the English. 
 
 " As to the land question. The Irish Americans, un- 
 fortunately, have done much to raise the price of land in 
 Ireland, for they have come back and bought land at any 
 price from sentimental notions. Many of the farmers are 
 in great distress. I know a man named Curran who lives 
 six miles from Clifden, who has fifty or sixty acres, half 
 bog. On this holding the rent was twenty pounds in 
 1849, ^^d has been raised successively to twenty-seven 
 pounds, forty-five pounds, fifty pounds, and sixty pounds, 
 and was lately reduced by the court to thirty pounds. 
 
 " The Land Act of 1881 was necessary, for the land 
 was exhausted by frequent cropping to meet exorbitant 
 rents, and improvements were prevented by the insecu- 
 rity of tenure. We admit that a great deal of our poverty 
 is our own fault, as we don't cultivate wisely or enough ; 
 but to this we were really forced by the custom of rais- 
 ing the rents for every improvement. Of course, too, 
 over-population is the cause of much of the evil, but how 
 can that be avoided ? 
 
 " The establishment of a peasant proprietary would 
 keep money in the country that is now spent abroad. 
 Lord Clanricarde takes out of the country about thirty 
 thousand pounds a year, not a penny of which ever 
 comes back. 
 
 " The landlords, moreover, have not quite so strong a 
 claim to compensation as they try to make out. If a 
 merchant buys a certain cargo, he cannot be insured a 
 certain price for it. Why should a buyer of land be bet- 
 ter off?"
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 157 
 
 I referred to the apparent lack of independence in the 
 people, as shown by their yielding such blind obedience 
 to their leaders. '' We have had," he replied, " so much 
 experience of disunion and political treachery in Ireland, 
 that, for the time, we have decided all to yield to Mr. 
 Parnell. Even if we don't approve of his choice of a 
 candidate, we submit for the sake of union. This was 
 strikingly shown at the last election here. We would not 
 have it said that Galway caused a split in the party. 
 Many of our M. P.'s are able men but unscrupulous, and 
 with patriotism only skin-deep, but if Mr. Parnell sent 
 one of them down here we would elect him because he 
 would serve our purpose." 
 
 " Would the Protestant minority have fair play under 
 Home Rule ?" 
 
 " The influence of the priests, you must remember, is 
 not what it was. Except Dr. Croke and Dr. Nulty, 
 who sided with the people, the bishops and almost all 
 the priests held out against the National movement 
 until they saw there was danger of the people falling 
 away from them [" Politically," interjected Sullivan] ; 
 then they fell in, and are now to the front again." 
 
 " They have been of marvellous service to the cause," 
 Sullivan remarked again. 
 
 " Yes," continued Lynch, " but these facts show how 
 independent the people have become, for in old times 
 the priests used to drive the people before them to the 
 polls. 
 
 " In Galway again, there are about sixteen Catholics to 
 one of any other denomination ; yet of the twenty-four 
 members of the corporation ten are Protestants, and the 
 chairman is a Protestant. On the Harbor Board the 
 majority of the members and the chairman are Protes-
 
 158 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 tants. On the Poor-Law Board the chairman is Catholic, 
 but three or four of the elected members are Protestants. 
 The Poor-Rate Collector is a Protestant, though elected 
 by Catholics, and so are the Engineer of the Harbor 
 Board, the Town Steward, and the Engineer for the 
 Town. A majority of the grand jury are Catholics, for the 
 landlords here are Catholics. 
 
 " In fine, I believe that if we had Home Rule to- 
 morrow, as I pray God we may, any bishop or priest who 
 stood up for ascendancy would have short shrift." 
 
 The opinion of a clockmaker in Galway may be worth 
 quoting : 
 
 " I firmly believe," he said, " that Home Rule would 
 injure me at first, but that in twenty, fifty, or a hundred 
 years my business would be benefited. Within a few 
 years a farmer in the west of Ireland was afraid to have 
 a clock in his house, because if the agent came round 
 and saw it, he would probably raise the rent." 
 
 WALKING IN CONNEMARA. 
 
 From Galway I walked along the coast to Clifden. A 
 few miles from Galway is Barna, a row of a dozen houses, 
 huts with thatched roofs, and three two-story, slated 
 houses by the side of the road. In one of the latter 
 lived James Hickey, whose story seemed to explain the 
 violence of so many Irish patriots. Hickey went to 
 America and enlisted at the breaking out of the civil 
 war. He was twice wounded, but not mustered out till 
 the war was over. His regiment was the Ninth Massachu- 
 setts Volunteers, the " Irish Brigade " ; and with several 
 other old comrades he took part in the Canadian risinpj, 
 and being in the first detachment that crossed Niagara, wa ; 
 taken, and spent many years in Dartmouth Prison.
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 1 59 
 
 " My father rented this strip of land of Lord Camp- 
 bell and Stratheden, and built these three stone houses, 
 each with eight rooms, and well slated. Nine or ten 
 years ago the price of cattle fell, and my father was then 
 evicted out of one house, but kept this and the next one, 
 which he let as a barracks to the constabulary. If it had 
 not been for my wife and children, I would then have 
 gone to America. As it was I went to London to see 
 the landlord, but he was never at home to me. I found 
 myself alone in London, without five shillings in my 
 pocket ; it was a blue look-out, but I found a friend in 
 T. P. O'Connor, M. P. for Galway, whom I had helped 
 in his election ; for I have considerable influence with 
 the people here, as I speak equally well English and 
 Irish. T. P. O'Connor got me a situation in London, 
 and there I stayed till I heard of my father's death. I 
 came back at once, knowing little of my father's affairs. 
 He used to keep things in a slovenly way, and it was only 
 from the agent that I found out he owed two and a half 
 years' rent. I had no money in the house at the time, 
 and went to see the agent. I stood outside the rail in 
 his office and told him ' it can be paid, but I want time.' 
 * Pooh, pooh ! ' he said ; ' the landlord can't give you any 
 time ; he must get the money.' ' See here,' said I, ' the 
 old times are gone. There 's no dark spot now but a 
 strong light can be thrown on it as never before, and if 
 you squeeze me I '11 squeal ' ' When will you pay me ? ' 
 he asked. ' I expect to sell this and that,' I said. ' I '11 
 sell every stick I have till I get out of this mess ' ; and 
 I gave him ^38 is. It was then November, 1883, and 
 that exhausted my resources. I paid him a pound later, 
 and ^10 more in 18S6, and then was at the end of my 
 tether. I now owep^42, about two and a half vears' rent.
 
 l6o IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " I went to him and said : ' I have no money now, but 
 I own the police barracks, for which I get ;Q\2 a year. 
 At twelve years' purchase that is worth nearly ^150. 
 Let me mortgage that to you as security, and redeem 
 when I can.' He paused a bit, and then said: 'You have 
 no lease for it,' he said. 'Whose fault is that ?' cried I. 
 ' The land the barracks is on is Lord Campbell's, but 
 the building itself is mine. If I can turn over the bar- 
 racks to him so that he can secure his ^^42 off it, what 's 
 the harm ? ' Legally, perhaps, he is owner and I am 
 tenant at will, but my father built the houses. Lord 
 Campbell never gave a shovel of sand towards building 
 it, nor a stick of timber, nor a single slate. Let him 
 mortgage it and hold it as security only. I will redeem 
 it' The clerk then drew up a paper, which I signed ; 
 and the next day the mean fellow collected a year's rent 
 then due on the barracks, and immediately evicted me 
 out of it, the constables being all turned out and at once 
 put back again. 
 
 " He evicted me out of every thing except the house I 
 am now in, and did not leave me land enough * to sod a 
 lark in,' and in that land there I have invested three 
 times its fee-simple value. 
 
 " The landlord now has possession of the barracks 
 and the land, though I could redeem it with only ^42, 
 and I am left with only this house and a few potato 
 patches, — and even for these I am writted for evict- 
 ment. While I was away, too, and the old man was sick, 
 every thing fell into disrepair, and it would take ^20 to 
 put things in order again. As to the houses themselves, 
 they are solid granite, as solid as Hell Gate in New York 
 Sound before they blew it up. 
 
 " Here the rent is not the grievance, though the time
 
 m CONNAUGHT. 
 
 i6i 
 
 will come, please God, when we shall pay no rent. In 
 fact we pay the rent now with as good grace as we can, 
 though we think it an injustice. 
 
 " The land acts have done some good, but your im- 
 provements you sacrifice even now if you go out for non- 
 payment of rent, and if you let six months pass after an 
 eviction without paying, you lose all claim on the land. 
 When I could n't hold the land, how could I redeem it m 
 six months, after being still further impoverished ? The 
 period of redemption should obviously be extended.' 
 
 Hickey led me out into a field behind the house, a 
 long, green field sloping to the sea. Here and there are 
 heaps of broken blocks of granite, like the debris of a 
 glacier moraine. A curving granite pier jutted out mto 
 the blue water and made a tiny harbor. Drawn up on 
 the beach were ten or a dozen " corraghs," canoes made 
 of tarred sail-cloth nailed over a bare wooden frame, and 
 beyond the pier were five or six more. Hickey seemed 
 strongly moved, and his eyes filled with tears. " About 
 1S59," he said gently, "the place we are walkmg on was 
 a prosperous fishing village, named Barna, m the county 
 and town of Galway. You are now treadmg on ruined 
 hearth-stones. There were then thirty-five or forty fish- 
 ing-boats in this little harbor, instead of three. Barna, 
 as it was, had nearly six hundred inhabitants. These 
 people lived here in a rude way, well in good times, and 
 bearing hard times bravely,-a typical fishing community. 
 " Where we are now standing there was a solid block 
 of houses. The present village was only the first row of 
 the old Barna, and from that to the beach were other 
 rows, with little lanes leading down to the water's edge. 
 The rent ranged from 15^. to ^os. a house, and there were 
 over forty houses.
 
 1 62 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 "The Lord Campbell of that day thought it would be 
 a good idea to have bathing-houses here, and an open 
 way to the sea. He ruthlessly exterminated the whole 
 community, and spent enormous sums in turning the 
 village into the field you see. 
 
 "There were little gardens to the houses, surrounded 
 by stone walls : they took the earth from the gardens, 
 and filled in the hollows with the ruins of the houses and 
 the garden walls, and then covered all snugly over with 
 the soil. Do you see those brown spots ? The grass 
 does n't grow there, for just beneath the surface is one of 
 the sunken stones of the buried village. 
 
 " The Czar of Russia gives subsistence to those he 
 transports to Siberia, but the children and the infirm and 
 the old people of Barna were sent into the workhouse, 
 and the rest wandered here and there over the earth. 
 God knows where some of them went to, for I don't. 
 In Second and Third streets, and in Athens Street, 
 South Boston, there used to be a little colony of these 
 people. Perhaps some of them may be there still. 
 
 " The rental of the old village was forty pounds or 
 more a year. After all those expensive operations this 
 field was let for ^2 a year. Now it is divided between 
 two tenants who pay altogether about ^8. Assign what 
 motive you like to this action of Lord Campbell's, there 
 is something diabolical about it. I used to amuse my- 
 self by observing the conduct in Parliament of the pres- 
 ent Lord Campbell, who is persecuting me. Whenever 
 he opened his mouth — he has n't now for some time — it 
 was to speak about the misery of the people under the 
 Turks. He might have found, I used to think, some 
 misery nearer home." 
 
 With such an experience ever in his heart, it is only
 
 IN- CONNAUGHT. 1 63 
 
 natural that Hickey should feel strongly, but the modera- 
 tion with which he considers practical questions is sig- 
 nificant. Let me recall one conversation as we walked 
 along the Galway road : '' In case of war between Eng- 
 land and any other power, Ireland would say to England : 
 
 ' Give us Home Rule, or ' A large measure of 
 
 Home Rule, that would satisfy the majority of my coun- 
 trymen, I would take as a finality, and not, in any sense, 
 as an instalment merely or an entering wedge. Then, if 
 it ever came in my power to effect separation, so long as 
 the government took no unfair advantage and kept the 
 agreement, I would not break it myself, though personally 
 I might wish for better terms. 
 
 " I should be willing to have all bills of an imperial 
 complexion settled finally at Westminster, but all other 
 bills relating to Ireland should be dealt with by a Parlia- 
 ment at Dublin. The Irish Parliament should send over 
 to England what consideration is settled on as Ireland's 
 share of the imperial expenses, and the rest of the rev- 
 enue they should collect and expend as they think best 
 for the interests of Ireland. 
 
 " One crux will be the disposition of the Irish constab- 
 ulary. They are picked men. I don't believe you can 
 find their match in the world. But they are the tools of 
 the government ; they are spies, taking note of your go- 
 ing out and your coming in, and are looked upon by 
 their fellow-countrymen as renegades. If we had Home 
 Rule, and these men remained under imperial control, 
 they would be a wedge through the heart of Ireland for 
 England to strike. We should have our enemies at our 
 doors and be unable to dismiss them. Such a state of 
 things would be intolerable in any country. 
 
 " I would suggest turning them into militia, each
 
 164 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 county having a regiment, to supplement the imperial 
 army if called upon. 
 
 " As policemen the constabulary are not needed. 
 Their numbers are absurd. In Barna, a policeman, un- 
 less he is drunk, does n't lay his hands on a man's 
 shoulder from one year's end to another. There has 
 never been a rape here, and not a murder in my 
 recollection. I never knew a row here, and there has n't 
 been a theft for years. I never lock my back door, and my 
 front door very seldom. I don't believe there are three 
 locks in the village. And yet in Barna there is one bar- 
 racks and five constables ; at Salthill, in the immediate 
 neighborhood, another ; in Spiddal, five miles to the 
 west, a third, with an inspector, two sergeants, and eigh- 
 teen or twenty rank and file ; at Moycullen, six miles to 
 the northwest, a fourth ; a fifth, two miles and a half off 
 along another road ; a sixth, five miles off in a different 
 direction ; and at intermediate places there are iron huts, 
 which are occupied by details from different barracks 
 ' on detached service,' as I used to say. This shows the 
 network of police in Ireland. What do we want with so 
 many ? 
 
 " At first, even with Home Rule, all will not be satis- 
 fied. Underlying all there will be a discontented mass 
 of laborers ; but the rent saved will soon become a fund 
 for their employment. Till then with the laborers it 
 will be a case of ' Live horse to get grass,' but they will 
 soon be benefited by the reduction of rents. I am pay- 
 ing twenty-three pounds odd for rent. If on my way to 
 Galway I got the news to-morrow that I was absolved 
 from all rent in scecula scBcidoriwi, I should say : ' Now I 
 will turn that field there to better use, and I will improve 
 my house. Here Mick, I want you to go right out with
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 1 65 
 
 Pat and Murphy, and get to Avork at my house and gar- 
 den.' 
 
 " Many laborers will be employed at once, and in nine 
 or ten years, when some capital has accumulated, there 
 will be room for all the present laborers and for many 
 more from America, for even now, every spring and 
 every harvest the farmers have to wait for laborers." 
 
 Of boycotting he said : " It is often the only defence 
 left the people, and, if used with proper discrimination, 
 is effective. It may be abused, but what is there that 
 is n't?" 
 
 We came into the townland of Furbough. " All this," 
 said Hickey, " is the property of Colonel John A. Daly, 
 whose family name was Blake. Here even, after the 
 passage of the first Land Act, the tenants were most griev- 
 ously oppressed. They not only paid rack-rents, poor- 
 rates, and taxes, but also tithes, and in addition they had 
 to give eight or nine days' labor about the Great House at 
 sixpence a day in winter, and eightpence a day in sum- 
 mer. There was also a certain amount of ' duty work ' 
 required of them, a survival from the feudal times. 
 Moreover, every house had to cut a day's turf. 
 
 " Some five years ago, on this same estate, there was a 
 man, Peter Kelly, now living in Galway, — a good fellow 
 he was, but if you ride on his back, don't spur him, or 
 he '11 throw you. The bailiff summoned him to cut turf 
 the next day. He told the bailiff to come some other 
 day, as he was busy. Some 'drivers,' other bailiffs, so- 
 called from their occupation, went down and seized his 
 cow to impound it the very next day, and drove it so 
 carelessly that it fell and broke its legs. Kelly told me 
 the cow was worth fifteen pounds, and he never got any 
 compensation. If he had said much more to the bailiff, 
 he would have lost his house as well."
 
 1 66 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 In a few minutes a man came driving along the road 
 from Gahvay in an "■ assen car." It was this very same 
 Peter Kelly. '' Eight days' duty work I had," said he 
 when I asked him. " Divil a copper he paid me for my 
 cow." 
 
 " There was another rule on the estates about here," 
 said Hickey, " a harsh one, you will admit. During the 
 famine time and the subsequent years when a large num- 
 ber of tenants were evicted, the other tenants were strictly 
 forbidden to harbor or give any shelter to the evicted 
 people. The reason was that the landlord paid half the 
 poor-rate, and he was afraid that if these poor people 
 stayed here they would come on the Union." 
 
 To the left of the road I noticed a little memorial 
 chapel, a sort of mausoleum. " An uncle of Mr. Daly 
 acted as his agent here. One day some one put day- 
 light through him, near Loughrea, and now he lies there 
 in that kennel. He was so detested that one tenant only 
 went to the funeral, and he went from motives of policy. 
 I met the procession on its way here, and, as it passed by, 
 I did not touch my hat." 
 
 On either side of the road are little holdings. The 
 country is so rocky and stony that there is scarcely an 
 acre not surrounded by a rude stone wall. When you 
 look at a gradually sloping hillside you see no green, 
 but one wall seems to rise on top of another, so as to 
 present the appearance of a continuous mass of stones. 
 The walls of the little huts are built as loosely as the 
 walls by the roadside, and at a first glance are hardly dis- 
 tinguishable. Now and then I knocked at a door and, 
 with Hickey acting as interpreter, for the people gener- 
 ally speak nothing but Irish, asked a few questions, which 
 were promptly and amiably answered. Anthony Con-
 
 IN CONN AUGHT. 1 6/ 
 
 cannon is a tenant of Mr. Marcus Lynch. He has 
 twenty-four acres, four of which he used to sow with 
 potatoes, but cannot now for want of money to buy seed. 
 The rent is ;^2 2, having been reduced in 1881 from ^26. 
 The day before he had gone to the office to pay some ar- 
 rears, and looked in vain for a reduction. He has another 
 farm of two acres or so, which he holds from the same 
 landlord on a grazing lease, for three pounds and ten 
 shillings. The rent has not been reduced for twenty 
 years, and the holding is not within the Land Act. For 
 a third plot he pays eight pounds, which has been re- 
 duced from eleven. Part of the home farm is often 
 flooded by the tide, and after the passage of the Land 
 Act the landlord for the first time claimed the black- 
 weed, which grows between high- and low-water mark, as 
 well as what washes against the sea wall. " I keep three 
 cows and four or five calves," he said, " besides a mare 
 and a foal. I grow turnips, potatoes, and mangels. The 
 potatoes are below the average, and the turnips and 
 mangels have failed entirely. I am sure I won't make 
 any rent this year." The black-weed, according to 
 Hickey, had always been considered the property of the 
 tenant ; and the drift-weed, which the landlords have gen- 
 erally claimed, Hickey argued was really public property. 
 The way the landlords deprive the tenants of the sea- 
 weed is by closing the roads to the shore. " The land- 
 lords have so many ways of getting round any law, they 
 will outflank you," he sighed, " in spite of the Devil." 
 
 Here is Edward Toole's holding. He has ten acres. 
 The rent has been reduced by agreement out of court 
 from fourteen to twelve pounds. The poor-rate is thirty 
 shillings, and the taxes eighteen shillings, due twice a 
 year. The house, a two-storied granite house, was built
 
 1 68 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 by Costello, Mrs. Toole's father. A little bit of land a 
 quarter of an acre, they were manuring with sea-weed for 
 a potato patch, but in the whole field there did not seem 
 to be four square yards free from large stones or rock. 
 
 We were now passing the Furbough National School, a 
 neat stone building like all the frequent schoolhouses in 
 this part of the country, and there we took up John R. 
 Curtin, the schoolmaster. " Generally," he said, " the 
 children in Ireland leave school about the lower-fifth 
 form, and many in the country from the third and fourth 
 forms, when they are thirteen or fourteen years old. 
 What they know then is not much, and is soon forgotten. 
 The attendance in the country is not apt to be con- 
 tinuous after the age of seven. The busy seasons are 
 spring, summer, and early autumn, for there 's turf- 
 cutting in summer, sea- weed gathering in spring, and then 
 the harvest, and at these times all except the very young 
 children are off. 
 
 "We schoolmasters want to get 'compulsory educa- 
 tion,' but this is barred by the religious difficulty. 
 
 " If the children could be kept at school till they had 
 passed through the senior grade of the sixth form, they 
 would be competent to fill a clerical position anywhere. 
 But even the standard of the lower fifth is high enough 
 for practical purposes. In English, they have to be 
 familiar with the fifth-standard reader, though in an Irish- 
 speaking community like ours this hope is seldom real- 
 ized ; in book-keeping, they go as far as double entry, 
 cash accounts, and personal accounts ; in geography, they 
 have to know well the geography of Ireland, the map of 
 Europe, and the outlines of the continents ; in agricul- 
 ture, which is taught in the rural schools, we study the 
 natures of the crops, the mode of cultivation, and some-
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 1 69 
 
 thing about the chemistry of the soil. If we only had a 
 little garden attached to the schoolhouse, for purposes of 
 practical illustration, this course would be of the greatest 
 value,' 
 
 As twilight came on, these newly found friends left 
 me, after quoting to my amusement a Celtic curse, com- 
 mon among the people, who, many of them, still believe 
 in the " evil eye " : " May the eye of an evil man never 
 rest on you, nor the eye of the dearly beloved Son of 
 God ! " 
 
 A few miles beyond Spiddal, a squalid little fishing 
 village, I called on the parish priest. Father Hosty. 
 "That wretched land," said he, pointing to a neighbor- 
 ing field, " is measured without counting the stones, and, 
 till lately, was paying thirty shillings an acre. It is now 
 held under judicial leases for from ten to twenty shil- 
 lings. One reason for the high rent is, that the right to 
 the sea-weed is included. 
 
 " Oats are a perfect failure this year, but, fortunately, 
 the potatoes are fair. There is nothing between the 
 people and a famine but those little bulbs. 
 
 ''I would n't call this place of mine 'a congested 
 district,' because there is plenty of room, and the people 
 could live well enough by fishing. There is, however, 
 no fishing here at all, for there are no boats, and no nets. 
 The fish in the bay are caught chiefly by a company 
 which sends them direct to Dublin. 
 
 " These houses are very poor-looking, but the people 
 are quite contented, and are willing enough to go on 
 living on potatoes. They don't care to go to America, 
 though we never say a word to dissuade them." 
 
 He took me into the school near by, and I heard the 
 barefooted children, boys and girls, but the girls best,
 
 I/O IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 read beautifully, and parse well. "Along this road," 
 continued the good father, '' you will find as fine schools 
 as there are anywhere. The younger generation are 
 better educated and more independent than the old, and 
 can take their place with any people in the world." 
 
 Near Castlerea, the keeper of the public-house, one 
 Taylor, joined me and piloted me across a boggy moun- 
 tain to the main road. " I have been many years in 
 America," he said, *' and find nowhere more liberty than 
 here. The rent is not the main thing ; the rent is not 
 so much, the taxes will soon be more, and, since this 
 agitation began, the taxes have risen enormously. 
 
 " I have a piece of land for which no rent has been 
 paid for seven years. The previous tenant went to 
 America, and then a man came in who sublet half to me. 
 I paid him one year's rent, and won't pay him any more 
 till he pays the landlord. 
 
 " The League, in my opinion, has ruined twenty to one 
 whom it has benefited. How many has it driven away 
 who might have been in their little houses to-day ? If 
 we are once put out of a place we cannot get another, 
 and cannot get the smallest room in a village without 
 paying rent for it. 
 
 " I see as much privilege and liberty in Ireland as ever 
 I saw anywhere, and I have been sixteen years in Amer- 
 ica. The League may have done some good in other 
 parts of the country, but they have done none in Galway. 
 
 " I tell you the farmers will always have to work them- 
 selves and cannot employ many laborers, but I knew 
 landlords who used to employ as many as fifty or a hun- 
 dred laborers, carpenters, blacksmiths, and harness- 
 makers, but they cannot afford to do so now. 
 
 "The poorest people, the laborers, are the sufferers by
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 17I 
 
 the agitation, and even under Home Rule the rich will 
 be the best off, but the poorest will be just as poor." 
 
 Miles and miles the road continued bounded by bogs 
 on either side ; not a soul, not a beast was to be seen. 
 Not even a dwelling of any sort was visible, till Scrieb 
 Lodge came in sight, a fishing lodge, — a deserted-look- 
 ing square white house by the side of a wide, straggling 
 morass, dotted with peaty islands, and encircled by low 
 brown hills, with the jagged Connemara '* Twelve Pins " 
 in the distance. It recalled the dismal horrors of the 
 " Fall of the House of Usher," and I hurried on as the 
 evening was closing in quickly. 
 
 From time to time I knocked at a cottage, to ask 
 leave to spend the night, but I was either refused or un- 
 able to make myself understood ; in two of the cottages 
 the cows were in the kitchen. At last I found an inn, 
 where a couple of constables sat and talked till midnight. 
 "We don't trouble ourselves about Home Rule," they 
 remarked, " for we shall then be surely pensioned off. 
 As to the poverty of the people, that is greatly exaggera- 
 ted. You often see a man living in a hut like a cow-shed, 
 and find that he has two or three hundred pounds in the 
 bank. These habits have come down from earlier times." 
 
 The next day a barefooted man, in a red-knitted cap, 
 started me on the road to Cashel. He has a small farm. 
 " The rent is fair, the oats is all dried up, but the pota- 
 toes are good, and that 's the main thing." 
 
 Two men, a woman, and a boy passed me, carrying 
 enormous bales of hay on their backs, and, later, the 
 cart of a Galway trader, who furnishes the people with 
 groceries, taking eggs in payment. Near a tiny hamlet a 
 couple of laborers, sitting smoking on a rock, asked for 
 news, saying there was a report that a head constable
 
 172 JN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 had been shot at Lisdoonvarna. In a cottage on a 
 mountain side at Shanadonel, I got some milk and eggs. 
 Joyce, his mother, and four children were in the kitchen, 
 all barefooted, occasionally tickling with their toes the 
 pigs that were playing with " a little cur dog " and two 
 cats on the earthen floor. The only furniture consisted 
 of a rough wooden table, a couple of home-made chairs, 
 and two pictures on the wall, supplements of old Christ- 
 mas Graphics. Joyce owns a hundred or more acres, 
 how many he does n't know, and pays twelve pounds for 
 it. This is too much, he thought. '' If we had a good 
 land bill," said he, " we would not care about Home 
 Rule. Our people ask for much more than they expect 
 to get." 
 
 Along a path invisible to my eyes, he led me across 
 several miles of bogs. A stone here, a footprint there 
 were all the signs of travel. We sank frequently ankle- 
 deep, but Joyce, like a satyr, leaped on before, and with 
 his bare toes seizing the bog, shook the mountain side 
 while he shouted : " Don't fear ; it is quite firm and 
 strong." Along this path he has driven cattle to Galway 
 fair, more than forty miles' distance. Such are some of 
 the inconveniences of life in central Galway. 
 
 The village of Cashel seemed to consist of a barracks, 
 a national school, and a public-house. The keeper of 
 the latter is Mr. J. J. O'Loghlen, a poor-law guardian. 
 This is in the notorious Clifden Union, one of the six 
 bankrupt unions which Mr. Morley, when in office, tried 
 to relieve by a grant of money, and succeeded only in 
 plunging into deeper debt. " The poor-rate here," said 
 O'Loghlen, " is very high — four shillings in the pound. 
 My valuation is ninety pounds, and I pay twenty pounds' 
 poor-rate. One reason is, that so many of our people
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 1 73 
 
 have gone to America, leaving behind them the poor old 
 people, who stick to their homes long after they have 
 ceased to make them pay. 
 
 " Two old men died here a few days ago who had 
 been for several years receiving out-door relief, and the 
 Union had to pay ten shillings for each funeral. One, 
 Colroy, had a son who was a captain of one of the Black 
 Ball ships, sailing to Australia, which was lost at sea a 
 few years ago with all on board. The other old man saw 
 his children go away to all parts of the world, and they 
 never sent him back a penny. 
 
 " There are too many doctors employed by the Unions, 
 five here where two would do, and we have to keep a 
 doctor in Innisbofin Island, which owes us now over five 
 hundred pounds, for we cannot collect any rates from 
 the people. 
 
 '' In the matter of rents we are not so badly off as 
 many places, and there is here no disturbance ; but the 
 land is not worth a farthing an acre. Payment is made 
 for the land by the holding and not by the acreage. So 
 I don't know how much I have. 
 
 '* The landlord, Mr. R. Berridge, lives in London, and 
 leaves every thing to the discretion of his agent, Robin- 
 son, who has a bad name but is not a bad man. Many 
 people have been evicted at different times, but they are 
 all living on their holdings as caretakers." 
 
 '' It is through the shopkeepers giving credit to the 
 people that the landlords are able to get in their rents. 
 But for the system of credit there would be no one in 
 this part of the country. I often have out ;^2,ooo in one 
 year, but I get no credit myself from the merchants. I 
 have been owed some ^^1,400 for the last six or seven 
 years, and if I can get half that I shall be happy, and
 
 174 ^^ CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 would take any thing they can give me, a horse, a cow, a 
 pig, or any thing. 
 
 " The people are also largely supported by American 
 money. About Christmas time I have often had given 
 me to cash a hundred checks on Boston and New 
 York. 
 
 " If we had employment," was his conclusion, " that 
 would be the only kind of Home Rule we should 
 want." 
 
 In the evening I found myself still far from Clifden in 
 a heavy rain, so I asked at a little cabin by the roadside 
 for hospitality, and was Avelcomed cordially. There was 
 only a kitchen and one room. In the kitchen were a 
 cow, a calf, a dog, three or four hens and a cock fiutter- 
 tering noisily about, and in a corner a coop full of 
 chickens. Here I slept on the ground near the ashes of 
 the glowing peat fire ; and in the other room slept the 
 family — father and mother, two girls, and a boy. The 
 silence of the night was broken from time to time by the 
 thud and splash of dung on the mud floor, and the crow- 
 ing and clatter of the fowls woke me early. There was 
 one chair, one bench, and several boxes to sit on, but no 
 table ; and some rude harness hanging from pegs on the 
 wall was the only ornament. " Michael, rise up ! " shouted 
 a man's voice, about seven o'clock, and a boot, as it 
 seemed, struck violently against the wooden partition. 
 Michael lounged in and rekindled the peat fire from the 
 dying embers. In a few minutes in came his mother, 
 and milked the cow in front of the fire into a series of 
 dirty-looking little tin pots, that reminded me of old 
 tomato cans. She then fed the calf on some milk and 
 raw potatoes, and in a little time gave me a cup of excel- 
 lent tea and a piece of potato bread.
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 1 75 
 
 WHAT THEY SAY AT CLIFDEN. 
 
