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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ireland's disease, by Philippe Daryl

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and

-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms

-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at

-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you

-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before

-using this eBook.

-

-Title: Ireland's disease

-

-Author: Philippe Daryl

-

-Release Date: February 9, 2023 [eBook #69993]

-

-Language: English

-

-Produced by: deaurider and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

-             https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images

-             generously made available by The Internet Archive)

-

-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRELAND'S DISEASE ***

-

-

-

-

-

-

-IRELAND’S DISEASE.

-

-

-

-

-                            IRELAND’S DISEASE

-

-                          NOTES AND IMPRESSIONS

-                                    BY

-                              PHILIPPE DARYL

-

-                      _THE AUTHOR’S ENGLISH VERSION_

-

-                                  LONDON

-                        GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS

-                          BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL

-                           GLASGOW AND NEW YORK

-                                   1888

-

-                                  LONDON

-              BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

-

-

-

-

-PREFACE.

-

-

-These pages were first published in the shape of letters addressed from

-Ireland to _Le Temps_, during the summer months of 1886 and 1887.

-

-A few extracts from those letters having found their way to the columns

-of the leading British papers, they became the occasion of somewhat

-premature, and, it seemed to the author, somewhat unfair conclusions, as

-to their general purport and bearing.

-

-A fiery correspondent of a London evening paper, in particular, who

-boldly signed “J. J. M.” for his name, went so far as to denounce the

-author as “an ally of the _Times_, in the congenial task of vilifying the

-Irish people by grotesque and ridiculous caricatures,” which charge was

-then summarily met as follows:—

-

-    _To the Editor of the PALL MALL GAZETTE._

-

-    SIR,—

-

-    Let me hope, for the sake of “J. J. M.’s” mental condition,

-    that he never set eyes upon my Irish sketches in _Le Temps_,

-    about which he volunteers an opinion. If, however, he has

-    actually seen my prose in the flesh, and he still clings to his

-    hobby that I am hostile to the Irish cause or unsympathetic

-    with the Irish race, why then I can only urge upon his friends

-    the advisability of a strait waistcoat, a brace of mad doctors,

-    and an early berth in a lunatic asylum. I never heard in my

-    life of a sadder case of raving delusion.

-

-                           Yours obediently,

-

-                                                     PHILIPPE DARYL.

-

-    PARIS, _September 18, 1887_.

-

-Thus ended the controversy. There was no reply.

-

-Allowance should be made, of course, for the natural sensitiveness of

-Irishmen on everything that relates to their noble and unhappy country.

-But, what! Do they entertain, for one moment, the idea that everything is

-right and normal in it? In that case there can be no cause of complaint

-for them, and things ought to remain as they are. All right-minded people

-will understand, on the contrary, that the redress of Irish wrongs can

-only come out of a sincere and assiduous exposure of the real state of

-affairs, which is not healthy but pathological, and, as such, manifests

-itself by peculiar symptoms.

-

-However it may be, a natural though perhaps morbid desire of submitting

-the case to the English-reading public was the consequence of those

-exceedingly brief and abortive polemics.

-

-The Author was already engaged in the not over-congenial task of putting

-his own French into English, or what he hoped might do duty as such, when

-Messrs. George Routledge & Sons, the London publishers of his _Public

-Life in England_, kindly proposed to introduce _Ireland’s Disease_ to

-British society. The offer was heartily accepted, and so it came to pass

-that the English version is to appear in book form on the same day as the

-French one.

-

-The special conditions of the case made it, of course, a duty to the

-author to strictly retain in his text every line that he had written

-down in the first instance, however little palatable it might prove to

-some English readers and fatal to his own literary or other prospects

-in England. That should be his excuse for sticking desperately to

-words which, like Tauchnitz editions, were not originally intended for

-circulation in Great Britain.

-

-                                                                    PH. D.

-

-PARIS, _Nov. 10th, 1887_.

-

-

-

-

-CONTENTS.

-

-

-                                              PAGE

-

-    INTRODUCTION                                 1

-

-                   CHAPTER I.

-

-    FIRST SENSATIONS                             5

-

-                   CHAPTER II.

-

-    DUBLIN LIFE                                 17

-

-                  CHAPTER III.

-

-    THE POOR OF DUBLIN                          31

-

-                   CHAPTER IV.

-

-    THE EMERALD ISLE                            46

-

-                   CHAPTER V.

-

-    THE RACE                                    60

-

-                   CHAPTER VI.

-

-    HISTORICAL GRIEVANCES                       76

-

-                  CHAPTER VII.

-

-    KILLARNEY                                   96

-

-                  CHAPTER VIII.

-

-    THROUGH KERRY ON HORSEBACK                 109

-

-                   CHAPTER IX.

-

-    A KERRY FARMER’S BUDGET                    139

-

-                   CHAPTER X.

-

-    RURAL PHYSIOLOGY                           157

-

-                   CHAPTER XI.

-

-    EMIGRATION                                 177

-

-                  CHAPTER XII.

-

-    THE LEAGUE                                 197

-

-                  CHAPTER XIII.

-

-    THE CLERGY                                 215

-

-                  CHAPTER XIV.

-

-    FORT SAUNDERS                              234

-

-                   CHAPTER XV.

-

-    THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN                       256

-

-                  CHAPTER XVI.

-

-    SCOTTISH IRELAND                           271

-

-                  CHAPTER XVII.

-

-    LEX LICINIA                                296

-

-         I.—The Gladstone Scheme               309

-

-        II.—An Outsider’s Suggestion           313

-

-    APPENDIX                                   331

-

-

-

-

-IRELAND’S DISEASE.

-

-

-

-

-INTRODUCTION.

-

-

-It is indeed a chronic and constitutional disease that Ireland is

-labouring under. Twice within the last fifteen months it has been my

-fortune to visit the Sister Isle; first in the summer of 1886, at the

-apparently decisive hour when the die of her destiny was being cast in

-the ballot-box, and her children seemed on the point of starting upon a

-new life; then again, twelve months after, in the summer of 1887, when I

-found her a prey to the very same local disorders and to the same general

-anxiety that I had previously observed.

-

-Last year it looked as if the solution was nigh, if Mr. Gladstone’s

-spirited eloquence was going to carry the English nation along with

-it. The seasons, however, have followed one another in due course,

-bringing with them the usual run of unpaid rent, eviction, and reciprocal

-violence; a new Crimes Act has been added to the long record of similar

-measures that the British Parliament has scored against Ireland in

-eighty-seven years of so-called Union; a few cabins have disappeared,

-have been unroofed or burnt down by the arm of the bailiff; a few more

-skulls have been broken; some hundred thousand more wretched beings have

-embarked in emigrant ships for the United States or Queensland; some

-more hunger-stricken women and children have swollen the list of obscure

-victims that green Erin annually pays to the Anglo-Saxon Minotaur. But

-nothing essential is altered. Things are in the same places and passions

-at the same pitch. The two nations are facing each other with defiance in

-their eyes, threats in their mouths, revolvers or dynamite in hand. The

-problem has not advanced one step. Social war is still there, filling the

-hearts, paralysing the action, poisoning the springs of life. It may be

-read in the alarmed looks of mothers, in the sullen faces of men; it is

-lurking behind every hedge.

-

-Before such an unparalleled case of a whole race’s physiological misery,

-how could one help being seized with an ardent curiosity mingled with

-pity? Who would not wish to plunge to the bottom of the matter, to make

-out, if possible, the secret of the evil, to deduce from it a lesson,

-and, may be, a general law?

-

-That want I have felt most deeply, and I have tried to gratify it by

-personal observation; looking at things through my own spectacles,

-without animus or hatred, passion or prejudice, as they came under my

-gaze; noting down what seemed to be characteristic; above all, avoiding

-like poison the contact of the professional politician on either side:

-then drawing my own conclusion.

-

-I need hardly add that for the intelligence of what I saw, I have always

-availed myself of the printed sources of information, such as the

-standard works on Irish history, Black’s excellent _Guide to Ireland_,

-the Parliamentary Reports, the national literature, and last but not

-least the graphic accounts of current events published by the English and

-native press. Of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, especially, I must state that

-I have found its files a mine of precise, well digested, and thoroughly

-reliable information on the subject.

-

-That my studies are above correction, I will not venture to hope. That

-they are in every case founded on facts, and, to the best of my belief,

-accurate, I earnestly vouch. As far as possible, I have made a point

-of giving the names of the persons mentioned. When it might have been

-inconvenient to them, however, or when delicacy forbade such a liberty,

-I have either suppressed the name or substituted a fictitious one. It

-should be understood that what I wanted, as a total stranger in the

-country, and what my French readers wanted, were not personal but typical

-instances.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER I.

-

-FIRST SENSATIONS.

-

-

-                                                                   DUBLIN.

-

-Hardly have you set foot on the quay at Kingstown, than you feel on

-an altogether different ground from England. Between Dover and Calais

-the contrast is not more striking. Kingstown is a pretty little place,

-whose harbour is used by the steamers from Holyhead, and whither Dublin

-shopkeepers resort in summer. Half a century back, it was only a

-fishermen’s village of the most rudimentary description. But George IV.,

-late Prince Regent, having done that promontory the honour to embark

-there when leaving Ireland, the place became the fashion. In memory of

-the glorious event, the citizens of Dublin raised on that spot a pyramid

-which rests on four cannon balls, and bears on its top the royal crown

-with the names of all the engineers, architects, captains, and harbour

-officials who had anything to do with the business. Villas soon sprang up

-round it, and from that time Kingstown went on thriving. A splendid pier

-bent round upon itself like a forearm on its humerus, makes it the safest

-harbour in Ireland, and the railway puts it in communication with Dublin

-in twenty minutes. It is the Portici of a bay that could vie with the

-Bay of Naples, did it boast its Vesuvius and sun, and did not the shoals

-which form its bottom get often bare and dry at low tide.

-

-You land then at Kingstown, early in the morning after a four hours’

-crossing, having started the evening before by the express from Euston

-Station. And immediately you feel that you are no longer in England. The

-language is the same, no doubt, though talked with a peculiar accent or

-_brogue_. The custom-house officers are English; so are the policemen

-and redcoats who air themselves on the quay; but the general type is no

-longer English, and the manners are still less so. Loud talk, violent

-gesticulation, jokes and laughter everywhere; brown hair, sparkling dark

-eyes: you could imagine you are at Bordeaux or at Nantes.

-

-The guard who asks for your ticket, the very train you get in, have

-something peculiar, undefinable, thoroughly un-English. The old lame

-newspaper-man who hands you _The Irish Times_ or the _Freeman’s Journal_

-at the carriage-door, indulges witticisms while giving you back your

-change, which not one of Mr. Smith’s well-conducted lads ever permits

-himself along a British line. As for the passengers they are more

-un-English than anything else. This lady with the olive complexion and

-brown hair, may be termed an English subject; but for all that she

-has not probably one globule of Anglo-Saxon blood in her veins. That

-gentleman in the grey suit has evidently an English tailor, but the

-flesh-and-bone lining of his coat is of an altogether different make. As

-for the little man in black who is curling himself cosily in the corner

-opposite to you, not only is he unmistakeably a Roman Catholic priest,

-but you must positively hear him talk, to give up the idea that he is a

-Breton just out of the Saint Brieux Seminary. High cheek-bones, bilious

-complexion, small tobacco-coloured eyes, lank hair, nothing is missing

-from the likeness.

-

-Here is Dublin. The train takes us to the very heart of the town, and

-there stops between a pretty public garden and the banks of the Liffey.

-The weather is cool and clear. Inside the station cabs and cars are

-waiting for travellers and their luggage. _Waiting_, not contending

-eagerly for their patronage as they do in London, where any possible

-customer is quickly surrounded by half-a-dozen rival drivers. “_Hansom,

-sir?... Hansom, sir?_” The Dublin cabman is more indolent. He keeps

-dozing on his seat or leisurely gossiping with his mates. “Why trouble

-oneself for nothing? The traveller knows how to call for a cab, I

-suppose!” So speaks the whole attitude of these philosophers in the

-Billycock hats.

-

-This, however, will not prevent their being as unscrupulous as any of

-their fellow-drivers in any part of the globe, when it comes to settling

-the fare. “How much?” “Five bob.” On verification you find that two

-shillings is all the rogue is entitled to. You give the two shillings, he

-pockets them and rattles away laughing. The job was a failure; no more.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Dublin is a big city, thickly populated, crossed by wide thoroughfares,

-provided with fine public gardens and splendid parks, which are here

-called _greens_, and adorned with an extraordinary number of statues.

-Its traffic and industry are important: visibly, this is a capital. More

-than a capital; the focus of a nationality. Everything in the streets

-proclaims it: sign-boards, monuments, countenances, manners. Those marble

-statues you see at every step are the effigies of the patriots who

-fought for the rights of Ireland. That palace with the noble colonnade,

-in the heart and finest part of the town, is the very building where

-the Irish Parliament, abolished in 1800 by the Act of Union, held its

-assemblies. Now-a-days the Bank directors meet in the room where once met

-the representatives of the nation. But they seem to have been careful

-not to change anything in the general arrangement, in case it was wanted

-to-morrow for some _Assemblée Constituante_. You may enter it: the

-door is open for every one. On the right you see what was the House of

-Lords, a rectangular hall with an open ceiling, historic hangings, and

-the statue of some royalties. On the left, the House of Commons. Here,

-mahogany counters stand in place of the members benches, and where

-sounded once the clash of argument, you hear now the tinkling of gold

-coins.

-

-Let old times come again; let Westminster give back to the Sister-Isle

-the autonomy she mourns, and, as a stage machinery, the Bank will vanish

-before the Parliament. It will be an affair of a night’s work for the

-upholsterers.

-

-In front of that building, which is the City Hall, it is not the British

-flag (though perhaps the law should insist upon it) that is hanging

-aloft. It is the green flag of Erin with the harp and the three towers.

-Everywhere there are calls on the national feeling. _Hibernian House_,

-_Hibernian Hotel_, _Erin Stores_, _Irish poplins_, _Irish gloves_,

-_Irish whisky_. Above all Irish whisky! one could not get comfortably

-drunk with Scotch whisky, that is evident.

-

-If you visit a museum or picture-gallery you will find Art exiled in the

-background, and patriotism shining to the fore. Bating a fine Giorgione,

-a valuable Potter, a Van Steen of large size and extraordinary quality,

-a rare Cornelius Béga and a few others, the collection is not worth

-much, and would not fetch its million francs at the _Hotel des Ventes_,

-in the Rue Drouot. It is only a pretext for a national collection of

-portraits where are represented all the glories of Ireland, from Jonathan

-Swift, Laurence Sterne, Steele, Sheridan, Edmund Burke to Moore, Lord

-Edward Fitzgerald, the Duke of Wellington, and above all, O’Connell,

-“the liberator;” and Henry Grattan, esquire, “true representative of the

-people, father of liberty, author of the emancipation.”

-

-Those things take hold of you as soon as you arrive at Dublin. Like a

-flash of lightning they bring light upon many things about _Home Rule_

-which had remained hazy to your continental heedlessness. A nation with

-such memories kept up with such jealous care must know what it wants, and

-will have it in the end. Such signs are the manifestation of a national

-soul, of a distinct personality in the great human family. When all,

-from alderman to beggar, have one sole aim, they are bound to reach it

-sooner or later. Here, if the Town Hall has its green flag, the urchin

-in the street has his sugarplum, shaped into the effigy of Parnell or

-Gladstone. Never, since the Venice and the Lombardy of 1859, was there

-such a passionate outburst of national feeling.

-

-In the central part of the town, several streets are really fine with

-their rows of large houses, their gorgeous shops and numberless statues.

-The women are generally good-looking; well built, well gloved, well

-shod. They move gracefully, and with a vivacity which is quite southern.

-They look gentle and modest, and dress almost as well as Frenchwomen, of

-whom they have the quiet grace. The youngest ones wear their brown hair

-floating behind, and that hair, fine in the extreme, made more supple by

-the moistness of an insular climate, is crossed now and then by a most

-lovely glimmer of golden light.

-

-Most of the men have acquired the significant habit of carrying large

-knotty cudgels in place of walking sticks. Other signs show a state of

-latent crisis, a sort of momentary truce between classes: for instance,

-the abundance of personal weapons, pneumatic rifles, pocket revolvers,

-&c., which are to be seen in the armourers’ shop windows.

-

-But what gives the principal streets of Dublin their peculiar character

-is the perpetual presence at every hour of the day of long rows of

-loiterers, which only one word could describe, and that is _lazzaroni_.

-As in Naples they stop there by hundreds; some in a sitting posture, or

-stretched at full length on the bare stone, others standing with their

-backs to the wall, all staring vaguely in front of them, doing nothing,

-hardly saying more, mesmerised by a sort of passive contemplation, and

-absorbed in the dull voluptuousness of inaction.

-

-What do they live upon? When do they eat? Where do they sleep? Mystery.

-They probably accept now and then some occasional job which may bring

-them a sixpence. At such times they disappear and are mixed among the

-laborious population; you don’t notice them. But their normal function is

-to be idle, to hem as a human fringe the public monuments.

-

-Some places they seem to affect particularly; Nelson’s Pillar amongst

-others. Whenever you pass it you are sure to see four rows of loungers

-seated on the pedestal, with legs dangling, pressed against each other

-like sardines.

-

-Numerous tramcars, light and quick, cross Dublin in all directions. Five

-or six railway stations are the heads of so many iron lines radiating

-fan-wise over Ireland. All bear their national stamp; but what possesses

-that character in the highest degree is that airy vehicle called a

-jaunting-car.

-

-Imagine a pleasure car where the seats, instead of being perpendicular to

-the shafts, are parallel with them, disposed back to back and perched on

-two very high wheels. You climb to your place under difficulties; then

-the driver seated sideways like you (unless the number of travellers

-obliges him to assume the rational position), lashes his horse, which

-plunges straightway into a mad career.

-

-This style of locomotion rather startles you at first, not only on

-account of its novelty, but also by reason of the indifferent equilibrium

-you are able to maintain. Jostled over the pavement, threatened

-every moment to see yourself projected into space, at a tangent, you

-involuntarily grasp the nickel handle which is there for that purpose,

-just as a tyro horseman instinctively clutches the mane of his steed. But

-one gets used in time to the Irish car, and even comes to like it. First,

-it goes at breakneck speed, which is not without its charm; then you have

-no time to be bored, considering that the care of preserving your neck

-gives you plenty of occupation; lastly, you have the satisfaction of

-facing constantly the shop windows and foot paths against which you are

-likely to be tossed at any moment. Those are serious advantages, which

-other countries’ cabs do not offer. To be candid, they are unaccompanied

-by other merits.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-In that equipage you go to the Phœnix Park, the Dublin “Bois de

-Boulogne.” It is a wide timbered expanse of some two thousand acres,

-full of tame deer, where all that is young in the place may be seen

-flirting, cricketing, playing all sorts of games, but above all,

-bicycling. Bicycles seem to be the ruling passion of the Dublin youth.

-I have seen more than a hundred at a time in a single lane near the

-Wellington Obelisk. By the way, this was the very avenue where Lord

-Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke were murdered five years ago by the

-_Invincibles_. A cross marks the place where the two corpses were

-discovered.

-

-The Castle, which the two English officials had the imprudence to leave

-that day, is the Lord-Lieutenant’s official residence. It has not the

-picturesque majesty of the castles of Edinburgh or Stirling. Instead of

-rising proudly on some cloud-ascending rock and lording over the town, it

-seems to hide “its diminished head” under a little hillock in the central

-quarters. You must literally stumble over its walls to become aware of

-their existence; and you understand then why the name of _Dublin Castle_

-is for the Irish synonymous with despotism and oppression.

-

-This is no Government office of the ordinary type, the dwelling of the

-Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland is a regular stronghold, encircled with

-ramparts, bristling with towers, shut up with portcullis, draw-bridge and

-iron bars. In the inner Castle yard are situated the apartments of the

-pro-consul, the lodgings of his dependants of all degrees, the offices

-where decrees are engrossed, the pigeon-holes where they are heaped, all

-forming a sort of separate city entrenched within its fortifications.

-

-A very gem is the Royal Chapel, with its marvellous oak wainscoting,

-which twenty generations of carvers have concurred to elaborate.

-The reception-rooms, the hall of the Order of St. Patrick, where

-_drawing-rooms_ are held, form the kernel of the fortress.

-

-The barracks of the English soldiers and of those giant constables whom

-you see about the town are also fortified with walls, and form a line of

-detached forts round the central stronghold.

-

-England is encamped at Dublin, with loaded guns and levelled rifles, even

-as she is encamped at Gibraltar, in Egypt, and in India.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER II.

-

-DUBLIN LIFE.

-

-

-As there is little aristocracy in Dublin there are few lordly dwellings

-besides the Vice-regal castle. This is very striking in this country of

-lords and serfs. The masters of the land, mostly of English origin, do

-not care at all to live in the capital of Ireland; all the time that they

-do not spend on their property they prefer to beguile away in London,

-Paris, Naples or elsewhere. Few of their tradesmen are Irish; and the

-greatest part of the rents they raise on their lands merely accumulate in

-the banks of Dublin to be afterwards spent on the foreign markets. Thence

-this consequence, which explains many things:—The clearest of the nett

-product of the country’s one industry—agricultural industry,—is poured

-outside it every year, without having circulated in Ireland, without

-having strengthened the local commerce or even invigorated agriculture

-itself, without having contributed to the well-being of a single

-Irishman. Let us set down this nett product, the Irish aggregate rental,

-at its lowest estimate, £8,000,000 per annum, a sum much inferior to the

-nominal one, and admit that one-half of it is sent abroad to absentee

-landlords. There we have £4,000,000 leaving the island every year without

-conferring the slightest benefit to any one of its inhabitants. In ten

-years’ time that represents 40 millions sterling; in fifty years, 200

-millions sterling, or five milliards francs, that Ireland has, so to

-speak, thrown into the sea, for that is to her the precise equivalent

-of such a continuous deperdition of capital.... And this has lasted for

-three centuries!...[1] What country would not be worn threadbare by such

-usage? What nation could resist it? Which individual, submitting to such

-periodical blood-lettings, would not succumb to anæmia?

-

-This anæmia betrays itself, even in Dublin, by many a symptom. For

-example, it is not long before one discovers that the finest shops, in

-the seven or eight principal streets, are a mere empty pretence; great

-windows displaying all the wares possessed by the merchant and beyond

-which the stock is _nil_. Money is so scarce that if you want to exchange

-a five pound note, in nine cases out of ten you do not get your right

-amount of change in specie. They give you back a quantity of small

-Irish banknotes, plus the change in half-crowns and shillings, and that

-not without having caused you to wait a long time while the important

-transaction was entered in and brought to a termination, and then only by

-the united energies of half the neighbourhood.

-

-There is not in all the city one tolerable _restaurant_ or _café_ where

-a stranger can read the papers or obtain a decent beefsteak. The two or

-three pretentious taverns that aspire to fulfil that purpose are horrible

-dens, where, without the civilized accompaniment of napkins, they give

-you slices of cow, tough as leather, which are charged for at Bignon’s

-prices.

-

-Necessity compels you to fall back on the hotels, where they pitilessly

-give you the same fare night after night,—salmon and roast beef. The

-first day this can be borne, for the Shannon salmon deserves its

-reputation; the second day one begins to find it indigestible; the third,

-one would like to see all the salmon of Ireland choking the head waiter.

-The fourth, one takes the train rather than remain any longer exposed to

-this implacable fare.... Vain hope! it pursues you everywhere: on the

-shores of Kingstown or those of Blackrock, in the pretty town of Bray,

-or at the furthermost end of Wicklow’s lakes. It is impossible to travel

-in Ireland without taking a dislike to salmon that will last the term of

-your natural life.

-

-And yet the fresh herrings of the Bay of Dublin are eating fit for the

-gods, and the good wives sell them in the streets at three a penny. Do

-not hope to taste them, however, unless you do your own marketing, and

-insist, with conditional threats, upon having your herrings brought up

-for breakfast. You will have a fight to sustain; you will run the risk of

-appearing in the eyes of the waiter as a man of no breeding, one who does

-not shrink from exhibiting his morbid tastes to the public view. But your

-pains and your humiliations will be rewarded by such a dish as is not

-often to be met with in this vale of tears and bad cooking.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Dublin possesses three theatres, not including the future Opera-House,

-for which a site has already been chosen. The Gaiety, the most elegant

-of the three, gives musical burlesques that are rather entertaining,

-though they come straight from London. But they are acted by Irishmen

-and Irishwomen, with all the dash, the brilliancy, the wit of the Celt.

-The comic actor of the company neglects nothing to amuse his audience;

-extravagant costumes, insane grimaces, jigs danced in brogues, impromptu

-verses on the events of the day,—he has any number of tricks at his

-command. That gentleman would score a sure success at the _Concert des

-Ambassadeurs_, with the ditty that actually delights the hearts of the

-Dublin public—“_That’s all_;” it is about as stupid as the general

-literature of the Champs Elysées. The accomplished and fascinating _corps

-de ballet_ exhibit tights of such indiscretion as the Lord Chamberlain

-would assuredly not tolerate in London. Is it that his jurisdiction does

-not extend to the sister isle; or does the thing which would imperil the

-virtue of club-loungers in Pall Mall appear to him without danger for

-those of Kildare Street? The problem would be worth studying. However

-that be, a boxfull of young officers in H. B. M.’s service seem greatly

-exhilarated by the display of ankles of the ladies, unless it be by the

-port wine of the mess.

-

-These officers, in plain clothes as they are always when out of duty,

-are nevertheless easy to recognise and seem about the only _swells_

-visible in the boxes. The rest of the audience manifestly belong to the

-commercial and working classes.

-

-For it is a fact that there is in Dublin no more upper middle class than

-there is aristocracy. The upper middle class seem not to exist, or to

-be only represented by tradespeople, the liberal professions, or the

-students. But these young men being, after the excellent English custom,

-lodged at the University, do not count in the pleasure-seeking public.

-In other words, they spend the evening in their rooms drinking toddy,

-instead of spending it, as with us, drinking small-beer in _brasseries_.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-The University of Dublin, or rather, to speak more exactly, Trinity

-College, rises opposite Grattan’s Parliament, in the very heart of the

-town. It is an agglomeration of buildings of sufficiently good style,

-separated by spacious courts, and surrounded by about thirty acres of

-ground planted with ancient trees. Technical museums, lecture-rooms,

-refectories, rooms for the Fellows and the pupils are all to be found

-there. There is a Section of Theology, one for Letters and Science, a

-Musical Section, a School of Medicine, a Law School, an Engineering

-School. Students and Masters all wear, as in Oxford or Cambridge, the

-stuff gown and the kind of black _Schapska_, which is the University

-head-covering throughout the United Kingdom.

-

-Thinking of this, why is it we see so many Eastern head-dresses in the

-school of the west? With us the cap of the professors is the same that

-Russian popes wear. The Anglo-Saxons take theirs from Polish Lancers.

-That is an anomaly in the history of dress which ought to attract the

-meditations of academies.

-

-Another anomaly, peculiar to Trinity College, is that the porters (most

-polite and benevolent of men) are provided with black velvet jockey

-caps, like the Yeomen of the Queen. They take the visitors through the

-museums of the place, and show them the plaster cast taken from the dead

-face of Swift, the harp of Brian Boru, and other relics of a more or

-less authentic character. The Dining Hall is ornamented with full-length

-portraits of the local celebrities. The library, one of the finest in the

-world, is proud of possessing, among many other riches, the manuscript

-(in the Erse tongue), of the “Seven times fifty Stories,” which the bards

-of the Second Order of Druids used to recite, on ancient feast days,

-before the assembled kings and chieftains. Those venerable tales are

-subdivided into Destructions, Massacres, Battles, Invasions, Sieges,

-Pillages, Raids of Cattle, Rapes of Women, Loves, Marriages, Exiles,

-Navigations, Marches, Voyages, Grottoes, Visions, Pomps, and Tragedies.

-This shows that “documentary literature” was not invented yesterday: all

-the primitive life of Celtic Ireland is told there.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-The undergraduates at Trinity College do not seem, as a rule, like those

-of Oxford and Cambridge, to belong to the privileged or unoccupied

-classes. They are embryo doctors, professors, or engineers, who work

-with all their might to gain one of the numerous scholarships given by

-competition at the University. These competitions evidently excite an

-ardent emulation. I chanced to pass before the Examination Hall at the

-moment when the Rector at the top of the steps proclaimed the name of

-the candidate who had just won the Fellowship. Five hundred students at

-least, grouped at the gate, had been waiting for an hour to hear it, and

-saluted it with frantic cheers.

-

-The Fellowship gives a right to board and lodging for seven years, with a

-stipend of some £400. It is a kind of prebend that implies few duties and

-leaves the titulary free to give himself up to his favourite studies. It

-has been the fashion in a certain set in France to go into ecstasies over

-this institution, and to regret that it should not have entered our own

-customs. The life of a Fellow at Oxford, Cambridge, or Dublin, was fondly

-represented to us as an ideal existence, freed from material cares,

-devoted exclusively to the culture of the mind. If we look at things more

-closely, we shall see that this opinion is wide of the mark. We find some

-of the prebendaries poorly lodged enough, submitted, by the exigencies of

-life in a community, to many a puerile rule, imprisoned within the narrow

-circle of scholastic ideas, and in too many cases buried up to the eyes

-in the sands of routine, if not in sloth, or drunkenness.

-

-After all, for what strong, manly work is the world indebted to these

-much-praised Fellows?... The true effort of science or letters was never

-brought forth in these abbeys of Thelema of pedantry. Indeed it is much

-sooner born of individual struggle and large contact with the outside

-world. Even in the English Universities there is now a marked tendency

-to demand from the Fellow a work of positive utility in exchange for

-his salary. He must take his part in educating the pupils, help in the

-examinations, and in elaborating programmes; his life is much the same

-as that of our _Agrégés de Facultés_, with a something in it of lesser

-freedom and a semi-priestly character, if he be a bachelor. But he is

-free to marry now, and has been for a few years, on condition that he

-lives outside the college buildings.

-

-The students, fourteen hundred in number, live two by two, in rooms of

-extreme simplicity, which they are at liberty to decorate according to

-their taste or means, with carpets, prints, and flowers. The names of

-the occupants are written over each door. The rooms generally include

-a small ante-chamber and a closet with glass doors. Women of venerable

-age and extraordinary ugliness are charged with the care of those young

-Cenobites’ abode.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Trinity College was founded by Queen Elizabeth when she undertook the

-task of Anglicizing Ireland, and it has remained to our own day one of

-the strongholds of the conquering race. It is only since the year 1873

-that the chairs and offices of this University have been accessible to

-Roman Catholics. Up to that time they were exclusively reserved for

-Anglicans, and Mr. Matthew Arnold would exclaim with good reason that

-such a state of things was the most scandalous in Europe. In France,

-he said, Protestant masters occupied all the chairs to which their

-merits entitled them; in Germany, Catholic professors taught history or

-philosophy at Bonn and elsewhere; while, in Catholic Ireland, the one

-University the country possessed remained closed during two centuries

-to all students that were not of the Protestant persuasion, and for

-three-quarters of the present century a Catholic could neither attain to

-a chair or to any degree of influence in it.

-

-It was in the year 1845 that the movement began which was to triumph

-definitely in 1873, under the initiative of Mr. Gladstone. A certain

-Mr. Denis Caulfield Heron went up in that year for the competition

-for a fellowship, and took the first place. When he was, according to

-custom, invited to sign the Thirty-Nine Articles and to communicate in

-the University chapel, he opposed an absolute refusal, declaring himself

-to be a Roman Catholic; whereupon he was disqualified by the University

-Council. Mr. Heron exposed this judgment before the public, and succeeded

-in winning opinion to his side. But it proved an impossibility to make

-the Council recall their decision. The only thing Mr. Heron obtained,

-after a protracted struggle, was the creation of a new class of

-fellowships, accessible to Roman Catholics.

-

-Finally, in 1873 the College authorities at last made up their minds to

-render the offices and emoluments of the University independent of any

-sectarian denomination; nevertheless the Anglican spirit remains alive

-within its precincts, and manifests itself in the clearest manner upon

-occasions.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Intellectual life is alive in Dublin, as many a learned or literary

-society, a flourishing review, four great daily and several weekly

-papers, can testify. The daily papers especially are edited with a spirit

-and humour truly characteristic. It is a well known fact that the Sister

-Isle contributes a third at least to the recruiting of the Anglo-Saxon

-press, not only in Great Britain, but in the United States, in Australia,

-and in the whole of the English speaking world. The Irishman a writer or

-a soldier born, as the Englishman is a born shopkeeper. The consequence

-is that the great papers in Dublin, the _Freeman’s Journal_, the _Irish

-Times_, _United Ireland_, the _Express_, the _Evening Telegraph_, are

-admirably edited each in its own line.

-

-But the same thing can hardly be said of the illustrated and coloured

-sheets that accompany the weeklies, and which are placarded everywhere.

-Those prints, bearing upon the political topics of the day, may possess

-the merit of teaching the crowd the lesson to be drawn from events; but

-they are lamentably inefficient from an artistic point of view.

-

-Ireland, decidedly, shines no more than does our own Brittany in the

-plastic arts. Her best painter has been Maclise, and he is by no means a

-great master. However, her coloured prints delight the hearts of the good

-people of Dublin. An old newspaper-seller, smoking her pipe at the corner

-of Leinster Street, holds her sides for very laughter as she contemplates

-the cartoon given this day by the _Weekly News_; it represents a mob

-of Orangemen in the act of pelting the Queen’s police with stones at

-Belfast. Underneath run the words: “_Behold loyal Ulster!_”

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-The quays of the Liffey are lined with book-shops like those of the

-Seine in Paris, to which they present a certain likeness. Following the

-quays from the west, one passes the building where sit the four Supreme

-Courts—Chancery, Exchequer, Queen’s Bench, and Common Pleas. The statues

-of Faith, Justice, Wisdom, and Piety rise under its Corinthian peristyle,

-which caused the typical Irish peasant, the Paddy of legend, to exclaim:

-

-“They did well to place them outside, for no one will ever meet them

-inside!”

-

-The judges, chosen by the Queen’s government, bear the title of _Chief

-Justice_ or _Baron_. There are four at each tribunal, each provided with

-a salary ranging from three to eight thousand pounds a year. They sit in

-groups of three, bewigged and clad in violet gowns, with peach-coloured

-facings, at the extremity of a recess screened by red curtains. Before

-them sit the barristers and clerks in black gowns and horsehair wigs.

-The writs and briefs of procedure, written out upon awe-inspiring sheets

-of foolscap paper, are piled up within capacious green bags, such as

-are only seen with us at the Comédie Française when they play _Les

-Plaideurs_. The judges appear to be a prey to overwhelming _ennui_, so

-do the barristers. The public, not being paid as highly as they are for

-remaining in this sleepy atmosphere, keep constantly going in and out.

-Now and then, however, Irish wit must have its due: some one delivers

-himself of a spicy remark; everyone wakes up a bit to laugh, after which

-business quietly resumes its dull course.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER III.

-

-THE POOR OF DUBLIN.

-

-

-Private houses are built in Dublin on the general type adopted throughout

-the British Isles: a basement opening on the railed area which runs

-along the pavement, a ground floor, a first floor, sometimes a second

-one. Above the front door a pane of glass lighted with gas. It is the

-custom of the country to place there one’s artistic treasures,—a china

-vase, a bust, or a small plaster horse. The small horse especially is a

-great favourite. You see it in a thousand copies which all came out of

-the same cast. In the suburbs you notice pretty often a window decorated

-with plants that are seen behind the glass panes,—Breton fashion,—and,

-striking circumstance, in Ireland also it is the uninteresting geranium

-which is the favourite flower of the poor. Inside the house the

-accommodation is nearly the same as in England. It is well known that

-nothing is more like an English house than another English house. But

-here, to the classical furniture, horse-hair and mahogany armchairs, and

-oil-cloth floor, is added a mural decoration of coloured prints and Roman

-Catholic chromolithographs, Saint Patrick, the Pope Leo XIII., the “Good

-Shepherd giving His life for the sheep,” surrounded by dried branches of

-holy palm, rosaries and scapularies. An ornament greatly appreciated on

-the chimney-piece is a glass vessel full of miraculous water in which

-swims a reduction of the tools of the Passion, the cross, the ladder, the

-hammer, the nails, and the crown of thorns.

-

-Eighty-seven per cent. of the Dublin population belong to the Roman

-Catholic religion. The proportion is higher in some other Irish counties:

-in Connaught it rises to ninety-five per cent.; nowhere, even in

-Protestant Ulster, does it descend lower than forty-five per cent.

-

-And those Catholics are not so only in name. The greater number follow

-the services of the Church, observe all the rites, maintain a direct

-and constant intercourse with the priests. The sincerity of their faith

-is particularly striking, and is not to be found in the same degree

-even in Italy or in Spain. For with them the Roman faith is narrowly

-bound with traditions most dear to their race; it remains one of the

-external forms of protestation against the conquest, and has been, till

-quite lately, a stigma of political incapacity. To the glamour of the

-traditional religion is added the poetry of persecution and the rancour

-of the vanquished. This religion is the one that is not professed by

-the hated Englishman: what a reason to love it above all the others! We

-must remember that in Dublin, amidst a population nine-tenths of which

-are devout Catholics, and where the remaining tenth is alone Protestant

-(Episcopalian’ Presbyterian, Methodist, &c.), the cathedral is in the

-hands of the Anglican minority with all the ancient basilics, whilst the

-worship of the majority is sheltered in modern and vulgar buildings.

-The conquering race has invaded Saint Patrick’s Baptistery as well as

-the Royal Castle, and the Senate of the University. A threefold reason

-for rancour to these who were thus deprived of the three sanctuaries of

-faith, public power, and learning.

-

-Such spoliations are those which a vanquished race cannot forget, because

-they bring constantly their sore under their eyes. Now the Irish have the

-artless vanity of the chivalrous races, and the wounds inflicted to their

-self-love are perhaps more cruel than the others.

-

-This vanity is frequently exhibited in a certain taste for show, and in

-a slight touch of the mountebank. The least apothecary’s shop in Dublin

-goes by the pompous name of _Medical Hall_; the smallest free school is

-an academy; and it is well known that every single Irishman is descended

-straight from the “ould kings of Oireland.”

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-There is a great deal of misery in Dublin; 6,036 of her inhabitants are

-inmates of the workhouse; 4,281 are the recipients of outdoor relief;

-19,332 are without a known trade or profession and without means of

-living. It makes about 30,000 paupers in a town of 250,000 inhabitants.

-Besides those officially recognised paupers, how many others whose

-distress is no less terrible for not being classed!

-

-I had the first sight of that misery on the quay of the Liffey. It was a

-dishevelled woman walking as in a trance, her eyes settled, immoveable.

-Barefooted, dressed in a yellowish tattered shawl which hardly covered

-her withered breast, and in a horrible nondescript silk petticoat once

-black, through which her thighs appeared. She was pale and silent, and

-she seemed to be lost in some unutterable grief. I spoke to her—she did

-not answer. I put a piece of money in her hand, she took it without a

-word, without even looking at it. She went her way.

-

-I thought I had seen the ghost of the _Shan Van Vocht_, “The Poor Old

-Woman,” as the Irish sorrowfully call their country. She went with long

-strides towards the police court—a new building, not far from Richmond

-Bridge. I went in after her.

-

-In the courtyard, groups of beings with human faces were crouching on

-the ground—so black, so dirty, so tattered were they, that they made

-me think of the Australian aborigines and Fuegian savages, of the most

-unenlightened and degraded tribes of the globe. Most of them bore

-outwardly the semblance of women. The males were standing with their

-backs against the wall in that listless attitude of the “unemployed” in

-Dublin.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-An ill-kept staircase leads to the audience room. The walls are

-whitewashed, the ceiling a skylight, white wooden benches round the room.

-

-In the chair, the police judge; he is a yellow-haired man with a

-benevolent countenance, dressed in a frock coat. Clerks and counsel are

-alike gownless and wigless; everything is conducted in a homely manner.

-The accused follow each other in single file. The witness (nearly always

-a constable) states what he has seen. The judge asks the delinquent if

-he has anything to say in his defence, and after a quick colloquy he

-pronounces his sentence. Generally it is a fine of two or three shillings

-or a day’s imprisonment for each unpaid shilling.

-

-One of the prisoners has just been condemned to pay a fine of half a

-crown for obvious drunkenness; he does not possess a farthing, but seems

-to be endowed with a humorous turn of mind.

-

-“Your honour could as well have said half a sovereign! It would have

-looked more respectable, and the result would have been the same,” he

-says, turning his pockets inside out. A guffaw of laughter joined in by

-the judge himself, who does not think it his duty to be offended by the

-remark; after which he calls out for number two.

-

-Number two is a boy fifteen or sixteen years old; he has a sweet

-intelligent countenance in spite of the indescribable rags that cover his

-body. Tears stand in his eyes and his lips are tremulous. Nothing in him

-of the habitual offender. The accusation that he is lying under seems to

-be: “Theft of a pork-chop in an open shop-window.” A single witness is

-called, a little maid five years old; so small that her head does not

-even reach the top of the witness-box. They bring her a footstool, on

-which she climbs to give her evidence.

-

-She has seen the boy, she says, near the shop window, looking wistfully

-for a long time on the chops and finally pocketing one. However, her

-account is not very clear. All those people make her shy, and she does

-not speak out loud, so the clerk takes the trouble to read over to her

-the evidence she has just given. Does she know how to write? Can she

-sign her name? Yes. They place a pen in her fingers, and with infinite

-trouble, bending her small fair head, shooting out her lips, she writes

-on the legal parchment with her tiny trembling hand her name and surname:

-_Maggie Flanagan_.

-

-“Well! prisoner, what have you to say?”

-

-The unfortunate boy stammers that he was hungry, that there was not a

-penny in the house, and that he had no work.

-

-“What is your father’s trade?”

-

-“He is gone to Australia, your honour. Mother has been left with four

-children. I am the eldest. We had eaten nothing for two days.”

-

-One feels he is speaking the truth. Every heart is moved.

-

-Suddenly a shrill voice bursts out from the lower end of the room,

-wailing: “Oh, your honour, don’t send him to jail!...”

-

-It is the woman I saw on the quay; the one that I followed to that

-Purgatory. The mother of the culprit very likely.

-

-“I am obliged to remand you for a week in order to examine the

-circumstances of the case,” the judge says, in a manner that shows he is

-anxious to arrange the affair with kindness.

-

-The prisoner goes out of the dock following the warder, and disappears

-through a small side door.

-

-The mother has gone away without waiting, and I hurry to follow her. But

-she walks so fast that I can hardly keep pace with her.

-

-She passes again on the bridge, walks along the quay, plunges in a

-by-street, goes up towards the south-western quarters of Dublin, called

-the _liberties_ of the town. Suddenly I lose sight of her at the corner

-of a narrow lane, and after winding round and round I am obliged to

-renounce coming up with her. There is a way of course to come to the

-relief of those poor creatures, by sending one’s subscription to the

-judge according to the British fashion. But I wanted to see them at home

-in their den, wallowing in their squalor, to see whether men or destiny

-bear the responsibility for such dark distress.

-

-Alas! examples are not wanting, and I have only to cross the first

-door that opens before me. Along these lanes yawn dark alleys from

-which hundreds of half-naked children are swarming out. All ages are

-represented; they are in the most fantastical and unexpected attire. One

-has got on breeches fastened under the shoulders by a piece of cord in

-lieu of braces; the same is full of holes large enough for his head to go

-through. Another has no shirt, and trails in the gutter the jagged skirt

-of a coat slashed like a doublet, and with only one sleeve left. They are

-all of them so extravagantly slovenly that it seems to be a competition

-for rags.

-

-A baby two or three years old strikes me particularly. It is absolutely

-naked, and so very, very dirty that dirt has formed a sort of bronzed

-skin over his little body, and he is like a juvenile nigger. As he came

-into the world so he has remained. Neither soap nor water ever moistened

-his skin. He has not even undergone the washing that the mother-cat

-applies so industriously with her tongue on her newborn kittens.

-

-Yet his mother loves him, squalid and black as he is. Just now a cart

-passed, and the baby was running under the wheels; the mother sprang out

-of her lair with the roar of a tigress, and pounced upon her child,

-which she jealously carried away.

-

-Never in London did I hear such accents. Far from me to hint that English

-mothers do not love their babies: but they love them after their own

-fashion, without showers of kisses or demonstrative ways.

-

-And this is the distinctive feature which divides the Irish pariahs from

-those of the London East-End. They love each other, and they know how to

-put that love into words. Their distress, perhaps deeper than English

-poverty, bears not the same hard, selfish character—tenderness and love

-are not unknown to them. They try to help and comfort one another in

-their misery. Thackeray has remarked it long ago: let an Irishman be

-as poor as you like; he will always contrive to find another Irishman

-poorer still, whom he will serve and oblige, and make the partaker of his

-good or bad luck. And it is absolutely true. That fraternal instinct, so

-unknown to the Anglo-Saxon, nay, so contrary to his nature, shows itself

-here at every step.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-But the misery is none the less terrible here; indeed, there are no

-adequate words in the dictionary to express it. No description can give

-an idea of those nameless dens, sordid, dilapidated stairs, miserable

-pieces of furniture, nondescript utensils invariably diverted from their

-original destination. And in that lamentable frame, those swarming

-families squatting in their filth; the starved look of the mothers under

-the tattered shawl that ever covers their heads, the hungry little faces

-of their whelps....

-

-A sickening smell, recalling that of ill-ventilated hospitals, comes

-out of those lairs and suffocating you, almost throws you back. But it

-is too late. You have been caught sight of. From all sides visions of

-horror are emerging to light, spectres are starting up; old hags that

-would have surprised Shakespeare himself, swarm round you, holding out

-their hand for a _copper_. The younger women don’t generally come to the

-front, not that their wants be less, but they know that coppers are not

-inexhaustible, and that the old ones must have the precedence. So they

-remain sadly in the background, and then, when you have emptied your

-pockets, there is a roar of benedictions fit to rend one’s heart with

-shame. They are so fearfully sincere! And how many times do we not throw

-to the winds of our caprice what would be sufficient to quench at least

-for one moment, the thirst which is raging in that hell! You fly from

-that den of horror, wondering whether the most horrible deserts would

-not be more merciful to those destitute creatures than the _liberties_ of

-the city of Dublin.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-In your flight you fatally fall upon Nicholas Street, where all those

-dark alleys open. This is the way to the cathedral, and the great

-commercial artery of this side of the town. If any doubt remained in you

-after the insight you had of the houses of the poor in Dublin, about the

-way they live, that street alone would give you sufficient information.

-

-From end to end it is lined with a row of disgusting shops or stalls,

-where the refuse of the new and the ancient world seems to have come

-for an exhibition. Imagine the most hideous, ragged, repulsive rubbish

-in the dust-bins of two capitals, and you will get an idea of that

-shop-window display; rank bacon, rotten fish, festering bones, potatoes

-in full germination, wormy fruit, dusty crusts, sheep’s hearts, sausages

-which remind you of the Siege of Paris, and perhaps come from it; all

-that running in garlands or festoons in front of the stalls, or made

-into indescribable heaps, is doled out to the customers in diminutive

-half-pence morsels. At every turning of the street a public-house with

-its dim glass and sticky glutinous door. Now and then a pawnbroker with

-the three symbolic brass balls, and every twenty yards a rag and bone

-shop.

-

-The rag and bone trade is extremely active in Dublin, which numbers no

-less than 400 shops of that description, according to statistics. And

-that is not too many for a population which from times immemorial never

-wore a garment that was not second-hand. To a man Ireland dresses on the

-_reach-me-down_ system, and wears out the cast-off garments which have

-passed on the backs of ten or twelve successive owners. Battered hats,

-dilapidated gowns, threadbare coats arrive here by shiploads. When the

-whole world has had enough of them, when the Papoo savages and Guinea

-niggers have discarded their finery, and declared it to be no longer

-serviceable, there are still amateurs to be found for it in Dublin. Hence

-the most extraordinary variety, and the wildest incoherence of costume.

-Knee-breeches, tail coats, white gowns, cocked hats,—Paddy and his spouse

-are ready for anything. So destitute are they of personal property, that

-they do not even possess an outline of their own. Their normal get-up

-resembles a travesty, and their distress a carnival.

-

-The main point for them is to have a garment of any description to put

-on, since it is a thing understood that one cannot go about naked; and

-it does not very much matter after all what is the state of that garment,

-as it is so soon to leave their backs to go to the pawnbroker’s. This is

-a prominent figure in the daily drama of their wretched existence, the

-regulator of their humble exchequer through the coming and going of the

-necessaries of life, which they are obliged to part with periodically.

-

-“You see that pair of hob-nailed shoes?” one of them tells me, “For the

-last six months it has come here every Monday regularly and gone every

-Saturday. The possessor uses them only on Sundays; on week days he

-prefers enjoying his capital....”

-

-His capital!—one shilling and sixpence, for which he has to pay an

-interest of one penny a week; _i.e._, three hundred per cent. a year!

-

-Usury under all its forms blooms spontaneously on that dung-hill. By the

-side of the pawnbroker a _money office_ is almost always to be seen. It

-is an English institution, natural in a nation which is bursting with

-money, and consequently finds it difficult to make it render 3 or 4 per

-cent. What is England if not a colossal bank, which advances money upon

-any three given signatures as a security, if they come from people with a

-settled dwelling and a regular profession? Well, who would believe it?

-Paddy himself is admitted to partake of the onerous benefits of that

-credit, provided he work ever so little and be not too hopelessly worn

-out. For these small banking houses form a union and let each other know

-the state of their accounts. Upon the poor man’s signature accompanied by

-those of two of his fellows, five and seven pounds sterling will be lent

-to him, to be reimbursed by weekly instalments. But that resource, which

-is a powerful help for the strong energetic man, is almost invariably

-a cause of distress and ruin to the weak. The borrowed money ebbs out

-in worthless expenditure, in the buying of some articles of apparel or

-furniture, which soon takes the road to the pawnbroker’s; and the debt

-alone remains weighing with all its weight on poor Paddy. It is the last

-straw on the camel’s back, and he ends by falling down irremediably under

-it.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER IV.

-

-THE EMERALD ISLE.

-

-

-Nothing can be easier than to go from one end to the other of Ireland.

-Though her network of railways is not yet complete, great arteries

-radiate from Dublin in all directions and allow the island to be

-traversed from end to end, whether southward, westward, or northward,

-in less than seven or eight hours. The journey from south to north,

-following the great axis, is longer and more complicated, for it is

-necessary to change lines several times. The circular journey along the

-coasts is facilitated by excellent services of open coaches, that go

-through the regions not yet penetrated by railways. Lastly, one can, by

-following the Shannon, enter by steamboat almost to the very heart of the

-country.

-

-When one has gone through those various excursions, completed by riding

-and walking tours, and seen the island under its various aspects, one

-perceives that it presents in a general manner the appearance of a

-cup, with brims rising towards the sea; in other words, it consists in

-a vast central plain, protected on all its circumference by groups of

-hills and mountains, preventing the inroad of the ocean. Those mountains

-are in no part very high; the finest, those of Kerry, do not rise above

-1800 feet. But their very position on the brink of the Atlantic, the

-erosions undermining their base, the deep bays they delineate, the

-innumerable lakes hidden away in their bosoms, lend them a majesty far

-above their altitude. Bland and smiling in Wicklow, they are in Kerry of

-an unequalled serenity, while in Connemara they preserve unbroken the

-rude chaos of primeval cataclysms, and display on the north of Antrim’s

-table-land, towards the Giant’s Causeway, the most stupendous basaltic

-formations.

-

-Yet the normal, the truest aspect of Ireland, is represented by the

-central plain—a large, unbroken surface of green undulating waves, ever

-bathed in a damp and fresh atmosphere, shut in on the horizon by dark

-blue mountains.

-

-This aspect is of infinite sweetness; no land possesses it in a similar

-degree. It takes possession of you, it penetrates you like a caress and

-a harmony. One understands, when submitted to that entirely physical

-influence, the passionate tenderness that Irishmen feel for their

-country, and that is best illustrated by Moore’s poetry. The sky seems

-to have endeavoured to find the true chord in response to the earth, in

-order to give to all things those deliciously blended tones. The stars

-are nearly always seen through a light haze, and the sun itself shines

-but through a veil of vapours, into which it seems eager to disappear

-again. The shadows are not hard and well defined; they melt into each

-other by insensible gradations of tint. All is green, even the stones,

-clothed in moss; the walls, covered with ivy; the waters, hidden under

-a mantle of reeds and water-lilies. In other climes the fields, after a

-spring shower, take unto themselves the bravery that here is seen in all

-seasons. In the full heat of July the corn, the barley, the oats still

-keep their April dress. Do they ever ripen? They say they do, towards

-the end of October; but surely they never can get yellow. Yellow is not

-an Irish colour, nor is white. Ireland is indeed green Erin, the Emerald

-Isle. Never was name more truly given.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-One could consider Ireland as a prodigious grass plot of some twenty

-million acres, constantly watered by rain. Water is everywhere: in the

-clouds that the winds of the Atlantic drive over her, and that the

-highlands of Scotland and Norway stop in their course; on the soil, where

-all hollows, great or small, become lakes; under the ground even, where

-the roots of vegetables, saturated and swollen like sponges, slowly

-change into peat. Ireland is the most liberally watered country in

-Europe, and yet, thanks to the constancy of the winds over her, one can

-scarcely say it is a damp country. The fall of water is on an average of

-926 millimetres in a year—a little over three feet. The ground, naturally

-of admirable fruitfulness, is still further favoured by the mildness and

-equableness of the climate on the shores.

-

-The flora almost recalls that of the Mediterranean coasts. The fauna

-presents the remarkable peculiarity of not possessing a single dangerous

-or even repulsive species—not one toad, not one reptile, except the most

-innocent among them all, the “friend of man,” the lizard. Legends say

-that St. Patrick, the Christian apostle of the isle, coming from Brittany

-in the 6th century, threw all the serpents into the sea, and all the

-toads after them; indeed, he is habitually represented in popular imagery

-as engaged in performing that miracle.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-An island possessing no backbone, and presenting generally the appearance

-of a cup, cannot have great rivers. In fact, almost all the rivers of

-Ireland, born within her girdle of mountains, soon lose themselves in the

-sea, forming at their mouth an estuary that takes the name of _Lough_, as

-do the lakes proper. One only creates an exception by the length of its

-course and the volume of its waters—the Shannon, rising in the central

-table-land, imprisoned, so to speak, at the bottom of the circular well,

-and whose course, impeded above Limerick by a barrier of rocks, form fine

-rapids, under which the waters flow in a majestic stream. With the tide,

-vessels of the heaviest tonnage can go up the river to Foynes.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Indeed, the country lacks no harbours on those deeply indented shores.

-North, west, east, and south, Ireland counts no less than fourteen

-natural harbours, large enough to shelter whole fleets.

-

-But this gift, like all the others that Fate has showered on her, seems

-to have turned against her by bringing the nations of prey within those

-bays. Thrown as an outwork of Europe in the middle of the ocean, she

-seemed to be opening her arms to the Phœnicians, to the Scandinavians;

-later on to the Arabs, the Spaniards, and the English. A gust of wind

-was enough to reveal her to them; a favourable breeze to bring them back.

-To understand clearly the perils of such a post, and to see how much more

-still than the muzzle of Brittany, Ireland is Atlantic land, one must

-go to Valencia, the small islet on which come to shore the ends of the

-Transatlantic cables.

-

-More than in any other spot of Europe one feels at the farthest end of

-the world there. It seems as if, by stretching one’s arm, one would reach

-the United States. And, in fact, one is near enough as it is—five or six

-days by steam—almost within speaking distance with the telephone. So fast

-travel the storms from America that the telegram is hardly able to arrive

-before them. A sea-gull, borne on the wing of the hurricane, would cross

-that arm of the sea in a few hours. The breeze that blows in your face

-may have stirred the hair of a Brooklyn belle in the morning. There one

-feels how very small is our globe.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Geologically, Ireland differs much from Great Britain. The island

-appeared much earlier, and its structure is special. Alone, its northern

-part, or Ulster, which, from a political point of view, forms such a

-striking contrast with the rest of the island, presents between Donegal

-Bay and Dundalk Bay, mountainous masses, entirely analogous with those of

-Scotland, towards which they advance, and of which they appear originally

-to have formed a part. They are basaltic rocks, or petrified streams of

-lava, while the mountains in Kerry or Connemara are red sandstone and

-slate, lying above the carbonaceous strata.

-

-What ought, in fact, to be considered as Ireland proper consists, then,

-of the eastern province or Leinster, the southern or Munster, and the

-western or Connaught. Ulster is in reality, as well by the nature of

-its soil as by the race and habits of the majority of its inhabitants,

-an annex and dependency of Scotland. The three other provinces, on the

-contrary, form a whole, as distinct from England or Scotland by the

-constitution and aspect of the land, as it is different by the race,

-genius, the traditions and beliefs of the population.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-The most striking thing on a first sight of the Irish landscape is the

-total absence of trees of any kind. They are only seen in private parks.

-As far as the eye can see the plains spread in gentle undulations,

-covered with grass and intersected with stone walls; no single oak, elm,

-or shrub ever comes to break its monotony. The tree has become a lordly

-ensign. Wherever one sees it one may be certain the landlord’s mansion is

-not far.

-

-That radical disappearance of the forests, in a country once covered with

-them, is singular. A great many explanations have been given of this

-fact,—explanations that went back as far as some geological cataclysm.

-Such theories are no longer acceptable in these days. The most likely

-supposition is that all the available timber has gradually been felled

-down for domestic uses, and that indifference, poverty, incessant war,

-incertitude as to the present or future, have, from the remotest times,

-prevented those sad gaps being repaired.

-

-On the lower land the absence of timber is explained of itself by

-the apparition of deep layers of turf, whose depth is sometimes from

-forty-five to sixty feet, in which whole oak trees have been discovered

-in a more or less advanced state of carbonisation. At a certain stage of

-this transformation the ligneous tissue has become of such flexibility

-that the Irish cut it into stripes and use it to make straps, fishing

-nets, bands of all kinds,—not to mention the pious trifles, pipes, small

-figures carved with a knife, and various _souvenirs_ with which they

-pester the tourist.

-

-The turf pits are a great source of riches for Ireland, and furnish the

-only fuel commonly used by the lower classes. In the country one sees

-everywhere people engaged in extracting peat, cutting it into cakes,

-erecting these cakes in pyramids to be allowed to dry in the sun, or

-transporting them from one place to the other. The people working at it

-are, indeed, almost the only ones visible in the fields. One might think

-that the extracting and manipulating of the turf were the only industry

-of the country.

-

-There are two kinds of turf, the red and the black, according to the

-degree of carbonisation attained by the layers, and the nature of the

-vegetable matter that formed them. The finest is of such intense and

-brilliant black, that it might almost be mistaken for coal. Those vast

-reservoirs of fuel, known in Ireland by the name of _bog_, are a constant

-feature of the landscape in the valleys of the mountainous girdle as in

-the lower parts of the plain. The total depth of these open carbon mines

-is estimated at no less than sixty million cubic feet; they occupy an

-area almost equal to the seventh part of the total superficies of the

-island, and the lakes cover another seventh part.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-One other striking peculiarity of the scenery in Ireland is the scarcity

-of cultivated fields. One can count them, dotted here and there, almost

-always planted with oats, potatoes, or turnips. The statistics of the

-Agricultural Society give, in round numbers, for twenty millions of acres

-of total surface, five millions, or a quarter in cultivated ground; that

-is, 150,000 acres only in cereals, 350,000 in turnips, one million and a

-half in potatoes, two million in artificial meadows. Ten million of acres

-are in natural meadows; the rest are fallow lands, bog or turf, waste

-land, roads and highways.

-

-Those roads and highways, as well as the bridges and all the public

-works depending upon the English Government, are admirably kept. It is

-clear that on that point Dublin Castle is resolved to give no handle to

-criticism. Those splendid tracks of road, laid across waste and desert

-land, even produce a curious effect, and one would be tempted to see an

-affectation about it, did they not, in the majority of cases, lead to

-some magnificent private property, spreading as far as one can see over

-hill and dale, always shut in by stone walls eight or ten feet high,

-enclosing an area of several miles.

-

-As for the conveyances that are seen on these Appian Ways they are of

-two kinds; either the smart carriage whose cockaded coachman drives

-magnificent horses, or the diminutive cart drawn by a small donkey,

-carrying, besides the grand-dame or child that drives it, a sort of

-conical-shaped utensil held in its place with cords and oftener filled

-with water than with milk. One must go to Morocco or Spain to see donkeys

-in such numbers as in Ireland.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-One thing surprises in those endless pastures—it is to count so few

-grazing beasts on them. Not that they are altogether excluded; now and

-then one perceives on the intense green of the fields reddish or white

-spots that are cattle or sheep, the rounded haunch of a mare, the awkward

-frolics of a foal. On the brinks of rivers that one can almost always

-cross wading, one sometimes sees a few happy cows, their feet in the

-water, wide-eyed and munching dreamily. Here and there one sees geese,

-hens escorted by their chicks, pigs fraternally wallowing with children

-in the muddy ditch. But in a general way the landscape is wanting in

-animated life, and as poor in domestic animals as in labourers.

-

-As a contrast game is plentiful, as is natural in a land that is

-three-quarters uncultivated, where it is forbidden to carry arms, and

-where shooting is the exclusive privilege of a very small minority. Hares

-and rabbits seem to enjoy their immunity to the utmost, and everywhere

-their white breeches are seen scudding away in the dewy grass like

-fireworks.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Villages are rare, and rarer still is farmhouse or homestead. Undulating

-ridges succeed to undulating ridges and still one sees no trace of

-any dwellings. One might think that these stone walls radiating over

-the fields had sprung there of their own accord, and that the hay is

-doomed to rot standing, after feeding the butterflies. Yet that cannot

-be—evidently some one must come now and then to cut this grass, make it

-into stacks and carry it away.... At last, by dint of stretching neck

-and legs you succeed in discovering far away on the horizon a spire

-that belongs to a big borough, a market-town rather, where those civic

-tillers of the soil dwell in houses similar to those of the _liberties_

-in Dublin.

-

-As for the mud cabin, generally described as the Irish peasant’s only

-home, it is now a thing of the past. One would hardly, and after much

-research, find some specimens of it in the farthest counties, at the end

-of Kerry or Mayo.

-

-True to say, when found, those specimens leave nothing to be desired for

-poverty and discomfort; no fire-place, no windows, no furniture; nothing

-but a roof of turf supported by a few poles on mud walls. The very pig

-that formerly shared its luxuries with the _genus homo_ and indicated a

-certain degree of relative comfort in his possessor, the pig himself has

-disappeared for ever.

-

-But those are exceptions, almost pre-historic cases. As a rule the mud

-cabin has been blotted out from the Irish soil—perhaps enlightened

-landlords systematically pursued its eradication; perhaps the peasants,

-tired of its tutelary protection, emigrated under other skies,—or more

-simply still, they took advantage of the last famine to die of hunger.

-Upon which came the rain, and two or three years sufficed to dilute the

-walls, render the mud house to the common reservoir, and wash out its

-very remembrance.

-

-The population of Ireland, it must be borne in mind, has been steadily

-decreasing for half a century. It was of 8,175,124 inhabitants in 1841;

-of 6,552,385 in 1851; 5,798,584 in 1861; 5,412,377 in 1871; and 5,174,836

-in 1881. By all appearances it must now have sunk under five millions. If

-this fish-eating race was not the most prolific under the sun it would

-have been blotted out long ago from the face of this planet.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER V.

-

-THE RACE.

-

-

-The essential character of Irish scenery is, besides the green colour

-and the absence of trees, the frequent ruins that meet the eyes

-everywhere—one cannot go two steps without seeing them. Ruins of castles,

-abbeys, churches, or even humble private dwellings. There are quarters of

-large towns or boroughs, such as for instance the northern one in Galway,

-that might be taken at night, with their sinister looking rows of houses,

-roofless and with gaping walls, for a street in Herculaneum or Pompeii.

-When the ancient stone walls are those of a church or chapel, they

-generally serve as a setting for the legends of the countryside; there

-occurred all the terrifying tales of former days, there took place all

-the local miracles, and there still is the favourite haunt of illustrious

-spirits, of fairies and _banshee_.

-

-Almost in every case the graves of a hamlet come to group themselves at

-the foot of those ivy-clothed old walls, by an instinctive and touching

-effect of the Irishman’s passionate love for the traditions of his race;

-and those graves, generally covered with great slabs of stone, scattered

-among the tall grasses, wild and moss-grown, without cross or emblem of

-any sort, well accord with the melancholy aspect of the site.

-

-Sometimes near these ruins and graves is still seen, proudly raising its

-head, one of those monuments peculiar to the country and about which

-antiquaries are at such variance,—the round towers of Ireland: slender

-and bold turrets, slightly conical in shape, not unlike minarets 75 or

-80 feet high, upon a base 15 to 18 feet broad, and springing from the

-ground like obelisks. They are built of large stones, sometimes rough,

-sometimes cut, but always cemented together, a fact which gave rise

-to the opinion that they must be posterior to the invasion of Great

-Britain by the Romans. But that is simply begging the question and is

-justified by nothing; moreover, the absence of any tradition about the

-origin or use of those towers make such a tale appear in the highest

-degree improbable. A race was never seen to borrow the technical industry

-of another race to apply it to the construction of monuments that are

-essentially their own. Celtic civilization had attained in Ireland,

-centuries before the Romans, to a degree of perfection witnessed by the

-Brehon Code, compiled at least five or six centuries before the Christian

-era, and the first among human laws that substituted arbitrage to brute

-force. A people capable of submitting to the law of reason and who knew

-enough of mechanics to erect monoliths of twenty-four thousand cubic feet

-could well discover alone the art of mixing mortar, and need not borrow

-it from the Romans, who besides did not set foot in the country. Never

-was hypothesis more childish or more unfounded. The truth is that nothing

-is known about the round towers, as is the case with the _nurraghs_

-of Sardinia; that all those monuments are anterior to any positive

-traditions and have been built for uses of which we have no conception.

-At the most one might suppose from their aspect, which is that of inland

-lighthouses, that they may have been used as military or astronomical

-observatories, and, perhaps, bore on their summit a sacred fire visible

-throughout a whole district. In such a case the only guide to be followed

-with any certainty is the eternal fitness between organ and function.

-

-Eighty-three of these towers are still standing in Ireland, and their

-dilapidated condition allows it to be supposed that they may once have

-been much more numerous. Whatever may have been their origin, they

-remain so narrowly and so fitly associated in the popular imagination

-with the Irish idea of nationality that the image of a round tower

-naturally grew under the chisel of the sculptor, as an emblem of

-patriotism, on the tomb of O’Connell in the cemetery of Dublin.

-

-Megalithic monuments and dolmen are equally found in great numbers in

-Ireland. Donegal presents at Raphre a circus of raised stones absolutely

-similar to that of Stonehenge, while in Derry one sees in the Grianan of

-Aileach the finest fortified temple that was ever raised in honour of the

-sun. In many districts all the hills or mountains without exception are

-crowned with the funeral hillock or Celtic _rath_. As for the Druidical

-inscriptions in the _Ogham_ character, consisting of twenty-five

-combinations of oblique or vertical strokes corresponding to an equal

-number of sounds, they abound in all the counties. The most curious is

-that of the Cave of Dunloe, discovered by a labourer, in the vicinity

-of Killarney, in the year 1838; it may be considered a true Druidical

-library, of which the books are represented by the stones of the vaulted

-roof. Those characters have been deciphered now, thanks to bilingual

-inscriptions posterior to the Roman period.

-

-Lastly, the names of places and the geographical definitions are, in

-nine cases out of ten, of Celtic origin, according to the tables drawn

-out by Chalmers. The mountains are called _ben_, and the chains of hills

-_sliebh_, rocks are _carricks_ or _cloagh_, lakes _loughs_, an island

-_innis_, bogs _corks_, lands _curraghs_, hills _knocks_, rivers _anagh_.

-

-The Erse tongue, still spoken by a twelfth part of the population, is

-sister to the Gaelic and the Breton. It denominates a field _agh_, a

-ford _ath_, a village _bally_, a city _cahir_, _ban_ what is white or

-beautiful, _deargh_ what is red, _dua_ what is black, _beg_ what is

-small, and _mor_ what is big, _clar_ a plain, _teach_ a house, _donagh_ a

-church, _ross_ a wooded hillside.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-As for the type of the Irish race it is undeniably Celtic, or at least

-essentially different from the Anglo-Saxon. The hair is black or brown,

-the eyes dark, the complexion pale, the nose short, the forehead bony.

-The general appearance is vigorous and active, the movements are quick

-and often graceful; the stature without being low, is nearer to middle

-height than is generally the case in a British country. The rudest

-peasant girls often have a sculptural grace of attitude; one sees them

-in the fields, carrying burdens on their head with that stateliness of

-Greek canephores which seems as a rule the exclusive attribute of the

-daughters of the East.

-

-Still more different from the English is the inner man; naturally

-mirthful and expansive, witty, careless, even giddy, quarrelsome from

-mere love of noise, prompt to enthusiasm or despondency, imbued with the

-love of literary form and legal subtleties, he is the Frenchman of the

-West, as the Pole or the Japanese are Frenchmen of the East. And always

-there has been an affinity of nature, a harmony of thought, between

-them and us. At once we feel we are cousins. Their ancestors formerly

-came in thousands to fight under our flag. Our revolutions were always

-felt in Ireland. So strong, for nations as well as individuals, is that

-mysterious tie of a common origin, or even the most remote consanguinity.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Does this mean that the Irishman, thanks to his insular position, has

-escaped all cross breeding and remained pure Celt? Far from it. No

-country was oftener or more cruelly invaded than his. The stranger

-implanted himself in it, begat his children there, introduced in the race

-elements that are still recognizable; for example, that most peculiar

-expression of the eyes, the height of the cheek-bones, the outline of

-the temples and cranium, which are in many cases clearly Scandinavian.

-

-In the origin of history the primitive inhabitants of Erin, the Firbolgs

-(men with the skin of beasts) were vanquished by the Thuathan-de-Danan,

-“the fairy people,” who came from the East, and who founded the realm of

-Innisfallen, or Island of Fate. A Spanish invasion (probably Phenician),

-that of the Milesians, overthrew that establishment ten or twelve

-centuries before the Christian era, and three hundred years before the

-foundation of Rome. After that came an uninterrupted list of one hundred

-and ninety-seven Milesian kings, who reached to the arrival of the

-Northmen, in the eighth century of the present era. Under their rule

-Ireland enjoyed a profound peace. It was during this period of more than

-a thousand years that flourished and developed in the island of Erin

-an entirely original civilization, characterised by the Brehon Code,

-by customs of great gentleness, by institutions of admirable prudence,

-among others that of a national militia, the _Fiana-Erin_, or _Fenians_,

-who were recruited by voluntary enlistment, defended the country and

-maintained order therein, while the citizens pursued their various

-avocations,—agriculture, in which they excelled, fishing and navigation,

-for which they displayed some ability.

-

-Divided into five or six small independent kingdoms Ireland, without her

-militia, would have fallen an easy prey to the Britons, the Gauls, or the

-Caledonians, and later on to the Romans. Thanks to that national force,—a

-true civic guard, quartered during winter on the inhabitants, and ever

-popular, which proves that it knew how to preserve intact the tradition

-of Celtic virtues,—Ireland, alone almost among European nations, escaped

-a Roman invasion. After twelve hundred years the remembrance of the

-Fenians has remained so vivid in the hearts of the people that the Irish

-Republicans of America, when they resumed in our own days the struggle in

-arms against England, naturally chose the name of the ancient defenders

-of national independence.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-With the fall of the Roman Empire and the dying out of the fear of

-invasion, the Fenian institution disappeared. The military instincts

-of the nation then manifested themselves at the exterior by frequent

-incursions made by Irish adventurers in England, Scotland, or Gaul. It

-was in one of those incursions off the coast of Brittany that Niall Mor,

-King of Tara, took prisoner, with several other young Christians, a

-boy named Sucoth, and whom they called _Patricius_ (Patrick) on account

-of his noble origin. This was at the end of the fourth century of our

-era. The prisoner was employed in tending flocks in Ireland, spent seven

-years there, and at last found an opportunity of escaping to his own

-country. When back in Brittany, he constantly thought with grief of the

-dreadful destiny of the Irish, who still remained in ignorance of the

-true religion, and vegetated in the darkness of Druidism. One night he

-had a prophetic dream, after which he resolved to dedicate himself to the

-evangelization of those unhappy heathens. To this effect he went to the

-town of Tours, where he assumed the religious habit, then on to Rome,

-where he entered the missionary seminary. In the year 432 he was at the

-Barefooted Augustines’ Convent, in Auxerre, when he heard of the death

-of Paladius, fifth apostolic missionary of the Holy See in the island of

-Erin. Patrick solicited and obtained the honour of succeeding him. He was

-made Archbishop _in partibus infidelium_, and set out with twenty other

-French priests.

-

-A certain number of Christians were already to be found in Ireland; but

-the bulk of the nation remained attached to its traditional worship,

-which was that of Chaldea and of Ancient Gaul, the worship of the sun or

-fire, as the principle of all life and purity.

-

-Yet the sons of Erin were not by any means barbarians; their civilization

-could rather be regarded as the most flourishing in Europe. They knew

-the art of weaving stuffs, and of working metals; their laws were wise

-and just, their customs hardy without ferocity. Patrick knew better than

-any one that he must think neither of hurrying their conversion nor

-of imposing it by force. He devoted himself with great adroitness to

-the task of winning the favour of the chiefs, tenderly handled all the

-national prejudices, loudly extolled the excellence of the Brehon Code,

-and succeeded at last in giving baptism to the Princes of Leinster. After

-this the new religion made such rapid progress that at the end of fifteen

-years Patrick was obliged to ask for thirty new Bishops from Rome,

-besides the numerous native priests who had already received ordination

-at his hands. When he died at the ripe age of one hundred and twenty

-years, Ireland had become Christian, and was rapidly being Latinised in

-the innumerable schools attached to the monasteries and churches. She

-even entered so eagerly in the new path as to deserve the name of “Isle

-of Saints” throughout the Roman world, and that for a long time it was

-enough to be Irish or to have visited Erin to become invested with

-almost a halo of sanctity.

-

-That transformation had been accomplished without violence or effusion

-of blood. Until the 8th century it was a source of honour and prosperity

-for Ireland, for the lustre of her own civilization was enhanced by her

-renown for piety, and all the neighbouring nations sent their sons in

-flocks to be instructed in her arts and her virtues.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-But the very virtues that made her a country of monks and scholars were

-doomed before long to become the source of all her misfortunes. When the

-Scandinavian invasions began to pour over the whole of Europe, Ireland,

-emasculated by an entirely mystical devotion, was found incapable of

-sustaining the shock of the Northmen. The disappearance of the Fenian

-Militia had for a long time left her without a national tie, given up to

-local rivalries, and broken in pieces, as it were, by the clan system. At

-the very time that she most urgently needed a powerful central authority

-to struggle against the _black_ and _white strangers_ from Norway and

-Denmark, she was found defenceless, and it was not her feeble belt of

-mountains, opening everywhere on deep bays, that could oppose a serious

-barrier to them, or guard her plains against their invasions.

-

-Pressed by hunger, the Scandinavians left their country in shoals. They

-threw themselves on the coasts of Great Britain, France, and Spain, as

-far as the basin of the Mediterranean. In no place were the people of

-Europe, already enfeebled by habits of comparative luxury, able to resist

-those giants of the North, who dauntlessly embarked in their otter-skin

-boats and dared to go up the Seine even to the very walls of Paris.

-Ireland was a prey marked out for them. If peradventure the invading

-party were not numerous enough and were beaten back by numbers, they

-would come back in thousands the following year and sweep all before

-them. Vainly did the sons of Erin fight with all the courage of despair;

-one after the other their chieftains were vanquished, and the foe

-definitely took up a position on the south-east coast, where he founded

-the cities of Strangford, Carlingford, and Wexford.

-

-Not content with reducing the Irish to bondage, the victors took a

-cunning and savage delight in humiliating and degrading them, lodging

-garnisaries under their roofs, interdicting, under pain of death, the

-exercise of all liberal arts as well as the carrying of arms, destroying

-schools, burning books to take possession of the gold boxes that

-protected their precious binding.

-

-Every ten or twelve years a liberator sprang up in the West or North,

-and tried to shake off the abhorred yoke. But the rebellion only made

-it weigh more heavily on the neck of the vanquished; and if it happened

-that a Brian Boru succeeded, after incredible efforts and heroism, in

-gathering troops numerous enough to inflict on the stranger a bloody

-defeat, such a day of glory was invariably followed by the most sinister

-morrow.

-

-After two centuries of slavery, interrupted by massacres, vain struggles,

-and impotent efforts, Ireland, once so prosperous, gradually sank in the

-darkest state of barbarism. The intestine dissensions and the rivalries

-between clans achieved the work of the Northern Conquerors. In the year

-1172 she was ripe for new masters, also of Scandinavian race, who were

-ready to swoop on her with their Anglo-Saxon bands, after passing, to

-come to her, through the duchy of Normandy and through Great Britain.

-

-Henry the Second of Anjou, King of England, was resolved to add Ireland

-to his possessions. All he wanted was a pretext. He found it in the state

-of practical schism and independence into which the insular Church

-had fallen. The members of its clergy no longer recognized the Roman

-discipline, did not observe Lent, and married like those of the Greek

-rite. Henry the Second solicited and obtained from Pope Adrian II. a bull

-authorizing him to invade the sister isle, in order to “re-establish

-therein the rule of the Holy See, stop the progress of vice, bring back

-respect for law and religion, and secure the payment of St. Peter’s

-pence.” But in spite of this formal authorization he was too much

-occupied with Aquitaine to be able to entertain seriously the idea of

-undertaking the conquest of Ireland, when one of his vassals, Strongbow,

-cut the knot by landing on the island at the head of a Welsh army, to

-carve himself a kingdom on the south-east coast.

-

-The way was open; Henry II. threw himself in it in his turn, and

-established himself in the east of the island, where, strong in the

-countenance of the clergy secured to him by the Papal bull, he received

-before long the homage of the principal native chieftains.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Limited at first to a territory enclosed within palisades, or _Pale_,

-which, during more than four centuries, enlarged or got narrowed,

-according to the fortune of war and the relative strength of the

-belligerent parties, the English rule was destined at last to spread

-over the whole of the island. But, of this seven-century struggle, the

-last word is not yet said. The wound is ever bleeding. Ireland has

-never accepted her defeat; she refuses to accept as valid a marriage

-consummated by a rape. Always she protested, either by direct rebellion,

-when she found the opportunity for it, as in 1640, in 1798, and in

-1848; either by the voice of her poets and orators, by the nocturnal

-raids of her _Whiteboys_ and _Ribbonmen_, by the plots of her Fenians,

-by the votes of her electors, by parliamentary obstruction, by passive

-resistance, by political or commercial interdict—opposed to the intruder;

-in a word, by all the means, legal or illegal, that offered to interrupt

-prescription.

-

-A striking, and, one may say, a unique example in history: after seven

-centuries of sustained effort on the part of the victor to achieve his

-conquest, this conquest is less advanced than on the morrow of Henry the

-Second’s landing at Waterford. An abyss still severs the two races, and

-time, instead of filling up that abyss, only seems to widen it. This

-phenomenon is of such exceptional and tragic interest; it beats with

-such crude light on the special physiology of two races and the general

-physiology of humanity, that one needs must stop first and try to unravel

-its tangible causes if one be desirous of comprehending what is taking

-place in the land of Erin.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER VI.

-

-HISTORICAL GRIEVANCES.

-

-

-The English, it must be admitted, are no amiable masters. Never, in any

-quarter of the globe, were they able to command the goodwill of the

-nations submitted to their rule, nor did they fascinate them by those

-brilliant qualities that often go a long way towards forgiveness of

-possible injuries. “Take yourself off there, that I may take your place,”

-seems always to have been the last word of their policy. Pure and simple

-extermination of autochthon races; such is their surest way to supremacy.

-One has seen it successively in America, on the Australian continent, in

-Tasmania, in New Zealand, where the native tribes hardly exist now more

-than as a memory. On the other hand, if the vanquished races were too

-numerous or too sturdy and prolific to be easily suppressed, as in India

-or Ireland, reconciliation never took place; conquest ever remained a

-doubtful and precarious fact.

-

-In Ireland, the question was made more complex by two elements

-that visibly took a predominant part in the relations between the

-conquerors and the conquered. In the first place, the island of Erin,

-having remained outside the pale of the Roman world and of barbaric

-invasions, possessed an indigenous and original civilization that made

-her peculiarly refractory to the establishment of the feudal system.

-Secondly, her very remoteness and her insular character inclined the

-immigrants to establish themselves there regretfully, to consider her

-always as a colony and a place of exile, where they only resided against

-their will. For the first four hundred years of their occupation they

-confined themselves to the eastern coast within the inclosed territory

-(varying with the fortune of war) that they called the _Pale_ or

-palisade, and outside which the Irish preserved their manners, their

-laws, and their own customs.

-

-In spite of this barrier, it happened in the course of time that the

-English colonists got pervaded by those customs and felt their contagion.

-At once the British Parliament had recourse to drastic laws in order to

-open a new abyss between the two races, and keep the mastery they had

-over the Irish. Such is the special object of an edict of Edward III.,

-known under the name of _Edict of Kilkenny_, and by which it is reputed

-high treason for any Englishman established in Ireland to have married

-an Irish-woman, to have legitimised an Irish child, or have held him in

-baptism, to have taken an Irish Christian name, to have worn the Irish

-dress, to have spoken the Erse tongue, to have let his moustache grow,

-or to have ridden saddleless, as was the Irish fashion; above all, to

-have submitted to the Brehon Code. Those divers crimes were punished by

-confiscation of property, and perpetual imprisonment of the offender.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Such laws were a powerful obstacle to fusion, raised by the intruder

-himself. One sees at once the difference between, for instance, such a

-system and that established by the Norman invasion in Great Britain.

-

-Here the conqueror found a race made supple by Roman occupation and

-Danish rule; he established himself, by strength of arm, on the soil,

-covered it with strongholds, and everywhere substituted himself to the

-dispossessed masters; he at once implanted within his new dominions the

-French tongue, the feudal system, the powerful hierarchy that constituted

-its strength; he remained standing, iron-covered and in arms, over the

-prostrate bodies of the population in bondage, and repressed with such

-a high hand any attempt at rebellion, that the very idea of resistance

-must of necessity die out soon. On the other hand, having transplanted

-himself, and without any idea of return, in this new sphere, he

-immediately submitted to its influence; he incorporated himself with the

-ambient race to such a degree as soon to forget his own origin, and come

-after two or three generations to consider himself as purely of English

-breed.

-

-In Ireland, on the contrary, not only was the conqueror reduced by the

-imperfect state of his conquest to remain on the defensive, confined

-within the Pale on the eastern shore, within reach, so to say, of the

-mother country; not only could not he dream for a long time of obliging

-populations that escaped all action on his part to obey his manners and

-his laws; not only did he systematically keep those populations at arm’s

-length and avoided mixing with them; but periodical laws and edicts

-constantly came to remind them, on pain of terrible punishment, that he

-belonged to another race, and must guard with jealous care the integrity

-of its autonomy. Without any intercourse with the more distant tribes, he

-was at constant war with those of the borders of the Pale.

-

-And war was, at this period even still more than in our own days, mere

-rapine, raised to the dignity of a system. The English did not scruple to

-make incursions on their neighbour’s lands, to take away harvest, cattle,

-and women, after which they returned to their fortified territory.

-

-They did even worse: having heard of the ancient custom by which the

-Irish formerly accorded fire and candle light to their national militia

-or Fenians, the English revived it to their own profit; they quartered on

-the peasantry in their neighbourhood during all the winter, a soldier,

-who took his seat round the domestic hearth, shared the meals of the

-family, took possession of the best bed—nay, did not disdain to cast

-the eye of favour on the wife or daughter—and not the less remained

-a stranger, a foe, at the same time that he was a forced guest and a

-spy—for he was forbidden to speak the language, to adopt the dress,

-to imitate the manners of his victims.... The horror of that burden

-coming anew every year had once led to the suppression of the Fenian

-militia. How much more terrible was such servitude, enforced by the

-enemy! Constant were the rebellions, and always repressed with calculated

-barbarity—they only served as a pretext for new exactions.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Still, in spite of all, a certain contagion of habits took place between

-the contiguous races. A few native chiefs insensibly began to imitate the

-manners of the English. The English were not long in discovering a way to

-reconcile them—by appealing to their basest impulses.

-

-Until then, the Irish had had no knowledge of individual property.

-With them land was, like the sky or the air they breathed, the common

-inheritance of those who occupied it. The members of a clan, indeed,

-paid the chieftain a tax or annual duty, but they did not conceive it

-as possible that this leader could look on himself as the master of the

-social fund to which they, like him, had a hereditary right. At the

-most they expected their harvest or cattle to be seized, in case of

-non-payment of the tax. There never had been an eviction of the tenant,

-as there had been no sale or transfer of the land by him occupied.

-Individual appropriation, as resulting from the feudal system, was such a

-new idea to the Irish that they were at first unable to grasp it.

-

-“What interest can you have in making your clan give up their land to the

-English, since you get it back in return for your homage?” would ask some

-of the native chieftains of those of their countrymen nearer the pale

-who had taken for some time to performing that commercial transaction.

-

-The neophytes of feudal law would then explain that in case of extension

-of the English conquest, their possession of the land would be guaranteed

-by the fact of the new title. What they took great care should not be

-discovered by the clan, was that they gave what did not belong to them,

-and sold the collective property of their followers, to receive it

-afterwards at the hands of the English as personal property.... This was

-seen clearly later on, when they began to sell it or raise mortgages

-on it. But that, the dawn of a gigantic fraud, nobody in Ireland could

-so much as suspect. The fraudulent origin of individual appropriation

-is nevertheless, even to our own day, the true root of the desperate

-resistance that the Irish tenant invariably opposes to eviction. Be it

-tradition, be it “cellular memory,” he is conscious of his primordial and

-superior right to that glebe once stolen from his forefathers.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Stolen! if only it had been stolen once for all!... But to repeat

-Fitzgibbon’s (Lord Clare) saying, there is not in the whole of Ireland

-one field that has not been _at least three times_ unjustly taken from

-its legitimate possessors. And that spoliation was always accompanied by

-the most aggravating circumstances.

-

-It was indeed with Henry VIII. and Elizabeth that the true efforts of

-England to achieve the conquest of Erin were made, and from that time, to

-the antagonism of the two races, to the conflict of interests, was added

-religious hatred. Between puritanical England and Catholic Ireland began

-a duel to the death, into which each generation in turn has thrown itself

-for three centuries. Oppression begets rebellion, and rebellion expires

-drowned in blood. We have no intention of repeating that history in these

-pages; its details are to be found everywhere. Let us only recall its

-essential features.

-

-Towards the year 1565, Queen Elizabeth undertook the “plantation” of

-Ireland on a large scale, and set about it by the elementary process

-of dispossessing the owners of the soil in order to present Englishmen

-with their lands. The whole country rose, under the command of John

-Desmond, who called the Spaniards to his aid. Upon which England sent to

-Ireland, together with Sydney, Sussex, and Walter Raleigh, armies whose

-instructions were “the extermination of the Rebels.”

-

-“At Christmas,” wrote one of the English Generals, Sir Nicolas Malby,

-in the year 1576, “I entered Connaught, and soon finding that by mercy

-I should only succeed in having my throat cut, I preferred to adopt a

-different tactic. I therefore threw myself in the mountains with the

-settled determination of destroying these people by sword and fire,

-sparing neither the old nor the children. _I burnt down all their

-harvests and all their houses, and I put to the sword all that fell

-within my hands...._ This occurred in the country of Shane Burke. I did

-the same thing in that of Ullick Burke.”

-

-The other English Generals vied in ardour with this butcher; so much so

-that at the end of a few years of indiscriminate hangings, massacres,

-burnings of house and land, the whole of Munster was laid waste like a

-desert; a few wretches only were left to wander over it like ghosts,

-and they came voluntarily to offer their throat to the knife of Queen

-Elizabeth’s soldiers. The Virgin Queen then resolved to repeople that

-desert; she made proclamation that all the lands of the Desmonds were

-confiscated (more than 500,000 acres) and she offered them gratuitously

-to whosoever would “plant” them with the help of English labour. The

-grantees were to pay no duty to the Crown until six years had passed, and

-that duty was always to be of the lightest. In spite of these advantages

-colonization did not make much progress. The English at last understood

-that they must either give it up, or resign themselves to having the

-ground cultivated by the despoiled Irish who had survived the massacres.

-H ow could those wretched people have done otherwise than nourish the

-hope of revenge?

-

-That revenge was attempted in Ulster at the death of Elizabeth. It ended

-in new disasters, new tortures, new confiscations. The counties of

-Tyrone, Derry, Donegal, Armagh, Fermanagh, and Cavan,—in all about three

-million acres,—were then seized by the Crown and distributed in lots to

-Scotch settlers.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-In the year 1641, under the reign of Charles I., a few Irishmen having

-emigrated to the continent, and having been initiated to modern military

-tactics in the ranks of the French army, attempted to liberate their

-country. They provoked a rising, succeeded in holding in check during

-eight years all the British forces, and in 1649 compelled the King of

-England to grant them by formal treaty the conditions they themselves

-dictated. But a few days later the head of Charles fell on the scaffold,

-and Cromwell in person, escorted by his son, by Ireton and Ludlow, made

-it his business to come and annul the treaty of Kilkenny.

-

-“For Jesus!... No quarter!...” Such was the battle-cry he gave to his

-Roundheads. Drogheda, then Wexford were taken by storm; men, women,

-and children were exterminated; Galway fell in 1652. The populations,

-exhausted by a war and famine of ten years’ duration, surrendered

-themselves to his mercy, and laid down their arms. Cromwell had only now

-to reap the fruits of his victory by making Ireland pay for it.

-

-His first idea was to complete the extermination of the native race,

-in order to replace it by English colonists. But even his gloomy soul

-recoiled before the only means that at once and for ever could put an

-end to “the Irish gangrene.” He adopted a middle course, of much less

-radical efficacy. This middle course consisted in transporting, or, as

-they called it at the time _transplanting_ all the Irish into the region

-bounded by the Shannon, there to be penned up like men infested with

-the plague, while all the rest of the territory was allotted to English

-families.

-

-The enterprise was conducted with truly puritanical method and rigour.

-Thousands of Irish were shipped as slaves to the West Indies, thousands

-of others were imprisoned in Connaught, under pain of death for whoever

-should cross its limits. All the land, carefully parcelled out, was

-divided by lot between the soldiers of Cromwell, upon agreement that they

-should consider themselves bound to expend their pay for three years on

-the improvement of it. But those fields, to yield up their value, had to

-be cultivated, and the English labourer declined to become a voluntary

-exile in order to cultivate them. Little by little the native peasantry

-came back to their old homes with the tenacity peculiar to their class,

-they founded families and reconstituted the Irish nation under the ten or

-twelve thousand landlords imposed over them by fraud and violence. Forty

-years after Cromwell’s death, these landlords had even forgotten how to

-speak the English language.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Restoration was not destined to heal any of those cruel wounds. Charles

-II. took little heed of Ireland, which he deemed too far off, and besides

-he thought it good policy not to disturb the new occupants in their

-possessions. He barely deemed it necessary to establish in Dublin a Court

-of Revision that sat only one year, examined no more than seven hundred

-cases out of a total of above three thousand that were submitted to it,

-and ordered the restitution of hardly a sixth part of the confiscated

-land.

-

-After the Revolution of 1688, nevertheless, the Irish only embraced with

-more ardour the cause of James II. when he landed in Ireland with a

-handful of men. Even after his defeat at the Boyne, they so successfully

-resisted William of Orange that he was compelled in 1691 to grant to

-them, by the treaty of Limerick, the free exercise of their religion

-and the political privileges that could help them to preserve it. But,

-like so many other charters, that one was soon to be violated. All the

-Irish Jacobites were compelled to expatriate themselves (numbers of them

-took service in France; more than fifty thousand Irishmen died under

-the _fleur-de-lis_ during the first half of the eighteenth century);

-four thousand others were evicted from one million of acres that

-William distributed among his followers. Soon to this already terrible

-repression were to be added all the rigours of the Penal Code, that code

-that proclaimed it a duty to spy, and a meritorious act to betray the

-Irishman at his hearth; that code of which Burke could say: “Never did

-the ingenious perversity of man put forth a machine more perfect, more

-thoughtfully elaborated, more calculated to oppress, to impoverish, to

-degrade a people, to lower in them human nature itself.”

-

-Under the network of that nameless despotism which attacked man in his

-dearest privileges, the rights of conscience, the sanctity of home,—under

-the weight of a legislation that in a manner forbade her the use of water

-and fire, that closed all careers before her, after having wrenched her

-last furrow from her keeping,—the Irish nation persisted in living and

-multiplying. Was it any wonder that in the depth of her collective soul

-she cherished dreams of revenge and justice?

-

-The American Emancipation and the French Revolution appeared to her

-as the dawn of regeneration. Alas! once again the glorious effort of

-1798,—the rebellion in arms, victory itself, were only to end in a

-complete wreck. As if Fate owed one more stroke of irony to this martyred

-nation, it was an Irish Parliament that by its own vote in 1800 abdicated

-the hardly recovered national independence. Pitt bought it wholesale for

-the price of 1,200,000 guineas.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-It was not enough, however, to have taken from the Irishman his blood,

-his land, his religious faith, and his liberty: they must still prevent

-his prospering in commerce or industry. Political interest was here in

-accordance with avarice in giving this advice to the victor.

-

-Charles II. began by forbidding Ireland to export meat, butter, and

-cheese to England. At that time of slow maritime intercourse, no idea

-could be entertained of sending them to any other market. The Irish had

-to fall back on wool, which they exported to France and Spain. That was

-sufficient to arouse the jealousy of their pitiless masters. The export

-of wool, be it as raw material or in woven stuffs, was forbidden the

-Irish on pain of confiscation and fines.

-

-The effect of this harsh measure was two-fold: it prevented the abhorred

-Irish prospering; it secured to the English merchant the monopoly of

-Irish wool, which he could henceforth buy at his own price (generally at

-a quarter of the current price), and sell again at a lesser rate than

-all his competitors. It only remained for Ireland to make smugglers of

-all her fishermen; they crammed all the caverns on her coasts with wool,

-and during the winter, in spite of excisemen, they exchanged it for the

-wines and spirits of France and Spain. By the same occasion they exported

-soldiers and imported Catholic priests. Thus did Ireland keep losing her

-vital strength, by the constant departure of the most vigorous amongst

-her sons, at the same time that she inoculated in her blood two equally

-fatal poisons—alcohol and fanaticism.

-

-On the other hand, the Puritan weavers of Ulster were ruined like the

-wool-farmers. They emigrated to America, and England found no bitterer

-foes than their sons during the War of Independence.

-

-Some of the Irish tried to fall back on other industries, as the weaving

-of linen or ship-building. At once England interfered with an iron hand

-by establishing the most ruinous prohibitive duties on Irish linens,

-while at the same time her cotton fabrics came pouring over the country.

-To make doubly sure, England, by a special law, formally interdicted

-ship-building in Ireland as well as any direct trade with any foreign

-market whatsoever.

-

-One feels a sort of shame for the human kind in having to record

-such consistent acts of systematic cruelty. The violence of military

-retaliation, the sacking of towns or the massacre of vanquished foes,

-may be explained by the heat of combat, and are found in the annals of

-all countries. An economical compression exercised during ten or twelve

-generations on one nation by another nation of Shylocks is, happily, a

-fact without any parallel in history.

-

-From the beginning of the 18th century all industrial enterprise had thus

-been unmercifully forbidden to Ireland. All the factories were closed,

-the working population had been reduced to field labour, emigration or

-street-begging. This population therefore weighed still more heavily

-on the soil, still exaggerating its tendencies to subdivision; which

-tendencies, already a curse for Ireland, were to cause in the future new

-ferments of hatred and misery. All the attempts that Ireland made to

-free herself from those iron shackles were pitilessly repressed. She saw

-herself deprived of her right to commercial activity, as she had been of

-national conscience, of land, and religious or political freedom. And

-it is after having thus for centuries systematically trained the Irish

-to poverty, idleness, and drink, that England, crowning her work with

-calumny, dares to bring forward their vices as an excuse for herself!

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-These things are far from us already. But it would be erring greatly to

-imagine that in the eyes of the Irish they bear an antiquated character.

-Oral tradition, seconded by an indigenous literature, keeps the wound

-open and green. Yonder wretched beggar, dying of hunger and want upon

-the glebe once possessed by his ancestors, knows that they ruled where

-he now serves, bears their name with a touching pride, and sadly toils

-for others in a field that he believes to belong to himself. He is not

-ignorant of the way in which it was taken from him, at what date, and

-in what manner the event took place. How could he consider its present

-possessors otherwise than as his most cruel enemies?

-

-Let us imagine the French _émigrés_ brought back violently on the lands

-taken from them by the nation, and reduced to support their family by

-tilling their fields with their own hands. Let us suppose them compelled

-every year to pay an exorbitant rent to the usurper. Let us blot out

-from history’s page the milliard indemnity given to the _émigrés_

-and the amnesty passed over those things by five or six successive

-revolutions. Let us lastly add to these deadly rancours the weight of a

-religious persecution of three centuries, of the undisguised contempt

-of the victor, and of the most shocking political inequality.... Let

-that _émigré_, in a word, not only have lost caste, be spoliated and a

-serf, but also be a pariah, a kind of pestilent member of the community:

-then we shall gather some idea of the state of mind of the Irish people

-towards England; we shall understand that in truth the only mistake

-committed by Cromwell and the others in their system of colonization was

-to have not carried it to its full length, to have not exterminated all

-by fire or sword, and to have left a single son of Erin alive.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-As a contrast to England and Ireland, let us place a historical fact

-of the same order, that of France with Corsica. Here also we find an

-insular race of markedly distinct character, of different language,

-different manners and traditions, the habit of independence and the

-clan-spirit,—all that can foster and serve resistance to annexation.

-But here the conquering nation is France, and she is a kind mother. She

-does not come, fire and sword in hand, to ravage the harvests of the

-vanquished, to take his land, to impose on him, together with a new

-faith, exceptional laws, and a brand of infamy. On the contrary, to them

-she opens her arms, she offers her wealth and her love. From the first

-day she admits Corsicans to the provincial parliaments, and twenty years

-later she receives their deputies in the Assemblée Nationale. From the

-first hour they feel they are Frenchmen, the equals of those born in the

-Ile de France. There are for them neither special taxes, nor political

-inferiority, nor rigours of any sort. Never was an inch of ground taken

-from them to be given to the continental families. Never were they

-treated like serfs to be trodden down without mercy. If there be an

-exception made, it is in their favour; as, for instance, the reduction

-of one half of all duties on imports; the free trade in tobacco; the

-enormous proportion of Corsicans admitted to all Government offices.

-

-But what a difference, too, in the results!... In less than a hundred

-years, the fusion between the two races is so perfect, the assimilation

-so complete, that one could not find to-day one man in Corsica to wish

-for a separation. Nay, rather, against such an enterprise, if any one

-were found to attempt it, all Corsica would rise in arms.

-

-If Great Britain had so willed it, Ireland might easily have become to

-her what Corsica is to us. Only, for the last seven hundred years, Great

-Britain has lacked what alone could have made that miracle possible,—a

-mother’s heart and love.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER VII.

-

-KILLARNEY.

-

-

-I know no place to compare with Killarney: so soft to the eye, so

-full of unspeakable grace. It is as a compendium of Ireland; all the

-characteristic features of the country are united there: the elegant

-“round towers,” drawing on the horizon the airy outline of their conic

-shafts; the soft moistness of the atmosphere, the tender blue of the sky,

-the intense green of the meadows, set off by long, black trails of peat,

-and the white, ochre, and red streaks which the grit-stone and clay-slate

-draw on the hill-side.

-

-Within the oval circus formed by the mountains of Kerry, the Killarney

-lakes succeed one another like small Mediterraneans, all dotted with

-lovely islands, where myrtle and rare ferns grow freely, fostered by a

-Lusitanian climate. Every one of those islands has its legend, its own

-saint, buried under some old moss-grown mound; its ruined castle, its

-ivy-clothed abbey, paved with tombstones and haunted by some _banshee_.

-They are like large baskets of flowers floating on the clear, silent

-waters, whose peace is only broken now and then by the jumping of a fish,

-or the clucking of some stray teal. All there unite to form a landscape

-of almost paradoxical beauty. You think you have landed in fairyland,

-outside the pale of ordinary life.

-

-The most illustrious of them is Innisfallen, where the monks wrote in the

-seventh century their famous _Annals_, the pride of the Bodleian Library.

-In viewing this enchanting island, you involuntarily fall to repeating

-the beautiful lines of Moore which you used to bungle in your school

-days, and of which you first realise the profound truth:

-

-    “_Sweet Innisfallen, fare thee well,_

-      _May calm and sunshine long be thine,_

-    _How fair thou art, let others tell,_

-      _While but to feel how fair be mine, etc._”

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Along the shores of that range of lakes, two lordly domains display the

-noble arrangement of their parks: one is the seat of the Earl of Kenmare,

-lord-lieutenant of the county, late Lord Chamberlain to the Queen during

-the Gladstone Ministry. The other belongs to Captain Herbert of Muckross,

-late Member of Parliament. As far around as you can see the land belongs

-to either of those two landlords. Just as in the tale, down to the

-extremity of the valley, up to the very top of the far-away mountain,

-land and water, beasts and Christians, all belong to the “Marquis de

-Carabas.”

-

-Some restriction must be made, however. Changes have been introduced

-lately. Only a few years ago it was a thing understood that of the two

-members which the borough returned to Parliament one must be the heir

-presumptive of the house of Kenmare, the other the chief of the house

-of Muckross. That is over. Now-a-days the Kerry voters send whom Mr.

-Parnell likes to the House of Commons. But the air of the parks is still

-the property of the two owners; none may breathe it without their leave.

-I hasten to say that the permission is most courteously given by Lord

-Kenmare to all tourists, and as readily (if less liberally) sold on the

-Muckross grounds to anyone willing to pay one or two shillings, according

-to his approach walking or on horseback.

-

-The two parks are marvels, almost without other rivals in the world, for

-their prodigious extent, their admirably kept shrubberies and avenues,

-and the splendour and variety of the points of view which art has devised

-on the lakes. Those lakes themselves, with their islands, bays, and

-toy-peninsulas, their rippling brooks and foaming cascades, are only

-part of the beauties of the whole. Muckross is proud to possess the old

-abbey of the same name, and the Torc Cascade. Kenmare boasts Innisfallen,

-Ross Island, Saint Finian’s Tomb, the legendary ruins of O’Donoghue’s

-Castle, and a hundred other wonders. It is more regal than lordly, and

-there are indeed few royal residences which can boast such gardens.

-

-You go away dazzled, enchanted, intoxicated with verdure, ozone, and

-poetic sights. You come back the day following, you almost wish to take

-root there for a sort of contemplative life, where you would discard any

-heavier occupation than catching salmon, smoking endless cigarettes, and

-reading over your favourite authors. A rich artist, it is said, being

-pricked with a violent desire of that kind, offered I don’t know how much

-ready money to Lord Kenmare if he would grant him five hundred square

-yards of ground on Ross Island. The offer was declined.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-There is a reverse side to the picture; and it could scarcely be less

-brilliant. Killarney is a sorry borough of about four or five thousand

-inhabitants, more miserable looking than words can express. Except in

-the great hotels which English enterprise has raised for fleecing the

-tourists attracted there by the beauty of the lakes, there is not a

-vestige of ease or prosperity. No busy workman, not one manufacture is

-to be seen. The miserable shops exhibit a few dusty wares which nobody

-seems anxious either to buy or to sell. There is a despondent stillness

-about, and people look tired with doing nothing. The women, all more or

-less “tattered and torn,” wear a poor rag of a shawl on their heads.

-Half-naked children, wild-haired, full of vermin, swarm out of all the

-small alleys which open on the one street of the town. Only the Anglican

-and Catholic churches rise above the sordid little dwellings with a

-substantial and well-to-do air.

-

-Go out of the village, follow the long walls which enclose the lordly

-seats, and after three or four miles you will find again the Irish

-country such as you have seen it everywhere. Turnip and barley fields,

-thin pastures, few trees or none at all. On the road-side occasionally

-is a consumptive cow, or a pig wallowing in mud fraternally with two or

-three bright-eyed urchins. Here and there a hovel with the traditional

-dung-hill and three hens. Nothing, in short, calculated to bring a new

-light on the agrarian crisis.

-

-It is in Kerry, however, that the malady has reached its most acute

-state, they all tell me. But you could not believe how hard it is to

-obtain any definite information about those matters. People who really

-know about it feel a sort of shame to bare their national wounds before a

-stranger, and besides, the diversity of judgments makes it difficult to

-draw something positive from them. Every man has his party feeling, and

-is wishing to enforce it upon you. Provided with a good number of letters

-of introduction, and everywhere received with perfect cordiality, I have

-talked already with people of all conditions—landlords, agents, farmers,

-doctors, priests, and labourers,—without having obtained as yet any but

-individual views. Home Rulers and Orangemen have made me hear arguments

-that I know by heart from having heard them repeated these last eight

-years, ever since the crisis entered its actual phase. This is not the

-thing we want: we want _espèces_, as they say in French law; specific

-illustration, direct symptoms of the Irish disease.

-

-And that is the difficulty. The habit of living among certain deformities

-so familiarises us with them that we are no longer able to perceive them,

-and still less to point them out. Moreover, when upon receiving a letter

-from London, a man is kind enough to ask you to dinner, to introduce

-you to his wife and daughters, to lend you his horse and trap, and to

-empty for your benefit his store of ready-made opinions, is it possible

-decently to ask him more? He has his own affairs, and cannot spend his

-time running with you through hill and dale in order to help you to

-unravel a sociological problem.

-

-By a stroke of good luck I met the scout I wanted.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-I was returning from an excursion to the Gap of Dunloe when, on the banks

-of the river which waters the Kenmare estate, near the bridge, I noticed

-a man of about forty, of middle height, poorly but neatly clad, who was

-walking in front of me and gave evident signs of wishing to enter into

-conversation. I had been so harassed lately by the swarm of cicerones

-and incompetent guides who crowd all ways to the lakes and sights around

-Killarney, that I had grown suspicious, and pretended not to see the man.

-But he had his idea and stuck to it. Slackening his pace, he began to

-whistle _La Marseillaise_.

-

-That was saying plainly:—

-

-“You are French, and I am a friend of France like all Irishmen. You are

-welcome here.”

-

-Throughout the world it is the adopted form for such a declaration of

-love. On board a transatlantic steamer or in the sitting-rooms of a

-cosmopolite hotel, when a fair-haired or dark-haired new acquaintance

-seats herself to the piano and begins to play the march of Rouget de

-l’Isle, the French tourist can see his way: he is looked upon with no

-unfriendly eye.

-

-There were no dark or fair tresses here, but only a bearded

-pepper-and-salt quadragenarian, with the patent purpose of hooking me

-at the rate of half-a-crown an hour: so I remained obdurate. But he,

-suddenly making up his mind:—

-

-“Well, _Sor_,” he said to me with a soft voice and the most enticing

-smile, “how do you _loike_ our country?”

-

-“Your country? I should like it a great deal better if one could go

-about it without being pestered by guides at every turning,” I said, but

-half-remorsefully.

-

-“How true, sir! Those guides positively infest the place. And if they

-only knew their trade! But they are regular swindlers, beggars who steal

-the tourist’s money; the shame of Ireland, that is what they are!”

-

-The conversation then commenced, and to say the truth I have no reason

-to repent it. The fellow is well-informed, quick-witted, incredibly

-talkative, and in five minutes has given me really valuable information,

-besides biographical details about himself. He is called MacMahon like

-many others in this country, for I have seen that name over twenty

-village shops already. Is he any relation to the Maréchal? No; he makes

-no pretension to that. But after all it is not improbable that they come

-from one root, for my friend is not, of course, without his relationship

-with some of the numberless kings of Ireland.

-

-“And the Marshal is a great man, a brave soldier, a true Irishman. I have

-his picture at home. I’ll show it to you if you do me the honour to visit

-my humble roof, and accept a glass of ‘mountain dew.’”

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-My new acquaintance has been quill-driver at a land surveyor’s, and he

-knows many things. This, for instance: that all people here, from the

-most insignificant farmer to the biggest landowner, are in debt.

-

-“All that glitters is not gold,” he says, with a melancholy smile. “Do

-you see that large expanse of land, sir? Well, those who own it are not

-perhaps richer than I, and have not perhaps always as much pocket-money

-as would be convenient for them. Their annual income goes to pay the

-interest of an enormous debt, the hereditary obligations which weigh on

-the property, and the normal keeping of it. Mr. Herbert, the owner of

-Muckross, had to emigrate to America, where he is now an attorney’s

-clerk, for his daily bread. The shilling you give for entering his park

-goes to the scraping of it. As for Lord Kenmare, he never sees as much

-as the tenth part of the revenue of his property, let alone his being

-forbidden his own grounds under pain of being shot dead! Lady Kenmare

-lives there alone with her children under protection of a detachment of

-the police.” So the masters of those two noble estates are exiled from

-them, one by mortgage, the other by agrarian hatred. O, irony of things!

-

-“But Lord Kenmare’s not a bad landlord, is he?” I said to MacMahon.

-

-“Far from it. His tenants are eight hundred in number, and there are

-not three evicted in the year. I know personally twenty of them who owe

-him four years’ rent and are never troubled about it. But he has taken

-position against the League—that is enough. And then, don’t you know,

-sir, the best of landlords is not worth much in the eyes of his tenants.

-_They want the land and they will have it._ But this is my house. Please

-come in, sir.”

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Thus chattering, the communicative Celt had brought me to the entrance

-of a small low house in a by-street of Killarney. We entered a sort

-of kitchen-parlour on a level with the lane. No carpet or flooring of

-any kind but the simple beaten clay, a large old-fashioned chimney, a

-table, a few straw-covered chairs; on the walls a whole private museum

-in chromo-lithography: Pope Pius IX., the Marshal Duke of Magenta, Mr.

-Parnell, &c., and a branch of holy palm.

-

-Upon our coming, a poor creature, pale and emaciated, had risen without

-showing any surprise.

-

-“Mrs. MacMahon, _Sor_! Everilda Matilda, a French gentleman who honours

-our house by stopping a moment in it. Call the children, my dear; the

-gentleman will be pleased to see them, I think.”

-

-A tall girl with brown eyes first presents herself, then a boy between

-twelve and thirteen years old, then a variety of younger fry. I am told

-that Mary has passed successfully her “standards,” that Tim has just

-begun Latin with an ultimate view to become a priest “like his uncle

-Jack;” then the “mountain dew” is produced. It is a kind of home-made

-whisky, not unpalatable.

-

-At last mine host turns to his wife.

-

-“Supposing, my dear, you show your lace to the French gentleman, to let

-him see what you can do when you are not bed-ridden. Perhaps he will

-like to bring back some little remembrance of Killarney to his ‘lady.’”

-

-I was caught.

-

-Everilda Matilda instantly produced a box containing cuffs and collars

-of Irish point, and all that remains to me to do, if I am not ready to

-forfeit my rights to the qualification of gentleman, is to buy a few

-guineas’ worth. Hardly is the matter over, than MacMahon turns to the

-future ecclesiastic—

-

-“And you, Tim, will you not show the gentleman those sticks you polish so

-well?”

-

-Caught again!

-

-If each member of the family has his own private trade, the

-_mountain-dew_ threatens to be rather an expensive refreshment.

-

-“I am greatly obliged to you,” I said, “but I have got already a complete

-collection of _shillelaghs_.”

-

-MacMahon’s jaw fell visibly.

-

-“But we could perhaps make another arrangement, that would be more

-advantageous,” I continued quietly. “You know the country well, you tell

-me?”

-

-“As a man who has lived forty years in it and never left it.”

-

-“Well, let us have a pair of good hacks; you lead me for a couple of

-days across field and country, and show me a dozen authentic cases of

-eviction, agrarian violence, or boycottism. If you will undertake this,

-and I am satisfied with you, upon our return I will take the whole lot of

-lace.”

-

-You should have seen the glowing faces of the whole family! The affair

-was soon settled, and the day after we started.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER VIII.

-

-THROUGH KERRY ON HORSEBACK.

-

-

-It was not two days but six that we spent, my guide and I, visiting

-the County Kerry in all directions, examining the crops, asking about

-prices, entering cottages and small farms, chatting with anyone that

-we supposed capable of giving us information. The rather unexpected

-conclusion I arrived at was that the agrarian crisis is more especially

-felt in the richest districts, while it can hardly be said to exist in

-the poorest parts. Kerry is, in that particular, a true copy of Ireland

-on a small scale. It may, in fact, be divided into two perfectly distinct

-regions—the plains of the north and the mountains of the south-west.

-Those regions offer characteristics as marked in an economical as in a

-geographical point of view.

-

-Another conclusion drawn from my personal intercourse with the Irish

-peasant was that nothing is to be got out of him by bullying and

-everything by gentle means. If you arrive at an inn and proceed, as

-do the English everywhere, to assume a harsh and arrogant tone, you

-will experience the greatest difficulties in obtaining even meagre

-fare in return for your money. They will pretend they have nothing in

-the house, that they are not in the habit of receiving travellers, and

-such like stories. If, on the contrary, you at once proclaim yourself

-delighted with the country, its manners and its inhabitants; if you risk

-a compliment to the hostess or a gentle pinch to the children’s cheek,

-the whole house is yours. They will instantly wring the neck of the

-solitary chicken promenading in front of the house; they will exhibit

-clean table-linen; they will rush to the neighbour and borrow a salad

-or some fruit; they will even unearth from some dark corner a bottle

-of old port. If you give this impromptu supper only half the praise it

-deserves, you may count on a luxurious breakfast for the next morning.

-These poor people are thus made. Their heart is warm; their sensibilities

-are quick. The least thing discourages them; the least thing electrifies

-them. In contradiction to the Anglo-Saxon serf, who despises his master

-if he treat him with gentleness, Paddy prefers a gracious word to all

-the guineas in the kingdom. The philosophical reason for the failure of

-the British in Ireland (and elsewhere) is perhaps chiefly to be found in

-their general want of human sympathy. The Englishman speaks too often

-like a slave-driver when he should speak like an elder brother.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                                THE PLAIN.

-

-The plains of North Kerry must be classed among the best land in

-the isle. This is not saying that they are first-class. But they

-evidently only need some outlay in drainage and manure and a few modern

-improvements in culture to rival our Normandy pastures. It is above

-all a land of grazing fields and butter; the grass in the meadows is

-green and luxuriant; the cows look strong and well. It is evident that

-the least effort would be sufficient to make agricultural enterprise a

-thriving business. But carelessness and want of thrift are plainly shown

-on all sides. Everywhere dung hills, placed just in front of the cottage

-doors, pour into the ditch the clearest of their virtue. The gardens are

-ill-kept, the fields transformed into bog for want of a drain seventy

-feet long. One sees oats so invaded by thistles that it must be a sheer

-impossibility to get the grain out. In other fields oats rot standing,

-because no one takes care to cut them in time. Nowhere is any sign shown

-of vigorous enterprise or activity. Not only do routine and sloth reign

-all over the country, but one might be tempted to believe in a general

-conspiracy for wasting the gratuitous gifts of Mother Nature without any

-profit to anybody.

-

-Yet the country looks relatively rich. The peasantry have good clothes,

-they despise potatoes, eat bread and meat, drink beer or tea, send

-their children to school, and appear peculiarly wide awake to their own

-interests. Are they really, as they declare, unable to pay their rents?

-That is possible, for the principal products of the country—corn, oats,

-barley, butter, beef, and mutton, wool and potatoes—have undergone for

-the last three years a considerable depreciation, estimated at from 15 to

-35 per cent. But this depreciation is evidently not felt by a diminution

-of comfort for the rural populations, here at least. The contrary might

-even be admitted. In any case there is evidently no question of a crisis

-of famine such as has so often been seen in this island for the last

-fifty years. The malady is something else. It is the malady of a people

-to whom it has been repeated for half a century that the land they live

-on has been stolen from them by strangers; a people who rightly or

-wrongly believe this to be the case; a people who have entered, under the

-direction of a central committee of politicians, on a regular struggle

-with the landlords; who profit by all economical incidents, especially

-the fall of prices, if not openly to denounce the treaty, at least to

-refuse to execute its articles.

-

-A few facts noted in passing will explain the situation better than all

-discourses.

-

-A large dairy farm, the finest I have yet seen in the country. The

-buildings are new, the fields covered with thick dark grass. I number

-sixty-five cows. All the dairy appointments are handsome and well-kept.

-The farmer looks prosperous. Clearly he lives at ease, judging by

-the furniture of the house, the quality of his clothes, by the very

-liberality with which he receives us, and by the brandy which he offers

-us (he is a friend of my guide). His rent is £100 a year. He does not

-mean to pay his next term. (_I don’t think I will pay this gale._) His

-landlord offers to him the sale of his land for a sum of eighteen years’

-rent, according to the official plan. If he followed that system all he

-would have to do would be to pay annually during forty-nine years the sum

-of £78, less by nearly a third than the present farm rent; he would then

-become a proprietor. He refuses. Why?

-

-“Indeed?” he says, with a wink, “engage myself for forty-nine years!...

-_Why! I shall have the land for nothing in two or three years!_...”

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Another well-to-do farmer driving in a dog-cart with his two daughters.

-The trap is new, the harness smart, the horse strong and well groomed.

-The damsels wear Dublin hats and white woollen dresses not unfashionable

-in cut.

-

-“That’s what enrages the landlords,” my guide says to me; “it is to see

-tenants come in this style to the Tralee races, cheerfully lose twenty

-guineas upon a horse, then, when the time for paying the rent arrives,

-coolly ask for a 40 per cent. reduction on their half-year’s rent....”

-

-“... And in fact it must be enough to make a saint swear!...” he adds

-philosophically. “But after all, the landlords might be content with the

-60 per cent. they get ... I am sure they get it cheap enough ... they

-may think themselves lucky to have even that much, as the interest of

-confiscated land!...”

-

-That notion of the land being held by its actual detentors through

-confiscation, may be unfounded in some cases, or even in the majority

-of cases, but none the less one finds it at the bottom of all Irish

-syllogisms. And in such cases the real value of the premiss is of little

-importance; what matters only is the conclusion drawn from it.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-A few middling and small farmers.

-

-_Maurice Macnamara_, Shinnagh: rent, £48 a year; seventeen cows, eight

-pigs, two horses and one donkey; grass fields, oats, and potatoes; four

-children, of which one is over twenty years of age. Was able to pay his

-rent, but was forbidden to do so by the other tenants on the estate,

-and was in consequence seized by order of the landlord. His neighbours

-offered to help him to resist the execution. He begged to be left alone,

-and the moment of the sale having come, he personally bought all his

-cattle up to the sum due. Nett result of the operation: £11 to pay, over

-and above the six months’ rent. Personal opinion of Maurice Macnamara: it

-is better to pay £11 than to get a bullet through your head.

-

-_John McCarthy_, Gwingullier: £16 annual rent, due in May and November;

-two cows, one horse; oats and potatoes; nine children, the eldest

-seventeen. Has paid nothing to his landlord since 1883; owes actually £48

-to him, and as much to divers tradespeople or usurers. Does not know how

-he shall get out of it.

-

-_Patrick Murphy_, Colyherbeer, barony Trughanarkny; was evicted in

-November from his holding of £28; owed eighteen months’ rent. Received

-from his Landlord the offer of being reinstated in the farm on payment

-of half the sum due, on condition that he would let his crops be sold.

-Declined the offer, and is perfectly satisfied to receive from the League

-relief to the amount of £2 a-week. Never saw himself so well off before.

-

-_Margaret Callaghan_, a widow, close by the town of Kenmare: £8 16_s._

-4_d._ rent; one pig, six hens; three small children; four acres of

-potatoes, three acres waste. Has paid nothing for the last four years.

-Owes about £20 to various tradespeople. Is not harshly pressed by her

-landlord, and can practically be considered as owning her bit of ground.

-Will die of hunger, with her children, the first year the harvest is bad.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Molahiffe, on the road to Tralee.

-

-“This is Mr. Curtin’s house.”

-

-“And who may Mr. Curtin be?”

-

-“What! have you never heard of that affair?... He was killed last year by

-the Moonlighters.”

-

-“Killed?... Was he then a party man, a fierce Orangeman?”

-

-“Mr. Curtin?... Not a bit in the world. He was one of the most peaceable,

-the most Irish at heart, the most esteemed man in this part of the

-country. His misfortune was to own two rifles. The Moonlighters wanted

-those weapons. One night they came and demanded them. The ladies of the

-family were ready to give them up, when Mr. Curtin arrived and looked as

-if he were going to resist. At once a gun exploded in the passage, and he

-fell stone dead.... That was a warning to everybody. Since that time no

-one disobeys the moonlighters. But all the same it is unfortunate that

-the victim should have been Mr. Curtin.”

-

-These _Moonlighters_ are the direct descendants of the Whiteboys of

-olden times. They band together and gather at night for the purpose of

-invading a farm, a solitary house. They are always masked, but sometimes

-in a very elementary fashion, by pulling down their hat or cap over the

-face and making two holes through it for the eyes. Normally they ought to

-search only for arms and to take only arms. But everything degenerates,

-and the use of force often leads to the abuse of it. The Moonlighters

-not unfrequently demand a supper, a sum of money, not to speak of the

-company of some farm-wench to whom they may take a fancy. This impartial

-offering of violence to house and inmates might lead them far, were they

-not certain of the discretion of the victims. But the terror they inspire

-secures impunity to them.

-

-Though everybody in a district knows perfectly well who the intruders

-are, and though they have often been recognized in spite of the mask, no

-one dares to reveal their name. They are all too well aware that in case

-of denunciation a nocturnal bullet will come unerringly to the offender.

-Besides, a sort of poetical halo and a political mantle of immunity

-surrounds men who may sometimes, indeed, carry their zeal a little too

-far, but are after all soldiers in the good cause. The “legitimate”

-industry of the Moonlighters allows their excesses to be forgotten. A

-sort of general complicity covers and favours their expeditions.

-

-That complicity goes sometimes to great lengths—for instance the length

-of non-admitting the intervention of the police in a house where the

-Moonlighters are performing. The constables perambulating the country

-hear screams, desperate appeals for help in a farmhouse. They rush to it

-headlong and knock at the door. At once silence reigns. They are asked

-from the inside of the house what they want.

-

-“We heard screams. Do you not want protection?”

-

-“What business is that of yours?” is the answer. “Go on your way, and do

-not come interfering and preventing honest folks enjoying the possession

-of their house undisturbed!...”

-

-The unlucky constables can only beat a retreat and go their round, often

-to meet shortly with the Moonlighters, who will laugh at them, having

-comfortably finished their business.

-

-Before the judges the same thing occurs. Not a witness will give

-evidence. And if by chance a witness does speak, the jury take care to

-correct this grave breach of etiquette in their verdict.

-

-The witness, as well as the juryman, has often received a warning.

-Working alone in the fields, or following a lonely path, he has suddenly

-seen a little puff of white smoke going up from the bushes some feet in

-front of him, and he has heard a bullet whizzing over his head. It was a

-Moonlighter telling him:—

-

-“Be silent, or thou art a dead man.”

-

-Castleisland. A small town of little interest, after the pattern of most

-Irish boroughs. We stop for lunch at a tavern of rather good appearance,

-and clearly very popular with the natives. The innkeeper smokes a cigar

-with us. Is he satisfied with the state of affairs? Yes and no. Certainly

-he cannot complain—trade in liquor is rather brisk. But there are too

-many places where one can buy drink in the town—no less than fifty-one.

-

-“And do they all prosper?”

-

-“Nearly all.”

-

-“What may their average receipts be?”

-

-“I should say about £400 a year.”

-

-£400 multiplied by fifty-one gives £20,400, more than 510,000 francs. And

-there is not in this place any other industry than agriculture, while

-statistics I have this moment in my pocket inform me that the aggregate

-rental of Castleisland is not above £14,000. It is then evident that,

-times good, times bad, they drink every year here £6,000 worth more

-in beer and spirits than they would pay in rent to the landlords, if

-they chose to pay. This seems to be conclusive, as far as Castleisland

-is concerned. But is there really any reason why the tenants of this

-district should turn total abstainers for the special purpose of paying

-the claret and champagne bills of half-a-dozen absentees? Here is the

-whole problem in a nutshell.

-

-Tralee. The big town of the county, what we should call in France the

-_chef-lieu_, the seat of the assizes. They are opened precisely at this

-moment. There are on the rolls three men charged with agrarian murder. I

-proposed to go and be present at the trials, when I heard that the three

-cases were to be remanded to the next session, the representative of the

-Crown having come to the conclusion that the jury would systematically

-acquit the prisoners, as is so often the case in Ireland.

-

-The Chairman of the Assizes, Mr. Justice O’Brien, seized this occasion to

-declare, that in the course of an already long career he had never met

-with a jury having so little regard for their duty. “It must be known

-widely,” he added, “the law becomes powerless when the course of justice

-is systematically impeded by the very jurymen, as we see it in this

-country; in which case there is no longer any security for persons or

-property.”

-

-To which the people in Kerry answer that they do not care a bit for

-English law; what they want is good Irish laws, made in Dublin by an

-Irish Parliament.

-

-“It is quite true that we have no security here for persons or property,”

-a doctor of the town said to me in the evening. “The outrages were at

-first exclusively directed against the landlords, rightly or wrongly

-accused of injustice and harshness in their dealings with their tenants;

-but for the last two or three years the field of nocturnal aggression

-has enlarged greatly—a shot now serves to settle any personal quarrel

-and even trade accounts. In the beginning the jury at least made a

-distinction between the different motives that actuated the accused.

-Now they always acquit them, _because they no longer dare to find them

-guilty_.... What will you have?... Jurymen are but men. They prefer

-sending a ruffian at large to paying with their life a too subtle

-distinction between crimes of an agrarian character and those of another

-sort. A lump of lead is the most irresistible of arguments. One may

-assert that presently law has lost all influence in Kerry. It is rapine

-that reigns, hardly tempered by the decrees of the National League, which

-of course means only legitimate resistance to the landlords, and by the

-fund of righteousness possessed at heart by the nation. But let things go

-on thus only for two years more, we shall have gone back to the savage

-state.”

-

-“Some people tell me, however, that raiding for money is never seen in

-this part of Ireland.”

-

-“Raiding for money never seen! I would rather say it is the latest

-development of moonlighting. Any one who covets a piece of his

-neighbour’s land, who wishes to influence his vote for a board of

-guardians, who is animated by any motive of vulgar greed or spite, has

-only to set the Moonlighters in motion. The machinery is at hand.”

-

-“Could you really give me a few recent instances of moonlighting for

-money?”

-

-“Of course I could. There is one Daniel Moynihan, at Freemount, near

-Rathmore: in October, 1886, a party of six men with blackened faces

-entered his house at night, and breaking open a box, carried away all

-his money. In January, 1887, at Ballinillane, three men armed with guns

-entered Daniel Lyne’s house and asked for money, threatening to shoot him

-if he refused; they took away £6. At Faha, in March, 1887, a party of

-six armed men visited the house of Mr. E. Morrogh Bernard; they demanded

-money, and got what was in the house.”[2]

-

-“You don’t say the League has anything to do with such obvious cases of

-non-political moonlighting, do you? It is a well-known fact that the

-organization discountenances moonlighting as well as all other violent

-practices.”

-

-“It does in a manner, but at the same time, by forming in each district

-a kind of police of the League, an executive body ready for action, it

-singles out to malignant persons men who may be ready for a private job.”

-

-There is obviously considerable exaggeration, or, rather, distortion of

-facts, in the above statement, as in everything relating to the League

-on one side or the other. The truth is probably that ruffians, when they

-want a job in the house-breaking line, ask for nobody’s permission, but

-are only too glad to take moonlighting as a pretence; and thus, common

-breaches of the law which in ordinary times would go by their proper

-name, are now ascribed to Moonlighters. The bulk of the population, which

-is thoroughly honest, has only words of contempt and hatred for what,

-in justice, should rather be called a deviation than a development of

-moonlighting.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Nine o’clock at night. In a hollow on the road to Milltown, a man tries

-to hide himself behind some shrubs; but perceiving that we do not belong

-to the neighbourhood he shows himself. He is a constable clad in

-uniform, the black helmet on his head, a loaded gun on his shoulder.

-

-“Why do you seek to avoid attention?”

-

-“Because we are watching that farm-house there on the height, my comrades

-and I; we have received information to the effect that some men propose

-to attack it one of these nights; now, we must try not to be seen by the

-people on the farm, for they would hasten to tell their assailants.”

-

-“What! these people would denounce you to those who come to rob them?”

-

-“Just so. We have to protect them against their will. Oh! it is indeed a

-nice trade to be a constable in Ireland!” &c. &c.

-

-Then follow professional complaints that throw a curious light on

-the relations between police and population. The unhappy constables

-are _boycotted_ personally and as a body. Nobody speaks to them. It

-is next to impossible for them to procure the first necessaries of

-life. Government has to distribute rations to them as to soldiers on a

-campaign. If they want a conveyance, a cart to transport a detachment

-of the public force where their presence is wanted, nobody—even among

-the principal interested—will give means of transport either for gold or

-silver. The Government have had to give the constabulary special traps

-that are constantly to be met on the roads, and that one recognizes by

-their blood-red colour.

-

-That police corps, _the Irish Constabulary Force_, is very numerous, and

-entails great expense—more than one million and a half sterling per year.

-The cost would hardly be half a million if the Irish police were on the

-same footing as the English force; that fact alone can give an adequate

-idea of the real state of things. Besides, numerous auxiliaries, called

-_Emergency men_, are always ready to give their help to the regular corps.

-

-Be they soldiers or policemen, Great Britain keeps nearly 50,000 armed

-men in Ireland. The male adult and able population of the island being

-under 500,000 men, of whom 200,000 at least are opposed to the agrarian

-and autonomist movement, one can assume that there is on an average one

-armed soldier or constable for every six unarmed Irishmen.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-On the dusty road before us are slowly walking five cows in rather an

-emaciated condition. Those beasts strike me by an odd appearance which

-I am unable to make out at first. When I am close to them I see what it

-is: _they have no tails_. The absence of that ornament gives the poor

-animals the awkwardest and most absurd look.

-

-I turn to my guide, who is laughing in his sleeve.

-

-“Look at their master!” he whispers in a low voice.

-

-“Well?”

-

-“The cows have no tails, and the man has no ears....”

-

-It is true. The unlucky wretch vainly endeavoured to hide his head, as

-round as a cheese, under the brim of his battered old hat; he did not

-succeed in hiding his deformity.

-

-“By Jove! who arranged you in this guise, you and your cows?” I said to

-the poor devil, stopping before him.

-

-He made a few grimaces before explaining; but the offer of a cigar, that

-rarely misses its effect, at last unloosed his tongue. He then told me

-that the Moonlighters had come with a razor to cut his ears, a week after

-having cut the tails of his cows as a warning.

-

-“And what could have been the motive of such cowardly, barbarous

-mutilation?”

-

-He had accepted work on a _boycotted_ farm, though the League had

-expressly forbidden it; in other words, he was what the Irish call a

-“land-grabber.”

-

-“Where are you going with your cows?”

-

-“To sell them at Listowel, if I may, which is not certain.”

-

-“Why is it not certain? Because they are unprovided with a tail? At the

-worst that would only prevent them being made into ox-tail soup,” I say,

-trying to enliven the conversation by an appropriate joke.

-

-“That’s not it,” answers the man. “But the interdict applies to the sale

-of the cows as well as to having any intercourse with me. I am forbidden

-to buy anything, and anyone speaking to me is fined two shillings.”

-

-He seemed to think this perfectly natural and even just, like the Leper

-of the “Cité d’Aoste,” or like common convicts when one talks to them of

-their punishment.

-

-“I gambled and I lost—so much the worse for me!...” all his resigned

-attitude seemed to say.

-

-“Perhaps they don’t know it yet in Listowel!” he resumed with a sigh, and

-hopefully pushed on with his cows.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-“Have there been many cases of such agrarian mutilation in the country?”

-I ask MacMahon.

-

-“No,” said my guide. “Perhaps half a dozen or so within the year.[3]

-They used to be much more numerous, but somehow they seem to go out of

-fashion under the sway of the League. But there are still other ways

-of annoying the enemy; fires are very frequent, so are blows, personal

-injuries, and even murder, threatening letters, and, above all, verbal

-intimidation.”

-

-Such proceedings, I understand, are altogether disowned by the chiefs

-of the League, who only patronise _boycotting_. Let a farmer, small or

-great, decline to enter the organisation, or check it by paying his rent

-to the landlord without the reduction agreed to by the tenantry, or take

-the succession of an evicted tenant on his holding, or commit any other

-serious offence against the law of land war, he is at once boycotted.

-That is to say, he will no longer be able to sell his goods, to buy the

-necessaries of life, to have his horses shod, his corn milled, or even

-to exchange one word with a living soul, within a circuit of fifteen to

-twenty miles round his house. His servants are tampered with and induced

-to leave him, his tradespeople are made to shut their door in his face,

-his neighbours compelled to cut him. It is a kind of excommunication,

-social, political and commercial; an interdict sometimes aggravated with

-direct vexations. People come and play football on his oat fields, his

-potatoes are rooted out, his fish or cattle poisoned, his game destroyed.

-

-“But supposing that instead of bearing meekly such indignities, he shows

-a bold front, shoulders his gun and keeps watch?”

-

-“Then his business is settled. Some day or other, he will receive a

-bullet in his arm, if not in his head.”

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-It will not perhaps be unnecessary to explain here the origin of that

-word _boycott_, so frequently used during the late few years. Everybody

-knows that on the British side of the Channel, but the French reader is

-not bound to remember it so exactly.

-

-In September, 1881, at a mass meeting held in Clare County, Mr. Parnell

-almost without being aware of the importance of his words, advised his

-friends, to exclude from the pale of social life whoever should eject

-a tenant for reason of an unpaid rent, or take the succession of the

-evicted farmer.

-

-The first application of that new penalty fell upon a certain Captain

-Boycott, a retired officer, who had applied himself to agriculture.

-Having had occasion to evict an obdurate defaulter, he saw himself within

-a few days forsaken by his servants, tabooed by his neighbours, reduced

-to dig out his own potatoes, and generally to become his own valet.

-

-The affair produced great sensation. The whole press talked about it.

-Legions of reporters flocked to the spot to follow the phases of the

-war waged between Captain Boycott and his opponents. Upon a memorable

-occasion a regular army of Orangemen, 7000 strong, they say, came over

-from Ulster to give a lift to him and help him to get in the harvest

-which threatened to rot standing. But the place became too hot for

-Captain Boycott. He was obliged to give way at last and leave his place

-in Connaught. (By the way, he ultimately returned there, and is now quite

-popular.)

-

-In the meanwhile his name, used as a proverb, or rather as a _verb_,

-has come to describe a way of intimidation, which at the hands of the

-League is a redoubtable weapon, more powerful than a hundred batteries of

-100-ton guns.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-“Could you show me anybody who is actually under boycott?”

-

-“Could I? That will not be difficult. There! Mr. Kennedy, beyond that

-clump of trees. He has been boycotted eighteen months.”

-

-“Do you think I might call on him?”

-

-“Certainly. But I shall ask leave to wait for you outside the gate, sir,

-on account of the League of course.——You may laugh at its verdict, not I.”

-

-Ten minutes later, I was at Mr. Kennedy’s gate. A little country house

-rather decayed, in the middle of grounds which no gardener has seen for

-at least two years. Nobody in sight. I try the bell-rope. It remains in

-my hand. I am then reduced to an energetic tattoo on the plate which

-shuts the lower part of the gate.

-

-Attracted by the unusual noise, a tall white-haired man makes his

-appearance at an upper window. Surprised at first, and even somewhat

-alarmed, he listens to my request, is reassured, and even comes to unbar

-the door. As I had hoped, he is not sorry to unloose his tongue a little,

-and with the best grace possible tells me the whole affair.

-

-“Yes, I am boycotted for having, single among all his tenants, paid to

-my landlord the entire rent of those meadows you see yonder. How do I

-take my situation? Well, as a philosopher. At the beginning, I thought

-it inconvenient to be deprived of new bread, to do without meat, and

-worse still, to be left without servants. But I have learnt by degrees

-to accommodate myself to my new condition. I have made provisions for

-a siege. I have found a few servants, strangers to the district, and

-made my arrangements to send my butter to Cork by rail. On the whole,

-there is not much to complain of. I should, of course, prefer things

-to follow their usual course. It is tedious at times to find oneself

-out of the pale of humanity. But you end by discovering that solitude

-has its advantages. You develop accomplishments up to that time latent

-in you. For instance, I shoe my horses myself; I have learnt to set a

-window pane, to sweep a chimney. My daughters have improved in cooking.

-We eat a great many chickens; now and then we kill a sheep; when we want

-butcher-meat, we must send rather far for it. The same for beer, wine,

-and many other commodities. It _is_ inconvenient—no more.”

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-At Listowel; a market day. Great animation on the market-place; tongues

-are busy; whisky seems to be flowing freely at every tap-room and

-tavern. But not much business is done, as far as I can judge. My guide

-calls my attention to two interesting phenomena that I should not,

-perhaps, have noticed otherwise.

-

-The first is a man in breeches, with bare calves, a _shillelagh_ under

-his arm, who seems to be a farmer in a small way. He approaches a

-wheel-barrow filled with big hob-nailed shoes, which a woman is dragging,

-and falls to examining them, evidently intent on buying a pair. Almost

-at the same moment, a boy of fifteen or sixteen comes to the other side

-of the woman and whispers something in her ear. She nods. At once the

-customer, turning very red in the face, lets go the pair of shoes and

-turns away. MacMahon says the man is a newly boycotted man and the boy an

-agent of the League, whose function consists in reporting the interdict

-to those who have not heard of it as yet.

-

-The other phenomenon is more remarkable. It is a stout gentleman in a

-shooting-jacket, carrying a double-barrelled gun of the latest model, and

-followed by a constable who also carries his regulation gun. The stout

-gentleman stops before a door where a smart _outside car_ with a servant

-in livery is waiting for him. He takes his seat; the constable jumps

-on after him. Is the stout gentleman under a writ of _habeas corpus_,

-I wonder, and is he going to be taken into the county jail? Not a bit

-of it. He is simply a landowner under threat of death, who has thought

-fit to indulge in a body-guard. He and the constable are henceforth

-inseparable.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-A large tract of uncultivated land. It was farmed at £60 a year. The

-farmer was a sporting man, fond of races and the like. To simplify his

-work he had the whole property converted into pasture. But his expensive

-mode of living obliged him now and then to sell a few head of cattle. The

-hour came when he had not one calf left, and he found himself utterly

-incapable of paying his rent. He was evicted. Sure not to find another

-tenant, on account of the law laid down by the League that every evicted

-farm should be left unoccupied, the landlord had recourse to the only

-sort of _métayage_ known in Ireland. (_Métayage_, it should be explained,

-is the kind of farming used in most French provinces, where the owner of

-the land enters into yearly partnership with his tenant, and advances the

-necessary capital in the shape of manure, seed, beasts of burden, and

-machinery, on the understanding that the crops be shared equally between

-himself and the tenant.) To return to my Kerry landlord: he set up on

-his meadows a caretaker, with a salary of twenty-five shillings a week

-and forty cows to keep. At the end of the first month the tails of ten

-cows had been chopped off, while two of them had died from suspicious

-inflammation of the bowels. It became necessary to put the cows, and

-the caretaker as well, under the protection of a detachment of police.

-Cost: two pounds a week for each constable. Nett loss at the end of the

-half-year: £60. The landlord wisely judged that it would be much better

-to send his cows to the slaughter-house, to pay off caretaker and police,

-and to forget that he ever was a landowner.

-

-In the same district, another farm gone waste. The tenant did not pay.

-He was evicted, but had another holding close by, where he encamped, and

-from that vantage-ground sent the following ultimatum to his _ci-devant_

-landlord:—“The hay I have left on my late farm is worth £30. I demand

-fifteen for allowing you to mow and sell it; you shall not see a shilling

-of it on any other terms.” Fury of the landlord. Then he cools down,

-thinks better of it, offers ten pounds. The evicted tenant declines the

-offer; a whole army would not have brought him round. Meanwhile, the hay

-got rotten.

-

-By the road-side near Castlemaine, is a row of barracks, where men,

-women, and children are huddled together. Those are _League-huts_,

-that is to say, a temporary shelter which the League offers to ejected

-tenants, for having, upon its command, declined to pay their rent. The

-cabins from which the poor wretches have been turned out, although they

-had, as a rule, built them themselves, are within shooting distance, on

-the right hand. They bear evident traces of having been fired by the

-sheriff’s officers in order to make them uninhabitable, and they present

-the desolate aspect of homesteads adjoining a field of battle. Walls

-broken by the crowbar, doors ajar, rubbish and ruins everywhere. Is it

-politic on the part of the landlords to add the horrors of fire to those

-of eviction? Hardly so, the outsider will think. It adds nothing to

-the majesty of the law to wage war with inanimate things. The exercise

-of a right ought never to assume the appearance of an act of revenge.

-Wrongly or rightly, eviction by itself always bears an odious character;

-but to see the house you have built with your own hands burnt to the

-ground will ever seem to cry for vengeance to Heaven. And, after all,

-who is the gainer by such violence? The League. It takes care to retain

-the victims of eviction within sight of the scene of their woes, feeds

-them, harbours them, exhibits them as in an open museum, by the side of

-their destroyed homes. And it is a permanent, practical lesson for the

-passer-by, a realistic drama where the landlord appears torch in hand,

-while the League dries the tears of the afflicted and allows them £2 a

-week. That is the usual pay for one family.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER IX.

-

-A KERRY FARMER’S BUDGET.

-

-

-“I wonder how landlords can manage to live, under such conditions,” I

-said to my guide. “Are there any tenants left paying their rent?”

-

-“There are many. First, those who have been able to come to an agreement

-with their landlord about the reduction of 20, 25, 30 per cent. that they

-claimed; in such cases the landlord’s income is reduced, but at least

-he still retains a part of it. Then, there is the tenant’s live stock;

-he cannot prevent its being seized for rent, in case of execution, and

-consequently chooses to pay, if possible, or he would have to sell his

-cattle to avoid distress, which means ruin to the family. Lastly, there

-are the tenants who pay secretly, although pretending to adhere to the

-rules of the League—_backsliders_ they are called—a class more numerous

-than could be supposed at first sight.”

-

-Here MacMahon laughed. He went on:

-

-“I will tell you, Sir, a story I have heard lately, of a man in county

-Cork, who wanted to pay his landlord but dared not, on account of the

-other tenants on the estate. Coming across the landlord on a lone road

-(not improbably after many an unfruitful attempt for such a propitious

-opportunity) he stood before him in a threatening attitude. ‘Put your

-hand in my coat’s inside pocket!’ he said gruffly. The landlord did not

-understand at first what the man meant, and considering his look and

-address, was far from feeling reassured. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked

-uneasily. ‘I tell you, sir, put your hand in my coat’s inside pocket, and

-feel for what you find in it.’ At last the landlord did as he was bidden.

-He put his hand in the man’s pocket, and extracted from it a bundle of

-papers, carefully tied up, that looked like banknotes. At once the tenant

-took to his heels. ‘The devil a penny of rent you can ever say I paid

-you,’ said he, in the same strange threatening tone of voice, as he ran

-away. Still, the banknotes in the landlord’s hand were exactly to the

-amount of the rent due. As a rule, when the tenant is really able to pay

-his rent, he pays it.”

-

-Such has not been the general case, it seems, for the last three years.

-_In produce_, perhaps the Irish farmer might have paid his rent, as the

-crops have been, on the whole, fairly up to the average. In _money_, he

-cannot, because the fall of prices on hay, potatoes, beef, mutton, pork,

-and butter alike, in 1885, 1886, 1887, has been at least 20 per cent. on

-the former and average prices, which not only means no margin whatever of

-profit to the farmer, besides his necessary expenses, but in most cases

-the sheer impossibility of providing for the forthcoming outlay in seeds,

-manure, and labour.

-

-This may not be self-evident. Many a reader probably fails to see why

-a fall of 20 per cent. on the prices of agricultural produce must

-necessarily entail a total disability to pay the rent. “I can well

-understand the demand of a proportional reduction of rent in such cases,”

-he will say, “but not absolute non-payment.” To fully realise the

-situation, one must go into the details of a farmer’s life.

-

-Let us take the case of Denis O’Leary, a Kerry man, with fourteen acres

-of good land. He seems to be in easy circumstances; his house is clean

-and pretty; he owns three cows, two sows, ten sheep, and about a score

-hens. Denis O’Leary is a good man, industrious and thrifty, who does all

-the work on his farm, with the help of wife and three children. He likes

-his pipe of tobacco, and on Sundays, a glass of beer over the counter

-with a friend or two, but otherwise indulges in no expensive habits. On

-the whole he can be considered a pattern tenant, as well as one of the

-most fortunate of his class. His rent, which had been gradually raised by

-his landlord up to the sum of £11 6_s._, was in 1883 put down at £8 7_s._

-by the Land Commissioners.

-

-Such being the case, when we are told that the same Denis O’Leary, who

-was for five years able to pay the larger rent, is now unable to pay

-the smaller one, this may look absurd. Still, it is the simple truth.

-To ascertain the fact, it is only necessary to make the budget of the

-O’Leary family.

-

-The yearly expenditure, unavoidable and irreducible, is as follows:—

-

-EXPENDITURE.

-

-                                       £ _s._

-    Taxes, rates, and county cess      1  15

-    Turf (Royalty on)                  1  10

-    Clothing and shoes                 6  10

-    Meat                               2  15

-    Bread                              6  18

-    Beer and tobacco                   2   5

-    Oil, candles, sundries             2  15

-    Sugar and tea                      6   5

-    School fees                        0   7

-    Church subscription                0  10

-                                      ------

-          Total                       31  10

-

-Most assuredly there is nothing excessive in such a budget of expenditure

-for a family of four. If even it is possible for Denis O’Leary not to

-go beyond its narrow limits, it is because he consumes in kind a large

-proportion of the produce of his fourteen acres, namely, some hundred

-stones of potatoes, with a good deal of milk, eggs, and butter. This

-alimentary deduction duly made, he has still a certain quantity of

-agricultural produce (which shall be supposed here a constant quantity)

-to sell, as follows:—

-

-          1800 lbs. Potatoes.

-          2200  ”   Wheat.

-          1750  ”   Oats.

-            38  ”   Wool.

-           116  ”   Butter.

-          1000  ”   Straw.

-            25 dozen Eggs.

-             3 Pigs.

-             2 Calves.

-             3 Lambs.

-

-The above commodities have not, unfortunately, a constant value. They

-sell more or less, according to the fluctuations of prices on the market.

-In 1882, 1883, 1884, prices were high. Denis O’Leary’s revenue was

-consequently as under:—

-

-REVENUE (THREE YEARS AGO).

-

-                                       £ _s._

-    Sold: 1800 lbs. Potatoes           3   8

-          2200  ”   Wheat              9   0

-          1750  ”   Oats               6   4

-            38  ”   Wool               1  15

-           116  ”   Butter             5   7

-          1000  ”   Straw;             1   5

-            25 dozen Eggs              1   2

-             3 Pigs                    5  10

-             2 Calves                  6  15

-             3 Lambs                   3   5

-                                      ------

-          Total                       43  11

-

-When Denis O’Leary had deducted from his revenue of £43 11_s._ the yearly

-expenditure of £31 10_s._, he had still £12 1_s._ left. He was able,

-accordingly, to pay £8 _7s._ rent (or even £11 6_s._ before the judicial

-reduction), and the rent duly paid, he was still the proud nett gainer of

-four shillings under the old _régime_, of £3 14_s._ under the new.

-

-Unhappily, prices fell down in 1885, 1886, and 1887, to the tune of 25

-or 30 per cent. on nearly all agricultural produce, with the exception

-perhaps of oats and eggs, so that the revenue of the O’Leary family (all

-things otherwise equal) has come to be as under:—

-

-REVENUE (AT PRESENT).

-

-                                       £ _s._

-    Sold: 1800 lbs. Potatoes           2   8

-          2200  ”   Wheat              7   0

-          1750  ”   Oats               6   2

-            38  ”   Wool               1   5

-           116  ”   Butter             3  12

-          1000  ”   Straw              0  15

-            25 dozen Eggs              1   5

-             3 Pigs                    3   4

-             2 Calves                  4   8

-             3 Lambs                   2  10

-                                      ------

-          Total                       32   9

-

-Thus, the revenue and expenditure are nearly equal, with a slight balance

-of nineteen shillings, that could hardly be proffered for rent. Local

-usurers are not wanting, of course, who will advance to Denis O’Leary the

-necessary funds, at 10 or 15 per cent., if he wants to pay the landlord,

-all the same. But then his budget is no more in a state of equilibrium:

-deficit enters it, to widen every year up to the final catastrophe. In

-other words, Denis O’Leary cannot pay the rent, unless he draws on his

-capital. One may well understand that he should not relish the idea,

-considering especially that the landlord’s rack-rent has been reduced

-three years ago in the Land Court, and that the same landlord demurs to

-a fresh reduction, so obviously just and necessary that all landlords in

-England have granted it of their own free will these last three years.

-

-And Denis O’Leary is a wonder in his class: he is an industrious,

-hard-working, wise man, without a penny of previous debt. He has

-precisely the area of land adequate to his means, and the live-stock

-indispensable to manure the soil. He does not drink, he does not gamble,

-he is never ill, he has no old people to support, he has not experienced

-failures or mishaps of any kind, and his crops are fairly up to the

-average.

-

-Let us come back, however, to the world as it is, and see Man with his

-foibles, his usual neglects, errors, and mishaps. Let us suppose that

-he has more land on his hands than he can well manage to till, or that

-his holding, on the contrary, is too small for his wants. Let us suppose

-that instead of selling three pigs and two calves, he was not able to

-rear them, or lost them from disease; that instead of bringing to market

-1,800 lbs. of potatoes he had to buy some hundred-weight of the same for

-domestic consumption—the man is lost, irretrievably lost. Not only will

-he never be able to pay the landlord one farthing, but it will be enough

-that the crops should be slightly under the average to make a hopeless

-beggar of him—a case of outdoor or indoor relief for the parish.

-

-Now, these are the circumstances of six or seven tenants out of ten in

-the lowlands of Kerry, where they seem to be comparatively well off. If

-we leave the plains for the higher districts bordering on the sea, the

-question is simpler still. There is no need of long accounts here. The

-hour of irretrievable misery has struck long ago, and habitual hunger

-stares us in the face.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                      UP IN THE MOUNTAINS.

-

-The mountains of Kerry are the finest in the island. They form its

-south-western angle, throwing out on the Atlantic the peninsula of

-Dingle, between the bay of the same name and the Kenmare River. As you

-leave the plain following the Cahirciveen road towards the coast, you see

-them develop their parallel ranges, which are divided by deep valleys.

-Some of these valleys are fertile, being watered by impetuous streams

-from the mountain side. But the general impression one receives is

-that of agricultural poverty, as is the case in nearly all mountainous

-countries in the world. Pastures are thinner, cattle less numerous,

-homesteads fewer and more miserable than in the plain. Human creatures

-themselves partake of the general look of wretchedness that prevails.

-They live on potatoes, milk, and porridge; seldom eat bread, meat never;

-wine, beer, tea, coffee are to them unknown luxuries. Their ill-shaped

-cottages are made of soft stone, with a thatched roof maintained by ropes

-made of straw. There they all sleep on a bed of rushes, which they share

-with the pig, when there is such a thing, for even the traditional pig

-has become now a symptom of wealth in a manner. On the beams of the roof

-roost perhaps half-a-dozen hens and chickens.

-

-Sloth and dirt hold here an undivided sway. Not a woman—and some are

-pretty—seems to mind the spots and holes in her garments; not one knows

-the use of soap or needle. They appear to have a rooted dislike for

-the comb; their hair falls on their back as is the fashion among the

-Australian aborigines, in nature’s simple disorder.

-

-Men look heavy and apathetic. They work as little as they can manage—one

-or two days out of seven, perhaps—and do not even think of seeking their

-sustenance from the sea, which is so close to them. The most they can do

-is to draw from it now and then a cart-load of seaweed to manure their

-miserable plot of ground. Their existence rolls on dull, idle, devoid of

-interest. It is the brute life in its most wretched and hideous state.

-Here is old Ireland as Gustave de Beaumont’s admirable book showed it

-to us fifty years ago. Hardly do those wretched products of Anglo-Saxon

-civilization receive a faint echo of the outer world when the electoral

-time comes.

-

-The consequence is that the agrarian crisis is reduced here to its

-simplest expression, _i.e._, sheer impossibility to pay the rent

-because of total absence of the £ _s._ _d._ wherewith. Elsewhere that

-impossibility may be half assumed; it is certainly mixed in the plain

-with bad will, goaded in the peasant’s heart by that dogged desire to

-possess the land which is so natural in him. In the mountain it is not a

-political fiction that holds the sway: famine is the king; and it is the

-spontaneous product of the very nature of things.

-

-For the naturally infertile soil has reached here to such a degree of

-subdivision that it is no longer sufficient even to feed those it bears.

-The greater part of those wretched holdings of five or six acres are

-let at the nominal price of about £4, to which must be added the taxes,

-poor-rates, and county-cess, increasing it by a quarter or a third. Four,

-five, six, sometimes ten or twelve beings with human faces squat on that

-bit of worthless ground and till it in the most primitive manner. Money,

-tools, intelligence, pluck, all are wanting there. Viewing things in the

-most optimist light, supposing the year to have been an exceptionally

-good one, the potato crop to have been plentiful, the cow to have hunted

-out on the hill-side the necessary grass for the making of a little

-butter, all that will be sufficient perhaps to prevent starvation. But

-where will the money be found to pay Queen and landlord?

-

-Let a child or an old person eat ever so little in the year, his food

-cannot but represent a value. Let that value be £4. Can six acres of

-mountain ground managed without skill or manure, render five, six, ten

-times £4 a year, and a rent in addition of five to six pounds? It is

-sheer impossibility.

-

-A few examples.

-

-James Garey, fifty years old, married, four children. Nominal rent £5

-14_s._ Two cows, one pig, eight chickens. About six acres of land.

-Cultivates only part of it, about three acres, where he grows potatoes;

-the remainder is pasture. Sold this year thirty shillings’ worth of

-butter; ate his potatoes from first to last; has not paid a farthing to

-his landlord for the last four years. Owes £6 to the draper-grocer; would

-never be able to pay his taxes if two of his children, who are out in

-domestic situations, did not send him the necessary amount to prevent

-execution.

-

-Widow Bridget Molony, sixty years old; five children; seven acres of

-land. Nominal rent £6 12_s._ Four cows, an eighteen-month-old calf, two

-pigs, twenty chickens. Sold £3 10_s._ of butter this year, £2 oats,

-15 shillings potatoes, and a pig for £3; just sent a calf to market,

-offering it for £1 15_s._; did not find purchaser. Thinks herself

-relatively lucky, as she is owing only two years’ rent to her landlord.

-Two of her children have situations at Liverpool, and help her to pay the

-taxes.

-

-Thomas Halloran, forty years. Three children, eight acres of land; rent

-£6 15_s._ Two cows, fifteen sheep, a pig, an ass, twelve chickens. Sold

-during the year ten shillingsworth of butter and ten sheep at twelve

-shillings a head. Has paid nothing to landlord since November, 1884.

-

-Michael Tuohy, seventy years old, three children, four grandchildren.

-Nine acres of land, £7 rent. A cow and five hens. Can no longer afford

-a pig. Sold only fifteen shillingsworth of butter this year, and had to

-get rid of two cows out of three to pay the ten per cent interest of a

-debt he has contracted with the National Bank. Owes four years’ rent to

-his landlord; hopes that his son, who has emigrated to the United States,

-will send him the money for the taxes; if the son doesn’t, he cannot see

-any way to save the last cow.

-

-Examples of that description could be multiplied _ad infinitum_; they

-are, so to say, the rule in the mountainous districts, where the holdings

-are for the most part beneath £10 rent, and totally unequal even to

-sustain the farmer.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Glenbeigh, between Kilarglin and Cahirciveen. This place was the

-theatre of several deplorable scenes in January last, on Mr. R. Winn’s

-property. That property, very extensive, but consisting of poor, not to

-say totally barren land, was put down at £2000 on the valuation roll.

-The aforesaid rent not having been paid during four or five years, the

-owner was of course in very strait circumstances; he had to go to some

-Jews, who substituted themselves in his place, and undertook to enforce

-payment. But the extreme poverty of the tenants proved even stronger than

-the energetic tribe. In consequence of the gradual subdivision of the

-land, they had come to hold diminutive scraps of it such as could not

-even grow the potatoes sufficient for their sustenance. After various

-judicial skirmishes, the plain result of which was to establish the utter

-incapacity of the peasants to give a penny, the council of creditors

-resolved in the depth of winter to undertake a wholesale campaign of

-evictions. Seventy-nine writs of ejectment were issued, and soon after

-the under-sheriff, backed by a strong detachment of mounted constables,

-arrived to evict the wretched families.

-

-The operations began at a certain Patrick Reardon’s, on a literally

-barren land, for which he was expected to pay £4 10_s._ a year. He was

-the father of eight children, but did not even possess a pig, not a pair

-of chickens. The furniture consisted of a bed, a rickety table and a

-kettle. Squatting on the ground with his whole family, according to the

-time-honoured custom, he waited for the executors of the law. Requested

-to pay, he answered that he possessed not one farthing; he was then

-informed that they were going to set fire to his cabin, in order to

-oblige him to evacuate the premises. The act soon followed the threat.

-A lighted match applied to the thatched roof, and in a few minutes the

-whole was in conflagration. All the neighbouring populations, who had run

-on to the scene of the tragedy, saluted the dreadful deed with hooting

-and execration.

-

-The myrmidons of the law pursued nevertheless the execution of their

-mandate. They went next to the dwelling of another tenant, Thomas

-Burke, inscribed on the list of debtors for a sum of £20. He had five

-children, and, like the above-mentioned, not one farthing to offer to the

-creditors. Order was given to set fire to his roof, but it was found to

-be so damp that fire would not take; so they had to attack the walls with

-the crowbar and pick-axe. The miserable inmates appeared then to the eyes

-of the indignant crowd, half naked, wan, emaciated, and starved; and so

-heartrending was the scene that with difficulty the representative of the

-League (who had come there for that very purpose) prevented the mob from

-stoning the bailiffs to death.

-

-Then came the turn of the third cottage. Two old men lived in it, Patrick

-and Thomas Diggin. The family of the former included ten persons; that of

-the latter, six. They owed a rent of £8, and had not a shilling between

-them all. Patrick’s wife, however, came forward, and declared she had

-just received £2 from her daughter, who was a servant in Belfast. Would

-they accept that, and stop the execution? The under-sheriff, whom the

-duties of his office oblige to back the bailiffs, urged them to accept

-the touching offer. They refused, and set fire to the roof. Then Patrick

-Diggin, an eighty-year-old man, was seen coming out of his home sobbing;

-he was followed by all his children and grandchildren. By an irresistible

-impulse of sympathy all crowd round him, offering what little they

-possess to the relief of that misery. The constables themselves, moved

-almost to tears, contribute their silver coin to the subscription which

-has been spontaneously organized. To carry the barbarous work further

-becomes an impossibility. The sheriff’s substitute gives the signal for

-departure, and the cavalcade follows amidst the derisive cries of the

-multitude.

-

-All those poor people, except one family, have since been re-installed on

-their holdings, and are now at work on their farms—a strange evidence of

-the uselessness and cruelty of eviction, to make tenants pay who cannot.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                          VALENTIA ISLAND.

-

-At Cahirciveen, I crossed the strait which divides the main land from the

-island of Valentia. This is the extreme point of the old continent, where

-the Transatlantic cables are placed. Good, honest, plucky fellows! what

-repose after the misery of Kerry! I am speaking of the fishermen of the

-island, a peculiar race who never ploughed any fields but those of the

-ocean. Every night they risk their lives on the giant billows, and earn

-their bread valiantly. They know nothing of sheep rot, potato disease, or

-landlordism; all they know is the management of their boats, the making

-and mending of their nets, and the art of making the deep yield food for

-their young. Strangers to the neighbouring world, they ignore even its

-language, and only talk the rude idiom of their ancestors, the Irish of

-the time of the O’Donoghue.

-

-Noble fellows! I shall not soon forget the night I spent there watching

-them as they were fishing between the Skellings, two enormous rocks that

-rise like Gothic cathedrals, about twelve miles from Bray Head, and on

-which the waves are eternally breaking with a thundering noise. My guide

-had warned me against offering them money; it would offend them, he said,

-so I did not do it. I simply drank with them a glass of whisky when they

-prepared to go home towards daybreak, the stars still shining. And,

-comparing their happy courage with the distress of Kerry, I wished them

-from the bottom of my heart never to become acquainted with agriculture

-on small holdings, under an English landlord.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER X.

-

-RURAL PHYSIOLOGY.

-

-

-We have glanced at a few facts presenting symptoms of the Irish disease,

-which were taken as chance guided us, in a ride through a south-western

-county. Similar symptoms are everywhere to be found through the island.

-To appreciate them at their right value, as even to comprehend them, it

-is essentially requisite to know, at least in its broader outlines, the

-physiology of landed property in this entirely agricultural country.

-

-Vast landed property and parcelled-out culture. This is the epitome of

-such a physiology. At the base of the social edifice we find the tenant,

-generally a Catholic and of indigenous race, occupying and cultivating

-after his own fashion the thousandth or ten thousandth part of a property

-ranging over an area of some hundred thousand acres. At the summit we

-find the landlord, almost invariably of English and Protestant race,

-ruling by right of primogeniture over this immense space.

-

-Does this right rest at its origin on confiscation and spoliation, as is

-averred by the Irish? That is of little importance from a legal point of

-view, for prescription has covered the spoliation by an occupation of two

-to eight centuries. It is of far greater importance from a moral point of

-view, because that grievance, ill or well founded, serves as a handle for

-all agrarian recriminations.

-

-In three out of five cases (so it has been shown by recent statistics)

-the landlord is an _absentee_, that is to say, he does not reside on

-his property, nor even in the kingdom, and spends abroad the money he

-raises on his lands. His income, from that source alone, is sometimes

-enormous—£10,000 a year—(Lord Greville, Westmeath; Lord Carisford,

-Wicklow; Mr. Wandesford, Kilkenny; Mr. King, Longford; Lord Inchiquin,

-Clare); £16,000 a year—(Lord Claremont, Louth; Mr. Naper, Meath; Lord

-Leconfield, Clare; Lord Ventry, Kerry); £26,000 and £32,000 a year—(Duke

-of Abercorn, Tyrone; Marquis of Clanricarde, Galway; Lord Kenmare,

-Kerry); £40,000, £80,000, and even £120,000 a year—(Mr. MacDonnell,

-Kildare; Marquis of Coningham, Cavan, Clare, and Donegal; Marquis of

-Londonderry, Down; Marquis of Downshire, &c.). Rent rolls of £4,000,

-£3,000, and £2,000 a year too plentiful to be mentioned.

-

-Three-fifths at least of those sums are lost every year for Ireland,

-and they go out of the island without having in any way helped to

-increase her capital in agricultural machinery, live stock, and general

-improvements of the land. As a natural consequence, the soil is

-ill-cultivated, ill-manured, insufficiently covered with cattle. For

-centuries its energies have suffered a constant draining, and nothing has

-been done to repair its losses.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-That soil has a tendency to subdivision in the hands of the tenants, who

-cultivate it by truly pre-historic methods. The figures are given in

-round numbers as follows:—

-

-Against 24,000 holdings of a value of above £500 a year there are in

-Ireland 85,000 holdings producing from £25 to £500 a year; 49,000 from

-£12 to £29 a year; 77,000 from £8 to £12 a year; 196,000 from £4 to £8 a

-year; lastly, 218,000 holdings of a revenue of _under £4 a year_.

-

-That is to say, out of six or seven hundred thousand families, living

-exclusively upon the product of the soil, more than two-thirds must get

-their sustenance from a wretched bit of ground, estimated by the owner

-himself at a value of £4 to £8 a year!

-

-To state such an economical paradox is to denounce it. Where there is

-nothing, the landlord, like the king, loses his rights. The situation,

-then, would already be strangely anomalous, even if the respective titles

-of landlord and tenant were of the clearest and most transparent kind.

-But it is complicated in Ireland by the most curious conceptions and

-customs in matters of landed property.

-

-To understand those conceptions and customs, a Frenchman must begin by

-putting aside all his Latin ideas. With us, since the Convention, one can

-always know by the Survey-Rolls to whom belongs absolutely such or such a

-piece of land. He who owns it is free to sell it, to give it, to let it

-as he pleases. His right is absolute; it is the right of “use and abuse,”

-according to the forcible expression of the Roman code. It passes with

-this absolute character to sons, grandsons, or legatees.

-

-In Ireland it is feudal law that obtains still; an estate is not a

-property, it is a fief. The lord of that estate is not the proprietor

-of it, he is an usufructuary, as it were, a life-tenant on it. He has

-only a limited right to his own land. He cannot sell it without the

-written consent of his substitute in the entail, and the authorization

-of the persons, often countless in numbers, that have some hereditary

-right on his property at the same time with him; most of the estates

-are encumbered with perpetual rents, served out either to the younger

-branches of the family, to old servants, or to creditors. All the

-titulary is free to alienate is his life interest, through some insurance

-combination with transfer of income.

-

-If we add that the said titulary is generally absent from his property,

-that he does not manage it personally, and that in many cases he does

-not even exactly know where it is to be found, we must own that it is no

-wonder he is considered as a stranger.

-

-A stranger he is besides, in race, by habits, by religion, by language.

-And yet this stranger,—precisely because his fief, practically

-inalienable, as it is immovable in its limits, has always been

-transmitted from father to eldest son in the family,—this stranger,

-of whom often nothing is known beyond his name, has a story, true or

-legendary, attached to him and to his title. It matters little that the

-revenue of the estate was scattered over five hundred heads, in the

-course of ten generations; the estate remains, and weighs on him with

-all its weight. We do not speak here of a mere geographical expression,

-of an area a hundred times parcelled out, altered, disfigured, in less

-than a century, but of land that for a thousand years, maybe, has changed

-neither form nor aspect.

-

-At night, by the fireside, old people will recall how in former days this

-land was the collective property of the clan; how they were defrauded by

-a political chief that treacherously gave it up to the English, in order

-to receive investiture from their hands; how, following the fortunes

-of twenty successive rebellions and repressions, it was confiscated,

-sequestered, given anew, till it came to the actual landlords. A special

-literature, ballads, popular imagery, little books, and penny papers

-constantly harp on that ancient spoliation. It is the only history

-studied under thatched roofs. The peasant breathes it in the atmosphere,

-imbibes it by all his pores.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Convinced that he has a hereditary right to the domain in general, the

-Irish peasant besides attributes to himself a special and prescriptive

-right to the plot of ground that he, like the landlord, occupies from

-father to son, though on a precarious tenure. This right is not purely

-imaginary; it was consecrated in the year 1860 by a special Act of

-Parliament, due to the initiative of Mr. Gladstone. Recognised from

-immemorial times in Ulster, it has always been claimed in all the other

-parts of Ireland; it is the _tenant right_, what in our own Picardy is

-called the _droit de marché_.

-

-It is well known in what consist this ancient prerogative of the Picardy

-farmer (Troplong in the Preface to his _Traité du Louage_, and Lefort

-in his _Histoire des contrats de location perpétuelle_, have treated it

-exhaustively): it is simply the privilege of preserving in perpetuity

-for him and for his heirs, the use of the ground for which he pays rent

-regularly.

-

-Not only is this privilege not denied to him, but he can transfer it

-to a third person, for a premium that goes by the name of _intrade_.

-The amount of that premium is often a third or even a half of the

-intrinsic value of the soil. Formerly this “_droit de marché_” applied

-to everything that can be let or hired; the labourers, the threshers,

-the shepherds of a domain, each claimed it in his own province as a

-hereditary monopoly. In modern days it is strictly limited to the hiring

-of servants, in the few districts where it survived the French revolution

-(in Péronne for instance).

-

-The thing that is only a curious exception in France has remained the

-rule in Ireland, where _tenant right_ has been in force for the last

-twenty-seven years. And what, after all, can be better founded than such

-a right? Has not the tenant, in the majority of cases, made his plot of

-ground what it is? Has he not tilled it, improved it, manured it, drained

-it according to his better knowledge; in a word, has he not _created_ it

-in its actual form?

-

-“Let us,” says the peasant, “admit the rights of the landlord. How could

-he deny me mine? Are they not legibly written in the furrow I have traced

-upon this earth, in the fruits I have made her bear?... The land is not

-a simple material, unreducible like a piece of gold. It is a chemical

-product, a conglomerate that is valuable especially by reason of all the

-substances I have mixed up with it during an occupation of ten, twenty,

-thirty years, or even more.... Who shall dare to deny the share I have

-brought into this company of which I am the acting manager, and deny that

-this share belongs to me?”

-

-Such a theory would doubtless appear sheer lunacy to the French

-proprietor who has paid for his land £400 per hectare, and who has let

-it for a fixed period at a fixed price, with the understanding that at

-the end of the contract he shall find it in good condition and shall then

-do what he pleases with it. That theory, however, is so well suited to

-Ireland, where custom has the force of law, that the landlord does not

-even think, practically, of disputing the _tenant’s right_.

-

-As a rule he is only too glad to let his land to the farmers who have

-traditionally occupied it, on condition that they pay the usual rent.

-

-But in practice, the Land Act of 1860, apparently so much in favour

-of the tenant, has produced disastrous effects. In the first place,

-by consecrating the right of the tenant only on improvements and

-enlargements made _with the landlord’s consent_. Thence the consequence

-that not only is the landlord never willing to spend a farthing on

-the improvements of the land, but also that he systematically opposes

-them, for fear he should have to pay for them in the end. Besides many

-landlords have signed their new leases only after the farmer has given

-them a formal renunciation to the tenant right; or else they have taken

-advantage of the pretext that offered itself, and raised the rent by way

-of compensation against all risks. Lastly, in many a place where this

-right has become positive, the rural usurers alone have profited by it by

-discounting it to the peasantry.

-

-The consequence is that the tenant right is often reduced practically

-to the implicit acknowledgment of the right of the farmer to occupy the

-land, so long as he pays his rent. It even happens not unfrequently that

-there is no lease and the occupancy goes on indefinitely without title.

-Doubtless this gives it only more value in the eyes of the peasant,

-naturally inclined to associate this absence of scrivening with the

-acknowledgment of his traditional rights.

-

-Having been able in certain cases to sell or hire his “interest,” he

-feels the more inclined to think himself entitled to divide it between

-his children. That division has become the rule, and what was once a farm

-of thirty to fifty acres turns out, at the third generation, parcelled

-in ten or twelve scraps of three to five acres. The landlord might have

-interfered in the beginning; he might have prevented such a division; he

-did not do it. Beside, that division of the land is recorded nowhere, has

-been the occasion of no formal deed; one member of the family answers

-for all the others, if necessary. How is one to unravel those private

-arrangements? And, after all, what does it matter, so long as the rents

-come in?

-

-They come in during ten, during twenty years. Then the harvest is bad,

-or the sub-dividing of the soil has arrived at the last limit compatible

-with the needs of those that cultivate it. The rent is no longer paid,

-and then the difficulties begin. How is one to appraise the improvements

-introduced in the land by the actual possessor, or by his forefathers?

-How can one find out what is due to him, even with the best intentions?

-Is the landlord to give him an indemnity before he evicts him? But then

-it means ruin to the landlord, who will have to pay precisely because he

-has not been paid himself. It is the squaring of the circle. When only

-very small holdings are in question, the difficulty is generally met by

-remaining in _statu quo_. But supposing the debt to be more important, or

-to have been transferred to a third person, which is often the case, the

-question becomes insoluble.

-

-Let us repeat that we must not consider these things from a French

-point of view. With us the idea of individual property is always of the

-clearest and simplest. The frequent sales and buying of land contribute

-still to make this idea of more actual and definite meaning to us.

-An hectare of grass or vine is, like any other goods, a merchandise

-that passes from hand to hand, and remains with the highest bidder. In

-Ireland the sales are rare, and in no case is it a question of absolute

-ownership; it is only a question about the respective and contradictory

-rights, some for life, some perpetual, some positive, others customary,

-of several persons over the same space of land, a space not to be

-transferred, not to be seized, and not to be fractionised. Is it any

-wonder that such contradictory pretensions should give rise to constant

-conflicts?

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Everything concurs to shut in that rural world in a vicious circle. Not

-only does the peasant lack capital to improve his farming, but, assured

-of seeing his rent raised if he ventured on the least improvement, he is

-careful to make none. On his side the landlord, for dread of annoying

-contestations, opposes as much as lies in his power any amendment

-susceptible of being turned into a title for his tenant.

-

-Is there a succession of relatively good harvests? He immediately raises

-the rent. Are the following years bad? He refuses to return to the old

-rate, in principle at least, because he finds it inconvenient to curtail

-a revenue to which he has accustomed himself, because he does not like

-to appear to bow before the League, and also because, being liable to

-expropriation, he is unwilling to depreciate beforehand the value of his

-property, which is always valued according to its rent.

-

-Lastly, the holdings, being too often mere plots of ground, are hardly

-sufficient to keep the peasant and his family occupied, and do not always

-give him a sufficiency of food. And just because it is so, the unlucky

-wretch does not find work outside sufficient for the equilibrium of his

-poor finances. The class of agricultural labourers can hardly be said

-to exist in numerous districts, because everyone is a small farmer.

-The tenant then becomes completely sunk in his inaction; he becomes

-apathetic, and from a sluggard too often turns into a drunkard. His wife

-is ignorant and careless. She can neither sew, nor is she able to give

-a palatable taste to his monotonous fare. His children are pallid and

-dirty. Everything is sad, everything is unlovely around him; and, like a

-dagger festering in the wound, the thought that all his misery is due to

-the English usurper ever makes his heart bleed.

-

-To all these causes of poverty and despair must be added the general

-difficulties that weigh on agriculture in all countries of Europe,

-the lowered prices of transport, the clearings of land in America

-and Australia, the awful transatlantic competition, the disease of

-potatoes.... The picture being finished, one thing only surprises—it is

-to find one single Irish farmer left in the country.

-

-These explanations, with many others, were given me by a person that

-it is time I should introduce to the reader; for he is the incarnation

-of one of the essential wheels in the machinery of Irish landed

-property—Captain Pembroke Stockton, _land agent_.

-

-The captain is a small fair man, of slim figure, of military aspect,

-who received me this morning at an office where he employs half a dozen

-clerks. The room was lined with green-backed ledgers, or, to speak

-more exactly, with rows of tin boxes, of a chocolate colour. To-night

-he receives me in a pleasant villa, where he takes me in his phaeton,

-drawn by two magnificent horses. He may be about fifty-three years old.

-His calm, regular-featured countenance owes its peculiar character to

-the line that cuts his forehead transversely, and divides it into two

-parts, one white, the other bronzed by the sun; a mark left by the

-English forage-cap, which is like a small muffin, and is worn on one side

-of the head. The captain has seen service in India; he fought against

-Nana-Sahib, and even hung with his own hand a certain number of rebels,

-as he not unfrequently relates after dinner. He sold out when about

-thirty-five years of age, at a period when selling out still existed (in

-1869), and got for his commission £3200, which, besides a small personal

-competency, allowed him to marry a charming girl, dowerless, according to

-the excellent English habit; children came: means became too straitened,

-and, to enlarge them, he resolved to become a _land agent_.

-

-The land agent has no equivalent in France, except for house property.

-He is neither a notary, nor a steward, and yet he partakes of both,

-being the intermediary between landlord and tenant. It is he that draws

-up the leases and settlements; he who receives the rents, who sends out

-summons, who signs every six months the cheque impatiently expected by

-the landlord; he who represents him at law, he who negotiates his loans,

-mortgages, cessions of income, and all other banking operations. In a

-word, he is the landlord’s prime minister, the person who takes on his

-shoulders all the management of his affairs, and reduces his profession

-to the agreeable function of spending money. The land agent naturally

-resides as a rule in the vicinity of the estate. Therefore he knows

-everybody by name; knows all about the incumbrances, the resources

-of every tenant, the length and breadth of every field, the price of

-produce, the probable value of the harvest; all the threads are in his

-hands; the landlord counts upon him, approves everything he does, upholds

-his rigours, and submits to his tolerance. Is he not himself at his

-mercy? The agent keeps all his deeds of property; has personally written

-out every one of them; knows, in fact, a great deal more than himself

-about it.

-

-Let us premise that very considerable interests are in question, and

-that the rents are ciphered by thousands of pounds sterling. It is easy

-to understand that the agent must be not only a man of honour, a clever

-man, a business man, but above all a man presenting the most serious

-guarantees from a financial point of view.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-That is sufficient to imply that they are not counted by dozens in

-every district; and that a land agent provided with all the necessary

-qualifications must before long govern all the principal estates in a

-county. From his office, situated in the principal county-town, he rules

-over ten, twenty, or thirty, square miles of land, cultivated by five or

-six thousand farmers, under some twenty landlords.

-

-Thence the natural consequence that the same policy generally prevails

-in all the administration of the landed property in one district. The

-personal character of the landlord may, indeed, influence it in some

-ways, but the character of the agent is of far greater importance. And

-thence this other consequence, not less serious for the farmer, and which

-gives the key to many an act of agrarian violence,—that in case of open

-war, in case of eviction especially, it is not only an affair between

-the landlord and the tenant, but also between the tenant and all the

-landlords in his county, through their one representative.

-

-Has he been evicted? It will be well-nigh impossible for him to get

-another farm in this county, where he was born, where his relations are

-living, where he has all his habits, all his roots, as it were. And no

-work to be had outside agricultural work.... Emigration only is open to

-him,—which is equivalent to saying that eviction must necessarily be

-followed by transportation.

-

-Let us imagine all the owners of houses in Paris, bound together in

-association, to be in the hands of a single agent; let us suppose that

-a dweller in one of those houses is turned out of it for quarrelling

-with his _concierge_ or for any other reason, and unable to find a house

-to live in; we shall then have an idea of the state of mind in which

-eviction places the Irish peasant. Let us add that this peasant has

-generally built with his own hand the hut that is taken from him; let us

-add that for him it is not only a question of knowing whether he shall

-have a roof over his head, but a question of being able to live by the

-only trade he has learnt.

-

-For many other reasons, the question of agencies on a large scale still

-contributes to make the problem more intricate.

-

-In all affairs personal intercourse brings an element the importance

-of which must not be overlooked. A man will display the greatest

-inflexibility in writing, who will hesitate to do so face to face with

-his opponent. If the landlord knew his tenants, if he lived among them,

-if he entered into their life and saw their misery, very often, may

-be, he would recoil before barbarous rigours, while the agent, by his

-very profession is obliged to act with the precision of a guillotine.

-The influence of women, so gentle and conciliatory, is absent from the

-system. Pity, sympathy, human contact, have no part in it. Can we wonder

-if harmony be destroyed?

-

-Examples are not wanting to show that a different system, a policy of

-gentleness, of direct and mutual concessions, and well directed efforts,

-bear very different results. I shall quote as an instance the case of an

-English lady, Miss Sherman Crawford, who bought, some twenty years ago,

-at a legal sale, a small half-ruined estate in Ireland. She went to live

-on it, and began by giving her ten or twelve tenants a written promise

-that they would get the benefit of all their improvements without having

-cause to fear that the rent should be raised. Then she made it a rule

-that everyone should come directly to her in case of difficulties, and

-not to an agent.

-

-She built a few sheds, repaired two or three cottages, on occasions lent

-a five pound note to facilitate the buying of a cow or pig. That was

-enough. In spite of the difference in race, religion, and language, she

-and her peasantry are on perfect terms with each other; her property of

-Timoleague thrives in the midst of general poverty and wretchedness;

-not an inch of ground lies uncultivated; the soil is well manured, well

-drained, well used; the people are happy and contented. To perform that

-miracle, all that was wanted was a little willingness, a little good

-management and gentleness.

-

-But then Miss Crawford’s property is neither too large nor too small.

-She brings there the capital needed, and allows it to circulate in the

-place. She sees everything with her own eyes, not with the eyes of an

-agent. She is not the titulary of an entailed estate, and has not given

-up its income to usurers. Her farms are large enough to allow her tenants

-to find their sustenance on them, for themselves and their families. In

-a word, her property is in everything the reverse of what is seen in all

-other parts of the island.

-

-And in truth, if delirious legislators had proposed to themselves the

-task of inventing a system of landed property that would give neither

-security to the owner nor peace to the tenant, where could they have

-succeeded better than with the Irish system? It is at once stupid and

-ferocious, absurd and monstrous. How true, alas! that human genius,

-so well able sometimes to profit by natural forces, excels also in

-sterilizing them, in making them homicides!

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XI.

-

-EMIGRATION.

-

-

-Before setting foot in this country your notions are not unfrequently

-ready made about the characters of the inhabitants. You have gathered

-them from miscellaneous reading, novel-reading mostly, and what you

-expect is an Ireland poor certainly, but nevertheless gay, improvident,

-chivalrous, addicted to sound drinking, good eating, fond of practical

-jokes, not unmixed with riot and even blows; an Ireland, in short, such

-as Charles Lever and Carleton, Banim and Maxwell, Sam Lover and Thackeray

-have described; an Ireland where wit and humour are to be met at every

-step, where the last beggar has his little joke, where originality of

-thought, unexpectedness of action, fun inexhaustible, combine to form

-that eccentricity of manner which is ever associated with the idea of an

-Irishman.

-

-That such an Ireland was, not long ago, a reality, one cannot doubt.

-A whole literature, a rich collection of tales, novels and legends

-is there to witness to the fact. Its historical existence is as

-scientifically demonstrated as that of our “Régence.” The worldly

-exploits of the Duke of Richelieu are not better proved. But it is in

-vain you look to-day for that gay and careless Ireland; from Cape Clear

-to Malin Head, from Dublin to Galway, there is no vestige of it. She is

-dead and gone. Like Mr. Credit, bad payers have killed her. Between her

-and us there has been a great financial cataclysm where she has been

-wrecked: the _crash_ of the great famine of 1846-1847.

-

-Never did she rise from it. Forty years ago she contrived to exist

-somehow. The tenants were poor, to be sure, but the landlords were not,

-and they spent their money grandly. They led the usual life of rich

-country gentlemen, had large retinues of servants and horses, kept

-playing, drinking, and betting till they had only debts left, which

-course had at least the advantage of permitting their cash to circulate

-about the country. The local traffic was relatively large then. Butchers,

-coach-makers, wine-merchants, and horse-dealers made rapid fortunes. Few

-towns in Europe showed so much animation as Dublin, now so empty and so

-dull a place. Everybody was in debt with everybody; not one property

-was not mortgaged. It was the fashion at that time to pay only at the

-last extremity. A general complicity gave force of law to that habit.

-Lawsuits, of course, were plentiful, but what is there in a lawsuit

-to prevent a jolly squire from drinking hard, riding his horses at a

-break-neck pace, or galloping from morning till night behind his hounds?

-

-Then came the potato-disease; then the famine, which brought in two

-years a general liquidation. Everyone awoke to find himself ruined;

-there were in six months fifty thousand evictions. The largest fortunes,

-when they escaped the Encumbered Estates Court, established in 1849,

-remained loaded with such heavy burdens that the income of the titulary

-fell to nothing. One was obliged to pinch then, to sell the horses, and

-shut up the kennel. There was an end to fun, and if there remained here

-and there some inveterate boon companion who would not give up the good

-old customs, the _Moonlighters_ soon brought him to reason, poisoning

-his dogs and hunters, confiscating his arms, and at times mistaking the

-landlord for the game.

-

-There is no vestige left now of the easy-going ways of old. The large

-town-houses and country seats are deserted or let to strangers; the

-cellar is empty, the dining-room silent. A gust of hatred and misery has

-blown on the isle and left all hearts frozen.

-

-As for the peasant, the poor creature has too many cares for thinking

-of a joke now. Perhaps in other climes, under a clearer sky and warmer

-sun, he would revive, and find in his very distress the element for

-some witticism. But here, the damp atmosphere, united with persevering

-ill-fortune, has deluged and drowned for ever his Celtic good-humour.

-Hardly does he find now and then a glimpse of it at the bottom of an

-ale-jug or in the tumult of some election riot. If a quick repartee, one

-of his characteristic sallies, escapes him now, it is always bitter, and

-reminds you of the acrid genius of Swift.

-

-“How deliciously pure and fresh is the air in Dublin,” said Lady

-Carteret, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland’s wife, to the author of

-“Gulliver.”

-

-“For goodness’ sake, Madam, don’t breathe a word about it to the English.

-They would put a duty on it.”

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-And his terrible satire about the famous “excess of population,” that

-favourite hobby of economists, who has not it in mind?

-

-“It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town

-or travel in the country, where they see the streets, the roads, and

-cabin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three,

-four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an

-alms ... I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number

-of children ... is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very

-great additional grievance; and therefore, whosoever could find out a

-fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, easy members

-of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his

-statue set up for a preserver of the nation. I shall now, therefore,

-humbly propose my own thoughts; which I hope will not be liable to the

-least objection.

-

-“I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in

-London that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a

-most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted,

-baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a

-fricassée or a ragout.

-

-“I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the

-hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand

-may be reserved for breed, whereof one-fourth part to be males ... that

-the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to

-the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising

-the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month so as to render

-them plump and fat for good tables. A child will make two dishes at an

-entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or

-hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and, seasoned with a little

-pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in

-winter.

-

-“I have reckoned, upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh twelve

-pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, will increase to

-twenty-eight pounds.

-

-“I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar’s child (in which

-list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers)

-to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no

-gentleman would refuse to give two shillings for the carcase of a good

-fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent

-nutritive meat. Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times

-require) may flay the carcase: the skin of which, artificially dressed,

-will make admirable gloves for ladies and summer boots for fine gentlemen.

-

-“As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose in

-the most convenient parts of it; and butchers we may be assured will not

-be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, then

-dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasted pigs....

-

-“I think the advantages, by the proposals I have made, are obvious and

-many, as well as of the highest importance: for first, as I have already

-observed, it would greatly lessen the number of papists, with whom we

-are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation, as well

-as our most dangerous enemies.... Whereas the maintenance of a hundred

-thousand children, from two years old and upwards, cannot be computed

-at less than ten shillings a piece per annum, the nation’s stock will

-be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, beside the profit

-of a new dish introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in

-the kingdom, who have any refinement in taste. And all the money will

-circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and

-manufacture.... Besides, this would be a great inducement to marriage,

-which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards or enforced by

-laws and penalties.”

-

-The grim sarcasm goes on in the same sinister, pitiless way up to the

-conclusion, which is worth the rest:

-

-“I profess in the sincerity of my heart that I have not the least

-personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work,

-having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing

-our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some

-pleasure to the rich. I have no children by which I can propose to get

-a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past

-child-bearing.”

-

-Modern Philanthropy is not quite so bold as the Dean of St. Patrick in

-suggesting remedies for the relief of the sufferings of Ireland. Its

-great panacea is emigration. The first thing which attracts the eye in

-villages and boroughs is a large showy placard representing a ship in

-full sail, with the following words in large capitals, “Emigration! ...

-free passage to Canada, Australia, New Zealand! ... free passage and a

-premium to emigrants for Queensland!...”

-

-Technical particulars follow; the agents’ addresses, the names of the

-outward-bound ships, &c.... These placards are everywhere. At each

-turning, on every wall they stare you in the face, and fascinate the

-starving man. Numerous and powerful emigration companies paid by colonies

-where hands are wanting, patronized by all that is influential in the

-kingdom, work unremittingly in recruiting that army of despair for a

-voluntary transportation. And thus a continuous stream of Irishmen is

-ebbing out through all the pores of the country.

-

-Shall we give the official figures? There are none given unfortunately

-for the years between 1847 and 1851, corresponding to the “famine

-clearances” or famine evictions. All that is known is that at that time

-the population of Ireland suddenly decreased by one million six hundred

-and twenty-two thousand inhabitants, without it being possible to say how

-many had died of starvation, how many had embarked pell-mell on hundreds

-of ships, how many had perished at sea, how many had survived. Since 1851

-the accounts are clear. It is known that 148,982 emigrants left Ireland

-in the eight last months of that year; 189,092 in 1852; 172,829 in 1853;

-139,312 in 1854. During the following years the emigration slackens its

-pace by degrees and falls to the rate of 75,000 heads a year. It rises

-again in 1863-64, and attains the figure of over 105,000. Then it settles

-again to its level: 60,000, where for a time it remains stationary. Since

-1880 it has risen again to 95,000, and over 100,000.

-

-Within thirty years, the period included between the 1st of May, 1851,

-and the 1st of May, 1881, Ireland has lost through emigration alone

-_two million five hundred and thirty-six thousand six hundred and

-twenty-seven_ of her children. The total for the last five years has not

-yet been published, but it certainly reaches half a million. From the

-year 1851, therefore, at least _three million_ Irish people of both sexes

-have left the island, that is to say, nearly the half of a population

-then reduced to six-and-a-half million souls.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Has, at least, the result of that frightful exodus been to eradicate

-pauperism? One would like to believe it. Theorists had promised it. But

-alas! stern statistics are there to answer their fallacies.

-

-Statistics inform us that the Ireland of 1887, with its present

-population, inferior to that of London, is poorer than it was in 1841,

-when it numbered eight million inhabitants. Twenty years ago the number

-of individuals admitted to workhouses was 114,594 out of six million

-inhabitants. To-day it is 316,165 out of a population diminished by a

-third. In 1884 the poor who received relief at home were 442,289. They

-are now 633,021. In other words, _one Irishman out of four_ lives on

-public charity—when he lives at all.

-

-Upon such facts, would you guess what monstrous conclusion the votaries

-of emigration at any price have come to? Simply this: that the

-blood-letting is not sufficient; that Ireland must be drained of another

-million inhabitants. Such is Lord Salisbury’s opinion. As if an area of

-20,194,602 statute acres, so favoured geographically, was not calculated

-to nourish twelve or fifteen million human beings rather than three!

-(This was the opinion of Gustave de Beaumont, after Arthur Young.) As if

-the emigration of every healthy and industrious adult was not a nett loss

-for the country, just as is the guinea taken away by any _absentee_!

-

-Is not his exit a sign of strength and energy in the emigrant? He was

-free to stay at home if he liked; to shut himself up in a workhouse and

-live there at the public expense. Has he not given by his very departure

-the best proof that he is not a useless member in the social body? What!

-you incite all that is able and active to go away, keeping only the

-weak, the old, the useless; to these you dole out what is necessary to

-keep up a flickering breath of life, and when poverty increases, you are

-surprised at it!

-

-I bear in mind the reasons alleged by politicians. Elizabeth and Cromwell

-have invoked them before, when recurring to more drastic but equally vain

-measures. But, here again, the calculation is wrong; the eternal justice

-of things has not permitted it to succeed.

-

-For all those whom the feudal system starves out of their native island

-take care, for the most part, not to go and fertilize with their work

-the British colonies. Vainly does the emigration agent offer them a

-free passage, grants of land, and even premiums in money. They prefer

-buying with their last penny a ticket which opens a free land to them.

-They go to the United States, where they thrive almost to a miracle, and

-this is a decisive answer to the masters of their race, who are also

-its calumniators. They multiply there so as to form already a fifth

-part (twelve millions) of the total population of the great American

-Republic. At the bar, in the press, in all liberal professions, they

-are a majority, and by their brilliant qualities, which often secure

-them the first rank, they exercise a real preponderance. But they never

-forget that they are Irish. They keep the unimpaired remembrance of their

-beloved country, dear to their heart in proportion as she is unhappy.

-They remember their home burnt to the ground, the old grandfather thrown

-on the road-side, the little ones crying at the withered breast of a

-pallid mother, the wrench of parting, the heart-rending farewell; then

-the contumely during the voyage—the hardships after the landing; and they

-swear an oath that all shall be paid some day, and, in the meanwhile,

-they contribute their dollars to the healing of an ever-bleeding wound.

-

-It is there that Fenianism was born. From their ranks come those

-conspirators who terrorize England with their periodic outrages. In all

-agrarian violence the hand of the emigrants is to be found. From 1848

-to 1864 they have sent thirteen million pounds to those of their family

-that have remained in Ireland; and, from 1864 to 1887, perhaps double

-that sum. But in those figures, given by Lord Dufferin, the secret funds

-brought to the service of an ever-increasing agitation are not reckoned.

-The _Invincibles_ were in their pay. The _Skirmishing Fund_ was entirely

-sustained by them. The National League lives, in a manner, upon their

-subsidies. When Mr. Parnell went to visit the United States, they were

-powerful enough to induce the Senate of Washington to give him the

-honours of the sitting—an exception which stands unique in history.

-

-The independence of Ireland is their dream, their ambition, their hope,

-their luxury in life. The day when this is accomplished, England will

-perhaps realize that the Irish emigration has been a political blunder,

-as it is an economical mistake and a moral crime.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                                     CORK.

-

-Wishing to see some of those who emigrate I have come to Cork. Cork is

-the great harbour of the South of Ireland, the gate that opens on America

-and Australia. From St. Patrick’s Bridge on the Lee a steamer took me to

-where three emigrant ships were at anchor ready to fly to other climes.

-I went on board two of them, one English, the other American. There

-was nothing particular to notice, except an under-deck disposed as a

-dormitory, as is the rule on board all maritime transports, so as to

-lodge four or five hundred steerage passengers. These passengers bring

-with them their bedding, which consists generally of a coarse blanket,

-and the staple part of their eatables. A canteen affords them, at

-reasonable prices, all drinks or extras that they may think fit to add to

-their ordinary fare.

-

-The impression I gather in these under-decks is rather a favourable one.

-There is as yet only the bare floor, but it is clean and well washed.

-Through the hatches, wide open, a pure and bracing air circulates freely.

-

-No doubt there will be some alteration after a few days’ voyage. But

-it is evident that the Queen’s administration keeps a sharp eye upon

-the emigration companies, and sees that all sanitary prescriptions

-are observed. One sees no longer now-a-days such scandalous spectacles

-as occurred in the years of the famine, when thousands of Irish were

-promiscuously heaped in the hold of _coffin-ships_, and died by hundreds

-before reaching the goal. Emigration is now one of the normal, it may be

-said one of the official, functions of social life in Ireland—a function

-which has its organs, laws, customs, and even its record-office. The

-companies keep their agents in all British possessions; they are informed

-of all the wants of those colonies; they know what specialists are in

-demand, what advantages are offered to the new-comer. They do their best

-to make the offer fit with the demand, and they seem to succeed.

-

-An old boatswain on board one of the emigrant ships tells me that life

-there is generally monotonous but quiet. The passengers do not mix or

-associate as quickly as one could imagine. Each of them pitches his own

-separate camp on the few square feet that chance gives him, and it is

-only after eight or ten days’ voyage that they begin to club together.

-The mothers tend their babies, the fathers smoke their pipes, the

-children play, the young people flirt. It appears that a relatively

-considerable number of marriages are prepared and even concluded in the

-crossing. There is nothing surprising in that, if we remember that the

-most numerous class of emigrants is composed of marriageable girls and

-men between twenty and twenty-five years of age.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-A few types of emigrants taken at the inns and public-houses on the

-quays. _John Moriarty_, of Ballinakilla, County Cork, 45 to 50 years

-old. A rural Micawber, dressed in a dilapidated black coat, a pair of

-green trousers, completely worn out at the knees, and crushed hat. A

-Catholic (he says _Cathioulic_). Squats with wife and children in a

-single room, almost devoid of furniture. Was to have embarked five days

-ago for Canada. The Board of Health did not allow it on account of one of

-the children having got the measles (an illness which assumes in Great

-Britain a most dangerous and infectious character). Makes no difficulty

-to tell me his whole history. Had a farm of thirteen acres. Was thriving

-more or less—rather less than more. But for the last seven years it has

-been an impossibility for him to make both ends meet.

-

-Strange as it may appear, the man is a Conservative in feeling.

-

-“Nothing to do in the country, with those _mob laws_ and agitation!” says

-he.

-

-“What mob laws?”

-

-“Well, the trash on fixity of tenure, fair rent and the rest.”

-

-“I thought they were favourable to the tenant.”

-

-“Favourable in one sense, yes, sir,” (_with a diplomatic air, as he

-fastens on me two little chocolate-coloured eyes_) “but disastrous in the

-end, because they allow one to sell his tenant-right at a discount. You

-believe that it will set you up, and it is the very stone that makes you

-sink. The banks are our ruin, don’t you see? Once they have taken hold

-of their man they don’t let him out before they have skinned him” (_a

-silence, then a sigh of mild envy_). “It is, indeed, a good trade that of

-banking!”

-

-He remains dreamy and seems to meditate the scheme of founding a bank in

-Canada.

-

-_Martin Mac Crea_, 22 years old, a shepherd of Drumcunning. A Catholic. A

-tall, pale, thin fellow, decently dressed, with a wide-awake look. Goes

-to Queensland. Why? “Because there is no opening in Ireland. The most you

-can do is to earn your bare sustenance.” It appears that in Queensland it

-is quite a different affair. The profession of shepherd pays there. Let

-a man bring or save the money necessary to buy half-a-dozen sheep, and

-let them graze at their will. Seven or eight years later their name is

-legion, and the man is rich.

-

-“But are you then quite free of ties here? Don’t you leave anybody, any

-relation, in Ireland?”

-

-“I was obliged to live far from them, and where I go I shall be more able

-to help them. Besides, the post reaches there.”

-

-“And the young ladies at Drumcunning. Do they allow you to go away

-without a protest?”

-

-A broad smile lights up Martin Mac Crea’s countenance. A further

-conversation informs me that his betrothed has gone before him to

-Brisbane, where she is a servant. He is going to meet her, and they shall

-settle together in the _bush_, keeping sheep on their own account.

-

-Let us hope she has waited for him. Queensland is far away!

-

-_Pat Coleman_, twenty years old. A friend to the former. Son of a small

-farmer with six children. Nothing to do at home. Prefers going to the

-Antipodes, to see if there is a way there to avoid dying of starvation,

-as happened to his grandfather.

-

-_Peter Doyle_, forty-three years old. A journeyman. A Presbyterian.

-Can’t find work at home; therefore emigrates. Was employed on railway

-construction, county Clare. Has been turned away, the line being

-completed and open to travellers. Had come to Cork in the hope of getting

-work, but found only insignificant jobs. Packed to Melbourne.

-

-_Dennis O’Rourke_, twenty-nine years old; of Enniscorthy, Wexford. An

-engine-maker; belongs to a class of which I had as yet met no specimen

-in Ireland, the workman-politician. Has already emigrated to the United

-States, where he spent three years. Wished to see his country again, and

-tried to set up a business on a small scale, first in Dublin, then at

-Cork; but it does not pay. Goes back to New York.

-

-“Do you know why? I am going to tell you. (_Fiercely_) I am going because

-this country is rotten to the core! Because it has no spirit left, not

-even that of rebellion! I am going because I will no longer bear on my

-back the weight of dukes and peers, of Queen, Prince of Wales, Royal

-family, and the whole lot of them! I am going where you can work and be

-free; where a man is worth another when he has got in his pocket two

-dollars honestly earned. That is where I go, and why I go.”

-

-“In short, you make England responsible for your misfortunes?”

-

-“England be damned!”

-

-It is O’Connell’s word. He was travelling in France, towards St. Omer,

-and found himself inside the mail-coach with an old officer of the first

-Empire who began forthwith to talk against the English. The great Irish

-agitator kept silent.

-

-“Don’t you hear me?” the other said at last, insolently.

-

-“I beg your pardon, I hear you perfectly well.”

-

-“And you don’t mind my treating your country as I do?”

-

-“England is not my country; I hate it more than you will ever do.”

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XII.

-

-THE LEAGUE.

-

-

-                                                                    ENNIS.

-

-The county Clare, and more especially Ennis, its chief town, have played

-an important part in the contemporary history of Ireland. It was here

-eight years ago (in 1879) that Mr. Parnell, at a great autumn meeting,

-gave his famous _mot d’ordre_ on social and political interdict.

-

-“If you refuse to pay unjust rents, if you refuse to take farms from

-which others have been evicted, the land question must be settled,

-and settled in a way that will be satisfactory to you. Now, what are

-you to do to a tenant who bids fora farm from which another has been

-evicted? You must shun him on the road-side where you meet him,—you must

-shun him in the shops,—you must shun him in the fair green, and in the

-market-place, and in the place of worship: by leaving him severely alone,

-by putting him in a moral Coventry; by isolating him from the rest of

-his countrymen, as if he were the leper of old, you must show him your

-detestation of the crime he has committed.”

-

-Those words contained a whole programme, faithfully carried out since,

-and which has already borne fruit. They took exceptional force from the

-fact that Mr. Parnell, at the time he pronounced them, was already the

-acknowledged leader of Irish opposition. They were in some sort the

-registration of birth of the League.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-The League! Every moment, travelling through this island, one comes in

-contact with this power, mysterious though positive, anonymous and yet

-implicitly recognized. The League houses and feeds evicted families;

-it settles that such a landlord or such a farmer shall be boycotted;

-it decrees that the rents of such an estate shall be reduced 30 per

-cent.; that of such another the rents shall be lodged in the League’s

-own coffers; it patronises candidatures, chooses the place and time of

-meetings, presides over all the phases of social life. What is that

-League? is the question one asks.

-

-At first one naturally supposes it to be an electoral association such

-as exists in every free country. But little by little one perceives that

-it is a far bigger affair. Electoral associations are not in the habit

-of inspiring such persistent enthusiasm, of covering during eight long

-years the extent of a whole country; they do not send roots to the most

-remote villages, nor do they count among their members three-quarters

-of the adult population. It is not their custom either to fulminate

-excommunications, or if they do they have but little appreciable effect

-on the ordinary tenour of life. One never heard that they disposed of

-important capital, and one would be less surprised to hear that they

-had entered into a lawsuit with their printer about an unpaid bill for

-five or six thousand placards, than one would be to hear that they have

-several hundred thousand pounds in the bank.

-

-And yet it is precisely of hundred thousand pounds that one constantly

-hears in connection with the League. Where does it get all that money,

-in a country worn so threadbare as this? Whence is it that it is so

-universally respected, so religiously obeyed? All the smiles are for the

-League, while the functionaries of the Crown pocket only snubbings. All

-the doors open before the League, while they close and even barricade

-themselves at the bare mention of the Lord Lieutenant’s name.

-

-One observes these facts; compare and weigh them. Then the conclusion

-imposes itself quite naturally that the League is the only public power

-recognised by the bulk of the Irish nation. One already had a suspicion

-of being a spectator to a revolution, of which the violent deeds, instead

-of being concentrated over a period of two or three years, as we have

-seen at home, have spread over half a century. One understands that one

-has fallen in the midst of a civil war, not in the incipient state,

-but fully let loose, and that there exists in this island two rival

-authorities,—that of the Crown with the bayonets on its side; that of the

-League, possessing all hearts.

-

-Ireland, it is hardly necessary to repeat, has been in a state of

-rebellion since the beginning of the British Conquest. But it has

-been in a state of revolution only for a period of about forty years.

-Insurrection betrayed itself now by individual but constant acts of

-rebellion, of which one can easily follow the succession through past

-ages, now by collective risings like those of Thomas Fitzgerald in

-1534, of O’Neil in 1563, of Desmond in 1579, of Preston in 1642, of the

-Whiteboys in 1791, of the Oakboys in 1762, of the Steelboys in 1768, of

-Wolfe Tone in the course of the French Revolution, of Emmet in 1803,

-the New Whiteboys in 1807, of John Mitchell in 1848, of the Fenians in

-1865 and 1867. As for the agrarian revolution, born of an economical

-situation impossible to bear, it follows its course as regularly as a

-great river, ever getting larger and larger, widening its bed, swelling

-its volume with all the streams it meets, increasing in power at the

-same time that its waters get more depth and breadth. Even the soothing

-mixtures prescribed for it by the Parliamentary doctors have served as

-its tributaries. Its torrent has at length become irresistible.

-

-To discover its source, we must go back to the famine evictions of 1847.

-The heart-rending spectacle then presented by Ireland made it natural

-to look for a palliation to such misery. The malady was studied in all

-its aspects; much learned discussion took place at the bedside of the

-agonizing patient. It was the time when Disraeli developed his famous

-theory of “the three profits.” The land, if one was to believe him, must

-yield profit to three persons:—the Queen, the landlord, and the tenant.

-It appears this was arranged from the end of Time by the Great Architect

-of the Universe. The laws of Kepler are not more absolute. The unlucky

-thing is that the earth does not always fulfil its obligations, and too

-often refuses to yield up the three sacramental profits.

-

-Theorists endowed with less boldness thought to find a remedy by giving

-legal consecration to the tenant’s rights by the system of _the three

-F’s_, as it was called, that is to say, _Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure,

-and Free Sale_. Through endless resistance, after endless debating in the

-course of twenty parliamentary sessions, a whole _remedial_ legislation

-came to add its bulk to the already so intricate structure of Anglo-Saxon

-law.

-

-Now the custom of Ulster was extended to the whole of Ireland, and the

-right of the farmer over the improvements paid with his money became

-law (1860); now he was promised an indemnity in case of eviction, and

-the basis was laid of a system of amortization which must infallibly in

-the course of time have ended in creating a class of peasant landowners

-(1870).

-

-Already in the year 1849, the State had interfered between the landlords

-in difficulties and their tenants, by the creation of a special tribunal

-for obligatory liquidation,—_the Encumbered Estates Court_. It finally

-came to interfere between landlord and tenant by instituting a new court

-of arbitration, the _Land Court_, entrusted with the care of fixing the

-“fair” rent in each case.

-

-That Court was no sooner opened than 75,807 affairs were inscribed upon

-its roll. It judged in one year 15,676. But there remained still 60,101

-to be judged, and already the reductions of 18 to 27 per cent. imposed

-on the landlords appeared insufficient; already the farmers were loudly

-clamouring for further reductions.

-

-For in truth such remedies were too anodine for such rooted disease! But

-the wedge had nevertheless entered the tree. The State had appeared in

-the character of umpire between the landlord and the peasant. Henceforth

-all was or seemed possible.

-

-The essence of dogmas is to suffer no questioning. One cannot with

-impunity discuss for twenty years the basis of landed property’s law and

-the theory of “the three profits” before empty stomachs. As a parallel

-to these debates, the question of political rights for Ireland rose

-again, and ended insensibly by the conquest of the electoral franchise,

-of religious equality, and of national education. The moment arrived

-when the bulk of the population took an interest only in the truly vital

-question,—that of the soil. And all of a sudden they understood that

-there was only one remedy for the ills that weighed so grievously over

-them: Landlords and tenants cannot continue to live side by side. Either

-the one or the other must go.

-

-“Let the landlords decamp! They do not belong here,” said the peasants.

-

-“No, by G⸺! The peasants shall go,” answered the landlords; “the way is

-open....”

-

-It was thus that towards 1876 the Irish movement became agrarian, from

-being purely national. The League is the organ of that new function.

-

-Its primary idea belongs to two veterans of the Fenian plots, Michael

-Davitt and John Devoy. But what distinguishes it from those plots,

-besides a broader basis and larger aims, is that it acts in broad

-daylight, with face uncovered, appealing to all men of goodwill, using

-exclusively those constitutional weapons—the right of meeting, the right

-of association and coalition.

-

-“The Fenians saw only the green flag,” wrote John Devoy. “The men of

-to-day perceive that under its folds is the Irish land.” Nevertheless, it

-was to the remains of the Fenian associations that he and Michael Davitt

-had recourse at first to lay the foundations of the new association.

-They went to look for them even to the uttermost end of America, secured

-the co-operation of some of the most influential members of the Irish

-emigration, then came back to Europe, and summoned a great preliminary

-meeting at Irishtown.

-

-As ordinarily enough happens in such cases, their project was at first

-looked upon coldly by members of Parliament, who thought it impolitic,

-and violently opposed by the secret societies—Fenians or Ribbonmen—who

-thought it calculated to cool the Nationalist zeal. But under the too

-real sufferings produced by two years of famine (1876-1877), the agrarian

-tempest assumed such formidable proportions, that all resistance had to

-cease, and the politicians were compelled to lower their flag. For the

-chiefs of the autonomist party it was a question of no less than keeping

-or losing their mandate. Either they would adopt the new evangel, or

-they would be left lying, officers without troops, on the electoral

-battle-field. Most of them understood this in time.

-

-Mr. Parnell, the most conspicuous of all, had till then limited his part

-to the demand for a national government for Ireland, and his tactics to

-parliamentary obstruction. From an economical point of view he still

-remained, with all his party, on the level of worthy Mr. Butt’s _three

-F’s_. He was one of the first to understand that it was all over with

-Home Rule, and with his own political fortune, if he hesitated any longer

-to plunge into deeper waters.

-

-He made his plunge with characteristic resolution. “There is no longer

-any possibility of conciliation between landlord and tenant,” he said.

-“Since the one or the other must go out, it is better that the less

-numerous class should be the one to do it.” On the 8th of June, 1879,

-at Westport, he pronounced his famous, “Keep a firm grip on your

-homesteads!” From the 21st of October following the agrarian League

-promulgated circulars, which he signed as president.

-

-The League’s aim and watchword were—_The land for the peasant!_ Its means

-were the union of all the rural forces, the formation of a resistance

-fund for evicted farmers, the strike of tenants with a view to compelling

-the landlords to grant a reduction of rent; and incessant agitation in

-favour of a law for the liquidation of landed property, which would give

-the land into the hands of the cultivators by means of partial payments

-made during a certain number of years.

-

-The success of such a programme, seconded by the political leaders of

-Ireland, was certain. But its promoters never had dared to hope for a

-rush such as was experienced in a few weeks’ time. Adhesions poured in

-by thousands; all the social classes embraced it. The Catholic clergy

-themselves, after wavering one moment, found it advisable to follow in

-the footsteps of the revolutionary party, as the Deputies had done before

-them. Everywhere local boards were formed which put themselves at the

-disposal of the central committee. Almost everywhere the Catholic priest,

-his curates, not unfrequently the Anglican priest himself, were found

-among the members of the board.

-

-This is enough to show with what alacrity and unanimity the mobilisation

-of the agrarian army was effected. Far from weakening the Nationalist

-party, as was feared by its prebendaries, it came out of this tempered

-afresh, enlarged, associated with the every-day interests, tied

-indissolubly henceforth, for the majority of an agricultural population,

-to the most secret if the most ardent wish of their labourers’ heart.

-

-What remained to do was to endow the League with the resources wanted to

-carry out its programme; but it was not in a country practically ruined,

-a prey to the tortures of hunger, literally reduced to beggary, that

-those resources were to be found. Mr. Parnell set out for the land of

-dollars. He preached the new word there with complete success. Exotic

-branches of the League were established in the various States of America,

-in Canada, and Australia; the only thing remaining to do was to organize

-the _in partibus infidelium_ government that was to take in hand the

-direction of Ireland.

-

-But a short time since this government sat in a palace of the finest

-street in Dublin—Sackville Street. There it had its offices, reception

-rooms, council-room furnished with the orthodox green baize table, its

-ministerial departments, secretaries and writers, officially headed

-paper, its stamp, documents, accounts and red tape.

-

-After a recent movement on the offensive on the part of the enemy, the

-League had to decamp and put all this material in a place of safety.

-But though it be presently without a known place of abode, the League

-none the less pursues its work. Do not telegraphic wires keep it in

-communication with its agents throughout the length and breadth of the

-territory? Why were Transatlantic cables invented, if not for the purpose

-of opening permanent communications between the League and its American,

-Australian, and Asiatic colonies? In all the extent of its jurisdiction,

-which is that of the globe, the League is obeyed and respected; it

-possesses the confidence of its innumerable tributaries.

-

-Perhaps that comes from the fact that this committee, though it sometimes

-accented too much the professional character of its members, has at least

-the rare merit of faithfully serving its constituents and of being in

-perfect harmony of conscience with them. Perhaps this is due to the

-effect of direct subsidies; and we must see there something better than a

-mere coincidence,—a great lesson for the democracies of the future. One

-thing is certain: this government, after wielding power for eight years,

-have their party well in hand. They are able to do without red tape or

-scribbling. One word is enough to indicate their will, and if they lack

-secretaries, a hundred newspapers will carry this word to its address.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-It would be a matter of some difficulty to appreciate rightly the

-financial resources of the League Competent judges estimate them at

-an income of two million francs. It receives on an average, from

-English-speaking countries, a thousand pounds a week. Now and then

-subscriptions slacken, and the incoming of money is smaller; but the

-least incident, such as a noisy arrest or a political law-suit, is

-sufficient to awaken the zeal of the leaguers. That zeal is always

-proportionate to the energy of resistance opposed by the Cabinet of St.

-James to the government of Sackville Street. If London so much as raises

-its head, at once Dublin, and behind Dublin the whole of Ireland, the

-whole of Irish America, Australia, the Cape, and the extreme depths of

-India, all are shaken to their very centre,—in other words, they pay.

-

-The chief treasurer of the League, Mr. Egan, giving account of his

-administration in October, 1882, after a space of three years, stated

-that during these three years £244,820 had passed through his hands. In

-this total one-third only came from insular contributors; all the rest

-came from abroad. £50,000 had been given in relief of distress; over

-£15,000 had been spent in State trials; nearly £148,000 had been expended

-through the general Land League and the Ladies’ Land League in support

-of evicted tenants, providing wooden houses, law costs, sheriffs’ sales,

-defence against ejectments and various local law proceedings, and upon

-the general expenses of the organization. A little over £31,900 remained

-to the account of the association.

-

-There are no reasons for supposing the normal receipts of the League to

-have diminished much since that period. More recently (in 1886) the “plan

-of campaign” has created new openings for it.

-

-This “plan of campaign,” one of the boldest conceptions ever accepted by

-a great political party, consists simply in lodging into the coffers of

-the League, and for its use, the rents that were pronounced excessive by

-its committee, and that the landlords refused to abate. Let us mention

-in passing that the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin publicly accepted the

-responsibility of this tremendous war-measure. It has, we must add,

-been exercised with obvious moderation, in specific cases only, and by

-way of example. The true weapon of the League, that which it used most

-liberally up to the present day, is the _boycotting_, or social interdict

-pitilessly pronounced against any one who disobeys its behests.

-

-From a legal point of view, the League has met with various fortunes.

-Suppressed in 1881 by an Act of Parliament, it was compelled to put on

-a mask and to disguise itself under the name of the _Ladies’ League_.

-A year later it underwent a new incarnation and became the _National

-League_.

-

-Now the Tory Ministry has suppressed it once more _proclaimed_ it, as

-they say (_clameur de haro_), in virtue of the special power conferred

-on it. It appears improbable that the health of the association should

-suffer much for this; on the contrary, it will probably be all the

-better for it. In former days it would have been content to undergo a

-fourth avatar by taking the name of _Celtic League_, _Irish Babies’

-League_, or any other name that would have done just as well to deride

-its adversaries. A special provision of the Coercion Act will prevent its

-having recourse to this expedient. By the 7th article of the Act, the

-Lord Lieutenant is empowered to suppress any _new_ association formed

-with a view to continuing the affairs of the old ones.

-

-But one never thinks of everything. Precisely because it is so explicit,

-the 7th article cannot apply to the _old_ Irish societies, different

-from the National League, and which can easily be substituted in its

-place. Those associations, _Home Rule Unions_, _Liberal Federations_,

-&c., are numerous through the country. One of them could easily accept

-the inheritance of the League, and it would be necessary to convoke

-Parliament to suppress it. If Parliament suppresses it, it will be easy

-to find something else. And so on for ever, through ages, to the crack

-of doom.... In the meanwhile there will be protestations, agitations,

-interpellations, and before the end, “the King, the ass” ... or the

-Ministry shall have died, as La Fontaine said.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Lord Salisbury may close two hundred offices of the League in the

-counties of Clare and Kerry. How shall he close the offices beyond the

-sea, which are the real ones?

-

-In fact, the League is indestructible, because it is impossible to get

-hold of it. One can arrest its chiefs, as has been done often enough,

-intercept its correspondence, oppose cavalry regiments to its public

-demonstrations, and retroactive measures to its secret acts; they

-cannot destroy the faith the Irish people have put in it; they cannot

-grapple with the essence of an association which rests on the most vital

-interests of the peasantry.

-

-Political persecution is fatally doomed to failure when exercised in a

-free country, if it does not begin by attacking the press and the right

-of meeting. And who shall dare to touch those two pillars of the British

-edifice? The English government is the government of opinion, or it is

-nothing: now, the opinion of the majority of Irishmen, of the majority of

-Scotchmen, and of an imposing minority of Englishmen, is in favour of the

-League.

-

-To say the truth, all parties are agreed _in petto_ upon the necessity

-of abolishing landlordism. It is only a question of settling who shall

-have the credit of doing it, and how it shall be managed so that neither

-the landlord’s creditors nor the public exchequer should suffer too

-much by that unavoidable liquidation. Therefore all the measures taken

-against an organism that incarnates such general feeling can only be an

-empty fooling, a holiday sport. Their only effect must be to awaken

-rural passions and provoke new acts of violence. One might even believe

-such was their only aim. For, to be able to ruin a perfectly lawful

-association like the League, in a country of free discussion, it is

-indispensable first to throw dishonour upon it.

-

-They have not yet succeeded in doing this, in spite of the most strenuous

-efforts. Not only has it always been impossible to charge the League with

-any act contrary to the current standard of morals, but it is beyond any

-doubt that its influence is especially directed towards the prevention of

-agrarian crimes, and even against individual resistance to landlordism.

-Wherever there is popular emotion or possible disorder, its delegates are

-present, and endeavour to enforce respect for the law. If it happen that

-the orations of some underlings overstep the mark, the general methods of

-the League none the less remain unimpeachable. It has taken for mandate

-the ruling of revolutionary action, the legalizing it, the task of giving

-it a scientific character. It is to its honour that it has succeeded up

-to the present day. One may reasonably suppose that it will not change

-its tactics at the hour when its true chief is no longer Mr. Parnell, but

-practically Mr. Gladstone.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIII.

-

-THE CLERGY.

-

-

-From Kilrush, on the coast of Clare, an excellent service of steamers

-goes up the estuary of the Shannon to Foynes, where one takes the train

-to Limerick. It is a charming excursion, undertaken by all tourists.

-The Shannon here is of great breadth and majesty, flowing in an immense

-sheet of water, recalling the aspect of the great rivers of America. At

-the back you have the stormy ocean; in front, on the right, on the left,

-green hills dotted with snowy villas. Few trees or none, as is the rule

-in Ireland, but a light haze that softens all the outlines of the ground,

-magnifies the least shrubs, and lends to all the view a melting aspect of

-striking loveliness.

-

-The boats are few in number, though the depth of the channel would allow

-ships of the heaviest tonnage to go up to within five miles of Limerick.

-I notice hardly two or three sailing boats at anchor on this four hours’

-journey. What an admirable harbour for an active commerce would be that

-broad estuary, opening directly opposite to America, on the extreme

-point of the European continent. It is the natural point of arrival and

-departure for the Transatlantic steamers, which would reach New York in

-five days from there. Engineers have dreamed of this possibility. But

-to justify a maritime movement, and legitimise such enterprise, a great

-commerce, an industry that Ireland lacks, would be wanted. Gentlemen of

-an engineering turn, come back again in a century or two.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-At Tarbert, where we stop to take passengers, a fort opens its

-loop-holes, armed with guns, on the river. Redcoats are encamping at the

-foot of the fortress, and the morning breeze carries to us the rough

-voice of a non-commissioned officer drilling his men. One might imagine

-him addressing the _Invincibles_ across the ocean somewhat after this

-guise:

-

-“Here we are, keeping watch: If ever this alluring bay tempt you to come

-over, you shall find us ready to receive you!”...

-

-The helm trembles; the boat goes on its course, and soon Tarbert melts

-behind us in the sunny haze.

-

-On board, the travellers resemble those seen in summer on all great

-rivers—merchants bent on a pleasure trip; judges and barristers, having

-taken leave of briefs; professors enjoying their holidays, with wives,

-daughters, sons, goods, and chattels—all have the sun-burnt complexion

-and the satisfied look one brings back from the seaside. They have been

-staying on the beautiful shores of the County Clare, and are returning

-home with a provision of health for one year. La Fontaine has already

-noticed that, travelling, one is sure to see “the monk poring over his

-breviary.” Here the proportion is far greater than in the ancient coach;

-it is not one priest we have on board, but a dozen, all sleek, fat, and

-prosperous, dressed in good stout broadcloth, as smooth as their rubicund

-faces, and provided with gold chains resting on comfortable abdomens.

-

-One remark, by the way. When you meet an Irish peasant on the road, he

-stops, wishes you good-day, and adds, “Please, sir, what is the time?”

-Not that he cares much to know. He is perfectly well able to read the

-time on the great clock of the heavens. But it is his own manner of

-saying, “I can see, sir, that you are a man of substance—one of the great

-ones of this earth—_since you have a watch_. My sincere congratulations!”

-

-Well, all those travelling priests possess chronometers—we are obliged

-to notice it, since it appears to be a sign of easy circumstances in

-Ireland—and the rest of their attire fully carries out that symptom.

-Under the undefinable cut that at once betrays a clerical garment,

-their black coat has all the softness of first quality cloth; their

-travelling bag is of good bright leather; their very umbrella has a look

-of smartness, and does not affect the lamentable droop that with us is

-always associated with the idea of a clerical umbrella. Some of them wear

-the Roman hat and collar, with a square-cut waistcoat and the ordinary

-trousers of the laity, and stockings of all the hues of the rainbow. A

-young curate sports violet-coloured ones, which he exhibits with some

-complacency. I ventured to ask him, in the course of conversation,

-whether he belonged to the Pope’s household. He answered with a blush of

-modesty that he had not that honour, and wore violet hose because he was

-fond of that colour.

-

-That is a matter of taste; but I have a right to suppose, young

-Levite, that the mitre and episcopal rochet—perhaps even the cardinal

-purple—hover at night over your ingenuous dreams.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                                 LIMERICK.

-

-Limerick is a big town of 40,000 inhabitants, celebrated for its hams,

-lace, and gloves. The objects of interest are an important linen factory,

-and another for military equipments, besides a stone mounted on a

-pedestal, and which served as a table for signing the famous treaty of

-1691—soon violated like all treaties, however. Opposite that historic

-stone, on the other side of the Shannon, the ancient castle of King John

-rears its proud head; it has a grim and gloomy look, with its seven

-towers, its thick walls and iron-bound gates.

-

-At the large hotel of the place I meet again three of my ecclesiastical

-fellow-travellers. They evidently know what is good for them, and would

-on no account stop at second-rate inns. One cannot blame them for it. But

-this is a sign of prosperity, added to all the others; a hotel at fifteen

-shillings a day, without counting the wine, seems at first sight suited

-to prelates rather than to humble clergymen. Yet these are only village

-and parish priests, as I gather from the book on which I sign my name

-after theirs. At dinner, where we sit side by side, I am compelled to

-see that the appetite of the reverend fathers is excellent, and that the

-_carte_ of the wines is a familiar object with them. They each have their

-favourite claret: one likes Léoville, another Château Margaux, while the

-third prefers Chambertin; and they drain the cup to the last drop. After

-dessert they remain last in the dining-room, in company with a bottle of

-port.

-

-At ten o’clock that night, entering it to get a cup of tea, I find the

-three seated round glasses of smoking toddy.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-These memorable events are not consigned here, it need hardly be said,

-for the vain satisfaction of recording that on a certain evening three

-Irish priests were tippling freely. They certainly had a perfect right

-to do so, if such was their bent. It is the most cherished privilege of

-a British subject; and of all capital sins proscribed by the Church,

-drunkenness is certainly the most innocent. But this remark, made

-without prejudice, during a chance meeting at an inn, carries out the

-general impression left by the Irish clergy—that of a corporation

-greatly enamoured of its comforts, endowed with good incomes, and whose

-sleekness forms a striking contrast with the general emaciation of their

-parishioners.

-

-Everywhere, in visiting this island, one meets with this typical pair

-of abbots, well dressed and well “groomed,” travelling comfortably

-together, and, to use a popular expression, “la coulant douce.” It is

-startling in this realm of poverty, the more startling because the

-Catholic clergy have no official means of existence, no salary paid

-them by the State. They owe all the money they spend to the private

-contributions of their admirers. Was there ever, they doubtlessly think,

-a more legitimate way of making money? That is probably why they make

-so little mystery of it, and disdain to hide when they exchange part of

-their income against a bottle of Chambertin. In other places, priests

-think that a certain reserve is expected of them; they prefer being

-securely shut in privacy before they carve a partridge or plentifully

-moisten a synod dinner. Here they are so secure in their position that

-they recoil from no profane glance.

-

-Their lives are, I am told, of exemplary purity. I have no difficulty in

-believing it, both because purity is a marked characteristic of the race,

-and because their faith has seemed to me simple as that of the Breton

-priests. There must be exceptions, and some were pointed out to me; but

-assuredly those exceptions are few in number. By many signs which do not

-deceive those who have some experience of life, one can see that the

-Irish priest has not the vices of the Italian or Spanish priest. He is

-a gormandizer to be sure, but he is chaste—perhaps for the very reason

-that he is so devoted to the pleasures of the table. His simplicity of

-heart is wonderful sometimes, and makes one think of those Mount Athos

-monks, nursed in the cloister from the tenderest age, and who know

-literally nothing of the exterior world. I heard two of them, old men

-both, who were quietly chatting in a corner of the railway carriage. Both

-had small, bald birds’ heads, shaven chins, and a quaint, old-fashioned

-look.

-

-“_I am next door to an idiot!_” one of them was saying, with curious

-complacency.

-

-“So am I,” answered the other; “so was I always, and I thank Almighty God

-for it!... for have you not noticed that all those grand, clever people

-often lose the faith?...”

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Where does their income come from? That is a question doubly interesting

-to us Frenchmen, who every year pay out two million sterling for the

-budget of public worship. A placard seen everywhere in Limerick, and

-presenting a marked resemblance to the advertisement for a theatre, will

-help to tell us. This placard is to the effect that on the day after

-to-morrow a general ordination of young priests will take place in the

-Cathedral of St. John, by the hands of the Right Reverend X. O’Dyer,

-archbishop of the town (the name and quality in conspicuous characters),

-assisted by several other prelates and dignitaries. It proceeds to state

-that excursion trains have been established for the occasion, and that

-tickets for the ceremony may be procured, at the price of half-a-crown

-and one shilling, at No. 98, George Street.

-

-This is a booking-office, exactly like those we have in theatres. Plenty

-of placards, the plan of the church showing the number and position of

-each seat, a table of prices, and behind a little grated window a bearded

-old woman for the tickets,—nothing is wanting. One has only to choose

-one’s place, to pay the price down, and to take away the ticket. About

-twenty persons perform these various acts before my eyes. Evidently the

-receipt will be good. The cathedral of St. John, that proudly raises

-its brand-new spire above all the others, must be able to accommodate

-at least three or four thousand spectators. At 1_s._ 9_d._ per head on

-an average, that gives already a total of two or three hundred pounds.

-To this must be added the product of the collections and that of the

-wooden money-boxes, that open everywhere to receive the outcome of

-the generosity of the faithful; the total, we may be sure, cannot be

-otherwise than respectable. It is true that an ordination is not an

-every-day event, and that it must be an expensive affair to put on the

-stage. We must therefore suppose the ordinary income to be raised by way

-of semestrial and direct contribution.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-This is how the thing is done: each parish priest has two Sundays in

-the year devoted to the taking his _dues_, as he calls it. On these

-days, instead of preaching, he exhibits a manuscript list upon which

-are inscribed by name all his tributaries, that is to say, all his

-parishioners, with the sums they have paid into his hands; this he reads

-publicly. As a rule he adds a running commentary to each name, either to

-praise the generosity of the donor, or, on the contrary, to complain of

-his stinginess. In the country, especially, the scene is not wanting in

-humour.

-

-“_Daniel MacCarthy_, four shillings and six-pence,” says the priest.

-“That’s not much for a farmer who keeps three cows and sold two calves

-this year. I will hope for him that he only meant that as a preliminary

-gift.... _Simon Redmond_, seven shillings and six-pence; he might have

-given ten shillings, as he did last year. He is not what we should call

-a progressive man.... _George Roehe_, two shillings and three-pence.

-_Richard MacKenna_, one shilling and three-pence. _Denis Twoney_, one

-shilling and nine-pence. Against those who do their best I have nothing

-to say. _Michael Murphy_, fifteen shillings. Now, I ask, could not he

-have made it a pound? The pity of it! _John Coleman_, five shillings.

-_Daniel Clune_, five shillings. _Cornelius Nagle_, five shillings. One

-would think they had agreed to do it.... _Henry Townsend_, Esq., of

-Townsend Manor, three pounds sterling. That’s what I call a subscriber!

-And he is a Protestant. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves to let a

-Protestant be more generous to your own church than you are.... _Harriet

-O’Connor_, one shilling and nine-pence. I will be bound she liked buying

-a new bonnet better than doing her duty. That is between her and her

-conscience. But I am afraid that at the Day of Judgment she won’t find it

-such a good investment.... _Mary Ann Cunningham_, twelve shillings and

-nine-pence. If everybody knew how to spare and how to use what they spare

-in the same way as this good lady, things would go better in this world

-and in the next, take my word for it.... _Colonel Lewis_, of Knockamore

-Villa, five pounds sterling. Another Protestant! Positively one might

-think one lived in a parish of heathens when one sees that the heretics

-alone seem to have some regard for the church!...”

-

-The reading goes on in this guise, adorned with reflections more or less

-pungent, and interrupted now and then by a repartee coming from the far

-end of the audience, and torn from the patient by the malignity of the

-attack; a general hilarity is then provoked without impairing in the

-least the reverence of the congregation for their priest or their church.

-This semestrial subscription, added to the weekly collections, the daily

-masses, the baptisms, weddings and burials, is amply sufficient to keep

-the church, the priest, and the priest’s house in a good state of repair.

-Most of the parish priests besides, have the habit of “binage,” that is

-to say they often say two or three masses a day, at different points of

-their sometimes very wide parish.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-They are generally addressed by their christian name, prefaced by the

-name of _Father_: _Father James_, _Father Henry_, etc., and this title

-well describes the terms of filial familiarity of the flocks with their

-pastor,—a familiarity not unfrequently manifested by sound boxes on the

-ear for children, and good blows with the stick on the shoulders of

-his grown-up parishioners, but which does not preclude respect. In the

-streets one always sees the parish priest respectfully greeted by the

-passers by; many women kneel down to kiss his hand as in Italy or Spain.

-

-His authority is that of a patriarch, who not only wields spiritual

-power, but also, to a great extent, social and political power. He

-incarnates at once in himself the native faith so long proscribed in the

-country, resistance to the oppressor, heavenly hopes and compensation for

-human trials. As a consequence, his influence is great, for good as for

-ill.

-

-The faith of the Irish peasant is entire, unquestioning, absolute as that

-of a thirteenth century’s serf. One must see on Sundays those churches

-crowded to overflowing, and too narrow for the congregation who remain,

-silent and kneeling, on the steps and even outside the doors. One must

-see those ragged people, forming a chain by holding on to each other’s

-tatters, one behind the other, at a distance of 50 to 60 feet from the

-altar, a patch of dim light up there in the darkness of the church; or

-else they must be seen at some pilgrimage round a miraculous well or

-stream, like the Lough Derg, wallowing indiscriminately in the pond,

-washing therein their moral and physical uncleanliness, drinking the

-sacred water by the pailful, intoxicated with enthusiasm and hope.

-

-The devotees of Our Lady del Pilar, and of San Gennaro, are less

-expansive and less ardent. The Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Rosary, St.

-Philip of Neri, all the mystical armoury of the modern church have

-innumerable votaries in Ireland. One would perhaps experience some

-difficulty in finding there ten born Catholics not wearing next to their

-skin some amulet made of cloth or ivory, and invested in their eyes with

-supernatural powers. If I do not greatly err, St. Peter’s pence must find

-its more generous contributors amidst those poverty-stricken populations.

-To those imaginations of starved and half hysterical people the Roman

-pontiff appears in the far distance, all in white, in a halo of gold,

-like a superhuman vision of Justice and Pity in this world where they

-found neither the one nor the other.

-

-An Irish servant in London once asked my advice about the investment of

-her savings, some thirty pounds which she had scraped together at the

-Post Office Savings Bank. I congratulated her on her thrift, when the

-poor girl told me, her eyes bright with unshed tears:

-

-“It is for our Holy Father, that they keep in prison up there in Rome....

-I mean to bring him fifty pounds as soon as ever I get them.”

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Those things may tend to explain why the only prosperous trade in Ireland

-is the clerical trade. Every year the number of priests increases, though

-the population is decreasing. In 1871 they numbered 3,136; in 1881 they

-were 3,363, or an increase of 227, under the guidance of four archbishops

-and twenty-four bishops. The Catholic population is of three million

-persons; that gives one priest for about 900 inhabitants.

-

-It is generally admitted that each of these priests, with his church and

-his house, cannot cost much under £300 or £400 a year. That would give

-about £1,200,000 coming annually from the pockets of those labourers and

-servant girls. The tithe was never so heavy.

-

-This clergy is chiefly recruited from the class of small farmers and

-peasantry (by the reason that the other classes are for the majority

-Protestants); as a consequence the clergy share all the passions of

-their class. The agrarian revolution has no agents more active. Almost

-everywhere the parish priest is the president of the local Land League

-Board. In the stormiest meetings is always to be found a village Peter

-the Hermit, preaching the new crusade and denouncing the landlords

-with fiery eloquence; not to speak of the Sunday preaching, which is

-only another meeting closed against the police, and where landlords

-are handled with extraordinary freedom of language. One has seen Irish

-priests openly declare a shot to be an unimportant trifle, so long as

-it was sent after a landed proprietor. A few months ago a Dublin paper

-mentioned a parish in Donegal, where the priest, they asserted, had gone

-so far as to put the properties of the landlords in lottery, by tickets

-of ten shillings each. The verification of this fact would by no means

-be easy. But, given the state of mind of the Irish priest, the ardour he

-brings into the struggle, the boundless indulgence he displays towards

-agrarian outrages, the tale is by no means improbable; our Leaguers have

-done even worse. However surprising may be in our Continental eyes the

-spectacle of a whole clergy taking part against the lords in a social

-war, under the paternal eyes of their episcopate, we must remember that

-here everything tends to bring about this result:—religious passions,

-hereditary instinct, and personal interest.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-A priest who had the unlucky idea of pronouncing himself against the

-League would soon see his subsidies stopped. His flock would besides lose

-all confidence in him, and all respect for his person. I am told of a

-characteristic example of the kind of practical jokes indulged in such

-a case by the peasantry against the dissident pastor. A priest of the

-county Clare, seized by sudden scruples, took it into his head to abuse

-the League at the Sunday preaching, instead of sounding the usual praise

-in its honour. At once they sent him from the lower end of the church

-an old woman who begged to be heard directly in confession, before she

-could approach Holy Communion. The worthy man, grumbling a little at such

-an untimely fit of devotion, nevertheless acceded to her request with

-antique simplicity, and seated himself inside the confessional.

-

-“Father,” said the old woman in aloud voice, “I accuse myself of having

-this moment thought that you were a wicked bad man, who betrays his flock

-to take the part of their natural enemies....”

-

-“Amen!” answered all the congregation in a chorus.

-

-Without waiting for absolution the old woman had got up to go. The priest

-tried to imitate her. Impossible. They had placed on his seat a huge lump

-of pitch which glued him, attached him indissolubly to his place. To get

-him free they were obliged to go for help outside, to call strangers to

-the rescue. The whole village meanwhile were shaking with laughter, and

-thought the joke in the best possible taste.

-

-The Irish clergy go with the League, both because their temperament

-inclines them that way, and also because it is an imperious necessity

-of their situation; their case is rather similar to that of the _Home

-Rule_ members, who were compelled to enter the movement, whether they

-approved of it or not. However strong their hold on the mass of the rural

-population, their influence would vanish in a week if they tried to pull

-against the irresistible stream. Such sacrifices have never been a habit

-of the Roman Church.

-

-Indeed it is permitted to smile, when one sees the Tory Ministry

-soliciting the intervention of the Pope in the Irish crisis, and

-obtaining from him the sending of a special legate entrusted with the

-mission of bringing the Episcopate of Ireland back to less subversive

-ideas. It is well understood that the Pope of course sends his legate,

-and derives from his diplomatic compliance all the advantages it entails.

-But he is better aware than any one that unless he personally gave away

-one million sterling a year to the parish priests of Ireland, he would

-have little reasonable hope of success in asking them to shift their

-policy.

-

-Is it necessary to add that the Irish priest himself knows on occasion

-how to bring into his mundane relations the traditional suppleness and

-prudence of his order? A priest of Wexford, actively mixed up with the

-agrarian movement, was dining a few years ago at the house of Mr. C⸺,

-proprietor of a large landed estate in the county. Conversation turned

-upon the League, and no good was said of it. The priest listened in

-silence, without giving his sentiment either for or against the League.

-All of a sudden, with a look of assumed simplicity, he turned to his host—

-

-“Look here, Mr. C⸺,” he said, “Will you believe me? _Me impresshun is

-that there is no Land League._”

-

-The saintly man had for the last three months been vice-president of the

-board of the Land League in his district.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XIV.

-

-FORT SAUNDERS.

-

-

-                                                                   GALWAY.

-

-Galway is an old Spanish colony, planted on the western coast of

-Ireland, and which kept for a long time intimate relations with the

-mother country. Things and people have retained the original stamp to an

-uncommon degree; but for the Irish names that are to be read on every

-shop, you could believe yourself in some ancient quarter of Seville.

-The women have the olive complexion, black hair, and red petticoat of

-the _mañolas_; the houses open on a courtyard, a thing unknown in other

-parts of Ireland, as well as in Great Britain; they have grated windows,

-peep-holes in the door, and are adorned with sculptures, in the Moorish

-style; the steeples of churches affect the shape of minarets; the very

-fishermen in the port, with the peculiar shape of their boat, sails and

-nets, and something indescribable in their general outline, remind you of

-the hardy sailors of Corunna.

-

-The remembrance of seven or eight centuries of busy trade with the

-Peninsula, does not show itself solely in faces, manners, or dwelling, it

-is to be found also in local tradition. Among others, there is the story

-of the Mayor Lynch Fitz-Stephen, who gave in 1493 such a fearful example

-of ruthless justice. His only son, whom he had sent to Spain to settle

-some important affair, was coming back with the Spanish correspondent of

-the family, bringing home a rich cargo, when he entered into a conspiracy

-with the crew, appropriated the merchandise, and threw overboard the

-unfortunate Spaniard. The crime was discovered, the culprit arrested, and

-brought to trial before his own father, who was exercising the right of

-high and low justice in the district, and by him condemned to the pain of

-death. The general belief was that the Mayor would contrive to find some

-pretext to give his son a respite; and in order to supply him with that

-pretext, his relations drew up a petition of grace, which they presented

-to him, covered with signatures. Lynch listened to their request, then

-merely told them to come back for an answer on a certain day he named.

-At the appointed time the suppliants appeared again; but the first sight

-which caught their eyes was the dead body of the Mayor’s son hanging from

-one of the grated windows of his house. An inscription, placed in 1524,

-on the walls of the cemetery of St. Nicholas, records the memory of that

-event.

-

-Galway is only a big borough nowadays, where ruins are nearly as numerous

-as inhabited dwellings. From the road that skirts the Bay, after leaving

-the harbour, the long islands of Arran may be seen rising on the west;

-from another road, which goes northwards, Lough Corrib appears, famous

-for its salmon fisheries. As an historic place, the county possessed

-already the field of Aughrim, celebrated for two centuries as the spot

-where James II. lost his last battle against William III.—a battle so

-murderous that the dogs of the country retained a taste for human flesh

-for three generations after. But since the last year it has acquired

-a new celebrity: another and no less epic battle has been fought at

-Woodford in August, 1886, for the agrarian cause. The account of it is

-worth telling. Never did the character of the struggle between League and

-landlord appear in such a glaring light. All the factors in the problem

-are there, each playing its own part. It is like a vertical cut opening

-Irish society down to its very core, and permitting to see it from basis

-to summit; a supplementary chapter to Balzac’s _Paysans_.

-

-Woodford is a pretty village seated on the shore of Lough Derg on the

-slope of the hills which divide Galway from Clare. The principal

-landowners there are the Marquis of Clanricarde, Sir Henry Burke, the

-Westmeath family, Colonel Daly, and Lord Dunsandle. Agrarian hatred is

-particularly alive in that district; the Galway man is bloodthirsty,

-and counts human life as nought. Five or six years ago Mr. Blake, Lord

-Clanricarde’s agent, was shot dead, and in March, 1886, a bailiff named

-Finley, a veteran of the Crimean war, had the same fate while he was

-going to proceed to an eviction on the account of Sir Henry Burke. The

-spot is shown still where the unfortunate man was murdered and his corpse

-left twenty-four hours without sepulture, nobody daring or willing to

-bear it away. A detachment of the police in the pay of the Property

-Defence Association having settled their barracks in the vicinity of

-Woodford, the inhabitants, about one thousand in number, organized a sort

-of grotesque pageant, which made its progress along the streets of the

-town behind a coffin bearing the inscription: _Down with landlordism!_

-then concluded by burning the coffin in sight of the barracks.

-

-There are two churches, one Protestant, the other Catholic. The faithful

-who attend the first are two in number, no mere nor less, which would be

-sufficient to show how legitimate it was for the Irish to protest when

-obliged to pay the tithes of an altogether alien worship. The second

-is headed by a jolly compeer, much beloved by his parishioners for his

-good humour and liberality, Father Caen, a pastor of the old school,

-whose boast it is that he keeps the best table and cellar, and has the

-prettiest nieces in the county. He is president of the local board of

-the League; the treasurer of that committee is the _guardian of the poor

-law_ of the district, what we would call “l’administrateur du bien des

-pauvres;” but the true agent of the League—the _Deus ex machina_ of the

-place—is the secretary, Father Egan, curate of the parish, an austere,

-thin, fanatic-looking man, a peasant’s son, with all the passions of his

-race, who sucked the hatred of landlords with his mother’s milk, and ever

-remembers that many of his kindred have been reduced to emigrate, and

-that an uncle of his went mad after being evicted. A feature to be noted

-down; that priest, tall, strong, sinewy, is an excellent shot and an

-inveterate poacher. Nothing would be easier for him than obtaining leave

-from the landowners to shoot on their grounds; but he scorns the leave.

-His delight is to lurk at night till he has shot some of their big game,

-or to head openly a _battue_ for a general slaughter five miles round.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-One of the finest estates in the county is that of Lord Clanricarde, to

-which are attached three hundred and sixteen tenants.

-

-Hubert George De Burgh Canning, Marquis of Clanricarde and Baron

-Somerhill, was born 1832, according to the _Peerage_. He was never

-married, has no children, belongs to the House of Lords as Baron

-Somerhill, is a member of two or three great clubs, and lives in

-Piccadilly, at the Albany, a sort of caravanserai (not to say seraglio),

-almost exclusively a resort of rich bachelors. That is about all that is

-known of him. His tenants do not know him. The only glimpse they ever had

-of their landlord was on the following occasion. In 1874, at the funeral

-of the late Marquis, a man of about forty, with fair hair, who had come

-from London for the ceremony, was noticed among the mourners. He was said

-to be the new master. That was all: he disappeared as he had come. Save

-for that hazy and far-away remembrance, the landlord is for the Woodford

-people a mere name, a philosophical entity of whom they know nothing

-except that he has a land agent at Loughrea, a little neighbouring town,

-and that into the hands of that agent they must pay every year £19,634

-out of the product of the land. The tenants of Woodford are in that sum

-for about £1,000.

-

-The Marquis’s father died in 1874. Quite contrary to the present owner,

-he was the prototype of the Irish lord resident. Great sportsman,

-scatter-brain, violent, extravagant, but kind and open-handed, he was

-liked in spite of his numerous failings, and tradition helping him he was

-emphatically the master almost all his life long; a fact which he was

-wont to illustrate by boasting that if it pleased him to send his old

-grey mare to the House of Commons, the electors would be too happy to

-vote unanimously for the animal.

-

-In 1872, however, the Marquis’s tenants took it into their heads to cut

-the tradition, and gave their vote to a certain Captain Nolan, the _Home

-Rule_ candidate. The irascible nobleman took revenge for what he chose to

-consider as a personal insult by raising the rent of all bad electors.

-He went so far in that line that in 1882 the _Land Commissioners_ had

-to reduce them by half. That judgment could not, of course, have a

-retrospective effect and bring a restitution of the sums that had been

-paid in excess during the last ten years, and which varied from £50 to

-£100. It may be imagined how they must weigh still on the peasant’s

-heart, and what a well-prepared ground the agrarian movement was to find

-at Woodford. The successive murders of the land agent Blake and Bailiff

-Finlay were among the first and visible signs of that ferment of hatred.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Those crimes, which remained unpunished, and the responsibility of which

-is thrown at each other’s heads by the two parties, came with the usual

-accompaniment of fires, mutilations, verbal and written threats. The

-reign of terror had begun in the district; no bailiff was any longer

-willing to serve a writ or assignation. There came a time when the

-landlords nearly gave up all hope of finding a land agent to take the

-place of the one who had been murdered; at last they discovered the man—a

-certain Joyce, of Galway—a man who united an indomitable spirit with

-the most consummate skill; deeply versed in the art of talking to the

-peasant, a fine shot, carrying his potations well; ready for anything.

-A professional exploit had made his name famous in the neighbourhood.

-Having to serve writs upon several farmers, and being unable to find

-bailiffs willing to carry them, he made a general convocation in his

-office of all the debtors, with the pretext of submitting to them some

-mode of accommodation. The proposition being unanimously rejected, Joyce

-gets up, goes to the door, and after having turned the key, leans with

-his back against it; then, producing out of his pocket as many writs as

-there were farmers in his room, distributes them among the visitors. The

-poor devils were caught; according to the terms of the law, nothing but

-submission was left to them. It will not be unnecessary to add here that

-Joyce, a born Catholic, had been recently converted to Protestantism,

-which is reputed an abomination in Ireland, and consequently went by the

-name of the _renegade_. Such was the man who came to settle at Loughrea

-under protection of a special guard of constables, and hostilities soon

-began.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-The harvest of 1885 had been but indifferent, and besides, by reason of

-American competition, the price of the chief local products had fallen

-down considerably—from about 15 to 20 per cent.—which implies for the

-farmer an utter impossibility to pay his rent, unless the nett profit he

-draws from the soil be estimated above 15 or 20 per cent. of his general

-receipt. Even in Ireland reasonable landlords are to be found. Those who

-understood the situation felt for their tenants, and, without waiting to

-be asked, granted a reduction of rent. At Woodford, Lord Dunsandle and

-Colonel Daly of their own impulse, and Sir H. Burke after some demur,

-gave up 15 per cent. of the unpaid rent.

-

-As for Lord Clanricarde, he gave not the least sign of existence. When

-the November term came, his tenants demanded a reduction of 25 per cent.,

-upon which Joyce declared that not a penny was to be given up. This

-seemed so hard that it was generally disbelieved; and an opinion spread

-itself that by applying personally to the landlord justice would be

-obtained. A collective address, signed by the 316 Woodford tenants, was

-accordingly drawn up and presented to him.

-

-The Marquis of Clanricarde vouchsafed no manner of answer. Then, Father

-Egan put himself in motion. He first obtained from the Bishop of Clonfert

-that he would send a second petition to the master, representing to

-him the true state of affairs, the reduction consented to by the other

-landlords, &c. Lord Clanricarde did not even acknowledge reception of the

-prelate’s letter. Let us state here, once for all, that he never swerved

-from the attitude he had adopted from the beginning, so aggressive in its

-very stolidity. Never once did he depart from that silence, except when

-he once wrote to the _Times_ that, personally, he did not object to the

-proposed reduction, but was in the habit of leaving to his agent the

-care of that sort of thing.

-

-Seeing that there was no satisfaction whatever to be expected from him,

-the Woodford tenants imitated their landlord, and henceforth gave no

-sign of life, or paid him a single farthing. In the month of April,

-1886, Joyce resorted to the legal ways and set up prosecutions against

-thirty-eight of the principal farmers, whose debt was £20 and above,

-assuming by that move the attitude of a moderate man who has to deal with

-obvious unwillingness to pay.

-

-And it was that which gave to the Woodford affair its peculiar character,

-which made it a _test case_, a decisive trial where the contending forces

-have measured their strength, where the inmost thought of the Irish

-peasant has shown itself in full light. If the chiefs of the League had

-singled it out from amidst a hundred (as, indeed, we may believe they

-did, whatever they might aver to the contrary), they could never have

-achieved a more complete demonstration of their power. Chance, however,

-had also its usual share in the turn which affairs took. Joyce, it

-appears, had began prosecutions against seventy-eight lesser tenants, and

-at the moment when success was on the point of crowning his efforts, the

-procedure was quashed for some legal flaw.

-

-As for the bigger ones, judgment had been entered against them, and the

-execution followed. The first step was the selling out in public court

-of the tenant’s interest in his holding. Ten of the men capitulated

-immediately, paying the rent in full with interest and law costs, that

-is to say, about 80 per cent. above the original debt. As for the

-twenty-eight others, fired by political passion, pride, and the ardent

-exhortations of Father Egan, they did not waver, and allowed the sale to

-proceed.

-

-Agreeably to the usage established since the League has been supreme in

-Ireland, not one bidder came forward at the sale. The representative of

-the landlord therefore remained master of the situation, and got for a

-few shillings the interest of the twenty-eight farmers—interest which, in

-certain cases, was worth £200 and more.

-

-It now remained to evict those tenants from their farms, and take

-possession in their place. Let us remark that, being certain of having

-allowed the landlord, through the sale, to help himself to a value

-of five or six times his due, those men were bound to consider such

-an eviction a gratuitous piece of cruelty. Well knowing before-hand

-that the eviction would by no means be an easy task, for all Ireland

-breathlessly followed the course of events, Joyce singled out amongst

-the twenty-eight defaulters, the four tenants for whom the eviction was

-sure to bear the hardest character, namely, Conroy, Fahey, Broderick,

-and Saunders. These were all people of comfortable means, who had for

-many years been established on their lands, who were profoundly attached

-to the house where their children or grand-children had been born, and

-which they had themselves built, enlarged and improved at great expense;

-rural _bourgeois_ rather than peasants; men that in a French country town

-should have been mayors, _adjoints_, or municipal councillors.

-

-For each of them eviction not only meant ruin, the voluntary and

-definitive loss of a small fortune laboriously acquired, and which could

-be estimated in each case at ten or twelve times the amount of the annual

-rent; it was, besides, the upsetting of all their dearest habits, the

-destruction of home, the end of domestic felicity. “Placed between this

-result and the choice of paying £30 or £40, which he has in his strong

-box, or which he will experience no difficulty in borrowing if he has

-them not—what country-bred man would hesitate?” thought Joyce. “Conroy,

-Fahey, Broderick, and Saunders shall pay! They shall pay, and after them

-the others must inevitably follow suit.”

-

-This was very sound reasoning. But Joyce calculated without the League

-and its agent, Father Egan. The four chosen victims did not pay. With a

-resolution that must really seem heroic to whoever knows the workings

-of a peasant’s soul, Conroy, Fahey, Broderick, and Saunders unanimously

-declared that the agent might expel them by force—_if he could_—but yield

-they would not.

-

-Ah! there was a fearful struggle. It was not without the most terrible

-inner combat that they kept their word. At home they had the money ready;

-nothing could be simpler than to go and pay it. Now and then temptation

-waxed almost too strong. James Broderick is an old man of seventy years.

-One day, called to Loughrea by the tempter, he went, in company with his

-friend Fahey.

-

-“Now, look here, Mr. Broderick,” Joyce said to him, “it goes to my heart

-to evict a good man like you from such a pretty house.... You have lived

-in it for these thirty years—it is the pearl of Woodford.... Let us make

-an arrangement about all this: you pay me down your rent with for costs,

-and I give you any length of time for the rest.... His lordship will

-even give you back the tenant-right for the price he paid himself,—fifty

-shillings.... Now what do you say?”...

-

-Old Broderick wavered; he was on the point of yielding.

-

-“Indeed, Mr. Joyce, you cannot do more than that,” ... he uttered in a

-trembling voice, involuntarily feeling for his pocket-book.

-

-But Fahey was there. He took the old man’s arm and drew him aside.

-

-“It is not _time_ that we want!” he said to him. “_What we want is to

-uphold the principle!_”

-

-Truly a great word. As fine as any recorded on History’s page, for those

-who know how to understand it rightly. If the peasants can remember a

-principle when their property is in question, verily one may say that the

-times are near being fulfilled!

-

-All conciliatory means were now exhausted. It only remained to have

-recourse to force. Joyce knew better than anyone what resistance he was

-going to encounter. Personally he thought he was going to meet death. He

-went resolutely nevertheless, but not without surrounding himself with a

-regular army.

-

-The bailiffs of the place refusing to act, some had to be sent for from

-Dublin. Those bailiffs, escorted by about a hundred emergency men, were

-supported besides by five hundred constables armed with rifles and

-revolvers. Woodford lies at a distance of about twenty miles from the

-nearest railway. The traps and horses necessary to carry all these people

-had to be sent down from Dublin, nobody consenting to give any manner of

-help. The same thing occurred for provisions and for the implements of

-the siege, pickaxes, levers, iron crowbars, which were indispensable to

-the assailants, and which were brought down with the army to Portumna.

-These preparations lasted three weeks. The mobilisation, decreed by Joyce

-at the end of July, could only be completed by the 17th of August.

-

-On the next day, the 18th, this army moved forward and left Portumna in a

-column, marching on Woodford.

-

-But on their side the Leaguers had not remained inactive.

-

-All the night long squads of voluntary workmen had been hard at work.

-When the police caravan arrived in sight of the village, they found the

-road barred by trees and heaps of stones placed across the way. They were

-obliged to dismount and go round by the fields.

-

-In the meantime, from the top of the neighbouring heights horns were

-signalling the appearance of the enemy; the chapel bells began to toll

-an alarm peal. From all the points of the compass an immense multitude

-of people hastened to come and take up their position on the hills of

-Woodford.

-

-When the bailiffs made their appearance, headed by Joyce, armed to the

-teeth, by the under-sheriff whom the duty of his charge obliged to

-preside at the execution, and leading on five hundred policemen, an

-indescribable, formidable howl rose up to heaven; the Irish _wail_ which

-partakes of the lion’s roar and of the human sob, of the yell of the

-expiring beast and of the rushing sound of waters.

-

-That lugubrious hooting was to last during two entire days, with

-full-stops, _da capo_, _decrescendo_ and _rinforzando_ of great effect.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-The first house attacked by the assailants was that of Conroy. It is a

-solid, comfortable-looking dwelling, built on the bank of Lough Derg.

-To the under-sheriff’s summons, the inhabitants, posted on the roof,

-answered only by derisive laughter. The door, which was of solid oak, was

-closed and barred inside. The order was given to break it open. A few

-minutes’ work sufficed to do it.

-

-When it fell crashing under the axes, it was perceived that a wall had

-been built behind it.... A triumphant shout rose from the crowd.

-

-“A breach must be made!” thundered Joyce. The stone wall was attacked.

-Immediately, from the roof, from the windows, poured a deluge of scalding

-hot lime-water, which fell on the assailants, blinded them, burnt them,

-and sent them back howling and dancing with pain. Again the crowd

-applauded, saluting with screams of laughter every ladleful of hot water

-that took effect. The custom of Galway authorizes, it appears, that

-singular way of defending one’s house. _It is no breach of the peace._

-One can scald the bailiffs without any qualms of conscience or fear of

-consequences.

-

-Nothing loth, the Conroy family freely used the permission. The miracle

-was that they did not use more murderous weapons. But the League’s

-agents were there holding back, according to their custom, the too fiery

-spirits, and keeping them within the bounds of legal hostilities. At

-their head the priest Egan was conspicuous, loudly advising the besieged,

-pointing out to them the uncovered assailants, telling them on what

-point to direct the effort of resistance. As for the police, mute and

-motionless, they beheld the drama without taking part in it. Four hours’

-work were needed to make the breach. At last the bailiffs were able to

-enter the house, expel the inhabitants, and take possession of it. They

-were obliged literally to carry away the youngest Miss Conroy, who

-desperately clung to the walls and furniture, and refused to come out of

-her own will.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Night came, and the bailiffs have no right to carry on their proceedings

-after sunset. They were therefore obliged to postpone their operations

-till the next day. What made matters worse was, that they must

-necessarily go back to Portumna, for they need expect to find no lodgings

-in Woodford. It is easy to foretell the complication of events that now

-followed.

-

-The whole of next day was employed in the eviction of Fahey. That of

-Broderick lasted another day, and caused the arrest of twenty-seven

-persons, for in spite of the League’s efforts heads were waxing hotter

-and hotter, and the combatants began to be rather too excited on both

-sides.

-

-But where resistance took a truly epic character was in the house of

-Thomas Saunders. With twenty-three comrades he held in check all assaults

-_during four entire days_. Not content with scalding the bailiffs by

-means of pumps and cauldrons installed on purpose, he had, by a stroke of

-genius, the idea of throwing on them hives of bees, that came out enraged

-from their cells and cruelly stung everything before them. Who knows

-that there may not be in this a precious indication for future warfare!

-European strategists may before long add “the chaste dew-drinkers,”

-as Victor Hugo called them, to the pigeons and the war-dogs. However

-that may be, Joyce’s mercenaries, burnt, stung, and crest-fallen, were

-compelled, for three nights running, to retreat on Portumna.

-

-The green flag meanwhile was proudly waving its folds on the summit of

-Saunders’ house, which enraptured Ireland, intoxicated with joy at the

-news of this unprecedented siege, immediately baptized _Fort Saunders_.

-Agitation was fast spreading over the whole country. The military

-authorities judged it indispensable to send down 200 mounted men, and to

-have the place patrolled at night. In Portumna councils of war were held,

-and serious thoughts were entertained of having recourse to the antique

-battering-ram and “tortoise” in order to approach the place and succeed

-in taking it. Three days passed in new preparations and supplementary

-armaments.

-

-At last, on the 27th of August, a new assault was attempted. It failed

-like all the others, but the law must, it was felt, at all costs, be

-enforced; the police interfered about some technical point, took the

-house at the bayonet’s point and made all its inmates prisoners.

-

-Thus ended, without effusion of blood, this memorable campaign; three

-weeks’ preparation, eight days’ fighting, a thousand men on foot,

-enormous expense had been required in order to succeed in evicting four

-tenants of the Marquis of Clanricarde, out of a number of 316, and that

-in the midst of scandalous scenes which gave the noisiest publicity to

-the agrarian cause. Everybody was of opinion that enough had been done,

-and evictions were stopped.

-

-The affair at Woodford marks a date in the annals of the Irish

-revolution. One has seen in it peasants living in relatively good

-circumstances fight for principles and go to the furthest ends of

-legality,—without overstepping them. Moreover, these events have taken

-place in a county famed for its violence and represented in Parliament

-by Mr. Matthew Harris, which is saying enough; (his motto was, till

-lately, “When you see a landlord, shoot him down like a partridge”).

-Three or four years sooner such events could not have taken place without

-involving fifteen or twenty deaths of persons. Here not a single one

-occurred. One could not but acknowledge that the honour of this was due

-to the League, to its moderating and constitutional influence. In vain

-it protested that it had nothing to do with those conflicts; its agents

-and its general instructions played the first part in it. Therefore it

-reaped all the fruits of this, came out of the ordeal greater, surrounded

-with a poetical halo, sovereign. History often has such ironies. At the

-price of their domestic happiness, four obscure heroes had just won in

-face of public opinion the cause of the serfs of the glebe against the

-lords.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XV.

-

-THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.

-

-

-                                                                    SLIGO.

-

-In all the cabins I enter, the first object that meets my eyes on the

-wall, besides a portrait of Parnell or Gladstone, is, enshrined between

-the bit of sacred palm and the photograph of the emigrant son, a sheet of

-printed paper, sometimes put under a glass, and headed by these words,

-“The Plan of Campaign.” This is a summary of the instructions given by

-the League to its followers in November, 1886, and of the various means

-by which the position may be made untenable by the landlords.

-

-That order of the day of the agrarian army was, however, absent from the

-house furniture of one of my friends, Mat Cloney; he was a fisherman on

-the Garvogue, near Lough Gill, and close to the ruins of the Abbey of

-Sligo; an old man of hale and pleasing countenance, whose weather-beaten

-face was shaded by a plenteous crop of gray hair, and lighted up by two

-wonderfully bright blue eyes: a true Celt in manner and appearance. When

-I entered his cabin for the first time he was engaged in preparing his

-dinner; this consisted of a dried herring and a cold potato; but tearing

-down from a hook near the fire-place a small piece of bacon, the old man

-hastily rubbed it over a frying-pan, which he set on the dying embers; in

-it he placed the herring. A great noise and spluttering followed, then

-Mat, mindful of future feasts, thriftily hung his piece of bacon back on

-its hook, and the herring being done, sat down to his meagre repast.

-

-“You see, sir,” he said contentedly, “it gives it a relish.”

-

-I must not omit to say that poor as his fare was, he nevertheless offered

-me a share of it. I explained I had already lunched, and while he was

-discussing his meal, we entered into conversation.

-

-“You must be pretty well advanced in years,” I said, “though one would

-not think it to see how you manage your boat.”

-

-“_Shure_, sir, I was _borren_ in the _Ribillion_!”

-

-Let me here observe that this is the common answer given by many Irish

-peasants as to their age. The “Ribillion” seems to have made an epoch in

-their history, and they consider that any person over middle age must

-have been born during that momentous period. The date appears to matter

-little to them. So, though I entertained private doubts of Cloney’s being

-89 years old, I let that pass, and we went on talking.

-

-“Have you any children?”

-

-“_Shire_ I have!... Me sons they are fishermen, and me daughters are all

-marr’d, near here....”

-

-“And you live alone?”

-

-“Yes, sir, that I do.”

-

-“It must be a lonely life for you. Were you never tempted to marry again

-after your wife’s death? A fine man like you would have had no difficulty

-in finding a wife.”

-

-“Och, sir, after me ould woman died ... (with a burst of emotion) I

-always remained a _dacent widowman_ ... that I did!...”

-

-While we were talking I had been looking at the walls of the cabin, and I

-was surprised at finding none of the usual League’s documents upon them.

-I turned to Mat and expressed my surprise. Instantly Mat let fall the

-knife with which he was conveying a piece of herring to his mouth, and

-burst into loud execrations.

-

-“Och! the b⸺ villains!” he exclaimed; “the dirty never-do-well wh⸺! the

-de’il take them for his own! ... the whole lot is not worth a pennyworth

-o’ salt; ... etc., etc.”

-

-I confess I rather wondered at this violence. But as everyone has a

-perfect right to his own opinion, I did not press the point.

-

-“And you, sir, you be not English, are ye?” said Mat after a moment. He

-had suddenly grown calm again.

-

-“No, I am French.”

-

-“Och! _Shure_ the French are foine fellows. I had an uncle that fought

-the French for three days at Badajos, and he always said they were b⸺y

-devils, ... begging your pardon, sir, foine fellows they were.... Me

-uncle always said so, ... under _Bonney_ the French fought, ... b⸺d ...

-foine fellows, to be sure.... Me uncle also said they had no landlords

-down there. Now, is that true, sir?” added Mat Cloney, looking at me with

-a queer expression of countenance.

-

-No landlords? could that be true? He seemed to consider such a state of

-things suited to fairy-land.

-

-I explained that this was pure truth. In few words I told him how,

-shortly before the _Ribillion_ dear to his heart, the French peasants had

-risen as one man to get rid of their own landlords; how those landlords

-had for the most part emigrated and taken up arms against their country,

-which had caused the confiscation and sale of their lands. I added that

-those lands were now the property of the French labourers, who highly

-appreciate this state of affairs.

-

-Mat Cloney listened to me, his eyes glistening with interest. Therefore,

-I was rather surprised when I stopped, and he abruptly asked me, as a

-conclusion:

-

-“Do you know any of those Sligo gentlemen who come fishing about here,

-sir?”

-

-“Indeed, I do not. I am a total stranger in these parts. It was the

-manager at my hotel who sent me to you.”

-

-“That’s roight!” he exclaimed, as if relieved from some anxiety. “In that

-case, sir, I am going to show you something!...”

-

-He went to a corner of the cabin, and after some rummaging in an old

-sailor’s box, he produced from it a neatly folded paper which he placed

-into my hands. I opened it with some curiosity.

-

-It was a supplementary sheet of the _United Ireland_, of Dublin, where

-stood _in extenso_ the League’s Plan of Campaign.

-

-I looked at Mat Cloney. He was laughing silently. I at last understood

-the riddle. The sly fox was at heart with the League (he dubbed it _the

-Leg_; by the way, like many other Irishmen); but he judged it prudent in

-any case to dissemble such subversive feelings, when he had to do with an

-unknown person from the town; and being a peasant he rather overdid it.

-

-The ice was broken now. He let me study thoroughly the document he had

-lent me, and even enriched it with luminous commentaries, in the course

-of a pleasant day’s fishing.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-The “Plan of Campaign” seems to have had for its father Mr. John Dillon,

-one of the most universally, and the most deservedly, popular of the

-Irish members; at all events, it was introduced to the public by that

-gentleman in October, 1886, at an autumn meeting. Those mass meetings,

-held every year after the harvest, have now become an institution, a

-kind of _Witena-gemot_ of the Irish nation. People come to them from

-the farthest ends of the island, by rail, in jaunting-cars, on foot,

-on horseback, as the case may be; in such numbers that there is no

-room or shanty large enough in the country to lodge the assemblage. So

-they are open-air meetings. The particular one alluded to was convened

-at Woodford, which has become, since the memorable battle on the

-Clanricarde estate, a kind of Holy Place and agrarian Kaaba. Soon after

-the autumn meeting, the scheme was approved by the authorities, at the

-head-quarters of the League (although they prudently refrained from

-committing themselves officially to it), and expounded in the special

-supplement to the _United Ireland_, of which I hold a copy. It was to the

-following effect:—

-

-    Present rents, speaking roundly, are impossible. That the

-    landlords will press for them is certain. A fight for the

-    coming winter is therefore inevitable, and it behoves the

-    Irish tenantry to fight with a skill begotten by experience.

-    The first question they have to consider is how to meet the

-    November demand. Should combinations be formed on the lines of

-    branches of the National League, or merely by estates? We say

-    _by estates_ decidedly. Let branches of the National League,

-    if they will, take the initiative in getting the tenantry on

-    each estate to meet one another. But it should be distinctly

-    understood that the action or resolution of one estate was not

-    to bind any other, and the tenantry on every estate should be

-    free to decide upon their own course.

-

-    When they are assembled together, let them appoint an

-    intelligent and sturdy member of their body as chairman,

-    and, after consulting, decide by resolution on the amount of

-    abatement they will demand. A committee consisting, say, of

-    six and the chairman, should then be elected, to be called a

-    Managing Committee, and to take charge of the half-year’s rent

-    of the tenant, should the landlord refuse it.

-

-    Everyone should pledge himself (1) to abide by the decision of

-    the majority; (2) to hold no communication with the landlord

-    or any of his agents, except in presence of the body of the

-    tenantry; (3) to accept no settlement for himself which is not

-    given to every tenant on the estate.

-

-    On the rent-day, the tenantry should proceed to the rent-office

-    in a body. If the agent refuses to see them in a body, they

-    should on no account confer with him individually, but depute

-    the chairman to act as their spokesman and acquaint them of

-    the reduction which they require. No offer to accept the rent

-    “on account” should be agreed to. Should the agent refuse,

-    then EVERY TENANT MUST HAND TO THE MANAGING COMMITTEE THE

-    HALF-YEAR’S RENT WHICH HE TENDERED TO THE AGENT.

-

-    To prevent any attempt at a garnishee, this money should be

-    deposited by the Managing Committee with some one reliable

-    person, _whose name would not be known to any but the members

-    of the committee_.

-

-    This may be called the estate fund, and it should be absolutely

-    at the disposal of the Managing Committee for the purposes

-    of the fight. Broken tenants who are unable to contribute

-    the reduced half-year’s rent should at least contribute the

-    percentage demanded from the landlord, that is the difference

-    between the rent demanded and that which the tenantry offer

-    to pay. A broken tenant is not likely to be among the first

-    proceeded against, and no risk is incurred by the general body

-    in taking him on these terms.

-

-    Thus, practically a half-year’s rent of the estate is put

-    together to fight the landlord with. This is a fund which,

-    if properly utilised, will reduce to reason any landlord in

-    Ireland.

-

-    How should the fund be employed? The answer to this question

-    must to some extent depend upon the course the landlord will

-    pursue; but in general we should say it must be devoted to the

-    support of the tenants who are dispossessed either by sale or

-    ejectment.

-

-    It should be distributed by the committee to each evicted

-    tenant in the proportion of his contribution to the fund. A

-    half-year’s rent is supposed to maintain a tenant for a half

-    year, and based upon this calculation, a tenant who funded say

-    £50 would be entitled when evicted to receive £2 per week.

-

-    _But not one penny should go in law costs._ This should be made

-    an absolute rule. For to pay law costs, such as attorney’s

-    letters, writs and judgments incurred by the landlord, is to

-    arm your enemy for the quarrel and furnish him with provisions

-    to boot. In a determined fight there are no “law costs” on

-    the side of the tenantry, and they should remain out for ever

-    rather than pay those which the landlord incurs in fleecing

-    them.

-

-    Ejectment is the most common of the landlord’s remedies. Every

-    legal and constitutional obstacle which could oppose or delay

-    eviction should be had recourse to, for every hour by which the

-    sheriff is delayed in one eviction gives another brother tenant

-    so much more grace. There are only 310 days in the sheriff’s

-    year, and he must do all the evictions in a whole county within

-    the time.

-

-    If, after eviction, a tenant is re-admitted as caretaker he

-    should go in, but _never_ upon the understanding that he would

-    care any other farm but his own. Should the tenant not be

-    re-admitted, shelter must be procured for him immediately by

-    the Managing Committee, and then, if necessary, a day appointed

-    when all would assemble to build him a hut on some spot

-    convenient to the farm where the landlord could not disturb

-    him. Wooden huts, such as those supplied by the League, waste

-    too much of the funds and become valueless when the tenant is

-    re-admitted.

-

-    Sale is the resort of the landlord when he proceeds by writ

-    or process as an ordinary creditor. From eight to twelve days

-    are allowed after service of the writ before judgment can be

-    marked. The sheriff may seize cattle if he finds them on the

-    farm, or he may seize and sell the tenant’s interest in the

-    farm. A tenant who has his mind made up for the fight will

-    have his cattle turned into money before the judgment comes

-    on. Every tenant who neglects to dispose of them is preparing

-    himself to accept the landlord’s terms, for he will not wish

-    to see the emergency men profit by taking his cattle at some

-    nominal price, and if he buys he is in reality handing the

-    landlord the amount of his demand. Sale of a farm is not of so

-    much consequence. Every farm sold in this manner during the

-    agitation either has come or is bound to come back to its owner

-    even on better terms than he first held it. But if a man has

-    a very valuable interest in his farm, he can place it beyond

-    the sheriff’s power by mortgaging it to some one to whom he

-    owes money. Mortgage effected thus for a _bonâ fide_ debt or

-    consideration bars the sheriff’s power of conveyance at a sale.

-    If the landlord or emergency men be represented, the cattle

-    should not be allowed to go at a nominal sum. They should be

-    run up to their price, and, if possible, left in the hands of

-    emergency men at full price. It should be borne in mind that if

-    the full price be not realised the sheriff could seize again

-    for the balance.

-

-    In bidding for a farm it should also be run to amount of debt,

-    but by a man of straw, or some one who, if it were knocked

-    down, would ask the sheriff for time to pay. By making the

-    landlord’s bidder run it up to the amount of debt and costs,

-    and leaving it on his hands, the sheriff cannot follow the

-    tenant further. No auction fees should be allowed. A farm held

-    on a lease for a life or lives, any one of which is extant,

-    cannot be sold by the sheriff. After sale a tenant is still

-    in possession of holding until a fresh writ is served and a

-    judgment for title marked against him. All this involves the

-    landlord in fresh costs. The eviction may then follow, and the

-    observations above recorded in case of ejectment or eviction

-    apply here.

-

-    Distress, another of the landlord’s remedies, cannot be

-    resorted to for more than one year’s rent. Few landlords can

-    have recourse to this without exposing themselves to actions.

-    The chief points to attend to are:—That distress must be made

-    by landlord or known agent, or bailiff authorized by warrant

-    signed by the landlord or known agent; that particulars of

-    distress be served; seizure on Sunday is unlawful; seizure

-    before sunrise or after sunset is unlawful; or for any rent

-    due more than one year. Distress is illegal if growing crops

-    be seized, or the implements of a man’s trade; and if other

-    property be on farm to ensure landlord’s demand, it is

-    illegal to seize beasts of the plough, sheep, or implements

-    of husbandry necessary for the cultivation of the land. These

-    points should be carefully watched when landlord has recourse

-    to distress.

-

-    Bankruptcy proceedings are too costly a machinery for general

-    use, and no landlord is likely to have recourse to them.

-

-    It is unnecessary to add that landlords, and their partisans on

-    the magisterial bench and among the Crown officials, will do

-    all in their power to twist the operation of the law so as to

-    harass the tenants.

-

-    A tenant taking possession of his house to shelter his family

-    from the severity of the winter is not likely to escape. A

-    summons for trespass must be preceded by a warning to the

-    tenant if he be found in possession. We have known a case where

-    the father complied with this warning, and on the bailiff’s

-    next visit the mother only was found, and she complied. Next

-    time the eldest daughter only was in possession, and so on

-    through the length of a long family, such as an evicted tenant

-    nearly always has. A goodly time had been saved before the

-    father’s turn came again. He was fined and went to gaol. The

-    prison then lost its terror for him. When he came out he stuck

-    boldly to his home, and he soon won the victory which rewards

-    determination.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-    The fullest publicity should be given to evictions, and every

-    effort made to enlist public sympathy. That the farms thus

-    unjustly evicted will be left severally alone, and everyone

-    who aids the eviction shunned, is scarcely necessary to say.

-    But the man who tries boycotting for a personal purpose is a

-    worse enemy than the evicting landlord, and should be expelled

-    from any branch of the League or combination of tenants. No

-    landlord should get one penny rent on any part of his estates,

-    wherever situated, so long as he has one tenant unjustly

-    evicted. This policy strikes not only at the landlord but the

-    whole ungodly crew of agents, attorneys, and bum-bailiffs.

-    Tenants should be the first to show their sympathy with

-    one another, and prompt publicity should be given to every

-    eviction, that the tenants of the evictor wherever he holds

-    property may show their sympathy.

-

-    Such a policy indicates a fight which has no half-heartedness

-    about it, and it is the only fight which will win.

-

-Well may the author of the “Plan of Campaign” wind up his catechism by

-the appropriate remark that “such a policy indicates a fight which has no

-half-heartedness about it.” Never before was such a tremendous weapon of

-social war put in motion. Never before, in the whole course of history,

-was such a forcible ultimatum drafted for the consideration of the

-adverse party.

-

-Leaving details aside, and the minute instructions on the true mode of

-skirmishing with the myrmidons of the law, the idea of using the very

-rent claimed by the landlord as a provision for feeding the struggle

-against him is in itself perfection—a real masterpiece of strategy. An

-artist can only feel the warmest admiration for such a combination of

-everything that is most pleasant to the heart of the agrarian warrior

-and most deadly to the landlord’s cause. As an orator of the League (Mr.

-W. O’Brien) has put it: “We have discovered a weapon against landlordism,

-the mere threat and terror of which have already brought down

-rack-renters to their knees. We have discovered a weapon which feudal

-landlordism can no more resist than a suit of armour of the middle ages

-can resist modern artillery.” And the country where such an admirable

-paper has been penned by its political leaders is supposed by its foes to

-be unable to rule its own affairs! This is unfairness with a vengeance.

-Let those meet its provisions, since they are so very clever.

-

-The wonder, however, is not that such a policy should have been dreamed

-of. Similar plans of warfare have more than once been drawn out in the

-council chamber of parties. The wonder is that this one should have been

-deemed practicable by the farmers of Ireland; that it should have been

-unanimously accepted by them; and, what is more, put at once into effect.

-Another wonder is that it should have been found _lawful_, on the best

-legal authority, and that it should have remained unopposed by the “Four

-Courts” and “the Castle.” The greatest wonder of all is that it should

-have enlisted the warm and public support not only of the lower ranks of

-the clergy all over the island, but of the Episcopate itself; not only

-of the Episcopate but of the Pope, since neither his special envoy in

-Ireland nor his Holiness personally in any encyclical letter, have spoken

-one word in condemnation of the “Plan of Campaign.”

-

-It has been in operation now for over one year; it has spread as far

-as the leaders of the League have deemed it expedient, for thus far

-they seem to have used it only moderately. “We did not desire,” they

-say, “and we do not desire now that the ‘Plan of Campaign’ should be

-adopted anywhere, except where the tenants have a just and moderate and

-unimpeachable case.” But, none the less, it hangs as a formidable threat

-over the heads of the doomed landlords. At a moment’s notice it may be

-extended to the whole island, as it has been already to some hundred

-estates in twenty-two counties.

-

-An idea of the state of affairs may be gathered from the account given by

-the _Freeman’s Journal_ (December 3, 1886) of the scene witnessed on Lord

-de Freyne’s property in county Sligo. His tenants asked for an abatement

-of 20 per cent., and, being refused, they decided to adopt the “Plan of

-Campaign.”

-

-    There is nothing in the nature of a town or even a village

-    at Kilfree Junction, there being only two or three one-story

-    thatched cottages within sight of it. In one of these, the

-    nearest to the station, the rents were received by Mr. William

-    Redmond, M.P.; the Rev. Canon O’Donoghue, D.D.; Rev. Father

-    Henry, C.C.; and the Rev. Father Filan, C.C. The operations of

-    receiving the rents, entering amounts, and giving receipts to

-    the tenants occupied the greater part of the day, commencing

-    in early morning and continuing far in the afternoon. Although

-    the situation was rather a depressing one for the poor people

-    exposed to all the severity of the elements, they seemed

-    to be one and all animated by the greatest enthusiasm. The

-    interior of the cottage in which the rents were being collected

-    presented a spectacle really unique in its way. The first room,

-    a sort of combination of kitchen, sitting-room, and shop, was

-    crowded almost to suffocation by men and a few women, who were

-    sheltering from the snow which fell in great white flakes

-    without. There was no grate, but a few turf sods burned on

-    the hearth, while above them hung a kettle, suspended from an

-    iron hook fixed from the quaint old chimney. In the centre of

-    the bedroom leading off the apartment was a small table, at

-    which Mr. Redmond, M.P., the clergymen whose names are given

-    above, and one of the leading members of the local branch of

-    the National League were seated receiving the tenants’ rents.

-    The room was densely crowded, but the utmost order and decorum

-    prevailed, and the whole proceedings were conducted in the most

-    punctilious and business-like manner.

-

-    The tenant handed the money to one of the gentlemen at the

-    table, his name was duly entered with the amount paid by him

-    into a book, and he was handed back a printed receipt for the

-    amount which he had lodged.

-

-    As the day wore on, the pile of bank notes upon the table

-    mounted higher and higher, and the rows of glistening

-    sovereigns grew longer and longer, until they stretched across

-    the table like streams of yellow ore. It was difficult to

-    realise how those bleak western plains had ever produced so

-    much money, and the conviction seemed to force itself upon the

-    mind that a considerable part of it had either been earned by

-    work across the Channel, or in remittances from friends and

-    relations on the other side of the broad Atlantic.

-

-    “Father,” exclaimed one of the younger men, pushing excitedly

-    his aged parent into the room where the rents were being paid

-    over, “come along; you have lived to strike a blow for freedom

-    and Ireland.” The words were uttered with earnestness and

-    enthusiasm. There are upwards of 300 tenants upon this estate

-    alone who have adopted the “Plan,” and a further sitting will

-    be necessary in order to receive the remaining lodgments.

-

-    A couple of policemen, who looked chilled and spiritless,

-    walked about the platform, but made no attempt to interfere

-    with the proceedings.

-

-It would be useless to add the least comment to such a picture. When

-similar scenes are witnessed everywhere over a country, and accepted by

-every one as the natural consummation of events, and the law is impotent

-to prevent them, the Revolution is not impending—it is practically

-accomplished in the mind of all classes.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XVI.

-

-SCOTTISH IRELAND.

-

-

-                                                              ENNISKILLEN.

-

-If you did not know beforehand that you are entering a new Ireland

-through Enniskillen, an Ireland, Scotch, Protestant, manufacturing, a

-glance through the carriage-window would suffice to reveal the fact.

-Over the hill, on the right, a fine country-house waves to the wind, as

-a defiance to the League, his orange-coloured flag, the colours of the

-“_Unionists_.” The landlords of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, who are

-Orangemen, as well as others, dare not proclaim their opinions so boldly,

-hoist them at the top of the main mast, so to say; for it might simply

-cost them their lives. You must come to “loyal Ulster” to see such acts

-of daring, for the simple reason that they are without danger here.

-

-Another symptom, more eloquent still than the colour of the flag, is

-the aspect of the landscape; no more uncultivated fields, no more

-endless bogs and fens. Instead of those long, red, or black streaks

-of peat, alternating with consumptive oat and potato-fields, green,

-fat meadows, mown by steam, studded with cows, in the most prosperous

-condition, spread themselves before your eyes. Some trees are to be seen

-now. The hedges are in good repair, the horses well harnessed to solid

-carts; the hay-stacks have a symmetrical outline, and vast fields of

-flax nod under the breeze; the farm-houses are well built, flanked by

-neat kitchen-gardens; in short, all gives the general impression of a

-properly cultivated land. Nothing like the agricultural opulence of Kent

-or Warwickshire though, but the normal state of a tolerably good land,

-where human industry is not fighting against an accumulation of almost

-insuperable obstacles.

-

-Is it that the law is different in Ulster? Not so, but the custom is.

-From immemorial times the tenant-right has been admitted here; and in

-consequence the farmer has never hesitated to introduce the necessary

-improvements, and to invest his hoard in the land, sure as he is to

-profit by it.

-

-That tenant is three times out of five of Scotch origin; three times out

-of five he belongs to the Protestant persuasion (Episcopal, Presbyterian,

-Methodist); there is not between him and his landlord the antagonism of

-race and worship which is to be found in other provinces. The landlord

-himself fulfils his duty better, and does not affect to spend abroad

-the money he draws from his estate; often that landlord is some guild

-or municipal corporation of London or elsewhere, which perhaps does not

-make the best use possible of its income, but is nevertheless obliged

-to justify more or less its privilege by some philanthropic foundation,

-trials of culture on the large scale, innovation, and examples.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Lastly, Ulster is a neighbour to Scotland, and belongs to the same

-geological, ethnological, commercial, and religious system. Capital is

-less timorous here. It ventures to come, to stay, to circulate. By the

-side of agriculture there are important factories, which help to sustain

-and feed it. Instead of keeping invariably to oats, turnips, and the

-time-honoured potato, the farmers grow flax on a large scale for the

-400,000 spindles which are spinning at Belfast, Dundalk, and Drogheda.

-

-A certain tendency to aggregate small holdings, and to constitute in

-that way great and middling farms, has been developing lately in Ulster.

-The peasants are better lodged and fed than elsewhere in Ireland. They

-find day-work more easily because agriculture is conducted there on more

-scientific principles, and they are not condemned to remain idle four

-days out of seven. In short, the economic condition of Scotch Ireland,

-without being such as to be offered as a pattern to the civilised world,

-is about as good as possible under the feudal _régime_ and landlordism.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                              LONDONDERRY.

-

-The signs of that relative prosperity are obvious. Thus in the

-neighbourhood of Derry (we say Londonderry, but the natives all say

-Derry), you observe with pleasure a line of tramcars moved by steam

-machinery, which puts remote places in communication with the railway.

-The carriages are of superior make, divided into three classes, towed

-by an engine heated with petroleum. Coming, as you do, out of Mayo and

-Galway, that steam tramway puffs in your face a breath of civilisation.

-You seem to enter a different world.

-

-Derry, with its active traffic, its elegant iron bridge over the

-Foyle, the fine, new buildings which attest its wealth, justifies that

-impression. It is the capital of the famous “Ulster plantation” of James

-I., entrusted by him to the “Honourable Irish Company,” which included

-twelve guilds of the city of London. For a century or two those grants of

-land did not answer as had been expected. But they have ended, in the

-course of time, by being prosperous. The municipal estates of Coleraine

-and Derry are accounted now the most flourishing in the island.

-

-Yet it does not follow that the tenant’s situation is very brilliant,

-even in Ulster. One of the counties of the province, Donegal, is the

-poorest in all Ireland, and two or three others are not much better. Even

-in the richest parts the tenant bears chafingly the yoke of landlordism.

-The Antrim Tenant Association went so far this year as to ask for a 50

-per cent. reduction on rent, owing to the low price of produce and the

-sheer impossibility of going on paying at the previous rate. It must be

-noted that tenant-right being rigorously observed in Ulster, the farmer

-always pays when he is able; for any remissness in paying would diminish

-by as much the value of his share in the proprietorship, which is

-estimated on an average at 8 or 10 times the annual farm rent.

-

-The newspapers of the county, even when unfavourable to agrarian

-revendications, unanimously acknowledge that by reason of the constant

-going down of prices, resulting from American competition, the present

-condition of the agriculturist is about as bad as it was in the worst

-famine times. All the farmers without exception, be they of Scotch or

-Irish race, aver that they actually pay from their own pockets every

-penny they give the landlords; that is to say, they borrow it in the

-shape of a loan on the value of their tenant-right.

-

-Such a state of things cannot continue. It explains how it is that

-Presbyterian peasants, the most ardent enemies of Papistry—in theory—none

-the less give the majority, even in Ulster itself, to the representatives

-of Home Rule and the liquidation of landed property.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                        PORTRUSH AND THE GIANT’S CAUSEWAY.

-

-Portrush is a delicious sea-side place, at the mouth of Lough Foyle,

-on the most wonderful coast in Europe; it is seated on the edge of the

-Antrim table-land, which is of volcanic origin: probably a dependency

-of Scotland geologically, rather than belonging properly to Ireland, to

-which it came and welded itself, at some unknown epoch. The traveller

-has there the agreeable surprise of a delightful hotel—one should say a

-perfect one—a regular miracle of comfort; and the still greater surprise

-of seeing there the only electric railway actually working on this

-planet. That bijou-line is used to take the visitors to the wonder of

-Ireland, the Giant’s Causeway. It ascends on the sea-side an acclivity

-of about three to four hundred yards, and runs over a length of five

-miles up to Bushmills, where the generators of electricity are set to

-work by hydraulic power. Nothing is so fresh or unexpected as that

-drive in open carriages. The train ascends lustily along the electric

-guiding-rail in the midst of a well-nourished fire of sparkles called

-to life by its iron hoofs. As it rises higher the prospect gets wider

-and wider, and you get a view of the Scotch mountains only fifteen miles

-distant, while the most extraordinary basaltic formations are following

-one another under your eye along the coast.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-The Antrim table-land, so geologists tell us, was formed by a layer of

-lava three or four hundred yards high, spread over the chalky bottom of

-the sea. Of the volcanoes which vomited that lava no vestige is to be

-seen to-day. The glaciers, tumbling down from the neighbouring heights,

-have cleared them away. In times remote, that table-land extended across

-to Scotland, to which it united Ireland as by a sort of prodigious bridge

-of lava. But the unremitting, incessant, work of the waters has eaten

-away by degrees the cretaceous masses which supported it. The arches

-of the bridge were then dislocated and precipitated into the ocean.

-Only some traces of it on both sides are left standing now: the Giant’s

-Causeway in Ireland, the point of Cantire in Scotland, and between the

-two, the little Island of Rathlin.

-

-Along the coast of Antrim the waves continuing their destructive work, go

-on gnawing the foundations of the cliffs, which they dig and carve like

-lacework. Numberless grottoes, rocky needles shaped into the likeness of

-steeples, deep chasms at the bottom of which the foaming waters are for

-ever contending, are the result of that perennial work.

-

-Occasionally, as at Dunluce, to the fantastic work of nature, some ruin

-that was once an illustrious stronghold, whose walls, literally hanging

-over the abyss, seem to be attached to the firm ground only by a curved

-arch of half-a-yard’s breadth, adds an element of tragic poetry. Under

-the rock which bear those dilapidated walls, the sea has dug for itself

-caves which are resounding night and day with the deafening noise of the

-beating waves. It is grand and terrible in summer; one can imagine what

-it must be when the tempest of a winter night unloosens its fury within

-those caverns.

-

-Naturally they are, more than any other place in the world, rich in

-legendary lore. The M’Quillans, to whom belonged Dunluce Castle, boast

-an antiquity which outshines greatly that of the descendants of the

-Crusaders. These are not people to be content, like Montesquieu, with two

-or three hundred years of acknowledged nobility. They came from Babylon,

-it appears, at an epoch exceptionally prehistoric, and can trace their

-origin back to 4,000 years ago. The only branch in existence now dwells

-in Scotland, and bear the title of lords of Antrim and Dunluce.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-At Bushmills the electric train stops. There you alight and take your

-seat in the car which brings you to the Causeway Hotel. Here, as the

-air is decidedly bracing, and the majority of the tourists English,

-luncheon is ready, as you may imagine. The classic salmon despatched in

-company with a glass of ale or porter, the only thing to do is to look to

-business and visit the marvels of the place. A wall, which the provident

-administration of the hotel have raised for purposes of safety, hides

-them as yet from your sight. When you have passed that obstacle you find

-yourself within a sort of circus, delineated by the cliffs, and at the

-extremity of which descends a path that looks anything but safe. Total

-absence of causeway. Where must we look for it? This a swarm of guides,

-cicerones, boatmen, beggars of all descriptions, offer to show you. They

-all speak at the same time, fight, wrangle, make you deaf with their

-jabbering. Wise is he who sends them to the devil, and follows peacefully

-the pathway which goes to the extremity of the circuit, turns alone round

-the foot of the cliff on the right, and penetrates, unaccompanied, into

-the neighbouring bay. He will have the joy of a powerful, wholly personal

-sensation, unalloyed by any impure element. But alas! how is one to guess

-that? You think you are doing the right thing in giving the lead to a

-professional guide. You choose among the howling crew the less ruffianly

-face, and you deliver yourself into the hands of a cicerone. Fatal error!

-Henceforward you cease to belong to yourself. You are no longer a being

-endowed with reason and volition, with the free exercise of your rights;

-you are an article of luggage in the hands of a porter, a disarmed

-traveller in the power of a Calabrian desperado.

-

-Instead of taking you to the bay on the right, the arbiter of your

-destiny begins by laying down as a dogma that the only means of seeing

-the causeway properly is to approach it by sea. On the same occasion you

-shall visit the marine caves. Allured by that programme, you follow the

-man, and you embark with him in a boat rowed by two oarsmen, who greet

-your advent rapturously.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Five minutes later you find yourself in total darkness under the oozing

-vault of a cavern, where the fluctuations of the mountainous waves now

-let the boat sink suddenly five or six yards down, now heave it up

-against the roof, and threaten to shiver your skull to pieces. In the

-midst of that frantic jogging and tossing the guide lights up a Bengal

-flame, in order to display to better advantage the variegated tints of

-the damp walls, or, it may be, to create the said tints, if they do not

-exist. Then he lets off a pistol in your ear to awake the echoes of the

-cavern, which answer to the call with deafening unanimity.

-

-This is the “psychological moment.” The rowers, laying down their oars,

-take off their caps and hold them to you, explaining at the same time

-that gunpowder is expensive. You hasten to accede to the request, and

-soon after you find yourself, not without pleasure, in the daylight again.

-

-Not for long, however; for you are expected to do another cavern. You

-submit meekly to the programme. Again that homicidal tossing; another

-Bengal flame; a second pistol shot. This time the boatmen offer you a box

-of geological specimens. As it is, you happen to abhor geology; but how

-is one to resist people who have him in their power in a marine cave?

-

-Liberation comes in time. You breathe again. The miscreants have the face

-to mention a third cavern! But this time you rebel. “No more caverns! The

-causeway instantly!”

-

-You double a little promontory, and after two or three oar-strokes you

-land on what seems to you at first a quay with a pavement made with

-hexagon slabs.

-

-“Here you are, sir! This is the Giant’s Causeway.” Let us confess it

-candidly: the first impression is disappointment. Is it then that

-famous Causeway, that unrivalled wonder? You are ready to believe in

-a mystification. But this is only a passing impression for which the

-guides, not the Causeway, are responsible.

-

-The truth is, you must not approach it by sea if you wish to see it well.

-It is by land only that it can be understood, like a symphony which

-would lose half its charm if executed in the open air. The treason of

-the guides is so cruel that it really cries for vengeance and must be

-denounced.

-

-At last you have managed to get rid of them, and leaving the Causeway,

-you have climbed up the steep neighbouring cliffs. And now looking round,

-you are struck with stupefaction and rapture at the spectacle which

-offers itself to your eyes. That sort of quay or footpath you deemed at

-first mean or insignificant is in reality, when viewed properly, the most

-stupendous whim of nature. Imagine a formidable array of forty thousand

-columns of prismatic shape (some one gifted with patience has numbered

-them), rising tall and majestic, and pressed against each other so as

-to form a continuous, almost level pavement, which emerges from the sea

-like a quay of marble. The symmetry of that pavement is so remarkable,

-all those shafts of columns are so well clamped together, that it seems

-almost impossible to admit that this is not human work. You fancy you are

-walking on the hexagonal slabs of some Babylonian palace, whose walls the

-storm has destroyed. These paving-stones are neat and even, about one

-foot wide, and perfectly regular. Towards the middle of the quay they

-rise in a sort of swelling, which permits one to study their anatomy and

-to perceive that they are really formed by the section of as many upright

-parallel prismatic columns.

-

-There are three Causeways,—the Great, the Little, and the Middle

-Causeway. They occupy the centre of a semi-circular bay, formed by lofty

-cliffs, which let you see under a thin covering of clay and grass other

-rows of basaltic columns that show their profile, and have been called

-“the Organ.” On the right the bay is limited by a jutting rock, above

-which tower two or three needles—“the Chimneypots.” A local tradition

-relates that the Invincible Armada, driven against the cliffs by a strong

-gale, mistook the needles for the towers of Dunluce, and stormed them

-uselessly a whole day long.

-

-Beyond those basaltic piers a spring of sweet water forms the “Giant’s

-Well;” further on a rock, roughly shaped as a church desk, is called

-“the Pulpit.” All those sports of nature compose a whole truly unique

-and wonderful. Neither the Alps, nor the chain of the Andes, nor Mount

-Vesuvius, nor Etna, can give you such an impression of grandeur—are able

-to that degree to put you as it were into communion with the mysteries of

-labouring Nature.

-

-What strikes you further about those basaltic formations is that they

-are both colossal, like all works directly resulting from the great

-cosmic forces, and at the same time almost Greek by the quality and

-symmetry of their arrangements. For once the volcanos seem to have had

-the whim to work according to the canons of art. It is both human and

-super-human—verily a Giant’s Causeway!

-

-The Giant Fin M’Coul, so the legend says, was the guardian genius of

-Ireland. He had for a rival a certain Scotch Giant of mighty conceit and

-insolence, whose boast it was that none could beat him. The sea alone,

-if that Scotch braggart was to be believed, prevented his coming to let

-M’Coul feel the might of his arm, as he was afraid of getting a cold if

-he attempted to swim across the Straits. So he remained at home. M’Coul

-was riled at last by that swaggering. “Since thou art afraid to get

-wet,” he cried to his rival, “I am going to throw a causeway between

-Scotland and Ireland, and we shall see then whether thou darest use it!”

-The building of the bridge took only a few thousand years, and then the

-Scot, having no pretence left, accepted the challenge, was beaten flat,

-and obliged to eat humble pie. After which, with true Irish generosity,

-the good-natured giant gave him his daughter in marriage, and allowed him

-to come and settle near him, which the Scot accepted, nothing loth, Erin

-being an infinitely sweeter and generally superior country to his own.

-But perhaps, after all, M’Coul found no cause to rejoice over the match

-he had arranged for his daughter, as he subsequently allowed the sea to

-destroy his work so as to prevent any more Scots from settling in his

-dominions. Only some of its piles remain standing, one of which is the

-Isle of Rathlin, half-way across the Straits.

-

-The legend, as you see, is not so foolish. It answers at all points

-to geological data, and even to historic truth, viz., the invasion of

-Ulster by the Scots. But, let its origin be what it may, the fact remains

-that the Giant’s Causeway, with its neighbour, Portnoffen Bay, the most

-perfect amphitheatre in the world, with the marvellous colonnade of

-the Pleaskin, Dunluce Castle, Dunseverick, and the bridge of rope of

-Carrick-a-Rede, thrown over a chasm that measures a hundred feet above

-the waters,—constitute one of the grandest, most moving spectacles

-that the traveller may see. You can go round the world without having

-such extraordinary sights. Add to it that few of the gems of nature

-are of so easy an access. From Paris you can be on the coast of Antrim

-in twenty hours, by London, Liverpool, and Belfast. Portrush, with its

-admirable sea-shore, its electric railway, and stupendous cliffs, is

-the ideal frame for a honeymoon excursion. I had resolved to recommend

-it to tourists, and to point out the guides of the Causeway to public

-execration. Now I have done my duty.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                                  BELFAST.

-

-The capital of Ulster is naturally the most flourishing town of Ireland.

-Whereas the others decrease in population and wealth, Belfast is rapidly

-thriving. From 20,000 inhabitants, which it numbered at the beginning

-of the century, it has risen in eighty years to 210,000. Another ten

-years and it will outdo Dublin itself. It is a manufacturing city as

-well as a big trading port. By an exception, unique in the island, it

-occupies a great number of workers, male and female—60,000, at the

-lowest computation—for the most part, in the weaving trade and naval

-construction. A single linen factory, that of Messrs. Mulholland, gives

-work to 29,000 pairs of hands. It is those weaving looms which utilize

-the product of the 110,000 acres of flax fields in Ulster. Out of

-nineteen ships of over 300 tons annually built in the docks of the island

-eighteen come out of the Belfast wharves. It is, in short, the maritime

-gate of Irish import and export—the insular suburb of Liverpool and

-Glasgow.

-

-As a consequence, signs of prosperity are showing themselves everywhere.

-The public walks are vast and carefully kept, the houses well built, the

-shops substantial and elegant, the educational establishments important

-and richly endowed. The town has a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon aspect. London

-fashions are scrupulously followed there. If you enter the Botanical

-Garden, maintained by voluntary contributions, you find there the

-lawn-tennis, the dresses, the ways of the metropolis. If you follow the

-road up to Cave Hill, one of the heights on the western side of Belfast,

-you embrace a vast landscape, where the flying steamers on the Lagan, the

-smoking factory-chimneys, the innumerable and opulent villas round its

-shores, all speak of wealth and prosperity.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-The population is about equally divided between Protestants and

-Catholics. The consequence is that party hatred and the struggle for

-local influence are far more ardent and long-lived here than in places

-where one of the two elements has an overwhelming majority. Electoral

-scuffles easily turn to bloody battles; political anniversaries—that of

-the Battle of the Boyne, above all—are a pretext for manifestations which

-often degenerate into regular battles.

-

-Belfast is the bulwark of Orangeism; and Orangeism may be described as

-Protestant and loyalist fanaticism, as opposed to Catholic and national

-fanaticism. Shankhill Road, which is frequently used as a battle-field by

-the antagonistic parties, is a long suburb which divides as a frontier

-line the Orangeist from the Irish quarters.

-

-Hardly one pay-day passes without the public-houses of that suburb being

-the theatre of some pugilistic feat accomplished by some voluntary

-representatives of the opposite camps. If the police happen to rush into

-the fray, reinforcements are called from either side; stones, cudgels,

-revolvers come to the rescue, and, on the morrow, the jails are filled

-with prisoners, and the hospitals with the dead and the wounded.

-

-Sad to relate, it is the clergy on both sides who incite them to those

-fratricidal struggles. There are certain Protestant preachers who are

-in no way behindhand in bitterness and virulent abuse with the most

-fanatic priest of Roscommon or Mayo. I have heard personally in Falls

-Road a Methodist preaching in the open air incite his audience to the

-extermination of Papists in strains which the creatures of Cromwell would

-not have disowned.

-

-In order that nothing should be missing to the parallel, Ulster has its

-Orangeist League, not unlike the National League of Ireland (save for

-the respect of legality and the general moderation of proceedings).

-That League is formed into battalions and companies which are privately

-drilled, they say, and lose no occasion to make a pageant in the streets

-with accompaniment of trumpets and drums, and whose ways remind one of

-the Salvation Army.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-On the whole, Ulster is the only province of Ireland where the Unionist

-forces are about equally matched with the party of Home Rule; that is

-to say, the former command a majority in Antrim, part of Down, part

-of Armagh, part of Derry and Donegal, whilst the Home Rulers have the

-stronger array of voters in the remaining parts of the province. Except

-in the above-delineated band of north-eastern territory, the result of

-the elections is always taken for granted beforehand all over the island,

-and is for—Home Rule. But this is not saying that the contest is at all

-passionate even in Belfast. I happened to be there on the occasion of the

-General Election of 1886, and was most struck by the comparative calm of

-the population pending the momentous ballot. I could not help expressing

-my surprise, over the mahogany, to my host, a wealthy mill-owner, a

-zealous Presbyterian, and an active Orangeist into the bargain, to whom

-an English friend had given me a letter of introduction.

-

-“You wonder at our calm?” he said. “The explanation is very simple. In

-Ireland the respective position of parties can hardly be much altered by

-the incidents of the struggle. Whether the Home Rulers take one seat from

-us or we gain one on them, we shall neither of us be much benefited by

-it. It is in Great Britain that the true battle is taking place. Let us

-suppose that Mr. Gladstone, instead of finding himself in a minority in

-the next Parliament, returns to the House with a majority. This majority

-can in no case be very strong, and we may still doubt that it will

-consent to follow him to the end in the path he has chosen. But let us go

-farther, and suppose Home Rule to have been voted by this majority,—let

-us suppose it to have been voted by the Upper House,—a still more

-unlikely contingency. Well, our decision is taken irrevocably. We are

-perfectly resolved not to bow to such a vote, and not to submit to Home

-Rule.”

-

-“What! shall you rebel against the constitution?”

-

-“Against the constitution, no. But if needs must be against Mr. Gladstone

-and his party. We shall appeal from the ignorant electors to the better

-informed ones. We shall protest against a decision that would in a way

-deprive us of our rights as British subjects. And in the meanwhile we

-shall refuse to acknowledge a Dublin Parliament. We shall refuse to pay

-the taxes that it may fix upon, or to obey the laws it may vote. We shall

-repeat loudly that we are Englishmen, and will not be anything else; that

-we depend on the British Parliament and recognize no other authority; and

-we shall see then if our appeal raise no echo in the United Kingdom!”

-

-“But still, the right of making laws generally entails the power of

-enforcing them. What shall you do on the day when the Dublin Parliament,

-having voted the taxes for you as for the rest of Ireland, shall send

-tax-gatherers to collect them?”

-

-“_We shall receive them with rifle-shots._”

-

-“What! are you going to tell me that you, sir, ‘worth’ half a

-million sterling, if the public voice speaks the truth, that this

-fat gentleman there, the father of those two pretty daughters, that

-this respectable doctor in gold spectacles, and all your other guests

-to-night, all peace-loving, middle-aged gentlemen, comfortable and

-with good rent-rolls, seriously entertain the idea of buckling on your

-shooting-gaiters and going to battle in the street?”

-

-“We shall go, if we are obliged, rather than submit to the Dublin

-people!... After all, have we not a right to remain English, if it suits

-us?... The very principle of Home Rule, if it is adopted, implies that we

-shall govern ourselves as it seems good to us. Well, here in Ulster, we

-are nearly two million loyalist Protestants, who cherish the pretension

-of not being given over to the three million Papists entrusted with the

-making of the Dublin Parliament,—who shall dare to deny this right to us?”

-

-“Mr. Parnell and his friends will certainly deny it as soon as their

-programme is embodied into law. They will say to you, ‘Henceforth Ireland

-shall govern herself. Let those who do not like it go away.’”

-

-“But it is precisely what we shall never do!... Our title to the Irish

-soil is as good as the Parnellites’.... Let them try to dislodge us, and

-they shall have a warm welcome, I promise you.”

-

-In the course of conversation my worthy interlocutor had let the number

-of 100,000 Orangemen, armed to the teeth and ready to defend Ulster

-against the Home Rulers, escape him. I took advantage of this to ask

-him for a few details on this organization. I learnt this: that the

-Orangeist army is by no means a fallacy, as one might imagine, and that

-it forms a sort of latent militia, with its active forces, and its

-reserve. At first, established as a kind of freemasonry, and formed in

-“circles” or “lodges,” it comprises actually four divisions, subdivided

-into twenty-two brigades: each of these brigades consists of two or

-three regiments, infantry, cavalry, and artillery; in each regiment are

-sections and companies, each composed of affiliates belonging to the same

-district. Three divisions are recruited in Ulster proper; the fourth in

-Dublin and Cork, in Wicklow and in King’s County. All those affiliates

-take the engagement to observe passive obedience and to render personal

-service on the first requisition of their supreme council; they furnish

-their own arms and recognise the authority of a commander-in-chief.

-

-Does all this have any substantial existence besides what it has on

-paper? Do the Orangemen secretly drill, as it is averred, both for the

-infantry and the cavalry manœuvres? Is it true that most of the volunteer

-companies in Ulster are exclusively Orange companies? Lastly, are those

-volunteers really ready in case of an open rupture with Dublin, to

-take up their arms and fight for their cause?... Many people think it

-doubtful. The Home Rulers especially think it pure moonshine and humbug.

-I remember one of their papers publishing the following advertisement

-last year to show in what esteem they held the Ulster army:

-

-    ROTTEN EGGS! ROTTEN EGGS! ROTTEN EGGS!

-

-    _Wanted: 100,000 rotten eggs, to be delivered in Tipperary,

-    worthily to welcome 20,000 Orangemen, armed with rifles and

-    guns, under command of the illustrious Johnson. Offers to be

-    addressed to the printing office of this paper._

-

-This certainly does not indicate a very exalted idea of the valour of the

-Orangeist forces on the part of the southern populations. But that does

-not mean that no other sugar plums shall be exchanged. In all civil wars

-such pleasantries take place, yet they do not prevent rivers of blood

-being shed. One fact alone is beyond doubt, that the Orange organization

-has immense ramifications among the regular troops, and is openly

-favoured by General Wolseley; that a large number of retired officers

-have entered it; that one would perhaps find it difficult to find one

-among the Queen’s regiments ready to fire on the loyalists, and that

-the most ardent partisans of Home Rule hesitate to grant to the Irish

-Parliament the faculty of raising an armed force.

-

-In conclusion, the last word in Ulster may very well be said by the

-Orangemen.

-

-

-

-

-CHAPTER XVII.

-

-LEX LICINIA.

-

-

-It would have been pleasant to conclude these pages without recording

-too harsh a judgment against England, one of the two or three nations

-for ever dear to the thinker; one of those who possess a brain of her

-own, not merely a chain of nervous nodosities presiding over the organic

-functions; one of those who lead the Human Race along the hard road

-where it toilingly drags its miseries and delusions. It would have been

-pleasant at least to find some kind of extenuating circumstances for

-the attitude she maintains doggedly towards Ireland. But this is sheer

-impossibility.

-

-All that can be pleaded on behalf of England is that she is truly

-unconscious of the wrong she has been doing for centuries, and that

-she firmly believes herself to have acted within her rights. Nations,

-still more than individuals, are the slaves of their temperament, of

-their faults and their qualities. Shall we call the tiger a murderer,

-or reproach vultures because they feed on human flesh? They obey their

-instincts, and merely follow the dictates of nature. So it is with

-nations. Considered no longer in the individuals that compose it, or in

-the intellectual _élite_ that speaks in its name, but in the fifteen or

-twenty generations that have woven the woof of its annals, a people is an

-irresponsible and blind organism, fatefully obeying its impulses, be they

-noble or base.

-

-Try to talk with a Protestant landlord about the wrongs and grievances of

-Ireland. He will tell you in all good faith that the Irish alone are to

-blame. Ignorant, slothful, given to drink, sly and cunning, a nation of

-liars,—weak, in a word, and vanquished beforehand,—this is the verdict he

-pronounces on them from the height of his respectable rent-roll. If they

-have failed in the struggle for life, it is because they came into it

-badly armed and unprepared. So much the worse for them,—let them make way

-for the stronger ones! Such is the theory.

-

-There can be no doubt that it is put forward in all sincerity by a

-majority of Englishmen. But this does not prove that it rests on any

-sound foundation. It only proves once more that they are incapable of

-understanding anything about the Irish temperament.[4] This reasoning

-is merely the classic sophistry. They mistake the effect for the cause,

-and are blind to the fact that those vices they so bitterly reproach

-the Irish with, are the inevitable result of three centuries of bad

-administration and England’s own work. Wherever it has been liberated

-from the English yoke, has not, on the contrary, the Irish race displayed

-abundant energy, activity, genius? Do not the Irish hold the first rank

-in the United States, in Canada, in Southern America, in Australia,

-wherever emigration has carried them. In England even are they not at

-the head of all liberal professions, letters, the daily press, the bar,

-science? Those who have seen and closely studied that nation, crushed

-under its secular burden, ground under the heel of the conqueror, cannot

-but feel surprised at the bare fact that it survives; and this fact

-alone presupposes the most admirable gifts. One could even question

-whether, deprived of the Irish Celt element, for leaven, for chiefs, for

-counsellors, in letters, and in assemblies, the heavy Anglo-Saxon race

-could ever have founded its flourishing colonies. These prosper, one may

-say, in direct proportion to the number of Irish that come to them, even

-as the mother island slowly decays in direct proportion to the number of

-her children that are driven from her shores.

-

-Why should such slanderous explanations be sought for a fact sufficiently

-explained by history? The great misfortune of Ireland is not to be a

-nation less richly gifted than its conqueror, but only to be too small a

-nation, established in an open island. The Irish have been neither more

-vicious, nor more fanatical, nor more slothful than the English; they

-have been less numerous, less well armed; and John Bull, according to his

-deplorable custom, has taken advantage of their weakness for bullying

-them, for levying heavy toll on them, for bleeding them to death without

-mercy. He has taken their land, their freedom, their industry, and still

-wrests from them the product of their labour. And, to crown all, he dares

-to call them to account for their misery as for a crime—this misery,

-which is his own work, with all its wretched following of vices and

-degradation.

-

-Before such a sight as this involuntary indignation must be felt. One

-wishes to say to the English—

-

-“You pirates, begin first by giving back to Ireland all you have taken

-from her, and you shall see then if she be guilty of this poverty you

-consider as a crime! Let us reckon. Give her back her land, which

-your nobles occupy. Give her back the bravest of her sons, that you

-have driven to emigration. Give her back the habit of work which you

-have destroyed in her. Give her back the wealth which you prevented

-her accumulating, by forbidding her commerce and industry. Give her

-back the millions which you still exact every year upon the produce of

-her agricultural energy. Give her back the experience of freedom that

-you have so long crushed in her. Give her back the faculty of coolly

-reasoning about her beliefs, which persecution took from her. Give her

-back the right of self-government according to her genius, her manners,

-her will, that right which you declare sacred and imprescriptible for

-every nation, that you grant to your most insignificant colonies, to the

-meanest island of your Empire, and which you refuse to her, the biggest

-of all. Give her back all this, and let us see then if Ireland be all you

-say.”

-

-“Alas! from that national inheritance of which you robbed her one can

-only find now, recognise and therefore give back, the land and the money.

-The land stands always there; and money is not wanting in your coffers.

-A good impulse, then! All has to be paid for in this world—defeat and

-failure like anything else. If one lose a game, one must know how to

-pay for it gallantly. If one has, personally, or in the person of one’s

-father, committed an unjust act, one must know how to atone for it.

-Your railway companies give indemnities to the families of those they

-have crushed to death. Yourselves, as a nation, have paid in the Alabama

-affair, once convinced of being in the wrong. Here also, in Ireland,

-the hour of Justice has come. Evidence is over. Your work rises in your

-throat and sickens you. You cannot any longer doubt, and your writers

-daily repeat it, that the cause of all Ireland’s sufferings is in your

-spoliation, complicated by your administration. Well, the remedy is

-clear. Ireland herself points it out to you, and your conscience whispers

-it: you must give back her inheritance to Ireland, with the right of

-administering it according to her own lights.”

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-England is fond of comparing herself to Rome, though it is Carthage

-rather that she resembles. She can find in Roman history a precedent for

-the solution that is obviously suited to Ireland. The _Lex Licinia_,

-promulgated in the year 376 before the Christian era, limited to 500

-arpents, that is to say, almost exactly 500 acres, the extent of land

-that the patricians were entitled to possess in a conquered country.

-This was the law that the Gracchi wanted to bring to life again, and for

-which they paid the penalty of death. It has long been believed, and

-Mably repeated it with Montesquieu, that the question was the dividing

-of private property between all the citizens. Niebuhr and Savigny have

-re-established historical truth, and shown that the question at issue

-was merely the limitation of, or atonement for, usurpations that ruined

-the State by ruining the rural populations. It is a Licinian Law that is

-wanted in Ireland, and it is to be hoped that England will give it to her

-before long.

-

-The disease of Ireland may be defined: the feudal system or landlordism,

-complicated by absenteeism and usury, having for its consequences extreme

-penury of capital, rural pauperism, and the incapacity for struggling

-against American competition.

-

-The case of Ireland, more acute by reason of its special sphere, is only

-a striking instance of a fact that the legislators of the old world must

-necessarily take into account henceforth, the fact that the immense area

-of land newly cleared in the two Americas, in Australia, and India,

-are, four-fifths of them at least, the property of those that cultivate

-them personally. They have no other burden to bear than taxes, and are

-therefore in a condition of crushing superiority in the struggle with the

-countries in which dual ownership obtains. With an equal fruitfulness

-(and that of virgin soil is almost always greater), it is clear that

-the soil which supports only those that cultivate it, instead of two or

-three superposed classes of participants in its products, must always be

-able to give those products at a lesser cost price, and therefore will

-be able to throw them on the market at a lower rate. It is not merely

-common sense, it is the immutable course of human progress that condemns

-landlordism to disappear ere long from the face of the globe.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Reduced to its elementary terms, the Irish question stands thus: 12,000

-landowners, of foreign origin, possessing almost the whole of the

-island; 1940 of these proprietors detaining two-thirds of this soil; 744

-holding the half of it. All these lands parcelled out into insufficient

-holdings, and cultivated by 720,000 native farmers, for the most part

-entirely devoid of capital. The agricultural product of the island,

-divided between two schedules on the official rolls of the income tax:

-the first one of £2,691,788 only, representing the income of the

-720,000 Irish farmers and their families; the second, of £13,192,758,

-representing the income of the 12,000 English landlords. The half at

-least of this sum leaving the island every year, and being spent outside

-it by the _absentee_ landlords. Not one farthing of this lordly income

-coming back to the soil, either directly or indirectly, in the shape of

-manure, buildings, or agricultural improvements; nor to industry, which

-is nil. General pauperism, resulting from the feudal organization that

-stops development of wealth in its germ, and more and more unfits the

-country for a struggle with the more normally organized nations. Unpaid

-rents, landlords and tenants eaten up by usurers, a permanent conflict of

-interests shown at each term by three or four thousand evictions, without

-mentioning the still more numerous cases in which eviction is not carried

-out because it would prove useless. A universal bankruptcy; a chronic

-state of social war; a growing contempt of the law; agrarian violence;

-the suspension of public liberties; a gradual return of the soil and

-its inhabitants to the savage condition; a constant augmentation in the

-area of uncultivated land; a regular emigration of the adult and able

-population; a quarter of the remaining inhabitants living at the expense

-of the ratepayers, either on outdoor relief or in the workhouses;

-financial grievances, added to historical and political grievances;

-hunger sharpening the rancour of the vanquished race; its hatred of the

-conqueror shown periodically by the return to the House of Commons of

-85 members whose only mandate is to obstruct the regular working of the

-British machinery. Such is the epitome of the results obtained in Ireland

-by the English after an occupation of seven centuries. Never did history

-register such a scandalous failure.

-

-Vainly do Oxford and Cambridge, in order to explain or palliate it,

-resort to all their scholastic sophistry. Vainly it is endeavoured

-to discover its cause in some inherent vice of the Irish race, in

-their ignorance, their religion, their laziness, and even a sort of

-“melancholy” imparted to them, it is alleged, by the neighbourhood of the

-ocean (_sic_).

-

-Ireland is not the only country edged by the Atlantic: neither is it

-the saddest. Her children are not in any marked degree more illiterate

-now-a-days than those of England, and if they were so for a long

-time—when they had to slip off to unlawful and clandestine “hedge

-schools” if they wanted to learn their alphabet—we know too well who was

-responsible for such an outrage on civilization. The Celts of Erin are

-Roman Catholics, it is true, but after all there are on our planet a

-certain number of nations who have not died yet of this religion. As for

-their political capacity, they vindicate it every day by the wisdom and

-firmness they display in sustaining the struggle against the oppressor.

-

-One must bow to evidence and do justice to Ireland. And for this there

-are not two formulas. There is only one, in two articles:

-

-1.—Expropriation of the landlords with a fair indemnity, to the profit of

-the Irish tenantry.

-

-2.—The extension to Ireland of Home Rule, which is the invariable rule

-of all British possessions, near or far, guaranteed of course by all the

-precautions judged necessary for the security and unity of the United

-Kingdom.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-It is the glory of Mr. Gladstone to have understood and to have had the

-moral courage to declare that there is no other solution. And as we

-think of this, is it not a strong argument in favour of the superior

-justice of agrarian revendications in Ireland, that it should have

-imposed itself to the reason of that illustrious politician, the most

-English assuredly of all the statesmen that have succeeded each other

-in office since the time of William Pitt? Those common reasoners who

-rebel against a necessary restitution, should think of this. Here is an

-old man seventy-eight years of age, who, ever since he left Eton, had no

-other care, no other occupation than the affairs of his country; the most

-energetic, the most active and brilliant of leaders, the most experienced

-in finance; of all the orators in the British Parliament the most lucid

-and pungent; a refined scholar, an accomplished Hellenist, the possessor

-of an hereditary fortune that frees him from domestic cares, the son

-of a British merchant-prince, and the father of an Anglican clergyman,

-himself Protestant to the core, and fond of officiating in the place of

-his son in the church of Hawarden; a man whose predominant quality is

-his earnestness, and whose supreme rule of conduct is a well-regulated

-love of his country. This statesman, who has been ten times in office

-since the year, already so far from us, when he entered it under the

-leadership of Robert Peel, and who knows everything about the affairs

-of his country at home and abroad, has made his life-study of the Irish

-question. Twenty times in forty years has he attempted to grapple with

-it, to unravel it, to solve it. All the remedial measures that have

-been applied to the wounds of Ireland since 1860 had him for their

-initiator. He was the first to realize the odious wrong of an established

-Anglican Church in that Catholic country. To him is due the political

-and intellectual enfranchisement of the Irish; it was he who gave them

-national schools and who put them (by dint of what Titanic struggles!)

-on the same electoral footing as the other British subjects. It was he

-who promoted, defended, and succeeded in passing all the Land Bills meant

-to soften the wretched fate of the Irish serf. Lastly, one must not

-forget it, he never hesitated, when he thought it necessary, to claim

-laws of repression against agrarian violence. Mr. Gladstone is assuredly

-no anarchist. He is neither a madman nor is he in his dotage. Never was

-his genius clearer, his word more eloquent. Add to this that this man,

-enamoured of power like all those who have passed their life in it, knew

-that he was courting a certain fall when he proposed his solution of the

-Irish question, and could entertain no doubt of the schism that would

-take place in his party on the subject....

-

-And yet his conscience could oppose no resistance to the blinding light

-of facts. He clearly saw that palliatives were insufficient, and that

-there was an urgent need to take the evil at its root. As a conclusion to

-half a century spent in studying the case, and to twenty local attempts

-at healing it, after two or three thousand nights spent in the House

-of Commons in discussing the question under all its aspects, he comes

-forward to say: “_Justice to Ireland!_ we must give back to her what was

-taken from her—her inheritance and her freedom!”

-

-Can one suppose for a moment that Mr. Gladstone came to such a conclusion

-without the most decisive and powerful motives? Can anyone feel himself

-strong enough to hold opinions better founded than his on this matter? We

-must congratulate his adversaries on their happy self-confidence; but we

-cannot do so on their moral sense or on their modesty.

-

-

-I.—MR. GLADSTONE’S SCHEME.

-

-Mr. Gladstone’s scheme was framed in two organic Bills. By the first the

-British Government undertook to expropriate the landlords, and to redeem

-the Irish lands on a basis of twenty times the actual rent, to be paid

-in English Consols, at par. These lands would then be sold to the Irish

-tenants at a discount of 20 per cent., payable in forty-nine years by

-instalments equal to about half the former rent. The second Bill provided

-for the local government of Ireland, while it reserved for Great Britain

-the general control of the revenue and the right of keeping military

-forces in the island. Thanks to a coalition of a fraction of the Liberal

-party with the Tories, this programme fell to the ground at the General

-Election of 1886, and was set aside by Parliament.

-

-It may be that the loss is not much to be regretted. Very likely Mr.

-Gladstone’s scheme was, in his own thoughts, only meant as a trial, what

-we call a _ballon d’essai_. Excellent in its twofold principle, his

-solution had the very serious drawback of substituting, in the place

-of the 12,000 present landlords of Ireland—a single one, the State.

-It looked as if it solved all difficulties, and perhaps it would have

-caused fresh complications. In fact, it amounted to requiring that the

-unavoidable liquidation should be paid—by which people? By those who

-could least afford it—the Irish tenants. Whence might the poor devils

-have taken the money for their annuities? And even admitting that they

-could have found it, can one refuse to see that their culture, so

-wretched already, would have become still poorer? Has ever man chosen, to

-buy an estate, the moment when he is a confirmed bankrupt?

-

-But it would have been to them a nett gain of one-half on their actual

-rent, it will be objected.

-

-A nett gain of one-half _on nothing_, then, as they cannot afford to pay

-any rent just now, unless they deduct it from their capital (supposing

-that they have any), and there is no reason to suppose that things will

-be better for the next fifty years.

-

-Besides, if you admit that by paying for forty-nine years half the actual

-rent as judicially fixed, the Irish tenants ought to have the ownership

-of the land, why, in the name of all that is fair, refuse to see that

-they have paid it more than ten times already, in the shape of excessive

-rent?

-

-“They were free not to pay it and go out, with their goods and chattels,”

-says my old friend, the Economist. I answer: No. They were not, for a

-thousand reasons, and had to obey the will of the vampires, as long as it

-was strictly possible.

-

-Either the tenants, having become proprietors in name but not in reality

-(or, as it were, proprietors of a shadow of land mortgaged for half a

-century), would have paid their annuity,—and in that case they were as

-poor as before; or they would not have paid it, and then the Liberal

-party would have heard a fine din!

-

-In fact the Gladstone plan rested on an entirely chimerical hope: that of

-settling the Irish question without its costing a penny to the British

-Exchequer. To entertain such a hope is clearly to prove that one sees

-indeed the evil, but without descrying its deeper cause.

-

-This cause lies in the IMPOSSIBILITY to the modern tenants, in the face

-of the competition of better organized countries, and generally under the

-present conditions of the world’s agriculture, TO PAY ANY RENT WHATEVER.

-

-The Irish tenant is a bankrupt, because he has paid, for too long a time

-already, the rent that he could not afford. The land is impoverished for

-the very same reason. Now, to sell it to a penniless buyer is absurd

-enough; but to pretend to believe that the penniless buyer shall render

-it prosperous and make it yield riches, is perhaps more absurd still.

-

-Such illusions ought to be discarded. If England really wants to settle

-the Irish question, as her honour and her true interest both command her

-to do, she must manfully accept the idea of a pecuniary sacrifice and a

-real restitution. It would be useless to cheat herself into acceptance of

-half-measures. She had much better weigh the real cost of an imperious

-duty, pay it, and square matters once for all.

-

-Not only must she give, _gratuitously give away_ as a present, the land

-to the Irish tenant, but she must provide him, at the lowest rate of

-interest, with the capital necessary for putting that land in working

-order.

-

-This consummation might perhaps be attained at a lesser cost than would

-at first sight appear possible,—let us name a figure,—at a cost of one

-milliard francs, or £40,000,000. But this milliard should be forthcoming

-in cash, presented by the British nation to the sister isle as a free

-gift, a premium paid for peace, or rather a lump sum of conscience-money,

-such as we see sometimes advertised in the columns of the _Times_.

-

-

-II.—AN OUTSIDER’S SUGGESTION.

-

-The ideal solution for the innumerable difficulties of the Irish question

-would evidently be the _tabula rasa_,—the hypothesis that would transform

-Ireland into a newly-discovered island of virgin soil, barren and

-uninhabited, where England had just planted her flag, and out of which

-she wished to get the fullest value in the shortest possible time.

-

-What would her policy be in such a case? She would begin by surveying

-the whole extent of her new acquisition, by parcelling it out in lots

-carefully, then by calling in colonists and capital.

-

-To the immigrants that came without any other wealth than their stalwart

-arms, she would make gratuitous concessions of small lots of land,

-accompanied by seeds, agricultural implements, and an exemption from

-taxes during a limited period of time. To those who came with capital,

-she would give more important plots of ground, either demanding a premium

-of occupation more or less high, shortening the period of exemption for

-taxes, or again elevating the rate of those taxes. Most likely, too,

-she would favour the establishment of an Agricultural Bank that would

-advance to the new colonists such moneys as they desired, according to

-their wants, their chances of success, and the individual securities they

-presented.

-

-In reality it cannot be supposed that in Ireland the past, the vested

-interests and the settled habits of centuries, can be erased. But at

-least one can try to come near to this ideal; and besides, this island

-presents, over the barren and uncultivated one, the advantage of having

-a ready-made population; the country, its climate, its soil, are known;

-there is a large proportion of able workmen, valuable house property,

-no inconsiderable provision in agricultural implements, not to mention

-several thousand head of horse, oxen, sheep, and pigs ready imported.

-

-The advantages of this over a virgin island are, therefore, very clear;

-they are visibly stronger than the drawbacks, and success is certain if

-measures of the kind we allude to are vigorously carried out.

-

-England, then, must begin by buying out, not only the properties of the

-landlords, but also, and this is only justice, the interest that a large

-number of farmers possess in those lands under the name of tenant-right.

-The area of cultivated land in Ireland (exclusive of towns) is, in round

-numbers, fifteen million acres. Before all, the basis of indemnity

-granted to the landlords must be fixed.

-

-Mr. Gladstone proposed the basis of twenty times the actual rent, as

-judicially fixed. This seems an exorbitant price, for various reasons.

-The first reason is that no leased land under the sun normally yields

-to its owner, at present, anything like the interest supposed by such a

-valuation. The second reason is that the landlords’ property in Ireland

-has actually no real value whatever; it could not find a purchaser,

-probably, at the price of three times the nominal rent, were it put up

-for sale (let anyone who commands capital, and who looks for a secure

-investment, consider whether he would ever dream of buying Irish land,

-just now, at any price). The third reason is that the true responsibility

-of the Irish disease rests with those very landlords who never did

-their duty by the country. Granted that their faults (one would rather

-say crimes) ought to be covered by the benefit of prescription, and

-that a fair indemnity ought to be given them or their creditors if

-they are dispossessed by measures of public sanitation, it would look

-ridiculous,—indecent to go to the length of rewarding them for their

-moral and economical failure by a disproportionate indemnity taken out of

-the pocket of the British taxpayer.

-

-When one hears, therefore, Mr. Gladstone speak of giving the landlords

-twenty times the nominal rent of their land, one is reduced to admit

-that his idea was to bribe them into acquiescence to his scheme by an

-exorbitant premium. The Irish landlords did not understand their true

-interest; they did not see that they should have thrown into the scale

-the weight of their votes. Very likely they were wrong. They may say

-good-bye to the Gladstone indemnity; they will never see it again. For

-the longer they wait to settle this question, the more must farm-rent

-dwindle away and indemnity shrink to nothingness.

-

-It seems that, at present, in fixing it on the basis of twelve times the

-judicial rent, the British nation would show great liberality. It would

-be equivalent to saying that Irish land, as an investment, is worth

-one-third the capital in English Consols that bears the same interest,

-which is certainly paying it an unexpected compliment.

-

-As for the tenant-right of the farmer, which it is equally indispensable

-to redeem if all is to be cleared and there are to be no more conflicts

-of interests, let us admit that it is worth, on the whole, three or

-four times the judicial rent. Very likely again this is excessive. But

-this matters little practically, as will be shown further on. We find

-thus, for the aggregate interest vested in the Irish soil and subject to

-indemnity, a common rate of sixteen times the judicial rent.

-

-The average of this judicial rent is ten shillings per acre. For fifteen

-millions of cultivated acres to be redeemed, this would therefore give a

-total sum of 120 millions sterling to be paid. Thanks to this indemnity

-of expropriation, the English nation would become absolutely free to

-dispose of these lands as she pleased.

-

-But where are those 120 million pounds to be found? and they must be

-found over and above the capital necessary for the working of these

-lands, since we admitted in principle that it would be necessary to find

-it in most cases. This is the way:

-

-As a first outlay, we have admitted that the British Exchequer would put

-down £40,000,000 sterling in the shape of Consols at par. That capital

-represents an interest of about one million sterling and a quarter, or

-an annual tax of about ninepence per head. This certainly would not be

-a high price to pay for such a precious advantage as the suppression of

-the Irish plague. There is no decade in which a great nation does not pay

-more for some unlucky and useless venture—the Afghanistan campaign, as a

-case in point.

-

-To these 40 millions sterling, sacrificed by the wealthiest of European

-nations to its internal peace, shall be added the resources proper to

-Ireland. These are no despicable ones. Ireland, taxed much lower than

-Great Britain, nevertheless contributes no less than eight millions

-sterling, in round numbers, to the general revenue of the United Kingdom.

-

-Of these £8,000,000 about £4,286,519 go to the keeping of the army

-of occupation and the administration of finances; in other words, to

-the services meant to remain “imperial” in the hypothesis of Home

-Rule. About £3,744,462 are paid for the services that would, in this

-hypothesis, come into the province of the Irish Parliament, viz., public

-works, law courts, tax-gathering, local administration, registrations,

-land-surveying, lunatic asylums, schools, prisons, and the like. It seems

-that a new and poor country, as we suppose Ireland to turn out, ought

-not to pay for such services as liberally as does wealthy England, and

-that a reduction of a third on these heads, or £1,250,000, is perfectly

-feasible. That is about the income for £40,000,000 in English Consols.

-Here, then, we have sufficient provision for a second milliard in the

-shape of _interest_.

-

-The interest for the third milliard would easily be raised in the shape

-of additional taxes, if Irish agriculture were freed from any other

-charges. That would only increase the annual taxation by about a sixth

-part, and would not even then put it on a level with the incidence

-of English taxation. Ireland, on her side, might well do this slight

-sacrifice to the cause of social and political peace.

-

-There, then, we have the £120,000,000 wanted (in the shape of a special

-loan, emitted and guaranteed by England), which are found—a third by each

-of the high contracting parties; a third by a reduction of 33 per cent.

-on all services that would have become purely Irish.

-

-How ought this magnificent lump of money to be used to make it bear

-all it can? By lodging the whole in the coffers of a special _Bank of

-Liquidation_, that would be entrusted with all the operation. This bank,

-strong in her guaranteed capital of £120,000,000, invested, if necessary,

-with the power of emitting special paper-money, begins by paying all the

-lands on the basis fixed upon by law. This implies only, at the most, an

-outlay of £90,000,000. These lands the bank divides into three classes.

-

-_Class A._—The fee simple of the first class, composed of the holdings

-under £10 a year, is simply transferred to their actual holders (as would

-be done in an infant colony in order to attract inhabitants), subject to

-the single proviso that these lands shall be cultivated after a given

-system, and according to certain rules, and taken back by the public

-domain, if this condition be not observed.

-

-Let us remark, in passing, that this free gift will, in the majority of

-cases, be only the legalization of a _de facto_ gratuitous occupation,

-most of these small tenants having, for the last three or four years,

-stopped paying any rent to the landlords.

-

-Where, in that case, will be their advantage? it might be asked. They

-will be no richer for having become landowners in point of law, as they

-are now in fact.

-

-This is a material error, as shown by the example of our peasant

-proprietors in France. One of the chief reasons that prevent the small

-Irish tenant endeavouring to get all he can out of his land is precisely

-the rooted wish in his mind not to work for the benefit of the landlord.

-From the day that he shall be certain of keeping the entire fruit of

-his labour to himself, he will emulate the French Celt; he will submit

-himself to the hardest privations and the most unremitting toil; he will

-abundantly manure his land, ceaselessly tend it, turn it again and again;

-he will make it yield all it can. Anyhow, if he does not, he will have

-only himself to blame for it.

-

-_Class B._—The second class of land, composed of holdings from 15 to 20

-acres and over, is sold to its actual holders for the price of their

-tenant right, if they be willing to accept this privilege. In the

-contrary case, the tenant right is paid down to them at the rate fixed

-upon by experts, and the fee simple is put up for sale by auction. The

-ultimate proprietors of these domains of average extent receive, by the

-hands of the local agents for the _Bank of Liquidation_, every facility

-to form themselves into unions for the collective culture of their land.

-They remain, however, free to cultivate it themselves and in their own

-fashion.

-

-_Class C._—The third portion of the soil, formed by the choicest land,

-shall be put aside in each district to form a great domain where

-experiments shall be tried and examples given in agriculture—a domain

-managed by official agronomists, and cultivated by associations of

-agricultural labourers, salaried partly in kind on the product of the

-land, partly by participation in the nett profits. Not only shall there

-be introduced on those great domains, together with the finest breeds of

-cattle, the most perfect and scientific modes of culture, but, besides,

-public demonstrations and lectures shall be made, agricultural pupils

-shall be formed, and seeds of first quality shall be given at cost

-price. These model-farms alone remain the property of the State, and are

-inalienable.

-

-Thus would be constituted at once, together with a class of peasant

-proprietors, the middle and great cultures which are equally wanting in

-Ireland.

-

-Special laws abolish entail in the island, submit to expropriation (for

-25 years at least) any owner non-resident on his property, and forbid,

-under pain of heavy fines, to hold or give on lease any parcel of land

-under 12 acres.

-

-Other laws, imitated from the _Homestead Exemption_ of the United States,

-protect the peasant against debt. The _Liquidation Bank_, after having

-set the new system in motion, secures its working by advancing at the

-lowest rate of interest the capital wanted by the small and middling

-landowners, which must before long kill usury and drive it from the

-country. This bank is, in every sense, the organ and focus of a fiduciary

-circulation that is amply sufficient, on this broad basis, for all the

-financial wants of agricultural industry.

-

-Thus, the whole revenue of the land remaining in the country, circulating

-freely, and incessantly undergoing its normal transformations, health

-returns by degrees to the social body. There is no longer any question

-of “unemployed” labourers; on the contrary, it is rather hands that are

-wanted on all those flourishing estates which have day-work to offer, not

-only to the owners of small holdings, but even to the unemployed of Great

-Britain.

-

-And so England begins rapidly, though indirectly, to recover her advance,

-owing to the quick increase in the returns of the Income Tax; in perhaps

-four or five years, that increase covers the interest of her £40,000,000.

-It comes to say that her real outlay turns out to be only a tenth or

-a twelfth part of that advance. Emigration suddenly receives a check.

-Nay, a new, liberated, prosperous Ireland sees her children flock back

-to her shores from abroad, enriched and reconciled, bringing home their

-capital with their experience. For the Irishman ever keeps in his heart

-unimpaired the love of his mother country, and will return to her as soon

-as he can.

-

-Let us carry our hypothesis further.

-

-At the same time when she gave up the responsibilities of the

-local government of Ireland, England has transmitted them to the

-representatives of the Irish nation.

-

-Are those representatives to form immediately a single Parliament sitting

-at Dublin, or are they for the present to be divided into four provincial

-assemblies for Leinster, Munster, Connaught, and Ulster? This question

-is of small importance, at least at the beginning. Let the first step

-be taken; an united Ireland will only be a matter of time. The best

-way in such cases is to follow the expressed wish of the populations;

-and supposing that Ulster, or at least a part of Ulster, vote for the

-continuation of the present _régime_, why should not those territories be

-excepted from the new arrangements, and either be left _in statu quo_ or

-joined politically to Scotland, of which they are a geological as well

-as an ethnical dependency? But I cannot help thinking that if the above

-system was submitted to the Antrim tenants themselves, they would not be

-backward to see its advantages.

-

-On the whole question the last word should remain to the voter. If a

-majority of the electors of Scottish Ireland spoke in favour of Home

-Rule, what could be objected to them? That they will eventually be

-oppressed by the Catholics? No great fear of that, I should think; and

-besides, efficient measures could be taken, guarantees found against

-that danger; but no such caution will be really wanted. The influence of

-the Catholic clergy in Ireland has for its principal basis the political

-state of the country. The day when difficulties are cleared up, national

-education will soon have put an end to the reign of clericalism in

-Ireland as elsewhere.

-

-One cannot help feeling firmly convinced that Mr. Gladstone’s formula,

-“Home Rule and Abolition of Landlordism,” taken in its most general

-meaning, and applied with a spirit both prudent and liberal, will suffice

-to heal in a few years the disease of Ireland. Public wealth will rise by

-degrees, feelings of hatred will die away, the rapidity of the cure will

-take the world by surprise. Has not already the adoption of the Irish

-programme by a large number of Englishmen belonging to the Liberal party

-been sufficient to bring about a partial reconciliation between the two

-countries? We have seen Irish orators come and preach the Liberal gospel

-in England, and reciprocally, English orators go and bring the word

-of peace to Ireland. That alone is an augury of success, a symptom of

-healing and pacification.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-Will it be objected that this is a Utopian picture, an unpractical

-scheme, or simply one of difficult execution? As for me, the more I look

-into the matter, the more settled grows my belief that three things only

-are requisite for substituting so much good for so much evil, viz.,

-money, steadiness of purpose and conscience. Nobody will say that the

-English have ever shown a lack of steadiness in the pursuit of success;

-money they have in abundance; will they be wanting in conscience? This is

-scarcely to be feared. Conscientiousness of a more or less enlightened

-kind is a characteristic of the Englishman, and it is his highest praise.

-Men are constantly to be met in England who rule their conduct on the

-principles of an inward law. It is true that, by a natural consequence,

-many are good only in name, and their display of conscience is only a

-sham; but as our great moralist has said, “Hypocrisy is a homage which

-vice renders to virtue,” and wherever vice is obliged to wear a mask,

-virtue is bound to conquer.

-

-A great transformation, the instruments of which are the press, the

-steam-engine, and the telegraph, has been slowly developing throughout

-the world during the last few years: a new and powerful influence has

-been born that might be named “obligatory justice through publicity.”

-Tennyson has spoken of “the fierce light that beats upon a throne;”

-thrones now-a-days scarcely exist except in name; the will of the people

-has taken their place. But let Governments call themselves republics or

-monarchies, they are equally submitted to that pitiless ray of light

-which is the ever-wakeful eye of the press, the uncompromising publicity

-which ignores either rank or station. How many examples of it have we

-not seen at home! To quote a recent one, take that wretched Schnæbelé

-affair. Only fifteen years ago there would have been found in it reasons

-ten times sufficient to bring about a war for those who wanted it. Not

-so in our days. In less than twenty-four hours the press had brought to

-light the most minute details of the affair, exposed the naked truth to

-the eyes of the world, photographed the place where the incident had

-occurred, submitted, in short, to the great public judge all the evidence

-of the case. One had to tender apologies under pain of being called the

-aggressor, and the whole affair evaporated into smoke.

-

-Such results are perhaps the clearest gain that modern progress has given

-us. If our age has a superiority over the preceding ages, it is assuredly

-to have succeeded in making injustice more difficult to practise. More

-and more henceforward will great national crimes become impossible. Mr.

-Gladstone’s chief merit will be to have understood it before anybody

-in England, and to have been emphatically the man of his time. In spite

-of friends and adversaries he has dared to utter the truth, and say:

-“We must give back to Ireland what we have taken from her. The good of

-England imperiously demands that sacrifice, for we are entering an age

-when the honour of a great nation should not even be suspected.”

-

-He is actually the only statesman in Europe who follows a policy of

-principle; the only one seeking the triumph of his opinions by the

-sole help of reason. All the others, from the most famous to the most

-obscure or passing politician, are only jobbers. Disraeli had too much

-of the mountebank about him to have been able to secure the respect

-of posterity. Gortschakoff was only a courtier of the old school;

-Cavour a clever lawyer; Thiers a dwarf, in a moral and political, as

-in a physical, sense. Bismarck profits by a state of affairs which

-he did little or nothing to create, and at the most is the belated

-representative in our times of fossil feudalism. Gladstone alone is a

-truly modern statesman, and therefore is destined to be set by history

-above all his contemporaries, if only he succeeds in carrying out

-his great enterprise; for the more we go the more nations shall be

-restricted to politics of principle, both because all other systems are

-exploded, and because the diffusion of learning will be for the future an

-almost insuperable obstacle to petty or brutal diplomatic conspiracies.

-

-Great Britain, it is earnestly to be hoped, will consent to follow

-her great leader in the way he has shown to her. She is offered the

-most splendid opportunity of doing what no nation has achieved as

-yet,—atoning, of her own free will, for centuries of injustice, and

-trying one of the noblest social experiments that can ever be attempted.

-It would be the beginning of a new era in the history of human societies,

-and pure glory for those who initiated it. Not only could such results

-be attained at little cost, but the most obvious, the most pressing

-interest of England invites her to the enterprise. Let her make haste.

-After having affirmed for half a century the sovereignty of peoples, and

-their right to govern themselves according to their will, she cannot give

-herself the lie at home. After having protested against Bomba and the

-Bulgarian atrocities, she cannot in her own dominions remain beneath “the

-unspeakable Turk.” After having assumed before the world the attitude of

-a systematic foe to slave-trade and all kinds of oppression or cruelty,

-after having carried it even to maudlin sensitiveness, as in the case

-of pigeon-shooting, “birds’ corpses on women’s hats,” and the like, she

-cannot decently carry on the slow destruction of a sister race through

-starvation. She cannot and she will not do it, for it would be branding

-herself for ever as Queen of Humbug, Empress of Sham.

-

-

-

-

-FOOTNOTES

-

-

-[1] Absenteeism, in its present form, seems to date only from Grattan’s

-Parliament, but in some shape or another it may be said to date from the

-British invasion of Ireland, and to result from the very nature of an

-insular kingdom transferred wholesale to the nobility of a neighbouring

-state.

-

-[2] A later instance. On August 30th, 1887, two men armed with guns and

-wearing masks entered the house of Mr. R. Blennerhasset, at Kells, near

-Cahirciveen; they went upstairs to Mrs. Blennerhasset’s room and demanded

-money, which they got to the amount of about £2.

-

-[3] My guide was quite right. In a statistical table of trials between

-July, 1885, and July, 1886, for the County Kerry, I find the following

-items: _maiming cattle_, 9; _injury to person_, 7; _murders_, 3; _firing

-at persons_, 8; _firing into houses_, 15; _threatening letters_, 125;

-_intimidation_, 36; _malicious injury_, 22; _arson_, 19; _assaults_, 22.

-The above figures, it should be observed, only relate to outrages brought

-home to their authors; there can be no doubt that a much larger number of

-agrarian outrages remain unpunished.

-

-[4] See Appendix, p. 331.

-

-

-

-

-APPENDIX.

-

-_EXTRACTS FROM SOME LETTERS ADDRESSED WITHIN THE LAST TWO YEARS TO AN

-IRISH LANDLORD BY HIS TENANTS._

-

-

-The _Times_ has published, on October 10, 1887, an exceedingly

-interesting batch of letters selected from some three hundred addressed

-within the last two years to an Irish landowner by his tenants. As the

-editor of those letters wrote most appropriately, there is perhaps no

-means whereby truer insight can be obtained into the ways and habits of

-the Irish peasantry than by studying the letters written by the people

-themselves. Typically enough, however, the same editor only saw in those

-letters how “unbusiness-like and illogical is the Irish tenant,” and

-“the various reasons that an Irishman gives for not paying his rent. One

-is unable to pay because his uncle is confined to bed, and his daughter

-suffering from a sore eye; another because a relative has died; a third

-because his brother-in-law has brought an action against him for money

-lent, and he has had to pay; one because his family is small, and another

-because it is large; another—and this is the most common excuse—because

-he has been unable to sell his stock; another because his wife has a sore

-hand; another because of the death of a cow; another because the weather

-is severe and there is a sheriff’s bailiff obstructing him from making up

-the rent; another because it was God’s will to take all the means he had;

-another because of the agitation.”

-

-Reasons which, it may be seen, appear to the English eye entirely

-ridiculous and unbusiness-like.

-

-What strikes a Frenchman most, on the other hand, in the letters, is

-their touching simplicity, the appalling instability of a budget that

-the least domestic mishap is enough to upset, and the fruitless attempt

-of the poor man to penetrate into the real cause of the burden under

-which he is panting; in the comments, the utter incapacity of the

-British landlord to understand his Irish tenantry even when he is a good

-landlord, which is obviously (perhaps too obviously) the case here.

-

-The letters are thus characteristic in more than one sense. Whatever the

-angle under which they are read, they undoubtedly remain first-class

-documentary evidence.

-

-                                                  _8th Jany., 1887._

-

-    To * * * *, Esq.

-

-    SIR,—I received a letter yesterday from Mr. G⸺ who demanded the

-    payment of £31 0_s._ 6_d._, rent due up to 29 Sept. 1886. I was

-    in with Mr. G⸺ this day & he told me that he had no further

-    instructions than what was contained in his note. Now my Uncle

-    has been confined through illness to his bed since last June,

-    & my daughter has been under medical treatment since last

-    September for a sore eye which proceeded from a bad tooth, & I

-    even had to pay the Dentist ten shillings for extracting it, as

-    the Doctor could not do so. I trust you will kindly take into

-    consideration my position and stay proceedings, & I will send

-    you £18 next Saturday & the remainder about the 13th February,

-    the day after fair of K⸺.

-

-                          Your obedt. Servant

-

-                                                             * * * *

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-The following is also from the same man:—

-

-    SIR,—I would have sent you the remainder of the rent on the day

-    mentioned but the old man died & I had extra expenses but if

-    you would kindly wait until about the 25th of March I will be

-    able to let you have it.

-

-                         Your obedient servant

-

-                                                             * * * *

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                  _9th March, 1887._

-

-    SIR,—I have yours of the 4th inst. & am very sorry to say

-    I have met a reverse & cant pay up to my word. I took a

-    Brother-in-law to live with me—he was a tenant of your

-    property who lost the power of his limbs & obliged to get into

-    Hospital, his daughter my niece who I reared went to America

-    she died there after saving a good deal of money her father

-    after much trouble got £200 of it & after being 17 years in the

-    Hospital he had to leave it having means to live & he requested

-    to come to live with me which I allowed, & being maintained as

-    one of my family for 12 months up to Wedy. last he now sued me

-    for £50 which he lent me while here. He is at other lodgings

-    & subject to evil advice but he fell out with me while here &

-    since has been most ungrateful. I done my best to get this law

-    put back but failed & had to pay the money I had made to pay

-    my rent. I am much grieved being obliged to ask to the middle

-    of next month to pay it. I wont have any fairs sooner to sell

-    my stores but I will surly have it about the 20th April if not

-    sooner. You may be sure only what happened me I would have paid

-    up to my promise.

-

-                             Your obt servt

-

-                                                             * * * *

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                       _10th March._

-

-    MR. ⸺. After all I built & what I ow in shops & from the loss

-    of sheep I am not abell to pay but if you forgive me this half

-    year’s rent you will save me from destruction, and if so I

-    will keep it a profound sacred. I promis I will never again

-    ask anything of you & will be punctual in future, my family

-    is small & my health not good to go travell. I brought a dale

-    of money in to this farm 5 years ago and it is all gon now. I

-    apeal to your kind genariss hart to do this for me & may the

-    almitey god give your self & your children the Kingdom of hevan.

-

-                       I remain most respectfully

-

-                                                             * * * *

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                      _January 9th._

-

-    DEAR SIR,—In reply to youre noat I am verrey sorrey that I can

-    do nothing at the presant it is out of my power I have nothing

-    to sell unlss I sell what I have to ate my self and seven

-    littel children. I had but one calf to sell to pay you and it

-    was the will of provedence to take him, he died. I have but one

-    cow & I had hur in the fair of N⸺ and all I could get for her

-    was four pounds, so if you presede with the law as yore lawyer

-    sayes he will I must sell hur to pay you

-

-                          Your humbel tennant

-

-                                                             * * * *

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                        _August 31._

-

-    SIR, — I promised the rent after the fair of K⸺ in June. I had

-    three calves in it & covld not sell. I took three months grass

-    for them to see could I do better. I intend to have them in D⸺

-    on the 12th & if I sell them I will send the rent after that. I

-    would have wrote only expecting to have the rent before this.

-    My wife took a sore hand & is in hospital this two months & is

-    in it still so its poor times with me.

-

-                              Your tennant

-

-                                                             * * * *

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                       _11th March._

-

-    SIR,—In reply to your letter dated 5th inst. I beg to ask your

-    honour the favour of a few days grace. I hope to be able to

-    meet your demands by the time you call to collect your rents in

-    April. In the meantime I might have an opportunity of setting

-    the fields in Con acre.

-

-    Being a lone widow with two helpless children one of them of

-    weak intellect I hope your honour will kindly consider my case.

-

-    I am Sir your Honour’s most obedient & humble servant

-

-                                                             * * * *

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                       _January 19._

-

-    SIR,—I received your letter, it is not in my power to make

-    money for you now as I had to borrow some of your last rent

-    which is not all paid yeat on account of the death of my fine

-    cow that died. I will use my best endavours against May.

-

-                             Your ob. servt

-

-                                                             * * * *

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                     _September 26._

-

-    DEAR SIR,—I make apail to you at the present time that I am

-    endeavring at this time to make up the rent. Now I would have

-    it sooner but the weather for the harvest was savere, sore I

-    could not help it Der Sir, there is a man who is a Sheirf’s

-    baliff is going to injure me & to obstruct me in making up

-    the rent for you which I would hope soon to have value for.

-    Dear Sir I apail to you that you will not allow but Dis allow

-    injuring a poor tenant who is endeavring to make up the rent.

-    I would say one thing that I believe he is at least without

-    maners. I apail to you that you will not allow to obstruct

-    making out rent as quck as posible. one thing I wonder much

-    that you would permit him or such as him any place. I will

-    refrain on that presnt. I will ask this request off Mr. ⸺ as

-    soon as I can get the rent will he be kind enough to take it

-    from me. I will ask the favour of you to give return as it may

-    plaise you. Excuse my hand riting.

-

-                              Yours truly

-

-                                                             * * * *

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                       _August 2nd._

-

-    MR. ⸺. I received Mr. G⸺’s letter on the 31st of July. I am

-    sorry I am not able to pay at preasant. I am willing to pay my

-    rent but it was God’s will to take all the mains I had intended

-    to meet you. I hope you will be so kind to give time untell

-    October, as it is so hard to make money

-

-                           Your obt. servent

-

-                                                            PAT. F⸺.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                      _Wensdy 19th._

-

-    * * * * Esq. SIR,—I received your letter & will send you the

-    rent as soon as I can. There was no price for cattle in the

-    fairs that is past, in fact the could not be sold atol. I

-    expect to make the rent in the fair of K⸺. I could always pay

-    my rent but this cursed agetation has destroyed our country but

-    I hope the worst of it is over

-

-                     I remain Your Obedient Servant

-

-                                                             * * * *

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-The following letters also relate to the payment of rent:—

-

-                                                       _October 10._

-

-    SIR,—I did not receive your letter ontill this Day. It has

-    given me a great surprise I hope your Honour will not put me to

-    cost I have a little best to sell, and after the fair in C⸺, a

-    thursday I will send it to yo and I hop yo will not put me to

-    cost. I hop your honour will feel for me

-

-                                 truly

-

-                                                             * * * *

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                      _October 4th._

-

-    MR. ⸺. SIR,—I was again disappointed in the fair at N⸺ in

-    selling my cattle and I must ask time of you till I get sale

-    for if possible I will sell them in the fair of C⸺ do not once

-    imagine that I am not enclined to pay but I never was offered

-    a price for my cattle. I was speaking to some of the tenants

-    and the would wish to see you in N⸺ the rent day as the want to

-    know what you want for your land

-

-                          Yours respectfully,

-

-                                                             * * * *

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-    SIR,—I was very sory to see your hon goeing back without the

-    rient.

-

-    I was willing to pay that day but I could not. I send you my

-    half-year’s rent £13 10, so I hope your hon will luck after

-    turf for me there is no ous in asking it of Mr. F⸺ There is to

-    banks idle on the tients part on F⸺ and Mrs. N⸺ has 30 banks

-    set this year so I count it very unfare if we doent get one The

-    old men was geoing to kill us when we did not pay your hon the

-    day you ware in N⸺ We ware all sory we did not settle that day

-

-                     I remane your obdient servant

-

-                                                             * * * *

-

-    rember the tturf.

-

-The following is in the same handwriting as the last, but signed by

-another tenant:—

-

-    DEAR SIR,—You spoke of referring to Mr. F⸺ for turf, we did not

-    like to intrupeed (query, interrupt) yur hon at that time. Well

-    sir there is too banks of your own on the tients part an Mrs.

-    N⸺ is giveing turf to men on the five different estates Every

-    one that wonted turf got it but two tients no one els wonts it

-    besids, so I hope your hon will luck to us. I am willing to pay

-    my way if I get a chance. N⸺ D⸺ has turf this 40 years No one

-    wants it but P⸺ F⸺ & M⸺ T⸺. We would pay your hon ondly for the

-    rest

-

-                    Believe me Your obedient servent

-

-                                                              M⸺ T⸺.

-

-    do what your hon can about the turf

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                 _November 23rd 86._

-

-    HONOURED SIR,—I got both your letters & replidd to the first

-    & directed it to D⸺ in which I asked for a little time to pay

-    the rent I had some young cattle in the fair of K⸺ and did not

-    sell them. It will greatly oblige me if your Honour will give

-    me time untill the Christmas fair of F⸺ as I have some pigs to

-    sell that will meet this rent & that would leave me the cattle

-    to meet the May rent as the young cattle I have is not fit to

-    sell at preasant.

-

-    I feel sorry to have to trespass on your Honour, but the times

-    are bad and it is hard to make money, but I hope we will soon

-    have better times under the present Government, and that all

-    those mob laws will soon be at an end.

-

-                     I remain your humble servant,

-

-                                                             * * * *

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-It shows a curious state of things when a would-be tenant thinks it

-necessary to assure the landlord that he knows the farm belongs to him:—

-

-                                                   _April 12, 1887._

-

-    To Mr. * * * *

-

-    SIR,—Just a few lines to let your honour know that my father

-    is very delicate for the past tow months and not expected to

-    recover. I would like to let your honour know that it was mee

-    that minded your Property for the last ten years. I know that

-    this place always belongs to you and that the emprovements cost

-    no one But your self a shilling. I would like to know how mutch

-    my father is in your dept.

-

-                 I remain your honors faiteful servant,

-

-                                                           JAMES T⸺.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-The following contain offers of cattle in lieu of rent, a form of payment

-which Irish tenants are always anxious to adopt if they can, for though

-they declare there will be no difference about the price, they always

-expect the landlord to give them considerably more than the market value:—

-

-                                                       _January 18._

-

-    DEAR SIR,—I am not able to answer you with money at present. I

-    have the heifer that I told you of and if you wish I will send

-    her to T⸺ for you, and I expect your honor and I wont differ.

-

-                         Your obedient servent,

-

-                                                        PATRICK F⸺Y.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                         _Jany 5th._

-

-    SIR,—I have 5 nice bullocks to sell if you would buy them. I

-    have no other way of paying the rent.

-

-                                                              F⸺ D⸺.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                     _October 14th._

-

-    DEAR SIR and pleas your honour,—I hope in you that you wont

-    buy all the cattle you want in S⸺ town. Patrick D⸺ has a lot

-    greasing with the father-in-law at C⸺; he intends to meet your

-    honour with them. Pleas, Sir, leave room for three Bullocks, I

-    have them greasing with you above the road all the summer.

-

-                         Your faithful servant,

-

-                                                          MICHL. T⸺.

-

-    I am setten some of my children and it has left me bare in

-    monney.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-                                                        _Novr 12th._

-

-    DEAR SIR,—I will give three two-year-old Bullicks good owns for

-    next May rent. I will leave the vallue to your honour when you

-    come down before Christamas. I was offered £15 pounds for the

-    three last June; £5 each from Mr. ⸺ the Miller of C⸺. I never

-    took them out since. I have no father for them. Your honour has

-    plenty of straw to give them, the will make good Bullocks on

-    it. Your honour must get them les than vallue

-

-                     Your truly faithfull servent,

-

-                                                             * * * *

-

-

-THE END.