 Clifden is a town of some seven hundred inhabitants 
 on an inlet of the sea. A graceful bridge spans a water- 
 course yellow-brown with sea-weed, famous for salmon, 
 and along the hillside beyond it are two streets of 
 thatched houses. 
 
 There is but one small industry in Clifden — the carv- 
 ing of the beautiful Connemara marble, by Alexander 
 McDonnell and his son. The intelligent, kindly old 
 Scotchman expressed in a word the cause of the people's 
 discontent when he said : " We are shut up here as in a 
 prison, and the wealth of the country is, as it were, locked 
 up behind iron bars. Sometimes for weeks we are with- 
 out meal, for it is too expensive to cart it from Galway, 
 and the little boats are apt to be detained by bad weather. 
 The kelp the people gather a few miles off they send by 
 cart twenty miles to an agent at Cashel, who ships it to 
 Galway. On Saturday, at the fish-market, the fish had to 
 be salted to keep it, and all but two small baskets of fine 
 lobsters had to be thrown into the sea. There are hun- 
 dreds of millions of tons of the best marble in the world 
 in the Twelve Pins, but the people cannot get at it. 
 
 "I want Home Rule, because an Irish Parliament 
 would spend public money wisely and without so much 
 waste. We need a railroad from Galway to Clifden to 
 open up the country. Then Clifden would double in 
 a year or two, and the people would not have to run away 
 to Scotland or England to earn a little money to keep 
 their homesteads. The people have not the gear nor the 
 boats for fishing. Money for this purpose should be lent 
 by the government. The imperial Parliament misman- 
 ages such matters. The government is now spending 
 some ;j{^io,ooo on a quay a few miles away, and they
 
 176 IN CASTLE AND CABIN, 
 
 might just as well throw the money into the sea. They 
 advanced money to the Unions, but charity and distribu- 
 tion of relief only demoralize the people." 
 
 The catholic curate, Father Biggins, was not an enthu- 
 siastic Home Ruler. " It is hard to see," he said, " how 
 Home Rule could improve the condition of this part of 
 the country, for under any form of government the peo- 
 ple cannot be well off so long as they depend on their 
 little holdings. The rent is very little, ;^4 or ^^5, and 
 if you made them a present of it, it would n't make 
 them a bit more comfortable. They have n't land 
 enough. All the best land is in the hands of graziers 
 and large farmers. Divide the grazing lands among the 
 dwellers on little patches on the coast ; they would pay 
 more than the graziers do, and that is the one thing that 
 would do them any good. 
 
 " The chief benefit Home Rule could do would be to 
 encourage the fisheries and to open up the country. It 
 costs a jobber too much to come here to buy, and a man 
 cannot drive cattle to a railroad forty or fifty miles off 
 and have them in good condition. 
 
 " The tenants have not generally got the benefit of the 
 Land Act, partly because of their subletting, and partly 
 because so many accepted the landlords' terms. Mr. 
 Robinson's offer of four shillings in the pound to Mr. 
 Berridge's tenants was generally taken, and the people 
 were at first delighted, but those who went into court got 
 often as much as ten shillings in the pound. 
 
 " The rents have been paid about here as well as ever. 
 Hazell, the agent of a Scotch company, living at Cashel, 
 has paid eight thousand pounds for kelp this year. That 
 helps the people a lot and pays the rent. 
 
 " The bankruptcy of the Union is due to the low 
 rating. Then, when the forty thousand pounds were
 
 IN CONN AUGHT. 1 7/ 
 
 given last year for the relief of distress, the local guar- 
 dians lost their heads and said to themselves : ' If we 
 don't give some relief at once the money will be all 
 spent.' So this year the rates will be eight shillings in 
 the pound, including special rates to meet the surplus 
 expended in excess of the government's grant. The only 
 remedy is to amalgamate two or three Unions with a 
 single common staff." 
 
 Father Linsky, the parish priest, is a man of wonder- 
 ful energy. '' I got from Mr. Kendall," he said, '' five 
 shillings in the pound reduction on all rents not judicial 
 and three shillings on judicial rents, and this through no 
 agitation except my personal efforts, though I have the 
 National League here in my hand. 
 
 " In this parish I urged the tenants to go into court, 
 and I filled in the notices myself and appeared in court 
 for many of them who were too poor to pay costs. On 
 an average I got six shillings and eight pence reduction 
 in the pound. 
 
 " So far as it goes, the new Land Act is of great value. 
 What is of particular benefit is that the commissioners 
 will adjudicate the rents on the basis of prices without 
 expense to landlord or tenant. 
 
 " As a rule, rents settled out of court are not settled 
 fairly. At Beeleek and Fahy, on Mrs. Sufifield's prop- 
 erty, the rents were settled out of court at a very small 
 reduction. The tenants protested, but paid, with my con- 
 sent, for I found them too poor to fight, so poor that they 
 don't care to come to church on Sunday because of their 
 ragged clothes. There are only some twenty tenants, 
 and so heavily is the estate encumbered that the land- 
 lord's interest does n't exceed sixty or seventy pounds. 
 
 " The people here are simple-mmded. Captain Thomp- 
 son's tenants agreed to buy their holdings at twenty
 
 1/8 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 years' purchase, but the sale fell through, because one 
 man refused, on the recommendation of the parish priest, 
 who thought the land worth not over eight years' pur- 
 chase. When the tenants were asked by the priest why 
 they agreed to give such an extraordinary sum, ' Well,' 
 they said, * we thought we would serve Captain Thomp- 
 son without doing ourselves any harm.' " 
 
 In the large beautiful church a series of missionary 
 services was being held. Thousands listened with awe 
 to a lurid sermon on hell by a Dominican friar. " Every 
 sinner makes his bed at the gates of hell." " One spark 
 of hell fire would turn the ocean to steam." These sen- 
 tences rang out clearly in the intense silence of the 
 hushed congregation. The same voice sounded much 
 sweeter in Father Linsky's dining-room, where we assem- 
 bled in the evening to discuss peasant proprietorship. 
 " A peasant proprietary," it was said, " would be a suc- 
 cess. In France, Belgium, Prussia, and a large part of 
 Russia a similar measure had worked well and not ended 
 in a restoration of landlordism. Why should Ireland 
 prove an exception ? 
 
 " Land scrip, with a local guaranty, would be depre- 
 ciated at once, as all paper is which is not secured by 
 property easily realizable. Let the imperial government 
 advance the purchase money, in the same way as it now 
 makes loans to fishermen. Ireland can never be sepa- 
 rated from England, and whatever our local government 
 may be, the imperial government will always be able to 
 exact repayment. The government must come in, for 
 the landlords, after they cease to be landlords, can never 
 collect payments, and no one else will be in a position 
 to do so for them. Will the action of the government 
 be resented ? Not at all. The collectors of taxes and
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 179 
 
 Other government officials are not odious. Indeed, the 
 gentleman here who is collecting from the fishermen 
 repayments of government money is very popular. There 
 are just men here. Under the Glebe Loan Act not ^500 
 out of ^^250,000 are outstanding as bad debts. The 
 payments of the fishery loan and under Lord Ashbourne's 
 Act tell the same story. Those who wish to keep the 
 land for nothing are madmen. 
 
 " Subdivision has been frequent in the west, largely 
 because the landlords were needy and got something for 
 the subdivision,— an increased rent or a fine,— an obolus 
 
 of some sort. 
 
 " Finally, it is said that a few pounds' rent remitted to 
 a small tenant would not help him. Suppose I get a re- 
 duction of four pounds ; I buy pigs ; half an acre of 
 turnips out of my six or seven acres will feed them ; the 
 pigs cost me a pound apiece, and at the end of six months 
 they sell for four pounds. The rent saved will be a little 
 capital, and will soon multiply itself." 
 
 I visited Mr. King, a farmer at Fahy, who acts as Mrs. 
 Suffield's agent. He has five acres, for which he pays 
 four pounds sixteen shillings. He has also commonage 
 of a mountain and " a strip of the weed" on the shore, 
 which he uses for manure. His house was built by his 
 father. He has one acre in potatoes, one in oats, and the 
 rest grazing. He has no horse now and only one cow. 
 " I am not in arrears," he said, "but should be if I had 
 not the agency of the property. My rent is a fair sample 
 of the others. We all settled outside the court for 25 per 
 cent, reduction, and thought that reasonable enough at the 
 time. But prices have been growing steadily worse since 
 then, and I don't think the land is now worth the rent. 
 The 'farmers here don't expect to get the land for noth-
 
 l8o IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 ing, they only want a fair price. They are all for Home 
 Rule, but don't know much about it. They think it will 
 mean employment and the circulation of money, but how 
 no one knows. There used to be a local branch of the 
 League here, but it has died out. 
 
 " After a Land-Purchase Act what the farmers need 
 most is loans of money on easy terms. Perhaps, the im- 
 perial Parliament would have more money to loan than 
 a Home-Rule Parliament. 
 
 " The farmers are very poor and much in debt. They 
 have gone security for one another to the banks, borrow- 
 ing eight or ten pounds, on which there is charged two 
 shillings a pound interest, and renewing their notes every 
 three months. The shopkeepers in Clifden have given a 
 great deal of credit and won't get much of it back. They 
 also give them ' loan money ' for which they charge 
 twenty per cent, interest." 
 
 It happened to be market day in Clifden, and in 
 Casey's drapery and spirit shop a little circle of farmers 
 sat and talked. Every one agreed that the crops were ex- 
 ceptionably poor. " The potato crop is very good, hay is 
 very light, turnips are a complete failure, and oats have 
 never been known to be so bad in Connemara." 
 
 James Casey, a grazier, came in. He has a tillage 
 farm of about a hundred and twenty acres, which he 
 holds under a perpetuity lease for twenty pounds a year. 
 " Some of it is bog, not worth sixpence an acre, and for 
 some I would n't take three pounds an acre. I have also 
 some two thousand acres of land, one farm at a pound and 
 another at sixteen shillings an acre. These are not with- 
 in the * Land Act,' and for some I have to pay in advance. 
 
 " I have been four years fighting with this depression, 
 and am now giving up, as I am losing money. A few
 
 I?r CONNAUGIIT. l8l 
 
 weeks ago I brought forty or fifty bullocks and heifers to 
 a large fair near here. I have got twelve and thirteen 
 pounds for worse stock, and was not offered a shilling 
 for one of them. 
 
 " I belonged to the National League at first, but as 
 soon as it seemed to be turning into an anti-rent move- 
 ment I dropped out, for it would n't do for me to run the 
 risk of losing my farms." 
 
 "The people ought to emigrate," said another. "I 
 have circumnavigated the globe, but the people here 
 think there 's no world beyond Clifden." 
 
 The master of the workhouse came in. " I was an 
 anti-Home Ruler till lately, but now believe in it. 
 
 " Its principal benefit would be to encourage our na- 
 tive industries. We could put a duty on English shoddy. 
 In Westport, next door to where I went to school, there 
 used to be a distillery, and near by rope walks, and four 
 tan yards at full work. All are gone now. 
 
 " If capital is needed for this, there 's the Irish National 
 Bank with two millions of Irish savings in its vaults. 
 
 " We would do away with all but a thousand of the 
 fourteen thousand Irish Constabulary and save nearly a 
 million pounds in this single item ; and safely too, for 
 satisfied with our own laws, we could become our own 
 policemen. 
 
 "The workhouses should be got rid of. Children 
 under fifteen should be boarded out, and old people left 
 with their friends and given an allowance." 
 
 I asked whether the Clifden Union had not been ruined 
 by excessive out-door relief. " The people," he said 
 " were demoralized by relief. Some years ago there was 
 *Jumperism.' People from England started 'Jumper 
 Schools ' in behalf of the Irish Church mission, and all
 
 l82 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 who attended got so much a week. In 1879 and 1880 
 there was a cry of destitution when there was but little, 
 and the government came to the people's relief. In 1886 
 there was another cry, and Morley got a large grant 
 passed, which was shamefully abused." (All present 
 assented.) " This was the fault of the local authorities, 
 who gave money to people not destitute, and neglected 
 any remunerative labor test. The money would have 
 relieved the distress, and yet now we are over four thou- 
 sand pounds in debt. 
 
 " Peasant proprietorship I believe in, and don't think 
 the evils of the present will recur. I am my own land- 
 lord now and have two children. I shall not divide my 
 land between them, but will act like a Massachusetts 
 farmer and send one or both of them away from home. 
 Others will do likewise." 
 
 There was a noise outside, and we joined a delighted 
 crowd that surrounded a juggler, in bright-red tights, 
 who devoured hot pokers and let the farmers crack 
 enormous stones on his chest. He took up a collection 
 that amounted to nearly three pounds ! 
 
 In the hotel, a somewhat mysterious stranger appeared 
 in the commercial room, whom I took to be a land 
 agent. 
 
 " These Nationalist Unions," he began, " are misera- 
 bly mismanaged ; I know more than I care to tell about 
 the Tulla Union in County Clare. The ex-officio guar- 
 dians have lost control of the management and the chair- 
 man is a small farmer holding some twenty acres. The 
 property of the Union has been seized for debt. The 
 number of laborers' cottages there is enormous, most of 
 them built only to spite the landlords. 
 
 " Here in Clifden the people have been accustomed to
 
 IN CONN AUGHT. 1 83 
 
 hand-to-mouth relief, and that has not improved their 
 morals. 
 
 *' The rents may seem excessive, but these men along 
 the coast who complain so bitterly don't pay more than 
 an ordinary laborer pays in this very village, a shilling a 
 week at most ; and for that they have three or four acres, 
 pigs, corn and potatoes, a right to cut as much fuel as 
 they want, and often sea-weed for manure free. But this, 
 of course, won't support a man with nine or ten children. 
 These people, too, are merely laborers. In Mayo and 
 Donegal they go every year to England and Scotland as 
 harvesters. In Galway and here they are fishermen. In 
 Carrarhoe the principal means of subsistence is making 
 poteen whiskey. 
 
 " No land legislation can materially help such people. 
 I know well an estate now in chancery, where the ten- 
 ants have paid no rent for seven or eight years. They 
 are the poorest people in the neighborhood. If they 
 owned the farms it might make them more prudent, but 
 I doubt it, for there are no natural habits of thrift among 
 the people. 
 
 " Home Rule I cannot believe in, for the doings of the 
 Tulla Union show me that the people cannot yet be 
 trusted." 
 
 CONNAUGHT LANDLEAGUERS. 
 
 County Mayo was the birthplace of the Land League, 
 and in Westport a somewhat extreme position was rather 
 concisely stated by a leader of the early movement. " The 
 rights of the landlords are not to be acknowledged, for 
 their titles are bad. The grants to the planters of the 
 north of Ireland required them to provide so many 
 soldiers each. When a standing army was established
 
 1 84 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 these deeds became void. The land belongs to the peo- 
 ple, and can be taken up by them whenever it is expedi- 
 ent, with or without compensation. The property of the 
 landlords was confiscated in part by the Land Act of 
 1881, which gave leases for a period of fifteen years at 
 rents fixed by a court, and took from the landlords their 
 right of resumption. That principle can be indefinitely 
 extended. 
 
 " It is a question of expediency, not of justice. Justice 
 is a vague word, an eighteenth-century theory, and ap- 
 peals to you as a Bostonian and a reader of Herbert 
 Spencer." 
 
 I suggested that the American Constitution prohibited 
 the taking of private property for public use without 
 compensation, and that a written constitution Vv^ith such 
 a clause might be wisely accepted by Irish Nationalists. 
 His answer was a surprise. " America had three million 
 inhabitants when the Constitution was adopted ; it has 
 now fifty million. Is it just that fifty millions should be 
 governed by three millions, and those of a deceased gen- 
 eration ? It is unwise to tie the hands of posterity. It 
 was so decided at the institution of the present French 
 Republic. I should oppose a written constitution for 
 Ireland. 
 
 " If the Irish in America," he said again, " had joined 
 the Republican party, the Irish question would have 
 already become an international question. Egan could 
 not turn them at the last election, but never will they 
 vote again for an anti-Irish friend of England, such 
 as Cleveland." It was perhaps characteristic of some 
 phases of Irish thought that the gentleman characterized 
 Sir William Harcourt as " a — useful scoundrel." 
 
 Similar opinions were expressed in Sligo by P. A.
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 1 85 
 
 M'Hugh, editor of the Sligo Sentinel and president of the 
 local branch of the League. 
 
 *' There is a great lack of bitterness here, due as much 
 to the character of the landlords as to the apathy of the 
 people. The landlords here have been exceptionally- 
 lenient. 
 
 " Mr. Phibbs is fighting the 'plan' with success, for 
 the leaders and the clergy have found it impossible to 
 prevent many of the tenants from paying their rent. So 
 many of these cowards were there that no attempt has 
 been made to boycott them. But a few farms on the 
 estate from which tenants have been evicted have been 
 kept vacant for several years, and if Phibbs tried to stock 
 them, injury would probably be inflicted on the cattle 
 and their caretakers. To keep an ' evicted ' farm vacant 
 is one of the strongest arguments we can use, and any one 
 who takes such a farm is regarded as a common enemy 
 and cut off from all communication with the people. The 
 Times has reprinted with comments some of the boy- 
 cotting resolutions printed in my paper, and we admit the 
 charge of intimidation and intending to intimidate. We 
 say this is the only efficient instrument left to the League. 
 
 " Michael Coffey, in Gurteen, took a farm from which a 
 Mr. McDermott had been evicted. He has been boy- 
 cotted for two years and his business, that of a spirit- 
 grocery, ruined. His children have not been allowed to 
 attend school. No man speaks to them. He is think- 
 ing" of removing. For using intimidatory language against 
 Coffey I was prosecuted at Petty Sessions, but the bench 
 was equally divided. The local magistrates were against 
 me, but two of the judges were personal friends of my 
 own, and one, Mr. Tigh, went down from this town to 
 sit there to prevent my conviction.
 
 1 86 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " Personally, I don't think any eviction could be just, 
 for I don't recognize the landlord's title at all. 
 
 " As to Land Purchase, the people are not prepared to 
 adopt such a scheme till advised to do so by their lead- 
 ers. The price of land is going down steadily ; the 
 longer the farmers hold off, the better it will be for 
 them, and the worse for the landlords. That is shown 
 by the willingness of the landlords to adopt Archbishop 
 Walsh's plan of a ' round-table conference.' The sug- 
 gestion was a mistake. It would be an unnecessary ad- 
 mission of a right. Until the Irish land question can 
 be settled by an Irish Parliament, no other plan should 
 be adopted for getting justice from the landlords save 
 the 'plan of campaign.' If, again, the landlords wait till 
 the English democracy settle the Irish land question, 
 they will be worse off than ever, for the opinion is daily 
 growing stronger that the landlords have no claim to rent 
 or to compensation for the loss of it, and that a free 
 ticket to Holyhead is the most that any of them de- 
 serves. 
 
 " There is practical unanimity in favor of Home Rule 
 in this part of the country, except among the Conserva- 
 tives, and the difference between Nationalist and Con- 
 servative here is practically the difference between 
 Catholic and Protestant. 
 
 " Home Rule will come soon, and I think a little more 
 ' physical force ' will hasten it, like that of the black- 
 thorns at Mitchelstown or of something stronger." 
 
 Mr. M'Hugh, according, to the statement of a Protes- 
 tant and conservative tradesman in Sligo, is " an educated 
 and influential man ; he is the mouthpiece of thousands, 
 and there is no other prominent spokesman here of the 
 Nationalist party."
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 1 8/ 
 
 JOTTINGS IN WESTPORT AND SLIGO. 
 
 The parish priest at Westport, Father Begley, was a 
 man of moderate but decided views. " There is a great 
 lack of money in this part of the country. But for the 
 collection made a year ago by Mr. Tuke for seed, there 
 would have been great distress here. I gave seed to over 
 five hundred people in this parish. 
 
 " The landlords, this year, did not look after the 
 people. In this parish Lord Sligo forgave the rent to 
 many poor people, but made no general reduction. Lord 
 Lucan and Sir Roger Palmer did nothing for us. 
 
 " Potatoes are good this year, and there is no danger 
 of starvation ; but there is no sale for cattle and corn, 
 and I don't see how rents are to be paid. 
 
 " Home Rule would help us, for the different locali- 
 ties would be represented by men who know their needs. 
 Here you have congested districts and a vast amount of 
 unreclaimed lands. Lord Lucan on one estate has some 
 fifteen hundred acres, nominally grazing or demesne 
 land, all uncultivated. If this and similar land were 
 divided among the small farmers so as to give them fifty 
 acres apiece instead of ten, they will be more prosperous 
 and the shops will prosper and Westport will become 
 twice the town it is. A Home-Rule Parliament would 
 promote migration and distribution of land. 
 
 "It would also encourage factories." 
 
 There used to be home industries, I remarked, which 
 have now died out. 
 
 " Yes," he replied, " clothes they used to make at home, 
 but now it is cheaper for them to buy at the shops. Pro- 
 tection," he added, " I do not believe in." 
 
 A landlord, a most liberal-minded man, suggested 
 some points that are often not considered.
 
 l88 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " The country may be purely agricultural, but the in- 
 habitants need not be, for they may share in all the mer- 
 cantile work of England. You can go from Westport to 
 Manchester for eight shillings and sixpence, and from 
 Sligo by sailing vessel for four shillings. It is as easy to 
 go from here to Yorkshire as it is from Kent. Some 
 years ago I had a man here whom I employed with a 
 horse and cart during the winter, while during the sum- 
 mer he used to work in England. I helped him off to 
 Scotland with his people. In two years he was back 
 again. He said he had to pay so much for lodging, board, 
 and coals, that he found himself better off here earning 
 seven shillings a week than in Scotland at fourteen shil- 
 lings, and that he made more going there every summer 
 than staying there all the time. 
 
 "You speak of the condition of Ireland as peculiar ; 
 that the tenants have no resources but the land, and can- 
 not protect themselves in any bargain with the landlords. 
 That may be so, but how does that apply to the large 
 farmers, who must have a large working capital ? These 
 men are shrewd and as able to take care of themselves as 
 any people in the world, yet the government fixes their 
 rents. One of the earliest cases in court was that of a 
 man in the centre of Ireland who was paying ^800 a 
 year, and he got his rent reduced to a little over ^600. 
 
 " Under the Land Acts a tenant now can do what he 
 likes. A place called Thornhill, between Westpoit and 
 Lewisburg, was let by Lord Sligo to a friend, a Mr. 
 Garvey, in the Board of Guardians. The property was 
 let for ;j{^55 a year, the valuation being ^91, and under a 
 twenty-one-year lease. On its expiration the widow of 
 Garvey went into court and got a fair rent fixed at 
 ^67 10^. Lord Sligo appealed, and though their valuer
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 1 89 
 
 valued the land at ^90, the Commissioners fixed the 
 rent at ^75. No claims were made for improvements. 
 For many years Mr. Garvey was unable to stock the 
 farm, and farmed it only by co7iacreing it and by taking 
 in grazing cattle. A farm has seldom been so ill-treated. 
 Mrs. Garvey again got into arrears, and finally gave up 
 the farm to Lord Sligo. It is now let to two solvent ten- 
 ants in common for ^100, and they pay and prosper. 
 
 " There is no trade or profession in the world, but 
 some people break down in it ; a fortiori, there must be 
 many break-downs where the people are poor and de- 
 pendent on the changes of a cold, northerly climate. 
 Since 1879, a bad year, the evictions have been few in 
 comparison with the number of broken-down tenants. 
 Before that, when a tenant broke down, the landlord 
 often gave him some assistance to go, and allowed him, 
 as a very general indulgence, to sell the good-will of his 
 holding. The neighbors, who generally bought, were bet- 
 ter off, and the evicted tenant got on well in America 
 when he could n't here. These broken-down tenants 
 are now accumulating ; and the League does not let them 
 sell. 
 
 '' If there were no question of eviction, the broken- 
 down men would remain, without paying any rent, with- 
 out selling, and in poverty ; so if they are to go and try 
 to mend themselves in another business or on a smaller 
 farm, the first move must be made by the landlord. 
 
 " Things have come to such a pass now that peasant 
 proprietorship is to be desired. It is, however, a ques- 
 tion of great intricacy. What is the price to be ? How 
 is it to be paid, in cash, or notes, or a promise with 
 security, or a promise that will never be kept ? If you 
 speak of a county or local guaranty, I should refuse to
 
 1 90 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 sell, for I have some chance of getting a little money if I 
 hold the land, but I shall certainly get nothing from the 
 county. You have no right to force a landlord to sell, 
 unless he is to get cash, for otherwise you in no respect 
 improve his condition. For a purchase scheme an ad- 
 vance of money by the imperial government is essen- 
 tial ; and a county guaranty, which to an individual 
 would be worthless, would be effective when given to 
 the government. It would require only an extension of 
 methods already in practical use. In the case of loans 
 for county buildings the government has the first claim 
 on the rates before any officer receives his salary. Where 
 money is borrowed for the purchase of seed, the local 
 government board can impound the money wherever 
 they find it. There is a system known as 'imperative 
 presentments,' to secure the repayment of loans for the 
 support of extra police. If there is any failure on the 
 part of the local authorities to put on a levy to cover the 
 charges, the judge of assize is bound to do so on the 
 mere production of a government certificate that the 
 amount is due. 
 
 " A Land Purchase bill ought to precede a Home 
 Rule bill, for it would interest the people in the main- 
 tenance of law and order. In my opinion that would be 
 the only possibility of Kome Rule succeeding. 
 
 " The effect of any Land Purchase Bill will certainly be 
 to ruin half in number, but not in valuation, of the pres- 
 ent proprietors. In the case of small properties the owners' 
 interests will be extinguished, for they are more deeply 
 encumbered even than the large landlords. 
 
 " Land Purchase is, however, necessary, for the Land 
 Acts involve most of its disadvantages and few of its 
 benefits. "When property had its rights, it had its duties.
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. I9I 
 
 Now that the rights are abolished, the duties go with 
 them. Lord Sligo will never come here again. He has 
 shut up his stables and his garden. Few people of 
 means live here now, for they cannot get the little enjoy- 
 ments they used to." 
 
 Mr. Richard Powell, Lord Sligo's agent, was little less 
 emphatic. 
 
 " Almost universally the landlords will clear out, for 
 the income from the purchase money will not keep up 
 their places. I know many who would be ruined by 
 twelve or even fourteen years' purchase. Only men 
 like Lord Sligo, who have other resources, will be able 
 to live here. The others will have to strike out for 
 themselves in a new country ; and the old, the feeble, 
 and the women will be very badly off. 
 
 "It will be hard to raise money for 'land purchase.' 
 Any local guaranty would probably have to be worked 
 from the Unions, where you already have a clerk and a 
 staff ; many of them are bankrupt now and ought to re- 
 fuse to guarantee any thing except under compulsion. 
 As a poor-law guardian myself, I should certainly refuse 
 to sanction any guaranty." 
 
 " Does n't this conclusion bring the whole matter to a 
 deadlock ? " I asked in some perplexity. 
 
 " Certainly," he replied. " That is what has staggered 
 all the statesmen. 
 
 " After a Land Purchase Act, something further would 
 be required to stop the agitation for Home Rule. 
 
 " Many people expect to get ' protection ' under Home 
 Rule, but the English people will not give Ireland Home 
 Rule if they think the result will be the boycotting of 
 their own goods. 
 
 " If Home Rule, like Gladstone's, were granted, I am
 
 192 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 convinced it would be followed by a movement for sepa- 
 ration, and that by a repeal of Home Rule and a return 
 to the present condition of things. 
 
 " My relations with the tenants are friendly. I keep 
 up a correspondence with many of them in America, 
 and they tell me how they are getting on and ask for 
 news. 
 
 " From November to June last, there were more evic- 
 tions in this neighborhood than I remember before in the 
 same time, chiefly because on Colonel Clive's property at 
 Ballycran there was a general strike against rent, but 
 after the eviction they all paid up. In my own case from 
 all I had ejectments against I took, as I always do, one 
 half the rent due and gave a clear receipt, as all I want is 
 to get them squared up. All but two are now in as care- 
 takers. We leave them in as caretakers till they have 
 saved their crops, and then, in three or four months, 
 they have to go, but in the meantime a great many pay. 
 I give the others then a few pounds and let them go. 
 
 '' I seldom have trouble with the people, but they are 
 sometimes singular. I have known men with money 
 enough to pay the rent, let themselves be evicted, and 
 put up shanties by the side of the road and stick there. 
 
 '' Colonel O'Callaghan was a great exception to the 
 general run of landlords, and I think that both he and 
 Lord Clanricarde might have been juster and wiser if 
 they had given a good reduction at first. The fact is 
 that you cannot deal with the Irish people on business 
 terms but must use considerable diplomacy." 
 
 On the car between Ballina and Sligo, part of the way 
 I sat next a gentleman who turned out to be a Methodist 
 minister, born and bred in Ballina — an elderly man, with 
 a quick, decisive manner. " The first thing the people
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 193 
 
 have set before themselves is getting rid of the landlords, 
 and the second is complete separation from England. 
 
 " When the Land League was started, there were great 
 positive grievances, though they were largely due to the 
 great competition for land during the good times (1865 
 to 1878) when men would offer the landlord or his agent 
 double or treble the value of a farm even before it was 
 vacant, and to refuse such offers would have been more 
 than human. Now, there is no excuse for the agitation. 
 It continues, however, and to-day throughout the great 
 part of Ireland there is no liberty. I know many who have 
 been coerced into joining the League, but they would be 
 afraid to have their names known. 
 
 "Look at the conduct of the trial of the police at 
 Mitchelstown. Mr. Harrington called one witness a 
 'murderer,' and forced him to state where he lived, in 
 order, as he said, that the place where a murderer lived 
 might be known to the public. And Mr. Harrington is 
 one of the leaders of the party into whose hands I am 
 asked to entrust my life, my liberty, and my character, 
 and that of my family." 
 
 "Will there be civil war," I asked, "if Home Rule is 
 granted ? " 
 
 " There will be no civil war — that is an exaggeration, — 
 but great discontent." 
 
 We were passing one of those enormous stone work- 
 houses, that so often disfigure the most charming Irish 
 landscapes. " That is now three quarters empty," Avas 
 his comment. " These buildings were erected on a great 
 scale throughout the country between the years 1845 and 
 1850. The houses and the official staffs remain as large 
 and expensive as ever, and eighty per cent, of the rates 
 go to support them and not the poor. This is a fair 
 ground for complaint."
 
 194 I^ CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 The minister got off at Temple Bar, and his place was 
 soon taken by a stone-mason, a native of Colloony, a 
 neighboring town. " I don't think Home Rule will do 
 much good " said he. " There has been no employment 
 for us since the agitation began. The landlords who used 
 to give us work have no money, and the other party will 
 never give us any. Sligo is full of workmen and trades- 
 people who say the same thing, and yet Sligo is the best 
 county in Ireland, and there is much harmony here be- 
 tween landlords and tenants, and no crime." 
 