-

-BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69993 ***
+
+IRELAND’S DISEASE.
+
+
+
+
+                            IRELAND’S DISEASE
+
+                          NOTES AND IMPRESSIONS
+                                    BY
+                              PHILIPPE DARYL
+
+                      _THE AUTHOR’S ENGLISH VERSION_
+
+                                  LONDON
+                        GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
+                          BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL
+                           GLASGOW AND NEW YORK
+                                   1888
+
+                                  LONDON
+              BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+These pages were first published in the shape of letters addressed from
+Ireland to _Le Temps_, during the summer months of 1886 and 1887.
+
+A few extracts from those letters having found their way to the columns
+of the leading British papers, they became the occasion of somewhat
+premature, and, it seemed to the author, somewhat unfair conclusions, as
+to their general purport and bearing.
+
+A fiery correspondent of a London evening paper, in particular, who
+boldly signed “J. J. M.” for his name, went so far as to denounce the
+author as “an ally of the _Times_, in the congenial task of vilifying the
+Irish people by grotesque and ridiculous caricatures,” which charge was
+then summarily met as follows:—
+
+    _To the Editor of the PALL MALL GAZETTE._
+
+    SIR,—
+
+    Let me hope, for the sake of “J. J. M.’s” mental condition,
+    that he never set eyes upon my Irish sketches in _Le Temps_,
+    about which he volunteers an opinion. If, however, he has
+    actually seen my prose in the flesh, and he still clings to his
+    hobby that I am hostile to the Irish cause or unsympathetic
+    with the Irish race, why then I can only urge upon his friends
+    the advisability of a strait waistcoat, a brace of mad doctors,
+    and an early berth in a lunatic asylum. I never heard in my
+    life of a sadder case of raving delusion.
+
+                           Yours obediently,
+
+                                                     PHILIPPE DARYL.
+
+    PARIS, _September 18, 1887_.
+
+Thus ended the controversy. There was no reply.
+
+Allowance should be made, of course, for the natural sensitiveness of
+Irishmen on everything that relates to their noble and unhappy country.
+But, what! Do they entertain, for one moment, the idea that everything is
+right and normal in it? In that case there can be no cause of complaint
+for them, and things ought to remain as they are. All right-minded people
+will understand, on the contrary, that the redress of Irish wrongs can
+only come out of a sincere and assiduous exposure of the real state of
+affairs, which is not healthy but pathological, and, as such, manifests
+itself by peculiar symptoms.
+
+However it may be, a natural though perhaps morbid desire of submitting
+the case to the English-reading public was the consequence of those
+exceedingly brief and abortive polemics.
+
+The Author was already engaged in the not over-congenial task of putting
+his own French into English, or what he hoped might do duty as such, when
+Messrs. George Routledge & Sons, the London publishers of his _Public
+Life in England_, kindly proposed to introduce _Ireland’s Disease_ to
+British society. The offer was heartily accepted, and so it came to pass
+that the English version is to appear in book form on the same day as the
+French one.
+
+The special conditions of the case made it, of course, a duty to the
+author to strictly retain in his text every line that he had written
+down in the first instance, however little palatable it might prove to
+some English readers and fatal to his own literary or other prospects
+in England. That should be his excuse for sticking desperately to
+words which, like Tauchnitz editions, were not originally intended for
+circulation in Great Britain.
+
+                                                                    PH. D.
+
+PARIS, _Nov. 10th, 1887_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                              PAGE
+
+    INTRODUCTION                                 1
+
+                   CHAPTER I.
+
+    FIRST SENSATIONS                             5
+
+                   CHAPTER II.
+
+    DUBLIN LIFE                                 17
+
+                  CHAPTER III.
+
+    THE POOR OF DUBLIN                          31
+
+                   CHAPTER IV.
+
+    THE EMERALD ISLE                            46
+
+                   CHAPTER V.
+
+    THE RACE                                    60
+
+                   CHAPTER VI.
+
+    HISTORICAL GRIEVANCES                       76
+
+                  CHAPTER VII.
+
+    KILLARNEY                                   96
+
+                  CHAPTER VIII.
+
+    THROUGH KERRY ON HORSEBACK                 109
+
+                   CHAPTER IX.
+
+    A KERRY FARMER’S BUDGET                    139
+
+                   CHAPTER X.
+
+    RURAL PHYSIOLOGY                           157
+
+                   CHAPTER XI.
+
+    EMIGRATION                                 177
+
+                  CHAPTER XII.
+
+    THE LEAGUE                                 197
+
+                  CHAPTER XIII.
+
+    THE CLERGY                                 215
+
+                  CHAPTER XIV.
+
+    FORT SAUNDERS                              234
+
+                   CHAPTER XV.
+
+    THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN                       256
+
+                  CHAPTER XVI.
+
+    SCOTTISH IRELAND                           271
+
+                  CHAPTER XVII.
+
+    LEX LICINIA                                296
+
+         I.—The Gladstone Scheme               309
+
+        II.—An Outsider’s Suggestion           313
+
+    APPENDIX                                   331
+
+
+
+
+IRELAND’S DISEASE.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+It is indeed a chronic and constitutional disease that Ireland is
+labouring under. Twice within the last fifteen months it has been my
+fortune to visit the Sister Isle; first in the summer of 1886, at the
+apparently decisive hour when the die of her destiny was being cast in
+the ballot-box, and her children seemed on the point of starting upon a
+new life; then again, twelve months after, in the summer of 1887, when I
+found her a prey to the very same local disorders and to the same general
+anxiety that I had previously observed.
+
+Last year it looked as if the solution was nigh, if Mr. Gladstone’s
+spirited eloquence was going to carry the English nation along with
+it. The seasons, however, have followed one another in due course,
+bringing with them the usual run of unpaid rent, eviction, and reciprocal
+violence; a new Crimes Act has been added to the long record of similar
+measures that the British Parliament has scored against Ireland in
+eighty-seven years of so-called Union; a few cabins have disappeared,
+have been unroofed or burnt down by the arm of the bailiff; a few more
+skulls have been broken; some hundred thousand more wretched beings have
+embarked in emigrant ships for the United States or Queensland; some
+more hunger-stricken women and children have swollen the list of obscure
+victims that green Erin annually pays to the Anglo-Saxon Minotaur. But
+nothing essential is altered. Things are in the same places and passions
+at the same pitch. The two nations are facing each other with defiance in
+their eyes, threats in their mouths, revolvers or dynamite in hand. The
+problem has not advanced one step. Social war is still there, filling the
+hearts, paralysing the action, poisoning the springs of life. It may be
+read in the alarmed looks of mothers, in the sullen faces of men; it is
+lurking behind every hedge.
+
+Before such an unparalleled case of a whole race’s physiological misery,
+how could one help being seized with an ardent curiosity mingled with
+pity? Who would not wish to plunge to the bottom of the matter, to make
+out, if possible, the secret of the evil, to deduce from it a lesson,
+and, may be, a general law?
+
+That want I have felt most deeply, and I have tried to gratify it by
+personal observation; looking at things through my own spectacles,
+without animus or hatred, passion or prejudice, as they came under my
+gaze; noting down what seemed to be characteristic; above all, avoiding
+like poison the contact of the professional politician on either side:
+then drawing my own conclusion.
+
+I need hardly add that for the intelligence of what I saw, I have always
+availed myself of the printed sources of information, such as the
+standard works on Irish history, Black’s excellent _Guide to Ireland_,
+the Parliamentary Reports, the national literature, and last but not
+least the graphic accounts of current events published by the English and
+native press. Of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, especially, I must state that
+I have found its files a mine of precise, well digested, and thoroughly
+reliable information on the subject.
+
+That my studies are above correction, I will not venture to hope. That
+they are in every case founded on facts, and, to the best of my belief,
+accurate, I earnestly vouch. As far as possible, I have made a point
+of giving the names of the persons mentioned. When it might have been
+inconvenient to them, however, or when delicacy forbade such a liberty,
+I have either suppressed the name or substituted a fictitious one. It
+should be understood that what I wanted, as a total stranger in the
+country, and what my French readers wanted, were not personal but typical
+instances.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+FIRST SENSATIONS.
+
+
+                                                                   DUBLIN.
+
+Hardly have you set foot on the quay at Kingstown, than you feel on
+an altogether different ground from England. Between Dover and Calais
+the contrast is not more striking. Kingstown is a pretty little place,
+whose harbour is used by the steamers from Holyhead, and whither Dublin
+shopkeepers resort in summer. Half a century back, it was only a
+fishermen’s village of the most rudimentary description. But George IV.,
+late Prince Regent, having done that promontory the honour to embark
+there when leaving Ireland, the place became the fashion. In memory of
+the glorious event, the citizens of Dublin raised on that spot a pyramid
+which rests on four cannon balls, and bears on its top the royal crown
+with the names of all the engineers, architects, captains, and harbour
+officials who had anything to do with the business. Villas soon sprang up
+round it, and from that time Kingstown went on thriving. A splendid pier
+bent round upon itself like a forearm on its humerus, makes it the safest
+harbour in Ireland, and the railway puts it in communication with Dublin
+in twenty minutes. It is the Portici of a bay that could vie with the
+Bay of Naples, did it boast its Vesuvius and sun, and did not the shoals
+which form its bottom get often bare and dry at low tide.
+
+You land then at Kingstown, early in the morning after a four hours’
+crossing, having started the evening before by the express from Euston
+Station. And immediately you feel that you are no longer in England. The
+language is the same, no doubt, though talked with a peculiar accent or
+_brogue_. The custom-house officers are English; so are the policemen
+and redcoats who air themselves on the quay; but the general type is no
+longer English, and the manners are still less so. Loud talk, violent
+gesticulation, jokes and laughter everywhere; brown hair, sparkling dark
+eyes: you could imagine you are at Bordeaux or at Nantes.
+
+The guard who asks for your ticket, the very train you get in, have
+something peculiar, undefinable, thoroughly un-English. The old lame
+newspaper-man who hands you _The Irish Times_ or the _Freeman’s Journal_
+at the carriage-door, indulges witticisms while giving you back your
+change, which not one of Mr. Smith’s well-conducted lads ever permits
+himself along a British line. As for the passengers they are more
+un-English than anything else. This lady with the olive complexion and
+brown hair, may be termed an English subject; but for all that she
+has not probably one globule of Anglo-Saxon blood in her veins. That
+gentleman in the grey suit has evidently an English tailor, but the
+flesh-and-bone lining of his coat is of an altogether different make. As
+for the little man in black who is curling himself cosily in the corner
+opposite to you, not only is he unmistakeably a Roman Catholic priest,
+but you must positively hear him talk, to give up the idea that he is a
+Breton just out of the Saint Brieux Seminary. High cheek-bones, bilious
+complexion, small tobacco-coloured eyes, lank hair, nothing is missing
+from the likeness.
+
+Here is Dublin. The train takes us to the very heart of the town, and
+there stops between a pretty public garden and the banks of the Liffey.
+The weather is cool and clear. Inside the station cabs and cars are
+waiting for travellers and their luggage. _Waiting_, not contending
+eagerly for their patronage as they do in London, where any possible
+customer is quickly surrounded by half-a-dozen rival drivers. “_Hansom,
+sir?... Hansom, sir?_” The Dublin cabman is more indolent. He keeps
+dozing on his seat or leisurely gossiping with his mates. “Why trouble
+oneself for nothing? The traveller knows how to call for a cab, I
+suppose!” So speaks the whole attitude of these philosophers in the
+Billycock hats.
+
+This, however, will not prevent their being as unscrupulous as any of
+their fellow-drivers in any part of the globe, when it comes to settling
+the fare. “How much?” “Five bob.” On verification you find that two
+shillings is all the rogue is entitled to. You give the two shillings, he
+pockets them and rattles away laughing. The job was a failure; no more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dublin is a big city, thickly populated, crossed by wide thoroughfares,
+provided with fine public gardens and splendid parks, which are here
+called _greens_, and adorned with an extraordinary number of statues.
+Its traffic and industry are important: visibly, this is a capital. More
+than a capital; the focus of a nationality. Everything in the streets
+proclaims it: sign-boards, monuments, countenances, manners. Those marble
+statues you see at every step are the effigies of the patriots who
+fought for the rights of Ireland. That palace with the noble colonnade,
+in the heart and finest part of the town, is the very building where
+the Irish Parliament, abolished in 1800 by the Act of Union, held its
+assemblies. Now-a-days the Bank directors meet in the room where once met
+the representatives of the nation. But they seem to have been careful
+not to change anything in the general arrangement, in case it was wanted
+to-morrow for some _Assemblée Constituante_. You may enter it: the
+door is open for every one. On the right you see what was the House of
+Lords, a rectangular hall with an open ceiling, historic hangings, and
+the statue of some royalties. On the left, the House of Commons. Here,
+mahogany counters stand in place of the members benches, and where
+sounded once the clash of argument, you hear now the tinkling of gold
+coins.
+
+Let old times come again; let Westminster give back to the Sister-Isle
+the autonomy she mourns, and, as a stage machinery, the Bank will vanish
+before the Parliament. It will be an affair of a night’s work for the
+upholsterers.
+
+In front of that building, which is the City Hall, it is not the British
+flag (though perhaps the law should insist upon it) that is hanging
+aloft. It is the green flag of Erin with the harp and the three towers.
+Everywhere there are calls on the national feeling. _Hibernian House_,
+_Hibernian Hotel_, _Erin Stores_, _Irish poplins_, _Irish gloves_,
+_Irish whisky_. Above all Irish whisky! one could not get comfortably
+drunk with Scotch whisky, that is evident.
+
+If you visit a museum or picture-gallery you will find Art exiled in the
+background, and patriotism shining to the fore. Bating a fine Giorgione,
+a valuable Potter, a Van Steen of large size and extraordinary quality,
+a rare Cornelius Béga and a few others, the collection is not worth
+much, and would not fetch its million francs at the _Hotel des Ventes_,
+in the Rue Drouot. It is only a pretext for a national collection of
+portraits where are represented all the glories of Ireland, from Jonathan
+Swift, Laurence Sterne, Steele, Sheridan, Edmund Burke to Moore, Lord
+Edward Fitzgerald, the Duke of Wellington, and above all, O’Connell,
+“the liberator;” and Henry Grattan, esquire, “true representative of the
+people, father of liberty, author of the emancipation.”
+
+Those things take hold of you as soon as you arrive at Dublin. Like a
+flash of lightning they bring light upon many things about _Home Rule_
+which had remained hazy to your continental heedlessness. A nation with
+such memories kept up with such jealous care must know what it wants, and
+will have it in the end. Such signs are the manifestation of a national
+soul, of a distinct personality in the great human family. When all,
+from alderman to beggar, have one sole aim, they are bound to reach it
+sooner or later. Here, if the Town Hall has its green flag, the urchin
+in the street has his sugarplum, shaped into the effigy of Parnell or
+Gladstone. Never, since the Venice and the Lombardy of 1859, was there
+such a passionate outburst of national feeling.
+
+In the central part of the town, several streets are really fine with
+their rows of large houses, their gorgeous shops and numberless statues.
+The women are generally good-looking; well built, well gloved, well
+shod. They move gracefully, and with a vivacity which is quite southern.
+They look gentle and modest, and dress almost as well as Frenchwomen, of
+whom they have the quiet grace. The youngest ones wear their brown hair
+floating behind, and that hair, fine in the extreme, made more supple by
+the moistness of an insular climate, is crossed now and then by a most
+lovely glimmer of golden light.
+
+Most of the men have acquired the significant habit of carrying large
+knotty cudgels in place of walking sticks. Other signs show a state of
+latent crisis, a sort of momentary truce between classes: for instance,
+the abundance of personal weapons, pneumatic rifles, pocket revolvers,
+&c., which are to be seen in the armourers’ shop windows.
+
+But what gives the principal streets of Dublin their peculiar character
+is the perpetual presence at every hour of the day of long rows of
+loiterers, which only one word could describe, and that is _lazzaroni_.
+As in Naples they stop there by hundreds; some in a sitting posture, or
+stretched at full length on the bare stone, others standing with their
+backs to the wall, all staring vaguely in front of them, doing nothing,
+hardly saying more, mesmerised by a sort of passive contemplation, and
+absorbed in the dull voluptuousness of inaction.
+
+What do they live upon? When do they eat? Where do they sleep? Mystery.
+They probably accept now and then some occasional job which may bring
+them a sixpence. At such times they disappear and are mixed among the
+laborious population; you don’t notice them. But their normal function is
+to be idle, to hem as a human fringe the public monuments.
+
+Some places they seem to affect particularly; Nelson’s Pillar amongst
+others. Whenever you pass it you are sure to see four rows of loungers
+seated on the pedestal, with legs dangling, pressed against each other
+like sardines.
+
+Numerous tramcars, light and quick, cross Dublin in all directions. Five
+or six railway stations are the heads of so many iron lines radiating
+fan-wise over Ireland. All bear their national stamp; but what possesses
+that character in the highest degree is that airy vehicle called a
+jaunting-car.
+
+Imagine a pleasure car where the seats, instead of being perpendicular to
+the shafts, are parallel with them, disposed back to back and perched on
+two very high wheels. You climb to your place under difficulties; then
+the driver seated sideways like you (unless the number of travellers
+obliges him to assume the rational position), lashes his horse, which
+plunges straightway into a mad career.
+
+This style of locomotion rather startles you at first, not only on
+account of its novelty, but also by reason of the indifferent equilibrium
+you are able to maintain. Jostled over the pavement, threatened
+every moment to see yourself projected into space, at a tangent, you
+involuntarily grasp the nickel handle which is there for that purpose,
+just as a tyro horseman instinctively clutches the mane of his steed. But
+one gets used in time to the Irish car, and even comes to like it. First,
+it goes at breakneck speed, which is not without its charm; then you have
+no time to be bored, considering that the care of preserving your neck
+gives you plenty of occupation; lastly, you have the satisfaction of
+facing constantly the shop windows and foot paths against which you are
+likely to be tossed at any moment. Those are serious advantages, which
+other countries’ cabs do not offer. To be candid, they are unaccompanied
+by other merits.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In that equipage you go to the Phœnix Park, the Dublin “Bois de
+Boulogne.” It is a wide timbered expanse of some two thousand acres,
+full of tame deer, where all that is young in the place may be seen
+flirting, cricketing, playing all sorts of games, but above all,
+bicycling. Bicycles seem to be the ruling passion of the Dublin youth.
+I have seen more than a hundred at a time in a single lane near the
+Wellington Obelisk. By the way, this was the very avenue where Lord
+Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke were murdered five years ago by the
+_Invincibles_. A cross marks the place where the two corpses were
+discovered.
+
+The Castle, which the two English officials had the imprudence to leave
+that day, is the Lord-Lieutenant’s official residence. It has not the
+picturesque majesty of the castles of Edinburgh or Stirling. Instead of
+rising proudly on some cloud-ascending rock and lording over the town, it
+seems to hide “its diminished head” under a little hillock in the central
+quarters. You must literally stumble over its walls to become aware of
+their existence; and you understand then why the name of _Dublin Castle_
+is for the Irish synonymous with despotism and oppression.
+
+This is no Government office of the ordinary type, the dwelling of the
+Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland is a regular stronghold, encircled with
+ramparts, bristling with towers, shut up with portcullis, draw-bridge and
+iron bars. In the inner Castle yard are situated the apartments of the
+pro-consul, the lodgings of his dependants of all degrees, the offices
+where decrees are engrossed, the pigeon-holes where they are heaped, all
+forming a sort of separate city entrenched within its fortifications.
+
+A very gem is the Royal Chapel, with its marvellous oak wainscoting,
+which twenty generations of carvers have concurred to elaborate.
+The reception-rooms, the hall of the Order of St. Patrick, where
+_drawing-rooms_ are held, form the kernel of the fortress.
+
+The barracks of the English soldiers and of those giant constables whom
+you see about the town are also fortified with walls, and form a line of
+detached forts round the central stronghold.
+
+England is encamped at Dublin, with loaded guns and levelled rifles, even
+as she is encamped at Gibraltar, in Egypt, and in India.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+DUBLIN LIFE.
+
+
+As there is little aristocracy in Dublin there are few lordly dwellings
+besides the Vice-regal castle. This is very striking in this country of
+lords and serfs. The masters of the land, mostly of English origin, do
+not care at all to live in the capital of Ireland; all the time that they
+do not spend on their property they prefer to beguile away in London,
+Paris, Naples or elsewhere. Few of their tradesmen are Irish; and the
+greatest part of the rents they raise on their lands merely accumulate in
+the banks of Dublin to be afterwards spent on the foreign markets. Thence
+this consequence, which explains many things:—The clearest of the nett
+product of the country’s one industry—agricultural industry,—is poured
+outside it every year, without having circulated in Ireland, without
+having strengthened the local commerce or even invigorated agriculture
+itself, without having contributed to the well-being of a single
+Irishman. Let us set down this nett product, the Irish aggregate rental,
+at its lowest estimate, £8,000,000 per annum, a sum much inferior to the
+nominal one, and admit that one-half of it is sent abroad to absentee
+landlords. There we have £4,000,000 leaving the island every year without
+conferring the slightest benefit to any one of its inhabitants. In ten
+years’ time that represents 40 millions sterling; in fifty years, 200
+millions sterling, or five milliards francs, that Ireland has, so to
+speak, thrown into the sea, for that is to her the precise equivalent
+of such a continuous deperdition of capital.... And this has lasted for
+three centuries!...[1] What country would not be worn threadbare by such
+usage? What nation could resist it? Which individual, submitting to such
+periodical blood-lettings, would not succumb to anæmia?
+
+This anæmia betrays itself, even in Dublin, by many a symptom. For
+example, it is not long before one discovers that the finest shops, in
+the seven or eight principal streets, are a mere empty pretence; great
+windows displaying all the wares possessed by the merchant and beyond
+which the stock is _nil_. Money is so scarce that if you want to exchange
+a five pound note, in nine cases out of ten you do not get your right
+amount of change in specie. They give you back a quantity of small
+Irish banknotes, plus the change in half-crowns and shillings, and that
+not without having caused you to wait a long time while the important
+transaction was entered in and brought to a termination, and then only by
+the united energies of half the neighbourhood.
+
+There is not in all the city one tolerable _restaurant_ or _café_ where
+a stranger can read the papers or obtain a decent beefsteak. The two or
+three pretentious taverns that aspire to fulfil that purpose are horrible
+dens, where, without the civilized accompaniment of napkins, they give
+you slices of cow, tough as leather, which are charged for at Bignon’s
+prices.
+
+Necessity compels you to fall back on the hotels, where they pitilessly
+give you the same fare night after night,—salmon and roast beef. The
+first day this can be borne, for the Shannon salmon deserves its
+reputation; the second day one begins to find it indigestible; the third,
+one would like to see all the salmon of Ireland choking the head waiter.
+The fourth, one takes the train rather than remain any longer exposed to
+this implacable fare.... Vain hope! it pursues you everywhere: on the
+shores of Kingstown or those of Blackrock, in the pretty town of Bray,
+or at the furthermost end of Wicklow’s lakes. It is impossible to travel
+in Ireland without taking a dislike to salmon that will last the term of
+your natural life.
+
+And yet the fresh herrings of the Bay of Dublin are eating fit for the
+gods, and the good wives sell them in the streets at three a penny. Do
+not hope to taste them, however, unless you do your own marketing, and
+insist, with conditional threats, upon having your herrings brought up
+for breakfast. You will have a fight to sustain; you will run the risk of
+appearing in the eyes of the waiter as a man of no breeding, one who does
+not shrink from exhibiting his morbid tastes to the public view. But your
+pains and your humiliations will be rewarded by such a dish as is not
+often to be met with in this vale of tears and bad cooking.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dublin possesses three theatres, not including the future Opera-House,
+for which a site has already been chosen. The Gaiety, the most elegant
+of the three, gives musical burlesques that are rather entertaining,
+though they come straight from London. But they are acted by Irishmen
+and Irishwomen, with all the dash, the brilliancy, the wit of the Celt.
+The comic actor of the company neglects nothing to amuse his audience;
+extravagant costumes, insane grimaces, jigs danced in brogues, impromptu
+verses on the events of the day,—he has any number of tricks at his
+command. That gentleman would score a sure success at the _Concert des
+Ambassadeurs_, with the ditty that actually delights the hearts of the
+Dublin public—“_That’s all_;” it is about as stupid as the general
+literature of the Champs Elysées. The accomplished and fascinating _corps
+de ballet_ exhibit tights of such indiscretion as the Lord Chamberlain
+would assuredly not tolerate in London. Is it that his jurisdiction does
+not extend to the sister isle; or does the thing which would imperil the
+virtue of club-loungers in Pall Mall appear to him without danger for
+those of Kildare Street? The problem would be worth studying. However
+that be, a boxfull of young officers in H. B. M.’s service seem greatly
+exhilarated by the display of ankles of the ladies, unless it be by the
+port wine of the mess.
+
+These officers, in plain clothes as they are always when out of duty,
+are nevertheless easy to recognise and seem about the only _swells_
+visible in the boxes. The rest of the audience manifestly belong to the
+commercial and working classes.
+
+For it is a fact that there is in Dublin no more upper middle class than
+there is aristocracy. The upper middle class seem not to exist, or to
+be only represented by tradespeople, the liberal professions, or the
+students. But these young men being, after the excellent English custom,
+lodged at the University, do not count in the pleasure-seeking public.
+In other words, they spend the evening in their rooms drinking toddy,
+instead of spending it, as with us, drinking small-beer in _brasseries_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The University of Dublin, or rather, to speak more exactly, Trinity
+College, rises opposite Grattan’s Parliament, in the very heart of the
+town. It is an agglomeration of buildings of sufficiently good style,
+separated by spacious courts, and surrounded by about thirty acres of
+ground planted with ancient trees. Technical museums, lecture-rooms,
+refectories, rooms for the Fellows and the pupils are all to be found
+there. There is a Section of Theology, one for Letters and Science, a
+Musical Section, a School of Medicine, a Law School, an Engineering
+School. Students and Masters all wear, as in Oxford or Cambridge, the
+stuff gown and the kind of black _Schapska_, which is the University
+head-covering throughout the United Kingdom.
+
+Thinking of this, why is it we see so many Eastern head-dresses in the
+school of the west? With us the cap of the professors is the same that
+Russian popes wear. The Anglo-Saxons take theirs from Polish Lancers.
+That is an anomaly in the history of dress which ought to attract the
+meditations of academies.
+
+Another anomaly, peculiar to Trinity College, is that the porters (most
+polite and benevolent of men) are provided with black velvet jockey
+caps, like the Yeomen of the Queen. They take the visitors through the
+museums of the place, and show them the plaster cast taken from the dead
+face of Swift, the harp of Brian Boru, and other relics of a more or
+less authentic character. The Dining Hall is ornamented with full-length
+portraits of the local celebrities. The library, one of the finest in the
+world, is proud of possessing, among many other riches, the manuscript
+(in the Erse tongue), of the “Seven times fifty Stories,” which the bards
+of the Second Order of Druids used to recite, on ancient feast days,
+before the assembled kings and chieftains. Those venerable tales are
+subdivided into Destructions, Massacres, Battles, Invasions, Sieges,
+Pillages, Raids of Cattle, Rapes of Women, Loves, Marriages, Exiles,
+Navigations, Marches, Voyages, Grottoes, Visions, Pomps, and Tragedies.
+This shows that “documentary literature” was not invented yesterday: all
+the primitive life of Celtic Ireland is told there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The undergraduates at Trinity College do not seem, as a rule, like those
+of Oxford and Cambridge, to belong to the privileged or unoccupied
+classes. They are embryo doctors, professors, or engineers, who work
+with all their might to gain one of the numerous scholarships given by
+competition at the University. These competitions evidently excite an
+ardent emulation. I chanced to pass before the Examination Hall at the
+moment when the Rector at the top of the steps proclaimed the name of
+the candidate who had just won the Fellowship. Five hundred students at
+least, grouped at the gate, had been waiting for an hour to hear it, and
+saluted it with frantic cheers.
+
+The Fellowship gives a right to board and lodging for seven years, with a
+stipend of some £400. It is a kind of prebend that implies few duties and
+leaves the titulary free to give himself up to his favourite studies. It
+has been the fashion in a certain set in France to go into ecstasies over
+this institution, and to regret that it should not have entered our own
+customs. The life of a Fellow at Oxford, Cambridge, or Dublin, was fondly
+represented to us as an ideal existence, freed from material cares,
+devoted exclusively to the culture of the mind. If we look at things more
+closely, we shall see that this opinion is wide of the mark. We find some
+of the prebendaries poorly lodged enough, submitted, by the exigencies of
+life in a community, to many a puerile rule, imprisoned within the narrow
+circle of scholastic ideas, and in too many cases buried up to the eyes
+in the sands of routine, if not in sloth, or drunkenness.
+
+After all, for what strong, manly work is the world indebted to these
+much-praised Fellows?... The true effort of science or letters was never
+brought forth in these abbeys of Thelema of pedantry. Indeed it is much
+sooner born of individual struggle and large contact with the outside
+world. Even in the English Universities there is now a marked tendency
+to demand from the Fellow a work of positive utility in exchange for
+his salary. He must take his part in educating the pupils, help in the
+examinations, and in elaborating programmes; his life is much the same
+as that of our _Agrégés de Facultés_, with a something in it of lesser
+freedom and a semi-priestly character, if he be a bachelor. But he is
+free to marry now, and has been for a few years, on condition that he
+lives outside the college buildings.
+
+The students, fourteen hundred in number, live two by two, in rooms of
+extreme simplicity, which they are at liberty to decorate according to
+their taste or means, with carpets, prints, and flowers. The names of
+the occupants are written over each door. The rooms generally include
+a small ante-chamber and a closet with glass doors. Women of venerable
+age and extraordinary ugliness are charged with the care of those young
+Cenobites’ abode.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Trinity College was founded by Queen Elizabeth when she undertook the
+task of Anglicizing Ireland, and it has remained to our own day one of
+the strongholds of the conquering race. It is only since the year 1873
+that the chairs and offices of this University have been accessible to
+Roman Catholics. Up to that time they were exclusively reserved for
+Anglicans, and Mr. Matthew Arnold would exclaim with good reason that
+such a state of things was the most scandalous in Europe. In France,
+he said, Protestant masters occupied all the chairs to which their
+merits entitled them; in Germany, Catholic professors taught history or
+philosophy at Bonn and elsewhere; while, in Catholic Ireland, the one
+University the country possessed remained closed during two centuries
+to all students that were not of the Protestant persuasion, and for
+three-quarters of the present century a Catholic could neither attain to
+a chair or to any degree of influence in it.
+
+It was in the year 1845 that the movement began which was to triumph
+definitely in 1873, under the initiative of Mr. Gladstone. A certain
+Mr. Denis Caulfield Heron went up in that year for the competition
+for a fellowship, and took the first place. When he was, according to
+custom, invited to sign the Thirty-Nine Articles and to communicate in
+the University chapel, he opposed an absolute refusal, declaring himself
+to be a Roman Catholic; whereupon he was disqualified by the University
+Council. Mr. Heron exposed this judgment before the public, and succeeded
+in winning opinion to his side. But it proved an impossibility to make
+the Council recall their decision. The only thing Mr. Heron obtained,
+after a protracted struggle, was the creation of a new class of
+fellowships, accessible to Roman Catholics.
+
+Finally, in 1873 the College authorities at last made up their minds to
+render the offices and emoluments of the University independent of any
+sectarian denomination; nevertheless the Anglican spirit remains alive
+within its precincts, and manifests itself in the clearest manner upon
+occasions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Intellectual life is alive in Dublin, as many a learned or literary
+society, a flourishing review, four great daily and several weekly
+papers, can testify. The daily papers especially are edited with a spirit
+and humour truly characteristic. It is a well known fact that the Sister
+Isle contributes a third at least to the recruiting of the Anglo-Saxon
+press, not only in Great Britain, but in the United States, in Australia,
+and in the whole of the English speaking world. The Irishman a writer or
+a soldier born, as the Englishman is a born shopkeeper. The consequence
+is that the great papers in Dublin, the _Freeman’s Journal_, the _Irish
+Times_, _United Ireland_, the _Express_, the _Evening Telegraph_, are
+admirably edited each in its own line.
+
+But the same thing can hardly be said of the illustrated and coloured
+sheets that accompany the weeklies, and which are placarded everywhere.
+Those prints, bearing upon the political topics of the day, may possess
+the merit of teaching the crowd the lesson to be drawn from events; but
+they are lamentably inefficient from an artistic point of view.
+
+Ireland, decidedly, shines no more than does our own Brittany in the
+plastic arts. Her best painter has been Maclise, and he is by no means a
+great master. However, her coloured prints delight the hearts of the good
+people of Dublin. An old newspaper-seller, smoking her pipe at the corner
+of Leinster Street, holds her sides for very laughter as she contemplates
+the cartoon given this day by the _Weekly News_; it represents a mob
+of Orangemen in the act of pelting the Queen’s police with stones at
+Belfast. Underneath run the words: “_Behold loyal Ulster!_”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The quays of the Liffey are lined with book-shops like those of the
+Seine in Paris, to which they present a certain likeness. Following the
+quays from the west, one passes the building where sit the four Supreme
+Courts—Chancery, Exchequer, Queen’s Bench, and Common Pleas. The statues
+of Faith, Justice, Wisdom, and Piety rise under its Corinthian peristyle,
+which caused the typical Irish peasant, the Paddy of legend, to exclaim:
+
+“They did well to place them outside, for no one will ever meet them
+inside!”
+
+The judges, chosen by the Queen’s government, bear the title of _Chief
+Justice_ or _Baron_. There are four at each tribunal, each provided with
+a salary ranging from three to eight thousand pounds a year. They sit in
+groups of three, bewigged and clad in violet gowns, with peach-coloured
+facings, at the extremity of a recess screened by red curtains. Before
+them sit the barristers and clerks in black gowns and horsehair wigs.
+The writs and briefs of procedure, written out upon awe-inspiring sheets
+of foolscap paper, are piled up within capacious green bags, such as
+are only seen with us at the Comédie Française when they play _Les
+Plaideurs_. The judges appear to be a prey to overwhelming _ennui_, so
+do the barristers. The public, not being paid as highly as they are for
+remaining in this sleepy atmosphere, keep constantly going in and out.
+Now and then, however, Irish wit must have its due: some one delivers
+himself of a spicy remark; everyone wakes up a bit to laugh, after which
+business quietly resumes its dull course.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE POOR OF DUBLIN.
+
+
+Private houses are built in Dublin on the general type adopted throughout
+the British Isles: a basement opening on the railed area which runs
+along the pavement, a ground floor, a first floor, sometimes a second
+one. Above the front door a pane of glass lighted with gas. It is the
+custom of the country to place there one’s artistic treasures,—a china
+vase, a bust, or a small plaster horse. The small horse especially is a
+great favourite. You see it in a thousand copies which all came out of
+the same cast. In the suburbs you notice pretty often a window decorated
+with plants that are seen behind the glass panes,—Breton fashion,—and,
+striking circumstance, in Ireland also it is the uninteresting geranium
+which is the favourite flower of the poor. Inside the house the
+accommodation is nearly the same as in England. It is well known that
+nothing is more like an English house than another English house. But
+here, to the classical furniture, horse-hair and mahogany armchairs, and
+oil-cloth floor, is added a mural decoration of coloured prints and Roman
+Catholic chromolithographs, Saint Patrick, the Pope Leo XIII., the “Good
+Shepherd giving His life for the sheep,” surrounded by dried branches of
+holy palm, rosaries and scapularies. An ornament greatly appreciated on
+the chimney-piece is a glass vessel full of miraculous water in which
+swims a reduction of the tools of the Passion, the cross, the ladder, the
+hammer, the nails, and the crown of thorns.
+
+Eighty-seven per cent. of the Dublin population belong to the Roman
+Catholic religion. The proportion is higher in some other Irish counties:
+in Connaught it rises to ninety-five per cent.; nowhere, even in
+Protestant Ulster, does it descend lower than forty-five per cent.
+
+And those Catholics are not so only in name. The greater number follow
+the services of the Church, observe all the rites, maintain a direct
+and constant intercourse with the priests. The sincerity of their faith
+is particularly striking, and is not to be found in the same degree
+even in Italy or in Spain. For with them the Roman faith is narrowly
+bound with traditions most dear to their race; it remains one of the
+external forms of protestation against the conquest, and has been, till
+quite lately, a stigma of political incapacity. To the glamour of the
+traditional religion is added the poetry of persecution and the rancour
+of the vanquished. This religion is the one that is not professed by
+the hated Englishman: what a reason to love it above all the others! We
+must remember that in Dublin, amidst a population nine-tenths of which
+are devout Catholics, and where the remaining tenth is alone Protestant
+(Episcopalian’ Presbyterian, Methodist, &c.), the cathedral is in the
+hands of the Anglican minority with all the ancient basilics, whilst the
+worship of the majority is sheltered in modern and vulgar buildings.
+The conquering race has invaded Saint Patrick’s Baptistery as well as
+the Royal Castle, and the Senate of the University. A threefold reason
+for rancour to these who were thus deprived of the three sanctuaries of
+faith, public power, and learning.
+
+Such spoliations are those which a vanquished race cannot forget, because
+they bring constantly their sore under their eyes. Now the Irish have the
+artless vanity of the chivalrous races, and the wounds inflicted to their
+self-love are perhaps more cruel than the others.
+
+This vanity is frequently exhibited in a certain taste for show, and in
+a slight touch of the mountebank. The least apothecary’s shop in Dublin
+goes by the pompous name of _Medical Hall_; the smallest free school is
+an academy; and it is well known that every single Irishman is descended
+straight from the “ould kings of Oireland.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a great deal of misery in Dublin; 6,036 of her inhabitants are
+inmates of the workhouse; 4,281 are the recipients of outdoor relief;
+19,332 are without a known trade or profession and without means of
+living. It makes about 30,000 paupers in a town of 250,000 inhabitants.
+Besides those officially recognised paupers, how many others whose
+distress is no less terrible for not being classed!
+
+I had the first sight of that misery on the quay of the Liffey. It was a
+dishevelled woman walking as in a trance, her eyes settled, immoveable.
+Barefooted, dressed in a yellowish tattered shawl which hardly covered
+her withered breast, and in a horrible nondescript silk petticoat once
+black, through which her thighs appeared. She was pale and silent, and
+she seemed to be lost in some unutterable grief. I spoke to her—she did
+not answer. I put a piece of money in her hand, she took it without a
+word, without even looking at it. She went her way.
+
+I thought I had seen the ghost of the _Shan Van Vocht_, “The Poor Old
+Woman,” as the Irish sorrowfully call their country. She went with long
+strides towards the police court—a new building, not far from Richmond
+Bridge. I went in after her.
+
+In the courtyard, groups of beings with human faces were crouching on
+the ground—so black, so dirty, so tattered were they, that they made
+me think of the Australian aborigines and Fuegian savages, of the most
+unenlightened and degraded tribes of the globe. Most of them bore
+outwardly the semblance of women. The males were standing with their
+backs against the wall in that listless attitude of the “unemployed” in
+Dublin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An ill-kept staircase leads to the audience room. The walls are
+whitewashed, the ceiling a skylight, white wooden benches round the room.
+
+In the chair, the police judge; he is a yellow-haired man with a
+benevolent countenance, dressed in a frock coat. Clerks and counsel are
+alike gownless and wigless; everything is conducted in a homely manner.
+The accused follow each other in single file. The witness (nearly always
+a constable) states what he has seen. The judge asks the delinquent if
+he has anything to say in his defence, and after a quick colloquy he
+pronounces his sentence. Generally it is a fine of two or three shillings
+or a day’s imprisonment for each unpaid shilling.
+
+One of the prisoners has just been condemned to pay a fine of half a
+crown for obvious drunkenness; he does not possess a farthing, but seems
+to be endowed with a humorous turn of mind.
+
+“Your honour could as well have said half a sovereign! It would have
+looked more respectable, and the result would have been the same,” he
+says, turning his pockets inside out. A guffaw of laughter joined in by
+the judge himself, who does not think it his duty to be offended by the
+remark; after which he calls out for number two.
+
+Number two is a boy fifteen or sixteen years old; he has a sweet
+intelligent countenance in spite of the indescribable rags that cover his
+body. Tears stand in his eyes and his lips are tremulous. Nothing in him
+of the habitual offender. The accusation that he is lying under seems to
+be: “Theft of a pork-chop in an open shop-window.” A single witness is
+called, a little maid five years old; so small that her head does not
+even reach the top of the witness-box. They bring her a footstool, on
+which she climbs to give her evidence.
+
+She has seen the boy, she says, near the shop window, looking wistfully
+for a long time on the chops and finally pocketing one. However, her
+account is not very clear. All those people make her shy, and she does
+not speak out loud, so the clerk takes the trouble to read over to her
+the evidence she has just given. Does she know how to write? Can she
+sign her name? Yes. They place a pen in her fingers, and with infinite
+trouble, bending her small fair head, shooting out her lips, she writes
+on the legal parchment with her tiny trembling hand her name and surname:
+_Maggie Flanagan_.
+
+“Well! prisoner, what have you to say?”
+
+The unfortunate boy stammers that he was hungry, that there was not a
+penny in the house, and that he had no work.
+
+“What is your father’s trade?”
+
+“He is gone to Australia, your honour. Mother has been left with four
+children. I am the eldest. We had eaten nothing for two days.”
+
+One feels he is speaking the truth. Every heart is moved.
+
+Suddenly a shrill voice bursts out from the lower end of the room,
+wailing: “Oh, your honour, don’t send him to jail!...”
+
+It is the woman I saw on the quay; the one that I followed to that
+Purgatory. The mother of the culprit very likely.
+
+“I am obliged to remand you for a week in order to examine the
+circumstances of the case,” the judge says, in a manner that shows he is
+anxious to arrange the affair with kindness.
+
+The prisoner goes out of the dock following the warder, and disappears
+through a small side door.
+
+The mother has gone away without waiting, and I hurry to follow her. But
+she walks so fast that I can hardly keep pace with her.
+
+She passes again on the bridge, walks along the quay, plunges in a
+by-street, goes up towards the south-western quarters of Dublin, called
+the _liberties_ of the town. Suddenly I lose sight of her at the corner
+of a narrow lane, and after winding round and round I am obliged to
+renounce coming up with her. There is a way of course to come to the
+relief of those poor creatures, by sending one’s subscription to the
+judge according to the British fashion. But I wanted to see them at home
+in their den, wallowing in their squalor, to see whether men or destiny
+bear the responsibility for such dark distress.
+
+Alas! examples are not wanting, and I have only to cross the first
+door that opens before me. Along these lanes yawn dark alleys from
+which hundreds of half-naked children are swarming out. All ages are
+represented; they are in the most fantastical and unexpected attire. One
+has got on breeches fastened under the shoulders by a piece of cord in
+lieu of braces; the same is full of holes large enough for his head to go
+through. Another has no shirt, and trails in the gutter the jagged skirt
+of a coat slashed like a doublet, and with only one sleeve left. They are
+all of them so extravagantly slovenly that it seems to be a competition
+for rags.
+
+A baby two or three years old strikes me particularly. It is absolutely
+naked, and so very, very dirty that dirt has formed a sort of bronzed
+skin over his little body, and he is like a juvenile nigger. As he came
+into the world so he has remained. Neither soap nor water ever moistened
+his skin. He has not even undergone the washing that the mother-cat
+applies so industriously with her tongue on her newborn kittens.
+
+Yet his mother loves him, squalid and black as he is. Just now a cart
+passed, and the baby was running under the wheels; the mother sprang out
+of her lair with the roar of a tigress, and pounced upon her child,
+which she jealously carried away.
+
+Never in London did I hear such accents. Far from me to hint that English
+mothers do not love their babies: but they love them after their own
+fashion, without showers of kisses or demonstrative ways.
+
+And this is the distinctive feature which divides the Irish pariahs from
+those of the London East-End. They love each other, and they know how to
+put that love into words. Their distress, perhaps deeper than English
+poverty, bears not the same hard, selfish character—tenderness and love
+are not unknown to them. They try to help and comfort one another in
+their misery. Thackeray has remarked it long ago: let an Irishman be
+as poor as you like; he will always contrive to find another Irishman
+poorer still, whom he will serve and oblige, and make the partaker of his
+good or bad luck. And it is absolutely true. That fraternal instinct, so
+unknown to the Anglo-Saxon, nay, so contrary to his nature, shows itself
+here at every step.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the misery is none the less terrible here; indeed, there are no
+adequate words in the dictionary to express it. No description can give
+an idea of those nameless dens, sordid, dilapidated stairs, miserable
+pieces of furniture, nondescript utensils invariably diverted from their
+original destination. And in that lamentable frame, those swarming
+families squatting in their filth; the starved look of the mothers under
+the tattered shawl that ever covers their heads, the hungry little faces
+of their whelps....
+
+A sickening smell, recalling that of ill-ventilated hospitals, comes
+out of those lairs and suffocating you, almost throws you back. But it
+is too late. You have been caught sight of. From all sides visions of
+horror are emerging to light, spectres are starting up; old hags that
+would have surprised Shakespeare himself, swarm round you, holding out
+their hand for a _copper_. The younger women don’t generally come to the
+front, not that their wants be less, but they know that coppers are not
+inexhaustible, and that the old ones must have the precedence. So they
+remain sadly in the background, and then, when you have emptied your
+pockets, there is a roar of benedictions fit to rend one’s heart with
+shame. They are so fearfully sincere! And how many times do we not throw
+to the winds of our caprice what would be sufficient to quench at least
+for one moment, the thirst which is raging in that hell! You fly from
+that den of horror, wondering whether the most horrible deserts would
+not be more merciful to those destitute creatures than the _liberties_ of
+the city of Dublin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In your flight you fatally fall upon Nicholas Street, where all those
+dark alleys open. This is the way to the cathedral, and the great
+commercial artery of this side of the town. If any doubt remained in you
+after the insight you had of the houses of the poor in Dublin, about the
+way they live, that street alone would give you sufficient information.
+
+From end to end it is lined with a row of disgusting shops or stalls,
+where the refuse of the new and the ancient world seems to have come
+for an exhibition. Imagine the most hideous, ragged, repulsive rubbish
+in the dust-bins of two capitals, and you will get an idea of that
+shop-window display; rank bacon, rotten fish, festering bones, potatoes
+in full germination, wormy fruit, dusty crusts, sheep’s hearts, sausages
+which remind you of the Siege of Paris, and perhaps come from it; all
+that running in garlands or festoons in front of the stalls, or made
+into indescribable heaps, is doled out to the customers in diminutive
+half-pence morsels. At every turning of the street a public-house with
+its dim glass and sticky glutinous door. Now and then a pawnbroker with
+the three symbolic brass balls, and every twenty yards a rag and bone
+shop.
+
+The rag and bone trade is extremely active in Dublin, which numbers no
+less than 400 shops of that description, according to statistics. And
+that is not too many for a population which from times immemorial never
+wore a garment that was not second-hand. To a man Ireland dresses on the
+_reach-me-down_ system, and wears out the cast-off garments which have
+passed on the backs of ten or twelve successive owners. Battered hats,
+dilapidated gowns, threadbare coats arrive here by shiploads. When the
+whole world has had enough of them, when the Papoo savages and Guinea
+niggers have discarded their finery, and declared it to be no longer
+serviceable, there are still amateurs to be found for it in Dublin. Hence
+the most extraordinary variety, and the wildest incoherence of costume.
+Knee-breeches, tail coats, white gowns, cocked hats,—Paddy and his spouse
+are ready for anything. So destitute are they of personal property, that
+they do not even possess an outline of their own. Their normal get-up
+resembles a travesty, and their distress a carnival.
+
+The main point for them is to have a garment of any description to put
+on, since it is a thing understood that one cannot go about naked; and
+it does not very much matter after all what is the state of that garment,
+as it is so soon to leave their backs to go to the pawnbroker’s. This is
+a prominent figure in the daily drama of their wretched existence, the
+regulator of their humble exchequer through the coming and going of the
+necessaries of life, which they are obliged to part with periodically.
+
+“You see that pair of hob-nailed shoes?” one of them tells me, “For the
+last six months it has come here every Monday regularly and gone every
+Saturday. The possessor uses them only on Sundays; on week days he
+prefers enjoying his capital....”
+
+His capital!—one shilling and sixpence, for which he has to pay an
+interest of one penny a week; _i.e._, three hundred per cent. a year!
+
+Usury under all its forms blooms spontaneously on that dung-hill. By the
+side of the pawnbroker a _money office_ is almost always to be seen. It
+is an English institution, natural in a nation which is bursting with
+money, and consequently finds it difficult to make it render 3 or 4 per
+cent. What is England if not a colossal bank, which advances money upon
+any three given signatures as a security, if they come from people with a
+settled dwelling and a regular profession? Well, who would believe it?
+Paddy himself is admitted to partake of the onerous benefits of that
+credit, provided he work ever so little and be not too hopelessly worn
+out. For these small banking houses form a union and let each other know
+the state of their accounts. Upon the poor man’s signature accompanied by
+those of two of his fellows, five and seven pounds sterling will be lent
+to him, to be reimbursed by weekly instalments. But that resource, which
+is a powerful help for the strong energetic man, is almost invariably
+a cause of distress and ruin to the weak. The borrowed money ebbs out
+in worthless expenditure, in the buying of some articles of apparel or
+furniture, which soon takes the road to the pawnbroker’s; and the debt
+alone remains weighing with all its weight on poor Paddy. It is the last
+straw on the camel’s back, and he ends by falling down irremediably under
+it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE EMERALD ISLE.
+
+
+Nothing can be easier than to go from one end to the other of Ireland.
+Though her network of railways is not yet complete, great arteries
+radiate from Dublin in all directions and allow the island to be
+traversed from end to end, whether southward, westward, or northward,
+in less than seven or eight hours. The journey from south to north,
+following the great axis, is longer and more complicated, for it is
+necessary to change lines several times. The circular journey along the
+coasts is facilitated by excellent services of open coaches, that go
+through the regions not yet penetrated by railways. Lastly, one can, by
+following the Shannon, enter by steamboat almost to the very heart of the
+country.
+
+When one has gone through those various excursions, completed by riding
+and walking tours, and seen the island under its various aspects, one
+perceives that it presents in a general manner the appearance of a
+cup, with brims rising towards the sea; in other words, it consists in
+a vast central plain, protected on all its circumference by groups of
+hills and mountains, preventing the inroad of the ocean. Those mountains
+are in no part very high; the finest, those of Kerry, do not rise above
+1800 feet. But their very position on the brink of the Atlantic, the
+erosions undermining their base, the deep bays they delineate, the
+innumerable lakes hidden away in their bosoms, lend them a majesty far
+above their altitude. Bland and smiling in Wicklow, they are in Kerry of
+an unequalled serenity, while in Connemara they preserve unbroken the
+rude chaos of primeval cataclysms, and display on the north of Antrim’s
+table-land, towards the Giant’s Causeway, the most stupendous basaltic
+formations.
+
+Yet the normal, the truest aspect of Ireland, is represented by the
+central plain—a large, unbroken surface of green undulating waves, ever
+bathed in a damp and fresh atmosphere, shut in on the horizon by dark
+blue mountains.
+
+This aspect is of infinite sweetness; no land possesses it in a similar
+degree. It takes possession of you, it penetrates you like a caress and
+a harmony. One understands, when submitted to that entirely physical
+influence, the passionate tenderness that Irishmen feel for their
+country, and that is best illustrated by Moore’s poetry. The sky seems
+to have endeavoured to find the true chord in response to the earth, in
+order to give to all things those deliciously blended tones. The stars
+are nearly always seen through a light haze, and the sun itself shines
+but through a veil of vapours, into which it seems eager to disappear
+again. The shadows are not hard and well defined; they melt into each
+other by insensible gradations of tint. All is green, even the stones,
+clothed in moss; the walls, covered with ivy; the waters, hidden under
+a mantle of reeds and water-lilies. In other climes the fields, after a
+spring shower, take unto themselves the bravery that here is seen in all
+seasons. In the full heat of July the corn, the barley, the oats still
+keep their April dress. Do they ever ripen? They say they do, towards
+the end of October; but surely they never can get yellow. Yellow is not
+an Irish colour, nor is white. Ireland is indeed green Erin, the Emerald
+Isle. Never was name more truly given.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One could consider Ireland as a prodigious grass plot of some twenty
+million acres, constantly watered by rain. Water is everywhere: in the
+clouds that the winds of the Atlantic drive over her, and that the
+highlands of Scotland and Norway stop in their course; on the soil, where
+all hollows, great or small, become lakes; under the ground even, where
+the roots of vegetables, saturated and swollen like sponges, slowly
+change into peat. Ireland is the most liberally watered country in
+Europe, and yet, thanks to the constancy of the winds over her, one can
+scarcely say it is a damp country. The fall of water is on an average of
+926 millimetres in a year—a little over three feet. The ground, naturally
+of admirable fruitfulness, is still further favoured by the mildness and
+equableness of the climate on the shores.
+
+The flora almost recalls that of the Mediterranean coasts. The fauna
+presents the remarkable peculiarity of not possessing a single dangerous
+or even repulsive species—not one toad, not one reptile, except the most
+innocent among them all, the “friend of man,” the lizard. Legends say
+that St. Patrick, the Christian apostle of the isle, coming from Brittany
+in the 6th century, threw all the serpents into the sea, and all the
+toads after them; indeed, he is habitually represented in popular imagery
+as engaged in performing that miracle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An island possessing no backbone, and presenting generally the appearance
+of a cup, cannot have great rivers. In fact, almost all the rivers of
+Ireland, born within her girdle of mountains, soon lose themselves in the
+sea, forming at their mouth an estuary that takes the name of _Lough_, as
+do the lakes proper. One only creates an exception by the length of its
+course and the volume of its waters—the Shannon, rising in the central
+table-land, imprisoned, so to speak, at the bottom of the circular well,
+and whose course, impeded above Limerick by a barrier of rocks, form fine
+rapids, under which the waters flow in a majestic stream. With the tide,
+vessels of the heaviest tonnage can go up the river to Foynes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Indeed, the country lacks no harbours on those deeply indented shores.
+North, west, east, and south, Ireland counts no less than fourteen
+natural harbours, large enough to shelter whole fleets.
+
+But this gift, like all the others that Fate has showered on her, seems
+to have turned against her by bringing the nations of prey within those
+bays. Thrown as an outwork of Europe in the middle of the ocean, she
+seemed to be opening her arms to the Phœnicians, to the Scandinavians;
+later on to the Arabs, the Spaniards, and the English. A gust of wind
+was enough to reveal her to them; a favourable breeze to bring them back.
+To understand clearly the perils of such a post, and to see how much more
+still than the muzzle of Brittany, Ireland is Atlantic land, one must
+go to Valencia, the small islet on which come to shore the ends of the
+Transatlantic cables.
+
+More than in any other spot of Europe one feels at the farthest end of
+the world there. It seems as if, by stretching one’s arm, one would reach
+the United States. And, in fact, one is near enough as it is—five or six
+days by steam—almost within speaking distance with the telephone. So fast
+travel the storms from America that the telegram is hardly able to arrive
+before them. A sea-gull, borne on the wing of the hurricane, would cross
+that arm of the sea in a few hours. The breeze that blows in your face
+may have stirred the hair of a Brooklyn belle in the morning. There one
+feels how very small is our globe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Geologically, Ireland differs much from Great Britain. The island
+appeared much earlier, and its structure is special. Alone, its northern
+part, or Ulster, which, from a political point of view, forms such a
+striking contrast with the rest of the island, presents between Donegal
+Bay and Dundalk Bay, mountainous masses, entirely analogous with those of
+Scotland, towards which they advance, and of which they appear originally
+to have formed a part. They are basaltic rocks, or petrified streams of
+lava, while the mountains in Kerry or Connemara are red sandstone and
+slate, lying above the carbonaceous strata.
+
+What ought, in fact, to be considered as Ireland proper consists, then,
+of the eastern province or Leinster, the southern or Munster, and the
+western or Connaught. Ulster is in reality, as well by the nature of
+its soil as by the race and habits of the majority of its inhabitants,
+an annex and dependency of Scotland. The three other provinces, on the
+contrary, form a whole, as distinct from England or Scotland by the
+constitution and aspect of the land, as it is different by the race,
+genius, the traditions and beliefs of the population.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The most striking thing on a first sight of the Irish landscape is the
+total absence of trees of any kind. They are only seen in private parks.
+As far as the eye can see the plains spread in gentle undulations,
+covered with grass and intersected with stone walls; no single oak, elm,
+or shrub ever comes to break its monotony. The tree has become a lordly
+ensign. Wherever one sees it one may be certain the landlord’s mansion is
+not far.
+
+That radical disappearance of the forests, in a country once covered with
+them, is singular. A great many explanations have been given of this
+fact,—explanations that went back as far as some geological cataclysm.
+Such theories are no longer acceptable in these days. The most likely
+supposition is that all the available timber has gradually been felled
+down for domestic uses, and that indifference, poverty, incessant war,
+incertitude as to the present or future, have, from the remotest times,
+prevented those sad gaps being repaired.
+
+On the lower land the absence of timber is explained of itself by
+the apparition of deep layers of turf, whose depth is sometimes from
+forty-five to sixty feet, in which whole oak trees have been discovered
+in a more or less advanced state of carbonisation. At a certain stage of
+this transformation the ligneous tissue has become of such flexibility
+that the Irish cut it into stripes and use it to make straps, fishing
+nets, bands of all kinds,—not to mention the pious trifles, pipes, small
+figures carved with a knife, and various _souvenirs_ with which they
+pester the tourist.
+
+The turf pits are a great source of riches for Ireland, and furnish the
+only fuel commonly used by the lower classes. In the country one sees
+everywhere people engaged in extracting peat, cutting it into cakes,
+erecting these cakes in pyramids to be allowed to dry in the sun, or
+transporting them from one place to the other. The people working at it
+are, indeed, almost the only ones visible in the fields. One might think
+that the extracting and manipulating of the turf were the only industry
+of the country.
+
+There are two kinds of turf, the red and the black, according to the
+degree of carbonisation attained by the layers, and the nature of the
+vegetable matter that formed them. The finest is of such intense and
+brilliant black, that it might almost be mistaken for coal. Those vast
+reservoirs of fuel, known in Ireland by the name of _bog_, are a constant
+feature of the landscape in the valleys of the mountainous girdle as in
+the lower parts of the plain. The total depth of these open carbon mines
+is estimated at no less than sixty million cubic feet; they occupy an
+area almost equal to the seventh part of the total superficies of the
+island, and the lakes cover another seventh part.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One other striking peculiarity of the scenery in Ireland is the scarcity
+of cultivated fields. One can count them, dotted here and there, almost
+always planted with oats, potatoes, or turnips. The statistics of the
+Agricultural Society give, in round numbers, for twenty millions of acres
+of total surface, five millions, or a quarter in cultivated ground; that
+is, 150,000 acres only in cereals, 350,000 in turnips, one million and a
+half in potatoes, two million in artificial meadows. Ten million of acres
+are in natural meadows; the rest are fallow lands, bog or turf, waste
+land, roads and highways.
+
+Those roads and highways, as well as the bridges and all the public
+works depending upon the English Government, are admirably kept. It is
+clear that on that point Dublin Castle is resolved to give no handle to
+criticism. Those splendid tracks of road, laid across waste and desert
+land, even produce a curious effect, and one would be tempted to see an
+affectation about it, did they not, in the majority of cases, lead to
+some magnificent private property, spreading as far as one can see over
+hill and dale, always shut in by stone walls eight or ten feet high,
+enclosing an area of several miles.
+
+As for the conveyances that are seen on these Appian Ways they are of
+two kinds; either the smart carriage whose cockaded coachman drives
+magnificent horses, or the diminutive cart drawn by a small donkey,
+carrying, besides the grand-dame or child that drives it, a sort of
+conical-shaped utensil held in its place with cords and oftener filled
+with water than with milk. One must go to Morocco or Spain to see donkeys
+in such numbers as in Ireland.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One thing surprises in those endless pastures—it is to count so few
+grazing beasts on them. Not that they are altogether excluded; now and
+then one perceives on the intense green of the fields reddish or white
+spots that are cattle or sheep, the rounded haunch of a mare, the awkward
+frolics of a foal. On the brinks of rivers that one can almost always
+cross wading, one sometimes sees a few happy cows, their feet in the
+water, wide-eyed and munching dreamily. Here and there one sees geese,
+hens escorted by their chicks, pigs fraternally wallowing with children
+in the muddy ditch. But in a general way the landscape is wanting in
+animated life, and as poor in domestic animals as in labourers.
+
+As a contrast game is plentiful, as is natural in a land that is
+three-quarters uncultivated, where it is forbidden to carry arms, and
+where shooting is the exclusive privilege of a very small minority. Hares
+and rabbits seem to enjoy their immunity to the utmost, and everywhere
+their white breeches are seen scudding away in the dewy grass like
+fireworks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Villages are rare, and rarer still is farmhouse or homestead. Undulating
+ridges succeed to undulating ridges and still one sees no trace of
+any dwellings. One might think that these stone walls radiating over
+the fields had sprung there of their own accord, and that the hay is
+doomed to rot standing, after feeding the butterflies. Yet that cannot
+be—evidently some one must come now and then to cut this grass, make it
+into stacks and carry it away.... At last, by dint of stretching neck
+and legs you succeed in discovering far away on the horizon a spire
+that belongs to a big borough, a market-town rather, where those civic
+tillers of the soil dwell in houses similar to those of the _liberties_
+in Dublin.
+
+As for the mud cabin, generally described as the Irish peasant’s only
+home, it is now a thing of the past. One would hardly, and after much
+research, find some specimens of it in the farthest counties, at the end
+of Kerry or Mayo.
+
+True to say, when found, those specimens leave nothing to be desired for
+poverty and discomfort; no fire-place, no windows, no furniture; nothing
+but a roof of turf supported by a few poles on mud walls. The very pig
+that formerly shared its luxuries with the _genus homo_ and indicated a
+certain degree of relative comfort in his possessor, the pig himself has
+disappeared for ever.
+
+But those are exceptions, almost pre-historic cases. As a rule the mud
+cabin has been blotted out from the Irish soil—perhaps enlightened
+landlords systematically pursued its eradication; perhaps the peasants,
+tired of its tutelary protection, emigrated under other skies,—or more
+simply still, they took advantage of the last famine to die of hunger.
+Upon which came the rain, and two or three years sufficed to dilute the
+walls, render the mud house to the common reservoir, and wash out its
+very remembrance.
+
+The population of Ireland, it must be borne in mind, has been steadily
+decreasing for half a century. It was of 8,175,124 inhabitants in 1841;
+of 6,552,385 in 1851; 5,798,584 in 1861; 5,412,377 in 1871; and 5,174,836
+in 1881. By all appearances it must now have sunk under five millions. If
+this fish-eating race was not the most prolific under the sun it would
+have been blotted out long ago from the face of this planet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE RACE.
+
+
+The essential character of Irish scenery is, besides the green colour
+and the absence of trees, the frequent ruins that meet the eyes
+everywhere—one cannot go two steps without seeing them. Ruins of castles,
+abbeys, churches, or even humble private dwellings. There are quarters of
+large towns or boroughs, such as for instance the northern one in Galway,
+that might be taken at night, with their sinister looking rows of houses,
+roofless and with gaping walls, for a street in Herculaneum or Pompeii.
+When the ancient stone walls are those of a church or chapel, they
+generally serve as a setting for the legends of the countryside; there
+occurred all the terrifying tales of former days, there took place all
+the local miracles, and there still is the favourite haunt of illustrious
+spirits, of fairies and _banshee_.
+
+Almost in every case the graves of a hamlet come to group themselves at
+the foot of those ivy-clothed old walls, by an instinctive and touching
+effect of the Irishman’s passionate love for the traditions of his race;
+and those graves, generally covered with great slabs of stone, scattered
+among the tall grasses, wild and moss-grown, without cross or emblem of
+any sort, well accord with the melancholy aspect of the site.
+
+Sometimes near these ruins and graves is still seen, proudly raising its
+head, one of those monuments peculiar to the country and about which
+antiquaries are at such variance,—the round towers of Ireland: slender
+and bold turrets, slightly conical in shape, not unlike minarets 75 or
+80 feet high, upon a base 15 to 18 feet broad, and springing from the
+ground like obelisks. They are built of large stones, sometimes rough,
+sometimes cut, but always cemented together, a fact which gave rise
+to the opinion that they must be posterior to the invasion of Great
+Britain by the Romans. But that is simply begging the question and is
+justified by nothing; moreover, the absence of any tradition about the
+origin or use of those towers make such a tale appear in the highest
+degree improbable. A race was never seen to borrow the technical industry
+of another race to apply it to the construction of monuments that are
+essentially their own. Celtic civilization had attained in Ireland,
+centuries before the Romans, to a degree of perfection witnessed by the
+Brehon Code, compiled at least five or six centuries before the Christian
+era, and the first among human laws that substituted arbitrage to brute
+force. A people capable of submitting to the law of reason and who knew
+enough of mechanics to erect monoliths of twenty-four thousand cubic feet
+could well discover alone the art of mixing mortar, and need not borrow
+it from the Romans, who besides did not set foot in the country. Never
+was hypothesis more childish or more unfounded. The truth is that nothing
+is known about the round towers, as is the case with the _nurraghs_
+of Sardinia; that all those monuments are anterior to any positive
+traditions and have been built for uses of which we have no conception.
+At the most one might suppose from their aspect, which is that of inland
+lighthouses, that they may have been used as military or astronomical
+observatories, and, perhaps, bore on their summit a sacred fire visible
+throughout a whole district. In such a case the only guide to be followed
+with any certainty is the eternal fitness between organ and function.
+
+Eighty-three of these towers are still standing in Ireland, and their
+dilapidated condition allows it to be supposed that they may once have
+been much more numerous. Whatever may have been their origin, they
+remain so narrowly and so fitly associated in the popular imagination
+with the Irish idea of nationality that the image of a round tower
+naturally grew under the chisel of the sculptor, as an emblem of
+patriotism, on the tomb of O’Connell in the cemetery of Dublin.
+
+Megalithic monuments and dolmen are equally found in great numbers in
+Ireland. Donegal presents at Raphre a circus of raised stones absolutely
+similar to that of Stonehenge, while in Derry one sees in the Grianan of
+Aileach the finest fortified temple that was ever raised in honour of the
+sun. In many districts all the hills or mountains without exception are
+crowned with the funeral hillock or Celtic _rath_. As for the Druidical
+inscriptions in the _Ogham_ character, consisting of twenty-five
+combinations of oblique or vertical strokes corresponding to an equal
+number of sounds, they abound in all the counties. The most curious is
+that of the Cave of Dunloe, discovered by a labourer, in the vicinity
+of Killarney, in the year 1838; it may be considered a true Druidical
+library, of which the books are represented by the stones of the vaulted
+roof. Those characters have been deciphered now, thanks to bilingual
+inscriptions posterior to the Roman period.
+
+Lastly, the names of places and the geographical definitions are, in
+nine cases out of ten, of Celtic origin, according to the tables drawn
+out by Chalmers. The mountains are called _ben_, and the chains of hills
+_sliebh_, rocks are _carricks_ or _cloagh_, lakes _loughs_, an island
+_innis_, bogs _corks_, lands _curraghs_, hills _knocks_, rivers _anagh_.
+
+The Erse tongue, still spoken by a twelfth part of the population, is
+sister to the Gaelic and the Breton. It denominates a field _agh_, a
+ford _ath_, a village _bally_, a city _cahir_, _ban_ what is white or
+beautiful, _deargh_ what is red, _dua_ what is black, _beg_ what is
+small, and _mor_ what is big, _clar_ a plain, _teach_ a house, _donagh_ a
+church, _ross_ a wooded hillside.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As for the type of the Irish race it is undeniably Celtic, or at least
+essentially different from the Anglo-Saxon. The hair is black or brown,
+the eyes dark, the complexion pale, the nose short, the forehead bony.
+The general appearance is vigorous and active, the movements are quick
+and often graceful; the stature without being low, is nearer to middle
+height than is generally the case in a British country. The rudest
+peasant girls often have a sculptural grace of attitude; one sees them
+in the fields, carrying burdens on their head with that stateliness of
+Greek canephores which seems as a rule the exclusive attribute of the
+daughters of the East.
+
+Still more different from the English is the inner man; naturally
+mirthful and expansive, witty, careless, even giddy, quarrelsome from
+mere love of noise, prompt to enthusiasm or despondency, imbued with the
+love of literary form and legal subtleties, he is the Frenchman of the
+West, as the Pole or the Japanese are Frenchmen of the East. And always
+there has been an affinity of nature, a harmony of thought, between
+them and us. At once we feel we are cousins. Their ancestors formerly
+came in thousands to fight under our flag. Our revolutions were always
+felt in Ireland. So strong, for nations as well as individuals, is that
+mysterious tie of a common origin, or even the most remote consanguinity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Does this mean that the Irishman, thanks to his insular position, has
+escaped all cross breeding and remained pure Celt? Far from it. No
+country was oftener or more cruelly invaded than his. The stranger
+implanted himself in it, begat his children there, introduced in the race
+elements that are still recognizable; for example, that most peculiar
+expression of the eyes, the height of the cheek-bones, the outline of
+the temples and cranium, which are in many cases clearly Scandinavian.
+
+In the origin of history the primitive inhabitants of Erin, the Firbolgs
+(men with the skin of beasts) were vanquished by the Thuathan-de-Danan,
+“the fairy people,” who came from the East, and who founded the realm of
+Innisfallen, or Island of Fate. A Spanish invasion (probably Phenician),
+that of the Milesians, overthrew that establishment ten or twelve
+centuries before the Christian era, and three hundred years before the
+foundation of Rome. After that came an uninterrupted list of one hundred
+and ninety-seven Milesian kings, who reached to the arrival of the
+Northmen, in the eighth century of the present era. Under their rule
+Ireland enjoyed a profound peace. It was during this period of more than
+a thousand years that flourished and developed in the island of Erin
+an entirely original civilization, characterised by the Brehon Code,
+by customs of great gentleness, by institutions of admirable prudence,
+among others that of a national militia, the _Fiana-Erin_, or _Fenians_,
+who were recruited by voluntary enlistment, defended the country and
+maintained order therein, while the citizens pursued their various
+avocations,—agriculture, in which they excelled, fishing and navigation,
+for which they displayed some ability.
+
+Divided into five or six small independent kingdoms Ireland, without her
+militia, would have fallen an easy prey to the Britons, the Gauls, or the
+Caledonians, and later on to the Romans. Thanks to that national force,—a
+true civic guard, quartered during winter on the inhabitants, and ever
+popular, which proves that it knew how to preserve intact the tradition
+of Celtic virtues,—Ireland, alone almost among European nations, escaped
+a Roman invasion. After twelve hundred years the remembrance of the
+Fenians has remained so vivid in the hearts of the people that the Irish
+Republicans of America, when they resumed in our own days the struggle in
+arms against England, naturally chose the name of the ancient defenders
+of national independence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the fall of the Roman Empire and the dying out of the fear of
+invasion, the Fenian institution disappeared. The military instincts
+of the nation then manifested themselves at the exterior by frequent
+incursions made by Irish adventurers in England, Scotland, or Gaul. It
+was in one of those incursions off the coast of Brittany that Niall Mor,
+King of Tara, took prisoner, with several other young Christians, a
+boy named Sucoth, and whom they called _Patricius_ (Patrick) on account
+of his noble origin. This was at the end of the fourth century of our
+era. The prisoner was employed in tending flocks in Ireland, spent seven
+years there, and at last found an opportunity of escaping to his own
+country. When back in Brittany, he constantly thought with grief of the
+dreadful destiny of the Irish, who still remained in ignorance of the
+true religion, and vegetated in the darkness of Druidism. One night he
+had a prophetic dream, after which he resolved to dedicate himself to the
+evangelization of those unhappy heathens. To this effect he went to the
+town of Tours, where he assumed the religious habit, then on to Rome,
+where he entered the missionary seminary. In the year 432 he was at the
+Barefooted Augustines’ Convent, in Auxerre, when he heard of the death
+of Paladius, fifth apostolic missionary of the Holy See in the island of
+Erin. Patrick solicited and obtained the honour of succeeding him. He was
+made Archbishop _in partibus infidelium_, and set out with twenty other
+French priests.
+
+A certain number of Christians were already to be found in Ireland; but
+the bulk of the nation remained attached to its traditional worship,
+which was that of Chaldea and of Ancient Gaul, the worship of the sun or
+fire, as the principle of all life and purity.
+
+Yet the sons of Erin were not by any means barbarians; their civilization
+could rather be regarded as the most flourishing in Europe. They knew
+the art of weaving stuffs, and of working metals; their laws were wise
+and just, their customs hardy without ferocity. Patrick knew better than
+any one that he must think neither of hurrying their conversion nor
+of imposing it by force. He devoted himself with great adroitness to
+the task of winning the favour of the chiefs, tenderly handled all the
+national prejudices, loudly extolled the excellence of the Brehon Code,
+and succeeded at last in giving baptism to the Princes of Leinster. After
+this the new religion made such rapid progress that at the end of fifteen
+years Patrick was obliged to ask for thirty new Bishops from Rome,
+besides the numerous native priests who had already received ordination
+at his hands. When he died at the ripe age of one hundred and twenty
+years, Ireland had become Christian, and was rapidly being Latinised in
+the innumerable schools attached to the monasteries and churches. She
+even entered so eagerly in the new path as to deserve the name of “Isle
+of Saints” throughout the Roman world, and that for a long time it was
+enough to be Irish or to have visited Erin to become invested with
+almost a halo of sanctity.
+
+That transformation had been accomplished without violence or effusion
+of blood. Until the 8th century it was a source of honour and prosperity
+for Ireland, for the lustre of her own civilization was enhanced by her
+renown for piety, and all the neighbouring nations sent their sons in
+flocks to be instructed in her arts and her virtues.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the very virtues that made her a country of monks and scholars were
+doomed before long to become the source of all her misfortunes. When the
+Scandinavian invasions began to pour over the whole of Europe, Ireland,
+emasculated by an entirely mystical devotion, was found incapable of
+sustaining the shock of the Northmen. The disappearance of the Fenian
+Militia had for a long time left her without a national tie, given up to
+local rivalries, and broken in pieces, as it were, by the clan system. At
+the very time that she most urgently needed a powerful central authority
+to struggle against the _black_ and _white strangers_ from Norway and
+Denmark, she was found defenceless, and it was not her feeble belt of
+mountains, opening everywhere on deep bays, that could oppose a serious
+barrier to them, or guard her plains against their invasions.
+
+Pressed by hunger, the Scandinavians left their country in shoals. They
+threw themselves on the coasts of Great Britain, France, and Spain, as
+far as the basin of the Mediterranean. In no place were the people of
+Europe, already enfeebled by habits of comparative luxury, able to resist
+those giants of the North, who dauntlessly embarked in their otter-skin
+boats and dared to go up the Seine even to the very walls of Paris.
+Ireland was a prey marked out for them. If peradventure the invading
+party were not numerous enough and were beaten back by numbers, they
+would come back in thousands the following year and sweep all before
+them. Vainly did the sons of Erin fight with all the courage of despair;
+one after the other their chieftains were vanquished, and the foe
+definitely took up a position on the south-east coast, where he founded
+the cities of Strangford, Carlingford, and Wexford.
+
+Not content with reducing the Irish to bondage, the victors took a
+cunning and savage delight in humiliating and degrading them, lodging
+garnisaries under their roofs, interdicting, under pain of death, the
+exercise of all liberal arts as well as the carrying of arms, destroying
+schools, burning books to take possession of the gold boxes that
+protected their precious binding.
+
+Every ten or twelve years a liberator sprang up in the West or North,
+and tried to shake off the abhorred yoke. But the rebellion only made
+it weigh more heavily on the neck of the vanquished; and if it happened
+that a Brian Boru succeeded, after incredible efforts and heroism, in
+gathering troops numerous enough to inflict on the stranger a bloody
+defeat, such a day of glory was invariably followed by the most sinister
+morrow.
+
+After two centuries of slavery, interrupted by massacres, vain struggles,
+and impotent efforts, Ireland, once so prosperous, gradually sank in the
+darkest state of barbarism. The intestine dissensions and the rivalries
+between clans achieved the work of the Northern Conquerors. In the year
+1172 she was ripe for new masters, also of Scandinavian race, who were
+ready to swoop on her with their Anglo-Saxon bands, after passing, to
+come to her, through the duchy of Normandy and through Great Britain.
+
+Henry the Second of Anjou, King of England, was resolved to add Ireland
+to his possessions. All he wanted was a pretext. He found it in the state
+of practical schism and independence into which the insular Church
+had fallen. The members of its clergy no longer recognized the Roman
+discipline, did not observe Lent, and married like those of the Greek
+rite. Henry the Second solicited and obtained from Pope Adrian II. a bull
+authorizing him to invade the sister isle, in order to “re-establish
+therein the rule of the Holy See, stop the progress of vice, bring back
+respect for law and religion, and secure the payment of St. Peter’s
+pence.” But in spite of this formal authorization he was too much
+occupied with Aquitaine to be able to entertain seriously the idea of
+undertaking the conquest of Ireland, when one of his vassals, Strongbow,
+cut the knot by landing on the island at the head of a Welsh army, to
+carve himself a kingdom on the south-east coast.
+
+The way was open; Henry II. threw himself in it in his turn, and
+established himself in the east of the island, where, strong in the
+countenance of the clergy secured to him by the Papal bull, he received
+before long the homage of the principal native chieftains.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Limited at first to a territory enclosed within palisades, or _Pale_,
+which, during more than four centuries, enlarged or got narrowed,
+according to the fortune of war and the relative strength of the
+belligerent parties, the English rule was destined at last to spread
+over the whole of the island. But, of this seven-century struggle, the
+last word is not yet said. The wound is ever bleeding. Ireland has
+never accepted her defeat; she refuses to accept as valid a marriage
+consummated by a rape. Always she protested, either by direct rebellion,
+when she found the opportunity for it, as in 1640, in 1798, and in
+1848; either by the voice of her poets and orators, by the nocturnal
+raids of her _Whiteboys_ and _Ribbonmen_, by the plots of her Fenians,
+by the votes of her electors, by parliamentary obstruction, by passive
+resistance, by political or commercial interdict—opposed to the intruder;
+in a word, by all the means, legal or illegal, that offered to interrupt
+prescription.
+
+A striking, and, one may say, a unique example in history: after seven
+centuries of sustained effort on the part of the victor to achieve his
+conquest, this conquest is less advanced than on the morrow of Henry the
+Second’s landing at Waterford. An abyss still severs the two races, and
+time, instead of filling up that abyss, only seems to widen it. This
+phenomenon is of such exceptional and tragic interest; it beats with
+such crude light on the special physiology of two races and the general
+physiology of humanity, that one needs must stop first and try to unravel
+its tangible causes if one be desirous of comprehending what is taking
+place in the land of Erin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+HISTORICAL GRIEVANCES.
+
+
+The English, it must be admitted, are no amiable masters. Never, in any
+quarter of the globe, were they able to command the goodwill of the
+nations submitted to their rule, nor did they fascinate them by those
+brilliant qualities that often go a long way towards forgiveness of
+possible injuries. “Take yourself off there, that I may take your place,”
+seems always to have been the last word of their policy. Pure and simple
+extermination of autochthon races; such is their surest way to supremacy.
+One has seen it successively in America, on the Australian continent, in
+Tasmania, in New Zealand, where the native tribes hardly exist now more
+than as a memory. On the other hand, if the vanquished races were too
+numerous or too sturdy and prolific to be easily suppressed, as in India
+or Ireland, reconciliation never took place; conquest ever remained a
+doubtful and precarious fact.
+
+In Ireland, the question was made more complex by two elements
+that visibly took a predominant part in the relations between the
+conquerors and the conquered. In the first place, the island of Erin,
+having remained outside the pale of the Roman world and of barbaric
+invasions, possessed an indigenous and original civilization that made
+her peculiarly refractory to the establishment of the feudal system.
+Secondly, her very remoteness and her insular character inclined the
+immigrants to establish themselves there regretfully, to consider her
+always as a colony and a place of exile, where they only resided against
+their will. For the first four hundred years of their occupation they
+confined themselves to the eastern coast within the inclosed territory
+(varying with the fortune of war) that they called the _Pale_ or
+palisade, and outside which the Irish preserved their manners, their
+laws, and their own customs.
+
+In spite of this barrier, it happened in the course of time that the
+English colonists got pervaded by those customs and felt their contagion.
+At once the British Parliament had recourse to drastic laws in order to
+open a new abyss between the two races, and keep the mastery they had
+over the Irish. Such is the special object of an edict of Edward III.,
+known under the name of _Edict of Kilkenny_, and by which it is reputed
+high treason for any Englishman established in Ireland to have married
+an Irish-woman, to have legitimised an Irish child, or have held him in
+baptism, to have taken an Irish Christian name, to have worn the Irish
+dress, to have spoken the Erse tongue, to have let his moustache grow,
+or to have ridden saddleless, as was the Irish fashion; above all, to
+have submitted to the Brehon Code. Those divers crimes were punished by
+confiscation of property, and perpetual imprisonment of the offender.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such laws were a powerful obstacle to fusion, raised by the intruder
+himself. One sees at once the difference between, for instance, such a
+system and that established by the Norman invasion in Great Britain.
+
+Here the conqueror found a race made supple by Roman occupation and
+Danish rule; he established himself, by strength of arm, on the soil,
+covered it with strongholds, and everywhere substituted himself to the
+dispossessed masters; he at once implanted within his new dominions the
+French tongue, the feudal system, the powerful hierarchy that constituted
+its strength; he remained standing, iron-covered and in arms, over the
+prostrate bodies of the population in bondage, and repressed with such
+a high hand any attempt at rebellion, that the very idea of resistance
+must of necessity die out soon. On the other hand, having transplanted
+himself, and without any idea of return, in this new sphere, he
+immediately submitted to its influence; he incorporated himself with the
+ambient race to such a degree as soon to forget his own origin, and come
+after two or three generations to consider himself as purely of English
+breed.
+
+In Ireland, on the contrary, not only was the conqueror reduced by the
+imperfect state of his conquest to remain on the defensive, confined
+within the Pale on the eastern shore, within reach, so to say, of the
+mother country; not only could not he dream for a long time of obliging
+populations that escaped all action on his part to obey his manners and
+his laws; not only did he systematically keep those populations at arm’s
+length and avoided mixing with them; but periodical laws and edicts
+constantly came to remind them, on pain of terrible punishment, that he
+belonged to another race, and must guard with jealous care the integrity
+of its autonomy. Without any intercourse with the more distant tribes, he
+was at constant war with those of the borders of the Pale.
+
+And war was, at this period even still more than in our own days, mere
+rapine, raised to the dignity of a system. The English did not scruple to
+make incursions on their neighbour’s lands, to take away harvest, cattle,
+and women, after which they returned to their fortified territory.
+
+They did even worse: having heard of the ancient custom by which the
+Irish formerly accorded fire and candle light to their national militia
+or Fenians, the English revived it to their own profit; they quartered on
+the peasantry in their neighbourhood during all the winter, a soldier,
+who took his seat round the domestic hearth, shared the meals of the
+family, took possession of the best bed—nay, did not disdain to cast
+the eye of favour on the wife or daughter—and not the less remained
+a stranger, a foe, at the same time that he was a forced guest and a
+spy—for he was forbidden to speak the language, to adopt the dress,
+to imitate the manners of his victims.... The horror of that burden
+coming anew every year had once led to the suppression of the Fenian
+militia. How much more terrible was such servitude, enforced by the
+enemy! Constant were the rebellions, and always repressed with calculated
+barbarity—they only served as a pretext for new exactions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Still, in spite of all, a certain contagion of habits took place between
+the contiguous races. A few native chiefs insensibly began to imitate the
+manners of the English. The English were not long in discovering a way to
+reconcile them—by appealing to their basest impulses.
+
+Until then, the Irish had had no knowledge of individual property.
+With them land was, like the sky or the air they breathed, the common
+inheritance of those who occupied it. The members of a clan, indeed,
+paid the chieftain a tax or annual duty, but they did not conceive it
+as possible that this leader could look on himself as the master of the
+social fund to which they, like him, had a hereditary right. At the
+most they expected their harvest or cattle to be seized, in case of
+non-payment of the tax. There never had been an eviction of the tenant,
+as there had been no sale or transfer of the land by him occupied.
+Individual appropriation, as resulting from the feudal system, was such a
+new idea to the Irish that they were at first unable to grasp it.
+
+“What interest can you have in making your clan give up their land to the
+English, since you get it back in return for your homage?” would ask some
+of the native chieftains of those of their countrymen nearer the pale
+who had taken for some time to performing that commercial transaction.
+
+The neophytes of feudal law would then explain that in case of extension
+of the English conquest, their possession of the land would be guaranteed
+by the fact of the new title. What they took great care should not be
+discovered by the clan, was that they gave what did not belong to them,
+and sold the collective property of their followers, to receive it
+afterwards at the hands of the English as personal property.... This was
+seen clearly later on, when they began to sell it or raise mortgages
+on it. But that, the dawn of a gigantic fraud, nobody in Ireland could
+so much as suspect. The fraudulent origin of individual appropriation
+is nevertheless, even to our own day, the true root of the desperate
+resistance that the Irish tenant invariably opposes to eviction. Be it
+tradition, be it “cellular memory,” he is conscious of his primordial and
+superior right to that glebe once stolen from his forefathers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Stolen! if only it had been stolen once for all!... But to repeat
+Fitzgibbon’s (Lord Clare) saying, there is not in the whole of Ireland
+one field that has not been _at least three times_ unjustly taken from
+its legitimate possessors. And that spoliation was always accompanied by
+the most aggravating circumstances.
+
+It was indeed with Henry VIII. and Elizabeth that the true efforts of
+England to achieve the conquest of Erin were made, and from that time, to
+the antagonism of the two races, to the conflict of interests, was added
+religious hatred. Between puritanical England and Catholic Ireland began
+a duel to the death, into which each generation in turn has thrown itself
+for three centuries. Oppression begets rebellion, and rebellion expires
+drowned in blood. We have no intention of repeating that history in these
+pages; its details are to be found everywhere. Let us only recall its
+essential features.
+
+Towards the year 1565, Queen Elizabeth undertook the “plantation” of
+Ireland on a large scale, and set about it by the elementary process
+of dispossessing the owners of the soil in order to present Englishmen
+with their lands. The whole country rose, under the command of John
+Desmond, who called the Spaniards to his aid. Upon which England sent to
+Ireland, together with Sydney, Sussex, and Walter Raleigh, armies whose
+instructions were “the extermination of the Rebels.”
+
+“At Christmas,” wrote one of the English Generals, Sir Nicolas Malby,
+in the year 1576, “I entered Connaught, and soon finding that by mercy
+I should only succeed in having my throat cut, I preferred to adopt a
+different tactic. I therefore threw myself in the mountains with the
+settled determination of destroying these people by sword and fire,
+sparing neither the old nor the children. _I burnt down all their
+harvests and all their houses, and I put to the sword all that fell
+within my hands...._ This occurred in the country of Shane Burke. I did
+the same thing in that of Ullick Burke.”
+
+The other English Generals vied in ardour with this butcher; so much so
+that at the end of a few years of indiscriminate hangings, massacres,
+burnings of house and land, the whole of Munster was laid waste like a
+desert; a few wretches only were left to wander over it like ghosts,
+and they came voluntarily to offer their throat to the knife of Queen
+Elizabeth’s soldiers. The Virgin Queen then resolved to repeople that
+desert; she made proclamation that all the lands of the Desmonds were
+confiscated (more than 500,000 acres) and she offered them gratuitously
+to whosoever would “plant” them with the help of English labour. The
+grantees were to pay no duty to the Crown until six years had passed, and
+that duty was always to be of the lightest. In spite of these advantages
+colonization did not make much progress. The English at last understood
+that they must either give it up, or resign themselves to having the
+ground cultivated by the despoiled Irish who had survived the massacres.
+H ow could those wretched people have done otherwise than nourish the
+hope of revenge?
+
+That revenge was attempted in Ulster at the death of Elizabeth. It ended
+in new disasters, new tortures, new confiscations. The counties of
+Tyrone, Derry, Donegal, Armagh, Fermanagh, and Cavan,—in all about three
+million acres,—were then seized by the Crown and distributed in lots to
+Scotch settlers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the year 1641, under the reign of Charles I., a few Irishmen having
+emigrated to the continent, and having been initiated to modern military
+tactics in the ranks of the French army, attempted to liberate their
+country. They provoked a rising, succeeded in holding in check during
+eight years all the British forces, and in 1649 compelled the King of
+England to grant them by formal treaty the conditions they themselves
+dictated. But a few days later the head of Charles fell on the scaffold,
+and Cromwell in person, escorted by his son, by Ireton and Ludlow, made
+it his business to come and annul the treaty of Kilkenny.
+
+“For Jesus!... No quarter!...” Such was the battle-cry he gave to his
+Roundheads. Drogheda, then Wexford were taken by storm; men, women,
+and children were exterminated; Galway fell in 1652. The populations,
+exhausted by a war and famine of ten years’ duration, surrendered
+themselves to his mercy, and laid down their arms. Cromwell had only now
+to reap the fruits of his victory by making Ireland pay for it.
+
+His first idea was to complete the extermination of the native race,
+in order to replace it by English colonists. But even his gloomy soul
+recoiled before the only means that at once and for ever could put an
+end to “the Irish gangrene.” He adopted a middle course, of much less
+radical efficacy. This middle course consisted in transporting, or, as
+they called it at the time _transplanting_ all the Irish into the region
+bounded by the Shannon, there to be penned up like men infested with
+the plague, while all the rest of the territory was allotted to English
+families.
+
+The enterprise was conducted with truly puritanical method and rigour.
+Thousands of Irish were shipped as slaves to the West Indies, thousands
+of others were imprisoned in Connaught, under pain of death for whoever
+should cross its limits. All the land, carefully parcelled out, was
+divided by lot between the soldiers of Cromwell, upon agreement that they
+should consider themselves bound to expend their pay for three years on
+the improvement of it. But those fields, to yield up their value, had to
+be cultivated, and the English labourer declined to become a voluntary
+exile in order to cultivate them. Little by little the native peasantry
+came back to their old homes with the tenacity peculiar to their class,
+they founded families and reconstituted the Irish nation under the ten or
+twelve thousand landlords imposed over them by fraud and violence. Forty
+years after Cromwell’s death, these landlords had even forgotten how to
+speak the English language.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Restoration was not destined to heal any of those cruel wounds. Charles
+II. took little heed of Ireland, which he deemed too far off, and besides
+he thought it good policy not to disturb the new occupants in their
+possessions. He barely deemed it necessary to establish in Dublin a Court
+of Revision that sat only one year, examined no more than seven hundred
+cases out of a total of above three thousand that were submitted to it,
+and ordered the restitution of hardly a sixth part of the confiscated
+land.
+
+After the Revolution of 1688, nevertheless, the Irish only embraced with
+more ardour the cause of James II. when he landed in Ireland with a
+handful of men. Even after his defeat at the Boyne, they so successfully
+resisted William of Orange that he was compelled in 1691 to grant to
+them, by the treaty of Limerick, the free exercise of their religion
+and the political privileges that could help them to preserve it. But,
+like so many other charters, that one was soon to be violated. All the
+Irish Jacobites were compelled to expatriate themselves (numbers of them
+took service in France; more than fifty thousand Irishmen died under
+the _fleur-de-lis_ during the first half of the eighteenth century);
+four thousand others were evicted from one million of acres that
+William distributed among his followers. Soon to this already terrible
+repression were to be added all the rigours of the Penal Code, that code
+that proclaimed it a duty to spy, and a meritorious act to betray the
+Irishman at his hearth; that code of which Burke could say: “Never did
+the ingenious perversity of man put forth a machine more perfect, more
+thoughtfully elaborated, more calculated to oppress, to impoverish, to
+degrade a people, to lower in them human nature itself.”
+
+Under the network of that nameless despotism which attacked man in his
+dearest privileges, the rights of conscience, the sanctity of home,—under
+the weight of a legislation that in a manner forbade her the use of water
+and fire, that closed all careers before her, after having wrenched her
+last furrow from her keeping,—the Irish nation persisted in living and
+multiplying. Was it any wonder that in the depth of her collective soul
+she cherished dreams of revenge and justice?
+
+The American Emancipation and the French Revolution appeared to her
+as the dawn of regeneration. Alas! once again the glorious effort of
+1798,—the rebellion in arms, victory itself, were only to end in a
+complete wreck. As if Fate owed one more stroke of irony to this martyred
+nation, it was an Irish Parliament that by its own vote in 1800 abdicated
+the hardly recovered national independence. Pitt bought it wholesale for
+the price of 1,200,000 guineas.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not enough, however, to have taken from the Irishman his blood,
+his land, his religious faith, and his liberty: they must still prevent
+his prospering in commerce or industry. Political interest was here in
+accordance with avarice in giving this advice to the victor.
+
+Charles II. began by forbidding Ireland to export meat, butter, and
+cheese to England. At that time of slow maritime intercourse, no idea
+could be entertained of sending them to any other market. The Irish had
+to fall back on wool, which they exported to France and Spain. That was
+sufficient to arouse the jealousy of their pitiless masters. The export
+of wool, be it as raw material or in woven stuffs, was forbidden the
+Irish on pain of confiscation and fines.
+
+The effect of this harsh measure was two-fold: it prevented the abhorred
+Irish prospering; it secured to the English merchant the monopoly of
+Irish wool, which he could henceforth buy at his own price (generally at
+a quarter of the current price), and sell again at a lesser rate than
+all his competitors. It only remained for Ireland to make smugglers of
+all her fishermen; they crammed all the caverns on her coasts with wool,
+and during the winter, in spite of excisemen, they exchanged it for the
+wines and spirits of France and Spain. By the same occasion they exported
+soldiers and imported Catholic priests. Thus did Ireland keep losing her
+vital strength, by the constant departure of the most vigorous amongst
+her sons, at the same time that she inoculated in her blood two equally
+fatal poisons—alcohol and fanaticism.
+
+On the other hand, the Puritan weavers of Ulster were ruined like the
+wool-farmers. They emigrated to America, and England found no bitterer
+foes than their sons during the War of Independence.
+
+Some of the Irish tried to fall back on other industries, as the weaving
+of linen or ship-building. At once England interfered with an iron hand
+by establishing the most ruinous prohibitive duties on Irish linens,
+while at the same time her cotton fabrics came pouring over the country.
+To make doubly sure, England, by a special law, formally interdicted
+ship-building in Ireland as well as any direct trade with any foreign
+market whatsoever.
+
+One feels a sort of shame for the human kind in having to record
+such consistent acts of systematic cruelty. The violence of military
+retaliation, the sacking of towns or the massacre of vanquished foes,
+may be explained by the heat of combat, and are found in the annals of
+all countries. An economical compression exercised during ten or twelve
+generations on one nation by another nation of Shylocks is, happily, a
+fact without any parallel in history.
+
+From the beginning of the 18th century all industrial enterprise had thus
+been unmercifully forbidden to Ireland. All the factories were closed,
+the working population had been reduced to field labour, emigration or
+street-begging. This population therefore weighed still more heavily
+on the soil, still exaggerating its tendencies to subdivision; which
+tendencies, already a curse for Ireland, were to cause in the future new
+ferments of hatred and misery. All the attempts that Ireland made to
+free herself from those iron shackles were pitilessly repressed. She saw
+herself deprived of her right to commercial activity, as she had been of
+national conscience, of land, and religious or political freedom. And
+it is after having thus for centuries systematically trained the Irish
+to poverty, idleness, and drink, that England, crowning her work with
+calumny, dares to bring forward their vices as an excuse for herself!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These things are far from us already. But it would be erring greatly to
+imagine that in the eyes of the Irish they bear an antiquated character.
+Oral tradition, seconded by an indigenous literature, keeps the wound
+open and green. Yonder wretched beggar, dying of hunger and want upon
+the glebe once possessed by his ancestors, knows that they ruled where
+he now serves, bears their name with a touching pride, and sadly toils
+for others in a field that he believes to belong to himself. He is not
+ignorant of the way in which it was taken from him, at what date, and
+in what manner the event took place. How could he consider its present
+possessors otherwise than as his most cruel enemies?
+
+Let us imagine the French _émigrés_ brought back violently on the lands
+taken from them by the nation, and reduced to support their family by
+tilling their fields with their own hands. Let us suppose them compelled
+every year to pay an exorbitant rent to the usurper. Let us blot out
+from history’s page the milliard indemnity given to the _émigrés_
+and the amnesty passed over those things by five or six successive
+revolutions. Let us lastly add to these deadly rancours the weight of a
+religious persecution of three centuries, of the undisguised contempt
+of the victor, and of the most shocking political inequality.... Let
+that _émigré_, in a word, not only have lost caste, be spoliated and a
+serf, but also be a pariah, a kind of pestilent member of the community:
+then we shall gather some idea of the state of mind of the Irish people
+towards England; we shall understand that in truth the only mistake
+committed by Cromwell and the others in their system of colonization was
+to have not carried it to its full length, to have not exterminated all
+by fire or sword, and to have left a single son of Erin alive.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As a contrast to England and Ireland, let us place a historical fact
+of the same order, that of France with Corsica. Here also we find an
+insular race of markedly distinct character, of different language,
+different manners and traditions, the habit of independence and the
+clan-spirit,—all that can foster and serve resistance to annexation.
+But here the conquering nation is France, and she is a kind mother. She
+does not come, fire and sword in hand, to ravage the harvests of the
+vanquished, to take his land, to impose on him, together with a new
+faith, exceptional laws, and a brand of infamy. On the contrary, to them
+she opens her arms, she offers her wealth and her love. From the first
+day she admits Corsicans to the provincial parliaments, and twenty years
+later she receives their deputies in the Assemblée Nationale. From the
+first hour they feel they are Frenchmen, the equals of those born in the
+Ile de France. There are for them neither special taxes, nor political
+inferiority, nor rigours of any sort. Never was an inch of ground taken
+from them to be given to the continental families. Never were they
+treated like serfs to be trodden down without mercy. If there be an
+exception made, it is in their favour; as, for instance, the reduction
+of one half of all duties on imports; the free trade in tobacco; the
+enormous proportion of Corsicans admitted to all Government offices.
+
+But what a difference, too, in the results!... In less than a hundred
+years, the fusion between the two races is so perfect, the assimilation
+so complete, that one could not find to-day one man in Corsica to wish
+for a separation. Nay, rather, against such an enterprise, if any one
+were found to attempt it, all Corsica would rise in arms.
+
+If Great Britain had so willed it, Ireland might easily have become to
+her what Corsica is to us. Only, for the last seven hundred years, Great
+Britain has lacked what alone could have made that miracle possible,—a
+mother’s heart and love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+KILLARNEY.
+
+
+I know no place to compare with Killarney: so soft to the eye, so
+full of unspeakable grace. It is as a compendium of Ireland; all the
+characteristic features of the country are united there: the elegant
+“round towers,” drawing on the horizon the airy outline of their conic
+shafts; the soft moistness of the atmosphere, the tender blue of the sky,
+the intense green of the meadows, set off by long, black trails of peat,
+and the white, ochre, and red streaks which the grit-stone and clay-slate
+draw on the hill-side.
+
+Within the oval circus formed by the mountains of Kerry, the Killarney
+lakes succeed one another like small Mediterraneans, all dotted with
+lovely islands, where myrtle and rare ferns grow freely, fostered by a
+Lusitanian climate. Every one of those islands has its legend, its own
+saint, buried under some old moss-grown mound; its ruined castle, its
+ivy-clothed abbey, paved with tombstones and haunted by some _banshee_.
+They are like large baskets of flowers floating on the clear, silent
+waters, whose peace is only broken now and then by the jumping of a fish,
+or the clucking of some stray teal. All there unite to form a landscape
+of almost paradoxical beauty. You think you have landed in fairyland,
+outside the pale of ordinary life.
+
+The most illustrious of them is Innisfallen, where the monks wrote in the
+seventh century their famous _Annals_, the pride of the Bodleian Library.
+In viewing this enchanting island, you involuntarily fall to repeating
+the beautiful lines of Moore which you used to bungle in your school
+days, and of which you first realise the profound truth:
+
+    “_Sweet Innisfallen, fare thee well,_
+      _May calm and sunshine long be thine,_
+    _How fair thou art, let others tell,_
+      _While but to feel how fair be mine, etc._”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Along the shores of that range of lakes, two lordly domains display the
+noble arrangement of their parks: one is the seat of the Earl of Kenmare,
+lord-lieutenant of the county, late Lord Chamberlain to the Queen during
+the Gladstone Ministry. The other belongs to Captain Herbert of Muckross,
+late Member of Parliament. As far around as you can see the land belongs
+to either of those two landlords. Just as in the tale, down to the
+extremity of the valley, up to the very top of the far-away mountain,
+land and water, beasts and Christians, all belong to the “Marquis de
+Carabas.”
+
+Some restriction must be made, however. Changes have been introduced
+lately. Only a few years ago it was a thing understood that of the two
+members which the borough returned to Parliament one must be the heir
+presumptive of the house of Kenmare, the other the chief of the house
+of Muckross. That is over. Now-a-days the Kerry voters send whom Mr.
+Parnell likes to the House of Commons. But the air of the parks is still
+the property of the two owners; none may breathe it without their leave.
+I hasten to say that the permission is most courteously given by Lord
+Kenmare to all tourists, and as readily (if less liberally) sold on the
+Muckross grounds to anyone willing to pay one or two shillings, according
+to his approach walking or on horseback.
+
+The two parks are marvels, almost without other rivals in the world, for
+their prodigious extent, their admirably kept shrubberies and avenues,
+and the splendour and variety of the points of view which art has devised
+on the lakes. Those lakes themselves, with their islands, bays, and
+toy-peninsulas, their rippling brooks and foaming cascades, are only
+part of the beauties of the whole. Muckross is proud to possess the old
+abbey of the same name, and the Torc Cascade. Kenmare boasts Innisfallen,
+Ross Island, Saint Finian’s Tomb, the legendary ruins of O’Donoghue’s
+Castle, and a hundred other wonders. It is more regal than lordly, and
+there are indeed few royal residences which can boast such gardens.
+
+You go away dazzled, enchanted, intoxicated with verdure, ozone, and
+poetic sights. You come back the day following, you almost wish to take
+root there for a sort of contemplative life, where you would discard any
+heavier occupation than catching salmon, smoking endless cigarettes, and
+reading over your favourite authors. A rich artist, it is said, being
+pricked with a violent desire of that kind, offered I don’t know how much
+ready money to Lord Kenmare if he would grant him five hundred square
+yards of ground on Ross Island. The offer was declined.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a reverse side to the picture; and it could scarcely be less
+brilliant. Killarney is a sorry borough of about four or five thousand
+inhabitants, more miserable looking than words can express. Except in
+the great hotels which English enterprise has raised for fleecing the
+tourists attracted there by the beauty of the lakes, there is not a
+vestige of ease or prosperity. No busy workman, not one manufacture is
+to be seen. The miserable shops exhibit a few dusty wares which nobody
+seems anxious either to buy or to sell. There is a despondent stillness
+about, and people look tired with doing nothing. The women, all more or
+less “tattered and torn,” wear a poor rag of a shawl on their heads.
+Half-naked children, wild-haired, full of vermin, swarm out of all the
+small alleys which open on the one street of the town. Only the Anglican
+and Catholic churches rise above the sordid little dwellings with a
+substantial and well-to-do air.
+
+Go out of the village, follow the long walls which enclose the lordly
+seats, and after three or four miles you will find again the Irish
+country such as you have seen it everywhere. Turnip and barley fields,
+thin pastures, few trees or none at all. On the road-side occasionally
+is a consumptive cow, or a pig wallowing in mud fraternally with two or
+three bright-eyed urchins. Here and there a hovel with the traditional
+dung-hill and three hens. Nothing, in short, calculated to bring a new
+light on the agrarian crisis.
+
+It is in Kerry, however, that the malady has reached its most acute
+state, they all tell me. But you could not believe how hard it is to
+obtain any definite information about those matters. People who really
+know about it feel a sort of shame to bare their national wounds before a
+stranger, and besides, the diversity of judgments makes it difficult to
+draw something positive from them. Every man has his party feeling, and
+is wishing to enforce it upon you. Provided with a good number of letters
+of introduction, and everywhere received with perfect cordiality, I have
+talked already with people of all conditions—landlords, agents, farmers,
+doctors, priests, and labourers,—without having obtained as yet any but
+individual views. Home Rulers and Orangemen have made me hear arguments
+that I know by heart from having heard them repeated these last eight
+years, ever since the crisis entered its actual phase. This is not the
+thing we want: we want _espèces_, as they say in French law; specific
+illustration, direct symptoms of the Irish disease.
+
+And that is the difficulty. The habit of living among certain deformities
+so familiarises us with them that we are no longer able to perceive them,
+and still less to point them out. Moreover, when upon receiving a letter
+from London, a man is kind enough to ask you to dinner, to introduce
+you to his wife and daughters, to lend you his horse and trap, and to
+empty for your benefit his store of ready-made opinions, is it possible
+decently to ask him more? He has his own affairs, and cannot spend his
+time running with you through hill and dale in order to help you to
+unravel a sociological problem.
+
+By a stroke of good luck I met the scout I wanted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was returning from an excursion to the Gap of Dunloe when, on the banks
+of the river which waters the Kenmare estate, near the bridge, I noticed
+a man of about forty, of middle height, poorly but neatly clad, who was
+walking in front of me and gave evident signs of wishing to enter into
+conversation. I had been so harassed lately by the swarm of cicerones
+and incompetent guides who crowd all ways to the lakes and sights around
+Killarney, that I had grown suspicious, and pretended not to see the man.
+But he had his idea and stuck to it. Slackening his pace, he began to
+whistle _La Marseillaise_.
+
+That was saying plainly:—
+
+“You are French, and I am a friend of France like all Irishmen. You are
+welcome here.”
+
+Throughout the world it is the adopted form for such a declaration of
+love. On board a transatlantic steamer or in the sitting-rooms of a
+cosmopolite hotel, when a fair-haired or dark-haired new acquaintance
+seats herself to the piano and begins to play the march of Rouget de
+l’Isle, the French tourist can see his way: he is looked upon with no
+unfriendly eye.
+
+There were no dark or fair tresses here, but only a bearded
+pepper-and-salt quadragenarian, with the patent purpose of hooking me
+at the rate of half-a-crown an hour: so I remained obdurate. But he,
+suddenly making up his mind:—
+
+“Well, _Sor_,” he said to me with a soft voice and the most enticing
+smile, “how do you _loike_ our country?”
+
+“Your country? I should like it a great deal better if one could go
+about it without being pestered by guides at every turning,” I said, but
+half-remorsefully.
+
+“How true, sir! Those guides positively infest the place. And if they
+only knew their trade! But they are regular swindlers, beggars who steal
+the tourist’s money; the shame of Ireland, that is what they are!”
+
+The conversation then commenced, and to say the truth I have no reason
+to repent it. The fellow is well-informed, quick-witted, incredibly
+talkative, and in five minutes has given me really valuable information,
+besides biographical details about himself. He is called MacMahon like
+many others in this country, for I have seen that name over twenty
+village shops already. Is he any relation to the Maréchal? No; he makes
+no pretension to that. But after all it is not improbable that they come
+from one root, for my friend is not, of course, without his relationship
+with some of the numberless kings of Ireland.
+
+“And the Marshal is a great man, a brave soldier, a true Irishman. I have
+his picture at home. I’ll show it to you if you do me the honour to visit
+my humble roof, and accept a glass of ‘mountain dew.’”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My new acquaintance has been quill-driver at a land surveyor’s, and he
+knows many things. This, for instance: that all people here, from the
+most insignificant farmer to the biggest landowner, are in debt.
+
+“All that glitters is not gold,” he says, with a melancholy smile. “Do
+you see that large expanse of land, sir? Well, those who own it are not
+perhaps richer than I, and have not perhaps always as much pocket-money
+as would be convenient for them. Their annual income goes to pay the
+interest of an enormous debt, the hereditary obligations which weigh on
+the property, and the normal keeping of it. Mr. Herbert, the owner of
+Muckross, had to emigrate to America, where he is now an attorney’s
+clerk, for his daily bread. The shilling you give for entering his park
+goes to the scraping of it. As for Lord Kenmare, he never sees as much
+as the tenth part of the revenue of his property, let alone his being
+forbidden his own grounds under pain of being shot dead! Lady Kenmare
+lives there alone with her children under protection of a detachment of
+the police.” So the masters of those two noble estates are exiled from
+them, one by mortgage, the other by agrarian hatred. O, irony of things!
+
+“But Lord Kenmare’s not a bad landlord, is he?” I said to MacMahon.
+
+“Far from it. His tenants are eight hundred in number, and there are
+not three evicted in the year. I know personally twenty of them who owe
+him four years’ rent and are never troubled about it. But he has taken
+position against the League—that is enough. And then, don’t you know,
+sir, the best of landlords is not worth much in the eyes of his tenants.
+_They want the land and they will have it._ But this is my house. Please
+come in, sir.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus chattering, the communicative Celt had brought me to the entrance
+of a small low house in a by-street of Killarney. We entered a sort
+of kitchen-parlour on a level with the lane. No carpet or flooring of
+any kind but the simple beaten clay, a large old-fashioned chimney, a
+table, a few straw-covered chairs; on the walls a whole private museum
+in chromo-lithography: Pope Pius IX., the Marshal Duke of Magenta, Mr.
+Parnell, &c., and a branch of holy palm.
+
+Upon our coming, a poor creature, pale and emaciated, had risen without
+showing any surprise.
+
+“Mrs. MacMahon, _Sor_! Everilda Matilda, a French gentleman who honours
+our house by stopping a moment in it. Call the children, my dear; the
+gentleman will be pleased to see them, I think.”
+
+A tall girl with brown eyes first presents herself, then a boy between
+twelve and thirteen years old, then a variety of younger fry. I am told
+that Mary has passed successfully her “standards,” that Tim has just
+begun Latin with an ultimate view to become a priest “like his uncle
+Jack;” then the “mountain dew” is produced. It is a kind of home-made
+whisky, not unpalatable.
+
+At last mine host turns to his wife.
+
+“Supposing, my dear, you show your lace to the French gentleman, to let
+him see what you can do when you are not bed-ridden. Perhaps he will
+like to bring back some little remembrance of Killarney to his ‘lady.’”
+
+I was caught.
+
+Everilda Matilda instantly produced a box containing cuffs and collars
+of Irish point, and all that remains to me to do, if I am not ready to
+forfeit my rights to the qualification of gentleman, is to buy a few
+guineas’ worth. Hardly is the matter over, than MacMahon turns to the
+future ecclesiastic—
+
+“And you, Tim, will you not show the gentleman those sticks you polish so
+well?”
+
+Caught again!
+
+If each member of the family has his own private trade, the
+_mountain-dew_ threatens to be rather an expensive refreshment.
+
+“I am greatly obliged to you,” I said, “but I have got already a complete
+collection of _shillelaghs_.”
+
+MacMahon’s jaw fell visibly.
+
+“But we could perhaps make another arrangement, that would be more
+advantageous,” I continued quietly. “You know the country well, you tell
+me?”
+
+“As a man who has lived forty years in it and never left it.”
+
+“Well, let us have a pair of good hacks; you lead me for a couple of
+days across field and country, and show me a dozen authentic cases of
+eviction, agrarian violence, or boycottism. If you will undertake this,
+and I am satisfied with you, upon our return I will take the whole lot of
+lace.”
+
+You should have seen the glowing faces of the whole family! The affair
+was soon settled, and the day after we started.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THROUGH KERRY ON HORSEBACK.
+
+
+It was not two days but six that we spent, my guide and I, visiting
+the County Kerry in all directions, examining the crops, asking about
+prices, entering cottages and small farms, chatting with anyone that
+we supposed capable of giving us information. The rather unexpected
+conclusion I arrived at was that the agrarian crisis is more especially
+felt in the richest districts, while it can hardly be said to exist in
+the poorest parts. Kerry is, in that particular, a true copy of Ireland
+on a small scale. It may, in fact, be divided into two perfectly distinct
+regions—the plains of the north and the mountains of the south-west.
+Those regions offer characteristics as marked in an economical as in a
+geographical point of view.
+
+Another conclusion drawn from my personal intercourse with the Irish
+peasant was that nothing is to be got out of him by bullying and
+everything by gentle means. If you arrive at an inn and proceed, as
+do the English everywhere, to assume a harsh and arrogant tone, you
+will experience the greatest difficulties in obtaining even meagre
+fare in return for your money. They will pretend they have nothing in
+the house, that they are not in the habit of receiving travellers, and
+such like stories. If, on the contrary, you at once proclaim yourself
+delighted with the country, its manners and its inhabitants; if you risk
+a compliment to the hostess or a gentle pinch to the children’s cheek,
+the whole house is yours. They will instantly wring the neck of the
+solitary chicken promenading in front of the house; they will exhibit
+clean table-linen; they will rush to the neighbour and borrow a salad
+or some fruit; they will even unearth from some dark corner a bottle
+of old port. If you give this impromptu supper only half the praise it
+deserves, you may count on a luxurious breakfast for the next morning.
+These poor people are thus made. Their heart is warm; their sensibilities
+are quick. The least thing discourages them; the least thing electrifies
+them. In contradiction to the Anglo-Saxon serf, who despises his master
+if he treat him with gentleness, Paddy prefers a gracious word to all
+the guineas in the kingdom. The philosophical reason for the failure of
+the British in Ireland (and elsewhere) is perhaps chiefly to be found in
+their general want of human sympathy. The Englishman speaks too often
+like a slave-driver when he should speak like an elder brother.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                                THE PLAIN.
+
+The plains of North Kerry must be classed among the best land in
+the isle. This is not saying that they are first-class. But they
+evidently only need some outlay in drainage and manure and a few modern
+improvements in culture to rival our Normandy pastures. It is above
+all a land of grazing fields and butter; the grass in the meadows is
+green and luxuriant; the cows look strong and well. It is evident that
+the least effort would be sufficient to make agricultural enterprise a
+thriving business. But carelessness and want of thrift are plainly shown
+on all sides. Everywhere dung hills, placed just in front of the cottage
+doors, pour into the ditch the clearest of their virtue. The gardens are
+ill-kept, the fields transformed into bog for want of a drain seventy
+feet long. One sees oats so invaded by thistles that it must be a sheer
+impossibility to get the grain out. In other fields oats rot standing,
+because no one takes care to cut them in time. Nowhere is any sign shown
+of vigorous enterprise or activity. Not only do routine and sloth reign
+all over the country, but one might be tempted to believe in a general
+conspiracy for wasting the gratuitous gifts of Mother Nature without any
+profit to anybody.
+
+Yet the country looks relatively rich. The peasantry have good clothes,
+they despise potatoes, eat bread and meat, drink beer or tea, send
+their children to school, and appear peculiarly wide awake to their own
+interests. Are they really, as they declare, unable to pay their rents?
+That is possible, for the principal products of the country—corn, oats,
+barley, butter, beef, and mutton, wool and potatoes—have undergone for
+the last three years a considerable depreciation, estimated at from 15 to
+35 per cent. But this depreciation is evidently not felt by a diminution
+of comfort for the rural populations, here at least. The contrary might
+even be admitted. In any case there is evidently no question of a crisis
+of famine such as has so often been seen in this island for the last
+fifty years. The malady is something else. It is the malady of a people
+to whom it has been repeated for half a century that the land they live
+on has been stolen from them by strangers; a people who rightly or
+wrongly believe this to be the case; a people who have entered, under the
+direction of a central committee of politicians, on a regular struggle
+with the landlords; who profit by all economical incidents, especially
+the fall of prices, if not openly to denounce the treaty, at least to
+refuse to execute its articles.
+
+A few facts noted in passing will explain the situation better than all
+discourses.
+
+A large dairy farm, the finest I have yet seen in the country. The
+buildings are new, the fields covered with thick dark grass. I number
+sixty-five cows. All the dairy appointments are handsome and well-kept.
+The farmer looks prosperous. Clearly he lives at ease, judging by
+the furniture of the house, the quality of his clothes, by the very
+liberality with which he receives us, and by the brandy which he offers
+us (he is a friend of my guide). His rent is £100 a year. He does not
+mean to pay his next term. (_I don’t think I will pay this gale._) His
+landlord offers to him the sale of his land for a sum of eighteen years’
+rent, according to the official plan. If he followed that system all he
+would have to do would be to pay annually during forty-nine years the sum
+of £78, less by nearly a third than the present farm rent; he would then
+become a proprietor. He refuses. Why?
+
+“Indeed?” he says, with a wink, “engage myself for forty-nine years!...
+_Why! I shall have the land for nothing in two or three years!_...”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another well-to-do farmer driving in a dog-cart with his two daughters.
+The trap is new, the harness smart, the horse strong and well groomed.
+The damsels wear Dublin hats and white woollen dresses not unfashionable
+in cut.
+
+“That’s what enrages the landlords,” my guide says to me; “it is to see
+tenants come in this style to the Tralee races, cheerfully lose twenty
+guineas upon a horse, then, when the time for paying the rent arrives,
+coolly ask for a 40 per cent. reduction on their half-year’s rent....”
+
+“... And in fact it must be enough to make a saint swear!...” he adds
+philosophically. “But after all, the landlords might be content with the
+60 per cent. they get ... I am sure they get it cheap enough ... they
+may think themselves lucky to have even that much, as the interest of
+confiscated land!...”
+
+That notion of the land being held by its actual detentors through
+confiscation, may be unfounded in some cases, or even in the majority
+of cases, but none the less one finds it at the bottom of all Irish
+syllogisms. And in such cases the real value of the premiss is of little
+importance; what matters only is the conclusion drawn from it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few middling and small farmers.
+
+_Maurice Macnamara_, Shinnagh: rent, £48 a year; seventeen cows, eight
+pigs, two horses and one donkey; grass fields, oats, and potatoes; four
+children, of which one is over twenty years of age. Was able to pay his
+rent, but was forbidden to do so by the other tenants on the estate,
+and was in consequence seized by order of the landlord. His neighbours
+offered to help him to resist the execution. He begged to be left alone,
+and the moment of the sale having come, he personally bought all his
+cattle up to the sum due. Nett result of the operation: £11 to pay, over
+and above the six months’ rent. Personal opinion of Maurice Macnamara: it
+is better to pay £11 than to get a bullet through your head.
+
+_John McCarthy_, Gwingullier: £16 annual rent, due in May and November;
+two cows, one horse; oats and potatoes; nine children, the eldest
+seventeen. Has paid nothing to his landlord since 1883; owes actually £48
+to him, and as much to divers tradespeople or usurers. Does not know how
+he shall get out of it.
+
+_Patrick Murphy_, Colyherbeer, barony Trughanarkny; was evicted in
+November from his holding of £28; owed eighteen months’ rent. Received
+from his Landlord the offer of being reinstated in the farm on payment
+of half the sum due, on condition that he would let his crops be sold.
+Declined the offer, and is perfectly satisfied to receive from the League
+relief to the amount of £2 a-week. Never saw himself so well off before.
+
+_Margaret Callaghan_, a widow, close by the town of Kenmare: £8 16_s._
+4_d._ rent; one pig, six hens; three small children; four acres of
+potatoes, three acres waste. Has paid nothing for the last four years.
+Owes about £20 to various tradespeople. Is not harshly pressed by her
+landlord, and can practically be considered as owning her bit of ground.
+Will die of hunger, with her children, the first year the harvest is bad.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Molahiffe, on the road to Tralee.
+
+“This is Mr. Curtin’s house.”
+
+“And who may Mr. Curtin be?”
+
+“What! have you never heard of that affair?... He was killed last year by
+the Moonlighters.”
+
+“Killed?... Was he then a party man, a fierce Orangeman?”
+
+“Mr. Curtin?... Not a bit in the world. He was one of the most peaceable,
+the most Irish at heart, the most esteemed man in this part of the
+country. His misfortune was to own two rifles. The Moonlighters wanted
+those weapons. One night they came and demanded them. The ladies of the
+family were ready to give them up, when Mr. Curtin arrived and looked as
+if he were going to resist. At once a gun exploded in the passage, and he
+fell stone dead.... That was a warning to everybody. Since that time no
+one disobeys the moonlighters. But all the same it is unfortunate that
+the victim should have been Mr. Curtin.”
+
+These _Moonlighters_ are the direct descendants of the Whiteboys of
+olden times. They band together and gather at night for the purpose of
+invading a farm, a solitary house. They are always masked, but sometimes
+in a very elementary fashion, by pulling down their hat or cap over the
+face and making two holes through it for the eyes. Normally they ought to
+search only for arms and to take only arms. But everything degenerates,
+and the use of force often leads to the abuse of it. The Moonlighters
+not unfrequently demand a supper, a sum of money, not to speak of the
+company of some farm-wench to whom they may take a fancy. This impartial
+offering of violence to house and inmates might lead them far, were they
+not certain of the discretion of the victims. But the terror they inspire
+secures impunity to them.
+
+Though everybody in a district knows perfectly well who the intruders
+are, and though they have often been recognized in spite of the mask, no
+one dares to reveal their name. They are all too well aware that in case
+of denunciation a nocturnal bullet will come unerringly to the offender.
+Besides, a sort of poetical halo and a political mantle of immunity
+surrounds men who may sometimes, indeed, carry their zeal a little too
+far, but are after all soldiers in the good cause. The “legitimate”
+industry of the Moonlighters allows their excesses to be forgotten. A
+sort of general complicity covers and favours their expeditions.
+
+That complicity goes sometimes to great lengths—for instance the length
+of non-admitting the intervention of the police in a house where the
+Moonlighters are performing. The constables perambulating the country
+hear screams, desperate appeals for help in a farmhouse. They rush to it
+headlong and knock at the door. At once silence reigns. They are asked
+from the inside of the house what they want.
+
+“We heard screams. Do you not want protection?”
+
+“What business is that of yours?” is the answer. “Go on your way, and do
+not come interfering and preventing honest folks enjoying the possession
+of their house undisturbed!...”
+
+The unlucky constables can only beat a retreat and go their round, often
+to meet shortly with the Moonlighters, who will laugh at them, having
+comfortably finished their business.
+
+Before the judges the same thing occurs. Not a witness will give
+evidence. And if by chance a witness does speak, the jury take care to
+correct this grave breach of etiquette in their verdict.
+
+The witness, as well as the juryman, has often received a warning.
+Working alone in the fields, or following a lonely path, he has suddenly
+seen a little puff of white smoke going up from the bushes some feet in
+front of him, and he has heard a bullet whizzing over his head. It was a
+Moonlighter telling him:—
+
+“Be silent, or thou art a dead man.”
+
+Castleisland. A small town of little interest, after the pattern of most
+Irish boroughs. We stop for lunch at a tavern of rather good appearance,
+and clearly very popular with the natives. The innkeeper smokes a cigar
+with us. Is he satisfied with the state of affairs? Yes and no. Certainly
+he cannot complain—trade in liquor is rather brisk. But there are too
+many places where one can buy drink in the town—no less than fifty-one.
+
+“And do they all prosper?”
+
+“Nearly all.”
+
+“What may their average receipts be?”
+
+“I should say about £400 a year.”
+
+£400 multiplied by fifty-one gives £20,400, more than 510,000 francs. And
+there is not in this place any other industry than agriculture, while
+statistics I have this moment in my pocket inform me that the aggregate
+rental of Castleisland is not above £14,000. It is then evident that,
+times good, times bad, they drink every year here £6,000 worth more
+in beer and spirits than they would pay in rent to the landlords, if
+they chose to pay. This seems to be conclusive, as far as Castleisland
+is concerned. But is there really any reason why the tenants of this
+district should turn total abstainers for the special purpose of paying
+the claret and champagne bills of half-a-dozen absentees? Here is the
+whole problem in a nutshell.
+
+Tralee. The big town of the county, what we should call in France the
+_chef-lieu_, the seat of the assizes. They are opened precisely at this
+moment. There are on the rolls three men charged with agrarian murder. I
+proposed to go and be present at the trials, when I heard that the three
+cases were to be remanded to the next session, the representative of the
+Crown having come to the conclusion that the jury would systematically
+acquit the prisoners, as is so often the case in Ireland.
+
+The Chairman of the Assizes, Mr. Justice O’Brien, seized this occasion to
+declare, that in the course of an already long career he had never met
+with a jury having so little regard for their duty. “It must be known
+widely,” he added, “the law becomes powerless when the course of justice
+is systematically impeded by the very jurymen, as we see it in this
+country; in which case there is no longer any security for persons or
+property.”
+
+To which the people in Kerry answer that they do not care a bit for
+English law; what they want is good Irish laws, made in Dublin by an
+Irish Parliament.
+
+“It is quite true that we have no security here for persons or property,”
+a doctor of the town said to me in the evening. “The outrages were at
+first exclusively directed against the landlords, rightly or wrongly
+accused of injustice and harshness in their dealings with their tenants;
+but for the last two or three years the field of nocturnal aggression
+has enlarged greatly—a shot now serves to settle any personal quarrel
+and even trade accounts. In the beginning the jury at least made a
+distinction between the different motives that actuated the accused.
+Now they always acquit them, _because they no longer dare to find them
+guilty_.... What will you have?... Jurymen are but men. They prefer
+sending a ruffian at large to paying with their life a too subtle
+distinction between crimes of an agrarian character and those of another
+sort. A lump of lead is the most irresistible of arguments. One may
+assert that presently law has lost all influence in Kerry. It is rapine
+that reigns, hardly tempered by the decrees of the National League, which
+of course means only legitimate resistance to the landlords, and by the
+fund of righteousness possessed at heart by the nation. But let things go
+on thus only for two years more, we shall have gone back to the savage
+state.”
+
+“Some people tell me, however, that raiding for money is never seen in
+this part of Ireland.”
+
+“Raiding for money never seen! I would rather say it is the latest
+development of moonlighting. Any one who covets a piece of his
+neighbour’s land, who wishes to influence his vote for a board of
+guardians, who is animated by any motive of vulgar greed or spite, has
+only to set the Moonlighters in motion. The machinery is at hand.”
+
+“Could you really give me a few recent instances of moonlighting for
+money?”
+
+“Of course I could. There is one Daniel Moynihan, at Freemount, near
+Rathmore: in October, 1886, a party of six men with blackened faces
+entered his house at night, and breaking open a box, carried away all
+his money. In January, 1887, at Ballinillane, three men armed with guns
+entered Daniel Lyne’s house and asked for money, threatening to shoot him
+if he refused; they took away £6. At Faha, in March, 1887, a party of
+six armed men visited the house of Mr. E. Morrogh Bernard; they demanded
+money, and got what was in the house.”[2]
+
+“You don’t say the League has anything to do with such obvious cases of
+non-political moonlighting, do you? It is a well-known fact that the
+organization discountenances moonlighting as well as all other violent
+practices.”
+
+“It does in a manner, but at the same time, by forming in each district
+a kind of police of the League, an executive body ready for action, it
+singles out to malignant persons men who may be ready for a private job.”
+
+There is obviously considerable exaggeration, or, rather, distortion of
+facts, in the above statement, as in everything relating to the League
+on one side or the other. The truth is probably that ruffians, when they
+want a job in the house-breaking line, ask for nobody’s permission, but
+are only too glad to take moonlighting as a pretence; and thus, common
+breaches of the law which in ordinary times would go by their proper
+name, are now ascribed to Moonlighters. The bulk of the population, which
+is thoroughly honest, has only words of contempt and hatred for what,
+in justice, should rather be called a deviation than a development of
+moonlighting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nine o’clock at night. In a hollow on the road to Milltown, a man tries
+to hide himself behind some shrubs; but perceiving that we do not belong
+to the neighbourhood he shows himself. He is a constable clad in
+uniform, the black helmet on his head, a loaded gun on his shoulder.
+
+“Why do you seek to avoid attention?”
+
+“Because we are watching that farm-house there on the height, my comrades
+and I; we have received information to the effect that some men propose
+to attack it one of these nights; now, we must try not to be seen by the
+people on the farm, for they would hasten to tell their assailants.”
+
+“What! these people would denounce you to those who come to rob them?”
+
+“Just so. We have to protect them against their will. Oh! it is indeed a
+nice trade to be a constable in Ireland!” &c. &c.
+
+Then follow professional complaints that throw a curious light on
+the relations between police and population. The unhappy constables
+are _boycotted_ personally and as a body. Nobody speaks to them. It
+is next to impossible for them to procure the first necessaries of
+life. Government has to distribute rations to them as to soldiers on a
+campaign. If they want a conveyance, a cart to transport a detachment
+of the public force where their presence is wanted, nobody—even among
+the principal interested—will give means of transport either for gold or
+silver. The Government have had to give the constabulary special traps
+that are constantly to be met on the roads, and that one recognizes by
+their blood-red colour.
+
+That police corps, _the Irish Constabulary Force_, is very numerous, and
+entails great expense—more than one million and a half sterling per year.
+The cost would hardly be half a million if the Irish police were on the
+same footing as the English force; that fact alone can give an adequate
+idea of the real state of things. Besides, numerous auxiliaries, called
+_Emergency men_, are always ready to give their help to the regular corps.
+
+Be they soldiers or policemen, Great Britain keeps nearly 50,000 armed
+men in Ireland. The male adult and able population of the island being
+under 500,000 men, of whom 200,000 at least are opposed to the agrarian
+and autonomist movement, one can assume that there is on an average one
+armed soldier or constable for every six unarmed Irishmen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the dusty road before us are slowly walking five cows in rather an
+emaciated condition. Those beasts strike me by an odd appearance which
+I am unable to make out at first. When I am close to them I see what it
+is: _they have no tails_. The absence of that ornament gives the poor
+animals the awkwardest and most absurd look.
+
+I turn to my guide, who is laughing in his sleeve.
+
+“Look at their master!” he whispers in a low voice.
+
+“Well?”
+
+“The cows have no tails, and the man has no ears....”
+
+It is true. The unlucky wretch vainly endeavoured to hide his head, as
+round as a cheese, under the brim of his battered old hat; he did not
+succeed in hiding his deformity.
+
+“By Jove! who arranged you in this guise, you and your cows?” I said to
+the poor devil, stopping before him.
+
+He made a few grimaces before explaining; but the offer of a cigar, that
+rarely misses its effect, at last unloosed his tongue. He then told me
+that the Moonlighters had come with a razor to cut his ears, a week after
+having cut the tails of his cows as a warning.
+
+“And what could have been the motive of such cowardly, barbarous
+mutilation?”
+
+He had accepted work on a _boycotted_ farm, though the League had
+expressly forbidden it; in other words, he was what the Irish call a
+“land-grabber.”
+
+“Where are you going with your cows?”
+
+“To sell them at Listowel, if I may, which is not certain.”
+
+“Why is it not certain? Because they are unprovided with a tail? At the
+worst that would only prevent them being made into ox-tail soup,” I say,
+trying to enliven the conversation by an appropriate joke.
+
+“That’s not it,” answers the man. “But the interdict applies to the sale
+of the cows as well as to having any intercourse with me. I am forbidden
+to buy anything, and anyone speaking to me is fined two shillings.”
+
+He seemed to think this perfectly natural and even just, like the Leper
+of the “Cité d’Aoste,” or like common convicts when one talks to them of
+their punishment.
+
+“I gambled and I lost—so much the worse for me!...” all his resigned
+attitude seemed to say.
+
+“Perhaps they don’t know it yet in Listowel!” he resumed with a sigh, and
+hopefully pushed on with his cows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Have there been many cases of such agrarian mutilation in the country?”
+I ask MacMahon.
+
+“No,” said my guide. “Perhaps half a dozen or so within the year.[3]
+They used to be much more numerous, but somehow they seem to go out of
+fashion under the sway of the League. But there are still other ways
+of annoying the enemy; fires are very frequent, so are blows, personal
+injuries, and even murder, threatening letters, and, above all, verbal
+intimidation.”
+
+Such proceedings, I understand, are altogether disowned by the chiefs
+of the League, who only patronise _boycotting_. Let a farmer, small or
+great, decline to enter the organisation, or check it by paying his rent
+to the landlord without the reduction agreed to by the tenantry, or take
+the succession of an evicted tenant on his holding, or commit any other
+serious offence against the law of land war, he is at once boycotted.
+That is to say, he will no longer be able to sell his goods, to buy the
+necessaries of life, to have his horses shod, his corn milled, or even
+to exchange one word with a living soul, within a circuit of fifteen to
+twenty miles round his house. His servants are tampered with and induced
+to leave him, his tradespeople are made to shut their door in his face,
+his neighbours compelled to cut him. It is a kind of excommunication,
+social, political and commercial; an interdict sometimes aggravated with
+direct vexations. People come and play football on his oat fields, his
+potatoes are rooted out, his fish or cattle poisoned, his game destroyed.
+
+“But supposing that instead of bearing meekly such indignities, he shows
+a bold front, shoulders his gun and keeps watch?”
+
+“Then his business is settled. Some day or other, he will receive a
+bullet in his arm, if not in his head.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It will not perhaps be unnecessary to explain here the origin of that
+word _boycott_, so frequently used during the late few years. Everybody
+knows that on the British side of the Channel, but the French reader is
+not bound to remember it so exactly.
+
+In September, 1881, at a mass meeting held in Clare County, Mr. Parnell
+almost without being aware of the importance of his words, advised his
+friends, to exclude from the pale of social life whoever should eject
+a tenant for reason of an unpaid rent, or take the succession of the
+evicted farmer.
+
+The first application of that new penalty fell upon a certain Captain
+Boycott, a retired officer, who had applied himself to agriculture.
+Having had occasion to evict an obdurate defaulter, he saw himself within
+a few days forsaken by his servants, tabooed by his neighbours, reduced
+to dig out his own potatoes, and generally to become his own valet.
+
+The affair produced great sensation. The whole press talked about it.
+Legions of reporters flocked to the spot to follow the phases of the
+war waged between Captain Boycott and his opponents. Upon a memorable
+occasion a regular army of Orangemen, 7000 strong, they say, came over
+from Ulster to give a lift to him and help him to get in the harvest
+which threatened to rot standing. But the place became too hot for
+Captain Boycott. He was obliged to give way at last and leave his place
+in Connaught. (By the way, he ultimately returned there, and is now quite
+popular.)
+
+In the meanwhile his name, used as a proverb, or rather as a _verb_,
+has come to describe a way of intimidation, which at the hands of the
+League is a redoubtable weapon, more powerful than a hundred batteries of
+100-ton guns.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Could you show me anybody who is actually under boycott?”
+
+“Could I? That will not be difficult. There! Mr. Kennedy, beyond that
+clump of trees. He has been boycotted eighteen months.”
+
+“Do you think I might call on him?”
+
+“Certainly. But I shall ask leave to wait for you outside the gate, sir,
+on account of the League of course.——You may laugh at its verdict, not I.”
+
+Ten minutes later, I was at Mr. Kennedy’s gate. A little country house
+rather decayed, in the middle of grounds which no gardener has seen for
+at least two years. Nobody in sight. I try the bell-rope. It remains in
+my hand. I am then reduced to an energetic tattoo on the plate which
+shuts the lower part of the gate.
+
+Attracted by the unusual noise, a tall white-haired man makes his
+appearance at an upper window. Surprised at first, and even somewhat
+alarmed, he listens to my request, is reassured, and even comes to unbar
+the door. As I had hoped, he is not sorry to unloose his tongue a little,
+and with the best grace possible tells me the whole affair.
+
+“Yes, I am boycotted for having, single among all his tenants, paid to
+my landlord the entire rent of those meadows you see yonder. How do I
+take my situation? Well, as a philosopher. At the beginning, I thought
+it inconvenient to be deprived of new bread, to do without meat, and
+worse still, to be left without servants. But I have learnt by degrees
+to accommodate myself to my new condition. I have made provisions for
+a siege. I have found a few servants, strangers to the district, and
+made my arrangements to send my butter to Cork by rail. On the whole,
+there is not much to complain of. I should, of course, prefer things
+to follow their usual course. It is tedious at times to find oneself
+out of the pale of humanity. But you end by discovering that solitude
+has its advantages. You develop accomplishments up to that time latent
+in you. For instance, I shoe my horses myself; I have learnt to set a
+window pane, to sweep a chimney. My daughters have improved in cooking.
+We eat a great many chickens; now and then we kill a sheep; when we want
+butcher-meat, we must send rather far for it. The same for beer, wine,
+and many other commodities. It _is_ inconvenient—no more.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Listowel; a market day. Great animation on the market-place; tongues
+are busy; whisky seems to be flowing freely at every tap-room and
+tavern. But not much business is done, as far as I can judge. My guide
+calls my attention to two interesting phenomena that I should not,
+perhaps, have noticed otherwise.
+
+The first is a man in breeches, with bare calves, a _shillelagh_ under
+his arm, who seems to be a farmer in a small way. He approaches a
+wheel-barrow filled with big hob-nailed shoes, which a woman is dragging,
+and falls to examining them, evidently intent on buying a pair. Almost
+at the same moment, a boy of fifteen or sixteen comes to the other side
+of the woman and whispers something in her ear. She nods. At once the
+customer, turning very red in the face, lets go the pair of shoes and
+turns away. MacMahon says the man is a newly boycotted man and the boy an
+agent of the League, whose function consists in reporting the interdict
+to those who have not heard of it as yet.
+
+The other phenomenon is more remarkable. It is a stout gentleman in a
+shooting-jacket, carrying a double-barrelled gun of the latest model, and
+followed by a constable who also carries his regulation gun. The stout
+gentleman stops before a door where a smart _outside car_ with a servant
+in livery is waiting for him. He takes his seat; the constable jumps
+on after him. Is the stout gentleman under a writ of _habeas corpus_,
+I wonder, and is he going to be taken into the county jail? Not a bit
+of it. He is simply a landowner under threat of death, who has thought
+fit to indulge in a body-guard. He and the constable are henceforth
+inseparable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A large tract of uncultivated land. It was farmed at £60 a year. The
+farmer was a sporting man, fond of races and the like. To simplify his
+work he had the whole property converted into pasture. But his expensive
+mode of living obliged him now and then to sell a few head of cattle. The
+hour came when he had not one calf left, and he found himself utterly
+incapable of paying his rent. He was evicted. Sure not to find another
+tenant, on account of the law laid down by the League that every evicted
+farm should be left unoccupied, the landlord had recourse to the only
+sort of _métayage_ known in Ireland. (_Métayage_, it should be explained,
+is the kind of farming used in most French provinces, where the owner of
+the land enters into yearly partnership with his tenant, and advances the
+necessary capital in the shape of manure, seed, beasts of burden, and
+machinery, on the understanding that the crops be shared equally between
+himself and the tenant.) To return to my Kerry landlord: he set up on
+his meadows a caretaker, with a salary of twenty-five shillings a week
+and forty cows to keep. At the end of the first month the tails of ten
+cows had been chopped off, while two of them had died from suspicious
+inflammation of the bowels. It became necessary to put the cows, and
+the caretaker as well, under the protection of a detachment of police.
+Cost: two pounds a week for each constable. Nett loss at the end of the
+half-year: £60. The landlord wisely judged that it would be much better
+to send his cows to the slaughter-house, to pay off caretaker and police,
+and to forget that he ever was a landowner.
+
+In the same district, another farm gone waste. The tenant did not pay.
+He was evicted, but had another holding close by, where he encamped, and
+from that vantage-ground sent the following ultimatum to his _ci-devant_
+landlord:—“The hay I have left on my late farm is worth £30. I demand
+fifteen for allowing you to mow and sell it; you shall not see a shilling
+of it on any other terms.” Fury of the landlord. Then he cools down,
+thinks better of it, offers ten pounds. The evicted tenant declines the
+offer; a whole army would not have brought him round. Meanwhile, the hay
+got rotten.
+
+By the road-side near Castlemaine, is a row of barracks, where men,
+women, and children are huddled together. Those are _League-huts_,
+that is to say, a temporary shelter which the League offers to ejected
+tenants, for having, upon its command, declined to pay their rent. The
+cabins from which the poor wretches have been turned out, although they
+had, as a rule, built them themselves, are within shooting distance, on
+the right hand. They bear evident traces of having been fired by the
+sheriff’s officers in order to make them uninhabitable, and they present
+the desolate aspect of homesteads adjoining a field of battle. Walls
+broken by the crowbar, doors ajar, rubbish and ruins everywhere. Is it
+politic on the part of the landlords to add the horrors of fire to those
+of eviction? Hardly so, the outsider will think. It adds nothing to
+the majesty of the law to wage war with inanimate things. The exercise
+of a right ought never to assume the appearance of an act of revenge.
+Wrongly or rightly, eviction by itself always bears an odious character;
+but to see the house you have built with your own hands burnt to the
+ground will ever seem to cry for vengeance to Heaven. And, after all,
+who is the gainer by such violence? The League. It takes care to retain
+the victims of eviction within sight of the scene of their woes, feeds
+them, harbours them, exhibits them as in an open museum, by the side of
+their destroyed homes. And it is a permanent, practical lesson for the
+passer-by, a realistic drama where the landlord appears torch in hand,
+while the League dries the tears of the afflicted and allows them £2 a
+week. That is the usual pay for one family.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A KERRY FARMER’S BUDGET.
+
+
+“I wonder how landlords can manage to live, under such conditions,” I
+said to my guide. “Are there any tenants left paying their rent?”
+
+“There are many. First, those who have been able to come to an agreement
+with their landlord about the reduction of 20, 25, 30 per cent. that they
+claimed; in such cases the landlord’s income is reduced, but at least
+he still retains a part of it. Then, there is the tenant’s live stock;
+he cannot prevent its being seized for rent, in case of execution, and
+consequently chooses to pay, if possible, or he would have to sell his
+cattle to avoid distress, which means ruin to the family. Lastly, there
+are the tenants who pay secretly, although pretending to adhere to the
+rules of the League—_backsliders_ they are called—a class more numerous
+than could be supposed at first sight.”
+
+Here MacMahon laughed. He went on:
+
+“I will tell you, Sir, a story I have heard lately, of a man in county
+Cork, who wanted to pay his landlord but dared not, on account of the
+other tenants on the estate. Coming across the landlord on a lone road
+(not improbably after many an unfruitful attempt for such a propitious
+opportunity) he stood before him in a threatening attitude. ‘Put your
+hand in my coat’s inside pocket!’ he said gruffly. The landlord did not
+understand at first what the man meant, and considering his look and
+address, was far from feeling reassured. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked
+uneasily. ‘I tell you, sir, put your hand in my coat’s inside pocket, and
+feel for what you find in it.’ At last the landlord did as he was bidden.
+He put his hand in the man’s pocket, and extracted from it a bundle of
+papers, carefully tied up, that looked like banknotes. At once the tenant
+took to his heels. ‘The devil a penny of rent you can ever say I paid
+you,’ said he, in the same strange threatening tone of voice, as he ran
+away. Still, the banknotes in the landlord’s hand were exactly to the
+amount of the rent due. As a rule, when the tenant is really able to pay
+his rent, he pays it.”
+
+Such has not been the general case, it seems, for the last three years.
+_In produce_, perhaps the Irish farmer might have paid his rent, as the
+crops have been, on the whole, fairly up to the average. In _money_, he
+cannot, because the fall of prices on hay, potatoes, beef, mutton, pork,
+and butter alike, in 1885, 1886, 1887, has been at least 20 per cent. on
+the former and average prices, which not only means no margin whatever of
+profit to the farmer, besides his necessary expenses, but in most cases
+the sheer impossibility of providing for the forthcoming outlay in seeds,
+manure, and labour.
+
+This may not be self-evident. Many a reader probably fails to see why
+a fall of 20 per cent. on the prices of agricultural produce must
+necessarily entail a total disability to pay the rent. “I can well
+understand the demand of a proportional reduction of rent in such cases,”
+he will say, “but not absolute non-payment.” To fully realise the
+situation, one must go into the details of a farmer’s life.
+
+Let us take the case of Denis O’Leary, a Kerry man, with fourteen acres
+of good land. He seems to be in easy circumstances; his house is clean
+and pretty; he owns three cows, two sows, ten sheep, and about a score
+hens. Denis O’Leary is a good man, industrious and thrifty, who does all
+the work on his farm, with the help of wife and three children. He likes
+his pipe of tobacco, and on Sundays, a glass of beer over the counter
+with a friend or two, but otherwise indulges in no expensive habits. On
+the whole he can be considered a pattern tenant, as well as one of the
+most fortunate of his class. His rent, which had been gradually raised by
+his landlord up to the sum of £11 6_s._, was in 1883 put down at £8 7_s._
+by the Land Commissioners.
+
+Such being the case, when we are told that the same Denis O’Leary, who
+was for five years able to pay the larger rent, is now unable to pay
+the smaller one, this may look absurd. Still, it is the simple truth.
+To ascertain the fact, it is only necessary to make the budget of the
+O’Leary family.
+
+The yearly expenditure, unavoidable and irreducible, is as follows:—
+
+EXPENDITURE.
+
+                                       £ _s._
+    Taxes, rates, and county cess      1  15
+    Turf (Royalty on)                  1  10
+    Clothing and shoes                 6  10
+    Meat                               2  15
+    Bread                              6  18
+    Beer and tobacco                   2   5
+    Oil, candles, sundries             2  15
+    Sugar and tea                      6   5
+    School fees                        0   7
+    Church subscription                0  10
+                                      ------
+          Total                       31  10
+
+Most assuredly there is nothing excessive in such a budget of expenditure
+for a family of four. If even it is possible for Denis O’Leary not to
+go beyond its narrow limits, it is because he consumes in kind a large
+proportion of the produce of his fourteen acres, namely, some hundred
+stones of potatoes, with a good deal of milk, eggs, and butter. This
+alimentary deduction duly made, he has still a certain quantity of
+agricultural produce (which shall be supposed here a constant quantity)
+to sell, as follows:—
+
+          1800 lbs. Potatoes.
+          2200  ”   Wheat.
+          1750  ”   Oats.
+            38  ”   Wool.
+           116  ”   Butter.
+          1000  ”   Straw.
+            25 dozen Eggs.
+             3 Pigs.
+             2 Calves.
+             3 Lambs.
+
+The above commodities have not, unfortunately, a constant value. They
+sell more or less, according to the fluctuations of prices on the market.
+In 1882, 1883, 1884, prices were high. Denis O’Leary’s revenue was
+consequently as under:—
+
+REVENUE (THREE YEARS AGO).
+
+                                       £ _s._
+    Sold: 1800 lbs. Potatoes           3   8
+          2200  ”   Wheat              9   0
+          1750  ”   Oats               6   4
+            38  ”   Wool               1  15
+           116  ”   Butter             5   7
+          1000  ”   Straw;             1   5
+            25 dozen Eggs              1   2
+             3 Pigs                    5  10
+             2 Calves                  6  15
+             3 Lambs                   3   5
+                                      ------
+          Total                       43  11
+
+When Denis O’Leary had deducted from his revenue of £43 11_s._ the yearly
+expenditure of £31 10_s._, he had still £12 1_s._ left. He was able,
+accordingly, to pay £8 _7s._ rent (or even £11 6_s._ before the judicial
+reduction), and the rent duly paid, he was still the proud nett gainer of
+four shillings under the old _régime_, of £3 14_s._ under the new.
+
+Unhappily, prices fell down in 1885, 1886, and 1887, to the tune of 25
+or 30 per cent. on nearly all agricultural produce, with the exception
+perhaps of oats and eggs, so that the revenue of the O’Leary family (all
+things otherwise equal) has come to be as under:—
+
+REVENUE (AT PRESENT).
+
+                                       £ _s._
+    Sold: 1800 lbs. Potatoes           2   8
+          2200  ”   Wheat              7   0
+          1750  ”   Oats               6   2
+            38  ”   Wool               1   5
+           116  ”   Butter             3  12
+          1000  ”   Straw              0  15
+            25 dozen Eggs              1   5
+             3 Pigs                    3   4
+             2 Calves                  4   8
+             3 Lambs                   2  10
+                                      ------
+          Total                       32   9
+
+Thus, the revenue and expenditure are nearly equal, with a slight balance
+of nineteen shillings, that could hardly be proffered for rent. Local
+usurers are not wanting, of course, who will advance to Denis O’Leary the
+necessary funds, at 10 or 15 per cent., if he wants to pay the landlord,
+all the same. But then his budget is no more in a state of equilibrium:
+deficit enters it, to widen every year up to the final catastrophe. In
+other words, Denis O’Leary cannot pay the rent, unless he draws on his
+capital. One may well understand that he should not relish the idea,
+considering especially that the landlord’s rack-rent has been reduced
+three years ago in the Land Court, and that the same landlord demurs to
+a fresh reduction, so obviously just and necessary that all landlords in
+England have granted it of their own free will these last three years.
+
+And Denis O’Leary is a wonder in his class: he is an industrious,
+hard-working, wise man, without a penny of previous debt. He has
+precisely the area of land adequate to his means, and the live-stock
+indispensable to manure the soil. He does not drink, he does not gamble,
+he is never ill, he has no old people to support, he has not experienced
+failures or mishaps of any kind, and his crops are fairly up to the
+average.
+
+Let us come back, however, to the world as it is, and see Man with his
+foibles, his usual neglects, errors, and mishaps. Let us suppose that
+he has more land on his hands than he can well manage to till, or that
+his holding, on the contrary, is too small for his wants. Let us suppose
+that instead of selling three pigs and two calves, he was not able to
+rear them, or lost them from disease; that instead of bringing to market
+1,800 lbs. of potatoes he had to buy some hundred-weight of the same for
+domestic consumption—the man is lost, irretrievably lost. Not only will
+he never be able to pay the landlord one farthing, but it will be enough
+that the crops should be slightly under the average to make a hopeless
+beggar of him—a case of outdoor or indoor relief for the parish.
+
+Now, these are the circumstances of six or seven tenants out of ten in
+the lowlands of Kerry, where they seem to be comparatively well off. If
+we leave the plains for the higher districts bordering on the sea, the
+question is simpler still. There is no need of long accounts here. The
+hour of irretrievable misery has struck long ago, and habitual hunger
+stares us in the face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                      UP IN THE MOUNTAINS.
+
+The mountains of Kerry are the finest in the island. They form its
+south-western angle, throwing out on the Atlantic the peninsula of
+Dingle, between the bay of the same name and the Kenmare River. As you
+leave the plain following the Cahirciveen road towards the coast, you see
+them develop their parallel ranges, which are divided by deep valleys.
+Some of these valleys are fertile, being watered by impetuous streams
+from the mountain side. But the general impression one receives is
+that of agricultural poverty, as is the case in nearly all mountainous
+countries in the world. Pastures are thinner, cattle less numerous,
+homesteads fewer and more miserable than in the plain. Human creatures
+themselves partake of the general look of wretchedness that prevails.
+They live on potatoes, milk, and porridge; seldom eat bread, meat never;
+wine, beer, tea, coffee are to them unknown luxuries. Their ill-shaped
+cottages are made of soft stone, with a thatched roof maintained by ropes
+made of straw. There they all sleep on a bed of rushes, which they share
+with the pig, when there is such a thing, for even the traditional pig
+has become now a symptom of wealth in a manner. On the beams of the roof
+roost perhaps half-a-dozen hens and chickens.
+
+Sloth and dirt hold here an undivided sway. Not a woman—and some are
+pretty—seems to mind the spots and holes in her garments; not one knows
+the use of soap or needle. They appear to have a rooted dislike for
+the comb; their hair falls on their back as is the fashion among the
+Australian aborigines, in nature’s simple disorder.
+
+Men look heavy and apathetic. They work as little as they can manage—one
+or two days out of seven, perhaps—and do not even think of seeking their
+sustenance from the sea, which is so close to them. The most they can do
+is to draw from it now and then a cart-load of seaweed to manure their
+miserable plot of ground. Their existence rolls on dull, idle, devoid of
+interest. It is the brute life in its most wretched and hideous state.
+Here is old Ireland as Gustave de Beaumont’s admirable book showed it
+to us fifty years ago. Hardly do those wretched products of Anglo-Saxon
+civilization receive a faint echo of the outer world when the electoral
+time comes.
+
+The consequence is that the agrarian crisis is reduced here to its
+simplest expression, _i.e._, sheer impossibility to pay the rent
+because of total absence of the £ _s._ _d._ wherewith. Elsewhere that
+impossibility may be half assumed; it is certainly mixed in the plain
+with bad will, goaded in the peasant’s heart by that dogged desire to
+possess the land which is so natural in him. In the mountain it is not a
+political fiction that holds the sway: famine is the king; and it is the
+spontaneous product of the very nature of things.
+
+For the naturally infertile soil has reached here to such a degree of
+subdivision that it is no longer sufficient even to feed those it bears.
+The greater part of those wretched holdings of five or six acres are
+let at the nominal price of about £4, to which must be added the taxes,
+poor-rates, and county-cess, increasing it by a quarter or a third. Four,
+five, six, sometimes ten or twelve beings with human faces squat on that
+bit of worthless ground and till it in the most primitive manner. Money,
+tools, intelligence, pluck, all are wanting there. Viewing things in the
+most optimist light, supposing the year to have been an exceptionally
+good one, the potato crop to have been plentiful, the cow to have hunted
+out on the hill-side the necessary grass for the making of a little
+butter, all that will be sufficient perhaps to prevent starvation. But
+where will the money be found to pay Queen and landlord?
+
+Let a child or an old person eat ever so little in the year, his food
+cannot but represent a value. Let that value be £4. Can six acres of
+mountain ground managed without skill or manure, render five, six, ten
+times £4 a year, and a rent in addition of five to six pounds? It is
+sheer impossibility.
+
+A few examples.
+
+James Garey, fifty years old, married, four children. Nominal rent £5
+14_s._ Two cows, one pig, eight chickens. About six acres of land.
+Cultivates only part of it, about three acres, where he grows potatoes;
+the remainder is pasture. Sold this year thirty shillings’ worth of
+butter; ate his potatoes from first to last; has not paid a farthing to
+his landlord for the last four years. Owes £6 to the draper-grocer; would
+never be able to pay his taxes if two of his children, who are out in
+domestic situations, did not send him the necessary amount to prevent
+execution.
+
+Widow Bridget Molony, sixty years old; five children; seven acres of
+land. Nominal rent £6 12_s._ Four cows, an eighteen-month-old calf, two
+pigs, twenty chickens. Sold £3 10_s._ of butter this year, £2 oats,
+15 shillings potatoes, and a pig for £3; just sent a calf to market,
+offering it for £1 15_s._; did not find purchaser. Thinks herself
+relatively lucky, as she is owing only two years’ rent to her landlord.
+Two of her children have situations at Liverpool, and help her to pay the
+taxes.
+
+Thomas Halloran, forty years. Three children, eight acres of land; rent
+£6 15_s._ Two cows, fifteen sheep, a pig, an ass, twelve chickens. Sold
+during the year ten shillingsworth of butter and ten sheep at twelve
+shillings a head. Has paid nothing to landlord since November, 1884.
+
+Michael Tuohy, seventy years old, three children, four grandchildren.
+Nine acres of land, £7 rent. A cow and five hens. Can no longer afford
+a pig. Sold only fifteen shillingsworth of butter this year, and had to
+get rid of two cows out of three to pay the ten per cent interest of a
+debt he has contracted with the National Bank. Owes four years’ rent to
+his landlord; hopes that his son, who has emigrated to the United States,
+will send him the money for the taxes; if the son doesn’t, he cannot see
+any way to save the last cow.
+
+Examples of that description could be multiplied _ad infinitum_; they
+are, so to say, the rule in the mountainous districts, where the holdings
+are for the most part beneath £10 rent, and totally unequal even to
+sustain the farmer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Glenbeigh, between Kilarglin and Cahirciveen. This place was the
+theatre of several deplorable scenes in January last, on Mr. R. Winn’s
+property. That property, very extensive, but consisting of poor, not to
+say totally barren land, was put down at £2000 on the valuation roll.
+The aforesaid rent not having been paid during four or five years, the
+owner was of course in very strait circumstances; he had to go to some
+Jews, who substituted themselves in his place, and undertook to enforce
+payment. But the extreme poverty of the tenants proved even stronger than
+the energetic tribe. In consequence of the gradual subdivision of the
+land, they had come to hold diminutive scraps of it such as could not
+even grow the potatoes sufficient for their sustenance. After various
+judicial skirmishes, the plain result of which was to establish the utter
+incapacity of the peasants to give a penny, the council of creditors
+resolved in the depth of winter to undertake a wholesale campaign of
+evictions. Seventy-nine writs of ejectment were issued, and soon after
+the under-sheriff, backed by a strong detachment of mounted constables,
+arrived to evict the wretched families.
+
+The operations began at a certain Patrick Reardon’s, on a literally
+barren land, for which he was expected to pay £4 10_s._ a year. He was
+the father of eight children, but did not even possess a pig, not a pair
+of chickens. The furniture consisted of a bed, a rickety table and a
+kettle. Squatting on the ground with his whole family, according to the
+time-honoured custom, he waited for the executors of the law. Requested
+to pay, he answered that he possessed not one farthing; he was then
+informed that they were going to set fire to his cabin, in order to
+oblige him to evacuate the premises. The act soon followed the threat.
+A lighted match applied to the thatched roof, and in a few minutes the
+whole was in conflagration. All the neighbouring populations, who had run
+on to the scene of the tragedy, saluted the dreadful deed with hooting
+and execration.
+
+The myrmidons of the law pursued nevertheless the execution of their
+mandate. They went next to the dwelling of another tenant, Thomas
+Burke, inscribed on the list of debtors for a sum of £20. He had five
+children, and, like the above-mentioned, not one farthing to offer to the
+creditors. Order was given to set fire to his roof, but it was found to
+be so damp that fire would not take; so they had to attack the walls with
+the crowbar and pick-axe. The miserable inmates appeared then to the eyes
+of the indignant crowd, half naked, wan, emaciated, and starved; and so
+heartrending was the scene that with difficulty the representative of the
+League (who had come there for that very purpose) prevented the mob from
+stoning the bailiffs to death.
+
+Then came the turn of the third cottage. Two old men lived in it, Patrick
+and Thomas Diggin. The family of the former included ten persons; that of
+the latter, six. They owed a rent of £8, and had not a shilling between
+them all. Patrick’s wife, however, came forward, and declared she had
+just received £2 from her daughter, who was a servant in Belfast. Would
+they accept that, and stop the execution? The under-sheriff, whom the
+duties of his office oblige to back the bailiffs, urged them to accept
+the touching offer. They refused, and set fire to the roof. Then Patrick
+Diggin, an eighty-year-old man, was seen coming out of his home sobbing;
+he was followed by all his children and grandchildren. By an irresistible
+impulse of sympathy all crowd round him, offering what little they
+possess to the relief of that misery. The constables themselves, moved
+almost to tears, contribute their silver coin to the subscription which
+has been spontaneously organized. To carry the barbarous work further
+becomes an impossibility. The sheriff’s substitute gives the signal for
+departure, and the cavalcade follows amidst the derisive cries of the
+multitude.
+
+All those poor people, except one family, have since been re-installed on
+their holdings, and are now at work on their farms—a strange evidence of
+the uselessness and cruelty of eviction, to make tenants pay who cannot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                          VALENTIA ISLAND.
+
+At Cahirciveen, I crossed the strait which divides the main land from the
+island of Valentia. This is the extreme point of the old continent, where
+the Transatlantic cables are placed. Good, honest, plucky fellows! what
+repose after the misery of Kerry! I am speaking of the fishermen of the
+island, a peculiar race who never ploughed any fields but those of the
+ocean. Every night they risk their lives on the giant billows, and earn
+their bread valiantly. They know nothing of sheep rot, potato disease, or
+landlordism; all they know is the management of their boats, the making
+and mending of their nets, and the art of making the deep yield food for
+their young. Strangers to the neighbouring world, they ignore even its
+language, and only talk the rude idiom of their ancestors, the Irish of
+the time of the O’Donoghue.
+
+Noble fellows! I shall not soon forget the night I spent there watching
+them as they were fishing between the Skellings, two enormous rocks that
+rise like Gothic cathedrals, about twelve miles from Bray Head, and on
+which the waves are eternally breaking with a thundering noise. My guide
+had warned me against offering them money; it would offend them, he said,
+so I did not do it. I simply drank with them a glass of whisky when they
+prepared to go home towards daybreak, the stars still shining. And,
+comparing their happy courage with the distress of Kerry, I wished them
+from the bottom of my heart never to become acquainted with agriculture
+on small holdings, under an English landlord.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+RURAL PHYSIOLOGY.
+
+
+We have glanced at a few facts presenting symptoms of the Irish disease,
+which were taken as chance guided us, in a ride through a south-western
+county. Similar symptoms are everywhere to be found through the island.
+To appreciate them at their right value, as even to comprehend them, it
+is essentially requisite to know, at least in its broader outlines, the
+physiology of landed property in this entirely agricultural country.
+
+Vast landed property and parcelled-out culture. This is the epitome of
+such a physiology. At the base of the social edifice we find the tenant,
+generally a Catholic and of indigenous race, occupying and cultivating
+after his own fashion the thousandth or ten thousandth part of a property
+ranging over an area of some hundred thousand acres. At the summit we
+find the landlord, almost invariably of English and Protestant race,
+ruling by right of primogeniture over this immense space.
+
+Does this right rest at its origin on confiscation and spoliation, as is
+averred by the Irish? That is of little importance from a legal point of
+view, for prescription has covered the spoliation by an occupation of two
+to eight centuries. It is of far greater importance from a moral point of
+view, because that grievance, ill or well founded, serves as a handle for
+all agrarian recriminations.
+
+In three out of five cases (so it has been shown by recent statistics)
+the landlord is an _absentee_, that is to say, he does not reside on
+his property, nor even in the kingdom, and spends abroad the money he
+raises on his lands. His income, from that source alone, is sometimes
+enormous—£10,000 a year—(Lord Greville, Westmeath; Lord Carisford,
+Wicklow; Mr. Wandesford, Kilkenny; Mr. King, Longford; Lord Inchiquin,
+Clare); £16,000 a year—(Lord Claremont, Louth; Mr. Naper, Meath; Lord
+Leconfield, Clare; Lord Ventry, Kerry); £26,000 and £32,000 a year—(Duke
+of Abercorn, Tyrone; Marquis of Clanricarde, Galway; Lord Kenmare,
+Kerry); £40,000, £80,000, and even £120,000 a year—(Mr. MacDonnell,
+Kildare; Marquis of Coningham, Cavan, Clare, and Donegal; Marquis of
+Londonderry, Down; Marquis of Downshire, &c.). Rent rolls of £4,000,
+£3,000, and £2,000 a year too plentiful to be mentioned.
+
+Three-fifths at least of those sums are lost every year for Ireland,
+and they go out of the island without having in any way helped to
+increase her capital in agricultural machinery, live stock, and general
+improvements of the land. As a natural consequence, the soil is
+ill-cultivated, ill-manured, insufficiently covered with cattle. For
+centuries its energies have suffered a constant draining, and nothing has
+been done to repair its losses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That soil has a tendency to subdivision in the hands of the tenants, who
+cultivate it by truly pre-historic methods. The figures are given in
+round numbers as follows:—
+
+Against 24,000 holdings of a value of above £500 a year there are in
+Ireland 85,000 holdings producing from £25 to £500 a year; 49,000 from
+£12 to £29 a year; 77,000 from £8 to £12 a year; 196,000 from £4 to £8 a
+year; lastly, 218,000 holdings of a revenue of _under £4 a year_.
+
+That is to say, out of six or seven hundred thousand families, living
+exclusively upon the product of the soil, more than two-thirds must get
+their sustenance from a wretched bit of ground, estimated by the owner
+himself at a value of £4 to £8 a year!
+
+To state such an economical paradox is to denounce it. Where there is
+nothing, the landlord, like the king, loses his rights. The situation,
+then, would already be strangely anomalous, even if the respective titles
+of landlord and tenant were of the clearest and most transparent kind.
+But it is complicated in Ireland by the most curious conceptions and
+customs in matters of landed property.
+
+To understand those conceptions and customs, a Frenchman must begin by
+putting aside all his Latin ideas. With us, since the Convention, one can
+always know by the Survey-Rolls to whom belongs absolutely such or such a
+piece of land. He who owns it is free to sell it, to give it, to let it
+as he pleases. His right is absolute; it is the right of “use and abuse,”
+according to the forcible expression of the Roman code. It passes with
+this absolute character to sons, grandsons, or legatees.
+
+In Ireland it is feudal law that obtains still; an estate is not a
+property, it is a fief. The lord of that estate is not the proprietor
+of it, he is an usufructuary, as it were, a life-tenant on it. He has
+only a limited right to his own land. He cannot sell it without the
+written consent of his substitute in the entail, and the authorization
+of the persons, often countless in numbers, that have some hereditary
+right on his property at the same time with him; most of the estates
+are encumbered with perpetual rents, served out either to the younger
+branches of the family, to old servants, or to creditors. All the
+titulary is free to alienate is his life interest, through some insurance
+combination with transfer of income.
+
+If we add that the said titulary is generally absent from his property,
+that he does not manage it personally, and that in many cases he does
+not even exactly know where it is to be found, we must own that it is no
+wonder he is considered as a stranger.
+
+A stranger he is besides, in race, by habits, by religion, by language.
+And yet this stranger,—precisely because his fief, practically
+inalienable, as it is immovable in its limits, has always been
+transmitted from father to eldest son in the family,—this stranger,
+of whom often nothing is known beyond his name, has a story, true or
+legendary, attached to him and to his title. It matters little that the
+revenue of the estate was scattered over five hundred heads, in the
+course of ten generations; the estate remains, and weighs on him with
+all its weight. We do not speak here of a mere geographical expression,
+of an area a hundred times parcelled out, altered, disfigured, in less
+than a century, but of land that for a thousand years, maybe, has changed
+neither form nor aspect.
+
+At night, by the fireside, old people will recall how in former days this
+land was the collective property of the clan; how they were defrauded by
+a political chief that treacherously gave it up to the English, in order
+to receive investiture from their hands; how, following the fortunes
+of twenty successive rebellions and repressions, it was confiscated,
+sequestered, given anew, till it came to the actual landlords. A special
+literature, ballads, popular imagery, little books, and penny papers
+constantly harp on that ancient spoliation. It is the only history
+studied under thatched roofs. The peasant breathes it in the atmosphere,
+imbibes it by all his pores.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Convinced that he has a hereditary right to the domain in general, the
+Irish peasant besides attributes to himself a special and prescriptive
+right to the plot of ground that he, like the landlord, occupies from
+father to son, though on a precarious tenure. This right is not purely
+imaginary; it was consecrated in the year 1860 by a special Act of
+Parliament, due to the initiative of Mr. Gladstone. Recognised from
+immemorial times in Ulster, it has always been claimed in all the other
+parts of Ireland; it is the _tenant right_, what in our own Picardy is
+called the _droit de marché_.
+
+It is well known in what consist this ancient prerogative of the Picardy
+farmer (Troplong in the Preface to his _Traité du Louage_, and Lefort
+in his _Histoire des contrats de location perpétuelle_, have treated it
+exhaustively): it is simply the privilege of preserving in perpetuity
+for him and for his heirs, the use of the ground for which he pays rent
+regularly.
+
+Not only is this privilege not denied to him, but he can transfer it
+to a third person, for a premium that goes by the name of _intrade_.
+The amount of that premium is often a third or even a half of the
+intrinsic value of the soil. Formerly this “_droit de marché_” applied
+to everything that can be let or hired; the labourers, the threshers,
+the shepherds of a domain, each claimed it in his own province as a
+hereditary monopoly. In modern days it is strictly limited to the hiring
+of servants, in the few districts where it survived the French revolution
+(in Péronne for instance).
+
+The thing that is only a curious exception in France has remained the
+rule in Ireland, where _tenant right_ has been in force for the last
+twenty-seven years. And what, after all, can be better founded than such
+a right? Has not the tenant, in the majority of cases, made his plot of
+ground what it is? Has he not tilled it, improved it, manured it, drained
+it according to his better knowledge; in a word, has he not _created_ it
+in its actual form?
+
+“Let us,” says the peasant, “admit the rights of the landlord. How could
+he deny me mine? Are they not legibly written in the furrow I have traced
+upon this earth, in the fruits I have made her bear?... The land is not
+a simple material, unreducible like a piece of gold. It is a chemical
+product, a conglomerate that is valuable especially by reason of all the
+substances I have mixed up with it during an occupation of ten, twenty,
+thirty years, or even more.... Who shall dare to deny the share I have
+brought into this company of which I am the acting manager, and deny that
+this share belongs to me?”
+
+Such a theory would doubtless appear sheer lunacy to the French
+proprietor who has paid for his land £400 per hectare, and who has let
+it for a fixed period at a fixed price, with the understanding that at
+the end of the contract he shall find it in good condition and shall then
+do what he pleases with it. That theory, however, is so well suited to
+Ireland, where custom has the force of law, that the landlord does not
+even think, practically, of disputing the _tenant’s right_.
+
+As a rule he is only too glad to let his land to the farmers who have
+traditionally occupied it, on condition that they pay the usual rent.
+
+But in practice, the Land Act of 1860, apparently so much in favour
+of the tenant, has produced disastrous effects. In the first place,
+by consecrating the right of the tenant only on improvements and
+enlargements made _with the landlord’s consent_. Thence the consequence
+that not only is the landlord never willing to spend a farthing on
+the improvements of the land, but also that he systematically opposes
+them, for fear he should have to pay for them in the end. Besides many
+landlords have signed their new leases only after the farmer has given
+them a formal renunciation to the tenant right; or else they have taken
+advantage of the pretext that offered itself, and raised the rent by way
+of compensation against all risks. Lastly, in many a place where this
+right has become positive, the rural usurers alone have profited by it by
+discounting it to the peasantry.
+
+The consequence is that the tenant right is often reduced practically
+to the implicit acknowledgment of the right of the farmer to occupy the
+land, so long as he pays his rent. It even happens not unfrequently that
+there is no lease and the occupancy goes on indefinitely without title.
+Doubtless this gives it only more value in the eyes of the peasant,
+naturally inclined to associate this absence of scrivening with the
+acknowledgment of his traditional rights.
+
+Having been able in certain cases to sell or hire his “interest,” he
+feels the more inclined to think himself entitled to divide it between
+his children. That division has become the rule, and what was once a farm
+of thirty to fifty acres turns out, at the third generation, parcelled
+in ten or twelve scraps of three to five acres. The landlord might have
+interfered in the beginning; he might have prevented such a division; he
+did not do it. Beside, that division of the land is recorded nowhere, has
+been the occasion of no formal deed; one member of the family answers
+for all the others, if necessary. How is one to unravel those private
+arrangements? And, after all, what does it matter, so long as the rents
+come in?
+
+They come in during ten, during twenty years. Then the harvest is bad,
+or the sub-dividing of the soil has arrived at the last limit compatible
+with the needs of those that cultivate it. The rent is no longer paid,
+and then the difficulties begin. How is one to appraise the improvements
+introduced in the land by the actual possessor, or by his forefathers?
+How can one find out what is due to him, even with the best intentions?
+Is the landlord to give him an indemnity before he evicts him? But then
+it means ruin to the landlord, who will have to pay precisely because he
+has not been paid himself. It is the squaring of the circle. When only
+very small holdings are in question, the difficulty is generally met by
+remaining in _statu quo_. But supposing the debt to be more important, or
+to have been transferred to a third person, which is often the case, the
+question becomes insoluble.
+
+Let us repeat that we must not consider these things from a French
+point of view. With us the idea of individual property is always of the
+clearest and simplest. The frequent sales and buying of land contribute
+still to make this idea of more actual and definite meaning to us.
+An hectare of grass or vine is, like any other goods, a merchandise
+that passes from hand to hand, and remains with the highest bidder. In
+Ireland the sales are rare, and in no case is it a question of absolute
+ownership; it is only a question about the respective and contradictory
+rights, some for life, some perpetual, some positive, others customary,
+of several persons over the same space of land, a space not to be
+transferred, not to be seized, and not to be fractionised. Is it any
+wonder that such contradictory pretensions should give rise to constant
+conflicts?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Everything concurs to shut in that rural world in a vicious circle. Not
+only does the peasant lack capital to improve his farming, but, assured
+of seeing his rent raised if he ventured on the least improvement, he is
+careful to make none. On his side the landlord, for dread of annoying
+contestations, opposes as much as lies in his power any amendment
+susceptible of being turned into a title for his tenant.
+
+Is there a succession of relatively good harvests? He immediately raises
+the rent. Are the following years bad? He refuses to return to the old
+rate, in principle at least, because he finds it inconvenient to curtail
+a revenue to which he has accustomed himself, because he does not like
+to appear to bow before the League, and also because, being liable to
+expropriation, he is unwilling to depreciate beforehand the value of his
+property, which is always valued according to its rent.
+
+Lastly, the holdings, being too often mere plots of ground, are hardly
+sufficient to keep the peasant and his family occupied, and do not always
+give him a sufficiency of food. And just because it is so, the unlucky
+wretch does not find work outside sufficient for the equilibrium of his
+poor finances. The class of agricultural labourers can hardly be said
+to exist in numerous districts, because everyone is a small farmer.
+The tenant then becomes completely sunk in his inaction; he becomes
+apathetic, and from a sluggard too often turns into a drunkard. His wife
+is ignorant and careless. She can neither sew, nor is she able to give
+a palatable taste to his monotonous fare. His children are pallid and
+dirty. Everything is sad, everything is unlovely around him; and, like a
+dagger festering in the wound, the thought that all his misery is due to
+the English usurper ever makes his heart bleed.
+
+To all these causes of poverty and despair must be added the general
+difficulties that weigh on agriculture in all countries of Europe,
+the lowered prices of transport, the clearings of land in America
+and Australia, the awful transatlantic competition, the disease of
+potatoes.... The picture being finished, one thing only surprises—it is
+to find one single Irish farmer left in the country.
+
+These explanations, with many others, were given me by a person that
+it is time I should introduce to the reader; for he is the incarnation
+of one of the essential wheels in the machinery of Irish landed
+property—Captain Pembroke Stockton, _land agent_.
+
+The captain is a small fair man, of slim figure, of military aspect,
+who received me this morning at an office where he employs half a dozen
+clerks. The room was lined with green-backed ledgers, or, to speak
+more exactly, with rows of tin boxes, of a chocolate colour. To-night
+he receives me in a pleasant villa, where he takes me in his phaeton,
+drawn by two magnificent horses. He may be about fifty-three years old.
+His calm, regular-featured countenance owes its peculiar character to
+the line that cuts his forehead transversely, and divides it into two
+parts, one white, the other bronzed by the sun; a mark left by the
+English forage-cap, which is like a small muffin, and is worn on one side
+of the head. The captain has seen service in India; he fought against
+Nana-Sahib, and even hung with his own hand a certain number of rebels,
+as he not unfrequently relates after dinner. He sold out when about
+thirty-five years of age, at a period when selling out still existed (in
+1869), and got for his commission £3200, which, besides a small personal
+competency, allowed him to marry a charming girl, dowerless, according to
+the excellent English habit; children came: means became too straitened,
+and, to enlarge them, he resolved to become a _land agent_.
+
+The land agent has no equivalent in France, except for house property.
+He is neither a notary, nor a steward, and yet he partakes of both,
+being the intermediary between landlord and tenant. It is he that draws
+up the leases and settlements; he who receives the rents, who sends out
+summons, who signs every six months the cheque impatiently expected by
+the landlord; he who represents him at law, he who negotiates his loans,
+mortgages, cessions of income, and all other banking operations. In a
+word, he is the landlord’s prime minister, the person who takes on his
+shoulders all the management of his affairs, and reduces his profession
+to the agreeable function of spending money. The land agent naturally
+resides as a rule in the vicinity of the estate. Therefore he knows
+everybody by name; knows all about the incumbrances, the resources
+of every tenant, the length and breadth of every field, the price of
+produce, the probable value of the harvest; all the threads are in his
+hands; the landlord counts upon him, approves everything he does, upholds
+his rigours, and submits to his tolerance. Is he not himself at his
+mercy? The agent keeps all his deeds of property; has personally written
+out every one of them; knows, in fact, a great deal more than himself
+about it.
+
+Let us premise that very considerable interests are in question, and
+that the rents are ciphered by thousands of pounds sterling. It is easy
+to understand that the agent must be not only a man of honour, a clever
+man, a business man, but above all a man presenting the most serious
+guarantees from a financial point of view.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That is sufficient to imply that they are not counted by dozens in
+every district; and that a land agent provided with all the necessary
+qualifications must before long govern all the principal estates in a
+county. From his office, situated in the principal county-town, he rules
+over ten, twenty, or thirty, square miles of land, cultivated by five or
+six thousand farmers, under some twenty landlords.
+
+Thence the natural consequence that the same policy generally prevails
+in all the administration of the landed property in one district. The
+personal character of the landlord may, indeed, influence it in some
+ways, but the character of the agent is of far greater importance. And
+thence this other consequence, not less serious for the farmer, and which
+gives the key to many an act of agrarian violence,—that in case of open
+war, in case of eviction especially, it is not only an affair between
+the landlord and the tenant, but also between the tenant and all the
+landlords in his county, through their one representative.
+
+Has he been evicted? It will be well-nigh impossible for him to get
+another farm in this county, where he was born, where his relations are
+living, where he has all his habits, all his roots, as it were. And no
+work to be had outside agricultural work.... Emigration only is open to
+him,—which is equivalent to saying that eviction must necessarily be
+followed by transportation.
+
+Let us imagine all the owners of houses in Paris, bound together in
+association, to be in the hands of a single agent; let us suppose that
+a dweller in one of those houses is turned out of it for quarrelling
+with his _concierge_ or for any other reason, and unable to find a house
+to live in; we shall then have an idea of the state of mind in which
+eviction places the Irish peasant. Let us add that this peasant has
+generally built with his own hand the hut that is taken from him; let us
+add that for him it is not only a question of knowing whether he shall
+have a roof over his head, but a question of being able to live by the
+only trade he has learnt.
+
+For many other reasons, the question of agencies on a large scale still
+contributes to make the problem more intricate.
+
+In all affairs personal intercourse brings an element the importance
+of which must not be overlooked. A man will display the greatest
+inflexibility in writing, who will hesitate to do so face to face with
+his opponent. If the landlord knew his tenants, if he lived among them,
+if he entered into their life and saw their misery, very often, may
+be, he would recoil before barbarous rigours, while the agent, by his
+very profession is obliged to act with the precision of a guillotine.
+The influence of women, so gentle and conciliatory, is absent from the
+system. Pity, sympathy, human contact, have no part in it. Can we wonder
+if harmony be destroyed?
+
+Examples are not wanting to show that a different system, a policy of
+gentleness, of direct and mutual concessions, and well directed efforts,
+bear very different results. I shall quote as an instance the case of an
+English lady, Miss Sherman Crawford, who bought, some twenty years ago,
+at a legal sale, a small half-ruined estate in Ireland. She went to live
+on it, and began by giving her ten or twelve tenants a written promise
+that they would get the benefit of all their improvements without having
+cause to fear that the rent should be raised. Then she made it a rule
+that everyone should come directly to her in case of difficulties, and
+not to an agent.
+
+She built a few sheds, repaired two or three cottages, on occasions lent
+a five pound note to facilitate the buying of a cow or pig. That was
+enough. In spite of the difference in race, religion, and language, she
+and her peasantry are on perfect terms with each other; her property of
+Timoleague thrives in the midst of general poverty and wretchedness;
+not an inch of ground lies uncultivated; the soil is well manured, well
+drained, well used; the people are happy and contented. To perform that
+miracle, all that was wanted was a little willingness, a little good
+management and gentleness.
+
+But then Miss Crawford’s property is neither too large nor too small.
+She brings there the capital needed, and allows it to circulate in the
+place. She sees everything with her own eyes, not with the eyes of an
+agent. She is not the titulary of an entailed estate, and has not given
+up its income to usurers. Her farms are large enough to allow her tenants
+to find their sustenance on them, for themselves and their families. In
+a word, her property is in everything the reverse of what is seen in all
+other parts of the island.
+
+And in truth, if delirious legislators had proposed to themselves the
+task of inventing a system of landed property that would give neither
+security to the owner nor peace to the tenant, where could they have
+succeeded better than with the Irish system? It is at once stupid and
+ferocious, absurd and monstrous. How true, alas! that human genius,
+so well able sometimes to profit by natural forces, excels also in
+sterilizing them, in making them homicides!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+EMIGRATION.
+
+
+Before setting foot in this country your notions are not unfrequently
+ready made about the characters of the inhabitants. You have gathered
+them from miscellaneous reading, novel-reading mostly, and what you
+expect is an Ireland poor certainly, but nevertheless gay, improvident,
+chivalrous, addicted to sound drinking, good eating, fond of practical
+jokes, not unmixed with riot and even blows; an Ireland, in short, such
+as Charles Lever and Carleton, Banim and Maxwell, Sam Lover and Thackeray
+have described; an Ireland where wit and humour are to be met at every
+step, where the last beggar has his little joke, where originality of
+thought, unexpectedness of action, fun inexhaustible, combine to form
+that eccentricity of manner which is ever associated with the idea of an
+Irishman.
+
+That such an Ireland was, not long ago, a reality, one cannot doubt.
+A whole literature, a rich collection of tales, novels and legends
+is there to witness to the fact. Its historical existence is as
+scientifically demonstrated as that of our “Régence.” The worldly
+exploits of the Duke of Richelieu are not better proved. But it is in
+vain you look to-day for that gay and careless Ireland; from Cape Clear
+to Malin Head, from Dublin to Galway, there is no vestige of it. She is
+dead and gone. Like Mr. Credit, bad payers have killed her. Between her
+and us there has been a great financial cataclysm where she has been
+wrecked: the _crash_ of the great famine of 1846-1847.
+
+Never did she rise from it. Forty years ago she contrived to exist
+somehow. The tenants were poor, to be sure, but the landlords were not,
+and they spent their money grandly. They led the usual life of rich
+country gentlemen, had large retinues of servants and horses, kept
+playing, drinking, and betting till they had only debts left, which
+course had at least the advantage of permitting their cash to circulate
+about the country. The local traffic was relatively large then. Butchers,
+coach-makers, wine-merchants, and horse-dealers made rapid fortunes. Few
+towns in Europe showed so much animation as Dublin, now so empty and so
+dull a place. Everybody was in debt with everybody; not one property
+was not mortgaged. It was the fashion at that time to pay only at the
+last extremity. A general complicity gave force of law to that habit.
+Lawsuits, of course, were plentiful, but what is there in a lawsuit
+to prevent a jolly squire from drinking hard, riding his horses at a
+break-neck pace, or galloping from morning till night behind his hounds?
+
+Then came the potato-disease; then the famine, which brought in two
+years a general liquidation. Everyone awoke to find himself ruined;
+there were in six months fifty thousand evictions. The largest fortunes,
+when they escaped the Encumbered Estates Court, established in 1849,
+remained loaded with such heavy burdens that the income of the titulary
+fell to nothing. One was obliged to pinch then, to sell the horses, and
+shut up the kennel. There was an end to fun, and if there remained here
+and there some inveterate boon companion who would not give up the good
+old customs, the _Moonlighters_ soon brought him to reason, poisoning
+his dogs and hunters, confiscating his arms, and at times mistaking the
+landlord for the game.
+
+There is no vestige left now of the easy-going ways of old. The large
+town-houses and country seats are deserted or let to strangers; the
+cellar is empty, the dining-room silent. A gust of hatred and misery has
+blown on the isle and left all hearts frozen.
+
+As for the peasant, the poor creature has too many cares for thinking
+of a joke now. Perhaps in other climes, under a clearer sky and warmer
+sun, he would revive, and find in his very distress the element for
+some witticism. But here, the damp atmosphere, united with persevering
+ill-fortune, has deluged and drowned for ever his Celtic good-humour.
+Hardly does he find now and then a glimpse of it at the bottom of an
+ale-jug or in the tumult of some election riot. If a quick repartee, one
+of his characteristic sallies, escapes him now, it is always bitter, and
+reminds you of the acrid genius of Swift.
+
+“How deliciously pure and fresh is the air in Dublin,” said Lady
+Carteret, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland’s wife, to the author of
+“Gulliver.”
+
+“For goodness’ sake, Madam, don’t breathe a word about it to the English.
+They would put a duty on it.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And his terrible satire about the famous “excess of population,” that
+favourite hobby of economists, who has not it in mind?
+
+“It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town
+or travel in the country, where they see the streets, the roads, and
+cabin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three,
+four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an
+alms ... I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number
+of children ... is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very
+great additional grievance; and therefore, whosoever could find out a
+fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, easy members
+of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his
+statue set up for a preserver of the nation. I shall now, therefore,
+humbly propose my own thoughts; which I hope will not be liable to the
+least objection.
+
+“I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in
+London that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a
+most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted,
+baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a
+fricassée or a ragout.
+
+“I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the
+hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand
+may be reserved for breed, whereof one-fourth part to be males ... that
+the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to
+the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising
+the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month so as to render
+them plump and fat for good tables. A child will make two dishes at an
+entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or
+hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and, seasoned with a little
+pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in
+winter.
+
+“I have reckoned, upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh twelve
+pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, will increase to
+twenty-eight pounds.
+
+“I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar’s child (in which
+list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers)
+to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no
+gentleman would refuse to give two shillings for the carcase of a good
+fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent
+nutritive meat. Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times
+require) may flay the carcase: the skin of which, artificially dressed,
+will make admirable gloves for ladies and summer boots for fine gentlemen.
+
+“As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose in
+the most convenient parts of it; and butchers we may be assured will not
+be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, then
+dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasted pigs....
+
+“I think the advantages, by the proposals I have made, are obvious and
+many, as well as of the highest importance: for first, as I have already
+observed, it would greatly lessen the number of papists, with whom we
+are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation, as well
+as our most dangerous enemies.... Whereas the maintenance of a hundred
+thousand children, from two years old and upwards, cannot be computed
+at less than ten shillings a piece per annum, the nation’s stock will
+be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, beside the profit
+of a new dish introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in
+the kingdom, who have any refinement in taste. And all the money will
+circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and
+manufacture.... Besides, this would be a great inducement to marriage,
+which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards or enforced by
+laws and penalties.”
+
+The grim sarcasm goes on in the same sinister, pitiless way up to the
+conclusion, which is worth the rest:
+
+“I profess in the sincerity of my heart that I have not the least
+personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work,
+having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing
+our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some
+pleasure to the rich. I have no children by which I can propose to get
+a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past
+child-bearing.”
+
+Modern Philanthropy is not quite so bold as the Dean of St. Patrick in
+suggesting remedies for the relief of the sufferings of Ireland. Its
+great panacea is emigration. The first thing which attracts the eye in
+villages and boroughs is a large showy placard representing a ship in
+full sail, with the following words in large capitals, “Emigration! ...
+free passage to Canada, Australia, New Zealand! ... free passage and a
+premium to emigrants for Queensland!...”
+
+Technical particulars follow; the agents’ addresses, the names of the
+outward-bound ships, &c.... These placards are everywhere. At each
+turning, on every wall they stare you in the face, and fascinate the
+starving man. Numerous and powerful emigration companies paid by colonies
+where hands are wanting, patronized by all that is influential in the
+kingdom, work unremittingly in recruiting that army of despair for a
+voluntary transportation. And thus a continuous stream of Irishmen is
+ebbing out through all the pores of the country.
+
+Shall we give the official figures? There are none given unfortunately
+for the years between 1847 and 1851, corresponding to the “famine
+clearances” or famine evictions. All that is known is that at that time
+the population of Ireland suddenly decreased by one million six hundred
+and twenty-two thousand inhabitants, without it being possible to say how
+many had died of starvation, how many had embarked pell-mell on hundreds
+of ships, how many had perished at sea, how many had survived. Since 1851
+the accounts are clear. It is known that 148,982 emigrants left Ireland
+in the eight last months of that year; 189,092 in 1852; 172,829 in 1853;
+139,312 in 1854. During the following years the emigration slackens its
+pace by degrees and falls to the rate of 75,000 heads a year. It rises
+again in 1863-64, and attains the figure of over 105,000. Then it settles
+again to its level: 60,000, where for a time it remains stationary. Since
+1880 it has risen again to 95,000, and over 100,000.
+
+Within thirty years, the period included between the 1st of May, 1851,
+and the 1st of May, 1881, Ireland has lost through emigration alone
+_two million five hundred and thirty-six thousand six hundred and
+twenty-seven_ of her children. The total for the last five years has not
+yet been published, but it certainly reaches half a million. From the
+year 1851, therefore, at least _three million_ Irish people of both sexes
+have left the island, that is to say, nearly the half of a population
+then reduced to six-and-a-half million souls.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Has, at least, the result of that frightful exodus been to eradicate
+pauperism? One would like to believe it. Theorists had promised it. But
+alas! stern statistics are there to answer their fallacies.
+
+Statistics inform us that the Ireland of 1887, with its present
+population, inferior to that of London, is poorer than it was in 1841,
+when it numbered eight million inhabitants. Twenty years ago the number
+of individuals admitted to workhouses was 114,594 out of six million
+inhabitants. To-day it is 316,165 out of a population diminished by a
+third. In 1884 the poor who received relief at home were 442,289. They
+are now 633,021. In other words, _one Irishman out of four_ lives on
+public charity—when he lives at all.
+
+Upon such facts, would you guess what monstrous conclusion the votaries
+of emigration at any price have come to? Simply this: that the
+blood-letting is not sufficient; that Ireland must be drained of another
+million inhabitants. Such is Lord Salisbury’s opinion. As if an area of
+20,194,602 statute acres, so favoured geographically, was not calculated
+to nourish twelve or fifteen million human beings rather than three!
+(This was the opinion of Gustave de Beaumont, after Arthur Young.) As if
+the emigration of every healthy and industrious adult was not a nett loss
+for the country, just as is the guinea taken away by any _absentee_!
+
+Is not his exit a sign of strength and energy in the emigrant? He was
+free to stay at home if he liked; to shut himself up in a workhouse and
+live there at the public expense. Has he not given by his very departure
+the best proof that he is not a useless member in the social body? What!
+you incite all that is able and active to go away, keeping only the
+weak, the old, the useless; to these you dole out what is necessary to
+keep up a flickering breath of life, and when poverty increases, you are
+surprised at it!
+
+I bear in mind the reasons alleged by politicians. Elizabeth and Cromwell
+have invoked them before, when recurring to more drastic but equally vain
+measures. But, here again, the calculation is wrong; the eternal justice
+of things has not permitted it to succeed.
+
+For all those whom the feudal system starves out of their native island
+take care, for the most part, not to go and fertilize with their work
+the British colonies. Vainly does the emigration agent offer them a
+free passage, grants of land, and even premiums in money. They prefer
+buying with their last penny a ticket which opens a free land to them.
+They go to the United States, where they thrive almost to a miracle, and
+this is a decisive answer to the masters of their race, who are also
+its calumniators. They multiply there so as to form already a fifth
+part (twelve millions) of the total population of the great American
+Republic. At the bar, in the press, in all liberal professions, they
+are a majority, and by their brilliant qualities, which often secure
+them the first rank, they exercise a real preponderance. But they never
+forget that they are Irish. They keep the unimpaired remembrance of their
+beloved country, dear to their heart in proportion as she is unhappy.
+They remember their home burnt to the ground, the old grandfather thrown
+on the road-side, the little ones crying at the withered breast of a
+pallid mother, the wrench of parting, the heart-rending farewell; then
+the contumely during the voyage—the hardships after the landing; and they
+swear an oath that all shall be paid some day, and, in the meanwhile,
+they contribute their dollars to the healing of an ever-bleeding wound.
+
+It is there that Fenianism was born. From their ranks come those
+conspirators who terrorize England with their periodic outrages. In all
+agrarian violence the hand of the emigrants is to be found. From 1848
+to 1864 they have sent thirteen million pounds to those of their family
+that have remained in Ireland; and, from 1864 to 1887, perhaps double
+that sum. But in those figures, given by Lord Dufferin, the secret funds
+brought to the service of an ever-increasing agitation are not reckoned.
+The _Invincibles_ were in their pay. The _Skirmishing Fund_ was entirely
+sustained by them. The National League lives, in a manner, upon their
+subsidies. When Mr. Parnell went to visit the United States, they were
+powerful enough to induce the Senate of Washington to give him the
+honours of the sitting—an exception which stands unique in history.
+
+The independence of Ireland is their dream, their ambition, their hope,
+their luxury in life. The day when this is accomplished, England will
+perhaps realize that the Irish emigration has been a political blunder,
+as it is an economical mistake and a moral crime.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                                     CORK.
+
+Wishing to see some of those who emigrate I have come to Cork. Cork is
+the great harbour of the South of Ireland, the gate that opens on America
+and Australia. From St. Patrick’s Bridge on the Lee a steamer took me to
+where three emigrant ships were at anchor ready to fly to other climes.
+I went on board two of them, one English, the other American. There
+was nothing particular to notice, except an under-deck disposed as a
+dormitory, as is the rule on board all maritime transports, so as to
+lodge four or five hundred steerage passengers. These passengers bring
+with them their bedding, which consists generally of a coarse blanket,
+and the staple part of their eatables. A canteen affords them, at
+reasonable prices, all drinks or extras that they may think fit to add to
+their ordinary fare.
+
+The impression I gather in these under-decks is rather a favourable one.
+There is as yet only the bare floor, but it is clean and well washed.
+Through the hatches, wide open, a pure and bracing air circulates freely.
+
+No doubt there will be some alteration after a few days’ voyage. But
+it is evident that the Queen’s administration keeps a sharp eye upon
+the emigration companies, and sees that all sanitary prescriptions
+are observed. One sees no longer now-a-days such scandalous spectacles
+as occurred in the years of the famine, when thousands of Irish were
+promiscuously heaped in the hold of _coffin-ships_, and died by hundreds
+before reaching the goal. Emigration is now one of the normal, it may be
+said one of the official, functions of social life in Ireland—a function
+which has its organs, laws, customs, and even its record-office. The
+companies keep their agents in all British possessions; they are informed
+of all the wants of those colonies; they know what specialists are in
+demand, what advantages are offered to the new-comer. They do their best
+to make the offer fit with the demand, and they seem to succeed.
+
+An old boatswain on board one of the emigrant ships tells me that life
+there is generally monotonous but quiet. The passengers do not mix or
+associate as quickly as one could imagine. Each of them pitches his own
+separate camp on the few square feet that chance gives him, and it is
+only after eight or ten days’ voyage that they begin to club together.
+The mothers tend their babies, the fathers smoke their pipes, the
+children play, the young people flirt. It appears that a relatively
+considerable number of marriages are prepared and even concluded in the
+crossing. There is nothing surprising in that, if we remember that the
+most numerous class of emigrants is composed of marriageable girls and
+men between twenty and twenty-five years of age.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few types of emigrants taken at the inns and public-houses on the
+quays. _John Moriarty_, of Ballinakilla, County Cork, 45 to 50 years
+old. A rural Micawber, dressed in a dilapidated black coat, a pair of
+green trousers, completely worn out at the knees, and crushed hat. A
+Catholic (he says _Cathioulic_). Squats with wife and children in a
+single room, almost devoid of furniture. Was to have embarked five days
+ago for Canada. The Board of Health did not allow it on account of one of
+the children having got the measles (an illness which assumes in Great
+Britain a most dangerous and infectious character). Makes no difficulty
+to tell me his whole history. Had a farm of thirteen acres. Was thriving
+more or less—rather less than more. But for the last seven years it has
+been an impossibility for him to make both ends meet.
+
+Strange as it may appear, the man is a Conservative in feeling.
+
+“Nothing to do in the country, with those _mob laws_ and agitation!” says
+he.
+
+“What mob laws?”
+
+“Well, the trash on fixity of tenure, fair rent and the rest.”
+
+“I thought they were favourable to the tenant.”
+
+“Favourable in one sense, yes, sir,” (_with a diplomatic air, as he
+fastens on me two little chocolate-coloured eyes_) “but disastrous in the
+end, because they allow one to sell his tenant-right at a discount. You
+believe that it will set you up, and it is the very stone that makes you
+sink. The banks are our ruin, don’t you see? Once they have taken hold
+of their man they don’t let him out before they have skinned him” (_a
+silence, then a sigh of mild envy_). “It is, indeed, a good trade that of
+banking!”
+
+He remains dreamy and seems to meditate the scheme of founding a bank in
+Canada.
+
+_Martin Mac Crea_, 22 years old, a shepherd of Drumcunning. A Catholic. A
+tall, pale, thin fellow, decently dressed, with a wide-awake look. Goes
+to Queensland. Why? “Because there is no opening in Ireland. The most you
+can do is to earn your bare sustenance.” It appears that in Queensland it
+is quite a different affair. The profession of shepherd pays there. Let
+a man bring or save the money necessary to buy half-a-dozen sheep, and
+let them graze at their will. Seven or eight years later their name is
+legion, and the man is rich.
+
+“But are you then quite free of ties here? Don’t you leave anybody, any
+relation, in Ireland?”
+
+“I was obliged to live far from them, and where I go I shall be more able
+to help them. Besides, the post reaches there.”
+
+“And the young ladies at Drumcunning. Do they allow you to go away
+without a protest?”
+
+A broad smile lights up Martin Mac Crea’s countenance. A further
+conversation informs me that his betrothed has gone before him to
+Brisbane, where she is a servant. He is going to meet her, and they shall
+settle together in the _bush_, keeping sheep on their own account.
+
+Let us hope she has waited for him. Queensland is far away!
+
+_Pat Coleman_, twenty years old. A friend to the former. Son of a small
+farmer with six children. Nothing to do at home. Prefers going to the
+Antipodes, to see if there is a way there to avoid dying of starvation,
+as happened to his grandfather.
+
+_Peter Doyle_, forty-three years old. A journeyman. A Presbyterian.
+Can’t find work at home; therefore emigrates. Was employed on railway
+construction, county Clare. Has been turned away, the line being
+completed and open to travellers. Had come to Cork in the hope of getting
+work, but found only insignificant jobs. Packed to Melbourne.
+
+_Dennis O’Rourke_, twenty-nine years old; of Enniscorthy, Wexford. An
+engine-maker; belongs to a class of which I had as yet met no specimen
+in Ireland, the workman-politician. Has already emigrated to the United
+States, where he spent three years. Wished to see his country again, and
+tried to set up a business on a small scale, first in Dublin, then at
+Cork; but it does not pay. Goes back to New York.
+
+“Do you know why? I am going to tell you. (_Fiercely_) I am going because
+this country is rotten to the core! Because it has no spirit left, not
+even that of rebellion! I am going because I will no longer bear on my
+back the weight of dukes and peers, of Queen, Prince of Wales, Royal
+family, and the whole lot of them! I am going where you can work and be
+free; where a man is worth another when he has got in his pocket two
+dollars honestly earned. That is where I go, and why I go.”
+
+“In short, you make England responsible for your misfortunes?”
+
+“England be damned!”
+
+It is O’Connell’s word. He was travelling in France, towards St. Omer,
+and found himself inside the mail-coach with an old officer of the first
+Empire who began forthwith to talk against the English. The great Irish
+agitator kept silent.
+
+“Don’t you hear me?” the other said at last, insolently.
+
+“I beg your pardon, I hear you perfectly well.”
+
+“And you don’t mind my treating your country as I do?”
+
+“England is not my country; I hate it more than you will ever do.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE LEAGUE.
+
+
+                                                                    ENNIS.
+
+The county Clare, and more especially Ennis, its chief town, have played
+an important part in the contemporary history of Ireland. It was here
+eight years ago (in 1879) that Mr. Parnell, at a great autumn meeting,
+gave his famous _mot d’ordre_ on social and political interdict.
+
+“If you refuse to pay unjust rents, if you refuse to take farms from
+which others have been evicted, the land question must be settled,
+and settled in a way that will be satisfactory to you. Now, what are
+you to do to a tenant who bids fora farm from which another has been
+evicted? You must shun him on the road-side where you meet him,—you must
+shun him in the shops,—you must shun him in the fair green, and in the
+market-place, and in the place of worship: by leaving him severely alone,
+by putting him in a moral Coventry; by isolating him from the rest of
+his countrymen, as if he were the leper of old, you must show him your
+detestation of the crime he has committed.”
+
+Those words contained a whole programme, faithfully carried out since,
+and which has already borne fruit. They took exceptional force from the
+fact that Mr. Parnell, at the time he pronounced them, was already the
+acknowledged leader of Irish opposition. They were in some sort the
+registration of birth of the League.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The League! Every moment, travelling through this island, one comes in
+contact with this power, mysterious though positive, anonymous and yet
+implicitly recognized. The League houses and feeds evicted families;
+it settles that such a landlord or such a farmer shall be boycotted;
+it decrees that the rents of such an estate shall be reduced 30 per
+cent.; that of such another the rents shall be lodged in the League’s
+own coffers; it patronises candidatures, chooses the place and time of
+meetings, presides over all the phases of social life. What is that
+League? is the question one asks.
+
+At first one naturally supposes it to be an electoral association such
+as exists in every free country. But little by little one perceives that
+it is a far bigger affair. Electoral associations are not in the habit
+of inspiring such persistent enthusiasm, of covering during eight long
+years the extent of a whole country; they do not send roots to the most
+remote villages, nor do they count among their members three-quarters
+of the adult population. It is not their custom either to fulminate
+excommunications, or if they do they have but little appreciable effect
+on the ordinary tenour of life. One never heard that they disposed of
+important capital, and one would be less surprised to hear that they
+had entered into a lawsuit with their printer about an unpaid bill for
+five or six thousand placards, than one would be to hear that they have
+several hundred thousand pounds in the bank.
+
+And yet it is precisely of hundred thousand pounds that one constantly
+hears in connection with the League. Where does it get all that money,
+in a country worn so threadbare as this? Whence is it that it is so
+universally respected, so religiously obeyed? All the smiles are for the
+League, while the functionaries of the Crown pocket only snubbings. All
+the doors open before the League, while they close and even barricade
+themselves at the bare mention of the Lord Lieutenant’s name.
+
+One observes these facts; compare and weigh them. Then the conclusion
+imposes itself quite naturally that the League is the only public power
+recognised by the bulk of the Irish nation. One already had a suspicion
+of being a spectator to a revolution, of which the violent deeds, instead
+of being concentrated over a period of two or three years, as we have
+seen at home, have spread over half a century. One understands that one
+has fallen in the midst of a civil war, not in the incipient state,
+but fully let loose, and that there exists in this island two rival
+authorities,—that of the Crown with the bayonets on its side; that of the
+League, possessing all hearts.
+
+Ireland, it is hardly necessary to repeat, has been in a state of
+rebellion since the beginning of the British Conquest. But it has
+been in a state of revolution only for a period of about forty years.
+Insurrection betrayed itself now by individual but constant acts of
+rebellion, of which one can easily follow the succession through past
+ages, now by collective risings like those of Thomas Fitzgerald in
+1534, of O’Neil in 1563, of Desmond in 1579, of Preston in 1642, of the
+Whiteboys in 1791, of the Oakboys in 1762, of the Steelboys in 1768, of
+Wolfe Tone in the course of the French Revolution, of Emmet in 1803,
+the New Whiteboys in 1807, of John Mitchell in 1848, of the Fenians in
+1865 and 1867. As for the agrarian revolution, born of an economical
+situation impossible to bear, it follows its course as regularly as a
+great river, ever getting larger and larger, widening its bed, swelling
+its volume with all the streams it meets, increasing in power at the
+same time that its waters get more depth and breadth. Even the soothing
+mixtures prescribed for it by the Parliamentary doctors have served as
+its tributaries. Its torrent has at length become irresistible.
+
+To discover its source, we must go back to the famine evictions of 1847.
+The heart-rending spectacle then presented by Ireland made it natural
+to look for a palliation to such misery. The malady was studied in all
+its aspects; much learned discussion took place at the bedside of the
+agonizing patient. It was the time when Disraeli developed his famous
+theory of “the three profits.” The land, if one was to believe him, must
+yield profit to three persons:—the Queen, the landlord, and the tenant.
+It appears this was arranged from the end of Time by the Great Architect
+of the Universe. The laws of Kepler are not more absolute. The unlucky
+thing is that the earth does not always fulfil its obligations, and too
+often refuses to yield up the three sacramental profits.
+
+Theorists endowed with less boldness thought to find a remedy by giving
+legal consecration to the tenant’s rights by the system of _the three
+F’s_, as it was called, that is to say, _Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure,
+and Free Sale_. Through endless resistance, after endless debating in the
+course of twenty parliamentary sessions, a whole _remedial_ legislation
+came to add its bulk to the already so intricate structure of Anglo-Saxon
+law.
+
+Now the custom of Ulster was extended to the whole of Ireland, and the
+right of the farmer over the improvements paid with his money became
+law (1860); now he was promised an indemnity in case of eviction, and
+the basis was laid of a system of amortization which must infallibly in
+the course of time have ended in creating a class of peasant landowners
+(1870).
+
+Already in the year 1849, the State had interfered between the landlords
+in difficulties and their tenants, by the creation of a special tribunal
+for obligatory liquidation,—_the Encumbered Estates Court_. It finally
+came to interfere between landlord and tenant by instituting a new court
+of arbitration, the _Land Court_, entrusted with the care of fixing the
+“fair” rent in each case.
+
+That Court was no sooner opened than 75,807 affairs were inscribed upon
+its roll. It judged in one year 15,676. But there remained still 60,101
+to be judged, and already the reductions of 18 to 27 per cent. imposed
+on the landlords appeared insufficient; already the farmers were loudly
+clamouring for further reductions.
+
+For in truth such remedies were too anodine for such rooted disease! But
+the wedge had nevertheless entered the tree. The State had appeared in
+the character of umpire between the landlord and the peasant. Henceforth
+all was or seemed possible.
+
+The essence of dogmas is to suffer no questioning. One cannot with
+impunity discuss for twenty years the basis of landed property’s law and
+the theory of “the three profits” before empty stomachs. As a parallel
+to these debates, the question of political rights for Ireland rose
+again, and ended insensibly by the conquest of the electoral franchise,
+of religious equality, and of national education. The moment arrived
+when the bulk of the population took an interest only in the truly vital
+question,—that of the soil. And all of a sudden they understood that
+there was only one remedy for the ills that weighed so grievously over
+them: Landlords and tenants cannot continue to live side by side. Either
+the one or the other must go.
+
+“Let the landlords decamp! They do not belong here,” said the peasants.
+
+“No, by G⸺! The peasants shall go,” answered the landlords; “the way is
+open....”
+
+It was thus that towards 1876 the Irish movement became agrarian, from
+being purely national. The League is the organ of that new function.
+
+Its primary idea belongs to two veterans of the Fenian plots, Michael
+Davitt and John Devoy. But what distinguishes it from those plots,
+besides a broader basis and larger aims, is that it acts in broad
+daylight, with face uncovered, appealing to all men of goodwill, using
+exclusively those constitutional weapons—the right of meeting, the right
+of association and coalition.
+
+“The Fenians saw only the green flag,” wrote John Devoy. “The men of
+to-day perceive that under its folds is the Irish land.” Nevertheless, it
+was to the remains of the Fenian associations that he and Michael Davitt
+had recourse at first to lay the foundations of the new association.
+They went to look for them even to the uttermost end of America, secured
+the co-operation of some of the most influential members of the Irish
+emigration, then came back to Europe, and summoned a great preliminary
+meeting at Irishtown.
+
+As ordinarily enough happens in such cases, their project was at first
+looked upon coldly by members of Parliament, who thought it impolitic,
+and violently opposed by the secret societies—Fenians or Ribbonmen—who
+thought it calculated to cool the Nationalist zeal. But under the too
+real sufferings produced by two years of famine (1876-1877), the agrarian
+tempest assumed such formidable proportions, that all resistance had to
+cease, and the politicians were compelled to lower their flag. For the
+chiefs of the autonomist party it was a question of no less than keeping
+or losing their mandate. Either they would adopt the new evangel, or
+they would be left lying, officers without troops, on the electoral
+battle-field. Most of them understood this in time.
+
+Mr. Parnell, the most conspicuous of all, had till then limited his part
+to the demand for a national government for Ireland, and his tactics to
+parliamentary obstruction. From an economical point of view he still
+remained, with all his party, on the level of worthy Mr. Butt’s _three
+F’s_. He was one of the first to understand that it was all over with
+Home Rule, and with his own political fortune, if he hesitated any longer
+to plunge into deeper waters.
+
+He made his plunge with characteristic resolution. “There is no longer
+any possibility of conciliation between landlord and tenant,” he said.
+“Since the one or the other must go out, it is better that the less
+numerous class should be the one to do it.” On the 8th of June, 1879,
+at Westport, he pronounced his famous, “Keep a firm grip on your
+homesteads!” From the 21st of October following the agrarian League
+promulgated circulars, which he signed as president.
+
+The League’s aim and watchword were—_The land for the peasant!_ Its means
+were the union of all the rural forces, the formation of a resistance
+fund for evicted farmers, the strike of tenants with a view to compelling
+the landlords to grant a reduction of rent; and incessant agitation in
+favour of a law for the liquidation of landed property, which would give
+the land into the hands of the cultivators by means of partial payments
+made during a certain number of years.
+
+The success of such a programme, seconded by the political leaders of
+Ireland, was certain. But its promoters never had dared to hope for a
+rush such as was experienced in a few weeks’ time. Adhesions poured in
+by thousands; all the social classes embraced it. The Catholic clergy
+themselves, after wavering one moment, found it advisable to follow in
+the footsteps of the revolutionary party, as the Deputies had done before
+them. Everywhere local boards were formed which put themselves at the
+disposal of the central committee. Almost everywhere the Catholic priest,
+his curates, not unfrequently the Anglican priest himself, were found
+among the members of the board.
+
+This is enough to show with what alacrity and unanimity the mobilisation
+of the agrarian army was effected. Far from weakening the Nationalist
+party, as was feared by its prebendaries, it came out of this tempered
+afresh, enlarged, associated with the every-day interests, tied
+indissolubly henceforth, for the majority of an agricultural population,
+to the most secret if the most ardent wish of their labourers’ heart.
+
+What remained to do was to endow the League with the resources wanted to
+carry out its programme; but it was not in a country practically ruined,
+a prey to the tortures of hunger, literally reduced to beggary, that
+those resources were to be found. Mr. Parnell set out for the land of
+dollars. He preached the new word there with complete success. Exotic
+branches of the League were established in the various States of America,
+in Canada, and Australia; the only thing remaining to do was to organize
+the _in partibus infidelium_ government that was to take in hand the
+direction of Ireland.
+
+But a short time since this government sat in a palace of the finest
+street in Dublin—Sackville Street. There it had its offices, reception
+rooms, council-room furnished with the orthodox green baize table, its
+ministerial departments, secretaries and writers, officially headed
+paper, its stamp, documents, accounts and red tape.
+
+After a recent movement on the offensive on the part of the enemy, the
+League had to decamp and put all this material in a place of safety.
+But though it be presently without a known place of abode, the League
+none the less pursues its work. Do not telegraphic wires keep it in
+communication with its agents throughout the length and breadth of the
+territory? Why were Transatlantic cables invented, if not for the purpose
+of opening permanent communications between the League and its American,
+Australian, and Asiatic colonies? In all the extent of its jurisdiction,
+which is that of the globe, the League is obeyed and respected; it
+possesses the confidence of its innumerable tributaries.
+
+Perhaps that comes from the fact that this committee, though it sometimes
+accented too much the professional character of its members, has at least
+the rare merit of faithfully serving its constituents and of being in
+perfect harmony of conscience with them. Perhaps this is due to the
+effect of direct subsidies; and we must see there something better than a
+mere coincidence,—a great lesson for the democracies of the future. One
+thing is certain: this government, after wielding power for eight years,
+have their party well in hand. They are able to do without red tape or
+scribbling. One word is enough to indicate their will, and if they lack
+secretaries, a hundred newspapers will carry this word to its address.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It would be a matter of some difficulty to appreciate rightly the
+financial resources of the League Competent judges estimate them at
+an income of two million francs. It receives on an average, from
+English-speaking countries, a thousand pounds a week. Now and then
+subscriptions slacken, and the incoming of money is smaller; but the
+least incident, such as a noisy arrest or a political law-suit, is
+sufficient to awaken the zeal of the leaguers. That zeal is always
+proportionate to the energy of resistance opposed by the Cabinet of St.
+James to the government of Sackville Street. If London so much as raises
+its head, at once Dublin, and behind Dublin the whole of Ireland, the
+whole of Irish America, Australia, the Cape, and the extreme depths of
+India, all are shaken to their very centre,—in other words, they pay.
+
+The chief treasurer of the League, Mr. Egan, giving account of his
+administration in October, 1882, after a space of three years, stated
+that during these three years £244,820 had passed through his hands. In
+this total one-third only came from insular contributors; all the rest
+came from abroad. £50,000 had been given in relief of distress; over
+£15,000 had been spent in State trials; nearly £148,000 had been expended
+through the general Land League and the Ladies’ Land League in support
+of evicted tenants, providing wooden houses, law costs, sheriffs’ sales,
+defence against ejectments and various local law proceedings, and upon
+the general expenses of the organization. A little over £31,900 remained
+to the account of the association.
+
+There are no reasons for supposing the normal receipts of the League to
+have diminished much since that period. More recently (in 1886) the “plan
+of campaign” has created new openings for it.
+
+This “plan of campaign,” one of the boldest conceptions ever accepted by
+a great political party, consists simply in lodging into the coffers of
+the League, and for its use, the rents that were pronounced excessive by
+its committee, and that the landlords refused to abate. Let us mention
+in passing that the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin publicly accepted the
+responsibility of this tremendous war-measure. It has, we must add,
+been exercised with obvious moderation, in specific cases only, and by
+way of example. The true weapon of the League, that which it used most
+liberally up to the present day, is the _boycotting_, or social interdict
+pitilessly pronounced against any one who disobeys its behests.
+
+From a legal point of view, the League has met with various fortunes.
+Suppressed in 1881 by an Act of Parliament, it was compelled to put on
+a mask and to disguise itself under the name of the _Ladies’ League_.
+A year later it underwent a new incarnation and became the _National
+League_.
+
+Now the Tory Ministry has suppressed it once more _proclaimed_ it, as
+they say (_clameur de haro_), in virtue of the special power conferred
+on it. It appears improbable that the health of the association should
+suffer much for this; on the contrary, it will probably be all the
+better for it. In former days it would have been content to undergo a
+fourth avatar by taking the name of _Celtic League_, _Irish Babies’
+League_, or any other name that would have done just as well to deride
+its adversaries. A special provision of the Coercion Act will prevent its
+having recourse to this expedient. By the 7th article of the Act, the
+Lord Lieutenant is empowered to suppress any _new_ association formed
+with a view to continuing the affairs of the old ones.
+
+But one never thinks of everything. Precisely because it is so explicit,
+the 7th article cannot apply to the _old_ Irish societies, different
+from the National League, and which can easily be substituted in its
+place. Those associations, _Home Rule Unions_, _Liberal Federations_,
+&c., are numerous through the country. One of them could easily accept
+the inheritance of the League, and it would be necessary to convoke
+Parliament to suppress it. If Parliament suppresses it, it will be easy
+to find something else. And so on for ever, through ages, to the crack
+of doom.... In the meanwhile there will be protestations, agitations,
+interpellations, and before the end, “the King, the ass” ... or the
+Ministry shall have died, as La Fontaine said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lord Salisbury may close two hundred offices of the League in the
+counties of Clare and Kerry. How shall he close the offices beyond the
+sea, which are the real ones?
+
+In fact, the League is indestructible, because it is impossible to get
+hold of it. One can arrest its chiefs, as has been done often enough,
+intercept its correspondence, oppose cavalry regiments to its public
+demonstrations, and retroactive measures to its secret acts; they
+cannot destroy the faith the Irish people have put in it; they cannot
+grapple with the essence of an association which rests on the most vital
+interests of the peasantry.
+
+Political persecution is fatally doomed to failure when exercised in a
+free country, if it does not begin by attacking the press and the right
+of meeting. And who shall dare to touch those two pillars of the British
+edifice? The English government is the government of opinion, or it is
+nothing: now, the opinion of the majority of Irishmen, of the majority of
+Scotchmen, and of an imposing minority of Englishmen, is in favour of the
+League.
+
+To say the truth, all parties are agreed _in petto_ upon the necessity
+of abolishing landlordism. It is only a question of settling who shall
+have the credit of doing it, and how it shall be managed so that neither
+the landlord’s creditors nor the public exchequer should suffer too
+much by that unavoidable liquidation. Therefore all the measures taken
+against an organism that incarnates such general feeling can only be an
+empty fooling, a holiday sport. Their only effect must be to awaken
+rural passions and provoke new acts of violence. One might even believe
+such was their only aim. For, to be able to ruin a perfectly lawful
+association like the League, in a country of free discussion, it is
+indispensable first to throw dishonour upon it.
+
+They have not yet succeeded in doing this, in spite of the most strenuous
+efforts. Not only has it always been impossible to charge the League with
+any act contrary to the current standard of morals, but it is beyond any
+doubt that its influence is especially directed towards the prevention of
+agrarian crimes, and even against individual resistance to landlordism.
+Wherever there is popular emotion or possible disorder, its delegates are
+present, and endeavour to enforce respect for the law. If it happen that
+the orations of some underlings overstep the mark, the general methods of
+the League none the less remain unimpeachable. It has taken for mandate
+the ruling of revolutionary action, the legalizing it, the task of giving
+it a scientific character. It is to its honour that it has succeeded up
+to the present day. One may reasonably suppose that it will not change
+its tactics at the hour when its true chief is no longer Mr. Parnell, but
+practically Mr. Gladstone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE CLERGY.
+
+
+From Kilrush, on the coast of Clare, an excellent service of steamers
+goes up the estuary of the Shannon to Foynes, where one takes the train
+to Limerick. It is a charming excursion, undertaken by all tourists.
+The Shannon here is of great breadth and majesty, flowing in an immense
+sheet of water, recalling the aspect of the great rivers of America. At
+the back you have the stormy ocean; in front, on the right, on the left,
+green hills dotted with snowy villas. Few trees or none, as is the rule
+in Ireland, but a light haze that softens all the outlines of the ground,
+magnifies the least shrubs, and lends to all the view a melting aspect of
+striking loveliness.
+
+The boats are few in number, though the depth of the channel would allow
+ships of the heaviest tonnage to go up to within five miles of Limerick.
+I notice hardly two or three sailing boats at anchor on this four hours’
+journey. What an admirable harbour for an active commerce would be that
+broad estuary, opening directly opposite to America, on the extreme
+point of the European continent. It is the natural point of arrival and
+departure for the Transatlantic steamers, which would reach New York in
+five days from there. Engineers have dreamed of this possibility. But
+to justify a maritime movement, and legitimise such enterprise, a great
+commerce, an industry that Ireland lacks, would be wanted. Gentlemen of
+an engineering turn, come back again in a century or two.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Tarbert, where we stop to take passengers, a fort opens its
+loop-holes, armed with guns, on the river. Redcoats are encamping at the
+foot of the fortress, and the morning breeze carries to us the rough
+voice of a non-commissioned officer drilling his men. One might imagine
+him addressing the _Invincibles_ across the ocean somewhat after this
+guise:
+
+“Here we are, keeping watch: If ever this alluring bay tempt you to come
+over, you shall find us ready to receive you!”...
+
+The helm trembles; the boat goes on its course, and soon Tarbert melts
+behind us in the sunny haze.
+
+On board, the travellers resemble those seen in summer on all great
+rivers—merchants bent on a pleasure trip; judges and barristers, having
+taken leave of briefs; professors enjoying their holidays, with wives,
+daughters, sons, goods, and chattels—all have the sun-burnt complexion
+and the satisfied look one brings back from the seaside. They have been
+staying on the beautiful shores of the County Clare, and are returning
+home with a provision of health for one year. La Fontaine has already
+noticed that, travelling, one is sure to see “the monk poring over his
+breviary.” Here the proportion is far greater than in the ancient coach;
+it is not one priest we have on board, but a dozen, all sleek, fat, and
+prosperous, dressed in good stout broadcloth, as smooth as their rubicund
+faces, and provided with gold chains resting on comfortable abdomens.
+
+One remark, by the way. When you meet an Irish peasant on the road, he
+stops, wishes you good-day, and adds, “Please, sir, what is the time?”
+Not that he cares much to know. He is perfectly well able to read the
+time on the great clock of the heavens. But it is his own manner of
+saying, “I can see, sir, that you are a man of substance—one of the great
+ones of this earth—_since you have a watch_. My sincere congratulations!”
+
+Well, all those travelling priests possess chronometers—we are obliged
+to notice it, since it appears to be a sign of easy circumstances in
+Ireland—and the rest of their attire fully carries out that symptom.
+Under the undefinable cut that at once betrays a clerical garment,
+their black coat has all the softness of first quality cloth; their
+travelling bag is of good bright leather; their very umbrella has a look
+of smartness, and does not affect the lamentable droop that with us is
+always associated with the idea of a clerical umbrella. Some of them wear
+the Roman hat and collar, with a square-cut waistcoat and the ordinary
+trousers of the laity, and stockings of all the hues of the rainbow. A
+young curate sports violet-coloured ones, which he exhibits with some
+complacency. I ventured to ask him, in the course of conversation,
+whether he belonged to the Pope’s household. He answered with a blush of
+modesty that he had not that honour, and wore violet hose because he was
+fond of that colour.
+
+That is a matter of taste; but I have a right to suppose, young
+Levite, that the mitre and episcopal rochet—perhaps even the cardinal
+purple—hover at night over your ingenuous dreams.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                                 LIMERICK.
+
+Limerick is a big town of 40,000 inhabitants, celebrated for its hams,
+lace, and gloves. The objects of interest are an important linen factory,
+and another for military equipments, besides a stone mounted on a
+pedestal, and which served as a table for signing the famous treaty of
+1691—soon violated like all treaties, however. Opposite that historic
+stone, on the other side of the Shannon, the ancient castle of King John
+rears its proud head; it has a grim and gloomy look, with its seven
+towers, its thick walls and iron-bound gates.
+
+At the large hotel of the place I meet again three of my ecclesiastical
+fellow-travellers. They evidently know what is good for them, and would
+on no account stop at second-rate inns. One cannot blame them for it. But
+this is a sign of prosperity, added to all the others; a hotel at fifteen
+shillings a day, without counting the wine, seems at first sight suited
+to prelates rather than to humble clergymen. Yet these are only village
+and parish priests, as I gather from the book on which I sign my name
+after theirs. At dinner, where we sit side by side, I am compelled to
+see that the appetite of the reverend fathers is excellent, and that the
+_carte_ of the wines is a familiar object with them. They each have their
+favourite claret: one likes Léoville, another Château Margaux, while the
+third prefers Chambertin; and they drain the cup to the last drop. After
+dessert they remain last in the dining-room, in company with a bottle of
+port.
+
+At ten o’clock that night, entering it to get a cup of tea, I find the
+three seated round glasses of smoking toddy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These memorable events are not consigned here, it need hardly be said,
+for the vain satisfaction of recording that on a certain evening three
+Irish priests were tippling freely. They certainly had a perfect right
+to do so, if such was their bent. It is the most cherished privilege of
+a British subject; and of all capital sins proscribed by the Church,
+drunkenness is certainly the most innocent. But this remark, made
+without prejudice, during a chance meeting at an inn, carries out the
+general impression left by the Irish clergy—that of a corporation
+greatly enamoured of its comforts, endowed with good incomes, and whose
+sleekness forms a striking contrast with the general emaciation of their
+parishioners.
+
+Everywhere, in visiting this island, one meets with this typical pair
+of abbots, well dressed and well “groomed,” travelling comfortably
+together, and, to use a popular expression, “la coulant douce.” It is
+startling in this realm of poverty, the more startling because the
+Catholic clergy have no official means of existence, no salary paid
+them by the State. They owe all the money they spend to the private
+contributions of their admirers. Was there ever, they doubtlessly think,
+a more legitimate way of making money? That is probably why they make
+so little mystery of it, and disdain to hide when they exchange part of
+their income against a bottle of Chambertin. In other places, priests
+think that a certain reserve is expected of them; they prefer being
+securely shut in privacy before they carve a partridge or plentifully
+moisten a synod dinner. Here they are so secure in their position that
+they recoil from no profane glance.
+
+Their lives are, I am told, of exemplary purity. I have no difficulty in
+believing it, both because purity is a marked characteristic of the race,
+and because their faith has seemed to me simple as that of the Breton
+priests. There must be exceptions, and some were pointed out to me; but
+assuredly those exceptions are few in number. By many signs which do not
+deceive those who have some experience of life, one can see that the
+Irish priest has not the vices of the Italian or Spanish priest. He is
+a gormandizer to be sure, but he is chaste—perhaps for the very reason
+that he is so devoted to the pleasures of the table. His simplicity of
+heart is wonderful sometimes, and makes one think of those Mount Athos
+monks, nursed in the cloister from the tenderest age, and who know
+literally nothing of the exterior world. I heard two of them, old men
+both, who were quietly chatting in a corner of the railway carriage. Both
+had small, bald birds’ heads, shaven chins, and a quaint, old-fashioned
+look.
+
+“_I am next door to an idiot!_” one of them was saying, with curious
+complacency.
+
+“So am I,” answered the other; “so was I always, and I thank Almighty God
+for it!... for have you not noticed that all those grand, clever people
+often lose the faith?...”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Where does their income come from? That is a question doubly interesting
+to us Frenchmen, who every year pay out two million sterling for the
+budget of public worship. A placard seen everywhere in Limerick, and
+presenting a marked resemblance to the advertisement for a theatre, will
+help to tell us. This placard is to the effect that on the day after
+to-morrow a general ordination of young priests will take place in the
+Cathedral of St. John, by the hands of the Right Reverend X. O’Dyer,
+archbishop of the town (the name and quality in conspicuous characters),
+assisted by several other prelates and dignitaries. It proceeds to state
+that excursion trains have been established for the occasion, and that
+tickets for the ceremony may be procured, at the price of half-a-crown
+and one shilling, at No. 98, George Street.
+
+This is a booking-office, exactly like those we have in theatres. Plenty
+of placards, the plan of the church showing the number and position of
+each seat, a table of prices, and behind a little grated window a bearded
+old woman for the tickets,—nothing is wanting. One has only to choose
+one’s place, to pay the price down, and to take away the ticket. About
+twenty persons perform these various acts before my eyes. Evidently the
+receipt will be good. The cathedral of St. John, that proudly raises
+its brand-new spire above all the others, must be able to accommodate
+at least three or four thousand spectators. At 1_s._ 9_d._ per head on
+an average, that gives already a total of two or three hundred pounds.
+To this must be added the product of the collections and that of the
+wooden money-boxes, that open everywhere to receive the outcome of
+the generosity of the faithful; the total, we may be sure, cannot be
+otherwise than respectable. It is true that an ordination is not an
+every-day event, and that it must be an expensive affair to put on the
+stage. We must therefore suppose the ordinary income to be raised by way
+of semestrial and direct contribution.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This is how the thing is done: each parish priest has two Sundays in
+the year devoted to the taking his _dues_, as he calls it. On these
+days, instead of preaching, he exhibits a manuscript list upon which
+are inscribed by name all his tributaries, that is to say, all his
+parishioners, with the sums they have paid into his hands; this he reads
+publicly. As a rule he adds a running commentary to each name, either to
+praise the generosity of the donor, or, on the contrary, to complain of
+his stinginess. In the country, especially, the scene is not wanting in
+humour.
+
+“_Daniel MacCarthy_, four shillings and six-pence,” says the priest.
+“That’s not much for a farmer who keeps three cows and sold two calves
+this year. I will hope for him that he only meant that as a preliminary
+gift.... _Simon Redmond_, seven shillings and six-pence; he might have
+given ten shillings, as he did last year. He is not what we should call
+a progressive man.... _George Roehe_, two shillings and three-pence.
+_Richard MacKenna_, one shilling and three-pence. _Denis Twoney_, one
+shilling and nine-pence. Against those who do their best I have nothing
+to say. _Michael Murphy_, fifteen shillings. Now, I ask, could not he
+have made it a pound? The pity of it! _John Coleman_, five shillings.
+_Daniel Clune_, five shillings. _Cornelius Nagle_, five shillings. One
+would think they had agreed to do it.... _Henry Townsend_, Esq., of
+Townsend Manor, three pounds sterling. That’s what I call a subscriber!
+And he is a Protestant. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves to let a
+Protestant be more generous to your own church than you are.... _Harriet
+O’Connor_, one shilling and nine-pence. I will be bound she liked buying
+a new bonnet better than doing her duty. That is between her and her
+conscience. But I am afraid that at the Day of Judgment she won’t find it
+such a good investment.... _Mary Ann Cunningham_, twelve shillings and
+nine-pence. If everybody knew how to spare and how to use what they spare
+in the same way as this good lady, things would go better in this world
+and in the next, take my word for it.... _Colonel Lewis_, of Knockamore
+Villa, five pounds sterling. Another Protestant! Positively one might
+think one lived in a parish of heathens when one sees that the heretics
+alone seem to have some regard for the church!...”
+
+The reading goes on in this guise, adorned with reflections more or less
+pungent, and interrupted now and then by a repartee coming from the far
+end of the audience, and torn from the patient by the malignity of the
+attack; a general hilarity is then provoked without impairing in the
+least the reverence of the congregation for their priest or their church.
+This semestrial subscription, added to the weekly collections, the daily
+masses, the baptisms, weddings and burials, is amply sufficient to keep
+the church, the priest, and the priest’s house in a good state of repair.
+Most of the parish priests besides, have the habit of “binage,” that is
+to say they often say two or three masses a day, at different points of
+their sometimes very wide parish.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They are generally addressed by their christian name, prefaced by the
+name of _Father_: _Father James_, _Father Henry_, etc., and this title
+well describes the terms of filial familiarity of the flocks with their
+pastor,—a familiarity not unfrequently manifested by sound boxes on the
+ear for children, and good blows with the stick on the shoulders of
+his grown-up parishioners, but which does not preclude respect. In the
+streets one always sees the parish priest respectfully greeted by the
+passers by; many women kneel down to kiss his hand as in Italy or Spain.
+
+His authority is that of a patriarch, who not only wields spiritual
+power, but also, to a great extent, social and political power. He
+incarnates at once in himself the native faith so long proscribed in the
+country, resistance to the oppressor, heavenly hopes and compensation for
+human trials. As a consequence, his influence is great, for good as for
+ill.
+
+The faith of the Irish peasant is entire, unquestioning, absolute as that
+of a thirteenth century’s serf. One must see on Sundays those churches
+crowded to overflowing, and too narrow for the congregation who remain,
+silent and kneeling, on the steps and even outside the doors. One must
+see those ragged people, forming a chain by holding on to each other’s
+tatters, one behind the other, at a distance of 50 to 60 feet from the
+altar, a patch of dim light up there in the darkness of the church; or
+else they must be seen at some pilgrimage round a miraculous well or
+stream, like the Lough Derg, wallowing indiscriminately in the pond,
+washing therein their moral and physical uncleanliness, drinking the
+sacred water by the pailful, intoxicated with enthusiasm and hope.
+
+The devotees of Our Lady del Pilar, and of San Gennaro, are less
+expansive and less ardent. The Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Rosary, St.
+Philip of Neri, all the mystical armoury of the modern church have
+innumerable votaries in Ireland. One would perhaps experience some
+difficulty in finding there ten born Catholics not wearing next to their
+skin some amulet made of cloth or ivory, and invested in their eyes with
+supernatural powers. If I do not greatly err, St. Peter’s pence must find
+its more generous contributors amidst those poverty-stricken populations.
+To those imaginations of starved and half hysterical people the Roman
+pontiff appears in the far distance, all in white, in a halo of gold,
+like a superhuman vision of Justice and Pity in this world where they
+found neither the one nor the other.
+
+An Irish servant in London once asked my advice about the investment of
+her savings, some thirty pounds which she had scraped together at the
+Post Office Savings Bank. I congratulated her on her thrift, when the
+poor girl told me, her eyes bright with unshed tears:
+
+“It is for our Holy Father, that they keep in prison up there in Rome....
+I mean to bring him fifty pounds as soon as ever I get them.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Those things may tend to explain why the only prosperous trade in Ireland
+is the clerical trade. Every year the number of priests increases, though
+the population is decreasing. In 1871 they numbered 3,136; in 1881 they
+were 3,363, or an increase of 227, under the guidance of four archbishops
+and twenty-four bishops. The Catholic population is of three million
+persons; that gives one priest for about 900 inhabitants.
+
+It is generally admitted that each of these priests, with his church and
+his house, cannot cost much under £300 or £400 a year. That would give
+about £1,200,000 coming annually from the pockets of those labourers and
+servant girls. The tithe was never so heavy.
+
+This clergy is chiefly recruited from the class of small farmers and
+peasantry (by the reason that the other classes are for the majority
+Protestants); as a consequence the clergy share all the passions of
+their class. The agrarian revolution has no agents more active. Almost
+everywhere the parish priest is the president of the local Land League
+Board. In the stormiest meetings is always to be found a village Peter
+the Hermit, preaching the new crusade and denouncing the landlords
+with fiery eloquence; not to speak of the Sunday preaching, which is
+only another meeting closed against the police, and where landlords
+are handled with extraordinary freedom of language. One has seen Irish
+priests openly declare a shot to be an unimportant trifle, so long as
+it was sent after a landed proprietor. A few months ago a Dublin paper
+mentioned a parish in Donegal, where the priest, they asserted, had gone
+so far as to put the properties of the landlords in lottery, by tickets
+of ten shillings each. The verification of this fact would by no means
+be easy. But, given the state of mind of the Irish priest, the ardour he
+brings into the struggle, the boundless indulgence he displays towards
+agrarian outrages, the tale is by no means improbable; our Leaguers have
+done even worse. However surprising may be in our Continental eyes the
+spectacle of a whole clergy taking part against the lords in a social
+war, under the paternal eyes of their episcopate, we must remember that
+here everything tends to bring about this result:—religious passions,
+hereditary instinct, and personal interest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A priest who had the unlucky idea of pronouncing himself against the
+League would soon see his subsidies stopped. His flock would besides lose
+all confidence in him, and all respect for his person. I am told of a
+characteristic example of the kind of practical jokes indulged in such
+a case by the peasantry against the dissident pastor. A priest of the
+county Clare, seized by sudden scruples, took it into his head to abuse
+the League at the Sunday preaching, instead of sounding the usual praise
+in its honour. At once they sent him from the lower end of the church
+an old woman who begged to be heard directly in confession, before she
+could approach Holy Communion. The worthy man, grumbling a little at such
+an untimely fit of devotion, nevertheless acceded to her request with
+antique simplicity, and seated himself inside the confessional.
+
+“Father,” said the old woman in aloud voice, “I accuse myself of having
+this moment thought that you were a wicked bad man, who betrays his flock
+to take the part of their natural enemies....”
+
+“Amen!” answered all the congregation in a chorus.
+
+Without waiting for absolution the old woman had got up to go. The priest
+tried to imitate her. Impossible. They had placed on his seat a huge lump
+of pitch which glued him, attached him indissolubly to his place. To get
+him free they were obliged to go for help outside, to call strangers to
+the rescue. The whole village meanwhile were shaking with laughter, and
+thought the joke in the best possible taste.
+
+The Irish clergy go with the League, both because their temperament
+inclines them that way, and also because it is an imperious necessity
+of their situation; their case is rather similar to that of the _Home
+Rule_ members, who were compelled to enter the movement, whether they
+approved of it or not. However strong their hold on the mass of the rural
+population, their influence would vanish in a week if they tried to pull
+against the irresistible stream. Such sacrifices have never been a habit
+of the Roman Church.
+
+Indeed it is permitted to smile, when one sees the Tory Ministry
+soliciting the intervention of the Pope in the Irish crisis, and
+obtaining from him the sending of a special legate entrusted with the
+mission of bringing the Episcopate of Ireland back to less subversive
+ideas. It is well understood that the Pope of course sends his legate,
+and derives from his diplomatic compliance all the advantages it entails.
+But he is better aware than any one that unless he personally gave away
+one million sterling a year to the parish priests of Ireland, he would
+have little reasonable hope of success in asking them to shift their
+policy.
+
+Is it necessary to add that the Irish priest himself knows on occasion
+how to bring into his mundane relations the traditional suppleness and
+prudence of his order? A priest of Wexford, actively mixed up with the
+agrarian movement, was dining a few years ago at the house of Mr. C⸺,
+proprietor of a large landed estate in the county. Conversation turned
+upon the League, and no good was said of it. The priest listened in
+silence, without giving his sentiment either for or against the League.
+All of a sudden, with a look of assumed simplicity, he turned to his host—
+
+“Look here, Mr. C⸺,” he said, “Will you believe me? _Me impresshun is
+that there is no Land League._”
+
+The saintly man had for the last three months been vice-president of the
+board of the Land League in his district.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+FORT SAUNDERS.
+
+
+                                                                   GALWAY.
+
+Galway is an old Spanish colony, planted on the western coast of
+Ireland, and which kept for a long time intimate relations with the
+mother country. Things and people have retained the original stamp to an
+uncommon degree; but for the Irish names that are to be read on every
+shop, you could believe yourself in some ancient quarter of Seville.
+The women have the olive complexion, black hair, and red petticoat of
+the _mañolas_; the houses open on a courtyard, a thing unknown in other
+parts of Ireland, as well as in Great Britain; they have grated windows,
+peep-holes in the door, and are adorned with sculptures, in the Moorish
+style; the steeples of churches affect the shape of minarets; the very
+fishermen in the port, with the peculiar shape of their boat, sails and
+nets, and something indescribable in their general outline, remind you of
+the hardy sailors of Corunna.
+
+The remembrance of seven or eight centuries of busy trade with the
+Peninsula, does not show itself solely in faces, manners, or dwelling, it
+is to be found also in local tradition. Among others, there is the story
+of the Mayor Lynch Fitz-Stephen, who gave in 1493 such a fearful example
+of ruthless justice. His only son, whom he had sent to Spain to settle
+some important affair, was coming back with the Spanish correspondent of
+the family, bringing home a rich cargo, when he entered into a conspiracy
+with the crew, appropriated the merchandise, and threw overboard the
+unfortunate Spaniard. The crime was discovered, the culprit arrested, and
+brought to trial before his own father, who was exercising the right of
+high and low justice in the district, and by him condemned to the pain of
+death. The general belief was that the Mayor would contrive to find some
+pretext to give his son a respite; and in order to supply him with that
+pretext, his relations drew up a petition of grace, which they presented
+to him, covered with signatures. Lynch listened to their request, then
+merely told them to come back for an answer on a certain day he named.
+At the appointed time the suppliants appeared again; but the first sight
+which caught their eyes was the dead body of the Mayor’s son hanging from
+one of the grated windows of his house. An inscription, placed in 1524,
+on the walls of the cemetery of St. Nicholas, records the memory of that
+event.
+
+Galway is only a big borough nowadays, where ruins are nearly as numerous
+as inhabited dwellings. From the road that skirts the Bay, after leaving
+the harbour, the long islands of Arran may be seen rising on the west;
+from another road, which goes northwards, Lough Corrib appears, famous
+for its salmon fisheries. As an historic place, the county possessed
+already the field of Aughrim, celebrated for two centuries as the spot
+where James II. lost his last battle against William III.—a battle so
+murderous that the dogs of the country retained a taste for human flesh
+for three generations after. But since the last year it has acquired
+a new celebrity: another and no less epic battle has been fought at
+Woodford in August, 1886, for the agrarian cause. The account of it is
+worth telling. Never did the character of the struggle between League and
+landlord appear in such a glaring light. All the factors in the problem
+are there, each playing its own part. It is like a vertical cut opening
+Irish society down to its very core, and permitting to see it from basis
+to summit; a supplementary chapter to Balzac’s _Paysans_.
+
+Woodford is a pretty village seated on the shore of Lough Derg on the
+slope of the hills which divide Galway from Clare. The principal
+landowners there are the Marquis of Clanricarde, Sir Henry Burke, the
+Westmeath family, Colonel Daly, and Lord Dunsandle. Agrarian hatred is
+particularly alive in that district; the Galway man is bloodthirsty,
+and counts human life as nought. Five or six years ago Mr. Blake, Lord
+Clanricarde’s agent, was shot dead, and in March, 1886, a bailiff named
+Finley, a veteran of the Crimean war, had the same fate while he was
+going to proceed to an eviction on the account of Sir Henry Burke. The
+spot is shown still where the unfortunate man was murdered and his corpse
+left twenty-four hours without sepulture, nobody daring or willing to
+bear it away. A detachment of the police in the pay of the Property
+Defence Association having settled their barracks in the vicinity of
+Woodford, the inhabitants, about one thousand in number, organized a sort
+of grotesque pageant, which made its progress along the streets of the
+town behind a coffin bearing the inscription: _Down with landlordism!_
+then concluded by burning the coffin in sight of the barracks.
+
+There are two churches, one Protestant, the other Catholic. The faithful
+who attend the first are two in number, no mere nor less, which would be
+sufficient to show how legitimate it was for the Irish to protest when
+obliged to pay the tithes of an altogether alien worship. The second
+is headed by a jolly compeer, much beloved by his parishioners for his
+good humour and liberality, Father Caen, a pastor of the old school,
+whose boast it is that he keeps the best table and cellar, and has the
+prettiest nieces in the county. He is president of the local board of
+the League; the treasurer of that committee is the _guardian of the poor
+law_ of the district, what we would call “l’administrateur du bien des
+pauvres;” but the true agent of the League—the _Deus ex machina_ of the
+place—is the secretary, Father Egan, curate of the parish, an austere,
+thin, fanatic-looking man, a peasant’s son, with all the passions of his
+race, who sucked the hatred of landlords with his mother’s milk, and ever
+remembers that many of his kindred have been reduced to emigrate, and
+that an uncle of his went mad after being evicted. A feature to be noted
+down; that priest, tall, strong, sinewy, is an excellent shot and an
+inveterate poacher. Nothing would be easier for him than obtaining leave
+from the landowners to shoot on their grounds; but he scorns the leave.
+His delight is to lurk at night till he has shot some of their big game,
+or to head openly a _battue_ for a general slaughter five miles round.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One of the finest estates in the county is that of Lord Clanricarde, to
+which are attached three hundred and sixteen tenants.
+
+Hubert George De Burgh Canning, Marquis of Clanricarde and Baron
+Somerhill, was born 1832, according to the _Peerage_. He was never
+married, has no children, belongs to the House of Lords as Baron
+Somerhill, is a member of two or three great clubs, and lives in
+Piccadilly, at the Albany, a sort of caravanserai (not to say seraglio),
+almost exclusively a resort of rich bachelors. That is about all that is
+known of him. His tenants do not know him. The only glimpse they ever had
+of their landlord was on the following occasion. In 1874, at the funeral
+of the late Marquis, a man of about forty, with fair hair, who had come
+from London for the ceremony, was noticed among the mourners. He was said
+to be the new master. That was all: he disappeared as he had come. Save
+for that hazy and far-away remembrance, the landlord is for the Woodford
+people a mere name, a philosophical entity of whom they know nothing
+except that he has a land agent at Loughrea, a little neighbouring town,
+and that into the hands of that agent they must pay every year £19,634
+out of the product of the land. The tenants of Woodford are in that sum
+for about £1,000.
+
+The Marquis’s father died in 1874. Quite contrary to the present owner,
+he was the prototype of the Irish lord resident. Great sportsman,
+scatter-brain, violent, extravagant, but kind and open-handed, he was
+liked in spite of his numerous failings, and tradition helping him he was
+emphatically the master almost all his life long; a fact which he was
+wont to illustrate by boasting that if it pleased him to send his old
+grey mare to the House of Commons, the electors would be too happy to
+vote unanimously for the animal.
+
+In 1872, however, the Marquis’s tenants took it into their heads to cut
+the tradition, and gave their vote to a certain Captain Nolan, the _Home
+Rule_ candidate. The irascible nobleman took revenge for what he chose to
+consider as a personal insult by raising the rent of all bad electors.
+He went so far in that line that in 1882 the _Land Commissioners_ had
+to reduce them by half. That judgment could not, of course, have a
+retrospective effect and bring a restitution of the sums that had been
+paid in excess during the last ten years, and which varied from £50 to
+£100. It may be imagined how they must weigh still on the peasant’s
+heart, and what a well-prepared ground the agrarian movement was to find
+at Woodford. The successive murders of the land agent Blake and Bailiff
+Finlay were among the first and visible signs of that ferment of hatred.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Those crimes, which remained unpunished, and the responsibility of which
+is thrown at each other’s heads by the two parties, came with the usual
+accompaniment of fires, mutilations, verbal and written threats. The
+reign of terror had begun in the district; no bailiff was any longer
+willing to serve a writ or assignation. There came a time when the
+landlords nearly gave up all hope of finding a land agent to take the
+place of the one who had been murdered; at last they discovered the man—a
+certain Joyce, of Galway—a man who united an indomitable spirit with
+the most consummate skill; deeply versed in the art of talking to the
+peasant, a fine shot, carrying his potations well; ready for anything.
+A professional exploit had made his name famous in the neighbourhood.
+Having to serve writs upon several farmers, and being unable to find
+bailiffs willing to carry them, he made a general convocation in his
+office of all the debtors, with the pretext of submitting to them some
+mode of accommodation. The proposition being unanimously rejected, Joyce
+gets up, goes to the door, and after having turned the key, leans with
+his back against it; then, producing out of his pocket as many writs as
+there were farmers in his room, distributes them among the visitors. The
+poor devils were caught; according to the terms of the law, nothing but
+submission was left to them. It will not be unnecessary to add here that
+Joyce, a born Catholic, had been recently converted to Protestantism,
+which is reputed an abomination in Ireland, and consequently went by the
+name of the _renegade_. Such was the man who came to settle at Loughrea
+under protection of a special guard of constables, and hostilities soon
+began.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The harvest of 1885 had been but indifferent, and besides, by reason of
+American competition, the price of the chief local products had fallen
+down considerably—from about 15 to 20 per cent.—which implies for the
+farmer an utter impossibility to pay his rent, unless the nett profit he
+draws from the soil be estimated above 15 or 20 per cent. of his general
+receipt. Even in Ireland reasonable landlords are to be found. Those who
+understood the situation felt for their tenants, and, without waiting to
+be asked, granted a reduction of rent. At Woodford, Lord Dunsandle and
+Colonel Daly of their own impulse, and Sir H. Burke after some demur,
+gave up 15 per cent. of the unpaid rent.
+
+As for Lord Clanricarde, he gave not the least sign of existence. When
+the November term came, his tenants demanded a reduction of 25 per cent.,
+upon which Joyce declared that not a penny was to be given up. This
+seemed so hard that it was generally disbelieved; and an opinion spread
+itself that by applying personally to the landlord justice would be
+obtained. A collective address, signed by the 316 Woodford tenants, was
+accordingly drawn up and presented to him.
+
+The Marquis of Clanricarde vouchsafed no manner of answer. Then, Father
+Egan put himself in motion. He first obtained from the Bishop of Clonfert
+that he would send a second petition to the master, representing to
+him the true state of affairs, the reduction consented to by the other
+landlords, &c. Lord Clanricarde did not even acknowledge reception of the
+prelate’s letter. Let us state here, once for all, that he never swerved
+from the attitude he had adopted from the beginning, so aggressive in its
+very stolidity. Never once did he depart from that silence, except when
+he once wrote to the _Times_ that, personally, he did not object to the
+proposed reduction, but was in the habit of leaving to his agent the
+care of that sort of thing.
+
+Seeing that there was no satisfaction whatever to be expected from him,
+the Woodford tenants imitated their landlord, and henceforth gave no
+sign of life, or paid him a single farthing. In the month of April,
+1886, Joyce resorted to the legal ways and set up prosecutions against
+thirty-eight of the principal farmers, whose debt was £20 and above,
+assuming by that move the attitude of a moderate man who has to deal with
+obvious unwillingness to pay.
+
+And it was that which gave to the Woodford affair its peculiar character,
+which made it a _test case_, a decisive trial where the contending forces
+have measured their strength, where the inmost thought of the Irish
+peasant has shown itself in full light. If the chiefs of the League had
+singled it out from amidst a hundred (as, indeed, we may believe they
+did, whatever they might aver to the contrary), they could never have
+achieved a more complete demonstration of their power. Chance, however,
+had also its usual share in the turn which affairs took. Joyce, it
+appears, had began prosecutions against seventy-eight lesser tenants, and
+at the moment when success was on the point of crowning his efforts, the
+procedure was quashed for some legal flaw.
+
+As for the bigger ones, judgment had been entered against them, and the
+execution followed. The first step was the selling out in public court
+of the tenant’s interest in his holding. Ten of the men capitulated
+immediately, paying the rent in full with interest and law costs, that
+is to say, about 80 per cent. above the original debt. As for the
+twenty-eight others, fired by political passion, pride, and the ardent
+exhortations of Father Egan, they did not waver, and allowed the sale to
+proceed.
+
+Agreeably to the usage established since the League has been supreme in
+Ireland, not one bidder came forward at the sale. The representative of
+the landlord therefore remained master of the situation, and got for a
+few shillings the interest of the twenty-eight farmers—interest which, in
+certain cases, was worth £200 and more.
+
+It now remained to evict those tenants from their farms, and take
+possession in their place. Let us remark that, being certain of having
+allowed the landlord, through the sale, to help himself to a value
+of five or six times his due, those men were bound to consider such
+an eviction a gratuitous piece of cruelty. Well knowing before-hand
+that the eviction would by no means be an easy task, for all Ireland
+breathlessly followed the course of events, Joyce singled out amongst
+the twenty-eight defaulters, the four tenants for whom the eviction was
+sure to bear the hardest character, namely, Conroy, Fahey, Broderick,
+and Saunders. These were all people of comfortable means, who had for
+many years been established on their lands, who were profoundly attached
+to the house where their children or grand-children had been born, and
+which they had themselves built, enlarged and improved at great expense;
+rural _bourgeois_ rather than peasants; men that in a French country town
+should have been mayors, _adjoints_, or municipal councillors.
+
+For each of them eviction not only meant ruin, the voluntary and
+definitive loss of a small fortune laboriously acquired, and which could
+be estimated in each case at ten or twelve times the amount of the annual
+rent; it was, besides, the upsetting of all their dearest habits, the
+destruction of home, the end of domestic felicity. “Placed between this
+result and the choice of paying £30 or £40, which he has in his strong
+box, or which he will experience no difficulty in borrowing if he has
+them not—what country-bred man would hesitate?” thought Joyce. “Conroy,
+Fahey, Broderick, and Saunders shall pay! They shall pay, and after them
+the others must inevitably follow suit.”
+
+This was very sound reasoning. But Joyce calculated without the League
+and its agent, Father Egan. The four chosen victims did not pay. With a
+resolution that must really seem heroic to whoever knows the workings
+of a peasant’s soul, Conroy, Fahey, Broderick, and Saunders unanimously
+declared that the agent might expel them by force—_if he could_—but yield
+they would not.
+
+Ah! there was a fearful struggle. It was not without the most terrible
+inner combat that they kept their word. At home they had the money ready;
+nothing could be simpler than to go and pay it. Now and then temptation
+waxed almost too strong. James Broderick is an old man of seventy years.
+One day, called to Loughrea by the tempter, he went, in company with his
+friend Fahey.
+
+“Now, look here, Mr. Broderick,” Joyce said to him, “it goes to my heart
+to evict a good man like you from such a pretty house.... You have lived
+in it for these thirty years—it is the pearl of Woodford.... Let us make
+an arrangement about all this: you pay me down your rent with for costs,
+and I give you any length of time for the rest.... His lordship will
+even give you back the tenant-right for the price he paid himself,—fifty
+shillings.... Now what do you say?”...
+
+Old Broderick wavered; he was on the point of yielding.
+
+“Indeed, Mr. Joyce, you cannot do more than that,” ... he uttered in a
+trembling voice, involuntarily feeling for his pocket-book.
+
+But Fahey was there. He took the old man’s arm and drew him aside.
+
+“It is not _time_ that we want!” he said to him. “_What we want is to
+uphold the principle!_”
+
+Truly a great word. As fine as any recorded on History’s page, for those
+who know how to understand it rightly. If the peasants can remember a
+principle when their property is in question, verily one may say that the
+times are near being fulfilled!
+
+All conciliatory means were now exhausted. It only remained to have
+recourse to force. Joyce knew better than anyone what resistance he was
+going to encounter. Personally he thought he was going to meet death. He
+went resolutely nevertheless, but not without surrounding himself with a
+regular army.
+
+The bailiffs of the place refusing to act, some had to be sent for from
+Dublin. Those bailiffs, escorted by about a hundred emergency men, were
+supported besides by five hundred constables armed with rifles and
+revolvers. Woodford lies at a distance of about twenty miles from the
+nearest railway. The traps and horses necessary to carry all these people
+had to be sent down from Dublin, nobody consenting to give any manner of
+help. The same thing occurred for provisions and for the implements of
+the siege, pickaxes, levers, iron crowbars, which were indispensable to
+the assailants, and which were brought down with the army to Portumna.
+These preparations lasted three weeks. The mobilisation, decreed by Joyce
+at the end of July, could only be completed by the 17th of August.
+
+On the next day, the 18th, this army moved forward and left Portumna in a
+column, marching on Woodford.
+
+But on their side the Leaguers had not remained inactive.
+
+All the night long squads of voluntary workmen had been hard at work.
+When the police caravan arrived in sight of the village, they found the
+road barred by trees and heaps of stones placed across the way. They were
+obliged to dismount and go round by the fields.
+
+In the meantime, from the top of the neighbouring heights horns were
+signalling the appearance of the enemy; the chapel bells began to toll
+an alarm peal. From all the points of the compass an immense multitude
+of people hastened to come and take up their position on the hills of
+Woodford.
+
+When the bailiffs made their appearance, headed by Joyce, armed to the
+teeth, by the under-sheriff whom the duty of his charge obliged to
+preside at the execution, and leading on five hundred policemen, an
+indescribable, formidable howl rose up to heaven; the Irish _wail_ which
+partakes of the lion’s roar and of the human sob, of the yell of the
+expiring beast and of the rushing sound of waters.
+
+That lugubrious hooting was to last during two entire days, with
+full-stops, _da capo_, _decrescendo_ and _rinforzando_ of great effect.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first house attacked by the assailants was that of Conroy. It is a
+solid, comfortable-looking dwelling, built on the bank of Lough Derg.
+To the under-sheriff’s summons, the inhabitants, posted on the roof,
+answered only by derisive laughter. The door, which was of solid oak, was
+closed and barred inside. The order was given to break it open. A few
+minutes’ work sufficed to do it.
+
+When it fell crashing under the axes, it was perceived that a wall had
+been built behind it.... A triumphant shout rose from the crowd.
+
+“A breach must be made!” thundered Joyce. The stone wall was attacked.
+Immediately, from the roof, from the windows, poured a deluge of scalding
+hot lime-water, which fell on the assailants, blinded them, burnt them,
+and sent them back howling and dancing with pain. Again the crowd
+applauded, saluting with screams of laughter every ladleful of hot water
+that took effect. The custom of Galway authorizes, it appears, that
+singular way of defending one’s house. _It is no breach of the peace._
+One can scald the bailiffs without any qualms of conscience or fear of
+consequences.
+
+Nothing loth, the Conroy family freely used the permission. The miracle
+was that they did not use more murderous weapons. But the League’s
+agents were there holding back, according to their custom, the too fiery
+spirits, and keeping them within the bounds of legal hostilities. At
+their head the priest Egan was conspicuous, loudly advising the besieged,
+pointing out to them the uncovered assailants, telling them on what
+point to direct the effort of resistance. As for the police, mute and
+motionless, they beheld the drama without taking part in it. Four hours’
+work were needed to make the breach. At last the bailiffs were able to
+enter the house, expel the inhabitants, and take possession of it. They
+were obliged literally to carry away the youngest Miss Conroy, who
+desperately clung to the walls and furniture, and refused to come out of
+her own will.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Night came, and the bailiffs have no right to carry on their proceedings
+after sunset. They were therefore obliged to postpone their operations
+till the next day. What made matters worse was, that they must
+necessarily go back to Portumna, for they need expect to find no lodgings
+in Woodford. It is easy to foretell the complication of events that now
+followed.
+
+The whole of next day was employed in the eviction of Fahey. That of
+Broderick lasted another day, and caused the arrest of twenty-seven
+persons, for in spite of the League’s efforts heads were waxing hotter
+and hotter, and the combatants began to be rather too excited on both
+sides.
+
+But where resistance took a truly epic character was in the house of
+Thomas Saunders. With twenty-three comrades he held in check all assaults
+_during four entire days_. Not content with scalding the bailiffs by
+means of pumps and cauldrons installed on purpose, he had, by a stroke of
+genius, the idea of throwing on them hives of bees, that came out enraged
+from their cells and cruelly stung everything before them. Who knows
+that there may not be in this a precious indication for future warfare!
+European strategists may before long add “the chaste dew-drinkers,”
+as Victor Hugo called them, to the pigeons and the war-dogs. However
+that may be, Joyce’s mercenaries, burnt, stung, and crest-fallen, were
+compelled, for three nights running, to retreat on Portumna.
+
+The green flag meanwhile was proudly waving its folds on the summit of
+Saunders’ house, which enraptured Ireland, intoxicated with joy at the
+news of this unprecedented siege, immediately baptized _Fort Saunders_.
+Agitation was fast spreading over the whole country. The military
+authorities judged it indispensable to send down 200 mounted men, and to
+have the place patrolled at night. In Portumna councils of war were held,
+and serious thoughts were entertained of having recourse to the antique
+battering-ram and “tortoise” in order to approach the place and succeed
+in taking it. Three days passed in new preparations and supplementary
+armaments.
+
+At last, on the 27th of August, a new assault was attempted. It failed
+like all the others, but the law must, it was felt, at all costs, be
+enforced; the police interfered about some technical point, took the
+house at the bayonet’s point and made all its inmates prisoners.
+
+Thus ended, without effusion of blood, this memorable campaign; three
+weeks’ preparation, eight days’ fighting, a thousand men on foot,
+enormous expense had been required in order to succeed in evicting four
+tenants of the Marquis of Clanricarde, out of a number of 316, and that
+in the midst of scandalous scenes which gave the noisiest publicity to
+the agrarian cause. Everybody was of opinion that enough had been done,
+and evictions were stopped.
+
+The affair at Woodford marks a date in the annals of the Irish
+revolution. One has seen in it peasants living in relatively good
+circumstances fight for principles and go to the furthest ends of
+legality,—without overstepping them. Moreover, these events have taken
+place in a county famed for its violence and represented in Parliament
+by Mr. Matthew Harris, which is saying enough; (his motto was, till
+lately, “When you see a landlord, shoot him down like a partridge”).
+Three or four years sooner such events could not have taken place without
+involving fifteen or twenty deaths of persons. Here not a single one
+occurred. One could not but acknowledge that the honour of this was due
+to the League, to its moderating and constitutional influence. In vain
+it protested that it had nothing to do with those conflicts; its agents
+and its general instructions played the first part in it. Therefore it
+reaped all the fruits of this, came out of the ordeal greater, surrounded
+with a poetical halo, sovereign. History often has such ironies. At the
+price of their domestic happiness, four obscure heroes had just won in
+face of public opinion the cause of the serfs of the glebe against the
+lords.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.
+
+
+                                                                    SLIGO.
+
+In all the cabins I enter, the first object that meets my eyes on the
+wall, besides a portrait of Parnell or Gladstone, is, enshrined between
+the bit of sacred palm and the photograph of the emigrant son, a sheet of
+printed paper, sometimes put under a glass, and headed by these words,
+“The Plan of Campaign.” This is a summary of the instructions given by
+the League to its followers in November, 1886, and of the various means
+by which the position may be made untenable by the landlords.
+
+That order of the day of the agrarian army was, however, absent from the
+house furniture of one of my friends, Mat Cloney; he was a fisherman on
+the Garvogue, near Lough Gill, and close to the ruins of the Abbey of
+Sligo; an old man of hale and pleasing countenance, whose weather-beaten
+face was shaded by a plenteous crop of gray hair, and lighted up by two
+wonderfully bright blue eyes: a true Celt in manner and appearance. When
+I entered his cabin for the first time he was engaged in preparing his
+dinner; this consisted of a dried herring and a cold potato; but tearing
+down from a hook near the fire-place a small piece of bacon, the old man
+hastily rubbed it over a frying-pan, which he set on the dying embers; in
+it he placed the herring. A great noise and spluttering followed, then
+Mat, mindful of future feasts, thriftily hung his piece of bacon back on
+its hook, and the herring being done, sat down to his meagre repast.
+
+“You see, sir,” he said contentedly, “it gives it a relish.”
+
+I must not omit to say that poor as his fare was, he nevertheless offered
+me a share of it. I explained I had already lunched, and while he was
+discussing his meal, we entered into conversation.
+
+“You must be pretty well advanced in years,” I said, “though one would
+not think it to see how you manage your boat.”
+
+“_Shure_, sir, I was _borren_ in the _Ribillion_!”
+
+Let me here observe that this is the common answer given by many Irish
+peasants as to their age. The “Ribillion” seems to have made an epoch in
+their history, and they consider that any person over middle age must
+have been born during that momentous period. The date appears to matter
+little to them. So, though I entertained private doubts of Cloney’s being
+89 years old, I let that pass, and we went on talking.
+
+“Have you any children?”
+
+“_Shire_ I have!... Me sons they are fishermen, and me daughters are all
+marr’d, near here....”
+
+“And you live alone?”
+
+“Yes, sir, that I do.”
+
+“It must be a lonely life for you. Were you never tempted to marry again
+after your wife’s death? A fine man like you would have had no difficulty
+in finding a wife.”
+
+“Och, sir, after me ould woman died ... (with a burst of emotion) I
+always remained a _dacent widowman_ ... that I did!...”
+
+While we were talking I had been looking at the walls of the cabin, and I
+was surprised at finding none of the usual League’s documents upon them.
+I turned to Mat and expressed my surprise. Instantly Mat let fall the
+knife with which he was conveying a piece of herring to his mouth, and
+burst into loud execrations.
+
+“Och! the b⸺ villains!” he exclaimed; “the dirty never-do-well wh⸺! the
+de’il take them for his own! ... the whole lot is not worth a pennyworth
+o’ salt; ... etc., etc.”
+
+I confess I rather wondered at this violence. But as everyone has a
+perfect right to his own opinion, I did not press the point.
+
+“And you, sir, you be not English, are ye?” said Mat after a moment. He
+had suddenly grown calm again.
+
+“No, I am French.”
+
+“Och! _Shure_ the French are foine fellows. I had an uncle that fought
+the French for three days at Badajos, and he always said they were b⸺y
+devils, ... begging your pardon, sir, foine fellows they were.... Me
+uncle always said so, ... under _Bonney_ the French fought, ... b⸺d ...
+foine fellows, to be sure.... Me uncle also said they had no landlords
+down there. Now, is that true, sir?” added Mat Cloney, looking at me with
+a queer expression of countenance.
+
+No landlords? could that be true? He seemed to consider such a state of
+things suited to fairy-land.
+
+I explained that this was pure truth. In few words I told him how,
+shortly before the _Ribillion_ dear to his heart, the French peasants had
+risen as one man to get rid of their own landlords; how those landlords
+had for the most part emigrated and taken up arms against their country,
+which had caused the confiscation and sale of their lands. I added that
+those lands were now the property of the French labourers, who highly
+appreciate this state of affairs.
+
+Mat Cloney listened to me, his eyes glistening with interest. Therefore,
+I was rather surprised when I stopped, and he abruptly asked me, as a
+conclusion:
+
+“Do you know any of those Sligo gentlemen who come fishing about here,
+sir?”
+
+“Indeed, I do not. I am a total stranger in these parts. It was the
+manager at my hotel who sent me to you.”
+
+“That’s roight!” he exclaimed, as if relieved from some anxiety. “In that
+case, sir, I am going to show you something!...”
+
+He went to a corner of the cabin, and after some rummaging in an old
+sailor’s box, he produced from it a neatly folded paper which he placed
+into my hands. I opened it with some curiosity.
+
+It was a supplementary sheet of the _United Ireland_, of Dublin, where
+stood _in extenso_ the League’s Plan of Campaign.
+
+I looked at Mat Cloney. He was laughing silently. I at last understood
+the riddle. The sly fox was at heart with the League (he dubbed it _the
+Leg_; by the way, like many other Irishmen); but he judged it prudent in
+any case to dissemble such subversive feelings, when he had to do with an
+unknown person from the town; and being a peasant he rather overdid it.
+
+The ice was broken now. He let me study thoroughly the document he had
+lent me, and even enriched it with luminous commentaries, in the course
+of a pleasant day’s fishing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The “Plan of Campaign” seems to have had for its father Mr. John Dillon,
+one of the most universally, and the most deservedly, popular of the
+Irish members; at all events, it was introduced to the public by that
+gentleman in October, 1886, at an autumn meeting. Those mass meetings,
+held every year after the harvest, have now become an institution, a
+kind of _Witena-gemot_ of the Irish nation. People come to them from
+the farthest ends of the island, by rail, in jaunting-cars, on foot,
+on horseback, as the case may be; in such numbers that there is no
+room or shanty large enough in the country to lodge the assemblage. So
+they are open-air meetings. The particular one alluded to was convened
+at Woodford, which has become, since the memorable battle on the
+Clanricarde estate, a kind of Holy Place and agrarian Kaaba. Soon after
+the autumn meeting, the scheme was approved by the authorities, at the
+head-quarters of the League (although they prudently refrained from
+committing themselves officially to it), and expounded in the special
+supplement to the _United Ireland_, of which I hold a copy. It was to the
+following effect:—
+
+    Present rents, speaking roundly, are impossible. That the
+    landlords will press for them is certain. A fight for the
+    coming winter is therefore inevitable, and it behoves the
+    Irish tenantry to fight with a skill begotten by experience.
+    The first question they have to consider is how to meet the
+    November demand. Should combinations be formed on the lines of
+    branches of the National League, or merely by estates? We say
+    _by estates_ decidedly. Let branches of the National League,
+    if they will, take the initiative in getting the tenantry on
+    each estate to meet one another. But it should be distinctly
+    understood that the action or resolution of one estate was not
+    to bind any other, and the tenantry on every estate should be
+    free to decide upon their own course.
+
+    When they are assembled together, let them appoint an
+    intelligent and sturdy member of their body as chairman,
+    and, after consulting, decide by resolution on the amount of
+    abatement they will demand. A committee consisting, say, of
+    six and the chairman, should then be elected, to be called a
+    Managing Committee, and to take charge of the half-year’s rent
+    of the tenant, should the landlord refuse it.
+
+    Everyone should pledge himself (1) to abide by the decision of
+    the majority; (2) to hold no communication with the landlord
+    or any of his agents, except in presence of the body of the
+    tenantry; (3) to accept no settlement for himself which is not
+    given to every tenant on the estate.
+
+    On the rent-day, the tenantry should proceed to the rent-office
+    in a body. If the agent refuses to see them in a body, they
+    should on no account confer with him individually, but depute
+    the chairman to act as their spokesman and acquaint them of
+    the reduction which they require. No offer to accept the rent
+    “on account” should be agreed to. Should the agent refuse,
+    then EVERY TENANT MUST HAND TO THE MANAGING COMMITTEE THE
+    HALF-YEAR’S RENT WHICH HE TENDERED TO THE AGENT.
+
+    To prevent any attempt at a garnishee, this money should be
+    deposited by the Managing Committee with some one reliable
+    person, _whose name would not be known to any but the members
+    of the committee_.
+
+    This may be called the estate fund, and it should be absolutely
+    at the disposal of the Managing Committee for the purposes
+    of the fight. Broken tenants who are unable to contribute
+    the reduced half-year’s rent should at least contribute the
+    percentage demanded from the landlord, that is the difference
+    between the rent demanded and that which the tenantry offer
+    to pay. A broken tenant is not likely to be among the first
+    proceeded against, and no risk is incurred by the general body
+    in taking him on these terms.
+
+    Thus, practically a half-year’s rent of the estate is put
+    together to fight the landlord with. This is a fund which,
+    if properly utilised, will reduce to reason any landlord in
+    Ireland.
+
+    How should the fund be employed? The answer to this question
+    must to some extent depend upon the course the landlord will
+    pursue; but in general we should say it must be devoted to the
+    support of the tenants who are dispossessed either by sale or
+    ejectment.
+
+    It should be distributed by the committee to each evicted
+    tenant in the proportion of his contribution to the fund. A
+    half-year’s rent is supposed to maintain a tenant for a half
+    year, and based upon this calculation, a tenant who funded say
+    £50 would be entitled when evicted to receive £2 per week.
+
+    _But not one penny should go in law costs._ This should be made
+    an absolute rule. For to pay law costs, such as attorney’s
+    letters, writs and judgments incurred by the landlord, is to
+    arm your enemy for the quarrel and furnish him with provisions
+    to boot. In a determined fight there are no “law costs” on
+    the side of the tenantry, and they should remain out for ever
+    rather than pay those which the landlord incurs in fleecing
+    them.
+
+    Ejectment is the most common of the landlord’s remedies. Every
+    legal and constitutional obstacle which could oppose or delay
+    eviction should be had recourse to, for every hour by which the
+    sheriff is delayed in one eviction gives another brother tenant
+    so much more grace. There are only 310 days in the sheriff’s
+    year, and he must do all the evictions in a whole county within
+    the time.
+
+    If, after eviction, a tenant is re-admitted as caretaker he
+    should go in, but _never_ upon the understanding that he would
+    care any other farm but his own. Should the tenant not be
+    re-admitted, shelter must be procured for him immediately by
+    the Managing Committee, and then, if necessary, a day appointed
+    when all would assemble to build him a hut on some spot
+    convenient to the farm where the landlord could not disturb
+    him. Wooden huts, such as those supplied by the League, waste
+    too much of the funds and become valueless when the tenant is
+    re-admitted.
+
+    Sale is the resort of the landlord when he proceeds by writ
+    or process as an ordinary creditor. From eight to twelve days
+    are allowed after service of the writ before judgment can be
+    marked. The sheriff may seize cattle if he finds them on the
+    farm, or he may seize and sell the tenant’s interest in the
+    farm. A tenant who has his mind made up for the fight will
+    have his cattle turned into money before the judgment comes
+    on. Every tenant who neglects to dispose of them is preparing
+    himself to accept the landlord’s terms, for he will not wish
+    to see the emergency men profit by taking his cattle at some
+    nominal price, and if he buys he is in reality handing the
+    landlord the amount of his demand. Sale of a farm is not of so
+    much consequence. Every farm sold in this manner during the
+    agitation either has come or is bound to come back to its owner
+    even on better terms than he first held it. But if a man has
+    a very valuable interest in his farm, he can place it beyond
+    the sheriff’s power by mortgaging it to some one to whom he
+    owes money. Mortgage effected thus for a _bonâ fide_ debt or
+    consideration bars the sheriff’s power of conveyance at a sale.
+    If the landlord or emergency men be represented, the cattle
+    should not be allowed to go at a nominal sum. They should be
+    run up to their price, and, if possible, left in the hands of
+    emergency men at full price. It should be borne in mind that if
+    the full price be not realised the sheriff could seize again
+    for the balance.
+
+    In bidding for a farm it should also be run to amount of debt,
+    but by a man of straw, or some one who, if it were knocked
+    down, would ask the sheriff for time to pay. By making the
+    landlord’s bidder run it up to the amount of debt and costs,
+    and leaving it on his hands, the sheriff cannot follow the
+    tenant further. No auction fees should be allowed. A farm held
+    on a lease for a life or lives, any one of which is extant,
+    cannot be sold by the sheriff. After sale a tenant is still
+    in possession of holding until a fresh writ is served and a
+    judgment for title marked against him. All this involves the
+    landlord in fresh costs. The eviction may then follow, and the
+    observations above recorded in case of ejectment or eviction
+    apply here.
+
+    Distress, another of the landlord’s remedies, cannot be
+    resorted to for more than one year’s rent. Few landlords can
+    have recourse to this without exposing themselves to actions.
+    The chief points to attend to are:—That distress must be made
+    by landlord or known agent, or bailiff authorized by warrant
+    signed by the landlord or known agent; that particulars of
+    distress be served; seizure on Sunday is unlawful; seizure
+    before sunrise or after sunset is unlawful; or for any rent
+    due more than one year. Distress is illegal if growing crops
+    be seized, or the implements of a man’s trade; and if other
+    property be on farm to ensure landlord’s demand, it is
+    illegal to seize beasts of the plough, sheep, or implements
+    of husbandry necessary for the cultivation of the land. These
+    points should be carefully watched when landlord has recourse
+    to distress.
+
+    Bankruptcy proceedings are too costly a machinery for general
+    use, and no landlord is likely to have recourse to them.
+
+    It is unnecessary to add that landlords, and their partisans on
+    the magisterial bench and among the Crown officials, will do
+    all in their power to twist the operation of the law so as to
+    harass the tenants.
+
+    A tenant taking possession of his house to shelter his family
+    from the severity of the winter is not likely to escape. A
+    summons for trespass must be preceded by a warning to the
+    tenant if he be found in possession. We have known a case where
+    the father complied with this warning, and on the bailiff’s
+    next visit the mother only was found, and she complied. Next
+    time the eldest daughter only was in possession, and so on
+    through the length of a long family, such as an evicted tenant
+    nearly always has. A goodly time had been saved before the
+    father’s turn came again. He was fined and went to gaol. The
+    prison then lost its terror for him. When he came out he stuck
+    boldly to his home, and he soon won the victory which rewards
+    determination.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    The fullest publicity should be given to evictions, and every
+    effort made to enlist public sympathy. That the farms thus
+    unjustly evicted will be left severally alone, and everyone
+    who aids the eviction shunned, is scarcely necessary to say.
+    But the man who tries boycotting for a personal purpose is a
+    worse enemy than the evicting landlord, and should be expelled
+    from any branch of the League or combination of tenants. No
+    landlord should get one penny rent on any part of his estates,
+    wherever situated, so long as he has one tenant unjustly
+    evicted. This policy strikes not only at the landlord but the
+    whole ungodly crew of agents, attorneys, and bum-bailiffs.
+    Tenants should be the first to show their sympathy with
+    one another, and prompt publicity should be given to every
+    eviction, that the tenants of the evictor wherever he holds
+    property may show their sympathy.
+
+    Such a policy indicates a fight which has no half-heartedness
+    about it, and it is the only fight which will win.
+
+Well may the author of the “Plan of Campaign” wind up his catechism by
+the appropriate remark that “such a policy indicates a fight which has no
+half-heartedness about it.” Never before was such a tremendous weapon of
+social war put in motion. Never before, in the whole course of history,
+was such a forcible ultimatum drafted for the consideration of the
+adverse party.
+
+Leaving details aside, and the minute instructions on the true mode of
+skirmishing with the myrmidons of the law, the idea of using the very
+rent claimed by the landlord as a provision for feeding the struggle
+against him is in itself perfection—a real masterpiece of strategy. An
+artist can only feel the warmest admiration for such a combination of
+everything that is most pleasant to the heart of the agrarian warrior
+and most deadly to the landlord’s cause. As an orator of the League (Mr.
+W. O’Brien) has put it: “We have discovered a weapon against landlordism,
+the mere threat and terror of which have already brought down
+rack-renters to their knees. We have discovered a weapon which feudal
+landlordism can no more resist than a suit of armour of the middle ages
+can resist modern artillery.” And the country where such an admirable
+paper has been penned by its political leaders is supposed by its foes to
+be unable to rule its own affairs! This is unfairness with a vengeance.
+Let those meet its provisions, since they are so very clever.
+
+The wonder, however, is not that such a policy should have been dreamed
+of. Similar plans of warfare have more than once been drawn out in the
+council chamber of parties. The wonder is that this one should have been
+deemed practicable by the farmers of Ireland; that it should have been
+unanimously accepted by them; and, what is more, put at once into effect.
+Another wonder is that it should have been found _lawful_, on the best
+legal authority, and that it should have remained unopposed by the “Four
+Courts” and “the Castle.” The greatest wonder of all is that it should
+have enlisted the warm and public support not only of the lower ranks of
+the clergy all over the island, but of the Episcopate itself; not only
+of the Episcopate but of the Pope, since neither his special envoy in
+Ireland nor his Holiness personally in any encyclical letter, have spoken
+one word in condemnation of the “Plan of Campaign.”
+
+It has been in operation now for over one year; it has spread as far
+as the leaders of the League have deemed it expedient, for thus far
+they seem to have used it only moderately. “We did not desire,” they
+say, “and we do not desire now that the ‘Plan of Campaign’ should be
+adopted anywhere, except where the tenants have a just and moderate and
+unimpeachable case.” But, none the less, it hangs as a formidable threat
+over the heads of the doomed landlords. At a moment’s notice it may be
+extended to the whole island, as it has been already to some hundred
+estates in twenty-two counties.
+
+An idea of the state of affairs may be gathered from the account given by
+the _Freeman’s Journal_ (December 3, 1886) of the scene witnessed on Lord
+de Freyne’s property in county Sligo. His tenants asked for an abatement
+of 20 per cent., and, being refused, they decided to adopt the “Plan of
+Campaign.”
+
+    There is nothing in the nature of a town or even a village
+    at Kilfree Junction, there being only two or three one-story
+    thatched cottages within sight of it. In one of these, the
+    nearest to the station, the rents were received by Mr. William
+    Redmond, M.P.; the Rev. Canon O’Donoghue, D.D.; Rev. Father
+    Henry, C.C.; and the Rev. Father Filan, C.C. The operations of
+    receiving the rents, entering amounts, and giving receipts to
+    the tenants occupied the greater part of the day, commencing
+    in early morning and continuing far in the afternoon. Although
+    the situation was rather a depressing one for the poor people
+    exposed to all the severity of the elements, they seemed
+    to be one and all animated by the greatest enthusiasm. The
+    interior of the cottage in which the rents were being collected
+    presented a spectacle really unique in its way. The first room,
+    a sort of combination of kitchen, sitting-room, and shop, was
+    crowded almost to suffocation by men and a few women, who were
+    sheltering from the snow which fell in great white flakes
+    without. There was no grate, but a few turf sods burned on
+    the hearth, while above them hung a kettle, suspended from an
+    iron hook fixed from the quaint old chimney. In the centre of
+    the bedroom leading off the apartment was a small table, at
+    which Mr. Redmond, M.P., the clergymen whose names are given
+    above, and one of the leading members of the local branch of
+    the National League were seated receiving the tenants’ rents.
+    The room was densely crowded, but the utmost order and decorum
+    prevailed, and the whole proceedings were conducted in the most
+    punctilious and business-like manner.
+
+    The tenant handed the money to one of the gentlemen at the
+    table, his name was duly entered with the amount paid by him
+    into a book, and he was handed back a printed receipt for the
+    amount which he had lodged.
+
+    As the day wore on, the pile of bank notes upon the table
+    mounted higher and higher, and the rows of glistening
+    sovereigns grew longer and longer, until they stretched across
+    the table like streams of yellow ore. It was difficult to
+    realise how those bleak western plains had ever produced so
+    much money, and the conviction seemed to force itself upon the
+    mind that a considerable part of it had either been earned by
+    work across the Channel, or in remittances from friends and
+    relations on the other side of the broad Atlantic.
+
+    “Father,” exclaimed one of the younger men, pushing excitedly
+    his aged parent into the room where the rents were being paid
+    over, “come along; you have lived to strike a blow for freedom
+    and Ireland.” The words were uttered with earnestness and
+    enthusiasm. There are upwards of 300 tenants upon this estate
+    alone who have adopted the “Plan,” and a further sitting will
+    be necessary in order to receive the remaining lodgments.
+
+    A couple of policemen, who looked chilled and spiritless,
+    walked about the platform, but made no attempt to interfere
+    with the proceedings.
+
+It would be useless to add the least comment to such a picture. When
+similar scenes are witnessed everywhere over a country, and accepted by
+every one as the natural consummation of events, and the law is impotent
+to prevent them, the Revolution is not impending—it is practically
+accomplished in the mind of all classes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+SCOTTISH IRELAND.
+
+
+                                                              ENNISKILLEN.
+
+If you did not know beforehand that you are entering a new Ireland
+through Enniskillen, an Ireland, Scotch, Protestant, manufacturing, a
+glance through the carriage-window would suffice to reveal the fact.
+Over the hill, on the right, a fine country-house waves to the wind, as
+a defiance to the League, his orange-coloured flag, the colours of the
+“_Unionists_.” The landlords of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, who are
+Orangemen, as well as others, dare not proclaim their opinions so boldly,
+hoist them at the top of the main mast, so to say; for it might simply
+cost them their lives. You must come to “loyal Ulster” to see such acts
+of daring, for the simple reason that they are without danger here.
+
+Another symptom, more eloquent still than the colour of the flag, is
+the aspect of the landscape; no more uncultivated fields, no more
+endless bogs and fens. Instead of those long, red, or black streaks
+of peat, alternating with consumptive oat and potato-fields, green,
+fat meadows, mown by steam, studded with cows, in the most prosperous
+condition, spread themselves before your eyes. Some trees are to be seen
+now. The hedges are in good repair, the horses well harnessed to solid
+carts; the hay-stacks have a symmetrical outline, and vast fields of
+flax nod under the breeze; the farm-houses are well built, flanked by
+neat kitchen-gardens; in short, all gives the general impression of a
+properly cultivated land. Nothing like the agricultural opulence of Kent
+or Warwickshire though, but the normal state of a tolerably good land,
+where human industry is not fighting against an accumulation of almost
+insuperable obstacles.
+
+Is it that the law is different in Ulster? Not so, but the custom is.
+From immemorial times the tenant-right has been admitted here; and in
+consequence the farmer has never hesitated to introduce the necessary
+improvements, and to invest his hoard in the land, sure as he is to
+profit by it.
+
+That tenant is three times out of five of Scotch origin; three times out
+of five he belongs to the Protestant persuasion (Episcopal, Presbyterian,
+Methodist); there is not between him and his landlord the antagonism of
+race and worship which is to be found in other provinces. The landlord
+himself fulfils his duty better, and does not affect to spend abroad
+the money he draws from his estate; often that landlord is some guild
+or municipal corporation of London or elsewhere, which perhaps does not
+make the best use possible of its income, but is nevertheless obliged
+to justify more or less its privilege by some philanthropic foundation,
+trials of culture on the large scale, innovation, and examples.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lastly, Ulster is a neighbour to Scotland, and belongs to the same
+geological, ethnological, commercial, and religious system. Capital is
+less timorous here. It ventures to come, to stay, to circulate. By the
+side of agriculture there are important factories, which help to sustain
+and feed it. Instead of keeping invariably to oats, turnips, and the
+time-honoured potato, the farmers grow flax on a large scale for the
+400,000 spindles which are spinning at Belfast, Dundalk, and Drogheda.
+
+A certain tendency to aggregate small holdings, and to constitute in
+that way great and middling farms, has been developing lately in Ulster.
+The peasants are better lodged and fed than elsewhere in Ireland. They
+find day-work more easily because agriculture is conducted there on more
+scientific principles, and they are not condemned to remain idle four
+days out of seven. In short, the economic condition of Scotch Ireland,
+without being such as to be offered as a pattern to the civilised world,
+is about as good as possible under the feudal _régime_ and landlordism.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                              LONDONDERRY.
+
+The signs of that relative prosperity are obvious. Thus in the
+neighbourhood of Derry (we say Londonderry, but the natives all say
+Derry), you observe with pleasure a line of tramcars moved by steam
+machinery, which puts remote places in communication with the railway.
+The carriages are of superior make, divided into three classes, towed
+by an engine heated with petroleum. Coming, as you do, out of Mayo and
+Galway, that steam tramway puffs in your face a breath of civilisation.
+You seem to enter a different world.
+
+Derry, with its active traffic, its elegant iron bridge over the
+Foyle, the fine, new buildings which attest its wealth, justifies that
+impression. It is the capital of the famous “Ulster plantation” of James
+I., entrusted by him to the “Honourable Irish Company,” which included
+twelve guilds of the city of London. For a century or two those grants of
+land did not answer as had been expected. But they have ended, in the
+course of time, by being prosperous. The municipal estates of Coleraine
+and Derry are accounted now the most flourishing in the island.
+
+Yet it does not follow that the tenant’s situation is very brilliant,
+even in Ulster. One of the counties of the province, Donegal, is the
+poorest in all Ireland, and two or three others are not much better. Even
+in the richest parts the tenant bears chafingly the yoke of landlordism.
+The Antrim Tenant Association went so far this year as to ask for a 50
+per cent. reduction on rent, owing to the low price of produce and the
+sheer impossibility of going on paying at the previous rate. It must be
+noted that tenant-right being rigorously observed in Ulster, the farmer
+always pays when he is able; for any remissness in paying would diminish
+by as much the value of his share in the proprietorship, which is
+estimated on an average at 8 or 10 times the annual farm rent.
+
+The newspapers of the county, even when unfavourable to agrarian
+revendications, unanimously acknowledge that by reason of the constant
+going down of prices, resulting from American competition, the present
+condition of the agriculturist is about as bad as it was in the worst
+famine times. All the farmers without exception, be they of Scotch or
+Irish race, aver that they actually pay from their own pockets every
+penny they give the landlords; that is to say, they borrow it in the
+shape of a loan on the value of their tenant-right.
+
+Such a state of things cannot continue. It explains how it is that
+Presbyterian peasants, the most ardent enemies of Papistry—in theory—none
+the less give the majority, even in Ulster itself, to the representatives
+of Home Rule and the liquidation of landed property.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                        PORTRUSH AND THE GIANT’S CAUSEWAY.
+
+Portrush is a delicious sea-side place, at the mouth of Lough Foyle,
+on the most wonderful coast in Europe; it is seated on the edge of the
+Antrim table-land, which is of volcanic origin: probably a dependency
+of Scotland geologically, rather than belonging properly to Ireland, to
+which it came and welded itself, at some unknown epoch. The traveller
+has there the agreeable surprise of a delightful hotel—one should say a
+perfect one—a regular miracle of comfort; and the still greater surprise
+of seeing there the only electric railway actually working on this
+planet. That bijou-line is used to take the visitors to the wonder of
+Ireland, the Giant’s Causeway. It ascends on the sea-side an acclivity
+of about three to four hundred yards, and runs over a length of five
+miles up to Bushmills, where the generators of electricity are set to
+work by hydraulic power. Nothing is so fresh or unexpected as that
+drive in open carriages. The train ascends lustily along the electric
+guiding-rail in the midst of a well-nourished fire of sparkles called
+to life by its iron hoofs. As it rises higher the prospect gets wider
+and wider, and you get a view of the Scotch mountains only fifteen miles
+distant, while the most extraordinary basaltic formations are following
+one another under your eye along the coast.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Antrim table-land, so geologists tell us, was formed by a layer of
+lava three or four hundred yards high, spread over the chalky bottom of
+the sea. Of the volcanoes which vomited that lava no vestige is to be
+seen to-day. The glaciers, tumbling down from the neighbouring heights,
+have cleared them away. In times remote, that table-land extended across
+to Scotland, to which it united Ireland as by a sort of prodigious bridge
+of lava. But the unremitting, incessant, work of the waters has eaten
+away by degrees the cretaceous masses which supported it. The arches
+of the bridge were then dislocated and precipitated into the ocean.
+Only some traces of it on both sides are left standing now: the Giant’s
+Causeway in Ireland, the point of Cantire in Scotland, and between the
+two, the little Island of Rathlin.
+
+Along the coast of Antrim the waves continuing their destructive work, go
+on gnawing the foundations of the cliffs, which they dig and carve like
+lacework. Numberless grottoes, rocky needles shaped into the likeness of
+steeples, deep chasms at the bottom of which the foaming waters are for
+ever contending, are the result of that perennial work.
+
+Occasionally, as at Dunluce, to the fantastic work of nature, some ruin
+that was once an illustrious stronghold, whose walls, literally hanging
+over the abyss, seem to be attached to the firm ground only by a curved
+arch of half-a-yard’s breadth, adds an element of tragic poetry. Under
+the rock which bear those dilapidated walls, the sea has dug for itself
+caves which are resounding night and day with the deafening noise of the
+beating waves. It is grand and terrible in summer; one can imagine what
+it must be when the tempest of a winter night unloosens its fury within
+those caverns.
+
+Naturally they are, more than any other place in the world, rich in
+legendary lore. The M’Quillans, to whom belonged Dunluce Castle, boast
+an antiquity which outshines greatly that of the descendants of the
+Crusaders. These are not people to be content, like Montesquieu, with two
+or three hundred years of acknowledged nobility. They came from Babylon,
+it appears, at an epoch exceptionally prehistoric, and can trace their
+origin back to 4,000 years ago. The only branch in existence now dwells
+in Scotland, and bear the title of lords of Antrim and Dunluce.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Bushmills the electric train stops. There you alight and take your
+seat in the car which brings you to the Causeway Hotel. Here, as the
+air is decidedly bracing, and the majority of the tourists English,
+luncheon is ready, as you may imagine. The classic salmon despatched in
+company with a glass of ale or porter, the only thing to do is to look to
+business and visit the marvels of the place. A wall, which the provident
+administration of the hotel have raised for purposes of safety, hides
+them as yet from your sight. When you have passed that obstacle you find
+yourself within a sort of circus, delineated by the cliffs, and at the
+extremity of which descends a path that looks anything but safe. Total
+absence of causeway. Where must we look for it? This a swarm of guides,
+cicerones, boatmen, beggars of all descriptions, offer to show you. They
+all speak at the same time, fight, wrangle, make you deaf with their
+jabbering. Wise is he who sends them to the devil, and follows peacefully
+the pathway which goes to the extremity of the circuit, turns alone round
+the foot of the cliff on the right, and penetrates, unaccompanied, into
+the neighbouring bay. He will have the joy of a powerful, wholly personal
+sensation, unalloyed by any impure element. But alas! how is one to guess
+that? You think you are doing the right thing in giving the lead to a
+professional guide. You choose among the howling crew the less ruffianly
+face, and you deliver yourself into the hands of a cicerone. Fatal error!
+Henceforward you cease to belong to yourself. You are no longer a being
+endowed with reason and volition, with the free exercise of your rights;
+you are an article of luggage in the hands of a porter, a disarmed
+traveller in the power of a Calabrian desperado.
+
+Instead of taking you to the bay on the right, the arbiter of your
+destiny begins by laying down as a dogma that the only means of seeing
+the causeway properly is to approach it by sea. On the same occasion you
+shall visit the marine caves. Allured by that programme, you follow the
+man, and you embark with him in a boat rowed by two oarsmen, who greet
+your advent rapturously.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Five minutes later you find yourself in total darkness under the oozing
+vault of a cavern, where the fluctuations of the mountainous waves now
+let the boat sink suddenly five or six yards down, now heave it up
+against the roof, and threaten to shiver your skull to pieces. In the
+midst of that frantic jogging and tossing the guide lights up a Bengal
+flame, in order to display to better advantage the variegated tints of
+the damp walls, or, it may be, to create the said tints, if they do not
+exist. Then he lets off a pistol in your ear to awake the echoes of the
+cavern, which answer to the call with deafening unanimity.
+
+This is the “psychological moment.” The rowers, laying down their oars,
+take off their caps and hold them to you, explaining at the same time
+that gunpowder is expensive. You hasten to accede to the request, and
+soon after you find yourself, not without pleasure, in the daylight again.
+
+Not for long, however; for you are expected to do another cavern. You
+submit meekly to the programme. Again that homicidal tossing; another
+Bengal flame; a second pistol shot. This time the boatmen offer you a box
+of geological specimens. As it is, you happen to abhor geology; but how
+is one to resist people who have him in their power in a marine cave?
+
+Liberation comes in time. You breathe again. The miscreants have the face
+to mention a third cavern! But this time you rebel. “No more caverns! The
+causeway instantly!”
+
+You double a little promontory, and after two or three oar-strokes you
+land on what seems to you at first a quay with a pavement made with
+hexagon slabs.
+
+“Here you are, sir! This is the Giant’s Causeway.” Let us confess it
+candidly: the first impression is disappointment. Is it then that
+famous Causeway, that unrivalled wonder? You are ready to believe in
+a mystification. But this is only a passing impression for which the
+guides, not the Causeway, are responsible.
+
+The truth is, you must not approach it by sea if you wish to see it well.
+It is by land only that it can be understood, like a symphony which
+would lose half its charm if executed in the open air. The treason of
+the guides is so cruel that it really cries for vengeance and must be
+denounced.
+
+At last you have managed to get rid of them, and leaving the Causeway,
+you have climbed up the steep neighbouring cliffs. And now looking round,
+you are struck with stupefaction and rapture at the spectacle which
+offers itself to your eyes. That sort of quay or footpath you deemed at
+first mean or insignificant is in reality, when viewed properly, the most
+stupendous whim of nature. Imagine a formidable array of forty thousand
+columns of prismatic shape (some one gifted with patience has numbered
+them), rising tall and majestic, and pressed against each other so as
+to form a continuous, almost level pavement, which emerges from the sea
+like a quay of marble. The symmetry of that pavement is so remarkable,
+all those shafts of columns are so well clamped together, that it seems
+almost impossible to admit that this is not human work. You fancy you are
+walking on the hexagonal slabs of some Babylonian palace, whose walls the
+storm has destroyed. These paving-stones are neat and even, about one
+foot wide, and perfectly regular. Towards the middle of the quay they
+rise in a sort of swelling, which permits one to study their anatomy and
+to perceive that they are really formed by the section of as many upright
+parallel prismatic columns.
+
+There are three Causeways,—the Great, the Little, and the Middle
+Causeway. They occupy the centre of a semi-circular bay, formed by lofty
+cliffs, which let you see under a thin covering of clay and grass other
+rows of basaltic columns that show their profile, and have been called
+“the Organ.” On the right the bay is limited by a jutting rock, above
+which tower two or three needles—“the Chimneypots.” A local tradition
+relates that the Invincible Armada, driven against the cliffs by a strong
+gale, mistook the needles for the towers of Dunluce, and stormed them
+uselessly a whole day long.
+
+Beyond those basaltic piers a spring of sweet water forms the “Giant’s
+Well;” further on a rock, roughly shaped as a church desk, is called
+“the Pulpit.” All those sports of nature compose a whole truly unique
+and wonderful. Neither the Alps, nor the chain of the Andes, nor Mount
+Vesuvius, nor Etna, can give you such an impression of grandeur—are able
+to that degree to put you as it were into communion with the mysteries of
+labouring Nature.
+
+What strikes you further about those basaltic formations is that they
+are both colossal, like all works directly resulting from the great
+cosmic forces, and at the same time almost Greek by the quality and
+symmetry of their arrangements. For once the volcanos seem to have had
+the whim to work according to the canons of art. It is both human and
+super-human—verily a Giant’s Causeway!
+
+The Giant Fin M’Coul, so the legend says, was the guardian genius of
+Ireland. He had for a rival a certain Scotch Giant of mighty conceit and
+insolence, whose boast it was that none could beat him. The sea alone,
+if that Scotch braggart was to be believed, prevented his coming to let
+M’Coul feel the might of his arm, as he was afraid of getting a cold if
+he attempted to swim across the Straits. So he remained at home. M’Coul
+was riled at last by that swaggering. “Since thou art afraid to get
+wet,” he cried to his rival, “I am going to throw a causeway between
+Scotland and Ireland, and we shall see then whether thou darest use it!”
+The building of the bridge took only a few thousand years, and then the
+Scot, having no pretence left, accepted the challenge, was beaten flat,
+and obliged to eat humble pie. After which, with true Irish generosity,
+the good-natured giant gave him his daughter in marriage, and allowed him
+to come and settle near him, which the Scot accepted, nothing loth, Erin
+being an infinitely sweeter and generally superior country to his own.
+But perhaps, after all, M’Coul found no cause to rejoice over the match
+he had arranged for his daughter, as he subsequently allowed the sea to
+destroy his work so as to prevent any more Scots from settling in his
+dominions. Only some of its piles remain standing, one of which is the
+Isle of Rathlin, half-way across the Straits.
+
+The legend, as you see, is not so foolish. It answers at all points
+to geological data, and even to historic truth, viz., the invasion of
+Ulster by the Scots. But, let its origin be what it may, the fact remains
+that the Giant’s Causeway, with its neighbour, Portnoffen Bay, the most
+perfect amphitheatre in the world, with the marvellous colonnade of
+the Pleaskin, Dunluce Castle, Dunseverick, and the bridge of rope of
+Carrick-a-Rede, thrown over a chasm that measures a hundred feet above
+the waters,—constitute one of the grandest, most moving spectacles
+that the traveller may see. You can go round the world without having
+such extraordinary sights. Add to it that few of the gems of nature
+are of so easy an access. From Paris you can be on the coast of Antrim
+in twenty hours, by London, Liverpool, and Belfast. Portrush, with its
+admirable sea-shore, its electric railway, and stupendous cliffs, is
+the ideal frame for a honeymoon excursion. I had resolved to recommend
+it to tourists, and to point out the guides of the Causeway to public
+execration. Now I have done my duty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                                  BELFAST.
+
+The capital of Ulster is naturally the most flourishing town of Ireland.
+Whereas the others decrease in population and wealth, Belfast is rapidly
+thriving. From 20,000 inhabitants, which it numbered at the beginning
+of the century, it has risen in eighty years to 210,000. Another ten
+years and it will outdo Dublin itself. It is a manufacturing city as
+well as a big trading port. By an exception, unique in the island, it
+occupies a great number of workers, male and female—60,000, at the
+lowest computation—for the most part, in the weaving trade and naval
+construction. A single linen factory, that of Messrs. Mulholland, gives
+work to 29,000 pairs of hands. It is those weaving looms which utilize
+the product of the 110,000 acres of flax fields in Ulster. Out of
+nineteen ships of over 300 tons annually built in the docks of the island
+eighteen come out of the Belfast wharves. It is, in short, the maritime
+gate of Irish import and export—the insular suburb of Liverpool and
+Glasgow.
+
+As a consequence, signs of prosperity are showing themselves everywhere.
+The public walks are vast and carefully kept, the houses well built, the
+shops substantial and elegant, the educational establishments important
+and richly endowed. The town has a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon aspect. London
+fashions are scrupulously followed there. If you enter the Botanical
+Garden, maintained by voluntary contributions, you find there the
+lawn-tennis, the dresses, the ways of the metropolis. If you follow the
+road up to Cave Hill, one of the heights on the western side of Belfast,
+you embrace a vast landscape, where the flying steamers on the Lagan, the
+smoking factory-chimneys, the innumerable and opulent villas round its
+shores, all speak of wealth and prosperity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The population is about equally divided between Protestants and
+Catholics. The consequence is that party hatred and the struggle for
+local influence are far more ardent and long-lived here than in places
+where one of the two elements has an overwhelming majority. Electoral
+scuffles easily turn to bloody battles; political anniversaries—that of
+the Battle of the Boyne, above all—are a pretext for manifestations which
+often degenerate into regular battles.
+
+Belfast is the bulwark of Orangeism; and Orangeism may be described as
+Protestant and loyalist fanaticism, as opposed to Catholic and national
+fanaticism. Shankhill Road, which is frequently used as a battle-field by
+the antagonistic parties, is a long suburb which divides as a frontier
+line the Orangeist from the Irish quarters.
+
+Hardly one pay-day passes without the public-houses of that suburb being
+the theatre of some pugilistic feat accomplished by some voluntary
+representatives of the opposite camps. If the police happen to rush into
+the fray, reinforcements are called from either side; stones, cudgels,
+revolvers come to the rescue, and, on the morrow, the jails are filled
+with prisoners, and the hospitals with the dead and the wounded.
+
+Sad to relate, it is the clergy on both sides who incite them to those
+fratricidal struggles. There are certain Protestant preachers who are
+in no way behindhand in bitterness and virulent abuse with the most
+fanatic priest of Roscommon or Mayo. I have heard personally in Falls
+Road a Methodist preaching in the open air incite his audience to the
+extermination of Papists in strains which the creatures of Cromwell would
+not have disowned.
+
+In order that nothing should be missing to the parallel, Ulster has its
+Orangeist League, not unlike the National League of Ireland (save for
+the respect of legality and the general moderation of proceedings).
+That League is formed into battalions and companies which are privately
+drilled, they say, and lose no occasion to make a pageant in the streets
+with accompaniment of trumpets and drums, and whose ways remind one of
+the Salvation Army.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the whole, Ulster is the only province of Ireland where the Unionist
+forces are about equally matched with the party of Home Rule; that is
+to say, the former command a majority in Antrim, part of Down, part
+of Armagh, part of Derry and Donegal, whilst the Home Rulers have the
+stronger array of voters in the remaining parts of the province. Except
+in the above-delineated band of north-eastern territory, the result of
+the elections is always taken for granted beforehand all over the island,
+and is for—Home Rule. But this is not saying that the contest is at all
+passionate even in Belfast. I happened to be there on the occasion of the
+General Election of 1886, and was most struck by the comparative calm of
+the population pending the momentous ballot. I could not help expressing
+my surprise, over the mahogany, to my host, a wealthy mill-owner, a
+zealous Presbyterian, and an active Orangeist into the bargain, to whom
+an English friend had given me a letter of introduction.
+
+“You wonder at our calm?” he said. “The explanation is very simple. In
+Ireland the respective position of parties can hardly be much altered by
+the incidents of the struggle. Whether the Home Rulers take one seat from
+us or we gain one on them, we shall neither of us be much benefited by
+it. It is in Great Britain that the true battle is taking place. Let us
+suppose that Mr. Gladstone, instead of finding himself in a minority in
+the next Parliament, returns to the House with a majority. This majority
+can in no case be very strong, and we may still doubt that it will
+consent to follow him to the end in the path he has chosen. But let us go
+farther, and suppose Home Rule to have been voted by this majority,—let
+us suppose it to have been voted by the Upper House,—a still more
+unlikely contingency. Well, our decision is taken irrevocably. We are
+perfectly resolved not to bow to such a vote, and not to submit to Home
+Rule.”
+
+“What! shall you rebel against the constitution?”
+
+“Against the constitution, no. But if needs must be against Mr. Gladstone
+and his party. We shall appeal from the ignorant electors to the better
+informed ones. We shall protest against a decision that would in a way
+deprive us of our rights as British subjects. And in the meanwhile we
+shall refuse to acknowledge a Dublin Parliament. We shall refuse to pay
+the taxes that it may fix upon, or to obey the laws it may vote. We shall
+repeat loudly that we are Englishmen, and will not be anything else; that
+we depend on the British Parliament and recognize no other authority; and
+we shall see then if our appeal raise no echo in the United Kingdom!”
+
+“But still, the right of making laws generally entails the power of
+enforcing them. What shall you do on the day when the Dublin Parliament,
+having voted the taxes for you as for the rest of Ireland, shall send
+tax-gatherers to collect them?”
+
+“_We shall receive them with rifle-shots._”
+
+“What! are you going to tell me that you, sir, ‘worth’ half a
+million sterling, if the public voice speaks the truth, that this
+fat gentleman there, the father of those two pretty daughters, that
+this respectable doctor in gold spectacles, and all your other guests
+to-night, all peace-loving, middle-aged gentlemen, comfortable and
+with good rent-rolls, seriously entertain the idea of buckling on your
+shooting-gaiters and going to battle in the street?”
+
+“We shall go, if we are obliged, rather than submit to the Dublin
+people!... After all, have we not a right to remain English, if it suits
+us?... The very principle of Home Rule, if it is adopted, implies that we
+shall govern ourselves as it seems good to us. Well, here in Ulster, we
+are nearly two million loyalist Protestants, who cherish the pretension
+of not being given over to the three million Papists entrusted with the
+making of the Dublin Parliament,—who shall dare to deny this right to us?”
+
+“Mr. Parnell and his friends will certainly deny it as soon as their
+programme is embodied into law. They will say to you, ‘Henceforth Ireland
+shall govern herself. Let those who do not like it go away.’”
+
+“But it is precisely what we shall never do!... Our title to the Irish
+soil is as good as the Parnellites’.... Let them try to dislodge us, and
+they shall have a warm welcome, I promise you.”
+
+In the course of conversation my worthy interlocutor had let the number
+of 100,000 Orangemen, armed to the teeth and ready to defend Ulster
+against the Home Rulers, escape him. I took advantage of this to ask
+him for a few details on this organization. I learnt this: that the
+Orangeist army is by no means a fallacy, as one might imagine, and that
+it forms a sort of latent militia, with its active forces, and its
+reserve. At first, established as a kind of freemasonry, and formed in
+“circles” or “lodges,” it comprises actually four divisions, subdivided
+into twenty-two brigades: each of these brigades consists of two or
+three regiments, infantry, cavalry, and artillery; in each regiment are
+sections and companies, each composed of affiliates belonging to the same
+district. Three divisions are recruited in Ulster proper; the fourth in
+Dublin and Cork, in Wicklow and in King’s County. All those affiliates
+take the engagement to observe passive obedience and to render personal
+service on the first requisition of their supreme council; they furnish
+their own arms and recognise the authority of a commander-in-chief.
+
+Does all this have any substantial existence besides what it has on
+paper? Do the Orangemen secretly drill, as it is averred, both for the
+infantry and the cavalry manœuvres? Is it true that most of the volunteer
+companies in Ulster are exclusively Orange companies? Lastly, are those
+volunteers really ready in case of an open rupture with Dublin, to
+take up their arms and fight for their cause?... Many people think it
+doubtful. The Home Rulers especially think it pure moonshine and humbug.
+I remember one of their papers publishing the following advertisement
+last year to show in what esteem they held the Ulster army:
+
+    ROTTEN EGGS! ROTTEN EGGS! ROTTEN EGGS!
+
+    _Wanted: 100,000 rotten eggs, to be delivered in Tipperary,
+    worthily to welcome 20,000 Orangemen, armed with rifles and
+    guns, under command of the illustrious Johnson. Offers to be
+    addressed to the printing office of this paper._
+
+This certainly does not indicate a very exalted idea of the valour of the
+Orangeist forces on the part of the southern populations. But that does
+not mean that no other sugar plums shall be exchanged. In all civil wars
+such pleasantries take place, yet they do not prevent rivers of blood
+being shed. One fact alone is beyond doubt, that the Orange organization
+has immense ramifications among the regular troops, and is openly
+favoured by General Wolseley; that a large number of retired officers
+have entered it; that one would perhaps find it difficult to find one
+among the Queen’s regiments ready to fire on the loyalists, and that
+the most ardent partisans of Home Rule hesitate to grant to the Irish
+Parliament the faculty of raising an armed force.
+
+In conclusion, the last word in Ulster may very well be said by the
+Orangemen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+LEX LICINIA.
+
+
+It would have been pleasant to conclude these pages without recording
+too harsh a judgment against England, one of the two or three nations
+for ever dear to the thinker; one of those who possess a brain of her
+own, not merely a chain of nervous nodosities presiding over the organic
+functions; one of those who lead the Human Race along the hard road
+where it toilingly drags its miseries and delusions. It would have been
+pleasant at least to find some kind of extenuating circumstances for
+the attitude she maintains doggedly towards Ireland. But this is sheer
+impossibility.
+
+All that can be pleaded on behalf of England is that she is truly
+unconscious of the wrong she has been doing for centuries, and that
+she firmly believes herself to have acted within her rights. Nations,
+still more than individuals, are the slaves of their temperament, of
+their faults and their qualities. Shall we call the tiger a murderer,
+or reproach vultures because they feed on human flesh? They obey their
+instincts, and merely follow the dictates of nature. So it is with
+nations. Considered no longer in the individuals that compose it, or in
+the intellectual _élite_ that speaks in its name, but in the fifteen or
+twenty generations that have woven the woof of its annals, a people is an
+irresponsible and blind organism, fatefully obeying its impulses, be they
+noble or base.
+
+Try to talk with a Protestant landlord about the wrongs and grievances of
+Ireland. He will tell you in all good faith that the Irish alone are to
+blame. Ignorant, slothful, given to drink, sly and cunning, a nation of
+liars,—weak, in a word, and vanquished beforehand,—this is the verdict he
+pronounces on them from the height of his respectable rent-roll. If they
+have failed in the struggle for life, it is because they came into it
+badly armed and unprepared. So much the worse for them,—let them make way
+for the stronger ones! Such is the theory.
+
+There can be no doubt that it is put forward in all sincerity by a
+majority of Englishmen. But this does not prove that it rests on any
+sound foundation. It only proves once more that they are incapable of
+understanding anything about the Irish temperament.[4] This reasoning
+is merely the classic sophistry. They mistake the effect for the cause,
+and are blind to the fact that those vices they so bitterly reproach
+the Irish with, are the inevitable result of three centuries of bad
+administration and England’s own work. Wherever it has been liberated
+from the English yoke, has not, on the contrary, the Irish race displayed
+abundant energy, activity, genius? Do not the Irish hold the first rank
+in the United States, in Canada, in Southern America, in Australia,
+wherever emigration has carried them. In England even are they not at
+the head of all liberal professions, letters, the daily press, the bar,
+science? Those who have seen and closely studied that nation, crushed
+under its secular burden, ground under the heel of the conqueror, cannot
+but feel surprised at the bare fact that it survives; and this fact
+alone presupposes the most admirable gifts. One could even question
+whether, deprived of the Irish Celt element, for leaven, for chiefs, for
+counsellors, in letters, and in assemblies, the heavy Anglo-Saxon race
+could ever have founded its flourishing colonies. These prosper, one may
+say, in direct proportion to the number of Irish that come to them, even
+as the mother island slowly decays in direct proportion to the number of
+her children that are driven from her shores.
+
+Why should such slanderous explanations be sought for a fact sufficiently
+explained by history? The great misfortune of Ireland is not to be a
+nation less richly gifted than its conqueror, but only to be too small a
+nation, established in an open island. The Irish have been neither more
+vicious, nor more fanatical, nor more slothful than the English; they
+have been less numerous, less well armed; and John Bull, according to his
+deplorable custom, has taken advantage of their weakness for bullying
+them, for levying heavy toll on them, for bleeding them to death without
+mercy. He has taken their land, their freedom, their industry, and still
+wrests from them the product of their labour. And, to crown all, he dares
+to call them to account for their misery as for a crime—this misery,
+which is his own work, with all its wretched following of vices and
+degradation.
+
+Before such a sight as this involuntary indignation must be felt. One
+wishes to say to the English—
+
+“You pirates, begin first by giving back to Ireland all you have taken
+from her, and you shall see then if she be guilty of this poverty you
+consider as a crime! Let us reckon. Give her back her land, which
+your nobles occupy. Give her back the bravest of her sons, that you
+have driven to emigration. Give her back the habit of work which you
+have destroyed in her. Give her back the wealth which you prevented
+her accumulating, by forbidding her commerce and industry. Give her
+back the millions which you still exact every year upon the produce of
+her agricultural energy. Give her back the experience of freedom that
+you have so long crushed in her. Give her back the faculty of coolly
+reasoning about her beliefs, which persecution took from her. Give her
+back the right of self-government according to her genius, her manners,
+her will, that right which you declare sacred and imprescriptible for
+every nation, that you grant to your most insignificant colonies, to the
+meanest island of your Empire, and which you refuse to her, the biggest
+of all. Give her back all this, and let us see then if Ireland be all you
+say.”
+
+“Alas! from that national inheritance of which you robbed her one can
+only find now, recognise and therefore give back, the land and the money.
+The land stands always there; and money is not wanting in your coffers.
+A good impulse, then! All has to be paid for in this world—defeat and
+failure like anything else. If one lose a game, one must know how to
+pay for it gallantly. If one has, personally, or in the person of one’s
+father, committed an unjust act, one must know how to atone for it.
+Your railway companies give indemnities to the families of those they
+have crushed to death. Yourselves, as a nation, have paid in the Alabama
+affair, once convinced of being in the wrong. Here also, in Ireland,
+the hour of Justice has come. Evidence is over. Your work rises in your
+throat and sickens you. You cannot any longer doubt, and your writers
+daily repeat it, that the cause of all Ireland’s sufferings is in your
+spoliation, complicated by your administration. Well, the remedy is
+clear. Ireland herself points it out to you, and your conscience whispers
+it: you must give back her inheritance to Ireland, with the right of
+administering it according to her own lights.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+England is fond of comparing herself to Rome, though it is Carthage
+rather that she resembles. She can find in Roman history a precedent for
+the solution that is obviously suited to Ireland. The _Lex Licinia_,
+promulgated in the year 376 before the Christian era, limited to 500
+arpents, that is to say, almost exactly 500 acres, the extent of land
+that the patricians were entitled to possess in a conquered country.
+This was the law that the Gracchi wanted to bring to life again, and for
+which they paid the penalty of death. It has long been believed, and
+Mably repeated it with Montesquieu, that the question was the dividing
+of private property between all the citizens. Niebuhr and Savigny have
+re-established historical truth, and shown that the question at issue
+was merely the limitation of, or atonement for, usurpations that ruined
+the State by ruining the rural populations. It is a Licinian Law that is
+wanted in Ireland, and it is to be hoped that England will give it to her
+before long.
+
+The disease of Ireland may be defined: the feudal system or landlordism,
+complicated by absenteeism and usury, having for its consequences extreme
+penury of capital, rural pauperism, and the incapacity for struggling
+against American competition.
+
+The case of Ireland, more acute by reason of its special sphere, is only
+a striking instance of a fact that the legislators of the old world must
+necessarily take into account henceforth, the fact that the immense area
+of land newly cleared in the two Americas, in Australia, and India,
+are, four-fifths of them at least, the property of those that cultivate
+them personally. They have no other burden to bear than taxes, and are
+therefore in a condition of crushing superiority in the struggle with the
+countries in which dual ownership obtains. With an equal fruitfulness
+(and that of virgin soil is almost always greater), it is clear that
+the soil which supports only those that cultivate it, instead of two or
+three superposed classes of participants in its products, must always be
+able to give those products at a lesser cost price, and therefore will
+be able to throw them on the market at a lower rate. It is not merely
+common sense, it is the immutable course of human progress that condemns
+landlordism to disappear ere long from the face of the globe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Reduced to its elementary terms, the Irish question stands thus: 12,000
+landowners, of foreign origin, possessing almost the whole of the
+island; 1940 of these proprietors detaining two-thirds of this soil; 744
+holding the half of it. All these lands parcelled out into insufficient
+holdings, and cultivated by 720,000 native farmers, for the most part
+entirely devoid of capital. The agricultural product of the island,
+divided between two schedules on the official rolls of the income tax:
+the first one of £2,691,788 only, representing the income of the
+720,000 Irish farmers and their families; the second, of £13,192,758,
+representing the income of the 12,000 English landlords. The half at
+least of this sum leaving the island every year, and being spent outside
+it by the _absentee_ landlords. Not one farthing of this lordly income
+coming back to the soil, either directly or indirectly, in the shape of
+manure, buildings, or agricultural improvements; nor to industry, which
+is nil. General pauperism, resulting from the feudal organization that
+stops development of wealth in its germ, and more and more unfits the
+country for a struggle with the more normally organized nations. Unpaid
+rents, landlords and tenants eaten up by usurers, a permanent conflict of
+interests shown at each term by three or four thousand evictions, without
+mentioning the still more numerous cases in which eviction is not carried
+out because it would prove useless. A universal bankruptcy; a chronic
+state of social war; a growing contempt of the law; agrarian violence;
+the suspension of public liberties; a gradual return of the soil and
+its inhabitants to the savage condition; a constant augmentation in the
+area of uncultivated land; a regular emigration of the adult and able
+population; a quarter of the remaining inhabitants living at the expense
+of the ratepayers, either on outdoor relief or in the workhouses;
+financial grievances, added to historical and political grievances;
+hunger sharpening the rancour of the vanquished race; its hatred of the
+conqueror shown periodically by the return to the House of Commons of
+85 members whose only mandate is to obstruct the regular working of the
+British machinery. Such is the epitome of the results obtained in Ireland
+by the English after an occupation of seven centuries. Never did history
+register such a scandalous failure.
+
+Vainly do Oxford and Cambridge, in order to explain or palliate it,
+resort to all their scholastic sophistry. Vainly it is endeavoured
+to discover its cause in some inherent vice of the Irish race, in
+their ignorance, their religion, their laziness, and even a sort of
+“melancholy” imparted to them, it is alleged, by the neighbourhood of the
+ocean (_sic_).
+
+Ireland is not the only country edged by the Atlantic: neither is it
+the saddest. Her children are not in any marked degree more illiterate
+now-a-days than those of England, and if they were so for a long
+time—when they had to slip off to unlawful and clandestine “hedge
+schools” if they wanted to learn their alphabet—we know too well who was
+responsible for such an outrage on civilization. The Celts of Erin are
+Roman Catholics, it is true, but after all there are on our planet a
+certain number of nations who have not died yet of this religion. As for
+their political capacity, they vindicate it every day by the wisdom and
+firmness they display in sustaining the struggle against the oppressor.
+
+One must bow to evidence and do justice to Ireland. And for this there
+are not two formulas. There is only one, in two articles:
+
+1.—Expropriation of the landlords with a fair indemnity, to the profit of
+the Irish tenantry.
+
+2.—The extension to Ireland of Home Rule, which is the invariable rule
+of all British possessions, near or far, guaranteed of course by all the
+precautions judged necessary for the security and unity of the United
+Kingdom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is the glory of Mr. Gladstone to have understood and to have had the
+moral courage to declare that there is no other solution. And as we
+think of this, is it not a strong argument in favour of the superior
+justice of agrarian revendications in Ireland, that it should have
+imposed itself to the reason of that illustrious politician, the most
+English assuredly of all the statesmen that have succeeded each other
+in office since the time of William Pitt? Those common reasoners who
+rebel against a necessary restitution, should think of this. Here is an
+old man seventy-eight years of age, who, ever since he left Eton, had no
+other care, no other occupation than the affairs of his country; the most
+energetic, the most active and brilliant of leaders, the most experienced
+in finance; of all the orators in the British Parliament the most lucid
+and pungent; a refined scholar, an accomplished Hellenist, the possessor
+of an hereditary fortune that frees him from domestic cares, the son
+of a British merchant-prince, and the father of an Anglican clergyman,
+himself Protestant to the core, and fond of officiating in the place of
+his son in the church of Hawarden; a man whose predominant quality is
+his earnestness, and whose supreme rule of conduct is a well-regulated
+love of his country. This statesman, who has been ten times in office
+since the year, already so far from us, when he entered it under the
+leadership of Robert Peel, and who knows everything about the affairs
+of his country at home and abroad, has made his life-study of the Irish
+question. Twenty times in forty years has he attempted to grapple with
+it, to unravel it, to solve it. All the remedial measures that have
+been applied to the wounds of Ireland since 1860 had him for their
+initiator. He was the first to realize the odious wrong of an established
+Anglican Church in that Catholic country. To him is due the political
+and intellectual enfranchisement of the Irish; it was he who gave them
+national schools and who put them (by dint of what Titanic struggles!)
+on the same electoral footing as the other British subjects. It was he
+who promoted, defended, and succeeded in passing all the Land Bills meant
+to soften the wretched fate of the Irish serf. Lastly, one must not
+forget it, he never hesitated, when he thought it necessary, to claim
+laws of repression against agrarian violence. Mr. Gladstone is assuredly
+no anarchist. He is neither a madman nor is he in his dotage. Never was
+his genius clearer, his word more eloquent. Add to this that this man,
+enamoured of power like all those who have passed their life in it, knew
+that he was courting a certain fall when he proposed his solution of the
+Irish question, and could entertain no doubt of the schism that would
+take place in his party on the subject....
+
+And yet his conscience could oppose no resistance to the blinding light
+of facts. He clearly saw that palliatives were insufficient, and that
+there was an urgent need to take the evil at its root. As a conclusion to
+half a century spent in studying the case, and to twenty local attempts
+at healing it, after two or three thousand nights spent in the House
+of Commons in discussing the question under all its aspects, he comes
+forward to say: “_Justice to Ireland!_ we must give back to her what was
+taken from her—her inheritance and her freedom!”
+
+Can one suppose for a moment that Mr. Gladstone came to such a conclusion
+without the most decisive and powerful motives? Can anyone feel himself
+strong enough to hold opinions better founded than his on this matter? We
+must congratulate his adversaries on their happy self-confidence; but we
+cannot do so on their moral sense or on their modesty.
+
+
+I.—MR. GLADSTONE’S SCHEME.
+
+Mr. Gladstone’s scheme was framed in two organic Bills. By the first the
+British Government undertook to expropriate the landlords, and to redeem
+the Irish lands on a basis of twenty times the actual rent, to be paid
+in English Consols, at par. These lands would then be sold to the Irish
+tenants at a discount of 20 per cent., payable in forty-nine years by
+instalments equal to about half the former rent. The second Bill provided
+for the local government of Ireland, while it reserved for Great Britain
+the general control of the revenue and the right of keeping military
+forces in the island. Thanks to a coalition of a fraction of the Liberal
+party with the Tories, this programme fell to the ground at the General
+Election of 1886, and was set aside by Parliament.
+
+It may be that the loss is not much to be regretted. Very likely Mr.
+Gladstone’s scheme was, in his own thoughts, only meant as a trial, what
+we call a _ballon d’essai_. Excellent in its twofold principle, his
+solution had the very serious drawback of substituting, in the place
+of the 12,000 present landlords of Ireland—a single one, the State.
+It looked as if it solved all difficulties, and perhaps it would have
+caused fresh complications. In fact, it amounted to requiring that the
+unavoidable liquidation should be paid—by which people? By those who
+could least afford it—the Irish tenants. Whence might the poor devils
+have taken the money for their annuities? And even admitting that they
+could have found it, can one refuse to see that their culture, so
+wretched already, would have become still poorer? Has ever man chosen, to
+buy an estate, the moment when he is a confirmed bankrupt?
+
+But it would have been to them a nett gain of one-half on their actual
+rent, it will be objected.
+
+A nett gain of one-half _on nothing_, then, as they cannot afford to pay
+any rent just now, unless they deduct it from their capital (supposing
+that they have any), and there is no reason to suppose that things will
+be better for the next fifty years.
+
+Besides, if you admit that by paying for forty-nine years half the actual
+rent as judicially fixed, the Irish tenants ought to have the ownership
+of the land, why, in the name of all that is fair, refuse to see that
+they have paid it more than ten times already, in the shape of excessive
+rent?
+
+“They were free not to pay it and go out, with their goods and chattels,”
+says my old friend, the Economist. I answer: No. They were not, for a
+thousand reasons, and had to obey the will of the vampires, as long as it
+was strictly possible.
+
+Either the tenants, having become proprietors in name but not in reality
+(or, as it were, proprietors of a shadow of land mortgaged for half a
+century), would have paid their annuity,—and in that case they were as
+poor as before; or they would not have paid it, and then the Liberal
+party would have heard a fine din!
+
+In fact the Gladstone plan rested on an entirely chimerical hope: that of
+settling the Irish question without its costing a penny to the British
+Exchequer. To entertain such a hope is clearly to prove that one sees
+indeed the evil, but without descrying its deeper cause.
+
+This cause lies in the IMPOSSIBILITY to the modern tenants, in the face
+of the competition of better organized countries, and generally under the
+present conditions of the world’s agriculture, TO PAY ANY RENT WHATEVER.
+
+The Irish tenant is a bankrupt, because he has paid, for too long a time
+already, the rent that he could not afford. The land is impoverished for
+the very same reason. Now, to sell it to a penniless buyer is absurd
+enough; but to pretend to believe that the penniless buyer shall render
+it prosperous and make it yield riches, is perhaps more absurd still.
+
+Such illusions ought to be discarded. If England really wants to settle
+the Irish question, as her honour and her true interest both command her
+to do, she must manfully accept the idea of a pecuniary sacrifice and a
+real restitution. It would be useless to cheat herself into acceptance of
+half-measures. She had much better weigh the real cost of an imperious
+duty, pay it, and square matters once for all.
+
+Not only must she give, _gratuitously give away_ as a present, the land
+to the Irish tenant, but she must provide him, at the lowest rate of
+interest, with the capital necessary for putting that land in working
+order.
+
+This consummation might perhaps be attained at a lesser cost than would
+at first sight appear possible,—let us name a figure,—at a cost of one
+milliard francs, or £40,000,000. But this milliard should be forthcoming
+in cash, presented by the British nation to the sister isle as a free
+gift, a premium paid for peace, or rather a lump sum of conscience-money,
+such as we see sometimes advertised in the columns of the _Times_.
+
+
+II.—AN OUTSIDER’S SUGGESTION.
+
+The ideal solution for the innumerable difficulties of the Irish question
+would evidently be the _tabula rasa_,—the hypothesis that would transform
+Ireland into a newly-discovered island of virgin soil, barren and
+uninhabited, where England had just planted her flag, and out of which
+she wished to get the fullest value in the shortest possible time.
+
+What would her policy be in such a case? She would begin by surveying
+the whole extent of her new acquisition, by parcelling it out in lots
+carefully, then by calling in colonists and capital.
+
+To the immigrants that came without any other wealth than their stalwart
+arms, she would make gratuitous concessions of small lots of land,
+accompanied by seeds, agricultural implements, and an exemption from
+taxes during a limited period of time. To those who came with capital,
+she would give more important plots of ground, either demanding a premium
+of occupation more or less high, shortening the period of exemption for
+taxes, or again elevating the rate of those taxes. Most likely, too,
+she would favour the establishment of an Agricultural Bank that would
+advance to the new colonists such moneys as they desired, according to
+their wants, their chances of success, and the individual securities they
+presented.
+
+In reality it cannot be supposed that in Ireland the past, the vested
+interests and the settled habits of centuries, can be erased. But at
+least one can try to come near to this ideal; and besides, this island
+presents, over the barren and uncultivated one, the advantage of having
+a ready-made population; the country, its climate, its soil, are known;
+there is a large proportion of able workmen, valuable house property,
+no inconsiderable provision in agricultural implements, not to mention
+several thousand head of horse, oxen, sheep, and pigs ready imported.
+
+The advantages of this over a virgin island are, therefore, very clear;
+they are visibly stronger than the drawbacks, and success is certain if
+measures of the kind we allude to are vigorously carried out.
+
+England, then, must begin by buying out, not only the properties of the
+landlords, but also, and this is only justice, the interest that a large
+number of farmers possess in those lands under the name of tenant-right.
+The area of cultivated land in Ireland (exclusive of towns) is, in round
+numbers, fifteen million acres. Before all, the basis of indemnity
+granted to the landlords must be fixed.
+
+Mr. Gladstone proposed the basis of twenty times the actual rent, as
+judicially fixed. This seems an exorbitant price, for various reasons.
+The first reason is that no leased land under the sun normally yields
+to its owner, at present, anything like the interest supposed by such a
+valuation. The second reason is that the landlords’ property in Ireland
+has actually no real value whatever; it could not find a purchaser,
+probably, at the price of three times the nominal rent, were it put up
+for sale (let anyone who commands capital, and who looks for a secure
+investment, consider whether he would ever dream of buying Irish land,
+just now, at any price). The third reason is that the true responsibility
+of the Irish disease rests with those very landlords who never did
+their duty by the country. Granted that their faults (one would rather
+say crimes) ought to be covered by the benefit of prescription, and
+that a fair indemnity ought to be given them or their creditors if
+they are dispossessed by measures of public sanitation, it would look
+ridiculous,—indecent to go to the length of rewarding them for their
+moral and economical failure by a disproportionate indemnity taken out of
+the pocket of the British taxpayer.
+
+When one hears, therefore, Mr. Gladstone speak of giving the landlords
+twenty times the nominal rent of their land, one is reduced to admit
+that his idea was to bribe them into acquiescence to his scheme by an
+exorbitant premium. The Irish landlords did not understand their true
+interest; they did not see that they should have thrown into the scale
+the weight of their votes. Very likely they were wrong. They may say
+good-bye to the Gladstone indemnity; they will never see it again. For
+the longer they wait to settle this question, the more must farm-rent
+dwindle away and indemnity shrink to nothingness.
+
+It seems that, at present, in fixing it on the basis of twelve times the
+judicial rent, the British nation would show great liberality. It would
+be equivalent to saying that Irish land, as an investment, is worth
+one-third the capital in English Consols that bears the same interest,
+which is certainly paying it an unexpected compliment.
+
+As for the tenant-right of the farmer, which it is equally indispensable
+to redeem if all is to be cleared and there are to be no more conflicts
+of interests, let us admit that it is worth, on the whole, three or
+four times the judicial rent. Very likely again this is excessive. But
+this matters little practically, as will be shown further on. We find
+thus, for the aggregate interest vested in the Irish soil and subject to
+indemnity, a common rate of sixteen times the judicial rent.
+
+The average of this judicial rent is ten shillings per acre. For fifteen
+millions of cultivated acres to be redeemed, this would therefore give a
+total sum of 120 millions sterling to be paid. Thanks to this indemnity
+of expropriation, the English nation would become absolutely free to
+dispose of these lands as she pleased.
+
+But where are those 120 million pounds to be found? and they must be
+found over and above the capital necessary for the working of these
+lands, since we admitted in principle that it would be necessary to find
+it in most cases. This is the way:
+
+As a first outlay, we have admitted that the British Exchequer would put
+down £40,000,000 sterling in the shape of Consols at par. That capital
+represents an interest of about one million sterling and a quarter, or
+an annual tax of about ninepence per head. This certainly would not be
+a high price to pay for such a precious advantage as the suppression of
+the Irish plague. There is no decade in which a great nation does not pay
+more for some unlucky and useless venture—the Afghanistan campaign, as a
+case in point.
+
+To these 40 millions sterling, sacrificed by the wealthiest of European
+nations to its internal peace, shall be added the resources proper to
+Ireland. These are no despicable ones. Ireland, taxed much lower than
+Great Britain, nevertheless contributes no less than eight millions
+sterling, in round numbers, to the general revenue of the United Kingdom.
+
+Of these £8,000,000 about £4,286,519 go to the keeping of the army
+of occupation and the administration of finances; in other words, to
+the services meant to remain “imperial” in the hypothesis of Home
+Rule. About £3,744,462 are paid for the services that would, in this
+hypothesis, come into the province of the Irish Parliament, viz., public
+works, law courts, tax-gathering, local administration, registrations,
+land-surveying, lunatic asylums, schools, prisons, and the like. It seems
+that a new and poor country, as we suppose Ireland to turn out, ought
+not to pay for such services as liberally as does wealthy England, and
+that a reduction of a third on these heads, or £1,250,000, is perfectly
+feasible. That is about the income for £40,000,000 in English Consols.
+Here, then, we have sufficient provision for a second milliard in the
+shape of _interest_.
+
+The interest for the third milliard would easily be raised in the shape
+of additional taxes, if Irish agriculture were freed from any other
+charges. That would only increase the annual taxation by about a sixth
+part, and would not even then put it on a level with the incidence
+of English taxation. Ireland, on her side, might well do this slight
+sacrifice to the cause of social and political peace.
+
+There, then, we have the £120,000,000 wanted (in the shape of a special
+loan, emitted and guaranteed by England), which are found—a third by each
+of the high contracting parties; a third by a reduction of 33 per cent.
+on all services that would have become purely Irish.
+
+How ought this magnificent lump of money to be used to make it bear
+all it can? By lodging the whole in the coffers of a special _Bank of
+Liquidation_, that would be entrusted with all the operation. This bank,
+strong in her guaranteed capital of £120,000,000, invested, if necessary,
+with the power of emitting special paper-money, begins by paying all the
+lands on the basis fixed upon by law. This implies only, at the most, an
+outlay of £90,000,000. These lands the bank divides into three classes.
+
+_Class A._—The fee simple of the first class, composed of the holdings
+under £10 a year, is simply transferred to their actual holders (as would
+be done in an infant colony in order to attract inhabitants), subject to
+the single proviso that these lands shall be cultivated after a given
+system, and according to certain rules, and taken back by the public
+domain, if this condition be not observed.
+
+Let us remark, in passing, that this free gift will, in the majority of
+cases, be only the legalization of a _de facto_ gratuitous occupation,
+most of these small tenants having, for the last three or four years,
+stopped paying any rent to the landlords.
+
+Where, in that case, will be their advantage? it might be asked. They
+will be no richer for having become landowners in point of law, as they
+are now in fact.
+
+This is a material error, as shown by the example of our peasant
+proprietors in France. One of the chief reasons that prevent the small
+Irish tenant endeavouring to get all he can out of his land is precisely
+the rooted wish in his mind not to work for the benefit of the landlord.
+From the day that he shall be certain of keeping the entire fruit of
+his labour to himself, he will emulate the French Celt; he will submit
+himself to the hardest privations and the most unremitting toil; he will
+abundantly manure his land, ceaselessly tend it, turn it again and again;
+he will make it yield all it can. Anyhow, if he does not, he will have
+only himself to blame for it.
+
+_Class B._—The second class of land, composed of holdings from 15 to 20
+acres and over, is sold to its actual holders for the price of their
+tenant right, if they be willing to accept this privilege. In the
+contrary case, the tenant right is paid down to them at the rate fixed
+upon by experts, and the fee simple is put up for sale by auction. The
+ultimate proprietors of these domains of average extent receive, by the
+hands of the local agents for the _Bank of Liquidation_, every facility
+to form themselves into unions for the collective culture of their land.
+They remain, however, free to cultivate it themselves and in their own
+fashion.
+
+_Class C._—The third portion of the soil, formed by the choicest land,
+shall be put aside in each district to form a great domain where
+experiments shall be tried and examples given in agriculture—a domain
+managed by official agronomists, and cultivated by associations of
+agricultural labourers, salaried partly in kind on the product of the
+land, partly by participation in the nett profits. Not only shall there
+be introduced on those great domains, together with the finest breeds of
+cattle, the most perfect and scientific modes of culture, but, besides,
+public demonstrations and lectures shall be made, agricultural pupils
+shall be formed, and seeds of first quality shall be given at cost
+price. These model-farms alone remain the property of the State, and are
+inalienable.
+
+Thus would be constituted at once, together with a class of peasant
+proprietors, the middle and great cultures which are equally wanting in
+Ireland.
+
+Special laws abolish entail in the island, submit to expropriation (for
+25 years at least) any owner non-resident on his property, and forbid,
+under pain of heavy fines, to hold or give on lease any parcel of land
+under 12 acres.
+
+Other laws, imitated from the _Homestead Exemption_ of the United States,
+protect the peasant against debt. The _Liquidation Bank_, after having
+set the new system in motion, secures its working by advancing at the
+lowest rate of interest the capital wanted by the small and middling
+landowners, which must before long kill usury and drive it from the
+country. This bank is, in every sense, the organ and focus of a fiduciary
+circulation that is amply sufficient, on this broad basis, for all the
+financial wants of agricultural industry.
+
+Thus, the whole revenue of the land remaining in the country, circulating
+freely, and incessantly undergoing its normal transformations, health
+returns by degrees to the social body. There is no longer any question
+of “unemployed” labourers; on the contrary, it is rather hands that are
+wanted on all those flourishing estates which have day-work to offer, not
+only to the owners of small holdings, but even to the unemployed of Great
+Britain.
+
+And so England begins rapidly, though indirectly, to recover her advance,
+owing to the quick increase in the returns of the Income Tax; in perhaps
+four or five years, that increase covers the interest of her £40,000,000.
+It comes to say that her real outlay turns out to be only a tenth or
+a twelfth part of that advance. Emigration suddenly receives a check.
+Nay, a new, liberated, prosperous Ireland sees her children flock back
+to her shores from abroad, enriched and reconciled, bringing home their
+capital with their experience. For the Irishman ever keeps in his heart
+unimpaired the love of his mother country, and will return to her as soon
+as he can.
+
+Let us carry our hypothesis further.
+
+At the same time when she gave up the responsibilities of the
+local government of Ireland, England has transmitted them to the
+representatives of the Irish nation.
+
+Are those representatives to form immediately a single Parliament sitting
+at Dublin, or are they for the present to be divided into four provincial
+assemblies for Leinster, Munster, Connaught, and Ulster? This question
+is of small importance, at least at the beginning. Let the first step
+be taken; an united Ireland will only be a matter of time. The best
+way in such cases is to follow the expressed wish of the populations;
+and supposing that Ulster, or at least a part of Ulster, vote for the
+continuation of the present _régime_, why should not those territories be
+excepted from the new arrangements, and either be left _in statu quo_ or
+joined politically to Scotland, of which they are a geological as well
+as an ethnical dependency? But I cannot help thinking that if the above
+system was submitted to the Antrim tenants themselves, they would not be
+backward to see its advantages.
+
+On the whole question the last word should remain to the voter. If a
+majority of the electors of Scottish Ireland spoke in favour of Home
+Rule, what could be objected to them? That they will eventually be
+oppressed by the Catholics? No great fear of that, I should think; and
+besides, efficient measures could be taken, guarantees found against
+that danger; but no such caution will be really wanted. The influence of
+the Catholic clergy in Ireland has for its principal basis the political
+state of the country. The day when difficulties are cleared up, national
+education will soon have put an end to the reign of clericalism in
+Ireland as elsewhere.
+
+One cannot help feeling firmly convinced that Mr. Gladstone’s formula,
+“Home Rule and Abolition of Landlordism,” taken in its most general
+meaning, and applied with a spirit both prudent and liberal, will suffice
+to heal in a few years the disease of Ireland. Public wealth will rise by
+degrees, feelings of hatred will die away, the rapidity of the cure will
+take the world by surprise. Has not already the adoption of the Irish
+programme by a large number of Englishmen belonging to the Liberal party
+been sufficient to bring about a partial reconciliation between the two
+countries? We have seen Irish orators come and preach the Liberal gospel
+in England, and reciprocally, English orators go and bring the word
+of peace to Ireland. That alone is an augury of success, a symptom of
+healing and pacification.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Will it be objected that this is a Utopian picture, an unpractical
+scheme, or simply one of difficult execution? As for me, the more I look
+into the matter, the more settled grows my belief that three things only
+are requisite for substituting so much good for so much evil, viz.,
+money, steadiness of purpose and conscience. Nobody will say that the
+English have ever shown a lack of steadiness in the pursuit of success;
+money they have in abundance; will they be wanting in conscience? This is
+scarcely to be feared. Conscientiousness of a more or less enlightened
+kind is a characteristic of the Englishman, and it is his highest praise.
+Men are constantly to be met in England who rule their conduct on the
+principles of an inward law. It is true that, by a natural consequence,
+many are good only in name, and their display of conscience is only a
+sham; but as our great moralist has said, “Hypocrisy is a homage which
+vice renders to virtue,” and wherever vice is obliged to wear a mask,
+virtue is bound to conquer.
+
+A great transformation, the instruments of which are the press, the
+steam-engine, and the telegraph, has been slowly developing throughout
+the world during the last few years: a new and powerful influence has
+been born that might be named “obligatory justice through publicity.”
+Tennyson has spoken of “the fierce light that beats upon a throne;”
+thrones now-a-days scarcely exist except in name; the will of the people
+has taken their place. But let Governments call themselves republics or
+monarchies, they are equally submitted to that pitiless ray of light
+which is the ever-wakeful eye of the press, the uncompromising publicity
+which ignores either rank or station. How many examples of it have we
+not seen at home! To quote a recent one, take that wretched Schnæbelé
+affair. Only fifteen years ago there would have been found in it reasons
+ten times sufficient to bring about a war for those who wanted it. Not
+so in our days. In less than twenty-four hours the press had brought to
+light the most minute details of the affair, exposed the naked truth to
+the eyes of the world, photographed the place where the incident had
+occurred, submitted, in short, to the great public judge all the evidence
+of the case. One had to tender apologies under pain of being called the
+aggressor, and the whole affair evaporated into smoke.
+
+Such results are perhaps the clearest gain that modern progress has given
+us. If our age has a superiority over the preceding ages, it is assuredly
+to have succeeded in making injustice more difficult to practise. More
+and more henceforward will great national crimes become impossible. Mr.
+Gladstone’s chief merit will be to have understood it before anybody
+in England, and to have been emphatically the man of his time. In spite
+of friends and adversaries he has dared to utter the truth, and say:
+“We must give back to Ireland what we have taken from her. The good of
+England imperiously demands that sacrifice, for we are entering an age
+when the honour of a great nation should not even be suspected.”
+
+He is actually the only statesman in Europe who follows a policy of
+principle; the only one seeking the triumph of his opinions by the
+sole help of reason. All the others, from the most famous to the most
+obscure or passing politician, are only jobbers. Disraeli had too much
+of the mountebank about him to have been able to secure the respect
+of posterity. Gortschakoff was only a courtier of the old school;
+Cavour a clever lawyer; Thiers a dwarf, in a moral and political, as
+in a physical, sense. Bismarck profits by a state of affairs which
+he did little or nothing to create, and at the most is the belated
+representative in our times of fossil feudalism. Gladstone alone is a
+truly modern statesman, and therefore is destined to be set by history
+above all his contemporaries, if only he succeeds in carrying out
+his great enterprise; for the more we go the more nations shall be
+restricted to politics of principle, both because all other systems are
+exploded, and because the diffusion of learning will be for the future an
+almost insuperable obstacle to petty or brutal diplomatic conspiracies.
+
+Great Britain, it is earnestly to be hoped, will consent to follow
+her great leader in the way he has shown to her. She is offered the
+most splendid opportunity of doing what no nation has achieved as
+yet,—atoning, of her own free will, for centuries of injustice, and
+trying one of the noblest social experiments that can ever be attempted.
+It would be the beginning of a new era in the history of human societies,
+and pure glory for those who initiated it. Not only could such results
+be attained at little cost, but the most obvious, the most pressing
+interest of England invites her to the enterprise. Let her make haste.
+After having affirmed for half a century the sovereignty of peoples, and
+their right to govern themselves according to their will, she cannot give
+herself the lie at home. After having protested against Bomba and the
+Bulgarian atrocities, she cannot in her own dominions remain beneath “the
+unspeakable Turk.” After having assumed before the world the attitude of
+a systematic foe to slave-trade and all kinds of oppression or cruelty,
+after having carried it even to maudlin sensitiveness, as in the case
+of pigeon-shooting, “birds’ corpses on women’s hats,” and the like, she
+cannot decently carry on the slow destruction of a sister race through
+starvation. She cannot and she will not do it, for it would be branding
+herself for ever as Queen of Humbug, Empress of Sham.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+[1] Absenteeism, in its present form, seems to date only from Grattan’s
+Parliament, but in some shape or another it may be said to date from the
+British invasion of Ireland, and to result from the very nature of an
+insular kingdom transferred wholesale to the nobility of a neighbouring
+state.
+
+[2] A later instance. On August 30th, 1887, two men armed with guns and
+wearing masks entered the house of Mr. R. Blennerhasset, at Kells, near
+Cahirciveen; they went upstairs to Mrs. Blennerhasset’s room and demanded
+money, which they got to the amount of about £2.
+
+[3] My guide was quite right. In a statistical table of trials between
+July, 1885, and July, 1886, for the County Kerry, I find the following
+items: _maiming cattle_, 9; _injury to person_, 7; _murders_, 3; _firing
+at persons_, 8; _firing into houses_, 15; _threatening letters_, 125;
+_intimidation_, 36; _malicious injury_, 22; _arson_, 19; _assaults_, 22.
+The above figures, it should be observed, only relate to outrages brought
+home to their authors; there can be no doubt that a much larger number of
+agrarian outrages remain unpunished.
+
+[4] See Appendix, p. 331.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+_EXTRACTS FROM SOME LETTERS ADDRESSED WITHIN THE LAST TWO YEARS TO AN
+IRISH LANDLORD BY HIS TENANTS._
+
+
+The _Times_ has published, on October 10, 1887, an exceedingly
+interesting batch of letters selected from some three hundred addressed
+within the last two years to an Irish landowner by his tenants. As the
+editor of those letters wrote most appropriately, there is perhaps no
+means whereby truer insight can be obtained into the ways and habits of
+the Irish peasantry than by studying the letters written by the people
+themselves. Typically enough, however, the same editor only saw in those
+letters how “unbusiness-like and illogical is the Irish tenant,” and
+“the various reasons that an Irishman gives for not paying his rent. One
+is unable to pay because his uncle is confined to bed, and his daughter
+suffering from a sore eye; another because a relative has died; a third
+because his brother-in-law has brought an action against him for money
+lent, and he has had to pay; one because his family is small, and another
+because it is large; another—and this is the most common excuse—because
+he has been unable to sell his stock; another because his wife has a sore
+hand; another because of the death of a cow; another because the weather
+is severe and there is a sheriff’s bailiff obstructing him from making up
+the rent; another because it was God’s will to take all the means he had;
+another because of the agitation.”
+
+Reasons which, it may be seen, appear to the English eye entirely
+ridiculous and unbusiness-like.
+
+What strikes a Frenchman most, on the other hand, in the letters, is
+their touching simplicity, the appalling instability of a budget that
+the least domestic mishap is enough to upset, and the fruitless attempt
+of the poor man to penetrate into the real cause of the burden under
+which he is panting; in the comments, the utter incapacity of the
+British landlord to understand his Irish tenantry even when he is a good
+landlord, which is obviously (perhaps too obviously) the case here.
+
+The letters are thus characteristic in more than one sense. Whatever the
+angle under which they are read, they undoubtedly remain first-class
+documentary evidence.
+
+                                                  _8th Jany., 1887._
+
+    To * * * *, Esq.
+
+    SIR,—I received a letter yesterday from Mr. G⸺ who demanded the
+    payment of £31 0_s._ 6_d._, rent due up to 29 Sept. 1886. I was
+    in with Mr. G⸺ this day & he told me that he had no further
+    instructions than what was contained in his note. Now my Uncle
+    has been confined through illness to his bed since last June,
+    & my daughter has been under medical treatment since last
+    September for a sore eye which proceeded from a bad tooth, & I
+    even had to pay the Dentist ten shillings for extracting it, as
+    the Doctor could not do so. I trust you will kindly take into
+    consideration my position and stay proceedings, & I will send
+    you £18 next Saturday & the remainder about the 13th February,
+    the day after fair of K⸺.
+
+                          Your obedt. Servant
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following is also from the same man:—
+
+    SIR,—I would have sent you the remainder of the rent on the day
+    mentioned but the old man died & I had extra expenses but if
+    you would kindly wait until about the 25th of March I will be
+    able to let you have it.
+
+                         Your obedient servant
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                  _9th March, 1887._
+
+    SIR,—I have yours of the 4th inst. & am very sorry to say
+    I have met a reverse & cant pay up to my word. I took a
+    Brother-in-law to live with me—he was a tenant of your
+    property who lost the power of his limbs & obliged to get into
+    Hospital, his daughter my niece who I reared went to America
+    she died there after saving a good deal of money her father
+    after much trouble got £200 of it & after being 17 years in the
+    Hospital he had to leave it having means to live & he requested
+    to come to live with me which I allowed, & being maintained as
+    one of my family for 12 months up to Wedy. last he now sued me
+    for £50 which he lent me while here. He is at other lodgings
+    & subject to evil advice but he fell out with me while here &
+    since has been most ungrateful. I done my best to get this law
+    put back but failed & had to pay the money I had made to pay
+    my rent. I am much grieved being obliged to ask to the middle
+    of next month to pay it. I wont have any fairs sooner to sell
+    my stores but I will surly have it about the 20th April if not
+    sooner. You may be sure only what happened me I would have paid
+    up to my promise.
+
+                             Your obt servt
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                       _10th March._
+
+    MR. ⸺. After all I built & what I ow in shops & from the loss
+    of sheep I am not abell to pay but if you forgive me this half
+    year’s rent you will save me from destruction, and if so I
+    will keep it a profound sacred. I promis I will never again
+    ask anything of you & will be punctual in future, my family
+    is small & my health not good to go travell. I brought a dale
+    of money in to this farm 5 years ago and it is all gon now. I
+    apeal to your kind genariss hart to do this for me & may the
+    almitey god give your self & your children the Kingdom of hevan.
+
+                       I remain most respectfully
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                      _January 9th._
+
+    DEAR SIR,—In reply to youre noat I am verrey sorrey that I can
+    do nothing at the presant it is out of my power I have nothing
+    to sell unlss I sell what I have to ate my self and seven
+    littel children. I had but one calf to sell to pay you and it
+    was the will of provedence to take him, he died. I have but one
+    cow & I had hur in the fair of N⸺ and all I could get for her
+    was four pounds, so if you presede with the law as yore lawyer
+    sayes he will I must sell hur to pay you
+
+                          Your humbel tennant
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                        _August 31._
+
+    SIR, — I promised the rent after the fair of K⸺ in June. I had
+    three calves in it & covld not sell. I took three months grass
+    for them to see could I do better. I intend to have them in D⸺
+    on the 12th & if I sell them I will send the rent after that. I
+    would have wrote only expecting to have the rent before this.
+    My wife took a sore hand & is in hospital this two months & is
+    in it still so its poor times with me.
+
+                              Your tennant
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                       _11th March._
+
+    SIR,—In reply to your letter dated 5th inst. I beg to ask your
+    honour the favour of a few days grace. I hope to be able to
+    meet your demands by the time you call to collect your rents in
+    April. In the meantime I might have an opportunity of setting
+    the fields in Con acre.
+
+    Being a lone widow with two helpless children one of them of
+    weak intellect I hope your honour will kindly consider my case.
+
+    I am Sir your Honour’s most obedient & humble servant
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                       _January 19._
+
+    SIR,—I received your letter, it is not in my power to make
+    money for you now as I had to borrow some of your last rent
+    which is not all paid yeat on account of the death of my fine
+    cow that died. I will use my best endavours against May.
+
+                             Your ob. servt
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                     _September 26._
+
+    DEAR SIR,—I make apail to you at the present time that I am
+    endeavring at this time to make up the rent. Now I would have
+    it sooner but the weather for the harvest was savere, sore I
+    could not help it Der Sir, there is a man who is a Sheirf’s
+    baliff is going to injure me & to obstruct me in making up
+    the rent for you which I would hope soon to have value for.
+    Dear Sir I apail to you that you will not allow but Dis allow
+    injuring a poor tenant who is endeavring to make up the rent.
+    I would say one thing that I believe he is at least without
+    maners. I apail to you that you will not allow to obstruct
+    making out rent as quck as posible. one thing I wonder much
+    that you would permit him or such as him any place. I will
+    refrain on that presnt. I will ask this request off Mr. ⸺ as
+    soon as I can get the rent will he be kind enough to take it
+    from me. I will ask the favour of you to give return as it may
+    plaise you. Excuse my hand riting.
+
+                              Yours truly
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                       _August 2nd._
+
+    MR. ⸺. I received Mr. G⸺’s letter on the 31st of July. I am
+    sorry I am not able to pay at preasant. I am willing to pay my
+    rent but it was God’s will to take all the mains I had intended
+    to meet you. I hope you will be so kind to give time untell
+    October, as it is so hard to make money
+
+                           Your obt. servent
+
+                                                            PAT. F⸺.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                      _Wensdy 19th._
+
+    * * * * Esq. SIR,—I received your letter & will send you the
+    rent as soon as I can. There was no price for cattle in the
+    fairs that is past, in fact the could not be sold atol. I
+    expect to make the rent in the fair of K⸺. I could always pay
+    my rent but this cursed agetation has destroyed our country but
+    I hope the worst of it is over
+
+                     I remain Your Obedient Servant
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following letters also relate to the payment of rent:—
+
+                                                       _October 10._
+
+    SIR,—I did not receive your letter ontill this Day. It has
+    given me a great surprise I hope your Honour will not put me to
+    cost I have a little best to sell, and after the fair in C⸺, a
+    thursday I will send it to yo and I hop yo will not put me to
+    cost. I hop your honour will feel for me
+
+                                 truly
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                      _October 4th._
+
+    MR. ⸺. SIR,—I was again disappointed in the fair at N⸺ in
+    selling my cattle and I must ask time of you till I get sale
+    for if possible I will sell them in the fair of C⸺ do not once
+    imagine that I am not enclined to pay but I never was offered
+    a price for my cattle. I was speaking to some of the tenants
+    and the would wish to see you in N⸺ the rent day as the want to
+    know what you want for your land
+
+                          Yours respectfully,
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    SIR,—I was very sory to see your hon goeing back without the
+    rient.
+
+    I was willing to pay that day but I could not. I send you my
+    half-year’s rent £13 10, so I hope your hon will luck after
+    turf for me there is no ous in asking it of Mr. F⸺ There is to
+    banks idle on the tients part on F⸺ and Mrs. N⸺ has 30 banks
+    set this year so I count it very unfare if we doent get one The
+    old men was geoing to kill us when we did not pay your hon the
+    day you ware in N⸺ We ware all sory we did not settle that day
+
+                     I remane your obdient servant
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+    rember the tturf.
+
+The following is in the same handwriting as the last, but signed by
+another tenant:—
+
+    DEAR SIR,—You spoke of referring to Mr. F⸺ for turf, we did not
+    like to intrupeed (query, interrupt) yur hon at that time. Well
+    sir there is too banks of your own on the tients part an Mrs.
+    N⸺ is giveing turf to men on the five different estates Every
+    one that wonted turf got it but two tients no one els wonts it
+    besids, so I hope your hon will luck to us. I am willing to pay
+    my way if I get a chance. N⸺ D⸺ has turf this 40 years No one
+    wants it but P⸺ F⸺ & M⸺ T⸺. We would pay your hon ondly for the
+    rest
+
+                    Believe me Your obedient servent
+
+                                                              M⸺ T⸺.
+
+    do what your hon can about the turf
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                 _November 23rd 86._
+
+    HONOURED SIR,—I got both your letters & replidd to the first
+    & directed it to D⸺ in which I asked for a little time to pay
+    the rent I had some young cattle in the fair of K⸺ and did not
+    sell them. It will greatly oblige me if your Honour will give
+    me time untill the Christmas fair of F⸺ as I have some pigs to
+    sell that will meet this rent & that would leave me the cattle
+    to meet the May rent as the young cattle I have is not fit to
+    sell at preasant.
+
+    I feel sorry to have to trespass on your Honour, but the times
+    are bad and it is hard to make money, but I hope we will soon
+    have better times under the present Government, and that all
+    those mob laws will soon be at an end.
+
+                     I remain your humble servant,
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It shows a curious state of things when a would-be tenant thinks it
+necessary to assure the landlord that he knows the farm belongs to him:—
+
+                                                   _April 12, 1887._
+
+    To Mr. * * * *
+
+    SIR,—Just a few lines to let your honour know that my father
+    is very delicate for the past tow months and not expected to
+    recover. I would like to let your honour know that it was mee
+    that minded your Property for the last ten years. I know that
+    this place always belongs to you and that the emprovements cost
+    no one But your self a shilling. I would like to know how mutch
+    my father is in your dept.
+
+                 I remain your honors faiteful servant,
+
+                                                           JAMES T⸺.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following contain offers of cattle in lieu of rent, a form of payment
+which Irish tenants are always anxious to adopt if they can, for though
+they declare there will be no difference about the price, they always
+expect the landlord to give them considerably more than the market value:—
+
+                                                       _January 18._
+
+    DEAR SIR,—I am not able to answer you with money at present. I
+    have the heifer that I told you of and if you wish I will send
+    her to T⸺ for you, and I expect your honor and I wont differ.
+
+                         Your obedient servent,
+
+                                                        PATRICK F⸺Y.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                         _Jany 5th._
+
+    SIR,—I have 5 nice bullocks to sell if you would buy them. I
+    have no other way of paying the rent.
+
+                                                              F⸺ D⸺.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                     _October 14th._
+
+    DEAR SIR and pleas your honour,—I hope in you that you wont
+    buy all the cattle you want in S⸺ town. Patrick D⸺ has a lot
+    greasing with the father-in-law at C⸺; he intends to meet your
+    honour with them. Pleas, Sir, leave room for three Bullocks, I
+    have them greasing with you above the road all the summer.
+
+                         Your faithful servant,
+
+                                                          MICHL. T⸺.
+
+    I am setten some of my children and it has left me bare in
+    monney.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                        _Novr 12th._
+
+    DEAR SIR,—I will give three two-year-old Bullicks good owns for
+    next May rent. I will leave the vallue to your honour when you
+    come down before Christamas. I was offered £15 pounds for the
+    three last June; £5 each from Mr. ⸺ the Miller of C⸺. I never
+    took them out since. I have no father for them. Your honour has
+    plenty of straw to give them, the will make good Bullocks on
+    it. Your honour must get them les than vallue
+
+                     Your truly faithfull servent,
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+
+THE END.
+
+BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69993 ***
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-<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ireland&#039;s disease, by Philippe Daryl</p>