 In the town the first shop I entered was a stationer's 
 to buy a newspaper. The shopkeeper was a keen-eyed 
 and sharp tongued old fellow. When very young he 
 had been employed in Kerry on the coast survey, and 
 had afterwards been for many years in the constabulary; 
 a Protestant but not an Orangeman. " I know very many 
 persons," he said, " who would never have joined the 
 League if they were free subjects ; they were afraid of 
 injury to their cattle or themselves. 
 
 " The old farmers did not believe that the landlords 
 could be forced to reduce their rents, and refused at first 
 to join either the League or the * Plan.' 
 
 " I heard Sexton a few years ago address a meeting 
 here, but it was only tall talk. The landlords, accord- 
 ing to Sexton, had confiscated the property of the ten- 
 ants ; their right to get any rent at all was very question- 
 able, and, in any case, the rents had already amounted 
 to the purchase value of the whole land ; in equity, then, 
 the farmers might justly refuse to pay any rent and not 
 excessive rents only. All this stuff went right down the 
 throats of an uneducated and gullible people. 
 
 " In talking about land purchase, I have often said 
 that the purchase money would be advanced by the
 
 IN CONNAUGIIT. 1 95 
 
 government, and have been answered, even by intelligent 
 people, * Ah, but it has been paid long ago.' 
 
 '' In 1882 I went down to County Leitrim on business. 
 A widow there, Mrs. Moore, whose second husband had 
 just died without children, wished to sell her farm, 
 and join her only son in Boston. She had nine acres of 
 very wet land. The poor-law valuation was j[,'i.o, and 
 the rent had been reduced from j[,'i.Z ^o ^1° i°-^' The 
 tenant right of the farm brought ^240, after deducting 
 five per cent, for the auctioneer's fees and ^10 for a 
 year's rent then due on it. 
 
 " By the Land Act I think it must be admitted that 
 the whole of Ireland has been thrown into a state of 
 hocus-pocus confusion, 
 
 "A majority of the people are in favor of Home Rule, 
 and a very large majority of the shopkeepers, who are 
 three quarters of them Catholics. There is, however, more 
 toleration here than in most places, and we have a Pro- 
 testant mayor and a Catholic majority in the corporation. 
 
 " In the harbor there is a fair run of shipping, and 
 steamers from Glasgow and Liverpool, for we supply the 
 counties of Sligo, Roscommon, and Leitrim. A grant 
 was given for a quay some time ago, but the money was 
 lavished and the quay is left unfinished." 
 
 A DAY WITH A POPULAR LAND AGENT. 
 
 The property of Lord Clancarty comprises some twenty- 
 five thousand acres in and around Ballinasloe, The town 
 itself is neat and thriving, with about five thousand in- 
 habitants. Here there are no manufactures, but the 
 annual fair of Ballinasloe is the most famous in Ireland. 
 In the fat years of the seventies, in the early days of 
 November, ninety thousand sheep and twenty thousand
 
 196 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 oxen were often penned in the extensive fair grounds. 
 Now the opening of Connaught by the railroad, and the 
 multipHcation of fairs, has reduced the number to a 
 third, but still the farmers swarm here from all parts of 
 the country and for a week every bed in the town is 
 taken at a pound a night. 
 
 The late Lord Clancarty was a well-known philan- 
 thropist. His son is obliged by ill health to spend much 
 time on the Continent, but is generally in residence from 
 October to February. In his absence the tenants are not 
 neglected ; the labor bill never falls below fifty pounds 
 a week, and the agent, Mr. Edward Fowler, represents 
 the landlord on the Grand Jury, the Board of Guardians, 
 the Board of the Asylum, and the Agricultural Society. 
 Mr. Fowler was once a railroad engineer, and afterwards 
 studied land agency under Mr. Trench. A tall, sturdy, 
 handsome country gentleman, his frankness, impartiality, 
 and fairness have won him the general respect of the 
 people, and enabled him last year to defeat with ease the 
 attempt to start the ' plan of campaign ' on the property 
 near Loughrea. The tenants are now all paying their 
 rents as well as ever, except, he said, '* the bad lot under 
 the influence of the agitators, and they won't pay even 
 'judicial ' rents." 
 
 A long drive with Mr. Fowler over the estate let me 
 see the country as it looks through the spectacles of a 
 land agent. For a few moments, perhaps, I can lend 
 them to the reader. 
 
 " There 's a substantial, two-story slated house. The 
 man who lives there has only seven or eight acres ; it is 
 fair land, but besides paying the rent he has been able 
 to pay interest on ^150 he borrowed from the Board of 
 Works to build the house.
 
 IN CON NAUGHT. 19/ 
 
 "This piece of land used to belong to an old Irish 
 family. The last of the race walked out of the window 
 in a fit of D. T., and the property was bought by Lord 
 Clancarty. The tenants were given places elsewhere ; 
 the land was thrown together, levelled, subsoiled, drained 
 on high Scotch farming principles, and let to a Scotch 
 grazier. The rent was lately reduced by the court to 
 ^120, on the ground that the buildings were too large 
 for the property, and the tenants ought not to be charged 
 full value for them. 
 
 "This farm I let to an English tenant on English 
 principles, building and mending myself, and I wish I 
 could get more tenants of the same sort on the same 
 terms. 
 
 "These are the best tenants about here. They are 
 mostly Scotch or north of Ireland men, who came here 
 when the weaving trade was brought into this part of the 
 country during the last century." 
 
 A young fellow passed us. " That is Armstrong, a fellow 
 from Fermanagh. He and his father I brought here my- 
 self, as I wanted them to teach the others how to farm. 
 
 " All that flat valley was, for months in the year, a lake, 
 and at other times too wet to shoot snipe in. Now the 
 larger part has been drained by Lord Clancarty and let 
 to that Fermanagh man. We made him an English ten- 
 ant, slating his house for him and making other improve- 
 ments, and now he has the place in splendid cultivation, 
 and is going to break up more land next year. 
 
 "Where those haycocks are was once a lake, marked on 
 the ordnance maps ; the water is now six or seven feet 
 below them, and the drainage was all done by me. 
 
 " Six thousand five hundred pounds were borrowed by 
 Lord Clancarty from the Board of Works for main drain-
 
 198 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 age and roads, exclusively for the benefit of the tenants ; 
 and nearly all these tenants whose lands we improved 
 have gone into court and got from ten to fifteen per 
 cent, reduction. As it is we are paying over ^300 a year 
 interest and don't get a penny of it from the tenants. 
 Indeed, on about five farms the rents have been reduced 
 to below what they were before we drained them. Prac- 
 tically, the result of the Land Acts has been to stop all im- 
 provements by the landlords, and in future every thing 
 will have to be done by the tenants and will not be done 
 as w^ell. Then, too, till 1881 we commonly gave the 
 tenants timber and slate for building ; but that also we 
 had to stop so soon as the government began legislating 
 our property away from us. If we could have foreseen 
 what has happened, our best plan would have been to 
 take up the land from the tenants twenty years ago, im- 
 prove it ourselves and let it now on judicial leases. 
 
 " This is the Manor Mill. It was let with twenty 
 acres on lease at thirty-seven pounds a year. When the 
 lease fell in, the rent was not raised, although meanwhile 
 we had deepened the stream and drained the neighbor- 
 hood at an expense of ^600, besides making a new dam 
 and altering the wheel from an overshot wheel to a low- 
 breast one. The miller died before signing an agree- 
 ment, as he had promised, authorizing us to make these 
 changes for a consideration of ^150, the average profits 
 for the time the mill had to be closed. His niece, Mrs. 
 Sellors, refused our terms and brought an action against 
 Lord Clancarty for ^2,000 damages for injury done to 
 the mill and the watercourses, which experts swore were 
 vastly improved. She swore she had nothing but the 
 mill to live by, but got only ^150 and costs. The year 
 after, she went into court about the land, and swore she
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 1 99 
 
 lived by the land only, and the mill was worth nothing ; 
 the sub-commissioners reduced the rent to ^27. I ap- 
 pealed and got the rent reinstated at ^37, and last win- 
 ter the mill did more work than for twenty years past. 
 
 " Shanvolly, here, went into court with my permission. 
 I thought he was too highly rented, but wished the 
 reduction to be legally made. 
 
 " In the neighborhood of this farm we spent ^1,500 ; 
 that sum has been almost a total loss. No interest was 
 allowed the landlord by the court ; the rent was reduced 
 from ^42 IS. M. to ^38 lo^-.y the value of the tenant right 
 was fixed at ^100 ; and the farm was sold at that with 
 all our improvements." 
 
 We came now to the farm of James Ryan, which Mr. 
 Foster had come to revalue by request of the tenant. 
 The sheds were dilapidated, with a tumble-down roof, 
 and the house had most of the window panes broken and 
 seemed deserted. At last Ryan appeared — a middle- 
 aged man, with a pleasant, open face. " This farm," 
 he said, " was taken in the bad times of '48 and '49, at 
 ^16 a year. Then ^^8 was put on on account of the 
 drainage undertaken by the landlord, and a lease for 
 two lives was given to my father, who succeeded his 
 uncle ; in due time he built this house," a substantial 
 two-storied building, " and died over ninety years old." 
 With another little farm Ryan has a hundred and forty 
 acres. His father in his day made money and was able 
 to buy land for his other children, but Ryan claims to 
 have lost "some ^r,ooo since the bad times began in 
 1879." He keeps very little stock — only four milch 
 cows, two yearlings, and three calves ; and so far as I 
 could see, he was a very indifferent farmer. The thistles 
 looked as though they were cultivated intentionally, so
 
 200 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 thick were they, and so tall and stout. " Sometimes," he 
 said, " I cut them, but most times not. When the cows 
 get them in the hay they eat them just as greedily." The 
 potato field was full of weeds, a sort of wild buckwheat. 
 But, most characteristic of all, were the gates. A cart, 
 with one wheel off, and some loose sticks, like an extem- 
 tempore barricade, formed the gate of the road to the 
 house, and a pile of stones surmounted by a branch of a 
 tree, with bundles of furze stuffed in the interspaces, the 
 gate to the field opposite. 
 
 While Mr. Fowler was pacing the land, from time to 
 time consulting his map, and prodding the earth with his 
 stick, Ryan lingered and chatted. 
 
 " Lord Clanricarde's property at Loughrea," said he, 
 " is fair land, and I don't much believe in the Plan of 
 Campaign there or anywhere. The best thing is for each 
 man to make his own ' plan ' for himself. As to Lord 
 Clancarty's property, in spite of the low prices, I would 
 sooner put money into it than take it out. 
 
 " If we are to have ' Land Purchase,' I believe in pay- 
 ing a fair price for it. It is, however, very hard to de- 
 termine the value of land. It is chiefly guesswork. If 
 the purchase money is advanced by the government, they 
 ought to charge us not more than two and a half per 
 cent, interest, or it will be as hard for us to pay as the 
 rent. Such a loan cannot be absolutely secured, for if 
 the farmers don't pay and force is used, there will be a 
 regular revolution." 
 
 We drove back to Ballinasloe by a circuitous road, 
 passing through one townland where no one has paid any 
 rent for two years. Here lives a widow, Biddy Dolan. 
 Her husband had been found many years ago in occupa- 
 tion of a little hut on a strip of bog, two miles off. He
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 20I 
 
 was, probably, a squatter ; and as no holding was wanted 
 there and the hut was an eyesore to the tidy agent, a high 
 rent, j[^2i 9^- '^^'^ imposed on the five Irish acres, to drive 
 the man out. 
 
 " I want the woman to give the place up," said Fowler, 
 "as I don't care to have such a wretched spot on the 
 estate ; it is tumbling down, and not occupied for any 
 purpose ; no rent has been paid for over two years and 
 none ever will be." 
 
 " Biddy," he called out, "Biddy, come here ! I want 
 you to let me take up that place of yours down in the 
 bog, and then Lord Clancarty will forgive you the ar- 
 rears on it. Over eight pounds you owe us, and you 
 know you can't pay it." 
 
 " Shure, your Honor, I '11 keep it till I die, for half the 
 rent." 
 
 " I don't think it would be wise for you to keep it for 
 that." 
 
 "Shure, your Honor," the son joined in, "the money 
 all went for nothing. It was not able to produce enough 
 to keep the house thatched." 
 
 " I know it." 
 
 " Give it to me for what your Honor thinks it is 
 worth," cried Biddy. 
 
 " I don't want any such tenancy on the property ; it is 
 no ornament to the estate, and no benefit to you." 
 
 " Lord Clancarty has had a lot of money for the 
 place," said the son, " and it is not worth sixpence an 
 acre." 
 
 " I honestly don't believe it is," the agent admitted. 
 
 " My man had it ; and I won't give it up till the Lord 
 calls me." 
 
 " You will never make a pound off it."
 
 202 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " I know I won't, but I am tight for land here, and 
 shure I might feed a little baste on it." 
 
 "You don't live on it," shouted the agent as a parting 
 shot. "You do nothing with it ; it would n't feed a rat ; 
 it is a mere strip of snipe bog, and the roof has fallen in. 
 But if you are unreasonable the sheriff will have to see 
 to it." 
 
 " It would cost us jQ^ xos." he continued, turning to 
 me, " to get a decree, and it would n't be worth that. 
 I shall let it alone now, and report the matter : I don't 
 want a person who does n't live on the estate keeping a 
 claim there for the purpose sometime of raising a flame. 
 I shall probably get a decree at Petty Sessions, and then, 
 if she ever does put * a little beast ' there I can seize it 
 and bring her to terms." 
 
 Half a mile farther on we passed a neat little house 
 and farm. " Here is where Kelly lives, a very different 
 sort of person from his next-door neighbor. An indus- 
 trious man, he pays as much rent as the others, and is 
 never behindhand, and yet has made money enough to 
 buy more land. Killeen, the neighbor, has n't paid any 
 thing for two years. 
 
 " In the house opposite, there lives a great, big, brawl- 
 ing fellow. He paid no rent, and in his cups used to 
 say that if ever I came near him he would do something 
 for me." The day I heard it, I went there. He came 
 towards me with a reaping hook in his hand. I sat 
 down on the side of the ditch and began to talk to him. 
 Finally I said : ' Now throw that thing down and shake 
 hands.' He did so, said I was n't a bad fellow, promised 
 to pay up, and kept his promise." 
 
 Nearer Ballinasloe is a fine property of some three 
 hundred acres, which Lord Clancarty purchased just
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 203 
 
 before the Land Act of 1881, at the large price of 
 ;^i 1,000, about thirty years' purchase of the existing 
 rental. " If he were selling this to the government to- 
 day," said Mr. Foster, " he would probably not get over 
 eighteen years' purchase at a pound an acre. See what 
 utter ruin the government is bringing on the landlords. 
 I have spent ^100 in levelling the fences and making a 
 new drain on this land, and we wont let it to tenants ex- 
 cept in conacre so as to keep it out of the Land Act. " 
 
 We were thus naturally led on to talk about Land 
 Purchase. Lord Clancarty will in any event be a large 
 proprietor. The mansion, the demesne with its thousand 
 acres, the estate we were looking at, the town and its 
 appurtenances, will remain his property to keep or sell 
 as he likes, and the rest the tenants will, probably, be 
 forced to purchase. A general valuation of the whole 
 country Mr. Fowler thought necessary. " I, with assist- 
 ants, could value Lord Clancarty's twenty-five thousand 
 acres," he suggested, '' in six months." The present 
 commissioners he thought incompetent. " They are, as 
 a rule, impecunious men of the farmer class, of no stand- 
 ing or experience." No light was thrown on the vexed 
 question of payment. " Greenbacks on the security of 
 Irish land, the interest to be paid by the farmers, would 
 be worthless." In general he seemed pessimistic. " The 
 expropriation of the landlords," he said, " will be ruin to 
 shopkeepers. The country will go back a century. I 
 thought of going away this year." 
 
 A DAY AND A NIGHT WITH NATIONALISTS AT BAL- 
 LINASLOE, 
 
 Purtil, the President of the League, I found in his 
 grocery, an amiable man who prides himself on his mod-
 
 204 I^ CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 eration. "Lord Clancarty," he admitted, "we don't 
 call a bad landlord. The rents have come down as they 
 are from generations. Here and there we find people 
 who have been tenants so long that they are unwilling to 
 go into court, but think they will soon. 
 
 " Mr. Fowler is not a bad man, but he wont take ad- 
 vice. I think he would like to see the tenants well off, 
 if he could get at the right way of going about it. I be- 
 lieve there have been some evictions, but not near Bal- 
 linasloe. I know no cases of extreme hardship here. 
 
 " "We find great difficulty in getting Lord Clancarty's 
 tenants to be active in our movement. One reason is 
 they get so much employment from Lord Clancarty, and 
 they are afraid it may cease if they join us. However, 
 they are getting more independent. 
 
 " Last January six shillings in the pound were given 
 for that half year, and four shillings for the half year 
 preceding. 
 
 " A few tenants went into court when the first Land 
 Act passed and got little reduction. Then when Mr. 
 Fowler was giving as much as thirty per cent., he refused 
 to consider these cases, on the ground that people who 
 went to law should abide the consequences. 
 
 " Any Purchase Act from the present government 
 would be badly received. The people think that ' Coer- 
 cion ' will rob a * Purchase ' bill of many of its merits. 
 The farmers, too, will not avail themselves of any act 
 not given as a final settlement. They will wait for some- 
 thing better to turn up. They would rather take a larger 
 reduction now and wait for a final settlement. They 
 remember that the men who went into the land courts 
 early did not get as good reductions as those who waited 
 till later. It does fall in with the views of a great many
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 205 
 
 that there will be no settlement of the land question till 
 Home Rule is granted, but the people will accept a good 
 Purchase Act first, and then will go in straight for Home 
 Rule. 
 
 " The townspeople mostly are in favor of Home Rule, 
 and think it would revive trade wonderfully, but the far- 
 mers are slow and have to be educated up to it. 
 
 " They have too m.uch to do beyond to look into our 
 local affairs here. That ought to be done by County 
 Boards, but the national desire for a Parliament would 
 lead to further agitation, even if the scheme of County 
 Boards worked well. 
 
 " In this town v/e have plenty of water power, a splen- 
 did river running idly by, and if we had a woollen fac- 
 tory here, which I have no doubt would spring up under 
 a Home Rule Parliament, the young people would be 
 employed, and all would be benefited. When things 
 settle down under Home Rule, capitalists will be willing 
 to invest, and then bounties, duties, and exhibitions will 
 encourage manufactures. 
 
 " It may be a government by ecclesiastics. What of 
 that ? The clergy of this country have ever been faith- 
 ful guides of the people, temporally as well as spiritually. 
 In no country in the world do they enter into the wel- 
 fare and happiness of the people so much as here. A 
 priest will do all he can for a parishioner in trouble, and 
 then it will be the man's own fault if he is not lifted. 
 Both priest and bishop are sprung from the people, and 
 there is no reason why they should not lead them right. 
 Their influence is great, bnt the reason is that it has always 
 been used for our good, and to-day the body of the clergy 
 are as true-hearted and able as ever. Not three people 
 in a hundred in Ireland will disagree with me here."
 
 206 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 The secretary of the League is Father Costello. His 
 words were strong. " From here to Banagher," he said, 
 " you pass through Pollock's estate, where he evicted 
 seven hundred families ; and four miles to the north, in 
 County Roscommon, he evicted fourteen hundred more. 
 East of this, again, another Scotchman, Mathers, evicted 
 five hundred families. North, south and east there ex- 
 tends a decimated plain. Midway between here and Birr, 
 from a little hill that overlooks the whole country-side, 
 you will see not a house except a herd's hut. 
 
 " Lords Clancarty and Clonbrook are the best land- 
 lords in County Galway. Lord Clancarty never raised 
 the rents, and never exacted the highest rent for a farm 
 when it became vacant : but the Land Commissioners 
 have taken off forty or fifty per cent, in some cases, and 
 his agent has appealed. 
 
 " Lord Clancarty has improved the property fairly, 
 or rather this town, where he has erected many fine 
 buildings. His draining operations I don't believe are 
 very considerable. He gets ^16,000 a year, and is most 
 of the time abroad. Where are the factories he might 
 have started ? 
 
 " Sir Henry Burke's father was a good man, he was a 
 good landlord in his way, not exacting the highest penny 
 for his land, and yet as much as forty and fifty per cent, 
 has been struck off his rents in some cases. 
 
 " There is a difference of opinion as to the priority of 
 the land question and Home Rule. As a priest, as the 
 government has conceded the principle of ' dual owner- 
 ship,' I would not question the title of the landlords. That 
 is the Irish moral opinion. Still the English Parliament 
 is not competent to settle the question of compensation ; 
 it has not legislated so often for the good of Ireland.
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 20/ 
 
 " For a hundred years we have been governed by Eng- 
 land. What has she done for us ? We were nine mil- 
 lions ; potatoes and meal would have supported us, and 
 England would not give us that. She has maintained 
 here a dominant oligarchy. Many a farmer could not 
 marry his daughter without asking the agent. If the 
 agent saw a girl nicely dressed, he would often raise her 
 father's rent. The ot?ier day one of the Land Commis- 
 sioners told me he was going to value a farm, and seeing 
 a fine clover field, turned to the farmer, and said : 
 ' Shure, you can't say your land is bad.' He replied : 
 ' Bad luck to that clover field! ' and explained that after 
 he had worked at it a long time and succeeded, the 
 landlady saw it, and made it the standard for the whole 
 farm, raising the rent accordingly." 
 
 In the evening at Purtill's store, half a dozen of us 
 sat and smoked our short clay pipes, — Comyn, a far- 
 mer ; Egan and O'Connor, shopkeepers ; and Kennedy, 
 the foreman of a quarry. 
 
 Egan. " Nothing short of Home Rule will satisfy the 
 Irish people ; but they will accept any Land Bill as an 
 instalment." All agreed. 
 
 Comyn, " No matter what the leaders wish, the ten- 
 ant farmers would accept a Land Purchase Bill as final 
 and give up Home Rule." 
 
 Ketinedy. " I want whatever Parnell wants, and Dillon 
 — nothing short of that. If I had sufficient force at my 
 back I would clear the whole lot of landlords out of 
 Ireland to-morrow, but that 's impossible. I would be 
 content with nothing short of separation for all the 
 wrongs of the last six centuries, — separation and repara- 
 tion ; till then I take all our leaders can get. We are as 
 favorably situated as Belgium, with its own king, near
 
 208 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 France. Why should n't we have a republic or a king of 
 our own here ? I think the majority of the younger men 
 agree with me." 
 
 Egan. " If we adopt the action of our leaders now, 
 how can we, as honest men, take Home Rule except as 
 a final settlement ?" 
 
 O'Connor. " If we cannot get Home Rule now except 
 as a finality, are not we right in pretending ? The big- 
 gest rogue is the best politician. Take Gladstone. His 
 speeches are inconsistent, and he is our model." 
 
 Piirtill. " Would the country accept Gladstone's bill 
 as final ?" 
 
 Omnes. " That is the question." 
 
 Purtill. " That would depend on the financial settle- 
 ment. We pay on whiskey, our national beverage, a tax 
 one third higher than the English pay on an equivalent 
 amount of beer, their national beverage. 
 
 Comyn. " There is a great deal of sentiment still 
 against the connection with England, no matter what 
 the financial settlement might be." 
 
 Egan. " Seeing that the people are apparently satisfied 
 with what the members are doing, and the members have 
 accepted Gladstone's bill, we should be satisfied with 
 it." 
 
 Kennedy. " The best way of getting total separation is 
 to get partial separation first." 
 
 O'Comior. " If I have an account of j£6o against a 
 man, I would accept ^30, but should be very slow to 
 give him a receipt in full." 
 
 Egan. "Suppose the man said, 'Will you take ten 
 shillings in the pound as payment in full ? ' Ought n't 
 you, on getting the ^30, to give him a receipt in full ? " 
 
 O'Connor. " If the fellow had gone to court with you.
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 2O9 
 
 and you knew he had the money, you would be a fool to 
 do so." 
 
 I suggested : " Surely the government has done some 
 generous things. Why else should they have passed the 
 last Land Act ? " 
 
 O'Connor. '^ That was in deference to Russell and not 
 to Parnell. There were too many lease-holders in 
 Ulster." • 
 
 " Where will the Home-Rule Parliament get money ? " 
 asked I. 
 
 Purtill. "From the English people." 
 
 Fallefi (a shopkeeper and farmer, who had just come 
 in). " Even if my wages were less under Home Rule, I 
 should still cry out for it. Our Parliament will have the 
 treasury of the country to start industries with." 
 
 When I asked how the condition of the west would be 
 improved, he replied : " It is not with the sea-coast 
 people we have to deal, but with inland men like these 
 here." 
 
 " Would you accept a constitution like that of Massa- 
 chusetts, with clauses against the violation of contracts 
 and taking of private property without compensation ? " 
 
 " No ! " he exclaimed. " Can we not pass laws for 
 ourselves, without England saying we must not pass a 
 law in violation of contracts ? " 
 
 Fallen then said he would tell me his story if I cared 
 to hear it. This is the story : 
 
 " In 1846 my father, with five other promising young 
 men, went up to Dublin to buy a farm offered in the 
 Four Courts. He got it for thirteen shillings an acre, a 
 hundred and fifty Irish acres in County Roscommon. 
 In 1863 William Daniel Kelly, the landlord, being a 
 spendthrift and short of money, raised the rent to a
 
 2IO IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 pound an acre. The next year, he inveigled the tenants, 
 under a threat that some Scotchman would come in and 
 turn the whole into sheep-walks, into taking out leases. 
 We had to pay jC^-^^ for the lease, which was for thirty- 
 one years, or three lives, at ;^i 2s. an acre. Up to 1876 
 we found no difficulty in paying our rent, and my father 
 brought up a large family — ten of us. He built a house 
 and offices, made a boundary fence, or 'mearing,' and 
 drained it. In 1873 I went into ironmongery here and 
 served my five years, being supported by my father. In 
 1876 my eldest brother emigrated to America, and the 
 next year two sisters. In 1880 an elder brother married 
 and got ;^i5o with his wife. He had his portion of the 
 farm set off to him, sixty acres ; a house was built for 
 him, and he took a mare and foal at ;^2o, two heifers 
 and twenty sheep at £,S^i ^ ^^^^ ^^ ;^^2, and ^^30 was 
 allowed for the house. His wife's fortune soon went, 
 and in 1886 he was totally without capital, and was on 
 the eve of eviction for one year's rent. I had saved 
 some money by that time and paid the rent, becoming 
 tenant myself. Last year I paid a second year's rent, 
 partly out of my savings ; and now another is due. How 
 am I to pay it ? It may drive me to desperation — it may 
 drive me to the Devil ! 
 
 " The farmers are quite willing to have the land ques- 
 tion settled first, but if our necks were in the gallows we 
 would n't rest till we got Home Rule. Even with Home 
 Rule we may never get over our feeling for a separate 
 nationality, but our children may." 
 
 A " PLAN OF CAMPAIGN " TOWN. 
 
 " Go to Loughrea if you want to study the land ques- 
 tion," said a casual acquaintance at Clifden. " There
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 211 
 
 the ' Plan ' is in full blast. In 1881 and 1882 the foun- 
 dation for the agitation was laid in blood. Within a 
 circuit of six or seven miles there were eight or nine 
 agrarian murders. At Woodford, on the property of 
 Lord Clanricarde, who also owns Loughrea, March 
 twelvemonth, Finley, a process-server, was shot dead in 
 the wood while cutting timber. He was an old Crimean 
 soldier, and his widow went down to the village and 
 cursed the Catholic curate, who was an officer of the 
 League. The police had to bring a coffin from a distance 
 of fifteen miles to bury him. 
 
 " There were about a dozen evictions near Woodford 
 about a year ago, and so great was the excitement that 
 the sub-agent and all the wood-rangers on the estate re- 
 signed their places simply from fear. 
 
 " In the present agitation there have not been many 
 murders; for boycotting proves a very efficient weapon, as 
 there is a wholesome recollection of the outrages that pre- 
 ceded it. A man who lives in a wild, remote spot in the 
 country, and gets a letter threatening him with the fate 
 of Blake or of Finley, if he persists in a certain course, 
 must be a brave man to hold out." 
 
 These remarks I had in mind as I drove to Loughrea, 
 the town of the '* gray lake," through an interesting coun- 
 try, twenty-two miles from Ballinasloe. 
 
 The town itself is decayed and wretched. I counted 
 over twenty ruined houses. Few people were moving in 
 the streets, the shops looked as though a purchaser was 
 unknown, and the hotel as though no guest had rung a 
 bell there for a year. Constables were strolling in twos 
 and threes wherever one turned. One, a sergeant, spoke 
 about the outrages : 
 
 " Mr. Blake, an agent of Lord Clanricarde, and his
 
 212 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 driver, were shot, a short quarter of a mile from town, as 
 they were driving in on a market day. 
 
 " Mr. Burke Rihassane, a landlord, near Castle Taylor, 
 and Corporal Wallace who accompanied him, were shot 
 in open daylight, while returning from Gort ' Petty Ses- 
 sions.' 
 
 " Dempsey, for taking an ' evicted ' farm, was shot at 
 Hollypark, on his way to mass, about ten o'clock in the 
 morning. 
 
 '* Dogherty was murdered for land-grabbing, at night, 
 in the yard of his own house, at Carrigar. 
 
 " Sergeant Lintan was shot in Church Lane, nearly op- 
 posite the church here, about nine o'clock in the morning, 
 because he was too sharp after the publicans. 
 
 " There were several persons tried for these murders, 
 but no evidence could be got, and no one was convicted, 
 except in the case of Dogherty's murder. Two men were 
 sentenced to be hung for that, but they were remanded 
 and are now in jail." 
 
 James Kennedy, who is famous as the first man in the 
 town who paid his money into the " Plan of Campaign " 
 fund, was standing in the doorway of his shop, a spirit 
 grocer)', like a sentinel on duty. " I am standing here," 
 he said, '* on the look-out, to give warning in case any 
 one pounces on us. 
 
 " Two hours ago, there was a sale of shop goods, across 
 the way, belonging to John Bowese. He can pay well, 
 but we are all on a general strike. 
 
 " Loughrea is in a state of siege. Sometimes we have 
 three hundred police here, and then they are cut down 
 to forty or fifty. It was once a prosperous town, before 
 the crops failed and the cattle and sheep died from some 
 kind of disease. It was a centre of grazing, but that has
 
 IN CON NAUGHT. 213 
 
 been ruined by American competition. Our only in- 
 dustries, are the 'awl' and the 'needle.' Everything 
 now is at a deadlock, and I don't believe six houses in 
 the town are self-supporting, far less making any rent. 
 The town is in a state of semi-bankruptcy. 
 
 " We pay ten shillings in the pound taxes. 
 
 " The rental of my house and six acres of land attached 
 to it, is ^27 10^. ]\Iy license costs ^10, and the rates 
 and taxes for the year are ^8 \os. During the eight 
 months past I haven't made the taxes from my business. 
 This year my land which I let in conacre did not bring 
 me in the rent and taxes. 
 
 " Last October, Lord Clanricarde offered us twenty 
 per cent, reduction, but we wanted forty per cent., though 
 we would probably take thirty per cent Then we struck 
 against him completely, and he has not got a penny from 
 us since except by seizures. We all paid a half year's 
 rent under the ' Plan of Campaign,' less eight shillmgs in 
 the pound. I and a dozen others are fighting the battle 
 of fifteen hundred tenants. Lord Clanricarde wants to 
 keep up his rental in order to have a good basis for sell- 
 ing under a Land Purchase Act. He 's a limb of perdi- 
 tion, seizing and evicting and doing every thing he can 
 to annoy us. He seems to be entirely callous. There 
 is no sign of surrender yet on either side. 
 
 '' Every sod and house in the town belongs to Lord 
 Clanricarde. This part of his property is worth about 
 _;2£"2o,ooo a year to him, and we have n't seen a Clanricarde 
 here since the old marquis died twelve or thirteen years 
 ago. 
 
 *' There have been no outrages here since the shooting 
 of Blake. The outrages then were caused by ' landlord- 
 ism.* The policeman who was shot was shot for his
 
 214 ^^ CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 officiousness in attending Land-League meetings as a 
 government spy. 
 
 " P. Sweeny is president of the ' District Organizing 
 Branch,' which has charge of offiences against the 
 League. How do they punish offenders ? By not 
 speaking to them, by not dealing with them, by avoiding 
 them in the market-place, in town and country, and leav- 
 ing them to the indignity \sic\ of their neighbors. This 
 has a good deal of effect. At least a couple of tenants 
 have been forced to give up farms they had grabbed. 
 
 " Tullahill farm, eighty or ninety acres, was held by a 
 brother of mine, who gave it up because the rent was too 
 high. Another man went in and took it over the heads 
 of the town people, who wanted it for a town park, for 
 the accommodation of milch cows. The new man was 
 of course obnoxious to the people and had to give up the 
 farm, which Lord Clanricarde finally had stocked and 
 kept by the Land Corporation. 
 
 " The agent, his bailiffs, and emergency men get no 
 supplies from the neighborhood, and the soldiers have to 
 keep a shop of their own in the barracks." 
 
 Land purchase he strongly approved of. " I consider," 
 he said, '' the farmers would be willing to buy for any 
 reasonable price." 
 
 A more detailed account of the causes of the agitation 
 here was given by the Catholic Administrator, Father 
 Cunningham. 
 
 " The trouble has been going on since the Nolan elec- 
 tion, about 1876, in the life of the old marquis. The 
 rents were raised then because the tenants would not 
 vote for the landlord's man. Blake was the agent. The 
 times were good, and he put on all the rent he eould. 
 Such tenants were the first to go into the land courts ;
 
 IN CONN A UGHT. 2 1 5 
 
 and then, owing to Lord Clanricarde appealing the cases 
 and pressing them, they found they could get no justice 
 from the courts or the landlord, and took to the wild jus- 
 tice of revenge. The other outrages were due to much the 
 same circumstances. 
 
 " In 1S79, owing to the famine, the tenants were una- 
 ble to pay the full rents. The Land League started here 
 in 1880. In 1 88 1 the Land Act was passed, and great 
 relief was expected from it ; but those who went into 
 court then got only about five per cent, reduction, and 
 that was not enough, though it brought the rents down 
 to about Griffith's valuation. That valuation, however, 
 was unusually high on the Clanricarde estate, because in 
 1858, when it was made, this was a great wheat-growing 
 country, and wheat was high ; now wheat is very low, 
 and the wheat lands have been turned into pastures. 
 
 " Lord Clanricarde appealed from all the judicial 
 rents, and that deterred others from going into court. 
 But after Blake was shot, in 1882 and 1S83, there was a 
 sudden jump in the price of cattle and sheep, and for a 
 while the rents were pretty fairly paid. When prices fell 
 again suddenly, the farmers had to sell off stock on a 
 falling market to meet the rent, and that impoverished 
 them greatly. Every half year, Joyce, the new agent, 
 instituted legal proceedings to recover the rent, and that 
 impoverished the tenants still more, for they had costs 
 to pay. 
 
 " Last August twelvemonth, six tenants were evicted 
 and some twenty others writted who have not yet been 
 disturbed. Some of them were only a year and a half 
 in arrears. Whenever the amount due was over ;^2o. 
 Lord Clanricarde brought suit in the Superior Court, so 
 as to carry ^\o costs. A company of soldiers and a
 
 2l6 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 number of police were here, and it took weeks to get 
 into one house. 
 
 " In October, last year, Lord Clanricarde offered, with- 
 out solicitation, a reduction of twenty per cent, to those 
 agricultural tenants who had holdings under ^^50 valua- 
 tion and who had not gone into court. The tenants re- 
 jected the offer, and none has been made since. A num- 
 ber of them would have accepted if the evicted tenants 
 were reinstated, but the majority did not think the re- 
 duction sufficient, though twenty-five per cent, all round 
 would have been taken. 
 
 " The Plan of Campaign was then adopted. The shop- 
 keepers, of course could pay, but they said they would 
 fall in with the rest, as they lived on the people. Many 
 of them were writted last Christmas, and within the last 
 fortnight the new agent has made a number of seizures 
 of shop goods. 
 
 "The government has suppressed the League here, be- 
 cause, I suppose, of the intimidation. There has been 
 intimidation, without doubt, but no serious outrages of 
 late. 
 
 " In the end. Lord Clanricarde can get the rent from a 
 certain number by proceeding as he is doing, but from 
 more than half he will never be able to get the full rent, 
 and he won't be able to evict them without a great 
 scandal. 
 
 " Peasant proprietorship must come in time ; I don't 
 care from which party, but when it does come I think 
 the people will lose their interest in the Home Rule 
 movement. 
 
 " The leaders use the land question as a lever for 
 Home Rule, and don't want a settlement ; but if a good 
 bill were introduced the people would not mind them.
 
 IN CONNAUGHT. 21/ 
 
 The priests will give sounder advice ; and without any 
 advice at all the farmers will look out for their own in- 
 terests. Then the same feeling which prompts a man to 
 buy land will make him keep it ; he will be as loath to 
 sell as he now is to give it up to the landlord, and land- 
 lordism will not spring up again. 
 
 " The landlords are few in number and the tenants 
 many ; so of the two, it is better that the former should 
 suffer ; besides, the ruin of the tenants would not benefit 
 the landlords, for they could not make the land pay with- 
 out them. 
 
 " From Home Rule, impossibilities are expected, and 
 changes that will require vast sums of money. A Home 
 Rule Parliament will have no capital and little credit, 
 and the only means of raising money will be by taxation. 
 What the people expect to do is to tax imports, and they 
 argue that that will both fill the exchequer and encour- 
 age native industries. The two objects are probably in- 
 consistent." 
 
 On the way back to Ballinasloe I stopped at a village, 
 Kilreegan. An old farmer with white hair talked in a 
 loud, good-natured voice. 
 
 "Michael Henry Burke, of Ballydoogan Castle," he 
 shouted, "is the best landlord in Ireland. His father 
 was a good one too, and gave good reductions. We pay 
 a good landlord his rents with satisfaction. He was in 
 Texas for four or five years, and our tongues could not 
 express our gladness to get him home. 
 
 " In his father's time, if we wanted some timber, what- 
 ever we wanted, he never refused us. 
 
 " Lord Clonbrook was very popular, but he evicted a 
 man some days ago, and when some of the tenants asked 
 for a reduction, he evicted them.
 
 2l8 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " Nineteen, twenty, and thirty pounds I have known 
 added to the rents as costs on Lord Clanricarde's prop- 
 erty. 
 
 " I am seventy-seven, and the corn-crop is the poorest 
 I ever saw, and the meadowing never was so light. The 
 potatoes are good, but the cabbages have failed. We can- 
 not live by the profits of the land." 
 
 Pat Gallagher, a tenant of Lord Wallescourt, was 
 standing by : 
 
 " I have seven acres, rented at seven pounds, and am 
 now evicted. The tenants asked for thirty per cent., and 
 only fifteen was offered. 
 
 " The locality is not able to pay taxes, much less rent. 
 
 " What do I do with my land ? Begorra, I can't tell." 
 
 Here a workingman broke in with : " We can't get any 
 work. Half a day, during the harvest, and during the 
 winter nothing but an odd day or two. The farmers are 
 too poor to give us work ; they could n't if they owned 
 their holdings."
 
 PART IV.— IN ULSTER- 
 
 GWEEDORE AN EVICTION 
 
 Twenty-two miles from Letterkenny, in the centre of 
 a wild, desolate region, is a large, square, wooden build- 
 ing, enclosing a broad courtyard — this is the Gweedore 
 Hotel. Behind us, on either side of the long, dreary 
 road stretch hills that seem little more than vast piles of 
 loose stones, variegated with patches of bog and grass, 
 black and green-bronzed over with the fading heather ; 
 the desolation unbroken save when a black-faced sheep 
 peers curiously through the low wire fences that reach 
 from rock to rock, or where a thin blue line of smoke 
 curls from a tiny stone hut nestling by a narrow ribbon 
 of potato ridges in the rare shelter of a wind-driven 
 clump of trees. Before us towers that beautiful moun- 
 tain Erigal, a pyramid of gleaming limestone ; at our 
 feet are neally trimmed hedges of purple-crimson fuschias, 
 and, when all is still, to our ears the light wind brings 
 the murmur of the neighboring ocean. 
 
 This is the property of Captain Hill, the eldest son of 
 Lord George Hill, who in his day was regarded as a 
 model philanthropic landlord. 
 
 " He built the hotel," said a business man, a strong 
 Nationalist, who for fourteen years had been familiar 
 with the place. " He tried to encourage neatness and in- 
 dustry by offering yearly prizes to the tenant who kept 
 the tidiest house or who made the best frieze. He was a 
 constant visitor at the hotel, and took the greatest inter- 
 
 219
 
 220 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 est in the property. The great wrong he did was to let 
 the commonage of the mountains to Scotch graziers, 
 and then to fine the people for the destruction of the 
 sheep, which was only in part malicious. Except for 
 this, there was little difference between Lord George 
 and his tenantry." 
 
 To the loss of their ancient rights of grazing the 
 people attribute their poverty ; but the graziers are to- 
 day more hard hit by the fall in prices than any other 
 class in Ireland, and there must be other causes to ac- 
 count for the unquestionable poverty of the people. 
 The average size of the holdings is not over four acres, 
 but thirty years ago these small tenants were fairly well 
 to do, for Gweedore was famous for its lobsters, which 
 were exported as far as Paris, and the kelp which 
 abounded all along the coast was extremely valuable. 
 Now the lobster fishery is exhausted, and the price of 
 kelp is low. In such a district the pressure of American 
 competition is severely felt, for the smallest rent cannot 
 be paid without ready money, and farm produce is be- 
 coming more and more difficult to dispose of at prices 
 sufficient to meet the cost of carriage to the nearest mar- 
 ket. The average rent of a holding is twenty-five shil- 
 lings a year, but even this cannot be collected without 
 threats and violence. For this purpose some seventy- 
 five of the Royal Irish Constabulary have been quartered 
 for the last month in the garrets of the hotel stables. A 
 resident magistrate and a stipendiary magistrate are 
 waiting the directions of the agent, Colonel Dobbing, 
 and in an angle of the road, anxiously watching the 
 movements of the police, may be seen the sturdy form of 
 the parish priest, James McFadden, and beside him in 
 long cloaks Professor Stuart, M.P., and friends.
 
 IN ULSTER. 221 
 
 Colonel Bobbing was the agent of the late Lord Lei- 
 trim who with his driver and footman was murdered 
 some years ago. To pacify the tenants he was dismissed 
 by the present Lord Leitrim, and was recently appointed 
 agent to Captain Hill. "Father McFadden," said my 
 informant, "protested against the appointment, and the 
 tenants refused to have any thing to do with him, though 
 they were willing to pay their rents to Robertson of the 
 Hotel or to Hill himself." Until the present Land Act 
 comparatively few of the tenants were able to go mto 
 court, because so many of them had sublet. In the 
 spring, several were evicted and were allowed to return 
 as caretakers on a promise by the parish priest that they 
 would either pay or go out quietly in six months. Such 
 at least is Dobbing's account. " Bobbing," said a visit- 
 ing priest to me as he offered me a seat on his car, 
 "Bobbing is a descendant of Heppenstal, the walkmg 
 gallows,' who in '98 used to hang criminals on his own 
 neck, he was so tall and strong." 
 
 Father McFadden is beloved by the people as much 
 as Colonel Bobbing is hated. About 1872 he was ap- 
 pointed curate in the Rosses, and won a great reputation 
 for zeal and benevolence, starting the temperance move- 
 ment and harmonizing the people. A few years later he 
 was appointed parish priest of Gweedore, the youngest 
 priest in the diocese, at a place requiring great energy. 
 
 Here he built a parochial schoolhouse and decorated 
 the church " A stream passed under the church," said 
 an enthusiastic admirer, " and a few years ago it was 
 flooded during service. He had to get up and cling to the 
 altar, and two persons were drowned. Father McFadden 
 had a new channel dug for the stream on one side of the 
 church ; and all these things he did with money collected
 
 222 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 outside of the parish. Almost all the people he has now 
 got enrolled in a temperance society, and he leads them 
 and protects them in every thing." 
 
 Such are the priest and the agent. It is perhaps not 
 surprising that, in the words of a magistrate, " Father 
 McFadden and Colonel Dobbing are like cat and dog. 
 Dobbing insists on the tenants paying at least half the 
 costs of the ejectment proceedings, some thing like ^^250, 
 in addition to the rent, and that Father McFadden will 
 never allow." 
 
 Soon the long line of constables, in their blue military 
 uniforms and forage caps, began to move, headed by the 
 Stipendiary Magistrate, a mild-mannered gentleman with 
 but little heart in the work, and Colonel Dobbing with a 
 rifle on his shoulder, a rigid, uncompromising, pale-faced, 
 and haughty man. Two miles from the hotel the police 
 halted by the roadside, while the agent and the magis- 
 trate marched slowly up a sloping field to the door of a 
 little cottage, — a rude stone hut, with one window, 
 thatched with " scraws " of sod, green with grass and 
 weeds. " Here lives Margaret Doughan," said a voice at 
 my side. " The rent is fifteen shillings a year for the 
 cottage and a patch of land, and she has turf from a bog 
 and grazing on the hillside free. The landlord built the 
 house himself at a cost of seven pounds, and now he is 
 puHing it down. I used to be bailiff here, but for the 
 last six years have had no dealings with the people. 
 When I did I found them the best people in the world." 
 
 The agent stepped quickly to the door to demand pos- 
 session, and at that moment Father McFadden ran up to 
 him, crying out, '' I have a proposal to make." 
 
 " Will you pay the cash .? " demanded Colonel Dobbing. 
 
 " No ! "
 
 IN ULSTER. 223 
 
 "Then go ahead," he shouted to the emergency men. 
 
 " I offer two thirds of one year's rent, if all arrears 
 are forgiven ! " cried McFadden, in great excitement. 
 
 " Mr. McFadden, walk off, sir ! " shouted the Colonel, 
 now thoroughly aroused. Four or five rough-looking men 
 seize long iron bars and begin striking at the door. In a 
 few minutes it is torn down and discloses a rough barri- 
 cade or rather a wall of large, flat stones five feet high, and 
 from behind it a shower of hot water issues in a cloud of 
 steam. Several constables now join in the fray and tak- 
 ing shelter under cover of the wall on each side of the 
 door dart forward from time to time, ducking to avoid 
 the water that jets out in intermittent streams, tug at the 
 stones in the doorway, and finally carry them off in tri- 
 umph as they are loosened by the continuous blows of 
 the emergency men. At last they leap over the ruins 
 and reappear with the still struggling warriors,— an old 
 woman in a patch-work dress of rags, a boy and a girl, 
 and a neighbor called in to assist in the defence of the 
 homestead. This valiant neighbor is— a sturdy young 
 married woman with an unweaned baby at her breast. 
 The contents of the hut are now removed, one by one, — 
 an old bench, a few pots and pans, and some soiled 
 blankets. 
 
 The eviction was scarcely over when up jumped 
 Father McFadden and again confronted Colonel Bobb- 
 ing, and in an instant it became clear that at the bottom 
 of the difficulty at Gweedore was a personal contest for 
 mastery between these two men, the aristocrat and the 
 peasant, both equally sincere and equally uncompromis- 
 ing. 
 
 " I am authorized," said the Champion of the Peo- 
 ple, " to make a most generous offer. I offer, in the name
 
 224 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 of Professor Stuart here, two thirds of the whole year's 
 rent of the agricultural holdings on the estate, ;^6oo or 
 jQ^oo, if all arrears are wiped off and the same reduction 
 allowed for the future." 
 
 "I refuse to allow any interference." 
 
 " I am sure," retorted McFadden, not uncourteously, 
 " you cannot arrange the affairs of the estate without my 
 assistance. I represent the people." 
 
 " I wish to make this offer," interrupted Professor 
 Stuart, gently, " believing I know the condition of the 
 tenants." 
 
 " I don't believe you can," was the reply. " You 
 have got your facts from the camp of the enemy. I 
 will discuss the matter with you at the hotel, but not 
 here, and not until these caretakers have given up pos- 
 session." 
 
 " I want to stop the whole wretched business," said 
 Professor Stuart as he turned away sadly. 
 
 The agent and the magistrate then went up the hill to 
 another little hut to demand possession, but, on the priest 
 interfering, it was found that the warrant was directed to 
 a widow who had lately died, instead of to her three 
 Kiaughters, who were now the tenants ; and the magistrate 
 descended to the road in disgust, amid the shouts of the 
 bystanders, and marched the constables quickly back 
 again to the hotel. 
 
 One of the officials who had watched the scene 
 throughout, expressed what seemed to be the general 
 opinion : " Any settlement almost would be for the 
 benefit of the landlord : for, in the first place, he will get 
 some money down, and then the combination would be 
 broken, and a great many will pay who dare not do so 
 under the 'Plan of Campaign.' The postmistress here,
 
 IN ULSTER. 225 
 
 for example, would be glad to pay, for if she were turned 
 out she would lose her situation." 
 
 A neighboring hill-top was black with people, watching 
 our doings, for the priest had forbidden them to come 
 any nearer. A mile from the hotel they met us, a great 
 crowd, clamorous and excited. In a moment the priest 
 stopped his car, and was standing on a low stone wall, 
 with the English visitors beside him. In the hush that 
 followed. Professor Stuart began to speak : " I only wish 
 there were a continuous stream of Englishmen coming 
 here. An eviction in England is merely a house-flitting ; 
 it is not so here. Here you have reclaimed the soil and 
 built your house, and are turned out of the holding you 
 have made productive. In England a farm is let with 
 the house and out-houses already built ; here you make 
 the land itself out of the rock, and when you improve it 
 the landlord raises the rent." (A Catholic curate beside 
 me admitted this was not true now.) " When the English 
 people understand that they will turn out Lord Salisbury 
 and bring in Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 " I would suggest that if Colonel Dobbing took a sail 
 to Tory Island to-morrow, and then a few storms arose, 
 no one here would feel any particular pain. 
 
 " From seven o'clock we have been making offers and 
 they have been refused. I offered to pay the present 
 year's rent, with certain reductions, if all arrears were 
 wiped out, and the evictions stayed. Many an English 
 landlord would be delighted to-day if he got such an 
 offer. These evictions will sound in the ears of Eng- 
 land, and it will be said the landlord had an offer and 
 refused it. 
 
 " It is a crime to evict, but it is a bigger crime to send 
 people to the workhouse or make them emigrate. It will
 
 226 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 be sand in the eyes and vinegar in the mouth of the 
 landlords if you build the evicted tenants houses on the 
 land and keep them there." 
 
 " I say," continued Mr, Beal, an unsuccessful candi- 
 date for M.P. for St. Pancras, London, " I say that any 
 man who says that Home Rule means Separation, says a 
 black and infamous lie. Is it Home Rule you want or 
 Separation ? " (A voice : " Home Rule, not Separa- 
 tion ! ") " I can now say I have seen Irish Nationalists 
 and they do not want Separation. 
 
 " Then, again, the smallest outrage will be magnified a 
 thousand-fold by the jealous lenses of the Tory party, so 
 commit no outrages. Those who have justice on their 
 side need not break the law. Let the Tory government 
 break the law, as they did at Mitchelstown." 
 
 Up spoke Mr. S., the secretary of the London Liberal 
 and Radical Union : " I have seen the monstrous in- 
 humanity of your landlords : but the Liberal party has 
 put its hand to the plough, and will not draw it back 
 until Home Rule is won. / want England also to have 
 Home Rule, and London too." 
 
 Large raindrops began to fall, and the people were 
 dismissed by Father McFadden. " We are about being 
 evicted by the weather. You will keep the principles 
 you have observed the last few days. It is abominable 
 to have these atrocities carried out in a hidden way, and 
 you are justified in attending them. Three evictions re- 
 main in the body of the parish. If they come off we will 
 meet to-morrow without fear of the proclamations, which 
 are not worth the paper they are written on. Be satisfied 
 of this. 
 
 " The full rents Captain Hill will never be able to ob- 
 tam : not even with the English fleet by sea and the
 
 7- IN ULSTER. 22.7 
 
 army by land. It is impossible. And of the costs he 
 will never get one farthing. We will never do the impos- 
 sible ; we will never do the unreasonable. 
 
 " To-day the agent went up the hill to that hut and 
 was going to pull it down without a legal warrant. That 
 is the sort of man you have to deal with. In our absence 
 he would ride rough-shod over the people." 
 
 The rest of the speech was in Irish. The meeting 
 closed with cheers for a constable who, the day before, 
 had refused to obey an order to load. 
 
 From Father McFadden some further facts about these 
 evictions were obtained. Margaret Doughan, evicted to- 
 day, had been evicted before, and was in as caretaker. 
 Her rent was twenty-five shillings, and the legal costs 
 were;^4 17.^. 4^'.' 
 
 Seventy-three tenants had gone into court to get judi- 
 cial rents fixed. The rents due from sixty-nine of these 
 tenants amounted to ^156 4.$'. i^., which arrears brought 
 up to ;^235 4^-. 331/., and the rental fixed by the court 
 was ^95 6s. 
 
 In the evening a neighboring farmer was talking about 
 a proposal made by Father McFadden to buy the prop- 
 erty for ten years' purchase of two thirds of the annual 
 rent. " I would give twelve years' purchase of a fair 
 rent, but not over ten years' purchase of the present 
 rents, which would make our annual payments forty per 
 cent, of what we pay now. I can't make more than that. 
 
 " Many of the people, though, will not be satisfied with 
 any thing. They seem to want the landlord to plough 
 the land and pay them for digging the potatoes. 
 
 ' Sheriff's fee when the writ was lodged, . £\ \s. dJ. 
 Execution fee ..... ^i. 
 Costs in court : solicitor's fee . £2 15J. 10^.
 
 228 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " The cause of the agitation is simply that prices have 
 fallen to half what they were. Five years ago, in 1882, 
 the people would have been glad to give twenty years' 
 purchase of the land, now they would hardly be satisfied 
 with ten. 
 
 *' Good landlords are treated now no better than the 
 bad, because before the Land Act they all acted as a 
 body, whenever the tenants tried to improve their posi- 
 tion, and because since the Land Act, instead of being 
 as kind to their tenants as before, the good landlords 
 have become stubborn and enforced all their legal rights 
 to the utmost, until they have all the tenants set against 
 them. 
 
 " The settlement of the land question would not stop 
 the agitation for Home Rule, but it would take the edge 
 off it. One has been the feeder for the other. We are 
 bound up with England, and would be injured by any 
 thing like separation. 
 
 " My hopes for the future rest on the fact that the peo- 
 ple are gaining so rapidly in intelligence and education, 
 and that the things that in the past caused ill-feeling are 
 disappearing, and will be avoided in the future." 
 
 ABOUT FALCARRAGH. 
 
 Falcarragh, or Cross Roads, is a little fishing village on 
 the bleak Donegal coast, opposite Tory Island, one long 
 street of two-storied, slated, stone houses. These houses 
 were built twenty years ago, when times were good, and 
 give the place an air of prosperity that is perhaps mis- 
 leading. So at least Father Stephens seemed to think, 
 the sturdy, athletic young curate, who has since been im- 
 prisoned under the "Crimes Act." 
 
 " Five or six years ago/' he said, " ;i^i,ooo a week was
 
 IN ULSTER. 229 
 
 paid in this parish for bog ore. The carters used to 
 spend their money freely, and as many as ten ships at a 
 time were owned here in this one industry. That busi- 
 ness has died out. 
 
 " The kelp trade also is going. Kelp once fetched ;£z 
 a ton, instead of thirty shillings, and now there is only 
 one buyer of kelp here where there used to be three or 
 four. 
 
 " The fall in prices has further impoverished us. Half 
 the pigs were driven home again from the last great pig 
 fair, for no money could be got for them. Oats that sold 
 for a shilling a stone are selling now for sixpence. 
 
 " All the men here go to Scotland as harvesters, and 
 the price of labor has fallen. The children over ten 
 years of age go out to service to the farmers in the Lag- 
 gan, the grazing district between Letterkenny, Lifford, 
 and Derry. The children are sent in droves to the spring 
 hiring-fair at Letterkenny, and the farmers, Scotch Pres- 
 byterians, examine them as they would animals, and pay 
 for them according to their condition. ' 
 
 " The landlords here were very niggardly. Twenty 
 years ago there was n't a church or a school in the town, 
 for the landlords would n't give us land to build on. 
 Finally one gentleman, Daniel Sweeney, twelve years 
 ago, gave us land for a schoolhouse and a church too, 
 and he was so boycotted by the neighboring gentry that 
 he had to go away. 
 
 " The great act of tyranny was the taking of the moun- 
 tain pastures from the people. They used, from time 
 immemorial, to send their beasts to the mountains ; but 
 thirty years ago the landlords combined to take the 
 
 ' Such hiring-fairs were once common throughout the country, and 
 even in England. They are simply the survival of an old custom.
 
 230 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 mountains from them and let them to Scotch graziers. 
 Many of the sheep disappeared, probably from the sever- 
 ity of the weather, for it is the custom here to winter the 
 sheep in the kitchens. The landlords then applied to the 
 grand juries to have taxes assessed on the county for ma- 
 licious injury, and thousands of pounds were taken from 
 the poor people, who have not yet recovered. 
 
 '' We want Home Rule, for that will develop our in- 
 dustries. What is needed is capital. No one will invest 
 now, but as soon as the agitation ceases, as it will under 
 Home Rule, money will come here in abundance." 
 
 After service in the beautiful large stone church, I 
 went to the weekly meeting of the National League, in a 
 large barnlike room. Father Stephens presided over 
 an assembly of earnest-looking farmers. Resolutions 
 were adopted sympathizing with the tenantry of Gwee- 
 dore ; and then the good Father urged all present to file 
 without delay notices under the new Land Act, and gave 
 advice to all who asked it, usually farmers served with 
 writs, who did not know what their rights were or what 
 to do. 
 
 For a long time we sat and chatted. Said one farmer, 
 like the rest in rough, warm home-spun : " Children 
 from seven to ten years old go to Letterkenny for from 
 sixteen shillings to a pound for the six summer months. 
 There is not a man here who has n't been through this." 
 
 "Olphert, the landlord here," chimed in another, 
 " would not give any land for a church, and would n't 
 allow any house in Falcarragh to be used for a school." 
 
 " The people here usually wear lapins, stockings with- 
 out soles." 
 
 " We have n't any coin at all here most of the time ; 
 for six months in the year the only currency is eggs."
 
 IN ULSTER. 231 
 
 George Brewster owns the hotel and several houses. 
 I asked him how Falcarragh came to look so prosperous ? 
 " Why," said he, " some years ago I made as much as 
 ;^i,2oo from the bog ore, which is now all used up. 
 Many of these houses were built then. With few excep- 
 tions, however, American or Australian money builds the 
 houses in Ireland. That pine house with the Welsh tiles 
 was built by a man who is indeed a publican, but he 
 got the money to build it from his brother in Australia." 
 
 "Ah ! " said an old farmer, " a farm by the sea-shore 
 that could pay ^£2^ a few years since cannot make ^15 
 rent now. Flax is ;£2 is. a hundredweight. I saw it 
 sold for thirty shillings last Friday in Letterkenny, and 
 in i860, at Cookstown, I saw seventeen shillings paid for 
 a stone. Corn used to be sixteen shillings a stone ; it is 
 now from four to six shillings. I have two cattle I 
 bought seven months ago for ;^i2, and if any man will 
 give me ^^lo for them now he can have them, though 
 the six months' grass is worth at least thirty shillings." 
 
 The next day muffled horses were being walked up 
 and down the street by diminutive jockeys, and the little 
 town was crowded with excited farmers and fishermen, 
 for it was the day of the autumn horse races. The races 
 were announced to take place in a large level field offered 
 by Mr. Olphert ; but early in the morning the crowds 
 were addressed by Father Stephens and Father McFad- 
 den of Gweedore. " The landlords must be boycotted," 
 they shouted ; " the races must be run on the shore, and 
 twenty pounds of the League funds will be given as 
 prizes." The jockeys cursed, but obeyed, and the horses 
 galloped and slipped on the broad, flat sands, where the 
 sea-water lingered in an infinity of pools and runlets, 
 while the people cheered lustily — weather-beaten Tory-
 
 232 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 Islanders, farmers in gray home-spun coats, and women 
 with picturesque red shawls and petticoats. In the even- 
 ing pandemonium reigned, and " poteen." 
 
 WITH A DRUMMER IN DONEGAL. 
 
 Such a jollv, stout, rosy-faced fellow was McCarthy, 
 now on his third trip through Donegal this year, a drum- 
 mer for tea, sugar, drapery, spirits, and cordials, and to 
 crown all, a life insurance agent as well. " I know every 
 man, woman, and child in Donegal," he cried, as he 
 slapped me on the back. " Up with your bag on my car, 
 and off with me to Creeslough." Away we drove, up hill 
 and down, by bleak inlets of the sea and stony valleys, 
 every view dominated by Muckish, that lumbering moun- 
 tain, with its " pig-shaped back " capped with snow. 
 Hail fell viciously as we passed a great stone workhouse, 
 and reached neat, picturesque Dunfanaghy. 
 