-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and

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-</div>

-

-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Ireland&#039;s disease</p>

-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Philippe Daryl</p>

-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February 9, 2023 [eBook #69993]</p>

-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>

-  <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: deaurider and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</p>

-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRELAND&#039;S DISEASE ***</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_i"></a>[i]</span></p>

-

-<p class="center larger">IRELAND’S DISEASE.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ii"></a>[ii]</span></p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iii"></a>[iii]</span></p>

-

-<p class="titlepage larger">IRELAND’S DISEASE</p>

-

-<p class="titlepage">NOTES AND IMPRESSIONS<br>

-<span class="smaller">BY</span><br>

-PHILIPPE DARYL</p>

-

-<p class="titlepage"><i>THE AUTHOR’S ENGLISH VERSION</i></p>

-

-<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">LONDON</span><br>

-GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS<br>

-<span class="smaller">BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL<br>

-GLASGOW AND NEW YORK</span><br>

-1888</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iv"></a>[iv]</span></p>

-

-<p class="titlepage smaller">LONDON<br>

-BRADBURY, AGNEW, &amp; CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_v"></a>[v]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak">PREFACE.</h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>These pages were first published in the

-shape of letters addressed from Ireland to

-<i>Le Temps</i>, during the summer months of 1886

-and 1887.</p>

-

-<p>A few extracts from those letters having found

-their way to the columns of the leading British

-papers, they became the occasion of somewhat

-premature, and, it seemed to the author, somewhat

-unfair conclusions, as to their general

-purport and bearing.</p>

-

-<p>A fiery correspondent of a London evening

-paper, in particular, who boldly signed

-“J. J. M.” for his name, went so far as to

-denounce the author as “an ally of the <i>Times</i>,

-in the congenial task of vilifying the Irish<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vi"></a>[vi]</span>

-people by grotesque and ridiculous caricatures,”

-which charge was then summarily met

-as follows:—</p>

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="center"><i>To the Editor of the <span class="smcap">Pall Mall Gazette</span>.</i></p>

-

-<p class="noindent"><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—</p>

-

-<p>Let me hope, for the sake of “J. J. M.’s” mental condition,

-that he never set eyes upon my Irish sketches in

-<i>Le Temps</i>, about which he volunteers an opinion. If, however,

-he has actually seen my prose in the flesh, and he still

-clings to his hobby that I am hostile to the Irish cause or

-unsympathetic with the Irish race, why then I can only urge

-upon his friends the advisability of a strait waistcoat, a

-brace of mad doctors, and an early berth in a lunatic asylum.

-I never heard in my life of a sadder case of raving delusion.</p>

-

-<p class="center">Yours obediently,</p>

-

-<p class="right">PHILIPPE DARYL.</p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Paris</span>, <i>September 18, 1887</i>.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>Thus ended the controversy. There was no

-reply.</p>

-

-<p>Allowance should be made, of course, for the

-natural sensitiveness of Irishmen on everything

-that relates to their noble and unhappy country.

-But, what! Do they entertain, for one moment,

-the idea that everything is right and normal in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vii"></a>[vii]</span>

-it? In that case there can be no cause of

-complaint for them, and things ought to remain

-as they are. All right-minded people will

-understand, on the contrary, that the redress

-of Irish wrongs can only come out of a sincere

-and assiduous exposure of the real state of

-affairs, which is not healthy but pathological,

-and, as such, manifests itself by peculiar symptoms.</p>

-

-<p>However it may be, a natural though perhaps

-morbid desire of submitting the case to

-the English-reading public was the consequence

-of those exceedingly brief and abortive

-polemics.</p>

-

-<p>The Author was already engaged in the not

-over-congenial task of putting his own French

-into English, or what he hoped might do duty as

-such, when Messrs. George Routledge &amp; Sons,

-the London publishers of his <i>Public Life

-in England</i>, kindly proposed to introduce

-<i>Ireland’s Disease</i> to British society. The offer<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_viii"></a>[viii]</span>

-was heartily accepted, and so it came to pass

-that the English version is to appear in book

-form on the same day as the French one.</p>

-

-<p>The special conditions of the case made it, of

-course, a duty to the author to strictly retain

-in his text every line that he had written

-down in the first instance, however little palatable

-it might prove to some English readers

-and fatal to his own literary or other prospects

-in England. That should be his excuse for

-sticking desperately to words which, like

-Tauchnitz editions, were not originally intended

-for circulation in Great Britain.</p>

-

-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Ph. D.</span></p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Paris</span>, <i>Nov. 10th, 1887</i>.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ix"></a>[ix]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS.</h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<table>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdpg smaller">PAGE</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>INTRODUCTION</td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#INTRODUCTION">1</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER I.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td><span class="smcap">First Sensations</span></td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">5</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER II.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td><span class="smcap">Dublin Life</span></td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">17</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER III.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td><span class="smcap">The Poor of Dublin</span></td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">31</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER IV.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td><span class="smcap">The Emerald Isle</span></td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">46</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER V.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td><span class="smcap">The Race</span></td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">60</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VI.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td><span class="smcap">Historical Grievances</span></td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">76</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VII.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td><span class="smcap">Killarney</span></td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">96</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VIII.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td><span class="smcap">Through Kerry on Horseback</span></td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">109</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_x"></a>[x]</span></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER IX.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td><span class="smcap">A Kerry Farmer’s Budget</span></td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">139</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER X.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td><span class="smcap">Rural Physiology</span></td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">157</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XI.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td><span class="smcap">Emigration</span></td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">177</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XII.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td><span class="smcap">The League</span></td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">197</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIII.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td><span class="smcap">The Clergy</span></td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">215</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIV.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td><span class="smcap">Fort Saunders</span></td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">234</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XV.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td><span class="smcap">The Plan of Campaign</span></td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">256</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVI.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td><span class="smcap">Scottish Ireland</span></td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">271</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVII.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td><span class="smcap">Lex Licinia</span></td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">296</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="in1">&#160;&#160;I.—The Gladstone Scheme</td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Page_309">309</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="in1">II.—An Outsider’s Suggestion</td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Page_313">313</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr class="mt">

-    <td>APPENDIX</td>

-    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX">331</a></td>

-  </tr>

-</table>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1"></a>[1]</span></p>

-

-<h1>IRELAND’S DISEASE.</h1>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION.</h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>It is indeed a chronic and constitutional disease

-that Ireland is labouring under. Twice within the

-last fifteen months it has been my fortune to visit the

-Sister Isle; first in the summer of 1886, at the apparently

-decisive hour when the die of her destiny was

-being cast in the ballot-box, and her children seemed

-on the point of starting upon a new life; then again,

-twelve months after, in the summer of 1887, when I

-found her a prey to the very same local disorders and

-to the same general anxiety that I had previously

-observed.</p>

-

-<p>Last year it looked as if the solution was nigh,

-if Mr. Gladstone’s spirited eloquence was going to

-carry the English nation along with it. The seasons,

-however, have followed one another in due course,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2"></a>[2]</span>

-bringing with them the usual run of unpaid rent,

-eviction, and reciprocal violence; a new Crimes Act

-has been added to the long record of similar measures

-that the British Parliament has scored against Ireland

-in eighty-seven years of so-called Union; a few cabins

-have disappeared, have been unroofed or burnt down

-by the arm of the bailiff; a few more skulls have been

-broken; some hundred thousand more wretched beings

-have embarked in emigrant ships for the United States

-or Queensland; some more hunger-stricken women

-and children have swollen the list of obscure victims

-that green Erin annually pays to the Anglo-Saxon

-Minotaur. But nothing essential is altered. Things

-are in the same places and passions at the same pitch.

-The two nations are facing each other with defiance

-in their eyes, threats in their mouths, revolvers or

-dynamite in hand. The problem has not advanced

-one step. Social war is still there, filling the hearts,

-paralysing the action, poisoning the springs of life.

-It may be read in the alarmed looks of mothers, in the

-sullen faces of men; it is lurking behind every

-hedge.</p>

-

-<p>Before such an unparalleled case of a whole race’s

-physiological misery, how could one help being seized

-with an ardent curiosity mingled with pity? Who

-would not wish to plunge to the bottom of the matter,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>[3]</span>

-to make out, if possible, the secret of the evil, to

-deduce from it a lesson, and, may be, a general law?</p>

-

-<p>That want I have felt most deeply, and I have tried

-to gratify it by personal observation; looking at things

-through my own spectacles, without animus or hatred,

-passion or prejudice, as they came under my gaze;

-noting down what seemed to be characteristic; above

-all, avoiding like poison the contact of the professional

-politician on either side: then drawing my own conclusion.</p>

-

-<p>I need hardly add that for the intelligence of what

-I saw, I have always availed myself of the printed

-sources of information, such as the standard works on

-Irish history, Black’s excellent <i>Guide to Ireland</i>, the

-Parliamentary Reports, the national literature, and

-last but not least the graphic accounts of current

-events published by the English and native press. Of

-the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, especially, I must state that I

-have found its files a mine of precise, well digested,

-and thoroughly reliable information on the subject.</p>

-

-<p>That my studies are above correction, I will not

-venture to hope. That they are in every case

-founded on facts, and, to the best of my belief,

-accurate, I earnestly vouch. As far as possible, I

-have made a point of giving the names of the persons

-mentioned. When it might have been inconvenient to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a>[4]</span>

-them, however, or when delicacy forbade such a liberty,

-I have either suppressed the name or substituted a

-fictitious one. It should be understood that what I

-wanted, as a total stranger in the country, and what

-my French readers wanted, were not personal but

-typical instances.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>[5]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.<br>

-<span class="smaller">FIRST SENSATIONS.</span></h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Dublin.</span></p>

-

-<p>Hardly have you set foot on the quay at Kingstown,

-than you feel on an altogether different ground

-from England. Between Dover and Calais the contrast

-is not more striking. Kingstown is a pretty

-little place, whose harbour is used by the steamers

-from Holyhead, and whither Dublin shopkeepers resort

-in summer. Half a century back, it was only a

-fishermen’s village of the most rudimentary description.

-But George IV., late Prince Regent, having

-done that promontory the honour to embark there

-when leaving Ireland, the place became the fashion.

-In memory of the glorious event, the citizens of Dublin

-raised on that spot a pyramid which rests on four

-cannon balls, and bears on its top the royal crown

-with the names of all the engineers, architects,

-captains, and harbour officials who had anything

-to do with the business. Villas soon sprang up round<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>[6]</span>

-it, and from that time Kingstown went on thriving.

-A splendid pier bent round upon itself like a forearm

-on its humerus, makes it the safest harbour in

-Ireland, and the railway puts it in communication

-with Dublin in twenty minutes. It is the Portici of a

-bay that could vie with the Bay of Naples, did it boast

-its Vesuvius and sun, and did not the shoals which

-form its bottom get often bare and dry at low tide.</p>

-

-<p>You land then at Kingstown, early in the morning

-after a four hours’ crossing, having started the evening

-before by the express from Euston Station. And immediately

-you feel that you are no longer in England.

-The language is the same, no doubt, though talked

-with a peculiar accent or <i>brogue</i>. The custom-house

-officers are English; so are the policemen and redcoats

-who air themselves on the quay; but the general

-type is no longer English, and the manners are still less

-so. Loud talk, violent gesticulation, jokes and laughter

-everywhere; brown hair, sparkling dark eyes: you

-could imagine you are at Bordeaux or at Nantes.</p>

-

-<p>The guard who asks for your ticket, the very train

-you get in, have something peculiar, undefinable,

-thoroughly un-English. The old lame newspaper-man

-who hands you <i>The Irish Times</i> or the <i>Freeman’s

-Journal</i> at the carriage-door, indulges witticisms

-while giving you back your change, which not one<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>[7]</span>

-of Mr. Smith’s well-conducted lads ever permits

-himself along a British line. As for the passengers

-they are more un-English than anything else. This

-lady with the olive complexion and brown hair, may

-be termed an English subject; but for all that she

-has not probably one globule of Anglo-Saxon blood

-in her veins. That gentleman in the grey suit has

-evidently an English tailor, but the flesh-and-bone

-lining of his coat is of an altogether different

-make. As for the little man in black who is

-curling himself cosily in the corner opposite to you, not

-only is he unmistakeably a Roman Catholic priest, but

-you must positively hear him talk, to give up the idea

-that he is a Breton just out of the Saint Brieux

-Seminary. High cheek-bones, bilious complexion,

-small tobacco-coloured eyes, lank hair, nothing is

-missing from the likeness.</p>

-

-<p>Here is Dublin. The train takes us to the very

-heart of the town, and there stops between a pretty

-public garden and the banks of the Liffey. The weather

-is cool and clear. Inside the station cabs and cars

-are waiting for travellers and their luggage. <i>Waiting</i>,

-not contending eagerly for their patronage as they do

-in London, where any possible customer is quickly

-surrounded by half-a-dozen rival drivers. “<i>Hansom,

-sir?... Hansom, sir?</i>” The Dublin cabman is more<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>[8]</span>

-indolent. He keeps dozing on his seat or leisurely

-gossiping with his mates. “Why trouble oneself

-for nothing? The traveller knows how to call for a

-cab, I suppose!” So speaks the whole attitude of

-these philosophers in the Billycock hats.</p>

-

-<p>This, however, will not prevent their being as unscrupulous

-as any of their fellow-drivers in any part

-of the globe, when it comes to settling the fare.

-“How much?” “Five bob.” On verification you

-find that two shillings is all the rogue is entitled to.

-You give the two shillings, he pockets them and

-rattles away laughing. The job was a failure; no

-more.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Dublin is a big city, thickly populated, crossed by

-wide thoroughfares, provided with fine public gardens

-and splendid parks, which are here called <i>greens</i>, and

-adorned with an extraordinary number of statues.

-Its traffic and industry are important: visibly, this is a

-capital. More than a capital; the focus of a nationality.

-Everything in the streets proclaims it: sign-boards,

-monuments, countenances, manners. Those marble

-statues you see at every step are the effigies of the

-patriots who fought for the rights of Ireland. That

-palace with the noble colonnade, in the heart and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span>

-finest part of the town, is the very building where

-the Irish Parliament, abolished in 1800 by the Act

-of Union, held its assemblies. Now-a-days the Bank

-directors meet in the room where once met the representatives

-of the nation. But they seem to have been

-careful not to change anything in the general arrangement,

-in case it was wanted to-morrow for some

-<i>Assemblée Constituante</i>. You may enter it: the door is

-open for every one. On the right you see what was

-the House of Lords, a rectangular hall with an open

-ceiling, historic hangings, and the statue of some

-royalties. On the left, the House of Commons. Here,

-mahogany counters stand in place of the members

-benches, and where sounded once the clash of

-argument, you hear now the tinkling of gold coins.</p>

-

-<p>Let old times come again; let Westminster give

-back to the Sister-Isle the autonomy she mourns,

-and, as a stage machinery, the Bank will vanish

-before the Parliament. It will be an affair of a

-night’s work for the upholsterers.</p>

-

-<p>In front of that building, which is the City Hall, it

-is not the British flag (though perhaps the law should

-insist upon it) that is hanging aloft. It is the green flag

-of Erin with the harp and the three towers. Everywhere

-there are calls on the national feeling. <i>Hibernian

-House</i>, <i>Hibernian Hotel</i>, <i>Erin Stores</i>, <i>Irish<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>[10]</span>

-poplins</i>, <i>Irish gloves</i>, <i>Irish whisky</i>. Above all Irish

-whisky! one could not get comfortably drunk with

-Scotch whisky, that is evident.</p>

-

-<p>If you visit a museum or picture-gallery you will

-find Art exiled in the background, and patriotism

-shining to the fore. Bating a fine Giorgione, a

-valuable Potter, a Van Steen of large size and extraordinary

-quality, a rare Cornelius Béga and a few

-others, the collection is not worth much, and would

-not fetch its million francs at the <i>Hotel des Ventes</i>, in

-the Rue Drouot. It is only a pretext for a national

-collection of portraits where are represented all the

-glories of Ireland, from Jonathan Swift, Laurence

-Sterne, Steele, Sheridan, Edmund Burke to Moore,

-Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the Duke of Wellington,

-and above all, O’Connell, “the liberator;” and Henry

-Grattan, esquire, “true representative of the people,

-father of liberty, author of the emancipation.”</p>

-

-<p>Those things take hold of you as soon as you

-arrive at Dublin. Like a flash of lightning they

-bring light upon many things about <i>Home Rule</i>

-which had remained hazy to your continental heedlessness.

-A nation with such memories kept up with

-such jealous care must know what it wants, and will

-have it in the end. Such signs are the manifestation

-of a national soul, of a distinct personality in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>[11]</span>

-great human family. When all, from alderman to

-beggar, have one sole aim, they are bound to

-reach it sooner or later. Here, if the Town Hall has

-its green flag, the urchin in the street has his sugarplum,

-shaped into the effigy of Parnell or Gladstone.

-Never, since the Venice and the Lombardy of 1859,

-was there such a passionate outburst of national

-feeling.</p>

-

-<p>In the central part of the town, several streets are

-really fine with their rows of large houses, their gorgeous

-shops and numberless statues. The women are

-generally good-looking; well built, well gloved, well

-shod. They move gracefully, and with a vivacity which

-is quite southern. They look gentle and modest,

-and dress almost as well as Frenchwomen, of

-whom they have the quiet grace. The youngest

-ones wear their brown hair floating behind, and

-that hair, fine in the extreme, made more supple

-by the moistness of an insular climate, is crossed

-now and then by a most lovely glimmer of golden

-light.</p>

-

-<p>Most of the men have acquired the significant

-habit of carrying large knotty cudgels in place of

-walking sticks. Other signs show a state of latent

-crisis, a sort of momentary truce between classes: for

-instance, the abundance of personal weapons, pneumatic<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>[12]</span>

-rifles, pocket revolvers, &amp;c., which are to be

-seen in the armourers’ shop windows.</p>

-

-<p>But what gives the principal streets of Dublin their

-peculiar character is the perpetual presence at every

-hour of the day of long rows of loiterers, which

-only one word could describe, and that is <i>lazzaroni</i>.

-As in Naples they stop there by hundreds; some

-in a sitting posture, or stretched at full length on

-the bare stone, others standing with their backs to

-the wall, all staring vaguely in front of them, doing

-nothing, hardly saying more, mesmerised by a sort of

-passive contemplation, and absorbed in the dull

-voluptuousness of inaction.</p>

-

-<p>What do they live upon? When do they eat?

-Where do they sleep? Mystery. They probably

-accept now and then some occasional job which may

-bring them a sixpence. At such times they disappear

-and are mixed among the laborious population;

-you don’t notice them. But their normal

-function is to be idle, to hem as a human fringe the

-public monuments.</p>

-

-<p>Some places they seem to affect particularly;

-Nelson’s Pillar amongst others. Whenever you pass

-it you are sure to see four rows of loungers seated on

-the pedestal, with legs dangling, pressed against each

-other like sardines.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>[13]</span></p>

-

-<p>Numerous tramcars, light and quick, cross Dublin

-in all directions. Five or six railway stations are the

-heads of so many iron lines radiating fan-wise over

-Ireland. All bear their national stamp; but what

-possesses that character in the highest degree is that

-airy vehicle called a jaunting-car.</p>

-

-<p>Imagine a pleasure car where the seats, instead of

-being perpendicular to the shafts, are parallel with

-them, disposed back to back and perched on

-two very high wheels. You climb to your place

-under difficulties; then the driver seated sideways

-like you (unless the number of travellers obliges him

-to assume the rational position), lashes his horse,

-which plunges straightway into a mad career.</p>

-

-<p>This style of locomotion rather startles you at

-first, not only on account of its novelty, but

-also by reason of the indifferent equilibrium you

-are able to maintain. Jostled over the pavement,

-threatened every moment to see yourself projected

-into space, at a tangent, you involuntarily grasp

-the nickel handle which is there for that purpose,

-just as a tyro horseman instinctively clutches the

-mane of his steed. But one gets used in time to

-the Irish car, and even comes to like it. First, it goes

-at breakneck speed, which is not without its charm;

-then you have no time to be bored, considering that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>[14]</span>

-the care of preserving your neck gives you plenty of

-occupation; lastly, you have the satisfaction of facing

-constantly the shop windows and foot paths against

-which you are likely to be tossed at any moment.

-Those are serious advantages, which other countries’

-cabs do not offer. To be candid, they are unaccompanied

-by other merits.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>In that equipage you go to the Phœnix Park, the

-Dublin “Bois de Boulogne.” It is a wide timbered

-expanse of some two thousand acres, full of tame

-deer, where all that is young in the place may be seen

-flirting, cricketing, playing all sorts of games, but

-above all, bicycling. Bicycles seem to be the ruling

-passion of the Dublin youth. I have seen more

-than a hundred at a time in a single lane near the

-Wellington Obelisk. By the way, this was the

-very avenue where Lord Frederick Cavendish and

-Mr. Burke were murdered five years ago by the

-<i>Invincibles</i>. A cross marks the place where the two

-corpses were discovered.</p>

-

-<p>The Castle, which the two English officials had

-the imprudence to leave that day, is the Lord-Lieutenant’s

-official residence. It has not the picturesque

-majesty of the castles of Edinburgh or Stirling.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>[15]</span>

-Instead of rising proudly on some cloud-ascending

-rock and lording over the town, it seems to hide “its

-diminished head” under a little hillock in the central

-quarters. You must literally stumble over its walls

-to become aware of their existence; and you understand

-then why the name of <i>Dublin Castle</i> is for

-the Irish synonymous with despotism and oppression.</p>

-

-<p>This is no Government office of the ordinary type,

-the dwelling of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland is a

-regular stronghold, encircled with ramparts, bristling

-with towers, shut up with portcullis, draw-bridge and

-iron bars. In the inner Castle yard are situated the

-apartments of the pro-consul, the lodgings of his

-dependants of all degrees, the offices where decrees

-are engrossed, the pigeon-holes where they are heaped,

-all forming a sort of separate city entrenched within

-its fortifications.</p>

-

-<p>A very gem is the Royal Chapel, with its marvellous

-oak wainscoting, which twenty generations of carvers

-have concurred to elaborate. The reception-rooms,

-the hall of the Order of St. Patrick, where <i>drawing-rooms</i>

-are held, form the kernel of the fortress.</p>

-

-<p>The barracks of the English soldiers and of those

-giant constables whom you see about the town are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>[16]</span>

-also fortified with walls, and form a line of detached

-forts round the central stronghold.</p>

-

-<p>England is encamped at Dublin, with loaded guns

-and levelled rifles, even as she is encamped at

-Gibraltar, in Egypt, and in India.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>[17]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.<br>

-<span class="smaller">DUBLIN LIFE.</span></h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>As there is little aristocracy in Dublin there are few

-lordly dwellings besides the Vice-regal castle. This

-is very striking in this country of lords and serfs.

-The masters of the land, mostly of English origin,

-do not care at all to live in the capital of Ireland;

-all the time that they do not spend on their property

-they prefer to beguile away in London, Paris, Naples

-or elsewhere. Few of their tradesmen are Irish;

-and the greatest part of the rents they raise on their

-lands merely accumulate in the banks of Dublin

-to be afterwards spent on the foreign markets.

-Thence this consequence, which explains many

-things:—The clearest of the nett product of the

-country’s one industry—agricultural industry,—is

-poured outside it every year, without having circulated

-in Ireland, without having strengthened the local

-commerce or even invigorated agriculture itself, without

-having contributed to the well-being of a single<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>[18]</span>

-Irishman. Let us set down this nett product, the

-Irish aggregate rental, at its lowest estimate,

-£8,000,000 per annum, a sum much inferior to

-the nominal one, and admit that one-half of it is

-sent abroad to absentee landlords. There we have

-£4,000,000 leaving the island every year without

-conferring the slightest benefit to any one of its

-inhabitants. In ten years’ time that represents

-40 millions sterling; in fifty years, 200 millions

-sterling, or five milliards francs, that Ireland has, so

-to speak, thrown into the sea, for that is to her the

-precise equivalent of such a continuous deperdition

-of capital.... And this has lasted for three

-centuries!...<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> What country would not be worn

-threadbare by such usage? What nation could resist

-it? Which individual, submitting to such periodical

-blood-lettings, would not succumb to anæmia?</p>

-

-<p>This anæmia betrays itself, even in Dublin, by many

-a symptom. For example, it is not long before one

-discovers that the finest shops, in the seven or eight

-principal streets, are a mere empty pretence; great

-windows displaying all the wares possessed by the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>[19]</span>

-merchant and beyond which the stock is <i>nil</i>. Money

-is so scarce that if you want to exchange a five

-pound note, in nine cases out of ten you do not get

-your right amount of change in specie. They give

-you back a quantity of small Irish banknotes, plus

-the change in half-crowns and shillings, and that not

-without having caused you to wait a long time while

-the important transaction was entered in and brought

-to a termination, and then only by the united energies

-of half the neighbourhood.</p>

-

-<p>There is not in all the city one tolerable <i>restaurant</i>

-or <i>café</i> where a stranger can read the papers or obtain

-a decent beefsteak. The two or three pretentious

-taverns that aspire to fulfil that purpose are horrible

-dens, where, without the civilized accompaniment of

-napkins, they give you slices of cow, tough as leather,

-which are charged for at Bignon’s prices.</p>

-

-<p>Necessity compels you to fall back on the hotels,

-where they pitilessly give you the same fare night

-after night,—salmon and roast beef. The first day

-this can be borne, for the Shannon salmon deserves

-its reputation; the second day one begins to find it

-indigestible; the third, one would like to see all the

-salmon of Ireland choking the head waiter. The

-fourth, one takes the train rather than remain any

-longer exposed to this implacable fare.... Vain<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>[20]</span>

-hope! it pursues you everywhere: on the shores of

-Kingstown or those of Blackrock, in the pretty town

-of Bray, or at the furthermost end of Wicklow’s lakes.

-It is impossible to travel in Ireland without taking a

-dislike to salmon that will last the term of your

-natural life.</p>

-

-<p>And yet the fresh herrings of the Bay of Dublin

-are eating fit for the gods, and the good wives sell

-them in the streets at three a penny. Do not

-hope to taste them, however, unless you do your own

-marketing, and insist, with conditional threats, upon

-having your herrings brought up for breakfast. You

-will have a fight to sustain; you will run the risk

-of appearing in the eyes of the waiter as a man of no

-breeding, one who does not shrink from exhibiting

-his morbid tastes to the public view. But your pains

-and your humiliations will be rewarded by such

-a dish as is not often to be met with in this vale

-of tears and bad cooking.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Dublin possesses three theatres, not including the

-future Opera-House, for which a site has already

-been chosen. The Gaiety, the most elegant of the

-three, gives musical burlesques that are rather entertaining,

-though they come straight from London.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>[21]</span>

-But they are acted by Irishmen and Irishwomen, with

-all the dash, the brilliancy, the wit of the Celt. The

-comic actor of the company neglects nothing to

-amuse his audience; extravagant costumes, insane

-grimaces, jigs danced in brogues, impromptu verses on

-the events of the day,—he has any number of tricks

-at his command. That gentleman would score a

-sure success at the <i>Concert des Ambassadeurs</i>, with

-the ditty that actually delights the hearts of the

-Dublin public—“<i>That’s all</i>;” it is about as stupid

-as the general literature of the Champs Elysées.

-The accomplished and fascinating <i>corps de ballet</i>

-exhibit tights of such indiscretion as the Lord Chamberlain

-would assuredly not tolerate in London. Is

-it that his jurisdiction does not extend to the sister

-isle; or does the thing which would imperil the virtue

-of club-loungers in Pall Mall appear to him without

-danger for those of Kildare Street? The problem

-would be worth studying. However that be, a

-boxfull of young officers in H. B. M.’s service seem

-greatly exhilarated by the display of ankles of

-the ladies, unless it be by the port wine of the

-mess.</p>

-

-<p>These officers, in plain clothes as they are always

-when out of duty, are nevertheless easy to recognise

-and seem about the only <i>swells</i> visible in the boxes.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>[22]</span>

-The rest of the audience manifestly belong to the

-commercial and working classes.</p>

-

-<p>For it is a fact that there is in Dublin no more

-upper middle class than there is aristocracy. The

-upper middle class seem not to exist, or to be only

-represented by tradespeople, the liberal professions,

-or the students. But these young men being, after

-the excellent English custom, lodged at the University,

-do not count in the pleasure-seeking public.

-In other words, they spend the evening in their

-rooms drinking toddy, instead of spending it, as with

-us, drinking small-beer in <i>brasseries</i>.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>The University of Dublin, or rather, to speak more

-exactly, Trinity College, rises opposite Grattan’s

-Parliament, in the very heart of the town. It

-is an agglomeration of buildings of sufficiently

-good style, separated by spacious courts, and surrounded

-by about thirty acres of ground planted

-with ancient trees. Technical museums, lecture-rooms,

-refectories, rooms for the Fellows and the

-pupils are all to be found there. There is a Section

-of Theology, one for Letters and Science, a Musical

-Section, a School of Medicine, a Law School, an

-Engineering School. Students and Masters all wear,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>[23]</span>

-as in Oxford or Cambridge, the stuff gown and the

-kind of black <i>Schapska</i>, which is the University head-covering

-throughout the United Kingdom.</p>

-

-<p>Thinking of this, why is it we see so many Eastern

-head-dresses in the school of the west? With us

-the cap of the professors is the same that Russian

-popes wear. The Anglo-Saxons take theirs from

-Polish Lancers. That is an anomaly in the history

-of dress which ought to attract the meditations of

-academies.</p>

-

-<p>Another anomaly, peculiar to Trinity College, is

-that the porters (most polite and benevolent of men)

-are provided with black velvet jockey caps, like the

-Yeomen of the Queen. They take the visitors through

-the museums of the place, and show them the plaster

-cast taken from the dead face of Swift, the harp of

-Brian Boru, and other relics of a more or less authentic

-character. The Dining Hall is ornamented with

-full-length portraits of the local celebrities. The

-library, one of the finest in the world, is proud of

-possessing, among many other riches, the manuscript

-(in the Erse tongue), of the “Seven times fifty

-Stories,” which the bards of the Second Order of

-Druids used to recite, on ancient feast days, before the

-assembled kings and chieftains. Those venerable tales

-are subdivided into Destructions, Massacres, Battles,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>[24]</span>

-Invasions, Sieges, Pillages, Raids of Cattle, Rapes of

-Women, Loves, Marriages, Exiles, Navigations,

-Marches, Voyages, Grottoes, Visions, Pomps, and

-Tragedies. This shows that “documentary literature”

-was not invented yesterday: all the primitive life of

-Celtic Ireland is told there.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>The undergraduates at Trinity College do not

-seem, as a rule, like those of Oxford and Cambridge,

-to belong to the privileged or unoccupied classes.

-They are embryo doctors, professors, or engineers,

-who work with all their might to gain one of the

-numerous scholarships given by competition at the

-University. These competitions evidently excite an

-ardent emulation. I chanced to pass before the

-Examination Hall at the moment when the Rector at

-the top of the steps proclaimed the name of the candidate

-who had just won the Fellowship. Five hundred

-students at least, grouped at the gate, had been

-waiting for an hour to hear it, and saluted it with frantic

-cheers.</p>

-

-<p>The Fellowship gives a right to board and lodging

-for seven years, with a stipend of some £400. It is a

-kind of prebend that implies few duties and leaves

-the titulary free to give himself up to his favourite<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>[25]</span>

-studies. It has been the fashion in a certain set in

-France to go into ecstasies over this institution, and

-to regret that it should not have entered our own

-customs. The life of a Fellow at Oxford, Cambridge,

-or Dublin, was fondly represented to us as an ideal

-existence, freed from material cares, devoted exclusively

-to the culture of the mind. If we look at things

-more closely, we shall see that this opinion is wide of

-the mark. We find some of the prebendaries poorly

-lodged enough, submitted, by the exigencies of life

-in a community, to many a puerile rule, imprisoned

-within the narrow circle of scholastic ideas, and in too

-many cases buried up to the eyes in the sands of

-routine, if not in sloth, or drunkenness.</p>

-

-<p>After all, for what strong, manly work is the world

-indebted to these much-praised Fellows?... The

-true effort of science or letters was never brought forth

-in these abbeys of Thelema of pedantry. Indeed it is

-much sooner born of individual struggle and large

-contact with the outside world. Even in the English

-Universities there is now a marked tendency to

-demand from the Fellow a work of positive utility in

-exchange for his salary. He must take his part in

-educating the pupils, help in the examinations, and in

-elaborating programmes; his life is much the same

-as that of our <i>Agrégés de Facultés</i>, with a something<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>[26]</span>

-in it of lesser freedom and a semi-priestly character,

-if he be a bachelor. But he is free to marry now, and

-has been for a few years, on condition that he lives

-outside the college buildings.</p>

-

-<p>The students, fourteen hundred in number, live

-two by two, in rooms of extreme simplicity, which

-they are at liberty to decorate according to their taste

-or means, with carpets, prints, and flowers. The

-names of the occupants are written over each door.

-The rooms generally include a small ante-chamber

-and a closet with glass doors. Women of venerable

-age and extraordinary ugliness are charged with the

-care of those young Cenobites’ abode.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Trinity College was founded by Queen Elizabeth

-when she undertook the task of Anglicizing Ireland,

-and it has remained to our own day one of the

-strongholds of the conquering race. It is only since

-the year 1873 that the chairs and offices of this

-University have been accessible to Roman Catholics.

-Up to that time they were exclusively reserved for

-Anglicans, and Mr. Matthew Arnold would exclaim

-with good reason that such a state of things was the

-most scandalous in Europe. In France, he said,

-Protestant masters occupied all the chairs to which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>[27]</span>

-their merits entitled them; in Germany, Catholic

-professors taught history or philosophy at Bonn and

-elsewhere; while, in Catholic Ireland, the one University

-the country possessed remained closed during two

-centuries to all students that were not of the Protestant

-persuasion, and for three-quarters of the

-present century a Catholic could neither attain to a

-chair or to any degree of influence in it.</p>

-

-<p>It was in the year 1845 that the movement began

-which was to triumph definitely in 1873, under the

-initiative of Mr. Gladstone. A certain Mr. Denis

-Caulfield Heron went up in that year for the competition

-for a fellowship, and took the first place. When

-he was, according to custom, invited to sign the Thirty-Nine

-Articles and to communicate in the University

-chapel, he opposed an absolute refusal, declaring himself

-to be a Roman Catholic; whereupon he was disqualified

-by the University Council. Mr. Heron

-exposed this judgment before the public, and succeeded

-in winning opinion to his side. But it proved an

-impossibility to make the Council recall their decision.

-The only thing Mr. Heron obtained, after

-a protracted struggle, was the creation of a new

-class of fellowships, accessible to Roman Catholics.</p>

-

-<p>Finally, in 1873 the College authorities at last

-made up their minds to render the offices and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>[28]</span>

-emoluments of the University independent of any

-sectarian denomination; nevertheless the Anglican

-spirit remains alive within its precincts, and manifests

-itself in the clearest manner upon occasions.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Intellectual life is alive in Dublin, as many a

-learned or literary society, a flourishing review, four

-great daily and several weekly papers, can testify.

-The daily papers especially are edited with a spirit

-and humour truly characteristic. It is a well known

-fact that the Sister Isle contributes a third at least

-to the recruiting of the Anglo-Saxon press, not only in

-Great Britain, but in the United States, in Australia,

-and in the whole of the English speaking world. The

-Irishman a writer or a soldier born, as the Englishman

-is a born shopkeeper. The consequence is that

-the great papers in Dublin, the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i>, the

-<i>Irish Times</i>, <i>United Ireland</i>, the <i>Express</i>, the <i>Evening

-Telegraph</i>, are admirably edited each in its own

-line.</p>

-

-<p>But the same thing can hardly be said of the illustrated

-and coloured sheets that accompany the weeklies,

-and which are placarded everywhere. Those

-prints, bearing upon the political topics of the day, may

-possess the merit of teaching the crowd the lesson<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>[29]</span>

-to be drawn from events; but they are lamentably

-inefficient from an artistic point of view.</p>

-

-<p>Ireland, decidedly, shines no more than does our

-own Brittany in the plastic arts. Her best painter

-has been Maclise, and he is by no means a great

-master. However, her coloured prints delight the

-hearts of the good people of Dublin. An old newspaper-seller,

-smoking her pipe at the corner of

-Leinster Street, holds her sides for very laughter as

-she contemplates the cartoon given this day by the

-<i>Weekly News</i>; it represents a mob of Orangemen

-in the act of pelting the Queen’s police with stones at

-Belfast. Underneath run the words: “<i>Behold loyal

-Ulster!</i>”</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>The quays of the Liffey are lined with book-shops

-like those of the Seine in Paris, to which they present

-a certain likeness. Following the quays from the

-west, one passes the building where sit the four

-Supreme Courts—Chancery, Exchequer, Queen’s

-Bench, and Common Pleas. The statues of Faith,

-Justice, Wisdom, and Piety rise under its Corinthian

-peristyle, which caused the typical Irish peasant, the

-Paddy of legend, to exclaim:</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>[30]</span></p>

-

-<p>“They did well to place them outside, for no one

-will ever meet them inside!”</p>

-

-<p>The judges, chosen by the Queen’s government,

-bear the title of <i>Chief Justice</i> or <i>Baron</i>. There are

-four at each tribunal, each provided with a salary

-ranging from three to eight thousand pounds a year.

-They sit in groups of three, bewigged and clad in

-violet gowns, with peach-coloured facings, at the

-extremity of a recess screened by red curtains. Before

-them sit the barristers and clerks in black gowns and

-horsehair wigs. The writs and briefs of procedure,

-written out upon awe-inspiring sheets of foolscap

-paper, are piled up within capacious green bags, such

-as are only seen with us at the Comédie Française

-when they play <i>Les Plaideurs</i>. The judges appear to

-be a prey to overwhelming <i>ennui</i>, so do the barristers.

-The public, not being paid as highly as they

-are for remaining in this sleepy atmosphere, keep

-constantly going in and out. Now and then, however,

-Irish wit must have its due: some one delivers

-himself of a spicy remark; everyone wakes up a bit

-to laugh, after which business quietly resumes its dull

-course.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>[31]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.<br>

-<span class="smaller">THE POOR OF DUBLIN.</span></h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>Private houses are built in Dublin on the general

-type adopted throughout the British Isles: a basement

-opening on the railed area which runs along

-the pavement, a ground floor, a first floor, sometimes

-a second one. Above the front door a pane of glass

-lighted with gas. It is the custom of the country to

-place there one’s artistic treasures,—a china vase, a

-bust, or a small plaster horse. The small horse especially

-is a great favourite. You see it in a thousand

-copies which all came out of the same cast. In the

-suburbs you notice pretty often a window decorated

-with plants that are seen behind the glass panes,—Breton

-fashion,—and, striking circumstance, in Ireland

-also it is the uninteresting geranium which is the

-favourite flower of the poor. Inside the house the

-accommodation is nearly the same as in England. It

-is well known that nothing is more like an English

-house than another English house. But here, to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>[32]</span>

-classical furniture, horse-hair and mahogany armchairs,

-and oil-cloth floor, is added a mural decoration

-of coloured prints and Roman Catholic chromolithographs,

-Saint Patrick, the Pope Leo XIII., the

-“Good Shepherd giving His life for the sheep,” surrounded

-by dried branches of holy palm, rosaries and

-scapularies. An ornament greatly appreciated on the

-chimney-piece is a glass vessel full of miraculous water

-in which swims a reduction of the tools of the Passion,

-the cross, the ladder, the hammer, the nails, and the

-crown of thorns.</p>

-

-<p>Eighty-seven per cent. of the Dublin population

-belong to the Roman Catholic religion. The proportion

-is higher in some other Irish counties: in

-Connaught it rises to ninety-five per cent.; nowhere,

-even in Protestant Ulster, does it descend lower than

-forty-five per cent.</p>

-

-<p>And those Catholics are not so only in name. The

-greater number follow the services of the Church,

-observe all the rites, maintain a direct and constant

-intercourse with the priests. The sincerity of

-their faith is particularly striking, and is not to be

-found in the same degree even in Italy or in Spain.

-For with them the Roman faith is narrowly bound

-with traditions most dear to their race; it remains

-one of the external forms of protestation against the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>[33]</span>

-conquest, and has been, till quite lately, a stigma of

-political incapacity. To the glamour of the traditional

-religion is added the poetry of persecution and

-the rancour of the vanquished. This religion is the

-one that is not professed by the hated Englishman:

-what a reason to love it above all the others! We

-must remember that in Dublin, amidst a population

-nine-tenths of which are devout Catholics, and where

-the remaining tenth is alone Protestant (Episcopalian’

-Presbyterian, Methodist, &amp;c.), the cathedral is in the

-hands of the Anglican minority with all the ancient

-basilics, whilst the worship of the majority is sheltered

-in modern and vulgar buildings. The conquering race

-has invaded Saint Patrick’s Baptistery as well as the

-Royal Castle, and the Senate of the University. A

-threefold reason for rancour to these who were thus

-deprived of the three sanctuaries of faith, public power,

-and learning.</p>

-

-<p>Such spoliations are those which a vanquished race

-cannot forget, because they bring constantly their

-sore under their eyes. Now the Irish have the artless

-vanity of the chivalrous races, and the wounds

-inflicted to their self-love are perhaps more cruel than

-the others.</p>

-

-<p>This vanity is frequently exhibited in a certain

-taste for show, and in a slight touch of the mountebank.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>[34]</span>

-The least apothecary’s shop in Dublin goes

-by the pompous name of <i>Medical Hall</i>; the smallest

-free school is an academy; and it is well known that

-every single Irishman is descended straight from the

-“ould kings of Oireland.”</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>There is a great deal of misery in Dublin; 6,036 of

-her inhabitants are inmates of the workhouse; 4,281

-are the recipients of outdoor relief; 19,332 are without

-a known trade or profession and without means of

-living. It makes about 30,000 paupers in a town of

-250,000 inhabitants. Besides those officially recognised

-paupers, how many others whose distress is no

-less terrible for not being classed!</p>

-

-<p>I had the first sight of that misery on the quay of

-the Liffey. It was a dishevelled woman walking as in

-a trance, her eyes settled, immoveable. Barefooted,

-dressed in a yellowish tattered shawl which hardly

-covered her withered breast, and in a horrible nondescript

-silk petticoat once black, through which her

-thighs appeared. She was pale and silent, and

-she seemed to be lost in some unutterable grief.

-I spoke to her—she did not answer. I put a

-piece of money in her hand, she took it without<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>[35]</span>

-a word, without even looking at it. She went her

-way.</p>

-

-<p>I thought I had seen the ghost of the <i>Shan Van

-Vocht</i>, “The Poor Old Woman,” as the Irish sorrowfully

-call their country. She went with long

-strides towards the police court—a new building,

-not far from Richmond Bridge. I went in after

-her.</p>

-

-<p>In the courtyard, groups of beings with human faces

-were crouching on the ground—so black, so dirty, so

-tattered were they, that they made me think of the

-Australian aborigines and Fuegian savages, of the

-most unenlightened and degraded tribes of the globe.

-Most of them bore outwardly the semblance of women.

-The males were standing with their backs against the

-wall in that listless attitude of the “unemployed” in

-Dublin.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>An ill-kept staircase leads to the audience room.

-The walls are whitewashed, the ceiling a skylight,

-white wooden benches round the room.</p>

-

-<p>In the chair, the police judge; he is a yellow-haired

-man with a benevolent countenance, dressed in a

-frock coat. Clerks and counsel are alike gownless

-and wigless; everything is conducted in a homely<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>[36]</span>

-manner. The accused follow each other in single file.

-The witness (nearly always a constable) states what

-he has seen. The judge asks the delinquent if he has

-anything to say in his defence, and after a quick

-colloquy he pronounces his sentence. Generally it is a

-fine of two or three shillings or a day’s imprisonment

-for each unpaid shilling.</p>

-

-<p>One of the prisoners has just been condemned to

-pay a fine of half a crown for obvious drunkenness;

-he does not possess a farthing, but seems to be endowed

-with a humorous turn of mind.</p>

-

-<p>“Your honour could as well have said half a

-sovereign! It would have looked more respectable,

-and the result would have been the same,” he says,

-turning his pockets inside out. A guffaw of laughter

-joined in by the judge himself, who does not think it

-his duty to be offended by the remark; after which

-he calls out for number two.</p>

-

-<p>Number two is a boy fifteen or sixteen years old;

-he has a sweet intelligent countenance in spite of the

-indescribable rags that cover his body. Tears stand

-in his eyes and his lips are tremulous. Nothing in

-him of the habitual offender. The accusation that he

-is lying under seems to be: “Theft of a pork-chop in

-an open shop-window.” A single witness is called, a

-little maid five years old; so small that her head does<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>[37]</span>

-not even reach the top of the witness-box. They bring

-her a footstool, on which she climbs to give her

-evidence.</p>

-

-<p>She has seen the boy, she says, near the shop

-window, looking wistfully for a long time on the

-chops and finally pocketing one. However, her account

-is not very clear. All those people make her

-shy, and she does not speak out loud, so the clerk

-takes the trouble to read over to her the evidence she

-has just given. Does she know how to write? Can

-she sign her name? Yes. They place a pen in her

-fingers, and with infinite trouble, bending her small

-fair head, shooting out her lips, she writes on the legal

-parchment with her tiny trembling hand her name

-and surname: <i>Maggie Flanagan</i>.</p>

-

-<p>“Well! prisoner, what have you to say?”</p>

-

-<p>The unfortunate boy stammers that he was hungry,

-that there was not a penny in the house, and that he

-had no work.</p>

-

-<p>“What is your father’s trade?”</p>

-

-<p>“He is gone to Australia, your honour. Mother

-has been left with four children. I am the eldest.

-We had eaten nothing for two days.”</p>

-

-<p>One feels he is speaking the truth. Every heart is

-moved.</p>

-

-<p>Suddenly a shrill voice bursts out from the lower<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>[38]</span>

-end of the room, wailing: “Oh, your honour, don’t

-send him to jail!...”</p>

-

-<p>It is the woman I saw on the quay; the one that I

-followed to that Purgatory. The mother of the

-culprit very likely.</p>

-

-<p>“I am obliged to remand you for a week in order

-to examine the circumstances of the case,” the judge

-says, in a manner that shows he is anxious to arrange

-the affair with kindness.</p>

-

-<p>The prisoner goes out of the dock following the

-warder, and disappears through a small side door.</p>

-

-<p>The mother has gone away without waiting, and I

-hurry to follow her. But she walks so fast that I

-can hardly keep pace with her.</p>

-

-<p>She passes again on the bridge, walks along the

-quay, plunges in a by-street, goes up towards the

-south-western quarters of Dublin, called the <i>liberties</i>

-of the town. Suddenly I lose sight of her at the

-corner of a narrow lane, and after winding round and

-round I am obliged to renounce coming up with her.

-There is a way of course to come to the relief of

-those poor creatures, by sending one’s subscription to

-the judge according to the British fashion. But I

-wanted to see them at home in their den, wallowing

-in their squalor, to see whether men or destiny bear

-the responsibility for such dark distress.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>[39]</span></p>

-

-<p>Alas! examples are not wanting, and I have only

-to cross the first door that opens before me. Along

-these lanes yawn dark alleys from which hundreds of

-half-naked children are swarming out. All ages are

-represented; they are in the most fantastical and

-unexpected attire. One has got on breeches fastened

-under the shoulders by a piece of cord in lieu of

-braces; the same is full of holes large enough for his

-head to go through. Another has no shirt, and trails

-in the gutter the jagged skirt of a coat slashed like a

-doublet, and with only one sleeve left. They are all

-of them so extravagantly slovenly that it seems to be

-a competition for rags.</p>

-

-<p>A baby two or three years old strikes me particularly.

-It is absolutely naked, and so very, very dirty

-that dirt has formed a sort of bronzed skin over his

-little body, and he is like a juvenile nigger. As he

-came into the world so he has remained. Neither

-soap nor water ever moistened his skin. He has not

-even undergone the washing that the mother-cat

-applies so industriously with her tongue on her newborn

-kittens.</p>

-

-<p>Yet his mother loves him, squalid and black

-as he is. Just now a cart passed, and the baby

-was running under the wheels; the mother sprang

-out of her lair with the roar of a tigress, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>[40]</span>

-pounced upon her child, which she jealously carried

-away.</p>

-

-<p>Never in London did I hear such accents. Far

-from me to hint that English mothers do not love

-their babies: but they love them after their own

-fashion, without showers of kisses or demonstrative

-ways.</p>

-

-<p>And this is the distinctive feature which divides the

-Irish pariahs from those of the London East-End.

-They love each other, and they know how to put that

-love into words. Their distress, perhaps deeper than

-English poverty, bears not the same hard, selfish

-character—tenderness and love are not unknown

-to them. They try to help and comfort one another

-in their misery. Thackeray has remarked it long

-ago: let an Irishman be as poor as you like; he will

-always contrive to find another Irishman poorer still,

-whom he will serve and oblige, and make the partaker

-of his good or bad luck. And it is absolutely true.

-That fraternal instinct, so unknown to the Anglo-Saxon,

-nay, so contrary to his nature, shows itself

-here at every step.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>But the misery is none the less terrible here;

-indeed, there are no adequate words in the dictionary<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>[41]</span>

-to express it. No description can give an idea of

-those nameless dens, sordid, dilapidated stairs, miserable

-pieces of furniture, nondescript utensils invariably

-diverted from their original destination. And in that

-lamentable frame, those swarming families squatting

-in their filth; the starved look of the mothers under

-the tattered shawl that ever covers their heads, the

-hungry little faces of their whelps....</p>

-

-<p>A sickening smell, recalling that of ill-ventilated

-hospitals, comes out of those lairs and suffocating you,

-almost throws you back. But it is too late. You

-have been caught sight of. From all sides visions of

-horror are emerging to light, spectres are starting up;

-old hags that would have surprised Shakespeare himself,

-swarm round you, holding out their hand for a

-<i>copper</i>. The younger women don’t generally come to

-the front, not that their wants be less, but they know

-that coppers are not inexhaustible, and that the old

-ones must have the precedence. So they remain

-sadly in the background, and then, when you have

-emptied your pockets, there is a roar of benedictions

-fit to rend one’s heart with shame. They are so fearfully

-sincere! And how many times do we not throw

-to the winds of our caprice what would be sufficient

-to quench at least for one moment, the thirst which is

-raging in that hell! You fly from that den of horror,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>[42]</span>

-wondering whether the most horrible deserts would

-not be more merciful to those destitute creatures than

-the <i>liberties</i> of the city of Dublin.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>In your flight you fatally fall upon Nicholas Street,

-where all those dark alleys open. This is the way to

-the cathedral, and the great commercial artery of

-this side of the town. If any doubt remained in you

-after the insight you had of the houses of the poor in

-Dublin, about the way they live, that street alone

-would give you sufficient information.</p>

-

-<p>From end to end it is lined with a row of disgusting

-shops or stalls, where the refuse of the new

-and the ancient world seems to have come for an

-exhibition. Imagine the most hideous, ragged, repulsive

-rubbish in the dust-bins of two capitals,

-and you will get an idea of that shop-window display;

-rank bacon, rotten fish, festering bones, potatoes

-in full germination, wormy fruit, dusty crusts, sheep’s

-hearts, sausages which remind you of the Siege of

-Paris, and perhaps come from it; all that running in

-garlands or festoons in front of the stalls, or made

-into indescribable heaps, is doled out to the customers

-in diminutive half-pence morsels. At every turning

-of the street a public-house with its dim glass and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>[43]</span>

-sticky glutinous door. Now and then a pawnbroker

-with the three symbolic brass balls, and every twenty

-yards a rag and bone shop.</p>

-

-<p>The rag and bone trade is extremely active in

-Dublin, which numbers no less than 400 shops of that

-description, according to statistics. And that is not

-too many for a population which from times immemorial

-never wore a garment that was not second-hand.

-To a man Ireland dresses on the <i>reach-me-down</i>

-system, and wears out the cast-off garments

-which have passed on the backs of ten or twelve successive

-owners. Battered hats, dilapidated gowns,

-threadbare coats arrive here by shiploads. When the

-whole world has had enough of them, when the Papoo

-savages and Guinea niggers have discarded their

-finery, and declared it to be no longer serviceable,

-there are still amateurs to be found for it in Dublin.

-Hence the most extraordinary variety, and the wildest

-incoherence of costume. Knee-breeches, tail coats,

-white gowns, cocked hats,—Paddy and his spouse

-are ready for anything. So destitute are they

-of personal property, that they do not even possess

-an outline of their own. Their normal get-up resembles

-a travesty, and their distress a carnival.</p>

-

-<p>The main point for them is to have a garment of

-any description to put on, since it is a thing understood<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>[44]</span>

-that one cannot go about naked; and it does

-not very much matter after all what is the state of

-that garment, as it is so soon to leave their backs to

-go to the pawnbroker’s. This is a prominent figure

-in the daily drama of their wretched existence, the

-regulator of their humble exchequer through the

-coming and going of the necessaries of life, which

-they are obliged to part with periodically.</p>

-

-<p>“You see that pair of hob-nailed shoes?” one of

-them tells me, “For the last six months it has come

-here every Monday regularly and gone every Saturday.

-The possessor uses them only on Sundays;

-on week days he prefers enjoying his capital....”</p>

-

-<p>His capital!—one shilling and sixpence, for which

-he has to pay an interest of one penny a week; <i>i.e.</i>,

-three hundred per cent. a year!</p>

-

-<p>Usury under all its forms blooms spontaneously

-on that dung-hill. By the side of the pawnbroker a

-<i>money office</i> is almost always to be seen. It is an

-English institution, natural in a nation which is

-bursting with money, and consequently finds it difficult

-to make it render 3 or 4 per cent. What is

-England if not a colossal bank, which advances

-money upon any three given signatures as a security,

-if they come from people with a settled dwelling and

-a regular profession? Well, who would believe it?<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>[45]</span>

-Paddy himself is admitted to partake of the onerous

-benefits of that credit, provided he work ever so little

-and be not too hopelessly worn out. For these

-small banking houses form a union and let each

-other know the state of their accounts. Upon the

-poor man’s signature accompanied by those of two

-of his fellows, five and seven pounds sterling will be

-lent to him, to be reimbursed by weekly instalments.

-But that resource, which is a powerful help for the

-strong energetic man, is almost invariably a cause of

-distress and ruin to the weak. The borrowed money

-ebbs out in worthless expenditure, in the buying of

-some articles of apparel or furniture, which soon

-takes the road to the pawnbroker’s; and the debt

-alone remains weighing with all its weight on poor

-Paddy. It is the last straw on the camel’s back, and

-he ends by falling down irremediably under it.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>[46]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.<br>

-<span class="smaller">THE EMERALD ISLE.</span></h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>Nothing can be easier than to go from one end to

-the other of Ireland. Though her network of railways

-is not yet complete, great arteries radiate from

-Dublin in all directions and allow the island to be

-traversed from end to end, whether southward, westward,

-or northward, in less than seven or eight hours.