 " This country is rich in natural wealth," said the 
 drummer, as he flicked meditatively at the pony's tail. 
 " In Erigal there is indigo, good for making blue-balls 
 and for dyeing the cloth the natives weave. Silver is 
 found there too. In Muckish there is some of the finest 
 flint-glass sand in the world. The gray and red granite 
 there is equal to Aberdeen granite. Only Mr. Olphert's 
 exorbitant demands prevented a London company from 
 building a tramway to get it. How the country v/ould 
 be benefited by granite works, for the pottle needed for 
 the polishing would make a distillery profitable ! 
 
 "All along the coast is found Carrigan moss, used 
 medicinally, and in Germany turned to account in finish- 
 ing collars and linen fronts. There is a buyer of the 
 moss in Derrybeg, who ships it to Derry and thence to 
 Germany.
 
 IN ULSTER. 233 
 
 ** From the kelp on the shore they make iodine and 
 potash, and the refuse does for manure. The importa- 
 tion of iodine from South America has lowered the 
 price, but it is rising now, as that supply is failing. 
 
 " The water power of Donegal is so great, and labor 
 here so cheap, that in the manufacture of flannels and 
 tweeds our people could compete with the world ; and 
 the sea-weed furnishes the finest dyes imaginable. 
 
 " The fisheries should be encouraged by loans from 
 the government for the purchase of better gear. The 
 fishermen need smacks to go out to the banks, for, with 
 ordinary boats, they have to run in and leave their nets 
 at the least storm." 
 
 We are passing now through the beautiful demesne of 
 Stuart of Ards, seven miles from gate to gate. Magnifi- 
 cent forests of oak and fir fringe the road ; and at every 
 turning one catches a glimpse of many-cornered Muckish 
 or of the glancing waters of Sheep Haven, and the bleak 
 coast beyond ; but every thing has fallen into melancholy 
 ruin : the leaves are ankle-deep in the paths ; gigantic 
 trees lie uprooted by the roadside ; while countless gray 
 rabbits are merrily leaping in the thick brown ferns. 
 Past large farm buildings, a little village in itself, we turn 
 up a steep road towards the tiny village of Creeslough. 
 A keen wind blows tempestuously from the Atlantic as 
 we mount the long flight of wooden steps to the hotel of 
 Edward Lafferty, as he stands expectant, twenty-six 
 stone of good-natured hospitality, by the side of a large 
 fuschia bush still in full bloom. 
 
 The drummer and the landlord, who is a farmer as 
 well, talked long and earnestly. " The country is really 
 bankrupt," said McCarthy. " Every one is in debt to the 
 banks.
 
 234 I^ CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " The farmers borrowed largely in the good times, and 
 put all the money into the land. Prices have fallen 
 since, and now the largest farm does n't make the inter- 
 est of the money spent upon it. The merchants for 
 years have been supporting the landlords. Here I know 
 all the debts, and the poorer the country is the deeper it 
 is in debt. Along the coast of Donegal there is not a 
 village where there is not three thousand pounds out- 
 standing, and if the farms were sold the proceeds would 
 not meet the indebtedness. 
 
 " Stir-about and potatoes are what the people live on. 
 All they buy from the shopkeepers is tea and drapery. 
 The blue cloth cloaks are, indeed, of West of England 
 manufacture, but the friezes they wear about Gweedore 
 are home-made." 
 
 " Yes," said Lafferty, " I agree. There is at least 
 ;!^3,ooo out in Creeslough and more in Dunfanaghy. 
 The banks have at last become shy of lending, except on 
 the best security. They pay one and a quarter per cent. 
 on ;^2oo, and less on larger deposits, and they charge 
 the people seven per cent, for the use of it." 
 
 " It is morally impossible," was their conclusion, "for 
 the land now to support the people living on it. No re- 
 mission of rent will help that, especially where the peo- 
 ple have never depended on the land but on kelp-picking 
 and going out to service. In Gweedore the people are 
 not able to live two months on what they get from the 
 land, and it is the same all along the coast. In Donegal 
 the people will never be able to live unless they get em- 
 ployment, but here are fisheries and water-power. Indus- 
 tries must be encouraged by the government ; and in the 
 greater part of the country no good can be done except 
 by protection duties. The same thing is true of England
 
 IN ULSTER. 235. 
 
 and Scotland. The expense of labor has been increasing 
 and the price of the product has been decreasing so fast 
 that protection has become necessary. 
 
 " Cattle are not paying. Flax has gone down. The 
 people have fallen back on pigs, and they are very low. 
 Pigs are the last resort, the people's little savings-banks. 
 Oats are i^\d. a stone, 7^/. for the best, and they used to 
 be \(id. and 17^. Sheep sell fairly. The people cannot 
 pay the shopkeepers, who give them a year or more, 
 while they get only three or four months' grace themselves. 
 The big farmers are losing all the time," continued the 
 drummer ; " the only restraining power at present is the 
 medium-sized farms, what a man can cultivate himself 
 without outside labor." 
 
 " How large would that be ? " I enquired. 
 
 "A man with two sons and two daughters," replied 
 Lafferty, " could cultivate from ten to twenty acres." 
 
 "If we had no rent," he said further, "we might live. 
 A mountain farmer with ^4, if the potatoes failed, could 
 buy meal for his pigs and be still a pound to the good ; 
 next year he would have more. Two pounds are a great 
 deal to a poor country farmer. In May such a man can 
 often not get a bit of meal, and an extra pound or two 
 would tide him over till the potatoes came. I believe, in 
 time, things will find their own level. No change of 
 government is necessary, except to one that will develop 
 the industries of the country." 
 
 The last thing I heard that night was the voice of Mc- 
 Carthy in the next room shouting : " It was a good thing 
 that Gladstone did not buy out the landlords ; the failure 
 of that bill has been the salvation of the country ! " 
 
 The next morning early we started again on our 
 rounds. One view was beautiful exceedingly, where
 
 236 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 from a high mountain road we looked down on the an- 
 cient, weather-stained Castle of Dove, seated on the 
 beach of a winding inlet of the sea, with golden strands 
 jutting by it far into the water, behind it yellowing woods, 
 and in front the bare, gray headland of Derg. 
 
 On the hillside an old man was digging potatoes ; we 
 called to him and went into his hut to try to sell him 
 some tea. No sign was on the door, but one of the side 
 rooms was a tiny shop, where eggs, butter, pipes and to- 
 bacco were lying promiscuously on dingy shelves, 
 " There is coal in this locality," grumbled our host, " but 
 the landlords won't let it be worked, for they claim the 
 mines and all minerals. They can't open them them- 
 selves for three fourths of them are bankrupt. The 
 country won't be opened up till we have Home Rule." 
 
 " Lord Leitrim has done some good," suggested the 
 drummer. ^' He built the houses at Dunfanaghy and 
 Creeslough. He made that fine market-place at Crees- 
 lough, and started the steamer from Milltown." 
 
 But the farmer was in a pessimistic mood. '' The 
 steamer has ruined the country. It has encouraged the 
 farmers to sell very cheap. It has left Milltown without 
 a penny. It takes away the little provision of the peo- 
 ple. Many a man who has a market is better wanting it. 
 As to the market-place in Creeslough it has done no 
 good, no one used it, and it was n't opened at all this 
 year. 
 
 " There is nothing for the laborers to do. A laboring 
 man in Milltown told me the other day he always got 
 employment till this steamer came. 
 
 " What is wanted is employment and opportunity to 
 earn money. 
 
 ** Things are getting worse every year. Land at the
 
 IN ULSTER. 237 
 
 present time is not worth any rent. Flax is the only thing 
 that sells at all. Potatoes are a good crop, but oats are 
 too low to be worth threshing. For eggs we pay only Zd. 
 a dozen, and eggs are depended upon to support the 
 house." 
 
 " They are shipped to Glasgow chiefly," suggested the 
 drummer, " for they expect larger eggs in England than 
 we raise. Well," he added, *' I never found it so hard to 
 get money. Tea is cheap. Can I do any thing for you ? " 
 
 " I can get good tea at Milltown for two shillings a 
 pound," was the only answer, but the drummer spread 
 out his little packages of samples on the table, and the 
 farmer's wife began to inspect them minutely, rubbing 
 the little black grains between her palms, and biting and 
 sniffing at them with an air of extreme intelligence. 
 
 In the next house we stopped at I listened sympatheti- 
 cally to a long complaint about the rights of the tenants 
 to a strip of salt meadow by the waterside, now claimed 
 by the landlord ; and thence we hastened to the house of 
 the parish priest, an elderly gentleman, with the most 
 polished and amiable manners in the world. 
 
 " Ten acres," he said, as he poured us out some whis- 
 key, " is the average size of a farm about here, including 
 arable and grazing land, but some have only an acre 
 or an acre and a half to two acres and a half arable 
 land. 
 
 " Lord Leitrim is the principal landlord, and the rents 
 are high. I, for one, pay ^6 7^. for six statute acres on 
 Cochrane's property, and for a farm of eight acres near 
 by a widow pays ^^8 icy. I have a right of commonage 
 of ten or fifteen acres on the mountain, but it would n't 
 pay to put cattle there. 
 
 " The rents are often kept up by people who come back
 
 238 JN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 from America and pay three or four times the value of 
 the land for a farm to die on. 
 
 " The people raise a little oats, flax, and potatoes. 
 Oats and flax are very low ; flax from here sold a fort- 
 night ago for two shillings and eight pence a stone at 
 Letterkenny. Very few use oatmeal ; they usually get In- 
 dian meal, and often feed the pigs on it. A cow or two 
 is often kept. Cash is got only from pigs and butter and 
 eggs. A little flannel is woven here, but no tweed. There 
 is some fishing of flat fish, sole, and cod, but only near 
 shore and from ' corraghs,' of which some th'rty are 
 owned in the parish. 
 
 " My people go out to service, not so much to the Lag- 
 gan as to Milltown and Rathmelton, but only for the 
 summer months. There is not much suffering here, if you 
 think people who live on dry potatoes don't suffer, for 
 few eat butter except in winter, and meat or fowl only 
 once or twice a year. 
 
 '' The widow who pays ^8 \os. is going into court. 
 The landlord offered to make it ;^6, but I would n't let 
 her accept it, it was too much ; and yet the land is con- 
 sidered good land. The rents all along the coast would 
 not have been paid for the last twenty-five years but for 
 American money. 
 
 Lord Leitrim's steamer instead of doing harm has been 
 useful to this parish. We had to go to Milltown, four- 
 teen or fifteen miles off, to get a market ; now we have 
 one at our doors. A chicken used to sell for twopence, 
 now it brings eightpence. 
 
 " A Purchase Bill would help the people, but slowly, 
 for what they need is employment, the encouragement of 
 industries, the opening up of the country. Whether this 
 would be broueht about by Home Rule, I don't know.
 
 IN ULSTER. 239 
 
 There is a sentiment in favor of it, but I have no positive 
 opinion. It may be said that our laws are now made 
 chiefly by Englishmen and Scotchmen." 
 
 Many were the anecdotes that my companion poured 
 into my willing ears as we drove rapidly along the dark- 
 ening roads. These are samples : 
 
 " On Rutland Island there used to be, before 1848, a 
 sailors' home, salt-pans, a custom-house, and a town as 
 large as Falcarragh, for a great herring fishery was car- 
 ried on there, and one could pass from one island to 
 another on the decks of fishing vessels. One year not a 
 fish was to be seen, and now fishermen have to go out to 
 sea, outside of Aran Island, beyond the course of the 
 Anchor Line steamers. 
 
 " A Major Barton has a property at Greenfield, in 
 Feenit. The charges on it are so great as to leave him 
 little or no surplus now, and as twenty per cent, reduc- 
 tion will probably be taken off under the new Land Act, 
 he could n't live off the land, though even that reduction 
 will give the tenants little enough. The Major is a magis- 
 trate, but he is now starting in the provision and whiskey 
 trade, and I have his opening orders. 
 
 " Stuart of Ards used to spend an immense amount of 
 money here, and provided much employment, but later 
 on he got into difficulties, through no fault of his own, 
 and now he has n't been seen in the County Donegal for 
 the last twelve years." 
 
 It became necessary to say " Good-bye " to my kind, 
 energetic, intelligent friend. " Remember," he said. 
 " that the farmers cannot be bettered so long as present 
 prices continue, even as peasant proprietors, and the only 
 thing that can improve their condition is a protective 
 tariff, which we cannot get until our laws are made by a 
 Home-Rule Parliament at Dublin."
 
 240 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 A MANUFACTURER IN COUNTY TYRONE. 
 
 As one travels from Donegal to Belfast, the signs of 
 industry seem to increase with every mile of the way. A 
 little village I came to one evening, that was nothing but 
 a large manufactory ; tidy operatives, cottages clustered 
 round an immense flax-spinning mill. The wealthy owner 
 of the mill is a representative Ulster man ; a devoted Glad- 
 stonian in the days of the Reform Bill, and now an ardent 
 Unionist, a practical business man, and successful, though 
 still young. He began by speaking about Gweedore. 
 
 " The average rental there is about twenty-four shil- 
 lings, and yet Father McFadden has made all this row 
 to get off thirty-three per cent., an average of eight shil- 
 lings a year. What good would that do them ? 
 
 " ' Compulsory land purchase is necessary,' said a 
 Catholic Divisional Magistrate to me the other day, ' to 
 make the tenants settle down in peace.' Now local guar- 
 anties alone can make purchase practicable, for only by 
 some such system will any pressure be put on a man by 
 his neighbors to make him pay his instalments. Suppose 
 that in one electoral division there are ten farmers ; if 
 one of them is a defaulter, his default will raise the 
 amount payable by the rest, and it will be their interest 
 to get in a new and a strong man in his place, instead of 
 boycotting any new-comer. You suggest that a guaran- 
 ty involves the existence of a surplus fund ; but there is 
 a surplus fund. The value of the land io made up of the 
 tenants' interest and the landlords' interest, and both to- 
 gether would be clearly a good security for the latter 
 value alone. If you say that local boards will often re- 
 fuse to give any guaranty, and that they cannot be forced 
 to, the answer is simple. Don't let that particular local- 
 ity purchase.
 
 IN ULSTER. 241 
 
 " Some of the landlords will suffer, but though in the 
 north they are a superior class, in the south and west 
 they are, many of them, a wretched lot, who have incomes 
 of only three or four hundred pounds, and who think of 
 nothing but amusing themselves. 
 
 "The landlords acted patriotically in refusing Glad- 
 stone's Purchase Bill. They would n't bring the country 
 to ruin for a sop of that sort. There is plenty of land 
 about here worth twenty-two years' purchase, and most 
 of the land in Ireland is worth ten ; but there are little 
 holdings in the west, bog and mountain, that it would 
 be criminal to allow the tenants to buy at any price. 
 Twenty-two years' purchase all round was obviously 
 unjust. 
 
 " Even with a peasant proprietary, prosperity is not 
 assured. In Belgium the most fearful rack-renting exists ; 
 very short leases are usual there, and just as soon as a 
 small tenant improves, his rent is raised ; but the people 
 don't mind that so much, because the new landlords are 
 of their own class. 
 
 " The first thing needed is the opening up of the con- 
 gested districts. The government must do that, whether 
 it pays or not. The government has been too niggardly, 
 and, as in the Light Railway Act, has always exacted the 
 strongest guaranties from local bodies. In opening up 
 the country, the expense ought not to be charged to the 
 localities immediately benefited. 
 
 " The desire the people have for protection is very un- 
 fortunate. Ireland is not rich enough to consume its 
 own manufactures ; we shall always have to depend on 
 our export trade. Under protection the cost of neces- 
 saries will be higher, and so the cost of labor. This is a 
 good climate for manufacturing, from its moisture and
 
 242 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 even temperature, and labor is very cheap. These are 
 our only advantages. Cheap labor enables us to sell all 
 over Europe, as I do ; but if we had protection we 
 could n't compete abroad at all. There is so much com- 
 petition, as it is, that the greatest patience and persever- 
 ance is necessary to make any manufacture successful, 
 but the people talk as though they could jump into 
 manufacturing at one bound. 
 
 " As business men, we are here absolutely opposed to 
 Home Rule. The Nationalists may want to encourage 
 my business, but every idea I have of justice, honesty, 
 and liberty is opposed to their practices and principles. 
 Our opinion ought to have weight, for what is the value 
 to a country of a lot of uncultivated, ignorant people in 
 comparison with an educated, industrious, manufacturing 
 class. Gladstone's bill was an absurdity in proposing 
 that we should continue to contribute to the imperial 
 exchequer and yet cease to take any part in imperial 
 affairs. We are determined not to allow ourselves to be 
 separated from England. To my mind the whole thing 
 is now completely over. All, except the most ignorant 
 electors, have learnt that we have made up our minds, 
 and that it is impossible to force a division upon two 
 million of the most industrious and wealthy people in 
 the country. The Irish will never get Home Rule with- 
 out fighting for it, and they don't dare to fight. I feel 
 sure that Ulster would fight, if a Home-Rule bill were 
 passed, and I would join the Ulster men. 
 
 " Local self-government is a different thing, and we 
 believe in it. Questions about railroads and water-sup- 
 plies, and local or private bills generally should be passed 
 upon by county boards, or by provincial boards sitting 
 in the capital of each province. These boards could not
 
 IN ULSTER. 243 
 
 be purely elective at the outset, but should be ap- 
 pointed. 
 
 " The misery of the west and south is largely due to 
 its being a Catholic country. I do not venture to have 
 more than half my workmen Catholics ; if I had more 
 my mills would soon be closed, for the priests would 
 make us stop work on saints' days, and would insist on all 
 the overseers being Catholics by threatening to strike if 
 we refused. Now we are independent of them. The 
 priests do evil that good may come, and join the League, 
 whose principles they detest, for the sake of keeping their 
 influence. The old Catholic curate here told me he dis- 
 approved of the League, and yet now he makes Nation- 
 alist speeches in public. 
 
 " The linen trade is said to be shaky, but in fact more 
 looms are going in Ireland now than ever before, and 
 there is more demand for labor. It is true that the 
 profits of the capitalists are diminishing, but so long as 
 the labor bills are as they were there is no loss to the 
 community." 
 
 CHANCE ACQUAINTANCES AT DUNGANNON. 
 
 Dungannon is a well-built, attractive town, the centre 
 of an agricultural district, and on that account deserted 
 and dead-and-alive every day in the week except Thurs- 
 day, the market day. Then the streets are crowded and 
 the shops thronged. In the large square before the Bel- 
 fast Bank, the farmers range their carts along the cobble 
 stones that line each side of the road ; in temporary 
 booths are displayed apples, butter, eggs, crockery, and 
 plaster images, and the contents of the shops are trans- 
 ferred from windows to stands upon the sidewalk, — 
 drapery, joints of meat, and hardware.
 
 244 ^^ CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 '* This town is half Catholic and half Protestant," said 
 a clergyman, " and of the latter half are Presbyterians. 
 The lowest stratum is Catholic, the next, chiefly store- 
 keepers, Presbyterian and Methodist, and the gentry and 
 some of the poorest people are Church of Ireland. 
 
 " I consider that Gladstone is a traitor, and in old 
 times would have been hung as one. In the event of 
 Home Rule, however, I don't believe there would be 
 more than a riot in Ulster, and not a very serious riot." 
 
 " I would die rather than have Home Rule," exclaimed 
 Mr. Black, the genial proprietor of a comfortable hotel, 
 "yet I don't think there will be a real rising in Ulster ; 
 and while many rich men will go away, their places will 
 be taken by Americans with money. The evil, however, 
 of Home Rule will in the long run be greater than the 
 good." 
 
 "Where I live," broke in a farmer who was listening, 
 " in twelve townlands there are only forty-eight Catho- 
 lics. How are we going to have Home Rule there ? We 
 won't have it." 
 
 " We want Home Rule," replied another farmer, " be- 
 cause prices are so low. The Americans are sending us 
 cheap cattle and grain. We want a tax on those things." 
 
 In a cosy room, Hursen, the owner of a spirit grocery 
 and Secretary of the League, a neighboring shopkeeper, 
 and Flanigan, an auctioneer and news agent, discussed 
 freely and at great length the condition and needs of 
 Ireland. This was what was said : 
 
 " In County Fermanagh the Catholics slightly prepon- 
 derate, and we expect soon to return all Nationalist 
 members at the next election. In Dungannon the ma- 
 jority of the tradespeople are Unionists, and the same is 
 true of Cookstown, but at Strabane, the largest town in
 
 IN ULSTER. 245 
 
 the county, every member of the town council is a Na- 
 tionalist. 
 
 "Home Rule is needed," said Hursen, ''to develop 
 our resources, the woollen trade, the fisheries, our rivers 
 and harbors, our railroads, which should be owned by 
 the government, and our waste lands, which should be 
 reclaimed. We also want a final settlement of the land 
 question, and the establishment of a peasant proprietary. 
 
 " It is hard to get finality. Suppose our manufactures 
 increase and laborers multiply ; they might be much 
 tempted by the theory of Henry George that Davitt 
 preaches. However, popular as Davitt is, the farmers 
 would drag him off the platform if they half understood 
 his meaning." 
 
 I asked if the Nationalists would try to make a good 
 purchase bill successful. 
 
 " Many farmers," he replied, '' would be contented if 
 the land question were settled, and that is why they won't 
 get it settled till Home Rule and Land Purchase are 
 given us together. Home Rule will never be granted 
 unless it is asked for, and it must be demanded with the 
 same persistency and determination. We are not all 
 farmers, remember, and how about the men who are not 
 farmers, who are the cream of the whole country and the 
 leaders of the movement ? They will have to be reckoned 
 with. Parnell owes his great reputation largely to his 
 not having formulated the demands of the Irish people. 
 Look at his position towards the Land Act of 188 1. If 
 he had accepted it as final, how could he have demanded 
 a revision of the judicial rents this year? He is quite 
 right in throwing on the other side the task of making 
 any Land Act or Purchase Act successful. 
 
 "As to the land, I think we have done very well. We
 
 246 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 have certainly a tenure superior to any I know anywhere. 
 I do not look on the landlords as a class better or worse 
 than any other class in the country, but landlordism has 
 become unworkable, and a new system must be devised 
 that will involve fewer interests. 
 
 " No settlement of the land question will ever settle 
 me. Every thing we want is given us from fear and not 
 by reason. Catholic Emancipation was to avert civil 
 war. The first Land Act was passed from the fear of 
 Fenianisrn, and the last one to satisfy the Unionists. 
 
 " However, we don't object to England because she 
 governs us badly, but because she governs us at all. My 
 position is that we have only one grievance — the govern- 
 ment of Ireland by England. That is the whole trouble. 
 The land laws of this country are indeed vastly better 
 than those of England or of any other country. Even 
 Henry George admits this." 
 
 " The land laws good ! " shouted Flanigan. 
 
 " ' A decent hat, a wife's new coat or gown 
 
 For higher rent may mark the farmer down ; 
 'Neath your cottage window cease to plant a rose, 
 Lest it may draw the prowling bailiff's nose. 
 Beware of whitewash lest your cottage lie 
 A target for the bullet of his eye.' ' 
 
 " That explains why the tenants do not make out of the 
 land half as much as they should ; the fields next the 
 road they never used to cultivate as well as the fields at 
 a distance. The lying and dissimulation that these 
 things caused have not been grown out of yet." 
 
 " Not a farmer in Ulster," chimed in our third com- 
 panion, "is able to pay his rents out of the profits 
 of the farm. The land of Ulster has deteriorated more 
 ' William Allingham.
 
 IN ULSTER. 247 
 
 than that of any other province, in consequence of the 
 culture of flax. Flax exhausts the soil ; it returns no 
 manure to it, and in the linseed oil extracts a quality 
 that seems impossible to restore. The prosperity of Bel- 
 fast is momentary and shadowy, based as it is on the flax 
 culture, for every year the flax grows poorer and weaker. 
 They manure and put in potatoes and grass, and cannot 
 repeat the flax with safety for seven years, but even then 
 it never comes up in the same perfection." 
 
 "I don't see," said Hursen, "that the contiguity of 
 Ireland to England justifies England in annexing Ire- 
 land, any more than the contiguity of England to France 
 would justify France in annexing England. I base the 
 demand for Home Rule on the ground of inalienable 
 right. Our position is that we owe no loyalty to England, 
 but we think the ruin of England would be the ruin of 
 Ireland, and we do not desire separation, because we 
 need England as a market for our goods, and we wish to 
 keep England in all its integrity as a good, big, benefi- 
 cent neighbor. 
 
 " From a military point of view the empire would not 
 be endangered by Home Rule. I believe there is a friend- 
 ship growing up between the English and the Irish democ- 
 racies. I cannot imagine that the Irish Parliament would 
 be rich enough to provide defences, forts, guns, navy, 
 commissariat, sufficient to protect itself from surrounding 
 nations. I don't think either we should intrigue with 
 France or any other power. It would n't be safe to rely 
 on French help. When Parnell went to France to enlist 
 the sympathy of Gambetta, he was. not received, from 
 fear of international difficulty, it was said, but really, I 
 think, from contempt. I should, too, prefer to live un- 
 der English than under French rule.
 
 248 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " Resistance by Ulster to Home Rule is absurd. If 
 the Orangemen resisted they would have to beat the rest 
 of Ulster before attacking the other provinces. If the 
 Orangemen cannot beat the Nationalists at the polls, 
 how can they expect to beat them in the field ? 
 
 " These people, too, are beginning to lose their terror 
 of Home Rule. If it comes they v.-ill take advantage of 
 it, just as they took advantage of the Land Act of i8Sr 
 after opposing it. 
 
 ** As to the religious question : the people are leading 
 the priests, not led by them. They are united now, 
 O'Connell never had the priests with him as Parnell has. 
 Some Protestants are with us too. The president of 
 our branch is Moffat, a Protestant who lived long in 
 America. 
 
 " About outrages much nonsense is talked. The peo- 
 ple should never be held accountable for moonlighting, 
 for the reason that they have not the making of their 
 own laws. What is the use of our trying to rectify the 
 state of society, when we are not paid constables, and 
 when those very acts complained of have been the means 
 of our getting the greatest benefits. If we do not get 
 Home Rule we are prepared to go on with a constant 
 guerilla warfare till the crack of doom." 
 
 It is time, perhaps, to listen to a landlord who has 
 property in this county and the neighboring one of Fer- 
 managh. A young man, of an old Protestant Orange 
 family, he was educated abroad and early adopted lib- 
 eral views, but as soon as the Home Rule Bill was intro- 
 duced he became an energetic Unionist. 
 
 "■ I have," he said, " a typical Ulster property. The 
 mountains are inhabited by Catholics, and the valleys by 
 Protestants. When a tenant fails in the valley, the ten-
 
 IN ULSTER. 249 
 
 ant right can be sold for what it is worth ; but when you 
 go up into the hills within reach of the League, a man 
 who fails and wants to sell insists on being evicted. He 
 allows himself to be evicted, and then we let him sell if 
 he can. I have a tenant in that mountainous district^ 
 a drunkard, who went about collecting money for the 
 League. He did n't pay any rent, so I evicted him, but 
 reinstated him on account of his old mother. After a 
 time I asked him to sell out ; but the people would n't 
 let him. I kept him on then as caretaker. Soon the 
 Protestant tenants in the neighborhood became tremen- 
 dously excited about something, and the agent overheard 
 them saying, 'A nice way to treat decent Protestants 
 who pay rent ! That Irish Papist blackguard you give 
 three years to and reinstate him.' I spoke to the man 
 and he said, ' Shure, if I did n't tell the people about it, I 
 could n't get a grazier to put a beast on the land at all.' 
 I asked the neighbors whether any one would take the 
 land if we turned the man out, and they all said ' No.' 
 
 " Near me there are a lot of small farms of ten or 
 twenty acres on the slopes of the mountains. Formerly, 
 with the help of his sons and with cheap labor, the farmer 
 reared cows and pigs, made butter, and raised oats 
 and potatoes, and so paid his rent. Now labor is dear, 
 and the young men, after getting a national-school educa- 
 tion, go into the constabulary or emigrate ; the farmers 
 cease to grow potatoes and oats, and the money from 
 the calves and the butter goes to buy Indian meal, etc., 
 for family use. So things get worse and worse. The 
 style of living has changed for the better, perhaps, but 
 the farmers are very incompetent. Such incompetency 
 would be impossible under landlordism with full powers, 
 and probably under peasant proprietorship. Even un-
 
 250 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 der a peasant proprietary, I do not suppose that evic- 
 tions will die out wholly, for in some way or other a sys- 
 tem will be devised for securing the survival of the fittest 
 instead of the survival of the unfittest, which is the case 
 to-day. 
 
 " A large majority of the landlords would accept any 
 reasonable terms of purchase now, and are coming to 
 favor a purchase scheme more and more. They feel that 
 their property is being taken from them slice by slice, 
 and they would rather take an insufficient sum and put 
 an end to their losses. In Ulster the landlords would 
 rather have the terms of purchase fixed by private con- 
 tract, but elsewhere they would welcome a compulsory 
 system of purchase. The Ulster landlords were opposed 
 to the Land Acts, because they were getting their rents, 
 and all the landlords were opposed to a reduction of the 
 judicial rents, because it was understood when these 
 rents were first fixed that they were to be a basis for pur- 
 chase. The outcry against Gladstone's Purchase Bill 
 was justifiable, because it was associated with his Home 
 Rule Bill, and the Act would be unworkable under Home 
 Rule. Under Home Rule local guaranties would be 
 sure to be repudiated, but they might answer without 
 Home Rule, as in India. 
 
 " There is a conspiracy here amounting to rebellion. 
 Certain men lead it, whose language shows that they are 
 animated by hatred of England, and that they are work- 
 ing for what they hope will lead to separation. In speak- 
 ing to their followers, these Parnellite M.P.'s say that 
 no limits can be set to the march of the nation. Such 
 speeches show the insincerity of their guaranties. 
 
 " Again, historically, the Irish Parliament of the 
 eighteenth century proved unworkable ; in eighteen years,
 
 IN ULSTER. 251 
 
 twice coming to loggerheads with the British Parliament, 
 and yet that Parliament was exclusively Protestant and 
 conservative, and now it is proposed to start a Parlia- 
 ment composed of the men most hostile to England. 
 
 " I read over Gladstone's bill carefully, and marked 
 sixty-two points over which England and Ireland were 
 bound to come to a violent disagreement within two or 
 three years. 
 
 " The Nationalist movement here is a Jacobin move- 
 ment, and like all such movements must fall into the 
 hands of the extreme party. Compare it with the French 
 revolutionary movement, the analogy is close. The 
 priests will finally split from it, and that will make mat- 
 ters worse. 
 
 "The rural population will be inclined to make the 
 best of things at first, but the town Protestants will be 
 hard to reconcile to Home Rule. * No taxes to support 
 nunneries,' will be the cry, and ultimately, I believe, the 
 north will be arrayed almost solid against the south." 
 
 SOME BELFAST MERCHANTS. 
 
 "I am a moderate man," said a merchant of great 
 weight and reputation, a director of innumerable com- 
 panies, — " I am a moderate man, and people like me would 
 see Home Rule come with the utmost reluctance, but 
 would not actually resist till the Irish Parliament had 
 abused its powers. 
 