-The journey from south to north, following the great

-axis, is longer and more complicated, for it is necessary

-to change lines several times. The circular

-journey along the coasts is facilitated by excellent

-services of open coaches, that go through the regions

-not yet penetrated by railways. Lastly, one can, by

-following the Shannon, enter by steamboat almost

-to the very heart of the country.</p>

-

-<p>When one has gone through those various excursions,

-completed by riding and walking tours, and seen

-the island under its various aspects, one perceives that

-it presents in a general manner the appearance of a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>[47]</span>

-cup, with brims rising towards the sea; in other

-words, it consists in a vast central plain, protected on

-all its circumference by groups of hills and mountains,

-preventing the inroad of the ocean. Those

-mountains are in no part very high; the finest, those

-of Kerry, do not rise above 1800 feet. But their

-very position on the brink of the Atlantic, the erosions

-undermining their base, the deep bays they delineate,

-the innumerable lakes hidden away in their bosoms,

-lend them a majesty far above their altitude. Bland

-and smiling in Wicklow, they are in Kerry of an

-unequalled serenity, while in Connemara they preserve

-unbroken the rude chaos of primeval cataclysms,

-and display on the north of Antrim’s table-land,

-towards the Giant’s Causeway, the most

-stupendous basaltic formations.</p>

-

-<p>Yet the normal, the truest aspect of Ireland, is

-represented by the central plain—a large, unbroken

-surface of green undulating waves, ever bathed in a

-damp and fresh atmosphere, shut in on the horizon

-by dark blue mountains.</p>

-

-<p>This aspect is of infinite sweetness; no land possesses

-it in a similar degree. It takes possession of

-you, it penetrates you like a caress and a harmony.

-One understands, when submitted to that entirely

-physical influence, the passionate tenderness that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>[48]</span>

-Irishmen feel for their country, and that is best illustrated

-by Moore’s poetry. The sky seems to have

-endeavoured to find the true chord in response to the

-earth, in order to give to all things those deliciously

-blended tones. The stars are nearly always seen

-through a light haze, and the sun itself shines but

-through a veil of vapours, into which it seems eager

-to disappear again. The shadows are not hard and

-well defined; they melt into each other by insensible

-gradations of tint. All is green, even the stones,

-clothed in moss; the walls, covered with ivy; the

-waters, hidden under a mantle of reeds and water-lilies.

-In other climes the fields, after a spring

-shower, take unto themselves the bravery that here is

-seen in all seasons. In the full heat of July the corn,

-the barley, the oats still keep their April dress. Do

-they ever ripen? They say they do, towards the end

-of October; but surely they never can get yellow.

-Yellow is not an Irish colour, nor is white. Ireland is

-indeed green Erin, the Emerald Isle. Never was

-name more truly given.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>One could consider Ireland as a prodigious grass

-plot of some twenty million acres, constantly watered

-by rain. Water is everywhere: in the clouds<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>[49]</span>

-that the winds of the Atlantic drive over her, and

-that the highlands of Scotland and Norway stop in

-their course; on the soil, where all hollows, great or

-small, become lakes; under the ground even, where

-the roots of vegetables, saturated and swollen like

-sponges, slowly change into peat. Ireland is the most

-liberally watered country in Europe, and yet, thanks

-to the constancy of the winds over her, one can

-scarcely say it is a damp country. The fall of water

-is on an average of 926 millimetres in a year—a little

-over three feet. The ground, naturally of admirable

-fruitfulness, is still further favoured by the mildness

-and equableness of the climate on the shores.</p>

-

-<p>The flora almost recalls that of the Mediterranean

-coasts. The fauna presents the remarkable peculiarity

-of not possessing a single dangerous or even repulsive

-species—not one toad, not one reptile, except the most

-innocent among them all, the “friend of man,” the

-lizard. Legends say that St. Patrick, the Christian

-apostle of the isle, coming from Brittany in the 6th

-century, threw all the serpents into the sea, and all

-the toads after them; indeed, he is habitually represented

-in popular imagery as engaged in performing

-that miracle.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>[50]</span></p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>An island possessing no backbone, and presenting

-generally the appearance of a cup, cannot have great

-rivers. In fact, almost all the rivers of Ireland, born

-within her girdle of mountains, soon lose themselves

-in the sea, forming at their mouth an estuary that

-takes the name of <i>Lough</i>, as do the lakes proper.

-One only creates an exception by the length of its

-course and the volume of its waters—the Shannon,

-rising in the central table-land, imprisoned, so to

-speak, at the bottom of the circular well, and whose

-course, impeded above Limerick by a barrier of rocks,

-form fine rapids, under which the waters flow in a

-majestic stream. With the tide, vessels of the heaviest

-tonnage can go up the river to Foynes.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Indeed, the country lacks no harbours on those

-deeply indented shores. North, west, east, and south,

-Ireland counts no less than fourteen natural harbours,

-large enough to shelter whole fleets.</p>

-

-<p>But this gift, like all the others that Fate has showered

-on her, seems to have turned against her by bringing

-the nations of prey within those bays. Thrown as an

-outwork of Europe in the middle of the ocean, she

-seemed to be opening her arms to the Phœnicians, to

-the Scandinavians; later on to the Arabs, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>[51]</span>

-Spaniards, and the English. A gust of wind was

-enough to reveal her to them; a favourable breeze to

-bring them back. To understand clearly the perils

-of such a post, and to see how much more still than

-the muzzle of Brittany, Ireland is Atlantic land, one

-must go to Valencia, the small islet on which come to

-shore the ends of the Transatlantic cables.</p>

-

-<p>More than in any other spot of Europe one feels at

-the farthest end of the world there. It seems as if, by

-stretching one’s arm, one would reach the United

-States. And, in fact, one is near enough as it is—five

-or six days by steam—almost within speaking

-distance with the telephone. So fast travel the

-storms from America that the telegram is hardly

-able to arrive before them. A sea-gull, borne on the

-wing of the hurricane, would cross that arm of the sea

-in a few hours. The breeze that blows in your face

-may have stirred the hair of a Brooklyn belle in the

-morning. There one feels how very small is our

-globe.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Geologically, Ireland differs much from Great

-Britain. The island appeared much earlier, and its

-structure is special. Alone, its northern part, or Ulster,

-which, from a political point of view, forms such a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52"></a>[52]</span>

-striking contrast with the rest of the island, presents

-between Donegal Bay and Dundalk Bay, mountainous

-masses, entirely analogous with those of Scotland,

-towards which they advance, and of which they

-appear originally to have formed a part. They are

-basaltic rocks, or petrified streams of lava, while

-the mountains in Kerry or Connemara are red

-sandstone and slate, lying above the carbonaceous

-strata.</p>

-

-<p>What ought, in fact, to be considered as Ireland

-proper consists, then, of the eastern province or

-Leinster, the southern or Munster, and the western or

-Connaught. Ulster is in reality, as well by the nature

-of its soil as by the race and habits of the majority of

-its inhabitants, an annex and dependency of Scotland.

-The three other provinces, on the contrary, form a

-whole, as distinct from England or Scotland by the

-constitution and aspect of the land, as it is different

-by the race, genius, the traditions and beliefs of the

-population.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>The most striking thing on a first sight of the Irish

-landscape is the total absence of trees of any kind.

-They are only seen in private parks. As far as the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53"></a>[53]</span>

-eye can see the plains spread in gentle undulations,

-covered with grass and intersected with stone walls;

-no single oak, elm, or shrub ever comes to break its

-monotony. The tree has become a lordly ensign.

-Wherever one sees it one may be certain the landlord’s

-mansion is not far.</p>

-

-<p>That radical disappearance of the forests, in a

-country once covered with them, is singular. A great

-many explanations have been given of this fact,—explanations

-that went back as far as some geological

-cataclysm. Such theories are no longer acceptable

-in these days. The most likely supposition is that

-all the available timber has gradually been felled

-down for domestic uses, and that indifference, poverty,

-incessant war, incertitude as to the present or future,

-have, from the remotest times, prevented those sad

-gaps being repaired.</p>

-

-<p>On the lower land the absence of timber is

-explained of itself by the apparition of deep layers

-of turf, whose depth is sometimes from forty-five

-to sixty feet, in which whole oak trees have been

-discovered in a more or less advanced state of carbonisation.

-At a certain stage of this transformation

-the ligneous tissue has become of such flexibility that

-the Irish cut it into stripes and use it to make straps,

-fishing nets, bands of all kinds,—not to mention the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a>[54]</span>

-pious trifles, pipes, small figures carved with a knife,

-and various <i>souvenirs</i> with which they pester the

-tourist.</p>

-

-<p>The turf pits are a great source of riches for Ireland,

-and furnish the only fuel commonly used by

-the lower classes. In the country one sees everywhere

-people engaged in extracting peat, cutting it

-into cakes, erecting these cakes in pyramids to be

-allowed to dry in the sun, or transporting them from

-one place to the other. The people working at it are,

-indeed, almost the only ones visible in the fields. One

-might think that the extracting and manipulating

-of the turf were the only industry of the

-country.</p>

-

-<p>There are two kinds of turf, the red and the black,

-according to the degree of carbonisation attained by

-the layers, and the nature of the vegetable matter

-that formed them. The finest is of such intense and

-brilliant black, that it might almost be mistaken for

-coal. Those vast reservoirs of fuel, known in Ireland

-by the name of <i>bog</i>, are a constant feature of the

-landscape in the valleys of the mountainous girdle

-as in the lower parts of the plain. The total depth

-of these open carbon mines is estimated at no less

-than sixty million cubic feet; they occupy an area

-almost equal to the seventh part of the total<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55"></a>[55]</span>

-superficies of the island, and the lakes cover another

-seventh part.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>One other striking peculiarity of the scenery in

-Ireland is the scarcity of cultivated fields. One can

-count them, dotted here and there, almost always

-planted with oats, potatoes, or turnips. The statistics

-of the Agricultural Society give, in round numbers,

-for twenty millions of acres of total surface, five

-millions, or a quarter in cultivated ground; that is,

-150,000 acres only in cereals, 350,000 in turnips, one

-million and a half in potatoes, two million in artificial

-meadows. Ten million of acres are in natural meadows;

-the rest are fallow lands, bog or turf, waste

-land, roads and highways.</p>

-

-<p>Those roads and highways, as well as the bridges

-and all the public works depending upon the English

-Government, are admirably kept. It is clear that on

-that point Dublin Castle is resolved to give no handle

-to criticism. Those splendid tracks of road, laid

-across waste and desert land, even produce a curious

-effect, and one would be tempted to see an affectation

-about it, did they not, in the majority of cases, lead

-to some magnificent private property, spreading as

-far as one can see over hill and dale, always shut in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a>[56]</span>

-by stone walls eight or ten feet high, enclosing an

-area of several miles.</p>

-

-<p>As for the conveyances that are seen on these

-Appian Ways they are of two kinds; either the

-smart carriage whose cockaded coachman drives magnificent

-horses, or the diminutive cart drawn by a

-small donkey, carrying, besides the grand-dame or child

-that drives it, a sort of conical-shaped utensil held in

-its place with cords and oftener filled with water than

-with milk. One must go to Morocco or Spain to see

-donkeys in such numbers as in Ireland.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>One thing surprises in those endless pastures—it is

-to count so few grazing beasts on them. Not that

-they are altogether excluded; now and then one

-perceives on the intense green of the fields reddish

-or white spots that are cattle or sheep, the rounded

-haunch of a mare, the awkward frolics of a foal. On

-the brinks of rivers that one can almost always cross

-wading, one sometimes sees a few happy cows, their

-feet in the water, wide-eyed and munching dreamily.

-Here and there one sees geese, hens escorted by their

-chicks, pigs fraternally wallowing with children in the

-muddy ditch. But in a general way the landscape is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[57]</span>

-wanting in animated life, and as poor in domestic

-animals as in labourers.</p>

-

-<p>As a contrast game is plentiful, as is natural in a

-land that is three-quarters uncultivated, where it is

-forbidden to carry arms, and where shooting is the

-exclusive privilege of a very small minority. Hares

-and rabbits seem to enjoy their immunity to the

-utmost, and everywhere their white breeches are

-seen scudding away in the dewy grass like fireworks.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Villages are rare, and rarer still is farmhouse or

-homestead. Undulating ridges succeed to undulating

-ridges and still one sees no trace of any dwellings.

-One might think that these stone walls radiating over

-the fields had sprung there of their own accord, and

-that the hay is doomed to rot standing, after feeding

-the butterflies. Yet that cannot be—evidently some

-one must come now and then to cut this grass, make

-it into stacks and carry it away.... At last, by dint

-of stretching neck and legs you succeed in discovering

-far away on the horizon a spire that belongs to a

-big borough, a market-town rather, where those civic

-tillers of the soil dwell in houses similar to those of

-the <i>liberties</i> in Dublin.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58"></a>[58]</span></p>

-

-<p>As for the mud cabin, generally described as the

-Irish peasant’s only home, it is now a thing of the

-past. One would hardly, and after much research,

-find some specimens of it in the farthest counties, at

-the end of Kerry or Mayo.</p>

-

-<p>True to say, when found, those specimens leave

-nothing to be desired for poverty and discomfort; no

-fire-place, no windows, no furniture; nothing but a

-roof of turf supported by a few poles on mud walls.

-The very pig that formerly shared its luxuries with

-the <i>genus homo</i> and indicated a certain degree of

-relative comfort in his possessor, the pig himself has

-disappeared for ever.</p>

-

-<p>But those are exceptions, almost pre-historic cases.

-As a rule the mud cabin has been blotted out from

-the Irish soil—perhaps enlightened landlords systematically

-pursued its eradication; perhaps the

-peasants, tired of its tutelary protection, emigrated

-under other skies,—or more simply still, they took

-advantage of the last famine to die of hunger. Upon

-which came the rain, and two or three years sufficed

-to dilute the walls, render the mud house to the

-common reservoir, and wash out its very remembrance.</p>

-

-<p>The population of Ireland, it must be borne in

-mind, has been steadily decreasing for half a century.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59"></a>[59]</span>

-It was of 8,175,124 inhabitants in 1841; of 6,552,385

-in 1851; 5,798,584 in 1861; 5,412,377 in 1871; and

-5,174,836 in 1881. By all appearances it must now

-have sunk under five millions. If this fish-eating

-race was not the most prolific under the sun it would

-have been blotted out long ago from the face of this

-planet.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60"></a>[60]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.<br>

-<span class="smaller">THE RACE.</span></h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>The essential character of Irish scenery is, besides

-the green colour and the absence of trees, the frequent

-ruins that meet the eyes everywhere—one cannot go

-two steps without seeing them. Ruins of castles,

-abbeys, churches, or even humble private dwellings.

-There are quarters of large towns or boroughs, such

-as for instance the northern one in Galway, that

-might be taken at night, with their sinister looking rows

-of houses, roofless and with gaping walls, for a street

-in Herculaneum or Pompeii. When the ancient stone

-walls are those of a church or chapel, they generally

-serve as a setting for the legends of the countryside;

-there occurred all the terrifying tales of former

-days, there took place all the local miracles, and there

-still is the favourite haunt of illustrious spirits, of

-fairies and <i>banshee</i>.</p>

-

-<p>Almost in every case the graves of a hamlet come

-to group themselves at the foot of those ivy-clothed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61"></a>[61]</span>

-old walls, by an instinctive and touching effect of the

-Irishman’s passionate love for the traditions of his

-race; and those graves, generally covered with great

-slabs of stone, scattered among the tall grasses, wild

-and moss-grown, without cross or emblem of any

-sort, well accord with the melancholy aspect of the

-site.</p>

-

-<p>Sometimes near these ruins and graves is still seen,

-proudly raising its head, one of those monuments

-peculiar to the country and about which antiquaries

-are at such variance,—the round towers of Ireland:

-slender and bold turrets, slightly conical in shape, not

-unlike minarets 75 or 80 feet high, upon a base

-15 to 18 feet broad, and springing from the ground

-like obelisks. They are built of large stones, sometimes

-rough, sometimes cut, but always cemented

-together, a fact which gave rise to the opinion that

-they must be posterior to the invasion of Great

-Britain by the Romans. But that is simply begging

-the question and is justified by nothing; moreover,

-the absence of any tradition about the origin or use

-of those towers make such a tale appear in the

-highest degree improbable. A race was never seen

-to borrow the technical industry of another race

-to apply it to the construction of monuments that are

-essentially their own. Celtic civilization had attained<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62"></a>[62]</span>

-in Ireland, centuries before the Romans, to a degree

-of perfection witnessed by the Brehon Code, compiled

-at least five or six centuries before the

-Christian era, and the first among human laws that

-substituted arbitrage to brute force. A people

-capable of submitting to the law of reason and who

-knew enough of mechanics to erect monoliths of

-twenty-four thousand cubic feet could well discover

-alone the art of mixing mortar, and need not borrow

-it from the Romans, who besides did not set foot in the

-country. Never was hypothesis more childish or more

-unfounded. The truth is that nothing is known about

-the round towers, as is the case with the <i>nurraghs</i> of

-Sardinia; that all those monuments are anterior to

-any positive traditions and have been built for uses

-of which we have no conception. At the most one

-might suppose from their aspect, which is that of

-inland lighthouses, that they may have been used

-as military or astronomical observatories, and, perhaps,

-bore on their summit a sacred fire visible throughout

-a whole district. In such a case the only guide to be

-followed with any certainty is the eternal fitness

-between organ and function.</p>

-

-<p>Eighty-three of these towers are still standing in

-Ireland, and their dilapidated condition allows it to

-be supposed that they may once have been much<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63"></a>[63]</span>

-more numerous. Whatever may have been their

-origin, they remain so narrowly and so fitly associated

-in the popular imagination with the Irish idea of

-nationality that the image of a round tower naturally

-grew under the chisel of the sculptor, as an emblem of

-patriotism, on the tomb of O’Connell in the cemetery

-of Dublin.</p>

-

-<p>Megalithic monuments and dolmen are equally

-found in great numbers in Ireland. Donegal presents

-at Raphre a circus of raised stones absolutely similar

-to that of Stonehenge, while in Derry one sees in

-the Grianan of Aileach the finest fortified temple

-that was ever raised in honour of the sun. In many

-districts all the hills or mountains without exception

-are crowned with the funeral hillock or Celtic <i>rath</i>.

-As for the Druidical inscriptions in the <i>Ogham</i>

-character, consisting of twenty-five combinations of

-oblique or vertical strokes corresponding to an equal

-number of sounds, they abound in all the counties.

-The most curious is that of the Cave of Dunloe, discovered

-by a labourer, in the vicinity of Killarney,

-in the year 1838; it may be considered a true

-Druidical library, of which the books are represented

-by the stones of the vaulted roof. Those characters

-have been deciphered now, thanks to bilingual inscriptions

-posterior to the Roman period.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a>[64]</span></p>

-

-<p>Lastly, the names of places and the geographical

-definitions are, in nine cases out of ten, of Celtic

-origin, according to the tables drawn out by Chalmers.

-The mountains are called <i>ben</i>, and the chains of hills

-<i>sliebh</i>, rocks are <i>carricks</i> or <i>cloagh</i>, lakes <i>loughs</i>, an

-island <i>innis</i>, bogs <i>corks</i>, lands <i>curraghs</i>, hills <i>knocks</i>,

-rivers <i>anagh</i>.</p>

-

-<p>The Erse tongue, still spoken by a twelfth part of

-the population, is sister to the Gaelic and the Breton.

-It denominates a field <i>agh</i>, a ford <i>ath</i>, a village <i>bally</i>,

-a city <i>cahir</i>, <i>ban</i> what is white or beautiful, <i>deargh</i>

-what is red, <i>dua</i> what is black, <i>beg</i> what is small, and

-<i>mor</i> what is big, <i>clar</i> a plain, <i>teach</i> a house, <i>donagh</i> a

-church, <i>ross</i> a wooded hillside.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>As for the type of the Irish race it is undeniably

-Celtic, or at least essentially different from the Anglo-Saxon.

-The hair is black or brown, the eyes dark,

-the complexion pale, the nose short, the forehead

-bony. The general appearance is vigorous and active,

-the movements are quick and often graceful; the stature

-without being low, is nearer to middle height than is

-generally the case in a British country. The rudest

-peasant girls often have a sculptural grace of attitude;

-one sees them in the fields, carrying burdens on their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>[65]</span>

-head with that stateliness of Greek canephores which

-seems as a rule the exclusive attribute of the daughters

-of the East.</p>

-

-<p>Still more different from the English is the inner

-man; naturally mirthful and expansive, witty, careless,

-even giddy, quarrelsome from mere love of noise,

-prompt to enthusiasm or despondency, imbued with

-the love of literary form and legal subtleties, he is

-the Frenchman of the West, as the Pole or the

-Japanese are Frenchmen of the East. And always

-there has been an affinity of nature, a harmony of

-thought, between them and us. At once we feel we are

-cousins. Their ancestors formerly came in thousands

-to fight under our flag. Our revolutions were always

-felt in Ireland. So strong, for nations as well as

-individuals, is that mysterious tie of a common origin,

-or even the most remote consanguinity.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Does this mean that the Irishman, thanks to his

-insular position, has escaped all cross breeding and

-remained pure Celt? Far from it. No country was

-oftener or more cruelly invaded than his. The stranger

-implanted himself in it, begat his children there, introduced

-in the race elements that are still recognizable;

-for example, that most peculiar expression<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66"></a>[66]</span>

-of the eyes, the height of the cheek-bones, the outline

-of the temples and cranium, which are in many cases

-clearly Scandinavian.</p>

-

-<p>In the origin of history the primitive inhabitants of

-Erin, the Firbolgs (men with the skin of beasts) were

-vanquished by the Thuathan-de-Danan, “the fairy

-people,” who came from the East, and who founded

-the realm of Innisfallen, or Island of Fate. A

-Spanish invasion (probably Phenician), that of the

-Milesians, overthrew that establishment ten or twelve

-centuries before the Christian era, and three hundred

-years before the foundation of Rome. After that

-came an uninterrupted list of one hundred and

-ninety-seven Milesian kings, who reached to the

-arrival of the Northmen, in the eighth century of

-the present era. Under their rule Ireland enjoyed

-a profound peace. It was during this period of

-more than a thousand years that flourished and

-developed in the island of Erin an entirely original

-civilization, characterised by the Brehon Code, by

-customs of great gentleness, by institutions of admirable

-prudence, among others that of a national

-militia, the <i>Fiana-Erin</i>, or <i>Fenians</i>, who were recruited

-by voluntary enlistment, defended the country

-and maintained order therein, while the citizens

-pursued their various avocations,—agriculture, in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67"></a>[67]</span>

-which they excelled, fishing and navigation, for which

-they displayed some ability.</p>

-

-<p>Divided into five or six small independent kingdoms

-Ireland, without her militia, would have fallen an easy

-prey to the Britons, the Gauls, or the Caledonians,

-and later on to the Romans. Thanks to that national

-force,—a true civic guard, quartered during winter on

-the inhabitants, and ever popular, which proves that

-it knew how to preserve intact the tradition of Celtic

-virtues,—Ireland, alone almost among European

-nations, escaped a Roman invasion. After twelve

-hundred years the remembrance of the Fenians has

-remained so vivid in the hearts of the people that the

-Irish Republicans of America, when they resumed

-in our own days the struggle in arms against England,

-naturally chose the name of the ancient defenders of

-national independence.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>With the fall of the Roman Empire and the dying

-out of the fear of invasion, the Fenian institution disappeared.

-The military instincts of the nation then

-manifested themselves at the exterior by frequent

-incursions made by Irish adventurers in England,

-Scotland, or Gaul. It was in one of those incursions

-off the coast of Brittany that Niall Mor, King of Tara,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68"></a>[68]</span>

-took prisoner, with several other young Christians, a

-boy named Sucoth, and whom they called <i>Patricius</i>

-(Patrick) on account of his noble origin. This was at

-the end of the fourth century of our era. The prisoner

-was employed in tending flocks in Ireland, spent seven

-years there, and at last found an opportunity of escaping

-to his own country. When back in Brittany, he

-constantly thought with grief of the dreadful destiny

-of the Irish, who still remained in ignorance of the

-true religion, and vegetated in the darkness of

-Druidism. One night he had a prophetic dream,

-after which he resolved to dedicate himself to the

-evangelization of those unhappy heathens. To this

-effect he went to the town of Tours, where he assumed

-the religious habit, then on to Rome, where he entered

-the missionary seminary. In the year 432 he was at

-the Barefooted Augustines’ Convent, in Auxerre, when

-he heard of the death of Paladius, fifth apostolic missionary

-of the Holy See in the island of Erin. Patrick

-solicited and obtained the honour of succeeding him.

-He was made Archbishop <i>in partibus infidelium</i>, and

-set out with twenty other French priests.</p>

-

-<p>A certain number of Christians were already to be

-found in Ireland; but the bulk of the nation remained

-attached to its traditional worship, which

-was that of Chaldea and of Ancient Gaul, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69"></a>[69]</span>

-worship of the sun or fire, as the principle of all life

-and purity.</p>

-

-<p>Yet the sons of Erin were not by any means barbarians;

-their civilization could rather be regarded

-as the most flourishing in Europe. They knew the

-art of weaving stuffs, and of working metals; their

-laws were wise and just, their customs hardy without

-ferocity. Patrick knew better than any one that he

-must think neither of hurrying their conversion nor

-of imposing it by force. He devoted himself with

-great adroitness to the task of winning the favour

-of the chiefs, tenderly handled all the national prejudices,

-loudly extolled the excellence of the Brehon

-Code, and succeeded at last in giving baptism to the

-Princes of Leinster. After this the new religion

-made such rapid progress that at the end of fifteen

-years Patrick was obliged to ask for thirty new

-Bishops from Rome, besides the numerous native

-priests who had already received ordination at his

-hands. When he died at the ripe age of one hundred

-and twenty years, Ireland had become Christian, and

-was rapidly being Latinised in the innumerable

-schools attached to the monasteries and churches.

-She even entered so eagerly in the new path as to

-deserve the name of “Isle of Saints” throughout the

-Roman world, and that for a long time it was enough<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70"></a>[70]</span>

-to be Irish or to have visited Erin to become invested

-with almost a halo of sanctity.</p>

-

-<p>That transformation had been accomplished without

-violence or effusion of blood. Until the 8th

-century it was a source of honour and prosperity for

-Ireland, for the lustre of her own civilization was

-enhanced by her renown for piety, and all the neighbouring

-nations sent their sons in flocks to be instructed

-in her arts and her virtues.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>But the very virtues that made her a country of

-monks and scholars were doomed before long to

-become the source of all her misfortunes. When the

-Scandinavian invasions began to pour over the whole

-of Europe, Ireland, emasculated by an entirely

-mystical devotion, was found incapable of sustaining

-the shock of the Northmen. The disappearance of the

-Fenian Militia had for a long time left her without a

-national tie, given up to local rivalries, and broken in

-pieces, as it were, by the clan system. At the very

-time that she most urgently needed a powerful

-central authority to struggle against the <i>black</i> and

-<i>white strangers</i> from Norway and Denmark, she

-was found defenceless, and it was not her feeble belt<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71"></a>[71]</span>

-of mountains, opening everywhere on deep bays, that

-could oppose a serious barrier to them, or guard her

-plains against their invasions.</p>

-

-<p>Pressed by hunger, the Scandinavians left their

-country in shoals. They threw themselves on the

-coasts of Great Britain, France, and Spain, as far as

-the basin of the Mediterranean. In no place were

-the people of Europe, already enfeebled by habits of

-comparative luxury, able to resist those giants of the

-North, who dauntlessly embarked in their otter-skin

-boats and dared to go up the Seine even to the very

-walls of Paris. Ireland was a prey marked out for

-them. If peradventure the invading party were not

-numerous enough and were beaten back by numbers,

-they would come back in thousands the following

-year and sweep all before them. Vainly did the

-sons of Erin fight with all the courage of despair;

-one after the other their chieftains were vanquished,

-and the foe definitely took up a position on the south-east

-coast, where he founded the cities of Strangford,

-Carlingford, and Wexford.</p>

-

-<p>Not content with reducing the Irish to bondage,

-the victors took a cunning and savage delight in

-humiliating and degrading them, lodging garnisaries

-under their roofs, interdicting, under pain of

-death, the exercise of all liberal arts as well as the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72"></a>[72]</span>

-carrying of arms, destroying schools, burning books

-to take possession of the gold boxes that protected

-their precious binding.</p>

-

-<p>Every ten or twelve years a liberator sprang up in

-the West or North, and tried to shake off the abhorred

-yoke. But the rebellion only made it weigh more

-heavily on the neck of the vanquished; and if it

-happened that a Brian Boru succeeded, after incredible

-efforts and heroism, in gathering troops numerous

-enough to inflict on the stranger a bloody defeat, such

-a day of glory was invariably followed by the most

-sinister morrow.</p>

-

-<p>After two centuries of slavery, interrupted by massacres,

-vain struggles, and impotent efforts, Ireland,

-once so prosperous, gradually sank in the darkest

-state of barbarism. The intestine dissensions and the

-rivalries between clans achieved the work of the

-Northern Conquerors. In the year 1172 she was ripe

-for new masters, also of Scandinavian race, who were

-ready to swoop on her with their Anglo-Saxon bands,

-after passing, to come to her, through the duchy of

-Normandy and through Great Britain.</p>

-

-<p>Henry the Second of Anjou, King of England, was

-resolved to add Ireland to his possessions. All he

-wanted was a pretext. He found it in the state of

-practical schism and independence into which the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73"></a>[73]</span>

-insular Church had fallen. The members of its clergy

-no longer recognized the Roman discipline, did not

-observe Lent, and married like those of the Greek

-rite. Henry the Second solicited and obtained from

-Pope Adrian II. a bull authorizing him to invade the

-sister isle, in order to “re-establish therein the rule of

-the Holy See, stop the progress of vice, bring back

-respect for law and religion, and secure the payment

-of St. Peter’s pence.” But in spite of this formal

-authorization he was too much occupied with Aquitaine

-to be able to entertain seriously the idea of

-undertaking the conquest of Ireland, when one of his

-vassals, Strongbow, cut the knot by landing on the

-island at the head of a Welsh army, to carve himself

-a kingdom on the south-east coast.</p>

-

-<p>The way was open; Henry II. threw himself in it

-in his turn, and established himself in the east of the

-island, where, strong in the countenance of the clergy

-secured to him by the Papal bull, he received before

-long the homage of the principal native chieftains.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Limited at first to a territory enclosed within palisades,

-or <i>Pale</i>, which, during more than four centuries,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74"></a>[74]</span>

-enlarged or got narrowed, according to the

-fortune of war and the relative strength of the belligerent

-parties, the English rule was destined at last to

-spread over the whole of the island. But, of this

-seven-century struggle, the last word is not yet said.

-The wound is ever bleeding. Ireland has never

-accepted her defeat; she refuses to accept as valid a

-marriage consummated by a rape. Always she protested,

-either by direct rebellion, when she found the

-opportunity for it, as in 1640, in 1798, and in 1848;

-either by the voice of her poets and orators, by the

-nocturnal raids of her <i>Whiteboys</i> and <i>Ribbonmen</i>, by the

-plots of her Fenians, by the votes of her electors,

-by parliamentary obstruction, by passive resistance,

-by political or commercial interdict—opposed to the

-intruder; in a word, by all the means, legal or illegal,

-that offered to interrupt prescription.</p>

-

-<p>A striking, and, one may say, a unique example in

-history: after seven centuries of sustained effort on

-the part of the victor to achieve his conquest, this

-conquest is less advanced than on the morrow of

-Henry the Second’s landing at Waterford. An abyss

-still severs the two races, and time, instead of filling

-up that abyss, only seems to widen it. This phenomenon

-is of such exceptional and tragic interest; it

-beats with such crude light on the special physiology<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75"></a>[75]</span>

-of two races and the general physiology of humanity,

-that one needs must stop first and try to unravel its

-tangible causes if one be desirous of comprehending

-what is taking place in the land of Erin.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76"></a>[76]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.<br>

-<span class="smaller">HISTORICAL GRIEVANCES.</span></h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>The English, it must be admitted, are no amiable

-masters. Never, in any quarter of the globe, were

-they able to command the goodwill of the nations

-submitted to their rule, nor did they fascinate them by

-those brilliant qualities that often go a long way

-towards forgiveness of possible injuries. “Take yourself

-off there, that I may take your place,” seems

-always to have been the last word of their policy.

-Pure and simple extermination of autochthon races;

-such is their surest way to supremacy. One has seen

-it successively in America, on the Australian continent,

-in Tasmania, in New Zealand, where the native tribes

-hardly exist now more than as a memory. On the

-other hand, if the vanquished races were too numerous

-or too sturdy and prolific to be easily suppressed,

-as in India or Ireland, reconciliation never took place;

-conquest ever remained a doubtful and precarious

-fact.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77"></a>[77]</span></p>

-

-<p>In Ireland, the question was made more complex

-by two elements that visibly took a predominant

-part in the relations between the conquerors and the

-conquered. In the first place, the island of Erin,

-having remained outside the pale of the Roman world

-and of barbaric invasions, possessed an indigenous

-and original civilization that made her peculiarly refractory

-to the establishment of the feudal system.

-Secondly, her very remoteness and her insular character

-inclined the immigrants to establish themselves

-there regretfully, to consider her always as a colony

-and a place of exile, where they only resided against

-their will. For the first four hundred years of their

-occupation they confined themselves to the eastern

-coast within the inclosed territory (varying with the

-fortune of war) that they called the <i>Pale</i> or palisade,

-and outside which the Irish preserved their manners,

-their laws, and their own customs.</p>

-

-<p>In spite of this barrier, it happened in the course of

-time that the English colonists got pervaded by those

-customs and felt their contagion. At once the British

-Parliament had recourse to drastic laws in order to

-open a new abyss between the two races, and keep

-the mastery they had over the Irish. Such is

-the special object of an edict of Edward III.,

-known under the name of <i>Edict of Kilkenny</i>, and by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78"></a>[78]</span>

-which it is reputed high treason for any Englishman

-established in Ireland to have married an Irish-woman,

-to have legitimised an Irish child, or have

-held him in baptism, to have taken an Irish

-Christian name, to have worn the Irish dress, to have

-spoken the Erse tongue, to have let his moustache

-grow, or to have ridden saddleless, as was the Irish

-fashion; above all, to have submitted to the Brehon

-Code. Those divers crimes were punished by confiscation

-of property, and perpetual imprisonment of the

-offender.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Such laws were a powerful obstacle to fusion, raised

-by the intruder himself. One sees at once the difference

-between, for instance, such a system and that

-established by the Norman invasion in Great Britain.</p>

-

-<p>Here the conqueror found a race made supple by

-Roman occupation and Danish rule; he established

-himself, by strength of arm, on the soil, covered it

-with strongholds, and everywhere substituted himself

-to the dispossessed masters; he at once implanted

-within his new dominions the French tongue, the

-feudal system, the powerful hierarchy that constituted

-its strength; he remained standing, iron-covered

-and in arms, over the prostrate bodies of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79"></a>[79]</span>

-population in bondage, and repressed with such a

-high hand any attempt at rebellion, that the very idea

-of resistance must of necessity die out soon. On the

-other hand, having transplanted himself, and without

-any idea of return, in this new sphere, he immediately

-submitted to its influence; he incorporated himself

-with the ambient race to such a degree as soon to

-forget his own origin, and come after two or three

-generations to consider himself as purely of English

-breed.</p>

-

-<p>In Ireland, on the contrary, not only was the conqueror

-reduced by the imperfect state of his conquest

-to remain on the defensive, confined within the Pale

-on the eastern shore, within reach, so to say, of the

-mother country; not only could not he dream for a

-long time of obliging populations that escaped all

-action on his part to obey his manners and his laws;

-not only did he systematically keep those populations

-at arm’s length and avoided mixing with them; but

-periodical laws and edicts constantly came to remind

-them, on pain of terrible punishment, that he belonged

-to another race, and must guard with jealous care the

-integrity of its autonomy. Without any intercourse

-with the more distant tribes, he was at constant war

-with those of the borders of the Pale.</p>

-

-<p>And war was, at this period even still more than in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80"></a>[80]</span>

-our own days, mere rapine, raised to the dignity of a

-system. The English did not scruple to make incursions

-on their neighbour’s lands, to take away harvest,

-cattle, and women, after which they returned to their

-fortified territory.</p>

-

-<p>They did even worse: having heard of the ancient

-custom by which the Irish formerly accorded fire and

-candle light to their national militia or Fenians, the

-English revived it to their own profit; they quartered

-on the peasantry in their neighbourhood during all

-the winter, a soldier, who took his seat round the

-domestic hearth, shared the meals of the family, took

-possession of the best bed—nay, did not disdain to

-cast the eye of favour on the wife or daughter—and

-not the less remained a stranger, a foe, at the same

-time that he was a forced guest and a spy—for he

-was forbidden to speak the language, to adopt the

-dress, to imitate the manners of his victims.... The

-horror of that burden coming anew every year

-had once led to the suppression of the Fenian militia.

-How much more terrible was such servitude, enforced

-by the enemy! Constant were the rebellions, and

-always repressed with calculated barbarity—they only

-served as a pretext for new exactions.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81"></a>[81]</span></p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Still, in spite of all, a certain contagion of habits

-took place between the contiguous races. A few

-native chiefs insensibly began to imitate the manners

-of the English. The English were not long in discovering

-a way to reconcile them—by appealing to

-their basest impulses.</p>

-

-<p>Until then, the Irish had had no knowledge of

-individual property. With them land was, like the

-sky or the air they breathed, the common inheritance

-of those who occupied it. The members of a clan,

-indeed, paid the chieftain a tax or annual duty, but

-they did not conceive it as possible that this leader

-could look on himself as the master of the social fund

-to which they, like him, had a hereditary right. At

-the most they expected their harvest or cattle to

-be seized, in case of non-payment of the tax.

-There never had been an eviction of the tenant,

-as there had been no sale or transfer of the

-land by him occupied. Individual appropriation,

-as resulting from the feudal system, was such a

-new idea to the Irish that they were at first unable to

-grasp it.</p>

-

-<p>“What interest can you have in making your clan

-give up their land to the English, since you get it

-back in return for your homage?” would ask some

-of the native chieftains of those of their countrymen<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82"></a>[82]</span>

-nearer the pale who had taken for some time to

-performing that commercial transaction.</p>

-

-<p>The neophytes of feudal law would then explain

-that in case of extension of the English conquest,

-their possession of the land would be guaranteed by

-the fact of the new title. What they took great care

-should not be discovered by the clan, was that they

-gave what did not belong to them, and sold the

-collective property of their followers, to receive it

-afterwards at the hands of the English as personal

-property.... This was seen clearly later on,

-when they began to sell it or raise mortgages on it.

-But that, the dawn of a gigantic fraud, nobody in

-Ireland could so much as suspect. The fraudulent

-origin of individual appropriation is nevertheless,

-even to our own day, the true root of the desperate

-resistance that the Irish tenant invariably opposes to

-eviction. Be it tradition, be it “cellular memory,” he

-is conscious of his primordial and superior right to

-that glebe once stolen from his forefathers.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Stolen! if only it had been stolen once for all!...

-But to repeat Fitzgibbon’s (Lord Clare) saying,

-there is not in the whole of Ireland one field that

-has not been <i>at least three times</i> unjustly taken from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83"></a>[83]</span>

-its legitimate possessors. And that spoliation was

-always accompanied by the most aggravating circumstances.</p>

-

-<p>It was indeed with Henry VIII. and Elizabeth that

-the true efforts of England to achieve the conquest of

-Erin were made, and from that time, to the antagonism

-of the two races, to the conflict of interests, was added

-religious hatred. Between puritanical England and

-Catholic Ireland began a duel to the death, into which

-each generation in turn has thrown itself for three

-centuries. Oppression begets rebellion, and rebellion

-expires drowned in blood. We have no intention of

-repeating that history in these pages; its details are

-to be found everywhere. Let us only recall its essential

-features.</p>

-

-<p>Towards the year 1565, Queen Elizabeth undertook

-the “plantation” of Ireland on a large scale, and

-set about it by the elementary process of dispossessing

-the owners of the soil in order to present

-Englishmen with their lands. The whole country

-rose, under the command of John Desmond, who

-called the Spaniards to his aid. Upon which England

-sent to Ireland, together with Sydney, Sussex, and

-Walter Raleigh, armies whose instructions were “the

-extermination of the Rebels.”</p>

-

-<p>“At Christmas,” wrote one of the English Generals,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84"></a>[84]</span>

-Sir Nicolas Malby, in the year 1576, “I entered

-Connaught, and soon finding that by mercy I should

-only succeed in having my throat cut, I preferred to

-adopt a different tactic. I therefore threw myself in

-the mountains with the settled determination of

-destroying these people by sword and fire, sparing

-neither the old nor the children. <i>I burnt down all

-their harvests and all their houses, and I put to the

-sword all that fell within my hands....</i> This

-occurred in the country of Shane Burke. I did the

-same thing in that of Ullick Burke.”</p>

-

-<p>The other English Generals vied in ardour with

-this butcher; so much so that at the end of a few

-years of indiscriminate hangings, massacres, burnings

-of house and land, the whole of Munster was laid

-waste like a desert; a few wretches only were left to

-wander over it like ghosts, and they came voluntarily to

-offer their throat to the knife of Queen Elizabeth’s

-soldiers. The Virgin Queen then resolved to repeople

-that desert; she made proclamation that all the lands of

-the Desmonds were confiscated (more than 500,000

-acres) and she offered them gratuitously to whosoever

-would “plant” them with the help of English labour.

-The grantees were to pay no duty to the Crown until

-six years had passed, and that duty was always to be of

-the lightest. In spite of these advantages colonization<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85"></a>[85]</span>

-did not make much progress. The English at last

-understood that they must either give it up, or resign

-themselves to having the ground cultivated by the

-despoiled Irish who had survived the massacres.

-H ow could those wretched people have done otherwise

-than nourish the hope of revenge?</p>

-

-<p>That revenge was attempted in Ulster at the death

-of Elizabeth. It ended in new disasters, new tortures,

-new confiscations. The counties of Tyrone, Derry,

-Donegal, Armagh, Fermanagh, and Cavan,—in all

-about three million acres,—were then seized by the

-Crown and distributed in lots to Scotch settlers.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>In the year 1641, under the reign of Charles I., a

-few Irishmen having emigrated to the continent, and

-having been initiated to modern military tactics in

-the ranks of the French army, attempted to liberate

-their country. They provoked a rising, succeeded in

-holding in check during eight years all the British

-forces, and in 1649 compelled the King of England to

-grant them by formal treaty the conditions they

-themselves dictated. But a few days later the head

-of Charles fell on the scaffold, and Cromwell in

-person, escorted by his son, by Ireton and Ludlow,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86"></a>[86]</span>

-made it his business to come and annul the treaty of

-Kilkenny.</p>

-

-<p>“For Jesus!... No quarter!...” Such was

-the battle-cry he gave to his Roundheads. Drogheda,

-then Wexford were taken by storm; men, women,

-and children were exterminated; Galway fell in

-1652. The populations, exhausted by a war and

-famine of ten years’ duration, surrendered themselves

-to his mercy, and laid down their arms. Cromwell

-had only now to reap the fruits of his victory by

-making Ireland pay for it.</p>

-

-<p>His first idea was to complete the extermination of

-the native race, in order to replace it by English colonists.

-But even his gloomy soul recoiled before the

-only means that at once and for ever could put an end

-to “the Irish gangrene.” He adopted a middle course,

-of much less radical efficacy. This middle course consisted

-in transporting, or, as they called it at the time

-<i>transplanting</i> all the Irish into the region bounded by

-the Shannon, there to be penned up like men infested

-with the plague, while all the rest of the territory was

-allotted to English families.</p>

-

-<p>The enterprise was conducted with truly puritanical

-method and rigour. Thousands of Irish were shipped

-as slaves to the West Indies, thousands of others were

-imprisoned in Connaught, under pain of death for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87"></a>[87]</span>

-whoever should cross its limits. All the land, carefully

-parcelled out, was divided by lot between the

-soldiers of Cromwell, upon agreement that they should

-consider themselves bound to expend their pay for

-three years on the improvement of it. But those fields,

-to yield up their value, had to be cultivated, and the

-English labourer declined to become a voluntary exile

-in order to cultivate them. Little by little the native

-peasantry came back to their old homes with the

-tenacity peculiar to their class, they founded families

-and reconstituted the Irish nation under the ten or

-twelve thousand landlords imposed over them by fraud

-and violence. Forty years after Cromwell’s death,

-these landlords had even forgotten how to speak the

-English language.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Restoration was not destined to heal any of those

-cruel wounds. Charles II. took little heed of Ireland,

-which he deemed too far off, and besides he thought it

-good policy not to disturb the new occupants in their

-possessions. He barely deemed it necessary to

-establish in Dublin a Court of Revision that sat only

-one year, examined no more than seven hundred cases<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88"></a>[88]</span>

-out of a total of above three thousand that were submitted

-to it, and ordered the restitution of hardly a

-sixth part of the confiscated land.</p>

-

-<p>After the Revolution of 1688, nevertheless, the

-Irish only embraced with more ardour the cause of

-James II. when he landed in Ireland with a handful

-of men. Even after his defeat at the Boyne, they so

-successfully resisted William of Orange that he was

-compelled in 1691 to grant to them, by the treaty of

-Limerick, the free exercise of their religion and the

-political privileges that could help them to preserve

-it. But, like so many other charters, that one was

-soon to be violated. All the Irish Jacobites were

-compelled to expatriate themselves (numbers of them

-took service in France; more than fifty thousand

-Irishmen died under the <i>fleur-de-lis</i> during the

-first half of the eighteenth century); four thousand

-others were evicted from one million of acres that

-William distributed among his followers. Soon to

-this already terrible repression were to be added

-all the rigours of the Penal Code, that code that proclaimed

-it a duty to spy, and a meritorious act to

-betray the Irishman at his hearth; that code of

-which Burke could say: “Never did the ingenious

-perversity of man put forth a machine more perfect,

-more thoughtfully elaborated, more calculated to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89"></a>[89]</span>

-oppress, to impoverish, to degrade a people, to lower

-in them human nature itself.”</p>

-

-<p>Under the network of that nameless despotism

-which attacked man in his dearest privileges, the

-rights of conscience, the sanctity of home,—under

-the weight of a legislation that in a manner forbade

-her the use of water and fire, that closed all careers

-before her, after having wrenched her last furrow from

-her keeping,—the Irish nation persisted in living

-and multiplying. Was it any wonder that in the

-depth of her collective soul she cherished dreams of

-revenge and justice?</p>

-

-<p>The American Emancipation and the French Revolution

-appeared to her as the dawn of regeneration.

-Alas! once again the glorious effort of 1798,—the

-rebellion in arms, victory itself, were only to end in a

-complete wreck. As if Fate owed one more stroke of

-irony to this martyred nation, it was an Irish Parliament

-that by its own vote in 1800 abdicated the

-hardly recovered national independence. Pitt bought

-it wholesale for the price of 1,200,000 guineas.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>It was not enough, however, to have taken from

-the Irishman his blood, his land, his religious faith,

-and his liberty: they must still prevent his prospering<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a>[90]</span>

-in commerce or industry. Political interest was here

-in accordance with avarice in giving this advice to

-the victor.</p>

-

-<p>Charles II. began by forbidding Ireland to export

-meat, butter, and cheese to England. At that time

-of slow maritime intercourse, no idea could be

-entertained of sending them to any other market.

-The Irish had to fall back on wool, which they exported

-to France and Spain. That was sufficient to

-arouse the jealousy of their pitiless masters. The

-export of wool, be it as raw material or in woven

-stuffs, was forbidden the Irish on pain of confiscation

-and fines.</p>

-

-<p>The effect of this harsh measure was two-fold: it

-prevented the abhorred Irish prospering; it secured

-to the English merchant the monopoly of Irish wool,

-which he could henceforth buy at his own price

-(generally at a quarter of the current price), and sell

-again at a lesser rate than all his competitors. It

-only remained for Ireland to make smugglers of all

-her fishermen; they crammed all the caverns on her

-coasts with wool, and during the winter, in spite of

-excisemen, they exchanged it for the wines and

-spirits of France and Spain. By the same occasion

-they exported soldiers and imported Catholic priests.

-Thus did Ireland keep losing her vital strength, by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91"></a>[91]</span>

-the constant departure of the most vigorous amongst

-her sons, at the same time that she inoculated in

-her blood two equally fatal poisons—alcohol and

-fanaticism.</p>

-

-<p>On the other hand, the Puritan weavers of Ulster

-were ruined like the wool-farmers. They emigrated

-to America, and England found no bitterer foes

-than their sons during the War of Independence.</p>

-

-<p>Some of the Irish tried to fall back on other industries,

-as the weaving of linen or ship-building. At

-once England interfered with an iron hand by establishing

-the most ruinous prohibitive duties on Irish

-linens, while at the same time her cotton fabrics came

-pouring over the country. To make doubly sure,

-England, by a special law, formally interdicted ship-building

-in Ireland as well as any direct trade with

-any foreign market whatsoever.</p>

-

-<p>One feels a sort of shame for the human kind in

-having to record such consistent acts of systematic

-cruelty. The violence of military retaliation, the

-sacking of towns or the massacre of vanquished foes,

-may be explained by the heat of combat, and are

-found in the annals of all countries. An economical

-compression exercised during ten or twelve generations

-on one nation by another nation of Shylocks is,

-happily, a fact without any parallel in history.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92"></a>[92]</span></p>

-

-<p>From the beginning of the 18th century all

-industrial enterprise had thus been unmercifully

-forbidden to Ireland. All the factories were closed,

-the working population had been reduced to field

-labour, emigration or street-begging. This population

-therefore weighed still more heavily on the soil,

-still exaggerating its tendencies to subdivision;

-which tendencies, already a curse for Ireland, were

-to cause in the future new ferments of hatred

-and misery. All the attempts that Ireland made to

-free herself from those iron shackles were pitilessly

-repressed. She saw herself deprived of her right to

-commercial activity, as she had been of national

-conscience, of land, and religious or political freedom.

-And it is after having thus for centuries systematically

-trained the Irish to poverty, idleness, and

-drink, that England, crowning her work with calumny,

-dares to bring forward their vices as an excuse for

-herself!</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>These things are far from us already. But it would

-be erring greatly to imagine that in the eyes of the

-Irish they bear an antiquated character. Oral tradition,

-seconded by an indigenous literature, keeps

-the wound open and green. Yonder wretched beggar,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>[93]</span>

-dying of hunger and want upon the glebe once possessed

-by his ancestors, knows that they ruled where

-he now serves, bears their name with a touching

-pride, and sadly toils for others in a field that he

-believes to belong to himself. He is not ignorant of

-the way in which it was taken from him, at what date,

-and in what manner the event took place. How

-could he consider its present possessors otherwise

-than as his most cruel enemies?</p>

-

-<p>Let us imagine the French <i>émigrés</i> brought back

-violently on the lands taken from them by the nation,

-and reduced to support their family by tilling their

-fields with their own hands. Let us suppose them

-compelled every year to pay an exorbitant rent to

-the usurper. Let us blot out from history’s page

-the milliard indemnity given to the <i>émigrés</i> and the

-amnesty passed over those things by five or six successive

-revolutions. Let us lastly add to these deadly

-rancours the weight of a religious persecution of three

-centuries, of the undisguised contempt of the victor,

-and of the most shocking political inequality....

-Let that <i>émigré</i>, in a word, not only have lost caste,

-be spoliated and a serf, but also be a pariah, a kind of

-pestilent member of the community: then we shall

-gather some idea of the state of mind of the Irish

-people towards England; we shall understand that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94"></a>[94]</span>

-in truth the only mistake committed by Cromwell

-and the others in their system of colonization was

-to have not carried it to its full length, to have not

-exterminated all by fire or sword, and to have left

-a single son of Erin alive.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>As a contrast to England and Ireland, let us place

-a historical fact of the same order, that of France

-with Corsica. Here also we find an insular race of

-markedly distinct character, of different language,

-different manners and traditions, the habit of independence

-and the clan-spirit,—all that can foster

-and serve resistance to annexation. But here the

-conquering nation is France, and she is a kind

-mother. She does not come, fire and sword in hand,

-to ravage the harvests of the vanquished, to take his

-land, to impose on him, together with a new faith,

-exceptional laws, and a brand of infamy. On the

-contrary, to them she opens her arms, she offers her

-wealth and her love. From the first day she admits

-Corsicans to the provincial parliaments, and twenty

-years later she receives their deputies in the

-Assemblée Nationale. From the first hour they

-feel they are Frenchmen, the equals of those born

-in the Ile de France. There are for them neither<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95"></a>[95]</span>

-special taxes, nor political inferiority, nor rigours of

-any sort. Never was an inch of ground taken from

-them to be given to the continental families. Never

-were they treated like serfs to be trodden down

-without mercy. If there be an exception made, it

-is in their favour; as, for instance, the reduction of

-one half of all duties on imports; the free trade in

-tobacco; the enormous proportion of Corsicans

-admitted to all Government offices.</p>

-

-<p>But what a difference, too, in the results!... In

-less than a hundred years, the fusion between the

-two races is so perfect, the assimilation so complete,

-that one could not find to-day one man in Corsica

-to wish for a separation. Nay, rather, against such

-an enterprise, if any one were found to attempt it, all

-Corsica would rise in arms.</p>

-

-<p>If Great Britain had so willed it, Ireland might

-easily have become to her what Corsica is to us.

-Only, for the last seven hundred years, Great Britain

-has lacked what alone could have made that miracle

-possible,—a mother’s heart and love.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96"></a>[96]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.<br>

-<span class="smaller">KILLARNEY.</span></h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>I know no place to compare with Killarney: so

-soft to the eye, so full of unspeakable grace. It is

-as a compendium of Ireland; all the characteristic

-features of the country are united there: the elegant

-“round towers,” drawing on the horizon the airy

-outline of their conic shafts; the soft moistness of the

-atmosphere, the tender blue of the sky, the intense

-green of the meadows, set off by long, black trails of

-peat, and the white, ochre, and red streaks which the

-grit-stone and clay-slate draw on the hill-side.</p>

-

-<p>Within the oval circus formed by the mountains of

-Kerry, the Killarney lakes succeed one another like

-small Mediterraneans, all dotted with lovely islands,

-where myrtle and rare ferns grow freely, fostered by a

-Lusitanian climate. Every one of those islands has

-its legend, its own saint, buried under some old moss-grown

-mound; its ruined castle, its ivy-clothed

-abbey, paved with tombstones and haunted by some<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97"></a>[97]</span>

-<i>banshee</i>. They are like large baskets of flowers

-floating on the clear, silent waters, whose peace is

-only broken now and then by the jumping of a fish,

-or the clucking of some stray teal. All there unite

-to form a landscape of almost paradoxical beauty.

-You think you have landed in fairyland, outside the

-pale of ordinary life.</p>

-

-<p>The most illustrious of them is Innisfallen, where

-the monks wrote in the seventh century their famous

-<i>Annals</i>, the pride of the Bodleian Library. In viewing

-this enchanting island, you involuntarily fall to

-repeating the beautiful lines of Moore which you

-used to bungle in your school days, and of which you

-first realise the profound truth:</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Sweet Innisfallen, fare thee well,</i></div>

-  <div class="verse indent2"><i>May calm and sunshine long be thine,</i></div>

-  <div class="verse indent0"><i>How fair thou art, let others tell,</i></div>

-  <div class="verse indent2"><i>While but to feel how fair be mine, etc.</i>”</div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Along the shores of that range of lakes, two lordly

-domains display the noble arrangement of their parks:

-one is the seat of the Earl of Kenmare, lord-lieutenant

-of the county, late Lord Chamberlain to the Queen

-during the Gladstone Ministry. The other belongs

-to Captain Herbert of Muckross, late Member of

-Parliament. As far around as you can see the land<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98"></a>[98]</span>

-belongs to either of those two landlords. Just as in

-the tale, down to the extremity of the valley, up to

-the very top of the far-away mountain, land and

-water, beasts and Christians, all belong to the “Marquis

-de Carabas.”</p>

-

-<p>Some restriction must be made, however. Changes

-have been introduced lately. Only a few years ago

-it was a thing understood that of the two members

-which the borough returned to Parliament one must

-be the heir presumptive of the house of Kenmare, the

-other the chief of the house of Muckross. That is

-over. Now-a-days the Kerry voters send whom Mr.

-Parnell likes to the House of Commons. But the air

-of the parks is still the property of the two owners;

-none may breathe it without their leave. I hasten to

-say that the permission is most courteously given by

-Lord Kenmare to all tourists, and as readily (if less

-liberally) sold on the Muckross grounds to anyone

-willing to pay one or two shillings, according to his

-approach walking or on horseback.</p>

-

-<p>The two parks are marvels, almost without other

-rivals in the world, for their prodigious extent, their

-admirably kept shrubberies and avenues, and the

-splendour and variety of the points of view which

-art has devised on the lakes. Those lakes themselves,

-with their islands, bays, and toy-peninsulas, their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99"></a>[99]</span>

-rippling brooks and foaming cascades, are only part

-of the beauties of the whole. Muckross is proud to

-possess the old abbey of the same name, and the

-Torc Cascade. Kenmare boasts Innisfallen, Ross

-Island, Saint Finian’s Tomb, the legendary ruins of

-O’Donoghue’s Castle, and a hundred other wonders.

-It is more regal than lordly, and there are indeed few

-royal residences which can boast such gardens.</p>

-

-<p>You go away dazzled, enchanted, intoxicated with

-verdure, ozone, and poetic sights. You come back

-the day following, you almost wish to take root there

-for a sort of contemplative life, where you would discard

-any heavier occupation than catching salmon,

-smoking endless cigarettes, and reading over your

-favourite authors. A rich artist, it is said, being

-pricked with a violent desire of that kind, offered I

-don’t know how much ready money to Lord Kenmare

-if he would grant him five hundred square yards of

-ground on Ross Island. The offer was declined.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>There is a reverse side to the picture; and it could

-scarcely be less brilliant. Killarney is a sorry borough

-of about four or five thousand inhabitants, more

-miserable looking than words can express. Except

-in the great hotels which English enterprise has<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100"></a>[100]</span>

-raised for fleecing the tourists attracted there by the

-beauty of the lakes, there is not a vestige of ease or

-prosperity. No busy workman, not one manufacture

-is to be seen. The miserable shops exhibit a few

-dusty wares which nobody seems anxious either to

-buy or to sell. There is a despondent stillness about,

-and people look tired with doing nothing. The

-women, all more or less “tattered and torn,” wear a

-poor rag of a shawl on their heads. Half-naked

-children, wild-haired, full of vermin, swarm out of all

-the small alleys which open on the one street of the

-town. Only the Anglican and Catholic churches rise

-above the sordid little dwellings with a substantial

-and well-to-do air.</p>

-

-<p>Go out of the village, follow the long walls which

-enclose the lordly seats, and after three or four miles

-you will find again the Irish country such as you have

-seen it everywhere. Turnip and barley fields, thin

-pastures, few trees or none at all. On the road-side

-occasionally is a consumptive cow, or a pig wallowing in

-mud fraternally with two or three bright-eyed urchins.

-Here and there a hovel with the traditional dung-hill

-and three hens. Nothing, in short, calculated to bring

-a new light on the agrarian crisis.</p>

-

-<p>It is in Kerry, however, that the malady has reached

-its most acute state, they all tell me. But you could<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101"></a>[101]</span>

-not believe how hard it is to obtain any definite information

-about those matters. People who really know

-about it feel a sort of shame to bare their national

-wounds before a stranger, and besides, the diversity

-of judgments makes it difficult to draw something

-positive from them. Every man has his party feeling,

-and is wishing to enforce it upon you. Provided with

-a good number of letters of introduction, and everywhere

-received with perfect cordiality, I have talked

-already with people of all conditions—landlords,

-agents, farmers, doctors, priests, and labourers,—without

-having obtained as yet any but individual views.

-Home Rulers and Orangemen have made me hear

-arguments that I know by heart from having heard

-them repeated these last eight years, ever since the

-crisis entered its actual phase. This is not the thing

-we want: we want <i>espèces</i>, as they say in French law;

-specific illustration, direct symptoms of the Irish

-disease.</p>

-

-<p>And that is the difficulty. The habit of living

-among certain deformities so familiarises us with

-them that we are no longer able to perceive them,

-and still less to point them out. Moreover, when

-upon receiving a letter from London, a man is

-kind enough to ask you to dinner, to introduce you

-to his wife and daughters, to lend you his horse and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102"></a>[102]</span>

-trap, and to empty for your benefit his store of ready-made

-opinions, is it possible decently to ask him

-more? He has his own affairs, and cannot spend his

-time running with you through hill and dale in order

-to help you to unravel a sociological problem.</p>

-

-<p>By a stroke of good luck I met the scout I wanted.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>I was returning from an excursion to the Gap of

-Dunloe when, on the banks of the river which waters

-the Kenmare estate, near the bridge, I noticed a man of

-about forty, of middle height, poorly but neatly clad,

-who was walking in front of me and gave evident signs

-of wishing to enter into conversation. I had been so

-harassed lately by the swarm of cicerones and incompetent

-guides who crowd all ways to the lakes

-and sights around Killarney, that I had grown

-suspicious, and pretended not to see the man. But

-he had his idea and stuck to it. Slackening his pace,

-he began to whistle <i>La Marseillaise</i>.</p>

-

-<p>That was saying plainly:—</p>

-

-<p>“You are French, and I am a friend of France like

-all Irishmen. You are welcome here.”</p>

-

-<p>Throughout the world it is the adopted form for

-such a declaration of love. On board a transatlantic

-steamer or in the sitting-rooms of a cosmopolite hotel,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103"></a>[103]</span>

-when a fair-haired or dark-haired new acquaintance

-seats herself to the piano and begins to play the

-march of Rouget de l’Isle, the French tourist can see

-his way: he is looked upon with no unfriendly eye.</p>

-

-<p>There were no dark or fair tresses here, but only a

-bearded pepper-and-salt quadragenarian, with the

-patent purpose of hooking me at the rate of half-a-crown

-an hour: so I remained obdurate. But he,

-suddenly making up his mind:—</p>

-

-<p>“Well, <i>Sor</i>,” he said to me with a soft voice and

-the most enticing smile, “how do you <i>loike</i> our

-country?”</p>

-

-<p>“Your country? I should like it a great deal

-better if one could go about it without being pestered

-by guides at every turning,” I said, but half-remorsefully.</p>

-

-<p>“How true, sir! Those guides positively infest the

-place. And if they only knew their trade! But they

-are regular swindlers, beggars who steal the tourist’s

-money; the shame of Ireland, that is what they

-are!”</p>

-

-<p>The conversation then commenced, and to say the

-truth I have no reason to repent it. The fellow is

-well-informed, quick-witted, incredibly talkative, and

-in five minutes has given me really valuable information,

-besides biographical details about himself. He<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104"></a>[104]</span>

-is called MacMahon like many others in this country,

-for I have seen that name over twenty village shops

-already. Is he any relation to the Maréchal? No;

-he makes no pretension to that. But after all it is

-not improbable that they come from one root, for my

-friend is not, of course, without his relationship with

-some of the numberless kings of Ireland.</p>

-

-<p>“And the Marshal is a great man, a brave soldier,

-a true Irishman. I have his picture at home. I’ll

-show it to you if you do me the honour to visit my

-humble roof, and accept a glass of ‘mountain dew.’”</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>My new acquaintance has been quill-driver at a

-land surveyor’s, and he knows many things. This,

-for instance: that all people here, from the most insignificant

-farmer to the biggest landowner, are in debt.</p>

-

-<p>“All that glitters is not gold,” he says, with a

-melancholy smile. “Do you see that large expanse

-of land, sir? Well, those who own it are not perhaps

-richer than I, and have not perhaps always

-as much pocket-money as would be convenient

-for them. Their annual income goes to pay the

-interest of an enormous debt, the hereditary obligations

-which weigh on the property, and the normal

-keeping of it. Mr. Herbert, the owner of Muckross,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105"></a>[105]</span>

-had to emigrate to America, where he is now an

-attorney’s clerk, for his daily bread. The shilling

-you give for entering his park goes to the scraping of

-it. As for Lord Kenmare, he never sees as much as

-the tenth part of the revenue of his property, let

-alone his being forbidden his own grounds under

-pain of being shot dead! Lady Kenmare lives there

-alone with her children under protection of a detachment

-of the police.” So the masters of those two

-noble estates are exiled from them, one by mortgage,

-the other by agrarian hatred. O, irony of things!</p>

-

-<p>“But Lord Kenmare’s not a bad landlord, is he?”

-I said to MacMahon.</p>

-

-<p>“Far from it. His tenants are eight hundred in

-number, and there are not three evicted in the year.

-I know personally twenty of them who owe him four

-years’ rent and are never troubled about it. But he

-has taken position against the League—that is

-enough. And then, don’t you know, sir, the best of

-landlords is not worth much in the eyes of his tenants.

-<i>They want the land and they will have it.</i> But this is

-my house. Please come in, sir.”</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Thus chattering, the communicative Celt had

-brought me to the entrance of a small low house<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a>[106]</span>

-in a by-street of Killarney. We entered a sort

-of kitchen-parlour on a level with the lane. No

-carpet or flooring of any kind but the simple beaten

-clay, a large old-fashioned chimney, a table, a few

-straw-covered chairs; on the walls a whole private

-museum in chromo-lithography: Pope Pius IX., the

-Marshal Duke of Magenta, Mr. Parnell, &amp;c., and a

-branch of holy palm.</p>

-

-<p>Upon our coming, a poor creature, pale and

-emaciated, had risen without showing any surprise.</p>

-

-<p>“Mrs. MacMahon, <i>Sor</i>! Everilda Matilda, a

-French gentleman who honours our house by

-stopping a moment in it. Call the children, my

-dear; the gentleman will be pleased to see them, I

-think.”</p>

-

-<p>A tall girl with brown eyes first presents herself,

-then a boy between twelve and thirteen years old,

-then a variety of younger fry. I am told that Mary

-has passed successfully her “standards,” that Tim

-has just begun Latin with an ultimate view to become

-a priest “like his uncle Jack;” then the “mountain

-dew” is produced. It is a kind of home-made

-whisky, not unpalatable.</p>

-

-<p>At last mine host turns to his wife.</p>

-

-<p>“Supposing, my dear, you show your lace to the

-French gentleman, to let him see what you can do<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107"></a>[107]</span>

-when you are not bed-ridden. Perhaps he will like

-to bring back some little remembrance of Killarney

-to his ‘lady.’”</p>

-

-<p>I was caught.</p>

-

-<p>Everilda Matilda instantly produced a box containing

-cuffs and collars of Irish point, and all that

-remains to me to do, if I am not ready to forfeit my

-rights to the qualification of gentleman, is to buy a

-few guineas’ worth. Hardly is the matter over, than

-MacMahon turns to the future ecclesiastic—</p>

-

-<p>“And you, Tim, will you not show the gentleman

-those sticks you polish so well?”</p>

-

-<p>Caught again!</p>

-

-<p>If each member of the family has his own private

-trade, the <i>mountain-dew</i> threatens to be rather an

-expensive refreshment.</p>

-

-<p>“I am greatly obliged to you,” I said, “but I have

-got already a complete collection of <i>shillelaghs</i>.”</p>

-

-<p>MacMahon’s jaw fell visibly.</p>

-

-<p>“But we could perhaps make another arrangement,

-that would be more advantageous,” I continued

-quietly. “You know the country well, you tell me?”</p>

-

-<p>“As a man who has lived forty years in it and

-never left it.”</p>

-

-<p>“Well, let us have a pair of good hacks; you lead

-me for a couple of days across field and country, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108"></a>[108]</span>

-show me a dozen authentic cases of eviction, agrarian

-violence, or boycottism. If you will undertake this,

-and I am satisfied with you, upon our return I will

-take the whole lot of lace.”</p>

-

-<p>You should have seen the glowing faces of the

-whole family! The affair was soon settled, and the

-day after we started.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>[109]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.<br>

-<span class="smaller">THROUGH KERRY ON HORSEBACK.</span></h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>It was not two days but six that we spent, my

-guide and I, visiting the County Kerry in all directions,

-examining the crops, asking about prices, entering

-cottages and small farms, chatting with anyone

-that we supposed capable of giving us information.

-The rather unexpected conclusion I arrived at was

-that the agrarian crisis is more especially felt in the

-richest districts, while it can hardly be said to exist in

-the poorest parts. Kerry is, in that particular, a true

-copy of Ireland on a small scale. It may, in fact, be

-divided into two perfectly distinct regions—the plains

-of the north and the mountains of the south-west.

-Those regions offer characteristics as marked in an

-economical as in a geographical point of view.</p>

-

-<p>Another conclusion drawn from my personal intercourse

-with the Irish peasant was that nothing is to

-be got out of him by bullying and everything by

-gentle means. If you arrive at an inn and proceed, as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110"></a>[110]</span>

-do the English everywhere, to assume a harsh and

-arrogant tone, you will experience the greatest difficulties

-in obtaining even meagre fare in return for

-your money. They will pretend they have nothing

-in the house, that they are not in the habit of receiving

-travellers, and such like stories. If, on the contrary,

-you at once proclaim yourself delighted with the

-country, its manners and its inhabitants; if you risk

-a compliment to the hostess or a gentle pinch to the

-children’s cheek, the whole house is yours. They will

-instantly wring the neck of the solitary chicken promenading

-in front of the house; they will exhibit

-clean table-linen; they will rush to the neighbour

-and borrow a salad or some fruit; they will even

-unearth from some dark corner a bottle of old port.

-If you give this impromptu supper only half the

-praise it deserves, you may count on a luxurious

-breakfast for the next morning. These poor people

-are thus made. Their heart is warm; their sensibilities

-are quick. The least thing discourages them;

-the least thing electrifies them. In contradiction to the

-Anglo-Saxon serf, who despises his master if he treat

-him with gentleness, Paddy prefers a gracious word

-to all the guineas in the kingdom. The philosophical

-reason for the failure of the British in Ireland (and

-elsewhere) is perhaps chiefly to be found in their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111"></a>[111]</span>

-general want of human sympathy. The Englishman

-speaks too often like a slave-driver when he should

-speak like an elder brother.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">The Plain.</span></p>

-

-<p>The plains of North Kerry must be classed among

-the best land in the isle. This is not saying that they

-are first-class. But they evidently only need some

-outlay in drainage and manure and a few modern

-improvements in culture to rival our Normandy

-pastures. It is above all a land of grazing fields

-and butter; the grass in the meadows is green and

-luxuriant; the cows look strong and well. It is

-evident that the least effort would be sufficient to

-make agricultural enterprise a thriving business. But

-carelessness and want of thrift are plainly shown on

-all sides. Everywhere dung hills, placed just in front

-of the cottage doors, pour into the ditch the clearest

-of their virtue. The gardens are ill-kept, the fields

-transformed into bog for want of a drain seventy

-feet long. One sees oats so invaded by thistles that it

-must be a sheer impossibility to get the grain out.

-In other fields oats rot standing, because no one

-takes care to cut them in time. Nowhere is any sign<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a>[112]</span>

-shown of vigorous enterprise or activity. Not only

-do routine and sloth reign all over the country, but

-one might be tempted to believe in a general conspiracy

-for wasting the gratuitous gifts of Mother

-Nature without any profit to anybody.</p>

-

-<p>Yet the country looks relatively rich. The peasantry

-have good clothes, they despise potatoes, eat bread

-and meat, drink beer or tea, send their children to

-school, and appear peculiarly wide awake to their

-own interests. Are they really, as they declare,

-unable to pay their rents? That is possible, for the

-principal products of the country—corn, oats, barley,

-butter, beef, and mutton, wool and potatoes—have

-undergone for the last three years a considerable

-depreciation, estimated at from 15 to 35 per cent.

-But this depreciation is evidently not felt by a diminution

-of comfort for the rural populations, here at least.

-The contrary might even be admitted. In any case

-there is evidently no question of a crisis of famine

-such as has so often been seen in this island for the

-last fifty years. The malady is something else. It

-is the malady of a people to whom it has been

-repeated for half a century that the land they live

-on has been stolen from them by strangers; a people

-who rightly or wrongly believe this to be the case; a

-people who have entered, under the direction of a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113"></a>[113]</span>

-central committee of politicians, on a regular struggle

-with the landlords; who profit by all economical

-incidents, especially the fall of prices, if not openly to

-denounce the treaty, at least to refuse to execute its

-articles.</p>

-

-<p>A few facts noted in passing will explain the situation

-better than all discourses.</p>

-

-<p>A large dairy farm, the finest I have yet seen in

-the country. The buildings are new, the fields covered

-with thick dark grass. I number sixty-five cows.

-All the dairy appointments are handsome and well-kept.

-The farmer looks prosperous. Clearly he lives

-at ease, judging by the furniture of the house, the

-quality of his clothes, by the very liberality with

-which he receives us, and by the brandy which he

-offers us (he is a friend of my guide). His rent is

-£100 a year. He does not mean to pay his next

-term. (<i>I don’t think I will pay this gale.</i>) His landlord

-offers to him the sale of his land for a sum of

-eighteen years’ rent, according to the official plan.

-If he followed that system all he would have to do

-would be to pay annually during forty-nine years the

-sum of £78, less by nearly a third than the present

-farm rent; he would then become a proprietor. He

-refuses. Why?</p>

-

-<p>“Indeed?” he says, with a wink, “engage myself<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a>[114]</span>

-for forty-nine years!... <i>Why! I shall have the land

-for nothing in two or three years!</i>...”</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Another well-to-do farmer driving in a dog-cart

-with his two daughters. The trap is new, the harness

-smart, the horse strong and well groomed. The

-damsels wear Dublin hats and white woollen dresses

-not unfashionable in cut.</p>

-

-<p>“That’s what enrages the landlords,” my guide

-says to me; “it is to see tenants come in this style

-to the Tralee races, cheerfully lose twenty guineas

-upon a horse, then, when the time for paying the rent

-arrives, coolly ask for a 40 per cent. reduction on their

-half-year’s rent....”</p>

-

-<p>“... And in fact it must be enough to make a

-saint swear!...” he adds philosophically. “But after

-all, the landlords might be content with the 60 per

-cent. they get ... I am sure they get it cheap

-enough ... they may think themselves lucky to

-have even that much, as the interest of confiscated

-land!...”</p>

-

-<p>That notion of the land being held by its actual

-detentors through confiscation, may be unfounded in

-some cases, or even in the majority of cases, but

-none the less one finds it at the bottom of all Irish<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115"></a>[115]</span>

-syllogisms. And in such cases the real value of

-the premiss is of little importance; what matters

-only is the conclusion drawn from it.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>A few middling and small farmers.</p>

-

-<p><i>Maurice Macnamara</i>, Shinnagh: rent, £48 a year;

-seventeen cows, eight pigs, two horses and one donkey;

-grass fields, oats, and potatoes; four children, of which

-one is over twenty years of age. Was able to pay his

-rent, but was forbidden to do so by the other tenants

-on the estate, and was in consequence seized by order

-of the landlord. His neighbours offered to help him

-to resist the execution. He begged to be left alone,

-and the moment of the sale having come, he personally

-bought all his cattle up to the sum due. Nett result

-of the operation: £11 to pay, over and above the six

-months’ rent. Personal opinion of Maurice Macnamara:

-it is better to pay £11 than to get a bullet

-through your head.</p>

-

-<p><i>John McCarthy</i>, Gwingullier: £16 annual rent,

-due in May and November; two cows, one horse;

-oats and potatoes; nine children, the eldest

-seventeen. Has paid nothing to his landlord since

-1883; owes actually £48 to him, and as much to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a>[116]</span>

-divers tradespeople or usurers. Does not know how

-he shall get out of it.</p>

-

-<p><i>Patrick Murphy</i>, Colyherbeer, barony Trughanarkny;

-was evicted in November from his holding

-of £28; owed eighteen months’ rent. Received

-from his Landlord the offer of being reinstated in the

-farm on payment of half the sum due, on condition

-that he would let his crops be sold. Declined the

-offer, and is perfectly satisfied to receive from the

-League relief to the amount of £2 a-week. Never

-saw himself so well off before.</p>

-

-<p><i>Margaret Callaghan</i>, a widow, close by the town

-of Kenmare: £8 16<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i> rent; one pig, six hens;

-three small children; four acres of potatoes, three

-acres waste. Has paid nothing for the last four

-years. Owes about £20 to various tradespeople.

-Is not harshly pressed by her landlord, and can

-practically be considered as owning her bit of

-ground. Will die of hunger, with her children, the

-first year the harvest is bad.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Molahiffe, on the road to Tralee.</p>

-

-<p>“This is Mr. Curtin’s house.”</p>

-

-<p>“And who may Mr. Curtin be?”</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117"></a>[117]</span></p>

-

-<p>“What! have you never heard of that affair?...

-He was killed last year by the Moonlighters.”</p>

-

-<p>“Killed?... Was he then a party man, a fierce

-Orangeman?”</p>

-

-<p>“Mr. Curtin?... Not a bit in the world. He

-was one of the most peaceable, the most Irish at

-heart, the most esteemed man in this part of the

-country. His misfortune was to own two rifles.

-The Moonlighters wanted those weapons. One

-night they came and demanded them. The ladies

-of the family were ready to give them up, when

-Mr. Curtin arrived and looked as if he were going

-to resist. At once a gun exploded in the passage,

-and he fell stone dead.... That was a warning to

-everybody. Since that time no one disobeys the

-moonlighters. But all the same it is unfortunate

-that the victim should have been Mr. Curtin.”</p>

-

-<p>These <i>Moonlighters</i> are the direct descendants of the

-Whiteboys of olden times. They band together and

-gather at night for the purpose of invading a farm,

-a solitary house. They are always masked, but

-sometimes in a very elementary fashion, by pulling

-down their hat or cap over the face and making two

-holes through it for the eyes. Normally they ought

-to search only for arms and to take only arms. But

-everything degenerates, and the use of force often leads<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118"></a>[118]</span>

-to the abuse of it. The Moonlighters not unfrequently

-demand a supper, a sum of money, not to speak of

-the company of some farm-wench to whom they may

-take a fancy. This impartial offering of violence to

-house and inmates might lead them far, were they

-not certain of the discretion of the victims. But the

-terror they inspire secures impunity to them.</p>

-

-<p>Though everybody in a district knows perfectly well

-who the intruders are, and though they have often

-been recognized in spite of the mask, no one dares to

-reveal their name. They are all too well aware that

-in case of denunciation a nocturnal bullet will come

-unerringly to the offender. Besides, a sort of poetical

-halo and a political mantle of immunity surrounds

-men who may sometimes, indeed, carry their zeal a

-little too far, but are after all soldiers in the good

-cause. The “legitimate” industry of the Moonlighters

-allows their excesses to be forgotten. A sort

-of general complicity covers and favours their expeditions.</p>

-

-<p>That complicity goes sometimes to great lengths—for

-instance the length of non-admitting the intervention

-of the police in a house where the Moonlighters

-are performing. The constables perambulating the

-country hear screams, desperate appeals for help

-in a farmhouse. They rush to it headlong and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>[119]</span>

-knock at the door. At once silence reigns. They

-are asked from the inside of the house what they

-want.</p>

-

-<p>“We heard screams. Do you not want protection?”</p>

-

-<p>“What business is that of yours?” is the answer.

-“Go on your way, and do not come interfering and

-preventing honest folks enjoying the possession of

-their house undisturbed!...”</p>

-

-<p>The unlucky constables can only beat a retreat and

-go their round, often to meet shortly with the Moonlighters,

-who will laugh at them, having comfortably

-finished their business.</p>

-

-<p>Before the judges the same thing occurs. Not a

-witness will give evidence. And if by chance a witness

-does speak, the jury take care to correct this

-grave breach of etiquette in their verdict.</p>

-

-<p>The witness, as well as the juryman, has often received

-a warning. Working alone in the fields, or

-following a lonely path, he has suddenly seen a little

-puff of white smoke going up from the bushes some

-feet in front of him, and he has heard a bullet

-whizzing over his head. It was a Moonlighter telling

-him:—</p>

-

-<p>“Be silent, or thou art a dead man.”</p>

-

-<p>Castleisland. A small town of little interest,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120"></a>[120]</span>

-after the pattern of most Irish boroughs. We stop

-for lunch at a tavern of rather good appearance, and

-clearly very popular with the natives. The innkeeper

-smokes a cigar with us. Is he satisfied with the state

-of affairs? Yes and no. Certainly he cannot complain—trade

-in liquor is rather brisk. But there are

-too many places where one can buy drink in the

-town—no less than fifty-one.</p>

-

-<p>“And do they all prosper?”</p>

-

-<p>“Nearly all.”</p>

-

-<p>“What may their average receipts be?”</p>

-

-<p>“I should say about £400 a year.”</p>

-

-<p>£400 multiplied by fifty-one gives £20,400, more

-than 510,000 francs. And there is not in this place

-any other industry than agriculture, while statistics

-I have this moment in my pocket inform me that

-the aggregate rental of Castleisland is not above

-£14,000. It is then evident that, times good, times

-bad, they drink every year here £6,000 worth more in

-beer and spirits than they would pay in rent to the

-landlords, if they chose to pay. This seems to be

-conclusive, as far as Castleisland is concerned. But is

-there really any reason why the tenants of this district

-should turn total abstainers for the special purpose of

-paying the claret and champagne bills of half-a-dozen

-absentees? Here is the whole problem in a nutshell.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121"></a>[121]</span></p>

-

-<p>Tralee. The big town of the county, what we

-should call in France the <i>chef-lieu</i>, the seat of the

-assizes. They are opened precisely at this moment.

-There are on the rolls three men charged with agrarian

-murder. I proposed to go and be present at the

-trials, when I heard that the three cases were to be

-remanded to the next session, the representative of

-the Crown having come to the conclusion that the

-jury would systematically acquit the prisoners, as is

-so often the case in Ireland.</p>

-

-<p>The Chairman of the Assizes, Mr. Justice O’Brien,

-seized this occasion to declare, that in the course of

-an already long career he had never met with a jury

-having so little regard for their duty. “It must be

-known widely,” he added, “the law becomes powerless

-when the course of justice is systematically impeded

-by the very jurymen, as we see it in this country; in

-which case there is no longer any security for persons

-or property.”</p>

-

-<p>To which the people in Kerry answer that they do

-not care a bit for English law; what they want is

-good Irish laws, made in Dublin by an Irish Parliament.</p>

-

-<p>“It is quite true that we have no security here for

-persons or property,” a doctor of the town said to me

-in the evening. “The outrages were at first exclusively<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a>[122]</span>

-directed against the landlords, rightly or wrongly

-accused of injustice and harshness in their dealings

-with their tenants; but for the last two or three

-years the field of nocturnal aggression has enlarged

-greatly—a shot now serves to settle any personal

-quarrel and even trade accounts. In the beginning

-the jury at least made a distinction between the

-different motives that actuated the accused. Now

-they always acquit them, <i>because they no longer dare

-to find them guilty</i>.... What will you have?...

-Jurymen are but men. They prefer sending a ruffian

-at large to paying with their life a too subtle distinction

-between crimes of an agrarian character and

-those of another sort. A lump of lead is the most

-irresistible of arguments. One may assert that

-presently law has lost all influence in Kerry. It

-is rapine that reigns, hardly tempered by the decrees

-of the National League, which of course means only

-legitimate resistance to the landlords, and by the

-fund of righteousness possessed at heart by the

-nation. But let things go on thus only for two

-years more, we shall have gone back to the savage

-state.”</p>

-

-<p>“Some people tell me, however, that raiding for

-money is never seen in this part of Ireland.”</p>

-

-<p>“Raiding for money never seen! I would rather<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123"></a>[123]</span>

-say it is the latest development of moonlighting.

-Any one who covets a piece of his neighbour’s land,

-who wishes to influence his vote for a board of

-guardians, who is animated by any motive of vulgar

-greed or spite, has only to set the Moonlighters in

-motion. The machinery is at hand.”</p>

-

-<p>“Could you really give me a few recent instances

-of moonlighting for money?”</p>

-

-<p>“Of course I could. There is one Daniel Moynihan,

-at Freemount, near Rathmore: in October,

-1886, a party of six men with blackened faces

-entered his house at night, and breaking open a

-box, carried away all his money. In January, 1887,

-at Ballinillane, three men armed with guns entered

-Daniel Lyne’s house and asked for money, threatening

-to shoot him if he refused; they took away £6.

-At Faha, in March, 1887, a party of six armed men

-visited the house of Mr. E. Morrogh Bernard; they

-demanded money, and got what was in the house.”<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>

-

-<p>“You don’t say the League has anything to do

-with such obvious cases of non-political moonlighting,

-do you? It is a well-known fact that the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124"></a>[124]</span>

-organization discountenances moonlighting as well as

-all other violent practices.”</p>

-

-<p>“It does in a manner, but at the same time, by

-forming in each district a kind of police of the League,

-an executive body ready for action, it singles out to

-malignant persons men who may be ready for a

-private job.”</p>

-

-<p>There is obviously considerable exaggeration, or,

-rather, distortion of facts, in the above statement, as

-in everything relating to the League on one side or

-the other. The truth is probably that ruffians, when

-they want a job in the house-breaking line, ask for

-nobody’s permission, but are only too glad to take

-moonlighting as a pretence; and thus, common

-breaches of the law which in ordinary times would go

-by their proper name, are now ascribed to Moonlighters.

-The bulk of the population, which is thoroughly

-honest, has only words of contempt and hatred for

-what, in justice, should rather be called a deviation

-than a development of moonlighting.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Nine o’clock at night. In a hollow on the road to

-Milltown, a man tries to hide himself behind some

-shrubs; but perceiving that we do not belong to the

-neighbourhood he shows himself. He is a constable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>[125]</span>

-clad in uniform, the black helmet on his head, a

-loaded gun on his shoulder.</p>

-

-<p>“Why do you seek to avoid attention?”</p>

-

-<p>“Because we are watching that farm-house there on

-the height, my comrades and I; we have received information

-to the effect that some men propose to

-attack it one of these nights; now, we must try not to

-be seen by the people on the farm, for they would

-hasten to tell their assailants.”</p>

-

-<p>“What! these people would denounce you to those

-who come to rob them?”</p>

-

-<p>“Just so. We have to protect them against their

-will. Oh! it is indeed a nice trade to be a constable

-in Ireland!” &amp;c. &amp;c.</p>

-

-<p>Then follow professional complaints that throw a

-curious light on the relations between police and

-population. The unhappy constables are <i>boycotted</i>

-personally and as a body. Nobody speaks to them.

-It is next to impossible for them to procure the first

-necessaries of life. Government has to distribute

-rations to them as to soldiers on a campaign. If they

-want a conveyance, a cart to transport a detachment

-of the public force where their presence is wanted,

-nobody—even among the principal interested—will

-give means of transport either for gold or silver. The

-Government have had to give the constabulary special<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126"></a>[126]</span>

-traps that are constantly to be met on the roads, and

-that one recognizes by their blood-red colour.</p>

-

-<p>That police corps, <i>the Irish Constabulary Force</i>, is

-very numerous, and entails great expense—more than

-one million and a half sterling per year. The cost

-would hardly be half a million if the Irish police were

-on the same footing as the English force; that fact

-alone can give an adequate idea of the real state of

-things. Besides, numerous auxiliaries, called <i>Emergency

-men</i>, are always ready to give their help to the

-regular corps.</p>

-

-<p>Be they soldiers or policemen, Great Britain keeps

-nearly 50,000 armed men in Ireland. The male adult

-and able population of the island being under

-500,000 men, of whom 200,000 at least are opposed

-to the agrarian and autonomist movement, one

-can assume that there is on an average one

-armed soldier or constable for every six unarmed

-Irishmen.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>On the dusty road before us are slowly walking

-five cows in rather an emaciated condition. Those

-beasts strike me by an odd appearance which I am

-unable to make out at first. When I am close

-to them I see what it is: <i>they have no tails</i>. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127"></a>[127]</span>

-absence of that ornament gives the poor animals the

-awkwardest and most absurd look.</p>

-

-<p>I turn to my guide, who is laughing in his sleeve.</p>

-

-<p>“Look at their master!” he whispers in a low voice.</p>

-

-<p>“Well?”</p>

-

-<p>“The cows have no tails, and the man has no

-ears....”</p>

-

-<p>It is true. The unlucky wretch vainly endeavoured

-to hide his head, as round as a cheese, under the brim

-of his battered old hat; he did not succeed in

-hiding his deformity.</p>

-

-<p>“By Jove! who arranged you in this guise, you

-and your cows?” I said to the poor devil, stopping

-before him.</p>

-

-<p>He made a few grimaces before explaining; but

-the offer of a cigar, that rarely misses its effect, at

-last unloosed his tongue. He then told me that the

-Moonlighters had come with a razor to cut his ears, a

-week after having cut the tails of his cows as a

-warning.</p>

-

-<p>“And what could have been the motive of such

-cowardly, barbarous mutilation?”</p>

-

-<p>He had accepted work on a <i>boycotted</i> farm, though

-the League had expressly forbidden it; in other

-words, he was what the Irish call a “land-grabber.”</p>

-

-<p>“Where are you going with your cows?”</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128"></a>[128]</span></p>

-

-<p>“To sell them at Listowel, if I may, which is not

-certain.”</p>

-

-<p>“Why is it not certain? Because they are unprovided

-with a tail? At the worst that would only

-prevent them being made into ox-tail soup,” I say,

-trying to enliven the conversation by an appropriate

-joke.</p>

-

-<p>“That’s not it,” answers the man. “But the interdict

-applies to the sale of the cows as well as to

-having any intercourse with me. I am forbidden to

-buy anything, and anyone speaking to me is fined

-two shillings.”</p>

-

-<p>He seemed to think this perfectly natural and even

-just, like the Leper of the “Cité d’Aoste,” or like

-common convicts when one talks to them of their

-punishment.</p>

-

-<p>“I gambled and I lost—so much the worse for

-me!...” all his resigned attitude seemed to say.</p>

-

-<p>“Perhaps they don’t know it yet in Listowel!” he

-resumed with a sigh, and hopefully pushed on with

-his cows.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>“Have there been many cases of such agrarian

-mutilation in the country?” I ask MacMahon.</p>

-

-<p>“No,” said my guide. “Perhaps half a dozen or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129"></a>[129]</span>

-so within the year.<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> They used to be much more

-numerous, but somehow they seem to go out of

-fashion under the sway of the League. But there are

-still other ways of annoying the enemy; fires are very

-frequent, so are blows, personal injuries, and even

-murder, threatening letters, and, above all, verbal

-intimidation.”</p>

-

-<p>Such proceedings, I understand, are altogether disowned

-by the chiefs of the League, who only patronise

-<i>boycotting</i>. Let a farmer, small or great, decline to

-enter the organisation, or check it by paying his rent

-to the landlord without the reduction agreed to by

-the tenantry, or take the succession of an evicted

-tenant on his holding, or commit any other serious

-offence against the law of land war, he is at once

-boycotted. That is to say, he will no longer be able

-to sell his goods, to buy the necessaries of life, to

-have his horses shod, his corn milled, or even to

-exchange one word with a living soul, within a circuit

-of fifteen to twenty miles round his house. His<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130"></a>[130]</span>

-servants are tampered with and induced to leave him,

-his tradespeople are made to shut their door in his

-face, his neighbours compelled to cut him. It is a

-kind of excommunication, social, political and commercial;

-an interdict sometimes aggravated with

-direct vexations. People come and play football on

-his oat fields, his potatoes are rooted out, his fish or

-cattle poisoned, his game destroyed.</p>

-

-<p>“But supposing that instead of bearing meekly

-such indignities, he shows a bold front, shoulders his

-gun and keeps watch?”</p>

-

-<p>“Then his business is settled. Some day or other,

-he will receive a bullet in his arm, if not in his head.”</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>It will not perhaps be unnecessary to explain here

-the origin of that word <i>boycott</i>, so frequently used

-during the late few years. Everybody knows that on

-the British side of the Channel, but the French reader

-is not bound to remember it so exactly.</p>

-

-<p>In September, 1881, at a mass meeting held in

-Clare County, Mr. Parnell almost without being aware

-of the importance of his words, advised his friends, to

-exclude from the pale of social life whoever should

-eject a tenant for reason of an unpaid rent, or take

-the succession of the evicted farmer.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131"></a>[131]</span></p>

-

-<p>The first application of that new penalty fell upon

-a certain Captain Boycott, a retired officer, who had

-applied himself to agriculture. Having had occasion

-to evict an obdurate defaulter, he saw himself within

-a few days forsaken by his servants, tabooed by his

-neighbours, reduced to dig out his own potatoes, and

-generally to become his own valet.</p>

-

-<p>The affair produced great sensation. The whole

-press talked about it. Legions of reporters flocked

-to the spot to follow the phases of the war waged

-between Captain Boycott and his opponents. Upon

-a memorable occasion a regular army of Orangemen,

-7000 strong, they say, came over from Ulster to

-give a lift to him and help him to get in the harvest

-which threatened to rot standing. But the place became

-too hot for Captain Boycott. He was obliged to

-give way at last and leave his place in Connaught.

-(By the way, he ultimately returned there, and is now

-quite popular.)</p>

-

-<p>In the meanwhile his name, used as a proverb, or

-rather as a <i>verb</i>, has come to describe a way of intimidation,

-which at the hands of the League is a

-redoubtable weapon, more powerful than a hundred

-batteries of 100-ton guns.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132"></a>[132]</span></p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>“Could you show me anybody who is actually

-under boycott?”</p>

-

-<p>“Could I? That will not be difficult. There!

-Mr. Kennedy, beyond that clump of trees. He has

-been boycotted eighteen months.”</p>

-

-<p>“Do you think I might call on him?”</p>

-

-<p>“Certainly. But I shall ask leave to wait for

-you outside the gate, sir, on account of the League of

-course.——You may laugh at its verdict, not I.”</p>

-

-<p>Ten minutes later, I was at Mr. Kennedy’s gate.

-A little country house rather decayed, in the

-middle of grounds which no gardener has seen for at

-least two years. Nobody in sight. I try the bell-rope.

-It remains in my hand. I am then reduced

-to an energetic tattoo on the plate which shuts the

-lower part of the gate.</p>

-

-<p>Attracted by the unusual noise, a tall white-haired

-man makes his appearance at an upper window.

-Surprised at first, and even somewhat alarmed, he

-listens to my request, is reassured, and even comes to

-unbar the door. As I had hoped, he is not sorry to

-unloose his tongue a little, and with the best grace

-possible tells me the whole affair.</p>

-

-<p>“Yes, I am boycotted for having, single among all

-his tenants, paid to my landlord the entire rent of

-those meadows you see yonder. How do I take my<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133"></a>[133]</span>

-situation? Well, as a philosopher. At the beginning,

-I thought it inconvenient to be deprived of new

-bread, to do without meat, and worse still, to be left

-without servants. But I have learnt by degrees to

-accommodate myself to my new condition. I have

-made provisions for a siege. I have found a few

-servants, strangers to the district, and made my

-arrangements to send my butter to Cork by rail. On

-the whole, there is not much to complain of. I

-should, of course, prefer things to follow their usual

-course. It is tedious at times to find oneself out of

-the pale of humanity. But you end by discovering

-that solitude has its advantages. You develop

-accomplishments up to that time latent in you. For

-instance, I shoe my horses myself; I have learnt

-to set a window pane, to sweep a chimney. My

-daughters have improved in cooking. We eat a great

-many chickens; now and then we kill a sheep; when

-we want butcher-meat, we must send rather far for

-it. The same for beer, wine, and many other commodities.

-It <i>is</i> inconvenient—no more.”</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>At Listowel; a market day. Great animation on

-the market-place; tongues are busy; whisky seems

-to be flowing freely at every tap-room and tavern.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134"></a>[134]</span>

-But not much business is done, as far as I can judge.

-My guide calls my attention to two interesting

-phenomena that I should not, perhaps, have noticed

-otherwise.</p>

-

-<p>The first is a man in breeches, with bare calves, a

-<i>shillelagh</i> under his arm, who seems to be a farmer in

-a small way. He approaches a wheel-barrow filled

-with big hob-nailed shoes, which a woman is dragging,

-and falls to examining them, evidently intent on

-buying a pair. Almost at the same moment, a boy

-of fifteen or sixteen comes to the other side of the

-woman and whispers something in her ear. She

-nods. At once the customer, turning very red in

-the face, lets go the pair of shoes and turns away.

-MacMahon says the man is a newly boycotted man

-and the boy an agent of the League, whose function

-consists in reporting the interdict to those who have

-not heard of it as yet.</p>

-

-<p>The other phenomenon is more remarkable. It is

-a stout gentleman in a shooting-jacket, carrying

-a double-barrelled gun of the latest model, and

-followed by a constable who also carries his regulation

-gun. The stout gentleman stops before a door

-where a smart <i>outside car</i> with a servant in livery

-is waiting for him. He takes his seat; the constable

-jumps on after him. Is the stout gentleman under a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135"></a>[135]</span>

-writ of <i>habeas corpus</i>, I wonder, and is he going to be

-taken into the county jail? Not a bit of it. He is

-simply a landowner under threat of death, who has

-thought fit to indulge in a body-guard. He and the

-constable are henceforth inseparable.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>A large tract of uncultivated land. It was farmed

-at £60 a year. The farmer was a sporting man, fond

-of races and the like. To simplify his work he had

-the whole property converted into pasture. But his

-expensive mode of living obliged him now and then

-to sell a few head of cattle. The hour came when

-he had not one calf left, and he found himself utterly

-incapable of paying his rent. He was evicted.

-Sure not to find another tenant, on account of the

-law laid down by the League that every evicted farm

-should be left unoccupied, the landlord had recourse

-to the only sort of <i>métayage</i> known in Ireland.

-(<i>Métayage</i>, it should be explained, is the kind of

-farming used in most French provinces, where the

-owner of the land enters into yearly partnership with

-his tenant, and advances the necessary capital in

-the shape of manure, seed, beasts of burden, and

-machinery, on the understanding that the crops be

-shared equally between himself and the tenant.)<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136"></a>[136]</span>

-To return to my Kerry landlord: he set up on his

-meadows a caretaker, with a salary of twenty-five

-shillings a week and forty cows to keep. At the end of

-the first month the tails of ten cows had been chopped

-off, while two of them had died from suspicious inflammation

-of the bowels. It became necessary to put

-the cows, and the caretaker as well, under the protection

-of a detachment of police. Cost: two pounds a

-week for each constable. Nett loss at the end of the

-half-year: £60. The landlord wisely judged that it

-would be much better to send his cows to the

-slaughter-house, to pay off caretaker and police, and

-to forget that he ever was a landowner.</p>

-

-<p>In the same district, another farm gone waste.

-The tenant did not pay. He was evicted, but had

-another holding close by, where he encamped, and

-from that vantage-ground sent the following ultimatum

-to his <i>ci-devant</i> landlord:—“The hay I have

-left on my late farm is worth £30. I demand fifteen

-for allowing you to mow and sell it; you shall

-not see a shilling of it on any other terms.” Fury

-of the landlord. Then he cools down, thinks

-better of it, offers ten pounds. The evicted tenant

-declines the offer; a whole army would not

-have brought him round. Meanwhile, the hay got

-rotten.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137"></a>[137]</span></p>

-

-<p>By the road-side near Castlemaine, is a row of

-barracks, where men, women, and children are

-huddled together. Those are <i>League-huts</i>, that is to

-say, a temporary shelter which the League offers to

-ejected tenants, for having, upon its command, declined

-to pay their rent. The cabins from which the poor

-wretches have been turned out, although they had,

-as a rule, built them themselves, are within shooting

-distance, on the right hand. They bear evident traces

-of having been fired by the sheriff’s officers in order to

-make them uninhabitable, and they present the desolate

-aspect of homesteads adjoining a field of battle. Walls

-broken by the crowbar, doors ajar, rubbish and ruins

-everywhere. Is it politic on the part of the landlords

-to add the horrors of fire to those of eviction?

-Hardly so, the outsider will think. It adds nothing

-to the majesty of the law to wage war with inanimate

-things. The exercise of a right ought never to

-assume the appearance of an act of revenge.

-Wrongly or rightly, eviction by itself always bears an

-odious character; but to see the house you have built

-with your own hands burnt to the ground will ever

-seem to cry for vengeance to Heaven. And, after all,

-who is the gainer by such violence? The League.

-It takes care to retain the victims of eviction within

-sight of the scene of their woes, feeds them, harbours<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138"></a>[138]</span>

-them, exhibits them as in an open museum, by the

-side of their destroyed homes. And it is a permanent,

-practical lesson for the passer-by, a realistic drama

-where the landlord appears torch in hand, while the

-League dries the tears of the afflicted and allows

-them £2 a week. That is the usual pay for one

-family.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139"></a>[139]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.<br>

-<span class="smaller">A KERRY FARMER’S BUDGET.</span></h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>“I wonder how landlords can manage to live, under

-such conditions,” I said to my guide. “Are there any

-tenants left paying their rent?”</p>

-

-<p>“There are many. First, those who have been able

-to come to an agreement with their landlord about

-the reduction of 20, 25, 30 per cent. that they claimed;

-in such cases the landlord’s income is reduced, but at

-least he still retains a part of it. Then, there is

-the tenant’s live stock; he cannot prevent its being

-seized for rent, in case of execution, and consequently

-chooses to pay, if possible, or he would have to sell

-his cattle to avoid distress, which means ruin to the

-family. Lastly, there are the tenants who pay

-secretly, although pretending to adhere to the rules of

-the League—<i>backsliders</i> they are called—a class more

-numerous than could be supposed at first sight.”</p>

-

-<p>Here MacMahon laughed. He went on:</p>

-

-<p>“I will tell you, Sir, a story I have heard lately, of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140"></a>[140]</span>

-a man in county Cork, who wanted to pay his landlord

-but dared not, on account of the other tenants

-on the estate. Coming across the landlord on a lone

-road (not improbably after many an unfruitful attempt

-for such a propitious opportunity) he stood before

-him in a threatening attitude. ‘Put your hand in my

-coat’s inside pocket!’ he said gruffly. The landlord

-did not understand at first what the man meant, and

-considering his look and address, was far from feeling

-reassured. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked uneasily.

-‘I tell you, sir, put your hand in my coat’s inside

-pocket, and feel for what you find in it.’ At last the

-landlord did as he was bidden. He put his hand in

-the man’s pocket, and extracted from it a bundle of

-papers, carefully tied up, that looked like banknotes.

-At once the tenant took to his heels. ‘The devil a

-penny of rent you can ever say I paid you,’ said he, in

-the same strange threatening tone of voice, as he ran

-away. Still, the banknotes in the landlord’s hand

-were exactly to the amount of the rent due. As a

-rule, when the tenant is really able to pay his rent, he

-pays it.”</p>

-

-<p>Such has not been the general case, it seems, for

-the last three years. <i>In produce</i>, perhaps the Irish

-farmer might have paid his rent, as the crops have

-been, on the whole, fairly up to the average. In<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141"></a>[141]</span>

-<i>money</i>, he cannot, because the fall of prices on hay,

-potatoes, beef, mutton, pork, and butter alike, in 1885,

-1886, 1887, has been at least 20 per cent. on the

-former and average prices, which not only means no

-margin whatever of profit to the farmer, besides his

-necessary expenses, but in most cases the sheer impossibility

-of providing for the forthcoming outlay in

-seeds, manure, and labour.</p>

-

-<p>This may not be self-evident. Many a reader probably

-fails to see why a fall of 20 per cent. on the

-prices of agricultural produce must necessarily entail

-a total disability to pay the rent. “I can well understand

-the demand of a proportional reduction of rent

-in such cases,” he will say, “but not absolute non-payment.”

-To fully realise the situation, one must

-go into the details of a farmer’s life.</p>

-

-<p>Let us take the case of Denis O’Leary, a Kerry

-man, with fourteen acres of good land. He seems to

-be in easy circumstances; his house is clean and

-pretty; he owns three cows, two sows, ten sheep,

-and about a score hens. Denis O’Leary is a good

-man, industrious and thrifty, who does all the work on

-his farm, with the help of wife and three children.

-He likes his pipe of tobacco, and on Sundays, a glass

-of beer over the counter with a friend or two,

-but otherwise indulges in no expensive habits. On<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142"></a>[142]</span>

-the whole he can be considered a pattern tenant, as well

-as one of the most fortunate of his class. His rent,

-which had been gradually raised by his landlord up to

-the sum of £11 6<i>s.</i>, was in 1883 put down at £8 7<i>s.</i>

-by the Land Commissioners.</p>

-

-<p>Such being the case, when we are told that the same

-Denis O’Leary, who was for five years able to pay the

-larger rent, is now unable to pay the smaller one, this

-may look absurd. Still, it is the simple truth. To

-ascertain the fact, it is only necessary to make the

-budget of the O’Leary family.</p>

-

-<p>The yearly expenditure, unavoidable and irreducible,

-is as follows:—</p>

-

-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Expenditure.</span></p>

-

-<table>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">£</td>

-    <td class="tdr"><i>s.</i></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>Taxes, rates, and county cess</td>

-    <td class="tdr">1</td>

-    <td class="tdr">15</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>Turf (Royalty on)</td>

-    <td class="tdr">1</td>

-    <td class="tdr">10</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>Clothing and shoes</td>

-    <td class="tdr">6</td>

-    <td class="tdr">10</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>Meat</td>

-    <td class="tdr">2</td>

-    <td class="tdr">15</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>Bread</td>

-    <td class="tdr">6</td>

-    <td class="tdr">18</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>Beer and tobacco</td>

-    <td class="tdr">2</td>

-    <td class="tdr">5</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>Oil, candles, sundries</td>

-    <td class="tdr">2</td>

-    <td class="tdr">15</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>Sugar and tea</td>

-    <td class="tdr">6</td>

-    <td class="tdr">5</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>School fees</td>

-    <td class="tdr">0</td>

-    <td class="tdr">7</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>Church subscription</td>

-    <td class="tdr">0</td>

-    <td class="tdr">10</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="in1">Total</td>

-    <td class="tdr total">31</td>

-    <td class="tdr total">10</td>

-  </tr>

-</table>

-

-<p>Most assuredly there is nothing excessive in such

-a budget of expenditure for a family of four. If even

-it is possible for Denis O’Leary not to go beyond its<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143"></a>[143]</span>

-narrow limits, it is because he consumes in kind a large

-proportion of the produce of his fourteen acres, namely,

-some hundred stones of potatoes, with a good deal of

-milk, eggs, and butter. This alimentary deduction

-duly made, he has still a certain quantity of agricultural

-produce (which shall be supposed here a constant

-quantity) to sell, as follows:—</p>

-

-<table>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">1800</td>

-    <td>lbs. Potatoes.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">2200</td>

-    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Wheat.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">1750</td>

-    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Oats.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">38</td>

-    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Wool.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">116</td>

-    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Butter.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">1000</td>

-    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Straw.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">25</td>

-    <td>dozen Eggs.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">3</td>

-    <td>Pigs.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">2</td>

-    <td>Calves.</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td class="tdr">3</td>

-    <td>Lambs.</td>

-  </tr>

-</table>

-

-<p>The above commodities have not, unfortunately, a

-constant value. They sell more or less, according to

-the fluctuations of prices on the market. In 1882,

-1883, 1884, prices were high. Denis O’Leary’s revenue

-was consequently as under:—</p>

-

-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Revenue (Three years ago).</span></p>

-

-<table>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td></td>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">£</td>

-    <td class="tdr"><i>s.</i></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>Sold:</td>

-    <td class="tdr">1800</td>

-    <td>lbs. Potatoes</td>

-    <td class="tdr">3</td>

-    <td class="tdr">8</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">2200</td>

-    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Wheat</td>

-    <td class="tdr">9</td>

-    <td class="tdr">0</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">1750</td>

-    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Oats</td>

-    <td class="tdr">6</td>

-    <td class="tdr">4</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">38</td>

-    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Wool</td>

-    <td class="tdr">1</td>

-    <td class="tdr">15</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">116</td>

-    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Butter</td>

-    <td class="tdr">5</td>

-    <td class="tdr">7</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144"></a>[144]</span>1000</td>

-    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Straw;</td>

-    <td class="tdr">1</td>

-    <td class="tdr">5</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">25</td>

-    <td>dozen Eggs</td>

-    <td class="tdr">1</td>

-    <td class="tdr">2</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">3</td>

-    <td>Pigs</td>

-    <td class="tdr">5</td>

-    <td class="tdr">10</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">2</td>

-    <td>Calves</td>

-    <td class="tdr">6</td>

-    <td class="tdr">15</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">3</td>

-    <td>Lambs</td>

-    <td class="tdr">3</td>

-    <td class="tdr">5</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="in1">Total</td>

-    <td class="tdr total">43</td>

-    <td class="tdr total">11</td>

-  </tr>

-</table>

-

-<p>When Denis O’Leary had deducted from his revenue

-of £43 11<i>s.</i> the yearly expenditure of £31 10<i>s.</i>, he

-had still £12 1<i>s.</i> left. He was able, accordingly, to

-pay £8 <i>7s.</i> rent (or even £11 6<i>s.</i> before the judicial

-reduction), and the rent duly paid, he was still the

-proud nett gainer of four shillings under the old

-<i>régime</i>, of £3 14<i>s.</i> under the new.</p>

-

-<p>Unhappily, prices fell down in 1885, 1886, and 1887,

-to the tune of 25 or 30 per cent. on nearly all agricultural

-produce, with the exception perhaps of oats

-and eggs, so that the revenue of the O’Leary family

-(all things otherwise equal) has come to be as

-under:—</p>

-

-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Revenue (at present).</span></p>

-

-<table>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td></td>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">£</td>

-    <td class="tdr"><i>s.</i></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>Sold:</td>

-    <td class="tdr">1800</td>

-    <td>lbs. Potatoes</td>

-    <td class="tdr">2</td>

-    <td class="tdr">8</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">2200</td>

-    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Wheat</td>

-    <td class="tdr">7</td>

-    <td class="tdr">0</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">1750</td>

-    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Oats</td>

-    <td class="tdr">6</td>

-    <td class="tdr">2</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">38</td>

-    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Wool</td>

-    <td class="tdr">1</td>

-    <td class="tdr">5</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">116</td>

-    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Butter</td>

-    <td class="tdr">3</td>

-    <td class="tdr">12</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">1000</td>

-    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Straw</td>

-    <td class="tdr">0</td>

-    <td class="tdr">15</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">25</td>

-    <td>dozen Eggs</td>

-    <td class="tdr">1</td>

-    <td class="tdr">5</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">3</td>

-    <td>Pigs</td>

-    <td class="tdr">3</td>

-    <td class="tdr">4</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">2</td>

-    <td>Calves</td>

-    <td class="tdr">4</td>

-    <td class="tdr">8</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="tdr">3</td>

-    <td>Lambs</td>

-    <td class="tdr">2</td>

-    <td class="tdr">10</td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td></td>

-    <td></td>

-    <td class="in1">Total</td>

-    <td class="tdr total">32</td>

-    <td class="tdr total">9</td>

-  </tr>

-</table>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145"></a>[145]</span></p>

-

-<p>Thus, the revenue and expenditure are nearly equal,

-with a slight balance of nineteen shillings, that could

-hardly be proffered for rent. Local usurers are not

-wanting, of course, who will advance to Denis O’Leary

-the necessary funds, at 10 or 15 per cent., if he wants

-to pay the landlord, all the same. But then his

-budget is no more in a state of equilibrium: deficit

-enters it, to widen every year up to the final catastrophe.

-In other words, Denis O’Leary cannot pay

-the rent, unless he draws on his capital. One may

-well understand that he should not relish the idea,

-considering especially that the landlord’s rack-rent

-has been reduced three years ago in the Land Court,

-and that the same landlord demurs to a fresh reduction,

-so obviously just and necessary that all landlords

-in England have granted it of their own free will

-these last three years.</p>

-

-<p>And Denis O’Leary is a wonder in his class: he is

-an industrious, hard-working, wise man, without a

-penny of previous debt. He has precisely the area of

-land adequate to his means, and the live-stock indispensable

-to manure the soil. He does not drink, he

-does not gamble, he is never ill, he has no old people

-to support, he has not experienced failures or mishaps

-of any kind, and his crops are fairly up to the

-average.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146"></a>[146]</span></p>

-

-<p>Let us come back, however, to the world as it is,

-and see Man with his foibles, his usual neglects, errors,

-and mishaps. Let us suppose that he has more land

-on his hands than he can well manage to till, or that

-his holding, on the contrary, is too small for his wants.

-Let us suppose that instead of selling three pigs and

-two calves, he was not able to rear them, or lost them

-from disease; that instead of bringing to market

-1,800 lbs. of potatoes he had to buy some hundred-weight

-of the same for domestic consumption—the man

-is lost, irretrievably lost. Not only will he never be

-able to pay the landlord one farthing, but it will be

-enough that the crops should be slightly under the

-average to make a hopeless beggar of him—a case of

-outdoor or indoor relief for the parish.</p>

-

-<p>Now, these are the circumstances of six or seven

-tenants out of ten in the lowlands of Kerry, where

-they seem to be comparatively well off. If we leave

-the plains for the higher districts bordering on the

-sea, the question is simpler still. There is no need of

-long accounts here. The hour of irretrievable misery

-has struck long ago, and habitual hunger stares us in

-the face.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147"></a>[147]</span></p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Up in the Mountains.</span></p>

-

-<p>The mountains of Kerry are the finest in the island.

-They form its south-western angle, throwing out on

-the Atlantic the peninsula of Dingle, between the bay

-of the same name and the Kenmare River. As you

-leave the plain following the Cahirciveen road

-towards the coast, you see them develop their

-parallel ranges, which are divided by deep valleys.

-Some of these valleys are fertile, being watered by

-impetuous streams from the mountain side. But the

-general impression one receives is that of agricultural

-poverty, as is the case in nearly all mountainous countries

-in the world. Pastures are thinner, cattle less

-numerous, homesteads fewer and more miserable than

-in the plain. Human creatures themselves partake

-of the general look of wretchedness that prevails.

-They live on potatoes, milk, and porridge; seldom eat

-bread, meat never; wine, beer, tea, coffee are to them

-unknown luxuries. Their ill-shaped cottages are

-made of soft stone, with a thatched roof maintained

-by ropes made of straw. There they all sleep on a bed

-of rushes, which they share with the pig, when there

-is such a thing, for even the traditional pig has become

-now a symptom of wealth in a manner. On the

-beams of the roof roost perhaps half-a-dozen hens

-and chickens.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148"></a>[148]</span></p>

-

-<p>Sloth and dirt hold here an undivided sway. Not

-a woman—and some are pretty—seems to mind the

-spots and holes in her garments; not one knows the

-use of soap or needle. They appear to have a rooted

-dislike for the comb; their hair falls on their back as

-is the fashion among the Australian aborigines, in

-nature’s simple disorder.</p>

-

-<p>Men look heavy and apathetic. They work as

-little as they can manage—one or two days out of

-seven, perhaps—and do not even think of seeking their

-sustenance from the sea, which is so close to them. The

-most they can do is to draw from it now and then a

-cart-load of seaweed to manure their miserable plot

-of ground. Their existence rolls on dull, idle, devoid

-of interest. It is the brute life in its most wretched

-and hideous state. Here is old Ireland as Gustave de

-Beaumont’s admirable book showed it to us fifty years

-ago. Hardly do those wretched products of Anglo-Saxon

-civilization receive a faint echo of the outer

-world when the electoral time comes.</p>

-

-<p>The consequence is that the agrarian crisis is reduced

-here to its simplest expression, <i>i.e.</i>, sheer impossibility

-to pay the rent because of total absence

-of the £ <i>s.</i> <i>d.</i> wherewith. Elsewhere that impossibility

-may be half assumed; it is certainly mixed in the

-plain with bad will, goaded in the peasant’s heart by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149"></a>[149]</span>

-that dogged desire to possess the land which is so

-natural in him. In the mountain it is not a political

-fiction that holds the sway: famine is the king; and

-it is the spontaneous product of the very nature of

-things.</p>

-

-<p>For the naturally infertile soil has reached here to

-such a degree of subdivision that it is no longer sufficient

-even to feed those it bears. The greater part of

-those wretched holdings of five or six acres are let at

-the nominal price of about £4, to which must be added

-the taxes, poor-rates, and county-cess, increasing it by

-a quarter or a third. Four, five, six, sometimes ten or

-twelve beings with human faces squat on that bit of

-worthless ground and till it in the most primitive

-manner. Money, tools, intelligence, pluck, all are wanting

-there. Viewing things in the most optimist light,

-supposing the year to have been an exceptionally

-good one, the potato crop to have been plentiful, the

-cow to have hunted out on the hill-side the necessary

-grass for the making of a little butter, all that will be

-sufficient perhaps to prevent starvation. But where

-will the money be found to pay Queen and landlord?</p>

-

-<p>Let a child or an old person eat ever so little in

-the year, his food cannot but represent a value. Let

-that value be £4. Can six acres of mountain ground<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150"></a>[150]</span>

-managed without skill or manure, render five, six, ten

-times £4 a year, and a rent in addition of five to six

-pounds? It is sheer impossibility.</p>

-

-<p>A few examples.</p>

-

-<p>James Garey, fifty years old, married, four children.

-Nominal rent £5 14<i>s.</i> Two cows, one pig, eight

-chickens. About six acres of land. Cultivates only

-part of it, about three acres, where he grows potatoes;

-the remainder is pasture. Sold this year thirty

-shillings’ worth of butter; ate his potatoes from first

-to last; has not paid a farthing to his landlord for

-the last four years. Owes £6 to the draper-grocer;

-would never be able to pay his taxes if two of his

-children, who are out in domestic situations, did not

-send him the necessary amount to prevent execution.</p>

-

-<p>Widow Bridget Molony, sixty years old; five

-children; seven acres of land. Nominal rent £6 12<i>s.</i>

-Four cows, an eighteen-month-old calf, two pigs,

-twenty chickens. Sold £3 10<i>s.</i> of butter this year,

-£2 oats, 15 shillings potatoes, and a pig for £3;

-just sent a calf to market, offering it for £1 15<i>s.</i>; did

-not find purchaser. Thinks herself relatively lucky,

-as she is owing only two years’ rent to her landlord.

-Two of her children have situations at Liverpool, and

-help her to pay the taxes.</p>

-

-<p>Thomas Halloran, forty years. Three children,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151"></a>[151]</span>

-eight acres of land; rent £6 15<i>s.</i> Two cows, fifteen

-sheep, a pig, an ass, twelve chickens. Sold during the

-year ten shillingsworth of butter and ten sheep at

-twelve shillings a head. Has paid nothing to landlord

-since November, 1884.</p>

-

-<p>Michael Tuohy, seventy years old, three children,

-four grandchildren. Nine acres of land, £7 rent. A

-cow and five hens. Can no longer afford a pig. Sold

-only fifteen shillingsworth of butter this year, and had

-to get rid of two cows out of three to pay the ten per

-cent interest of a debt he has contracted with the

-National Bank. Owes four years’ rent to his landlord;

-hopes that his son, who has emigrated to the

-United States, will send him the money for the

-taxes; if the son doesn’t, he cannot see any way to

-save the last cow.</p>

-

-<p>Examples of that description could be multiplied

-<i>ad infinitum</i>; they are, so to say, the rule in the

-mountainous districts, where the holdings are for

-the most part beneath £10 rent, and totally unequal

-even to sustain the farmer.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Glenbeigh, between Kilarglin and Cahirciveen.

-This place was the theatre of several deplorable

-scenes in January last, on Mr. R. Winn’s property.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152"></a>[152]</span>

-That property, very extensive, but consisting of poor,

-not to say totally barren land, was put down at

-£2000 on the valuation roll. The aforesaid rent not

-having been paid during four or five years, the owner

-was of course in very strait circumstances; he had

-to go to some Jews, who substituted themselves in his

-place, and undertook to enforce payment. But the

-extreme poverty of the tenants proved even stronger

-than the energetic tribe. In consequence of the

-gradual subdivision of the land, they had come to

-hold diminutive scraps of it such as could not even

-grow the potatoes sufficient for their sustenance.

-After various judicial skirmishes, the plain result

-of which was to establish the utter incapacity of the

-peasants to give a penny, the council of creditors

-resolved in the depth of winter to undertake a wholesale

-campaign of evictions. Seventy-nine writs of

-ejectment were issued, and soon after the under-sheriff,

-backed by a strong detachment of mounted

-constables, arrived to evict the wretched families.</p>

-

-<p>The operations began at a certain Patrick Reardon’s,

-on a literally barren land, for which he was expected

-to pay £4 10<i>s.</i> a year. He was the father of eight

-children, but did not even possess a pig, not a pair of

-chickens. The furniture consisted of a bed, a rickety

-table and a kettle. Squatting on the ground with his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153"></a>[153]</span>

-whole family, according to the time-honoured custom,

-he waited for the executors of the law. Requested

-to pay, he answered that he possessed not one

-farthing; he was then informed that they were going

-to set fire to his cabin, in order to oblige him to

-evacuate the premises. The act soon followed the

-threat. A lighted match applied to the thatched roof,

-and in a few minutes the whole was in conflagration.

-All the neighbouring populations, who had run on to

-the scene of the tragedy, saluted the dreadful deed

-with hooting and execration.</p>

-

-<p>The myrmidons of the law pursued nevertheless

-the execution of their mandate. They went next to

-the dwelling of another tenant, Thomas Burke,

-inscribed on the list of debtors for a sum of £20. He

-had five children, and, like the above-mentioned, not

-one farthing to offer to the creditors. Order was

-given to set fire to his roof, but it was found to be so

-damp that fire would not take; so they had to attack

-the walls with the crowbar and pick-axe. The

-miserable inmates appeared then to the eyes of the

-indignant crowd, half naked, wan, emaciated, and

-starved; and so heartrending was the scene that with

-difficulty the representative of the League (who had

-come there for that very purpose) prevented the mob

-from stoning the bailiffs to death.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154"></a>[154]</span></p>

-

-<p>Then came the turn of the third cottage. Two old

-men lived in it, Patrick and Thomas Diggin. The

-family of the former included ten persons; that of

-the latter, six. They owed a rent of £8, and had not

-a shilling between them all. Patrick’s wife, however,

-came forward, and declared she had just received £2

-from her daughter, who was a servant in Belfast.

-Would they accept that, and stop the execution?

-The under-sheriff, whom the duties of his office oblige

-to back the bailiffs, urged them to accept the touching

-offer. They refused, and set fire to the roof. Then

-Patrick Diggin, an eighty-year-old man, was seen

-coming out of his home sobbing; he was followed by

-all his children and grandchildren. By an irresistible

-impulse of sympathy all crowd round him, offering

-what little they possess to the relief of that misery.

-The constables themselves, moved almost to tears,

-contribute their silver coin to the subscription which

-has been spontaneously organized. To carry the

-barbarous work further becomes an impossibility. The

-sheriff’s substitute gives the signal for departure, and

-the cavalcade follows amidst the derisive cries of the

-multitude.</p>

-

-<p>All those poor people, except one family, have since

-been re-installed on their holdings, and are now at

-work on their farms—a strange evidence of the uselessness<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155"></a>[155]</span>

-and cruelty of eviction, to make tenants pay

-who cannot.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Valentia Island.</span></p>

-

-<p>At Cahirciveen, I crossed the strait which divides

-the main land from the island of Valentia. This is

-the extreme point of the old continent, where the

-Transatlantic cables are placed. Good, honest, plucky

-fellows! what repose after the misery of Kerry! I

-am speaking of the fishermen of the island, a peculiar

-race who never ploughed any fields but those of the

-ocean. Every night they risk their lives on the giant

-billows, and earn their bread valiantly. They know

-nothing of sheep rot, potato disease, or landlordism;

-all they know is the management of their

-boats, the making and mending of their nets, and the

-art of making the deep yield food for their young.

-Strangers to the neighbouring world, they ignore even

-its language, and only talk the rude idiom of their

-ancestors, the Irish of the time of the O’Donoghue.</p>

-

-<p>Noble fellows! I shall not soon forget the night I

-spent there watching them as they were fishing

-between the Skellings, two enormous rocks that rise

-like Gothic cathedrals, about twelve miles from Bray

-Head, and on which the waves are eternally breaking<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156"></a>[156]</span>

-with a thundering noise. My guide had warned me

-against offering them money; it would offend them,

-he said, so I did not do it. I simply drank with

-them a glass of whisky when they prepared to go

-home towards daybreak, the stars still shining.

-And, comparing their happy courage with the distress

-of Kerry, I wished them from the bottom of my

-heart never to become acquainted with agriculture on

-small holdings, under an English landlord.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157"></a>[157]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.<br>

-<span class="smaller">RURAL PHYSIOLOGY.</span></h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>We have glanced at a few facts presenting symptoms

-of the Irish disease, which were taken as chance

-guided us, in a ride through a south-western county.

-Similar symptoms are everywhere to be found through

-the island. To appreciate them at their right value,

-as even to comprehend them, it is essentially requisite

-to know, at least in its broader outlines, the physiology

-of landed property in this entirely agricultural

-country.</p>

-

-<p>Vast landed property and parcelled-out culture. This

-is the epitome of such a physiology. At the base of the

-social edifice we find the tenant, generally a Catholic

-and of indigenous race, occupying and cultivating after

-his own fashion the thousandth or ten thousandth

-part of a property ranging over an area of some

-hundred thousand acres. At the summit we find

-the landlord, almost invariably of English and Protestant<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158"></a>[158]</span>

-race, ruling by right of primogeniture over this

-immense space.</p>

-

-<p>Does this right rest at its origin on confiscation and

-spoliation, as is averred by the Irish? That is of

-little importance from a legal point of view, for prescription

-has covered the spoliation by an occupation

-of two to eight centuries. It is of far greater importance

-from a moral point of view, because that

-grievance, ill or well founded, serves as a handle for all

-agrarian recriminations.</p>

-

-<p>In three out of five cases (so it has been shown by

-recent statistics) the landlord is an <i>absentee</i>, that is to

-say, he does not reside on his property, nor even in

-the kingdom, and spends abroad the money he

-raises on his lands. His income, from that source

-alone, is sometimes enormous—£10,000 a year—(Lord

-Greville, Westmeath; Lord Carisford,

-Wicklow; Mr. Wandesford, Kilkenny; Mr. King,

-Longford; Lord Inchiquin, Clare); £16,000 a year—(Lord

-Claremont, Louth; Mr. Naper, Meath; Lord

-Leconfield, Clare; Lord Ventry, Kerry); £26,000

-and £32,000 a year—(Duke of Abercorn, Tyrone;

-Marquis of Clanricarde, Galway; Lord Kenmare,

-Kerry); £40,000, £80,000, and even £120,000 a year—(Mr.

-MacDonnell, Kildare; Marquis of Coningham,

-Cavan, Clare, and Donegal; Marquis of Londonderry,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159"></a>[159]</span>

-Down; Marquis of Downshire, &amp;c.). Rent

-rolls of £4,000, £3,000, and £2,000 a year too

-plentiful to be mentioned.</p>

-

-<p>Three-fifths at least of those sums are lost every

-year for Ireland, and they go out of the island

-without having in any way helped to increase her

-capital in agricultural machinery, live stock, and

-general improvements of the land. As a natural

-consequence, the soil is ill-cultivated, ill-manured,

-insufficiently covered with cattle. For centuries its

-energies have suffered a constant draining, and

-nothing has been done to repair its losses.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>That soil has a tendency to subdivision in the

-hands of the tenants, who cultivate it by truly

-pre-historic methods. The figures are given in round

-numbers as follows:—</p>

-

-<p>Against 24,000 holdings of a value of above £500

-a year there are in Ireland 85,000 holdings producing

-from £25 to £500 a year; 49,000 from £12 to £29

-a year; 77,000 from £8 to £12 a year; 196,000 from

-£4 to £8 a year; lastly, 218,000 holdings of a

-revenue of <i>under £4 a year</i>.</p>

-

-<p>That is to say, out of six or seven hundred thousand

-families, living exclusively upon the product of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160"></a>[160]</span>

-soil, more than two-thirds must get their sustenance

-from a wretched bit of ground, estimated by the

-owner himself at a value of £4 to £8 a year!</p>

-

-<p>To state such an economical paradox is to

-denounce it. Where there is nothing, the landlord,

-like the king, loses his rights. The situation, then,

-would already be strangely anomalous, even if the

-respective titles of landlord and tenant were of the

-clearest and most transparent kind. But it is complicated

-in Ireland by the most curious conceptions and

-customs in matters of landed property.</p>

-

-<p>To understand those conceptions and customs, a

-Frenchman must begin by putting aside all his

-Latin ideas. With us, since the Convention, one can

-always know by the Survey-Rolls to whom belongs

-absolutely such or such a piece of land. He who

-owns it is free to sell it, to give it, to let it as he

-pleases. His right is absolute; it is the right of

-“use and abuse,” according to the forcible expression

-of the Roman code. It passes with this absolute

-character to sons, grandsons, or legatees.</p>

-

-<p>In Ireland it is feudal law that obtains still;

-an estate is not a property, it is a fief. The lord of

-that estate is not the proprietor of it, he is an

-usufructuary, as it were, a life-tenant on it. He has

-only a limited right to his own land. He cannot sell<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161"></a>[161]</span>

-it without the written consent of his substitute in the

-entail, and the authorization of the persons, often

-countless in numbers, that have some hereditary right

-on his property at the same time with him; most of

-the estates are encumbered with perpetual rents,

-served out either to the younger branches of the

-family, to old servants, or to creditors. All the titulary

-is free to alienate is his life interest, through some

-insurance combination with transfer of income.</p>

-

-<p>If we add that the said titulary is generally absent

-from his property, that he does not manage it personally,

-and that in many cases he does not even

-exactly know where it is to be found, we must own

-that it is no wonder he is considered as a stranger.</p>

-

-<p>A stranger he is besides, in race, by habits,

-by religion, by language. And yet this stranger,—precisely

-because his fief, practically inalienable, as it

-is immovable in its limits, has always been transmitted

-from father to eldest son in the family,—this

-stranger, of whom often nothing is known beyond his

-name, has a story, true or legendary, attached to him

-and to his title. It matters little that the revenue of

-the estate was scattered over five hundred heads, in

-the course of ten generations; the estate remains,

-and weighs on him with all its weight. We do not

-speak here of a mere geographical expression, of an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162"></a>[162]</span>

-area a hundred times parcelled out, altered, disfigured,

-in less than a century, but of land that for a

-thousand years, maybe, has changed neither form nor

-aspect.</p>

-

-<p>At night, by the fireside, old people will recall how

-in former days this land was the collective property

-of the clan; how they were defrauded by a political

-chief that treacherously gave it up to the English, in

-order to receive investiture from their hands; how,

-following the fortunes of twenty successive rebellions

-and repressions, it was confiscated, sequestered, given

-anew, till it came to the actual landlords. A special

-literature, ballads, popular imagery, little books, and

-penny papers constantly harp on that ancient spoliation.

-It is the only history studied under thatched

-roofs. The peasant breathes it in the atmosphere,

-imbibes it by all his pores.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Convinced that he has a hereditary right to the

-domain in general, the Irish peasant besides attributes

-to himself a special and prescriptive right to the plot of

-ground that he, like the landlord, occupies from father

-to son, though on a precarious tenure. This right is

-not purely imaginary; it was consecrated in the

-year 1860 by a special Act of Parliament, due to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163"></a>[163]</span>

-initiative of Mr. Gladstone. Recognised from immemorial

-times in Ulster, it has always been claimed in

-all the other parts of Ireland; it is the <i>tenant right</i>,

-what in our own Picardy is called the <i>droit de

-marché</i>.</p>

-

-<p>It is well known in what consist this ancient prerogative

-of the Picardy farmer (Troplong in the Preface

-to his <i>Traité du Louage</i>, and Lefort in his <i>Histoire des

-contrats de location perpétuelle</i>, have treated it exhaustively):

-it is simply the privilege of preserving in

-perpetuity for him and for his heirs, the use of the

-ground for which he pays rent regularly.</p>

-

-<p>Not only is this privilege not denied to him, but he

-can transfer it to a third person, for a premium that

-goes by the name of <i>intrade</i>. The amount of that

-premium is often a third or even a half of the intrinsic

-value of the soil. Formerly this “<i>droit de marché</i>”

-applied to everything that can be let or hired; the

-labourers, the threshers, the shepherds of a domain,

-each claimed it in his own province as a hereditary

-monopoly. In modern days it is strictly limited to

-the hiring of servants, in the few districts where it

-survived the French revolution (in Péronne for

-instance).</p>

-

-<p>The thing that is only a curious exception in

-France has remained the rule in Ireland, where <i>tenant<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164"></a>[164]</span>

-right</i> has been in force for the last twenty-seven

-years. And what, after all, can be better founded

-than such a right? Has not the tenant, in the

-majority of cases, made his plot of ground what it is?

-Has he not tilled it, improved it, manured it, drained

-it according to his better knowledge; in a word, has

-he not <i>created</i> it in its actual form?</p>

-

-<p>“Let us,” says the peasant, “admit the rights of the

-landlord. How could he deny me mine? Are they

-not legibly written in the furrow I have traced upon

-this earth, in the fruits I have made her bear?...

-The land is not a simple material, unreducible like a

-piece of gold. It is a chemical product, a conglomerate

-that is valuable especially by reason of all the

-substances I have mixed up with it during an occupation

-of ten, twenty, thirty years, or even more....

-Who shall dare to deny the share I have brought into

-this company of which I am the acting manager, and

-deny that this share belongs to me?”</p>

-

-<p>Such a theory would doubtless appear sheer lunacy

-to the French proprietor who has paid for his land £400

-per hectare, and who has let it for a fixed period at a

-fixed price, with the understanding that at the end of

-the contract he shall find it in good condition and shall

-then do what he pleases with it. That theory, however,

-is so well suited to Ireland, where custom has<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165"></a>[165]</span>

-the force of law, that the landlord does not even think,

-practically, of disputing the <i>tenant’s right</i>.</p>

-

-<p>As a rule he is only too glad to let his land to the

-farmers who have traditionally occupied it, on condition

-that they pay the usual rent.</p>

-

-<p>But in practice, the Land Act of 1860, apparently

-so much in favour of the tenant, has produced

-disastrous effects. In the first place, by consecrating

-the right of the tenant only on improvements and enlargements

-made <i>with the landlord’s consent</i>. Thence

-the consequence that not only is the landlord never

-willing to spend a farthing on the improvements of

-the land, but also that he systematically opposes

-them, for fear he should have to pay for them in the

-end. Besides many landlords have signed their new

-leases only after the farmer has given them a formal

-renunciation to the tenant right; or else they have

-taken advantage of the pretext that offered itself, and

-raised the rent by way of compensation against all

-risks. Lastly, in many a place where this right has

-become positive, the rural usurers alone have profited

-by it by discounting it to the peasantry.</p>

-

-<p>The consequence is that the tenant right is often reduced

-practically to the implicit acknowledgment of the

-right of the farmer to occupy the land, so long as he

-pays his rent. It even happens not unfrequently that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166"></a>[166]</span>

-there is no lease and the occupancy goes on indefinitely

-without title. Doubtless this gives it only

-more value in the eyes of the peasant, naturally inclined

-to associate this absence of scrivening with the

-acknowledgment of his traditional rights.</p>

-

-<p>Having been able in certain cases to sell or hire his

-“interest,” he feels the more inclined to think himself

-entitled to divide it between his children. That

-division has become the rule, and what was once a

-farm of thirty to fifty acres turns out, at the third

-generation, parcelled in ten or twelve scraps of three

-to five acres. The landlord might have interfered

-in the beginning; he might have prevented such a

-division; he did not do it. Beside, that division of

-the land is recorded nowhere, has been the occasion

-of no formal deed; one member of the family

-answers for all the others, if necessary. How is one

-to unravel those private arrangements? And, after

-all, what does it matter, so long as the rents come

-in?</p>

-

-<p>They come in during ten, during twenty years.

-Then the harvest is bad, or the sub-dividing of the

-soil has arrived at the last limit compatible with the

-needs of those that cultivate it. The rent is no

-longer paid, and then the difficulties begin. How is

-one to appraise the improvements introduced in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167"></a>[167]</span>

-land by the actual possessor, or by his forefathers?

-How can one find out what is due to him, even with

-the best intentions? Is the landlord to give him an

-indemnity before he evicts him? But then it means

-ruin to the landlord, who will have to pay precisely

-because he has not been paid himself. It is the

-squaring of the circle. When only very small

-holdings are in question, the difficulty is generally

-met by remaining in <i>statu quo</i>. But supposing the

-debt to be more important, or to have been transferred

-to a third person, which is often the case, the

-question becomes insoluble.</p>

-

-<p>Let us repeat that we must not consider these

-things from a French point of view. With us the idea

-of individual property is always of the clearest and

-simplest. The frequent sales and buying of land

-contribute still to make this idea of more actual and

-definite meaning to us. An hectare of grass or vine

-is, like any other goods, a merchandise that passes

-from hand to hand, and remains with the highest

-bidder. In Ireland the sales are rare, and in no case

-is it a question of absolute ownership; it is only

-a question about the respective and contradictory

-rights, some for life, some perpetual, some positive,

-others customary, of several persons over the same

-space of land, a space not to be transferred, not to be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168"></a>[168]</span>

-seized, and not to be fractionised. Is it any wonder

-that such contradictory pretensions should give rise to

-constant conflicts?</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Everything concurs to shut in that rural world in

-a vicious circle. Not only does the peasant lack

-capital to improve his farming, but, assured of seeing

-his rent raised if he ventured on the least improvement,

-he is careful to make none. On his side the

-landlord, for dread of annoying contestations, opposes

-as much as lies in his power any amendment susceptible

-of being turned into a title for his tenant.</p>

-

-<p>Is there a succession of relatively good harvests?

-He immediately raises the rent. Are the following

-years bad? He refuses to return to the old rate, in

-principle at least, because he finds it inconvenient to

-curtail a revenue to which he has accustomed himself,

-because he does not like to appear to bow before the

-League, and also because, being liable to expropriation,

-he is unwilling to depreciate beforehand the

-value of his property, which is always valued according

-to its rent.</p>

-

-<p>Lastly, the holdings, being too often mere plots of

-ground, are hardly sufficient to keep the peasant and

-his family occupied, and do not always give him a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169"></a>[169]</span>

-sufficiency of food. And just because it is so, the

-unlucky wretch does not find work outside sufficient

-for the equilibrium of his poor finances. The

-class of agricultural labourers can hardly be said

-to exist in numerous districts, because everyone

-is a small farmer. The tenant then becomes

-completely sunk in his inaction; he becomes apathetic,

-and from a sluggard too often turns into a

-drunkard. His wife is ignorant and careless. She

-can neither sew, nor is she able to give a palatable

-taste to his monotonous fare. His children are pallid

-and dirty. Everything is sad, everything is unlovely

-around him; and, like a dagger festering in the

-wound, the thought that all his misery is due to the

-English usurper ever makes his heart bleed.</p>

-

-<p>To all these causes of poverty and despair must be

-added the general difficulties that weigh on agriculture

-in all countries of Europe, the lowered prices of

-transport, the clearings of land in America and

-Australia, the awful transatlantic competition, the

-disease of potatoes.... The picture being finished,

-one thing only surprises—it is to find one single Irish

-farmer left in the country.</p>

-

-<p>These explanations, with many others, were given

-me by a person that it is time I should introduce

-to the reader; for he is the incarnation of one of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170"></a>[170]</span>

-the essential wheels in the machinery of Irish

-landed property—Captain Pembroke Stockton, <i>land

-agent</i>.</p>

-

-<p>The captain is a small fair man, of slim figure, of

-military aspect, who received me this morning at an

-office where he employs half a dozen clerks. The

-room was lined with green-backed ledgers, or, to

-speak more exactly, with rows of tin boxes, of a

-chocolate colour. To-night he receives me in a pleasant

-villa, where he takes me in his phaeton, drawn by

-two magnificent horses. He may be about fifty-three

-years old. His calm, regular-featured countenance

-owes its peculiar character to the line that cuts

-his forehead transversely, and divides it into two parts,

-one white, the other bronzed by the sun; a mark left

-by the English forage-cap, which is like a small muffin,

-and is worn on one side of the head. The captain

-has seen service in India; he fought against Nana-Sahib,

-and even hung with his own hand a certain

-number of rebels, as he not unfrequently relates after

-dinner. He sold out when about thirty-five years of

-age, at a period when selling out still existed (in 1869),

-and got for his commission £3200, which, besides a

-small personal competency, allowed him to marry a

-charming girl, dowerless, according to the excellent

-English habit; children came: means became too<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171"></a>[171]</span>

-straitened, and, to enlarge them, he resolved to

-become a <i>land agent</i>.</p>

-

-<p>The land agent has no equivalent in France, except

-for house property. He is neither a notary, nor a

-steward, and yet he partakes of both, being the intermediary

-between landlord and tenant. It is he that

-draws up the leases and settlements; he who receives

-the rents, who sends out summons, who signs every

-six months the cheque impatiently expected by

-the landlord; he who represents him at law, he

-who negotiates his loans, mortgages, cessions of

-income, and all other banking operations. In a

-word, he is the landlord’s prime minister, the person

-who takes on his shoulders all the management of his

-affairs, and reduces his profession to the agreeable

-function of spending money. The land agent naturally

-resides as a rule in the vicinity of the estate.

-Therefore he knows everybody by name; knows all

-about the incumbrances, the resources of every tenant,

-the length and breadth of every field, the price of

-produce, the probable value of the harvest; all

-the threads are in his hands; the landlord counts

-upon him, approves everything he does, upholds his

-rigours, and submits to his tolerance. Is he not himself

-at his mercy? The agent keeps all his deeds of

-property; has personally written out every one of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172"></a>[172]</span>

-them; knows, in fact, a great deal more than himself

-about it.</p>

-

-<p>Let us premise that very considerable interests are in

-question, and that the rents are ciphered by thousands

-of pounds sterling. It is easy to understand that the

-agent must be not only a man of honour, a clever man,

-a business man, but above all a man presenting the

-most serious guarantees from a financial point of view.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>That is sufficient to imply that they are not counted

-by dozens in every district; and that a land agent

-provided with all the necessary qualifications must

-before long govern all the principal estates in a

-county. From his office, situated in the principal

-county-town, he rules over ten, twenty, or thirty, square

-miles of land, cultivated by five or six thousand

-farmers, under some twenty landlords.</p>

-

-<p>Thence the natural consequence that the same

-policy generally prevails in all the administration

-of the landed property in one district. The personal

-character of the landlord may, indeed, influence

-it in some ways, but the character of the

-agent is of far greater importance. And thence this

-other consequence, not less serious for the farmer, and

-which gives the key to many an act of agrarian<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173"></a>[173]</span>

-violence,—that in case of open war, in case of eviction

-especially, it is not only an affair between the

-landlord and the tenant, but also between the tenant

-and all the landlords in his county, through their

-one representative.</p>

-

-<p>Has he been evicted? It will be well-nigh impossible

-for him to get another farm in this county,

-where he was born, where his relations are living,

-where he has all his habits, all his roots, as it were.

-And no work to be had outside agricultural work....

-Emigration only is open to him,—which is equivalent

-to saying that eviction must necessarily be followed

-by transportation.</p>

-

-<p>Let us imagine all the owners of houses in Paris,

-bound together in association, to be in the hands of a

-single agent; let us suppose that a dweller in one of

-those houses is turned out of it for quarrelling with his

-<i>concierge</i> or for any other reason, and unable to find a

-house to live in; we shall then have an idea of the

-state of mind in which eviction places the Irish

-peasant. Let us add that this peasant has generally

-built with his own hand the hut that is taken from

-him; let us add that for him it is not only a question

-of knowing whether he shall have a roof over his

-head, but a question of being able to live by the only

-trade he has learnt.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174"></a>[174]</span></p>

-

-<p>For many other reasons, the question of agencies

-on a large scale still contributes to make the problem

-more intricate.</p>

-

-<p>In all affairs personal intercourse brings an element

-the importance of which must not be overlooked. A

-man will display the greatest inflexibility in writing,

-who will hesitate to do so face to face with his opponent.

-If the landlord knew his tenants, if he lived among

-them, if he entered into their life and saw their

-misery, very often, may be, he would recoil before

-barbarous rigours, while the agent, by his very profession

-is obliged to act with the precision of a

-guillotine. The influence of women, so gentle and

-conciliatory, is absent from the system. Pity,

-sympathy, human contact, have no part in it. Can

-we wonder if harmony be destroyed?</p>

-

-<p>Examples are not wanting to show that a different

-system, a policy of gentleness, of direct and mutual

-concessions, and well directed efforts, bear very

-different results. I shall quote as an instance the

-case of an English lady, Miss Sherman Crawford,

-who bought, some twenty years ago, at a legal sale,

-a small half-ruined estate in Ireland. She went to

-live on it, and began by giving her ten or twelve

-tenants a written promise that they would get the

-benefit of all their improvements without having cause<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175"></a>[175]</span>

-to fear that the rent should be raised. Then she made

-it a rule that everyone should come directly to her in

-case of difficulties, and not to an agent.</p>

-

-<p>She built a few sheds, repaired two or three cottages,

-on occasions lent a five pound note to facilitate the

-buying of a cow or pig. That was enough. In spite

-of the difference in race, religion, and language, she

-and her peasantry are on perfect terms with each

-other; her property of Timoleague thrives in the

-midst of general poverty and wretchedness; not an

-inch of ground lies uncultivated; the soil is well

-manured, well drained, well used; the people are

-happy and contented. To perform that miracle, all

-that was wanted was a little willingness, a little good

-management and gentleness.</p>

-

-<p>But then Miss Crawford’s property is neither too

-large nor too small. She brings there the capital

-needed, and allows it to circulate in the place. She

-sees everything with her own eyes, not with the eyes

-of an agent. She is not the titulary of an entailed

-estate, and has not given up its income to usurers.

-Her farms are large enough to allow her tenants to

-find their sustenance on them, for themselves and

-their families. In a word, her property is in everything

-the reverse of what is seen in all other parts of

-the island.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176"></a>[176]</span></p>

-

-<p>And in truth, if delirious legislators had proposed

-to themselves the task of inventing a system of landed

-property that would give neither security to the

-owner nor peace to the tenant, where could they have

-succeeded better than with the Irish system? It is

-at once stupid and ferocious, absurd and monstrous.

-How true, alas! that human genius, so well able sometimes

-to profit by natural forces, excels also in

-sterilizing them, in making them homicides!</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177"></a>[177]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.<br>

-<span class="smaller">EMIGRATION.</span></h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>Before setting foot in this country your notions

-are not unfrequently ready made about the characters

-of the inhabitants. You have gathered them from

-miscellaneous reading, novel-reading mostly, and what

-you expect is an Ireland poor certainly, but nevertheless

-gay, improvident, chivalrous, addicted to sound

-drinking, good eating, fond of practical jokes, not

-unmixed with riot and even blows; an Ireland, in

-short, such as Charles Lever and Carleton, Banim and

-Maxwell, Sam Lover and Thackeray have described;

-an Ireland where wit and humour are to be met at

-every step, where the last beggar has his little joke,

-where originality of thought, unexpectedness of action,

-fun inexhaustible, combine to form that eccentricity of

-manner which is ever associated with the idea of an

-Irishman.</p>

-

-<p>That such an Ireland was, not long ago, a reality,

-one cannot doubt. A whole literature, a rich<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178"></a>[178]</span>

-collection of tales, novels and legends is there to witness

-to the fact. Its historical existence is as scientifically

-demonstrated as that of our “Régence.” The

-worldly exploits of the Duke of Richelieu are not

-better proved. But it is in vain you look to-day for

-that gay and careless Ireland; from Cape Clear to

-Malin Head, from Dublin to Galway, there is no

-vestige of it. She is dead and gone. Like Mr. Credit,

-bad payers have killed her. Between her and us there

-has been a great financial cataclysm where she has

-been wrecked: the <i>crash</i> of the great famine of 1846-1847.</p>

-

-<p>Never did she rise from it. Forty years ago she

-contrived to exist somehow. The tenants were poor,

-to be sure, but the landlords were not, and they spent

-their money grandly. They led the usual life of rich

-country gentlemen, had large retinues of servants and

-horses, kept playing, drinking, and betting till they

-had only debts left, which course had at least the advantage

-of permitting their cash to circulate about

-the country. The local traffic was relatively large

-then. Butchers, coach-makers, wine-merchants, and

-horse-dealers made rapid fortunes. Few towns in

-Europe showed so much animation as Dublin, now

-so empty and so dull a place. Everybody was in

-debt with everybody; not one property was not mortgaged.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179"></a>[179]</span>

-It was the fashion at that time to pay only at

-the last extremity. A general complicity gave force

-of law to that habit. Lawsuits, of course, were plentiful,

-but what is there in a lawsuit to prevent a jolly

-squire from drinking hard, riding his horses at a

-break-neck pace, or galloping from morning till night

-behind his hounds?</p>

-

-<p>Then came the potato-disease; then the famine,

-which brought in two years a general liquidation.

-Everyone awoke to find himself ruined; there were in

-six months fifty thousand evictions. The largest fortunes,

-when they escaped the Encumbered Estates

-Court, established in 1849, remained loaded with such

-heavy burdens that the income of the titulary fell to

-nothing. One was obliged to pinch then, to sell the

-horses, and shut up the kennel. There was an end to fun,

-and if there remained here and there some inveterate

-boon companion who would not give up the good old

-customs, the <i>Moonlighters</i> soon brought him to reason,

-poisoning his dogs and hunters, confiscating his

-arms, and at times mistaking the landlord for the game.</p>

-

-<p>There is no vestige left now of the easy-going ways

-of old. The large town-houses and country seats are

-deserted or let to strangers; the cellar is empty, the

-dining-room silent. A gust of hatred and misery has

-blown on the isle and left all hearts frozen.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180"></a>[180]</span></p>

-

-<p>As for the peasant, the poor creature has too many

-cares for thinking of a joke now. Perhaps in other

-climes, under a clearer sky and warmer sun, he would

-revive, and find in his very distress the element for

-some witticism. But here, the damp atmosphere, united

-with persevering ill-fortune, has deluged and drowned

-for ever his Celtic good-humour. Hardly does he find

-now and then a glimpse of it at the bottom of an ale-jug

-or in the tumult of some election riot. If a quick

-repartee, one of his characteristic sallies, escapes him

-now, it is always bitter, and reminds you of the acrid

-genius of Swift.</p>

-

-<p>“How deliciously pure and fresh is the air in Dublin,”

-said Lady Carteret, the Lord Lieutenant of

-Ireland’s wife, to the author of “Gulliver.”</p>

-

-<p>“For goodness’ sake, Madam, don’t breathe a word

-about it to the English. They would put a duty

-on it.”</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>And his terrible satire about the famous “excess of

-population,” that favourite hobby of economists, who

-has not it in mind?</p>

-

-<p>“It is a melancholy object to those who walk

-through this great town or travel in the country,

-where they see the streets, the roads, and cabin-doors<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181"></a>[181]</span>

-crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by

-three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning

-every passenger for an alms ... I think it is

-agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of

-children ... is in the present deplorable state of

-the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and

-therefore, whosoever could find out a fair, cheap, and

-easy method of making these children sound, easy

-members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well

-of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver

-of the nation. I shall now, therefore, humbly

-propose my own thoughts; which I hope will not be

-liable to the least objection.</p>

-

-<p>“I have been assured by a very knowing American

-of my acquaintance in London that a young healthy

-child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious,

-nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed,

-roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that

-it will equally serve in a fricassée or a ragout.</p>

-

-<p>“I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration

-that of the hundred and twenty thousand

-children already computed, twenty thousand may be

-reserved for breed, whereof one-fourth part to be

-males ... that the remaining hundred thousand

-may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons

-of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182"></a>[182]</span>

-advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in

-the last month so as to render them plump and fat

-for good tables. A child will make two dishes at an

-entertainment for friends, and when the family dines

-alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable

-dish, and, seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be

-very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in

-winter.</p>

-

-<p>“I have reckoned, upon a medium, that a child

-just born will weigh twelve pounds, and in a solar year,

-if tolerably nursed, will increase to twenty-eight

-pounds.</p>

-

-<p>“I have already computed the charge of nursing a

-beggar’s child (in which list I reckon all cottagers,

-labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about

-two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe

-no gentleman would refuse to give two shillings for the

-carcase of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will

-make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat. Those

-who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times

-require) may flay the carcase: the skin of which,

-artificially dressed, will make admirable gloves for

-ladies and summer boots for fine gentlemen.</p>

-

-<p>“As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed

-for this purpose in the most convenient parts

-of it; and butchers we may be assured will not be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183"></a>[183]</span>

-wanting; although I rather recommend buying the

-children alive, then dressing them hot from the knife,

-as we do roasted pigs....</p>

-

-<p>“I think the advantages, by the proposals I have

-made, are obvious and many, as well as of the highest

-importance: for first, as I have already observed, it

-would greatly lessen the number of papists, with

-whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal

-breeders of the nation, as well as our most dangerous

-enemies.... Whereas the maintenance of a

-hundred thousand children, from two years old and

-upwards, cannot be computed at less than ten shillings

-a piece per annum, the nation’s stock will be thereby

-increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, beside

-the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all

-gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom, who have any

-refinement in taste. And all the money will circulate

-among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own

-growth and manufacture.... Besides, this would

-be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise

-nations have either encouraged by rewards or enforced

-by laws and penalties.”</p>

-

-<p>The grim sarcasm goes on in the same sinister, pitiless

-way up to the conclusion, which is worth the rest:</p>

-

-<p>“I profess in the sincerity of my heart that I have

-not the least personal interest in endeavouring to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184"></a>[184]</span>

-promote this necessary work, having no other

-motive than the public good of my country, by

-advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving

-the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich.

-I have no children by which I can propose to get a

-single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and

-my wife past child-bearing.”</p>

-

-<p>Modern Philanthropy is not quite so bold as the

-Dean of St. Patrick in suggesting remedies for the

-relief of the sufferings of Ireland. Its great panacea

-is emigration. The first thing which attracts the eye

-in villages and boroughs is a large showy placard

-representing a ship in full sail, with the following

-words in large capitals, “Emigration! ... free

-passage to Canada, Australia, New Zealand! ...

-free passage and a premium to emigrants for Queensland!...”</p>

-

-<p>Technical particulars follow; the agents’ addresses,

-the names of the outward-bound ships, &amp;c....

-These placards are everywhere. At each turning, on

-every wall they stare you in the face, and fascinate

-the starving man. Numerous and powerful emigration

-companies paid by colonies where hands are

-wanting, patronized by all that is influential in the

-kingdom, work unremittingly in recruiting that army

-of despair for a voluntary transportation. And thus<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185"></a>[185]</span>

-a continuous stream of Irishmen is ebbing out through

-all the pores of the country.</p>

-

-<p>Shall we give the official figures? There are none

-given unfortunately for the years between 1847 and

-1851, corresponding to the “famine clearances” or

-famine evictions. All that is known is that at that

-time the population of Ireland suddenly decreased by

-one million six hundred and twenty-two thousand inhabitants,

-without it being possible to say how many

-had died of starvation, how many had embarked pell-mell

-on hundreds of ships, how many had perished

-at sea, how many had survived. Since 1851

-the accounts are clear. It is known that 148,982

-emigrants left Ireland in the eight last months

-of that year; 189,092 in 1852; 172,829 in 1853;

-139,312 in 1854. During the following years the

-emigration slackens its pace by degrees and falls to

-the rate of 75,000 heads a year. It rises again in

-1863-64, and attains the figure of over 105,000.

-Then it settles again to its level: 60,000, where for a

-time it remains stationary. Since 1880 it has risen

-again to 95,000, and over 100,000.</p>

-

-<p>Within thirty years, the period included between the

-1st of May, 1851, and the 1st of May, 1881, Ireland has

-lost through emigration alone <i>two million five hundred

-and thirty-six thousand six hundred and twenty-seven</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186"></a>[186]</span>

-of her children. The total for the last five years

-has not yet been published, but it certainly reaches

-half a million. From the year 1851, therefore, at

-least <i>three million</i> Irish people of both sexes have left

-the island, that is to say, nearly the half of a population

-then reduced to six-and-a-half million souls.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Has, at least, the result of that frightful exodus been

-to eradicate pauperism? One would like to believe it.

-Theorists had promised it. But alas! stern statistics

-are there to answer their fallacies.</p>

-

-<p>Statistics inform us that the Ireland of 1887, with

-its present population, inferior to that of London, is

-poorer than it was in 1841, when it numbered eight

-million inhabitants. Twenty years ago the number

-of individuals admitted to workhouses was 114,594

-out of six million inhabitants. To-day it is 316,165

-out of a population diminished by a third. In 1884

-the poor who received relief at home were 442,289.

-They are now 633,021. In other words, <i>one Irishman

-out of four</i> lives on public charity—when he

-lives at all.</p>

-

-<p>Upon such facts, would you guess what monstrous

-conclusion the votaries of emigration at any price

-have come to? Simply this: that the blood-letting<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187"></a>[187]</span>

-is not sufficient; that Ireland must be drained of

-another million inhabitants. Such is Lord Salisbury’s

-opinion. As if an area of 20,194,602 statute acres,

-so favoured geographically, was not calculated to

-nourish twelve or fifteen million human beings rather

-than three! (This was the opinion of Gustave de

-Beaumont, after Arthur Young.) As if the emigration

-of every healthy and industrious adult was not

-a nett loss for the country, just as is the guinea taken

-away by any <i>absentee</i>!</p>

-

-<p>Is not his exit a sign of strength and energy in the

-emigrant? He was free to stay at home if he liked; to

-shut himself up in a workhouse and live there at the

-public expense. Has he not given by his very

-departure the best proof that he is not a useless

-member in the social body? What! you incite all

-that is able and active to go away, keeping only the

-weak, the old, the useless; to these you dole out what

-is necessary to keep up a flickering breath of life, and

-when poverty increases, you are surprised at it!</p>

-

-<p>I bear in mind the reasons alleged by politicians.

-Elizabeth and Cromwell have invoked them before,

-when recurring to more drastic but equally vain

-measures. But, here again, the calculation is wrong;

-the eternal justice of things has not permitted it to

-succeed.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188"></a>[188]</span></p>

-

-<p>For all those whom the feudal system starves out

-of their native island take care, for the most part,

-not to go and fertilize with their work the British

-colonies. Vainly does the emigration agent offer

-them a free passage, grants of land, and even premiums

-in money. They prefer buying with their last

-penny a ticket which opens a free land to them. They

-go to the United States, where they thrive almost

-to a miracle, and this is a decisive answer to the

-masters of their race, who are also its calumniators.

-They multiply there so as to form already a fifth part

-(twelve millions) of the total population of the great

-American Republic. At the bar, in the press, in all

-liberal professions, they are a majority, and by their

-brilliant qualities, which often secure them the first

-rank, they exercise a real preponderance. But they

-never forget that they are Irish. They keep the unimpaired

-remembrance of their beloved country, dear

-to their heart in proportion as she is unhappy. They

-remember their home burnt to the ground, the old

-grandfather thrown on the road-side, the little ones

-crying at the withered breast of a pallid mother, the

-wrench of parting, the heart-rending farewell; then

-the contumely during the voyage—the hardships

-after the landing; and they swear an oath that all

-shall be paid some day, and, in the meanwhile, they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189"></a>[189]</span>

-contribute their dollars to the healing of an ever-bleeding

-wound.</p>

-

-<p>It is there that Fenianism was born. From their

-ranks come those conspirators who terrorize England

-with their periodic outrages. In all agrarian

-violence the hand of the emigrants is to be found.

-From 1848 to 1864 they have sent thirteen million

-pounds to those of their family that have remained in

-Ireland; and, from 1864 to 1887, perhaps double

-that sum. But in those figures, given by Lord

-Dufferin, the secret funds brought to the service of

-an ever-increasing agitation are not reckoned. The

-<i>Invincibles</i> were in their pay. The <i>Skirmishing Fund</i>

-was entirely sustained by them. The National League

-lives, in a manner, upon their subsidies. When

-Mr. Parnell went to visit the United States, they were

-powerful enough to induce the Senate of Washington

-to give him the honours of the sitting—an exception

-which stands unique in history.</p>

-

-<p>The independence of Ireland is their dream, their

-ambition, their hope, their luxury in life. The day

-when this is accomplished, England will perhaps

-realize that the Irish emigration has been a political

-blunder, as it is an economical mistake and a moral

-crime.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190"></a>[190]</span></p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Cork.</span></p>

-

-<p>Wishing to see some of those who emigrate I have

-come to Cork. Cork is the great harbour of the

-South of Ireland, the gate that opens on America

-and Australia. From St. Patrick’s Bridge on the

-Lee a steamer took me to where three emigrant

-ships were at anchor ready to fly to other climes. I

-went on board two of them, one English, the other

-American. There was nothing particular to notice,

-except an under-deck disposed as a dormitory, as

-is the rule on board all maritime transports, so as to

-lodge four or five hundred steerage passengers. These

-passengers bring with them their bedding, which consists

-generally of a coarse blanket, and the staple part

-of their eatables. A canteen affords them, at reasonable

-prices, all drinks or extras that they may think

-fit to add to their ordinary fare.</p>

-

-<p>The impression I gather in these under-decks is

-rather a favourable one. There is as yet only the

-bare floor, but it is clean and well washed. Through

-the hatches, wide open, a pure and bracing air circulates

-freely.</p>

-

-<p>No doubt there will be some alteration after a few

-days’ voyage. But it is evident that the Queen’s

-administration keeps a sharp eye upon the emigration

-companies, and sees that all sanitary prescriptions<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191"></a>[191]</span>

-are observed. One sees no longer now-a-days such

-scandalous spectacles as occurred in the years of the

-famine, when thousands of Irish were promiscuously

-heaped in the hold of <i>coffin-ships</i>, and died by

-hundreds before reaching the goal. Emigration is now

-one of the normal, it may be said one of the official,

-functions of social life in Ireland—a function which

-has its organs, laws, customs, and even its record-office.

-The companies keep their agents in all

-British possessions; they are informed of all the

-wants of those colonies; they know what specialists

-are in demand, what advantages are offered to the

-new-comer. They do their best to make the offer fit

-with the demand, and they seem to succeed.</p>

-

-<p>An old boatswain on board one of the emigrant

-ships tells me that life there is generally monotonous

-but quiet. The passengers do not mix or associate

-as quickly as one could imagine. Each of them

-pitches his own separate camp on the few square feet

-that chance gives him, and it is only after eight or

-ten days’ voyage that they begin to club together.

-The mothers tend their babies, the fathers smoke

-their pipes, the children play, the young people flirt.

-It appears that a relatively considerable number of

-marriages are prepared and even concluded in the

-crossing. There is nothing surprising in that, if we<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192"></a>[192]</span>

-remember that the most numerous class of emigrants

-is composed of marriageable girls and men between

-twenty and twenty-five years of age.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>A few types of emigrants taken at the inns and

-public-houses on the quays. <i>John Moriarty</i>, of Ballinakilla,

-County Cork, 45 to 50 years old. A rural

-Micawber, dressed in a dilapidated black coat, a pair

-of green trousers, completely worn out at the knees,

-and crushed hat. A Catholic (he says <i>Cathioulic</i>).

-Squats with wife and children in a single room,

-almost devoid of furniture. Was to have embarked

-five days ago for Canada. The Board of Health did

-not allow it on account of one of the children having

-got the measles (an illness which assumes in Great

-Britain a most dangerous and infectious character).

-Makes no difficulty to tell me his whole history.

-Had a farm of thirteen acres. Was thriving more or

-less—rather less than more. But for the last seven

-years it has been an impossibility for him to make

-both ends meet.</p>

-

-<p>Strange as it may appear, the man is a Conservative

-in feeling.</p>

-

-<p>“Nothing to do in the country, with those <i>mob

-laws</i> and agitation!” says he.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193"></a>[193]</span></p>

-

-<p>“What mob laws?”</p>

-

-<p>“Well, the trash on fixity of tenure, fair rent and

-the rest.”</p>

-

-<p>“I thought they were favourable to the

-tenant.”</p>

-

-<p>“Favourable in one sense, yes, sir,” (<i>with a diplomatic

-air, as he fastens on me two little chocolate-coloured

-eyes</i>) “but disastrous in the end, because they allow one

-to sell his tenant-right at a discount. You believe that

-it will set you up, and it is the very stone that makes

-you sink. The banks are our ruin, don’t you see?

-Once they have taken hold of their man they don’t

-let him out before they have skinned him” (<i>a silence,

-then a sigh of mild envy</i>). “It is, indeed, a good trade

-that of banking!”</p>

-

-<p>He remains dreamy and seems to meditate the

-scheme of founding a bank in Canada.</p>

-

-<p><i>Martin Mac Crea</i>, 22 years old, a shepherd of

-Drumcunning. A Catholic. A tall, pale, thin fellow,

-decently dressed, with a wide-awake look. Goes to

-Queensland. Why? “Because there is no opening

-in Ireland. The most you can do is to earn your

-bare sustenance.” It appears that in Queensland

-it is quite a different affair. The profession of shepherd

-pays there. Let a man bring or save the money

-necessary to buy half-a-dozen sheep, and let them<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194"></a>[194]</span>

-graze at their will. Seven or eight years later their

-name is legion, and the man is rich.</p>

-

-<p>“But are you then quite free of ties here? Don’t

-you leave anybody, any relation, in Ireland?”</p>

-

-<p>“I was obliged to live far from them, and where I

-go I shall be more able to help them. Besides, the

-post reaches there.”</p>

-

-<p>“And the young ladies at Drumcunning. Do they

-allow you to go away without a protest?”</p>

-

-<p>A broad smile lights up Martin Mac Crea’s countenance.

-A further conversation informs me that his

-betrothed has gone before him to Brisbane, where

-she is a servant. He is going to meet her, and they

-shall settle together in the <i>bush</i>, keeping sheep on

-their own account.</p>

-

-<p>Let us hope she has waited for him. Queensland

-is far away!</p>

-

-<p><i>Pat Coleman</i>, twenty years old. A friend to the

-former. Son of a small farmer with six children.

-Nothing to do at home. Prefers going to the Antipodes,

-to see if there is a way there to avoid dying

-of starvation, as happened to his grandfather.</p>

-

-<p><i>Peter Doyle</i>, forty-three years old. A journeyman.

-A Presbyterian. Can’t find work at home; therefore

-emigrates. Was employed on railway construction,

-county Clare. Has been turned away, the line being<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195"></a>[195]</span>

-completed and open to travellers. Had come to Cork

-in the hope of getting work, but found only insignificant

-jobs. Packed to Melbourne.</p>

-

-<p><i>Dennis O’Rourke</i>, twenty-nine years old; of Enniscorthy,

-Wexford. An engine-maker; belongs to a

-class of which I had as yet met no specimen in

-Ireland, the workman-politician. Has already emigrated

-to the United States, where he spent three

-years. Wished to see his country again, and tried to

-set up a business on a small scale, first in Dublin, then

-at Cork; but it does not pay. Goes back to New

-York.</p>

-

-<p>“Do you know why? I am going to tell you.

-(<i>Fiercely</i>) I am going because this country is rotten

-to the core! Because it has no spirit left, not even

-that of rebellion! I am going because I will no

-longer bear on my back the weight of dukes and

-peers, of Queen, Prince of Wales, Royal family, and

-the whole lot of them! I am going where you can

-work and be free; where a man is worth another

-when he has got in his pocket two dollars honestly

-earned. That is where I go, and why I go.”</p>

-

-<p>“In short, you make England responsible for your

-misfortunes?”</p>

-

-<p>“England be damned!”</p>

-

-<p>It is O’Connell’s word. He was travelling in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196"></a>[196]</span>

-France, towards St. Omer, and found himself inside

-the mail-coach with an old officer of the first Empire

-who began forthwith to talk against the English.

-The great Irish agitator kept silent.</p>

-

-<p>“Don’t you hear me?” the other said at last,

-insolently.</p>

-

-<p>“I beg your pardon, I hear you perfectly well.”</p>

-

-<p>“And you don’t mind my treating your country as

-I do?”</p>

-

-<p>“England is not my country; I hate it more than

-you will ever do.”</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_197"></a>[197]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.<br>

-<span class="smaller">THE LEAGUE.</span></h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Ennis.</span></p>

-

-<p>The county Clare, and more especially Ennis,

-its chief town, have played an important part in the

-contemporary history of Ireland. It was here eight

-years ago (in 1879) that Mr. Parnell, at a great autumn

-meeting, gave his famous <i>mot d’ordre</i> on social and

-political interdict.</p>

-

-<p>“If you refuse to pay unjust rents, if you refuse to

-take farms from which others have been evicted, the

-land question must be settled, and settled in a way

-that will be satisfactory to you. Now, what are you to

-do to a tenant who bids fora farm from which another

-has been evicted? You must shun him on the road-side

-where you meet him,—you must shun him in the

-shops,—you must shun him in the fair green, and in

-the market-place, and in the place of worship: by

-leaving him severely alone, by putting him in a moral

-Coventry; by isolating him from the rest of his

-countrymen, as if he were the leper of old, you must<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_198"></a>[198]</span>

-show him your detestation of the crime he has

-committed.”</p>

-

-<p>Those words contained a whole programme, faithfully

-carried out since, and which has already borne fruit.

-They took exceptional force from the fact that Mr.

-Parnell, at the time he pronounced them, was already

-the acknowledged leader of Irish opposition. They were

-in some sort the registration of birth of the League.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>The League! Every moment, travelling through

-this island, one comes in contact with this power,

-mysterious though positive, anonymous and yet implicitly

-recognized. The League houses and feeds

-evicted families; it settles that such a landlord or such

-a farmer shall be boycotted; it decrees that the rents

-of such an estate shall be reduced 30 per cent.; that

-of such another the rents shall be lodged in the League’s

-own coffers; it patronises candidatures, chooses the

-place and time of meetings, presides over all the

-phases of social life. What is that League? is the

-question one asks.</p>

-

-<p>At first one naturally supposes it to be an electoral

-association such as exists in every free country. But

-little by little one perceives that it is a far bigger

-affair. Electoral associations are not in the habit of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_199"></a>[199]</span>

-inspiring such persistent enthusiasm, of covering during

-eight long years the extent of a whole country; they

-do not send roots to the most remote villages, nor do

-they count among their members three-quarters of the

-adult population. It is not their custom either to

-fulminate excommunications, or if they do they have

-but little appreciable effect on the ordinary tenour of

-life. One never heard that they disposed of important

-capital, and one would be less surprised to hear that

-they had entered into a lawsuit with their printer about

-an unpaid bill for five or six thousand placards, than

-one would be to hear that they have several hundred

-thousand pounds in the bank.</p>

-

-<p>And yet it is precisely of hundred thousand pounds

-that one constantly hears in connection with the

-League. Where does it get all that money, in a

-country worn so threadbare as this? Whence is it that

-it is so universally respected, so religiously obeyed?

-All the smiles are for the League, while the functionaries

-of the Crown pocket only snubbings. All

-the doors open before the League, while they close

-and even barricade themselves at the bare mention of

-the Lord Lieutenant’s name.</p>

-

-<p>One observes these facts; compare and weigh them.

-Then the conclusion imposes itself quite naturally

-that the League is the only public power recognised<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_200"></a>[200]</span>

-by the bulk of the Irish nation. One already had a

-suspicion of being a spectator to a revolution, of which

-the violent deeds, instead of being concentrated over a

-period of two or three years, as we have seen at home,

-have spread over half a century. One understands that

-one has fallen in the midst of a civil war, not in the

-incipient state, but fully let loose, and that there exists

-in this island two rival authorities,—that of the Crown

-with the bayonets on its side; that of the League,

-possessing all hearts.</p>

-

-<p>Ireland, it is hardly necessary to repeat, has been

-in a state of rebellion since the beginning of the

-British Conquest. But it has been in a state of

-revolution only for a period of about forty years.

-Insurrection betrayed itself now by individual but

-constant acts of rebellion, of which one can easily

-follow the succession through past ages, now by

-collective risings like those of Thomas Fitzgerald in

-1534, of O’Neil in 1563, of Desmond in 1579, of

-Preston in 1642, of the Whiteboys in 1791, of the

-Oakboys in 1762, of the Steelboys in 1768, of Wolfe

-Tone in the course of the French Revolution, of

-Emmet in 1803, the New Whiteboys in 1807, of

-John Mitchell in 1848, of the Fenians in 1865 and

-1867. As for the agrarian revolution, born of an

-economical situation impossible to bear, it follows its<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_201"></a>[201]</span>

-course as regularly as a great river, ever getting

-larger and larger, widening its bed, swelling its volume

-with all the streams it meets, increasing in power at

-the same time that its waters get more depth and

-breadth. Even the soothing mixtures prescribed for

-it by the Parliamentary doctors have served as its

-tributaries. Its torrent has at length become irresistible.</p>

-

-<p>To discover its source, we must go back to the

-famine evictions of 1847. The heart-rending spectacle

-then presented by Ireland made it natural to look for

-a palliation to such misery. The malady was studied

-in all its aspects; much learned discussion took place

-at the bedside of the agonizing patient. It was the

-time when Disraeli developed his famous theory of

-“the three profits.” The land, if one was to believe

-him, must yield profit to three persons:—the Queen,

-the landlord, and the tenant. It appears this was

-arranged from the end of Time by the Great Architect

-of the Universe. The laws of Kepler are not

-more absolute. The unlucky thing is that the earth

-does not always fulfil its obligations, and too often

-refuses to yield up the three sacramental profits.</p>

-

-<p>Theorists endowed with less boldness thought to

-find a remedy by giving legal consecration to the

-tenant’s rights by the system of <i>the three F’s</i>, as it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_202"></a>[202]</span>

-was called, that is to say, <i>Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure,

-and Free Sale</i>. Through endless resistance, after

-endless debating in the course of twenty parliamentary

-sessions, a whole <i>remedial</i> legislation came

-to add its bulk to the already so intricate structure of

-Anglo-Saxon law.</p>

-

-<p>Now the custom of Ulster was extended to the

-whole of Ireland, and the right of the farmer over

-the improvements paid with his money became law

-(1860); now he was promised an indemnity in case of

-eviction, and the basis was laid of a system of

-amortization which must infallibly in the course of

-time have ended in creating a class of peasant landowners

-(1870).</p>

-

-<p>Already in the year 1849, the State had interfered

-between the landlords in difficulties and their

-tenants, by the creation of a special tribunal for

-obligatory liquidation,—<i>the Encumbered Estates Court</i>.

-It finally came to interfere between landlord and

-tenant by instituting a new court of arbitration, the

-<i>Land Court</i>, entrusted with the care of fixing the

-“fair” rent in each case.</p>

-

-<p>That Court was no sooner opened than 75,807

-affairs were inscribed upon its roll. It judged in one

-year 15,676. But there remained still 60,101 to be

-judged, and already the reductions of 18 to 27 per<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_203"></a>[203]</span>

-cent. imposed on the landlords appeared insufficient;

-already the farmers were loudly clamouring for

-further reductions.</p>

-

-<p>For in truth such remedies were too anodine for

-such rooted disease! But the wedge had nevertheless

-entered the tree. The State had appeared

-in the character of umpire between the landlord

-and the peasant. Henceforth all was or seemed

-possible.</p>

-

-<p>The essence of dogmas is to suffer no questioning.

-One cannot with impunity discuss for twenty

-years the basis of landed property’s law and the

-theory of “the three profits” before empty stomachs.

-As a parallel to these debates, the question of political

-rights for Ireland rose again, and ended insensibly

-by the conquest of the electoral franchise, of religious

-equality, and of national education. The moment

-arrived when the bulk of the population took an interest

-only in the truly vital question,—that of the soil.

-And all of a sudden they understood that there

-was only one remedy for the ills that weighed so

-grievously over them: Landlords and tenants cannot

-continue to live side by side. Either the one or the

-other must go.</p>

-

-<p>“Let the landlords decamp! They do not belong

-here,” said the peasants.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_204"></a>[204]</span></p>

-

-<p>“No, by G⸺! The peasants shall go,” answered

-the landlords; “the way is open....”</p>

-

-<p>It was thus that towards 1876 the Irish movement

-became agrarian, from being purely national. The

-League is the organ of that new function.</p>

-

-<p>Its primary idea belongs to two veterans of the

-Fenian plots, Michael Davitt and John Devoy. But

-what distinguishes it from those plots, besides a

-broader basis and larger aims, is that it acts in broad

-daylight, with face uncovered, appealing to all men

-of goodwill, using exclusively those constitutional

-weapons—the right of meeting, the right of association

-and coalition.</p>

-

-<p>“The Fenians saw only the green flag,” wrote

-John Devoy. “The men of to-day perceive that

-under its folds is the Irish land.” Nevertheless, it

-was to the remains of the Fenian associations that he

-and Michael Davitt had recourse at first to lay the

-foundations of the new association. They went to

-look for them even to the uttermost end of America,

-secured the co-operation of some of the most influential

-members of the Irish emigration, then came back to

-Europe, and summoned a great preliminary meeting

-at Irishtown.</p>

-

-<p>As ordinarily enough happens in such cases,

-their project was at first looked upon coldly by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_205"></a>[205]</span>

-members of Parliament, who thought it impolitic,

-and violently opposed by the secret societies—Fenians

-or Ribbonmen—who thought it calculated to cool

-the Nationalist zeal. But under the too real sufferings

-produced by two years of famine (1876-1877),

-the agrarian tempest assumed such formidable proportions,

-that all resistance had to cease, and the

-politicians were compelled to lower their flag. For

-the chiefs of the autonomist party it was a question

-of no less than keeping or losing their mandate.

-Either they would adopt the new evangel, or they

-would be left lying, officers without troops, on the

-electoral battle-field. Most of them understood this

-in time.</p>

-

-<p>Mr. Parnell, the most conspicuous of all, had till

-then limited his part to the demand for a national

-government for Ireland, and his tactics to parliamentary

-obstruction. From an economical point of

-view he still remained, with all his party, on the level

-of worthy Mr. Butt’s <i>three F’s</i>. He was one of the

-first to understand that it was all over with Home

-Rule, and with his own political fortune, if he hesitated

-any longer to plunge into deeper waters.</p>

-

-<p>He made his plunge with characteristic resolution.

-“There is no longer any possibility of conciliation

-between landlord and tenant,” he said. “Since the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206"></a>[206]</span>

-one or the other must go out, it is better that the

-less numerous class should be the one to do it.” On

-the 8th of June, 1879, at Westport, he pronounced

-his famous, “Keep a firm grip on your homesteads!”

-From the 21st of October following the agrarian

-League promulgated circulars, which he signed as

-president.</p>

-

-<p>The League’s aim and watchword were—<i>The

-land for the peasant!</i> Its means were the union

-of all the rural forces, the formation of a resistance

-fund for evicted farmers, the strike of tenants

-with a view to compelling the landlords to grant a

-reduction of rent; and incessant agitation in favour

-of a law for the liquidation of landed property, which

-would give the land into the hands of the cultivators

-by means of partial payments made during a certain

-number of years.</p>

-

-<p>The success of such a programme, seconded by the

-political leaders of Ireland, was certain. But its

-promoters never had dared to hope for a rush such as

-was experienced in a few weeks’ time. Adhesions

-poured in by thousands; all the social classes embraced

-it. The Catholic clergy themselves, after

-wavering one moment, found it advisable to follow in

-the footsteps of the revolutionary party, as the

-Deputies had done before them. Everywhere local<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_207"></a>[207]</span>

-boards were formed which put themselves at the

-disposal of the central committee. Almost everywhere

-the Catholic priest, his curates, not unfrequently

-the Anglican priest himself, were found among the

-members of the board.</p>

-

-<p>This is enough to show with what alacrity and

-unanimity the mobilisation of the agrarian army was

-effected. Far from weakening the Nationalist party,

-as was feared by its prebendaries, it came out of this

-tempered afresh, enlarged, associated with the every-day

-interests, tied indissolubly henceforth, for the

-majority of an agricultural population, to the most

-secret if the most ardent wish of their labourers’

-heart.</p>

-

-<p>What remained to do was to endow the League with

-the resources wanted to carry out its programme; but

-it was not in a country practically ruined, a prey to

-the tortures of hunger, literally reduced to beggary,

-that those resources were to be found. Mr. Parnell

-set out for the land of dollars. He preached the new

-word there with complete success. Exotic branches

-of the League were established in the various States of

-America, in Canada, and Australia; the only thing

-remaining to do was to organize the <i>in partibus

-infidelium</i> government that was to take in hand the

-direction of Ireland.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_208"></a>[208]</span></p>

-

-<p>But a short time since this government sat in a

-palace of the finest street in Dublin—Sackville Street.

-There it had its offices, reception rooms, council-room

-furnished with the orthodox green baize table,

-its ministerial departments, secretaries and writers,

-officially headed paper, its stamp, documents, accounts

-and red tape.</p>

-

-<p>After a recent movement on the offensive on the

-part of the enemy, the League had to decamp and put

-all this material in a place of safety. But though it

-be presently without a known place of abode, the

-League none the less pursues its work. Do not telegraphic

-wires keep it in communication with its agents

-throughout the length and breadth of the territory?

-Why were Transatlantic cables invented, if not for the

-purpose of opening permanent communications between

-the League and its American, Australian, and

-Asiatic colonies? In all the extent of its jurisdiction,

-which is that of the globe, the League is obeyed and

-respected; it possesses the confidence of its innumerable

-tributaries.</p>

-

-<p>Perhaps that comes from the fact that this committee,

-though it sometimes accented too much the

-professional character of its members, has at least the

-rare merit of faithfully serving its constituents and of

-being in perfect harmony of conscience with them.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_209"></a>[209]</span>

-Perhaps this is due to the effect of direct subsidies;

-and we must see there something better than a mere

-coincidence,—a great lesson for the democracies of

-the future. One thing is certain: this government,

-after wielding power for eight years, have their party

-well in hand. They are able to do without red tape

-or scribbling. One word is enough to indicate their

-will, and if they lack secretaries, a hundred newspapers

-will carry this word to its address.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>It would be a matter of some difficulty to appreciate

-rightly the financial resources of the League

-Competent judges estimate them at an income of two

-million francs. It receives on an average, from

-English-speaking countries, a thousand pounds a

-week. Now and then subscriptions slacken, and the

-incoming of money is smaller; but the least incident,

-such as a noisy arrest or a political law-suit, is

-sufficient to awaken the zeal of the leaguers. That

-zeal is always proportionate to the energy of resistance

-opposed by the Cabinet of St. James to the

-government of Sackville Street. If London so much

-as raises its head, at once Dublin, and behind Dublin

-the whole of Ireland, the whole of Irish America,

-Australia, the Cape, and the extreme depths of India,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_210"></a>[210]</span>

-all are shaken to their very centre,—in other words,

-they pay.</p>

-

-<p>The chief treasurer of the League, Mr. Egan, giving

-account of his administration in October, 1882,

-after a space of three years, stated that during these

-three years £244,820 had passed through his hands.

-In this total one-third only came from insular contributors;

-all the rest came from abroad. £50,000 had

-been given in relief of distress; over £15,000 had

-been spent in State trials; nearly £148,000 had been

-expended through the general Land League and the

-Ladies’ Land League in support of evicted tenants,

-providing wooden houses, law costs, sheriffs’ sales,

-defence against ejectments and various local law

-proceedings, and upon the general expenses of the

-organization. A little over £31,900 remained to

-the account of the association.</p>

-

-<p>There are no reasons for supposing the normal

-receipts of the League to have diminished much since

-that period. More recently (in 1886) the “plan of

-campaign” has created new openings for it.</p>

-

-<p>This “plan of campaign,” one of the boldest conceptions

-ever accepted by a great political party,

-consists simply in lodging into the coffers of the

-League, and for its use, the rents that were pronounced

-excessive by its committee, and that the landlords<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_211"></a>[211]</span>

-refused to abate. Let us mention in passing that the

-Catholic Archbishop of Dublin publicly accepted the

-responsibility of this tremendous war-measure. It

-has, we must add, been exercised with obvious

-moderation, in specific cases only, and by way of

-example. The true weapon of the League, that which

-it used most liberally up to the present day, is the

-<i>boycotting</i>, or social interdict pitilessly pronounced

-against any one who disobeys its behests.</p>

-

-<p>From a legal point of view, the League has met with

-various fortunes. Suppressed in 1881 by an Act of

-Parliament, it was compelled to put on a mask and

-to disguise itself under the name of the <i>Ladies’ League</i>.

-A year later it underwent a new incarnation and

-became the <i>National League</i>.</p>

-

-<p>Now the Tory Ministry has suppressed it once more

-<i>proclaimed</i> it, as they say (<i>clameur de haro</i>), in virtue

-of the special power conferred on it. It appears

-improbable that the health of the association should

-suffer much for this; on the contrary, it will probably be

-all the better for it. In former days it would have been

-content to undergo a fourth avatar by taking the

-name of <i>Celtic League</i>, <i>Irish Babies’ League</i>, or any

-other name that would have done just as well to

-deride its adversaries. A special provision of the

-Coercion Act will prevent its having recourse to this<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_212"></a>[212]</span>

-expedient. By the 7th article of the Act, the Lord

-Lieutenant is empowered to suppress any <i>new</i> association

-formed with a view to continuing the affairs of

-the old ones.</p>

-

-<p>But one never thinks of everything. Precisely

-because it is so explicit, the 7th article cannot apply

-to the <i>old</i> Irish societies, different from the National

-League, and which can easily be substituted in its

-place. Those associations, <i>Home Rule Unions</i>, <i>Liberal

-Federations</i>, &amp;c., are numerous through the country.

-One of them could easily accept the inheritance of

-the League, and it would be necessary to convoke

-Parliament to suppress it. If Parliament suppresses

-it, it will be easy to find something else.

-And so on for ever, through ages, to the crack of

-doom.... In the meanwhile there will be protestations,

-agitations, interpellations, and before the end,

-“the King, the ass” ... or the Ministry shall have

-died, as La Fontaine said.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Lord Salisbury may close two hundred offices of

-the League in the counties of Clare and Kerry. How

-shall he close the offices beyond the sea, which are

-the real ones?</p>

-

-<p>In fact, the League is indestructible, because it is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_213"></a>[213]</span>

-impossible to get hold of it. One can arrest its chiefs,

-as has been done often enough, intercept its correspondence,

-oppose cavalry regiments to its public

-demonstrations, and retroactive measures to its secret

-acts; they cannot destroy the faith the Irish people

-have put in it; they cannot grapple with the essence

-of an association which rests on the most vital interests

-of the peasantry.</p>

-

-<p>Political persecution is fatally doomed to failure

-when exercised in a free country, if it does not begin

-by attacking the press and the right of meeting. And

-who shall dare to touch those two pillars of the British

-edifice? The English government is the government

-of opinion, or it is nothing: now, the opinion of the

-majority of Irishmen, of the majority of Scotchmen,

-and of an imposing minority of Englishmen, is in

-favour of the League.</p>

-

-<p>To say the truth, all parties are agreed <i>in petto</i>

-upon the necessity of abolishing landlordism. It is

-only a question of settling who shall have the credit

-of doing it, and how it shall be managed so that

-neither the landlord’s creditors nor the public exchequer

-should suffer too much by that unavoidable liquidation.

-Therefore all the measures taken against an

-organism that incarnates such general feeling can

-only be an empty fooling, a holiday sport. Their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_214"></a>[214]</span>

-only effect must be to awaken rural passions and

-provoke new acts of violence. One might even

-believe such was their only aim. For, to be able to

-ruin a perfectly lawful association like the League, in

-a country of free discussion, it is indispensable first to

-throw dishonour upon it.</p>

-

-<p>They have not yet succeeded in doing this, in spite

-of the most strenuous efforts. Not only has it always

-been impossible to charge the League with any act

-contrary to the current standard of morals, but it is beyond

-any doubt that its influence is especially directed

-towards the prevention of agrarian crimes, and even

-against individual resistance to landlordism. Wherever

-there is popular emotion or possible disorder,

-its delegates are present, and endeavour to enforce

-respect for the law. If it happen that the orations of

-some underlings overstep the mark, the general

-methods of the League none the less remain unimpeachable.

-It has taken for mandate the ruling of

-revolutionary action, the legalizing it, the task of

-giving it a scientific character. It is to its honour

-that it has succeeded up to the present day. One

-may reasonably suppose that it will not change its

-tactics at the hour when its true chief is no longer

-Mr. Parnell, but practically Mr. Gladstone.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_215"></a>[215]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.<br>

-<span class="smaller">THE CLERGY.</span></h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>From Kilrush, on the coast of Clare, an excellent

-service of steamers goes up the estuary of the Shannon

-to Foynes, where one takes the train to Limerick. It

-is a charming excursion, undertaken by all tourists.

-The Shannon here is of great breadth and majesty,

-flowing in an immense sheet of water, recalling the

-aspect of the great rivers of America. At the back

-you have the stormy ocean; in front, on the right,

-on the left, green hills dotted with snowy villas. Few

-trees or none, as is the rule in Ireland, but a light

-haze that softens all the outlines of the ground,

-magnifies the least shrubs, and lends to all the view a

-melting aspect of striking loveliness.</p>

-

-<p>The boats are few in number, though the depth of

-the channel would allow ships of the heaviest tonnage to

-go up to within five miles of Limerick. I notice hardly

-two or three sailing boats at anchor on this four

-hours’ journey. What an admirable harbour for an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_216"></a>[216]</span>

-active commerce would be that broad estuary, opening

-directly opposite to America, on the extreme

-point of the European continent. It is the natural

-point of arrival and departure for the Transatlantic

-steamers, which would reach New York in five days

-from there. Engineers have dreamed of this possibility.

-But to justify a maritime movement, and

-legitimise such enterprise, a great commerce, an

-industry that Ireland lacks, would be wanted. Gentlemen

-of an engineering turn, come back again in a

-century or two.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>At Tarbert, where we stop to take passengers, a

-fort opens its loop-holes, armed with guns, on the

-river. Redcoats are encamping at the foot of the

-fortress, and the morning breeze carries to us the

-rough voice of a non-commissioned officer drilling his

-men. One might imagine him addressing the <i>Invincibles</i>

-across the ocean somewhat after this guise:</p>

-

-<p>“Here we are, keeping watch: If ever this alluring

-bay tempt you to come over, you shall find us

-ready to receive you!”...</p>

-

-<p>The helm trembles; the boat goes on its course,

-and soon Tarbert melts behind us in the sunny haze.</p>

-

-<p>On board, the travellers resemble those seen in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_217"></a>[217]</span>

-summer on all great rivers—merchants bent on a

-pleasure trip; judges and barristers, having taken

-leave of briefs; professors enjoying their holidays, with

-wives, daughters, sons, goods, and chattels—all have

-the sun-burnt complexion and the satisfied look one

-brings back from the seaside. They have been staying

-on the beautiful shores of the County Clare, and are

-returning home with a provision of health for one

-year. La Fontaine has already noticed that, travelling,

-one is sure to see “the monk poring over his

-breviary.” Here the proportion is far greater than in

-the ancient coach; it is not one priest we have on

-board, but a dozen, all sleek, fat, and prosperous,

-dressed in good stout broadcloth, as smooth as their

-rubicund faces, and provided with gold chains resting

-on comfortable abdomens.</p>

-

-<p>One remark, by the way. When you meet an Irish

-peasant on the road, he stops, wishes you good-day,

-and adds, “Please, sir, what is the time?” Not that

-he cares much to know. He is perfectly well able to

-read the time on the great clock of the heavens. But

-it is his own manner of saying, “I can see, sir, that

-you are a man of substance—one of the great ones of

-this earth—<i>since you have a watch</i>. My sincere congratulations!”</p>

-

-<p>Well, all those travelling priests possess chronometers—we<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_218"></a>[218]</span>

-are obliged to notice it, since it appears

-to be a sign of easy circumstances in Ireland—and

-the rest of their attire fully carries out that symptom.