 " Unfair taxation is what we fear. Some Nationalists 
 propose a general poor-rate for the whole of Ireland ; 
 that would be a gross injustice to Belfast, where people 
 have something to lose. 
 
 " An Irish Parliament would be likely to resort to 
 protection. If food were taxed, that would press severely
 
 252 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 on the artisans ; and if flax were taxed, the manufacturers 
 would be ruined, for we import flax from Holland, Bel- 
 gium, and Russia. 
 
 " The Belfast Chamber of Commerce, on April 22, 
 1886, unanimously adopted a resolution deploring the in- 
 troduction of the Home Rule Bill, at a meeting expressly 
 called ' to consider the proposals now placed before Par- 
 liament by Mr. Gladstone.' The sudden fall in the price 
 of all stocks while that bill was pending shows how serious 
 is our dread of Home Rule. 
 
 " Private bill legislation in Ireland is necessary, and 
 the establishment of local county boards. Indeed, most 
 moderate men would be willing to accept a Home Rule 
 measure, provided that the executive were responsible 
 only to the Imperial Parliament, and the police and the 
 judges were appointed from London and not from Dub- 
 lin. The police in Belfast used to be appointed by the 
 town commissioners, but during the riots the force was 
 found to be so partisan that a change was necessary, and 
 Belfast is now policed by a detachment of the Royal 
 Irish Constabulary, under the command of a town in- 
 spector. So if the judges or the police were appointed 
 by the Parnellites, they would lose their impartiality. 
 
 " The views of the mercantile community are ex- 
 pressed by the Northern Whig, which as early as 1881 
 suggested the separation of Ulster. 'We want no sepa- 
 ration ; but should such a question ever be discussed, 
 Ulster as a province, with Belfast as its capital, would 
 have as much right to claim separation from the other 
 provinces of Ireland as the latter have to ask for separa- 
 tion from the other portions of the United Kingdom ; for 
 it would only be by such separation, and the mainte- 
 nance, so far as she is concerned, of the Union with
 
 IN ULSTER. 253 
 
 Great Britain, that the present manufacturing and com- 
 mercial position of Ulster could be maintained. ' ' 
 
 " The League has recently tried to prove that Ulster 
 is poorer than either Leinster or Munster, but the fact is 
 not so. The railway companies, the banks, and the 
 Inland Revenue Department all pay their income taxes 
 and duties to the government in Dublin. All the passen- 
 ger duty of the Great Northern Railroad Company was 
 paid in Dublin, even before the road was built so far. 
 For all that, Dublin gets the credit. So when a merchant 
 in Belfast exports a hundred cases of linen to New York 
 via Liverpool, those goods are credited to Liverpool. In 
 this way the error has become possible. 
 
 " There is supposed to be about ^100,000,000 invested 
 in the flax and linen trade in Ulster. Some of the com- 
 panies are shaky, but such is not the case with the gen- 
 erality of them." 
 
 At the Merchants' Exchange there are some six hun- 
 dred members, of whom probably not over twenty-five 
 are Catholics. The brief remarks elicited from one mer- 
 chant after another were much the same : " In 1884 the 
 Bank of Ireland stock was 342, in 1886, 249, and now it 
 has only recovered to 288. What does that prove?" 
 " We grow one million pounds worth of flax ; a duty of 
 ten per cent, would ruin all the mills in Ireland and turn 
 the trade over to the Germans and French." " If you 
 will tell me what legislation would be done by a Home- 
 Rule Parliament, I will tell you how it would affect busi- 
 ness. We do not believe it would legislate wisely." 
 
 One gentleman, often referred to as the leading Union- 
 ist in Belfast, spoke at some length. 
 
 " A Home Ruler would make out some case for Home 
 
 ' January i, ifeSl.
 
 254 I^ CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 Rule if he could mention things we want that Parliament 
 cannot or will not give us. We have no special griev- 
 ances here. 
 
 " Agricultural depression is everywhere ; the deprecia- 
 tion of land is as great in England as in Ireland. The 
 question of the rent is rather a small matter. Twenty-five 
 years ago an acre of land in Ireland would probably 
 have produced from ;^8 to ^ lo worth of gross produce. 
 The value of that produce has depreciated about twenty- 
 five per cent., so that a farm of a hundred acres would 
 now make ^600 instead of ^800. The average rent was 
 25J. per acre, and the average reduction 6^. or ^30 on 
 the hundred acres. The cost of labor is, however, a third 
 or half as much greater than it used to be. Omit the rent 
 altogether and you would not put the farmer back where 
 he was twenty-five years ago. There are 200,000 tenants 
 who pay rent of less than ^4 a year, that means that there 
 are a million people who cannot make their living out 
 of the land. They used to go to England to harvest, but 
 the introduction of machinery has largely decreased the 
 demand for them. The stir of capital is necessary, and 
 agitation and the impoverishment of the landlords have 
 done them great injury. 
 
 ** Till within the last fifteen years the peasants were in 
 a condition of serfdom, afraid of their landlords, whom 
 they always approached as a debtor would his creditor, 
 making a poor mouth. Their votes were their landlords, 
 until the Ballot Act. Since then they have obtained 
 secrecy of voting and an independent interest in their 
 holdings ; but as yet not half a generation has been born 
 under the new conditions, and the people are now led 
 blindly either by the priests or the agitators. Is it not a 
 risky experiment to entrust the government to the hands
 
 IN ULSTER. 255 
 
 of these people, who have never cast a responsible vote in 
 their lives or not till very recently ? In England you 
 have urban and rural constituencies nearly equally di- 
 vided. You have artisans and mechanics and a great 
 body of professional men. In Ireland the urban constit- 
 tuencies are in the proportion of one to sixteen, and 
 there is no middle class except the small country shop- 
 keeper and the merchants to be found in a city like Bel- 
 fast. The whole idea of the bulk of the voters since 
 1870 has been to hit the landlords and get something 
 from them. Can they be trusted now to decide wisely 
 difficult economical questions ? Yet the Irish are very 
 able and have a genius for politics, and but for the legis- 
 lation since 1870 I should be a strong Nationalist now. 
 
 " The first legislation of an Irish Parliament would be 
 apt to be dangerous. Protection is the panacea the Na- 
 tionalists advance, and that would be fatal to us. The 
 Irish are not accustomed to factory life, and are fond of 
 feasts and holidays ; they would try to foster industries 
 under unprofitable conditions, and would throw the bur- 
 den of the experiment on communities like this. 
 
 " There is almost a certainty that an Irish Parliament 
 would change the national-school system and make it 
 part of the machinery of the Catholic Church. The in- 
 fluence of men like Davitt and Parnell is the only coun- 
 terpoise to the influence of the clergy. The leading poli- 
 ticians may be free from bigotry, but not the ignorant 
 masses who elect them. That is true of the south and 
 the west, while in the north the only politics and pretty 
 much the only religion of the masses is hatred of the 
 Pope. 
 
 " The National feeling is chiefly fed by Catholicism. 
 The Catholics don't intermarry with the Protestants, they
 
 256 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 don't live together, nor even dance together. No race 
 feeling could be half so strong. Any legislation in the 
 interest of the Catholics would cause riots in Belfast. 
 Who would put the riots down ? The police ? They eat 
 the police alive in Belfast. The military ? I know many 
 officers who would throw up their commissions sooner 
 than interfere ; and how long would the English people 
 tolerate the shooting down of loyal Protestants by the 
 British army at the command of the National League ? 
 It would n't be a question of shooting a few rioters, but 
 of suppressing the whole country-side, with the clergy 
 at the head of their congregations. 
 
 "There is no good in giving Home Rule unless the 
 measure is thoroughgoing ; a system of local boards 
 would be useless, because the membership would not 
 give sufficient dignity and responsibility to attract com- 
 petent men. 
 
 "Representation in the imperial Parliament would be 
 absurd, because Irishmen would then be interfering in 
 English and Scotch affairs, which could not possibly be 
 separated from imperial affairs as Parliament is now con- 
 stituted. Home Rule for Ireland must then be correlated 
 with Home Rule for England and Scotland. This would 
 mean a complete change of the constitution, and a senate 
 of some sort would be necessary in which members from 
 each country could meet on the same footing. If the 
 Irish Parliament, for instance, passed a law of doubtful 
 constitutionality, could it be abrogated by the Parliament 
 of Great Britain, in which we are not represented ? 
 
 " When you begin to cut up the country and establish 
 separate local parliaments, where are you to stop ? With 
 Wales and Scotland, England and Ireland .'' Will you 
 separate the north of England from the south? Are
 
 IN ULSTER. 257 
 
 you going to upset the whole cart, the government of 
 some forty million people, for the sake of three million 
 Home Rulers in Ireland ? 
 
 " There are certain reforms we do need. Our execu- 
 tive and administrative departments are all inspired from 
 Dublin Castle, and that means a very narrow clique, tra- 
 ditionally opposed to the real sentiments of the great 
 body of the people. Every poor-law inspector, every 
 stipendiary magistrate, is appointed by the Castle, and 
 that is the secret of the hatred of the government in Ire- 
 land. It is not a question of parliamentary government. 
 That could n't be successful so long as the two opposing 
 parties are fighting so bitterly, for agitation would con- 
 tinue, and extremists on each side would keep the ear of 
 the people. 
 
 " We Presbyterians object to this centralization as much 
 as the Catholics do ; we are out in the cold as much as 
 they are, and as things settle down will work with them 
 for changes. 
 
 " I would recommend that the executive consult with 
 the Nationalist leaders as to the appointment of magis- 
 trates. The private-bill legislation for Ireland might 
 also be entrusted to the Irish members sitting at Dublin, 
 as a committee of the House, If this were done, the 
 members would soon be weeded out. Most of them now 
 are regular adventurers, and under Home Rule they 
 would be our masters. What we need is to be able to 
 test and increase the ability and honesty of these men 
 without throwing our whole constitution out of joint. I 
 should like to see Healy made Attorney-General ; it 
 would make a much better man of him. 
 
 "I think the notion of 'a separate Ulster' is totally 
 wrong, but I am sure the north of Ireland would not at
 
 258 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 present obtain justice from a legislature at Dublin. In 
 sympathy, connections, and interests the bulk of the 
 Protestant north are more closely allied with England 
 and Scotland than with the rest of Ireland. As to the 
 lower agricultural population, ninety-nine out of a hun- 
 dred would want a separate Ulster if Home Rule is to be 
 given at all, and they had to make their election ; but 
 they are not willing to adopt that policy yet ; they don't 
 want to remove the block they now are to Home Rule. 
 Many people believe that as a separate province the 
 future of Ulster would be made, for the best people in 
 the south say they would come here. I think it a miser- 
 able alternative, for it would create a constant source of 
 trouble, a regular sore. There would be competition be- 
 tween the legislatures inside and out of the pale for the 
 interests of particular classes. I am opposed to it also 
 in sentiment, for I prefer to be an Irishman than an 
 Ulsterman. We are a desperately bigoted people, politi- 
 cally and religiously, Presbyterians, Methodists, Church- 
 men, and Catholics. 
 
 "At present I think that Irish affairs can be managed 
 as well at Westminster, or through Westminster, as by a 
 Parliament at Dublin. In time the people may grow out 
 of their present state of demoralization ; the National 
 movement has changed enormously from the time of the 
 Fenians, and the alliance between the Liberals and the 
 Nationalists will modify it still more, for the Liberals 
 will not stand outrages, and don't sympathize with ex- 
 treme views. In time the legislative benefits of the last 
 few years will begin to show some results, and the farm- 
 ers, as they become proprietors, will become conserva 
 tive. After a while a better set of politicians will, I hope, 
 come to the front. In five or six years then there may
 
 IN ULSTER. 259 
 
 well be less danger in Home Rule, but no special 
 benefit." 
 
 "A friend of mine," said a flax manufacturer, as he 
 drew his chair up to the table in the club, " tried to start 
 a mill near Cork. The difficulty he found sprang from 
 religious interference. The parish priest made him take 
 on an incompetent foreman he had dismissed, and soon 
 there was not a foreman or overseer under his control. 
 The result was a bad failure. Even when the men don't 
 care about sectarian questions, the women do, and the 
 priests work on their husbands and sons through them. 
 
 "We have had no advantage over the rest of Ireland, 
 but rather every disadvantage. The climate is better in 
 the south ; and we, too, have neither coal nor iron. 
 
 " Peasant proprietorship will do one good thing. It 
 will clear out a whole lot of incompetent men. More- 
 over, there will then be nothing to agitate about. It will 
 not, however, bring the millennium. The few shillings a 
 year saved will not enable the smaller men to live here, 
 and they will have to emigrate." 
 
 Another manufacturer, not in the linen trade, but still 
 one of the most successful citizens of Belfast, represented 
 conservative Presbyterian opinions : 
 
 " The Protestant Home Rulers are people who would 
 not be considered by anybody, and for the most part are 
 not Protestants at all but deists and infidels. 
 
 "There are some 220,000 people in Belfast, of whom 
 70,000 are Catholics, and they are the hewers of wood 
 and drawers of water, and would never have been intro- 
 duced into the city except from the demand for mill 
 hands. Nine tenths of the public-houses are kept by 
 Catholics, while the vast majority of the large wholesale 
 merchants are Protestants.
 
 260 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " The Nationalist success is the first result of the ex- 
 tension of the suffrage to small tenants. 
 
 "Agriculture to be profitable needs to be conducted 
 on a large scale, and this is impossible with such small 
 holdings. Till we get the population down to three 
 millions we shall never come to any good. How can five 
 or six people live on a five-acre farm ? It is necessary 
 to find something else for them to do. Why does n't 
 Parnell take up some of these questions, for most of the 
 existing misery has nothing whatever to do with the want 
 of Home Rule ? Why, too, have the National Leaguers 
 never paid a poor man's rent out of their American 
 money ? The other day a friend of mine was obliged to 
 evict a tenant because he had been in possession without 
 paying rent for eleven years, and eviction was the only 
 means by which my friend could retain his title. 
 
 "The poverty of the landlords has already ruined 
 many trades. From ten to twenty years ago half our 
 trade in Ireland was in stable fittings and such goods 
 that the landlords can no longer afford to buy. I calcu- 
 late, too, that some ^500,000 has been lost to this coun- 
 try by the boycotting of hunting. 
 
 "The people have lost more in morality since 1880, 
 than they have gained by the reductions of the rent. It 
 is, too, the payments to one another for tenant right, and 
 not the payments to the landlords of rent, that have 
 ruined so many farmers. I know many a man who has 
 gone into debt for the purchase money of a tenant right. 
 
 " The Catholics complain of not being given political 
 offices, but out of ten thousand people you will scarcely 
 find six Catholics fit to administer out-door relief or to 
 sit on the local boards. 
 
 " We are satisfied in Belfast fairly well with things as
 
 IN ULSTER, 261 
 
 they are. We want quietness ; m e don't want any radical 
 change. Many things have contributed to our success : 
 that we can get coal as cheaply as on the Clyde, that our 
 taxes are low, the houses cheaper and more commodious, 
 and that men can live better here for the same money 
 than elsewhere. Here is my list of local taxes, so much 
 in the pound of my real-estate valuation : ' Poor-rate, \s. 
 Sd. ; borough rate, 3^. y general purpose rate, 2s. 6d. ; park 
 rate (a special temporary charge), 3^.' This is far less 
 than taxes in Dublin. 
 
 " Home Rule, we believe, would absolutely ruin our 
 trade. The linen trade of course could not be moved, 
 but the ship-building would go. Harland himself has 
 said he would not stay, and he employs over six thousand 
 men. We do most of our business in England and Scot- 
 land and only one tenth is in Ireland. We, and others 
 like us, would go out of business. The whiskey trade 
 will go. John Brown, worth about ;^ 200,000, said that 
 if Home Rule came he would close up his works and go 
 to England. The banking system is altogether English, 
 and the banks will be ruined. One of the first things a 
 Home-Rule Parliament will do will be to establish a 
 national bank, whose notes will be issued or guaranteed 
 by the Irish government, and that will destroy the issue 
 business cf the other banks. The process of transferring 
 the business houses from Belfast will be slow but inev- 
 itable. 
 
 "Although I don't want Home Rule, I think the pass- 
 ing of the Act of Union was bad for Ireland, because it 
 created a great inducement to absenteeism, and the best 
 class of people got into the habit of going to London, 
 
 " Again, we don't want to have to go to England in 
 order to get a new bridge built here. The grand jury
 
 262 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 system should be elective, so that we could control our 
 own taxes and expenses. Primary education should be 
 compulsory. 
 
 " Call at the Clerk's office and note the number of 
 illiterate voters in Belfast at the last election. There 
 are nearly four times as many illiterates in the district 
 that returned Mr. Sexton, the Nationalist, as in any 
 other." ' 
 
 An enthusiastic young man, a ship-broker, carried me 
 off one afternoon to the office of the only linen firm of 
 which the members were Catholics. A shrewd-looking, 
 gray-headed gentleman turned round in his chair to 
 greet us. 
 
 " I am not a politician, as my brother is," he ex- 
 plained. " I had a strong fit of political enthusiasm in 
 1848, and that exhausted all I had in me. Since then 
 I 've been merely a spectator. 
 
 " The Protestants would be greatly indignant if we 
 had Home Rule, but I don't think they would do more 
 than grumble, and they will probably take every advan- 
 tage that Home Rule offers. They are opposed to it not 
 as business men but as politicians, they don't want to lose 
 their political ascendancy. We have been for a long 
 time carrying them on our backs, or rather they have 
 been riding on our backs, and don't want to dismount. 
 The Ulster Protestants raise all this clamor, because 
 they want something given to stop their mouths." 
 
 ' The figures are : 
 
 
 
 
 Division. 
 
 No. Illiterate. 
 
 Vote Cast. 
 
 Elected. 
 
 East Division 
 
 . 228 
 
 6292 
 
 Cobain 
 
 West Division . 
 
 • 944 
 
 7559 
 
 Sexton 
 
 North Division . 
 
 . 125 
 
 5254 
 
 Ewart 
 
 South Division . 
 
 • 153 
 
 5199 
 
 Johnson
 
 IN ULSTER. 263 
 
 " There is n't one Catholic in the Harbor Board or in 
 their employment, except two brokers," interrupted the 
 young man. 
 
 " Protection," continued the old gentleman," is prob- 
 ably impossible ; because if agricultural products are 
 taxed, the working-men will complain, and if manufac- 
 tured articles are taxed, the farmers will complain. Two 
 or three years ago there was a good deal of talk about 
 Fair Trade, but it seems to have died out. If I thought 
 protection would come with Home Rule, I would vote 
 against Home Rule. 
 
 " I don't suppose we shall get any great benefit from 
 Home Rule in Belfast in my day. Indeed, the saving 
 of expense in sending our private bills to London to be 
 passed, is the only immediate benefit I think of." 
 
 " No, no," cried out our companion. " These men 
 are the descendants of colonists, and still consider them- 
 selves as colonists, living off the country but caring little 
 for it. Won't it be a benefit to make them care for it ? 
 
 " Again, the encouragement of our resources would be 
 a great boon. There are mountains in Antrim and 
 Down full of iron ore, and ^2,000 would be enough to 
 make experiments and start manufactories. Then our 
 people might make the iron plates for the Belfast ship- 
 yards. So with coal, there is plenty of it about Dungan- 
 non in Tyrone, and Ballycastle in Antrim. The English 
 government does make various loans to Ireland, but 
 many of them are jobs, and very little of the money 
 reaches its destination. 
 
 " Again, we want Catholic education. The books 
 issued by the Board of Intermediate Education, though 
 half the Board are Catholic, contain frequently matter 
 insulting to Catholics. I would n't have a child of mine
 
 264 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 contaminated by reading them. The national-school 
 books are freer from this fault, but I would n't have my 
 children brought up without perpetual religious instruc- 
 tion. The government is dead to every thing Irish. 
 The gist of the matter is that we live here and wish to 
 prosper, and we think we can manage our own business 
 best." 
 
 " The question of religion has nothing to do with it," 
 said the merchant. '"' If the priests had their way there 
 would n't be Home Rule here for two hundred years." 
 
 '' That 's the truest thing you 've said this evening," 
 replied the young fellow ; " and I will say this, that if 
 you could secure to Ulster influence in the Dublin Par- 
 liament, Ulster would go for Home Rule to-morrow." 
 
 " They would go like sheep, even the educated classes," 
 continued the merchant. 
 
 "Would you trust the present M.P.'s ?" I asked. 
 
 " I would n't trust them farther than I could see them," 
 cried the older man, " but no more I would any politi- 
 cian." 
 
 " If we sent the English over eighty-five apostles," 
 shouted the younger man, " they would find names of 
 abuse to fling at them, and some would stick. These 
 men are unimpeachable and irreproachable, and we 
 should all feel extreme gratitude to them." 
 
 " I don't feel a particle," said the other, " but it makes 
 little difference what they are or what their motives are, 
 if they get us benefits. I would take a good thing even 
 from the Old Scratch." 
 
 " An Ulster Parliament seems to me such an idiotic 
 idea that no one out of a lunatic asylum could be- 
 lieve in it. What is Ulster that she should have a sep- 
 arate Parliament ? Statistics prepared by the League
 
 IN ULSTER. 265 
 
 show that Ulster is less wealthy than any province ex- 
 cept Connaught. Belfast is prosperous, but largely by 
 accident. It is on the Marquis of Donegal's property ; 
 and his debts were so great that he was glad to give 
 blank leases for almost any thing. Lisbourne was not so 
 fortunate, and the Richardsons, the linen merchants, 
 tried in vain to get satisfactory leases there and had to 
 go to Newry where they have built a village." 
 
 I walked home to take tea with " the firm," and on the 
 way the conversation was continued. The land question 
 came up. 
 
 "There is no man," said the merchant, "with an 
 article to sell, who will not try to get the best price for it. 
 The landlords have not been so much to blame after 
 all. So eager for land are the people, that they even 
 borrow money from the banks at twelve per cent, to buy 
 a neighbor's tenant right. It will not be more than two 
 generations after a peasant proprietary is established 
 before a new class of landlords arise. 
 
 " I have always believed that a man should stick to his 
 bargains about land as about any thing else ; that he 
 should be allowed to make his own bargains ; that land 
 is a commodity like other things, and that if a man 
 could n't pay for it he should leave it. But the last Land 
 Act has changed my mind. The government has decided 
 that land is different from any other commodity ; the 
 rents are now fixed by the courts and not by the parties ; 
 and free sale of the tenant right is allowed, which op- 
 erates to impose on the land an additional rent. The 
 present system won't work ; and the old system is de- 
 clared to be false. The only way I see out of the mud- 
 dle is the nationalization of the land." 
 
 I mentioned the difficulty in the way of Home Rule,
 
 266 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 that if the Irish M.P's. remain in Parliament they will be 
 acting on questions of purely English concern, while if 
 they are excluded from Parliament, the Irish people will 
 be taxed by a body in which they are not represented, 
 and will be subordinated to a policy purely alien. 
 
 " What is workable for Canada," was the reply, " might 
 do here." 
 
 "I think now," he went on, "of some further advan- 
 tages of Home Rule. You can bring goods from Leeds 
 to Athlone for less than you can take them there from 
 Belfast. An Irish Parliament might superintend the 
 management of the Irish railroads." 
 
 After tea the other member of the firm, the politician, 
 the leader of the Nationalists in Belfast, took up the tale. 
 
 " Home Rule," he declared, " would be an enormous 
 benefit. Here are 70,000 Catholics in Belfast without 
 any influence in the city government. It is true that the 
 Catholics control no considerable industries, except that 
 of mineral water, but man for man in Ulster I think their 
 accumulated wealth would equal that of the Protestants. 
 Statistics are hard to get, but during the twenty-five years 
 of the administration of the late Catholic Archbishop of 
 Down and Connor, his parishioners contributed over 
 half a million pounds towards church buildings, schools, 
 convents, and colleges. There is one Catholic spinning- 
 mill in Ulster, that of William Ross, who got into the 
 trade by accident. Not a Catholic could become a man- 
 ager of a spinning-mill here. Hughes, the great baker in 
 Belfast, a Catholic, tried in vain to get his three sons 
 into the mills. The Catholics have been pushing lately 
 in the tobacco trade and the jewelry trade. Brown is 
 the chief Catholic jeweller, and Leahy, Kelly, & Leahy 
 is a great Catholic tobacco firm. Until a few years ago
 
 IN ULSTER. 267 
 
 no prominent shopkeeper was a Catholic outside of the 
 public-house business. Now most of the hotels are 
 kept by Catholics, — the Royal, the Prince of Wales, the 
 Linen Hall, the Donegal, and the Union ; this began, 
 perhaps, as an extension of the publican trade. 
 
 " It would add strength to the commerce of Belfast if 
 Catholics had a fair share in it. 
 
 "There was no Catholic organization here till 1885. 
 If we were organized properly we could upset the corpo- 
 ration of Belfast, but we don't wish to do so, for we are 
 peacefully disposed and want only a fair share in the 
 distribution of power. 
 
 " That the Nationalists when they get into power will 
 act patriotically, without religious prejudice, is shown by 
 the conduct of Sexton in Parliament. Sexton has 
 brought in a bill to equalize the municipal with the par- 
 liamentary franchise, though this change will enfranchise 
 more of the Orange than of the Catholic democracy. 
 The town council has been promoting a main drainage 
 bill authorizing them to borrow nearly a quarter of a 
 million pounds. Sexton has had the bill postponed on 
 the ground that the council now is a mere clique and not 
 representative, though the new council is just as certain 
 to be wholly Protestant. Harland and Wolff's men struck 
 some time ago for weekly wages, which had been usual 
 till recently. Sexton, accordingly, had tacked on to 
 Bradlaugh's ' Truck Bill ' a clause to give weekly pay- 
 ments in Ireland, except in piece-work. Yet these Island 
 men, as they are called, are the most bigoted Orangemen 
 and stir up all the riots against the Catholics. Sexton 
 has also brought in a local bankruptcy bill, to establish 
 courts in Belfast, Limerick, and Cork. 
 
 "Sexton, the first Catholic M.P. for Belfast, and the
 
 268 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 only active M.P. we have had, is a living proof that we 
 don't want to set up a counter ascendancy to the 
 Protestants. 
 
 " There will be no successful rebellion in Ulster, for 
 in 1 88 1 forty-nine per cent, of the population were Catho- 
 lics, and now the Catholics must be equal or more than 
 equal to the Protestants. What rioting there might be 
 would be easily checked by the police. There would 
 have been none in 1886 if the police had been energetic. 
 The riots began on the 4th of June, and continued inter- 
 mittently till the end of September. Only about thirty 
 persons were reported killed in that four months' fight- 
 ing. As to what the police could have done, see in the 
 parliamentary report ' how Sergeant Carey with only 
 nine truncheon men drove a mob of a thousand men 
 down Stanhope Street, and up and down Porter's Hill. 
 * If every one had done so,' said Sir John Charles Day, 
 the President of the Commission, " these riots would have 
 ended long ago.' Was Carey promoted ? Not he ; he 
 was sent out of Belfast as too good a man for this place. 
 
 " Our day is near at hand, for as Gladstone showed 
 lately a change of only six per cent, will put the Conserva- 
 tives out and the Liberals in." 
 
 "Will not taxes be higher under Home Rule," I asked, 
 " and the credit of the country less ? " 
 
 " As to money," he replied, " we have plenty of 
 money, thirty-two millions of Irish money are invested in 
 England. Our payments to England will be less under 
 any rational scheme, for, as Sir Charles G. Duffy pointed 
 out, we are paying nearly seven million pounds a year 
 towards the interest on the national debt, instead of 
 
 ' Belfast Riots Commission, 1886, Minutes of Evidence, pp. 
 538, 539-
 
 IN ULSTER. 269 
 
 ;i^3, 500,000. So far as I can see, I agree thoroughly 
 with his idea of a constitution for Ireland.' I think too 
 that we should be more than just to the Protestant mi- 
 nority, and allow them more than their full representa- 
 tion. 
 
 " The existence of Orangeism and Masonry here has 
 helped to destroy the linen trade. The merchants buy 
 and sell not on commercial principles, but for the bene- 
 fit of their brotherhood. The system of limited lia- 
 bility companies has increased this cliquishness. 
 
 '^ So much money was made in linen during the Amer- 
 ican civil war, that mills were built in excessive num- 
 bers. Every small shopkeeper put his mite into the 
 trade. The result of this over-production is that a large 
 number of the spinning-mills are now insolvent. The 
 Northern Spinning Company is in process of liquidation. 
 The Ulster Spinning Company, with one twelfth of all 
 the spindles in Ulster, some 60,000, had to reorganize a 
 short time ago. 
 
 " The large spinning concerns are largely carried on 
 with deposits lent them for specified times by the farm- 
 ers and the Catholics who have no opportunity of using 
 their money in starting business of their own. The York 
 Street Flax Spinning Company, Limited, had, for in- 
 stance, half a million on deposit, over and above its cap- 
 ital, on which it pays five per cent. A business managed 
 
 ' Sir Charles G. Duffy proposed a Parliament, with the same pow- 
 ers as the Canadian and Australian legislatures, of two houses. The 
 Lower House to consist of 105 members, three members being 
 elected by each of thirty-five constituencies, no elector voting for 
 more than two candidates. The Senate to consist of 54 members, 
 appointed in the Constitution, but to be elective after ten years. A 
 court of three judges is to be appointed to act as interpreters of the 
 Act of Constitution ; and the judiciary at large to bo appointed.
 
 270 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 in such a way, even though the deposit receipts circulate 
 as bank notes, must always be liable to be shaken. 
 
 Mr. James Canning, Mr. Oldham of Dublin, and Mi- 
 chael Davitt, with the Protestant Home Rule Asssocia- 
 tion, are trying to extend the cultivation of flax outside 
 of Ulster. Our object is to reform abuses in the trade, 
 not to attack the trade itself. 
 
 " Revolutionary methods are now discredited. Davitt 
 tried to draw a red herring across the Nationalist move- 
 ment by introducing Henry George's theory of nation- 
 alization of the land, but he will not be allowed to inter- 
 fere with the business now in hand. All the old Fenian 
 movement is dead now. Mr. James O'Kelly, an out and 
 outer, who would be as willing as any one to head a force 
 in arms, now admits that the English democracy is 
 heart and soul with us, and he and Tim Healey are hon- 
 est converts to the * New Departure.' " 
 
 Another business man, interested chiefly in the Stock 
 Exchange, has the advantage of being a foreigner by birth, 
 though he has lived in Belfast for the last twenty-six 
 years. "Unless England," he said, "sends an army here 
 to enforce obedience to a Dublin Parliament, I don't be- 
 lieve that Ulstermen will pay taxes or submit to it in any 
 way. What interest has England in establishing a hos- 
 tile government at its back door ? 
 
 " The welcome paid here to Chamberlain was general 
 and not merely Orange. At the great banquet in his 
 honor, out of the four hundred guests probably not five 
 were Orangemen. The middle and the upper classes here 
 are not Orange. 
 
 "The banks here are very prosperous, chiefly because 
 they have a small paid up capital and get large deposits 
 ^rom the farmers who have nothing else to do with their
 
 IN ULSTER. 271 
 
 money and are contented with about one per cent, for it. 
 The Ulster Bank pays eighteen per cent., the Belfast 
 Banking Co., twenty, and the Northern, twelve per cent." 
 
 The views of a couple of commercial travellers may 
 well close this brief sketch of the sentiments of the busi- 
 ness men of Belfast. 
 
 " Here," said Mr. S., in the commission trade in Done- 
 gal Street, who has travelled through '' every village in 
 Ireland," — " here in Ulster we have nine counties as pros- 
 perous as any in the land. We are an energetic, honest 
 race, very different from the south of Ireland people. 
 The successful Irishmen in America are chiefly of Irish- 
 Scotch descent. The southern Irish are born politi- 
 cians and form a clique in every city, but they are not 
 capable of self-government. The reason is that they be- 
 long to a system, semi-religious and semi-political. Here 
 we are as free as anywhere under the sun, but the Catho- 
 lic Irish have a different idea of liberty. See how they 
 assaulted the English in Boston at their celebration of the 
 Queen's Jubilee. They want no one to be free except as 
 they dictate. The farmers, too, on the hills and moun- 
 tains are very ignorant and brutal. They have no sym- 
 pathy with manufactures. Now that they have the suf- 
 frage, Home Rule would give us over into their hands. 
 
 "The people of Belfast simply want to be let alone. 
 They think they are doing as well as any people in the 
 world. We are always on the job, and make bargains 
 without telling lies. We want peace and quiet, and very 
 much object to getting hurt, but when put on our mettle 
 we don't give in easy. We have never been conquered, 
 and never will be. I am not an Orangeman, but I am 
 the kind of stuff Orangemen are made of. 
 
 " I am not rigidly conservative. I was a member of
 
 2/2 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 the Land League till the Land Acts were passed, but 
 this talk of nationality I don't believe in. I cannot look 
 on myself as hemmed into a little place like Ireland. I 
 want to be world-wide. Though born in Ireland and of 
 Irish parents, I can go to any colony to-morrow and find 
 myself still in my own country as an Englishman." 
 
 " I have been all over Ulster," said another commer- 
 cial traveller. " The farmers want the land cheap ; that 's 
 the peg the whole National question hangs on ; settle 
 that and all is settled. The farmers are chiefly Presby- 
 terians, and all agree on this. 
 
 "The people are very selfish and there has been an 
 immense amount of land grabbing. A farmer will often 
 have, say^ioo in the bank at ^i a year interest. He 
 cannot use the money profitably in any occupation ex- 
 cept farming, but there is a farm next door which he can 
 work without much increase in his expenses. The land- 
 lord often in the past would say to his tenant : ' Here 's a 
 man who wants the farm and offers more rent than you 
 are paying ; you must pay the increased rent or go.' In 
 many parts of the country the landlords are mean and 
 with but little sense of honor, and if it were not for the 
 boycotting the rack-renting would have been extreme." 
 
 SOME BELFAST PROFESSIONAL MEN. 
 
 The great majority of professional men in Belfast are 
 Protestants and Unionists, but an able statement of the 
 Nationalist position was made to me by Mr. Andrew Mc- 
 Erlean, a gray-haired solicitor. 
 
 " In the time of James I. the Irish were driven to the 
 mountains' sides and the waters' edges, and the whole 
 country was planted with Protestants, chiefly lowland 
 Scotch. Gradually, as the rents were raised, the Scotch
 
 IN ULSTER. 273 
 
 retired and were succeeded by the Irish, who would pay 
 any rent. For centuries the Catholics have been sup- 
 pressed. Even now, from the appointment of a street 
 scavenger to the purchase of a horse, religion is brought 
 in. There is only one Catholic in any public board in 
 Belfast, and he is on the water board. There is not a 
 Catholic official in County Antrim, and in the rest of 
 Ulster the only Catholic officials I can think of are one in 
 County Down, and the Clerk of Newry. Not one of the 
 forty Town Counsellors of Belfast is a Catholic, and not 
 one is a Liberal, except two who were elected by Con- 
 servative votes and who were more Tory than the Tories. 
 The foremen and managers of all the mills are Protes- 
 tants, and in the banks every man is a Protestant. 
 
 "In 1870, Professor Galbraith, John Martin, and A. 
 M. Sullivan established a branch of the Home Rule 
 Association in Londonderry. At the election that year 
 I was Joe Biggar's canvassing agent, and Joe Biggar 
 polled 89 votes for Home Rule. Now the seed sown by 
 Galbraith has brought forth fruit, and Justin McCarthy 
 is one of the M.P.'s for Derry, Sexton one of the M.P.'s 
 for Belfast, and Ulster is represented by seventeen Na- 
 tionalists to sixteen Unionists. Such is the progress of 
 Home Rule in Protestant Ulster. 
 
 " The landlords can no longer keep the white slaves 
 they did, and are making a desperate struggle. Wherever 
 you go — if you go where Stanley is, and where he is no 
 one knows — if you want to kick up a row you kick over 
 the idols of the people. That is what the landlords do 
 with the Orangemen. There is scarcely a parish or town 
 land in Ulster without an Orange Hall, for which the 
 landlord has given the land and a subscription. There 
 the Orangemen hold their tea-parties, and the landlord
 
 2/4 IN' CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 or his head bailiff presides A year ago they were call- 
 ing John Morley an emissary of the Pope, and Gladstone, 
 Antichrist. All this is done to preserve the privileges of 
 a few landlords and their friends. Deprive politics of 
 the religious element and there would not be the smallest 
 opposition to Home Rule. 
 
 " The talk about civil war is nonsense. The moment 
 you place her Majesty's troops before the Orangemen, 
 they will retire ; they are valiant only against the Pope. 
 Is Belfast, with the counties of Armagh and Antrim, 
 going to make a revolution ? One third of Belfast is for 
 Home Rule, and a great part of Armagh and Antrim. 
 Scotland won't interfere, for the Scotch are Nationalists 
 at heart and will get Home Rule themselves in a few 
 years. The Nationalists won't want to fight, for they 
 are getting all they want without fighting. It will never 
 be left to the people on each side of the Boyne to fight 
 the question out. Home Rule, if it is granted, will have 
 the sanction of an Act of Parliament and will be enforced 
 by the imperial army. 
 
 " Moreover, the Protestants are as good Irishmen as 
 the Catholics. The last struggle we had for freedom was 
 in '98, and that was exclusively a Presbyterian move- 
 ment. Wolf Tone, who founded the United Irishmen, 
 was an Ulster Protestant, and so was Henry Joy 
 M'Cracken, who was executed in Belfast. The leaders 
 of the movement of 1848 also came from Ulster — Charles 
 Duffy, John Martin, and John Mitchel. 
 
 " In a plebescite, even among the Protestants, I don't 
 believe the majority for Orangeism would be large. 
 Many of the best men in the town are strong Home 
 Rulers, but not openly, for fear it would interfere with 
 their business. A number of linen concerns have gone
 
 IN ULSTER. 275 
 
 to the wall lately. Foreign competition is driving the 
 trade out of the country. If it was n't for the banks the 
 linen trade would cease to exist. The merchants are in 
 the hands of the banks, and the banks are in the hands 
 of the Orangemen. The least movement would shake 
 the merchants, and that is the real reason why they want 
 to keep the present regime. 
 
 " Religious persecution under Home Rule would be 
 impossible. Here are three or four million Catholics 
 within a few miles of thirty or forty million Protestants. 
 There are enough Protestants here to keep the Catholics 
 very well employed till the arrival of steamers with the 
 English army, and the army ought to come if ever such 
 a diabolical thought entered the minds of the Irish 
 people. 
 
 " In the Home Rule Parliament I don't expect to see 
 a single national body. It will certainly contain a 
 progressive party and a whig or conservative party, and 
 they will keep each other in order. 
 
 " The arguments of the opposition are hearthstone 
 arguments — arguments true only in Ulster, — not prin- 
 ciples that will sway mankind." 
 
 A gentleman of a different profession, who has gained, 
 though a Catholic, a distinguished social position, is a 
 pronounced Home Ruler, and his opinion on the land 
 question seemed of special significance : " The Land 
 Acts were absolutely necessary. It is essential to the 
 prosperity of a country that the people should have an 
 interest in making improvements. The provisions of 
 the Land Act of 1881 were approved by John Stuart 
 Mill. 
 
 " Suppose two men take two adjoining farms, thirty 
 acres each, at ^i an acre. A keeps the land in the
 
 2/6 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 same state of cultivation in which he took it, and at the 
 end of twenty years he is paying the same rent and 
 neither better nor worse off. B thoroughly drains the 
 land and generally improves it, and at the end of twenty 
 years his rent is doubled. What has B taken from the 
 landlord that A did not take ? For what is the extra 
 payment exacted of B ? Simply for the labor of B. 
 Such additional rent is a tax on industry. 
 
 " In the matter of land purchase the imperial Parlia- 
 ment might fairly vote some substantial relief to the 
 landlords. They might give them ten or twelve million 
 pounds, as was done at the time of Church Disestablish- 
 ment, when the government added some twelve per cent, 
 to the purchase money of the life interests of the clergy." 
 
 Let us take now the point of view of a master in one 
 of the higher educational institutions of Belfast, an Irish- 
 man of experience and keen observation. 
 
 " In County Down," he began, " which I know well, 
 every shilling of capital expended in putting the land in 
 a workable condition has been paid by the tenant. In 
 England the reverse is the case. Even if the English 
 landlord charges the tenant interest on the capital in- 
 vested in improvements, while in Ireland some compen- 
 sation is made to the tenant through the rents being on 
 the average much lower than on similar farms in Eng- 
 land, the fact remains that the English tenant is charge- 
 able with the interest only while he is in occupation, 
 while the Irish tenant, on the other hand, so soon as he 
 ceases to be occupier, until lately lost all the capital he 
 had invested. 
 
 " Now the tenant has absolute security for his im- 
 provements, but it will take a generation more to remove 
 the feelings and habits that the old system developed.
 
 IN ULSTER. 277 
 
 " All interest in Home Rule will certainly die out in 
 the north, when once the land question is settled. The 
 only settlement possible is by establishing a peasant 
 proprietory. In Seeley's ' Life of Stein ' there is some 
 account of how this was done in Germany, 
 
 "At the same time something needs to be done for 
 the landlords. As the government is diminishing their 
 income, it ought to relieve them to a corresponding de- 
 gree from the burden of family charges and mortgages. 
 Interference with family charges is generally approved 
 of, but mortgages are said to be on a different basis. 
 Money was borrowed and spent, it is said ; it ought then 
 to be returned without regard to the depreciation of the 
 security. But would not this plan be equitable ? Sup- 
 pose a capitalist twenty years ago lent ^10,000 on the 
 security of an estate, for which he gets five per cent. 
 Why did he get five per cent, from the landlord when 
 he could have got only three and a quarter per cent, from 
 the government ? Because the land was considered a 
 less secure investment than consols. The two investments 
 were equivalent. Now if you give the mortgagee con- 
 sols sufficient to yield him the same income that his 
 capital would have produced at the time of the mortgage 
 if invested in consols, surely you have met the senti- 
 mental objection to any interference with mortgages. 
 
 " Antrim, Down, Derry, Tyrone, and Armagh, are 
 the strong Protestant counties, and they are the flax- 
 producing and the linen-manufacturing counties The 
 nearer you get to Belfast, the more exclusively Protes- 
 tant the country is. If the land question were settled, I 
 believe that only West Tyrone, South Down, and per- 
 haps South Armagh would return, even for a time, 
 Nationalist members.
 
 2/8 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " Under the national-school system here, the govern- 
 ment goes so far as to provide for religious instruction, 
 with the simple proviso that it shall be so given as to 
 avoid annoyance to the minority. Yet what did Arch- 
 bishop Walsh say the other day when he addressed four 
 thousand school children near Dublin ? He said the 
 Catholics wanted freedom of education in Ireland. I 
 asked a Catholic inspector of schools what this meant. 
 He said : ' The freedom we want is, first, to get a govern- 
 ment grant without being obliged to adopt the Board 
 school-books ; secondly, to have religious instruction 
 unlimited as to time and place ; and thirdly, to have the 
 right to exhibit Catholic emblems in the school-rooms at 
 all times.' Now, such freedom of education as the Catho- 
 lics want would mean in all parts of the country where 
 the Protestants are in a minority, either no school, or a 
 separate Protestant school, or only Catholic schools ; in 
 other words, a choice for the Protestants between igno- 
 rance, inferior schools, or proselytizing schools. 
 
 "University education is made the subject of another 
 grievance. The Catholics think the government ought 
 to lend or give money to found a Catholic university, to 
 be in the hands of the hierarchy. Is there any country 
 where that would be allowed ? 
 
 " Religious sects here have all perfect liberty to estab- 
 lish sectarian schools ; but why should the government 
 do so? 
 
 " Under a Home Rule Parliament this would unques- 
 tionably be done, and we in Ulster would have to bear 
 half the expense. 
 
 " For the time being political excitement has thrown 
 Catholic bigotry into the background. But the bigotry 
 exists notwithstanding. In South Down, for instance,
 
 I.Y ULSTER. 2/9 
 
 if Home Rule were granted, the people would relapse 
 into complete subserviency to the priests ; and it would 
 probably be the same throughout Ireland. 
 
 "At Richhill the Orangemen were actually drilling 
 during the pendency of the Home Rule Bill. The 
 Orangemen are chiefly laborers and artisans. Half the 
 conservatives are opposed to Orangeism, and the higher 
 up you go in the social scale the fewer Orangemen you 
 find. Three quarters of the Presbyterian clergy are, 
 or rather were, Liberals, while two thirds of the Episco- 
 palian clergy are in sympathy with Orangeism. In North, 
 South, and East Belfast the Orangemen control the 
 elections, without regard to the Tories. 
 
 " There will, I think, be fighting under Home Rule. 
 There will be riots first, then repression, and then great 
 popular excitement and a general rising. The beginning 
 of the riots here last year was significant, one Catholic 
 workman at the Queen's Island yards saying to another, 
 a Protestant : ' Ah, it will soon be so that none of your 
 kind will be able to earn a loaf of bread in the country.' 
 During the riots the police were regarded by the Orange- 
 men much as they now are by the Nationalists. They 
 were called then, * the foreign police,' * the French police,' 
 ' Morley's murderers,' as they are called now ' Bloody 
 Balfour's myrmidons.' 
 
 ** Where you have a large dissenting minority, both 
 sides are always intensely bigoted. In France and Bel- 
 gium the Protestants are comparatively few in number 
 and much scattered, so there is little danger of intoler- 
 ance or persecution. A central, controlling, impartial 
 government like that of the imperial Parliament is far 
 more likely to hold the scales of justice even between 
 two such bigoted factions than any local body."
 
 280 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 The editor of the principal Unionist paper may finally 
 be quoted, as a practical and clever man of affairs who is 
 most competent to define the position of his party. 
 
 "The majority of the farmers in Ulster," he said de- 
 liberately, " are opposed to Home Rule, but the tempta- 
 tion is strong, and there is danger that if the Unionists 
 do not offer them something of material benefit they will 
 vote against them at the next election. As yet there are 
 not a thousand Protestant votes in the north for the 
 Nationalists, and this shows how wonderfully they have 
 resisted the enormous bribes they have been offered. 
 
 " The landlords have been extreme even in Ulster, and 
 have offset the benefit of free sale by raising the rents. 
 But there are many districts where there is no margin for 
 rent at all, not through any fault of the landlords, but on 
 account of the extreme prolificacy and the uneconomical 
 habits of the people. Those who shout most for Home 
 Rule would be no better off if they got it, for they have 
 not the enterprise and the capital necessary to raise them 
 above a hand-to-mouth existence. 
 
 "The present Nationalist leaders are smart, clever 
 dogs, but without any experience in affairs of govern- 
 ment ; most of them are good as destructive politicians 
 but would not be likely to succeed as constructive states- 
 men. William O'Brien, for instance, is one of the few 
 thoroughly honest Nationalists, and he is fanatically hon- 
 est ; but he is a dreamy, poetical fellow who, if he sees 
 poverty anywhere, assumes it to be the fault of either the 
 government or the landlords. 
 
 " If we had Home Rule to-morrow, I should expect the 
 situation would be trying enough for the period of my 
 lifetime. I don't fear there would be much robbery or 
 shooting : but however fairly a Parliament at Dublin
 
 IN ULSTER. 281 
 
 might govern, you could n't get an Orangeman of the 
 extreme Protestant party to believe it, and there would 
 be endless turmoil. As a result, the credit of the country 
 would suffer. It would, however, be humanly impossible 
 that a Dublin Parliament should be perfectly fair. There 
 has been too much bitterness in this agitation for the 
 people to become quickly just and wise. There would 
 be, first of all, a clean sweep of all the officials. That 
 would not promote efficiency in the public service. A 
 Dublin Parliament would be sure to affect Ulster injuri- 
 ously. For one thing, there would probably be a national 
 poor-rate instead of the existing local poor-rates, and 
 prudent Ulster would have to pay for the improvidence 
 of Kerry and Clare, as well as of Donegal and Cavan. 
 
 " What would be necessary to make Home Rule in 
 any way successful would be the existence of trained 
 men to draw upon for officials. If we began with an 
 elective council, a grand jury for each county or prov- 
 ince, with full control over local affairs, in ten or twenty 
 years we should have some trained men who had had 
 some responsibility, and then if they wished to come to- 
 gether they could do so with comparatively little danger. 
 In Scotland the people would go in for Home Rule sim- 
 ply because it would bring certain practical advantages ; 
 but here they would rather have Home Rule with greater 
 misery than prosperity without it. It is a question here 
 of sentiment rather than of self-interest. 
 
 "Self-interest requires certain changes. Whigs and 
 Tories have been equally short-sighted in not appointing 
 local boards to act on the spot upon local questions. 
 This is a real grievance. The last local Police Act, for 
 instance, cost us probably about ^10,000. 
 
 " I am a Presbyterian of Scotch descent, but I don't
 
 282 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 believe that Home Rule would be as bad as many think, 
 though I am certain that it would be so bad that I would 
 rather be for a long time in some other country. 
 
 "As to resistance to Home Rule. There is this differ- 
 ence between the northern and the southern Irish : In 
 the south they blacken their faces and fight at night ; 
 but here they fight in the open, and face to face. I am 
 not an Orangeman, but it is true that individuality here 
 is stronger than anywhere else in Ireland. I don't be- 
 lieve there is the organization among the Orangemen 
 that was reported, but if they did turn out they would 
 cause a riot very different from the riots last year, when 
 the police only had to do with isolated and usually un- 
 armed crowds. The Orangemen have no good leader. 
 The two members for Belfast are not competent to lead 
 an army of chickens, much less to head a revolt. There 
 will be nothing like civil war, but merely very serious 
 rioting. In the last riots I saw men marching in the 
 streets of a class far superior to any I expected to see 
 there, and I was amazed at the sympathy shown them by 
 the better citizens." 
 
 SOME COUNTRY NATIONALISTS. 
 
 I met him in the train as he was returning from the 
 great fair of Ballinasloe. He was a burly, rough, 
 amiable man, and was soon chatting confidentially. " I 
 live," he said, " two miles from Dundalk, My farm is 
 near the sea, and the soil is so light that we always have 
 a hard time if we don't get rain in June. There are 
 only about twenty tenants on the estate, which belongs 
 to the Rev. Sir Cavendish Foster. He lives in England, 
 and we seldom see him, but both the landlord and his 
 agent have always been kind and indulgent, never press-
 
 IN ULSTER. 283 
 
 ing us, and they have made many improvements, giving 
 us timber and slates when we built, and iron gates for 
 our fields, and sharing in the expense of draining. 
 
 " All the landlords about us have been giving reduc- 
 tions for the last three years. Last Christmas we asked 
 for a. reduction of 30 per cent, on the half year's rent 
 then due, but it was refused so we none of us paid any 
 rent till June, when the landlord gave in. My tenancy 
 is one from year to year, and I have not yet gone into 
 the land courts, but I intend to go now. 
 
 " My rent is very high — ^2. 5.?. for the arable land per 
 Irish acre. I raise chiefly corn and turnips on half the 
 farm, and graze the other half. The oat crop this year 
 is almost a total failure. The turnip crop is a third of the 
 average. Hay is about half. For cattle there is scarcely 
 any price to be got. 
 
 " There will be no peace, I think, till the landlords are 
 bought out, but I would give them fair compensation. 
 A land-purchase bill would be very good if it allowed the 
 tenants to buy at about sixteen years' purchase of the re- 
 duced rents. We offered to purchase our farms, but the 
 landlord would n't sell. 
 
 " I am a Catholic and believe in Home Rule. There 
 are many reforms necessary. The Lord-Lieutenant nomi- 
 nates three men for high sheriff of each county, and they 
 decide among themselves who shall accept. The high 
 sheriff then has the appointment of the grand jurors. 
 In County Lowth the Catholics are to the Protestants in 
 the proportion of four to one, and yet this summer there 
 was only one Catholic on the grand jury. The grand 
 jury levies the county cess, and appoints all the cess col- 
 lectors and the jail officials. The levy is often excessive. 
 I pay, for instance, ^^29 a year in county cess, and only
 
 284 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 -£6 or ^7 in poor-rates, which are levied by the Unions. 
 Rehiring county officials are paid extravagant pensions, 
 almost equal to their salaries, and these take some 
 ^3,000 a year out of the county cess. 
 
 " The magistrates are appointed by the Lord-Lieuten- 
 ant. They are apt to be extremely unpopular, and 
 many of them own no property and are totally incom- 
 petent. 
 
 " For awhile Home Rule appointments might be made 
 for partisan purposes, in a spirit of tit for tat, but that 
 would right itself in time. As to local appointment of 
 the police, which some Nationalists urge, I don't believe 
 in that at all. They would favor their neighbors. The 
 police should always be appointed by the central 
 authority. 
 
 " The grand-jury system, then, should be replaced by 
 elective boards, and the government should be decentral- 
 ized. But we want Home Rule above all, because it is 
 our right. Canada has Home Rule, and why should n't 
 we have it ? 
 
 " The danger of rash legislation under Home Rule is 
 exaggerated. The farmers on the whole are exceedingly 
 conservative ; and I believe that if we had Home Rule 
 to-morrow Parnell would lead a strong conservative wing. 
 I think, too, that if the land question were settled, the 
 farmers would be unlikely to agitate for any thing else, 
 even for Home Rule. They are exceedingly selfish. 
 They are even opposed to the building of these laborers' 
 cottages. They would become as conservative then as 
 now they are the reverse. 
 
 " As to the Protestants not wanting Home Rule : the 
 Presbyterians about me are as thick as bats ; they don't 
 dare to vote or to go to meetings of the League ; but yet
 
 IN ULSTER. 285 
 
 they are very willing to accept all that the Catholics can 
 get for them." 
 
 At Cavan I left my new acquaintance, to spend a day 
 in that old-fashioned, badly paved, dirty little town. 
 The chief public building is an enormous jail with walls 
 like the walls of a fortress. The old waiter at the hotel 
 spoke mournfully of the good old days when landlords 
 were rich and spent their money freely, but the secretary 
 of the League, McFinley, in his spirit-grocery, seemed 
 unusually full of hope and determination. 
 
 " We are all Home Rulers here," said he. " At the last 
 election, in December, 1885, I was agent for Biggar, who 
 stood against Saunderson, the best landlord and largest 
 employer of labor in the neighborhood, and Biggar had 
 a majority of 6,564 out of a total electorate of 10,000. 
 
 " One of the absurd anomalies of our government is that 
 the county cess, over ten shilUngs in the pound, is levied 
 by the grand jury, in which the farmers are absolutely 
 unrepresented." 
 
 " Might not that be changed without a revolution in 
 the form of government ? " I asked. 
 
 " Certainly," he answered; "but the people think it 
 best to concentrate their exertions on one reform once for 
 all, instead of having year by year to push for little re- 
 forms, one by one. 
 
 " The general belief is that a Home Rule Parliament 
 would be sufficiently conservative to deal with perfect 
 justice with the land question. The influence of the 
 Catholic clergy is conservative and all-powerful. 
 
 " The present land system must be done away with. 
 The land this season has not produced any rent, and for 
 the last two seasons we believe it has been paid out of 
 the capital. Every effort has been made to meet the 
 landlords.
 
 286 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 " The increase of deposits in the banks does n't prove 
 that the people are prospering ; the money would have 
 been invested in the land instead if the farmers had been 
 prosperous. 
 
 " Have not transactions in land been discouraged ? 
 Certainly. Why not ? A high price paid for the tenant 
 right, the result of competition, might have led the land- 
 lord to think his rents were fair, however excessive they 
 might be. 
 
 " Land purchase, even, is not all that is needed. 
 There are any number of holdings in County Cavan of 
 five or six acres each. The League programme is, in 
 such cases, to transfer a number of the tenants to land 
 now uncultivated, and to throw two or more of these 
 little plots together to make one holding of a profitable 
 size. 
 
 "Would I deprive the landlords of their demesne 
 lands? Certainly. If one of these swell landlords 
 wants to keep a park, or a cover, or a pleasure-ground, 
 as he is diverting the land from the use Providence de- 
 signed it for— the support of the human race, — he ought 
 to pay for it a tax equal to the rent that average tenants 
 would pay for it. One individual ought not to have a 
 thousand or five thousand acres within his demesne 
 walls, while thousands outside are starving for want of 
 it. These and other similar questions should be left to 
 the collective wisdom of the country to settle, though 
 perhaps some of the suffering farmers may be rather 
 severe. This will, possibly, drive the landlords away, 
 but there are already any number of residences vacant 
 throughout the country, for the Land Acts have whittled 
 down the rents so much that the landlords could n't keep 
 ♦heir places up. There were two tobacco factories here :
 
 IN ULSTER. 287 
 
 one, kept by a local landlord, was closed a year or two 
 ago ; and the other, kept by Mr. Kennedy, was trans- 
 ferred to Dublin. 
 
 " Under Home Rule, there will have to be local control 
 of the police. It is their interest now to make themselves 
 as unpleasant as possible. So if there is a street row 
 anywhere the people side against the police, or at least 
 are indifferent. Mrs. Curtin of Mollahiffe might be un- 
 safe if the police were appointed by her neighbors, but 
 why deprive thirty-one counties of a right, because in the 
 thirty-second it might be abused ? 
 
 " Now policemen and detectives are often the heads of 
 local secret societies, paid by the secret-service fund. 
 They often push on the more hot-headed young men to 
 commit outrages. The Sunday after the Crimes Act was 
 passed, last spring, a meeting of the secret societies was 
 held near Cavan at three o'clock in the morning ; and 
 before six, full particulars, with the names of all the 
 people present, were lodged in the police head-quarters. 
 
 " As to the Fenians, many of them are good men and 
 the people owe much to them. When there was nothing 
 like law between landlord and tenant, the dread of the 
 Ribbonman's bullet or of a Fenian rising kept many a 
 landlord's conscience open to the law of God. Now, 
 however, all are blended with the Nationalists. 
 
 " It is an herculean task in one year to settle the fric- 
 tion of centuries. If Mr. Gladstone's bill had been 
 passed as it was, there would have been amendments 
 needed within three years ; and what is wanted is a final 
 settlement. 
 
 " Parnell, at the beginning of the movement, ordered 
 us to seize the Municipal Boards and Boards of Guardians, 
 and now the people have done so and become educated
 
 288 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 by the responsibility. Delay has been a good thing for 
 us, and will secure a more satisfactory bill in the end. 
 Tim Healey, the Irish platform orator, and Tim Healey, 
 the Attorney-General, would be very different people. 
 
 " Many of the Unions have been mismanaged, and 
 that is used as an argument against Home Rule. But the 
 reverse is often the case. At Old Castle, in County 
 Meath, less than twenty people received relief under the 
 Conservatives, and now the Nationalist Board is giving 
 out-door relief to over three hundred without any increase 
 in the rates. The only thing the Nationalist Boards have 
 done has been, where an unjust landlord has evicted a 
 number of people and made paupers of them, to give 
 them one or two pounds each a week, half of which the 
 landlord pays ; and this is only fair, since the landlord has 
 made them paupers. 
 
 " In this county, the Catholics are nearly three quar- 
 ters of the whole people, and outside of the landlords 
 and their immediate dependents, not five per cent, are 
 opposed to Home Rule. Lough, a leading Protestant 
 merchant here, is openly with us, and many others are 
 so in secret. You must not confound Protestantism with 
 Orangeism, for Orangeism is to Protestantism much 
 what Fenianism is to Catholicism." 
 
 A few miles farther on was Clones, a fairly prosperous 
 town, with several streets straggling down the slope of a 
 high hill surmounted by a large Catholic church. As in 
 other country towns no business seems to be done ex- 
 cept on the weekly fair day, when the farmers throng the 
 narrow little streets, and are succeeded the next morning 
 by a troop of commercial travellers eager to fill their or- 
 ders while the money is in the till. The people seemed 
 peaceful and contented, perhaps for the reasons sug-
 
 IN ULSTER. 289 
 
 gested by T. Coffey, a leading publican and farmer. 
 " Sir Thomas B. Leonard," he explained, " my landlord, 
 has sold the whole of his agricultural property here to 
 the tenants, at from eighteen to twenty years' purchase. I 
 bought at the lowest price of any, seventeen and a half 
 years' purchase, and while I used to pay ;^ 16 a year rent 
 I am now purchasing by yearly payments of ^11 for 
 forty-nine years. 
 
 '' The landlords about here are good and have had no 
 trouble with their tenants, though we are all Home 
 Rulers. There is neither religious excitement nor boy- 
 cotting here, and the people generally would buy if the 
 landlords would sell." 
 
 SOME ORANGEMEN. 
 