-Under the undefinable cut that at once betrays a

-clerical garment, their black coat has all the softness

-of first quality cloth; their travelling bag is of good

-bright leather; their very umbrella has a look of smartness,

-and does not affect the lamentable droop that

-with us is always associated with the idea of a clerical

-umbrella. Some of them wear the Roman hat and

-collar, with a square-cut waistcoat and the ordinary

-trousers of the laity, and stockings of all the hues of

-the rainbow. A young curate sports violet-coloured

-ones, which he exhibits with some complacency. I

-ventured to ask him, in the course of conversation,

-whether he belonged to the Pope’s household. He

-answered with a blush of modesty that he had not

-that honour, and wore violet hose because he was

-fond of that colour.</p>

-

-<p>That is a matter of taste; but I have a right to

-suppose, young Levite, that the mitre and episcopal

-rochet—perhaps even the cardinal purple—hover at

-night over your ingenuous dreams.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_219"></a>[219]</span></p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Limerick.</span></p>

-

-<p>Limerick is a big town of 40,000 inhabitants,

-celebrated for its hams, lace, and gloves. The objects

-of interest are an important linen factory, and another

-for military equipments, besides a stone mounted on

-a pedestal, and which served as a table for signing

-the famous treaty of 1691—soon violated like all

-treaties, however. Opposite that historic stone, on

-the other side of the Shannon, the ancient castle of

-King John rears its proud head; it has a grim and

-gloomy look, with its seven towers, its thick walls and

-iron-bound gates.</p>

-

-<p>At the large hotel of the place I meet again three

-of my ecclesiastical fellow-travellers. They evidently

-know what is good for them, and would on no account

-stop at second-rate inns. One cannot blame them

-for it. But this is a sign of prosperity, added to all the

-others; a hotel at fifteen shillings a day, without

-counting the wine, seems at first sight suited to

-prelates rather than to humble clergymen. Yet these

-are only village and parish priests, as I gather from

-the book on which I sign my name after theirs. At

-dinner, where we sit side by side, I am compelled to

-see that the appetite of the reverend fathers is excellent,

-and that the <i>carte</i> of the wines is a familiar

-object with them. They each have their favourite<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_220"></a>[220]</span>

-claret: one likes Léoville, another Château Margaux,

-while the third prefers Chambertin; and they drain

-the cup to the last drop. After dessert they remain

-last in the dining-room, in company with a bottle of

-port.</p>

-

-<p>At ten o’clock that night, entering it to get a cup

-of tea, I find the three seated round glasses of smoking

-toddy.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>These memorable events are not consigned here, it

-need hardly be said, for the vain satisfaction of

-recording that on a certain evening three Irish priests

-were tippling freely. They certainly had a perfect

-right to do so, if such was their bent. It is the most

-cherished privilege of a British subject; and of all

-capital sins proscribed by the Church, drunkenness is

-certainly the most innocent. But this remark, made

-without prejudice, during a chance meeting at an inn,

-carries out the general impression left by the Irish

-clergy—that of a corporation greatly enamoured of

-its comforts, endowed with good incomes, and whose

-sleekness forms a striking contrast with the general

-emaciation of their parishioners.</p>

-

-<p>Everywhere, in visiting this island, one meets with

-this typical pair of abbots, well dressed and well<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_221"></a>[221]</span>

-“groomed,” travelling comfortably together, and, to

-use a popular expression, “la coulant douce.” It is

-startling in this realm of poverty, the more startling

-because the Catholic clergy have no official means of

-existence, no salary paid them by the State. They

-owe all the money they spend to the private contributions

-of their admirers. Was there ever, they doubtlessly

-think, a more legitimate way of making money?

-That is probably why they make so little mystery

-of it, and disdain to hide when they exchange part of

-their income against a bottle of Chambertin. In other

-places, priests think that a certain reserve is expected

-of them; they prefer being securely shut in privacy

-before they carve a partridge or plentifully moisten

-a synod dinner. Here they are so secure in their

-position that they recoil from no profane glance.</p>

-

-<p>Their lives are, I am told, of exemplary purity. I

-have no difficulty in believing it, both because purity

-is a marked characteristic of the race, and because

-their faith has seemed to me simple as that of the

-Breton priests. There must be exceptions, and some

-were pointed out to me; but assuredly those exceptions

-are few in number. By many signs which do

-not deceive those who have some experience of life,

-one can see that the Irish priest has not the vices of

-the Italian or Spanish priest. He is a gormandizer<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_222"></a>[222]</span>

-to be sure, but he is chaste—perhaps for the very

-reason that he is so devoted to the pleasures of the

-table. His simplicity of heart is wonderful sometimes,

-and makes one think of those Mount Athos

-monks, nursed in the cloister from the tenderest age,

-and who know literally nothing of the exterior world.

-I heard two of them, old men both, who were quietly

-chatting in a corner of the railway carriage. Both

-had small, bald birds’ heads, shaven chins, and a quaint,

-old-fashioned look.</p>

-

-<p>“<i>I am next door to an idiot!</i>” one of them was

-saying, with curious complacency.</p>

-

-<p>“So am I,” answered the other; “so was I always,

-and I thank Almighty God for it!... for have

-you not noticed that all those grand, clever people

-often lose the faith?...”</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Where does their income come from? That is a

-question doubly interesting to us Frenchmen, who

-every year pay out two million sterling for the budget

-of public worship. A placard seen everywhere in

-Limerick, and presenting a marked resemblance to

-the advertisement for a theatre, will help to tell us.

-This placard is to the effect that on the day after to-morrow

-a general ordination of young priests will<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_223"></a>[223]</span>

-take place in the Cathedral of St. John, by the hands

-of the Right Reverend X. O’Dyer, archbishop of the

-town (the name and quality in conspicuous characters),

-assisted by several other prelates and dignitaries.

-It proceeds to state that excursion trains have

-been established for the occasion, and that tickets for

-the ceremony may be procured, at the price of half-a-crown

-and one shilling, at No. 98, George Street.</p>

-

-<p>This is a booking-office, exactly like those we have

-in theatres. Plenty of placards, the plan of the church

-showing the number and position of each seat, a table of

-prices, and behind a little grated window a bearded old

-woman for the tickets,—nothing is wanting. One has

-only to choose one’s place, to pay the price down, and

-to take away the ticket. About twenty persons perform

-these various acts before my eyes. Evidently

-the receipt will be good. The cathedral of St. John,

-that proudly raises its brand-new spire above all the

-others, must be able to accommodate at least three

-or four thousand spectators. At 1<i>s.</i> 9<i>d.</i> per head on

-an average, that gives already a total of two or three

-hundred pounds. To this must be added the product

-of the collections and that of the wooden money-boxes,

-that open everywhere to receive the outcome of the

-generosity of the faithful; the total, we may be sure,

-cannot be otherwise than respectable. It is true that an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_224"></a>[224]</span>

-ordination is not an every-day event, and that it must

-be an expensive affair to put on the stage. We must

-therefore suppose the ordinary income to be raised by

-way of semestrial and direct contribution.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>This is how the thing is done: each parish priest

-has two Sundays in the year devoted to the taking

-his <i>dues</i>, as he calls it. On these days, instead of

-preaching, he exhibits a manuscript list upon which

-are inscribed by name all his tributaries, that is to

-say, all his parishioners, with the sums they have

-paid into his hands; this he reads publicly. As a

-rule he adds a running commentary to each name,

-either to praise the generosity of the donor, or, on the

-contrary, to complain of his stinginess. In the country,

-especially, the scene is not wanting in humour.</p>

-

-<p>“<i>Daniel MacCarthy</i>, four shillings and six-pence,”

-says the priest. “That’s not much for a farmer who

-keeps three cows and sold two calves this year. I

-will hope for him that he only meant that as a preliminary

-gift.... <i>Simon Redmond</i>, seven shillings

-and six-pence; he might have given ten shillings, as

-he did last year. He is not what we should call a

-progressive man.... <i>George Roehe</i>, two shillings and

-three-pence. <i>Richard MacKenna</i>, one shilling and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_225"></a>[225]</span>

-three-pence. <i>Denis Twoney</i>, one shilling and nine-pence.

-Against those who do their best I have

-nothing to say. <i>Michael Murphy</i>, fifteen shillings.

-Now, I ask, could not he have made it a pound?

-The pity of it! <i>John Coleman</i>, five shillings. <i>Daniel

-Clune</i>, five shillings. <i>Cornelius Nagle</i>, five shillings.

-One would think they had agreed to do it.... <i>Henry

-Townsend</i>, Esq., of Townsend Manor, three pounds

-sterling. That’s what I call a subscriber! And

-he is a Protestant. You ought to be ashamed of

-yourselves to let a Protestant be more generous to

-your own church than you are.... <i>Harriet O’Connor</i>,

-one shilling and nine-pence. I will be bound she

-liked buying a new bonnet better than doing her

-duty. That is between her and her conscience. But

-I am afraid that at the Day of Judgment she won’t

-find it such a good investment.... <i>Mary Ann Cunningham</i>,

-twelve shillings and nine-pence. If everybody

-knew how to spare and how to use what they

-spare in the same way as this good lady, things would

-go better in this world and in the next, take my word

-for it.... <i>Colonel Lewis</i>, of Knockamore Villa, five

-pounds sterling. Another Protestant! Positively one

-might think one lived in a parish of heathens when

-one sees that the heretics alone seem to have some

-regard for the church!...”</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_226"></a>[226]</span></p>

-

-<p>The reading goes on in this guise, adorned with

-reflections more or less pungent, and interrupted now

-and then by a repartee coming from the far end of

-the audience, and torn from the patient by the malignity

-of the attack; a general hilarity is then provoked

-without impairing in the least the reverence of the

-congregation for their priest or their church. This

-semestrial subscription, added to the weekly collections,

-the daily masses, the baptisms, weddings and

-burials, is amply sufficient to keep the church, the

-priest, and the priest’s house in a good state of

-repair. Most of the parish priests besides, have the

-habit of “binage,” that is to say they often say two

-or three masses a day, at different points of their

-sometimes very wide parish.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>They are generally addressed by their christian

-name, prefaced by the name of <i>Father</i>: <i>Father James</i>,

-<i>Father Henry</i>, etc., and this title well describes the

-terms of filial familiarity of the flocks with their

-pastor,—a familiarity not unfrequently manifested by

-sound boxes on the ear for children, and good blows

-with the stick on the shoulders of his grown-up

-parishioners, but which does not preclude respect.

-In the streets one always sees the parish priest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_227"></a>[227]</span>

-respectfully greeted by the passers by; many women

-kneel down to kiss his hand as in Italy or

-Spain.</p>

-

-<p>His authority is that of a patriarch, who not only

-wields spiritual power, but also, to a great extent,

-social and political power. He incarnates at once in

-himself the native faith so long proscribed in the

-country, resistance to the oppressor, heavenly hopes

-and compensation for human trials. As a consequence,

-his influence is great, for good as for ill.</p>

-

-<p>The faith of the Irish peasant is entire, unquestioning,

-absolute as that of a thirteenth century’s serf.

-One must see on Sundays those churches crowded to

-overflowing, and too narrow for the congregation who

-remain, silent and kneeling, on the steps and even

-outside the doors. One must see those ragged

-people, forming a chain by holding on to each other’s

-tatters, one behind the other, at a distance of 50 to

-60 feet from the altar, a patch of dim light up there

-in the darkness of the church; or else they must be

-seen at some pilgrimage round a miraculous well or

-stream, like the Lough Derg, wallowing indiscriminately

-in the pond, washing therein their moral and

-physical uncleanliness, drinking the sacred water by

-the pailful, intoxicated with enthusiasm and hope.</p>

-

-<p>The devotees of Our Lady del Pilar, and of San<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_228"></a>[228]</span>

-Gennaro, are less expansive and less ardent. The

-Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Rosary, St. Philip of Neri,

-all the mystical armoury of the modern church have

-innumerable votaries in Ireland. One would perhaps

-experience some difficulty in finding there ten born

-Catholics not wearing next to their skin some amulet

-made of cloth or ivory, and invested in their eyes

-with supernatural powers. If I do not greatly err,

-St. Peter’s pence must find its more generous contributors

-amidst those poverty-stricken populations.

-To those imaginations of starved and half hysterical

-people the Roman pontiff appears in the far distance,

-all in white, in a halo of gold, like a superhuman

-vision of Justice and Pity in this world where they

-found neither the one nor the other.</p>

-

-<p>An Irish servant in London once asked my advice

-about the investment of her savings, some thirty

-pounds which she had scraped together at the Post

-Office Savings Bank. I congratulated her on her

-thrift, when the poor girl told me, her eyes bright

-with unshed tears:</p>

-

-<p>“It is for our Holy Father, that they keep in prison

-up there in Rome.... I mean to bring him fifty

-pounds as soon as ever I get them.”</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_229"></a>[229]</span></p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Those things may tend to explain why the only

-prosperous trade in Ireland is the clerical trade.

-Every year the number of priests increases, though

-the population is decreasing. In 1871 they numbered

-3,136; in 1881 they were 3,363, or an increase of 227,

-under the guidance of four archbishops and twenty-four

-bishops. The Catholic population is of three

-million persons; that gives one priest for about 900

-inhabitants.</p>

-

-<p>It is generally admitted that each of these priests,

-with his church and his house, cannot cost much under

-£300 or £400 a year. That would give about

-£1,200,000 coming annually from the pockets of

-those labourers and servant girls. The tithe was never

-so heavy.</p>

-

-<p>This clergy is chiefly recruited from the class of

-small farmers and peasantry (by the reason that

-the other classes are for the majority Protestants); as

-a consequence the clergy share all the passions of their

-class. The agrarian revolution has no agents more

-active. Almost everywhere the parish priest is the

-president of the local Land League Board. In the

-stormiest meetings is always to be found a village Peter

-the Hermit, preaching the new crusade and denouncing

-the landlords with fiery eloquence; not to speak of

-the Sunday preaching, which is only another meeting<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_230"></a>[230]</span>

-closed against the police, and where landlords are

-handled with extraordinary freedom of language.

-One has seen Irish priests openly declare a shot to be

-an unimportant trifle, so long as it was sent after a

-landed proprietor. A few months ago a Dublin paper

-mentioned a parish in Donegal, where the priest, they

-asserted, had gone so far as to put the properties of

-the landlords in lottery, by tickets of ten shillings each.

-The verification of this fact would by no means be

-easy. But, given the state of mind of the Irish priest,

-the ardour he brings into the struggle, the boundless

-indulgence he displays towards agrarian outrages, the

-tale is by no means improbable; our Leaguers have

-done even worse. However surprising may be in our

-Continental eyes the spectacle of a whole clergy taking

-part against the lords in a social war, under the

-paternal eyes of their episcopate, we must remember

-that here everything tends to bring about this result:—religious

-passions, hereditary instinct, and personal

-interest.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>A priest who had the unlucky idea of pronouncing

-himself against the League would soon see his subsidies

-stopped. His flock would besides lose all confidence

-in him, and all respect for his person. I am<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_231"></a>[231]</span>

-told of a characteristic example of the kind of practical

-jokes indulged in such a case by the peasantry against

-the dissident pastor. A priest of the county Clare,

-seized by sudden scruples, took it into his head to

-abuse the League at the Sunday preaching, instead of

-sounding the usual praise in its honour. At once they

-sent him from the lower end of the church an old

-woman who begged to be heard directly in confession,

-before she could approach Holy Communion. The

-worthy man, grumbling a little at such an untimely fit

-of devotion, nevertheless acceded to her request with

-antique simplicity, and seated himself inside the

-confessional.</p>

-

-<p>“Father,” said the old woman in aloud voice, “I

-accuse myself of having this moment thought that you

-were a wicked bad man, who betrays his flock to take

-the part of their natural enemies....”</p>

-

-<p>“Amen!” answered all the congregation in a chorus.</p>

-

-<p>Without waiting for absolution the old woman had

-got up to go. The priest tried to imitate her. Impossible.

-They had placed on his seat a huge lump

-of pitch which glued him, attached him indissolubly

-to his place. To get him free they were obliged to go

-for help outside, to call strangers to the rescue. The

-whole village meanwhile were shaking with laughter,

-and thought the joke in the best possible taste.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_232"></a>[232]</span></p>

-

-<p>The Irish clergy go with the League, both because

-their temperament inclines them that way, and also

-because it is an imperious necessity of their situation;

-their case is rather similar to that of the <i>Home Rule</i>

-members, who were compelled to enter the movement,

-whether they approved of it or not. However strong

-their hold on the mass of the rural population, their

-influence would vanish in a week if they tried to pull

-against the irresistible stream. Such sacrifices have

-never been a habit of the Roman Church.</p>

-

-<p>Indeed it is permitted to smile, when one sees the

-Tory Ministry soliciting the intervention of the Pope

-in the Irish crisis, and obtaining from him the sending

-of a special legate entrusted with the mission of

-bringing the Episcopate of Ireland back to less subversive

-ideas. It is well understood that the Pope of

-course sends his legate, and derives from his diplomatic

-compliance all the advantages it entails. But

-he is better aware than any one that unless he personally

-gave away one million sterling a year to the

-parish priests of Ireland, he would have little reasonable

-hope of success in asking them to shift their

-policy.</p>

-

-<p>Is it necessary to add that the Irish priest himself

-knows on occasion how to bring into his mundane

-relations the traditional suppleness and prudence of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_233"></a>[233]</span>

-his order? A priest of Wexford, actively mixed up

-with the agrarian movement, was dining a few years

-ago at the house of Mr. C⸺, proprietor of a large

-landed estate in the county. Conversation turned

-upon the League, and no good was said of it. The

-priest listened in silence, without giving his sentiment

-either for or against the League. All of a sudden,

-with a look of assumed simplicity, he turned to his

-host—</p>

-

-<p>“Look here, Mr. C⸺,” he said, “Will you

-believe me? <i>Me impresshun is that there is no Land

-League.</i>”</p>

-

-<p>The saintly man had for the last three months been

-vice-president of the board of the Land League in

-his district.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_234"></a>[234]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.<br>

-<span class="smaller">FORT SAUNDERS.</span></h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Galway.</span></p>

-

-<p>Galway is an old Spanish colony, planted on the

-western coast of Ireland, and which kept for a long

-time intimate relations with the mother country.

-Things and people have retained the original stamp

-to an uncommon degree; but for the Irish names that

-are to be read on every shop, you could believe yourself

-in some ancient quarter of Seville. The women

-have the olive complexion, black hair, and red petticoat

-of the <i>mañolas</i>; the houses open on a courtyard,

-a thing unknown in other parts of Ireland, as well

-as in Great Britain; they have grated windows, peep-holes

-in the door, and are adorned with sculptures, in

-the Moorish style; the steeples of churches affect

-the shape of minarets; the very fishermen in the port,

-with the peculiar shape of their boat, sails and nets,

-and something indescribable in their general outline,

-remind you of the hardy sailors of Corunna.</p>

-

-<p>The remembrance of seven or eight centuries of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_235"></a>[235]</span>

-busy trade with the Peninsula, does not show itself

-solely in faces, manners, or dwelling, it is to be

-found also in local tradition. Among others, there

-is the story of the Mayor Lynch Fitz-Stephen, who

-gave in 1493 such a fearful example of ruthless justice.

-His only son, whom he had sent to Spain to settle

-some important affair, was coming back with the

-Spanish correspondent of the family, bringing home

-a rich cargo, when he entered into a conspiracy with

-the crew, appropriated the merchandise, and threw

-overboard the unfortunate Spaniard. The crime was

-discovered, the culprit arrested, and brought to trial

-before his own father, who was exercising the right

-of high and low justice in the district, and by him

-condemned to the pain of death. The general belief

-was that the Mayor would contrive to find some pretext

-to give his son a respite; and in order to supply

-him with that pretext, his relations drew up a petition

-of grace, which they presented to him, covered with

-signatures. Lynch listened to their request, then

-merely told them to come back for an answer on a

-certain day he named. At the appointed time the

-suppliants appeared again; but the first sight which

-caught their eyes was the dead body of the Mayor’s

-son hanging from one of the grated windows of his

-house. An inscription, placed in 1524, on the walls<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_236"></a>[236]</span>

-of the cemetery of St. Nicholas, records the memory

-of that event.</p>

-

-<p>Galway is only a big borough nowadays, where

-ruins are nearly as numerous as inhabited dwellings.

-From the road that skirts the Bay, after leaving the

-harbour, the long islands of Arran may be seen

-rising on the west; from another road, which goes

-northwards, Lough Corrib appears, famous for its

-salmon fisheries. As an historic place, the county

-possessed already the field of Aughrim, celebrated for

-two centuries as the spot where James II. lost his last

-battle against William III.—a battle so murderous

-that the dogs of the country retained a taste for human

-flesh for three generations after. But since the last

-year it has acquired a new celebrity: another and no

-less epic battle has been fought at Woodford in

-August, 1886, for the agrarian cause. The account

-of it is worth telling. Never did the character of the

-struggle between League and landlord appear in such

-a glaring light. All the factors in the problem are

-there, each playing its own part. It is like a vertical

-cut opening Irish society down to its very core, and

-permitting to see it from basis to summit; a supplementary

-chapter to Balzac’s <i>Paysans</i>.</p>

-

-<p>Woodford is a pretty village seated on the shore of

-Lough Derg on the slope of the hills which divide<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_237"></a>[237]</span>

-Galway from Clare. The principal landowners there

-are the Marquis of Clanricarde, Sir Henry Burke,

-the Westmeath family, Colonel Daly, and Lord Dunsandle.

-Agrarian hatred is particularly alive in that

-district; the Galway man is bloodthirsty, and counts

-human life as nought. Five or six years ago Mr.

-Blake, Lord Clanricarde’s agent, was shot dead,

-and in March, 1886, a bailiff named Finley, a

-veteran of the Crimean war, had the same fate

-while he was going to proceed to an eviction on

-the account of Sir Henry Burke. The spot is shown

-still where the unfortunate man was murdered and

-his corpse left twenty-four hours without sepulture,

-nobody daring or willing to bear it away. A detachment

-of the police in the pay of the Property Defence

-Association having settled their barracks in the

-vicinity of Woodford, the inhabitants, about one

-thousand in number, organized a sort of grotesque

-pageant, which made its progress along the streets of

-the town behind a coffin bearing the inscription:

-<i>Down with landlordism!</i> then concluded by burning

-the coffin in sight of the barracks.</p>

-

-<p>There are two churches, one Protestant, the other

-Catholic. The faithful who attend the first are two

-in number, no mere nor less, which would be sufficient

-to show how legitimate it was for the Irish to protest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_238"></a>[238]</span>

-when obliged to pay the tithes of an altogether alien

-worship. The second is headed by a jolly compeer,

-much beloved by his parishioners for his good humour

-and liberality, Father Caen, a pastor of the old school,

-whose boast it is that he keeps the best table and

-cellar, and has the prettiest nieces in the county.

-He is president of the local board of the League;

-the treasurer of that committee is the <i>guardian of

-the poor law</i> of the district, what we would call

-“l’administrateur du bien des pauvres;” but the true

-agent of the League—the <i>Deus ex machina</i> of the place—is

-the secretary, Father Egan, curate of the parish,

-an austere, thin, fanatic-looking man, a peasant’s son,

-with all the passions of his race, who sucked the

-hatred of landlords with his mother’s milk, and ever

-remembers that many of his kindred have been

-reduced to emigrate, and that an uncle of his went

-mad after being evicted. A feature to be noted

-down; that priest, tall, strong, sinewy, is an excellent

-shot and an inveterate poacher. Nothing would be

-easier for him than obtaining leave from the landowners

-to shoot on their grounds; but he scorns the

-leave. His delight is to lurk at night till he has shot

-some of their big game, or to head openly a <i>battue</i>

-for a general slaughter five miles round.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_239"></a>[239]</span></p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>One of the finest estates in the county is that of

-Lord Clanricarde, to which are attached three hundred

-and sixteen tenants.</p>

-

-<p>Hubert George De Burgh Canning, Marquis of

-Clanricarde and Baron Somerhill, was born 1832,

-according to the <i>Peerage</i>. He was never married,

-has no children, belongs to the House of Lords as

-Baron Somerhill, is a member of two or three great

-clubs, and lives in Piccadilly, at the Albany, a sort

-of caravanserai (not to say seraglio), almost exclusively

-a resort of rich bachelors. That is about

-all that is known of him. His tenants do not

-know him. The only glimpse they ever had of

-their landlord was on the following occasion. In 1874,

-at the funeral of the late Marquis, a man of about

-forty, with fair hair, who had come from London for

-the ceremony, was noticed among the mourners.

-He was said to be the new master. That was all:

-he disappeared as he had come. Save for that hazy

-and far-away remembrance, the landlord is for the

-Woodford people a mere name, a philosophical entity

-of whom they know nothing except that he has a land

-agent at Loughrea, a little neighbouring town, and that

-into the hands of that agent they must pay every year

-£19,634 out of the product of the land. The tenants

-of Woodford are in that sum for about £1,000.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_240"></a>[240]</span></p>

-

-<p>The Marquis’s father died in 1874. Quite contrary

-to the present owner, he was the prototype of the

-Irish lord resident. Great sportsman, scatter-brain,

-violent, extravagant, but kind and open-handed, he

-was liked in spite of his numerous failings, and tradition

-helping him he was emphatically the master

-almost all his life long; a fact which he was wont to

-illustrate by boasting that if it pleased him to send his

-old grey mare to the House of Commons, the electors

-would be too happy to vote unanimously for the

-animal.</p>

-

-<p>In 1872, however, the Marquis’s tenants took it

-into their heads to cut the tradition, and gave their

-vote to a certain Captain Nolan, the <i>Home Rule</i>

-candidate. The irascible nobleman took revenge for

-what he chose to consider as a personal insult by

-raising the rent of all bad electors. He went so far

-in that line that in 1882 the <i>Land Commissioners</i> had

-to reduce them by half. That judgment could not,

-of course, have a retrospective effect and bring a

-restitution of the sums that had been paid in excess

-during the last ten years, and which varied from £50

-to £100. It may be imagined how they must weigh

-still on the peasant’s heart, and what a well-prepared

-ground the agrarian movement was to find at Woodford.

-The successive murders of the land agent<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_241"></a>[241]</span>

-Blake and Bailiff Finlay were among the first and

-visible signs of that ferment of hatred.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Those crimes, which remained unpunished, and the

-responsibility of which is thrown at each other’s heads

-by the two parties, came with the usual accompaniment

-of fires, mutilations, verbal and written threats.

-The reign of terror had begun in the district; no

-bailiff was any longer willing to serve a writ or

-assignation. There came a time when the landlords

-nearly gave up all hope of finding a land agent to take

-the place of the one who had been murdered; at last

-they discovered the man—a certain Joyce, of Galway—a

-man who united an indomitable spirit with the

-most consummate skill; deeply versed in the art of

-talking to the peasant, a fine shot, carrying his potations

-well; ready for anything. A professional

-exploit had made his name famous in the neighbourhood.

-Having to serve writs upon several farmers,

-and being unable to find bailiffs willing to carry them,

-he made a general convocation in his office of all the

-debtors, with the pretext of submitting to them some

-mode of accommodation. The proposition being

-unanimously rejected, Joyce gets up, goes to the door,

-and after having turned the key, leans with his back<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_242"></a>[242]</span>

-against it; then, producing out of his pocket as many

-writs as there were farmers in his room, distributes

-them among the visitors. The poor devils were

-caught; according to the terms of the law, nothing

-but submission was left to them. It will not be unnecessary

-to add here that Joyce, a born Catholic, had

-been recently converted to Protestantism, which is

-reputed an abomination in Ireland, and consequently

-went by the name of the <i>renegade</i>. Such was the

-man who came to settle at Loughrea under protection

-of a special guard of constables, and hostilities soon

-began.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>The harvest of 1885 had been but indifferent, and

-besides, by reason of American competition, the price

-of the chief local products had fallen down considerably—from

-about 15 to 20 per cent.—which implies

-for the farmer an utter impossibility to pay his rent,

-unless the nett profit he draws from the soil be estimated

-above 15 or 20 per cent. of his general receipt.

-Even in Ireland reasonable landlords are to be found.

-Those who understood the situation felt for their

-tenants, and, without waiting to be asked, granted a

-reduction of rent. At Woodford, Lord Dunsandle and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_243"></a>[243]</span>

-Colonel Daly of their own impulse, and Sir H. Burke

-after some demur, gave up 15 per cent. of the unpaid

-rent.</p>

-

-<p>As for Lord Clanricarde, he gave not the least sign

-of existence. When the November term came, his

-tenants demanded a reduction of 25 per cent., upon

-which Joyce declared that not a penny was to be

-given up. This seemed so hard that it was generally

-disbelieved; and an opinion spread itself that by

-applying personally to the landlord justice would be

-obtained. A collective address, signed by the 316

-Woodford tenants, was accordingly drawn up and

-presented to him.</p>

-

-<p>The Marquis of Clanricarde vouchsafed no manner

-of answer. Then, Father Egan put himself in motion.

-He first obtained from the Bishop of Clonfert that he

-would send a second petition to the master, representing

-to him the true state of affairs, the reduction

-consented to by the other landlords, &amp;c. Lord Clanricarde

-did not even acknowledge reception of the

-prelate’s letter. Let us state here, once for all, that

-he never swerved from the attitude he had adopted

-from the beginning, so aggressive in its very stolidity.

-Never once did he depart from that silence, except

-when he once wrote to the <i>Times</i> that, personally, he

-did not object to the proposed reduction, but was in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_244"></a>[244]</span>

-the habit of leaving to his agent the care of that sort

-of thing.</p>

-

-<p>Seeing that there was no satisfaction whatever to

-be expected from him, the Woodford tenants imitated

-their landlord, and henceforth gave no sign of

-life, or paid him a single farthing. In the month of

-April, 1886, Joyce resorted to the legal ways and set

-up prosecutions against thirty-eight of the principal

-farmers, whose debt was £20 and above, assuming by

-that move the attitude of a moderate man who has to

-deal with obvious unwillingness to pay.</p>

-

-<p>And it was that which gave to the Woodford affair

-its peculiar character, which made it a <i>test case</i>, a

-decisive trial where the contending forces have

-measured their strength, where the inmost thought

-of the Irish peasant has shown itself in full light. If

-the chiefs of the League had singled it out from amidst

-a hundred (as, indeed, we may believe they did, whatever

-they might aver to the contrary), they could

-never have achieved a more complete demonstration

-of their power. Chance, however, had also its usual

-share in the turn which affairs took. Joyce, it

-appears, had began prosecutions against seventy-eight

-lesser tenants, and at the moment when success was

-on the point of crowning his efforts, the procedure

-was quashed for some legal flaw.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_245"></a>[245]</span></p>

-

-<p>As for the bigger ones, judgment had been entered

-against them, and the execution followed. The first

-step was the selling out in public court of the tenant’s

-interest in his holding. Ten of the men capitulated

-immediately, paying the rent in full with interest and

-law costs, that is to say, about 80 per cent. above the

-original debt. As for the twenty-eight others, fired

-by political passion, pride, and the ardent exhortations

-of Father Egan, they did not waver, and allowed

-the sale to proceed.</p>

-

-<p>Agreeably to the usage established since the League

-has been supreme in Ireland, not one bidder came forward

-at the sale. The representative of the landlord

-therefore remained master of the situation, and got

-for a few shillings the interest of the twenty-eight

-farmers—interest which, in certain cases, was worth

-£200 and more.</p>

-

-<p>It now remained to evict those tenants from their

-farms, and take possession in their place. Let us

-remark that, being certain of having allowed the

-landlord, through the sale, to help himself to a value

-of five or six times his due, those men were bound to

-consider such an eviction a gratuitous piece of cruelty.

-Well knowing before-hand that the eviction would by

-no means be an easy task, for all Ireland breathlessly

-followed the course of events, Joyce singled out<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_246"></a>[246]</span>

-amongst the twenty-eight defaulters, the four tenants

-for whom the eviction was sure to bear the hardest

-character, namely, Conroy, Fahey, Broderick, and

-Saunders. These were all people of comfortable

-means, who had for many years been established on

-their lands, who were profoundly attached to the

-house where their children or grand-children had

-been born, and which they had themselves built,

-enlarged and improved at great expense; rural

-<i>bourgeois</i> rather than peasants; men that in a French

-country town should have been mayors, <i>adjoints</i>, or

-municipal councillors.</p>

-

-<p>For each of them eviction not only meant ruin, the

-voluntary and definitive loss of a small fortune

-laboriously acquired, and which could be estimated in

-each case at ten or twelve times the amount of the

-annual rent; it was, besides, the upsetting of all their

-dearest habits, the destruction of home, the end of

-domestic felicity. “Placed between this result and

-the choice of paying £30 or £40, which he has in his

-strong box, or which he will experience no difficulty

-in borrowing if he has them not—what country-bred

-man would hesitate?” thought Joyce. “Conroy,

-Fahey, Broderick, and Saunders shall pay! They

-shall pay, and after them the others must inevitably

-follow suit.”</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_247"></a>[247]</span></p>

-

-<p>This was very sound reasoning. But Joyce calculated

-without the League and its agent, Father Egan.

-The four chosen victims did not pay. With a resolution

-that must really seem heroic to whoever knows

-the workings of a peasant’s soul, Conroy, Fahey,

-Broderick, and Saunders unanimously declared that

-the agent might expel them by force—<i>if he could</i>—but

-yield they would not.</p>

-

-<p>Ah! there was a fearful struggle. It was not

-without the most terrible inner combat that they kept

-their word. At home they had the money ready;

-nothing could be simpler than to go and pay it.

-Now and then temptation waxed almost too strong.

-James Broderick is an old man of seventy years.

-One day, called to Loughrea by the tempter, he went,

-in company with his friend Fahey.</p>

-

-<p>“Now, look here, Mr. Broderick,” Joyce said to him,

-“it goes to my heart to evict a good man like you

-from such a pretty house.... You have lived in it

-for these thirty years—it is the pearl of Woodford....

-Let us make an arrangement about all this: you

-pay me down your rent with for costs, and I

-give you any length of time for the rest.... His

-lordship will even give you back the tenant-right for

-the price he paid himself,—fifty shillings.... Now

-what do you say?”...</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_248"></a>[248]</span></p>

-

-<p>Old Broderick wavered; he was on the point of

-yielding.</p>

-

-<p>“Indeed, Mr. Joyce, you cannot do more than that,”

-... he uttered in a trembling voice, involuntarily

-feeling for his pocket-book.</p>

-

-<p>But Fahey was there. He took the old man’s arm

-and drew him aside.</p>

-

-<p>“It is not <i>time</i> that we want!” he said to him.

-“<i>What we want is to uphold the principle!</i>”</p>

-

-<p>Truly a great word. As fine as any recorded on

-History’s page, for those who know how to understand

-it rightly. If the peasants can remember a

-principle when their property is in question, verily

-one may say that the times are near being fulfilled!</p>

-

-<p>All conciliatory means were now exhausted. It

-only remained to have recourse to force. Joyce knew

-better than anyone what resistance he was going to

-encounter. Personally he thought he was going to

-meet death. He went resolutely nevertheless, but

-not without surrounding himself with a regular

-army.</p>

-

-<p>The bailiffs of the place refusing to act, some had

-to be sent for from Dublin. Those bailiffs, escorted

-by about a hundred emergency men, were supported

-besides by five hundred constables armed with rifles

-and revolvers. Woodford lies at a distance of about<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_249"></a>[249]</span>

-twenty miles from the nearest railway. The traps and

-horses necessary to carry all these people had to be

-sent down from Dublin, nobody consenting to give

-any manner of help. The same thing occurred for

-provisions and for the implements of the siege, pickaxes,

-levers, iron crowbars, which were indispensable

-to the assailants, and which were brought down with

-the army to Portumna. These preparations lasted

-three weeks. The mobilisation, decreed by Joyce at

-the end of July, could only be completed by the 17th

-of August.</p>

-

-<p>On the next day, the 18th, this army moved forward

-and left Portumna in a column, marching on

-Woodford.</p>

-

-<p>But on their side the Leaguers had not remained

-inactive.</p>

-

-<p>All the night long squads of voluntary workmen

-had been hard at work. When the police caravan

-arrived in sight of the village, they found the road

-barred by trees and heaps of stones placed across the

-way. They were obliged to dismount and go round

-by the fields.</p>

-

-<p>In the meantime, from the top of the neighbouring

-heights horns were signalling the appearance of the

-enemy; the chapel bells began to toll an alarm peal.

-From all the points of the compass an immense<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_250"></a>[250]</span>

-multitude of people hastened to come and take up

-their position on the hills of Woodford.</p>

-

-<p>When the bailiffs made their appearance, headed

-by Joyce, armed to the teeth, by the under-sheriff

-whom the duty of his charge obliged to preside at the

-execution, and leading on five hundred policemen,

-an indescribable, formidable howl rose up to heaven;

-the Irish <i>wail</i> which partakes of the lion’s roar and of

-the human sob, of the yell of the expiring beast and

-of the rushing sound of waters.</p>

-

-<p>That lugubrious hooting was to last during two

-entire days, with full-stops, <i>da capo</i>, <i>decrescendo</i> and

-<i>rinforzando</i> of great effect.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>The first house attacked by the assailants was that

-of Conroy. It is a solid, comfortable-looking dwelling,

-built on the bank of Lough Derg. To the

-under-sheriff’s summons, the inhabitants, posted on

-the roof, answered only by derisive laughter. The

-door, which was of solid oak, was closed and barred

-inside. The order was given to break it open. A

-few minutes’ work sufficed to do it.</p>

-

-<p>When it fell crashing under the axes, it was perceived

-that a wall had been built behind it.... A

-triumphant shout rose from the crowd.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_251"></a>[251]</span></p>

-

-<p>“A breach must be made!” thundered Joyce. The

-stone wall was attacked. Immediately, from the roof,

-from the windows, poured a deluge of scalding hot

-lime-water, which fell on the assailants, blinded them,

-burnt them, and sent them back howling and dancing

-with pain. Again the crowd applauded, saluting with

-screams of laughter every ladleful of hot water that

-took effect. The custom of Galway authorizes, it

-appears, that singular way of defending one’s house.

-<i>It is no breach of the peace.</i> One can scald the bailiffs

-without any qualms of conscience or fear of consequences.</p>

-

-<p>Nothing loth, the Conroy family freely used the

-permission. The miracle was that they did not use

-more murderous weapons. But the League’s agents

-were there holding back, according to their custom,

-the too fiery spirits, and keeping them within the

-bounds of legal hostilities. At their head the priest

-Egan was conspicuous, loudly advising the besieged,

-pointing out to them the uncovered assailants, telling

-them on what point to direct the effort of resistance.

-As for the police, mute and motionless, they beheld

-the drama without taking part in it. Four hours’

-work were needed to make the breach. At last

-the bailiffs were able to enter the house, expel the

-inhabitants, and take possession of it. They were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_252"></a>[252]</span>

-obliged literally to carry away the youngest Miss

-Conroy, who desperately clung to the walls and furniture,

-and refused to come out of her own will.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Night came, and the bailiffs have no right to carry

-on their proceedings after sunset. They were therefore

-obliged to postpone their operations till the next

-day. What made matters worse was, that they must

-necessarily go back to Portumna, for they need expect

-to find no lodgings in Woodford. It is easy to

-foretell the complication of events that now followed.</p>

-

-<p>The whole of next day was employed in the eviction

-of Fahey. That of Broderick lasted another

-day, and caused the arrest of twenty-seven persons,

-for in spite of the League’s efforts heads were waxing

-hotter and hotter, and the combatants began to be

-rather too excited on both sides.</p>

-

-<p>But where resistance took a truly epic character

-was in the house of Thomas Saunders. With twenty-three

-comrades he held in check all assaults <i>during

-four entire days</i>. Not content with scalding the

-bailiffs by means of pumps and cauldrons installed

-on purpose, he had, by a stroke of genius, the idea

-of throwing on them hives of bees, that came out

-enraged from their cells and cruelly stung everything<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_253"></a>[253]</span>

-before them. Who knows that there may not be in

-this a precious indication for future warfare! European

-strategists may before long add “the chaste dew-drinkers,”

-as Victor Hugo called them, to the pigeons

-and the war-dogs. However that may be, Joyce’s

-mercenaries, burnt, stung, and crest-fallen, were compelled,

-for three nights running, to retreat on Portumna.</p>

-

-<p>The green flag meanwhile was proudly waving its

-folds on the summit of Saunders’ house, which

-enraptured Ireland, intoxicated with joy at the news

-of this unprecedented siege, immediately baptized

-<i>Fort Saunders</i>. Agitation was fast spreading over

-the whole country. The military authorities judged

-it indispensable to send down 200 mounted men, and

-to have the place patrolled at night. In Portumna

-councils of war were held, and serious thoughts were

-entertained of having recourse to the antique battering-ram

-and “tortoise” in order to approach the

-place and succeed in taking it. Three days passed

-in new preparations and supplementary armaments.</p>

-

-<p>At last, on the 27th of August, a new assault was

-attempted. It failed like all the others, but the law

-must, it was felt, at all costs, be enforced; the police

-interfered about some technical point, took the house

-at the bayonet’s point and made all its inmates

-prisoners.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_254"></a>[254]</span></p>

-

-<p>Thus ended, without effusion of blood, this memorable

-campaign; three weeks’ preparation, eight days’

-fighting, a thousand men on foot, enormous expense

-had been required in order to succeed in evicting four

-tenants of the Marquis of Clanricarde, out of a number

-of 316, and that in the midst of scandalous scenes

-which gave the noisiest publicity to the agrarian cause.

-Everybody was of opinion that enough had been done,

-and evictions were stopped.</p>

-

-<p>The affair at Woodford marks a date in the annals

-of the Irish revolution. One has seen in it peasants

-living in relatively good circumstances fight for principles

-and go to the furthest ends of legality,—without

-overstepping them. Moreover, these events have

-taken place in a county famed for its violence and

-represented in Parliament by Mr. Matthew Harris,

-which is saying enough; (his motto was, till lately,

-“When you see a landlord, shoot him down like a

-partridge”). Three or four years sooner such events

-could not have taken place without involving fifteen

-or twenty deaths of persons. Here not a single one

-occurred. One could not but acknowledge that the

-honour of this was due to the League, to its moderating

-and constitutional influence. In vain it protested

-that it had nothing to do with those conflicts;

-its agents and its general instructions played the first<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_255"></a>[255]</span>

-part in it. Therefore it reaped all the fruits of this,

-came out of the ordeal greater, surrounded with a

-poetical halo, sovereign. History often has such

-ironies. At the price of their domestic happiness,

-four obscure heroes had just won in face of public

-opinion the cause of the serfs of the glebe against the

-lords.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_256"></a>[256]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.<br>

-<span class="smaller">THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.</span></h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Sligo.</span></p>

-

-<p>In all the cabins I enter, the first object that meets

-my eyes on the wall, besides a portrait of Parnell or

-Gladstone, is, enshrined between the bit of sacred

-palm and the photograph of the emigrant son, a sheet

-of printed paper, sometimes put under a glass, and

-headed by these words, “The Plan of Campaign.”

-This is a summary of the instructions given by the

-League to its followers in November, 1886, and of the

-various means by which the position may be made

-untenable by the landlords.</p>

-

-<p>That order of the day of the agrarian army was,

-however, absent from the house furniture of one of my

-friends, Mat Cloney; he was a fisherman on the Garvogue,

-near Lough Gill, and close to the ruins of the

-Abbey of Sligo; an old man of hale and pleasing

-countenance, whose weather-beaten face was shaded

-by a plenteous crop of gray hair, and lighted up by

-two wonderfully bright blue eyes: a true Celt in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_257"></a>[257]</span>

-manner and appearance. When I entered his cabin

-for the first time he was engaged in preparing his

-dinner; this consisted of a dried herring and a cold

-potato; but tearing down from a hook near the fire-place

-a small piece of bacon, the old man hastily

-rubbed it over a frying-pan, which he set on the dying

-embers; in it he placed the herring. A great noise

-and spluttering followed, then Mat, mindful of future

-feasts, thriftily hung his piece of bacon back on its

-hook, and the herring being done, sat down to his

-meagre repast.</p>

-

-<p>“You see, sir,” he said contentedly, “it gives it a

-relish.”</p>

-

-<p>I must not omit to say that poor as his fare was, he

-nevertheless offered me a share of it. I explained I had

-already lunched, and while he was discussing his meal,

-we entered into conversation.</p>

-

-<p>“You must be pretty well advanced in years,” I

-said, “though one would not think it to see how you

-manage your boat.”</p>

-

-<p>“<i>Shure</i>, sir, I was <i>borren</i> in the <i>Ribillion</i>!”</p>

-

-<p>Let me here observe that this is the common

-answer given by many Irish peasants as to their age.

-The “Ribillion” seems to have made an epoch in their

-history, and they consider that any person over middle

-age must have been born during that momentous<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_258"></a>[258]</span>

-period. The date appears to matter little to them. So,

-though I entertained private doubts of Cloney’s being

-89 years old, I let that pass, and we went on talking.</p>

-

-<p>“Have you any children?”</p>

-

-<p>“<i>Shire</i> I have!... Me sons they are fishermen,

-and me daughters are all marr’d, near here....”</p>

-

-<p>“And you live alone?”</p>

-

-<p>“Yes, sir, that I do.”</p>

-

-<p>“It must be a lonely life for you. Were you never

-tempted to marry again after your wife’s death? A

-fine man like you would have had no difficulty in

-finding a wife.”</p>

-

-<p>“Och, sir, after me ould woman died ... (with a

-burst of emotion) I always remained a <i>dacent widowman</i> ...

-that I did!...”</p>

-

-<p>While we were talking I had been looking at the

-walls of the cabin, and I was surprised at finding

-none of the usual League’s documents upon them. I

-turned to Mat and expressed my surprise. Instantly

-Mat let fall the knife with which he was conveying a

-piece of herring to his mouth, and burst into loud

-execrations.</p>

-

-<p>“Och! the b⸺ villains!” he exclaimed; “the

-dirty never-do-well wh⸺! the de’il take them for

-his own! ... the whole lot is not worth a pennyworth

-o’ salt; ... etc., etc.”</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_259"></a>[259]</span></p>

-

-<p>I confess I rather wondered at this violence. But

-as everyone has a perfect right to his own opinion,

-I did not press the point.</p>

-

-<p>“And you, sir, you be not English, are ye?” said

-Mat after a moment. He had suddenly grown calm

-again.</p>

-

-<p>“No, I am French.”</p>

-

-<p>“Och! <i>Shure</i> the French are foine fellows. I had

-an uncle that fought the French for three days

-at Badajos, and he always said they were b⸺y

-devils, ... begging your pardon, sir, foine fellows

-they were.... Me uncle always said so, ...

-under <i>Bonney</i> the French fought, ... b⸺d ...

-foine fellows, to be sure.... Me uncle also said

-they had no landlords down there. Now, is that true,

-sir?” added Mat Cloney, looking at me with a queer

-expression of countenance.</p>

-

-<p>No landlords? could that be true? He seemed to

-consider such a state of things suited to fairy-land.</p>

-

-<p>I explained that this was pure truth. In few words

-I told him how, shortly before the <i>Ribillion</i> dear to

-his heart, the French peasants had risen as one man

-to get rid of their own landlords; how those landlords

-had for the most part emigrated and taken up arms

-against their country, which had caused the confiscation

-and sale of their lands. I added that those lands<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_260"></a>[260]</span>

-were now the property of the French labourers, who

-highly appreciate this state of affairs.</p>

-

-<p>Mat Cloney listened to me, his eyes glistening with

-interest. Therefore, I was rather surprised when I

-stopped, and he abruptly asked me, as a conclusion:</p>

-

-<p>“Do you know any of those Sligo gentlemen who

-come fishing about here, sir?”</p>

-

-<p>“Indeed, I do not. I am a total stranger in these

-parts. It was the manager at my hotel who sent me

-to you.”</p>

-

-<p>“That’s roight!” he exclaimed, as if relieved from

-some anxiety. “In that case, sir, I am going to show

-you something!...”</p>

-

-<p>He went to a corner of the cabin, and after some

-rummaging in an old sailor’s box, he produced from

-it a neatly folded paper which he placed into my

-hands. I opened it with some curiosity.</p>

-

-<p>It was a supplementary sheet of the <i>United Ireland</i>,

-of Dublin, where stood <i>in extenso</i> the League’s Plan

-of Campaign.</p>

-

-<p>I looked at Mat Cloney. He was laughing silently.

-I at last understood the riddle. The sly fox was at

-heart with the League (he dubbed it <i>the Leg</i>; by the

-way, like many other Irishmen); but he judged it

-prudent in any case to dissemble such subversive

-feelings, when he had to do with an unknown person<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_261"></a>[261]</span>

-from the town; and being a peasant he rather overdid

-it.</p>

-

-<p>The ice was broken now. He let me study

-thoroughly the document he had lent me, and even

-enriched it with luminous commentaries, in the course

-of a pleasant day’s fishing.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>The “Plan of Campaign” seems to have had for its

-father Mr. John Dillon, one of the most universally, and

-the most deservedly, popular of the Irish members; at

-all events, it was introduced to the public by that

-gentleman in October, 1886, at an autumn meeting.

-Those mass meetings, held every year after the

-harvest, have now become an institution, a kind of

-<i>Witena-gemot</i> of the Irish nation. People come to

-them from the farthest ends of the island, by rail, in

-jaunting-cars, on foot, on horseback, as the case may

-be; in such numbers that there is no room or shanty

-large enough in the country to lodge the assemblage.

-So they are open-air meetings. The particular one

-alluded to was convened at Woodford, which has

-become, since the memorable battle on the Clanricarde

-estate, a kind of Holy Place and agrarian

-Kaaba. Soon after the autumn meeting, the scheme

-was approved by the authorities, at the head-quarters<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_262"></a>[262]</span>

-of the League (although they prudently refrained

-from committing themselves officially to it), and expounded

-in the special supplement to the <i>United

-Ireland</i>, of which I hold a copy. It was to the

-following effect:—</p>

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p>Present rents, speaking roundly, are impossible. That the landlords

-will press for them is certain. A fight for the coming winter is therefore

-inevitable, and it behoves the Irish tenantry to fight with a skill

-begotten by experience. The first question they have to consider is

-how to meet the November demand. Should combinations be formed

-on the lines of branches of the National League, or merely by estates?

-We say <i>by estates</i> decidedly. Let branches of the National League, if

-they will, take the initiative in getting the tenantry on each estate to

-meet one another. But it should be distinctly understood that the

-action or resolution of one estate was not to bind any other, and the

-tenantry on every estate should be free to decide upon their own course.</p>

-

-<p>When they are assembled together, let them appoint an intelligent

-and sturdy member of their body as chairman, and, after consulting, decide

-by resolution on the amount of abatement they will demand. A

-committee consisting, say, of six and the chairman, should then be

-elected, to be called a Managing Committee, and to take charge of the

-half-year’s rent of the tenant, should the landlord refuse it.</p>

-

-<p>Everyone should pledge himself (1) to abide by the decision of the

-majority; (2) to hold no communication with the landlord or any of his

-agents, except in presence of the body of the tenantry; (3) to accept

-no settlement for himself which is not given to every tenant on the

-estate.</p>

-

-<p>On the rent-day, the tenantry should proceed to the rent-office in a

-body. If the agent refuses to see them in a body, they should on no

-account confer with him individually, but depute the chairman to act as

-their spokesman and acquaint them of the reduction which they require.

-No offer to accept the rent “on account” should be agreed to. Should

-the agent refuse, then <span class="smcap">every tenant must hand to the Managing

-Committee the half-year’s rent which he tendered to

-the agent</span>.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_263"></a>[263]</span></p>

-

-<p>To prevent any attempt at a garnishee, this money should be deposited

-by the Managing Committee with some one reliable person,

-<i>whose name would not be known to any but the members of the committee</i>.</p>

-

-<p>This may be called the estate fund, and it should be absolutely at the

-disposal of the Managing Committee for the purposes of the fight.

-Broken tenants who are unable to contribute the reduced half-year’s

-rent should at least contribute the percentage demanded from the landlord,

-that is the difference between the rent demanded and that which

-the tenantry offer to pay. A broken tenant is not likely to be among

-the first proceeded against, and no risk is incurred by the general body

-in taking him on these terms.</p>

-

-<p>Thus, practically a half-year’s rent of the estate is put together to

-fight the landlord with. This is a fund which, if properly utilised, will

-reduce to reason any landlord in Ireland.</p>

-

-<p>How should the fund be employed? The answer to this question

-must to some extent depend upon the course the landlord will pursue;

-but in general we should say it must be devoted to the support of the

-tenants who are dispossessed either by sale or ejectment.</p>

-

-<p>It should be distributed by the committee to each evicted tenant in

-the proportion of his contribution to the fund. A half-year’s rent is

-supposed to maintain a tenant for a half year, and based upon this

-calculation, a tenant who funded say £50 would be entitled when evicted

-to receive £2 per week.</p>

-

-<p><i>But not one penny should go in law costs.</i> This should be made an

-absolute rule. For to pay law costs, such as attorney’s letters, writs and

-judgments incurred by the landlord, is to arm your enemy for the quarrel

-and furnish him with provisions to boot. In a determined fight there

-are no “law costs” on the side of the tenantry, and they should remain

-out for ever rather than pay those which the landlord incurs in fleecing

-them.</p>

-

-<p>Ejectment is the most common of the landlord’s remedies. Every

-legal and constitutional obstacle which could oppose or delay eviction

-should be had recourse to, for every hour by which the sheriff is delayed

-in one eviction gives another brother tenant so much more grace. There

-are only 310 days in the sheriff’s year, and he must do all the evictions

-in a whole county within the time.</p>

-

-<p>If, after eviction, a tenant is re-admitted as caretaker he should go in,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_264"></a>[264]</span>

-but <i>never</i> upon the understanding that he would care any other farm but

-his own. Should the tenant not be re-admitted, shelter must be procured

-for him immediately by the Managing Committee, and then, if

-necessary, a day appointed when all would assemble to build him a hut

-on some spot convenient to the farm where the landlord could not disturb

-him. Wooden huts, such as those supplied by the League, waste

-too much of the funds and become valueless when the tenant is re-admitted.</p>

-

-<p>Sale is the resort of the landlord when he proceeds by writ or process

-as an ordinary creditor. From eight to twelve days are allowed after

-service of the writ before judgment can be marked. The sheriff may

-seize cattle if he finds them on the farm, or he may seize and sell the

-tenant’s interest in the farm. A tenant who has his mind made up for

-the fight will have his cattle turned into money before the judgment

-comes on. Every tenant who neglects to dispose of them is preparing

-himself to accept the landlord’s terms, for he will not wish to see the

-emergency men profit by taking his cattle at some nominal price,

-and if he buys he is in reality handing the landlord the amount of his

-demand. Sale of a farm is not of so much consequence. Every farm

-sold in this manner during the agitation either has come or is bound to

-come back to its owner even on better terms than he first held it. But

-if a man has a very valuable interest in his farm, he can place it beyond

-the sheriff’s power by mortgaging it to some one to whom he owes

-money. Mortgage effected thus for a <i>bonâ fide</i> debt or consideration

-bars the sheriff’s power of conveyance at a sale. If the landlord or

-emergency men be represented, the cattle should not be allowed to go

-at a nominal sum. They should be run up to their price, and, if possible,

-left in the hands of emergency men at full price. It should be

-borne in mind that if the full price be not realised the sheriff could seize

-again for the balance.</p>

-

-<p>In bidding for a farm it should also be run to amount of debt, but by

-a man of straw, or some one who, if it were knocked down, would ask

-the sheriff for time to pay. By making the landlord’s bidder run it up

-to the amount of debt and costs, and leaving it on his hands, the sheriff

-cannot follow the tenant further. No auction fees should be allowed.

-A farm held on a lease for a life or lives, any one of which is extant,

-cannot be sold by the sheriff. After sale a tenant is still in possession<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_265"></a>[265]</span>

-of holding until a fresh writ is served and a judgment for title marked

-against him. All this involves the landlord in fresh costs. The eviction

-may then follow, and the observations above recorded in case of ejectment

-or eviction apply here.</p>

-

-<p>Distress, another of the landlord’s remedies, cannot be resorted to for

-more than one year’s rent. Few landlords can have recourse to this

-without exposing themselves to actions. The chief points to attend to

-are:—That distress must be made by landlord or known agent, or bailiff

-authorized by warrant signed by the landlord or known agent; that

-particulars of distress be served; seizure on Sunday is unlawful; seizure

-before sunrise or after sunset is unlawful; or for any rent due more

-than one year. Distress is illegal if growing crops be seized, or the

-implements of a man’s trade; and if other property be on farm to

-ensure landlord’s demand, it is illegal to seize beasts of the plough,

-sheep, or implements of husbandry necessary for the cultivation of the

-land. These points should be carefully watched when landlord has

-recourse to distress.</p>

-

-<p>Bankruptcy proceedings are too costly a machinery for general use,

-and no landlord is likely to have recourse to them.</p>

-

-<p>It is unnecessary to add that landlords, and their partisans on the

-magisterial bench and among the Crown officials, will do all in their

-power to twist the operation of the law so as to harass the tenants.</p>

-

-<p>A tenant taking possession of his house to shelter his family from the

-severity of the winter is not likely to escape. A summons for trespass

-must be preceded by a warning to the tenant if he be found in possession.

-We have known a case where the father complied with this

-warning, and on the bailiff’s next visit the mother only was found, and

-she complied. Next time the eldest daughter only was in possession,

-and so on through the length of a long family, such as an evicted tenant

-nearly always has. A goodly time had been saved before the father’s

-turn came again. He was fined and went to gaol. The prison then

-lost its terror for him. When he came out he stuck boldly to his home,

-and he soon won the victory which rewards determination.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>The fullest publicity should be given to evictions, and every effort

-made to enlist public sympathy. That the farms thus unjustly evicted<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_266"></a>[266]</span>

-will be left severally alone, and everyone who aids the eviction shunned,

-is scarcely necessary to say. But the man who tries boycotting for a

-personal purpose is a worse enemy than the evicting landlord, and

-should be expelled from any branch of the League or combination of

-tenants. No landlord should get one penny rent on any part of his

-estates, wherever situated, so long as he has one tenant unjustly evicted.

-This policy strikes not only at the landlord but the whole ungodly crew

-of agents, attorneys, and bum-bailiffs. Tenants should be the first to

-show their sympathy with one another, and prompt publicity should be

-given to every eviction, that the tenants of the evictor wherever he

-holds property may show their sympathy.</p>

-

-<p>Such a policy indicates a fight which has no half-heartedness about it,

-and it is the only fight which will win.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>Well may the author of the “Plan of Campaign”

-wind up his catechism by the appropriate remark that

-“such a policy indicates a fight which has no half-heartedness

-about it.” Never before was such a tremendous

-weapon of social war put in motion. Never

-before, in the whole course of history, was such a

-forcible ultimatum drafted for the consideration of the

-adverse party.</p>

-

-<p>Leaving details aside, and the minute instructions

-on the true mode of skirmishing with the myrmidons

-of the law, the idea of using the very rent claimed by

-the landlord as a provision for feeding the struggle

-against him is in itself perfection—a real masterpiece

-of strategy. An artist can only feel the

-warmest admiration for such a combination of everything<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_267"></a>[267]</span>

-that is most pleasant to the heart of the agrarian

-warrior and most deadly to the landlord’s cause. As

-an orator of the League (Mr. W. O’Brien) has put it:

-“We have discovered a weapon against landlordism,

-the mere threat and terror of which have already

-brought down rack-renters to their knees. We have

-discovered a weapon which feudal landlordism can no

-more resist than a suit of armour of the middle ages

-can resist modern artillery.” And the country where

-such an admirable paper has been penned by its

-political leaders is supposed by its foes to be unable

-to rule its own affairs! This is unfairness with a

-vengeance. Let those meet its provisions, since they

-are so very clever.</p>

-

-<p>The wonder, however, is not that such a policy

-should have been dreamed of. Similar plans of warfare

-have more than once been drawn out in the

-council chamber of parties. The wonder is that this one

-should have been deemed practicable by the farmers

-of Ireland; that it should have been unanimously

-accepted by them; and, what is more, put at once

-into effect. Another wonder is that it should have

-been found <i>lawful</i>, on the best legal authority, and

-that it should have remained unopposed by the “Four

-Courts” and “the Castle.” The greatest wonder of

-all is that it should have enlisted the warm and public<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_268"></a>[268]</span>

-support not only of the lower ranks of the clergy all

-over the island, but of the Episcopate itself; not only

-of the Episcopate but of the Pope, since neither his

-special envoy in Ireland nor his Holiness personally in

-any encyclical letter, have spoken one word in condemnation

-of the “Plan of Campaign.”</p>

-

-<p>It has been in operation now for over one year; it

-has spread as far as the leaders of the League have

-deemed it expedient, for thus far they seem to have

-used it only moderately. “We did not desire,” they

-say, “and we do not desire now that the ‘Plan of

-Campaign’ should be adopted anywhere, except where

-the tenants have a just and moderate and unimpeachable

-case.” But, none the less, it hangs as a formidable

-threat over the heads of the doomed landlords. At a

-moment’s notice it may be extended to the whole

-island, as it has been already to some hundred estates

-in twenty-two counties.</p>

-

-<p>An idea of the state of affairs may be gathered

-from the account given by the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i>

-(December 3, 1886) of the scene witnessed on Lord

-de Freyne’s property in county Sligo. His tenants

-asked for an abatement of 20 per cent., and, being

-refused, they decided to adopt the “Plan of Campaign.”</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_269"></a>[269]</span></p>

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p>There is nothing in the nature of a town or even a village at Kilfree

-Junction, there being only two or three one-story thatched cottages

-within sight of it. In one of these, the nearest to the station, the rents

-were received by Mr. William Redmond, M.P.; the Rev. Canon

-O’Donoghue, D.D.; Rev. Father Henry, C.C.; and the Rev. Father

-Filan, C.C. The operations of receiving the rents, entering amounts,

-and giving receipts to the tenants occupied the greater part of the day,

-commencing in early morning and continuing far in the afternoon.

-Although the situation was rather a depressing one for the poor people

-exposed to all the severity of the elements, they seemed to be one and

-all animated by the greatest enthusiasm. The interior of the cottage in

-which the rents were being collected presented a spectacle really unique

-in its way. The first room, a sort of combination of kitchen, sitting-room,

-and shop, was crowded almost to suffocation by men and a few

-women, who were sheltering from the snow which fell in great white

-flakes without. There was no grate, but a few turf sods burned on the

-hearth, while above them hung a kettle, suspended from an iron hook

-fixed from the quaint old chimney. In the centre of the bedroom leading

-off the apartment was a small table, at which Mr. Redmond, M.P.,

-the clergymen whose names are given above, and one of the leading

-members of the local branch of the National League were seated receiving

-the tenants’ rents. The room was densely crowded, but the

-utmost order and decorum prevailed, and the whole proceedings were

-conducted in the most punctilious and business-like manner.</p>

-

-<p>The tenant handed the money to one of the gentlemen at the table,

-his name was duly entered with the amount paid by him into a book,

-and he was handed back a printed receipt for the amount which he had

-lodged.</p>

-

-<p>As the day wore on, the pile of bank notes upon the table mounted

-higher and higher, and the rows of glistening sovereigns grew longer

-and longer, until they stretched across the table like streams of yellow

-ore. It was difficult to realise how those bleak western plains had ever

-produced so much money, and the conviction seemed to force itself upon

-the mind that a considerable part of it had either been earned by work

-across the Channel, or in remittances from friends and relations on the

-other side of the broad Atlantic.</p>

-

-<p>“Father,” exclaimed one of the younger men, pushing excitedly his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_270"></a>[270]</span>

-aged parent into the room where the rents were being paid over, “come

-along; you have lived to strike a blow for freedom and Ireland.” The

-words were uttered with earnestness and enthusiasm. There are upwards

-of 300 tenants upon this estate alone who have adopted the

-“Plan,” and a further sitting will be necessary in order to receive the

-remaining lodgments.</p>

-

-<p>A couple of policemen, who looked chilled and spiritless, walked

-about the platform, but made no attempt to interfere with the proceedings.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>It would be useless to add the least comment to

-such a picture. When similar scenes are witnessed

-everywhere over a country, and accepted by every one

-as the natural consummation of events, and the law

-is impotent to prevent them, the Revolution is not

-impending—it is practically accomplished in the

-mind of all classes.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_271"></a>[271]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.<br>

-<span class="smaller">SCOTTISH IRELAND.</span></h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Enniskillen.</span></p>

-

-<p>If you did not know beforehand that you are

-entering a new Ireland through Enniskillen, an Ireland,

-Scotch, Protestant, manufacturing, a glance

-through the carriage-window would suffice to reveal

-the fact. Over the hill, on the right, a fine country-house

-waves to the wind, as a defiance to the League, his

-orange-coloured flag, the colours of the “<i>Unionists</i>.”

-The landlords of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught,

-who are Orangemen, as well as others, dare not proclaim

-their opinions so boldly, hoist them at the top of the

-main mast, so to say; for it might simply cost them

-their lives. You must come to “loyal Ulster” to see

-such acts of daring, for the simple reason that they

-are without danger here.</p>

-

-<p>Another symptom, more eloquent still than the

-colour of the flag, is the aspect of the landscape; no

-more uncultivated fields, no more endless bogs and

-fens. Instead of those long, red, or black streaks of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_272"></a>[272]</span>

-peat, alternating with consumptive oat and potato-fields,

-green, fat meadows, mown by steam, studded with

-cows, in the most prosperous condition, spread themselves

-before your eyes. Some trees are to be seen

-now. The hedges are in good repair, the horses well

-harnessed to solid carts; the hay-stacks have a symmetrical

-outline, and vast fields of flax nod under the

-breeze; the farm-houses are well built, flanked by

-neat kitchen-gardens; in short, all gives the general

-impression of a properly cultivated land. Nothing

-like the agricultural opulence of Kent or Warwickshire

-though, but the normal state of a tolerably good

-land, where human industry is not fighting against an

-accumulation of almost insuperable obstacles.</p>

-

-<p>Is it that the law is different in Ulster? Not so,

-but the custom is. From immemorial times the

-tenant-right has been admitted here; and in consequence

-the farmer has never hesitated to introduce the

-necessary improvements, and to invest his hoard in

-the land, sure as he is to profit by it.</p>

-

-<p>That tenant is three times out of five of Scotch

-origin; three times out of five he belongs to the Protestant

-persuasion (Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist);

-there is not between him and his landlord the

-antagonism of race and worship which is to be found in

-other provinces. The landlord himself fulfils his duty<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_273"></a>[273]</span>

-better, and does not affect to spend abroad the money

-he draws from his estate; often that landlord is some

-guild or municipal corporation of London or elsewhere,

-which perhaps does not make the best use

-possible of its income, but is nevertheless obliged to

-justify more or less its privilege by some philanthropic

-foundation, trials of culture on the large scale, innovation,

-and examples.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Lastly, Ulster is a neighbour to Scotland, and

-belongs to the same geological, ethnological, commercial,

-and religious system. Capital is less timorous

-here. It ventures to come, to stay, to circulate. By

-the side of agriculture there are important factories,

-which help to sustain and feed it. Instead of keeping

-invariably to oats, turnips, and the time-honoured

-potato, the farmers grow flax on a large scale for the

-400,000 spindles which are spinning at Belfast,

-Dundalk, and Drogheda.</p>

-

-<p>A certain tendency to aggregate small holdings,

-and to constitute in that way great and middling farms,

-has been developing lately in Ulster. The peasants

-are better lodged and fed than elsewhere in Ireland.

-They find day-work more easily because agriculture is

-conducted there on more scientific principles, and they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_274"></a>[274]</span>

-are not condemned to remain idle four days out of

-seven. In short, the economic condition of Scotch

-Ireland, without being such as to be offered as a

-pattern to the civilised world, is about as good as

-possible under the feudal <i>régime</i> and landlordism.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Londonderry.</span></p>

-

-<p>The signs of that relative prosperity are obvious.

-Thus in the neighbourhood of Derry (we say Londonderry,

-but the natives all say Derry), you observe

-with pleasure a line of tramcars moved by steam

-machinery, which puts remote places in communication

-with the railway. The carriages are of superior

-make, divided into three classes, towed by an

-engine heated with petroleum. Coming, as you do,

-out of Mayo and Galway, that steam tramway puffs

-in your face a breath of civilisation. You seem to

-enter a different world.</p>

-

-<p>Derry, with its active traffic, its elegant iron bridge

-over the Foyle, the fine, new buildings which attest

-its wealth, justifies that impression. It is the capital

-of the famous “Ulster plantation” of James I., entrusted

-by him to the “Honourable Irish Company,”

-which included twelve guilds of the city of London.

-For a century or two those grants of land did not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_275"></a>[275]</span>

-answer as had been expected. But they have

-ended, in the course of time, by being prosperous.

-The municipal estates of Coleraine and Derry are

-accounted now the most flourishing in the island.</p>

-

-<p>Yet it does not follow that the tenant’s situation is

-very brilliant, even in Ulster. One of the counties

-of the province, Donegal, is the poorest in all Ireland,

-and two or three others are not much better. Even

-in the richest parts the tenant bears chafingly the

-yoke of landlordism. The Antrim Tenant Association

-went so far this year as to ask for a 50 per cent.

-reduction on rent, owing to the low price of produce

-and the sheer impossibility of going on paying at the

-previous rate. It must be noted that tenant-right

-being rigorously observed in Ulster, the farmer always

-pays when he is able; for any remissness in paying

-would diminish by as much the value of his share in

-the proprietorship, which is estimated on an average

-at 8 or 10 times the annual farm rent.</p>

-

-<p>The newspapers of the county, even when unfavourable

-to agrarian revendications, unanimously

-acknowledge that by reason of the constant going

-down of prices, resulting from American competition,

-the present condition of the agriculturist is about

-as bad as it was in the worst famine times. All

-the farmers without exception, be they of Scotch or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_276"></a>[276]</span>

-Irish race, aver that they actually pay from their own

-pockets every penny they give the landlords; that is

-to say, they borrow it in the shape of a loan on the

-value of their tenant-right.</p>

-

-<p>Such a state of things cannot continue. It explains

-how it is that Presbyterian peasants, the most ardent

-enemies of Papistry—in theory—none the less give

-the majority, even in Ulster itself, to the representatives

-of Home Rule and the liquidation of landed

-property.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Portrush and the Giant’s Causeway.</span></p>

-

-<p>Portrush is a delicious sea-side place, at the mouth

-of Lough Foyle, on the most wonderful coast in

-Europe; it is seated on the edge of the Antrim

-table-land, which is of volcanic origin: probably a

-dependency of Scotland geologically, rather than

-belonging properly to Ireland, to which it came and

-welded itself, at some unknown epoch. The traveller

-has there the agreeable surprise of a delightful hotel—one

-should say a perfect one—a regular miracle of

-comfort; and the still greater surprise of seeing

-there the only electric railway actually working on

-this planet. That bijou-line is used to take the

-visitors to the wonder of Ireland, the Giant’s Causeway.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_277"></a>[277]</span>

-It ascends on the sea-side an acclivity of

-about three to four hundred yards, and runs over a

-length of five miles up to Bushmills, where the

-generators of electricity are set to work by hydraulic

-power. Nothing is so fresh or unexpected as that drive

-in open carriages. The train ascends lustily along the

-electric guiding-rail in the midst of a well-nourished

-fire of sparkles called to life by its iron hoofs. As it

-rises higher the prospect gets wider and wider, and

-you get a view of the Scotch mountains only fifteen

-miles distant, while the most extraordinary basaltic

-formations are following one another under your eye

-along the coast.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>The Antrim table-land, so geologists tell us,

-was formed by a layer of lava three or four hundred

-yards high, spread over the chalky bottom of the sea.

-Of the volcanoes which vomited that lava no vestige

-is to be seen to-day. The glaciers, tumbling down

-from the neighbouring heights, have cleared them away.

-In times remote, that table-land extended across to

-Scotland, to which it united Ireland as by a sort

-of prodigious bridge of lava. But the unremitting,

-incessant, work of the waters has eaten away by

-degrees the cretaceous masses which supported it.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_278"></a>[278]</span>

-The arches of the bridge were then dislocated and

-precipitated into the ocean. Only some traces of it

-on both sides are left standing now: the Giant’s

-Causeway in Ireland, the point of Cantire in Scotland,

-and between the two, the little Island of Rathlin.</p>

-

-<p>Along the coast of Antrim the waves continuing

-their destructive work, go on gnawing the foundations

-of the cliffs, which they dig and carve like lacework.

-Numberless grottoes, rocky needles shaped into the

-likeness of steeples, deep chasms at the bottom of

-which the foaming waters are for ever contending, are

-the result of that perennial work.</p>

-

-<p>Occasionally, as at Dunluce, to the fantastic work of

-nature, some ruin that was once an illustrious stronghold,

-whose walls, literally hanging over the abyss,

-seem to be attached to the firm ground only by a

-curved arch of half-a-yard’s breadth, adds an element

-of tragic poetry. Under the rock which bear those

-dilapidated walls, the sea has dug for itself caves

-which are resounding night and day with the deafening

-noise of the beating waves. It is grand and

-terrible in summer; one can imagine what it must be

-when the tempest of a winter night unloosens its fury

-within those caverns.</p>

-

-<p>Naturally they are, more than any other place in the

-world, rich in legendary lore. The M’Quillans, to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_279"></a>[279]</span>

-whom belonged Dunluce Castle, boast an antiquity

-which outshines greatly that of the descendants of

-the Crusaders. These are not people to be content,

-like Montesquieu, with two or three hundred years

-of acknowledged nobility. They came from Babylon,

-it appears, at an epoch exceptionally prehistoric,

-and can trace their origin back to 4,000 years ago.

-The only branch in existence now dwells in Scotland,

-and bear the title of lords of Antrim and

-Dunluce.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>At Bushmills the electric train stops. There you

-alight and take your seat in the car which brings

-you to the Causeway Hotel. Here, as the air is

-decidedly bracing, and the majority of the tourists

-English, luncheon is ready, as you may imagine.

-The classic salmon despatched in company with a

-glass of ale or porter, the only thing to do is to look

-to business and visit the marvels of the place. A

-wall, which the provident administration of the hotel

-have raised for purposes of safety, hides them as yet

-from your sight. When you have passed that

-obstacle you find yourself within a sort of circus,

-delineated by the cliffs, and at the extremity of

-which descends a path that looks anything but safe.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_280"></a>[280]</span>

-Total absence of causeway. Where must we look for

-it? This a swarm of guides, cicerones, boatmen,

-beggars of all descriptions, offer to show you. They

-all speak at the same time, fight, wrangle, make you

-deaf with their jabbering. Wise is he who sends

-them to the devil, and follows peacefully the pathway

-which goes to the extremity of the circuit, turns alone

-round the foot of the cliff on the right, and penetrates,

-unaccompanied, into the neighbouring bay. He will

-have the joy of a powerful, wholly personal sensation,

-unalloyed by any impure element. But alas! how is

-one to guess that? You think you are doing the

-right thing in giving the lead to a professional guide.

-You choose among the howling crew the less ruffianly

-face, and you deliver yourself into the hands of a

-cicerone. Fatal error! Henceforward you cease to

-belong to yourself. You are no longer a being

-endowed with reason and volition, with the free

-exercise of your rights; you are an article of luggage

-in the hands of a porter, a disarmed traveller in the

-power of a Calabrian desperado.</p>

-

-<p>Instead of taking you to the bay on the right, the

-arbiter of your destiny begins by laying down as a

-dogma that the only means of seeing the causeway

-properly is to approach it by sea. On the same occasion

-you shall visit the marine caves. Allured by that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_281"></a>[281]</span>

-programme, you follow the man, and you embark

-with him in a boat rowed by two oarsmen, who greet

-your advent rapturously.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Five minutes later you find yourself in total darkness

-under the oozing vault of a cavern, where the

-fluctuations of the mountainous waves now let the

-boat sink suddenly five or six yards down, now heave

-it up against the roof, and threaten to shiver your

-skull to pieces. In the midst of that frantic jogging

-and tossing the guide lights up a Bengal flame, in

-order to display to better advantage the variegated

-tints of the damp walls, or, it may be, to create the

-said tints, if they do not exist. Then he lets off a

-pistol in your ear to awake the echoes of the cavern,

-which answer to the call with deafening unanimity.</p>

-

-<p>This is the “psychological moment.” The rowers,

-laying down their oars, take off their caps and hold

-them to you, explaining at the same time that gunpowder

-is expensive. You hasten to accede to the

-request, and soon after you find yourself, not without

-pleasure, in the daylight again.</p>

-

-<p>Not for long, however; for you are expected to do

-another cavern. You submit meekly to the programme.

-Again that homicidal tossing; another<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_282"></a>[282]</span>

-Bengal flame; a second pistol shot. This time the

-boatmen offer you a box of geological specimens. As

-it is, you happen to abhor geology; but how is one

-to resist people who have him in their power in a

-marine cave?</p>

-

-<p>Liberation comes in time. You breathe again.

-The miscreants have the face to mention a third

-cavern! But this time you rebel. “No more caverns!

-The causeway instantly!”</p>

-

-<p>You double a little promontory, and after two or

-three oar-strokes you land on what seems to you at

-first a quay with a pavement made with hexagon

-slabs.</p>

-

-<p>“Here you are, sir! This is the Giant’s Causeway.”

-Let us confess it candidly: the first impression is

-disappointment. Is it then that famous Causeway,

-that unrivalled wonder? You are ready to believe in

-a mystification. But this is only a passing impression

-for which the guides, not the Causeway, are responsible.</p>

-

-<p>The truth is, you must not approach it by sea if you

-wish to see it well. It is by land only that it can be

-understood, like a symphony which would lose half

-its charm if executed in the open air. The treason

-of the guides is so cruel that it really cries for

-vengeance and must be denounced.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_283"></a>[283]</span></p>

-

-<p>At last you have managed to get rid of them, and

-leaving the Causeway, you have climbed up the steep

-neighbouring cliffs. And now looking round, you are

-struck with stupefaction and rapture at the spectacle

-which offers itself to your eyes. That sort of quay

-or footpath you deemed at first mean or insignificant

-is in reality, when viewed properly, the most

-stupendous whim of nature. Imagine a formidable

-array of forty thousand columns of prismatic shape

-(some one gifted with patience has numbered them),

-rising tall and majestic, and pressed against each

-other so as to form a continuous, almost level pavement,

-which emerges from the sea like a quay of

-marble. The symmetry of that pavement is so remarkable,

-all those shafts of columns are so well

-clamped together, that it seems almost impossible to

-admit that this is not human work. You fancy you

-are walking on the hexagonal slabs of some Babylonian

-palace, whose walls the storm has destroyed.

-These paving-stones are neat and even, about

-one foot wide, and perfectly regular. Towards the

-middle of the quay they rise in a sort of swelling,

-which permits one to study their anatomy

-and to perceive that they are really formed by

-the section of as many upright parallel prismatic

-columns.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_284"></a>[284]</span></p>

-

-<p>There are three Causeways,—the Great, the Little,

-and the Middle Causeway. They occupy the centre

-of a semi-circular bay, formed by lofty cliffs, which

-let you see under a thin covering of clay and grass

-other rows of basaltic columns that show their profile,

-and have been called “the Organ.” On the

-right the bay is limited by a jutting rock, above

-which tower two or three needles—“the Chimneypots.”

-A local tradition relates that the Invincible

-Armada, driven against the cliffs by a strong gale,

-mistook the needles for the towers of Dunluce, and

-stormed them uselessly a whole day long.</p>

-

-<p>Beyond those basaltic piers a spring of sweet water

-forms the “Giant’s Well;” further on a rock, roughly

-shaped as a church desk, is called “the Pulpit.” All

-those sports of nature compose a whole truly unique

-and wonderful. Neither the Alps, nor the chain of

-the Andes, nor Mount Vesuvius, nor Etna, can

-give you such an impression of grandeur—are able to

-that degree to put you as it were into communion

-with the mysteries of labouring Nature.</p>

-

-<p>What strikes you further about those basaltic

-formations is that they are both colossal, like all

-works directly resulting from the great cosmic forces,

-and at the same time almost Greek by the quality

-and symmetry of their arrangements. For once the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_285"></a>[285]</span>

-volcanos seem to have had the whim to work according

-to the canons of art. It is both human and

-super-human—verily a Giant’s Causeway!</p>

-

-<p>The Giant Fin M’Coul, so the legend says, was

-the guardian genius of Ireland. He had for a rival

-a certain Scotch Giant of mighty conceit and insolence,

-whose boast it was that none could beat him.

-The sea alone, if that Scotch braggart was to be

-believed, prevented his coming to let M’Coul feel

-the might of his arm, as he was afraid of getting a

-cold if he attempted to swim across the Straits. So

-he remained at home. M’Coul was riled at last by

-that swaggering. “Since thou art afraid to get wet,”

-he cried to his rival, “I am going to throw a causeway

-between Scotland and Ireland, and we shall see

-then whether thou darest use it!” The building of

-the bridge took only a few thousand years, and then

-the Scot, having no pretence left, accepted the challenge,

-was beaten flat, and obliged to eat humble pie.

-After which, with true Irish generosity, the good-natured

-giant gave him his daughter in marriage, and

-allowed him to come and settle near him, which the

-Scot accepted, nothing loth, Erin being an infinitely

-sweeter and generally superior country to his own.

-But perhaps, after all, M’Coul found no cause to

-rejoice over the match he had arranged for his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_286"></a>[286]</span>

-daughter, as he subsequently allowed the sea to

-destroy his work so as to prevent any more Scots

-from settling in his dominions. Only some of its

-piles remain standing, one of which is the Isle of

-Rathlin, half-way across the Straits.</p>

-

-<p>The legend, as you see, is not so foolish. It answers

-at all points to geological data, and even to historic

-truth, viz., the invasion of Ulster by the Scots. But,

-let its origin be what it may, the fact remains that

-the Giant’s Causeway, with its neighbour, Portnoffen

-Bay, the most perfect amphitheatre in the world,

-with the marvellous colonnade of the Pleaskin, Dunluce

-Castle, Dunseverick, and the bridge of rope of

-Carrick-a-Rede, thrown over a chasm that measures

-a hundred feet above the waters,—constitute one

-of the grandest, most moving spectacles that the

-traveller may see. You can go round the world without

-having such extraordinary sights. Add to it

-that few of the gems of nature are of so easy an

-access. From Paris you can be on the coast of Antrim

-in twenty hours, by London, Liverpool, and Belfast.

-Portrush, with its admirable sea-shore, its electric

-railway, and stupendous cliffs, is the ideal frame for a

-honeymoon excursion. I had resolved to recommend

-it to tourists, and to point out the guides of the Causeway

-to public execration. Now I have done my duty.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_287"></a>[287]</span></p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Belfast.</span></p>

-

-<p>The capital of Ulster is naturally the most flourishing

-town of Ireland. Whereas the others decrease in

-population and wealth, Belfast is rapidly thriving.

-From 20,000 inhabitants, which it numbered at the

-beginning of the century, it has risen in eighty years

-to 210,000. Another ten years and it will outdo

-Dublin itself. It is a manufacturing city as well as a

-big trading port. By an exception, unique in the

-island, it occupies a great number of workers, male

-and female—60,000, at the lowest computation—for

-the most part, in the weaving trade and naval construction.

-A single linen factory, that of Messrs.

-Mulholland, gives work to 29,000 pairs of hands. It

-is those weaving looms which utilize the product of

-the 110,000 acres of flax fields in Ulster. Out of

-nineteen ships of over 300 tons annually built in the

-docks of the island eighteen come out of the Belfast

-wharves. It is, in short, the maritime gate of Irish

-import and export—the insular suburb of Liverpool

-and Glasgow.</p>

-

-<p>As a consequence, signs of prosperity are showing

-themselves everywhere. The public walks are vast

-and carefully kept, the houses well built, the shops

-substantial and elegant, the educational establishments

-important and richly endowed. The town has<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_288"></a>[288]</span>

-a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon aspect. London fashions

-are scrupulously followed there. If you enter the

-Botanical Garden, maintained by voluntary contributions,

-you find there the lawn-tennis, the dresses, the

-ways of the metropolis. If you follow the road up to

-Cave Hill, one of the heights on the western side of

-Belfast, you embrace a vast landscape, where the

-flying steamers on the Lagan, the smoking factory-chimneys,

-the innumerable and opulent villas round

-its shores, all speak of wealth and prosperity.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>The population is about equally divided between

-Protestants and Catholics. The consequence is that

-party hatred and the struggle for local influence are

-far more ardent and long-lived here than in places

-where one of the two elements has an overwhelming

-majority. Electoral scuffles easily turn to bloody

-battles; political anniversaries—that of the Battle of

-the Boyne, above all—are a pretext for manifestations

-which often degenerate into regular battles.</p>

-

-<p>Belfast is the bulwark of Orangeism; and Orangeism

-may be described as Protestant and loyalist fanaticism,

-as opposed to Catholic and national fanaticism.

-Shankhill Road, which is frequently used as a battle-field

-by the antagonistic parties, is a long suburb<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_289"></a>[289]</span>

-which divides as a frontier line the Orangeist from

-the Irish quarters.</p>

-

-<p>Hardly one pay-day passes without the public-houses

-of that suburb being the theatre of some pugilistic

-feat accomplished by some voluntary representatives

-of the opposite camps. If the police

-happen to rush into the fray, reinforcements are

-called from either side; stones, cudgels, revolvers

-come to the rescue, and, on the morrow, the jails are

-filled with prisoners, and the hospitals with the dead

-and the wounded.</p>

-

-<p>Sad to relate, it is the clergy on both sides who

-incite them to those fratricidal struggles. There are

-certain Protestant preachers who are in no way behindhand

-in bitterness and virulent abuse with the

-most fanatic priest of Roscommon or Mayo. I have

-heard personally in Falls Road a Methodist preaching

-in the open air incite his audience to the extermination

-of Papists in strains which the creatures of

-Cromwell would not have disowned.</p>

-

-<p>In order that nothing should be missing to the

-parallel, Ulster has its Orangeist League, not unlike

-the National League of Ireland (save for the respect

-of legality and the general moderation of proceedings).

-That League is formed into battalions and

-companies which are privately drilled, they say, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_290"></a>[290]</span>

-lose no occasion to make a pageant in the streets

-with accompaniment of trumpets and drums, and

-whose ways remind one of the Salvation Army.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>On the whole, Ulster is the only province of Ireland

-where the Unionist forces are about equally matched

-with the party of Home Rule; that is to say, the

-former command a majority in Antrim, part of Down,

-part of Armagh, part of Derry and Donegal, whilst

-the Home Rulers have the stronger array of voters

-in the remaining parts of the province. Except in

-the above-delineated band of north-eastern territory,

-the result of the elections is always taken for granted

-beforehand all over the island, and is for—Home

-Rule. But this is not saying that the contest is at

-all passionate even in Belfast. I happened to be there

-on the occasion of the General Election of 1886, and

-was most struck by the comparative calm of the

-population pending the momentous ballot. I could

-not help expressing my surprise, over the mahogany,

-to my host, a wealthy mill-owner, a zealous Presbyterian,

-and an active Orangeist into the bargain, to

-whom an English friend had given me a letter of

-introduction.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_291"></a>[291]</span></p>

-

-<p>“You wonder at our calm?” he said. “The explanation

-is very simple. In Ireland the respective

-position of parties can hardly be much altered by the

-incidents of the struggle. Whether the Home Rulers

-take one seat from us or we gain one on them, we

-shall neither of us be much benefited by it. It is in

-Great Britain that the true battle is taking place.

-Let us suppose that Mr. Gladstone, instead of finding

-himself in a minority in the next Parliament, returns

-to the House with a majority. This majority can in

-no case be very strong, and we may still doubt that

-it will consent to follow him to the end in the path

-he has chosen. But let us go farther, and suppose

-Home Rule to have been voted by this majority,—let

-us suppose it to have been voted by the Upper

-House,—a still more unlikely contingency. Well, our

-decision is taken irrevocably. We are perfectly resolved

-not to bow to such a vote, and not to submit

-to Home Rule.”</p>

-

-<p>“What! shall you rebel against the constitution?”</p>

-

-<p>“Against the constitution, no. But if needs must

-be against Mr. Gladstone and his party. We shall

-appeal from the ignorant electors to the better informed

-ones. We shall protest against a decision

-that would in a way deprive us of our rights as British<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_292"></a>[292]</span>

-subjects. And in the meanwhile we shall refuse to

-acknowledge a Dublin Parliament. We shall refuse

-to pay the taxes that it may fix upon, or to obey the

-laws it may vote. We shall repeat loudly that we are

-Englishmen, and will not be anything else; that we

-depend on the British Parliament and recognize no

-other authority; and we shall see then if our appeal

-raise no echo in the United Kingdom!”</p>

-

-<p>“But still, the right of making laws generally

-entails the power of enforcing them. What shall

-you do on the day when the Dublin Parliament,

-having voted the taxes for you as for the rest

-of Ireland, shall send tax-gatherers to collect

-them?”</p>

-

-<p>“<i>We shall receive them with rifle-shots.</i>”</p>

-

-<p>“What! are you going to tell me that you, sir,

-‘worth’ half a million sterling, if the public voice

-speaks the truth, that this fat gentleman there, the

-father of those two pretty daughters, that this respectable

-doctor in gold spectacles, and all your other

-guests to-night, all peace-loving, middle-aged gentlemen,

-comfortable and with good rent-rolls, seriously

-entertain the idea of buckling on your shooting-gaiters

-and going to battle in the street?”</p>

-

-<p>“We shall go, if we are obliged, rather than submit

-to the Dublin people!... After all, have we not a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_293"></a>[293]</span>

-right to remain English, if it suits us?... The very

-principle of Home Rule, if it is adopted, implies that

-we shall govern ourselves as it seems good to us.

-Well, here in Ulster, we are nearly two million loyalist

-Protestants, who cherish the pretension of not being

-given over to the three million Papists entrusted with

-the making of the Dublin Parliament,—who shall dare

-to deny this right to us?”</p>

-

-<p>“Mr. Parnell and his friends will certainly deny it

-as soon as their programme is embodied into law.

-They will say to you, ‘Henceforth Ireland shall

-govern herself. Let those who do not like it go

-away.’”</p>

-

-<p>“But it is precisely what we shall never do!... Our

-title to the Irish soil is as good as the Parnellites’....

-Let them try to dislodge us, and they shall have a warm

-welcome, I promise you.”</p>

-

-<p>In the course of conversation my worthy interlocutor

-had let the number of 100,000 Orangemen, armed to the

-teeth and ready to defend Ulster against the Home

-Rulers, escape him. I took advantage of this to ask

-him for a few details on this organization. I learnt

-this: that the Orangeist army is by no means a fallacy,

-as one might imagine, and that it forms a sort of

-latent militia, with its active forces, and its reserve.

-At first, established as a kind of freemasonry, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_294"></a>[294]</span>

-formed in “circles” or “lodges,” it comprises actually

-four divisions, subdivided into twenty-two brigades:

-each of these brigades consists of two or three

-regiments, infantry, cavalry, and artillery; in each

-regiment are sections and companies, each composed

-of affiliates belonging to the same district. Three

-divisions are recruited in Ulster proper; the fourth in

-Dublin and Cork, in Wicklow and in King’s County.

-All those affiliates take the engagement to observe

-passive obedience and to render personal service on

-the first requisition of their supreme council; they

-furnish their own arms and recognise the authority of

-a commander-in-chief.</p>

-

-<p>Does all this have any substantial existence besides

-what it has on paper? Do the Orangemen secretly

-drill, as it is averred, both for the infantry and the

-cavalry manœuvres? Is it true that most of the volunteer

-companies in Ulster are exclusively Orange

-companies? Lastly, are those volunteers really ready

-in case of an open rupture with Dublin, to take up

-their arms and fight for their cause?... Many

-people think it doubtful. The Home Rulers especially

-think it pure moonshine and humbug. I

-remember one of their papers publishing the following

-advertisement last year to show in what esteem they

-held the Ulster army:</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_295"></a>[295]</span></p>

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Rotten Eggs! Rotten Eggs! Rotten Eggs!</span></p>

-

-<p><i>Wanted: 100,000 rotten eggs, to be delivered in Tipperary,

-worthily to welcome 20,000 Orangemen, armed

-with rifles and guns, under command of the illustrious

-Johnson. Offers to be addressed to the printing office

-of this paper.</i></p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>This certainly does not indicate a very exalted idea

-of the valour of the Orangeist forces on the part of the

-southern populations. But that does not mean that

-no other sugar plums shall be exchanged. In all civil

-wars such pleasantries take place, yet they do not

-prevent rivers of blood being shed. One fact alone is

-beyond doubt, that the Orange organization has

-immense ramifications among the regular troops, and

-is openly favoured by General Wolseley; that a

-large number of retired officers have entered it;

-that one would perhaps find it difficult to find one

-among the Queen’s regiments ready to fire on the

-loyalists, and that the most ardent partisans of Home

-Rule hesitate to grant to the Irish Parliament the

-faculty of raising an armed force.</p>

-

-<p>In conclusion, the last word in Ulster may very well

-be said by the Orangemen.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_296"></a>[296]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.<br>

-<span class="smaller">LEX LICINIA.</span></h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>It would have been pleasant to conclude these

-pages without recording too harsh a judgment

-against England, one of the two or three nations for

-ever dear to the thinker; one of those who possess a

-brain of her own, not merely a chain of nervous

-nodosities presiding over the organic functions; one of

-those who lead the Human Race along the hard road

-where it toilingly drags its miseries and delusions. It

-would have been pleasant at least to find some kind

-of extenuating circumstances for the attitude she

-maintains doggedly towards Ireland. But this is

-sheer impossibility.</p>

-

-<p>All that can be pleaded on behalf of England is

-that she is truly unconscious of the wrong she has

-been doing for centuries, and that she firmly

-believes herself to have acted within her rights.

-Nations, still more than individuals, are the slaves of

-their temperament, of their faults and their qualities.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_297"></a>[297]</span>

-Shall we call the tiger a murderer, or reproach

-vultures because they feed on human flesh? They

-obey their instincts, and merely follow the dictates of

-nature. So it is with nations. Considered no longer

-in the individuals that compose it, or in the intellectual

-<i>élite</i> that speaks in its name, but in the fifteen or

-twenty generations that have woven the woof of its

-annals, a people is an irresponsible and blind organism,

-fatefully obeying its impulses, be they noble or

-base.</p>

-

-<p>Try to talk with a Protestant landlord about the

-wrongs and grievances of Ireland. He will tell you

-in all good faith that the Irish alone are to blame.

-Ignorant, slothful, given to drink, sly and cunning, a

-nation of liars,—weak, in a word, and vanquished

-beforehand,—this is the verdict he pronounces on

-them from the height of his respectable rent-roll. If

-they have failed in the struggle for life, it is because

-they came into it badly armed and unprepared. So

-much the worse for them,—let them make way for the

-stronger ones! Such is the theory.</p>

-

-<p>There can be no doubt that it is put forward in all

-sincerity by a majority of Englishmen. But this does

-not prove that it rests on any sound foundation. It

-only proves once more that they are incapable of

-understanding anything about the Irish<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_298"></a>[298]</span>

-temperament.<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> This reasoning is merely the classic sophistry.

-They mistake the effect for the cause, and are blind

-to the fact that those vices they so bitterly reproach

-the Irish with, are the inevitable result of three

-centuries of bad administration and England’s own

-work. Wherever it has been liberated from the

-English yoke, has not, on the contrary, the Irish race

-displayed abundant energy, activity, genius? Do not

-the Irish hold the first rank in the United States, in

-Canada, in Southern America, in Australia, wherever

-emigration has carried them. In England even are

-they not at the head of all liberal professions,

-letters, the daily press, the bar, science? Those who

-have seen and closely studied that nation, crushed

-under its secular burden, ground under the heel of the

-conqueror, cannot but feel surprised at the bare fact

-that it survives; and this fact alone presupposes the

-most admirable gifts. One could even question

-whether, deprived of the Irish Celt element, for leaven,

-for chiefs, for counsellors, in letters, and in assemblies,

-the heavy Anglo-Saxon race could ever have founded

-its flourishing colonies. These prosper, one may say,

-in direct proportion to the number of Irish that

-come to them, even as the mother island slowly decays<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_299"></a>[299]</span>

-in direct proportion to the number of her children

-that are driven from her shores.</p>

-

-<p>Why should such slanderous explanations be sought

-for a fact sufficiently explained by history? The great

-misfortune of Ireland is not to be a nation less richly

-gifted than its conqueror, but only to be too small

-a nation, established in an open island. The Irish have

-been neither more vicious, nor more fanatical, nor

-more slothful than the English; they have been less

-numerous, less well armed; and John Bull, according

-to his deplorable custom, has taken advantage of their

-weakness for bullying them, for levying heavy toll on

-them, for bleeding them to death without mercy. He

-has taken their land, their freedom, their industry,

-and still wrests from them the product of their labour.

-And, to crown all, he dares to call them to account

-for their misery as for a crime—this misery, which is

-his own work, with all its wretched following of vices

-and degradation.</p>

-

-<p>Before such a sight as this involuntary indignation

-must be felt. One wishes to say to the English—</p>

-

-<p>“You pirates, begin first by giving back to Ireland

-all you have taken from her, and you shall see then

-if she be guilty of this poverty you consider as a

-crime! Let us reckon. Give her back her land,

-which your nobles occupy. Give her back the bravest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_300"></a>[300]</span>

-of her sons, that you have driven to emigration. Give

-her back the habit of work which you have destroyed

-in her. Give her back the wealth which you prevented

-her accumulating, by forbidding her commerce and

-industry. Give her back the millions which you still

-exact every year upon the produce of her agricultural

-energy. Give her back the experience of freedom

-that you have so long crushed in her. Give her back

-the faculty of coolly reasoning about her beliefs, which

-persecution took from her. Give her back the right of

-self-government according to her genius, her manners,

-her will, that right which you declare sacred and

-imprescriptible for every nation, that you grant to

-your most insignificant colonies, to the meanest

-island of your Empire, and which you refuse to her,

-the biggest of all. Give her back all this, and let us

-see then if Ireland be all you say.”</p>

-

-<p>“Alas! from that national inheritance of which

-you robbed her one can only find now, recognise

-and therefore give back, the land and the money.

-The land stands always there; and money is not

-wanting in your coffers. A good impulse, then! All

-has to be paid for in this world—defeat and failure

-like anything else. If one lose a game, one must

-know how to pay for it gallantly. If one has, personally,

-or in the person of one’s father, committed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_301"></a>[301]</span>

-an unjust act, one must know how to atone for it.

-Your railway companies give indemnities to the

-families of those they have crushed to death. Yourselves,

-as a nation, have paid in the Alabama affair,

-once convinced of being in the wrong. Here also, in

-Ireland, the hour of Justice has come. Evidence is

-over. Your work rises in your throat and sickens

-you. You cannot any longer doubt, and your writers

-daily repeat it, that the cause of all Ireland’s

-sufferings is in your spoliation, complicated by your

-administration. Well, the remedy is clear. Ireland

-herself points it out to you, and your conscience

-whispers it: you must give back her inheritance to

-Ireland, with the right of administering it according

-to her own lights.”</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>England is fond of comparing herself to Rome,

-though it is Carthage rather that she resembles. She

-can find in Roman history a precedent for the solution

-that is obviously suited to Ireland. The <i>Lex

-Licinia</i>, promulgated in the year 376 before the

-Christian era, limited to 500 arpents, that is to say,

-almost exactly 500 acres, the extent of land that the

-patricians were entitled to possess in a conquered<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_302"></a>[302]</span>

-country. This was the law that the Gracchi wanted

-to bring to life again, and for which they paid the

-penalty of death. It has long been believed, and

-Mably repeated it with Montesquieu, that the question

-was the dividing of private property between all the

-citizens. Niebuhr and Savigny have re-established

-historical truth, and shown that the question at issue

-was merely the limitation of, or atonement for, usurpations

-that ruined the State by ruining the rural populations.

-It is a Licinian Law that is wanted in Ireland,

-and it is to be hoped that England will give it to her

-before long.</p>

-

-<p>The disease of Ireland may be defined: the feudal

-system or landlordism, complicated by absenteeism

-and usury, having for its consequences extreme

-penury of capital, rural pauperism, and the incapacity

-for struggling against American competition.</p>

-

-<p>The case of Ireland, more acute by reason of its

-special sphere, is only a striking instance of a fact

-that the legislators of the old world must necessarily

-take into account henceforth, the fact that the

-immense area of land newly cleared in the two

-Americas, in Australia, and India, are, four-fifths of

-them at least, the property of those that cultivate

-them personally. They have no other burden to bear<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_303"></a>[303]</span>

-than taxes, and are therefore in a condition of crushing

-superiority in the struggle with the countries in

-which dual ownership obtains. With an equal fruitfulness

-(and that of virgin soil is almost always

-greater), it is clear that the soil which supports only

-those that cultivate it, instead of two or three superposed

-classes of participants in its products, must

-always be able to give those products at a lesser cost

-price, and therefore will be able to throw them on the

-market at a lower rate. It is not merely common

-sense, it is the immutable course of human progress

-that condemns landlordism to disappear ere long from

-the face of the globe.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Reduced to its elementary terms, the Irish question

-stands thus: 12,000 landowners, of foreign origin,

-possessing almost the whole of the island; 1940 of

-these proprietors detaining two-thirds of this soil; 744

-holding the half of it. All these lands parcelled out

-into insufficient holdings, and cultivated by 720,000

-native farmers, for the most part entirely devoid of

-capital. The agricultural product of the island,

-divided between two schedules on the official rolls of

-the income tax: the first one of £2,691,788 only,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_304"></a>[304]</span>

-representing the income of the 720,000 Irish farmers

-and their families; the second, of £13,192,758, representing

-the income of the 12,000 English landlords.

-The half at least of this sum leaving the island every

-year, and being spent outside it by the <i>absentee</i> landlords.

-Not one farthing of this lordly income coming

-back to the soil, either directly or indirectly, in the

-shape of manure, buildings, or agricultural improvements;

-nor to industry, which is nil. General

-pauperism, resulting from the feudal organization

-that stops development of wealth in its germ, and

-more and more unfits the country for a struggle with

-the more normally organized nations. Unpaid rents,

-landlords and tenants eaten up by usurers, a permanent

-conflict of interests shown at each term by three

-or four thousand evictions, without mentioning the

-still more numerous cases in which eviction is not

-carried out because it would prove useless. A universal

-bankruptcy; a chronic state of social war;

-a growing contempt of the law; agrarian violence;

-the suspension of public liberties; a gradual return of

-the soil and its inhabitants to the savage condition; a

-constant augmentation in the area of uncultivated

-land; a regular emigration of the adult and able

-population; a quarter of the remaining inhabitants

-living at the expense of the ratepayers, either on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_305"></a>[305]</span>

-outdoor relief or in the workhouses; financial grievances,

-added to historical and political grievances;

-hunger sharpening the rancour of the vanquished

-race; its hatred of the conqueror shown periodically

-by the return to the House of Commons of 85 members

-whose only mandate is to obstruct the regular

-working of the British machinery. Such is the

-epitome of the results obtained in Ireland by the

-English after an occupation of seven centuries. Never

-did history register such a scandalous failure.</p>

-

-<p>Vainly do Oxford and Cambridge, in order to

-explain or palliate it, resort to all their scholastic

-sophistry. Vainly it is endeavoured to discover its

-cause in some inherent vice of the Irish race, in their

-ignorance, their religion, their laziness, and even a

-sort of “melancholy” imparted to them, it is alleged,

-by the neighbourhood of the ocean (<i>sic</i>).</p>

-

-<p>Ireland is not the only country edged by the

-Atlantic: neither is it the saddest. Her children are

-not in any marked degree more illiterate now-a-days

-than those of England, and if they were so for a long

-time—when they had to slip off to unlawful and

-clandestine “hedge schools” if they wanted to learn

-their alphabet—we know too well who was responsible

-for such an outrage on civilization. The Celts of

-Erin are Roman Catholics, it is true, but after all there<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_306"></a>[306]</span>

-are on our planet a certain number of nations who

-have not died yet of this religion. As for their

-political capacity, they vindicate it every day by the

-wisdom and firmness they display in sustaining the

-struggle against the oppressor.</p>

-

-<p>One must bow to evidence and do justice to Ireland.

-And for this there are not two formulas. There is

-only one, in two articles:</p>

-

-<p>1.—Expropriation of the landlords with a fair

-indemnity, to the profit of the Irish tenantry.</p>

-

-<p>2.—The extension to Ireland of Home Rule, which

-is the invariable rule of all British possessions, near

-or far, guaranteed of course by all the precautions

-judged necessary for the security and unity of the

-United Kingdom.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>It is the glory of Mr. Gladstone to have understood

-and to have had the moral courage to declare that

-there is no other solution. And as we think of this,

-is it not a strong argument in favour of the superior

-justice of agrarian revendications in Ireland, that it

-should have imposed itself to the reason of that

-illustrious politician, the most English assuredly of

-all the statesmen that have succeeded each other in

-office since the time of William Pitt? Those common<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_307"></a>[307]</span>

-reasoners who rebel against a necessary restitution,

-should think of this. Here is an old man seventy-eight

-years of age, who, ever since he left Eton, had

-no other care, no other occupation than the affairs of

-his country; the most energetic, the most active and

-brilliant of leaders, the most experienced in finance;

-of all the orators in the British Parliament the most

-lucid and pungent; a refined scholar, an accomplished

-Hellenist, the possessor of an hereditary fortune that

-frees him from domestic cares, the son of a British

-merchant-prince, and the father of an Anglican

-clergyman, himself Protestant to the core, and fond

-of officiating in the place of his son in the church of

-Hawarden; a man whose predominant quality is his

-earnestness, and whose supreme rule of conduct is a

-well-regulated love of his country. This statesman,

-who has been ten times in office since the year, already

-so far from us, when he entered it under the leadership

-of Robert Peel, and who knows everything about the

-affairs of his country at home and abroad, has made

-his life-study of the Irish question. Twenty times in

-forty years has he attempted to grapple with it, to

-unravel it, to solve it. All the remedial measures

-that have been applied to the wounds of Ireland since

-1860 had him for their initiator. He was the first to

-realize the odious wrong of an established Anglican<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_308"></a>[308]</span>

-Church in that Catholic country. To him is due the

-political and intellectual enfranchisement of the Irish;

-it was he who gave them national schools and who

-put them (by dint of what Titanic struggles!) on the

-same electoral footing as the other British subjects.

-It was he who promoted, defended, and succeeded in

-passing all the Land Bills meant to soften the wretched

-fate of the Irish serf. Lastly, one must not forget it,

-he never hesitated, when he thought it necessary, to

-claim laws of repression against agrarian violence.

-Mr. Gladstone is assuredly no anarchist. He is

-neither a madman nor is he in his dotage. Never

-was his genius clearer, his word more eloquent. Add

-to this that this man, enamoured of power like all

-those who have passed their life in it, knew that he

-was courting a certain fall when he proposed his solution

-of the Irish question, and could entertain no

-doubt of the schism that would take place in his

-party on the subject....</p>

-

-<p>And yet his conscience could oppose no resistance

-to the blinding light of facts. He clearly saw that

-palliatives were insufficient, and that there was an

-urgent need to take the evil at its root. As a conclusion

-to half a century spent in studying the case, and to

-twenty local attempts at healing it, after two or three

-thousand nights spent in the House of Commons in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_309"></a>[309]</span>

-discussing the question under all its aspects, he comes

-forward to say: “<i>Justice to Ireland!</i> we must give

-back to her what was taken from her—her inheritance

-and her freedom!”</p>

-

-<p>Can one suppose for a moment that Mr. Gladstone

-came to such a conclusion without the most decisive

-and powerful motives? Can anyone feel himself

-strong enough to hold opinions better founded than

-his on this matter? We must congratulate his

-adversaries on their happy self-confidence; but

-we cannot do so on their moral sense or on their

-modesty.</p>

-

-<h3>I.—<span class="smcap">Mr. Gladstone’s Scheme.</span></h3>

-

-<p>Mr. Gladstone’s scheme was framed in two

-organic Bills. By the first the British Government

-undertook to expropriate the landlords, and to

-redeem the Irish lands on a basis of twenty times

-the actual rent, to be paid in English Consols, at par.

-These lands would then be sold to the Irish tenants

-at a discount of 20 per cent., payable in forty-nine

-years by instalments equal to about half the former

-rent. The second Bill provided for the local government

-of Ireland, while it reserved for Great Britain

-the general control of the revenue and the right of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_310"></a>[310]</span>

-keeping military forces in the island. Thanks to a

-coalition of a fraction of the Liberal party with the

-Tories, this programme fell to the ground at the

-General Election of 1886, and was set aside by

-Parliament.</p>

-

-<p>It may be that the loss is not much to be regretted.

-Very likely Mr. Gladstone’s scheme was, in his own

-thoughts, only meant as a trial, what we call a <i>ballon

-d’essai</i>. Excellent in its twofold principle, his solution

-had the very serious drawback of substituting, in

-the place of the 12,000 present landlords of Ireland—a

-single one, the State. It looked as if it

-solved all difficulties, and perhaps it would have

-caused fresh complications. In fact, it amounted to

-requiring that the unavoidable liquidation should be

-paid—by which people? By those who could least

-afford it—the Irish tenants. Whence might the poor

-devils have taken the money for their annuities?

-And even admitting that they could have found it,

-can one refuse to see that their culture, so wretched

-already, would have become still poorer? Has ever

-man chosen, to buy an estate, the moment when he is

-a confirmed bankrupt?</p>

-

-<p>But it would have been to them a nett gain of one-half

-on their actual rent, it will be objected.</p>

-

-<p>A nett gain of one-half <i>on nothing</i>, then, as they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_311"></a>[311]</span>

-cannot afford to pay any rent just now, unless they

-deduct it from their capital (supposing that they have

-any), and there is no reason to suppose that things

-will be better for the next fifty years.</p>

-

-<p>Besides, if you admit that by paying for forty-nine

-years half the actual rent as judicially fixed, the Irish

-tenants ought to have the ownership of the land, why,

-in the name of all that is fair, refuse to see that they

-have paid it more than ten times already, in the

-shape of excessive rent?</p>

-

-<p>“They were free not to pay it and go out, with

-their goods and chattels,” says my old friend, the

-Economist. I answer: No. They were not, for a

-thousand reasons, and had to obey the will of the

-vampires, as long as it was strictly possible.</p>

-

-<p>Either the tenants, having become proprietors in

-name but not in reality (or, as it were, proprietors of

-a shadow of land mortgaged for half a century),

-would have paid their annuity,—and in that case

-they were as poor as before; or they would not have

-paid it, and then the Liberal party would have heard

-a fine din!</p>

-

-<p>In fact the Gladstone plan rested on an entirely

-chimerical hope: that of settling the Irish question

-without its costing a penny to the British Exchequer.

-To entertain such a hope is clearly to prove that one<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_312"></a>[312]</span>

-sees indeed the evil, but without descrying its deeper

-cause.</p>

-

-<p>This cause lies in the <span class="smcap">impossibility</span> to the modern

-tenants, in the face of the competition of better

-organized countries, and generally under the present

-conditions of the world’s agriculture, <span class="smcap">to pay any

-rent whatever</span>.</p>

-

-<p>The Irish tenant is a bankrupt, because he has

-paid, for too long a time already, the rent that he

-could not afford. The land is impoverished for the

-very same reason. Now, to sell it to a penniless

-buyer is absurd enough; but to pretend to believe

-that the penniless buyer shall render it prosperous

-and make it yield riches, is perhaps more absurd still.</p>

-

-<p>Such illusions ought to be discarded. If England

-really wants to settle the Irish question, as her honour

-and her true interest both command her to do, she

-must manfully accept the idea of a pecuniary sacrifice

-and a real restitution. It would be useless to cheat

-herself into acceptance of half-measures. She had

-much better weigh the real cost of an imperious duty,

-pay it, and square matters once for all.</p>

-

-<p>Not only must she give, <i>gratuitously give away</i> as a

-present, the land to the Irish tenant, but she must

-provide him, at the lowest rate of interest, with the

-capital necessary for putting that land in working order.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_313"></a>[313]</span></p>

-

-<p>This consummation might perhaps be attained

-at a lesser cost than would at first sight appear

-possible,—let us name a figure,—at a cost of one

-milliard francs, or £40,000,000. But this milliard

-should be forthcoming in cash, presented by the

-British nation to the sister isle as a free gift, a

-premium paid for peace, or rather a lump sum of

-conscience-money, such as we see sometimes advertised

-in the columns of the <i>Times</i>.</p>

-

-<h3>II.—<span class="smcap">An Outsider’s Suggestion.</span></h3>

-

-<p>The ideal solution for the innumerable difficulties

-of the Irish question would evidently be the <i>tabula

-rasa</i>,—the hypothesis that would transform Ireland

-into a newly-discovered island of virgin soil, barren

-and uninhabited, where England had just planted her

-flag, and out of which she wished to get the fullest

-value in the shortest possible time.</p>

-

-<p>What would her policy be in such a case? She

-would begin by surveying the whole extent of her

-new acquisition, by parcelling it out in lots carefully,

-then by calling in colonists and capital.</p>

-

-<p>To the immigrants that came without any other

-wealth than their stalwart arms, she would make

-gratuitous concessions of small lots of land, accompanied<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_314"></a>[314]</span>

-by seeds, agricultural implements, and an

-exemption from taxes during a limited period of time.

-To those who came with capital, she would give more

-important plots of ground, either demanding a premium

-of occupation more or less high, shortening the

-period of exemption for taxes, or again elevating the

-rate of those taxes. Most likely, too, she would

-favour the establishment of an Agricultural Bank that

-would advance to the new colonists such moneys as

-they desired, according to their wants, their chances

-of success, and the individual securities they presented.</p>

-

-<p>In reality it cannot be supposed that in Ireland the

-past, the vested interests and the settled habits of

-centuries, can be erased. But at least one can try to

-come near to this ideal; and besides, this island presents,

-over the barren and uncultivated one, the

-advantage of having a ready-made population; the

-country, its climate, its soil, are known; there is a

-large proportion of able workmen, valuable house

-property, no inconsiderable provision in agricultural

-implements, not to mention several thousand head

-of horse, oxen, sheep, and pigs ready imported.</p>

-

-<p>The advantages of this over a virgin island are,

-therefore, very clear; they are visibly stronger than

-the drawbacks, and success is certain if measures of

-the kind we allude to are vigorously carried out.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_315"></a>[315]</span></p>

-

-<p>England, then, must begin by buying out, not only

-the properties of the landlords, but also, and this is

-only justice, the interest that a large number of

-farmers possess in those lands under the name of

-tenant-right. The area of cultivated land in Ireland

-(exclusive of towns) is, in round numbers, fifteen million

-acres. Before all, the basis of indemnity granted

-to the landlords must be fixed.</p>

-

-<p>Mr. Gladstone proposed the basis of twenty times

-the actual rent, as judicially fixed. This seems an

-exorbitant price, for various reasons. The first reason

-is that no leased land under the sun normally yields

-to its owner, at present, anything like the interest

-supposed by such a valuation. The second reason is

-that the landlords’ property in Ireland has actually

-no real value whatever; it could not find a purchaser,

-probably, at the price of three times the nominal rent,

-were it put up for sale (let anyone who commands

-capital, and who looks for a secure investment, consider

-whether he would ever dream of buying Irish

-land, just now, at any price). The third reason is

-that the true responsibility of the Irish disease rests

-with those very landlords who never did their duty

-by the country. Granted that their faults (one would

-rather say crimes) ought to be covered by the benefit

-of prescription, and that a fair indemnity ought to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_316"></a>[316]</span>

-be given them or their creditors if they are dispossessed

-by measures of public sanitation, it would look

-ridiculous,—indecent to go to the length of rewarding

-them for their moral and economical failure by a disproportionate

-indemnity taken out of the pocket of

-the British taxpayer.</p>

-

-<p>When one hears, therefore, Mr. Gladstone speak of

-giving the landlords twenty times the nominal rent of

-their land, one is reduced to admit that his idea was

-to bribe them into acquiescence to his scheme by an

-exorbitant premium. The Irish landlords did not

-understand their true interest; they did not see that

-they should have thrown into the scale the weight of

-their votes. Very likely they were wrong. They may

-say good-bye to the Gladstone indemnity; they will

-never see it again. For the longer they wait to settle

-this question, the more must farm-rent dwindle away

-and indemnity shrink to nothingness.</p>

-

-<p>It seems that, at present, in fixing it on the basis

-of twelve times the judicial rent, the British nation

-would show great liberality. It would be equivalent

-to saying that Irish land, as an investment, is worth

-one-third the capital in English Consols that bears

-the same interest, which is certainly paying it an

-unexpected compliment.</p>

-

-<p>As for the tenant-right of the farmer, which it is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_317"></a>[317]</span>

-equally indispensable to redeem if all is to be cleared

-and there are to be no more conflicts of interests, let

-us admit that it is worth, on the whole, three or four

-times the judicial rent. Very likely again this is

-excessive. But this matters little practically, as will

-be shown further on. We find thus, for the aggregate

-interest vested in the Irish soil and subject to indemnity,

-a common rate of sixteen times the judicial

-rent.</p>

-

-<p>The average of this judicial rent is ten shillings per

-acre. For fifteen millions of cultivated acres to be

-redeemed, this would therefore give a total sum of

-120 millions sterling to be paid. Thanks to this indemnity

-of expropriation, the English nation would

-become absolutely free to dispose of these lands as

-she pleased.</p>

-

-<p>But where are those 120 million pounds to be

-found? and they must be found over and above the

-capital necessary for the working of these lands, since

-we admitted in principle that it would be necessary

-to find it in most cases. This is the way:</p>

-

-<p>As a first outlay, we have admitted that the British

-Exchequer would put down £40,000,000 sterling in

-the shape of Consols at par. That capital represents

-an interest of about one million sterling and a quarter,

-or an annual tax of about ninepence per head. This<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_318"></a>[318]</span>

-certainly would not be a high price to pay for such a

-precious advantage as the suppression of the Irish

-plague. There is no decade in which a great nation

-does not pay more for some unlucky and useless

-venture—the Afghanistan campaign, as a case in

-point.</p>

-

-<p>To these 40 millions sterling, sacrificed by the

-wealthiest of European nations to its internal peace,

-shall be added the resources proper to Ireland. These

-are no despicable ones. Ireland, taxed much lower

-than Great Britain, nevertheless contributes no less

-than eight millions sterling, in round numbers, to the

-general revenue of the United Kingdom.</p>

-

-<p>Of these £8,000,000 about £4,286,519 go to the

-keeping of the army of occupation and the administration

-of finances; in other words, to the services

-meant to remain “imperial” in the hypothesis of

-Home Rule. About £3,744,462 are paid for the

-services that would, in this hypothesis, come into the

-province of the Irish Parliament, viz., public works,

-law courts, tax-gathering, local administration, registrations,

-land-surveying, lunatic asylums, schools,

-prisons, and the like. It seems that a new and poor

-country, as we suppose Ireland to turn out, ought not

-to pay for such services as liberally as does wealthy

-England, and that a reduction of a third on these<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_319"></a>[319]</span>

-heads, or £1,250,000, is perfectly feasible. That is

-about the income for £40,000,000 in English Consols.

-Here, then, we have sufficient provision for a second

-milliard in the shape of <i>interest</i>.</p>

-

-<p>The interest for the third milliard would easily be

-raised in the shape of additional taxes, if Irish agriculture

-were freed from any other charges. That would

-only increase the annual taxation by about a sixth

-part, and would not even then put it on a level with

-the incidence of English taxation. Ireland, on her

-side, might well do this slight sacrifice to the cause

-of social and political peace.</p>

-

-<p>There, then, we have the £120,000,000 wanted (in

-the shape of a special loan, emitted and guaranteed by

-England), which are found—a third by each of the

-high contracting parties; a third by a reduction of 33

-per cent. on all services that would have become

-purely Irish.</p>

-

-<p>How ought this magnificent lump of money to be

-used to make it bear all it can? By lodging the

-whole in the coffers of a special <i>Bank of Liquidation</i>,

-that would be entrusted with all the operation.

-This bank, strong in her guaranteed capital of

-£120,000,000, invested, if necessary, with the power

-of emitting special paper-money, begins by paying all

-the lands on the basis fixed upon by law. This<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_320"></a>[320]</span>

-implies only, at the most, an outlay of £90,000,000.

-These lands the bank divides into three classes.</p>

-

-<p><i>Class A.</i>—The fee simple of the first class, composed

-of the holdings under £10 a year, is simply

-transferred to their actual holders (as would be

-done in an infant colony in order to attract inhabitants),

-subject to the single proviso that these lands

-shall be cultivated after a given system, and according

-to certain rules, and taken back by the public domain,

-if this condition be not observed.</p>

-

-<p>Let us remark, in passing, that this free gift will, in

-the majority of cases, be only the legalization of a

-<i>de facto</i> gratuitous occupation, most of these small

-tenants having, for the last three or four years, stopped

-paying any rent to the landlords.</p>

-

-<p>Where, in that case, will be their advantage? it

-might be asked. They will be no richer for having

-become landowners in point of law, as they are now in

-fact.</p>

-

-<p>This is a material error, as shown by the example

-of our peasant proprietors in France. One of the

-chief reasons that prevent the small Irish tenant

-endeavouring to get all he can out of his land is precisely

-the rooted wish in his mind not to work

-for the benefit of the landlord. From the day that he

-shall be certain of keeping the entire fruit of his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_321"></a>[321]</span>

-labour to himself, he will emulate the French Celt;

-he will submit himself to the hardest privations and

-the most unremitting toil; he will abundantly manure

-his land, ceaselessly tend it, turn it again and again;

-he will make it yield all it can. Anyhow, if he does

-not, he will have only himself to blame for it.</p>

-

-<p><i>Class B.</i>—The second class of land, composed of

-holdings from 15 to 20 acres and over, is sold

-to its actual holders for the price of their tenant

-right, if they be willing to accept this privilege. In

-the contrary case, the tenant right is paid down to

-them at the rate fixed upon by experts, and the fee

-simple is put up for sale by auction. The ultimate

-proprietors of these domains of average extent

-receive, by the hands of the local agents for the <i>Bank

-of Liquidation</i>, every facility to form themselves into

-unions for the collective culture of their land. They

-remain, however, free to cultivate it themselves and in

-their own fashion.</p>

-

-<p><i>Class C.</i>—The third portion of the soil, formed by

-the choicest land, shall be put aside in each district to

-form a great domain where experiments shall be tried

-and examples given in agriculture—a domain managed

-by official agronomists, and cultivated by associations

-of agricultural labourers, salaried partly in kind on

-the product of the land, partly by participation in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_322"></a>[322]</span>

-nett profits. Not only shall there be introduced on

-those great domains, together with the finest breeds

-of cattle, the most perfect and scientific modes of

-culture, but, besides, public demonstrations and

-lectures shall be made, agricultural pupils shall be

-formed, and seeds of first quality shall be given at cost

-price. These model-farms alone remain the property

-of the State, and are inalienable.</p>

-

-<p>Thus would be constituted at once, together

-with a class of peasant proprietors, the middle

-and great cultures which are equally wanting in

-Ireland.</p>

-

-<p>Special laws abolish entail in the island, submit to

-expropriation (for 25 years at least) any owner non-resident

-on his property, and forbid, under pain of

-heavy fines, to hold or give on lease any parcel of

-land under 12 acres.</p>

-

-<p>Other laws, imitated from the <i>Homestead Exemption</i>

-of the United States, protect the peasant against debt.

-The <i>Liquidation Bank</i>, after having set the new system

-in motion, secures its working by advancing at the

-lowest rate of interest the capital wanted by the

-small and middling landowners, which must before

-long kill usury and drive it from the country. This

-bank is, in every sense, the organ and focus of a fiduciary

-circulation that is amply sufficient, on this broad<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_323"></a>[323]</span>

-basis, for all the financial wants of agricultural

-industry.</p>

-

-<p>Thus, the whole revenue of the land remaining in

-the country, circulating freely, and incessantly undergoing

-its normal transformations, health returns by

-degrees to the social body. There is no longer any

-question of “unemployed” labourers; on the contrary,

-it is rather hands that are wanted on all those flourishing

-estates which have day-work to offer, not only to

-the owners of small holdings, but even to the unemployed

-of Great Britain.</p>

-

-<p>And so England begins rapidly, though indirectly,

-to recover her advance, owing to the quick increase

-in the returns of the Income Tax; in perhaps four or

-five years, that increase covers the interest of her

-£40,000,000. It comes to say that her real outlay

-turns out to be only a tenth or a twelfth part of that

-advance. Emigration suddenly receives a check.

-Nay, a new, liberated, prosperous Ireland sees her

-children flock back to her shores from abroad, enriched

-and reconciled, bringing home their capital

-with their experience. For the Irishman ever keeps

-in his heart unimpaired the love of his mother

-country, and will return to her as soon as he can.</p>

-

-<p>Let us carry our hypothesis further.</p>

-

-<p>At the same time when she gave up the responsibilities<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_324"></a>[324]</span>

-of the local government of Ireland, England

-has transmitted them to the representatives of the

-Irish nation.</p>

-

-<p>Are those representatives to form immediately a

-single Parliament sitting at Dublin, or are they for

-the present to be divided into four provincial

-assemblies for Leinster, Munster, Connaught, and

-Ulster? This question is of small importance, at

-least at the beginning. Let the first step be taken;

-an united Ireland will only be a matter of time. The

-best way in such cases is to follow the expressed wish

-of the populations; and supposing that Ulster, or at

-least a part of Ulster, vote for the continuation of the

-present <i>régime</i>, why should not those territories be

-excepted from the new arrangements, and either be

-left <i>in statu quo</i> or joined politically to Scotland,

-of which they are a geological as well as an ethnical

-dependency? But I cannot help thinking that if the

-above system was submitted to the Antrim tenants

-themselves, they would not be backward to see its

-advantages.</p>

-

-<p>On the whole question the last word should remain

-to the voter. If a majority of the electors of Scottish

-Ireland spoke in favour of Home Rule, what could be

-objected to them? That they will eventually be

-oppressed by the Catholics? No great fear of that, I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_325"></a>[325]</span>

-should think; and besides, efficient measures could be

-taken, guarantees found against that danger; but no

-such caution will be really wanted. The influence of

-the Catholic clergy in Ireland has for its principal

-basis the political state of the country. The day when

-difficulties are cleared up, national education will

-soon have put an end to the reign of clericalism in

-Ireland as elsewhere.</p>

-

-<p>One cannot help feeling firmly convinced that Mr.

-Gladstone’s formula, “Home Rule and Abolition

-of Landlordism,” taken in its most general meaning,

-and applied with a spirit both prudent and liberal,

-will suffice to heal in a few years the disease of

-Ireland. Public wealth will rise by degrees, feelings

-of hatred will die away, the rapidity of the cure will

-take the world by surprise. Has not already the

-adoption of the Irish programme by a large number

-of Englishmen belonging to the Liberal party been

-sufficient to bring about a partial reconciliation between

-the two countries? We have seen Irish orators come

-and preach the Liberal gospel in England, and reciprocally,

-English orators go and bring the word of

-peace to Ireland. That alone is an augury of success,

-a symptom of healing and pacification.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_326"></a>[326]</span></p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>Will it be objected that this is a Utopian picture,

-an unpractical scheme, or simply one of difficult execution?

-As for me, the more I look into the matter,

-the more settled grows my belief that three things

-only are requisite for substituting so much good for so

-much evil, viz., money, steadiness of purpose and conscience.

-Nobody will say that the English have ever

-shown a lack of steadiness in the pursuit of success;

-money they have in abundance; will they be wanting

-in conscience? This is scarcely to be feared. Conscientiousness

-of a more or less enlightened kind is a

-characteristic of the Englishman, and it is his highest

-praise. Men are constantly to be met in England

-who rule their conduct on the principles of an inward

-law. It is true that, by a natural consequence,

-many are good only in name, and their display

-of conscience is only a sham; but as our great

-moralist has said, “Hypocrisy is a homage which

-vice renders to virtue,” and wherever vice is obliged

-to wear a mask, virtue is bound to conquer.</p>

-

-<p>A great transformation, the instruments of which

-are the press, the steam-engine, and the telegraph,

-has been slowly developing throughout the world

-during the last few years: a new and powerful influence

-has been born that might be named “obligatory

-justice through publicity.” Tennyson has spoken of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_327"></a>[327]</span>

-“the fierce light that beats upon a throne;” thrones

-now-a-days scarcely exist except in name; the will of

-the people has taken their place. But let Governments

-call themselves republics or monarchies, they

-are equally submitted to that pitiless ray of light

-which is the ever-wakeful eye of the press, the uncompromising

-publicity which ignores either rank or

-station. How many examples of it have we not seen

-at home! To quote a recent one, take that wretched

-Schnæbelé affair. Only fifteen years ago there would

-have been found in it reasons ten times sufficient to

-bring about a war for those who wanted it. Not so

-in our days. In less than twenty-four hours the press

-had brought to light the most minute details of the

-affair, exposed the naked truth to the eyes of the

-world, photographed the place where the incident had

-occurred, submitted, in short, to the great public

-judge all the evidence of the case. One had to

-tender apologies under pain of being called the

-aggressor, and the whole affair evaporated into smoke.</p>

-

-<p>Such results are perhaps the clearest gain that

-modern progress has given us. If our age has a

-superiority over the preceding ages, it is assuredly to

-have succeeded in making injustice more difficult to

-practise. More and more henceforward will great

-national crimes become impossible. Mr. Gladstone’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_328"></a>[328]</span>

-chief merit will be to have understood it before

-anybody in England, and to have been emphatically

-the man of his time. In spite of friends and adversaries

-he has dared to utter the truth, and say: “We

-must give back to Ireland what we have taken from

-her. The good of England imperiously demands

-that sacrifice, for we are entering an age when the

-honour of a great nation should not even be suspected.”</p>

-

-<p>He is actually the only statesman in Europe who

-follows a policy of principle; the only one seeking

-the triumph of his opinions by the sole help of reason.

-All the others, from the most famous to the most

-obscure or passing politician, are only jobbers. Disraeli

-had too much of the mountebank about him to

-have been able to secure the respect of posterity.

-Gortschakoff was only a courtier of the old school;

-Cavour a clever lawyer; Thiers a dwarf, in a

-moral and political, as in a physical, sense.

-Bismarck profits by a state of affairs which he did

-little or nothing to create, and at the most is the

-belated representative in our times of fossil feudalism.

-Gladstone alone is a truly modern statesman, and

-therefore is destined to be set by history above all

-his contemporaries, if only he succeeds in carrying

-out his great enterprise; for the more we go the more<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_329"></a>[329]</span>

-nations shall be restricted to politics of principle,

-both because all other systems are exploded, and

-because the diffusion of learning will be for the

-future an almost insuperable obstacle to petty or

-brutal diplomatic conspiracies.</p>

-

-<p>Great Britain, it is earnestly to be hoped, will consent

-to follow her great leader in the way he has

-shown to her. She is offered the most splendid

-opportunity of doing what no nation has achieved as

-yet,—atoning, of her own free will, for centuries of

-injustice, and trying one of the noblest social experiments

-that can ever be attempted. It would be the

-beginning of a new era in the history of human

-societies, and pure glory for those who initiated it.

-Not only could such results be attained at little cost,

-but the most obvious, the most pressing interest of

-England invites her to the enterprise. Let her make

-haste. After having affirmed for half a century the

-sovereignty of peoples, and their right to govern

-themselves according to their will, she cannot give

-herself the lie at home. After having protested

-against Bomba and the Bulgarian atrocities, she

-cannot in her own dominions remain beneath “the

-unspeakable Turk.” After having assumed before

-the world the attitude of a systematic foe to slave-trade

-and all kinds of oppression or cruelty, after<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_330"></a>[330]</span>

-having carried it even to maudlin sensitiveness, as

-in the case of pigeon-shooting, “birds’ corpses on

-women’s hats,” and the like, she cannot decently carry

-on the slow destruction of a sister race through

-starvation. She cannot and she will not do it, for it

-would be branding herself for ever as Queen of

-Humbug, Empress of Sham.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="footnotes">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<h2 class="nobreak">FOOTNOTES</h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<div class="footnote">

-

-<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> Absenteeism, in its present form, seems to date only from Grattan’s

-Parliament, but in some shape or another it may be said to date from

-the British invasion of Ireland, and to result from the very nature of

-an insular kingdom transferred wholesale to the nobility of a neighbouring

-state.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<div class="footnote">

-

-<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> A later instance. On August 30th, 1887, two men armed with

-guns and wearing masks entered the house of Mr. R. Blennerhasset, at

-Kells, near Cahirciveen; they went upstairs to Mrs. Blennerhasset’s

-room and demanded money, which they got to the amount of about £2.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<div class="footnote">

-

-<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> My guide was quite right. In a statistical table of trials between

-July, 1885, and July, 1886, for the County Kerry, I find the following

-items: <i>maiming cattle</i>, 9; <i>injury to person</i>, 7; <i>murders</i>, 3; <i>firing at

-persons</i>, 8; <i>firing into houses</i>, 15; <i>threatening letters</i>, 125; <i>intimidation</i>,

-36; <i>malicious injury</i>, 22; <i>arson</i>, 19; <i>assaults</i>, 22. The above figures,

-it should be observed, only relate to outrages brought home to their

-authors; there can be no doubt that a much larger number of agrarian

-outrages remain unpunished.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<div class="footnote">

-

-<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> <a href="#APPENDIX">See Appendix, p. 331.</a></p>

-

-</div>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

-

-<div class="chapter">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_331"></a>[331]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX">APPENDIX.<br>

-<i class="smaller">EXTRACTS FROM SOME LETTERS ADDRESSED

-WITHIN THE LAST TWO YEARS TO AN IRISH

-LANDLORD BY HIS TENANTS.</i></h2>

-

-</div>

-

-<p>The <i>Times</i> has published, on October 10, 1887, an

-exceedingly interesting batch of letters selected from

-some three hundred addressed within the last two

-years to an Irish landowner by his tenants. As the

-editor of those letters wrote most appropriately, there

-is perhaps no means whereby truer insight can be obtained

-into the ways and habits of the Irish peasantry

-than by studying the letters written by the people

-themselves. Typically enough, however, the same

-editor only saw in those letters how “unbusiness-like

-and illogical is the Irish tenant,” and “the various

-reasons that an Irishman gives for not paying his rent.

-One is unable to pay because his uncle is confined to

-bed, and his daughter suffering from a sore eye;

-another because a relative has died; a third because<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_332"></a>[332]</span>

-his brother-in-law has brought an action against him

-for money lent, and he has had to pay; one because

-his family is small, and another because it is large;

-another—and this is the most common excuse—because

-he has been unable to sell his stock; another

-because his wife has a sore hand; another because of

-the death of a cow; another because the weather is

-severe and there is a sheriff’s bailiff obstructing him

-from making up the rent; another because it was

-God’s will to take all the means he had; another

-because of the agitation.”</p>

-

-<p>Reasons which, it may be seen, appear to the

-English eye entirely ridiculous and unbusiness-like.</p>

-

-<p>What strikes a Frenchman most, on the other hand,

-in the letters, is their touching simplicity, the appalling

-instability of a budget that the least domestic

-mishap is enough to upset, and the fruitless attempt

-of the poor man to penetrate into the real cause of

-the burden under which he is panting; in the comments,

-the utter incapacity of the British landlord to

-understand his Irish tenantry even when he is a good

-landlord, which is obviously (perhaps too obviously)

-the case here.</p>

-

-<p>The letters are thus characteristic in more than one

-sense. Whatever the angle under which they are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_333"></a>[333]</span>

-read, they undoubtedly remain first-class documentary

-evidence.</p>

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="right"><i>8th Jany., 1887.</i></p>

-

-<p>To * * * *, Esq.</p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I received a letter yesterday from Mr. G⸺ who

-demanded the payment of £31 0<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i>, rent due up to 29 Sept.

-1886. I was in with Mr. G⸺ this day &amp; he told me that

-he had no further instructions than what was contained in his

-note. Now my Uncle has been confined through illness to his

-bed since last June, &amp; my daughter has been under medical

-treatment since last September for a sore eye which proceeded

-from a bad tooth, &amp; I even had to pay the Dentist ten shillings

-for extracting it, as the Doctor could not do so. I trust you will

-kindly take into consideration my position and stay proceedings,

-&amp; I will send you £18 next Saturday &amp; the remainder about the

-13th February, the day after fair of K⸺.</p>

-

-<p class="center">Your obedt. Servant</p>

-

-<p class="right">* * * *</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>The following is also from the same man:—</p>

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I would have sent you the remainder of the rent on

-the day mentioned but the old man died &amp; I had extra expenses

-but if you would kindly wait until about the 25th of March I will

-be able to let you have it.</p>

-

-<p class="center">Your obedient servant</p>

-

-<p class="right">* * * *</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="right"><i>9th March, 1887.</i></p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I have yours of the 4th inst. &amp; am very sorry to say I

-have met a reverse &amp; cant pay up to my word. I took a

-Brother-in-law to live with me—he was a tenant of your property<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_334"></a>[334]</span>

-who lost the power of his limbs &amp; obliged to get into Hospital,

-his daughter my niece who I reared went to America she died

-there after saving a good deal of money her father after much

-trouble got £200 of it &amp; after being 17 years in the Hospital he

-had to leave it having means to live &amp; he requested to come to

-live with me which I allowed, &amp; being maintained as one of my

-family for 12 months up to Wedy. last he now sued me for

-£50 which he lent me while here. He is at other lodgings &amp;

-subject to evil advice but he fell out with me while here &amp; since

-has been most ungrateful. I done my best to get this law put

-back but failed &amp; had to pay the money I had made to pay my

-rent. I am much grieved being obliged to ask to the middle of

-next month to pay it. I wont have any fairs sooner to sell my

-stores but I will surly have it about the 20th April if not sooner.

-You may be sure only what happened me I would have paid up

-to my promise.</p>

-

-<p class="center">Your obt servt</p>

-

-<p class="right">* * * *</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="right"><i>10th March.</i></p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Mr. ⸺.</span> After all I built &amp; what I ow in shops &amp; from

-the loss of sheep I am not abell to pay but if you forgive me

-this half year’s rent you will save me from destruction, and if so

-I will keep it a profound sacred. I promis I will never again

-ask anything of you &amp; will be punctual in future, my family is

-small &amp; my health not good to go travell. I brought a dale of

-money in to this farm 5 years ago and it is all gon now. I

-apeal to your kind genariss hart to do this for me &amp; may the

-almitey god give your self &amp; your children the Kingdom of

-hevan.</p>

-

-<p class="center">I remain most respectfully</p>

-

-<p class="right">* * * *</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_335"></a>[335]</span></p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="right"><i>January 9th.</i></p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—In reply to youre noat I am verrey sorrey that

-I can do nothing at the presant it is out of my power I have nothing

-to sell unlss I sell what I have to ate my self and seven littel

-children. I had but one calf to sell to pay you and it was the

-will of provedence to take him, he died. I have but one cow &amp;

-I had hur in the fair of N⸺ and all I could get for her was

-four pounds, so if you presede with the law as yore lawyer sayes

-he will I must sell hur to pay you</p>

-

-<p class="center">Your humbel tennant</p>

-

-<p class="right">* * * *</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="right"><i>August 31.</i></p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>, — I promised the rent after the fair of K⸺ in June.

-I had three calves in it &amp; covld not sell. I took three months

-grass for them to see could I do better. I intend to have them

-in D⸺ on the 12th &amp; if I sell them I will send the rent

-after that. I would have wrote only expecting to have the rent

-before this. My wife took a sore hand &amp; is in hospital this two

-months &amp; is in it still so its poor times with me.</p>

-

-<p class="center">Your tennant</p>

-

-<p class="right">* * * *</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="right"><i>11th March.</i></p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—In reply to your letter dated 5th inst. I beg to ask your

-honour the favour of a few days grace. I hope to be able to

-meet your demands by the time you call to collect your rents in

-April. In the meantime I might have an opportunity of setting

-the fields in Con acre.</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_336"></a>[336]</span></p>

-

-<p>Being a lone widow with two helpless children one of them

-of weak intellect I hope your honour will kindly consider my

-case.</p>

-

-<p>I am Sir your Honour’s most obedient &amp; humble servant</p>

-

-<p class="right">* * * *</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="right"><i>January 19.</i></p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I received your letter, it is not in my power to make

-money for you now as I had to borrow some of your last rent

-which is not all paid yeat on account of the death of my fine cow

-that died. I will use my best endavours against May.</p>

-

-<p class="center">Your ob. servt</p>

-

-<p class="right">* * * *</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="right"><i>September 26.</i></p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—I make apail to you at the present time that

-I am endeavring at this time to make up the rent. Now I would

-have it sooner but the weather for the harvest was savere, sore I

-could not help it Der Sir, there is a man who is a Sheirf’s baliff is

-going to injure me &amp; to obstruct me in making up the rent for

-you which I would hope soon to have value for. Dear Sir I

-apail to you that you will not allow but Dis allow injuring a

-poor tenant who is endeavring to make up the rent. I would

-say one thing that I believe he is at least without maners. I

-apail to you that you will not allow to obstruct making out rent

-as quck as posible. one thing I wonder much that you would

-permit him or such as him any place. I will refrain on that

-presnt. I will ask this request off Mr. ⸺ as soon as I can<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_337"></a>[337]</span>

-get the rent will he be kind enough to take it from me. I will

-ask the favour of you to give return as it may plaise you. Excuse

-my hand riting.</p>

-

-<p class="center">Yours truly</p>

-

-<p class="right">* * * *</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="right"><i>August 2nd.</i></p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Mr. ⸺.</span> I received Mr. G⸺’s letter on the 31st of

-July. I am sorry I am not able to pay at preasant. I am

-willing to pay my rent but it was God’s will to take all the mains

-I had intended to meet you. I hope you will be so kind to give

-time untell October, as it is so hard to make money</p>

-

-<p class="center">Your obt. servent</p>

-

-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Pat. F⸺.</span></p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="right"><i>Wensdy 19th.</i></p>

-

-<p>* * * * Esq. <span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I received your letter &amp; will send

-you the rent as soon as I can. There was no price for cattle in

-the fairs that is past, in fact the could not be sold atol. I expect

-to make the rent in the fair of K⸺. I could always pay my

-rent but this cursed agetation has destroyed our country but I

-hope the worst of it is over</p>

-

-<p class="center">I remain Your Obedient Servant</p>

-

-<p class="right">* * * *</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_338"></a>[338]</span></p>

-

-<p>The following letters also relate to the payment of

-rent:—</p>

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="right"><i>October 10.</i></p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I did not receive your letter ontill this Day. It has

-given me a great surprise I hope your Honour will not put me

-to cost I have a little best to sell, and after the fair in C⸺,

-a thursday I will send it to yo and I hop yo will not put me to

-cost. I hop your honour will feel for me</p>

-

-<p class="center">truly</p>

-

-<p class="right">* * * *</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="right"><i>October 4th.</i></p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Mr. ⸺.</span> <span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I was again disappointed in the fair at

-N⸺ in selling my cattle and I must ask time of you till I

-get sale for if possible I will sell them in the fair of C⸺ do

-not once imagine that I am not enclined to pay but I never was

-offered a price for my cattle. I was speaking to some of the

-tenants and the would wish to see you in N⸺ the rent day

-as the want to know what you want for your land</p>

-

-<p class="center">Yours respectfully,</p>

-

-<p class="right">* * * *</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I was very sory to see your hon goeing back without

-the rient.</p>

-

-<p>I was willing to pay that day but I could not. I send you my

-half-year’s rent £13 10, so I hope your hon will luck after turf

-for me there is no ous in asking it of Mr. F⸺ There is to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_339"></a>[339]</span>

-banks idle on the tients part on F⸺ and Mrs. N⸺ has

-30 banks set this year so I count it very unfare if we doent get

-one The old men was geoing to kill us when we did not pay

-your hon the day you ware in N⸺ We ware all sory we did

-not settle that day</p>

-

-<p class="center">I remane your obdient servant</p>

-

-<p class="right">* * * *</p>

-

-<p>rember the tturf.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>The following is in the same handwriting as the

-last, but signed by another tenant:—</p>

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—You spoke of referring to Mr. F⸺ for turf,

-we did not like to intrupeed (query, interrupt) yur hon at that time.

-Well sir there is too banks of your own on the tients part

-an Mrs. N⸺ is giveing turf to men on the five different

-estates Every one that wonted turf got it but two tients no

-one els wonts it besids, so I hope your hon will luck to us. I

-am willing to pay my way if I get a chance. N⸺ D⸺

-has turf this 40 years No one wants it but P⸺ F⸺ &amp;

-M⸺ T⸺. We would pay your hon ondly for the rest</p>

-

-<p class="center">Believe me Your obedient servent</p>

-

-<p class="right">M⸺ T⸺.</p>

-

-<p>do what your hon can about the turf</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="right"><i>November 23rd 86.</i></p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Honoured Sir</span>,—I got both your letters &amp; replidd to the

-first &amp; directed it to D⸺ in which I asked for a little time to

-pay the rent I had some young cattle in the fair of K⸺<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_340"></a>[340]</span>

-and did not sell them. It will greatly oblige me if your Honour

-will give me time untill the Christmas fair of F⸺ as I have

-some pigs to sell that will meet this rent &amp; that would leave me

-the cattle to meet the May rent as the young cattle I have is

-not fit to sell at preasant.</p>

-

-<p>I feel sorry to have to trespass on your Honour, but the times

-are bad and it is hard to make money, but I hope we will soon

-have better times under the present Government, and that all

-those mob laws will soon be at an end.</p>

-

-<p class="center">I remain your humble servant,</p>

-

-<p class="right">* * * *</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p>It shows a curious state of things when a would-be

-tenant thinks it necessary to assure the landlord that

-he knows the farm belongs to him:—</p>

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="right"><i>April 12, 1887.</i></p>

-

-<p>To Mr. * * * *</p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—Just a few lines to let your honour know that my

-father is very delicate for the past tow months and not expected

-to recover. I would like to let your honour know that it was mee

-that minded your Property for the last ten years. I know that

-this place always belongs to you and that the emprovements

-cost no one But your self a shilling. I would like to know how

-mutch my father is in your dept.</p>

-

-<p class="center">I remain your honors faiteful servant,</p>

-

-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">James T⸺.</span></p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_341"></a>[341]</span></p>

-

-<p>The following contain offers of cattle in lieu of rent,

-a form of payment which Irish tenants are always

-anxious to adopt if they can, for though they declare

-there will be no difference about the price, they always

-expect the landlord to give them considerably more

-than the market value:—</p>

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="right"><i>January 18.</i></p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—I am not able to answer you with money at present.

-I have the heifer that I told you of and if you wish I will

-send her to T⸺ for you, and I expect your honor and I

-wont differ.</p>

-

-<p class="center">Your obedient servent,</p>

-

-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Patrick F⸺y.</span></p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="right"><i>Jany 5th.</i></p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I have 5 nice bullocks to sell if you would buy them.

-I have no other way of paying the rent.</p>

-

-<p class="right">F⸺ D⸺.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="right"><i>October 14th.</i></p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span> and pleas your honour,—I hope in you that

-you wont buy all the cattle you want in S⸺ town. Patrick

-D⸺ has a lot greasing with the father-in-law at C⸺;

-he intends to meet your honour with them. Pleas, Sir, leave

-room for three Bullocks, I have them greasing with you above

-the road all the summer.</p>

-

-<p class="center">Your faithful servant,</p>

-

-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Michl. T⸺.</span></p>

-

-<p>I am setten some of my children and it has left me bare in

-monney.</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_342"></a>[342]</span></p>

-

-<hr class="tb">

-

-<div class="blockquote">

-

-<p class="right"><i>Novr 12th.</i></p>

-

-<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—I will give three two-year-old Bullicks good

-owns for next May rent. I will leave the vallue to your honour

-when you come down before Christamas. I was offered £15 pounds

-for the three last June; £5 each from Mr. ⸺ the Miller of

-C⸺. I never took them out since. I have no father for

-them. Your honour has plenty of straw to give them, the will

-make good Bullocks on it. Your honour must get them les

-than vallue</p>

-

-<p class="center">Your truly faithfull servent,</p>

-

-<p class="right">* * * *</p>

-

-</div>

-

-<p class="titlepage">THE END.</p>

-

-<p class="titlepage smaller">BRADBURY, AGNEW, &amp; CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.</p>