 The Orange Society, though comparatively modern, 
 has its roots in the seventeenth century. The siege of 
 Derry was early celebrated by local feasts and proces- 
 sions. In 1688 a secret society was formed among the 
 adherents of William of Orange, in the army on Houns- 
 low Heath, and was perpetuated as a semi-military asso- 
 ciation in County Antrim. For a century afterwards the 
 Protestants of the north were perpetually alarmed by 
 fears of risings among the Catholics, who had been dis- 
 possessed of their ancient properties ; both parties or- 
 ganized intermittently, and in 1795 a riot, grandiloquent- 
 ly called the Battle of the Diamond, took place between 
 the rival secret societies — the Defenders, who raided 
 Protestant farmers for arms, and the Peep-of-Day Boys, 
 who used to get up early to recapture them. The out- 
 rages that followed were so alarming that the more re- 
 spectable Protestants began to organize semi-vigilance 
 societies after the fashion of Masonic lodges, calling
 
 290 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 themselves Orange Boys ; and three years later, when the 
 Nationalist feeling revived under the influence of the 
 French Revolution, and the Presbyterians of the north 
 united with the Defenders of the south in the highly cen- 
 tralized association of the United Irishmen, the Orange 
 lodges were merged into the Orange Association. " We 
 associate," ran the preamble of the old constitution, " to 
 the utmost of our power to support and defend his Ma- 
 jesty George the Third, the Constitution, the Laws of 
 the Country, and the succession to the Throne in his 
 Majesty's illustrious house, being Protestants ; for the 
 defence of our persons and properties and to maintain 
 the peace of our country ; and for these purposes we 
 will be at all times ready to assist the civil and military 
 powers in the just and lawful discharge of their duty. 
 . . . We further declare that we are exclusively a Prot- 
 estant Association ; yet detesting as we do any intolerant 
 spirit, we solemnly pledge ourselves to each other, that 
 we will not persecute or upbraid any person on account 
 of his religious opinions." ' 
 
 During the Revolution of 1798 the Orangemen per- 
 formed important military and police service. Two 
 years later they were generally opposed to the Union 
 with England, from a fear of Catholic Emancipation 
 and the consequent downfall of the Protestant ascend- 
 ancy. During the reign of William IV. the society was 
 the subject of a parliamentary investigation, and the 
 oaths were subsequently modified. When the disestab- 
 lishment of the Irish Church was proposed by Mr. Glad- 
 stone, the most violent and revolutionary language was 
 used by the Orange leaders, and in 1886, during the pen- 
 dency of the Home Rule Bill, the Orangemen began to 
 ' Published for the use of Orangemen only, 1799.
 
 IN ULSTER. 291 
 
 drill nightly in Belfast, at Rich Hill, and at Armagh. 
 The speeches delivered at the opening of the Ballynapage 
 Orange Hall in Belfast this last autumn, to an immense 
 and enthusiastic audience, show the high-water mark of 
 Orange feeling at the present moment. " We do desire," 
 said Colonel Saunderson, M.P., "to perpetuate memories 
 of the past, which we believe reflect the glory of the race 
 to which we belong and the religion which we profess, 
 but vv-e do not do it with the unchristian purpose of per- 
 petuating discord and hatred in this our country, . 
 but we do it that we may teach our children, as we have 
 learned ourselves, that if a day should ever come when 
 we are to be confronted by a similar danger and a similar 
 foe we are ready to perform the same deeds again. . . . 
 We require now an organization more than ever we did 
 yet. Our opponents are organizing, and therefore I im- 
 press upon you and, through you, upon all my Orange 
 brethren who may read these words that I employ, that 
 no effort should be spared, and no stone should be left 
 unturned, to make the Orangemen of Ulster prepared to 
 meet a day of danger, and it may be a day of battle." ' 
 
 The opinions of Orangemen when taken alone are per- 
 haps more temperate than such words would imply. 
 
 "The great objection we in Ulster have to Home 
 Rule," said a landlord, one of the recognized leaders of 
 the Orangemen, "is that we have inherited certain rights 
 as British citizens, and we believe these rights will not 
 be secure under a Dublin Parliament. We do not be- 
 lieve that the men who have come to the front in the 
 National movement are people from whom we could 
 expect fair, sound, and reasonable legislation. 
 
 "Parnell is a conservative Nationalist ; but can Parnell 
 ^ Belfast Nezosletler, October iS, 1887.
 
 292 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 lead his party? The people will insist on returning their 
 own favorites. No guaranties would be of any value ; 
 the Irish-Americans are at the back of the Irish in Ire- 
 land, and they are parties to no guaranties. 
 
 " The recent Land Acts have been unjust, not because 
 they have made our property worthless, but because they 
 have deprived us, without compensation, of proprietary 
 rights which many of us bought not many years ago with 
 hard cash. If such things are done in the green tree, 
 what will be done in the dry ? 
 
 "Again, prejudices, religious and social, are so violent 
 here that no Irish Parliament could be impartial. I 
 know, on good authority, that, four or five years ago, a 
 priest in County Down said from the altar : ' The time 
 will come when there will be not a landlord nor a 
 Protestant in Ireland.' 
 
 "The present local boards are mere jobs, and a Home 
 Rule Parliament would be of a similar character. 
 
 " All English laws are based on the theory that the 
 majority of the people will obey and enforce them. 
 Here the reverse is true. The people disobey the laws 
 and do every thing to hinder their execution. The 
 juries, who should be merely judges of the fact, make them- 
 selves interpreters of the laws. In such a state of society 
 of what good would be any constitutional limitations ? 
 
 " Some people suggest that Ireland be given a consti- 
 tution like that of Massachusetts, with the imperial 
 rights enforced by federal courts. But such a system 
 has been successful in America only because the United 
 States are composed of so many States that the interest 
 of no one State preponderates. We are a small country 
 next a very much larger and richer one, so that there can 
 be no balance between the two.
 
 IN ULSTER. 293 
 
 " It has been suggested that Ulster be given its own 
 Home Rule legislature. The feeling abou/ that sugges- 
 tion in Ulster is creditable. The people believe they 
 would do very well as Ulstermen, but they don't want to 
 cut themselves off from the large loyalist minority in the 
 rest of Ireland, who would then be left at the mercy of 
 the majority. 
 
 " We are loyal to the laws of Engla.id ; if England 
 chooses to transfer us to the control of a Parliament at 
 Dublin, we shall owe that Parliament no allegiance, for 
 allegiance cannot be transferred, and we shall not obey 
 it. Such is the simple position of the Orangemen, and I 
 suppose there are over a hundred thousand of us in 
 Ulster. 
 
 " If we refused to obey or pay taxes to a Dublin gov- 
 ernment, it could n't force us to, for it would not have 
 the control of the police, and half the military would 
 side with us. The Unionists would begin to drill, 
 and would have in the Orangemen the nucleus of an 
 army. In the Belfast riots, it was the street boys and 
 not the Orangemen who fought, and more serious riots 
 have happened in the past, when the Queen's Island 
 men have turned out in force with their riveting ham- 
 mers to strike and their bolts to throw. In the case of 
 such a rising as Home Rule would occasion, the move- 
 ment would be taken up by the leaders and would go 
 from the top to the bottom of society." 
 
 Portadown is a smoky, bustling manufacturing town, 
 the centre of an intensely Orange district. There is not 
 even a branch of the National League in the place. The 
 Orange Hall is a simple stone building, but the number 
 of lodges that meet there regularly or occasionally is 
 enormous. In Portadown itself there are thirty-three
 
 294 I^ CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 lodges, and within a radius of a little over nine miles 
 there are one hundred and fifty-seven more — thirty-four 
 in Lurgan, twenty-nine in Killylea, twenty-two in Tan- 
 deragee, eleven in Richhill, twenty-seven in Legoniel, 
 eleven in Gilford, and twenty-three in Armagh. The 
 attitude of the Orangemen is that of stubborn, but rather 
 gloomy, determination. '* I don't know how we can pre- 
 vent Home Rule, but I do say this, that we will not have 
 it." This was the deliberate statement of one of the 
 Town Commissioners, and the feeling of Portadown 
 could not possibly be expressed with more precision in a 
 hundred pages. Those Protestants who are not Orange 
 are even more pessimistic still. " People like me," a 
 substantial shopkeeper remarked, "will quietly slip 
 away ; and those who stay, will never be at peace. I 
 have seen them chasing the police here like goats before 
 them." 
 
 It is the fear of unjust treatment by the Catholics and 
 not any theory or sentiment for the Union that arrays the 
 Orangemen against Home Ruje. One who protested 
 most loudly that the Irish flag was blue, not green, and 
 that *' the Church of Ireland " was properly termed the 
 Catholic Church, since it dated from apostolic times and 
 had never protested against any thing, confessed that 
 whal Ireland most needed was " education— education 
 to prepare the people for Home Rule." 
 
 " We are partners in a mill near here," said one of two 
 table companions at Larne, where I was waiting the sail- 
 ing of my steamer. " We began as common mill hands, 
 and gradually saved money till we were able to set up a 
 bleachery of our own. We have won prosperity by our 
 industry, and don't wish to help support these National- 
 ists in a Dublin Parliament or in new political offices.
 
 IN ULSTER. 295 
 
 The south of Ireland people are lazy and thriftless. We 
 won't have Home Rule." 
 
 " We don't believe we should get fair play from a Home 
 Rule Parliament. With only sixteen members out of 
 eighty-nine or more, we should be completely swamped. 
 We will fight first. 
 
 " If we believed that our interests as British citizens 
 would be secure, we should not of course object to Home 
 Rule ; but, as it is, we are a divided people, and oil and 
 water would mix better than we do. 
 
 " During the riots the manager of a flax company near 
 here was attacked by some hundreds of his hands, 
 simply because he was a Protestant, though a good and 
 generous man, and we had to organize parties to sit up 
 with guns in our hands to guard him at night. 
 
 "Well, we can hold our own against the Nationalists, 
 and we will fight, if need be, to keep our liberty."
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 The reader has been listening to many voices ; much 
 of what they say is contradictory ; and not a single word, 
 perhaps, is beyond question wholly impartial and unpar- 
 tisan ; but in spite of the confusion some facts seem to 
 be definite and undeniable. 
 
 From a distance the various classes in Ireland seem 
 separated one from another by wide gulfs of feeling 
 and interest. Close at hand they are seen to contain 
 within themselves every variety of opinion, to be all 
 sincerely in love with Ireland, and all dissatisfied with 
 the present system of government. In the event of 
 " Home Rule " there is no danger of actual civil war, 
 and a Dublin Parliament, so long as it holds the scales of 
 justice even, will be criticised and ridiculed but not forci- 
 bly resisted. No general exodus of the merchants is 
 expected. Except under compulsion a merchant does 
 not go out of business, and with the exception of a few 
 distilleries and iron manufactories about Belfast there 
 is little business now transacted in Ireland that could 
 be transferred to another country. The landlords also 
 will remain for the most part, if they can. Only those 
 will leave the country who are driven by poverty or 
 persecution to live or to earn a living in a more busi- 
 ness-like or tolerant community. Home Rule, if it does 
 come, will be given a fair trial even by those who are 
 hopeless of its success. 
 
 The poverty is unquestionably extreme ; the propor- 
 296
 
 CONCL USION. 297 
 
 tion of paupers to the population is from three to four 
 times greater than in England ; not only do the farmers 
 generally complain of failing crops and falling prices, 
 but the shopkeepers and commercial travellers, usually 
 a conservative class, are also in despair ; the landlords, 
 who were once large employers of labor are becoming 
 bankrupt, and the laborers who used to depend upon 
 them can find no work. It is true that the drink bill of 
 Ireland is enormous, and that the deposits in Irish banks 
 were never larger than to-day, but drunkenness is as 
 often the consequence as the cause of misery, and in 
 prosperous times a deposit yielding one per cent, is not 
 a popular investment. Irish poverty, when it is not laid 
 to the account of the government, is attributed to Ameri- 
 can competition in grain and flour, a sufficient cause and 
 a true one. 
 
 The general desire for Home Rule is, it would seem, 
 a natural result of the general poverty. The most pro- 
 nounced Nationalists do not rest their claims on purely 
 sentimental grounds, but argue that one nation cannot 
 govern another nation well, and then point to the dis- 
 tress of the farmers, the incessant emigration, the ab- 
 sence of manufactories. The farmers and the priests, 
 who usually belong to the farming class, believe in Home 
 Rule, because they think it will mean the purchase by the 
 tenants of their holdings at a minimum price, and pro- 
 tective duties on American grain and English manufac- 
 tures. In Galway the shopkeepers and fishermen expect 
 a Dublin Parliament to build a railroad to Clifden, piers 
 along the coast, and boats for those who need them. In 
 Donegal the farmers look for a redistribution of land 
 now occupied by landlords or graziers, and a rapid de- 
 velopment of the resources of the country. In Athlone
 
 298 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 and Kilkenny vast industrial schools are expected to 
 train the people in manufacturing processes under gov- 
 ernment supervision. In many places the railroads are 
 complained of, and it is suggested that they should be con- 
 trolled by an Irish government. The people, in a word, 
 are Home Rulers, because they wish to see Ireland pros- 
 per and to share in her prosperity. The only means sug- 
 gested to this end are the reduction of taxation and the 
 creation of industries more profitable than agriculture, 
 and these benefits they think will come only under Home 
 Rule- 
 
 A few fanatics there are who would prefer Home Rule 
 and greater poverty to a continuance of the Union and 
 less poverty, but they are clearly in a minority. In pri- 
 vate and serious conversation a priest, a farmer, a shop- 
 keeper, or a laborer invariably denounces the government 
 for some particular grievance that seems to him prevent- 
 able and that touches his own pocket or the pockets of 
 his neighbors. In these primitive instincts an Irishman 
 is not unlike other people, and of this human tendency, 
 that in the course of time is sure to influence conduct, 
 many of the more radical agitators are unquestionably 
 afraid. It is significant that in Donegal, in Tyrone, and 
 elsewhere, local leaders admit that the farmers would 
 lose interest in Home Rule if the land question were set- 
 tled, and that in Ballinasloe and Cork it is noticed that 
 the laborers are satisfied where they have employment. 
 
 Certain grievances are admitted to exist by men of all 
 shades of political opinion : the amount of the law costs 
 in proceedings in the land courts, which often equals or 
 exceeds the amount of the reductions granted ; the ab- 
 sence of local authority to incorporate companies for 
 purposes of local improvement, to run tramways, build
 
 CONCL USION. 299 
 
 bridges, or to furnish towns with gas or water-works ; the 
 non-representative character of the grand juries ; the 
 excessive centralization of the government, which keeps 
 it wholly uninfluenced by Irish popular opinion, which 
 fills too frequently important offices with men unknown 
 or without reputation or even hated in Ireland, and 
 which affords Irish Nationalists of ability and political in- 
 fluence no opportunity to acquire that sense of responsi- 
 bility which can be given only by administrative expe- 
 rience. 
 
 The recent Land Acts are certainly so revolutionary in 
 character that they would be held unconstitutional in 
 any State in this country, but as yet they have not been 
 given a fair trial by the people. Free sale of the tenant 
 right, and purchase under the various acts of the land- 
 lord's interest, have been generally discouraged by the 
 Nationalist leaders. Farms have been boycotted often 
 for the most trivial reasons : the spite or greed of a 
 neighbor, the political opinions of the tenant, the dis- 
 charge or hiring of a laborer. Throughout the country 
 are to be seen fields black with rag-weeds, or white with 
 thistles. In such conditions farming can be successful only 
 by accident. The reopening of judicial leases, however 
 equitable in principle, has had the effect of finally stop- 
 ping any improvements by either landlord or tenant, and 
 of encouraging the tenants to regard any land act, how- 
 ever advantageous to them, as a temporary makeshift, 
 certain if disregarded to give place to something better. 
 Such tactics are abhorrent to the survivors of the move- 
 ment of 1848, and to the priests of the older generation ; 
 but they, or the sentiments that inspire them, are preva- 
 lent throughout Ireland. 
 
 Among the Catholics at the present time there is little
 
 300 IN CASTLE AND CABIi. 
 
 apparent religious intolerance. In the south and south- 
 west there are not a few Protestants holding elective of- 
 fices in Catholic communities, and I di^ not hear a word 
 in Ireland spoken by a Catholic against a Protestant, as 
 such. In Connemara and Donegal some feeling had been . 
 plainly excited among the Catholics by attempts at 
 proselytizing. In the north and in Dublin shopkeepers 
 and others were full of fear of Catholic aggression, and 
 in the south ignorant Protestant laborers and intelligent 
 Protestant landlords were as one in believing that mur- 
 der and outrage would be the result of Catholic suprem- 
 acy. Such alarm seems unfounded ; but one danger 
 exists, and that a grave one — the opposition of the Cath- 
 olics to any but a Catholic system of education. " There," 
 said Archbishop Walsh, pointing to four thousand chil- 
 dren of the Christian Brother Schools, " there is the pro- 
 test of the Catholic people of Dublin against the main- 
 tenance in this Catholic country of a system of education 
 in which religion is shut out from the opportunity of ex- 
 ercising with unrestrained freedom her legitimate in- 
 fluence in the education of the young." As the freedom 
 that is desired is the repeal of the "conscience clause," 
 forbidding religious instruction and the exhibition of 
 emblems, except at certain hours, it would seem that in 
 the matter of education the religious line is sharply 
 drawn. 
 
 " Home Rule," a Parliament at Dublin, with exclusive 
 control of all Irish matters, is proposed as a means for 
 restoring prosperity to Ireland. This it is expected to 
 do by settling the land question, by fostering domestic 
 industries through protection or a system of loans and 
 bounties, by founding technical schools, by reducing 
 taxation, and by restoring law and order.
 
 CONCLUSION. 301 
 
 The " Land Question " would severely tax the skill of 
 a body of men with little knowledge of political economy. 
 Mr. Michael Davitt and many other Nationalists would 
 approach the subject with confidence, but few landlords 
 would trust themselves willingly to their tender mercies. 
 A just price is seldom paid by a purchaser who can fix 
 his own terms and enforce their acceptance. Even lead- 
 ing Nationalists see the danger and impolicy of such a 
 course. " There can be no doubt," Mr. Timothy Har- 
 rington wrote me, " as to the eagerness of the Irish 
 Nationalist party to have the land question settled by 
 the imperial Parliament, and settled as early as possible. 
 We are all extremely anxious that a question calculated 
 to excite so much feeling and bring so many opposing in- 
 terests into collision should not be left to be settled in 
 the early and therefore trying days of a new legislature. 
 No sincere Irishman could honestly entertain any other 
 opinion." Such is well known not to be the opinion of 
 Mr. Michael Davitt, and these notes would seem to show 
 that many of the local leaders would not consider favor- 
 ably any land legislation proposed by the imperial 
 government. It is also clear that Irish statesmen are 
 now confronted by a very pretty dilemma. The land 
 question should be settled before Home Rule is estab- 
 lished, and yet no guaranty for the purchase money 
 is suggested by the Nationalists, except a guaranty by a 
 Home Rule Parliament. The creation of a peasant pro- 
 prietary is, moreover, not the work of a year, nor even of 
 a few years, and is apparently impossible, except under 
 the continuous supervision of a strongly centralized and 
 stable government. 
 
 " Protection " is an article of faith in the economical 
 creed' of the great majority of Irishmen. The farmers
 
 302 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 look to protective duties on cereals and cattle to restore 
 the prices of the last decade ; the shopkeepers and many- 
 landlords share the hopes of the farmers, in whose pros- 
 perity or poverty they are partners ; and everybody in 
 Ireland believes that Irish manufactures cannot be estab- 
 lished without protection against the manufactured goods 
 of England and the Continent, — everybody, that is, with 
 the significant exception of the only successful manufac- 
 turers, the Ulster linen manufacturers, and the owners 
 of the woollen and tweed mills of West Meath. The 
 protective system is now on its defence in the United 
 States, and the chief argument of its defenders is 
 that our home market is more valuable than the for- 
 eign market, and at all costs must be retained. This 
 argument does not apply to Ireland ; England and 
 the Continent are the chief markets for Irish linen, Amer- 
 ica is the chief market for Irish woollen goods. For 
 manufactures of a high grade there is no demand in 
 poverty-stricken Ireland ; for manufactures of a low 
 grade even the demand is restricted to the necessaries of 
 life. If any manufactures cannot be profitably conducted 
 in Ireland without "protection," it is because those manu- 
 factures cannot be profitably sold at the same price as 
 similar articles of foreign make. If any manufactures 
 shall be profitably conducted in Ireland with "protec- 
 tion," it will be because those articles are bought at 
 greater cost than similar articles now are by the consum- 
 ers, the Irish people. The farmers and laborers who 
 cannot pay their shop bills now will not be benefited by 
 an increase in such bills in future. But the farmers will 
 be recompensed by the higher price of agricultural pro- 
 ducts. They may be, and in that case the bills of all 
 other men in Ireland will be still further increased by
 
 CONCLUSION. 303 
 
 the amount of the farmers' extra profits ; while the graz- 
 iers certainly will be ruined by a duty on live stock, for 
 their market is England and the prices in the English 
 market will not be affected by " protection " in Ireland, 
 which can raise the cost of beef and mutton to the inhab- 
 itants of Ireland but to no one else. " Protection," then, 
 may not affect for the worse the Irish farmers, but it will 
 starve the laborers unless the manufacturers can afford 
 to pay higher wages than are paid at present. This they 
 cannot do without raising proportionally the prices of 
 their goods. The foreign market will then be finally 
 lost, and those manufactures only will survive in Ireland 
 that are needed to supply the home market. Less money 
 and goods, instead of more, will flow into Ireland from 
 without, and the only effect of '' protection " in the course 
 of time will have been a redistribution of Irish property 
 among Irishmen in Ireland. 
 
 " The bounty system," which some regard more favor- 
 ably than protection, is identical with it in principle, and 
 produces, though more rapidly, similar results. The 
 system, with regard to beet-root sugar, has been recently 
 discussed in Europe and seems now utterly discredited. 
 It would in Ireland require an immediate increase in 
 taxation, an increase less indirect than that exacted by 
 protection, and on that account it is less likely to com- 
 mend itself to an Irish Parliament. 
 
 Loans to fishermen for boats and schooners and nets, 
 grants for piers and harbors, for prizes and exhibitions, 
 for railroads to open up the country, for experiments and 
 surveys to discover mines and quarries, for founding in- 
 dustrial schools and colleges, — such expenses cannot 
 easily be incurred by the most patriotic representatives 
 of people on the verge of bankruptcy.
 
 304 I^ CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 Taxation, even though lightened by a great reduction 
 in the cost of police, of which a part is now borne by the 
 imperial exchequer, is not likely to be materially reduced 
 for many years after the peaceful establishment of " Home 
 Rule." If it is accompanied or preceded by the creation 
 of a peasant proprietary, and the claims of the landlords 
 have not been completely extinguished, the national 
 guaranty of the purchase money or of interest upon it 
 must seriously impair the credit of the Irish government. 
 Expenses for bounties, grants, and loans will have to be 
 met by borrowing at high interest or by direct imposts ; 
 in either case the people must pay. In certain respects 
 the government of Ireland will cost more than it does 
 now. The members of the Irish Parliament will certainly 
 have to be paid salaries from the Irish treasury ; several 
 new offices must be created ; and if any large measures 
 of a socialistic character are undertaken by the govern- 
 ment, such as the nationalization of the land, or the 
 management of the railroads, the number of officials and 
 the amount of public salaries must be increased very 
 considerably. 
 
 One difficulty, then, in determining the question of 
 Home Rule that cannot be called theoretical, is the fact 
 that it is doubtful whether " Home Rule " would restore 
 prosperity to Ireland, even if the Dublin Parliament 
 were to do all that the people expect of it ; while it is 
 certain that any practical pecuniary benefit would be 
 long delayed. The faith that the Irish people have had 
 in the power of the imperial government to create pov- 
 erty or wealth by legislation, to change the laws of na- 
 ture by Act of Parliament has been transferred to an 
 imaginary Home Rule government. No change of 
 government can effect a change in the tendencies of
 
 CONCL USION. 305 
 
 natural processes, whether they are called economic laws, 
 physical laws, or the laws of God. If all the land in Ire- 
 land were to-morrow divided equally among all the Irish 
 tenant farmers, it could raise the standard of living in Ire- 
 land only for a few years In no country, in no county or 
 town in any country, can the standard of living be perma- 
 nently raised, or the population increase and maintain 
 the same standard, without " the development there of 
 some industry, the discovery of some local springs of in- 
 dustry, a new appreciation of previously unrecognized 
 facilities for the application of more efficient processes of 
 labor." ' So long as agriculture continues to be the chief 
 industry of Ireland, no legislation can improve the con- 
 dition of its people and save them from the fate which 
 between 1880 and 1883 drove from Norway, that land of 
 peasant proprietors, one twentieth of its inhabitants. 
 The one practical benefit of Home Rule, if wisely ad- 
 ministered, will be the restoration of law and order, un- 
 til such time as recurring poverty shall reproduce the 
 elements of disorder and lawlessness. 
 
 The more or less theoretical difficulties or dilemmas in 
 the way of Home Rule are many and serious. Of the 
 various nationalities inhabiting the British Islands the 
 population and wealth of England is so much the largest 
 and the greatest that a federal union between them, a 
 union that recognizes the equal claim of each nationality, 
 as in the United States Senate, is preposterous. The 
 interests of England must prevail in all questions in 
 which those interests are involved, for the same reason 
 that the interests of New York would prevail in the 
 federal government if the United States consisted only 
 of New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. No sys- 
 1 Mr. L. Courtney in The Niitcteenlh CeiUttry.
 
 306 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 tern of Home Rule would be practicable, therefore, that 
 gives an Irish government any control of the excise ; 
 and yet it is for that purpose that the Irish mainly desire 
 Home Rule. 
 
 The analogy of Canada and Australia does not apply 
 to the case of Ireland. The secession of Canada or its 
 cession to the United States at some future period is con- 
 templated with complacency by many English statesmen, 
 as is the independence of Australia by Mr. Labouchere. 
 That the cession of Ireland to France, or its indepen- 
 dence, would be ruinous to England until the advent of 
 the age of universal peace, proves conclusively the inac- 
 curacy of such an analogy. The integrity of Ireland is 
 essential to the independent power of England in a sense 
 in which the integrity of no other territory is essential to 
 it. The union between the two islands must therefore 
 be peculiarly close, and the links must be forged of some- 
 thing less brittle and more material than sentiment. Any 
 local government, then, accorded to Ireland must possess 
 only strictly defined and delegated powers, and the im- 
 perial Parliament or some other central body must retain 
 the authority and the means to enforce any measure 
 judged necessary for the general safety. 
 
 Certain principles of justice, impartially enforced by 
 law, are recognized as conditions of modern civilization. 
 Intercourse between England and Ireland would be 
 hindered, just men without reason would be sacrificed, 
 and the public conscience would be outraged, if laws 
 subversive of such principles were suffered to be enacted 
 in Ireland. The power of a Home Rule Parliament 
 should then be still further restricted by constitutional 
 provisions in the nature of a bill of rights prohibiting 
 legislation in violation of contracts, taking private prop-
 
 CONCL USION. 307 
 
 erty for public use without compensation, imposing un- 
 equal or unjust taxation, or discriminating against any 
 individual or class. A court, appointed by the central 
 authority, should then be established, to go on circuit 
 throughout Ireland and adjudicate all causes involving 
 constitutional questions, or questions touching imperial 
 or other reserved rights. Such a Parliament, it is worth 
 observing, would be unable to enact laws similar to the 
 Land Acts. 
 
 The grant to Ireland of a Home Rule Parliament, 
 however constituted, and with powers however limited, 
 involves a complete revolution in the system of govern- 
 ment in Great Britain. Parliament now is the autocratic 
 committee of a highly centralized democracy, with un- 
 limited and undefined powers. The local affairs of Ire- 
 land cannot be removed from the discretionary inter- 
 ference of Parliament without limiting the powers of 
 Parliament. Is such limitation possible ? It may be 
 suspected that a Home Rule Parliament, so long as the 
 government of Great Britain remains otherwise un- 
 changed, will and can exist only during good behavior^ 
 at the pleasure of the capricious British democracy. 
 
 If the consideration of Home Rule is postponed till 
 after the settlement of the land question, it is likely that 
 many years will pass before an Irish Parliament sits in 
 Dublin. In the meantime, if Irish discontent is to be 
 allayed, certain changes should be made in the manage- 
 ment of Irish affairs and at once. The grand-jury sys- 
 tem is obsolescent, and grand juries should be made 
 elective, or should be superseded by representative bodies 
 with more varied powers. It is, moreover, absurd that 
 the promoters of schemes of purely local improvement 
 should have to apply to Westminster for incorporation.
 
 308 IN CASTLE AND CABIN. 
 
 These, and all the more obvious Irish grievances, would 
 be removed by an extension to Ireland of the Local 
 Government Bill, now under discussion in Parliament. 
 By that bill county councils are to be elected by the 
 ratepayers for three years, to add to themselves one 
 fourth their own number from the ratepayers to sit for 
 six years. They are to exercise " the existing adminis- 
 trative powers of the justices in respect of county rates 
 and financial business, county buildings, county bridges, 
 the provision and management of the county lunatic 
 asylums, the establishment and maintenance of reforma- 
 tory and industrial schools, the granting of licences for 
 music and dancing, the granting of licences for the sale 
 of intoxicating liquors." They are to have " the control 
 and maintenance of all main highways, the power of 
 making all provisional orders under the Pier and Harbor 
 Acts, the Tramways Act, the Electric Lighting Act, and 
 the Gas and Water-works Facilities Acts as regards com- 
 panies "; and a variety of other powers not of a judicial 
 character may be transferred to them by the government 
 of the day by a mere Order in Council, subject to no 
 control except Parliament and the common law. The 
 powers specified are so extensive as to make the 
 office of County Councillor one of sufficient dignity, 
 responsibility, and experience to attract men of ability ; 
 and if a salary were attached to the office, as it should 
 be in Ireland, it would be the means of turning many a 
 brilliant demagogue into a useful public servant. Some 
 abuses and jobs might be perpetrated in the begin- 
 ning ; but the people would soon learn by experience 
 that few luxuries are so expensive as abuses and jobs in 
 the granting of public franchises or the expenditure of 
 the public money.
 
 CONCL USION. 309 
 
 In the matter of the appointment of judicial officers in 
 Ireland, it would be wise for the government to con- 
 sult with the Nationalist Members of Parliament, and 
 whenever possible to adopt their suggestions. It is not 
 always easy for a man of legal training to decide a ques- 
 tion of law on grounds purely sentimental, and a few 
 gross miscarriages of justice might yet be counterbal- 
 anced by an increased respect for law among the people. 
 All public offices should of course be filled by Irishmen, 
 and Irishmen not specially connected with Dublin Cas- 
 tle. 
 
 Finally, with generosity and discretion the govern- 
 ment should promote works of public improvement in 
 Ireland ; loans should be granted for the extension of 
 railroads in Connaught, for the building of piers, for the 
 purchase of boats and nets for fishermen, — and the lia- 
 bility for such loans should not fall only on the districts 
 chiefly benefited. In every way technical education 
 should be fostered ; and primary education should be 
 made compulsory, even though it have to be largely sec- 
 tarian and Catholic. 
 
 As the farmers become occupiers, as the laborers find 
 employment, as the people by controlling their own 
 local affairs learn to blame themselves rather than the 
 English government for local discomforts, the number of 
 Irishmen in Ireland will increase who will be perfectly 
 contented with a measure of Home Rule far less sweeping 
 than that proposed by Mr. Gladstone, and at the same 
 time they will become more and more competent to 
 operate with benefit to themselves and without injury 
 to others any measure of Home Rule that shall be 
 granted.
 
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