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+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
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+      Ireland’s Disease | Project Gutenberg
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+  </head>
+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69993 ***</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_i"></a>[i]</span></p>
+
+<p class="center larger">IRELAND’S DISEASE.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ii"></a>[ii]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iii"></a>[iii]</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage larger">IRELAND’S DISEASE</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage">NOTES AND IMPRESSIONS<br>
+<span class="smaller">BY</span><br>
+PHILIPPE DARYL</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage"><i>THE AUTHOR’S ENGLISH VERSION</i></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">LONDON</span><br>
+GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS<br>
+<span class="smaller">BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL<br>
+GLASGOW AND NEW YORK</span><br>
+1888</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iv"></a>[iv]</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller">LONDON<br>
+BRADBURY, AGNEW, &amp; CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_v"></a>[v]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak">PREFACE.</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>These pages were first published in the
+shape of letters addressed from Ireland to
+<i>Le Temps</i>, during the summer months of 1886
+and 1887.</p>
+
+<p>A few extracts from those letters having found
+their way to the columns of the leading British
+papers, they became the occasion of somewhat
+premature, and, it seemed to the author, somewhat
+unfair conclusions, as to their general
+purport and bearing.</p>
+
+<p>A fiery correspondent of a London evening
+paper, in particular, who boldly signed
+“J. J. M.” for his name, went so far as to
+denounce the author as “an ally of the <i>Times</i>,
+in the congenial task of vilifying the Irish<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vi"></a>[vi]</span>
+people by grotesque and ridiculous caricatures,”
+which charge was then summarily met
+as follows:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="center"><i>To the Editor of the <span class="smcap">Pall Mall Gazette</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—</p>
+
+<p>Let me hope, for the sake of “J. J. M.’s” mental condition,
+that he never set eyes upon my Irish sketches in
+<i>Le Temps</i>, about which he volunteers an opinion. If, however,
+he has actually seen my prose in the flesh, and he still
+clings to his hobby that I am hostile to the Irish cause or
+unsympathetic with the Irish race, why then I can only urge
+upon his friends the advisability of a strait waistcoat, a
+brace of mad doctors, and an early berth in a lunatic asylum.
+I never heard in my life of a sadder case of raving delusion.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Yours obediently,</p>
+
+<p class="right">PHILIPPE DARYL.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Paris</span>, <i>September 18, 1887</i>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Thus ended the controversy. There was no
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>Allowance should be made, of course, for the
+natural sensitiveness of Irishmen on everything
+that relates to their noble and unhappy country.
+But, what! Do they entertain, for one moment,
+the idea that everything is right and normal in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vii"></a>[vii]</span>
+it? In that case there can be no cause of
+complaint for them, and things ought to remain
+as they are. All right-minded people will
+understand, on the contrary, that the redress
+of Irish wrongs can only come out of a sincere
+and assiduous exposure of the real state of
+affairs, which is not healthy but pathological,
+and, as such, manifests itself by peculiar symptoms.</p>
+
+<p>However it may be, a natural though perhaps
+morbid desire of submitting the case to
+the English-reading public was the consequence
+of those exceedingly brief and abortive
+polemics.</p>
+
+<p>The Author was already engaged in the not
+over-congenial task of putting his own French
+into English, or what he hoped might do duty as
+such, when Messrs. George Routledge &amp; Sons,
+the London publishers of his <i>Public Life
+in England</i>, kindly proposed to introduce
+<i>Ireland’s Disease</i> to British society. The offer<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_viii"></a>[viii]</span>
+was heartily accepted, and so it came to pass
+that the English version is to appear in book
+form on the same day as the French one.</p>
+
+<p>The special conditions of the case made it, of
+course, a duty to the author to strictly retain
+in his text every line that he had written
+down in the first instance, however little palatable
+it might prove to some English readers
+and fatal to his own literary or other prospects
+in England. That should be his excuse for
+sticking desperately to words which, like
+Tauchnitz editions, were not originally intended
+for circulation in Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Ph. D.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Paris</span>, <i>Nov. 10th, 1887</i>.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ix"></a>[ix]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdpg smaller">PAGE</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>INTRODUCTION</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#INTRODUCTION">1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER I.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">First Sensations</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">5</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER II.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Dublin Life</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">17</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER III.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Poor of Dublin</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">31</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER IV.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Emerald Isle</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">46</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER V.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Race</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">60</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VI.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Historical Grievances</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">76</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VII.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Killarney</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">96</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VIII.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Through Kerry on Horseback</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">109</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_x"></a>[x]</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER IX.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">A Kerry Farmer’s Budget</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">139</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER X.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Rural Physiology</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">157</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XI.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Emigration</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">177</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XII.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The League</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">197</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIII.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Clergy</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">215</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIV.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Fort Saunders</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">234</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XV.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Plan of Campaign</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">256</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVI.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Scottish Ireland</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">271</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVII.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Lex Licinia</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">296</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="in1">&#160;&#160;I.—The Gladstone Scheme</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Page_309">309</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="in1">II.—An Outsider’s Suggestion</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Page_313">313</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr class="mt">
+    <td>APPENDIX</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX">331</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1"></a>[1]</span></p>
+
+<h1>IRELAND’S DISEASE.</h1>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION.</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It is indeed a chronic and constitutional disease
+that Ireland is labouring under. Twice within the
+last fifteen months it has been my fortune to visit the
+Sister Isle; first in the summer of 1886, at the apparently
+decisive hour when the die of her destiny was
+being cast in the ballot-box, and her children seemed
+on the point of starting upon a new life; then again,
+twelve months after, in the summer of 1887, when I
+found her a prey to the very same local disorders and
+to the same general anxiety that I had previously
+observed.</p>
+
+<p>Last year it looked as if the solution was nigh,
+if Mr. Gladstone’s spirited eloquence was going to
+carry the English nation along with it. The seasons,
+however, have followed one another in due course,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2"></a>[2]</span>
+bringing with them the usual run of unpaid rent,
+eviction, and reciprocal violence; a new Crimes Act
+has been added to the long record of similar measures
+that the British Parliament has scored against Ireland
+in eighty-seven years of so-called Union; a few cabins
+have disappeared, have been unroofed or burnt down
+by the arm of the bailiff; a few more skulls have been
+broken; some hundred thousand more wretched beings
+have embarked in emigrant ships for the United States
+or Queensland; some more hunger-stricken women
+and children have swollen the list of obscure victims
+that green Erin annually pays to the Anglo-Saxon
+Minotaur. But nothing essential is altered. Things
+are in the same places and passions at the same pitch.
+The two nations are facing each other with defiance
+in their eyes, threats in their mouths, revolvers or
+dynamite in hand. The problem has not advanced
+one step. Social war is still there, filling the hearts,
+paralysing the action, poisoning the springs of life.
+It may be read in the alarmed looks of mothers, in the
+sullen faces of men; it is lurking behind every
+hedge.</p>
+
+<p>Before such an unparalleled case of a whole race’s
+physiological misery, how could one help being seized
+with an ardent curiosity mingled with pity? Who
+would not wish to plunge to the bottom of the matter,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>[3]</span>
+to make out, if possible, the secret of the evil, to
+deduce from it a lesson, and, may be, a general law?</p>
+
+<p>That want I have felt most deeply, and I have tried
+to gratify it by personal observation; looking at things
+through my own spectacles, without animus or hatred,
+passion or prejudice, as they came under my gaze;
+noting down what seemed to be characteristic; above
+all, avoiding like poison the contact of the professional
+politician on either side: then drawing my own conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>I need hardly add that for the intelligence of what
+I saw, I have always availed myself of the printed
+sources of information, such as the standard works on
+Irish history, Black’s excellent <i>Guide to Ireland</i>, the
+Parliamentary Reports, the national literature, and
+last but not least the graphic accounts of current
+events published by the English and native press. Of
+the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, especially, I must state that I
+have found its files a mine of precise, well digested,
+and thoroughly reliable information on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>That my studies are above correction, I will not
+venture to hope. That they are in every case
+founded on facts, and, to the best of my belief,
+accurate, I earnestly vouch. As far as possible, I
+have made a point of giving the names of the persons
+mentioned. When it might have been inconvenient to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a>[4]</span>
+them, however, or when delicacy forbade such a liberty,
+I have either suppressed the name or substituted a
+fictitious one. It should be understood that what I
+wanted, as a total stranger in the country, and what
+my French readers wanted, were not personal but
+typical instances.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>[5]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.<br>
+<span class="smaller">FIRST SENSATIONS.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Dublin.</span></p>
+
+<p>Hardly have you set foot on the quay at Kingstown,
+than you feel on an altogether different ground
+from England. Between Dover and Calais the contrast
+is not more striking. Kingstown is a pretty
+little place, whose harbour is used by the steamers
+from Holyhead, and whither Dublin shopkeepers resort
+in summer. Half a century back, it was only a
+fishermen’s village of the most rudimentary description.
+But George IV., late Prince Regent, having
+done that promontory the honour to embark there
+when leaving Ireland, the place became the fashion.
+In memory of the glorious event, the citizens of Dublin
+raised on that spot a pyramid which rests on four
+cannon balls, and bears on its top the royal crown
+with the names of all the engineers, architects,
+captains, and harbour officials who had anything
+to do with the business. Villas soon sprang up round<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>[6]</span>
+it, and from that time Kingstown went on thriving.
+A splendid pier bent round upon itself like a forearm
+on its humerus, makes it the safest harbour in
+Ireland, and the railway puts it in communication
+with Dublin in twenty minutes. It is the Portici of a
+bay that could vie with the Bay of Naples, did it boast
+its Vesuvius and sun, and did not the shoals which
+form its bottom get often bare and dry at low tide.</p>
+
+<p>You land then at Kingstown, early in the morning
+after a four hours’ crossing, having started the evening
+before by the express from Euston Station. And immediately
+you feel that you are no longer in England.
+The language is the same, no doubt, though talked
+with a peculiar accent or <i>brogue</i>. The custom-house
+officers are English; so are the policemen and redcoats
+who air themselves on the quay; but the general
+type is no longer English, and the manners are still less
+so. Loud talk, violent gesticulation, jokes and laughter
+everywhere; brown hair, sparkling dark eyes: you
+could imagine you are at Bordeaux or at Nantes.</p>
+
+<p>The guard who asks for your ticket, the very train
+you get in, have something peculiar, undefinable,
+thoroughly un-English. The old lame newspaper-man
+who hands you <i>The Irish Times</i> or the <i>Freeman’s
+Journal</i> at the carriage-door, indulges witticisms
+while giving you back your change, which not one<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>[7]</span>
+of Mr. Smith’s well-conducted lads ever permits
+himself along a British line. As for the passengers
+they are more un-English than anything else. This
+lady with the olive complexion and brown hair, may
+be termed an English subject; but for all that she
+has not probably one globule of Anglo-Saxon blood
+in her veins. That gentleman in the grey suit has
+evidently an English tailor, but the flesh-and-bone
+lining of his coat is of an altogether different
+make. As for the little man in black who is
+curling himself cosily in the corner opposite to you, not
+only is he unmistakeably a Roman Catholic priest, but
+you must positively hear him talk, to give up the idea
+that he is a Breton just out of the Saint Brieux
+Seminary. High cheek-bones, bilious complexion,
+small tobacco-coloured eyes, lank hair, nothing is
+missing from the likeness.</p>
+
+<p>Here is Dublin. The train takes us to the very
+heart of the town, and there stops between a pretty
+public garden and the banks of the Liffey. The weather
+is cool and clear. Inside the station cabs and cars
+are waiting for travellers and their luggage. <i>Waiting</i>,
+not contending eagerly for their patronage as they do
+in London, where any possible customer is quickly
+surrounded by half-a-dozen rival drivers. “<i>Hansom,
+sir?... Hansom, sir?</i>” The Dublin cabman is more<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>[8]</span>
+indolent. He keeps dozing on his seat or leisurely
+gossiping with his mates. “Why trouble oneself
+for nothing? The traveller knows how to call for a
+cab, I suppose!” So speaks the whole attitude of
+these philosophers in the Billycock hats.</p>
+
+<p>This, however, will not prevent their being as unscrupulous
+as any of their fellow-drivers in any part
+of the globe, when it comes to settling the fare.
+“How much?” “Five bob.” On verification you
+find that two shillings is all the rogue is entitled to.
+You give the two shillings, he pockets them and
+rattles away laughing. The job was a failure; no
+more.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Dublin is a big city, thickly populated, crossed by
+wide thoroughfares, provided with fine public gardens
+and splendid parks, which are here called <i>greens</i>, and
+adorned with an extraordinary number of statues.
+Its traffic and industry are important: visibly, this is a
+capital. More than a capital; the focus of a nationality.
+Everything in the streets proclaims it: sign-boards,
+monuments, countenances, manners. Those marble
+statues you see at every step are the effigies of the
+patriots who fought for the rights of Ireland. That
+palace with the noble colonnade, in the heart and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span>
+finest part of the town, is the very building where
+the Irish Parliament, abolished in 1800 by the Act
+of Union, held its assemblies. Now-a-days the Bank
+directors meet in the room where once met the representatives
+of the nation. But they seem to have been
+careful not to change anything in the general arrangement,
+in case it was wanted to-morrow for some
+<i>Assemblée Constituante</i>. You may enter it: the door is
+open for every one. On the right you see what was
+the House of Lords, a rectangular hall with an open
+ceiling, historic hangings, and the statue of some
+royalties. On the left, the House of Commons. Here,
+mahogany counters stand in place of the members
+benches, and where sounded once the clash of
+argument, you hear now the tinkling of gold coins.</p>
+
+<p>Let old times come again; let Westminster give
+back to the Sister-Isle the autonomy she mourns,
+and, as a stage machinery, the Bank will vanish
+before the Parliament. It will be an affair of a
+night’s work for the upholsterers.</p>
+
+<p>In front of that building, which is the City Hall, it
+is not the British flag (though perhaps the law should
+insist upon it) that is hanging aloft. It is the green flag
+of Erin with the harp and the three towers. Everywhere
+there are calls on the national feeling. <i>Hibernian
+House</i>, <i>Hibernian Hotel</i>, <i>Erin Stores</i>, <i>Irish<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>[10]</span>
+poplins</i>, <i>Irish gloves</i>, <i>Irish whisky</i>. Above all Irish
+whisky! one could not get comfortably drunk with
+Scotch whisky, that is evident.</p>
+
+<p>If you visit a museum or picture-gallery you will
+find Art exiled in the background, and patriotism
+shining to the fore. Bating a fine Giorgione, a
+valuable Potter, a Van Steen of large size and extraordinary
+quality, a rare Cornelius Béga and a few
+others, the collection is not worth much, and would
+not fetch its million francs at the <i>Hotel des Ventes</i>, in
+the Rue Drouot. It is only a pretext for a national
+collection of portraits where are represented all the
+glories of Ireland, from Jonathan Swift, Laurence
+Sterne, Steele, Sheridan, Edmund Burke to Moore,
+Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the Duke of Wellington,
+and above all, O’Connell, “the liberator;” and Henry
+Grattan, esquire, “true representative of the people,
+father of liberty, author of the emancipation.”</p>
+
+<p>Those things take hold of you as soon as you
+arrive at Dublin. Like a flash of lightning they
+bring light upon many things about <i>Home Rule</i>
+which had remained hazy to your continental heedlessness.
+A nation with such memories kept up with
+such jealous care must know what it wants, and will
+have it in the end. Such signs are the manifestation
+of a national soul, of a distinct personality in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>[11]</span>
+great human family. When all, from alderman to
+beggar, have one sole aim, they are bound to
+reach it sooner or later. Here, if the Town Hall has
+its green flag, the urchin in the street has his sugarplum,
+shaped into the effigy of Parnell or Gladstone.
+Never, since the Venice and the Lombardy of 1859,
+was there such a passionate outburst of national
+feeling.</p>
+
+<p>In the central part of the town, several streets are
+really fine with their rows of large houses, their gorgeous
+shops and numberless statues. The women are
+generally good-looking; well built, well gloved, well
+shod. They move gracefully, and with a vivacity which
+is quite southern. They look gentle and modest,
+and dress almost as well as Frenchwomen, of
+whom they have the quiet grace. The youngest
+ones wear their brown hair floating behind, and
+that hair, fine in the extreme, made more supple
+by the moistness of an insular climate, is crossed
+now and then by a most lovely glimmer of golden
+light.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the men have acquired the significant
+habit of carrying large knotty cudgels in place of
+walking sticks. Other signs show a state of latent
+crisis, a sort of momentary truce between classes: for
+instance, the abundance of personal weapons, pneumatic<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>[12]</span>
+rifles, pocket revolvers, &amp;c., which are to be
+seen in the armourers’ shop windows.</p>
+
+<p>But what gives the principal streets of Dublin their
+peculiar character is the perpetual presence at every
+hour of the day of long rows of loiterers, which
+only one word could describe, and that is <i>lazzaroni</i>.
+As in Naples they stop there by hundreds; some
+in a sitting posture, or stretched at full length on
+the bare stone, others standing with their backs to
+the wall, all staring vaguely in front of them, doing
+nothing, hardly saying more, mesmerised by a sort of
+passive contemplation, and absorbed in the dull
+voluptuousness of inaction.</p>
+
+<p>What do they live upon? When do they eat?
+Where do they sleep? Mystery. They probably
+accept now and then some occasional job which may
+bring them a sixpence. At such times they disappear
+and are mixed among the laborious population;
+you don’t notice them. But their normal
+function is to be idle, to hem as a human fringe the
+public monuments.</p>
+
+<p>Some places they seem to affect particularly;
+Nelson’s Pillar amongst others. Whenever you pass
+it you are sure to see four rows of loungers seated on
+the pedestal, with legs dangling, pressed against each
+other like sardines.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>[13]</span></p>
+
+<p>Numerous tramcars, light and quick, cross Dublin
+in all directions. Five or six railway stations are the
+heads of so many iron lines radiating fan-wise over
+Ireland. All bear their national stamp; but what
+possesses that character in the highest degree is that
+airy vehicle called a jaunting-car.</p>
+
+<p>Imagine a pleasure car where the seats, instead of
+being perpendicular to the shafts, are parallel with
+them, disposed back to back and perched on
+two very high wheels. You climb to your place
+under difficulties; then the driver seated sideways
+like you (unless the number of travellers obliges him
+to assume the rational position), lashes his horse,
+which plunges straightway into a mad career.</p>
+
+<p>This style of locomotion rather startles you at
+first, not only on account of its novelty, but
+also by reason of the indifferent equilibrium you
+are able to maintain. Jostled over the pavement,
+threatened every moment to see yourself projected
+into space, at a tangent, you involuntarily grasp
+the nickel handle which is there for that purpose,
+just as a tyro horseman instinctively clutches the
+mane of his steed. But one gets used in time to
+the Irish car, and even comes to like it. First, it goes
+at breakneck speed, which is not without its charm;
+then you have no time to be bored, considering that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>[14]</span>
+the care of preserving your neck gives you plenty of
+occupation; lastly, you have the satisfaction of facing
+constantly the shop windows and foot paths against
+which you are likely to be tossed at any moment.
+Those are serious advantages, which other countries’
+cabs do not offer. To be candid, they are unaccompanied
+by other merits.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>In that equipage you go to the Phœnix Park, the
+Dublin “Bois de Boulogne.” It is a wide timbered
+expanse of some two thousand acres, full of tame
+deer, where all that is young in the place may be seen
+flirting, cricketing, playing all sorts of games, but
+above all, bicycling. Bicycles seem to be the ruling
+passion of the Dublin youth. I have seen more
+than a hundred at a time in a single lane near the
+Wellington Obelisk. By the way, this was the
+very avenue where Lord Frederick Cavendish and
+Mr. Burke were murdered five years ago by the
+<i>Invincibles</i>. A cross marks the place where the two
+corpses were discovered.</p>
+
+<p>The Castle, which the two English officials had
+the imprudence to leave that day, is the Lord-Lieutenant’s
+official residence. It has not the picturesque
+majesty of the castles of Edinburgh or Stirling.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>[15]</span>
+Instead of rising proudly on some cloud-ascending
+rock and lording over the town, it seems to hide “its
+diminished head” under a little hillock in the central
+quarters. You must literally stumble over its walls
+to become aware of their existence; and you understand
+then why the name of <i>Dublin Castle</i> is for
+the Irish synonymous with despotism and oppression.</p>
+
+<p>This is no Government office of the ordinary type,
+the dwelling of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland is a
+regular stronghold, encircled with ramparts, bristling
+with towers, shut up with portcullis, draw-bridge and
+iron bars. In the inner Castle yard are situated the
+apartments of the pro-consul, the lodgings of his
+dependants of all degrees, the offices where decrees
+are engrossed, the pigeon-holes where they are heaped,
+all forming a sort of separate city entrenched within
+its fortifications.</p>
+
+<p>A very gem is the Royal Chapel, with its marvellous
+oak wainscoting, which twenty generations of carvers
+have concurred to elaborate. The reception-rooms,
+the hall of the Order of St. Patrick, where <i>drawing-rooms</i>
+are held, form the kernel of the fortress.</p>
+
+<p>The barracks of the English soldiers and of those
+giant constables whom you see about the town are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>[16]</span>
+also fortified with walls, and form a line of detached
+forts round the central stronghold.</p>
+
+<p>England is encamped at Dublin, with loaded guns
+and levelled rifles, even as she is encamped at
+Gibraltar, in Egypt, and in India.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>[17]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.<br>
+<span class="smaller">DUBLIN LIFE.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>As there is little aristocracy in Dublin there are few
+lordly dwellings besides the Vice-regal castle. This
+is very striking in this country of lords and serfs.
+The masters of the land, mostly of English origin,
+do not care at all to live in the capital of Ireland;
+all the time that they do not spend on their property
+they prefer to beguile away in London, Paris, Naples
+or elsewhere. Few of their tradesmen are Irish;
+and the greatest part of the rents they raise on their
+lands merely accumulate in the banks of Dublin
+to be afterwards spent on the foreign markets.
+Thence this consequence, which explains many
+things:—The clearest of the nett product of the
+country’s one industry—agricultural industry,—is
+poured outside it every year, without having circulated
+in Ireland, without having strengthened the local
+commerce or even invigorated agriculture itself, without
+having contributed to the well-being of a single<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>[18]</span>
+Irishman. Let us set down this nett product, the
+Irish aggregate rental, at its lowest estimate,
+£8,000,000 per annum, a sum much inferior to
+the nominal one, and admit that one-half of it is
+sent abroad to absentee landlords. There we have
+£4,000,000 leaving the island every year without
+conferring the slightest benefit to any one of its
+inhabitants. In ten years’ time that represents
+40 millions sterling; in fifty years, 200 millions
+sterling, or five milliards francs, that Ireland has, so
+to speak, thrown into the sea, for that is to her the
+precise equivalent of such a continuous deperdition
+of capital.... And this has lasted for three
+centuries!...<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> What country would not be worn
+threadbare by such usage? What nation could resist
+it? Which individual, submitting to such periodical
+blood-lettings, would not succumb to anæmia?</p>
+
+<p>This anæmia betrays itself, even in Dublin, by many
+a symptom. For example, it is not long before one
+discovers that the finest shops, in the seven or eight
+principal streets, are a mere empty pretence; great
+windows displaying all the wares possessed by the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>[19]</span>
+merchant and beyond which the stock is <i>nil</i>. Money
+is so scarce that if you want to exchange a five
+pound note, in nine cases out of ten you do not get
+your right amount of change in specie. They give
+you back a quantity of small Irish banknotes, plus
+the change in half-crowns and shillings, and that not
+without having caused you to wait a long time while
+the important transaction was entered in and brought
+to a termination, and then only by the united energies
+of half the neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p>There is not in all the city one tolerable <i>restaurant</i>
+or <i>café</i> where a stranger can read the papers or obtain
+a decent beefsteak. The two or three pretentious
+taverns that aspire to fulfil that purpose are horrible
+dens, where, without the civilized accompaniment of
+napkins, they give you slices of cow, tough as leather,
+which are charged for at Bignon’s prices.</p>
+
+<p>Necessity compels you to fall back on the hotels,
+where they pitilessly give you the same fare night
+after night,—salmon and roast beef. The first day
+this can be borne, for the Shannon salmon deserves
+its reputation; the second day one begins to find it
+indigestible; the third, one would like to see all the
+salmon of Ireland choking the head waiter. The
+fourth, one takes the train rather than remain any
+longer exposed to this implacable fare.... Vain<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>[20]</span>
+hope! it pursues you everywhere: on the shores of
+Kingstown or those of Blackrock, in the pretty town
+of Bray, or at the furthermost end of Wicklow’s lakes.
+It is impossible to travel in Ireland without taking a
+dislike to salmon that will last the term of your
+natural life.</p>
+
+<p>And yet the fresh herrings of the Bay of Dublin
+are eating fit for the gods, and the good wives sell
+them in the streets at three a penny. Do not
+hope to taste them, however, unless you do your own
+marketing, and insist, with conditional threats, upon
+having your herrings brought up for breakfast. You
+will have a fight to sustain; you will run the risk
+of appearing in the eyes of the waiter as a man of no
+breeding, one who does not shrink from exhibiting
+his morbid tastes to the public view. But your pains
+and your humiliations will be rewarded by such
+a dish as is not often to be met with in this vale
+of tears and bad cooking.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Dublin possesses three theatres, not including the
+future Opera-House, for which a site has already
+been chosen. The Gaiety, the most elegant of the
+three, gives musical burlesques that are rather entertaining,
+though they come straight from London.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>[21]</span>
+But they are acted by Irishmen and Irishwomen, with
+all the dash, the brilliancy, the wit of the Celt. The
+comic actor of the company neglects nothing to
+amuse his audience; extravagant costumes, insane
+grimaces, jigs danced in brogues, impromptu verses on
+the events of the day,—he has any number of tricks
+at his command. That gentleman would score a
+sure success at the <i>Concert des Ambassadeurs</i>, with
+the ditty that actually delights the hearts of the
+Dublin public—“<i>That’s all</i>;” it is about as stupid
+as the general literature of the Champs Elysées.
+The accomplished and fascinating <i>corps de ballet</i>
+exhibit tights of such indiscretion as the Lord Chamberlain
+would assuredly not tolerate in London. Is
+it that his jurisdiction does not extend to the sister
+isle; or does the thing which would imperil the virtue
+of club-loungers in Pall Mall appear to him without
+danger for those of Kildare Street? The problem
+would be worth studying. However that be, a
+boxfull of young officers in H. B. M.’s service seem
+greatly exhilarated by the display of ankles of
+the ladies, unless it be by the port wine of the
+mess.</p>
+
+<p>These officers, in plain clothes as they are always
+when out of duty, are nevertheless easy to recognise
+and seem about the only <i>swells</i> visible in the boxes.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>[22]</span>
+The rest of the audience manifestly belong to the
+commercial and working classes.</p>
+
+<p>For it is a fact that there is in Dublin no more
+upper middle class than there is aristocracy. The
+upper middle class seem not to exist, or to be only
+represented by tradespeople, the liberal professions,
+or the students. But these young men being, after
+the excellent English custom, lodged at the University,
+do not count in the pleasure-seeking public.
+In other words, they spend the evening in their
+rooms drinking toddy, instead of spending it, as with
+us, drinking small-beer in <i>brasseries</i>.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The University of Dublin, or rather, to speak more
+exactly, Trinity College, rises opposite Grattan’s
+Parliament, in the very heart of the town. It
+is an agglomeration of buildings of sufficiently
+good style, separated by spacious courts, and surrounded
+by about thirty acres of ground planted
+with ancient trees. Technical museums, lecture-rooms,
+refectories, rooms for the Fellows and the
+pupils are all to be found there. There is a Section
+of Theology, one for Letters and Science, a Musical
+Section, a School of Medicine, a Law School, an
+Engineering School. Students and Masters all wear,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>[23]</span>
+as in Oxford or Cambridge, the stuff gown and the
+kind of black <i>Schapska</i>, which is the University head-covering
+throughout the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>Thinking of this, why is it we see so many Eastern
+head-dresses in the school of the west? With us
+the cap of the professors is the same that Russian
+popes wear. The Anglo-Saxons take theirs from
+Polish Lancers. That is an anomaly in the history
+of dress which ought to attract the meditations of
+academies.</p>
+
+<p>Another anomaly, peculiar to Trinity College, is
+that the porters (most polite and benevolent of men)
+are provided with black velvet jockey caps, like the
+Yeomen of the Queen. They take the visitors through
+the museums of the place, and show them the plaster
+cast taken from the dead face of Swift, the harp of
+Brian Boru, and other relics of a more or less authentic
+character. The Dining Hall is ornamented with
+full-length portraits of the local celebrities. The
+library, one of the finest in the world, is proud of
+possessing, among many other riches, the manuscript
+(in the Erse tongue), of the “Seven times fifty
+Stories,” which the bards of the Second Order of
+Druids used to recite, on ancient feast days, before the
+assembled kings and chieftains. Those venerable tales
+are subdivided into Destructions, Massacres, Battles,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>[24]</span>
+Invasions, Sieges, Pillages, Raids of Cattle, Rapes of
+Women, Loves, Marriages, Exiles, Navigations,
+Marches, Voyages, Grottoes, Visions, Pomps, and
+Tragedies. This shows that “documentary literature”
+was not invented yesterday: all the primitive life of
+Celtic Ireland is told there.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The undergraduates at Trinity College do not
+seem, as a rule, like those of Oxford and Cambridge,
+to belong to the privileged or unoccupied classes.
+They are embryo doctors, professors, or engineers,
+who work with all their might to gain one of the
+numerous scholarships given by competition at the
+University. These competitions evidently excite an
+ardent emulation. I chanced to pass before the
+Examination Hall at the moment when the Rector at
+the top of the steps proclaimed the name of the candidate
+who had just won the Fellowship. Five hundred
+students at least, grouped at the gate, had been
+waiting for an hour to hear it, and saluted it with frantic
+cheers.</p>
+
+<p>The Fellowship gives a right to board and lodging
+for seven years, with a stipend of some £400. It is a
+kind of prebend that implies few duties and leaves
+the titulary free to give himself up to his favourite<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>[25]</span>
+studies. It has been the fashion in a certain set in
+France to go into ecstasies over this institution, and
+to regret that it should not have entered our own
+customs. The life of a Fellow at Oxford, Cambridge,
+or Dublin, was fondly represented to us as an ideal
+existence, freed from material cares, devoted exclusively
+to the culture of the mind. If we look at things
+more closely, we shall see that this opinion is wide of
+the mark. We find some of the prebendaries poorly
+lodged enough, submitted, by the exigencies of life
+in a community, to many a puerile rule, imprisoned
+within the narrow circle of scholastic ideas, and in too
+many cases buried up to the eyes in the sands of
+routine, if not in sloth, or drunkenness.</p>
+
+<p>After all, for what strong, manly work is the world
+indebted to these much-praised Fellows?... The
+true effort of science or letters was never brought forth
+in these abbeys of Thelema of pedantry. Indeed it is
+much sooner born of individual struggle and large
+contact with the outside world. Even in the English
+Universities there is now a marked tendency to
+demand from the Fellow a work of positive utility in
+exchange for his salary. He must take his part in
+educating the pupils, help in the examinations, and in
+elaborating programmes; his life is much the same
+as that of our <i>Agrégés de Facultés</i>, with a something<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>[26]</span>
+in it of lesser freedom and a semi-priestly character,
+if he be a bachelor. But he is free to marry now, and
+has been for a few years, on condition that he lives
+outside the college buildings.</p>
+
+<p>The students, fourteen hundred in number, live
+two by two, in rooms of extreme simplicity, which
+they are at liberty to decorate according to their taste
+or means, with carpets, prints, and flowers. The
+names of the occupants are written over each door.
+The rooms generally include a small ante-chamber
+and a closet with glass doors. Women of venerable
+age and extraordinary ugliness are charged with the
+care of those young Cenobites’ abode.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Trinity College was founded by Queen Elizabeth
+when she undertook the task of Anglicizing Ireland,
+and it has remained to our own day one of the
+strongholds of the conquering race. It is only since
+the year 1873 that the chairs and offices of this
+University have been accessible to Roman Catholics.
+Up to that time they were exclusively reserved for
+Anglicans, and Mr. Matthew Arnold would exclaim
+with good reason that such a state of things was the
+most scandalous in Europe. In France, he said,
+Protestant masters occupied all the chairs to which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>[27]</span>
+their merits entitled them; in Germany, Catholic
+professors taught history or philosophy at Bonn and
+elsewhere; while, in Catholic Ireland, the one University
+the country possessed remained closed during two
+centuries to all students that were not of the Protestant
+persuasion, and for three-quarters of the
+present century a Catholic could neither attain to a
+chair or to any degree of influence in it.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the year 1845 that the movement began
+which was to triumph definitely in 1873, under the
+initiative of Mr. Gladstone. A certain Mr. Denis
+Caulfield Heron went up in that year for the competition
+for a fellowship, and took the first place. When
+he was, according to custom, invited to sign the Thirty-Nine
+Articles and to communicate in the University
+chapel, he opposed an absolute refusal, declaring himself
+to be a Roman Catholic; whereupon he was disqualified
+by the University Council. Mr. Heron
+exposed this judgment before the public, and succeeded
+in winning opinion to his side. But it proved an
+impossibility to make the Council recall their decision.
+The only thing Mr. Heron obtained, after
+a protracted struggle, was the creation of a new
+class of fellowships, accessible to Roman Catholics.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, in 1873 the College authorities at last
+made up their minds to render the offices and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>[28]</span>
+emoluments of the University independent of any
+sectarian denomination; nevertheless the Anglican
+spirit remains alive within its precincts, and manifests
+itself in the clearest manner upon occasions.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Intellectual life is alive in Dublin, as many a
+learned or literary society, a flourishing review, four
+great daily and several weekly papers, can testify.
+The daily papers especially are edited with a spirit
+and humour truly characteristic. It is a well known
+fact that the Sister Isle contributes a third at least
+to the recruiting of the Anglo-Saxon press, not only in
+Great Britain, but in the United States, in Australia,
+and in the whole of the English speaking world. The
+Irishman a writer or a soldier born, as the Englishman
+is a born shopkeeper. The consequence is that
+the great papers in Dublin, the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i>, the
+<i>Irish Times</i>, <i>United Ireland</i>, the <i>Express</i>, the <i>Evening
+Telegraph</i>, are admirably edited each in its own
+line.</p>
+
+<p>But the same thing can hardly be said of the illustrated
+and coloured sheets that accompany the weeklies,
+and which are placarded everywhere. Those
+prints, bearing upon the political topics of the day, may
+possess the merit of teaching the crowd the lesson<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>[29]</span>
+to be drawn from events; but they are lamentably
+inefficient from an artistic point of view.</p>
+
+<p>Ireland, decidedly, shines no more than does our
+own Brittany in the plastic arts. Her best painter
+has been Maclise, and he is by no means a great
+master. However, her coloured prints delight the
+hearts of the good people of Dublin. An old newspaper-seller,
+smoking her pipe at the corner of
+Leinster Street, holds her sides for very laughter as
+she contemplates the cartoon given this day by the
+<i>Weekly News</i>; it represents a mob of Orangemen
+in the act of pelting the Queen’s police with stones at
+Belfast. Underneath run the words: “<i>Behold loyal
+Ulster!</i>”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The quays of the Liffey are lined with book-shops
+like those of the Seine in Paris, to which they present
+a certain likeness. Following the quays from the
+west, one passes the building where sit the four
+Supreme Courts—Chancery, Exchequer, Queen’s
+Bench, and Common Pleas. The statues of Faith,
+Justice, Wisdom, and Piety rise under its Corinthian
+peristyle, which caused the typical Irish peasant, the
+Paddy of legend, to exclaim:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>[30]</span></p>
+
+<p>“They did well to place them outside, for no one
+will ever meet them inside!”</p>
+
+<p>The judges, chosen by the Queen’s government,
+bear the title of <i>Chief Justice</i> or <i>Baron</i>. There are
+four at each tribunal, each provided with a salary
+ranging from three to eight thousand pounds a year.
+They sit in groups of three, bewigged and clad in
+violet gowns, with peach-coloured facings, at the
+extremity of a recess screened by red curtains. Before
+them sit the barristers and clerks in black gowns and
+horsehair wigs. The writs and briefs of procedure,
+written out upon awe-inspiring sheets of foolscap
+paper, are piled up within capacious green bags, such
+as are only seen with us at the Comédie Française
+when they play <i>Les Plaideurs</i>. The judges appear to
+be a prey to overwhelming <i>ennui</i>, so do the barristers.
+The public, not being paid as highly as they
+are for remaining in this sleepy atmosphere, keep
+constantly going in and out. Now and then, however,
+Irish wit must have its due: some one delivers
+himself of a spicy remark; everyone wakes up a bit
+to laugh, after which business quietly resumes its dull
+course.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>[31]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE POOR OF DUBLIN.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Private houses are built in Dublin on the general
+type adopted throughout the British Isles: a basement
+opening on the railed area which runs along
+the pavement, a ground floor, a first floor, sometimes
+a second one. Above the front door a pane of glass
+lighted with gas. It is the custom of the country to
+place there one’s artistic treasures,—a china vase, a
+bust, or a small plaster horse. The small horse especially
+is a great favourite. You see it in a thousand
+copies which all came out of the same cast. In the
+suburbs you notice pretty often a window decorated
+with plants that are seen behind the glass panes,—Breton
+fashion,—and, striking circumstance, in Ireland
+also it is the uninteresting geranium which is the
+favourite flower of the poor. Inside the house the
+accommodation is nearly the same as in England. It
+is well known that nothing is more like an English
+house than another English house. But here, to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>[32]</span>
+classical furniture, horse-hair and mahogany armchairs,
+and oil-cloth floor, is added a mural decoration
+of coloured prints and Roman Catholic chromolithographs,
+Saint Patrick, the Pope Leo XIII., the
+“Good Shepherd giving His life for the sheep,” surrounded
+by dried branches of holy palm, rosaries and
+scapularies. An ornament greatly appreciated on the
+chimney-piece is a glass vessel full of miraculous water
+in which swims a reduction of the tools of the Passion,
+the cross, the ladder, the hammer, the nails, and the
+crown of thorns.</p>
+
+<p>Eighty-seven per cent. of the Dublin population
+belong to the Roman Catholic religion. The proportion
+is higher in some other Irish counties: in
+Connaught it rises to ninety-five per cent.; nowhere,
+even in Protestant Ulster, does it descend lower than
+forty-five per cent.</p>
+
+<p>And those Catholics are not so only in name. The
+greater number follow the services of the Church,
+observe all the rites, maintain a direct and constant
+intercourse with the priests. The sincerity of
+their faith is particularly striking, and is not to be
+found in the same degree even in Italy or in Spain.
+For with them the Roman faith is narrowly bound
+with traditions most dear to their race; it remains
+one of the external forms of protestation against the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>[33]</span>
+conquest, and has been, till quite lately, a stigma of
+political incapacity. To the glamour of the traditional
+religion is added the poetry of persecution and
+the rancour of the vanquished. This religion is the
+one that is not professed by the hated Englishman:
+what a reason to love it above all the others! We
+must remember that in Dublin, amidst a population
+nine-tenths of which are devout Catholics, and where
+the remaining tenth is alone Protestant (Episcopalian’
+Presbyterian, Methodist, &amp;c.), the cathedral is in the
+hands of the Anglican minority with all the ancient
+basilics, whilst the worship of the majority is sheltered
+in modern and vulgar buildings. The conquering race
+has invaded Saint Patrick’s Baptistery as well as the
+Royal Castle, and the Senate of the University. A
+threefold reason for rancour to these who were thus
+deprived of the three sanctuaries of faith, public power,
+and learning.</p>
+
+<p>Such spoliations are those which a vanquished race
+cannot forget, because they bring constantly their
+sore under their eyes. Now the Irish have the artless
+vanity of the chivalrous races, and the wounds
+inflicted to their self-love are perhaps more cruel than
+the others.</p>
+
+<p>This vanity is frequently exhibited in a certain
+taste for show, and in a slight touch of the mountebank.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>[34]</span>
+The least apothecary’s shop in Dublin goes
+by the pompous name of <i>Medical Hall</i>; the smallest
+free school is an academy; and it is well known that
+every single Irishman is descended straight from the
+“ould kings of Oireland.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>There is a great deal of misery in Dublin; 6,036 of
+her inhabitants are inmates of the workhouse; 4,281
+are the recipients of outdoor relief; 19,332 are without
+a known trade or profession and without means of
+living. It makes about 30,000 paupers in a town of
+250,000 inhabitants. Besides those officially recognised
+paupers, how many others whose distress is no
+less terrible for not being classed!</p>
+
+<p>I had the first sight of that misery on the quay of
+the Liffey. It was a dishevelled woman walking as in
+a trance, her eyes settled, immoveable. Barefooted,
+dressed in a yellowish tattered shawl which hardly
+covered her withered breast, and in a horrible nondescript
+silk petticoat once black, through which her
+thighs appeared. She was pale and silent, and
+she seemed to be lost in some unutterable grief.
+I spoke to her—she did not answer. I put a
+piece of money in her hand, she took it without<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>[35]</span>
+a word, without even looking at it. She went her
+way.</p>
+
+<p>I thought I had seen the ghost of the <i>Shan Van
+Vocht</i>, “The Poor Old Woman,” as the Irish sorrowfully
+call their country. She went with long
+strides towards the police court—a new building,
+not far from Richmond Bridge. I went in after
+her.</p>
+
+<p>In the courtyard, groups of beings with human faces
+were crouching on the ground—so black, so dirty, so
+tattered were they, that they made me think of the
+Australian aborigines and Fuegian savages, of the
+most unenlightened and degraded tribes of the globe.
+Most of them bore outwardly the semblance of women.
+The males were standing with their backs against the
+wall in that listless attitude of the “unemployed” in
+Dublin.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>An ill-kept staircase leads to the audience room.
+The walls are whitewashed, the ceiling a skylight,
+white wooden benches round the room.</p>
+
+<p>In the chair, the police judge; he is a yellow-haired
+man with a benevolent countenance, dressed in a
+frock coat. Clerks and counsel are alike gownless
+and wigless; everything is conducted in a homely<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>[36]</span>
+manner. The accused follow each other in single file.
+The witness (nearly always a constable) states what
+he has seen. The judge asks the delinquent if he has
+anything to say in his defence, and after a quick
+colloquy he pronounces his sentence. Generally it is a
+fine of two or three shillings or a day’s imprisonment
+for each unpaid shilling.</p>
+
+<p>One of the prisoners has just been condemned to
+pay a fine of half a crown for obvious drunkenness;
+he does not possess a farthing, but seems to be endowed
+with a humorous turn of mind.</p>
+
+<p>“Your honour could as well have said half a
+sovereign! It would have looked more respectable,
+and the result would have been the same,” he says,
+turning his pockets inside out. A guffaw of laughter
+joined in by the judge himself, who does not think it
+his duty to be offended by the remark; after which
+he calls out for number two.</p>
+
+<p>Number two is a boy fifteen or sixteen years old;
+he has a sweet intelligent countenance in spite of the
+indescribable rags that cover his body. Tears stand
+in his eyes and his lips are tremulous. Nothing in
+him of the habitual offender. The accusation that he
+is lying under seems to be: “Theft of a pork-chop in
+an open shop-window.” A single witness is called, a
+little maid five years old; so small that her head does<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>[37]</span>
+not even reach the top of the witness-box. They bring
+her a footstool, on which she climbs to give her
+evidence.</p>
+
+<p>She has seen the boy, she says, near the shop
+window, looking wistfully for a long time on the
+chops and finally pocketing one. However, her account
+is not very clear. All those people make her
+shy, and she does not speak out loud, so the clerk
+takes the trouble to read over to her the evidence she
+has just given. Does she know how to write? Can
+she sign her name? Yes. They place a pen in her
+fingers, and with infinite trouble, bending her small
+fair head, shooting out her lips, she writes on the legal
+parchment with her tiny trembling hand her name
+and surname: <i>Maggie Flanagan</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“Well! prisoner, what have you to say?”</p>
+
+<p>The unfortunate boy stammers that he was hungry,
+that there was not a penny in the house, and that he
+had no work.</p>
+
+<p>“What is your father’s trade?”</p>
+
+<p>“He is gone to Australia, your honour. Mother
+has been left with four children. I am the eldest.
+We had eaten nothing for two days.”</p>
+
+<p>One feels he is speaking the truth. Every heart is
+moved.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a shrill voice bursts out from the lower<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>[38]</span>
+end of the room, wailing: “Oh, your honour, don’t
+send him to jail!...”</p>
+
+<p>It is the woman I saw on the quay; the one that I
+followed to that Purgatory. The mother of the
+culprit very likely.</p>
+
+<p>“I am obliged to remand you for a week in order
+to examine the circumstances of the case,” the judge
+says, in a manner that shows he is anxious to arrange
+the affair with kindness.</p>
+
+<p>The prisoner goes out of the dock following the
+warder, and disappears through a small side door.</p>
+
+<p>The mother has gone away without waiting, and I
+hurry to follow her. But she walks so fast that I
+can hardly keep pace with her.</p>
+
+<p>She passes again on the bridge, walks along the
+quay, plunges in a by-street, goes up towards the
+south-western quarters of Dublin, called the <i>liberties</i>
+of the town. Suddenly I lose sight of her at the
+corner of a narrow lane, and after winding round and
+round I am obliged to renounce coming up with her.
+There is a way of course to come to the relief of
+those poor creatures, by sending one’s subscription to
+the judge according to the British fashion. But I
+wanted to see them at home in their den, wallowing
+in their squalor, to see whether men or destiny bear
+the responsibility for such dark distress.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>[39]</span></p>
+
+<p>Alas! examples are not wanting, and I have only
+to cross the first door that opens before me. Along
+these lanes yawn dark alleys from which hundreds of
+half-naked children are swarming out. All ages are
+represented; they are in the most fantastical and
+unexpected attire. One has got on breeches fastened
+under the shoulders by a piece of cord in lieu of
+braces; the same is full of holes large enough for his
+head to go through. Another has no shirt, and trails
+in the gutter the jagged skirt of a coat slashed like a
+doublet, and with only one sleeve left. They are all
+of them so extravagantly slovenly that it seems to be
+a competition for rags.</p>
+
+<p>A baby two or three years old strikes me particularly.
+It is absolutely naked, and so very, very dirty
+that dirt has formed a sort of bronzed skin over his
+little body, and he is like a juvenile nigger. As he
+came into the world so he has remained. Neither
+soap nor water ever moistened his skin. He has not
+even undergone the washing that the mother-cat
+applies so industriously with her tongue on her newborn
+kittens.</p>
+
+<p>Yet his mother loves him, squalid and black
+as he is. Just now a cart passed, and the baby
+was running under the wheels; the mother sprang
+out of her lair with the roar of a tigress, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>[40]</span>
+pounced upon her child, which she jealously carried
+away.</p>
+
+<p>Never in London did I hear such accents. Far
+from me to hint that English mothers do not love
+their babies: but they love them after their own
+fashion, without showers of kisses or demonstrative
+ways.</p>
+
+<p>And this is the distinctive feature which divides the
+Irish pariahs from those of the London East-End.
+They love each other, and they know how to put that
+love into words. Their distress, perhaps deeper than
+English poverty, bears not the same hard, selfish
+character—tenderness and love are not unknown
+to them. They try to help and comfort one another
+in their misery. Thackeray has remarked it long
+ago: let an Irishman be as poor as you like; he will
+always contrive to find another Irishman poorer still,
+whom he will serve and oblige, and make the partaker
+of his good or bad luck. And it is absolutely true.
+That fraternal instinct, so unknown to the Anglo-Saxon,
+nay, so contrary to his nature, shows itself
+here at every step.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>But the misery is none the less terrible here;
+indeed, there are no adequate words in the dictionary<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>[41]</span>
+to express it. No description can give an idea of
+those nameless dens, sordid, dilapidated stairs, miserable
+pieces of furniture, nondescript utensils invariably
+diverted from their original destination. And in that
+lamentable frame, those swarming families squatting
+in their filth; the starved look of the mothers under
+the tattered shawl that ever covers their heads, the
+hungry little faces of their whelps....</p>
+
+<p>A sickening smell, recalling that of ill-ventilated
+hospitals, comes out of those lairs and suffocating you,
+almost throws you back. But it is too late. You
+have been caught sight of. From all sides visions of
+horror are emerging to light, spectres are starting up;
+old hags that would have surprised Shakespeare himself,
+swarm round you, holding out their hand for a
+<i>copper</i>. The younger women don’t generally come to
+the front, not that their wants be less, but they know
+that coppers are not inexhaustible, and that the old
+ones must have the precedence. So they remain
+sadly in the background, and then, when you have
+emptied your pockets, there is a roar of benedictions
+fit to rend one’s heart with shame. They are so fearfully
+sincere! And how many times do we not throw
+to the winds of our caprice what would be sufficient
+to quench at least for one moment, the thirst which is
+raging in that hell! You fly from that den of horror,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>[42]</span>
+wondering whether the most horrible deserts would
+not be more merciful to those destitute creatures than
+the <i>liberties</i> of the city of Dublin.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>In your flight you fatally fall upon Nicholas Street,
+where all those dark alleys open. This is the way to
+the cathedral, and the great commercial artery of
+this side of the town. If any doubt remained in you
+after the insight you had of the houses of the poor in
+Dublin, about the way they live, that street alone
+would give you sufficient information.</p>
+
+<p>From end to end it is lined with a row of disgusting
+shops or stalls, where the refuse of the new
+and the ancient world seems to have come for an
+exhibition. Imagine the most hideous, ragged, repulsive
+rubbish in the dust-bins of two capitals,
+and you will get an idea of that shop-window display;
+rank bacon, rotten fish, festering bones, potatoes
+in full germination, wormy fruit, dusty crusts, sheep’s
+hearts, sausages which remind you of the Siege of
+Paris, and perhaps come from it; all that running in
+garlands or festoons in front of the stalls, or made
+into indescribable heaps, is doled out to the customers
+in diminutive half-pence morsels. At every turning
+of the street a public-house with its dim glass and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>[43]</span>
+sticky glutinous door. Now and then a pawnbroker
+with the three symbolic brass balls, and every twenty
+yards a rag and bone shop.</p>
+
+<p>The rag and bone trade is extremely active in
+Dublin, which numbers no less than 400 shops of that
+description, according to statistics. And that is not
+too many for a population which from times immemorial
+never wore a garment that was not second-hand.
+To a man Ireland dresses on the <i>reach-me-down</i>
+system, and wears out the cast-off garments
+which have passed on the backs of ten or twelve successive
+owners. Battered hats, dilapidated gowns,
+threadbare coats arrive here by shiploads. When the
+whole world has had enough of them, when the Papoo
+savages and Guinea niggers have discarded their
+finery, and declared it to be no longer serviceable,
+there are still amateurs to be found for it in Dublin.
+Hence the most extraordinary variety, and the wildest
+incoherence of costume. Knee-breeches, tail coats,
+white gowns, cocked hats,—Paddy and his spouse
+are ready for anything. So destitute are they
+of personal property, that they do not even possess
+an outline of their own. Their normal get-up resembles
+a travesty, and their distress a carnival.</p>
+
+<p>The main point for them is to have a garment of
+any description to put on, since it is a thing understood<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>[44]</span>
+that one cannot go about naked; and it does
+not very much matter after all what is the state of
+that garment, as it is so soon to leave their backs to
+go to the pawnbroker’s. This is a prominent figure
+in the daily drama of their wretched existence, the
+regulator of their humble exchequer through the
+coming and going of the necessaries of life, which
+they are obliged to part with periodically.</p>
+
+<p>“You see that pair of hob-nailed shoes?” one of
+them tells me, “For the last six months it has come
+here every Monday regularly and gone every Saturday.
+The possessor uses them only on Sundays;
+on week days he prefers enjoying his capital....”</p>
+
+<p>His capital!—one shilling and sixpence, for which
+he has to pay an interest of one penny a week; <i>i.e.</i>,
+three hundred per cent. a year!</p>
+
+<p>Usury under all its forms blooms spontaneously
+on that dung-hill. By the side of the pawnbroker a
+<i>money office</i> is almost always to be seen. It is an
+English institution, natural in a nation which is
+bursting with money, and consequently finds it difficult
+to make it render 3 or 4 per cent. What is
+England if not a colossal bank, which advances
+money upon any three given signatures as a security,
+if they come from people with a settled dwelling and
+a regular profession? Well, who would believe it?<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>[45]</span>
+Paddy himself is admitted to partake of the onerous
+benefits of that credit, provided he work ever so little
+and be not too hopelessly worn out. For these
+small banking houses form a union and let each
+other know the state of their accounts. Upon the
+poor man’s signature accompanied by those of two
+of his fellows, five and seven pounds sterling will be
+lent to him, to be reimbursed by weekly instalments.
+But that resource, which is a powerful help for the
+strong energetic man, is almost invariably a cause of
+distress and ruin to the weak. The borrowed money
+ebbs out in worthless expenditure, in the buying of
+some articles of apparel or furniture, which soon
+takes the road to the pawnbroker’s; and the debt
+alone remains weighing with all its weight on poor
+Paddy. It is the last straw on the camel’s back, and
+he ends by falling down irremediably under it.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>[46]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE EMERALD ISLE.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Nothing can be easier than to go from one end to
+the other of Ireland. Though her network of railways
+is not yet complete, great arteries radiate from
+Dublin in all directions and allow the island to be
+traversed from end to end, whether southward, westward,
+or northward, in less than seven or eight hours.
+The journey from south to north, following the great
+axis, is longer and more complicated, for it is necessary
+to change lines several times. The circular
+journey along the coasts is facilitated by excellent
+services of open coaches, that go through the regions
+not yet penetrated by railways. Lastly, one can, by
+following the Shannon, enter by steamboat almost
+to the very heart of the country.</p>
+
+<p>When one has gone through those various excursions,
+completed by riding and walking tours, and seen
+the island under its various aspects, one perceives that
+it presents in a general manner the appearance of a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>[47]</span>
+cup, with brims rising towards the sea; in other
+words, it consists in a vast central plain, protected on
+all its circumference by groups of hills and mountains,
+preventing the inroad of the ocean. Those
+mountains are in no part very high; the finest, those
+of Kerry, do not rise above 1800 feet. But their
+very position on the brink of the Atlantic, the erosions
+undermining their base, the deep bays they delineate,
+the innumerable lakes hidden away in their bosoms,
+lend them a majesty far above their altitude. Bland
+and smiling in Wicklow, they are in Kerry of an
+unequalled serenity, while in Connemara they preserve
+unbroken the rude chaos of primeval cataclysms,
+and display on the north of Antrim’s table-land,
+towards the Giant’s Causeway, the most
+stupendous basaltic formations.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the normal, the truest aspect of Ireland, is
+represented by the central plain—a large, unbroken
+surface of green undulating waves, ever bathed in a
+damp and fresh atmosphere, shut in on the horizon
+by dark blue mountains.</p>
+
+<p>This aspect is of infinite sweetness; no land possesses
+it in a similar degree. It takes possession of
+you, it penetrates you like a caress and a harmony.
+One understands, when submitted to that entirely
+physical influence, the passionate tenderness that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>[48]</span>
+Irishmen feel for their country, and that is best illustrated
+by Moore’s poetry. The sky seems to have
+endeavoured to find the true chord in response to the
+earth, in order to give to all things those deliciously
+blended tones. The stars are nearly always seen
+through a light haze, and the sun itself shines but
+through a veil of vapours, into which it seems eager
+to disappear again. The shadows are not hard and
+well defined; they melt into each other by insensible
+gradations of tint. All is green, even the stones,
+clothed in moss; the walls, covered with ivy; the
+waters, hidden under a mantle of reeds and water-lilies.
+In other climes the fields, after a spring
+shower, take unto themselves the bravery that here is
+seen in all seasons. In the full heat of July the corn,
+the barley, the oats still keep their April dress. Do
+they ever ripen? They say they do, towards the end
+of October; but surely they never can get yellow.
+Yellow is not an Irish colour, nor is white. Ireland is
+indeed green Erin, the Emerald Isle. Never was
+name more truly given.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>One could consider Ireland as a prodigious grass
+plot of some twenty million acres, constantly watered
+by rain. Water is everywhere: in the clouds<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>[49]</span>
+that the winds of the Atlantic drive over her, and
+that the highlands of Scotland and Norway stop in
+their course; on the soil, where all hollows, great or
+small, become lakes; under the ground even, where
+the roots of vegetables, saturated and swollen like
+sponges, slowly change into peat. Ireland is the most
+liberally watered country in Europe, and yet, thanks
+to the constancy of the winds over her, one can
+scarcely say it is a damp country. The fall of water
+is on an average of 926 millimetres in a year—a little
+over three feet. The ground, naturally of admirable
+fruitfulness, is still further favoured by the mildness
+and equableness of the climate on the shores.</p>
+
+<p>The flora almost recalls that of the Mediterranean
+coasts. The fauna presents the remarkable peculiarity
+of not possessing a single dangerous or even repulsive
+species—not one toad, not one reptile, except the most
+innocent among them all, the “friend of man,” the
+lizard. Legends say that St. Patrick, the Christian
+apostle of the isle, coming from Brittany in the 6th
+century, threw all the serpents into the sea, and all
+the toads after them; indeed, he is habitually represented
+in popular imagery as engaged in performing
+that miracle.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>[50]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>An island possessing no backbone, and presenting
+generally the appearance of a cup, cannot have great
+rivers. In fact, almost all the rivers of Ireland, born
+within her girdle of mountains, soon lose themselves
+in the sea, forming at their mouth an estuary that
+takes the name of <i>Lough</i>, as do the lakes proper.
+One only creates an exception by the length of its
+course and the volume of its waters—the Shannon,
+rising in the central table-land, imprisoned, so to
+speak, at the bottom of the circular well, and whose
+course, impeded above Limerick by a barrier of rocks,
+form fine rapids, under which the waters flow in a
+majestic stream. With the tide, vessels of the heaviest
+tonnage can go up the river to Foynes.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Indeed, the country lacks no harbours on those
+deeply indented shores. North, west, east, and south,
+Ireland counts no less than fourteen natural harbours,
+large enough to shelter whole fleets.</p>
+
+<p>But this gift, like all the others that Fate has showered
+on her, seems to have turned against her by bringing
+the nations of prey within those bays. Thrown as an
+outwork of Europe in the middle of the ocean, she
+seemed to be opening her arms to the Phœnicians, to
+the Scandinavians; later on to the Arabs, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>[51]</span>
+Spaniards, and the English. A gust of wind was
+enough to reveal her to them; a favourable breeze to
+bring them back. To understand clearly the perils
+of such a post, and to see how much more still than
+the muzzle of Brittany, Ireland is Atlantic land, one
+must go to Valencia, the small islet on which come to
+shore the ends of the Transatlantic cables.</p>
+
+<p>More than in any other spot of Europe one feels at
+the farthest end of the world there. It seems as if, by
+stretching one’s arm, one would reach the United
+States. And, in fact, one is near enough as it is—five
+or six days by steam—almost within speaking
+distance with the telephone. So fast travel the
+storms from America that the telegram is hardly
+able to arrive before them. A sea-gull, borne on the
+wing of the hurricane, would cross that arm of the sea
+in a few hours. The breeze that blows in your face
+may have stirred the hair of a Brooklyn belle in the
+morning. There one feels how very small is our
+globe.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Geologically, Ireland differs much from Great
+Britain. The island appeared much earlier, and its
+structure is special. Alone, its northern part, or Ulster,
+which, from a political point of view, forms such a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52"></a>[52]</span>
+striking contrast with the rest of the island, presents
+between Donegal Bay and Dundalk Bay, mountainous
+masses, entirely analogous with those of Scotland,
+towards which they advance, and of which they
+appear originally to have formed a part. They are
+basaltic rocks, or petrified streams of lava, while
+the mountains in Kerry or Connemara are red
+sandstone and slate, lying above the carbonaceous
+strata.</p>
+
+<p>What ought, in fact, to be considered as Ireland
+proper consists, then, of the eastern province or
+Leinster, the southern or Munster, and the western or
+Connaught. Ulster is in reality, as well by the nature
+of its soil as by the race and habits of the majority of
+its inhabitants, an annex and dependency of Scotland.
+The three other provinces, on the contrary, form a
+whole, as distinct from England or Scotland by the
+constitution and aspect of the land, as it is different
+by the race, genius, the traditions and beliefs of the
+population.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The most striking thing on a first sight of the Irish
+landscape is the total absence of trees of any kind.
+They are only seen in private parks. As far as the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53"></a>[53]</span>
+eye can see the plains spread in gentle undulations,
+covered with grass and intersected with stone walls;
+no single oak, elm, or shrub ever comes to break its
+monotony. The tree has become a lordly ensign.
+Wherever one sees it one may be certain the landlord’s
+mansion is not far.</p>
+
+<p>That radical disappearance of the forests, in a
+country once covered with them, is singular. A great
+many explanations have been given of this fact,—explanations
+that went back as far as some geological
+cataclysm. Such theories are no longer acceptable
+in these days. The most likely supposition is that
+all the available timber has gradually been felled
+down for domestic uses, and that indifference, poverty,
+incessant war, incertitude as to the present or future,
+have, from the remotest times, prevented those sad
+gaps being repaired.</p>
+
+<p>On the lower land the absence of timber is
+explained of itself by the apparition of deep layers
+of turf, whose depth is sometimes from forty-five
+to sixty feet, in which whole oak trees have been
+discovered in a more or less advanced state of carbonisation.
+At a certain stage of this transformation
+the ligneous tissue has become of such flexibility that
+the Irish cut it into stripes and use it to make straps,
+fishing nets, bands of all kinds,—not to mention the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a>[54]</span>
+pious trifles, pipes, small figures carved with a knife,
+and various <i>souvenirs</i> with which they pester the
+tourist.</p>
+
+<p>The turf pits are a great source of riches for Ireland,
+and furnish the only fuel commonly used by
+the lower classes. In the country one sees everywhere
+people engaged in extracting peat, cutting it
+into cakes, erecting these cakes in pyramids to be
+allowed to dry in the sun, or transporting them from
+one place to the other. The people working at it are,
+indeed, almost the only ones visible in the fields. One
+might think that the extracting and manipulating
+of the turf were the only industry of the
+country.</p>
+
+<p>There are two kinds of turf, the red and the black,
+according to the degree of carbonisation attained by
+the layers, and the nature of the vegetable matter
+that formed them. The finest is of such intense and
+brilliant black, that it might almost be mistaken for
+coal. Those vast reservoirs of fuel, known in Ireland
+by the name of <i>bog</i>, are a constant feature of the
+landscape in the valleys of the mountainous girdle
+as in the lower parts of the plain. The total depth
+of these open carbon mines is estimated at no less
+than sixty million cubic feet; they occupy an area
+almost equal to the seventh part of the total<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55"></a>[55]</span>
+superficies of the island, and the lakes cover another
+seventh part.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>One other striking peculiarity of the scenery in
+Ireland is the scarcity of cultivated fields. One can
+count them, dotted here and there, almost always
+planted with oats, potatoes, or turnips. The statistics
+of the Agricultural Society give, in round numbers,
+for twenty millions of acres of total surface, five
+millions, or a quarter in cultivated ground; that is,
+150,000 acres only in cereals, 350,000 in turnips, one
+million and a half in potatoes, two million in artificial
+meadows. Ten million of acres are in natural meadows;
+the rest are fallow lands, bog or turf, waste
+land, roads and highways.</p>
+
+<p>Those roads and highways, as well as the bridges
+and all the public works depending upon the English
+Government, are admirably kept. It is clear that on
+that point Dublin Castle is resolved to give no handle
+to criticism. Those splendid tracks of road, laid
+across waste and desert land, even produce a curious
+effect, and one would be tempted to see an affectation
+about it, did they not, in the majority of cases, lead
+to some magnificent private property, spreading as
+far as one can see over hill and dale, always shut in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a>[56]</span>
+by stone walls eight or ten feet high, enclosing an
+area of several miles.</p>
+
+<p>As for the conveyances that are seen on these
+Appian Ways they are of two kinds; either the
+smart carriage whose cockaded coachman drives magnificent
+horses, or the diminutive cart drawn by a
+small donkey, carrying, besides the grand-dame or child
+that drives it, a sort of conical-shaped utensil held in
+its place with cords and oftener filled with water than
+with milk. One must go to Morocco or Spain to see
+donkeys in such numbers as in Ireland.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>One thing surprises in those endless pastures—it is
+to count so few grazing beasts on them. Not that
+they are altogether excluded; now and then one
+perceives on the intense green of the fields reddish
+or white spots that are cattle or sheep, the rounded
+haunch of a mare, the awkward frolics of a foal. On
+the brinks of rivers that one can almost always cross
+wading, one sometimes sees a few happy cows, their
+feet in the water, wide-eyed and munching dreamily.
+Here and there one sees geese, hens escorted by their
+chicks, pigs fraternally wallowing with children in the
+muddy ditch. But in a general way the landscape is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[57]</span>
+wanting in animated life, and as poor in domestic
+animals as in labourers.</p>
+
+<p>As a contrast game is plentiful, as is natural in a
+land that is three-quarters uncultivated, where it is
+forbidden to carry arms, and where shooting is the
+exclusive privilege of a very small minority. Hares
+and rabbits seem to enjoy their immunity to the
+utmost, and everywhere their white breeches are
+seen scudding away in the dewy grass like fireworks.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Villages are rare, and rarer still is farmhouse or
+homestead. Undulating ridges succeed to undulating
+ridges and still one sees no trace of any dwellings.
+One might think that these stone walls radiating over
+the fields had sprung there of their own accord, and
+that the hay is doomed to rot standing, after feeding
+the butterflies. Yet that cannot be—evidently some
+one must come now and then to cut this grass, make
+it into stacks and carry it away.... At last, by dint
+of stretching neck and legs you succeed in discovering
+far away on the horizon a spire that belongs to a
+big borough, a market-town rather, where those civic
+tillers of the soil dwell in houses similar to those of
+the <i>liberties</i> in Dublin.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58"></a>[58]</span></p>
+
+<p>As for the mud cabin, generally described as the
+Irish peasant’s only home, it is now a thing of the
+past. One would hardly, and after much research,
+find some specimens of it in the farthest counties, at
+the end of Kerry or Mayo.</p>
+
+<p>True to say, when found, those specimens leave
+nothing to be desired for poverty and discomfort; no
+fire-place, no windows, no furniture; nothing but a
+roof of turf supported by a few poles on mud walls.
+The very pig that formerly shared its luxuries with
+the <i>genus homo</i> and indicated a certain degree of
+relative comfort in his possessor, the pig himself has
+disappeared for ever.</p>
+
+<p>But those are exceptions, almost pre-historic cases.
+As a rule the mud cabin has been blotted out from
+the Irish soil—perhaps enlightened landlords systematically
+pursued its eradication; perhaps the
+peasants, tired of its tutelary protection, emigrated
+under other skies,—or more simply still, they took
+advantage of the last famine to die of hunger. Upon
+which came the rain, and two or three years sufficed
+to dilute the walls, render the mud house to the
+common reservoir, and wash out its very remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>The population of Ireland, it must be borne in
+mind, has been steadily decreasing for half a century.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59"></a>[59]</span>
+It was of 8,175,124 inhabitants in 1841; of 6,552,385
+in 1851; 5,798,584 in 1861; 5,412,377 in 1871; and
+5,174,836 in 1881. By all appearances it must now
+have sunk under five millions. If this fish-eating
+race was not the most prolific under the sun it would
+have been blotted out long ago from the face of this
+planet.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60"></a>[60]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE RACE.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The essential character of Irish scenery is, besides
+the green colour and the absence of trees, the frequent
+ruins that meet the eyes everywhere—one cannot go
+two steps without seeing them. Ruins of castles,
+abbeys, churches, or even humble private dwellings.
+There are quarters of large towns or boroughs, such
+as for instance the northern one in Galway, that
+might be taken at night, with their sinister looking rows
+of houses, roofless and with gaping walls, for a street
+in Herculaneum or Pompeii. When the ancient stone
+walls are those of a church or chapel, they generally
+serve as a setting for the legends of the countryside;
+there occurred all the terrifying tales of former
+days, there took place all the local miracles, and there
+still is the favourite haunt of illustrious spirits, of
+fairies and <i>banshee</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Almost in every case the graves of a hamlet come
+to group themselves at the foot of those ivy-clothed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61"></a>[61]</span>
+old walls, by an instinctive and touching effect of the
+Irishman’s passionate love for the traditions of his
+race; and those graves, generally covered with great
+slabs of stone, scattered among the tall grasses, wild
+and moss-grown, without cross or emblem of any
+sort, well accord with the melancholy aspect of the
+site.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes near these ruins and graves is still seen,
+proudly raising its head, one of those monuments
+peculiar to the country and about which antiquaries
+are at such variance,—the round towers of Ireland:
+slender and bold turrets, slightly conical in shape, not
+unlike minarets 75 or 80 feet high, upon a base
+15 to 18 feet broad, and springing from the ground
+like obelisks. They are built of large stones, sometimes
+rough, sometimes cut, but always cemented
+together, a fact which gave rise to the opinion that
+they must be posterior to the invasion of Great
+Britain by the Romans. But that is simply begging
+the question and is justified by nothing; moreover,
+the absence of any tradition about the origin or use
+of those towers make such a tale appear in the
+highest degree improbable. A race was never seen
+to borrow the technical industry of another race
+to apply it to the construction of monuments that are
+essentially their own. Celtic civilization had attained<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62"></a>[62]</span>
+in Ireland, centuries before the Romans, to a degree
+of perfection witnessed by the Brehon Code, compiled
+at least five or six centuries before the
+Christian era, and the first among human laws that
+substituted arbitrage to brute force. A people
+capable of submitting to the law of reason and who
+knew enough of mechanics to erect monoliths of
+twenty-four thousand cubic feet could well discover
+alone the art of mixing mortar, and need not borrow
+it from the Romans, who besides did not set foot in the
+country. Never was hypothesis more childish or more
+unfounded. The truth is that nothing is known about
+the round towers, as is the case with the <i>nurraghs</i> of
+Sardinia; that all those monuments are anterior to
+any positive traditions and have been built for uses
+of which we have no conception. At the most one
+might suppose from their aspect, which is that of
+inland lighthouses, that they may have been used
+as military or astronomical observatories, and, perhaps,
+bore on their summit a sacred fire visible throughout
+a whole district. In such a case the only guide to be
+followed with any certainty is the eternal fitness
+between organ and function.</p>
+
+<p>Eighty-three of these towers are still standing in
+Ireland, and their dilapidated condition allows it to
+be supposed that they may once have been much<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63"></a>[63]</span>
+more numerous. Whatever may have been their
+origin, they remain so narrowly and so fitly associated
+in the popular imagination with the Irish idea of
+nationality that the image of a round tower naturally
+grew under the chisel of the sculptor, as an emblem of
+patriotism, on the tomb of O’Connell in the cemetery
+of Dublin.</p>
+
+<p>Megalithic monuments and dolmen are equally
+found in great numbers in Ireland. Donegal presents
+at Raphre a circus of raised stones absolutely similar
+to that of Stonehenge, while in Derry one sees in
+the Grianan of Aileach the finest fortified temple
+that was ever raised in honour of the sun. In many
+districts all the hills or mountains without exception
+are crowned with the funeral hillock or Celtic <i>rath</i>.
+As for the Druidical inscriptions in the <i>Ogham</i>
+character, consisting of twenty-five combinations of
+oblique or vertical strokes corresponding to an equal
+number of sounds, they abound in all the counties.
+The most curious is that of the Cave of Dunloe, discovered
+by a labourer, in the vicinity of Killarney,
+in the year 1838; it may be considered a true
+Druidical library, of which the books are represented
+by the stones of the vaulted roof. Those characters
+have been deciphered now, thanks to bilingual inscriptions
+posterior to the Roman period.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a>[64]</span></p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the names of places and the geographical
+definitions are, in nine cases out of ten, of Celtic
+origin, according to the tables drawn out by Chalmers.
+The mountains are called <i>ben</i>, and the chains of hills
+<i>sliebh</i>, rocks are <i>carricks</i> or <i>cloagh</i>, lakes <i>loughs</i>, an
+island <i>innis</i>, bogs <i>corks</i>, lands <i>curraghs</i>, hills <i>knocks</i>,
+rivers <i>anagh</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The Erse tongue, still spoken by a twelfth part of
+the population, is sister to the Gaelic and the Breton.
+It denominates a field <i>agh</i>, a ford <i>ath</i>, a village <i>bally</i>,
+a city <i>cahir</i>, <i>ban</i> what is white or beautiful, <i>deargh</i>
+what is red, <i>dua</i> what is black, <i>beg</i> what is small, and
+<i>mor</i> what is big, <i>clar</i> a plain, <i>teach</i> a house, <i>donagh</i> a
+church, <i>ross</i> a wooded hillside.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>As for the type of the Irish race it is undeniably
+Celtic, or at least essentially different from the Anglo-Saxon.
+The hair is black or brown, the eyes dark,
+the complexion pale, the nose short, the forehead
+bony. The general appearance is vigorous and active,
+the movements are quick and often graceful; the stature
+without being low, is nearer to middle height than is
+generally the case in a British country. The rudest
+peasant girls often have a sculptural grace of attitude;
+one sees them in the fields, carrying burdens on their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>[65]</span>
+head with that stateliness of Greek canephores which
+seems as a rule the exclusive attribute of the daughters
+of the East.</p>
+
+<p>Still more different from the English is the inner
+man; naturally mirthful and expansive, witty, careless,
+even giddy, quarrelsome from mere love of noise,
+prompt to enthusiasm or despondency, imbued with
+the love of literary form and legal subtleties, he is
+the Frenchman of the West, as the Pole or the
+Japanese are Frenchmen of the East. And always
+there has been an affinity of nature, a harmony of
+thought, between them and us. At once we feel we are
+cousins. Their ancestors formerly came in thousands
+to fight under our flag. Our revolutions were always
+felt in Ireland. So strong, for nations as well as
+individuals, is that mysterious tie of a common origin,
+or even the most remote consanguinity.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Does this mean that the Irishman, thanks to his
+insular position, has escaped all cross breeding and
+remained pure Celt? Far from it. No country was
+oftener or more cruelly invaded than his. The stranger
+implanted himself in it, begat his children there, introduced
+in the race elements that are still recognizable;
+for example, that most peculiar expression<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66"></a>[66]</span>
+of the eyes, the height of the cheek-bones, the outline
+of the temples and cranium, which are in many cases
+clearly Scandinavian.</p>
+
+<p>In the origin of history the primitive inhabitants of
+Erin, the Firbolgs (men with the skin of beasts) were
+vanquished by the Thuathan-de-Danan, “the fairy
+people,” who came from the East, and who founded
+the realm of Innisfallen, or Island of Fate. A
+Spanish invasion (probably Phenician), that of the
+Milesians, overthrew that establishment ten or twelve
+centuries before the Christian era, and three hundred
+years before the foundation of Rome. After that
+came an uninterrupted list of one hundred and
+ninety-seven Milesian kings, who reached to the
+arrival of the Northmen, in the eighth century of
+the present era. Under their rule Ireland enjoyed
+a profound peace. It was during this period of
+more than a thousand years that flourished and
+developed in the island of Erin an entirely original
+civilization, characterised by the Brehon Code, by
+customs of great gentleness, by institutions of admirable
+prudence, among others that of a national
+militia, the <i>Fiana-Erin</i>, or <i>Fenians</i>, who were recruited
+by voluntary enlistment, defended the country
+and maintained order therein, while the citizens
+pursued their various avocations,—agriculture, in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67"></a>[67]</span>
+which they excelled, fishing and navigation, for which
+they displayed some ability.</p>
+
+<p>Divided into five or six small independent kingdoms
+Ireland, without her militia, would have fallen an easy
+prey to the Britons, the Gauls, or the Caledonians,
+and later on to the Romans. Thanks to that national
+force,—a true civic guard, quartered during winter on
+the inhabitants, and ever popular, which proves that
+it knew how to preserve intact the tradition of Celtic
+virtues,—Ireland, alone almost among European
+nations, escaped a Roman invasion. After twelve
+hundred years the remembrance of the Fenians has
+remained so vivid in the hearts of the people that the
+Irish Republicans of America, when they resumed
+in our own days the struggle in arms against England,
+naturally chose the name of the ancient defenders of
+national independence.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>With the fall of the Roman Empire and the dying
+out of the fear of invasion, the Fenian institution disappeared.
+The military instincts of the nation then
+manifested themselves at the exterior by frequent
+incursions made by Irish adventurers in England,
+Scotland, or Gaul. It was in one of those incursions
+off the coast of Brittany that Niall Mor, King of Tara,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68"></a>[68]</span>
+took prisoner, with several other young Christians, a
+boy named Sucoth, and whom they called <i>Patricius</i>
+(Patrick) on account of his noble origin. This was at
+the end of the fourth century of our era. The prisoner
+was employed in tending flocks in Ireland, spent seven
+years there, and at last found an opportunity of escaping
+to his own country. When back in Brittany, he
+constantly thought with grief of the dreadful destiny
+of the Irish, who still remained in ignorance of the
+true religion, and vegetated in the darkness of
+Druidism. One night he had a prophetic dream,
+after which he resolved to dedicate himself to the
+evangelization of those unhappy heathens. To this
+effect he went to the town of Tours, where he assumed
+the religious habit, then on to Rome, where he entered
+the missionary seminary. In the year 432 he was at
+the Barefooted Augustines’ Convent, in Auxerre, when
+he heard of the death of Paladius, fifth apostolic missionary
+of the Holy See in the island of Erin. Patrick
+solicited and obtained the honour of succeeding him.
+He was made Archbishop <i>in partibus infidelium</i>, and
+set out with twenty other French priests.</p>
+
+<p>A certain number of Christians were already to be
+found in Ireland; but the bulk of the nation remained
+attached to its traditional worship, which
+was that of Chaldea and of Ancient Gaul, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69"></a>[69]</span>
+worship of the sun or fire, as the principle of all life
+and purity.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the sons of Erin were not by any means barbarians;
+their civilization could rather be regarded
+as the most flourishing in Europe. They knew the
+art of weaving stuffs, and of working metals; their
+laws were wise and just, their customs hardy without
+ferocity. Patrick knew better than any one that he
+must think neither of hurrying their conversion nor
+of imposing it by force. He devoted himself with
+great adroitness to the task of winning the favour
+of the chiefs, tenderly handled all the national prejudices,
+loudly extolled the excellence of the Brehon
+Code, and succeeded at last in giving baptism to the
+Princes of Leinster. After this the new religion
+made such rapid progress that at the end of fifteen
+years Patrick was obliged to ask for thirty new
+Bishops from Rome, besides the numerous native
+priests who had already received ordination at his
+hands. When he died at the ripe age of one hundred
+and twenty years, Ireland had become Christian, and
+was rapidly being Latinised in the innumerable
+schools attached to the monasteries and churches.
+She even entered so eagerly in the new path as to
+deserve the name of “Isle of Saints” throughout the
+Roman world, and that for a long time it was enough<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70"></a>[70]</span>
+to be Irish or to have visited Erin to become invested
+with almost a halo of sanctity.</p>
+
+<p>That transformation had been accomplished without
+violence or effusion of blood. Until the 8th
+century it was a source of honour and prosperity for
+Ireland, for the lustre of her own civilization was
+enhanced by her renown for piety, and all the neighbouring
+nations sent their sons in flocks to be instructed
+in her arts and her virtues.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>But the very virtues that made her a country of
+monks and scholars were doomed before long to
+become the source of all her misfortunes. When the
+Scandinavian invasions began to pour over the whole
+of Europe, Ireland, emasculated by an entirely
+mystical devotion, was found incapable of sustaining
+the shock of the Northmen. The disappearance of the
+Fenian Militia had for a long time left her without a
+national tie, given up to local rivalries, and broken in
+pieces, as it were, by the clan system. At the very
+time that she most urgently needed a powerful
+central authority to struggle against the <i>black</i> and
+<i>white strangers</i> from Norway and Denmark, she
+was found defenceless, and it was not her feeble belt<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71"></a>[71]</span>
+of mountains, opening everywhere on deep bays, that
+could oppose a serious barrier to them, or guard her
+plains against their invasions.</p>
+
+<p>Pressed by hunger, the Scandinavians left their
+country in shoals. They threw themselves on the
+coasts of Great Britain, France, and Spain, as far as
+the basin of the Mediterranean. In no place were
+the people of Europe, already enfeebled by habits of
+comparative luxury, able to resist those giants of the
+North, who dauntlessly embarked in their otter-skin
+boats and dared to go up the Seine even to the very
+walls of Paris. Ireland was a prey marked out for
+them. If peradventure the invading party were not
+numerous enough and were beaten back by numbers,
+they would come back in thousands the following
+year and sweep all before them. Vainly did the
+sons of Erin fight with all the courage of despair;
+one after the other their chieftains were vanquished,
+and the foe definitely took up a position on the south-east
+coast, where he founded the cities of Strangford,
+Carlingford, and Wexford.</p>
+
+<p>Not content with reducing the Irish to bondage,
+the victors took a cunning and savage delight in
+humiliating and degrading them, lodging garnisaries
+under their roofs, interdicting, under pain of
+death, the exercise of all liberal arts as well as the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72"></a>[72]</span>
+carrying of arms, destroying schools, burning books
+to take possession of the gold boxes that protected
+their precious binding.</p>
+
+<p>Every ten or twelve years a liberator sprang up in
+the West or North, and tried to shake off the abhorred
+yoke. But the rebellion only made it weigh more
+heavily on the neck of the vanquished; and if it
+happened that a Brian Boru succeeded, after incredible
+efforts and heroism, in gathering troops numerous
+enough to inflict on the stranger a bloody defeat, such
+a day of glory was invariably followed by the most
+sinister morrow.</p>
+
+<p>After two centuries of slavery, interrupted by massacres,
+vain struggles, and impotent efforts, Ireland,
+once so prosperous, gradually sank in the darkest
+state of barbarism. The intestine dissensions and the
+rivalries between clans achieved the work of the
+Northern Conquerors. In the year 1172 she was ripe
+for new masters, also of Scandinavian race, who were
+ready to swoop on her with their Anglo-Saxon bands,
+after passing, to come to her, through the duchy of
+Normandy and through Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>Henry the Second of Anjou, King of England, was
+resolved to add Ireland to his possessions. All he
+wanted was a pretext. He found it in the state of
+practical schism and independence into which the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73"></a>[73]</span>
+insular Church had fallen. The members of its clergy
+no longer recognized the Roman discipline, did not
+observe Lent, and married like those of the Greek
+rite. Henry the Second solicited and obtained from
+Pope Adrian II. a bull authorizing him to invade the
+sister isle, in order to “re-establish therein the rule of
+the Holy See, stop the progress of vice, bring back
+respect for law and religion, and secure the payment
+of St. Peter’s pence.” But in spite of this formal
+authorization he was too much occupied with Aquitaine
+to be able to entertain seriously the idea of
+undertaking the conquest of Ireland, when one of his
+vassals, Strongbow, cut the knot by landing on the
+island at the head of a Welsh army, to carve himself
+a kingdom on the south-east coast.</p>
+
+<p>The way was open; Henry II. threw himself in it
+in his turn, and established himself in the east of the
+island, where, strong in the countenance of the clergy
+secured to him by the Papal bull, he received before
+long the homage of the principal native chieftains.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Limited at first to a territory enclosed within palisades,
+or <i>Pale</i>, which, during more than four centuries,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74"></a>[74]</span>
+enlarged or got narrowed, according to the
+fortune of war and the relative strength of the belligerent
+parties, the English rule was destined at last to
+spread over the whole of the island. But, of this
+seven-century struggle, the last word is not yet said.
+The wound is ever bleeding. Ireland has never
+accepted her defeat; she refuses to accept as valid a
+marriage consummated by a rape. Always she protested,
+either by direct rebellion, when she found the
+opportunity for it, as in 1640, in 1798, and in 1848;
+either by the voice of her poets and orators, by the
+nocturnal raids of her <i>Whiteboys</i> and <i>Ribbonmen</i>, by the
+plots of her Fenians, by the votes of her electors,
+by parliamentary obstruction, by passive resistance,
+by political or commercial interdict—opposed to the
+intruder; in a word, by all the means, legal or illegal,
+that offered to interrupt prescription.</p>
+
+<p>A striking, and, one may say, a unique example in
+history: after seven centuries of sustained effort on
+the part of the victor to achieve his conquest, this
+conquest is less advanced than on the morrow of
+Henry the Second’s landing at Waterford. An abyss
+still severs the two races, and time, instead of filling
+up that abyss, only seems to widen it. This phenomenon
+is of such exceptional and tragic interest; it
+beats with such crude light on the special physiology<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75"></a>[75]</span>
+of two races and the general physiology of humanity,
+that one needs must stop first and try to unravel its
+tangible causes if one be desirous of comprehending
+what is taking place in the land of Erin.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76"></a>[76]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.<br>
+<span class="smaller">HISTORICAL GRIEVANCES.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The English, it must be admitted, are no amiable
+masters. Never, in any quarter of the globe, were
+they able to command the goodwill of the nations
+submitted to their rule, nor did they fascinate them by
+those brilliant qualities that often go a long way
+towards forgiveness of possible injuries. “Take yourself
+off there, that I may take your place,” seems
+always to have been the last word of their policy.
+Pure and simple extermination of autochthon races;
+such is their surest way to supremacy. One has seen
+it successively in America, on the Australian continent,
+in Tasmania, in New Zealand, where the native tribes
+hardly exist now more than as a memory. On the
+other hand, if the vanquished races were too numerous
+or too sturdy and prolific to be easily suppressed,
+as in India or Ireland, reconciliation never took place;
+conquest ever remained a doubtful and precarious
+fact.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77"></a>[77]</span></p>
+
+<p>In Ireland, the question was made more complex
+by two elements that visibly took a predominant
+part in the relations between the conquerors and the
+conquered. In the first place, the island of Erin,
+having remained outside the pale of the Roman world
+and of barbaric invasions, possessed an indigenous
+and original civilization that made her peculiarly refractory
+to the establishment of the feudal system.
+Secondly, her very remoteness and her insular character
+inclined the immigrants to establish themselves
+there regretfully, to consider her always as a colony
+and a place of exile, where they only resided against
+their will. For the first four hundred years of their
+occupation they confined themselves to the eastern
+coast within the inclosed territory (varying with the
+fortune of war) that they called the <i>Pale</i> or palisade,
+and outside which the Irish preserved their manners,
+their laws, and their own customs.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of this barrier, it happened in the course of
+time that the English colonists got pervaded by those
+customs and felt their contagion. At once the British
+Parliament had recourse to drastic laws in order to
+open a new abyss between the two races, and keep
+the mastery they had over the Irish. Such is
+the special object of an edict of Edward III.,
+known under the name of <i>Edict of Kilkenny</i>, and by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78"></a>[78]</span>
+which it is reputed high treason for any Englishman
+established in Ireland to have married an Irish-woman,
+to have legitimised an Irish child, or have
+held him in baptism, to have taken an Irish
+Christian name, to have worn the Irish dress, to have
+spoken the Erse tongue, to have let his moustache
+grow, or to have ridden saddleless, as was the Irish
+fashion; above all, to have submitted to the Brehon
+Code. Those divers crimes were punished by confiscation
+of property, and perpetual imprisonment of the
+offender.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Such laws were a powerful obstacle to fusion, raised
+by the intruder himself. One sees at once the difference
+between, for instance, such a system and that
+established by the Norman invasion in Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>Here the conqueror found a race made supple by
+Roman occupation and Danish rule; he established
+himself, by strength of arm, on the soil, covered it
+with strongholds, and everywhere substituted himself
+to the dispossessed masters; he at once implanted
+within his new dominions the French tongue, the
+feudal system, the powerful hierarchy that constituted
+its strength; he remained standing, iron-covered
+and in arms, over the prostrate bodies of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79"></a>[79]</span>
+population in bondage, and repressed with such a
+high hand any attempt at rebellion, that the very idea
+of resistance must of necessity die out soon. On the
+other hand, having transplanted himself, and without
+any idea of return, in this new sphere, he immediately
+submitted to its influence; he incorporated himself
+with the ambient race to such a degree as soon to
+forget his own origin, and come after two or three
+generations to consider himself as purely of English
+breed.</p>
+
+<p>In Ireland, on the contrary, not only was the conqueror
+reduced by the imperfect state of his conquest
+to remain on the defensive, confined within the Pale
+on the eastern shore, within reach, so to say, of the
+mother country; not only could not he dream for a
+long time of obliging populations that escaped all
+action on his part to obey his manners and his laws;
+not only did he systematically keep those populations
+at arm’s length and avoided mixing with them; but
+periodical laws and edicts constantly came to remind
+them, on pain of terrible punishment, that he belonged
+to another race, and must guard with jealous care the
+integrity of its autonomy. Without any intercourse
+with the more distant tribes, he was at constant war
+with those of the borders of the Pale.</p>
+
+<p>And war was, at this period even still more than in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80"></a>[80]</span>
+our own days, mere rapine, raised to the dignity of a
+system. The English did not scruple to make incursions
+on their neighbour’s lands, to take away harvest,
+cattle, and women, after which they returned to their
+fortified territory.</p>
+
+<p>They did even worse: having heard of the ancient
+custom by which the Irish formerly accorded fire and
+candle light to their national militia or Fenians, the
+English revived it to their own profit; they quartered
+on the peasantry in their neighbourhood during all
+the winter, a soldier, who took his seat round the
+domestic hearth, shared the meals of the family, took
+possession of the best bed—nay, did not disdain to
+cast the eye of favour on the wife or daughter—and
+not the less remained a stranger, a foe, at the same
+time that he was a forced guest and a spy—for he
+was forbidden to speak the language, to adopt the
+dress, to imitate the manners of his victims.... The
+horror of that burden coming anew every year
+had once led to the suppression of the Fenian militia.
+How much more terrible was such servitude, enforced
+by the enemy! Constant were the rebellions, and
+always repressed with calculated barbarity—they only
+served as a pretext for new exactions.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81"></a>[81]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Still, in spite of all, a certain contagion of habits
+took place between the contiguous races. A few
+native chiefs insensibly began to imitate the manners
+of the English. The English were not long in discovering
+a way to reconcile them—by appealing to
+their basest impulses.</p>
+
+<p>Until then, the Irish had had no knowledge of
+individual property. With them land was, like the
+sky or the air they breathed, the common inheritance
+of those who occupied it. The members of a clan,
+indeed, paid the chieftain a tax or annual duty, but
+they did not conceive it as possible that this leader
+could look on himself as the master of the social fund
+to which they, like him, had a hereditary right. At
+the most they expected their harvest or cattle to
+be seized, in case of non-payment of the tax.
+There never had been an eviction of the tenant,
+as there had been no sale or transfer of the
+land by him occupied. Individual appropriation,
+as resulting from the feudal system, was such a
+new idea to the Irish that they were at first unable to
+grasp it.</p>
+
+<p>“What interest can you have in making your clan
+give up their land to the English, since you get it
+back in return for your homage?” would ask some
+of the native chieftains of those of their countrymen<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82"></a>[82]</span>
+nearer the pale who had taken for some time to
+performing that commercial transaction.</p>
+
+<p>The neophytes of feudal law would then explain
+that in case of extension of the English conquest,
+their possession of the land would be guaranteed by
+the fact of the new title. What they took great care
+should not be discovered by the clan, was that they
+gave what did not belong to them, and sold the
+collective property of their followers, to receive it
+afterwards at the hands of the English as personal
+property.... This was seen clearly later on,
+when they began to sell it or raise mortgages on it.
+But that, the dawn of a gigantic fraud, nobody in
+Ireland could so much as suspect. The fraudulent
+origin of individual appropriation is nevertheless,
+even to our own day, the true root of the desperate
+resistance that the Irish tenant invariably opposes to
+eviction. Be it tradition, be it “cellular memory,” he
+is conscious of his primordial and superior right to
+that glebe once stolen from his forefathers.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Stolen! if only it had been stolen once for all!...
+But to repeat Fitzgibbon’s (Lord Clare) saying,
+there is not in the whole of Ireland one field that
+has not been <i>at least three times</i> unjustly taken from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83"></a>[83]</span>
+its legitimate possessors. And that spoliation was
+always accompanied by the most aggravating circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>It was indeed with Henry VIII. and Elizabeth that
+the true efforts of England to achieve the conquest of
+Erin were made, and from that time, to the antagonism
+of the two races, to the conflict of interests, was added
+religious hatred. Between puritanical England and
+Catholic Ireland began a duel to the death, into which
+each generation in turn has thrown itself for three
+centuries. Oppression begets rebellion, and rebellion
+expires drowned in blood. We have no intention of
+repeating that history in these pages; its details are
+to be found everywhere. Let us only recall its essential
+features.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the year 1565, Queen Elizabeth undertook
+the “plantation” of Ireland on a large scale, and
+set about it by the elementary process of dispossessing
+the owners of the soil in order to present
+Englishmen with their lands. The whole country
+rose, under the command of John Desmond, who
+called the Spaniards to his aid. Upon which England
+sent to Ireland, together with Sydney, Sussex, and
+Walter Raleigh, armies whose instructions were “the
+extermination of the Rebels.”</p>
+
+<p>“At Christmas,” wrote one of the English Generals,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84"></a>[84]</span>
+Sir Nicolas Malby, in the year 1576, “I entered
+Connaught, and soon finding that by mercy I should
+only succeed in having my throat cut, I preferred to
+adopt a different tactic. I therefore threw myself in
+the mountains with the settled determination of
+destroying these people by sword and fire, sparing
+neither the old nor the children. <i>I burnt down all
+their harvests and all their houses, and I put to the
+sword all that fell within my hands....</i> This
+occurred in the country of Shane Burke. I did the
+same thing in that of Ullick Burke.”</p>
+
+<p>The other English Generals vied in ardour with
+this butcher; so much so that at the end of a few
+years of indiscriminate hangings, massacres, burnings
+of house and land, the whole of Munster was laid
+waste like a desert; a few wretches only were left to
+wander over it like ghosts, and they came voluntarily to
+offer their throat to the knife of Queen Elizabeth’s
+soldiers. The Virgin Queen then resolved to repeople
+that desert; she made proclamation that all the lands of
+the Desmonds were confiscated (more than 500,000
+acres) and she offered them gratuitously to whosoever
+would “plant” them with the help of English labour.
+The grantees were to pay no duty to the Crown until
+six years had passed, and that duty was always to be of
+the lightest. In spite of these advantages colonization<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85"></a>[85]</span>
+did not make much progress. The English at last
+understood that they must either give it up, or resign
+themselves to having the ground cultivated by the
+despoiled Irish who had survived the massacres.
+H ow could those wretched people have done otherwise
+than nourish the hope of revenge?</p>
+
+<p>That revenge was attempted in Ulster at the death
+of Elizabeth. It ended in new disasters, new tortures,
+new confiscations. The counties of Tyrone, Derry,
+Donegal, Armagh, Fermanagh, and Cavan,—in all
+about three million acres,—were then seized by the
+Crown and distributed in lots to Scotch settlers.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>In the year 1641, under the reign of Charles I., a
+few Irishmen having emigrated to the continent, and
+having been initiated to modern military tactics in
+the ranks of the French army, attempted to liberate
+their country. They provoked a rising, succeeded in
+holding in check during eight years all the British
+forces, and in 1649 compelled the King of England to
+grant them by formal treaty the conditions they
+themselves dictated. But a few days later the head
+of Charles fell on the scaffold, and Cromwell in
+person, escorted by his son, by Ireton and Ludlow,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86"></a>[86]</span>
+made it his business to come and annul the treaty of
+Kilkenny.</p>
+
+<p>“For Jesus!... No quarter!...” Such was
+the battle-cry he gave to his Roundheads. Drogheda,
+then Wexford were taken by storm; men, women,
+and children were exterminated; Galway fell in
+1652. The populations, exhausted by a war and
+famine of ten years’ duration, surrendered themselves
+to his mercy, and laid down their arms. Cromwell
+had only now to reap the fruits of his victory by
+making Ireland pay for it.</p>
+
+<p>His first idea was to complete the extermination of
+the native race, in order to replace it by English colonists.
+But even his gloomy soul recoiled before the
+only means that at once and for ever could put an end
+to “the Irish gangrene.” He adopted a middle course,
+of much less radical efficacy. This middle course consisted
+in transporting, or, as they called it at the time
+<i>transplanting</i> all the Irish into the region bounded by
+the Shannon, there to be penned up like men infested
+with the plague, while all the rest of the territory was
+allotted to English families.</p>
+
+<p>The enterprise was conducted with truly puritanical
+method and rigour. Thousands of Irish were shipped
+as slaves to the West Indies, thousands of others were
+imprisoned in Connaught, under pain of death for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87"></a>[87]</span>
+whoever should cross its limits. All the land, carefully
+parcelled out, was divided by lot between the
+soldiers of Cromwell, upon agreement that they should
+consider themselves bound to expend their pay for
+three years on the improvement of it. But those fields,
+to yield up their value, had to be cultivated, and the
+English labourer declined to become a voluntary exile
+in order to cultivate them. Little by little the native
+peasantry came back to their old homes with the
+tenacity peculiar to their class, they founded families
+and reconstituted the Irish nation under the ten or
+twelve thousand landlords imposed over them by fraud
+and violence. Forty years after Cromwell’s death,
+these landlords had even forgotten how to speak the
+English language.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Restoration was not destined to heal any of those
+cruel wounds. Charles II. took little heed of Ireland,
+which he deemed too far off, and besides he thought it
+good policy not to disturb the new occupants in their
+possessions. He barely deemed it necessary to
+establish in Dublin a Court of Revision that sat only
+one year, examined no more than seven hundred cases<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88"></a>[88]</span>
+out of a total of above three thousand that were submitted
+to it, and ordered the restitution of hardly a
+sixth part of the confiscated land.</p>
+
+<p>After the Revolution of 1688, nevertheless, the
+Irish only embraced with more ardour the cause of
+James II. when he landed in Ireland with a handful
+of men. Even after his defeat at the Boyne, they so
+successfully resisted William of Orange that he was
+compelled in 1691 to grant to them, by the treaty of
+Limerick, the free exercise of their religion and the
+political privileges that could help them to preserve
+it. But, like so many other charters, that one was
+soon to be violated. All the Irish Jacobites were
+compelled to expatriate themselves (numbers of them
+took service in France; more than fifty thousand
+Irishmen died under the <i>fleur-de-lis</i> during the
+first half of the eighteenth century); four thousand
+others were evicted from one million of acres that
+William distributed among his followers. Soon to
+this already terrible repression were to be added
+all the rigours of the Penal Code, that code that proclaimed
+it a duty to spy, and a meritorious act to
+betray the Irishman at his hearth; that code of
+which Burke could say: “Never did the ingenious
+perversity of man put forth a machine more perfect,
+more thoughtfully elaborated, more calculated to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89"></a>[89]</span>
+oppress, to impoverish, to degrade a people, to lower
+in them human nature itself.”</p>
+
+<p>Under the network of that nameless despotism
+which attacked man in his dearest privileges, the
+rights of conscience, the sanctity of home,—under
+the weight of a legislation that in a manner forbade
+her the use of water and fire, that closed all careers
+before her, after having wrenched her last furrow from
+her keeping,—the Irish nation persisted in living
+and multiplying. Was it any wonder that in the
+depth of her collective soul she cherished dreams of
+revenge and justice?</p>
+
+<p>The American Emancipation and the French Revolution
+appeared to her as the dawn of regeneration.
+Alas! once again the glorious effort of 1798,—the
+rebellion in arms, victory itself, were only to end in a
+complete wreck. As if Fate owed one more stroke of
+irony to this martyred nation, it was an Irish Parliament
+that by its own vote in 1800 abdicated the
+hardly recovered national independence. Pitt bought
+it wholesale for the price of 1,200,000 guineas.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It was not enough, however, to have taken from
+the Irishman his blood, his land, his religious faith,
+and his liberty: they must still prevent his prospering<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a>[90]</span>
+in commerce or industry. Political interest was here
+in accordance with avarice in giving this advice to
+the victor.</p>
+
+<p>Charles II. began by forbidding Ireland to export
+meat, butter, and cheese to England. At that time
+of slow maritime intercourse, no idea could be
+entertained of sending them to any other market.
+The Irish had to fall back on wool, which they exported
+to France and Spain. That was sufficient to
+arouse the jealousy of their pitiless masters. The
+export of wool, be it as raw material or in woven
+stuffs, was forbidden the Irish on pain of confiscation
+and fines.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of this harsh measure was two-fold: it
+prevented the abhorred Irish prospering; it secured
+to the English merchant the monopoly of Irish wool,
+which he could henceforth buy at his own price
+(generally at a quarter of the current price), and sell
+again at a lesser rate than all his competitors. It
+only remained for Ireland to make smugglers of all
+her fishermen; they crammed all the caverns on her
+coasts with wool, and during the winter, in spite of
+excisemen, they exchanged it for the wines and
+spirits of France and Spain. By the same occasion
+they exported soldiers and imported Catholic priests.
+Thus did Ireland keep losing her vital strength, by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91"></a>[91]</span>
+the constant departure of the most vigorous amongst
+her sons, at the same time that she inoculated in
+her blood two equally fatal poisons—alcohol and
+fanaticism.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the Puritan weavers of Ulster
+were ruined like the wool-farmers. They emigrated
+to America, and England found no bitterer foes
+than their sons during the War of Independence.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the Irish tried to fall back on other industries,
+as the weaving of linen or ship-building. At
+once England interfered with an iron hand by establishing
+the most ruinous prohibitive duties on Irish
+linens, while at the same time her cotton fabrics came
+pouring over the country. To make doubly sure,
+England, by a special law, formally interdicted ship-building
+in Ireland as well as any direct trade with
+any foreign market whatsoever.</p>
+
+<p>One feels a sort of shame for the human kind in
+having to record such consistent acts of systematic
+cruelty. The violence of military retaliation, the
+sacking of towns or the massacre of vanquished foes,
+may be explained by the heat of combat, and are
+found in the annals of all countries. An economical
+compression exercised during ten or twelve generations
+on one nation by another nation of Shylocks is,
+happily, a fact without any parallel in history.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92"></a>[92]</span></p>
+
+<p>From the beginning of the 18th century all
+industrial enterprise had thus been unmercifully
+forbidden to Ireland. All the factories were closed,
+the working population had been reduced to field
+labour, emigration or street-begging. This population
+therefore weighed still more heavily on the soil,
+still exaggerating its tendencies to subdivision;
+which tendencies, already a curse for Ireland, were
+to cause in the future new ferments of hatred
+and misery. All the attempts that Ireland made to
+free herself from those iron shackles were pitilessly
+repressed. She saw herself deprived of her right to
+commercial activity, as she had been of national
+conscience, of land, and religious or political freedom.
+And it is after having thus for centuries systematically
+trained the Irish to poverty, idleness, and
+drink, that England, crowning her work with calumny,
+dares to bring forward their vices as an excuse for
+herself!</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>These things are far from us already. But it would
+be erring greatly to imagine that in the eyes of the
+Irish they bear an antiquated character. Oral tradition,
+seconded by an indigenous literature, keeps
+the wound open and green. Yonder wretched beggar,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>[93]</span>
+dying of hunger and want upon the glebe once possessed
+by his ancestors, knows that they ruled where
+he now serves, bears their name with a touching
+pride, and sadly toils for others in a field that he
+believes to belong to himself. He is not ignorant of
+the way in which it was taken from him, at what date,
+and in what manner the event took place. How
+could he consider its present possessors otherwise
+than as his most cruel enemies?</p>
+
+<p>Let us imagine the French <i>émigrés</i> brought back
+violently on the lands taken from them by the nation,
+and reduced to support their family by tilling their
+fields with their own hands. Let us suppose them
+compelled every year to pay an exorbitant rent to
+the usurper. Let us blot out from history’s page
+the milliard indemnity given to the <i>émigrés</i> and the
+amnesty passed over those things by five or six successive
+revolutions. Let us lastly add to these deadly
+rancours the weight of a religious persecution of three
+centuries, of the undisguised contempt of the victor,
+and of the most shocking political inequality....
+Let that <i>émigré</i>, in a word, not only have lost caste,
+be spoliated and a serf, but also be a pariah, a kind of
+pestilent member of the community: then we shall
+gather some idea of the state of mind of the Irish
+people towards England; we shall understand that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94"></a>[94]</span>
+in truth the only mistake committed by Cromwell
+and the others in their system of colonization was
+to have not carried it to its full length, to have not
+exterminated all by fire or sword, and to have left
+a single son of Erin alive.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>As a contrast to England and Ireland, let us place
+a historical fact of the same order, that of France
+with Corsica. Here also we find an insular race of
+markedly distinct character, of different language,
+different manners and traditions, the habit of independence
+and the clan-spirit,—all that can foster
+and serve resistance to annexation. But here the
+conquering nation is France, and she is a kind
+mother. She does not come, fire and sword in hand,
+to ravage the harvests of the vanquished, to take his
+land, to impose on him, together with a new faith,
+exceptional laws, and a brand of infamy. On the
+contrary, to them she opens her arms, she offers her
+wealth and her love. From the first day she admits
+Corsicans to the provincial parliaments, and twenty
+years later she receives their deputies in the
+Assemblée Nationale. From the first hour they
+feel they are Frenchmen, the equals of those born
+in the Ile de France. There are for them neither<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95"></a>[95]</span>
+special taxes, nor political inferiority, nor rigours of
+any sort. Never was an inch of ground taken from
+them to be given to the continental families. Never
+were they treated like serfs to be trodden down
+without mercy. If there be an exception made, it
+is in their favour; as, for instance, the reduction of
+one half of all duties on imports; the free trade in
+tobacco; the enormous proportion of Corsicans
+admitted to all Government offices.</p>
+
+<p>But what a difference, too, in the results!... In
+less than a hundred years, the fusion between the
+two races is so perfect, the assimilation so complete,
+that one could not find to-day one man in Corsica
+to wish for a separation. Nay, rather, against such
+an enterprise, if any one were found to attempt it, all
+Corsica would rise in arms.</p>
+
+<p>If Great Britain had so willed it, Ireland might
+easily have become to her what Corsica is to us.
+Only, for the last seven hundred years, Great Britain
+has lacked what alone could have made that miracle
+possible,—a mother’s heart and love.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96"></a>[96]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.<br>
+<span class="smaller">KILLARNEY.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I know no place to compare with Killarney: so
+soft to the eye, so full of unspeakable grace. It is
+as a compendium of Ireland; all the characteristic
+features of the country are united there: the elegant
+“round towers,” drawing on the horizon the airy
+outline of their conic shafts; the soft moistness of the
+atmosphere, the tender blue of the sky, the intense
+green of the meadows, set off by long, black trails of
+peat, and the white, ochre, and red streaks which the
+grit-stone and clay-slate draw on the hill-side.</p>
+
+<p>Within the oval circus formed by the mountains of
+Kerry, the Killarney lakes succeed one another like
+small Mediterraneans, all dotted with lovely islands,
+where myrtle and rare ferns grow freely, fostered by a
+Lusitanian climate. Every one of those islands has
+its legend, its own saint, buried under some old moss-grown
+mound; its ruined castle, its ivy-clothed
+abbey, paved with tombstones and haunted by some<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97"></a>[97]</span>
+<i>banshee</i>. They are like large baskets of flowers
+floating on the clear, silent waters, whose peace is
+only broken now and then by the jumping of a fish,
+or the clucking of some stray teal. All there unite
+to form a landscape of almost paradoxical beauty.
+You think you have landed in fairyland, outside the
+pale of ordinary life.</p>
+
+<p>The most illustrious of them is Innisfallen, where
+the monks wrote in the seventh century their famous
+<i>Annals</i>, the pride of the Bodleian Library. In viewing
+this enchanting island, you involuntarily fall to
+repeating the beautiful lines of Moore which you
+used to bungle in your school days, and of which you
+first realise the profound truth:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Sweet Innisfallen, fare thee well,</i></div>
+  <div class="verse indent2"><i>May calm and sunshine long be thine,</i></div>
+  <div class="verse indent0"><i>How fair thou art, let others tell,</i></div>
+  <div class="verse indent2"><i>While but to feel how fair be mine, etc.</i>”</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Along the shores of that range of lakes, two lordly
+domains display the noble arrangement of their parks:
+one is the seat of the Earl of Kenmare, lord-lieutenant
+of the county, late Lord Chamberlain to the Queen
+during the Gladstone Ministry. The other belongs
+to Captain Herbert of Muckross, late Member of
+Parliament. As far around as you can see the land<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98"></a>[98]</span>
+belongs to either of those two landlords. Just as in
+the tale, down to the extremity of the valley, up to
+the very top of the far-away mountain, land and
+water, beasts and Christians, all belong to the “Marquis
+de Carabas.”</p>
+
+<p>Some restriction must be made, however. Changes
+have been introduced lately. Only a few years ago
+it was a thing understood that of the two members
+which the borough returned to Parliament one must
+be the heir presumptive of the house of Kenmare, the
+other the chief of the house of Muckross. That is
+over. Now-a-days the Kerry voters send whom Mr.
+Parnell likes to the House of Commons. But the air
+of the parks is still the property of the two owners;
+none may breathe it without their leave. I hasten to
+say that the permission is most courteously given by
+Lord Kenmare to all tourists, and as readily (if less
+liberally) sold on the Muckross grounds to anyone
+willing to pay one or two shillings, according to his
+approach walking or on horseback.</p>
+
+<p>The two parks are marvels, almost without other
+rivals in the world, for their prodigious extent, their
+admirably kept shrubberies and avenues, and the
+splendour and variety of the points of view which
+art has devised on the lakes. Those lakes themselves,
+with their islands, bays, and toy-peninsulas, their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99"></a>[99]</span>
+rippling brooks and foaming cascades, are only part
+of the beauties of the whole. Muckross is proud to
+possess the old abbey of the same name, and the
+Torc Cascade. Kenmare boasts Innisfallen, Ross
+Island, Saint Finian’s Tomb, the legendary ruins of
+O’Donoghue’s Castle, and a hundred other wonders.
+It is more regal than lordly, and there are indeed few
+royal residences which can boast such gardens.</p>
+
+<p>You go away dazzled, enchanted, intoxicated with
+verdure, ozone, and poetic sights. You come back
+the day following, you almost wish to take root there
+for a sort of contemplative life, where you would discard
+any heavier occupation than catching salmon,
+smoking endless cigarettes, and reading over your
+favourite authors. A rich artist, it is said, being
+pricked with a violent desire of that kind, offered I
+don’t know how much ready money to Lord Kenmare
+if he would grant him five hundred square yards of
+ground on Ross Island. The offer was declined.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>There is a reverse side to the picture; and it could
+scarcely be less brilliant. Killarney is a sorry borough
+of about four or five thousand inhabitants, more
+miserable looking than words can express. Except
+in the great hotels which English enterprise has<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100"></a>[100]</span>
+raised for fleecing the tourists attracted there by the
+beauty of the lakes, there is not a vestige of ease or
+prosperity. No busy workman, not one manufacture
+is to be seen. The miserable shops exhibit a few
+dusty wares which nobody seems anxious either to
+buy or to sell. There is a despondent stillness about,
+and people look tired with doing nothing. The
+women, all more or less “tattered and torn,” wear a
+poor rag of a shawl on their heads. Half-naked
+children, wild-haired, full of vermin, swarm out of all
+the small alleys which open on the one street of the
+town. Only the Anglican and Catholic churches rise
+above the sordid little dwellings with a substantial
+and well-to-do air.</p>
+
+<p>Go out of the village, follow the long walls which
+enclose the lordly seats, and after three or four miles
+you will find again the Irish country such as you have
+seen it everywhere. Turnip and barley fields, thin
+pastures, few trees or none at all. On the road-side
+occasionally is a consumptive cow, or a pig wallowing in
+mud fraternally with two or three bright-eyed urchins.
+Here and there a hovel with the traditional dung-hill
+and three hens. Nothing, in short, calculated to bring
+a new light on the agrarian crisis.</p>
+
+<p>It is in Kerry, however, that the malady has reached
+its most acute state, they all tell me. But you could<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101"></a>[101]</span>
+not believe how hard it is to obtain any definite information
+about those matters. People who really know
+about it feel a sort of shame to bare their national
+wounds before a stranger, and besides, the diversity
+of judgments makes it difficult to draw something
+positive from them. Every man has his party feeling,
+and is wishing to enforce it upon you. Provided with
+a good number of letters of introduction, and everywhere
+received with perfect cordiality, I have talked
+already with people of all conditions—landlords,
+agents, farmers, doctors, priests, and labourers,—without
+having obtained as yet any but individual views.
+Home Rulers and Orangemen have made me hear
+arguments that I know by heart from having heard
+them repeated these last eight years, ever since the
+crisis entered its actual phase. This is not the thing
+we want: we want <i>espèces</i>, as they say in French law;
+specific illustration, direct symptoms of the Irish
+disease.</p>
+
+<p>And that is the difficulty. The habit of living
+among certain deformities so familiarises us with
+them that we are no longer able to perceive them,
+and still less to point them out. Moreover, when
+upon receiving a letter from London, a man is
+kind enough to ask you to dinner, to introduce you
+to his wife and daughters, to lend you his horse and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102"></a>[102]</span>
+trap, and to empty for your benefit his store of ready-made
+opinions, is it possible decently to ask him
+more? He has his own affairs, and cannot spend his
+time running with you through hill and dale in order
+to help you to unravel a sociological problem.</p>
+
+<p>By a stroke of good luck I met the scout I wanted.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>I was returning from an excursion to the Gap of
+Dunloe when, on the banks of the river which waters
+the Kenmare estate, near the bridge, I noticed a man of
+about forty, of middle height, poorly but neatly clad,
+who was walking in front of me and gave evident signs
+of wishing to enter into conversation. I had been so
+harassed lately by the swarm of cicerones and incompetent
+guides who crowd all ways to the lakes
+and sights around Killarney, that I had grown
+suspicious, and pretended not to see the man. But
+he had his idea and stuck to it. Slackening his pace,
+he began to whistle <i>La Marseillaise</i>.</p>
+
+<p>That was saying plainly:—</p>
+
+<p>“You are French, and I am a friend of France like
+all Irishmen. You are welcome here.”</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the world it is the adopted form for
+such a declaration of love. On board a transatlantic
+steamer or in the sitting-rooms of a cosmopolite hotel,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103"></a>[103]</span>
+when a fair-haired or dark-haired new acquaintance
+seats herself to the piano and begins to play the
+march of Rouget de l’Isle, the French tourist can see
+his way: he is looked upon with no unfriendly eye.</p>
+
+<p>There were no dark or fair tresses here, but only a
+bearded pepper-and-salt quadragenarian, with the
+patent purpose of hooking me at the rate of half-a-crown
+an hour: so I remained obdurate. But he,
+suddenly making up his mind:—</p>
+
+<p>“Well, <i>Sor</i>,” he said to me with a soft voice and
+the most enticing smile, “how do you <i>loike</i> our
+country?”</p>
+
+<p>“Your country? I should like it a great deal
+better if one could go about it without being pestered
+by guides at every turning,” I said, but half-remorsefully.</p>
+
+<p>“How true, sir! Those guides positively infest the
+place. And if they only knew their trade! But they
+are regular swindlers, beggars who steal the tourist’s
+money; the shame of Ireland, that is what they
+are!”</p>
+
+<p>The conversation then commenced, and to say the
+truth I have no reason to repent it. The fellow is
+well-informed, quick-witted, incredibly talkative, and
+in five minutes has given me really valuable information,
+besides biographical details about himself. He<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104"></a>[104]</span>
+is called MacMahon like many others in this country,
+for I have seen that name over twenty village shops
+already. Is he any relation to the Maréchal? No;
+he makes no pretension to that. But after all it is
+not improbable that they come from one root, for my
+friend is not, of course, without his relationship with
+some of the numberless kings of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>“And the Marshal is a great man, a brave soldier,
+a true Irishman. I have his picture at home. I’ll
+show it to you if you do me the honour to visit my
+humble roof, and accept a glass of ‘mountain dew.’”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>My new acquaintance has been quill-driver at a
+land surveyor’s, and he knows many things. This,
+for instance: that all people here, from the most insignificant
+farmer to the biggest landowner, are in debt.</p>
+
+<p>“All that glitters is not gold,” he says, with a
+melancholy smile. “Do you see that large expanse
+of land, sir? Well, those who own it are not perhaps
+richer than I, and have not perhaps always
+as much pocket-money as would be convenient
+for them. Their annual income goes to pay the
+interest of an enormous debt, the hereditary obligations
+which weigh on the property, and the normal
+keeping of it. Mr. Herbert, the owner of Muckross,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105"></a>[105]</span>
+had to emigrate to America, where he is now an
+attorney’s clerk, for his daily bread. The shilling
+you give for entering his park goes to the scraping of
+it. As for Lord Kenmare, he never sees as much as
+the tenth part of the revenue of his property, let
+alone his being forbidden his own grounds under
+pain of being shot dead! Lady Kenmare lives there
+alone with her children under protection of a detachment
+of the police.” So the masters of those two
+noble estates are exiled from them, one by mortgage,
+the other by agrarian hatred. O, irony of things!</p>
+
+<p>“But Lord Kenmare’s not a bad landlord, is he?”
+I said to MacMahon.</p>
+
+<p>“Far from it. His tenants are eight hundred in
+number, and there are not three evicted in the year.
+I know personally twenty of them who owe him four
+years’ rent and are never troubled about it. But he
+has taken position against the League—that is
+enough. And then, don’t you know, sir, the best of
+landlords is not worth much in the eyes of his tenants.
+<i>They want the land and they will have it.</i> But this is
+my house. Please come in, sir.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Thus chattering, the communicative Celt had
+brought me to the entrance of a small low house<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a>[106]</span>
+in a by-street of Killarney. We entered a sort
+of kitchen-parlour on a level with the lane. No
+carpet or flooring of any kind but the simple beaten
+clay, a large old-fashioned chimney, a table, a few
+straw-covered chairs; on the walls a whole private
+museum in chromo-lithography: Pope Pius IX., the
+Marshal Duke of Magenta, Mr. Parnell, &amp;c., and a
+branch of holy palm.</p>
+
+<p>Upon our coming, a poor creature, pale and
+emaciated, had risen without showing any surprise.</p>
+
+<p>“Mrs. MacMahon, <i>Sor</i>! Everilda Matilda, a
+French gentleman who honours our house by
+stopping a moment in it. Call the children, my
+dear; the gentleman will be pleased to see them, I
+think.”</p>
+
+<p>A tall girl with brown eyes first presents herself,
+then a boy between twelve and thirteen years old,
+then a variety of younger fry. I am told that Mary
+has passed successfully her “standards,” that Tim
+has just begun Latin with an ultimate view to become
+a priest “like his uncle Jack;” then the “mountain
+dew” is produced. It is a kind of home-made
+whisky, not unpalatable.</p>
+
+<p>At last mine host turns to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>“Supposing, my dear, you show your lace to the
+French gentleman, to let him see what you can do<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107"></a>[107]</span>
+when you are not bed-ridden. Perhaps he will like
+to bring back some little remembrance of Killarney
+to his ‘lady.’”</p>
+
+<p>I was caught.</p>
+
+<p>Everilda Matilda instantly produced a box containing
+cuffs and collars of Irish point, and all that
+remains to me to do, if I am not ready to forfeit my
+rights to the qualification of gentleman, is to buy a
+few guineas’ worth. Hardly is the matter over, than
+MacMahon turns to the future ecclesiastic—</p>
+
+<p>“And you, Tim, will you not show the gentleman
+those sticks you polish so well?”</p>
+
+<p>Caught again!</p>
+
+<p>If each member of the family has his own private
+trade, the <i>mountain-dew</i> threatens to be rather an
+expensive refreshment.</p>
+
+<p>“I am greatly obliged to you,” I said, “but I have
+got already a complete collection of <i>shillelaghs</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>MacMahon’s jaw fell visibly.</p>
+
+<p>“But we could perhaps make another arrangement,
+that would be more advantageous,” I continued
+quietly. “You know the country well, you tell me?”</p>
+
+<p>“As a man who has lived forty years in it and
+never left it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, let us have a pair of good hacks; you lead
+me for a couple of days across field and country, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108"></a>[108]</span>
+show me a dozen authentic cases of eviction, agrarian
+violence, or boycottism. If you will undertake this,
+and I am satisfied with you, upon our return I will
+take the whole lot of lace.”</p>
+
+<p>You should have seen the glowing faces of the
+whole family! The affair was soon settled, and the
+day after we started.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>[109]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.<br>
+<span class="smaller">THROUGH KERRY ON HORSEBACK.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It was not two days but six that we spent, my
+guide and I, visiting the County Kerry in all directions,
+examining the crops, asking about prices, entering
+cottages and small farms, chatting with anyone
+that we supposed capable of giving us information.
+The rather unexpected conclusion I arrived at was
+that the agrarian crisis is more especially felt in the
+richest districts, while it can hardly be said to exist in
+the poorest parts. Kerry is, in that particular, a true
+copy of Ireland on a small scale. It may, in fact, be
+divided into two perfectly distinct regions—the plains
+of the north and the mountains of the south-west.
+Those regions offer characteristics as marked in an
+economical as in a geographical point of view.</p>
+
+<p>Another conclusion drawn from my personal intercourse
+with the Irish peasant was that nothing is to
+be got out of him by bullying and everything by
+gentle means. If you arrive at an inn and proceed, as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110"></a>[110]</span>
+do the English everywhere, to assume a harsh and
+arrogant tone, you will experience the greatest difficulties
+in obtaining even meagre fare in return for
+your money. They will pretend they have nothing
+in the house, that they are not in the habit of receiving
+travellers, and such like stories. If, on the contrary,
+you at once proclaim yourself delighted with the
+country, its manners and its inhabitants; if you risk
+a compliment to the hostess or a gentle pinch to the
+children’s cheek, the whole house is yours. They will
+instantly wring the neck of the solitary chicken promenading
+in front of the house; they will exhibit
+clean table-linen; they will rush to the neighbour
+and borrow a salad or some fruit; they will even
+unearth from some dark corner a bottle of old port.
+If you give this impromptu supper only half the
+praise it deserves, you may count on a luxurious
+breakfast for the next morning. These poor people
+are thus made. Their heart is warm; their sensibilities
+are quick. The least thing discourages them;
+the least thing electrifies them. In contradiction to the
+Anglo-Saxon serf, who despises his master if he treat
+him with gentleness, Paddy prefers a gracious word
+to all the guineas in the kingdom. The philosophical
+reason for the failure of the British in Ireland (and
+elsewhere) is perhaps chiefly to be found in their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111"></a>[111]</span>
+general want of human sympathy. The Englishman
+speaks too often like a slave-driver when he should
+speak like an elder brother.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">The Plain.</span></p>
+
+<p>The plains of North Kerry must be classed among
+the best land in the isle. This is not saying that they
+are first-class. But they evidently only need some
+outlay in drainage and manure and a few modern
+improvements in culture to rival our Normandy
+pastures. It is above all a land of grazing fields
+and butter; the grass in the meadows is green and
+luxuriant; the cows look strong and well. It is
+evident that the least effort would be sufficient to
+make agricultural enterprise a thriving business. But
+carelessness and want of thrift are plainly shown on
+all sides. Everywhere dung hills, placed just in front
+of the cottage doors, pour into the ditch the clearest
+of their virtue. The gardens are ill-kept, the fields
+transformed into bog for want of a drain seventy
+feet long. One sees oats so invaded by thistles that it
+must be a sheer impossibility to get the grain out.
+In other fields oats rot standing, because no one
+takes care to cut them in time. Nowhere is any sign<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a>[112]</span>
+shown of vigorous enterprise or activity. Not only
+do routine and sloth reign all over the country, but
+one might be tempted to believe in a general conspiracy
+for wasting the gratuitous gifts of Mother
+Nature without any profit to anybody.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the country looks relatively rich. The peasantry
+have good clothes, they despise potatoes, eat bread
+and meat, drink beer or tea, send their children to
+school, and appear peculiarly wide awake to their
+own interests. Are they really, as they declare,
+unable to pay their rents? That is possible, for the
+principal products of the country—corn, oats, barley,
+butter, beef, and mutton, wool and potatoes—have
+undergone for the last three years a considerable
+depreciation, estimated at from 15 to 35 per cent.
+But this depreciation is evidently not felt by a diminution
+of comfort for the rural populations, here at least.
+The contrary might even be admitted. In any case
+there is evidently no question of a crisis of famine
+such as has so often been seen in this island for the
+last fifty years. The malady is something else. It
+is the malady of a people to whom it has been
+repeated for half a century that the land they live
+on has been stolen from them by strangers; a people
+who rightly or wrongly believe this to be the case; a
+people who have entered, under the direction of a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113"></a>[113]</span>
+central committee of politicians, on a regular struggle
+with the landlords; who profit by all economical
+incidents, especially the fall of prices, if not openly to
+denounce the treaty, at least to refuse to execute its
+articles.</p>
+
+<p>A few facts noted in passing will explain the situation
+better than all discourses.</p>
+
+<p>A large dairy farm, the finest I have yet seen in
+the country. The buildings are new, the fields covered
+with thick dark grass. I number sixty-five cows.
+All the dairy appointments are handsome and well-kept.
+The farmer looks prosperous. Clearly he lives
+at ease, judging by the furniture of the house, the
+quality of his clothes, by the very liberality with
+which he receives us, and by the brandy which he
+offers us (he is a friend of my guide). His rent is
+£100 a year. He does not mean to pay his next
+term. (<i>I don’t think I will pay this gale.</i>) His landlord
+offers to him the sale of his land for a sum of
+eighteen years’ rent, according to the official plan.
+If he followed that system all he would have to do
+would be to pay annually during forty-nine years the
+sum of £78, less by nearly a third than the present
+farm rent; he would then become a proprietor. He
+refuses. Why?</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed?” he says, with a wink, “engage myself<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a>[114]</span>
+for forty-nine years!... <i>Why! I shall have the land
+for nothing in two or three years!</i>...”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Another well-to-do farmer driving in a dog-cart
+with his two daughters. The trap is new, the harness
+smart, the horse strong and well groomed. The
+damsels wear Dublin hats and white woollen dresses
+not unfashionable in cut.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s what enrages the landlords,” my guide
+says to me; “it is to see tenants come in this style
+to the Tralee races, cheerfully lose twenty guineas
+upon a horse, then, when the time for paying the rent
+arrives, coolly ask for a 40 per cent. reduction on their
+half-year’s rent....”</p>
+
+<p>“... And in fact it must be enough to make a
+saint swear!...” he adds philosophically. “But after
+all, the landlords might be content with the 60 per
+cent. they get ... I am sure they get it cheap
+enough ... they may think themselves lucky to
+have even that much, as the interest of confiscated
+land!...”</p>
+
+<p>That notion of the land being held by its actual
+detentors through confiscation, may be unfounded in
+some cases, or even in the majority of cases, but
+none the less one finds it at the bottom of all Irish<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115"></a>[115]</span>
+syllogisms. And in such cases the real value of
+the premiss is of little importance; what matters
+only is the conclusion drawn from it.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>A few middling and small farmers.</p>
+
+<p><i>Maurice Macnamara</i>, Shinnagh: rent, £48 a year;
+seventeen cows, eight pigs, two horses and one donkey;
+grass fields, oats, and potatoes; four children, of which
+one is over twenty years of age. Was able to pay his
+rent, but was forbidden to do so by the other tenants
+on the estate, and was in consequence seized by order
+of the landlord. His neighbours offered to help him
+to resist the execution. He begged to be left alone,
+and the moment of the sale having come, he personally
+bought all his cattle up to the sum due. Nett result
+of the operation: £11 to pay, over and above the six
+months’ rent. Personal opinion of Maurice Macnamara:
+it is better to pay £11 than to get a bullet
+through your head.</p>
+
+<p><i>John McCarthy</i>, Gwingullier: £16 annual rent,
+due in May and November; two cows, one horse;
+oats and potatoes; nine children, the eldest
+seventeen. Has paid nothing to his landlord since
+1883; owes actually £48 to him, and as much to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a>[116]</span>
+divers tradespeople or usurers. Does not know how
+he shall get out of it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Patrick Murphy</i>, Colyherbeer, barony Trughanarkny;
+was evicted in November from his holding
+of £28; owed eighteen months’ rent. Received
+from his Landlord the offer of being reinstated in the
+farm on payment of half the sum due, on condition
+that he would let his crops be sold. Declined the
+offer, and is perfectly satisfied to receive from the
+League relief to the amount of £2 a-week. Never
+saw himself so well off before.</p>
+
+<p><i>Margaret Callaghan</i>, a widow, close by the town
+of Kenmare: £8 16<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i> rent; one pig, six hens;
+three small children; four acres of potatoes, three
+acres waste. Has paid nothing for the last four
+years. Owes about £20 to various tradespeople.
+Is not harshly pressed by her landlord, and can
+practically be considered as owning her bit of
+ground. Will die of hunger, with her children, the
+first year the harvest is bad.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Molahiffe, on the road to Tralee.</p>
+
+<p>“This is Mr. Curtin’s house.”</p>
+
+<p>“And who may Mr. Curtin be?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117"></a>[117]</span></p>
+
+<p>“What! have you never heard of that affair?...
+He was killed last year by the Moonlighters.”</p>
+
+<p>“Killed?... Was he then a party man, a fierce
+Orangeman?”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Curtin?... Not a bit in the world. He
+was one of the most peaceable, the most Irish at
+heart, the most esteemed man in this part of the
+country. His misfortune was to own two rifles.
+The Moonlighters wanted those weapons. One
+night they came and demanded them. The ladies
+of the family were ready to give them up, when
+Mr. Curtin arrived and looked as if he were going
+to resist. At once a gun exploded in the passage,
+and he fell stone dead.... That was a warning to
+everybody. Since that time no one disobeys the
+moonlighters. But all the same it is unfortunate
+that the victim should have been Mr. Curtin.”</p>
+
+<p>These <i>Moonlighters</i> are the direct descendants of the
+Whiteboys of olden times. They band together and
+gather at night for the purpose of invading a farm,
+a solitary house. They are always masked, but
+sometimes in a very elementary fashion, by pulling
+down their hat or cap over the face and making two
+holes through it for the eyes. Normally they ought
+to search only for arms and to take only arms. But
+everything degenerates, and the use of force often leads<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118"></a>[118]</span>
+to the abuse of it. The Moonlighters not unfrequently
+demand a supper, a sum of money, not to speak of
+the company of some farm-wench to whom they may
+take a fancy. This impartial offering of violence to
+house and inmates might lead them far, were they
+not certain of the discretion of the victims. But the
+terror they inspire secures impunity to them.</p>
+
+<p>Though everybody in a district knows perfectly well
+who the intruders are, and though they have often
+been recognized in spite of the mask, no one dares to
+reveal their name. They are all too well aware that
+in case of denunciation a nocturnal bullet will come
+unerringly to the offender. Besides, a sort of poetical
+halo and a political mantle of immunity surrounds
+men who may sometimes, indeed, carry their zeal a
+little too far, but are after all soldiers in the good
+cause. The “legitimate” industry of the Moonlighters
+allows their excesses to be forgotten. A sort
+of general complicity covers and favours their expeditions.</p>
+
+<p>That complicity goes sometimes to great lengths—for
+instance the length of non-admitting the intervention
+of the police in a house where the Moonlighters
+are performing. The constables perambulating the
+country hear screams, desperate appeals for help
+in a farmhouse. They rush to it headlong and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>[119]</span>
+knock at the door. At once silence reigns. They
+are asked from the inside of the house what they
+want.</p>
+
+<p>“We heard screams. Do you not want protection?”</p>
+
+<p>“What business is that of yours?” is the answer.
+“Go on your way, and do not come interfering and
+preventing honest folks enjoying the possession of
+their house undisturbed!...”</p>
+
+<p>The unlucky constables can only beat a retreat and
+go their round, often to meet shortly with the Moonlighters,
+who will laugh at them, having comfortably
+finished their business.</p>
+
+<p>Before the judges the same thing occurs. Not a
+witness will give evidence. And if by chance a witness
+does speak, the jury take care to correct this
+grave breach of etiquette in their verdict.</p>
+
+<p>The witness, as well as the juryman, has often received
+a warning. Working alone in the fields, or
+following a lonely path, he has suddenly seen a little
+puff of white smoke going up from the bushes some
+feet in front of him, and he has heard a bullet
+whizzing over his head. It was a Moonlighter telling
+him:—</p>
+
+<p>“Be silent, or thou art a dead man.”</p>
+
+<p>Castleisland. A small town of little interest,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120"></a>[120]</span>
+after the pattern of most Irish boroughs. We stop
+for lunch at a tavern of rather good appearance, and
+clearly very popular with the natives. The innkeeper
+smokes a cigar with us. Is he satisfied with the state
+of affairs? Yes and no. Certainly he cannot complain—trade
+in liquor is rather brisk. But there are
+too many places where one can buy drink in the
+town—no less than fifty-one.</p>
+
+<p>“And do they all prosper?”</p>
+
+<p>“Nearly all.”</p>
+
+<p>“What may their average receipts be?”</p>
+
+<p>“I should say about £400 a year.”</p>
+
+<p>£400 multiplied by fifty-one gives £20,400, more
+than 510,000 francs. And there is not in this place
+any other industry than agriculture, while statistics
+I have this moment in my pocket inform me that
+the aggregate rental of Castleisland is not above
+£14,000. It is then evident that, times good, times
+bad, they drink every year here £6,000 worth more in
+beer and spirits than they would pay in rent to the
+landlords, if they chose to pay. This seems to be
+conclusive, as far as Castleisland is concerned. But is
+there really any reason why the tenants of this district
+should turn total abstainers for the special purpose of
+paying the claret and champagne bills of half-a-dozen
+absentees? Here is the whole problem in a nutshell.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121"></a>[121]</span></p>
+
+<p>Tralee. The big town of the county, what we
+should call in France the <i>chef-lieu</i>, the seat of the
+assizes. They are opened precisely at this moment.
+There are on the rolls three men charged with agrarian
+murder. I proposed to go and be present at the
+trials, when I heard that the three cases were to be
+remanded to the next session, the representative of
+the Crown having come to the conclusion that the
+jury would systematically acquit the prisoners, as is
+so often the case in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>The Chairman of the Assizes, Mr. Justice O’Brien,
+seized this occasion to declare, that in the course of
+an already long career he had never met with a jury
+having so little regard for their duty. “It must be
+known widely,” he added, “the law becomes powerless
+when the course of justice is systematically impeded
+by the very jurymen, as we see it in this country; in
+which case there is no longer any security for persons
+or property.”</p>
+
+<p>To which the people in Kerry answer that they do
+not care a bit for English law; what they want is
+good Irish laws, made in Dublin by an Irish Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>“It is quite true that we have no security here for
+persons or property,” a doctor of the town said to me
+in the evening. “The outrages were at first exclusively<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a>[122]</span>
+directed against the landlords, rightly or wrongly
+accused of injustice and harshness in their dealings
+with their tenants; but for the last two or three
+years the field of nocturnal aggression has enlarged
+greatly—a shot now serves to settle any personal
+quarrel and even trade accounts. In the beginning
+the jury at least made a distinction between the
+different motives that actuated the accused. Now
+they always acquit them, <i>because they no longer dare
+to find them guilty</i>.... What will you have?...
+Jurymen are but men. They prefer sending a ruffian
+at large to paying with their life a too subtle distinction
+between crimes of an agrarian character and
+those of another sort. A lump of lead is the most
+irresistible of arguments. One may assert that
+presently law has lost all influence in Kerry. It
+is rapine that reigns, hardly tempered by the decrees
+of the National League, which of course means only
+legitimate resistance to the landlords, and by the
+fund of righteousness possessed at heart by the
+nation. But let things go on thus only for two
+years more, we shall have gone back to the savage
+state.”</p>
+
+<p>“Some people tell me, however, that raiding for
+money is never seen in this part of Ireland.”</p>
+
+<p>“Raiding for money never seen! I would rather<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123"></a>[123]</span>
+say it is the latest development of moonlighting.
+Any one who covets a piece of his neighbour’s land,
+who wishes to influence his vote for a board of
+guardians, who is animated by any motive of vulgar
+greed or spite, has only to set the Moonlighters in
+motion. The machinery is at hand.”</p>
+
+<p>“Could you really give me a few recent instances
+of moonlighting for money?”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course I could. There is one Daniel Moynihan,
+at Freemount, near Rathmore: in October,
+1886, a party of six men with blackened faces
+entered his house at night, and breaking open a
+box, carried away all his money. In January, 1887,
+at Ballinillane, three men armed with guns entered
+Daniel Lyne’s house and asked for money, threatening
+to shoot him if he refused; they took away £6.
+At Faha, in March, 1887, a party of six armed men
+visited the house of Mr. E. Morrogh Bernard; they
+demanded money, and got what was in the house.”<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>“You don’t say the League has anything to do
+with such obvious cases of non-political moonlighting,
+do you? It is a well-known fact that the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124"></a>[124]</span>
+organization discountenances moonlighting as well as
+all other violent practices.”</p>
+
+<p>“It does in a manner, but at the same time, by
+forming in each district a kind of police of the League,
+an executive body ready for action, it singles out to
+malignant persons men who may be ready for a
+private job.”</p>
+
+<p>There is obviously considerable exaggeration, or,
+rather, distortion of facts, in the above statement, as
+in everything relating to the League on one side or
+the other. The truth is probably that ruffians, when
+they want a job in the house-breaking line, ask for
+nobody’s permission, but are only too glad to take
+moonlighting as a pretence; and thus, common
+breaches of the law which in ordinary times would go
+by their proper name, are now ascribed to Moonlighters.
+The bulk of the population, which is thoroughly
+honest, has only words of contempt and hatred for
+what, in justice, should rather be called a deviation
+than a development of moonlighting.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Nine o’clock at night. In a hollow on the road to
+Milltown, a man tries to hide himself behind some
+shrubs; but perceiving that we do not belong to the
+neighbourhood he shows himself. He is a constable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>[125]</span>
+clad in uniform, the black helmet on his head, a
+loaded gun on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>“Why do you seek to avoid attention?”</p>
+
+<p>“Because we are watching that farm-house there on
+the height, my comrades and I; we have received information
+to the effect that some men propose to
+attack it one of these nights; now, we must try not to
+be seen by the people on the farm, for they would
+hasten to tell their assailants.”</p>
+
+<p>“What! these people would denounce you to those
+who come to rob them?”</p>
+
+<p>“Just so. We have to protect them against their
+will. Oh! it is indeed a nice trade to be a constable
+in Ireland!” &amp;c. &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>Then follow professional complaints that throw a
+curious light on the relations between police and
+population. The unhappy constables are <i>boycotted</i>
+personally and as a body. Nobody speaks to them.
+It is next to impossible for them to procure the first
+necessaries of life. Government has to distribute
+rations to them as to soldiers on a campaign. If they
+want a conveyance, a cart to transport a detachment
+of the public force where their presence is wanted,
+nobody—even among the principal interested—will
+give means of transport either for gold or silver. The
+Government have had to give the constabulary special<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126"></a>[126]</span>
+traps that are constantly to be met on the roads, and
+that one recognizes by their blood-red colour.</p>
+
+<p>That police corps, <i>the Irish Constabulary Force</i>, is
+very numerous, and entails great expense—more than
+one million and a half sterling per year. The cost
+would hardly be half a million if the Irish police were
+on the same footing as the English force; that fact
+alone can give an adequate idea of the real state of
+things. Besides, numerous auxiliaries, called <i>Emergency
+men</i>, are always ready to give their help to the
+regular corps.</p>
+
+<p>Be they soldiers or policemen, Great Britain keeps
+nearly 50,000 armed men in Ireland. The male adult
+and able population of the island being under
+500,000 men, of whom 200,000 at least are opposed
+to the agrarian and autonomist movement, one
+can assume that there is on an average one
+armed soldier or constable for every six unarmed
+Irishmen.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>On the dusty road before us are slowly walking
+five cows in rather an emaciated condition. Those
+beasts strike me by an odd appearance which I am
+unable to make out at first. When I am close
+to them I see what it is: <i>they have no tails</i>. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127"></a>[127]</span>
+absence of that ornament gives the poor animals the
+awkwardest and most absurd look.</p>
+
+<p>I turn to my guide, who is laughing in his sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>“Look at their master!” he whispers in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>“Well?”</p>
+
+<p>“The cows have no tails, and the man has no
+ears....”</p>
+
+<p>It is true. The unlucky wretch vainly endeavoured
+to hide his head, as round as a cheese, under the brim
+of his battered old hat; he did not succeed in
+hiding his deformity.</p>
+
+<p>“By Jove! who arranged you in this guise, you
+and your cows?” I said to the poor devil, stopping
+before him.</p>
+
+<p>He made a few grimaces before explaining; but
+the offer of a cigar, that rarely misses its effect, at
+last unloosed his tongue. He then told me that the
+Moonlighters had come with a razor to cut his ears, a
+week after having cut the tails of his cows as a
+warning.</p>
+
+<p>“And what could have been the motive of such
+cowardly, barbarous mutilation?”</p>
+
+<p>He had accepted work on a <i>boycotted</i> farm, though
+the League had expressly forbidden it; in other
+words, he was what the Irish call a “land-grabber.”</p>
+
+<p>“Where are you going with your cows?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128"></a>[128]</span></p>
+
+<p>“To sell them at Listowel, if I may, which is not
+certain.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why is it not certain? Because they are unprovided
+with a tail? At the worst that would only
+prevent them being made into ox-tail soup,” I say,
+trying to enliven the conversation by an appropriate
+joke.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s not it,” answers the man. “But the interdict
+applies to the sale of the cows as well as to
+having any intercourse with me. I am forbidden to
+buy anything, and anyone speaking to me is fined
+two shillings.”</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to think this perfectly natural and even
+just, like the Leper of the “Cité d’Aoste,” or like
+common convicts when one talks to them of their
+punishment.</p>
+
+<p>“I gambled and I lost—so much the worse for
+me!...” all his resigned attitude seemed to say.</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps they don’t know it yet in Listowel!” he
+resumed with a sigh, and hopefully pushed on with
+his cows.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>“Have there been many cases of such agrarian
+mutilation in the country?” I ask MacMahon.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” said my guide. “Perhaps half a dozen or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129"></a>[129]</span>
+so within the year.<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> They used to be much more
+numerous, but somehow they seem to go out of
+fashion under the sway of the League. But there are
+still other ways of annoying the enemy; fires are very
+frequent, so are blows, personal injuries, and even
+murder, threatening letters, and, above all, verbal
+intimidation.”</p>
+
+<p>Such proceedings, I understand, are altogether disowned
+by the chiefs of the League, who only patronise
+<i>boycotting</i>. Let a farmer, small or great, decline to
+enter the organisation, or check it by paying his rent
+to the landlord without the reduction agreed to by
+the tenantry, or take the succession of an evicted
+tenant on his holding, or commit any other serious
+offence against the law of land war, he is at once
+boycotted. That is to say, he will no longer be able
+to sell his goods, to buy the necessaries of life, to
+have his horses shod, his corn milled, or even to
+exchange one word with a living soul, within a circuit
+of fifteen to twenty miles round his house. His<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130"></a>[130]</span>
+servants are tampered with and induced to leave him,
+his tradespeople are made to shut their door in his
+face, his neighbours compelled to cut him. It is a
+kind of excommunication, social, political and commercial;
+an interdict sometimes aggravated with
+direct vexations. People come and play football on
+his oat fields, his potatoes are rooted out, his fish or
+cattle poisoned, his game destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>“But supposing that instead of bearing meekly
+such indignities, he shows a bold front, shoulders his
+gun and keeps watch?”</p>
+
+<p>“Then his business is settled. Some day or other,
+he will receive a bullet in his arm, if not in his head.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It will not perhaps be unnecessary to explain here
+the origin of that word <i>boycott</i>, so frequently used
+during the late few years. Everybody knows that on
+the British side of the Channel, but the French reader
+is not bound to remember it so exactly.</p>
+
+<p>In September, 1881, at a mass meeting held in
+Clare County, Mr. Parnell almost without being aware
+of the importance of his words, advised his friends, to
+exclude from the pale of social life whoever should
+eject a tenant for reason of an unpaid rent, or take
+the succession of the evicted farmer.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131"></a>[131]</span></p>
+
+<p>The first application of that new penalty fell upon
+a certain Captain Boycott, a retired officer, who had
+applied himself to agriculture. Having had occasion
+to evict an obdurate defaulter, he saw himself within
+a few days forsaken by his servants, tabooed by his
+neighbours, reduced to dig out his own potatoes, and
+generally to become his own valet.</p>
+
+<p>The affair produced great sensation. The whole
+press talked about it. Legions of reporters flocked
+to the spot to follow the phases of the war waged
+between Captain Boycott and his opponents. Upon
+a memorable occasion a regular army of Orangemen,
+7000 strong, they say, came over from Ulster to
+give a lift to him and help him to get in the harvest
+which threatened to rot standing. But the place became
+too hot for Captain Boycott. He was obliged to
+give way at last and leave his place in Connaught.
+(By the way, he ultimately returned there, and is now
+quite popular.)</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile his name, used as a proverb, or
+rather as a <i>verb</i>, has come to describe a way of intimidation,
+which at the hands of the League is a
+redoubtable weapon, more powerful than a hundred
+batteries of 100-ton guns.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132"></a>[132]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>“Could you show me anybody who is actually
+under boycott?”</p>
+
+<p>“Could I? That will not be difficult. There!
+Mr. Kennedy, beyond that clump of trees. He has
+been boycotted eighteen months.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you think I might call on him?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly. But I shall ask leave to wait for
+you outside the gate, sir, on account of the League of
+course.——You may laugh at its verdict, not I.”</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes later, I was at Mr. Kennedy’s gate.
+A little country house rather decayed, in the
+middle of grounds which no gardener has seen for at
+least two years. Nobody in sight. I try the bell-rope.
+It remains in my hand. I am then reduced
+to an energetic tattoo on the plate which shuts the
+lower part of the gate.</p>
+
+<p>Attracted by the unusual noise, a tall white-haired
+man makes his appearance at an upper window.
+Surprised at first, and even somewhat alarmed, he
+listens to my request, is reassured, and even comes to
+unbar the door. As I had hoped, he is not sorry to
+unloose his tongue a little, and with the best grace
+possible tells me the whole affair.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I am boycotted for having, single among all
+his tenants, paid to my landlord the entire rent of
+those meadows you see yonder. How do I take my<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133"></a>[133]</span>
+situation? Well, as a philosopher. At the beginning,
+I thought it inconvenient to be deprived of new
+bread, to do without meat, and worse still, to be left
+without servants. But I have learnt by degrees to
+accommodate myself to my new condition. I have
+made provisions for a siege. I have found a few
+servants, strangers to the district, and made my
+arrangements to send my butter to Cork by rail. On
+the whole, there is not much to complain of. I
+should, of course, prefer things to follow their usual
+course. It is tedious at times to find oneself out of
+the pale of humanity. But you end by discovering
+that solitude has its advantages. You develop
+accomplishments up to that time latent in you. For
+instance, I shoe my horses myself; I have learnt
+to set a window pane, to sweep a chimney. My
+daughters have improved in cooking. We eat a great
+many chickens; now and then we kill a sheep; when
+we want butcher-meat, we must send rather far for
+it. The same for beer, wine, and many other commodities.
+It <i>is</i> inconvenient—no more.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>At Listowel; a market day. Great animation on
+the market-place; tongues are busy; whisky seems
+to be flowing freely at every tap-room and tavern.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134"></a>[134]</span>
+But not much business is done, as far as I can judge.
+My guide calls my attention to two interesting
+phenomena that I should not, perhaps, have noticed
+otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>The first is a man in breeches, with bare calves, a
+<i>shillelagh</i> under his arm, who seems to be a farmer in
+a small way. He approaches a wheel-barrow filled
+with big hob-nailed shoes, which a woman is dragging,
+and falls to examining them, evidently intent on
+buying a pair. Almost at the same moment, a boy
+of fifteen or sixteen comes to the other side of the
+woman and whispers something in her ear. She
+nods. At once the customer, turning very red in
+the face, lets go the pair of shoes and turns away.
+MacMahon says the man is a newly boycotted man
+and the boy an agent of the League, whose function
+consists in reporting the interdict to those who have
+not heard of it as yet.</p>
+
+<p>The other phenomenon is more remarkable. It is
+a stout gentleman in a shooting-jacket, carrying
+a double-barrelled gun of the latest model, and
+followed by a constable who also carries his regulation
+gun. The stout gentleman stops before a door
+where a smart <i>outside car</i> with a servant in livery
+is waiting for him. He takes his seat; the constable
+jumps on after him. Is the stout gentleman under a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135"></a>[135]</span>
+writ of <i>habeas corpus</i>, I wonder, and is he going to be
+taken into the county jail? Not a bit of it. He is
+simply a landowner under threat of death, who has
+thought fit to indulge in a body-guard. He and the
+constable are henceforth inseparable.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>A large tract of uncultivated land. It was farmed
+at £60 a year. The farmer was a sporting man, fond
+of races and the like. To simplify his work he had
+the whole property converted into pasture. But his
+expensive mode of living obliged him now and then
+to sell a few head of cattle. The hour came when
+he had not one calf left, and he found himself utterly
+incapable of paying his rent. He was evicted.
+Sure not to find another tenant, on account of the
+law laid down by the League that every evicted farm
+should be left unoccupied, the landlord had recourse
+to the only sort of <i>métayage</i> known in Ireland.
+(<i>Métayage</i>, it should be explained, is the kind of
+farming used in most French provinces, where the
+owner of the land enters into yearly partnership with
+his tenant, and advances the necessary capital in
+the shape of manure, seed, beasts of burden, and
+machinery, on the understanding that the crops be
+shared equally between himself and the tenant.)<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136"></a>[136]</span>
+To return to my Kerry landlord: he set up on his
+meadows a caretaker, with a salary of twenty-five
+shillings a week and forty cows to keep. At the end of
+the first month the tails of ten cows had been chopped
+off, while two of them had died from suspicious inflammation
+of the bowels. It became necessary to put
+the cows, and the caretaker as well, under the protection
+of a detachment of police. Cost: two pounds a
+week for each constable. Nett loss at the end of the
+half-year: £60. The landlord wisely judged that it
+would be much better to send his cows to the
+slaughter-house, to pay off caretaker and police, and
+to forget that he ever was a landowner.</p>
+
+<p>In the same district, another farm gone waste.
+The tenant did not pay. He was evicted, but had
+another holding close by, where he encamped, and
+from that vantage-ground sent the following ultimatum
+to his <i>ci-devant</i> landlord:—“The hay I have
+left on my late farm is worth £30. I demand fifteen
+for allowing you to mow and sell it; you shall
+not see a shilling of it on any other terms.” Fury
+of the landlord. Then he cools down, thinks
+better of it, offers ten pounds. The evicted tenant
+declines the offer; a whole army would not
+have brought him round. Meanwhile, the hay got
+rotten.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137"></a>[137]</span></p>
+
+<p>By the road-side near Castlemaine, is a row of
+barracks, where men, women, and children are
+huddled together. Those are <i>League-huts</i>, that is to
+say, a temporary shelter which the League offers to
+ejected tenants, for having, upon its command, declined
+to pay their rent. The cabins from which the poor
+wretches have been turned out, although they had,
+as a rule, built them themselves, are within shooting
+distance, on the right hand. They bear evident traces
+of having been fired by the sheriff’s officers in order to
+make them uninhabitable, and they present the desolate
+aspect of homesteads adjoining a field of battle. Walls
+broken by the crowbar, doors ajar, rubbish and ruins
+everywhere. Is it politic on the part of the landlords
+to add the horrors of fire to those of eviction?
+Hardly so, the outsider will think. It adds nothing
+to the majesty of the law to wage war with inanimate
+things. The exercise of a right ought never to
+assume the appearance of an act of revenge.
+Wrongly or rightly, eviction by itself always bears an
+odious character; but to see the house you have built
+with your own hands burnt to the ground will ever
+seem to cry for vengeance to Heaven. And, after all,
+who is the gainer by such violence? The League.
+It takes care to retain the victims of eviction within
+sight of the scene of their woes, feeds them, harbours<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138"></a>[138]</span>
+them, exhibits them as in an open museum, by the
+side of their destroyed homes. And it is a permanent,
+practical lesson for the passer-by, a realistic drama
+where the landlord appears torch in hand, while the
+League dries the tears of the afflicted and allows
+them £2 a week. That is the usual pay for one
+family.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139"></a>[139]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.<br>
+<span class="smaller">A KERRY FARMER’S BUDGET.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>“I wonder how landlords can manage to live, under
+such conditions,” I said to my guide. “Are there any
+tenants left paying their rent?”</p>
+
+<p>“There are many. First, those who have been able
+to come to an agreement with their landlord about
+the reduction of 20, 25, 30 per cent. that they claimed;
+in such cases the landlord’s income is reduced, but at
+least he still retains a part of it. Then, there is
+the tenant’s live stock; he cannot prevent its being
+seized for rent, in case of execution, and consequently
+chooses to pay, if possible, or he would have to sell
+his cattle to avoid distress, which means ruin to the
+family. Lastly, there are the tenants who pay
+secretly, although pretending to adhere to the rules of
+the League—<i>backsliders</i> they are called—a class more
+numerous than could be supposed at first sight.”</p>
+
+<p>Here MacMahon laughed. He went on:</p>
+
+<p>“I will tell you, Sir, a story I have heard lately, of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140"></a>[140]</span>
+a man in county Cork, who wanted to pay his landlord
+but dared not, on account of the other tenants
+on the estate. Coming across the landlord on a lone
+road (not improbably after many an unfruitful attempt
+for such a propitious opportunity) he stood before
+him in a threatening attitude. ‘Put your hand in my
+coat’s inside pocket!’ he said gruffly. The landlord
+did not understand at first what the man meant, and
+considering his look and address, was far from feeling
+reassured. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked uneasily.
+‘I tell you, sir, put your hand in my coat’s inside
+pocket, and feel for what you find in it.’ At last the
+landlord did as he was bidden. He put his hand in
+the man’s pocket, and extracted from it a bundle of
+papers, carefully tied up, that looked like banknotes.
+At once the tenant took to his heels. ‘The devil a
+penny of rent you can ever say I paid you,’ said he, in
+the same strange threatening tone of voice, as he ran
+away. Still, the banknotes in the landlord’s hand
+were exactly to the amount of the rent due. As a
+rule, when the tenant is really able to pay his rent, he
+pays it.”</p>
+
+<p>Such has not been the general case, it seems, for
+the last three years. <i>In produce</i>, perhaps the Irish
+farmer might have paid his rent, as the crops have
+been, on the whole, fairly up to the average. In<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141"></a>[141]</span>
+<i>money</i>, he cannot, because the fall of prices on hay,
+potatoes, beef, mutton, pork, and butter alike, in 1885,
+1886, 1887, has been at least 20 per cent. on the
+former and average prices, which not only means no
+margin whatever of profit to the farmer, besides his
+necessary expenses, but in most cases the sheer impossibility
+of providing for the forthcoming outlay in
+seeds, manure, and labour.</p>
+
+<p>This may not be self-evident. Many a reader probably
+fails to see why a fall of 20 per cent. on the
+prices of agricultural produce must necessarily entail
+a total disability to pay the rent. “I can well understand
+the demand of a proportional reduction of rent
+in such cases,” he will say, “but not absolute non-payment.”
+To fully realise the situation, one must
+go into the details of a farmer’s life.</p>
+
+<p>Let us take the case of Denis O’Leary, a Kerry
+man, with fourteen acres of good land. He seems to
+be in easy circumstances; his house is clean and
+pretty; he owns three cows, two sows, ten sheep,
+and about a score hens. Denis O’Leary is a good
+man, industrious and thrifty, who does all the work on
+his farm, with the help of wife and three children.
+He likes his pipe of tobacco, and on Sundays, a glass
+of beer over the counter with a friend or two,
+but otherwise indulges in no expensive habits. On<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142"></a>[142]</span>
+the whole he can be considered a pattern tenant, as well
+as one of the most fortunate of his class. His rent,
+which had been gradually raised by his landlord up to
+the sum of £11 6<i>s.</i>, was in 1883 put down at £8 7<i>s.</i>
+by the Land Commissioners.</p>
+
+<p>Such being the case, when we are told that the same
+Denis O’Leary, who was for five years able to pay the
+larger rent, is now unable to pay the smaller one, this
+may look absurd. Still, it is the simple truth. To
+ascertain the fact, it is only necessary to make the
+budget of the O’Leary family.</p>
+
+<p>The yearly expenditure, unavoidable and irreducible,
+is as follows:—</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Expenditure.</span></p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">£</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><i>s.</i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Taxes, rates, and county cess</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1</td>
+    <td class="tdr">15</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Turf (Royalty on)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1</td>
+    <td class="tdr">10</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Clothing and shoes</td>
+    <td class="tdr">6</td>
+    <td class="tdr">10</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Meat</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+    <td class="tdr">15</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Bread</td>
+    <td class="tdr">6</td>
+    <td class="tdr">18</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Beer and tobacco</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Oil, candles, sundries</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+    <td class="tdr">15</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Sugar and tea</td>
+    <td class="tdr">6</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>School fees</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+    <td class="tdr">7</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Church subscription</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+    <td class="tdr">10</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="in1">Total</td>
+    <td class="tdr total">31</td>
+    <td class="tdr total">10</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Most assuredly there is nothing excessive in such
+a budget of expenditure for a family of four. If even
+it is possible for Denis O’Leary not to go beyond its<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143"></a>[143]</span>
+narrow limits, it is because he consumes in kind a large
+proportion of the produce of his fourteen acres, namely,
+some hundred stones of potatoes, with a good deal of
+milk, eggs, and butter. This alimentary deduction
+duly made, he has still a certain quantity of agricultural
+produce (which shall be supposed here a constant
+quantity) to sell, as follows:—</p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">1800</td>
+    <td>lbs. Potatoes.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">2200</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Wheat.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">1750</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Oats.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">38</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Wool.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">116</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Butter.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">1000</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Straw.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">25</td>
+    <td>dozen Eggs.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td>Pigs.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+    <td>Calves.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td>Lambs.</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The above commodities have not, unfortunately, a
+constant value. They sell more or less, according to
+the fluctuations of prices on the market. In 1882,
+1883, 1884, prices were high. Denis O’Leary’s revenue
+was consequently as under:—</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Revenue (Three years ago).</span></p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">£</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><i>s.</i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Sold:</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1800</td>
+    <td>lbs. Potatoes</td>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td class="tdr">8</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">2200</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Wheat</td>
+    <td class="tdr">9</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">1750</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Oats</td>
+    <td class="tdr">6</td>
+    <td class="tdr">4</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">38</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Wool</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1</td>
+    <td class="tdr">15</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">116</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Butter</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5</td>
+    <td class="tdr">7</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144"></a>[144]</span>1000</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Straw;</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">25</td>
+    <td>dozen Eggs</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td>Pigs</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5</td>
+    <td class="tdr">10</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+    <td>Calves</td>
+    <td class="tdr">6</td>
+    <td class="tdr">15</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td>Lambs</td>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="in1">Total</td>
+    <td class="tdr total">43</td>
+    <td class="tdr total">11</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>When Denis O’Leary had deducted from his revenue
+of £43 11<i>s.</i> the yearly expenditure of £31 10<i>s.</i>, he
+had still £12 1<i>s.</i> left. He was able, accordingly, to
+pay £8 <i>7s.</i> rent (or even £11 6<i>s.</i> before the judicial
+reduction), and the rent duly paid, he was still the
+proud nett gainer of four shillings under the old
+<i>régime</i>, of £3 14<i>s.</i> under the new.</p>
+
+<p>Unhappily, prices fell down in 1885, 1886, and 1887,
+to the tune of 25 or 30 per cent. on nearly all agricultural
+produce, with the exception perhaps of oats
+and eggs, so that the revenue of the O’Leary family
+(all things otherwise equal) has come to be as
+under:—</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Revenue (at present).</span></p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">£</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><i>s.</i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Sold:</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1800</td>
+    <td>lbs. Potatoes</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+    <td class="tdr">8</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">2200</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Wheat</td>
+    <td class="tdr">7</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">1750</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Oats</td>
+    <td class="tdr">6</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">38</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Wool</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">116</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Butter</td>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td class="tdr">12</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">1000</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Straw</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+    <td class="tdr">15</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">25</td>
+    <td>dozen Eggs</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td>Pigs</td>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td class="tdr">4</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+    <td>Calves</td>
+    <td class="tdr">4</td>
+    <td class="tdr">8</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td>Lambs</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+    <td class="tdr">10</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="in1">Total</td>
+    <td class="tdr total">32</td>
+    <td class="tdr total">9</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145"></a>[145]</span></p>
+
+<p>Thus, the revenue and expenditure are nearly equal,
+with a slight balance of nineteen shillings, that could
+hardly be proffered for rent. Local usurers are not
+wanting, of course, who will advance to Denis O’Leary
+the necessary funds, at 10 or 15 per cent., if he wants
+to pay the landlord, all the same. But then his
+budget is no more in a state of equilibrium: deficit
+enters it, to widen every year up to the final catastrophe.
+In other words, Denis O’Leary cannot pay
+the rent, unless he draws on his capital. One may
+well understand that he should not relish the idea,
+considering especially that the landlord’s rack-rent
+has been reduced three years ago in the Land Court,
+and that the same landlord demurs to a fresh reduction,
+so obviously just and necessary that all landlords
+in England have granted it of their own free will
+these last three years.</p>
+
+<p>And Denis O’Leary is a wonder in his class: he is
+an industrious, hard-working, wise man, without a
+penny of previous debt. He has precisely the area of
+land adequate to his means, and the live-stock indispensable
+to manure the soil. He does not drink, he
+does not gamble, he is never ill, he has no old people
+to support, he has not experienced failures or mishaps
+of any kind, and his crops are fairly up to the
+average.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146"></a>[146]</span></p>
+
+<p>Let us come back, however, to the world as it is,
+and see Man with his foibles, his usual neglects, errors,
+and mishaps. Let us suppose that he has more land
+on his hands than he can well manage to till, or that
+his holding, on the contrary, is too small for his wants.
+Let us suppose that instead of selling three pigs and
+two calves, he was not able to rear them, or lost them
+from disease; that instead of bringing to market
+1,800 lbs. of potatoes he had to buy some hundred-weight
+of the same for domestic consumption—the man
+is lost, irretrievably lost. Not only will he never be
+able to pay the landlord one farthing, but it will be
+enough that the crops should be slightly under the
+average to make a hopeless beggar of him—a case of
+outdoor or indoor relief for the parish.</p>
+
+<p>Now, these are the circumstances of six or seven
+tenants out of ten in the lowlands of Kerry, where
+they seem to be comparatively well off. If we leave
+the plains for the higher districts bordering on the
+sea, the question is simpler still. There is no need of
+long accounts here. The hour of irretrievable misery
+has struck long ago, and habitual hunger stares us in
+the face.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147"></a>[147]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Up in the Mountains.</span></p>
+
+<p>The mountains of Kerry are the finest in the island.
+They form its south-western angle, throwing out on
+the Atlantic the peninsula of Dingle, between the bay
+of the same name and the Kenmare River. As you
+leave the plain following the Cahirciveen road
+towards the coast, you see them develop their
+parallel ranges, which are divided by deep valleys.
+Some of these valleys are fertile, being watered by
+impetuous streams from the mountain side. But the
+general impression one receives is that of agricultural
+poverty, as is the case in nearly all mountainous countries
+in the world. Pastures are thinner, cattle less
+numerous, homesteads fewer and more miserable than
+in the plain. Human creatures themselves partake
+of the general look of wretchedness that prevails.
+They live on potatoes, milk, and porridge; seldom eat
+bread, meat never; wine, beer, tea, coffee are to them
+unknown luxuries. Their ill-shaped cottages are
+made of soft stone, with a thatched roof maintained
+by ropes made of straw. There they all sleep on a bed
+of rushes, which they share with the pig, when there
+is such a thing, for even the traditional pig has become
+now a symptom of wealth in a manner. On the
+beams of the roof roost perhaps half-a-dozen hens
+and chickens.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148"></a>[148]</span></p>
+
+<p>Sloth and dirt hold here an undivided sway. Not
+a woman—and some are pretty—seems to mind the
+spots and holes in her garments; not one knows the
+use of soap or needle. They appear to have a rooted
+dislike for the comb; their hair falls on their back as
+is the fashion among the Australian aborigines, in
+nature’s simple disorder.</p>
+
+<p>Men look heavy and apathetic. They work as
+little as they can manage—one or two days out of
+seven, perhaps—and do not even think of seeking their
+sustenance from the sea, which is so close to them. The
+most they can do is to draw from it now and then a
+cart-load of seaweed to manure their miserable plot
+of ground. Their existence rolls on dull, idle, devoid
+of interest. It is the brute life in its most wretched
+and hideous state. Here is old Ireland as Gustave de
+Beaumont’s admirable book showed it to us fifty years
+ago. Hardly do those wretched products of Anglo-Saxon
+civilization receive a faint echo of the outer
+world when the electoral time comes.</p>
+
+<p>The consequence is that the agrarian crisis is reduced
+here to its simplest expression, <i>i.e.</i>, sheer impossibility
+to pay the rent because of total absence
+of the £ <i>s.</i> <i>d.</i> wherewith. Elsewhere that impossibility
+may be half assumed; it is certainly mixed in the
+plain with bad will, goaded in the peasant’s heart by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149"></a>[149]</span>
+that dogged desire to possess the land which is so
+natural in him. In the mountain it is not a political
+fiction that holds the sway: famine is the king; and
+it is the spontaneous product of the very nature of
+things.</p>
+
+<p>For the naturally infertile soil has reached here to
+such a degree of subdivision that it is no longer sufficient
+even to feed those it bears. The greater part of
+those wretched holdings of five or six acres are let at
+the nominal price of about £4, to which must be added
+the taxes, poor-rates, and county-cess, increasing it by
+a quarter or a third. Four, five, six, sometimes ten or
+twelve beings with human faces squat on that bit of
+worthless ground and till it in the most primitive
+manner. Money, tools, intelligence, pluck, all are wanting
+there. Viewing things in the most optimist light,
+supposing the year to have been an exceptionally
+good one, the potato crop to have been plentiful, the
+cow to have hunted out on the hill-side the necessary
+grass for the making of a little butter, all that will be
+sufficient perhaps to prevent starvation. But where
+will the money be found to pay Queen and landlord?</p>
+
+<p>Let a child or an old person eat ever so little in
+the year, his food cannot but represent a value. Let
+that value be £4. Can six acres of mountain ground<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150"></a>[150]</span>
+managed without skill or manure, render five, six, ten
+times £4 a year, and a rent in addition of five to six
+pounds? It is sheer impossibility.</p>
+
+<p>A few examples.</p>
+
+<p>James Garey, fifty years old, married, four children.
+Nominal rent £5 14<i>s.</i> Two cows, one pig, eight
+chickens. About six acres of land. Cultivates only
+part of it, about three acres, where he grows potatoes;
+the remainder is pasture. Sold this year thirty
+shillings’ worth of butter; ate his potatoes from first
+to last; has not paid a farthing to his landlord for
+the last four years. Owes £6 to the draper-grocer;
+would never be able to pay his taxes if two of his
+children, who are out in domestic situations, did not
+send him the necessary amount to prevent execution.</p>
+
+<p>Widow Bridget Molony, sixty years old; five
+children; seven acres of land. Nominal rent £6 12<i>s.</i>
+Four cows, an eighteen-month-old calf, two pigs,
+twenty chickens. Sold £3 10<i>s.</i> of butter this year,
+£2 oats, 15 shillings potatoes, and a pig for £3;
+just sent a calf to market, offering it for £1 15<i>s.</i>; did
+not find purchaser. Thinks herself relatively lucky,
+as she is owing only two years’ rent to her landlord.
+Two of her children have situations at Liverpool, and
+help her to pay the taxes.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Halloran, forty years. Three children,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151"></a>[151]</span>
+eight acres of land; rent £6 15<i>s.</i> Two cows, fifteen
+sheep, a pig, an ass, twelve chickens. Sold during the
+year ten shillingsworth of butter and ten sheep at
+twelve shillings a head. Has paid nothing to landlord
+since November, 1884.</p>
+
+<p>Michael Tuohy, seventy years old, three children,
+four grandchildren. Nine acres of land, £7 rent. A
+cow and five hens. Can no longer afford a pig. Sold
+only fifteen shillingsworth of butter this year, and had
+to get rid of two cows out of three to pay the ten per
+cent interest of a debt he has contracted with the
+National Bank. Owes four years’ rent to his landlord;
+hopes that his son, who has emigrated to the
+United States, will send him the money for the
+taxes; if the son doesn’t, he cannot see any way to
+save the last cow.</p>
+
+<p>Examples of that description could be multiplied
+<i>ad infinitum</i>; they are, so to say, the rule in the
+mountainous districts, where the holdings are for
+the most part beneath £10 rent, and totally unequal
+even to sustain the farmer.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Glenbeigh, between Kilarglin and Cahirciveen.
+This place was the theatre of several deplorable
+scenes in January last, on Mr. R. Winn’s property.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152"></a>[152]</span>
+That property, very extensive, but consisting of poor,
+not to say totally barren land, was put down at
+£2000 on the valuation roll. The aforesaid rent not
+having been paid during four or five years, the owner
+was of course in very strait circumstances; he had
+to go to some Jews, who substituted themselves in his
+place, and undertook to enforce payment. But the
+extreme poverty of the tenants proved even stronger
+than the energetic tribe. In consequence of the
+gradual subdivision of the land, they had come to
+hold diminutive scraps of it such as could not even
+grow the potatoes sufficient for their sustenance.
+After various judicial skirmishes, the plain result
+of which was to establish the utter incapacity of the
+peasants to give a penny, the council of creditors
+resolved in the depth of winter to undertake a wholesale
+campaign of evictions. Seventy-nine writs of
+ejectment were issued, and soon after the under-sheriff,
+backed by a strong detachment of mounted
+constables, arrived to evict the wretched families.</p>
+
+<p>The operations began at a certain Patrick Reardon’s,
+on a literally barren land, for which he was expected
+to pay £4 10<i>s.</i> a year. He was the father of eight
+children, but did not even possess a pig, not a pair of
+chickens. The furniture consisted of a bed, a rickety
+table and a kettle. Squatting on the ground with his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153"></a>[153]</span>
+whole family, according to the time-honoured custom,
+he waited for the executors of the law. Requested
+to pay, he answered that he possessed not one
+farthing; he was then informed that they were going
+to set fire to his cabin, in order to oblige him to
+evacuate the premises. The act soon followed the
+threat. A lighted match applied to the thatched roof,
+and in a few minutes the whole was in conflagration.
+All the neighbouring populations, who had run on to
+the scene of the tragedy, saluted the dreadful deed
+with hooting and execration.</p>
+
+<p>The myrmidons of the law pursued nevertheless
+the execution of their mandate. They went next to
+the dwelling of another tenant, Thomas Burke,
+inscribed on the list of debtors for a sum of £20. He
+had five children, and, like the above-mentioned, not
+one farthing to offer to the creditors. Order was
+given to set fire to his roof, but it was found to be so
+damp that fire would not take; so they had to attack
+the walls with the crowbar and pick-axe. The
+miserable inmates appeared then to the eyes of the
+indignant crowd, half naked, wan, emaciated, and
+starved; and so heartrending was the scene that with
+difficulty the representative of the League (who had
+come there for that very purpose) prevented the mob
+from stoning the bailiffs to death.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154"></a>[154]</span></p>
+
+<p>Then came the turn of the third cottage. Two old
+men lived in it, Patrick and Thomas Diggin. The
+family of the former included ten persons; that of
+the latter, six. They owed a rent of £8, and had not
+a shilling between them all. Patrick’s wife, however,
+came forward, and declared she had just received £2
+from her daughter, who was a servant in Belfast.
+Would they accept that, and stop the execution?
+The under-sheriff, whom the duties of his office oblige
+to back the bailiffs, urged them to accept the touching
+offer. They refused, and set fire to the roof. Then
+Patrick Diggin, an eighty-year-old man, was seen
+coming out of his home sobbing; he was followed by
+all his children and grandchildren. By an irresistible
+impulse of sympathy all crowd round him, offering
+what little they possess to the relief of that misery.
+The constables themselves, moved almost to tears,
+contribute their silver coin to the subscription which
+has been spontaneously organized. To carry the
+barbarous work further becomes an impossibility. The
+sheriff’s substitute gives the signal for departure, and
+the cavalcade follows amidst the derisive cries of the
+multitude.</p>
+
+<p>All those poor people, except one family, have since
+been re-installed on their holdings, and are now at
+work on their farms—a strange evidence of the uselessness<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155"></a>[155]</span>
+and cruelty of eviction, to make tenants pay
+who cannot.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Valentia Island.</span></p>
+
+<p>At Cahirciveen, I crossed the strait which divides
+the main land from the island of Valentia. This is
+the extreme point of the old continent, where the
+Transatlantic cables are placed. Good, honest, plucky
+fellows! what repose after the misery of Kerry! I
+am speaking of the fishermen of the island, a peculiar
+race who never ploughed any fields but those of the
+ocean. Every night they risk their lives on the giant
+billows, and earn their bread valiantly. They know
+nothing of sheep rot, potato disease, or landlordism;
+all they know is the management of their
+boats, the making and mending of their nets, and the
+art of making the deep yield food for their young.
+Strangers to the neighbouring world, they ignore even
+its language, and only talk the rude idiom of their
+ancestors, the Irish of the time of the O’Donoghue.</p>
+
+<p>Noble fellows! I shall not soon forget the night I
+spent there watching them as they were fishing
+between the Skellings, two enormous rocks that rise
+like Gothic cathedrals, about twelve miles from Bray
+Head, and on which the waves are eternally breaking<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156"></a>[156]</span>
+with a thundering noise. My guide had warned me
+against offering them money; it would offend them,
+he said, so I did not do it. I simply drank with
+them a glass of whisky when they prepared to go
+home towards daybreak, the stars still shining.
+And, comparing their happy courage with the distress
+of Kerry, I wished them from the bottom of my
+heart never to become acquainted with agriculture on
+small holdings, under an English landlord.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157"></a>[157]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.<br>
+<span class="smaller">RURAL PHYSIOLOGY.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>We have glanced at a few facts presenting symptoms
+of the Irish disease, which were taken as chance
+guided us, in a ride through a south-western county.
+Similar symptoms are everywhere to be found through
+the island. To appreciate them at their right value,
+as even to comprehend them, it is essentially requisite
+to know, at least in its broader outlines, the physiology
+of landed property in this entirely agricultural
+country.</p>
+
+<p>Vast landed property and parcelled-out culture. This
+is the epitome of such a physiology. At the base of the
+social edifice we find the tenant, generally a Catholic
+and of indigenous race, occupying and cultivating after
+his own fashion the thousandth or ten thousandth
+part of a property ranging over an area of some
+hundred thousand acres. At the summit we find
+the landlord, almost invariably of English and Protestant<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158"></a>[158]</span>
+race, ruling by right of primogeniture over this
+immense space.</p>
+
+<p>Does this right rest at its origin on confiscation and
+spoliation, as is averred by the Irish? That is of
+little importance from a legal point of view, for prescription
+has covered the spoliation by an occupation
+of two to eight centuries. It is of far greater importance
+from a moral point of view, because that
+grievance, ill or well founded, serves as a handle for all
+agrarian recriminations.</p>
+
+<p>In three out of five cases (so it has been shown by
+recent statistics) the landlord is an <i>absentee</i>, that is to
+say, he does not reside on his property, nor even in
+the kingdom, and spends abroad the money he
+raises on his lands. His income, from that source
+alone, is sometimes enormous—£10,000 a year—(Lord
+Greville, Westmeath; Lord Carisford,
+Wicklow; Mr. Wandesford, Kilkenny; Mr. King,
+Longford; Lord Inchiquin, Clare); £16,000 a year—(Lord
+Claremont, Louth; Mr. Naper, Meath; Lord
+Leconfield, Clare; Lord Ventry, Kerry); £26,000
+and £32,000 a year—(Duke of Abercorn, Tyrone;
+Marquis of Clanricarde, Galway; Lord Kenmare,
+Kerry); £40,000, £80,000, and even £120,000 a year—(Mr.
+MacDonnell, Kildare; Marquis of Coningham,
+Cavan, Clare, and Donegal; Marquis of Londonderry,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159"></a>[159]</span>
+Down; Marquis of Downshire, &amp;c.). Rent
+rolls of £4,000, £3,000, and £2,000 a year too
+plentiful to be mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>Three-fifths at least of those sums are lost every
+year for Ireland, and they go out of the island
+without having in any way helped to increase her
+capital in agricultural machinery, live stock, and
+general improvements of the land. As a natural
+consequence, the soil is ill-cultivated, ill-manured,
+insufficiently covered with cattle. For centuries its
+energies have suffered a constant draining, and
+nothing has been done to repair its losses.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>That soil has a tendency to subdivision in the
+hands of the tenants, who cultivate it by truly
+pre-historic methods. The figures are given in round
+numbers as follows:—</p>
+
+<p>Against 24,000 holdings of a value of above £500
+a year there are in Ireland 85,000 holdings producing
+from £25 to £500 a year; 49,000 from £12 to £29
+a year; 77,000 from £8 to £12 a year; 196,000 from
+£4 to £8 a year; lastly, 218,000 holdings of a
+revenue of <i>under £4 a year</i>.</p>
+
+<p>That is to say, out of six or seven hundred thousand
+families, living exclusively upon the product of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160"></a>[160]</span>
+soil, more than two-thirds must get their sustenance
+from a wretched bit of ground, estimated by the
+owner himself at a value of £4 to £8 a year!</p>
+
+<p>To state such an economical paradox is to
+denounce it. Where there is nothing, the landlord,
+like the king, loses his rights. The situation, then,
+would already be strangely anomalous, even if the
+respective titles of landlord and tenant were of the
+clearest and most transparent kind. But it is complicated
+in Ireland by the most curious conceptions and
+customs in matters of landed property.</p>
+
+<p>To understand those conceptions and customs, a
+Frenchman must begin by putting aside all his
+Latin ideas. With us, since the Convention, one can
+always know by the Survey-Rolls to whom belongs
+absolutely such or such a piece of land. He who
+owns it is free to sell it, to give it, to let it as he
+pleases. His right is absolute; it is the right of
+“use and abuse,” according to the forcible expression
+of the Roman code. It passes with this absolute
+character to sons, grandsons, or legatees.</p>
+
+<p>In Ireland it is feudal law that obtains still;
+an estate is not a property, it is a fief. The lord of
+that estate is not the proprietor of it, he is an
+usufructuary, as it were, a life-tenant on it. He has
+only a limited right to his own land. He cannot sell<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161"></a>[161]</span>
+it without the written consent of his substitute in the
+entail, and the authorization of the persons, often
+countless in numbers, that have some hereditary right
+on his property at the same time with him; most of
+the estates are encumbered with perpetual rents,
+served out either to the younger branches of the
+family, to old servants, or to creditors. All the titulary
+is free to alienate is his life interest, through some
+insurance combination with transfer of income.</p>
+
+<p>If we add that the said titulary is generally absent
+from his property, that he does not manage it personally,
+and that in many cases he does not even
+exactly know where it is to be found, we must own
+that it is no wonder he is considered as a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>A stranger he is besides, in race, by habits,
+by religion, by language. And yet this stranger,—precisely
+because his fief, practically inalienable, as it
+is immovable in its limits, has always been transmitted
+from father to eldest son in the family,—this
+stranger, of whom often nothing is known beyond his
+name, has a story, true or legendary, attached to him
+and to his title. It matters little that the revenue of
+the estate was scattered over five hundred heads, in
+the course of ten generations; the estate remains,
+and weighs on him with all its weight. We do not
+speak here of a mere geographical expression, of an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162"></a>[162]</span>
+area a hundred times parcelled out, altered, disfigured,
+in less than a century, but of land that for a
+thousand years, maybe, has changed neither form nor
+aspect.</p>
+
+<p>At night, by the fireside, old people will recall how
+in former days this land was the collective property
+of the clan; how they were defrauded by a political
+chief that treacherously gave it up to the English, in
+order to receive investiture from their hands; how,
+following the fortunes of twenty successive rebellions
+and repressions, it was confiscated, sequestered, given
+anew, till it came to the actual landlords. A special
+literature, ballads, popular imagery, little books, and
+penny papers constantly harp on that ancient spoliation.
+It is the only history studied under thatched
+roofs. The peasant breathes it in the atmosphere,
+imbibes it by all his pores.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Convinced that he has a hereditary right to the
+domain in general, the Irish peasant besides attributes
+to himself a special and prescriptive right to the plot of
+ground that he, like the landlord, occupies from father
+to son, though on a precarious tenure. This right is
+not purely imaginary; it was consecrated in the
+year 1860 by a special Act of Parliament, due to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163"></a>[163]</span>
+initiative of Mr. Gladstone. Recognised from immemorial
+times in Ulster, it has always been claimed in
+all the other parts of Ireland; it is the <i>tenant right</i>,
+what in our own Picardy is called the <i>droit de
+marché</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is well known in what consist this ancient prerogative
+of the Picardy farmer (Troplong in the Preface
+to his <i>Traité du Louage</i>, and Lefort in his <i>Histoire des
+contrats de location perpétuelle</i>, have treated it exhaustively):
+it is simply the privilege of preserving in
+perpetuity for him and for his heirs, the use of the
+ground for which he pays rent regularly.</p>
+
+<p>Not only is this privilege not denied to him, but he
+can transfer it to a third person, for a premium that
+goes by the name of <i>intrade</i>. The amount of that
+premium is often a third or even a half of the intrinsic
+value of the soil. Formerly this “<i>droit de marché</i>”
+applied to everything that can be let or hired; the
+labourers, the threshers, the shepherds of a domain,
+each claimed it in his own province as a hereditary
+monopoly. In modern days it is strictly limited to
+the hiring of servants, in the few districts where it
+survived the French revolution (in Péronne for
+instance).</p>
+
+<p>The thing that is only a curious exception in
+France has remained the rule in Ireland, where <i>tenant<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164"></a>[164]</span>
+right</i> has been in force for the last twenty-seven
+years. And what, after all, can be better founded
+than such a right? Has not the tenant, in the
+majority of cases, made his plot of ground what it is?
+Has he not tilled it, improved it, manured it, drained
+it according to his better knowledge; in a word, has
+he not <i>created</i> it in its actual form?</p>
+
+<p>“Let us,” says the peasant, “admit the rights of the
+landlord. How could he deny me mine? Are they
+not legibly written in the furrow I have traced upon
+this earth, in the fruits I have made her bear?...
+The land is not a simple material, unreducible like a
+piece of gold. It is a chemical product, a conglomerate
+that is valuable especially by reason of all the
+substances I have mixed up with it during an occupation
+of ten, twenty, thirty years, or even more....
+Who shall dare to deny the share I have brought into
+this company of which I am the acting manager, and
+deny that this share belongs to me?”</p>
+
+<p>Such a theory would doubtless appear sheer lunacy
+to the French proprietor who has paid for his land £400
+per hectare, and who has let it for a fixed period at a
+fixed price, with the understanding that at the end of
+the contract he shall find it in good condition and shall
+then do what he pleases with it. That theory, however,
+is so well suited to Ireland, where custom has<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165"></a>[165]</span>
+the force of law, that the landlord does not even think,
+practically, of disputing the <i>tenant’s right</i>.</p>
+
+<p>As a rule he is only too glad to let his land to the
+farmers who have traditionally occupied it, on condition
+that they pay the usual rent.</p>
+
+<p>But in practice, the Land Act of 1860, apparently
+so much in favour of the tenant, has produced
+disastrous effects. In the first place, by consecrating
+the right of the tenant only on improvements and enlargements
+made <i>with the landlord’s consent</i>. Thence
+the consequence that not only is the landlord never
+willing to spend a farthing on the improvements of
+the land, but also that he systematically opposes
+them, for fear he should have to pay for them in the
+end. Besides many landlords have signed their new
+leases only after the farmer has given them a formal
+renunciation to the tenant right; or else they have
+taken advantage of the pretext that offered itself, and
+raised the rent by way of compensation against all
+risks. Lastly, in many a place where this right has
+become positive, the rural usurers alone have profited
+by it by discounting it to the peasantry.</p>
+
+<p>The consequence is that the tenant right is often reduced
+practically to the implicit acknowledgment of the
+right of the farmer to occupy the land, so long as he
+pays his rent. It even happens not unfrequently that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166"></a>[166]</span>
+there is no lease and the occupancy goes on indefinitely
+without title. Doubtless this gives it only
+more value in the eyes of the peasant, naturally inclined
+to associate this absence of scrivening with the
+acknowledgment of his traditional rights.</p>
+
+<p>Having been able in certain cases to sell or hire his
+“interest,” he feels the more inclined to think himself
+entitled to divide it between his children. That
+division has become the rule, and what was once a
+farm of thirty to fifty acres turns out, at the third
+generation, parcelled in ten or twelve scraps of three
+to five acres. The landlord might have interfered
+in the beginning; he might have prevented such a
+division; he did not do it. Beside, that division of
+the land is recorded nowhere, has been the occasion
+of no formal deed; one member of the family
+answers for all the others, if necessary. How is one
+to unravel those private arrangements? And, after
+all, what does it matter, so long as the rents come
+in?</p>
+
+<p>They come in during ten, during twenty years.
+Then the harvest is bad, or the sub-dividing of the
+soil has arrived at the last limit compatible with the
+needs of those that cultivate it. The rent is no
+longer paid, and then the difficulties begin. How is
+one to appraise the improvements introduced in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167"></a>[167]</span>
+land by the actual possessor, or by his forefathers?
+How can one find out what is due to him, even with
+the best intentions? Is the landlord to give him an
+indemnity before he evicts him? But then it means
+ruin to the landlord, who will have to pay precisely
+because he has not been paid himself. It is the
+squaring of the circle. When only very small
+holdings are in question, the difficulty is generally
+met by remaining in <i>statu quo</i>. But supposing the
+debt to be more important, or to have been transferred
+to a third person, which is often the case, the
+question becomes insoluble.</p>
+
+<p>Let us repeat that we must not consider these
+things from a French point of view. With us the idea
+of individual property is always of the clearest and
+simplest. The frequent sales and buying of land
+contribute still to make this idea of more actual and
+definite meaning to us. An hectare of grass or vine
+is, like any other goods, a merchandise that passes
+from hand to hand, and remains with the highest
+bidder. In Ireland the sales are rare, and in no case
+is it a question of absolute ownership; it is only
+a question about the respective and contradictory
+rights, some for life, some perpetual, some positive,
+others customary, of several persons over the same
+space of land, a space not to be transferred, not to be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168"></a>[168]</span>
+seized, and not to be fractionised. Is it any wonder
+that such contradictory pretensions should give rise to
+constant conflicts?</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Everything concurs to shut in that rural world in
+a vicious circle. Not only does the peasant lack
+capital to improve his farming, but, assured of seeing
+his rent raised if he ventured on the least improvement,
+he is careful to make none. On his side the
+landlord, for dread of annoying contestations, opposes
+as much as lies in his power any amendment susceptible
+of being turned into a title for his tenant.</p>
+
+<p>Is there a succession of relatively good harvests?
+He immediately raises the rent. Are the following
+years bad? He refuses to return to the old rate, in
+principle at least, because he finds it inconvenient to
+curtail a revenue to which he has accustomed himself,
+because he does not like to appear to bow before the
+League, and also because, being liable to expropriation,
+he is unwilling to depreciate beforehand the
+value of his property, which is always valued according
+to its rent.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the holdings, being too often mere plots of
+ground, are hardly sufficient to keep the peasant and
+his family occupied, and do not always give him a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169"></a>[169]</span>
+sufficiency of food. And just because it is so, the
+unlucky wretch does not find work outside sufficient
+for the equilibrium of his poor finances. The
+class of agricultural labourers can hardly be said
+to exist in numerous districts, because everyone
+is a small farmer. The tenant then becomes
+completely sunk in his inaction; he becomes apathetic,
+and from a sluggard too often turns into a
+drunkard. His wife is ignorant and careless. She
+can neither sew, nor is she able to give a palatable
+taste to his monotonous fare. His children are pallid
+and dirty. Everything is sad, everything is unlovely
+around him; and, like a dagger festering in the
+wound, the thought that all his misery is due to the
+English usurper ever makes his heart bleed.</p>
+
+<p>To all these causes of poverty and despair must be
+added the general difficulties that weigh on agriculture
+in all countries of Europe, the lowered prices of
+transport, the clearings of land in America and
+Australia, the awful transatlantic competition, the
+disease of potatoes.... The picture being finished,
+one thing only surprises—it is to find one single Irish
+farmer left in the country.</p>
+
+<p>These explanations, with many others, were given
+me by a person that it is time I should introduce
+to the reader; for he is the incarnation of one of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170"></a>[170]</span>
+the essential wheels in the machinery of Irish
+landed property—Captain Pembroke Stockton, <i>land
+agent</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The captain is a small fair man, of slim figure, of
+military aspect, who received me this morning at an
+office where he employs half a dozen clerks. The
+room was lined with green-backed ledgers, or, to
+speak more exactly, with rows of tin boxes, of a
+chocolate colour. To-night he receives me in a pleasant
+villa, where he takes me in his phaeton, drawn by
+two magnificent horses. He may be about fifty-three
+years old. His calm, regular-featured countenance
+owes its peculiar character to the line that cuts
+his forehead transversely, and divides it into two parts,
+one white, the other bronzed by the sun; a mark left
+by the English forage-cap, which is like a small muffin,
+and is worn on one side of the head. The captain
+has seen service in India; he fought against Nana-Sahib,
+and even hung with his own hand a certain
+number of rebels, as he not unfrequently relates after
+dinner. He sold out when about thirty-five years of
+age, at a period when selling out still existed (in 1869),
+and got for his commission £3200, which, besides a
+small personal competency, allowed him to marry a
+charming girl, dowerless, according to the excellent
+English habit; children came: means became too<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171"></a>[171]</span>
+straitened, and, to enlarge them, he resolved to
+become a <i>land agent</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The land agent has no equivalent in France, except
+for house property. He is neither a notary, nor a
+steward, and yet he partakes of both, being the intermediary
+between landlord and tenant. It is he that
+draws up the leases and settlements; he who receives
+the rents, who sends out summons, who signs every
+six months the cheque impatiently expected by
+the landlord; he who represents him at law, he
+who negotiates his loans, mortgages, cessions of
+income, and all other banking operations. In a
+word, he is the landlord’s prime minister, the person
+who takes on his shoulders all the management of his
+affairs, and reduces his profession to the agreeable
+function of spending money. The land agent naturally
+resides as a rule in the vicinity of the estate.
+Therefore he knows everybody by name; knows all
+about the incumbrances, the resources of every tenant,
+the length and breadth of every field, the price of
+produce, the probable value of the harvest; all
+the threads are in his hands; the landlord counts
+upon him, approves everything he does, upholds his
+rigours, and submits to his tolerance. Is he not himself
+at his mercy? The agent keeps all his deeds of
+property; has personally written out every one of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172"></a>[172]</span>
+them; knows, in fact, a great deal more than himself
+about it.</p>
+
+<p>Let us premise that very considerable interests are in
+question, and that the rents are ciphered by thousands
+of pounds sterling. It is easy to understand that the
+agent must be not only a man of honour, a clever man,
+a business man, but above all a man presenting the
+most serious guarantees from a financial point of view.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>That is sufficient to imply that they are not counted
+by dozens in every district; and that a land agent
+provided with all the necessary qualifications must
+before long govern all the principal estates in a
+county. From his office, situated in the principal
+county-town, he rules over ten, twenty, or thirty, square
+miles of land, cultivated by five or six thousand
+farmers, under some twenty landlords.</p>
+
+<p>Thence the natural consequence that the same
+policy generally prevails in all the administration
+of the landed property in one district. The personal
+character of the landlord may, indeed, influence
+it in some ways, but the character of the
+agent is of far greater importance. And thence this
+other consequence, not less serious for the farmer, and
+which gives the key to many an act of agrarian<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173"></a>[173]</span>
+violence,—that in case of open war, in case of eviction
+especially, it is not only an affair between the
+landlord and the tenant, but also between the tenant
+and all the landlords in his county, through their
+one representative.</p>
+
+<p>Has he been evicted? It will be well-nigh impossible
+for him to get another farm in this county,
+where he was born, where his relations are living,
+where he has all his habits, all his roots, as it were.
+And no work to be had outside agricultural work....
+Emigration only is open to him,—which is equivalent
+to saying that eviction must necessarily be followed
+by transportation.</p>
+
+<p>Let us imagine all the owners of houses in Paris,
+bound together in association, to be in the hands of a
+single agent; let us suppose that a dweller in one of
+those houses is turned out of it for quarrelling with his
+<i>concierge</i> or for any other reason, and unable to find a
+house to live in; we shall then have an idea of the
+state of mind in which eviction places the Irish
+peasant. Let us add that this peasant has generally
+built with his own hand the hut that is taken from
+him; let us add that for him it is not only a question
+of knowing whether he shall have a roof over his
+head, but a question of being able to live by the only
+trade he has learnt.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174"></a>[174]</span></p>
+
+<p>For many other reasons, the question of agencies
+on a large scale still contributes to make the problem
+more intricate.</p>
+
+<p>In all affairs personal intercourse brings an element
+the importance of which must not be overlooked. A
+man will display the greatest inflexibility in writing,
+who will hesitate to do so face to face with his opponent.
+If the landlord knew his tenants, if he lived among
+them, if he entered into their life and saw their
+misery, very often, may be, he would recoil before
+barbarous rigours, while the agent, by his very profession
+is obliged to act with the precision of a
+guillotine. The influence of women, so gentle and
+conciliatory, is absent from the system. Pity,
+sympathy, human contact, have no part in it. Can
+we wonder if harmony be destroyed?</p>
+
+<p>Examples are not wanting to show that a different
+system, a policy of gentleness, of direct and mutual
+concessions, and well directed efforts, bear very
+different results. I shall quote as an instance the
+case of an English lady, Miss Sherman Crawford,
+who bought, some twenty years ago, at a legal sale,
+a small half-ruined estate in Ireland. She went to
+live on it, and began by giving her ten or twelve
+tenants a written promise that they would get the
+benefit of all their improvements without having cause<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175"></a>[175]</span>
+to fear that the rent should be raised. Then she made
+it a rule that everyone should come directly to her in
+case of difficulties, and not to an agent.</p>
+
+<p>She built a few sheds, repaired two or three cottages,
+on occasions lent a five pound note to facilitate the
+buying of a cow or pig. That was enough. In spite
+of the difference in race, religion, and language, she
+and her peasantry are on perfect terms with each
+other; her property of Timoleague thrives in the
+midst of general poverty and wretchedness; not an
+inch of ground lies uncultivated; the soil is well
+manured, well drained, well used; the people are
+happy and contented. To perform that miracle, all
+that was wanted was a little willingness, a little good
+management and gentleness.</p>
+
+<p>But then Miss Crawford’s property is neither too
+large nor too small. She brings there the capital
+needed, and allows it to circulate in the place. She
+sees everything with her own eyes, not with the eyes
+of an agent. She is not the titulary of an entailed
+estate, and has not given up its income to usurers.
+Her farms are large enough to allow her tenants to
+find their sustenance on them, for themselves and
+their families. In a word, her property is in everything
+the reverse of what is seen in all other parts of
+the island.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176"></a>[176]</span></p>
+
+<p>And in truth, if delirious legislators had proposed
+to themselves the task of inventing a system of landed
+property that would give neither security to the
+owner nor peace to the tenant, where could they have
+succeeded better than with the Irish system? It is
+at once stupid and ferocious, absurd and monstrous.
+How true, alas! that human genius, so well able sometimes
+to profit by natural forces, excels also in
+sterilizing them, in making them homicides!</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177"></a>[177]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.<br>
+<span class="smaller">EMIGRATION.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Before setting foot in this country your notions
+are not unfrequently ready made about the characters
+of the inhabitants. You have gathered them from
+miscellaneous reading, novel-reading mostly, and what
+you expect is an Ireland poor certainly, but nevertheless
+gay, improvident, chivalrous, addicted to sound
+drinking, good eating, fond of practical jokes, not
+unmixed with riot and even blows; an Ireland, in
+short, such as Charles Lever and Carleton, Banim and
+Maxwell, Sam Lover and Thackeray have described;
+an Ireland where wit and humour are to be met at
+every step, where the last beggar has his little joke,
+where originality of thought, unexpectedness of action,
+fun inexhaustible, combine to form that eccentricity of
+manner which is ever associated with the idea of an
+Irishman.</p>
+
+<p>That such an Ireland was, not long ago, a reality,
+one cannot doubt. A whole literature, a rich<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178"></a>[178]</span>
+collection of tales, novels and legends is there to witness
+to the fact. Its historical existence is as scientifically
+demonstrated as that of our “Régence.” The
+worldly exploits of the Duke of Richelieu are not
+better proved. But it is in vain you look to-day for
+that gay and careless Ireland; from Cape Clear to
+Malin Head, from Dublin to Galway, there is no
+vestige of it. She is dead and gone. Like Mr. Credit,
+bad payers have killed her. Between her and us there
+has been a great financial cataclysm where she has
+been wrecked: the <i>crash</i> of the great famine of 1846-1847.</p>
+
+<p>Never did she rise from it. Forty years ago she
+contrived to exist somehow. The tenants were poor,
+to be sure, but the landlords were not, and they spent
+their money grandly. They led the usual life of rich
+country gentlemen, had large retinues of servants and
+horses, kept playing, drinking, and betting till they
+had only debts left, which course had at least the advantage
+of permitting their cash to circulate about
+the country. The local traffic was relatively large
+then. Butchers, coach-makers, wine-merchants, and
+horse-dealers made rapid fortunes. Few towns in
+Europe showed so much animation as Dublin, now
+so empty and so dull a place. Everybody was in
+debt with everybody; not one property was not mortgaged.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179"></a>[179]</span>
+It was the fashion at that time to pay only at
+the last extremity. A general complicity gave force
+of law to that habit. Lawsuits, of course, were plentiful,
+but what is there in a lawsuit to prevent a jolly
+squire from drinking hard, riding his horses at a
+break-neck pace, or galloping from morning till night
+behind his hounds?</p>
+
+<p>Then came the potato-disease; then the famine,
+which brought in two years a general liquidation.
+Everyone awoke to find himself ruined; there were in
+six months fifty thousand evictions. The largest fortunes,
+when they escaped the Encumbered Estates
+Court, established in 1849, remained loaded with such
+heavy burdens that the income of the titulary fell to
+nothing. One was obliged to pinch then, to sell the
+horses, and shut up the kennel. There was an end to fun,
+and if there remained here and there some inveterate
+boon companion who would not give up the good old
+customs, the <i>Moonlighters</i> soon brought him to reason,
+poisoning his dogs and hunters, confiscating his
+arms, and at times mistaking the landlord for the game.</p>
+
+<p>There is no vestige left now of the easy-going ways
+of old. The large town-houses and country seats are
+deserted or let to strangers; the cellar is empty, the
+dining-room silent. A gust of hatred and misery has
+blown on the isle and left all hearts frozen.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180"></a>[180]</span></p>
+
+<p>As for the peasant, the poor creature has too many
+cares for thinking of a joke now. Perhaps in other
+climes, under a clearer sky and warmer sun, he would
+revive, and find in his very distress the element for
+some witticism. But here, the damp atmosphere, united
+with persevering ill-fortune, has deluged and drowned
+for ever his Celtic good-humour. Hardly does he find
+now and then a glimpse of it at the bottom of an ale-jug
+or in the tumult of some election riot. If a quick
+repartee, one of his characteristic sallies, escapes him
+now, it is always bitter, and reminds you of the acrid
+genius of Swift.</p>
+
+<p>“How deliciously pure and fresh is the air in Dublin,”
+said Lady Carteret, the Lord Lieutenant of
+Ireland’s wife, to the author of “Gulliver.”</p>
+
+<p>“For goodness’ sake, Madam, don’t breathe a word
+about it to the English. They would put a duty
+on it.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>And his terrible satire about the famous “excess of
+population,” that favourite hobby of economists, who
+has not it in mind?</p>
+
+<p>“It is a melancholy object to those who walk
+through this great town or travel in the country,
+where they see the streets, the roads, and cabin-doors<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181"></a>[181]</span>
+crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by
+three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning
+every passenger for an alms ... I think it is
+agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of
+children ... is in the present deplorable state of
+the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and
+therefore, whosoever could find out a fair, cheap, and
+easy method of making these children sound, easy
+members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well
+of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver
+of the nation. I shall now, therefore, humbly
+propose my own thoughts; which I hope will not be
+liable to the least objection.</p>
+
+<p>“I have been assured by a very knowing American
+of my acquaintance in London that a young healthy
+child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious,
+nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed,
+roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that
+it will equally serve in a fricassée or a ragout.</p>
+
+<p>“I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration
+that of the hundred and twenty thousand
+children already computed, twenty thousand may be
+reserved for breed, whereof one-fourth part to be
+males ... that the remaining hundred thousand
+may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons
+of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182"></a>[182]</span>
+advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in
+the last month so as to render them plump and fat
+for good tables. A child will make two dishes at an
+entertainment for friends, and when the family dines
+alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable
+dish, and, seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be
+very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in
+winter.</p>
+
+<p>“I have reckoned, upon a medium, that a child
+just born will weigh twelve pounds, and in a solar year,
+if tolerably nursed, will increase to twenty-eight
+pounds.</p>
+
+<p>“I have already computed the charge of nursing a
+beggar’s child (in which list I reckon all cottagers,
+labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about
+two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe
+no gentleman would refuse to give two shillings for the
+carcase of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will
+make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat. Those
+who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times
+require) may flay the carcase: the skin of which,
+artificially dressed, will make admirable gloves for
+ladies and summer boots for fine gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p>“As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed
+for this purpose in the most convenient parts
+of it; and butchers we may be assured will not be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183"></a>[183]</span>
+wanting; although I rather recommend buying the
+children alive, then dressing them hot from the knife,
+as we do roasted pigs....</p>
+
+<p>“I think the advantages, by the proposals I have
+made, are obvious and many, as well as of the highest
+importance: for first, as I have already observed, it
+would greatly lessen the number of papists, with
+whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal
+breeders of the nation, as well as our most dangerous
+enemies.... Whereas the maintenance of a
+hundred thousand children, from two years old and
+upwards, cannot be computed at less than ten shillings
+a piece per annum, the nation’s stock will be thereby
+increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, beside
+the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all
+gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom, who have any
+refinement in taste. And all the money will circulate
+among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own
+growth and manufacture.... Besides, this would
+be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise
+nations have either encouraged by rewards or enforced
+by laws and penalties.”</p>
+
+<p>The grim sarcasm goes on in the same sinister, pitiless
+way up to the conclusion, which is worth the rest:</p>
+
+<p>“I profess in the sincerity of my heart that I have
+not the least personal interest in endeavouring to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184"></a>[184]</span>
+promote this necessary work, having no other
+motive than the public good of my country, by
+advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving
+the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich.
+I have no children by which I can propose to get a
+single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and
+my wife past child-bearing.”</p>
+
+<p>Modern Philanthropy is not quite so bold as the
+Dean of St. Patrick in suggesting remedies for the
+relief of the sufferings of Ireland. Its great panacea
+is emigration. The first thing which attracts the eye
+in villages and boroughs is a large showy placard
+representing a ship in full sail, with the following
+words in large capitals, “Emigration! ... free
+passage to Canada, Australia, New Zealand! ...
+free passage and a premium to emigrants for Queensland!...”</p>
+
+<p>Technical particulars follow; the agents’ addresses,
+the names of the outward-bound ships, &amp;c....
+These placards are everywhere. At each turning, on
+every wall they stare you in the face, and fascinate
+the starving man. Numerous and powerful emigration
+companies paid by colonies where hands are
+wanting, patronized by all that is influential in the
+kingdom, work unremittingly in recruiting that army
+of despair for a voluntary transportation. And thus<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185"></a>[185]</span>
+a continuous stream of Irishmen is ebbing out through
+all the pores of the country.</p>
+
+<p>Shall we give the official figures? There are none
+given unfortunately for the years between 1847 and
+1851, corresponding to the “famine clearances” or
+famine evictions. All that is known is that at that
+time the population of Ireland suddenly decreased by
+one million six hundred and twenty-two thousand inhabitants,
+without it being possible to say how many
+had died of starvation, how many had embarked pell-mell
+on hundreds of ships, how many had perished
+at sea, how many had survived. Since 1851
+the accounts are clear. It is known that 148,982
+emigrants left Ireland in the eight last months
+of that year; 189,092 in 1852; 172,829 in 1853;
+139,312 in 1854. During the following years the
+emigration slackens its pace by degrees and falls to
+the rate of 75,000 heads a year. It rises again in
+1863-64, and attains the figure of over 105,000.
+Then it settles again to its level: 60,000, where for a
+time it remains stationary. Since 1880 it has risen
+again to 95,000, and over 100,000.</p>
+
+<p>Within thirty years, the period included between the
+1st of May, 1851, and the 1st of May, 1881, Ireland has
+lost through emigration alone <i>two million five hundred
+and thirty-six thousand six hundred and twenty-seven</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186"></a>[186]</span>
+of her children. The total for the last five years
+has not yet been published, but it certainly reaches
+half a million. From the year 1851, therefore, at
+least <i>three million</i> Irish people of both sexes have left
+the island, that is to say, nearly the half of a population
+then reduced to six-and-a-half million souls.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Has, at least, the result of that frightful exodus been
+to eradicate pauperism? One would like to believe it.
+Theorists had promised it. But alas! stern statistics
+are there to answer their fallacies.</p>
+
+<p>Statistics inform us that the Ireland of 1887, with
+its present population, inferior to that of London, is
+poorer than it was in 1841, when it numbered eight
+million inhabitants. Twenty years ago the number
+of individuals admitted to workhouses was 114,594
+out of six million inhabitants. To-day it is 316,165
+out of a population diminished by a third. In 1884
+the poor who received relief at home were 442,289.
+They are now 633,021. In other words, <i>one Irishman
+out of four</i> lives on public charity—when he
+lives at all.</p>
+
+<p>Upon such facts, would you guess what monstrous
+conclusion the votaries of emigration at any price
+have come to? Simply this: that the blood-letting<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187"></a>[187]</span>
+is not sufficient; that Ireland must be drained of
+another million inhabitants. Such is Lord Salisbury’s
+opinion. As if an area of 20,194,602 statute acres,
+so favoured geographically, was not calculated to
+nourish twelve or fifteen million human beings rather
+than three! (This was the opinion of Gustave de
+Beaumont, after Arthur Young.) As if the emigration
+of every healthy and industrious adult was not
+a nett loss for the country, just as is the guinea taken
+away by any <i>absentee</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Is not his exit a sign of strength and energy in the
+emigrant? He was free to stay at home if he liked; to
+shut himself up in a workhouse and live there at the
+public expense. Has he not given by his very
+departure the best proof that he is not a useless
+member in the social body? What! you incite all
+that is able and active to go away, keeping only the
+weak, the old, the useless; to these you dole out what
+is necessary to keep up a flickering breath of life, and
+when poverty increases, you are surprised at it!</p>
+
+<p>I bear in mind the reasons alleged by politicians.
+Elizabeth and Cromwell have invoked them before,
+when recurring to more drastic but equally vain
+measures. But, here again, the calculation is wrong;
+the eternal justice of things has not permitted it to
+succeed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188"></a>[188]</span></p>
+
+<p>For all those whom the feudal system starves out
+of their native island take care, for the most part,
+not to go and fertilize with their work the British
+colonies. Vainly does the emigration agent offer
+them a free passage, grants of land, and even premiums
+in money. They prefer buying with their last
+penny a ticket which opens a free land to them. They
+go to the United States, where they thrive almost
+to a miracle, and this is a decisive answer to the
+masters of their race, who are also its calumniators.
+They multiply there so as to form already a fifth part
+(twelve millions) of the total population of the great
+American Republic. At the bar, in the press, in all
+liberal professions, they are a majority, and by their
+brilliant qualities, which often secure them the first
+rank, they exercise a real preponderance. But they
+never forget that they are Irish. They keep the unimpaired
+remembrance of their beloved country, dear
+to their heart in proportion as she is unhappy. They
+remember their home burnt to the ground, the old
+grandfather thrown on the road-side, the little ones
+crying at the withered breast of a pallid mother, the
+wrench of parting, the heart-rending farewell; then
+the contumely during the voyage—the hardships
+after the landing; and they swear an oath that all
+shall be paid some day, and, in the meanwhile, they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189"></a>[189]</span>
+contribute their dollars to the healing of an ever-bleeding
+wound.</p>
+
+<p>It is there that Fenianism was born. From their
+ranks come those conspirators who terrorize England
+with their periodic outrages. In all agrarian
+violence the hand of the emigrants is to be found.
+From 1848 to 1864 they have sent thirteen million
+pounds to those of their family that have remained in
+Ireland; and, from 1864 to 1887, perhaps double
+that sum. But in those figures, given by Lord
+Dufferin, the secret funds brought to the service of
+an ever-increasing agitation are not reckoned. The
+<i>Invincibles</i> were in their pay. The <i>Skirmishing Fund</i>
+was entirely sustained by them. The National League
+lives, in a manner, upon their subsidies. When
+Mr. Parnell went to visit the United States, they were
+powerful enough to induce the Senate of Washington
+to give him the honours of the sitting—an exception
+which stands unique in history.</p>
+
+<p>The independence of Ireland is their dream, their
+ambition, their hope, their luxury in life. The day
+when this is accomplished, England will perhaps
+realize that the Irish emigration has been a political
+blunder, as it is an economical mistake and a moral
+crime.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190"></a>[190]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Cork.</span></p>
+
+<p>Wishing to see some of those who emigrate I have
+come to Cork. Cork is the great harbour of the
+South of Ireland, the gate that opens on America
+and Australia. From St. Patrick’s Bridge on the
+Lee a steamer took me to where three emigrant
+ships were at anchor ready to fly to other climes. I
+went on board two of them, one English, the other
+American. There was nothing particular to notice,
+except an under-deck disposed as a dormitory, as
+is the rule on board all maritime transports, so as to
+lodge four or five hundred steerage passengers. These
+passengers bring with them their bedding, which consists
+generally of a coarse blanket, and the staple part
+of their eatables. A canteen affords them, at reasonable
+prices, all drinks or extras that they may think
+fit to add to their ordinary fare.</p>
+
+<p>The impression I gather in these under-decks is
+rather a favourable one. There is as yet only the
+bare floor, but it is clean and well washed. Through
+the hatches, wide open, a pure and bracing air circulates
+freely.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt there will be some alteration after a few
+days’ voyage. But it is evident that the Queen’s
+administration keeps a sharp eye upon the emigration
+companies, and sees that all sanitary prescriptions<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191"></a>[191]</span>
+are observed. One sees no longer now-a-days such
+scandalous spectacles as occurred in the years of the
+famine, when thousands of Irish were promiscuously
+heaped in the hold of <i>coffin-ships</i>, and died by
+hundreds before reaching the goal. Emigration is now
+one of the normal, it may be said one of the official,
+functions of social life in Ireland—a function which
+has its organs, laws, customs, and even its record-office.
+The companies keep their agents in all
+British possessions; they are informed of all the
+wants of those colonies; they know what specialists
+are in demand, what advantages are offered to the
+new-comer. They do their best to make the offer fit
+with the demand, and they seem to succeed.</p>
+
+<p>An old boatswain on board one of the emigrant
+ships tells me that life there is generally monotonous
+but quiet. The passengers do not mix or associate
+as quickly as one could imagine. Each of them
+pitches his own separate camp on the few square feet
+that chance gives him, and it is only after eight or
+ten days’ voyage that they begin to club together.
+The mothers tend their babies, the fathers smoke
+their pipes, the children play, the young people flirt.
+It appears that a relatively considerable number of
+marriages are prepared and even concluded in the
+crossing. There is nothing surprising in that, if we<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192"></a>[192]</span>
+remember that the most numerous class of emigrants
+is composed of marriageable girls and men between
+twenty and twenty-five years of age.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>A few types of emigrants taken at the inns and
+public-houses on the quays. <i>John Moriarty</i>, of Ballinakilla,
+County Cork, 45 to 50 years old. A rural
+Micawber, dressed in a dilapidated black coat, a pair
+of green trousers, completely worn out at the knees,
+and crushed hat. A Catholic (he says <i>Cathioulic</i>).
+Squats with wife and children in a single room,
+almost devoid of furniture. Was to have embarked
+five days ago for Canada. The Board of Health did
+not allow it on account of one of the children having
+got the measles (an illness which assumes in Great
+Britain a most dangerous and infectious character).
+Makes no difficulty to tell me his whole history.
+Had a farm of thirteen acres. Was thriving more or
+less—rather less than more. But for the last seven
+years it has been an impossibility for him to make
+both ends meet.</p>
+
+<p>Strange as it may appear, the man is a Conservative
+in feeling.</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing to do in the country, with those <i>mob
+laws</i> and agitation!” says he.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193"></a>[193]</span></p>
+
+<p>“What mob laws?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, the trash on fixity of tenure, fair rent and
+the rest.”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought they were favourable to the
+tenant.”</p>
+
+<p>“Favourable in one sense, yes, sir,” (<i>with a diplomatic
+air, as he fastens on me two little chocolate-coloured
+eyes</i>) “but disastrous in the end, because they allow one
+to sell his tenant-right at a discount. You believe that
+it will set you up, and it is the very stone that makes
+you sink. The banks are our ruin, don’t you see?
+Once they have taken hold of their man they don’t
+let him out before they have skinned him” (<i>a silence,
+then a sigh of mild envy</i>). “It is, indeed, a good trade
+that of banking!”</p>
+
+<p>He remains dreamy and seems to meditate the
+scheme of founding a bank in Canada.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martin Mac Crea</i>, 22 years old, a shepherd of
+Drumcunning. A Catholic. A tall, pale, thin fellow,
+decently dressed, with a wide-awake look. Goes to
+Queensland. Why? “Because there is no opening
+in Ireland. The most you can do is to earn your
+bare sustenance.” It appears that in Queensland
+it is quite a different affair. The profession of shepherd
+pays there. Let a man bring or save the money
+necessary to buy half-a-dozen sheep, and let them<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194"></a>[194]</span>
+graze at their will. Seven or eight years later their
+name is legion, and the man is rich.</p>
+
+<p>“But are you then quite free of ties here? Don’t
+you leave anybody, any relation, in Ireland?”</p>
+
+<p>“I was obliged to live far from them, and where I
+go I shall be more able to help them. Besides, the
+post reaches there.”</p>
+
+<p>“And the young ladies at Drumcunning. Do they
+allow you to go away without a protest?”</p>
+
+<p>A broad smile lights up Martin Mac Crea’s countenance.
+A further conversation informs me that his
+betrothed has gone before him to Brisbane, where
+she is a servant. He is going to meet her, and they
+shall settle together in the <i>bush</i>, keeping sheep on
+their own account.</p>
+
+<p>Let us hope she has waited for him. Queensland
+is far away!</p>
+
+<p><i>Pat Coleman</i>, twenty years old. A friend to the
+former. Son of a small farmer with six children.
+Nothing to do at home. Prefers going to the Antipodes,
+to see if there is a way there to avoid dying
+of starvation, as happened to his grandfather.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter Doyle</i>, forty-three years old. A journeyman.
+A Presbyterian. Can’t find work at home; therefore
+emigrates. Was employed on railway construction,
+county Clare. Has been turned away, the line being<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195"></a>[195]</span>
+completed and open to travellers. Had come to Cork
+in the hope of getting work, but found only insignificant
+jobs. Packed to Melbourne.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dennis O’Rourke</i>, twenty-nine years old; of Enniscorthy,
+Wexford. An engine-maker; belongs to a
+class of which I had as yet met no specimen in
+Ireland, the workman-politician. Has already emigrated
+to the United States, where he spent three
+years. Wished to see his country again, and tried to
+set up a business on a small scale, first in Dublin, then
+at Cork; but it does not pay. Goes back to New
+York.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you know why? I am going to tell you.
+(<i>Fiercely</i>) I am going because this country is rotten
+to the core! Because it has no spirit left, not even
+that of rebellion! I am going because I will no
+longer bear on my back the weight of dukes and
+peers, of Queen, Prince of Wales, Royal family, and
+the whole lot of them! I am going where you can
+work and be free; where a man is worth another
+when he has got in his pocket two dollars honestly
+earned. That is where I go, and why I go.”</p>
+
+<p>“In short, you make England responsible for your
+misfortunes?”</p>
+
+<p>“England be damned!”</p>
+
+<p>It is O’Connell’s word. He was travelling in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196"></a>[196]</span>
+France, towards St. Omer, and found himself inside
+the mail-coach with an old officer of the first Empire
+who began forthwith to talk against the English.
+The great Irish agitator kept silent.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t you hear me?” the other said at last,
+insolently.</p>
+
+<p>“I beg your pardon, I hear you perfectly well.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you don’t mind my treating your country as
+I do?”</p>
+
+<p>“England is not my country; I hate it more than
+you will ever do.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_197"></a>[197]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE LEAGUE.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Ennis.</span></p>
+
+<p>The county Clare, and more especially Ennis,
+its chief town, have played an important part in the
+contemporary history of Ireland. It was here eight
+years ago (in 1879) that Mr. Parnell, at a great autumn
+meeting, gave his famous <i>mot d’ordre</i> on social and
+political interdict.</p>
+
+<p>“If you refuse to pay unjust rents, if you refuse to
+take farms from which others have been evicted, the
+land question must be settled, and settled in a way
+that will be satisfactory to you. Now, what are you to
+do to a tenant who bids fora farm from which another
+has been evicted? You must shun him on the road-side
+where you meet him,—you must shun him in the
+shops,—you must shun him in the fair green, and in
+the market-place, and in the place of worship: by
+leaving him severely alone, by putting him in a moral
+Coventry; by isolating him from the rest of his
+countrymen, as if he were the leper of old, you must<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_198"></a>[198]</span>
+show him your detestation of the crime he has
+committed.”</p>
+
+<p>Those words contained a whole programme, faithfully
+carried out since, and which has already borne fruit.
+They took exceptional force from the fact that Mr.
+Parnell, at the time he pronounced them, was already
+the acknowledged leader of Irish opposition. They were
+in some sort the registration of birth of the League.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The League! Every moment, travelling through
+this island, one comes in contact with this power,
+mysterious though positive, anonymous and yet implicitly
+recognized. The League houses and feeds
+evicted families; it settles that such a landlord or such
+a farmer shall be boycotted; it decrees that the rents
+of such an estate shall be reduced 30 per cent.; that
+of such another the rents shall be lodged in the League’s
+own coffers; it patronises candidatures, chooses the
+place and time of meetings, presides over all the
+phases of social life. What is that League? is the
+question one asks.</p>
+
+<p>At first one naturally supposes it to be an electoral
+association such as exists in every free country. But
+little by little one perceives that it is a far bigger
+affair. Electoral associations are not in the habit of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_199"></a>[199]</span>
+inspiring such persistent enthusiasm, of covering during
+eight long years the extent of a whole country; they
+do not send roots to the most remote villages, nor do
+they count among their members three-quarters of the
+adult population. It is not their custom either to
+fulminate excommunications, or if they do they have
+but little appreciable effect on the ordinary tenour of
+life. One never heard that they disposed of important
+capital, and one would be less surprised to hear that
+they had entered into a lawsuit with their printer about
+an unpaid bill for five or six thousand placards, than
+one would be to hear that they have several hundred
+thousand pounds in the bank.</p>
+
+<p>And yet it is precisely of hundred thousand pounds
+that one constantly hears in connection with the
+League. Where does it get all that money, in a
+country worn so threadbare as this? Whence is it that
+it is so universally respected, so religiously obeyed?
+All the smiles are for the League, while the functionaries
+of the Crown pocket only snubbings. All
+the doors open before the League, while they close
+and even barricade themselves at the bare mention of
+the Lord Lieutenant’s name.</p>
+
+<p>One observes these facts; compare and weigh them.
+Then the conclusion imposes itself quite naturally
+that the League is the only public power recognised<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_200"></a>[200]</span>
+by the bulk of the Irish nation. One already had a
+suspicion of being a spectator to a revolution, of which
+the violent deeds, instead of being concentrated over a
+period of two or three years, as we have seen at home,
+have spread over half a century. One understands that
+one has fallen in the midst of a civil war, not in the
+incipient state, but fully let loose, and that there exists
+in this island two rival authorities,—that of the Crown
+with the bayonets on its side; that of the League,
+possessing all hearts.</p>
+
+<p>Ireland, it is hardly necessary to repeat, has been
+in a state of rebellion since the beginning of the
+British Conquest. But it has been in a state of
+revolution only for a period of about forty years.
+Insurrection betrayed itself now by individual but
+constant acts of rebellion, of which one can easily
+follow the succession through past ages, now by
+collective risings like those of Thomas Fitzgerald in
+1534, of O’Neil in 1563, of Desmond in 1579, of
+Preston in 1642, of the Whiteboys in 1791, of the
+Oakboys in 1762, of the Steelboys in 1768, of Wolfe
+Tone in the course of the French Revolution, of
+Emmet in 1803, the New Whiteboys in 1807, of
+John Mitchell in 1848, of the Fenians in 1865 and
+1867. As for the agrarian revolution, born of an
+economical situation impossible to bear, it follows its<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_201"></a>[201]</span>
+course as regularly as a great river, ever getting
+larger and larger, widening its bed, swelling its volume
+with all the streams it meets, increasing in power at
+the same time that its waters get more depth and
+breadth. Even the soothing mixtures prescribed for
+it by the Parliamentary doctors have served as its
+tributaries. Its torrent has at length become irresistible.</p>
+
+<p>To discover its source, we must go back to the
+famine evictions of 1847. The heart-rending spectacle
+then presented by Ireland made it natural to look for
+a palliation to such misery. The malady was studied
+in all its aspects; much learned discussion took place
+at the bedside of the agonizing patient. It was the
+time when Disraeli developed his famous theory of
+“the three profits.” The land, if one was to believe
+him, must yield profit to three persons:—the Queen,
+the landlord, and the tenant. It appears this was
+arranged from the end of Time by the Great Architect
+of the Universe. The laws of Kepler are not
+more absolute. The unlucky thing is that the earth
+does not always fulfil its obligations, and too often
+refuses to yield up the three sacramental profits.</p>
+
+<p>Theorists endowed with less boldness thought to
+find a remedy by giving legal consecration to the
+tenant’s rights by the system of <i>the three F’s</i>, as it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_202"></a>[202]</span>
+was called, that is to say, <i>Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure,
+and Free Sale</i>. Through endless resistance, after
+endless debating in the course of twenty parliamentary
+sessions, a whole <i>remedial</i> legislation came
+to add its bulk to the already so intricate structure of
+Anglo-Saxon law.</p>
+
+<p>Now the custom of Ulster was extended to the
+whole of Ireland, and the right of the farmer over
+the improvements paid with his money became law
+(1860); now he was promised an indemnity in case of
+eviction, and the basis was laid of a system of
+amortization which must infallibly in the course of
+time have ended in creating a class of peasant landowners
+(1870).</p>
+
+<p>Already in the year 1849, the State had interfered
+between the landlords in difficulties and their
+tenants, by the creation of a special tribunal for
+obligatory liquidation,—<i>the Encumbered Estates Court</i>.
+It finally came to interfere between landlord and
+tenant by instituting a new court of arbitration, the
+<i>Land Court</i>, entrusted with the care of fixing the
+“fair” rent in each case.</p>
+
+<p>That Court was no sooner opened than 75,807
+affairs were inscribed upon its roll. It judged in one
+year 15,676. But there remained still 60,101 to be
+judged, and already the reductions of 18 to 27 per<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_203"></a>[203]</span>
+cent. imposed on the landlords appeared insufficient;
+already the farmers were loudly clamouring for
+further reductions.</p>
+
+<p>For in truth such remedies were too anodine for
+such rooted disease! But the wedge had nevertheless
+entered the tree. The State had appeared
+in the character of umpire between the landlord
+and the peasant. Henceforth all was or seemed
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>The essence of dogmas is to suffer no questioning.
+One cannot with impunity discuss for twenty
+years the basis of landed property’s law and the
+theory of “the three profits” before empty stomachs.
+As a parallel to these debates, the question of political
+rights for Ireland rose again, and ended insensibly
+by the conquest of the electoral franchise, of religious
+equality, and of national education. The moment
+arrived when the bulk of the population took an interest
+only in the truly vital question,—that of the soil.
+And all of a sudden they understood that there
+was only one remedy for the ills that weighed so
+grievously over them: Landlords and tenants cannot
+continue to live side by side. Either the one or the
+other must go.</p>
+
+<p>“Let the landlords decamp! They do not belong
+here,” said the peasants.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_204"></a>[204]</span></p>
+
+<p>“No, by G⸺! The peasants shall go,” answered
+the landlords; “the way is open....”</p>
+
+<p>It was thus that towards 1876 the Irish movement
+became agrarian, from being purely national. The
+League is the organ of that new function.</p>
+
+<p>Its primary idea belongs to two veterans of the
+Fenian plots, Michael Davitt and John Devoy. But
+what distinguishes it from those plots, besides a
+broader basis and larger aims, is that it acts in broad
+daylight, with face uncovered, appealing to all men
+of goodwill, using exclusively those constitutional
+weapons—the right of meeting, the right of association
+and coalition.</p>
+
+<p>“The Fenians saw only the green flag,” wrote
+John Devoy. “The men of to-day perceive that
+under its folds is the Irish land.” Nevertheless, it
+was to the remains of the Fenian associations that he
+and Michael Davitt had recourse at first to lay the
+foundations of the new association. They went to
+look for them even to the uttermost end of America,
+secured the co-operation of some of the most influential
+members of the Irish emigration, then came back to
+Europe, and summoned a great preliminary meeting
+at Irishtown.</p>
+
+<p>As ordinarily enough happens in such cases,
+their project was at first looked upon coldly by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_205"></a>[205]</span>
+members of Parliament, who thought it impolitic,
+and violently opposed by the secret societies—Fenians
+or Ribbonmen—who thought it calculated to cool
+the Nationalist zeal. But under the too real sufferings
+produced by two years of famine (1876-1877),
+the agrarian tempest assumed such formidable proportions,
+that all resistance had to cease, and the
+politicians were compelled to lower their flag. For
+the chiefs of the autonomist party it was a question
+of no less than keeping or losing their mandate.
+Either they would adopt the new evangel, or they
+would be left lying, officers without troops, on the
+electoral battle-field. Most of them understood this
+in time.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Parnell, the most conspicuous of all, had till
+then limited his part to the demand for a national
+government for Ireland, and his tactics to parliamentary
+obstruction. From an economical point of
+view he still remained, with all his party, on the level
+of worthy Mr. Butt’s <i>three F’s</i>. He was one of the
+first to understand that it was all over with Home
+Rule, and with his own political fortune, if he hesitated
+any longer to plunge into deeper waters.</p>
+
+<p>He made his plunge with characteristic resolution.
+“There is no longer any possibility of conciliation
+between landlord and tenant,” he said. “Since the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206"></a>[206]</span>
+one or the other must go out, it is better that the
+less numerous class should be the one to do it.” On
+the 8th of June, 1879, at Westport, he pronounced
+his famous, “Keep a firm grip on your homesteads!”
+From the 21st of October following the agrarian
+League promulgated circulars, which he signed as
+president.</p>
+
+<p>The League’s aim and watchword were—<i>The
+land for the peasant!</i> Its means were the union
+of all the rural forces, the formation of a resistance
+fund for evicted farmers, the strike of tenants
+with a view to compelling the landlords to grant a
+reduction of rent; and incessant agitation in favour
+of a law for the liquidation of landed property, which
+would give the land into the hands of the cultivators
+by means of partial payments made during a certain
+number of years.</p>
+
+<p>The success of such a programme, seconded by the
+political leaders of Ireland, was certain. But its
+promoters never had dared to hope for a rush such as
+was experienced in a few weeks’ time. Adhesions
+poured in by thousands; all the social classes embraced
+it. The Catholic clergy themselves, after
+wavering one moment, found it advisable to follow in
+the footsteps of the revolutionary party, as the
+Deputies had done before them. Everywhere local<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_207"></a>[207]</span>
+boards were formed which put themselves at the
+disposal of the central committee. Almost everywhere
+the Catholic priest, his curates, not unfrequently
+the Anglican priest himself, were found among the
+members of the board.</p>
+
+<p>This is enough to show with what alacrity and
+unanimity the mobilisation of the agrarian army was
+effected. Far from weakening the Nationalist party,
+as was feared by its prebendaries, it came out of this
+tempered afresh, enlarged, associated with the every-day
+interests, tied indissolubly henceforth, for the
+majority of an agricultural population, to the most
+secret if the most ardent wish of their labourers’
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>What remained to do was to endow the League with
+the resources wanted to carry out its programme; but
+it was not in a country practically ruined, a prey to
+the tortures of hunger, literally reduced to beggary,
+that those resources were to be found. Mr. Parnell
+set out for the land of dollars. He preached the new
+word there with complete success. Exotic branches
+of the League were established in the various States of
+America, in Canada, and Australia; the only thing
+remaining to do was to organize the <i>in partibus
+infidelium</i> government that was to take in hand the
+direction of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_208"></a>[208]</span></p>
+
+<p>But a short time since this government sat in a
+palace of the finest street in Dublin—Sackville Street.
+There it had its offices, reception rooms, council-room
+furnished with the orthodox green baize table,
+its ministerial departments, secretaries and writers,
+officially headed paper, its stamp, documents, accounts
+and red tape.</p>
+
+<p>After a recent movement on the offensive on the
+part of the enemy, the League had to decamp and put
+all this material in a place of safety. But though it
+be presently without a known place of abode, the
+League none the less pursues its work. Do not telegraphic
+wires keep it in communication with its agents
+throughout the length and breadth of the territory?
+Why were Transatlantic cables invented, if not for the
+purpose of opening permanent communications between
+the League and its American, Australian, and
+Asiatic colonies? In all the extent of its jurisdiction,
+which is that of the globe, the League is obeyed and
+respected; it possesses the confidence of its innumerable
+tributaries.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps that comes from the fact that this committee,
+though it sometimes accented too much the
+professional character of its members, has at least the
+rare merit of faithfully serving its constituents and of
+being in perfect harmony of conscience with them.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_209"></a>[209]</span>
+Perhaps this is due to the effect of direct subsidies;
+and we must see there something better than a mere
+coincidence,—a great lesson for the democracies of
+the future. One thing is certain: this government,
+after wielding power for eight years, have their party
+well in hand. They are able to do without red tape
+or scribbling. One word is enough to indicate their
+will, and if they lack secretaries, a hundred newspapers
+will carry this word to its address.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It would be a matter of some difficulty to appreciate
+rightly the financial resources of the League
+Competent judges estimate them at an income of two
+million francs. It receives on an average, from
+English-speaking countries, a thousand pounds a
+week. Now and then subscriptions slacken, and the
+incoming of money is smaller; but the least incident,
+such as a noisy arrest or a political law-suit, is
+sufficient to awaken the zeal of the leaguers. That
+zeal is always proportionate to the energy of resistance
+opposed by the Cabinet of St. James to the
+government of Sackville Street. If London so much
+as raises its head, at once Dublin, and behind Dublin
+the whole of Ireland, the whole of Irish America,
+Australia, the Cape, and the extreme depths of India,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_210"></a>[210]</span>
+all are shaken to their very centre,—in other words,
+they pay.</p>
+
+<p>The chief treasurer of the League, Mr. Egan, giving
+account of his administration in October, 1882,
+after a space of three years, stated that during these
+three years £244,820 had passed through his hands.
+In this total one-third only came from insular contributors;
+all the rest came from abroad. £50,000 had
+been given in relief of distress; over £15,000 had
+been spent in State trials; nearly £148,000 had been
+expended through the general Land League and the
+Ladies’ Land League in support of evicted tenants,
+providing wooden houses, law costs, sheriffs’ sales,
+defence against ejectments and various local law
+proceedings, and upon the general expenses of the
+organization. A little over £31,900 remained to
+the account of the association.</p>
+
+<p>There are no reasons for supposing the normal
+receipts of the League to have diminished much since
+that period. More recently (in 1886) the “plan of
+campaign” has created new openings for it.</p>
+
+<p>This “plan of campaign,” one of the boldest conceptions
+ever accepted by a great political party,
+consists simply in lodging into the coffers of the
+League, and for its use, the rents that were pronounced
+excessive by its committee, and that the landlords<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_211"></a>[211]</span>
+refused to abate. Let us mention in passing that the
+Catholic Archbishop of Dublin publicly accepted the
+responsibility of this tremendous war-measure. It
+has, we must add, been exercised with obvious
+moderation, in specific cases only, and by way of
+example. The true weapon of the League, that which
+it used most liberally up to the present day, is the
+<i>boycotting</i>, or social interdict pitilessly pronounced
+against any one who disobeys its behests.</p>
+
+<p>From a legal point of view, the League has met with
+various fortunes. Suppressed in 1881 by an Act of
+Parliament, it was compelled to put on a mask and
+to disguise itself under the name of the <i>Ladies’ League</i>.
+A year later it underwent a new incarnation and
+became the <i>National League</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Now the Tory Ministry has suppressed it once more
+<i>proclaimed</i> it, as they say (<i>clameur de haro</i>), in virtue
+of the special power conferred on it. It appears
+improbable that the health of the association should
+suffer much for this; on the contrary, it will probably be
+all the better for it. In former days it would have been
+content to undergo a fourth avatar by taking the
+name of <i>Celtic League</i>, <i>Irish Babies’ League</i>, or any
+other name that would have done just as well to
+deride its adversaries. A special provision of the
+Coercion Act will prevent its having recourse to this<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_212"></a>[212]</span>
+expedient. By the 7th article of the Act, the Lord
+Lieutenant is empowered to suppress any <i>new</i> association
+formed with a view to continuing the affairs of
+the old ones.</p>
+
+<p>But one never thinks of everything. Precisely
+because it is so explicit, the 7th article cannot apply
+to the <i>old</i> Irish societies, different from the National
+League, and which can easily be substituted in its
+place. Those associations, <i>Home Rule Unions</i>, <i>Liberal
+Federations</i>, &amp;c., are numerous through the country.
+One of them could easily accept the inheritance of
+the League, and it would be necessary to convoke
+Parliament to suppress it. If Parliament suppresses
+it, it will be easy to find something else.
+And so on for ever, through ages, to the crack of
+doom.... In the meanwhile there will be protestations,
+agitations, interpellations, and before the end,
+“the King, the ass” ... or the Ministry shall have
+died, as La Fontaine said.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Lord Salisbury may close two hundred offices of
+the League in the counties of Clare and Kerry. How
+shall he close the offices beyond the sea, which are
+the real ones?</p>
+
+<p>In fact, the League is indestructible, because it is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_213"></a>[213]</span>
+impossible to get hold of it. One can arrest its chiefs,
+as has been done often enough, intercept its correspondence,
+oppose cavalry regiments to its public
+demonstrations, and retroactive measures to its secret
+acts; they cannot destroy the faith the Irish people
+have put in it; they cannot grapple with the essence
+of an association which rests on the most vital interests
+of the peasantry.</p>
+
+<p>Political persecution is fatally doomed to failure
+when exercised in a free country, if it does not begin
+by attacking the press and the right of meeting. And
+who shall dare to touch those two pillars of the British
+edifice? The English government is the government
+of opinion, or it is nothing: now, the opinion of the
+majority of Irishmen, of the majority of Scotchmen,
+and of an imposing minority of Englishmen, is in
+favour of the League.</p>
+
+<p>To say the truth, all parties are agreed <i>in petto</i>
+upon the necessity of abolishing landlordism. It is
+only a question of settling who shall have the credit
+of doing it, and how it shall be managed so that
+neither the landlord’s creditors nor the public exchequer
+should suffer too much by that unavoidable liquidation.
+Therefore all the measures taken against an
+organism that incarnates such general feeling can
+only be an empty fooling, a holiday sport. Their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_214"></a>[214]</span>
+only effect must be to awaken rural passions and
+provoke new acts of violence. One might even
+believe such was their only aim. For, to be able to
+ruin a perfectly lawful association like the League, in
+a country of free discussion, it is indispensable first to
+throw dishonour upon it.</p>
+
+<p>They have not yet succeeded in doing this, in spite
+of the most strenuous efforts. Not only has it always
+been impossible to charge the League with any act
+contrary to the current standard of morals, but it is beyond
+any doubt that its influence is especially directed
+towards the prevention of agrarian crimes, and even
+against individual resistance to landlordism. Wherever
+there is popular emotion or possible disorder,
+its delegates are present, and endeavour to enforce
+respect for the law. If it happen that the orations of
+some underlings overstep the mark, the general
+methods of the League none the less remain unimpeachable.
+It has taken for mandate the ruling of
+revolutionary action, the legalizing it, the task of
+giving it a scientific character. It is to its honour
+that it has succeeded up to the present day. One
+may reasonably suppose that it will not change its
+tactics at the hour when its true chief is no longer
+Mr. Parnell, but practically Mr. Gladstone.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_215"></a>[215]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE CLERGY.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>From Kilrush, on the coast of Clare, an excellent
+service of steamers goes up the estuary of the Shannon
+to Foynes, where one takes the train to Limerick. It
+is a charming excursion, undertaken by all tourists.
+The Shannon here is of great breadth and majesty,
+flowing in an immense sheet of water, recalling the
+aspect of the great rivers of America. At the back
+you have the stormy ocean; in front, on the right,
+on the left, green hills dotted with snowy villas. Few
+trees or none, as is the rule in Ireland, but a light
+haze that softens all the outlines of the ground,
+magnifies the least shrubs, and lends to all the view a
+melting aspect of striking loveliness.</p>
+
+<p>The boats are few in number, though the depth of
+the channel would allow ships of the heaviest tonnage to
+go up to within five miles of Limerick. I notice hardly
+two or three sailing boats at anchor on this four
+hours’ journey. What an admirable harbour for an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_216"></a>[216]</span>
+active commerce would be that broad estuary, opening
+directly opposite to America, on the extreme
+point of the European continent. It is the natural
+point of arrival and departure for the Transatlantic
+steamers, which would reach New York in five days
+from there. Engineers have dreamed of this possibility.
+But to justify a maritime movement, and
+legitimise such enterprise, a great commerce, an
+industry that Ireland lacks, would be wanted. Gentlemen
+of an engineering turn, come back again in a
+century or two.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>At Tarbert, where we stop to take passengers, a
+fort opens its loop-holes, armed with guns, on the
+river. Redcoats are encamping at the foot of the
+fortress, and the morning breeze carries to us the
+rough voice of a non-commissioned officer drilling his
+men. One might imagine him addressing the <i>Invincibles</i>
+across the ocean somewhat after this guise:</p>
+
+<p>“Here we are, keeping watch: If ever this alluring
+bay tempt you to come over, you shall find us
+ready to receive you!”...</p>
+
+<p>The helm trembles; the boat goes on its course,
+and soon Tarbert melts behind us in the sunny haze.</p>
+
+<p>On board, the travellers resemble those seen in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_217"></a>[217]</span>
+summer on all great rivers—merchants bent on a
+pleasure trip; judges and barristers, having taken
+leave of briefs; professors enjoying their holidays, with
+wives, daughters, sons, goods, and chattels—all have
+the sun-burnt complexion and the satisfied look one
+brings back from the seaside. They have been staying
+on the beautiful shores of the County Clare, and are
+returning home with a provision of health for one
+year. La Fontaine has already noticed that, travelling,
+one is sure to see “the monk poring over his
+breviary.” Here the proportion is far greater than in
+the ancient coach; it is not one priest we have on
+board, but a dozen, all sleek, fat, and prosperous,
+dressed in good stout broadcloth, as smooth as their
+rubicund faces, and provided with gold chains resting
+on comfortable abdomens.</p>
+
+<p>One remark, by the way. When you meet an Irish
+peasant on the road, he stops, wishes you good-day,
+and adds, “Please, sir, what is the time?” Not that
+he cares much to know. He is perfectly well able to
+read the time on the great clock of the heavens. But
+it is his own manner of saying, “I can see, sir, that
+you are a man of substance—one of the great ones of
+this earth—<i>since you have a watch</i>. My sincere congratulations!”</p>
+
+<p>Well, all those travelling priests possess chronometers—we<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_218"></a>[218]</span>
+are obliged to notice it, since it appears
+to be a sign of easy circumstances in Ireland—and
+the rest of their attire fully carries out that symptom.
+Under the undefinable cut that at once betrays a
+clerical garment, their black coat has all the softness
+of first quality cloth; their travelling bag is of good
+bright leather; their very umbrella has a look of smartness,
+and does not affect the lamentable droop that
+with us is always associated with the idea of a clerical
+umbrella. Some of them wear the Roman hat and
+collar, with a square-cut waistcoat and the ordinary
+trousers of the laity, and stockings of all the hues of
+the rainbow. A young curate sports violet-coloured
+ones, which he exhibits with some complacency. I
+ventured to ask him, in the course of conversation,
+whether he belonged to the Pope’s household. He
+answered with a blush of modesty that he had not
+that honour, and wore violet hose because he was
+fond of that colour.</p>
+
+<p>That is a matter of taste; but I have a right to
+suppose, young Levite, that the mitre and episcopal
+rochet—perhaps even the cardinal purple—hover at
+night over your ingenuous dreams.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_219"></a>[219]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Limerick.</span></p>
+
+<p>Limerick is a big town of 40,000 inhabitants,
+celebrated for its hams, lace, and gloves. The objects
+of interest are an important linen factory, and another
+for military equipments, besides a stone mounted on
+a pedestal, and which served as a table for signing
+the famous treaty of 1691—soon violated like all
+treaties, however. Opposite that historic stone, on
+the other side of the Shannon, the ancient castle of
+King John rears its proud head; it has a grim and
+gloomy look, with its seven towers, its thick walls and
+iron-bound gates.</p>
+
+<p>At the large hotel of the place I meet again three
+of my ecclesiastical fellow-travellers. They evidently
+know what is good for them, and would on no account
+stop at second-rate inns. One cannot blame them
+for it. But this is a sign of prosperity, added to all the
+others; a hotel at fifteen shillings a day, without
+counting the wine, seems at first sight suited to
+prelates rather than to humble clergymen. Yet these
+are only village and parish priests, as I gather from
+the book on which I sign my name after theirs. At
+dinner, where we sit side by side, I am compelled to
+see that the appetite of the reverend fathers is excellent,
+and that the <i>carte</i> of the wines is a familiar
+object with them. They each have their favourite<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_220"></a>[220]</span>
+claret: one likes Léoville, another Château Margaux,
+while the third prefers Chambertin; and they drain
+the cup to the last drop. After dessert they remain
+last in the dining-room, in company with a bottle of
+port.</p>
+
+<p>At ten o’clock that night, entering it to get a cup
+of tea, I find the three seated round glasses of smoking
+toddy.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>These memorable events are not consigned here, it
+need hardly be said, for the vain satisfaction of
+recording that on a certain evening three Irish priests
+were tippling freely. They certainly had a perfect
+right to do so, if such was their bent. It is the most
+cherished privilege of a British subject; and of all
+capital sins proscribed by the Church, drunkenness is
+certainly the most innocent. But this remark, made
+without prejudice, during a chance meeting at an inn,
+carries out the general impression left by the Irish
+clergy—that of a corporation greatly enamoured of
+its comforts, endowed with good incomes, and whose
+sleekness forms a striking contrast with the general
+emaciation of their parishioners.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere, in visiting this island, one meets with
+this typical pair of abbots, well dressed and well<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_221"></a>[221]</span>
+“groomed,” travelling comfortably together, and, to
+use a popular expression, “la coulant douce.” It is
+startling in this realm of poverty, the more startling
+because the Catholic clergy have no official means of
+existence, no salary paid them by the State. They
+owe all the money they spend to the private contributions
+of their admirers. Was there ever, they doubtlessly
+think, a more legitimate way of making money?
+That is probably why they make so little mystery
+of it, and disdain to hide when they exchange part of
+their income against a bottle of Chambertin. In other
+places, priests think that a certain reserve is expected
+of them; they prefer being securely shut in privacy
+before they carve a partridge or plentifully moisten
+a synod dinner. Here they are so secure in their
+position that they recoil from no profane glance.</p>
+
+<p>Their lives are, I am told, of exemplary purity. I
+have no difficulty in believing it, both because purity
+is a marked characteristic of the race, and because
+their faith has seemed to me simple as that of the
+Breton priests. There must be exceptions, and some
+were pointed out to me; but assuredly those exceptions
+are few in number. By many signs which do
+not deceive those who have some experience of life,
+one can see that the Irish priest has not the vices of
+the Italian or Spanish priest. He is a gormandizer<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_222"></a>[222]</span>
+to be sure, but he is chaste—perhaps for the very
+reason that he is so devoted to the pleasures of the
+table. His simplicity of heart is wonderful sometimes,
+and makes one think of those Mount Athos
+monks, nursed in the cloister from the tenderest age,
+and who know literally nothing of the exterior world.
+I heard two of them, old men both, who were quietly
+chatting in a corner of the railway carriage. Both
+had small, bald birds’ heads, shaven chins, and a quaint,
+old-fashioned look.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>I am next door to an idiot!</i>” one of them was
+saying, with curious complacency.</p>
+
+<p>“So am I,” answered the other; “so was I always,
+and I thank Almighty God for it!... for have
+you not noticed that all those grand, clever people
+often lose the faith?...”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Where does their income come from? That is a
+question doubly interesting to us Frenchmen, who
+every year pay out two million sterling for the budget
+of public worship. A placard seen everywhere in
+Limerick, and presenting a marked resemblance to
+the advertisement for a theatre, will help to tell us.
+This placard is to the effect that on the day after to-morrow
+a general ordination of young priests will<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_223"></a>[223]</span>
+take place in the Cathedral of St. John, by the hands
+of the Right Reverend X. O’Dyer, archbishop of the
+town (the name and quality in conspicuous characters),
+assisted by several other prelates and dignitaries.
+It proceeds to state that excursion trains have
+been established for the occasion, and that tickets for
+the ceremony may be procured, at the price of half-a-crown
+and one shilling, at No. 98, George Street.</p>
+
+<p>This is a booking-office, exactly like those we have
+in theatres. Plenty of placards, the plan of the church
+showing the number and position of each seat, a table of
+prices, and behind a little grated window a bearded old
+woman for the tickets,—nothing is wanting. One has
+only to choose one’s place, to pay the price down, and
+to take away the ticket. About twenty persons perform
+these various acts before my eyes. Evidently
+the receipt will be good. The cathedral of St. John,
+that proudly raises its brand-new spire above all the
+others, must be able to accommodate at least three
+or four thousand spectators. At 1<i>s.</i> 9<i>d.</i> per head on
+an average, that gives already a total of two or three
+hundred pounds. To this must be added the product
+of the collections and that of the wooden money-boxes,
+that open everywhere to receive the outcome of the
+generosity of the faithful; the total, we may be sure,
+cannot be otherwise than respectable. It is true that an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_224"></a>[224]</span>
+ordination is not an every-day event, and that it must
+be an expensive affair to put on the stage. We must
+therefore suppose the ordinary income to be raised by
+way of semestrial and direct contribution.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>This is how the thing is done: each parish priest
+has two Sundays in the year devoted to the taking
+his <i>dues</i>, as he calls it. On these days, instead of
+preaching, he exhibits a manuscript list upon which
+are inscribed by name all his tributaries, that is to
+say, all his parishioners, with the sums they have
+paid into his hands; this he reads publicly. As a
+rule he adds a running commentary to each name,
+either to praise the generosity of the donor, or, on the
+contrary, to complain of his stinginess. In the country,
+especially, the scene is not wanting in humour.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Daniel MacCarthy</i>, four shillings and six-pence,”
+says the priest. “That’s not much for a farmer who
+keeps three cows and sold two calves this year. I
+will hope for him that he only meant that as a preliminary
+gift.... <i>Simon Redmond</i>, seven shillings
+and six-pence; he might have given ten shillings, as
+he did last year. He is not what we should call a
+progressive man.... <i>George Roehe</i>, two shillings and
+three-pence. <i>Richard MacKenna</i>, one shilling and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_225"></a>[225]</span>
+three-pence. <i>Denis Twoney</i>, one shilling and nine-pence.
+Against those who do their best I have
+nothing to say. <i>Michael Murphy</i>, fifteen shillings.
+Now, I ask, could not he have made it a pound?
+The pity of it! <i>John Coleman</i>, five shillings. <i>Daniel
+Clune</i>, five shillings. <i>Cornelius Nagle</i>, five shillings.
+One would think they had agreed to do it.... <i>Henry
+Townsend</i>, Esq., of Townsend Manor, three pounds
+sterling. That’s what I call a subscriber! And
+he is a Protestant. You ought to be ashamed of
+yourselves to let a Protestant be more generous to
+your own church than you are.... <i>Harriet O’Connor</i>,
+one shilling and nine-pence. I will be bound she
+liked buying a new bonnet better than doing her
+duty. That is between her and her conscience. But
+I am afraid that at the Day of Judgment she won’t
+find it such a good investment.... <i>Mary Ann Cunningham</i>,
+twelve shillings and nine-pence. If everybody
+knew how to spare and how to use what they
+spare in the same way as this good lady, things would
+go better in this world and in the next, take my word
+for it.... <i>Colonel Lewis</i>, of Knockamore Villa, five
+pounds sterling. Another Protestant! Positively one
+might think one lived in a parish of heathens when
+one sees that the heretics alone seem to have some
+regard for the church!...”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_226"></a>[226]</span></p>
+
+<p>The reading goes on in this guise, adorned with
+reflections more or less pungent, and interrupted now
+and then by a repartee coming from the far end of
+the audience, and torn from the patient by the malignity
+of the attack; a general hilarity is then provoked
+without impairing in the least the reverence of the
+congregation for their priest or their church. This
+semestrial subscription, added to the weekly collections,
+the daily masses, the baptisms, weddings and
+burials, is amply sufficient to keep the church, the
+priest, and the priest’s house in a good state of
+repair. Most of the parish priests besides, have the
+habit of “binage,” that is to say they often say two
+or three masses a day, at different points of their
+sometimes very wide parish.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>They are generally addressed by their christian
+name, prefaced by the name of <i>Father</i>: <i>Father James</i>,
+<i>Father Henry</i>, etc., and this title well describes the
+terms of filial familiarity of the flocks with their
+pastor,—a familiarity not unfrequently manifested by
+sound boxes on the ear for children, and good blows
+with the stick on the shoulders of his grown-up
+parishioners, but which does not preclude respect.
+In the streets one always sees the parish priest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_227"></a>[227]</span>
+respectfully greeted by the passers by; many women
+kneel down to kiss his hand as in Italy or
+Spain.</p>
+
+<p>His authority is that of a patriarch, who not only
+wields spiritual power, but also, to a great extent,
+social and political power. He incarnates at once in
+himself the native faith so long proscribed in the
+country, resistance to the oppressor, heavenly hopes
+and compensation for human trials. As a consequence,
+his influence is great, for good as for ill.</p>
+
+<p>The faith of the Irish peasant is entire, unquestioning,
+absolute as that of a thirteenth century’s serf.
+One must see on Sundays those churches crowded to
+overflowing, and too narrow for the congregation who
+remain, silent and kneeling, on the steps and even
+outside the doors. One must see those ragged
+people, forming a chain by holding on to each other’s
+tatters, one behind the other, at a distance of 50 to
+60 feet from the altar, a patch of dim light up there
+in the darkness of the church; or else they must be
+seen at some pilgrimage round a miraculous well or
+stream, like the Lough Derg, wallowing indiscriminately
+in the pond, washing therein their moral and
+physical uncleanliness, drinking the sacred water by
+the pailful, intoxicated with enthusiasm and hope.</p>
+
+<p>The devotees of Our Lady del Pilar, and of San<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_228"></a>[228]</span>
+Gennaro, are less expansive and less ardent. The
+Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Rosary, St. Philip of Neri,
+all the mystical armoury of the modern church have
+innumerable votaries in Ireland. One would perhaps
+experience some difficulty in finding there ten born
+Catholics not wearing next to their skin some amulet
+made of cloth or ivory, and invested in their eyes
+with supernatural powers. If I do not greatly err,
+St. Peter’s pence must find its more generous contributors
+amidst those poverty-stricken populations.
+To those imaginations of starved and half hysterical
+people the Roman pontiff appears in the far distance,
+all in white, in a halo of gold, like a superhuman
+vision of Justice and Pity in this world where they
+found neither the one nor the other.</p>
+
+<p>An Irish servant in London once asked my advice
+about the investment of her savings, some thirty
+pounds which she had scraped together at the Post
+Office Savings Bank. I congratulated her on her
+thrift, when the poor girl told me, her eyes bright
+with unshed tears:</p>
+
+<p>“It is for our Holy Father, that they keep in prison
+up there in Rome.... I mean to bring him fifty
+pounds as soon as ever I get them.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_229"></a>[229]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Those things may tend to explain why the only
+prosperous trade in Ireland is the clerical trade.
+Every year the number of priests increases, though
+the population is decreasing. In 1871 they numbered
+3,136; in 1881 they were 3,363, or an increase of 227,
+under the guidance of four archbishops and twenty-four
+bishops. The Catholic population is of three
+million persons; that gives one priest for about 900
+inhabitants.</p>
+
+<p>It is generally admitted that each of these priests,
+with his church and his house, cannot cost much under
+£300 or £400 a year. That would give about
+£1,200,000 coming annually from the pockets of
+those labourers and servant girls. The tithe was never
+so heavy.</p>
+
+<p>This clergy is chiefly recruited from the class of
+small farmers and peasantry (by the reason that
+the other classes are for the majority Protestants); as
+a consequence the clergy share all the passions of their
+class. The agrarian revolution has no agents more
+active. Almost everywhere the parish priest is the
+president of the local Land League Board. In the
+stormiest meetings is always to be found a village Peter
+the Hermit, preaching the new crusade and denouncing
+the landlords with fiery eloquence; not to speak of
+the Sunday preaching, which is only another meeting<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_230"></a>[230]</span>
+closed against the police, and where landlords are
+handled with extraordinary freedom of language.
+One has seen Irish priests openly declare a shot to be
+an unimportant trifle, so long as it was sent after a
+landed proprietor. A few months ago a Dublin paper
+mentioned a parish in Donegal, where the priest, they
+asserted, had gone so far as to put the properties of
+the landlords in lottery, by tickets of ten shillings each.
+The verification of this fact would by no means be
+easy. But, given the state of mind of the Irish priest,
+the ardour he brings into the struggle, the boundless
+indulgence he displays towards agrarian outrages, the
+tale is by no means improbable; our Leaguers have
+done even worse. However surprising may be in our
+Continental eyes the spectacle of a whole clergy taking
+part against the lords in a social war, under the
+paternal eyes of their episcopate, we must remember
+that here everything tends to bring about this result:—religious
+passions, hereditary instinct, and personal
+interest.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>A priest who had the unlucky idea of pronouncing
+himself against the League would soon see his subsidies
+stopped. His flock would besides lose all confidence
+in him, and all respect for his person. I am<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_231"></a>[231]</span>
+told of a characteristic example of the kind of practical
+jokes indulged in such a case by the peasantry against
+the dissident pastor. A priest of the county Clare,
+seized by sudden scruples, took it into his head to
+abuse the League at the Sunday preaching, instead of
+sounding the usual praise in its honour. At once they
+sent him from the lower end of the church an old
+woman who begged to be heard directly in confession,
+before she could approach Holy Communion. The
+worthy man, grumbling a little at such an untimely fit
+of devotion, nevertheless acceded to her request with
+antique simplicity, and seated himself inside the
+confessional.</p>
+
+<p>“Father,” said the old woman in aloud voice, “I
+accuse myself of having this moment thought that you
+were a wicked bad man, who betrays his flock to take
+the part of their natural enemies....”</p>
+
+<p>“Amen!” answered all the congregation in a chorus.</p>
+
+<p>Without waiting for absolution the old woman had
+got up to go. The priest tried to imitate her. Impossible.
+They had placed on his seat a huge lump
+of pitch which glued him, attached him indissolubly
+to his place. To get him free they were obliged to go
+for help outside, to call strangers to the rescue. The
+whole village meanwhile were shaking with laughter,
+and thought the joke in the best possible taste.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_232"></a>[232]</span></p>
+
+<p>The Irish clergy go with the League, both because
+their temperament inclines them that way, and also
+because it is an imperious necessity of their situation;
+their case is rather similar to that of the <i>Home Rule</i>
+members, who were compelled to enter the movement,
+whether they approved of it or not. However strong
+their hold on the mass of the rural population, their
+influence would vanish in a week if they tried to pull
+against the irresistible stream. Such sacrifices have
+never been a habit of the Roman Church.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed it is permitted to smile, when one sees the
+Tory Ministry soliciting the intervention of the Pope
+in the Irish crisis, and obtaining from him the sending
+of a special legate entrusted with the mission of
+bringing the Episcopate of Ireland back to less subversive
+ideas. It is well understood that the Pope of
+course sends his legate, and derives from his diplomatic
+compliance all the advantages it entails. But
+he is better aware than any one that unless he personally
+gave away one million sterling a year to the
+parish priests of Ireland, he would have little reasonable
+hope of success in asking them to shift their
+policy.</p>
+
+<p>Is it necessary to add that the Irish priest himself
+knows on occasion how to bring into his mundane
+relations the traditional suppleness and prudence of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_233"></a>[233]</span>
+his order? A priest of Wexford, actively mixed up
+with the agrarian movement, was dining a few years
+ago at the house of Mr. C⸺, proprietor of a large
+landed estate in the county. Conversation turned
+upon the League, and no good was said of it. The
+priest listened in silence, without giving his sentiment
+either for or against the League. All of a sudden,
+with a look of assumed simplicity, he turned to his
+host—</p>
+
+<p>“Look here, Mr. C⸺,” he said, “Will you
+believe me? <i>Me impresshun is that there is no Land
+League.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>The saintly man had for the last three months been
+vice-president of the board of the Land League in
+his district.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_234"></a>[234]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.<br>
+<span class="smaller">FORT SAUNDERS.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Galway.</span></p>
+
+<p>Galway is an old Spanish colony, planted on the
+western coast of Ireland, and which kept for a long
+time intimate relations with the mother country.
+Things and people have retained the original stamp
+to an uncommon degree; but for the Irish names that
+are to be read on every shop, you could believe yourself
+in some ancient quarter of Seville. The women
+have the olive complexion, black hair, and red petticoat
+of the <i>mañolas</i>; the houses open on a courtyard,
+a thing unknown in other parts of Ireland, as well
+as in Great Britain; they have grated windows, peep-holes
+in the door, and are adorned with sculptures, in
+the Moorish style; the steeples of churches affect
+the shape of minarets; the very fishermen in the port,
+with the peculiar shape of their boat, sails and nets,
+and something indescribable in their general outline,
+remind you of the hardy sailors of Corunna.</p>
+
+<p>The remembrance of seven or eight centuries of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_235"></a>[235]</span>
+busy trade with the Peninsula, does not show itself
+solely in faces, manners, or dwelling, it is to be
+found also in local tradition. Among others, there
+is the story of the Mayor Lynch Fitz-Stephen, who
+gave in 1493 such a fearful example of ruthless justice.
+His only son, whom he had sent to Spain to settle
+some important affair, was coming back with the
+Spanish correspondent of the family, bringing home
+a rich cargo, when he entered into a conspiracy with
+the crew, appropriated the merchandise, and threw
+overboard the unfortunate Spaniard. The crime was
+discovered, the culprit arrested, and brought to trial
+before his own father, who was exercising the right
+of high and low justice in the district, and by him
+condemned to the pain of death. The general belief
+was that the Mayor would contrive to find some pretext
+to give his son a respite; and in order to supply
+him with that pretext, his relations drew up a petition
+of grace, which they presented to him, covered with
+signatures. Lynch listened to their request, then
+merely told them to come back for an answer on a
+certain day he named. At the appointed time the
+suppliants appeared again; but the first sight which
+caught their eyes was the dead body of the Mayor’s
+son hanging from one of the grated windows of his
+house. An inscription, placed in 1524, on the walls<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_236"></a>[236]</span>
+of the cemetery of St. Nicholas, records the memory
+of that event.</p>
+
+<p>Galway is only a big borough nowadays, where
+ruins are nearly as numerous as inhabited dwellings.
+From the road that skirts the Bay, after leaving the
+harbour, the long islands of Arran may be seen
+rising on the west; from another road, which goes
+northwards, Lough Corrib appears, famous for its
+salmon fisheries. As an historic place, the county
+possessed already the field of Aughrim, celebrated for
+two centuries as the spot where James II. lost his last
+battle against William III.—a battle so murderous
+that the dogs of the country retained a taste for human
+flesh for three generations after. But since the last
+year it has acquired a new celebrity: another and no
+less epic battle has been fought at Woodford in
+August, 1886, for the agrarian cause. The account
+of it is worth telling. Never did the character of the
+struggle between League and landlord appear in such
+a glaring light. All the factors in the problem are
+there, each playing its own part. It is like a vertical
+cut opening Irish society down to its very core, and
+permitting to see it from basis to summit; a supplementary
+chapter to Balzac’s <i>Paysans</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Woodford is a pretty village seated on the shore of
+Lough Derg on the slope of the hills which divide<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_237"></a>[237]</span>
+Galway from Clare. The principal landowners there
+are the Marquis of Clanricarde, Sir Henry Burke,
+the Westmeath family, Colonel Daly, and Lord Dunsandle.
+Agrarian hatred is particularly alive in that
+district; the Galway man is bloodthirsty, and counts
+human life as nought. Five or six years ago Mr.
+Blake, Lord Clanricarde’s agent, was shot dead,
+and in March, 1886, a bailiff named Finley, a
+veteran of the Crimean war, had the same fate
+while he was going to proceed to an eviction on
+the account of Sir Henry Burke. The spot is shown
+still where the unfortunate man was murdered and
+his corpse left twenty-four hours without sepulture,
+nobody daring or willing to bear it away. A detachment
+of the police in the pay of the Property Defence
+Association having settled their barracks in the
+vicinity of Woodford, the inhabitants, about one
+thousand in number, organized a sort of grotesque
+pageant, which made its progress along the streets of
+the town behind a coffin bearing the inscription:
+<i>Down with landlordism!</i> then concluded by burning
+the coffin in sight of the barracks.</p>
+
+<p>There are two churches, one Protestant, the other
+Catholic. The faithful who attend the first are two
+in number, no mere nor less, which would be sufficient
+to show how legitimate it was for the Irish to protest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_238"></a>[238]</span>
+when obliged to pay the tithes of an altogether alien
+worship. The second is headed by a jolly compeer,
+much beloved by his parishioners for his good humour
+and liberality, Father Caen, a pastor of the old school,
+whose boast it is that he keeps the best table and
+cellar, and has the prettiest nieces in the county.
+He is president of the local board of the League;
+the treasurer of that committee is the <i>guardian of
+the poor law</i> of the district, what we would call
+“l’administrateur du bien des pauvres;” but the true
+agent of the League—the <i>Deus ex machina</i> of the place—is
+the secretary, Father Egan, curate of the parish,
+an austere, thin, fanatic-looking man, a peasant’s son,
+with all the passions of his race, who sucked the
+hatred of landlords with his mother’s milk, and ever
+remembers that many of his kindred have been
+reduced to emigrate, and that an uncle of his went
+mad after being evicted. A feature to be noted
+down; that priest, tall, strong, sinewy, is an excellent
+shot and an inveterate poacher. Nothing would be
+easier for him than obtaining leave from the landowners
+to shoot on their grounds; but he scorns the
+leave. His delight is to lurk at night till he has shot
+some of their big game, or to head openly a <i>battue</i>
+for a general slaughter five miles round.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_239"></a>[239]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>One of the finest estates in the county is that of
+Lord Clanricarde, to which are attached three hundred
+and sixteen tenants.</p>
+
+<p>Hubert George De Burgh Canning, Marquis of
+Clanricarde and Baron Somerhill, was born 1832,
+according to the <i>Peerage</i>. He was never married,
+has no children, belongs to the House of Lords as
+Baron Somerhill, is a member of two or three great
+clubs, and lives in Piccadilly, at the Albany, a sort
+of caravanserai (not to say seraglio), almost exclusively
+a resort of rich bachelors. That is about
+all that is known of him. His tenants do not
+know him. The only glimpse they ever had of
+their landlord was on the following occasion. In 1874,
+at the funeral of the late Marquis, a man of about
+forty, with fair hair, who had come from London for
+the ceremony, was noticed among the mourners.
+He was said to be the new master. That was all:
+he disappeared as he had come. Save for that hazy
+and far-away remembrance, the landlord is for the
+Woodford people a mere name, a philosophical entity
+of whom they know nothing except that he has a land
+agent at Loughrea, a little neighbouring town, and that
+into the hands of that agent they must pay every year
+£19,634 out of the product of the land. The tenants
+of Woodford are in that sum for about £1,000.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_240"></a>[240]</span></p>
+
+<p>The Marquis’s father died in 1874. Quite contrary
+to the present owner, he was the prototype of the
+Irish lord resident. Great sportsman, scatter-brain,
+violent, extravagant, but kind and open-handed, he
+was liked in spite of his numerous failings, and tradition
+helping him he was emphatically the master
+almost all his life long; a fact which he was wont to
+illustrate by boasting that if it pleased him to send his
+old grey mare to the House of Commons, the electors
+would be too happy to vote unanimously for the
+animal.</p>
+
+<p>In 1872, however, the Marquis’s tenants took it
+into their heads to cut the tradition, and gave their
+vote to a certain Captain Nolan, the <i>Home Rule</i>
+candidate. The irascible nobleman took revenge for
+what he chose to consider as a personal insult by
+raising the rent of all bad electors. He went so far
+in that line that in 1882 the <i>Land Commissioners</i> had
+to reduce them by half. That judgment could not,
+of course, have a retrospective effect and bring a
+restitution of the sums that had been paid in excess
+during the last ten years, and which varied from £50
+to £100. It may be imagined how they must weigh
+still on the peasant’s heart, and what a well-prepared
+ground the agrarian movement was to find at Woodford.
+The successive murders of the land agent<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_241"></a>[241]</span>
+Blake and Bailiff Finlay were among the first and
+visible signs of that ferment of hatred.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Those crimes, which remained unpunished, and the
+responsibility of which is thrown at each other’s heads
+by the two parties, came with the usual accompaniment
+of fires, mutilations, verbal and written threats.
+The reign of terror had begun in the district; no
+bailiff was any longer willing to serve a writ or
+assignation. There came a time when the landlords
+nearly gave up all hope of finding a land agent to take
+the place of the one who had been murdered; at last
+they discovered the man—a certain Joyce, of Galway—a
+man who united an indomitable spirit with the
+most consummate skill; deeply versed in the art of
+talking to the peasant, a fine shot, carrying his potations
+well; ready for anything. A professional
+exploit had made his name famous in the neighbourhood.
+Having to serve writs upon several farmers,
+and being unable to find bailiffs willing to carry them,
+he made a general convocation in his office of all the
+debtors, with the pretext of submitting to them some
+mode of accommodation. The proposition being
+unanimously rejected, Joyce gets up, goes to the door,
+and after having turned the key, leans with his back<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_242"></a>[242]</span>
+against it; then, producing out of his pocket as many
+writs as there were farmers in his room, distributes
+them among the visitors. The poor devils were
+caught; according to the terms of the law, nothing
+but submission was left to them. It will not be unnecessary
+to add here that Joyce, a born Catholic, had
+been recently converted to Protestantism, which is
+reputed an abomination in Ireland, and consequently
+went by the name of the <i>renegade</i>. Such was the
+man who came to settle at Loughrea under protection
+of a special guard of constables, and hostilities soon
+began.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The harvest of 1885 had been but indifferent, and
+besides, by reason of American competition, the price
+of the chief local products had fallen down considerably—from
+about 15 to 20 per cent.—which implies
+for the farmer an utter impossibility to pay his rent,
+unless the nett profit he draws from the soil be estimated
+above 15 or 20 per cent. of his general receipt.
+Even in Ireland reasonable landlords are to be found.
+Those who understood the situation felt for their
+tenants, and, without waiting to be asked, granted a
+reduction of rent. At Woodford, Lord Dunsandle and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_243"></a>[243]</span>
+Colonel Daly of their own impulse, and Sir H. Burke
+after some demur, gave up 15 per cent. of the unpaid
+rent.</p>
+
+<p>As for Lord Clanricarde, he gave not the least sign
+of existence. When the November term came, his
+tenants demanded a reduction of 25 per cent., upon
+which Joyce declared that not a penny was to be
+given up. This seemed so hard that it was generally
+disbelieved; and an opinion spread itself that by
+applying personally to the landlord justice would be
+obtained. A collective address, signed by the 316
+Woodford tenants, was accordingly drawn up and
+presented to him.</p>
+
+<p>The Marquis of Clanricarde vouchsafed no manner
+of answer. Then, Father Egan put himself in motion.
+He first obtained from the Bishop of Clonfert that he
+would send a second petition to the master, representing
+to him the true state of affairs, the reduction
+consented to by the other landlords, &amp;c. Lord Clanricarde
+did not even acknowledge reception of the
+prelate’s letter. Let us state here, once for all, that
+he never swerved from the attitude he had adopted
+from the beginning, so aggressive in its very stolidity.
+Never once did he depart from that silence, except
+when he once wrote to the <i>Times</i> that, personally, he
+did not object to the proposed reduction, but was in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_244"></a>[244]</span>
+the habit of leaving to his agent the care of that sort
+of thing.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing that there was no satisfaction whatever to
+be expected from him, the Woodford tenants imitated
+their landlord, and henceforth gave no sign of
+life, or paid him a single farthing. In the month of
+April, 1886, Joyce resorted to the legal ways and set
+up prosecutions against thirty-eight of the principal
+farmers, whose debt was £20 and above, assuming by
+that move the attitude of a moderate man who has to
+deal with obvious unwillingness to pay.</p>
+
+<p>And it was that which gave to the Woodford affair
+its peculiar character, which made it a <i>test case</i>, a
+decisive trial where the contending forces have
+measured their strength, where the inmost thought
+of the Irish peasant has shown itself in full light. If
+the chiefs of the League had singled it out from amidst
+a hundred (as, indeed, we may believe they did, whatever
+they might aver to the contrary), they could
+never have achieved a more complete demonstration
+of their power. Chance, however, had also its usual
+share in the turn which affairs took. Joyce, it
+appears, had began prosecutions against seventy-eight
+lesser tenants, and at the moment when success was
+on the point of crowning his efforts, the procedure
+was quashed for some legal flaw.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_245"></a>[245]</span></p>
+
+<p>As for the bigger ones, judgment had been entered
+against them, and the execution followed. The first
+step was the selling out in public court of the tenant’s
+interest in his holding. Ten of the men capitulated
+immediately, paying the rent in full with interest and
+law costs, that is to say, about 80 per cent. above the
+original debt. As for the twenty-eight others, fired
+by political passion, pride, and the ardent exhortations
+of Father Egan, they did not waver, and allowed
+the sale to proceed.</p>
+
+<p>Agreeably to the usage established since the League
+has been supreme in Ireland, not one bidder came forward
+at the sale. The representative of the landlord
+therefore remained master of the situation, and got
+for a few shillings the interest of the twenty-eight
+farmers—interest which, in certain cases, was worth
+£200 and more.</p>
+
+<p>It now remained to evict those tenants from their
+farms, and take possession in their place. Let us
+remark that, being certain of having allowed the
+landlord, through the sale, to help himself to a value
+of five or six times his due, those men were bound to
+consider such an eviction a gratuitous piece of cruelty.
+Well knowing before-hand that the eviction would by
+no means be an easy task, for all Ireland breathlessly
+followed the course of events, Joyce singled out<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_246"></a>[246]</span>
+amongst the twenty-eight defaulters, the four tenants
+for whom the eviction was sure to bear the hardest
+character, namely, Conroy, Fahey, Broderick, and
+Saunders. These were all people of comfortable
+means, who had for many years been established on
+their lands, who were profoundly attached to the
+house where their children or grand-children had
+been born, and which they had themselves built,
+enlarged and improved at great expense; rural
+<i>bourgeois</i> rather than peasants; men that in a French
+country town should have been mayors, <i>adjoints</i>, or
+municipal councillors.</p>
+
+<p>For each of them eviction not only meant ruin, the
+voluntary and definitive loss of a small fortune
+laboriously acquired, and which could be estimated in
+each case at ten or twelve times the amount of the
+annual rent; it was, besides, the upsetting of all their
+dearest habits, the destruction of home, the end of
+domestic felicity. “Placed between this result and
+the choice of paying £30 or £40, which he has in his
+strong box, or which he will experience no difficulty
+in borrowing if he has them not—what country-bred
+man would hesitate?” thought Joyce. “Conroy,
+Fahey, Broderick, and Saunders shall pay! They
+shall pay, and after them the others must inevitably
+follow suit.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_247"></a>[247]</span></p>
+
+<p>This was very sound reasoning. But Joyce calculated
+without the League and its agent, Father Egan.
+The four chosen victims did not pay. With a resolution
+that must really seem heroic to whoever knows
+the workings of a peasant’s soul, Conroy, Fahey,
+Broderick, and Saunders unanimously declared that
+the agent might expel them by force—<i>if he could</i>—but
+yield they would not.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! there was a fearful struggle. It was not
+without the most terrible inner combat that they kept
+their word. At home they had the money ready;
+nothing could be simpler than to go and pay it.
+Now and then temptation waxed almost too strong.
+James Broderick is an old man of seventy years.
+One day, called to Loughrea by the tempter, he went,
+in company with his friend Fahey.</p>
+
+<p>“Now, look here, Mr. Broderick,” Joyce said to him,
+“it goes to my heart to evict a good man like you
+from such a pretty house.... You have lived in it
+for these thirty years—it is the pearl of Woodford....
+Let us make an arrangement about all this: you
+pay me down your rent with for costs, and I
+give you any length of time for the rest.... His
+lordship will even give you back the tenant-right for
+the price he paid himself,—fifty shillings.... Now
+what do you say?”...</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_248"></a>[248]</span></p>
+
+<p>Old Broderick wavered; he was on the point of
+yielding.</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed, Mr. Joyce, you cannot do more than that,”
+... he uttered in a trembling voice, involuntarily
+feeling for his pocket-book.</p>
+
+<p>But Fahey was there. He took the old man’s arm
+and drew him aside.</p>
+
+<p>“It is not <i>time</i> that we want!” he said to him.
+“<i>What we want is to uphold the principle!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>Truly a great word. As fine as any recorded on
+History’s page, for those who know how to understand
+it rightly. If the peasants can remember a
+principle when their property is in question, verily
+one may say that the times are near being fulfilled!</p>
+
+<p>All conciliatory means were now exhausted. It
+only remained to have recourse to force. Joyce knew
+better than anyone what resistance he was going to
+encounter. Personally he thought he was going to
+meet death. He went resolutely nevertheless, but
+not without surrounding himself with a regular
+army.</p>
+
+<p>The bailiffs of the place refusing to act, some had
+to be sent for from Dublin. Those bailiffs, escorted
+by about a hundred emergency men, were supported
+besides by five hundred constables armed with rifles
+and revolvers. Woodford lies at a distance of about<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_249"></a>[249]</span>
+twenty miles from the nearest railway. The traps and
+horses necessary to carry all these people had to be
+sent down from Dublin, nobody consenting to give
+any manner of help. The same thing occurred for
+provisions and for the implements of the siege, pickaxes,
+levers, iron crowbars, which were indispensable
+to the assailants, and which were brought down with
+the army to Portumna. These preparations lasted
+three weeks. The mobilisation, decreed by Joyce at
+the end of July, could only be completed by the 17th
+of August.</p>
+
+<p>On the next day, the 18th, this army moved forward
+and left Portumna in a column, marching on
+Woodford.</p>
+
+<p>But on their side the Leaguers had not remained
+inactive.</p>
+
+<p>All the night long squads of voluntary workmen
+had been hard at work. When the police caravan
+arrived in sight of the village, they found the road
+barred by trees and heaps of stones placed across the
+way. They were obliged to dismount and go round
+by the fields.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, from the top of the neighbouring
+heights horns were signalling the appearance of the
+enemy; the chapel bells began to toll an alarm peal.
+From all the points of the compass an immense<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_250"></a>[250]</span>
+multitude of people hastened to come and take up
+their position on the hills of Woodford.</p>
+
+<p>When the bailiffs made their appearance, headed
+by Joyce, armed to the teeth, by the under-sheriff
+whom the duty of his charge obliged to preside at the
+execution, and leading on five hundred policemen,
+an indescribable, formidable howl rose up to heaven;
+the Irish <i>wail</i> which partakes of the lion’s roar and of
+the human sob, of the yell of the expiring beast and
+of the rushing sound of waters.</p>
+
+<p>That lugubrious hooting was to last during two
+entire days, with full-stops, <i>da capo</i>, <i>decrescendo</i> and
+<i>rinforzando</i> of great effect.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The first house attacked by the assailants was that
+of Conroy. It is a solid, comfortable-looking dwelling,
+built on the bank of Lough Derg. To the
+under-sheriff’s summons, the inhabitants, posted on
+the roof, answered only by derisive laughter. The
+door, which was of solid oak, was closed and barred
+inside. The order was given to break it open. A
+few minutes’ work sufficed to do it.</p>
+
+<p>When it fell crashing under the axes, it was perceived
+that a wall had been built behind it.... A
+triumphant shout rose from the crowd.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_251"></a>[251]</span></p>
+
+<p>“A breach must be made!” thundered Joyce. The
+stone wall was attacked. Immediately, from the roof,
+from the windows, poured a deluge of scalding hot
+lime-water, which fell on the assailants, blinded them,
+burnt them, and sent them back howling and dancing
+with pain. Again the crowd applauded, saluting with
+screams of laughter every ladleful of hot water that
+took effect. The custom of Galway authorizes, it
+appears, that singular way of defending one’s house.
+<i>It is no breach of the peace.</i> One can scald the bailiffs
+without any qualms of conscience or fear of consequences.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing loth, the Conroy family freely used the
+permission. The miracle was that they did not use
+more murderous weapons. But the League’s agents
+were there holding back, according to their custom,
+the too fiery spirits, and keeping them within the
+bounds of legal hostilities. At their head the priest
+Egan was conspicuous, loudly advising the besieged,
+pointing out to them the uncovered assailants, telling
+them on what point to direct the effort of resistance.
+As for the police, mute and motionless, they beheld
+the drama without taking part in it. Four hours’
+work were needed to make the breach. At last
+the bailiffs were able to enter the house, expel the
+inhabitants, and take possession of it. They were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_252"></a>[252]</span>
+obliged literally to carry away the youngest Miss
+Conroy, who desperately clung to the walls and furniture,
+and refused to come out of her own will.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Night came, and the bailiffs have no right to carry
+on their proceedings after sunset. They were therefore
+obliged to postpone their operations till the next
+day. What made matters worse was, that they must
+necessarily go back to Portumna, for they need expect
+to find no lodgings in Woodford. It is easy to
+foretell the complication of events that now followed.</p>
+
+<p>The whole of next day was employed in the eviction
+of Fahey. That of Broderick lasted another
+day, and caused the arrest of twenty-seven persons,
+for in spite of the League’s efforts heads were waxing
+hotter and hotter, and the combatants began to be
+rather too excited on both sides.</p>
+
+<p>But where resistance took a truly epic character
+was in the house of Thomas Saunders. With twenty-three
+comrades he held in check all assaults <i>during
+four entire days</i>. Not content with scalding the
+bailiffs by means of pumps and cauldrons installed
+on purpose, he had, by a stroke of genius, the idea
+of throwing on them hives of bees, that came out
+enraged from their cells and cruelly stung everything<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_253"></a>[253]</span>
+before them. Who knows that there may not be in
+this a precious indication for future warfare! European
+strategists may before long add “the chaste dew-drinkers,”
+as Victor Hugo called them, to the pigeons
+and the war-dogs. However that may be, Joyce’s
+mercenaries, burnt, stung, and crest-fallen, were compelled,
+for three nights running, to retreat on Portumna.</p>
+
+<p>The green flag meanwhile was proudly waving its
+folds on the summit of Saunders’ house, which
+enraptured Ireland, intoxicated with joy at the news
+of this unprecedented siege, immediately baptized
+<i>Fort Saunders</i>. Agitation was fast spreading over
+the whole country. The military authorities judged
+it indispensable to send down 200 mounted men, and
+to have the place patrolled at night. In Portumna
+councils of war were held, and serious thoughts were
+entertained of having recourse to the antique battering-ram
+and “tortoise” in order to approach the
+place and succeed in taking it. Three days passed
+in new preparations and supplementary armaments.</p>
+
+<p>At last, on the 27th of August, a new assault was
+attempted. It failed like all the others, but the law
+must, it was felt, at all costs, be enforced; the police
+interfered about some technical point, took the house
+at the bayonet’s point and made all its inmates
+prisoners.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_254"></a>[254]</span></p>
+
+<p>Thus ended, without effusion of blood, this memorable
+campaign; three weeks’ preparation, eight days’
+fighting, a thousand men on foot, enormous expense
+had been required in order to succeed in evicting four
+tenants of the Marquis of Clanricarde, out of a number
+of 316, and that in the midst of scandalous scenes
+which gave the noisiest publicity to the agrarian cause.
+Everybody was of opinion that enough had been done,
+and evictions were stopped.</p>
+
+<p>The affair at Woodford marks a date in the annals
+of the Irish revolution. One has seen in it peasants
+living in relatively good circumstances fight for principles
+and go to the furthest ends of legality,—without
+overstepping them. Moreover, these events have
+taken place in a county famed for its violence and
+represented in Parliament by Mr. Matthew Harris,
+which is saying enough; (his motto was, till lately,
+“When you see a landlord, shoot him down like a
+partridge”). Three or four years sooner such events
+could not have taken place without involving fifteen
+or twenty deaths of persons. Here not a single one
+occurred. One could not but acknowledge that the
+honour of this was due to the League, to its moderating
+and constitutional influence. In vain it protested
+that it had nothing to do with those conflicts;
+its agents and its general instructions played the first<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_255"></a>[255]</span>
+part in it. Therefore it reaped all the fruits of this,
+came out of the ordeal greater, surrounded with a
+poetical halo, sovereign. History often has such
+ironies. At the price of their domestic happiness,
+four obscure heroes had just won in face of public
+opinion the cause of the serfs of the glebe against the
+lords.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_256"></a>[256]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Sligo.</span></p>
+
+<p>In all the cabins I enter, the first object that meets
+my eyes on the wall, besides a portrait of Parnell or
+Gladstone, is, enshrined between the bit of sacred
+palm and the photograph of the emigrant son, a sheet
+of printed paper, sometimes put under a glass, and
+headed by these words, “The Plan of Campaign.”
+This is a summary of the instructions given by the
+League to its followers in November, 1886, and of the
+various means by which the position may be made
+untenable by the landlords.</p>
+
+<p>That order of the day of the agrarian army was,
+however, absent from the house furniture of one of my
+friends, Mat Cloney; he was a fisherman on the Garvogue,
+near Lough Gill, and close to the ruins of the
+Abbey of Sligo; an old man of hale and pleasing
+countenance, whose weather-beaten face was shaded
+by a plenteous crop of gray hair, and lighted up by
+two wonderfully bright blue eyes: a true Celt in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_257"></a>[257]</span>
+manner and appearance. When I entered his cabin
+for the first time he was engaged in preparing his
+dinner; this consisted of a dried herring and a cold
+potato; but tearing down from a hook near the fire-place
+a small piece of bacon, the old man hastily
+rubbed it over a frying-pan, which he set on the dying
+embers; in it he placed the herring. A great noise
+and spluttering followed, then Mat, mindful of future
+feasts, thriftily hung his piece of bacon back on its
+hook, and the herring being done, sat down to his
+meagre repast.</p>
+
+<p>“You see, sir,” he said contentedly, “it gives it a
+relish.”</p>
+
+<p>I must not omit to say that poor as his fare was, he
+nevertheless offered me a share of it. I explained I had
+already lunched, and while he was discussing his meal,
+we entered into conversation.</p>
+
+<p>“You must be pretty well advanced in years,” I
+said, “though one would not think it to see how you
+manage your boat.”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Shure</i>, sir, I was <i>borren</i> in the <i>Ribillion</i>!”</p>
+
+<p>Let me here observe that this is the common
+answer given by many Irish peasants as to their age.
+The “Ribillion” seems to have made an epoch in their
+history, and they consider that any person over middle
+age must have been born during that momentous<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_258"></a>[258]</span>
+period. The date appears to matter little to them. So,
+though I entertained private doubts of Cloney’s being
+89 years old, I let that pass, and we went on talking.</p>
+
+<p>“Have you any children?”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Shire</i> I have!... Me sons they are fishermen,
+and me daughters are all marr’d, near here....”</p>
+
+<p>“And you live alone?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, sir, that I do.”</p>
+
+<p>“It must be a lonely life for you. Were you never
+tempted to marry again after your wife’s death? A
+fine man like you would have had no difficulty in
+finding a wife.”</p>
+
+<p>“Och, sir, after me ould woman died ... (with a
+burst of emotion) I always remained a <i>dacent widowman</i> ...
+that I did!...”</p>
+
+<p>While we were talking I had been looking at the
+walls of the cabin, and I was surprised at finding
+none of the usual League’s documents upon them. I
+turned to Mat and expressed my surprise. Instantly
+Mat let fall the knife with which he was conveying a
+piece of herring to his mouth, and burst into loud
+execrations.</p>
+
+<p>“Och! the b⸺ villains!” he exclaimed; “the
+dirty never-do-well wh⸺! the de’il take them for
+his own! ... the whole lot is not worth a pennyworth
+o’ salt; ... etc., etc.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_259"></a>[259]</span></p>
+
+<p>I confess I rather wondered at this violence. But
+as everyone has a perfect right to his own opinion,
+I did not press the point.</p>
+
+<p>“And you, sir, you be not English, are ye?” said
+Mat after a moment. He had suddenly grown calm
+again.</p>
+
+<p>“No, I am French.”</p>
+
+<p>“Och! <i>Shure</i> the French are foine fellows. I had
+an uncle that fought the French for three days
+at Badajos, and he always said they were b⸺y
+devils, ... begging your pardon, sir, foine fellows
+they were.... Me uncle always said so, ...
+under <i>Bonney</i> the French fought, ... b⸺d ...
+foine fellows, to be sure.... Me uncle also said
+they had no landlords down there. Now, is that true,
+sir?” added Mat Cloney, looking at me with a queer
+expression of countenance.</p>
+
+<p>No landlords? could that be true? He seemed to
+consider such a state of things suited to fairy-land.</p>
+
+<p>I explained that this was pure truth. In few words
+I told him how, shortly before the <i>Ribillion</i> dear to
+his heart, the French peasants had risen as one man
+to get rid of their own landlords; how those landlords
+had for the most part emigrated and taken up arms
+against their country, which had caused the confiscation
+and sale of their lands. I added that those lands<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_260"></a>[260]</span>
+were now the property of the French labourers, who
+highly appreciate this state of affairs.</p>
+
+<p>Mat Cloney listened to me, his eyes glistening with
+interest. Therefore, I was rather surprised when I
+stopped, and he abruptly asked me, as a conclusion:</p>
+
+<p>“Do you know any of those Sligo gentlemen who
+come fishing about here, sir?”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed, I do not. I am a total stranger in these
+parts. It was the manager at my hotel who sent me
+to you.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s roight!” he exclaimed, as if relieved from
+some anxiety. “In that case, sir, I am going to show
+you something!...”</p>
+
+<p>He went to a corner of the cabin, and after some
+rummaging in an old sailor’s box, he produced from
+it a neatly folded paper which he placed into my
+hands. I opened it with some curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>It was a supplementary sheet of the <i>United Ireland</i>,
+of Dublin, where stood <i>in extenso</i> the League’s Plan
+of Campaign.</p>
+
+<p>I looked at Mat Cloney. He was laughing silently.
+I at last understood the riddle. The sly fox was at
+heart with the League (he dubbed it <i>the Leg</i>; by the
+way, like many other Irishmen); but he judged it
+prudent in any case to dissemble such subversive
+feelings, when he had to do with an unknown person<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_261"></a>[261]</span>
+from the town; and being a peasant he rather overdid
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The ice was broken now. He let me study
+thoroughly the document he had lent me, and even
+enriched it with luminous commentaries, in the course
+of a pleasant day’s fishing.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The “Plan of Campaign” seems to have had for its
+father Mr. John Dillon, one of the most universally, and
+the most deservedly, popular of the Irish members; at
+all events, it was introduced to the public by that
+gentleman in October, 1886, at an autumn meeting.
+Those mass meetings, held every year after the
+harvest, have now become an institution, a kind of
+<i>Witena-gemot</i> of the Irish nation. People come to
+them from the farthest ends of the island, by rail, in
+jaunting-cars, on foot, on horseback, as the case may
+be; in such numbers that there is no room or shanty
+large enough in the country to lodge the assemblage.
+So they are open-air meetings. The particular one
+alluded to was convened at Woodford, which has
+become, since the memorable battle on the Clanricarde
+estate, a kind of Holy Place and agrarian
+Kaaba. Soon after the autumn meeting, the scheme
+was approved by the authorities, at the head-quarters<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_262"></a>[262]</span>
+of the League (although they prudently refrained
+from committing themselves officially to it), and expounded
+in the special supplement to the <i>United
+Ireland</i>, of which I hold a copy. It was to the
+following effect:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>Present rents, speaking roundly, are impossible. That the landlords
+will press for them is certain. A fight for the coming winter is therefore
+inevitable, and it behoves the Irish tenantry to fight with a skill
+begotten by experience. The first question they have to consider is
+how to meet the November demand. Should combinations be formed
+on the lines of branches of the National League, or merely by estates?
+We say <i>by estates</i> decidedly. Let branches of the National League, if
+they will, take the initiative in getting the tenantry on each estate to
+meet one another. But it should be distinctly understood that the
+action or resolution of one estate was not to bind any other, and the
+tenantry on every estate should be free to decide upon their own course.</p>
+
+<p>When they are assembled together, let them appoint an intelligent
+and sturdy member of their body as chairman, and, after consulting, decide
+by resolution on the amount of abatement they will demand. A
+committee consisting, say, of six and the chairman, should then be
+elected, to be called a Managing Committee, and to take charge of the
+half-year’s rent of the tenant, should the landlord refuse it.</p>
+
+<p>Everyone should pledge himself (1) to abide by the decision of the
+majority; (2) to hold no communication with the landlord or any of his
+agents, except in presence of the body of the tenantry; (3) to accept
+no settlement for himself which is not given to every tenant on the
+estate.</p>
+
+<p>On the rent-day, the tenantry should proceed to the rent-office in a
+body. If the agent refuses to see them in a body, they should on no
+account confer with him individually, but depute the chairman to act as
+their spokesman and acquaint them of the reduction which they require.
+No offer to accept the rent “on account” should be agreed to. Should
+the agent refuse, then <span class="smcap">every tenant must hand to the Managing
+Committee the half-year’s rent which he tendered to
+the agent</span>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_263"></a>[263]</span></p>
+
+<p>To prevent any attempt at a garnishee, this money should be deposited
+by the Managing Committee with some one reliable person,
+<i>whose name would not be known to any but the members of the committee</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This may be called the estate fund, and it should be absolutely at the
+disposal of the Managing Committee for the purposes of the fight.
+Broken tenants who are unable to contribute the reduced half-year’s
+rent should at least contribute the percentage demanded from the landlord,
+that is the difference between the rent demanded and that which
+the tenantry offer to pay. A broken tenant is not likely to be among
+the first proceeded against, and no risk is incurred by the general body
+in taking him on these terms.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, practically a half-year’s rent of the estate is put together to
+fight the landlord with. This is a fund which, if properly utilised, will
+reduce to reason any landlord in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>How should the fund be employed? The answer to this question
+must to some extent depend upon the course the landlord will pursue;
+but in general we should say it must be devoted to the support of the
+tenants who are dispossessed either by sale or ejectment.</p>
+
+<p>It should be distributed by the committee to each evicted tenant in
+the proportion of his contribution to the fund. A half-year’s rent is
+supposed to maintain a tenant for a half year, and based upon this
+calculation, a tenant who funded say £50 would be entitled when evicted
+to receive £2 per week.</p>
+
+<p><i>But not one penny should go in law costs.</i> This should be made an
+absolute rule. For to pay law costs, such as attorney’s letters, writs and
+judgments incurred by the landlord, is to arm your enemy for the quarrel
+and furnish him with provisions to boot. In a determined fight there
+are no “law costs” on the side of the tenantry, and they should remain
+out for ever rather than pay those which the landlord incurs in fleecing
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Ejectment is the most common of the landlord’s remedies. Every
+legal and constitutional obstacle which could oppose or delay eviction
+should be had recourse to, for every hour by which the sheriff is delayed
+in one eviction gives another brother tenant so much more grace. There
+are only 310 days in the sheriff’s year, and he must do all the evictions
+in a whole county within the time.</p>
+
+<p>If, after eviction, a tenant is re-admitted as caretaker he should go in,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_264"></a>[264]</span>
+but <i>never</i> upon the understanding that he would care any other farm but
+his own. Should the tenant not be re-admitted, shelter must be procured
+for him immediately by the Managing Committee, and then, if
+necessary, a day appointed when all would assemble to build him a hut
+on some spot convenient to the farm where the landlord could not disturb
+him. Wooden huts, such as those supplied by the League, waste
+too much of the funds and become valueless when the tenant is re-admitted.</p>
+
+<p>Sale is the resort of the landlord when he proceeds by writ or process
+as an ordinary creditor. From eight to twelve days are allowed after
+service of the writ before judgment can be marked. The sheriff may
+seize cattle if he finds them on the farm, or he may seize and sell the
+tenant’s interest in the farm. A tenant who has his mind made up for
+the fight will have his cattle turned into money before the judgment
+comes on. Every tenant who neglects to dispose of them is preparing
+himself to accept the landlord’s terms, for he will not wish to see the
+emergency men profit by taking his cattle at some nominal price,
+and if he buys he is in reality handing the landlord the amount of his
+demand. Sale of a farm is not of so much consequence. Every farm
+sold in this manner during the agitation either has come or is bound to
+come back to its owner even on better terms than he first held it. But
+if a man has a very valuable interest in his farm, he can place it beyond
+the sheriff’s power by mortgaging it to some one to whom he owes
+money. Mortgage effected thus for a <i>bonâ fide</i> debt or consideration
+bars the sheriff’s power of conveyance at a sale. If the landlord or
+emergency men be represented, the cattle should not be allowed to go
+at a nominal sum. They should be run up to their price, and, if possible,
+left in the hands of emergency men at full price. It should be
+borne in mind that if the full price be not realised the sheriff could seize
+again for the balance.</p>
+
+<p>In bidding for a farm it should also be run to amount of debt, but by
+a man of straw, or some one who, if it were knocked down, would ask
+the sheriff for time to pay. By making the landlord’s bidder run it up
+to the amount of debt and costs, and leaving it on his hands, the sheriff
+cannot follow the tenant further. No auction fees should be allowed.
+A farm held on a lease for a life or lives, any one of which is extant,
+cannot be sold by the sheriff. After sale a tenant is still in possession<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_265"></a>[265]</span>
+of holding until a fresh writ is served and a judgment for title marked
+against him. All this involves the landlord in fresh costs. The eviction
+may then follow, and the observations above recorded in case of ejectment
+or eviction apply here.</p>
+
+<p>Distress, another of the landlord’s remedies, cannot be resorted to for
+more than one year’s rent. Few landlords can have recourse to this
+without exposing themselves to actions. The chief points to attend to
+are:—That distress must be made by landlord or known agent, or bailiff
+authorized by warrant signed by the landlord or known agent; that
+particulars of distress be served; seizure on Sunday is unlawful; seizure
+before sunrise or after sunset is unlawful; or for any rent due more
+than one year. Distress is illegal if growing crops be seized, or the
+implements of a man’s trade; and if other property be on farm to
+ensure landlord’s demand, it is illegal to seize beasts of the plough,
+sheep, or implements of husbandry necessary for the cultivation of the
+land. These points should be carefully watched when landlord has
+recourse to distress.</p>
+
+<p>Bankruptcy proceedings are too costly a machinery for general use,
+and no landlord is likely to have recourse to them.</p>
+
+<p>It is unnecessary to add that landlords, and their partisans on the
+magisterial bench and among the Crown officials, will do all in their
+power to twist the operation of the law so as to harass the tenants.</p>
+
+<p>A tenant taking possession of his house to shelter his family from the
+severity of the winter is not likely to escape. A summons for trespass
+must be preceded by a warning to the tenant if he be found in possession.
+We have known a case where the father complied with this
+warning, and on the bailiff’s next visit the mother only was found, and
+she complied. Next time the eldest daughter only was in possession,
+and so on through the length of a long family, such as an evicted tenant
+nearly always has. A goodly time had been saved before the father’s
+turn came again. He was fined and went to gaol. The prison then
+lost its terror for him. When he came out he stuck boldly to his home,
+and he soon won the victory which rewards determination.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The fullest publicity should be given to evictions, and every effort
+made to enlist public sympathy. That the farms thus unjustly evicted<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_266"></a>[266]</span>
+will be left severally alone, and everyone who aids the eviction shunned,
+is scarcely necessary to say. But the man who tries boycotting for a
+personal purpose is a worse enemy than the evicting landlord, and
+should be expelled from any branch of the League or combination of
+tenants. No landlord should get one penny rent on any part of his
+estates, wherever situated, so long as he has one tenant unjustly evicted.
+This policy strikes not only at the landlord but the whole ungodly crew
+of agents, attorneys, and bum-bailiffs. Tenants should be the first to
+show their sympathy with one another, and prompt publicity should be
+given to every eviction, that the tenants of the evictor wherever he
+holds property may show their sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Such a policy indicates a fight which has no half-heartedness about it,
+and it is the only fight which will win.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Well may the author of the “Plan of Campaign”
+wind up his catechism by the appropriate remark that
+“such a policy indicates a fight which has no half-heartedness
+about it.” Never before was such a tremendous
+weapon of social war put in motion. Never
+before, in the whole course of history, was such a
+forcible ultimatum drafted for the consideration of the
+adverse party.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving details aside, and the minute instructions
+on the true mode of skirmishing with the myrmidons
+of the law, the idea of using the very rent claimed by
+the landlord as a provision for feeding the struggle
+against him is in itself perfection—a real masterpiece
+of strategy. An artist can only feel the
+warmest admiration for such a combination of everything<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_267"></a>[267]</span>
+that is most pleasant to the heart of the agrarian
+warrior and most deadly to the landlord’s cause. As
+an orator of the League (Mr. W. O’Brien) has put it:
+“We have discovered a weapon against landlordism,
+the mere threat and terror of which have already
+brought down rack-renters to their knees. We have
+discovered a weapon which feudal landlordism can no
+more resist than a suit of armour of the middle ages
+can resist modern artillery.” And the country where
+such an admirable paper has been penned by its
+political leaders is supposed by its foes to be unable
+to rule its own affairs! This is unfairness with a
+vengeance. Let those meet its provisions, since they
+are so very clever.</p>
+
+<p>The wonder, however, is not that such a policy
+should have been dreamed of. Similar plans of warfare
+have more than once been drawn out in the
+council chamber of parties. The wonder is that this one
+should have been deemed practicable by the farmers
+of Ireland; that it should have been unanimously
+accepted by them; and, what is more, put at once
+into effect. Another wonder is that it should have
+been found <i>lawful</i>, on the best legal authority, and
+that it should have remained unopposed by the “Four
+Courts” and “the Castle.” The greatest wonder of
+all is that it should have enlisted the warm and public<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_268"></a>[268]</span>
+support not only of the lower ranks of the clergy all
+over the island, but of the Episcopate itself; not only
+of the Episcopate but of the Pope, since neither his
+special envoy in Ireland nor his Holiness personally in
+any encyclical letter, have spoken one word in condemnation
+of the “Plan of Campaign.”</p>
+
+<p>It has been in operation now for over one year; it
+has spread as far as the leaders of the League have
+deemed it expedient, for thus far they seem to have
+used it only moderately. “We did not desire,” they
+say, “and we do not desire now that the ‘Plan of
+Campaign’ should be adopted anywhere, except where
+the tenants have a just and moderate and unimpeachable
+case.” But, none the less, it hangs as a formidable
+threat over the heads of the doomed landlords. At a
+moment’s notice it may be extended to the whole
+island, as it has been already to some hundred estates
+in twenty-two counties.</p>
+
+<p>An idea of the state of affairs may be gathered
+from the account given by the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i>
+(December 3, 1886) of the scene witnessed on Lord
+de Freyne’s property in county Sligo. His tenants
+asked for an abatement of 20 per cent., and, being
+refused, they decided to adopt the “Plan of Campaign.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_269"></a>[269]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>There is nothing in the nature of a town or even a village at Kilfree
+Junction, there being only two or three one-story thatched cottages
+within sight of it. In one of these, the nearest to the station, the rents
+were received by Mr. William Redmond, M.P.; the Rev. Canon
+O’Donoghue, D.D.; Rev. Father Henry, C.C.; and the Rev. Father
+Filan, C.C. The operations of receiving the rents, entering amounts,
+and giving receipts to the tenants occupied the greater part of the day,
+commencing in early morning and continuing far in the afternoon.
+Although the situation was rather a depressing one for the poor people
+exposed to all the severity of the elements, they seemed to be one and
+all animated by the greatest enthusiasm. The interior of the cottage in
+which the rents were being collected presented a spectacle really unique
+in its way. The first room, a sort of combination of kitchen, sitting-room,
+and shop, was crowded almost to suffocation by men and a few
+women, who were sheltering from the snow which fell in great white
+flakes without. There was no grate, but a few turf sods burned on the
+hearth, while above them hung a kettle, suspended from an iron hook
+fixed from the quaint old chimney. In the centre of the bedroom leading
+off the apartment was a small table, at which Mr. Redmond, M.P.,
+the clergymen whose names are given above, and one of the leading
+members of the local branch of the National League were seated receiving
+the tenants’ rents. The room was densely crowded, but the
+utmost order and decorum prevailed, and the whole proceedings were
+conducted in the most punctilious and business-like manner.</p>
+
+<p>The tenant handed the money to one of the gentlemen at the table,
+his name was duly entered with the amount paid by him into a book,
+and he was handed back a printed receipt for the amount which he had
+lodged.</p>
+
+<p>As the day wore on, the pile of bank notes upon the table mounted
+higher and higher, and the rows of glistening sovereigns grew longer
+and longer, until they stretched across the table like streams of yellow
+ore. It was difficult to realise how those bleak western plains had ever
+produced so much money, and the conviction seemed to force itself upon
+the mind that a considerable part of it had either been earned by work
+across the Channel, or in remittances from friends and relations on the
+other side of the broad Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p>“Father,” exclaimed one of the younger men, pushing excitedly his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_270"></a>[270]</span>
+aged parent into the room where the rents were being paid over, “come
+along; you have lived to strike a blow for freedom and Ireland.” The
+words were uttered with earnestness and enthusiasm. There are upwards
+of 300 tenants upon this estate alone who have adopted the
+“Plan,” and a further sitting will be necessary in order to receive the
+remaining lodgments.</p>
+
+<p>A couple of policemen, who looked chilled and spiritless, walked
+about the platform, but made no attempt to interfere with the proceedings.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It would be useless to add the least comment to
+such a picture. When similar scenes are witnessed
+everywhere over a country, and accepted by every one
+as the natural consummation of events, and the law
+is impotent to prevent them, the Revolution is not
+impending—it is practically accomplished in the
+mind of all classes.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_271"></a>[271]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.<br>
+<span class="smaller">SCOTTISH IRELAND.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Enniskillen.</span></p>
+
+<p>If you did not know beforehand that you are
+entering a new Ireland through Enniskillen, an Ireland,
+Scotch, Protestant, manufacturing, a glance
+through the carriage-window would suffice to reveal
+the fact. Over the hill, on the right, a fine country-house
+waves to the wind, as a defiance to the League, his
+orange-coloured flag, the colours of the “<i>Unionists</i>.”
+The landlords of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught,
+who are Orangemen, as well as others, dare not proclaim
+their opinions so boldly, hoist them at the top of the
+main mast, so to say; for it might simply cost them
+their lives. You must come to “loyal Ulster” to see
+such acts of daring, for the simple reason that they
+are without danger here.</p>
+
+<p>Another symptom, more eloquent still than the
+colour of the flag, is the aspect of the landscape; no
+more uncultivated fields, no more endless bogs and
+fens. Instead of those long, red, or black streaks of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_272"></a>[272]</span>
+peat, alternating with consumptive oat and potato-fields,
+green, fat meadows, mown by steam, studded with
+cows, in the most prosperous condition, spread themselves
+before your eyes. Some trees are to be seen
+now. The hedges are in good repair, the horses well
+harnessed to solid carts; the hay-stacks have a symmetrical
+outline, and vast fields of flax nod under the
+breeze; the farm-houses are well built, flanked by
+neat kitchen-gardens; in short, all gives the general
+impression of a properly cultivated land. Nothing
+like the agricultural opulence of Kent or Warwickshire
+though, but the normal state of a tolerably good
+land, where human industry is not fighting against an
+accumulation of almost insuperable obstacles.</p>
+
+<p>Is it that the law is different in Ulster? Not so,
+but the custom is. From immemorial times the
+tenant-right has been admitted here; and in consequence
+the farmer has never hesitated to introduce the
+necessary improvements, and to invest his hoard in
+the land, sure as he is to profit by it.</p>
+
+<p>That tenant is three times out of five of Scotch
+origin; three times out of five he belongs to the Protestant
+persuasion (Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist);
+there is not between him and his landlord the
+antagonism of race and worship which is to be found in
+other provinces. The landlord himself fulfils his duty<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_273"></a>[273]</span>
+better, and does not affect to spend abroad the money
+he draws from his estate; often that landlord is some
+guild or municipal corporation of London or elsewhere,
+which perhaps does not make the best use
+possible of its income, but is nevertheless obliged to
+justify more or less its privilege by some philanthropic
+foundation, trials of culture on the large scale, innovation,
+and examples.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Lastly, Ulster is a neighbour to Scotland, and
+belongs to the same geological, ethnological, commercial,
+and religious system. Capital is less timorous
+here. It ventures to come, to stay, to circulate. By
+the side of agriculture there are important factories,
+which help to sustain and feed it. Instead of keeping
+invariably to oats, turnips, and the time-honoured
+potato, the farmers grow flax on a large scale for the
+400,000 spindles which are spinning at Belfast,
+Dundalk, and Drogheda.</p>
+
+<p>A certain tendency to aggregate small holdings,
+and to constitute in that way great and middling farms,
+has been developing lately in Ulster. The peasants
+are better lodged and fed than elsewhere in Ireland.
+They find day-work more easily because agriculture is
+conducted there on more scientific principles, and they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_274"></a>[274]</span>
+are not condemned to remain idle four days out of
+seven. In short, the economic condition of Scotch
+Ireland, without being such as to be offered as a
+pattern to the civilised world, is about as good as
+possible under the feudal <i>régime</i> and landlordism.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Londonderry.</span></p>
+
+<p>The signs of that relative prosperity are obvious.
+Thus in the neighbourhood of Derry (we say Londonderry,
+but the natives all say Derry), you observe
+with pleasure a line of tramcars moved by steam
+machinery, which puts remote places in communication
+with the railway. The carriages are of superior
+make, divided into three classes, towed by an
+engine heated with petroleum. Coming, as you do,
+out of Mayo and Galway, that steam tramway puffs
+in your face a breath of civilisation. You seem to
+enter a different world.</p>
+
+<p>Derry, with its active traffic, its elegant iron bridge
+over the Foyle, the fine, new buildings which attest
+its wealth, justifies that impression. It is the capital
+of the famous “Ulster plantation” of James I., entrusted
+by him to the “Honourable Irish Company,”
+which included twelve guilds of the city of London.
+For a century or two those grants of land did not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_275"></a>[275]</span>
+answer as had been expected. But they have
+ended, in the course of time, by being prosperous.
+The municipal estates of Coleraine and Derry are
+accounted now the most flourishing in the island.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it does not follow that the tenant’s situation is
+very brilliant, even in Ulster. One of the counties
+of the province, Donegal, is the poorest in all Ireland,
+and two or three others are not much better. Even
+in the richest parts the tenant bears chafingly the
+yoke of landlordism. The Antrim Tenant Association
+went so far this year as to ask for a 50 per cent.
+reduction on rent, owing to the low price of produce
+and the sheer impossibility of going on paying at the
+previous rate. It must be noted that tenant-right
+being rigorously observed in Ulster, the farmer always
+pays when he is able; for any remissness in paying
+would diminish by as much the value of his share in
+the proprietorship, which is estimated on an average
+at 8 or 10 times the annual farm rent.</p>
+
+<p>The newspapers of the county, even when unfavourable
+to agrarian revendications, unanimously
+acknowledge that by reason of the constant going
+down of prices, resulting from American competition,
+the present condition of the agriculturist is about
+as bad as it was in the worst famine times. All
+the farmers without exception, be they of Scotch or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_276"></a>[276]</span>
+Irish race, aver that they actually pay from their own
+pockets every penny they give the landlords; that is
+to say, they borrow it in the shape of a loan on the
+value of their tenant-right.</p>
+
+<p>Such a state of things cannot continue. It explains
+how it is that Presbyterian peasants, the most ardent
+enemies of Papistry—in theory—none the less give
+the majority, even in Ulster itself, to the representatives
+of Home Rule and the liquidation of landed
+property.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Portrush and the Giant’s Causeway.</span></p>
+
+<p>Portrush is a delicious sea-side place, at the mouth
+of Lough Foyle, on the most wonderful coast in
+Europe; it is seated on the edge of the Antrim
+table-land, which is of volcanic origin: probably a
+dependency of Scotland geologically, rather than
+belonging properly to Ireland, to which it came and
+welded itself, at some unknown epoch. The traveller
+has there the agreeable surprise of a delightful hotel—one
+should say a perfect one—a regular miracle of
+comfort; and the still greater surprise of seeing
+there the only electric railway actually working on
+this planet. That bijou-line is used to take the
+visitors to the wonder of Ireland, the Giant’s Causeway.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_277"></a>[277]</span>
+It ascends on the sea-side an acclivity of
+about three to four hundred yards, and runs over a
+length of five miles up to Bushmills, where the
+generators of electricity are set to work by hydraulic
+power. Nothing is so fresh or unexpected as that drive
+in open carriages. The train ascends lustily along the
+electric guiding-rail in the midst of a well-nourished
+fire of sparkles called to life by its iron hoofs. As it
+rises higher the prospect gets wider and wider, and
+you get a view of the Scotch mountains only fifteen
+miles distant, while the most extraordinary basaltic
+formations are following one another under your eye
+along the coast.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The Antrim table-land, so geologists tell us,
+was formed by a layer of lava three or four hundred
+yards high, spread over the chalky bottom of the sea.
+Of the volcanoes which vomited that lava no vestige
+is to be seen to-day. The glaciers, tumbling down
+from the neighbouring heights, have cleared them away.
+In times remote, that table-land extended across to
+Scotland, to which it united Ireland as by a sort
+of prodigious bridge of lava. But the unremitting,
+incessant, work of the waters has eaten away by
+degrees the cretaceous masses which supported it.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_278"></a>[278]</span>
+The arches of the bridge were then dislocated and
+precipitated into the ocean. Only some traces of it
+on both sides are left standing now: the Giant’s
+Causeway in Ireland, the point of Cantire in Scotland,
+and between the two, the little Island of Rathlin.</p>
+
+<p>Along the coast of Antrim the waves continuing
+their destructive work, go on gnawing the foundations
+of the cliffs, which they dig and carve like lacework.
+Numberless grottoes, rocky needles shaped into the
+likeness of steeples, deep chasms at the bottom of
+which the foaming waters are for ever contending, are
+the result of that perennial work.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally, as at Dunluce, to the fantastic work of
+nature, some ruin that was once an illustrious stronghold,
+whose walls, literally hanging over the abyss,
+seem to be attached to the firm ground only by a
+curved arch of half-a-yard’s breadth, adds an element
+of tragic poetry. Under the rock which bear those
+dilapidated walls, the sea has dug for itself caves
+which are resounding night and day with the deafening
+noise of the beating waves. It is grand and
+terrible in summer; one can imagine what it must be
+when the tempest of a winter night unloosens its fury
+within those caverns.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally they are, more than any other place in the
+world, rich in legendary lore. The M’Quillans, to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_279"></a>[279]</span>
+whom belonged Dunluce Castle, boast an antiquity
+which outshines greatly that of the descendants of
+the Crusaders. These are not people to be content,
+like Montesquieu, with two or three hundred years
+of acknowledged nobility. They came from Babylon,
+it appears, at an epoch exceptionally prehistoric,
+and can trace their origin back to 4,000 years ago.
+The only branch in existence now dwells in Scotland,
+and bear the title of lords of Antrim and
+Dunluce.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>At Bushmills the electric train stops. There you
+alight and take your seat in the car which brings
+you to the Causeway Hotel. Here, as the air is
+decidedly bracing, and the majority of the tourists
+English, luncheon is ready, as you may imagine.
+The classic salmon despatched in company with a
+glass of ale or porter, the only thing to do is to look
+to business and visit the marvels of the place. A
+wall, which the provident administration of the hotel
+have raised for purposes of safety, hides them as yet
+from your sight. When you have passed that
+obstacle you find yourself within a sort of circus,
+delineated by the cliffs, and at the extremity of
+which descends a path that looks anything but safe.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_280"></a>[280]</span>
+Total absence of causeway. Where must we look for
+it? This a swarm of guides, cicerones, boatmen,
+beggars of all descriptions, offer to show you. They
+all speak at the same time, fight, wrangle, make you
+deaf with their jabbering. Wise is he who sends
+them to the devil, and follows peacefully the pathway
+which goes to the extremity of the circuit, turns alone
+round the foot of the cliff on the right, and penetrates,
+unaccompanied, into the neighbouring bay. He will
+have the joy of a powerful, wholly personal sensation,
+unalloyed by any impure element. But alas! how is
+one to guess that? You think you are doing the
+right thing in giving the lead to a professional guide.
+You choose among the howling crew the less ruffianly
+face, and you deliver yourself into the hands of a
+cicerone. Fatal error! Henceforward you cease to
+belong to yourself. You are no longer a being
+endowed with reason and volition, with the free
+exercise of your rights; you are an article of luggage
+in the hands of a porter, a disarmed traveller in the
+power of a Calabrian desperado.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of taking you to the bay on the right, the
+arbiter of your destiny begins by laying down as a
+dogma that the only means of seeing the causeway
+properly is to approach it by sea. On the same occasion
+you shall visit the marine caves. Allured by that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_281"></a>[281]</span>
+programme, you follow the man, and you embark
+with him in a boat rowed by two oarsmen, who greet
+your advent rapturously.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Five minutes later you find yourself in total darkness
+under the oozing vault of a cavern, where the
+fluctuations of the mountainous waves now let the
+boat sink suddenly five or six yards down, now heave
+it up against the roof, and threaten to shiver your
+skull to pieces. In the midst of that frantic jogging
+and tossing the guide lights up a Bengal flame, in
+order to display to better advantage the variegated
+tints of the damp walls, or, it may be, to create the
+said tints, if they do not exist. Then he lets off a
+pistol in your ear to awake the echoes of the cavern,
+which answer to the call with deafening unanimity.</p>
+
+<p>This is the “psychological moment.” The rowers,
+laying down their oars, take off their caps and hold
+them to you, explaining at the same time that gunpowder
+is expensive. You hasten to accede to the
+request, and soon after you find yourself, not without
+pleasure, in the daylight again.</p>
+
+<p>Not for long, however; for you are expected to do
+another cavern. You submit meekly to the programme.
+Again that homicidal tossing; another<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_282"></a>[282]</span>
+Bengal flame; a second pistol shot. This time the
+boatmen offer you a box of geological specimens. As
+it is, you happen to abhor geology; but how is one
+to resist people who have him in their power in a
+marine cave?</p>
+
+<p>Liberation comes in time. You breathe again.
+The miscreants have the face to mention a third
+cavern! But this time you rebel. “No more caverns!
+The causeway instantly!”</p>
+
+<p>You double a little promontory, and after two or
+three oar-strokes you land on what seems to you at
+first a quay with a pavement made with hexagon
+slabs.</p>
+
+<p>“Here you are, sir! This is the Giant’s Causeway.”
+Let us confess it candidly: the first impression is
+disappointment. Is it then that famous Causeway,
+that unrivalled wonder? You are ready to believe in
+a mystification. But this is only a passing impression
+for which the guides, not the Causeway, are responsible.</p>
+
+<p>The truth is, you must not approach it by sea if you
+wish to see it well. It is by land only that it can be
+understood, like a symphony which would lose half
+its charm if executed in the open air. The treason
+of the guides is so cruel that it really cries for
+vengeance and must be denounced.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_283"></a>[283]</span></p>
+
+<p>At last you have managed to get rid of them, and
+leaving the Causeway, you have climbed up the steep
+neighbouring cliffs. And now looking round, you are
+struck with stupefaction and rapture at the spectacle
+which offers itself to your eyes. That sort of quay
+or footpath you deemed at first mean or insignificant
+is in reality, when viewed properly, the most
+stupendous whim of nature. Imagine a formidable
+array of forty thousand columns of prismatic shape
+(some one gifted with patience has numbered them),
+rising tall and majestic, and pressed against each
+other so as to form a continuous, almost level pavement,
+which emerges from the sea like a quay of
+marble. The symmetry of that pavement is so remarkable,
+all those shafts of columns are so well
+clamped together, that it seems almost impossible to
+admit that this is not human work. You fancy you
+are walking on the hexagonal slabs of some Babylonian
+palace, whose walls the storm has destroyed.
+These paving-stones are neat and even, about
+one foot wide, and perfectly regular. Towards the
+middle of the quay they rise in a sort of swelling,
+which permits one to study their anatomy
+and to perceive that they are really formed by
+the section of as many upright parallel prismatic
+columns.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_284"></a>[284]</span></p>
+
+<p>There are three Causeways,—the Great, the Little,
+and the Middle Causeway. They occupy the centre
+of a semi-circular bay, formed by lofty cliffs, which
+let you see under a thin covering of clay and grass
+other rows of basaltic columns that show their profile,
+and have been called “the Organ.” On the
+right the bay is limited by a jutting rock, above
+which tower two or three needles—“the Chimneypots.”
+A local tradition relates that the Invincible
+Armada, driven against the cliffs by a strong gale,
+mistook the needles for the towers of Dunluce, and
+stormed them uselessly a whole day long.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond those basaltic piers a spring of sweet water
+forms the “Giant’s Well;” further on a rock, roughly
+shaped as a church desk, is called “the Pulpit.” All
+those sports of nature compose a whole truly unique
+and wonderful. Neither the Alps, nor the chain of
+the Andes, nor Mount Vesuvius, nor Etna, can
+give you such an impression of grandeur—are able to
+that degree to put you as it were into communion
+with the mysteries of labouring Nature.</p>
+
+<p>What strikes you further about those basaltic
+formations is that they are both colossal, like all
+works directly resulting from the great cosmic forces,
+and at the same time almost Greek by the quality
+and symmetry of their arrangements. For once the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_285"></a>[285]</span>
+volcanos seem to have had the whim to work according
+to the canons of art. It is both human and
+super-human—verily a Giant’s Causeway!</p>
+
+<p>The Giant Fin M’Coul, so the legend says, was
+the guardian genius of Ireland. He had for a rival
+a certain Scotch Giant of mighty conceit and insolence,
+whose boast it was that none could beat him.
+The sea alone, if that Scotch braggart was to be
+believed, prevented his coming to let M’Coul feel
+the might of his arm, as he was afraid of getting a
+cold if he attempted to swim across the Straits. So
+he remained at home. M’Coul was riled at last by
+that swaggering. “Since thou art afraid to get wet,”
+he cried to his rival, “I am going to throw a causeway
+between Scotland and Ireland, and we shall see
+then whether thou darest use it!” The building of
+the bridge took only a few thousand years, and then
+the Scot, having no pretence left, accepted the challenge,
+was beaten flat, and obliged to eat humble pie.
+After which, with true Irish generosity, the good-natured
+giant gave him his daughter in marriage, and
+allowed him to come and settle near him, which the
+Scot accepted, nothing loth, Erin being an infinitely
+sweeter and generally superior country to his own.
+But perhaps, after all, M’Coul found no cause to
+rejoice over the match he had arranged for his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_286"></a>[286]</span>
+daughter, as he subsequently allowed the sea to
+destroy his work so as to prevent any more Scots
+from settling in his dominions. Only some of its
+piles remain standing, one of which is the Isle of
+Rathlin, half-way across the Straits.</p>
+
+<p>The legend, as you see, is not so foolish. It answers
+at all points to geological data, and even to historic
+truth, viz., the invasion of Ulster by the Scots. But,
+let its origin be what it may, the fact remains that
+the Giant’s Causeway, with its neighbour, Portnoffen
+Bay, the most perfect amphitheatre in the world,
+with the marvellous colonnade of the Pleaskin, Dunluce
+Castle, Dunseverick, and the bridge of rope of
+Carrick-a-Rede, thrown over a chasm that measures
+a hundred feet above the waters,—constitute one
+of the grandest, most moving spectacles that the
+traveller may see. You can go round the world without
+having such extraordinary sights. Add to it
+that few of the gems of nature are of so easy an
+access. From Paris you can be on the coast of Antrim
+in twenty hours, by London, Liverpool, and Belfast.
+Portrush, with its admirable sea-shore, its electric
+railway, and stupendous cliffs, is the ideal frame for a
+honeymoon excursion. I had resolved to recommend
+it to tourists, and to point out the guides of the Causeway
+to public execration. Now I have done my duty.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_287"></a>[287]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Belfast.</span></p>
+
+<p>The capital of Ulster is naturally the most flourishing
+town of Ireland. Whereas the others decrease in
+population and wealth, Belfast is rapidly thriving.
+From 20,000 inhabitants, which it numbered at the
+beginning of the century, it has risen in eighty years
+to 210,000. Another ten years and it will outdo
+Dublin itself. It is a manufacturing city as well as a
+big trading port. By an exception, unique in the
+island, it occupies a great number of workers, male
+and female—60,000, at the lowest computation—for
+the most part, in the weaving trade and naval construction.
+A single linen factory, that of Messrs.
+Mulholland, gives work to 29,000 pairs of hands. It
+is those weaving looms which utilize the product of
+the 110,000 acres of flax fields in Ulster. Out of
+nineteen ships of over 300 tons annually built in the
+docks of the island eighteen come out of the Belfast
+wharves. It is, in short, the maritime gate of Irish
+import and export—the insular suburb of Liverpool
+and Glasgow.</p>
+
+<p>As a consequence, signs of prosperity are showing
+themselves everywhere. The public walks are vast
+and carefully kept, the houses well built, the shops
+substantial and elegant, the educational establishments
+important and richly endowed. The town has<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_288"></a>[288]</span>
+a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon aspect. London fashions
+are scrupulously followed there. If you enter the
+Botanical Garden, maintained by voluntary contributions,
+you find there the lawn-tennis, the dresses, the
+ways of the metropolis. If you follow the road up to
+Cave Hill, one of the heights on the western side of
+Belfast, you embrace a vast landscape, where the
+flying steamers on the Lagan, the smoking factory-chimneys,
+the innumerable and opulent villas round
+its shores, all speak of wealth and prosperity.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The population is about equally divided between
+Protestants and Catholics. The consequence is that
+party hatred and the struggle for local influence are
+far more ardent and long-lived here than in places
+where one of the two elements has an overwhelming
+majority. Electoral scuffles easily turn to bloody
+battles; political anniversaries—that of the Battle of
+the Boyne, above all—are a pretext for manifestations
+which often degenerate into regular battles.</p>
+
+<p>Belfast is the bulwark of Orangeism; and Orangeism
+may be described as Protestant and loyalist fanaticism,
+as opposed to Catholic and national fanaticism.
+Shankhill Road, which is frequently used as a battle-field
+by the antagonistic parties, is a long suburb<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_289"></a>[289]</span>
+which divides as a frontier line the Orangeist from
+the Irish quarters.</p>
+
+<p>Hardly one pay-day passes without the public-houses
+of that suburb being the theatre of some pugilistic
+feat accomplished by some voluntary representatives
+of the opposite camps. If the police
+happen to rush into the fray, reinforcements are
+called from either side; stones, cudgels, revolvers
+come to the rescue, and, on the morrow, the jails are
+filled with prisoners, and the hospitals with the dead
+and the wounded.</p>
+
+<p>Sad to relate, it is the clergy on both sides who
+incite them to those fratricidal struggles. There are
+certain Protestant preachers who are in no way behindhand
+in bitterness and virulent abuse with the
+most fanatic priest of Roscommon or Mayo. I have
+heard personally in Falls Road a Methodist preaching
+in the open air incite his audience to the extermination
+of Papists in strains which the creatures of
+Cromwell would not have disowned.</p>
+
+<p>In order that nothing should be missing to the
+parallel, Ulster has its Orangeist League, not unlike
+the National League of Ireland (save for the respect
+of legality and the general moderation of proceedings).
+That League is formed into battalions and
+companies which are privately drilled, they say, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_290"></a>[290]</span>
+lose no occasion to make a pageant in the streets
+with accompaniment of trumpets and drums, and
+whose ways remind one of the Salvation Army.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>On the whole, Ulster is the only province of Ireland
+where the Unionist forces are about equally matched
+with the party of Home Rule; that is to say, the
+former command a majority in Antrim, part of Down,
+part of Armagh, part of Derry and Donegal, whilst
+the Home Rulers have the stronger array of voters
+in the remaining parts of the province. Except in
+the above-delineated band of north-eastern territory,
+the result of the elections is always taken for granted
+beforehand all over the island, and is for—Home
+Rule. But this is not saying that the contest is at
+all passionate even in Belfast. I happened to be there
+on the occasion of the General Election of 1886, and
+was most struck by the comparative calm of the
+population pending the momentous ballot. I could
+not help expressing my surprise, over the mahogany,
+to my host, a wealthy mill-owner, a zealous Presbyterian,
+and an active Orangeist into the bargain, to
+whom an English friend had given me a letter of
+introduction.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_291"></a>[291]</span></p>
+
+<p>“You wonder at our calm?” he said. “The explanation
+is very simple. In Ireland the respective
+position of parties can hardly be much altered by the
+incidents of the struggle. Whether the Home Rulers
+take one seat from us or we gain one on them, we
+shall neither of us be much benefited by it. It is in
+Great Britain that the true battle is taking place.
+Let us suppose that Mr. Gladstone, instead of finding
+himself in a minority in the next Parliament, returns
+to the House with a majority. This majority can in
+no case be very strong, and we may still doubt that
+it will consent to follow him to the end in the path
+he has chosen. But let us go farther, and suppose
+Home Rule to have been voted by this majority,—let
+us suppose it to have been voted by the Upper
+House,—a still more unlikely contingency. Well, our
+decision is taken irrevocably. We are perfectly resolved
+not to bow to such a vote, and not to submit
+to Home Rule.”</p>
+
+<p>“What! shall you rebel against the constitution?”</p>
+
+<p>“Against the constitution, no. But if needs must
+be against Mr. Gladstone and his party. We shall
+appeal from the ignorant electors to the better informed
+ones. We shall protest against a decision
+that would in a way deprive us of our rights as British<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_292"></a>[292]</span>
+subjects. And in the meanwhile we shall refuse to
+acknowledge a Dublin Parliament. We shall refuse
+to pay the taxes that it may fix upon, or to obey the
+laws it may vote. We shall repeat loudly that we are
+Englishmen, and will not be anything else; that we
+depend on the British Parliament and recognize no
+other authority; and we shall see then if our appeal
+raise no echo in the United Kingdom!”</p>
+
+<p>“But still, the right of making laws generally
+entails the power of enforcing them. What shall
+you do on the day when the Dublin Parliament,
+having voted the taxes for you as for the rest
+of Ireland, shall send tax-gatherers to collect
+them?”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>We shall receive them with rifle-shots.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“What! are you going to tell me that you, sir,
+‘worth’ half a million sterling, if the public voice
+speaks the truth, that this fat gentleman there, the
+father of those two pretty daughters, that this respectable
+doctor in gold spectacles, and all your other
+guests to-night, all peace-loving, middle-aged gentlemen,
+comfortable and with good rent-rolls, seriously
+entertain the idea of buckling on your shooting-gaiters
+and going to battle in the street?”</p>
+
+<p>“We shall go, if we are obliged, rather than submit
+to the Dublin people!... After all, have we not a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_293"></a>[293]</span>
+right to remain English, if it suits us?... The very
+principle of Home Rule, if it is adopted, implies that
+we shall govern ourselves as it seems good to us.
+Well, here in Ulster, we are nearly two million loyalist
+Protestants, who cherish the pretension of not being
+given over to the three million Papists entrusted with
+the making of the Dublin Parliament,—who shall dare
+to deny this right to us?”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Parnell and his friends will certainly deny it
+as soon as their programme is embodied into law.
+They will say to you, ‘Henceforth Ireland shall
+govern herself. Let those who do not like it go
+away.’”</p>
+
+<p>“But it is precisely what we shall never do!... Our
+title to the Irish soil is as good as the Parnellites’....
+Let them try to dislodge us, and they shall have a warm
+welcome, I promise you.”</p>
+
+<p>In the course of conversation my worthy interlocutor
+had let the number of 100,000 Orangemen, armed to the
+teeth and ready to defend Ulster against the Home
+Rulers, escape him. I took advantage of this to ask
+him for a few details on this organization. I learnt
+this: that the Orangeist army is by no means a fallacy,
+as one might imagine, and that it forms a sort of
+latent militia, with its active forces, and its reserve.
+At first, established as a kind of freemasonry, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_294"></a>[294]</span>
+formed in “circles” or “lodges,” it comprises actually
+four divisions, subdivided into twenty-two brigades:
+each of these brigades consists of two or three
+regiments, infantry, cavalry, and artillery; in each
+regiment are sections and companies, each composed
+of affiliates belonging to the same district. Three
+divisions are recruited in Ulster proper; the fourth in
+Dublin and Cork, in Wicklow and in King’s County.
+All those affiliates take the engagement to observe
+passive obedience and to render personal service on
+the first requisition of their supreme council; they
+furnish their own arms and recognise the authority of
+a commander-in-chief.</p>
+
+<p>Does all this have any substantial existence besides
+what it has on paper? Do the Orangemen secretly
+drill, as it is averred, both for the infantry and the
+cavalry manœuvres? Is it true that most of the volunteer
+companies in Ulster are exclusively Orange
+companies? Lastly, are those volunteers really ready
+in case of an open rupture with Dublin, to take up
+their arms and fight for their cause?... Many
+people think it doubtful. The Home Rulers especially
+think it pure moonshine and humbug. I
+remember one of their papers publishing the following
+advertisement last year to show in what esteem they
+held the Ulster army:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_295"></a>[295]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Rotten Eggs! Rotten Eggs! Rotten Eggs!</span></p>
+
+<p><i>Wanted: 100,000 rotten eggs, to be delivered in Tipperary,
+worthily to welcome 20,000 Orangemen, armed
+with rifles and guns, under command of the illustrious
+Johnson. Offers to be addressed to the printing office
+of this paper.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>This certainly does not indicate a very exalted idea
+of the valour of the Orangeist forces on the part of the
+southern populations. But that does not mean that
+no other sugar plums shall be exchanged. In all civil
+wars such pleasantries take place, yet they do not
+prevent rivers of blood being shed. One fact alone is
+beyond doubt, that the Orange organization has
+immense ramifications among the regular troops, and
+is openly favoured by General Wolseley; that a
+large number of retired officers have entered it;
+that one would perhaps find it difficult to find one
+among the Queen’s regiments ready to fire on the
+loyalists, and that the most ardent partisans of Home
+Rule hesitate to grant to the Irish Parliament the
+faculty of raising an armed force.</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion, the last word in Ulster may very well
+be said by the Orangemen.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_296"></a>[296]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.<br>
+<span class="smaller">LEX LICINIA.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It would have been pleasant to conclude these
+pages without recording too harsh a judgment
+against England, one of the two or three nations for
+ever dear to the thinker; one of those who possess a
+brain of her own, not merely a chain of nervous
+nodosities presiding over the organic functions; one of
+those who lead the Human Race along the hard road
+where it toilingly drags its miseries and delusions. It
+would have been pleasant at least to find some kind
+of extenuating circumstances for the attitude she
+maintains doggedly towards Ireland. But this is
+sheer impossibility.</p>
+
+<p>All that can be pleaded on behalf of England is
+that she is truly unconscious of the wrong she has
+been doing for centuries, and that she firmly
+believes herself to have acted within her rights.
+Nations, still more than individuals, are the slaves of
+their temperament, of their faults and their qualities.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_297"></a>[297]</span>
+Shall we call the tiger a murderer, or reproach
+vultures because they feed on human flesh? They
+obey their instincts, and merely follow the dictates of
+nature. So it is with nations. Considered no longer
+in the individuals that compose it, or in the intellectual
+<i>élite</i> that speaks in its name, but in the fifteen or
+twenty generations that have woven the woof of its
+annals, a people is an irresponsible and blind organism,
+fatefully obeying its impulses, be they noble or
+base.</p>
+
+<p>Try to talk with a Protestant landlord about the
+wrongs and grievances of Ireland. He will tell you
+in all good faith that the Irish alone are to blame.
+Ignorant, slothful, given to drink, sly and cunning, a
+nation of liars,—weak, in a word, and vanquished
+beforehand,—this is the verdict he pronounces on
+them from the height of his respectable rent-roll. If
+they have failed in the struggle for life, it is because
+they came into it badly armed and unprepared. So
+much the worse for them,—let them make way for the
+stronger ones! Such is the theory.</p>
+
+<p>There can be no doubt that it is put forward in all
+sincerity by a majority of Englishmen. But this does
+not prove that it rests on any sound foundation. It
+only proves once more that they are incapable of
+understanding anything about the Irish<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_298"></a>[298]</span>
+temperament.<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> This reasoning is merely the classic sophistry.
+They mistake the effect for the cause, and are blind
+to the fact that those vices they so bitterly reproach
+the Irish with, are the inevitable result of three
+centuries of bad administration and England’s own
+work. Wherever it has been liberated from the
+English yoke, has not, on the contrary, the Irish race
+displayed abundant energy, activity, genius? Do not
+the Irish hold the first rank in the United States, in
+Canada, in Southern America, in Australia, wherever
+emigration has carried them. In England even are
+they not at the head of all liberal professions,
+letters, the daily press, the bar, science? Those who
+have seen and closely studied that nation, crushed
+under its secular burden, ground under the heel of the
+conqueror, cannot but feel surprised at the bare fact
+that it survives; and this fact alone presupposes the
+most admirable gifts. One could even question
+whether, deprived of the Irish Celt element, for leaven,
+for chiefs, for counsellors, in letters, and in assemblies,
+the heavy Anglo-Saxon race could ever have founded
+its flourishing colonies. These prosper, one may say,
+in direct proportion to the number of Irish that
+come to them, even as the mother island slowly decays<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_299"></a>[299]</span>
+in direct proportion to the number of her children
+that are driven from her shores.</p>
+
+<p>Why should such slanderous explanations be sought
+for a fact sufficiently explained by history? The great
+misfortune of Ireland is not to be a nation less richly
+gifted than its conqueror, but only to be too small
+a nation, established in an open island. The Irish have
+been neither more vicious, nor more fanatical, nor
+more slothful than the English; they have been less
+numerous, less well armed; and John Bull, according
+to his deplorable custom, has taken advantage of their
+weakness for bullying them, for levying heavy toll on
+them, for bleeding them to death without mercy. He
+has taken their land, their freedom, their industry,
+and still wrests from them the product of their labour.
+And, to crown all, he dares to call them to account
+for their misery as for a crime—this misery, which is
+his own work, with all its wretched following of vices
+and degradation.</p>
+
+<p>Before such a sight as this involuntary indignation
+must be felt. One wishes to say to the English—</p>
+
+<p>“You pirates, begin first by giving back to Ireland
+all you have taken from her, and you shall see then
+if she be guilty of this poverty you consider as a
+crime! Let us reckon. Give her back her land,
+which your nobles occupy. Give her back the bravest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_300"></a>[300]</span>
+of her sons, that you have driven to emigration. Give
+her back the habit of work which you have destroyed
+in her. Give her back the wealth which you prevented
+her accumulating, by forbidding her commerce and
+industry. Give her back the millions which you still
+exact every year upon the produce of her agricultural
+energy. Give her back the experience of freedom
+that you have so long crushed in her. Give her back
+the faculty of coolly reasoning about her beliefs, which
+persecution took from her. Give her back the right of
+self-government according to her genius, her manners,
+her will, that right which you declare sacred and
+imprescriptible for every nation, that you grant to
+your most insignificant colonies, to the meanest
+island of your Empire, and which you refuse to her,
+the biggest of all. Give her back all this, and let us
+see then if Ireland be all you say.”</p>
+
+<p>“Alas! from that national inheritance of which
+you robbed her one can only find now, recognise
+and therefore give back, the land and the money.
+The land stands always there; and money is not
+wanting in your coffers. A good impulse, then! All
+has to be paid for in this world—defeat and failure
+like anything else. If one lose a game, one must
+know how to pay for it gallantly. If one has, personally,
+or in the person of one’s father, committed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_301"></a>[301]</span>
+an unjust act, one must know how to atone for it.
+Your railway companies give indemnities to the
+families of those they have crushed to death. Yourselves,
+as a nation, have paid in the Alabama affair,
+once convinced of being in the wrong. Here also, in
+Ireland, the hour of Justice has come. Evidence is
+over. Your work rises in your throat and sickens
+you. You cannot any longer doubt, and your writers
+daily repeat it, that the cause of all Ireland’s
+sufferings is in your spoliation, complicated by your
+administration. Well, the remedy is clear. Ireland
+herself points it out to you, and your conscience
+whispers it: you must give back her inheritance to
+Ireland, with the right of administering it according
+to her own lights.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>England is fond of comparing herself to Rome,
+though it is Carthage rather that she resembles. She
+can find in Roman history a precedent for the solution
+that is obviously suited to Ireland. The <i>Lex
+Licinia</i>, promulgated in the year 376 before the
+Christian era, limited to 500 arpents, that is to say,
+almost exactly 500 acres, the extent of land that the
+patricians were entitled to possess in a conquered<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_302"></a>[302]</span>
+country. This was the law that the Gracchi wanted
+to bring to life again, and for which they paid the
+penalty of death. It has long been believed, and
+Mably repeated it with Montesquieu, that the question
+was the dividing of private property between all the
+citizens. Niebuhr and Savigny have re-established
+historical truth, and shown that the question at issue
+was merely the limitation of, or atonement for, usurpations
+that ruined the State by ruining the rural populations.
+It is a Licinian Law that is wanted in Ireland,
+and it is to be hoped that England will give it to her
+before long.</p>
+
+<p>The disease of Ireland may be defined: the feudal
+system or landlordism, complicated by absenteeism
+and usury, having for its consequences extreme
+penury of capital, rural pauperism, and the incapacity
+for struggling against American competition.</p>
+
+<p>The case of Ireland, more acute by reason of its
+special sphere, is only a striking instance of a fact
+that the legislators of the old world must necessarily
+take into account henceforth, the fact that the
+immense area of land newly cleared in the two
+Americas, in Australia, and India, are, four-fifths of
+them at least, the property of those that cultivate
+them personally. They have no other burden to bear<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_303"></a>[303]</span>
+than taxes, and are therefore in a condition of crushing
+superiority in the struggle with the countries in
+which dual ownership obtains. With an equal fruitfulness
+(and that of virgin soil is almost always
+greater), it is clear that the soil which supports only
+those that cultivate it, instead of two or three superposed
+classes of participants in its products, must
+always be able to give those products at a lesser cost
+price, and therefore will be able to throw them on the
+market at a lower rate. It is not merely common
+sense, it is the immutable course of human progress
+that condemns landlordism to disappear ere long from
+the face of the globe.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Reduced to its elementary terms, the Irish question
+stands thus: 12,000 landowners, of foreign origin,
+possessing almost the whole of the island; 1940 of
+these proprietors detaining two-thirds of this soil; 744
+holding the half of it. All these lands parcelled out
+into insufficient holdings, and cultivated by 720,000
+native farmers, for the most part entirely devoid of
+capital. The agricultural product of the island,
+divided between two schedules on the official rolls of
+the income tax: the first one of £2,691,788 only,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_304"></a>[304]</span>
+representing the income of the 720,000 Irish farmers
+and their families; the second, of £13,192,758, representing
+the income of the 12,000 English landlords.
+The half at least of this sum leaving the island every
+year, and being spent outside it by the <i>absentee</i> landlords.
+Not one farthing of this lordly income coming
+back to the soil, either directly or indirectly, in the
+shape of manure, buildings, or agricultural improvements;
+nor to industry, which is nil. General
+pauperism, resulting from the feudal organization
+that stops development of wealth in its germ, and
+more and more unfits the country for a struggle with
+the more normally organized nations. Unpaid rents,
+landlords and tenants eaten up by usurers, a permanent
+conflict of interests shown at each term by three
+or four thousand evictions, without mentioning the
+still more numerous cases in which eviction is not
+carried out because it would prove useless. A universal
+bankruptcy; a chronic state of social war;
+a growing contempt of the law; agrarian violence;
+the suspension of public liberties; a gradual return of
+the soil and its inhabitants to the savage condition; a
+constant augmentation in the area of uncultivated
+land; a regular emigration of the adult and able
+population; a quarter of the remaining inhabitants
+living at the expense of the ratepayers, either on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_305"></a>[305]</span>
+outdoor relief or in the workhouses; financial grievances,
+added to historical and political grievances;
+hunger sharpening the rancour of the vanquished
+race; its hatred of the conqueror shown periodically
+by the return to the House of Commons of 85 members
+whose only mandate is to obstruct the regular
+working of the British machinery. Such is the
+epitome of the results obtained in Ireland by the
+English after an occupation of seven centuries. Never
+did history register such a scandalous failure.</p>
+
+<p>Vainly do Oxford and Cambridge, in order to
+explain or palliate it, resort to all their scholastic
+sophistry. Vainly it is endeavoured to discover its
+cause in some inherent vice of the Irish race, in their
+ignorance, their religion, their laziness, and even a
+sort of “melancholy” imparted to them, it is alleged,
+by the neighbourhood of the ocean (<i>sic</i>).</p>
+
+<p>Ireland is not the only country edged by the
+Atlantic: neither is it the saddest. Her children are
+not in any marked degree more illiterate now-a-days
+than those of England, and if they were so for a long
+time—when they had to slip off to unlawful and
+clandestine “hedge schools” if they wanted to learn
+their alphabet—we know too well who was responsible
+for such an outrage on civilization. The Celts of
+Erin are Roman Catholics, it is true, but after all there<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_306"></a>[306]</span>
+are on our planet a certain number of nations who
+have not died yet of this religion. As for their
+political capacity, they vindicate it every day by the
+wisdom and firmness they display in sustaining the
+struggle against the oppressor.</p>
+
+<p>One must bow to evidence and do justice to Ireland.
+And for this there are not two formulas. There is
+only one, in two articles:</p>
+
+<p>1.—Expropriation of the landlords with a fair
+indemnity, to the profit of the Irish tenantry.</p>
+
+<p>2.—The extension to Ireland of Home Rule, which
+is the invariable rule of all British possessions, near
+or far, guaranteed of course by all the precautions
+judged necessary for the security and unity of the
+United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It is the glory of Mr. Gladstone to have understood
+and to have had the moral courage to declare that
+there is no other solution. And as we think of this,
+is it not a strong argument in favour of the superior
+justice of agrarian revendications in Ireland, that it
+should have imposed itself to the reason of that
+illustrious politician, the most English assuredly of
+all the statesmen that have succeeded each other in
+office since the time of William Pitt? Those common<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_307"></a>[307]</span>
+reasoners who rebel against a necessary restitution,
+should think of this. Here is an old man seventy-eight
+years of age, who, ever since he left Eton, had
+no other care, no other occupation than the affairs of
+his country; the most energetic, the most active and
+brilliant of leaders, the most experienced in finance;
+of all the orators in the British Parliament the most
+lucid and pungent; a refined scholar, an accomplished
+Hellenist, the possessor of an hereditary fortune that
+frees him from domestic cares, the son of a British
+merchant-prince, and the father of an Anglican
+clergyman, himself Protestant to the core, and fond
+of officiating in the place of his son in the church of
+Hawarden; a man whose predominant quality is his
+earnestness, and whose supreme rule of conduct is a
+well-regulated love of his country. This statesman,
+who has been ten times in office since the year, already
+so far from us, when he entered it under the leadership
+of Robert Peel, and who knows everything about the
+affairs of his country at home and abroad, has made
+his life-study of the Irish question. Twenty times in
+forty years has he attempted to grapple with it, to
+unravel it, to solve it. All the remedial measures
+that have been applied to the wounds of Ireland since
+1860 had him for their initiator. He was the first to
+realize the odious wrong of an established Anglican<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_308"></a>[308]</span>
+Church in that Catholic country. To him is due the
+political and intellectual enfranchisement of the Irish;
+it was he who gave them national schools and who
+put them (by dint of what Titanic struggles!) on the
+same electoral footing as the other British subjects.
+It was he who promoted, defended, and succeeded in
+passing all the Land Bills meant to soften the wretched
+fate of the Irish serf. Lastly, one must not forget it,
+he never hesitated, when he thought it necessary, to
+claim laws of repression against agrarian violence.
+Mr. Gladstone is assuredly no anarchist. He is
+neither a madman nor is he in his dotage. Never
+was his genius clearer, his word more eloquent. Add
+to this that this man, enamoured of power like all
+those who have passed their life in it, knew that he
+was courting a certain fall when he proposed his solution
+of the Irish question, and could entertain no
+doubt of the schism that would take place in his
+party on the subject....</p>
+
+<p>And yet his conscience could oppose no resistance
+to the blinding light of facts. He clearly saw that
+palliatives were insufficient, and that there was an
+urgent need to take the evil at its root. As a conclusion
+to half a century spent in studying the case, and to
+twenty local attempts at healing it, after two or three
+thousand nights spent in the House of Commons in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_309"></a>[309]</span>
+discussing the question under all its aspects, he comes
+forward to say: “<i>Justice to Ireland!</i> we must give
+back to her what was taken from her—her inheritance
+and her freedom!”</p>
+
+<p>Can one suppose for a moment that Mr. Gladstone
+came to such a conclusion without the most decisive
+and powerful motives? Can anyone feel himself
+strong enough to hold opinions better founded than
+his on this matter? We must congratulate his
+adversaries on their happy self-confidence; but
+we cannot do so on their moral sense or on their
+modesty.</p>
+
+<h3>I.—<span class="smcap">Mr. Gladstone’s Scheme.</span></h3>
+
+<p>Mr. Gladstone’s scheme was framed in two
+organic Bills. By the first the British Government
+undertook to expropriate the landlords, and to
+redeem the Irish lands on a basis of twenty times
+the actual rent, to be paid in English Consols, at par.
+These lands would then be sold to the Irish tenants
+at a discount of 20 per cent., payable in forty-nine
+years by instalments equal to about half the former
+rent. The second Bill provided for the local government
+of Ireland, while it reserved for Great Britain
+the general control of the revenue and the right of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_310"></a>[310]</span>
+keeping military forces in the island. Thanks to a
+coalition of a fraction of the Liberal party with the
+Tories, this programme fell to the ground at the
+General Election of 1886, and was set aside by
+Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>It may be that the loss is not much to be regretted.
+Very likely Mr. Gladstone’s scheme was, in his own
+thoughts, only meant as a trial, what we call a <i>ballon
+d’essai</i>. Excellent in its twofold principle, his solution
+had the very serious drawback of substituting, in
+the place of the 12,000 present landlords of Ireland—a
+single one, the State. It looked as if it
+solved all difficulties, and perhaps it would have
+caused fresh complications. In fact, it amounted to
+requiring that the unavoidable liquidation should be
+paid—by which people? By those who could least
+afford it—the Irish tenants. Whence might the poor
+devils have taken the money for their annuities?
+And even admitting that they could have found it,
+can one refuse to see that their culture, so wretched
+already, would have become still poorer? Has ever
+man chosen, to buy an estate, the moment when he is
+a confirmed bankrupt?</p>
+
+<p>But it would have been to them a nett gain of one-half
+on their actual rent, it will be objected.</p>
+
+<p>A nett gain of one-half <i>on nothing</i>, then, as they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_311"></a>[311]</span>
+cannot afford to pay any rent just now, unless they
+deduct it from their capital (supposing that they have
+any), and there is no reason to suppose that things
+will be better for the next fifty years.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, if you admit that by paying for forty-nine
+years half the actual rent as judicially fixed, the Irish
+tenants ought to have the ownership of the land, why,
+in the name of all that is fair, refuse to see that they
+have paid it more than ten times already, in the
+shape of excessive rent?</p>
+
+<p>“They were free not to pay it and go out, with
+their goods and chattels,” says my old friend, the
+Economist. I answer: No. They were not, for a
+thousand reasons, and had to obey the will of the
+vampires, as long as it was strictly possible.</p>
+
+<p>Either the tenants, having become proprietors in
+name but not in reality (or, as it were, proprietors of
+a shadow of land mortgaged for half a century),
+would have paid their annuity,—and in that case
+they were as poor as before; or they would not have
+paid it, and then the Liberal party would have heard
+a fine din!</p>
+
+<p>In fact the Gladstone plan rested on an entirely
+chimerical hope: that of settling the Irish question
+without its costing a penny to the British Exchequer.
+To entertain such a hope is clearly to prove that one<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_312"></a>[312]</span>
+sees indeed the evil, but without descrying its deeper
+cause.</p>
+
+<p>This cause lies in the <span class="smcap">impossibility</span> to the modern
+tenants, in the face of the competition of better
+organized countries, and generally under the present
+conditions of the world’s agriculture, <span class="smcap">to pay any
+rent whatever</span>.</p>
+
+<p>The Irish tenant is a bankrupt, because he has
+paid, for too long a time already, the rent that he
+could not afford. The land is impoverished for the
+very same reason. Now, to sell it to a penniless
+buyer is absurd enough; but to pretend to believe
+that the penniless buyer shall render it prosperous
+and make it yield riches, is perhaps more absurd still.</p>
+
+<p>Such illusions ought to be discarded. If England
+really wants to settle the Irish question, as her honour
+and her true interest both command her to do, she
+must manfully accept the idea of a pecuniary sacrifice
+and a real restitution. It would be useless to cheat
+herself into acceptance of half-measures. She had
+much better weigh the real cost of an imperious duty,
+pay it, and square matters once for all.</p>
+
+<p>Not only must she give, <i>gratuitously give away</i> as a
+present, the land to the Irish tenant, but she must
+provide him, at the lowest rate of interest, with the
+capital necessary for putting that land in working order.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_313"></a>[313]</span></p>
+
+<p>This consummation might perhaps be attained
+at a lesser cost than would at first sight appear
+possible,—let us name a figure,—at a cost of one
+milliard francs, or £40,000,000. But this milliard
+should be forthcoming in cash, presented by the
+British nation to the sister isle as a free gift, a
+premium paid for peace, or rather a lump sum of
+conscience-money, such as we see sometimes advertised
+in the columns of the <i>Times</i>.</p>
+
+<h3>II.—<span class="smcap">An Outsider’s Suggestion.</span></h3>
+
+<p>The ideal solution for the innumerable difficulties
+of the Irish question would evidently be the <i>tabula
+rasa</i>,—the hypothesis that would transform Ireland
+into a newly-discovered island of virgin soil, barren
+and uninhabited, where England had just planted her
+flag, and out of which she wished to get the fullest
+value in the shortest possible time.</p>
+
+<p>What would her policy be in such a case? She
+would begin by surveying the whole extent of her
+new acquisition, by parcelling it out in lots carefully,
+then by calling in colonists and capital.</p>
+
+<p>To the immigrants that came without any other
+wealth than their stalwart arms, she would make
+gratuitous concessions of small lots of land, accompanied<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_314"></a>[314]</span>
+by seeds, agricultural implements, and an
+exemption from taxes during a limited period of time.
+To those who came with capital, she would give more
+important plots of ground, either demanding a premium
+of occupation more or less high, shortening the
+period of exemption for taxes, or again elevating the
+rate of those taxes. Most likely, too, she would
+favour the establishment of an Agricultural Bank that
+would advance to the new colonists such moneys as
+they desired, according to their wants, their chances
+of success, and the individual securities they presented.</p>
+
+<p>In reality it cannot be supposed that in Ireland the
+past, the vested interests and the settled habits of
+centuries, can be erased. But at least one can try to
+come near to this ideal; and besides, this island presents,
+over the barren and uncultivated one, the
+advantage of having a ready-made population; the
+country, its climate, its soil, are known; there is a
+large proportion of able workmen, valuable house
+property, no inconsiderable provision in agricultural
+implements, not to mention several thousand head
+of horse, oxen, sheep, and pigs ready imported.</p>
+
+<p>The advantages of this over a virgin island are,
+therefore, very clear; they are visibly stronger than
+the drawbacks, and success is certain if measures of
+the kind we allude to are vigorously carried out.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_315"></a>[315]</span></p>
+
+<p>England, then, must begin by buying out, not only
+the properties of the landlords, but also, and this is
+only justice, the interest that a large number of
+farmers possess in those lands under the name of
+tenant-right. The area of cultivated land in Ireland
+(exclusive of towns) is, in round numbers, fifteen million
+acres. Before all, the basis of indemnity granted
+to the landlords must be fixed.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gladstone proposed the basis of twenty times
+the actual rent, as judicially fixed. This seems an
+exorbitant price, for various reasons. The first reason
+is that no leased land under the sun normally yields
+to its owner, at present, anything like the interest
+supposed by such a valuation. The second reason is
+that the landlords’ property in Ireland has actually
+no real value whatever; it could not find a purchaser,
+probably, at the price of three times the nominal rent,
+were it put up for sale (let anyone who commands
+capital, and who looks for a secure investment, consider
+whether he would ever dream of buying Irish
+land, just now, at any price). The third reason is
+that the true responsibility of the Irish disease rests
+with those very landlords who never did their duty
+by the country. Granted that their faults (one would
+rather say crimes) ought to be covered by the benefit
+of prescription, and that a fair indemnity ought to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_316"></a>[316]</span>
+be given them or their creditors if they are dispossessed
+by measures of public sanitation, it would look
+ridiculous,—indecent to go to the length of rewarding
+them for their moral and economical failure by a disproportionate
+indemnity taken out of the pocket of
+the British taxpayer.</p>
+
+<p>When one hears, therefore, Mr. Gladstone speak of
+giving the landlords twenty times the nominal rent of
+their land, one is reduced to admit that his idea was
+to bribe them into acquiescence to his scheme by an
+exorbitant premium. The Irish landlords did not
+understand their true interest; they did not see that
+they should have thrown into the scale the weight of
+their votes. Very likely they were wrong. They may
+say good-bye to the Gladstone indemnity; they will
+never see it again. For the longer they wait to settle
+this question, the more must farm-rent dwindle away
+and indemnity shrink to nothingness.</p>
+
+<p>It seems that, at present, in fixing it on the basis
+of twelve times the judicial rent, the British nation
+would show great liberality. It would be equivalent
+to saying that Irish land, as an investment, is worth
+one-third the capital in English Consols that bears
+the same interest, which is certainly paying it an
+unexpected compliment.</p>
+
+<p>As for the tenant-right of the farmer, which it is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_317"></a>[317]</span>
+equally indispensable to redeem if all is to be cleared
+and there are to be no more conflicts of interests, let
+us admit that it is worth, on the whole, three or four
+times the judicial rent. Very likely again this is
+excessive. But this matters little practically, as will
+be shown further on. We find thus, for the aggregate
+interest vested in the Irish soil and subject to indemnity,
+a common rate of sixteen times the judicial
+rent.</p>
+
+<p>The average of this judicial rent is ten shillings per
+acre. For fifteen millions of cultivated acres to be
+redeemed, this would therefore give a total sum of
+120 millions sterling to be paid. Thanks to this indemnity
+of expropriation, the English nation would
+become absolutely free to dispose of these lands as
+she pleased.</p>
+
+<p>But where are those 120 million pounds to be
+found? and they must be found over and above the
+capital necessary for the working of these lands, since
+we admitted in principle that it would be necessary
+to find it in most cases. This is the way:</p>
+
+<p>As a first outlay, we have admitted that the British
+Exchequer would put down £40,000,000 sterling in
+the shape of Consols at par. That capital represents
+an interest of about one million sterling and a quarter,
+or an annual tax of about ninepence per head. This<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_318"></a>[318]</span>
+certainly would not be a high price to pay for such a
+precious advantage as the suppression of the Irish
+plague. There is no decade in which a great nation
+does not pay more for some unlucky and useless
+venture—the Afghanistan campaign, as a case in
+point.</p>
+
+<p>To these 40 millions sterling, sacrificed by the
+wealthiest of European nations to its internal peace,
+shall be added the resources proper to Ireland. These
+are no despicable ones. Ireland, taxed much lower
+than Great Britain, nevertheless contributes no less
+than eight millions sterling, in round numbers, to the
+general revenue of the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>Of these £8,000,000 about £4,286,519 go to the
+keeping of the army of occupation and the administration
+of finances; in other words, to the services
+meant to remain “imperial” in the hypothesis of
+Home Rule. About £3,744,462 are paid for the
+services that would, in this hypothesis, come into the
+province of the Irish Parliament, viz., public works,
+law courts, tax-gathering, local administration, registrations,
+land-surveying, lunatic asylums, schools,
+prisons, and the like. It seems that a new and poor
+country, as we suppose Ireland to turn out, ought not
+to pay for such services as liberally as does wealthy
+England, and that a reduction of a third on these<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_319"></a>[319]</span>
+heads, or £1,250,000, is perfectly feasible. That is
+about the income for £40,000,000 in English Consols.
+Here, then, we have sufficient provision for a second
+milliard in the shape of <i>interest</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The interest for the third milliard would easily be
+raised in the shape of additional taxes, if Irish agriculture
+were freed from any other charges. That would
+only increase the annual taxation by about a sixth
+part, and would not even then put it on a level with
+the incidence of English taxation. Ireland, on her
+side, might well do this slight sacrifice to the cause
+of social and political peace.</p>
+
+<p>There, then, we have the £120,000,000 wanted (in
+the shape of a special loan, emitted and guaranteed by
+England), which are found—a third by each of the
+high contracting parties; a third by a reduction of 33
+per cent. on all services that would have become
+purely Irish.</p>
+
+<p>How ought this magnificent lump of money to be
+used to make it bear all it can? By lodging the
+whole in the coffers of a special <i>Bank of Liquidation</i>,
+that would be entrusted with all the operation.
+This bank, strong in her guaranteed capital of
+£120,000,000, invested, if necessary, with the power
+of emitting special paper-money, begins by paying all
+the lands on the basis fixed upon by law. This<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_320"></a>[320]</span>
+implies only, at the most, an outlay of £90,000,000.
+These lands the bank divides into three classes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Class A.</i>—The fee simple of the first class, composed
+of the holdings under £10 a year, is simply
+transferred to their actual holders (as would be
+done in an infant colony in order to attract inhabitants),
+subject to the single proviso that these lands
+shall be cultivated after a given system, and according
+to certain rules, and taken back by the public domain,
+if this condition be not observed.</p>
+
+<p>Let us remark, in passing, that this free gift will, in
+the majority of cases, be only the legalization of a
+<i>de facto</i> gratuitous occupation, most of these small
+tenants having, for the last three or four years, stopped
+paying any rent to the landlords.</p>
+
+<p>Where, in that case, will be their advantage? it
+might be asked. They will be no richer for having
+become landowners in point of law, as they are now in
+fact.</p>
+
+<p>This is a material error, as shown by the example
+of our peasant proprietors in France. One of the
+chief reasons that prevent the small Irish tenant
+endeavouring to get all he can out of his land is precisely
+the rooted wish in his mind not to work
+for the benefit of the landlord. From the day that he
+shall be certain of keeping the entire fruit of his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_321"></a>[321]</span>
+labour to himself, he will emulate the French Celt;
+he will submit himself to the hardest privations and
+the most unremitting toil; he will abundantly manure
+his land, ceaselessly tend it, turn it again and again;
+he will make it yield all it can. Anyhow, if he does
+not, he will have only himself to blame for it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Class B.</i>—The second class of land, composed of
+holdings from 15 to 20 acres and over, is sold
+to its actual holders for the price of their tenant
+right, if they be willing to accept this privilege. In
+the contrary case, the tenant right is paid down to
+them at the rate fixed upon by experts, and the fee
+simple is put up for sale by auction. The ultimate
+proprietors of these domains of average extent
+receive, by the hands of the local agents for the <i>Bank
+of Liquidation</i>, every facility to form themselves into
+unions for the collective culture of their land. They
+remain, however, free to cultivate it themselves and in
+their own fashion.</p>
+
+<p><i>Class C.</i>—The third portion of the soil, formed by
+the choicest land, shall be put aside in each district to
+form a great domain where experiments shall be tried
+and examples given in agriculture—a domain managed
+by official agronomists, and cultivated by associations
+of agricultural labourers, salaried partly in kind on
+the product of the land, partly by participation in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_322"></a>[322]</span>
+nett profits. Not only shall there be introduced on
+those great domains, together with the finest breeds
+of cattle, the most perfect and scientific modes of
+culture, but, besides, public demonstrations and
+lectures shall be made, agricultural pupils shall be
+formed, and seeds of first quality shall be given at cost
+price. These model-farms alone remain the property
+of the State, and are inalienable.</p>
+
+<p>Thus would be constituted at once, together
+with a class of peasant proprietors, the middle
+and great cultures which are equally wanting in
+Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Special laws abolish entail in the island, submit to
+expropriation (for 25 years at least) any owner non-resident
+on his property, and forbid, under pain of
+heavy fines, to hold or give on lease any parcel of
+land under 12 acres.</p>
+
+<p>Other laws, imitated from the <i>Homestead Exemption</i>
+of the United States, protect the peasant against debt.
+The <i>Liquidation Bank</i>, after having set the new system
+in motion, secures its working by advancing at the
+lowest rate of interest the capital wanted by the
+small and middling landowners, which must before
+long kill usury and drive it from the country. This
+bank is, in every sense, the organ and focus of a fiduciary
+circulation that is amply sufficient, on this broad<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_323"></a>[323]</span>
+basis, for all the financial wants of agricultural
+industry.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, the whole revenue of the land remaining in
+the country, circulating freely, and incessantly undergoing
+its normal transformations, health returns by
+degrees to the social body. There is no longer any
+question of “unemployed” labourers; on the contrary,
+it is rather hands that are wanted on all those flourishing
+estates which have day-work to offer, not only to
+the owners of small holdings, but even to the unemployed
+of Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>And so England begins rapidly, though indirectly,
+to recover her advance, owing to the quick increase
+in the returns of the Income Tax; in perhaps four or
+five years, that increase covers the interest of her
+£40,000,000. It comes to say that her real outlay
+turns out to be only a tenth or a twelfth part of that
+advance. Emigration suddenly receives a check.
+Nay, a new, liberated, prosperous Ireland sees her
+children flock back to her shores from abroad, enriched
+and reconciled, bringing home their capital
+with their experience. For the Irishman ever keeps
+in his heart unimpaired the love of his mother
+country, and will return to her as soon as he can.</p>
+
+<p>Let us carry our hypothesis further.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time when she gave up the responsibilities<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_324"></a>[324]</span>
+of the local government of Ireland, England
+has transmitted them to the representatives of the
+Irish nation.</p>
+
+<p>Are those representatives to form immediately a
+single Parliament sitting at Dublin, or are they for
+the present to be divided into four provincial
+assemblies for Leinster, Munster, Connaught, and
+Ulster? This question is of small importance, at
+least at the beginning. Let the first step be taken;
+an united Ireland will only be a matter of time. The
+best way in such cases is to follow the expressed wish
+of the populations; and supposing that Ulster, or at
+least a part of Ulster, vote for the continuation of the
+present <i>régime</i>, why should not those territories be
+excepted from the new arrangements, and either be
+left <i>in statu quo</i> or joined politically to Scotland,
+of which they are a geological as well as an ethnical
+dependency? But I cannot help thinking that if the
+above system was submitted to the Antrim tenants
+themselves, they would not be backward to see its
+advantages.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole question the last word should remain
+to the voter. If a majority of the electors of Scottish
+Ireland spoke in favour of Home Rule, what could be
+objected to them? That they will eventually be
+oppressed by the Catholics? No great fear of that, I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_325"></a>[325]</span>
+should think; and besides, efficient measures could be
+taken, guarantees found against that danger; but no
+such caution will be really wanted. The influence of
+the Catholic clergy in Ireland has for its principal
+basis the political state of the country. The day when
+difficulties are cleared up, national education will
+soon have put an end to the reign of clericalism in
+Ireland as elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>One cannot help feeling firmly convinced that Mr.
+Gladstone’s formula, “Home Rule and Abolition
+of Landlordism,” taken in its most general meaning,
+and applied with a spirit both prudent and liberal,
+will suffice to heal in a few years the disease of
+Ireland. Public wealth will rise by degrees, feelings
+of hatred will die away, the rapidity of the cure will
+take the world by surprise. Has not already the
+adoption of the Irish programme by a large number
+of Englishmen belonging to the Liberal party been
+sufficient to bring about a partial reconciliation between
+the two countries? We have seen Irish orators come
+and preach the Liberal gospel in England, and reciprocally,
+English orators go and bring the word of
+peace to Ireland. That alone is an augury of success,
+a symptom of healing and pacification.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_326"></a>[326]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Will it be objected that this is a Utopian picture,
+an unpractical scheme, or simply one of difficult execution?
+As for me, the more I look into the matter,
+the more settled grows my belief that three things
+only are requisite for substituting so much good for so
+much evil, viz., money, steadiness of purpose and conscience.
+Nobody will say that the English have ever
+shown a lack of steadiness in the pursuit of success;
+money they have in abundance; will they be wanting
+in conscience? This is scarcely to be feared. Conscientiousness
+of a more or less enlightened kind is a
+characteristic of the Englishman, and it is his highest
+praise. Men are constantly to be met in England
+who rule their conduct on the principles of an inward
+law. It is true that, by a natural consequence,
+many are good only in name, and their display
+of conscience is only a sham; but as our great
+moralist has said, “Hypocrisy is a homage which
+vice renders to virtue,” and wherever vice is obliged
+to wear a mask, virtue is bound to conquer.</p>
+
+<p>A great transformation, the instruments of which
+are the press, the steam-engine, and the telegraph,
+has been slowly developing throughout the world
+during the last few years: a new and powerful influence
+has been born that might be named “obligatory
+justice through publicity.” Tennyson has spoken of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_327"></a>[327]</span>
+“the fierce light that beats upon a throne;” thrones
+now-a-days scarcely exist except in name; the will of
+the people has taken their place. But let Governments
+call themselves republics or monarchies, they
+are equally submitted to that pitiless ray of light
+which is the ever-wakeful eye of the press, the uncompromising
+publicity which ignores either rank or
+station. How many examples of it have we not seen
+at home! To quote a recent one, take that wretched
+Schnæbelé affair. Only fifteen years ago there would
+have been found in it reasons ten times sufficient to
+bring about a war for those who wanted it. Not so
+in our days. In less than twenty-four hours the press
+had brought to light the most minute details of the
+affair, exposed the naked truth to the eyes of the
+world, photographed the place where the incident had
+occurred, submitted, in short, to the great public
+judge all the evidence of the case. One had to
+tender apologies under pain of being called the
+aggressor, and the whole affair evaporated into smoke.</p>
+
+<p>Such results are perhaps the clearest gain that
+modern progress has given us. If our age has a
+superiority over the preceding ages, it is assuredly to
+have succeeded in making injustice more difficult to
+practise. More and more henceforward will great
+national crimes become impossible. Mr. Gladstone’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_328"></a>[328]</span>
+chief merit will be to have understood it before
+anybody in England, and to have been emphatically
+the man of his time. In spite of friends and adversaries
+he has dared to utter the truth, and say: “We
+must give back to Ireland what we have taken from
+her. The good of England imperiously demands
+that sacrifice, for we are entering an age when the
+honour of a great nation should not even be suspected.”</p>
+
+<p>He is actually the only statesman in Europe who
+follows a policy of principle; the only one seeking
+the triumph of his opinions by the sole help of reason.
+All the others, from the most famous to the most
+obscure or passing politician, are only jobbers. Disraeli
+had too much of the mountebank about him to
+have been able to secure the respect of posterity.
+Gortschakoff was only a courtier of the old school;
+Cavour a clever lawyer; Thiers a dwarf, in a
+moral and political, as in a physical, sense.
+Bismarck profits by a state of affairs which he did
+little or nothing to create, and at the most is the
+belated representative in our times of fossil feudalism.
+Gladstone alone is a truly modern statesman, and
+therefore is destined to be set by history above all
+his contemporaries, if only he succeeds in carrying
+out his great enterprise; for the more we go the more<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_329"></a>[329]</span>
+nations shall be restricted to politics of principle,
+both because all other systems are exploded, and
+because the diffusion of learning will be for the
+future an almost insuperable obstacle to petty or
+brutal diplomatic conspiracies.</p>
+
+<p>Great Britain, it is earnestly to be hoped, will consent
+to follow her great leader in the way he has
+shown to her. She is offered the most splendid
+opportunity of doing what no nation has achieved as
+yet,—atoning, of her own free will, for centuries of
+injustice, and trying one of the noblest social experiments
+that can ever be attempted. It would be the
+beginning of a new era in the history of human
+societies, and pure glory for those who initiated it.
+Not only could such results be attained at little cost,
+but the most obvious, the most pressing interest of
+England invites her to the enterprise. Let her make
+haste. After having affirmed for half a century the
+sovereignty of peoples, and their right to govern
+themselves according to their will, she cannot give
+herself the lie at home. After having protested
+against Bomba and the Bulgarian atrocities, she
+cannot in her own dominions remain beneath “the
+unspeakable Turk.” After having assumed before
+the world the attitude of a systematic foe to slave-trade
+and all kinds of oppression or cruelty, after<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_330"></a>[330]</span>
+having carried it even to maudlin sensitiveness, as
+in the case of pigeon-shooting, “birds’ corpses on
+women’s hats,” and the like, she cannot decently carry
+on the slow destruction of a sister race through
+starvation. She cannot and she will not do it, for it
+would be branding herself for ever as Queen of
+Humbug, Empress of Sham.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2 class="nobreak">FOOTNOTES</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> Absenteeism, in its present form, seems to date only from Grattan’s
+Parliament, but in some shape or another it may be said to date from
+the British invasion of Ireland, and to result from the very nature of
+an insular kingdom transferred wholesale to the nobility of a neighbouring
+state.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> A later instance. On August 30th, 1887, two men armed with
+guns and wearing masks entered the house of Mr. R. Blennerhasset, at
+Kells, near Cahirciveen; they went upstairs to Mrs. Blennerhasset’s
+room and demanded money, which they got to the amount of about £2.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> My guide was quite right. In a statistical table of trials between
+July, 1885, and July, 1886, for the County Kerry, I find the following
+items: <i>maiming cattle</i>, 9; <i>injury to person</i>, 7; <i>murders</i>, 3; <i>firing at
+persons</i>, 8; <i>firing into houses</i>, 15; <i>threatening letters</i>, 125; <i>intimidation</i>,
+36; <i>malicious injury</i>, 22; <i>arson</i>, 19; <i>assaults</i>, 22. The above figures,
+it should be observed, only relate to outrages brought home to their
+authors; there can be no doubt that a much larger number of agrarian
+outrages remain unpunished.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> <a href="#APPENDIX">See Appendix, p. 331.</a></p>
+
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_331"></a>[331]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX">APPENDIX.<br>
+<i class="smaller">EXTRACTS FROM SOME LETTERS ADDRESSED
+WITHIN THE LAST TWO YEARS TO AN IRISH
+LANDLORD BY HIS TENANTS.</i></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The <i>Times</i> has published, on October 10, 1887, an
+exceedingly interesting batch of letters selected from
+some three hundred addressed within the last two
+years to an Irish landowner by his tenants. As the
+editor of those letters wrote most appropriately, there
+is perhaps no means whereby truer insight can be obtained
+into the ways and habits of the Irish peasantry
+than by studying the letters written by the people
+themselves. Typically enough, however, the same
+editor only saw in those letters how “unbusiness-like
+and illogical is the Irish tenant,” and “the various
+reasons that an Irishman gives for not paying his rent.
+One is unable to pay because his uncle is confined to
+bed, and his daughter suffering from a sore eye;
+another because a relative has died; a third because<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_332"></a>[332]</span>
+his brother-in-law has brought an action against him
+for money lent, and he has had to pay; one because
+his family is small, and another because it is large;
+another—and this is the most common excuse—because
+he has been unable to sell his stock; another
+because his wife has a sore hand; another because of
+the death of a cow; another because the weather is
+severe and there is a sheriff’s bailiff obstructing him
+from making up the rent; another because it was
+God’s will to take all the means he had; another
+because of the agitation.”</p>
+
+<p>Reasons which, it may be seen, appear to the
+English eye entirely ridiculous and unbusiness-like.</p>
+
+<p>What strikes a Frenchman most, on the other hand,
+in the letters, is their touching simplicity, the appalling
+instability of a budget that the least domestic
+mishap is enough to upset, and the fruitless attempt
+of the poor man to penetrate into the real cause of
+the burden under which he is panting; in the comments,
+the utter incapacity of the British landlord to
+understand his Irish tenantry even when he is a good
+landlord, which is obviously (perhaps too obviously)
+the case here.</p>
+
+<p>The letters are thus characteristic in more than one
+sense. Whatever the angle under which they are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_333"></a>[333]</span>
+read, they undoubtedly remain first-class documentary
+evidence.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>8th Jany., 1887.</i></p>
+
+<p>To * * * *, Esq.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I received a letter yesterday from Mr. G⸺ who
+demanded the payment of £31 0<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i>, rent due up to 29 Sept.
+1886. I was in with Mr. G⸺ this day &amp; he told me that
+he had no further instructions than what was contained in his
+note. Now my Uncle has been confined through illness to his
+bed since last June, &amp; my daughter has been under medical
+treatment since last September for a sore eye which proceeded
+from a bad tooth, &amp; I even had to pay the Dentist ten shillings
+for extracting it, as the Doctor could not do so. I trust you will
+kindly take into consideration my position and stay proceedings,
+&amp; I will send you £18 next Saturday &amp; the remainder about the
+13th February, the day after fair of K⸺.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your obedt. Servant</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The following is also from the same man:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I would have sent you the remainder of the rent on
+the day mentioned but the old man died &amp; I had extra expenses
+but if you would kindly wait until about the 25th of March I will
+be able to let you have it.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your obedient servant</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>9th March, 1887.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I have yours of the 4th inst. &amp; am very sorry to say I
+have met a reverse &amp; cant pay up to my word. I took a
+Brother-in-law to live with me—he was a tenant of your property<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_334"></a>[334]</span>
+who lost the power of his limbs &amp; obliged to get into Hospital,
+his daughter my niece who I reared went to America she died
+there after saving a good deal of money her father after much
+trouble got £200 of it &amp; after being 17 years in the Hospital he
+had to leave it having means to live &amp; he requested to come to
+live with me which I allowed, &amp; being maintained as one of my
+family for 12 months up to Wedy. last he now sued me for
+£50 which he lent me while here. He is at other lodgings &amp;
+subject to evil advice but he fell out with me while here &amp; since
+has been most ungrateful. I done my best to get this law put
+back but failed &amp; had to pay the money I had made to pay my
+rent. I am much grieved being obliged to ask to the middle of
+next month to pay it. I wont have any fairs sooner to sell my
+stores but I will surly have it about the 20th April if not sooner.
+You may be sure only what happened me I would have paid up
+to my promise.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your obt servt</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>10th March.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mr. ⸺.</span> After all I built &amp; what I ow in shops &amp; from
+the loss of sheep I am not abell to pay but if you forgive me
+this half year’s rent you will save me from destruction, and if so
+I will keep it a profound sacred. I promis I will never again
+ask anything of you &amp; will be punctual in future, my family is
+small &amp; my health not good to go travell. I brought a dale of
+money in to this farm 5 years ago and it is all gon now. I
+apeal to your kind genariss hart to do this for me &amp; may the
+almitey god give your self &amp; your children the Kingdom of
+hevan.</p>
+
+<p class="center">I remain most respectfully</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_335"></a>[335]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>January 9th.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—In reply to youre noat I am verrey sorrey that
+I can do nothing at the presant it is out of my power I have nothing
+to sell unlss I sell what I have to ate my self and seven littel
+children. I had but one calf to sell to pay you and it was the
+will of provedence to take him, he died. I have but one cow &amp;
+I had hur in the fair of N⸺ and all I could get for her was
+four pounds, so if you presede with the law as yore lawyer sayes
+he will I must sell hur to pay you</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your humbel tennant</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>August 31.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>, — I promised the rent after the fair of K⸺ in June.
+I had three calves in it &amp; covld not sell. I took three months
+grass for them to see could I do better. I intend to have them
+in D⸺ on the 12th &amp; if I sell them I will send the rent
+after that. I would have wrote only expecting to have the rent
+before this. My wife took a sore hand &amp; is in hospital this two
+months &amp; is in it still so its poor times with me.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your tennant</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>11th March.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—In reply to your letter dated 5th inst. I beg to ask your
+honour the favour of a few days grace. I hope to be able to
+meet your demands by the time you call to collect your rents in
+April. In the meantime I might have an opportunity of setting
+the fields in Con acre.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_336"></a>[336]</span></p>
+
+<p>Being a lone widow with two helpless children one of them
+of weak intellect I hope your honour will kindly consider my
+case.</p>
+
+<p>I am Sir your Honour’s most obedient &amp; humble servant</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>January 19.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I received your letter, it is not in my power to make
+money for you now as I had to borrow some of your last rent
+which is not all paid yeat on account of the death of my fine cow
+that died. I will use my best endavours against May.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your ob. servt</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>September 26.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—I make apail to you at the present time that
+I am endeavring at this time to make up the rent. Now I would
+have it sooner but the weather for the harvest was savere, sore I
+could not help it Der Sir, there is a man who is a Sheirf’s baliff is
+going to injure me &amp; to obstruct me in making up the rent for
+you which I would hope soon to have value for. Dear Sir I
+apail to you that you will not allow but Dis allow injuring a
+poor tenant who is endeavring to make up the rent. I would
+say one thing that I believe he is at least without maners. I
+apail to you that you will not allow to obstruct making out rent
+as quck as posible. one thing I wonder much that you would
+permit him or such as him any place. I will refrain on that
+presnt. I will ask this request off Mr. ⸺ as soon as I can<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_337"></a>[337]</span>
+get the rent will he be kind enough to take it from me. I will
+ask the favour of you to give return as it may plaise you. Excuse
+my hand riting.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Yours truly</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>August 2nd.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mr. ⸺.</span> I received Mr. G⸺’s letter on the 31st of
+July. I am sorry I am not able to pay at preasant. I am
+willing to pay my rent but it was God’s will to take all the mains
+I had intended to meet you. I hope you will be so kind to give
+time untell October, as it is so hard to make money</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your obt. servent</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Pat. F⸺.</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>Wensdy 19th.</i></p>
+
+<p>* * * * Esq. <span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I received your letter &amp; will send
+you the rent as soon as I can. There was no price for cattle in
+the fairs that is past, in fact the could not be sold atol. I expect
+to make the rent in the fair of K⸺. I could always pay my
+rent but this cursed agetation has destroyed our country but I
+hope the worst of it is over</p>
+
+<p class="center">I remain Your Obedient Servant</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_338"></a>[338]</span></p>
+
+<p>The following letters also relate to the payment of
+rent:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>October 10.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I did not receive your letter ontill this Day. It has
+given me a great surprise I hope your Honour will not put me
+to cost I have a little best to sell, and after the fair in C⸺,
+a thursday I will send it to yo and I hop yo will not put me to
+cost. I hop your honour will feel for me</p>
+
+<p class="center">truly</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>October 4th.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mr. ⸺.</span> <span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I was again disappointed in the fair at
+N⸺ in selling my cattle and I must ask time of you till I
+get sale for if possible I will sell them in the fair of C⸺ do
+not once imagine that I am not enclined to pay but I never was
+offered a price for my cattle. I was speaking to some of the
+tenants and the would wish to see you in N⸺ the rent day
+as the want to know what you want for your land</p>
+
+<p class="center">Yours respectfully,</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I was very sory to see your hon goeing back without
+the rient.</p>
+
+<p>I was willing to pay that day but I could not. I send you my
+half-year’s rent £13 10, so I hope your hon will luck after turf
+for me there is no ous in asking it of Mr. F⸺ There is to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_339"></a>[339]</span>
+banks idle on the tients part on F⸺ and Mrs. N⸺ has
+30 banks set this year so I count it very unfare if we doent get
+one The old men was geoing to kill us when we did not pay
+your hon the day you ware in N⸺ We ware all sory we did
+not settle that day</p>
+
+<p class="center">I remane your obdient servant</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+<p>rember the tturf.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The following is in the same handwriting as the
+last, but signed by another tenant:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—You spoke of referring to Mr. F⸺ for turf,
+we did not like to intrupeed (query, interrupt) yur hon at that time.
+Well sir there is too banks of your own on the tients part
+an Mrs. N⸺ is giveing turf to men on the five different
+estates Every one that wonted turf got it but two tients no
+one els wonts it besids, so I hope your hon will luck to us. I
+am willing to pay my way if I get a chance. N⸺ D⸺
+has turf this 40 years No one wants it but P⸺ F⸺ &amp;
+M⸺ T⸺. We would pay your hon ondly for the rest</p>
+
+<p class="center">Believe me Your obedient servent</p>
+
+<p class="right">M⸺ T⸺.</p>
+
+<p>do what your hon can about the turf</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>November 23rd 86.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Honoured Sir</span>,—I got both your letters &amp; replidd to the
+first &amp; directed it to D⸺ in which I asked for a little time to
+pay the rent I had some young cattle in the fair of K⸺<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_340"></a>[340]</span>
+and did not sell them. It will greatly oblige me if your Honour
+will give me time untill the Christmas fair of F⸺ as I have
+some pigs to sell that will meet this rent &amp; that would leave me
+the cattle to meet the May rent as the young cattle I have is
+not fit to sell at preasant.</p>
+
+<p>I feel sorry to have to trespass on your Honour, but the times
+are bad and it is hard to make money, but I hope we will soon
+have better times under the present Government, and that all
+those mob laws will soon be at an end.</p>
+
+<p class="center">I remain your humble servant,</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It shows a curious state of things when a would-be
+tenant thinks it necessary to assure the landlord that
+he knows the farm belongs to him:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>April 12, 1887.</i></p>
+
+<p>To Mr. * * * *</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—Just a few lines to let your honour know that my
+father is very delicate for the past tow months and not expected
+to recover. I would like to let your honour know that it was mee
+that minded your Property for the last ten years. I know that
+this place always belongs to you and that the emprovements
+cost no one But your self a shilling. I would like to know how
+mutch my father is in your dept.</p>
+
+<p class="center">I remain your honors faiteful servant,</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">James T⸺.</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_341"></a>[341]</span></p>
+
+<p>The following contain offers of cattle in lieu of rent,
+a form of payment which Irish tenants are always
+anxious to adopt if they can, for though they declare
+there will be no difference about the price, they always
+expect the landlord to give them considerably more
+than the market value:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>January 18.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—I am not able to answer you with money at present.
+I have the heifer that I told you of and if you wish I will
+send her to T⸺ for you, and I expect your honor and I
+wont differ.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your obedient servent,</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Patrick F⸺y.</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>Jany 5th.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I have 5 nice bullocks to sell if you would buy them.
+I have no other way of paying the rent.</p>
+
+<p class="right">F⸺ D⸺.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>October 14th.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span> and pleas your honour,—I hope in you that
+you wont buy all the cattle you want in S⸺ town. Patrick
+D⸺ has a lot greasing with the father-in-law at C⸺;
+he intends to meet your honour with them. Pleas, Sir, leave
+room for three Bullocks, I have them greasing with you above
+the road all the summer.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your faithful servant,</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Michl. T⸺.</span></p>
+
+<p>I am setten some of my children and it has left me bare in
+monney.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_342"></a>[342]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>Novr 12th.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—I will give three two-year-old Bullicks good
+owns for next May rent. I will leave the vallue to your honour
+when you come down before Christamas. I was offered £15 pounds
+for the three last June; £5 each from Mr. ⸺ the Miller of
+C⸺. I never took them out since. I have no father for
+them. Your honour has plenty of straw to give them, the will
+make good Bullocks on it. Your honour must get them les
+than vallue</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your truly faithfull servent,</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="titlepage">THE END.</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller">BRADBURY, AGNEW, &amp; CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.</p>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69993 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ireland's disease, by Philippe Daryl
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Ireland's disease
+
+Author: Philippe Daryl
+
+Release Date: February 9, 2023 [eBook #69993]
+
+Language: English
+
+Produced by: deaurider and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+             https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+             generously made available by The Internet Archive)
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRELAND'S DISEASE ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+IRELAND’S DISEASE.
+
+
+
+
+                            IRELAND’S DISEASE
+
+                          NOTES AND IMPRESSIONS
+                                    BY
+                              PHILIPPE DARYL
+
+                      _THE AUTHOR’S ENGLISH VERSION_
+
+                                  LONDON
+                        GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS
+                          BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL
+                           GLASGOW AND NEW YORK
+                                   1888
+
+                                  LONDON
+              BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+These pages were first published in the shape of letters addressed from
+Ireland to _Le Temps_, during the summer months of 1886 and 1887.
+
+A few extracts from those letters having found their way to the columns
+of the leading British papers, they became the occasion of somewhat
+premature, and, it seemed to the author, somewhat unfair conclusions, as
+to their general purport and bearing.
+
+A fiery correspondent of a London evening paper, in particular, who
+boldly signed “J. J. M.” for his name, went so far as to denounce the
+author as “an ally of the _Times_, in the congenial task of vilifying the
+Irish people by grotesque and ridiculous caricatures,” which charge was
+then summarily met as follows:—
+
+    _To the Editor of the PALL MALL GAZETTE._
+
+    SIR,—
+
+    Let me hope, for the sake of “J. J. M.’s” mental condition,
+    that he never set eyes upon my Irish sketches in _Le Temps_,
+    about which he volunteers an opinion. If, however, he has
+    actually seen my prose in the flesh, and he still clings to his
+    hobby that I am hostile to the Irish cause or unsympathetic
+    with the Irish race, why then I can only urge upon his friends
+    the advisability of a strait waistcoat, a brace of mad doctors,
+    and an early berth in a lunatic asylum. I never heard in my
+    life of a sadder case of raving delusion.
+
+                           Yours obediently,
+
+                                                     PHILIPPE DARYL.
+
+    PARIS, _September 18, 1887_.
+
+Thus ended the controversy. There was no reply.
+
+Allowance should be made, of course, for the natural sensitiveness of
+Irishmen on everything that relates to their noble and unhappy country.
+But, what! Do they entertain, for one moment, the idea that everything is
+right and normal in it? In that case there can be no cause of complaint
+for them, and things ought to remain as they are. All right-minded people
+will understand, on the contrary, that the redress of Irish wrongs can
+only come out of a sincere and assiduous exposure of the real state of
+affairs, which is not healthy but pathological, and, as such, manifests
+itself by peculiar symptoms.
+
+However it may be, a natural though perhaps morbid desire of submitting
+the case to the English-reading public was the consequence of those
+exceedingly brief and abortive polemics.
+
+The Author was already engaged in the not over-congenial task of putting
+his own French into English, or what he hoped might do duty as such, when
+Messrs. George Routledge & Sons, the London publishers of his _Public
+Life in England_, kindly proposed to introduce _Ireland’s Disease_ to
+British society. The offer was heartily accepted, and so it came to pass
+that the English version is to appear in book form on the same day as the
+French one.
+
+The special conditions of the case made it, of course, a duty to the
+author to strictly retain in his text every line that he had written
+down in the first instance, however little palatable it might prove to
+some English readers and fatal to his own literary or other prospects
+in England. That should be his excuse for sticking desperately to
+words which, like Tauchnitz editions, were not originally intended for
+circulation in Great Britain.
+
+                                                                    PH. D.
+
+PARIS, _Nov. 10th, 1887_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                              PAGE
+
+    INTRODUCTION                                 1
+
+                   CHAPTER I.
+
+    FIRST SENSATIONS                             5
+
+                   CHAPTER II.
+
+    DUBLIN LIFE                                 17
+
+                  CHAPTER III.
+
+    THE POOR OF DUBLIN                          31
+
+                   CHAPTER IV.
+
+    THE EMERALD ISLE                            46
+
+                   CHAPTER V.
+
+    THE RACE                                    60
+
+                   CHAPTER VI.
+
+    HISTORICAL GRIEVANCES                       76
+
+                  CHAPTER VII.
+
+    KILLARNEY                                   96
+
+                  CHAPTER VIII.
+
+    THROUGH KERRY ON HORSEBACK                 109
+
+                   CHAPTER IX.
+
+    A KERRY FARMER’S BUDGET                    139
+
+                   CHAPTER X.
+
+    RURAL PHYSIOLOGY                           157
+
+                   CHAPTER XI.
+
+    EMIGRATION                                 177
+
+                  CHAPTER XII.
+
+    THE LEAGUE                                 197
+
+                  CHAPTER XIII.
+
+    THE CLERGY                                 215
+
+                  CHAPTER XIV.
+
+    FORT SAUNDERS                              234
+
+                   CHAPTER XV.
+
+    THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN                       256
+
+                  CHAPTER XVI.
+
+    SCOTTISH IRELAND                           271
+
+                  CHAPTER XVII.
+
+    LEX LICINIA                                296
+
+         I.—The Gladstone Scheme               309
+
+        II.—An Outsider’s Suggestion           313
+
+    APPENDIX                                   331
+
+
+
+
+IRELAND’S DISEASE.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+It is indeed a chronic and constitutional disease that Ireland is
+labouring under. Twice within the last fifteen months it has been my
+fortune to visit the Sister Isle; first in the summer of 1886, at the
+apparently decisive hour when the die of her destiny was being cast in
+the ballot-box, and her children seemed on the point of starting upon a
+new life; then again, twelve months after, in the summer of 1887, when I
+found her a prey to the very same local disorders and to the same general
+anxiety that I had previously observed.
+
+Last year it looked as if the solution was nigh, if Mr. Gladstone’s
+spirited eloquence was going to carry the English nation along with
+it. The seasons, however, have followed one another in due course,
+bringing with them the usual run of unpaid rent, eviction, and reciprocal
+violence; a new Crimes Act has been added to the long record of similar
+measures that the British Parliament has scored against Ireland in
+eighty-seven years of so-called Union; a few cabins have disappeared,
+have been unroofed or burnt down by the arm of the bailiff; a few more
+skulls have been broken; some hundred thousand more wretched beings have
+embarked in emigrant ships for the United States or Queensland; some
+more hunger-stricken women and children have swollen the list of obscure
+victims that green Erin annually pays to the Anglo-Saxon Minotaur. But
+nothing essential is altered. Things are in the same places and passions
+at the same pitch. The two nations are facing each other with defiance in
+their eyes, threats in their mouths, revolvers or dynamite in hand. The
+problem has not advanced one step. Social war is still there, filling the
+hearts, paralysing the action, poisoning the springs of life. It may be
+read in the alarmed looks of mothers, in the sullen faces of men; it is
+lurking behind every hedge.
+
+Before such an unparalleled case of a whole race’s physiological misery,
+how could one help being seized with an ardent curiosity mingled with
+pity? Who would not wish to plunge to the bottom of the matter, to make
+out, if possible, the secret of the evil, to deduce from it a lesson,
+and, may be, a general law?
+
+That want I have felt most deeply, and I have tried to gratify it by
+personal observation; looking at things through my own spectacles,
+without animus or hatred, passion or prejudice, as they came under my
+gaze; noting down what seemed to be characteristic; above all, avoiding
+like poison the contact of the professional politician on either side:
+then drawing my own conclusion.
+
+I need hardly add that for the intelligence of what I saw, I have always
+availed myself of the printed sources of information, such as the
+standard works on Irish history, Black’s excellent _Guide to Ireland_,
+the Parliamentary Reports, the national literature, and last but not
+least the graphic accounts of current events published by the English and
+native press. Of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, especially, I must state that
+I have found its files a mine of precise, well digested, and thoroughly
+reliable information on the subject.
+
+That my studies are above correction, I will not venture to hope. That
+they are in every case founded on facts, and, to the best of my belief,
+accurate, I earnestly vouch. As far as possible, I have made a point
+of giving the names of the persons mentioned. When it might have been
+inconvenient to them, however, or when delicacy forbade such a liberty,
+I have either suppressed the name or substituted a fictitious one. It
+should be understood that what I wanted, as a total stranger in the
+country, and what my French readers wanted, were not personal but typical
+instances.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+FIRST SENSATIONS.
+
+
+                                                                   DUBLIN.
+
+Hardly have you set foot on the quay at Kingstown, than you feel on
+an altogether different ground from England. Between Dover and Calais
+the contrast is not more striking. Kingstown is a pretty little place,
+whose harbour is used by the steamers from Holyhead, and whither Dublin
+shopkeepers resort in summer. Half a century back, it was only a
+fishermen’s village of the most rudimentary description. But George IV.,
+late Prince Regent, having done that promontory the honour to embark
+there when leaving Ireland, the place became the fashion. In memory of
+the glorious event, the citizens of Dublin raised on that spot a pyramid
+which rests on four cannon balls, and bears on its top the royal crown
+with the names of all the engineers, architects, captains, and harbour
+officials who had anything to do with the business. Villas soon sprang up
+round it, and from that time Kingstown went on thriving. A splendid pier
+bent round upon itself like a forearm on its humerus, makes it the safest
+harbour in Ireland, and the railway puts it in communication with Dublin
+in twenty minutes. It is the Portici of a bay that could vie with the
+Bay of Naples, did it boast its Vesuvius and sun, and did not the shoals
+which form its bottom get often bare and dry at low tide.
+
+You land then at Kingstown, early in the morning after a four hours’
+crossing, having started the evening before by the express from Euston
+Station. And immediately you feel that you are no longer in England. The
+language is the same, no doubt, though talked with a peculiar accent or
+_brogue_. The custom-house officers are English; so are the policemen
+and redcoats who air themselves on the quay; but the general type is no
+longer English, and the manners are still less so. Loud talk, violent
+gesticulation, jokes and laughter everywhere; brown hair, sparkling dark
+eyes: you could imagine you are at Bordeaux or at Nantes.
+
+The guard who asks for your ticket, the very train you get in, have
+something peculiar, undefinable, thoroughly un-English. The old lame
+newspaper-man who hands you _The Irish Times_ or the _Freeman’s Journal_
+at the carriage-door, indulges witticisms while giving you back your
+change, which not one of Mr. Smith’s well-conducted lads ever permits
+himself along a British line. As for the passengers they are more
+un-English than anything else. This lady with the olive complexion and
+brown hair, may be termed an English subject; but for all that she
+has not probably one globule of Anglo-Saxon blood in her veins. That
+gentleman in the grey suit has evidently an English tailor, but the
+flesh-and-bone lining of his coat is of an altogether different make. As
+for the little man in black who is curling himself cosily in the corner
+opposite to you, not only is he unmistakeably a Roman Catholic priest,
+but you must positively hear him talk, to give up the idea that he is a
+Breton just out of the Saint Brieux Seminary. High cheek-bones, bilious
+complexion, small tobacco-coloured eyes, lank hair, nothing is missing
+from the likeness.
+
+Here is Dublin. The train takes us to the very heart of the town, and
+there stops between a pretty public garden and the banks of the Liffey.
+The weather is cool and clear. Inside the station cabs and cars are
+waiting for travellers and their luggage. _Waiting_, not contending
+eagerly for their patronage as they do in London, where any possible
+customer is quickly surrounded by half-a-dozen rival drivers. “_Hansom,
+sir?... Hansom, sir?_” The Dublin cabman is more indolent. He keeps
+dozing on his seat or leisurely gossiping with his mates. “Why trouble
+oneself for nothing? The traveller knows how to call for a cab, I
+suppose!” So speaks the whole attitude of these philosophers in the
+Billycock hats.
+
+This, however, will not prevent their being as unscrupulous as any of
+their fellow-drivers in any part of the globe, when it comes to settling
+the fare. “How much?” “Five bob.” On verification you find that two
+shillings is all the rogue is entitled to. You give the two shillings, he
+pockets them and rattles away laughing. The job was a failure; no more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dublin is a big city, thickly populated, crossed by wide thoroughfares,
+provided with fine public gardens and splendid parks, which are here
+called _greens_, and adorned with an extraordinary number of statues.
+Its traffic and industry are important: visibly, this is a capital. More
+than a capital; the focus of a nationality. Everything in the streets
+proclaims it: sign-boards, monuments, countenances, manners. Those marble
+statues you see at every step are the effigies of the patriots who
+fought for the rights of Ireland. That palace with the noble colonnade,
+in the heart and finest part of the town, is the very building where
+the Irish Parliament, abolished in 1800 by the Act of Union, held its
+assemblies. Now-a-days the Bank directors meet in the room where once met
+the representatives of the nation. But they seem to have been careful
+not to change anything in the general arrangement, in case it was wanted
+to-morrow for some _Assemblée Constituante_. You may enter it: the
+door is open for every one. On the right you see what was the House of
+Lords, a rectangular hall with an open ceiling, historic hangings, and
+the statue of some royalties. On the left, the House of Commons. Here,
+mahogany counters stand in place of the members benches, and where
+sounded once the clash of argument, you hear now the tinkling of gold
+coins.
+
+Let old times come again; let Westminster give back to the Sister-Isle
+the autonomy she mourns, and, as a stage machinery, the Bank will vanish
+before the Parliament. It will be an affair of a night’s work for the
+upholsterers.
+
+In front of that building, which is the City Hall, it is not the British
+flag (though perhaps the law should insist upon it) that is hanging
+aloft. It is the green flag of Erin with the harp and the three towers.
+Everywhere there are calls on the national feeling. _Hibernian House_,
+_Hibernian Hotel_, _Erin Stores_, _Irish poplins_, _Irish gloves_,
+_Irish whisky_. Above all Irish whisky! one could not get comfortably
+drunk with Scotch whisky, that is evident.
+
+If you visit a museum or picture-gallery you will find Art exiled in the
+background, and patriotism shining to the fore. Bating a fine Giorgione,
+a valuable Potter, a Van Steen of large size and extraordinary quality,
+a rare Cornelius Béga and a few others, the collection is not worth
+much, and would not fetch its million francs at the _Hotel des Ventes_,
+in the Rue Drouot. It is only a pretext for a national collection of
+portraits where are represented all the glories of Ireland, from Jonathan
+Swift, Laurence Sterne, Steele, Sheridan, Edmund Burke to Moore, Lord
+Edward Fitzgerald, the Duke of Wellington, and above all, O’Connell,
+“the liberator;” and Henry Grattan, esquire, “true representative of the
+people, father of liberty, author of the emancipation.”
+
+Those things take hold of you as soon as you arrive at Dublin. Like a
+flash of lightning they bring light upon many things about _Home Rule_
+which had remained hazy to your continental heedlessness. A nation with
+such memories kept up with such jealous care must know what it wants, and
+will have it in the end. Such signs are the manifestation of a national
+soul, of a distinct personality in the great human family. When all,
+from alderman to beggar, have one sole aim, they are bound to reach it
+sooner or later. Here, if the Town Hall has its green flag, the urchin
+in the street has his sugarplum, shaped into the effigy of Parnell or
+Gladstone. Never, since the Venice and the Lombardy of 1859, was there
+such a passionate outburst of national feeling.
+
+In the central part of the town, several streets are really fine with
+their rows of large houses, their gorgeous shops and numberless statues.
+The women are generally good-looking; well built, well gloved, well
+shod. They move gracefully, and with a vivacity which is quite southern.
+They look gentle and modest, and dress almost as well as Frenchwomen, of
+whom they have the quiet grace. The youngest ones wear their brown hair
+floating behind, and that hair, fine in the extreme, made more supple by
+the moistness of an insular climate, is crossed now and then by a most
+lovely glimmer of golden light.
+
+Most of the men have acquired the significant habit of carrying large
+knotty cudgels in place of walking sticks. Other signs show a state of
+latent crisis, a sort of momentary truce between classes: for instance,
+the abundance of personal weapons, pneumatic rifles, pocket revolvers,
+&c., which are to be seen in the armourers’ shop windows.
+
+But what gives the principal streets of Dublin their peculiar character
+is the perpetual presence at every hour of the day of long rows of
+loiterers, which only one word could describe, and that is _lazzaroni_.
+As in Naples they stop there by hundreds; some in a sitting posture, or
+stretched at full length on the bare stone, others standing with their
+backs to the wall, all staring vaguely in front of them, doing nothing,
+hardly saying more, mesmerised by a sort of passive contemplation, and
+absorbed in the dull voluptuousness of inaction.
+
+What do they live upon? When do they eat? Where do they sleep? Mystery.
+They probably accept now and then some occasional job which may bring
+them a sixpence. At such times they disappear and are mixed among the
+laborious population; you don’t notice them. But their normal function is
+to be idle, to hem as a human fringe the public monuments.
+
+Some places they seem to affect particularly; Nelson’s Pillar amongst
+others. Whenever you pass it you are sure to see four rows of loungers
+seated on the pedestal, with legs dangling, pressed against each other
+like sardines.
+
+Numerous tramcars, light and quick, cross Dublin in all directions. Five
+or six railway stations are the heads of so many iron lines radiating
+fan-wise over Ireland. All bear their national stamp; but what possesses
+that character in the highest degree is that airy vehicle called a
+jaunting-car.
+
+Imagine a pleasure car where the seats, instead of being perpendicular to
+the shafts, are parallel with them, disposed back to back and perched on
+two very high wheels. You climb to your place under difficulties; then
+the driver seated sideways like you (unless the number of travellers
+obliges him to assume the rational position), lashes his horse, which
+plunges straightway into a mad career.
+
+This style of locomotion rather startles you at first, not only on
+account of its novelty, but also by reason of the indifferent equilibrium
+you are able to maintain. Jostled over the pavement, threatened
+every moment to see yourself projected into space, at a tangent, you
+involuntarily grasp the nickel handle which is there for that purpose,
+just as a tyro horseman instinctively clutches the mane of his steed. But
+one gets used in time to the Irish car, and even comes to like it. First,
+it goes at breakneck speed, which is not without its charm; then you have
+no time to be bored, considering that the care of preserving your neck
+gives you plenty of occupation; lastly, you have the satisfaction of
+facing constantly the shop windows and foot paths against which you are
+likely to be tossed at any moment. Those are serious advantages, which
+other countries’ cabs do not offer. To be candid, they are unaccompanied
+by other merits.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In that equipage you go to the Phœnix Park, the Dublin “Bois de
+Boulogne.” It is a wide timbered expanse of some two thousand acres,
+full of tame deer, where all that is young in the place may be seen
+flirting, cricketing, playing all sorts of games, but above all,
+bicycling. Bicycles seem to be the ruling passion of the Dublin youth.
+I have seen more than a hundred at a time in a single lane near the
+Wellington Obelisk. By the way, this was the very avenue where Lord
+Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke were murdered five years ago by the
+_Invincibles_. A cross marks the place where the two corpses were
+discovered.
+
+The Castle, which the two English officials had the imprudence to leave
+that day, is the Lord-Lieutenant’s official residence. It has not the
+picturesque majesty of the castles of Edinburgh or Stirling. Instead of
+rising proudly on some cloud-ascending rock and lording over the town, it
+seems to hide “its diminished head” under a little hillock in the central
+quarters. You must literally stumble over its walls to become aware of
+their existence; and you understand then why the name of _Dublin Castle_
+is for the Irish synonymous with despotism and oppression.
+
+This is no Government office of the ordinary type, the dwelling of the
+Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland is a regular stronghold, encircled with
+ramparts, bristling with towers, shut up with portcullis, draw-bridge and
+iron bars. In the inner Castle yard are situated the apartments of the
+pro-consul, the lodgings of his dependants of all degrees, the offices
+where decrees are engrossed, the pigeon-holes where they are heaped, all
+forming a sort of separate city entrenched within its fortifications.
+
+A very gem is the Royal Chapel, with its marvellous oak wainscoting,
+which twenty generations of carvers have concurred to elaborate.
+The reception-rooms, the hall of the Order of St. Patrick, where
+_drawing-rooms_ are held, form the kernel of the fortress.
+
+The barracks of the English soldiers and of those giant constables whom
+you see about the town are also fortified with walls, and form a line of
+detached forts round the central stronghold.
+
+England is encamped at Dublin, with loaded guns and levelled rifles, even
+as she is encamped at Gibraltar, in Egypt, and in India.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+DUBLIN LIFE.
+
+
+As there is little aristocracy in Dublin there are few lordly dwellings
+besides the Vice-regal castle. This is very striking in this country of
+lords and serfs. The masters of the land, mostly of English origin, do
+not care at all to live in the capital of Ireland; all the time that they
+do not spend on their property they prefer to beguile away in London,
+Paris, Naples or elsewhere. Few of their tradesmen are Irish; and the
+greatest part of the rents they raise on their lands merely accumulate in
+the banks of Dublin to be afterwards spent on the foreign markets. Thence
+this consequence, which explains many things:—The clearest of the nett
+product of the country’s one industry—agricultural industry,—is poured
+outside it every year, without having circulated in Ireland, without
+having strengthened the local commerce or even invigorated agriculture
+itself, without having contributed to the well-being of a single
+Irishman. Let us set down this nett product, the Irish aggregate rental,
+at its lowest estimate, £8,000,000 per annum, a sum much inferior to the
+nominal one, and admit that one-half of it is sent abroad to absentee
+landlords. There we have £4,000,000 leaving the island every year without
+conferring the slightest benefit to any one of its inhabitants. In ten
+years’ time that represents 40 millions sterling; in fifty years, 200
+millions sterling, or five milliards francs, that Ireland has, so to
+speak, thrown into the sea, for that is to her the precise equivalent
+of such a continuous deperdition of capital.... And this has lasted for
+three centuries!...[1] What country would not be worn threadbare by such
+usage? What nation could resist it? Which individual, submitting to such
+periodical blood-lettings, would not succumb to anæmia?
+
+This anæmia betrays itself, even in Dublin, by many a symptom. For
+example, it is not long before one discovers that the finest shops, in
+the seven or eight principal streets, are a mere empty pretence; great
+windows displaying all the wares possessed by the merchant and beyond
+which the stock is _nil_. Money is so scarce that if you want to exchange
+a five pound note, in nine cases out of ten you do not get your right
+amount of change in specie. They give you back a quantity of small
+Irish banknotes, plus the change in half-crowns and shillings, and that
+not without having caused you to wait a long time while the important
+transaction was entered in and brought to a termination, and then only by
+the united energies of half the neighbourhood.
+
+There is not in all the city one tolerable _restaurant_ or _café_ where
+a stranger can read the papers or obtain a decent beefsteak. The two or
+three pretentious taverns that aspire to fulfil that purpose are horrible
+dens, where, without the civilized accompaniment of napkins, they give
+you slices of cow, tough as leather, which are charged for at Bignon’s
+prices.
+
+Necessity compels you to fall back on the hotels, where they pitilessly
+give you the same fare night after night,—salmon and roast beef. The
+first day this can be borne, for the Shannon salmon deserves its
+reputation; the second day one begins to find it indigestible; the third,
+one would like to see all the salmon of Ireland choking the head waiter.
+The fourth, one takes the train rather than remain any longer exposed to
+this implacable fare.... Vain hope! it pursues you everywhere: on the
+shores of Kingstown or those of Blackrock, in the pretty town of Bray,
+or at the furthermost end of Wicklow’s lakes. It is impossible to travel
+in Ireland without taking a dislike to salmon that will last the term of
+your natural life.
+
+And yet the fresh herrings of the Bay of Dublin are eating fit for the
+gods, and the good wives sell them in the streets at three a penny. Do
+not hope to taste them, however, unless you do your own marketing, and
+insist, with conditional threats, upon having your herrings brought up
+for breakfast. You will have a fight to sustain; you will run the risk of
+appearing in the eyes of the waiter as a man of no breeding, one who does
+not shrink from exhibiting his morbid tastes to the public view. But your
+pains and your humiliations will be rewarded by such a dish as is not
+often to be met with in this vale of tears and bad cooking.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dublin possesses three theatres, not including the future Opera-House,
+for which a site has already been chosen. The Gaiety, the most elegant
+of the three, gives musical burlesques that are rather entertaining,
+though they come straight from London. But they are acted by Irishmen
+and Irishwomen, with all the dash, the brilliancy, the wit of the Celt.
+The comic actor of the company neglects nothing to amuse his audience;
+extravagant costumes, insane grimaces, jigs danced in brogues, impromptu
+verses on the events of the day,—he has any number of tricks at his
+command. That gentleman would score a sure success at the _Concert des
+Ambassadeurs_, with the ditty that actually delights the hearts of the
+Dublin public—“_That’s all_;” it is about as stupid as the general
+literature of the Champs Elysées. The accomplished and fascinating _corps
+de ballet_ exhibit tights of such indiscretion as the Lord Chamberlain
+would assuredly not tolerate in London. Is it that his jurisdiction does
+not extend to the sister isle; or does the thing which would imperil the
+virtue of club-loungers in Pall Mall appear to him without danger for
+those of Kildare Street? The problem would be worth studying. However
+that be, a boxfull of young officers in H. B. M.’s service seem greatly
+exhilarated by the display of ankles of the ladies, unless it be by the
+port wine of the mess.
+
+These officers, in plain clothes as they are always when out of duty,
+are nevertheless easy to recognise and seem about the only _swells_
+visible in the boxes. The rest of the audience manifestly belong to the
+commercial and working classes.
+
+For it is a fact that there is in Dublin no more upper middle class than
+there is aristocracy. The upper middle class seem not to exist, or to
+be only represented by tradespeople, the liberal professions, or the
+students. But these young men being, after the excellent English custom,
+lodged at the University, do not count in the pleasure-seeking public.
+In other words, they spend the evening in their rooms drinking toddy,
+instead of spending it, as with us, drinking small-beer in _brasseries_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The University of Dublin, or rather, to speak more exactly, Trinity
+College, rises opposite Grattan’s Parliament, in the very heart of the
+town. It is an agglomeration of buildings of sufficiently good style,
+separated by spacious courts, and surrounded by about thirty acres of
+ground planted with ancient trees. Technical museums, lecture-rooms,
+refectories, rooms for the Fellows and the pupils are all to be found
+there. There is a Section of Theology, one for Letters and Science, a
+Musical Section, a School of Medicine, a Law School, an Engineering
+School. Students and Masters all wear, as in Oxford or Cambridge, the
+stuff gown and the kind of black _Schapska_, which is the University
+head-covering throughout the United Kingdom.
+
+Thinking of this, why is it we see so many Eastern head-dresses in the
+school of the west? With us the cap of the professors is the same that
+Russian popes wear. The Anglo-Saxons take theirs from Polish Lancers.
+That is an anomaly in the history of dress which ought to attract the
+meditations of academies.
+
+Another anomaly, peculiar to Trinity College, is that the porters (most
+polite and benevolent of men) are provided with black velvet jockey
+caps, like the Yeomen of the Queen. They take the visitors through the
+museums of the place, and show them the plaster cast taken from the dead
+face of Swift, the harp of Brian Boru, and other relics of a more or
+less authentic character. The Dining Hall is ornamented with full-length
+portraits of the local celebrities. The library, one of the finest in the
+world, is proud of possessing, among many other riches, the manuscript
+(in the Erse tongue), of the “Seven times fifty Stories,” which the bards
+of the Second Order of Druids used to recite, on ancient feast days,
+before the assembled kings and chieftains. Those venerable tales are
+subdivided into Destructions, Massacres, Battles, Invasions, Sieges,
+Pillages, Raids of Cattle, Rapes of Women, Loves, Marriages, Exiles,
+Navigations, Marches, Voyages, Grottoes, Visions, Pomps, and Tragedies.
+This shows that “documentary literature” was not invented yesterday: all
+the primitive life of Celtic Ireland is told there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The undergraduates at Trinity College do not seem, as a rule, like those
+of Oxford and Cambridge, to belong to the privileged or unoccupied
+classes. They are embryo doctors, professors, or engineers, who work
+with all their might to gain one of the numerous scholarships given by
+competition at the University. These competitions evidently excite an
+ardent emulation. I chanced to pass before the Examination Hall at the
+moment when the Rector at the top of the steps proclaimed the name of
+the candidate who had just won the Fellowship. Five hundred students at
+least, grouped at the gate, had been waiting for an hour to hear it, and
+saluted it with frantic cheers.
+
+The Fellowship gives a right to board and lodging for seven years, with a
+stipend of some £400. It is a kind of prebend that implies few duties and
+leaves the titulary free to give himself up to his favourite studies. It
+has been the fashion in a certain set in France to go into ecstasies over
+this institution, and to regret that it should not have entered our own
+customs. The life of a Fellow at Oxford, Cambridge, or Dublin, was fondly
+represented to us as an ideal existence, freed from material cares,
+devoted exclusively to the culture of the mind. If we look at things more
+closely, we shall see that this opinion is wide of the mark. We find some
+of the prebendaries poorly lodged enough, submitted, by the exigencies of
+life in a community, to many a puerile rule, imprisoned within the narrow
+circle of scholastic ideas, and in too many cases buried up to the eyes
+in the sands of routine, if not in sloth, or drunkenness.
+
+After all, for what strong, manly work is the world indebted to these
+much-praised Fellows?... The true effort of science or letters was never
+brought forth in these abbeys of Thelema of pedantry. Indeed it is much
+sooner born of individual struggle and large contact with the outside
+world. Even in the English Universities there is now a marked tendency
+to demand from the Fellow a work of positive utility in exchange for
+his salary. He must take his part in educating the pupils, help in the
+examinations, and in elaborating programmes; his life is much the same
+as that of our _Agrégés de Facultés_, with a something in it of lesser
+freedom and a semi-priestly character, if he be a bachelor. But he is
+free to marry now, and has been for a few years, on condition that he
+lives outside the college buildings.
+
+The students, fourteen hundred in number, live two by two, in rooms of
+extreme simplicity, which they are at liberty to decorate according to
+their taste or means, with carpets, prints, and flowers. The names of
+the occupants are written over each door. The rooms generally include
+a small ante-chamber and a closet with glass doors. Women of venerable
+age and extraordinary ugliness are charged with the care of those young
+Cenobites’ abode.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Trinity College was founded by Queen Elizabeth when she undertook the
+task of Anglicizing Ireland, and it has remained to our own day one of
+the strongholds of the conquering race. It is only since the year 1873
+that the chairs and offices of this University have been accessible to
+Roman Catholics. Up to that time they were exclusively reserved for
+Anglicans, and Mr. Matthew Arnold would exclaim with good reason that
+such a state of things was the most scandalous in Europe. In France,
+he said, Protestant masters occupied all the chairs to which their
+merits entitled them; in Germany, Catholic professors taught history or
+philosophy at Bonn and elsewhere; while, in Catholic Ireland, the one
+University the country possessed remained closed during two centuries
+to all students that were not of the Protestant persuasion, and for
+three-quarters of the present century a Catholic could neither attain to
+a chair or to any degree of influence in it.
+
+It was in the year 1845 that the movement began which was to triumph
+definitely in 1873, under the initiative of Mr. Gladstone. A certain
+Mr. Denis Caulfield Heron went up in that year for the competition
+for a fellowship, and took the first place. When he was, according to
+custom, invited to sign the Thirty-Nine Articles and to communicate in
+the University chapel, he opposed an absolute refusal, declaring himself
+to be a Roman Catholic; whereupon he was disqualified by the University
+Council. Mr. Heron exposed this judgment before the public, and succeeded
+in winning opinion to his side. But it proved an impossibility to make
+the Council recall their decision. The only thing Mr. Heron obtained,
+after a protracted struggle, was the creation of a new class of
+fellowships, accessible to Roman Catholics.
+
+Finally, in 1873 the College authorities at last made up their minds to
+render the offices and emoluments of the University independent of any
+sectarian denomination; nevertheless the Anglican spirit remains alive
+within its precincts, and manifests itself in the clearest manner upon
+occasions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Intellectual life is alive in Dublin, as many a learned or literary
+society, a flourishing review, four great daily and several weekly
+papers, can testify. The daily papers especially are edited with a spirit
+and humour truly characteristic. It is a well known fact that the Sister
+Isle contributes a third at least to the recruiting of the Anglo-Saxon
+press, not only in Great Britain, but in the United States, in Australia,
+and in the whole of the English speaking world. The Irishman a writer or
+a soldier born, as the Englishman is a born shopkeeper. The consequence
+is that the great papers in Dublin, the _Freeman’s Journal_, the _Irish
+Times_, _United Ireland_, the _Express_, the _Evening Telegraph_, are
+admirably edited each in its own line.
+
+But the same thing can hardly be said of the illustrated and coloured
+sheets that accompany the weeklies, and which are placarded everywhere.
+Those prints, bearing upon the political topics of the day, may possess
+the merit of teaching the crowd the lesson to be drawn from events; but
+they are lamentably inefficient from an artistic point of view.
+
+Ireland, decidedly, shines no more than does our own Brittany in the
+plastic arts. Her best painter has been Maclise, and he is by no means a
+great master. However, her coloured prints delight the hearts of the good
+people of Dublin. An old newspaper-seller, smoking her pipe at the corner
+of Leinster Street, holds her sides for very laughter as she contemplates
+the cartoon given this day by the _Weekly News_; it represents a mob
+of Orangemen in the act of pelting the Queen’s police with stones at
+Belfast. Underneath run the words: “_Behold loyal Ulster!_”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The quays of the Liffey are lined with book-shops like those of the
+Seine in Paris, to which they present a certain likeness. Following the
+quays from the west, one passes the building where sit the four Supreme
+Courts—Chancery, Exchequer, Queen’s Bench, and Common Pleas. The statues
+of Faith, Justice, Wisdom, and Piety rise under its Corinthian peristyle,
+which caused the typical Irish peasant, the Paddy of legend, to exclaim:
+
+“They did well to place them outside, for no one will ever meet them
+inside!”
+
+The judges, chosen by the Queen’s government, bear the title of _Chief
+Justice_ or _Baron_. There are four at each tribunal, each provided with
+a salary ranging from three to eight thousand pounds a year. They sit in
+groups of three, bewigged and clad in violet gowns, with peach-coloured
+facings, at the extremity of a recess screened by red curtains. Before
+them sit the barristers and clerks in black gowns and horsehair wigs.
+The writs and briefs of procedure, written out upon awe-inspiring sheets
+of foolscap paper, are piled up within capacious green bags, such as
+are only seen with us at the Comédie Française when they play _Les
+Plaideurs_. The judges appear to be a prey to overwhelming _ennui_, so
+do the barristers. The public, not being paid as highly as they are for
+remaining in this sleepy atmosphere, keep constantly going in and out.
+Now and then, however, Irish wit must have its due: some one delivers
+himself of a spicy remark; everyone wakes up a bit to laugh, after which
+business quietly resumes its dull course.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE POOR OF DUBLIN.
+
+
+Private houses are built in Dublin on the general type adopted throughout
+the British Isles: a basement opening on the railed area which runs
+along the pavement, a ground floor, a first floor, sometimes a second
+one. Above the front door a pane of glass lighted with gas. It is the
+custom of the country to place there one’s artistic treasures,—a china
+vase, a bust, or a small plaster horse. The small horse especially is a
+great favourite. You see it in a thousand copies which all came out of
+the same cast. In the suburbs you notice pretty often a window decorated
+with plants that are seen behind the glass panes,—Breton fashion,—and,
+striking circumstance, in Ireland also it is the uninteresting geranium
+which is the favourite flower of the poor. Inside the house the
+accommodation is nearly the same as in England. It is well known that
+nothing is more like an English house than another English house. But
+here, to the classical furniture, horse-hair and mahogany armchairs, and
+oil-cloth floor, is added a mural decoration of coloured prints and Roman
+Catholic chromolithographs, Saint Patrick, the Pope Leo XIII., the “Good
+Shepherd giving His life for the sheep,” surrounded by dried branches of
+holy palm, rosaries and scapularies. An ornament greatly appreciated on
+the chimney-piece is a glass vessel full of miraculous water in which
+swims a reduction of the tools of the Passion, the cross, the ladder, the
+hammer, the nails, and the crown of thorns.
+
+Eighty-seven per cent. of the Dublin population belong to the Roman
+Catholic religion. The proportion is higher in some other Irish counties:
+in Connaught it rises to ninety-five per cent.; nowhere, even in
+Protestant Ulster, does it descend lower than forty-five per cent.
+
+And those Catholics are not so only in name. The greater number follow
+the services of the Church, observe all the rites, maintain a direct
+and constant intercourse with the priests. The sincerity of their faith
+is particularly striking, and is not to be found in the same degree
+even in Italy or in Spain. For with them the Roman faith is narrowly
+bound with traditions most dear to their race; it remains one of the
+external forms of protestation against the conquest, and has been, till
+quite lately, a stigma of political incapacity. To the glamour of the
+traditional religion is added the poetry of persecution and the rancour
+of the vanquished. This religion is the one that is not professed by
+the hated Englishman: what a reason to love it above all the others! We
+must remember that in Dublin, amidst a population nine-tenths of which
+are devout Catholics, and where the remaining tenth is alone Protestant
+(Episcopalian’ Presbyterian, Methodist, &c.), the cathedral is in the
+hands of the Anglican minority with all the ancient basilics, whilst the
+worship of the majority is sheltered in modern and vulgar buildings.
+The conquering race has invaded Saint Patrick’s Baptistery as well as
+the Royal Castle, and the Senate of the University. A threefold reason
+for rancour to these who were thus deprived of the three sanctuaries of
+faith, public power, and learning.
+
+Such spoliations are those which a vanquished race cannot forget, because
+they bring constantly their sore under their eyes. Now the Irish have the
+artless vanity of the chivalrous races, and the wounds inflicted to their
+self-love are perhaps more cruel than the others.
+
+This vanity is frequently exhibited in a certain taste for show, and in
+a slight touch of the mountebank. The least apothecary’s shop in Dublin
+goes by the pompous name of _Medical Hall_; the smallest free school is
+an academy; and it is well known that every single Irishman is descended
+straight from the “ould kings of Oireland.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a great deal of misery in Dublin; 6,036 of her inhabitants are
+inmates of the workhouse; 4,281 are the recipients of outdoor relief;
+19,332 are without a known trade or profession and without means of
+living. It makes about 30,000 paupers in a town of 250,000 inhabitants.
+Besides those officially recognised paupers, how many others whose
+distress is no less terrible for not being classed!
+
+I had the first sight of that misery on the quay of the Liffey. It was a
+dishevelled woman walking as in a trance, her eyes settled, immoveable.
+Barefooted, dressed in a yellowish tattered shawl which hardly covered
+her withered breast, and in a horrible nondescript silk petticoat once
+black, through which her thighs appeared. She was pale and silent, and
+she seemed to be lost in some unutterable grief. I spoke to her—she did
+not answer. I put a piece of money in her hand, she took it without a
+word, without even looking at it. She went her way.
+
+I thought I had seen the ghost of the _Shan Van Vocht_, “The Poor Old
+Woman,” as the Irish sorrowfully call their country. She went with long
+strides towards the police court—a new building, not far from Richmond
+Bridge. I went in after her.
+
+In the courtyard, groups of beings with human faces were crouching on
+the ground—so black, so dirty, so tattered were they, that they made
+me think of the Australian aborigines and Fuegian savages, of the most
+unenlightened and degraded tribes of the globe. Most of them bore
+outwardly the semblance of women. The males were standing with their
+backs against the wall in that listless attitude of the “unemployed” in
+Dublin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An ill-kept staircase leads to the audience room. The walls are
+whitewashed, the ceiling a skylight, white wooden benches round the room.
+
+In the chair, the police judge; he is a yellow-haired man with a
+benevolent countenance, dressed in a frock coat. Clerks and counsel are
+alike gownless and wigless; everything is conducted in a homely manner.
+The accused follow each other in single file. The witness (nearly always
+a constable) states what he has seen. The judge asks the delinquent if
+he has anything to say in his defence, and after a quick colloquy he
+pronounces his sentence. Generally it is a fine of two or three shillings
+or a day’s imprisonment for each unpaid shilling.
+
+One of the prisoners has just been condemned to pay a fine of half a
+crown for obvious drunkenness; he does not possess a farthing, but seems
+to be endowed with a humorous turn of mind.
+
+“Your honour could as well have said half a sovereign! It would have
+looked more respectable, and the result would have been the same,” he
+says, turning his pockets inside out. A guffaw of laughter joined in by
+the judge himself, who does not think it his duty to be offended by the
+remark; after which he calls out for number two.
+
+Number two is a boy fifteen or sixteen years old; he has a sweet
+intelligent countenance in spite of the indescribable rags that cover his
+body. Tears stand in his eyes and his lips are tremulous. Nothing in him
+of the habitual offender. The accusation that he is lying under seems to
+be: “Theft of a pork-chop in an open shop-window.” A single witness is
+called, a little maid five years old; so small that her head does not
+even reach the top of the witness-box. They bring her a footstool, on
+which she climbs to give her evidence.
+
+She has seen the boy, she says, near the shop window, looking wistfully
+for a long time on the chops and finally pocketing one. However, her
+account is not very clear. All those people make her shy, and she does
+not speak out loud, so the clerk takes the trouble to read over to her
+the evidence she has just given. Does she know how to write? Can she
+sign her name? Yes. They place a pen in her fingers, and with infinite
+trouble, bending her small fair head, shooting out her lips, she writes
+on the legal parchment with her tiny trembling hand her name and surname:
+_Maggie Flanagan_.
+
+“Well! prisoner, what have you to say?”
+
+The unfortunate boy stammers that he was hungry, that there was not a
+penny in the house, and that he had no work.
+
+“What is your father’s trade?”
+
+“He is gone to Australia, your honour. Mother has been left with four
+children. I am the eldest. We had eaten nothing for two days.”
+
+One feels he is speaking the truth. Every heart is moved.
+
+Suddenly a shrill voice bursts out from the lower end of the room,
+wailing: “Oh, your honour, don’t send him to jail!...”
+
+It is the woman I saw on the quay; the one that I followed to that
+Purgatory. The mother of the culprit very likely.
+
+“I am obliged to remand you for a week in order to examine the
+circumstances of the case,” the judge says, in a manner that shows he is
+anxious to arrange the affair with kindness.
+
+The prisoner goes out of the dock following the warder, and disappears
+through a small side door.
+
+The mother has gone away without waiting, and I hurry to follow her. But
+she walks so fast that I can hardly keep pace with her.
+
+She passes again on the bridge, walks along the quay, plunges in a
+by-street, goes up towards the south-western quarters of Dublin, called
+the _liberties_ of the town. Suddenly I lose sight of her at the corner
+of a narrow lane, and after winding round and round I am obliged to
+renounce coming up with her. There is a way of course to come to the
+relief of those poor creatures, by sending one’s subscription to the
+judge according to the British fashion. But I wanted to see them at home
+in their den, wallowing in their squalor, to see whether men or destiny
+bear the responsibility for such dark distress.
+
+Alas! examples are not wanting, and I have only to cross the first
+door that opens before me. Along these lanes yawn dark alleys from
+which hundreds of half-naked children are swarming out. All ages are
+represented; they are in the most fantastical and unexpected attire. One
+has got on breeches fastened under the shoulders by a piece of cord in
+lieu of braces; the same is full of holes large enough for his head to go
+through. Another has no shirt, and trails in the gutter the jagged skirt
+of a coat slashed like a doublet, and with only one sleeve left. They are
+all of them so extravagantly slovenly that it seems to be a competition
+for rags.
+
+A baby two or three years old strikes me particularly. It is absolutely
+naked, and so very, very dirty that dirt has formed a sort of bronzed
+skin over his little body, and he is like a juvenile nigger. As he came
+into the world so he has remained. Neither soap nor water ever moistened
+his skin. He has not even undergone the washing that the mother-cat
+applies so industriously with her tongue on her newborn kittens.
+
+Yet his mother loves him, squalid and black as he is. Just now a cart
+passed, and the baby was running under the wheels; the mother sprang out
+of her lair with the roar of a tigress, and pounced upon her child,
+which she jealously carried away.
+
+Never in London did I hear such accents. Far from me to hint that English
+mothers do not love their babies: but they love them after their own
+fashion, without showers of kisses or demonstrative ways.
+
+And this is the distinctive feature which divides the Irish pariahs from
+those of the London East-End. They love each other, and they know how to
+put that love into words. Their distress, perhaps deeper than English
+poverty, bears not the same hard, selfish character—tenderness and love
+are not unknown to them. They try to help and comfort one another in
+their misery. Thackeray has remarked it long ago: let an Irishman be
+as poor as you like; he will always contrive to find another Irishman
+poorer still, whom he will serve and oblige, and make the partaker of his
+good or bad luck. And it is absolutely true. That fraternal instinct, so
+unknown to the Anglo-Saxon, nay, so contrary to his nature, shows itself
+here at every step.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the misery is none the less terrible here; indeed, there are no
+adequate words in the dictionary to express it. No description can give
+an idea of those nameless dens, sordid, dilapidated stairs, miserable
+pieces of furniture, nondescript utensils invariably diverted from their
+original destination. And in that lamentable frame, those swarming
+families squatting in their filth; the starved look of the mothers under
+the tattered shawl that ever covers their heads, the hungry little faces
+of their whelps....
+
+A sickening smell, recalling that of ill-ventilated hospitals, comes
+out of those lairs and suffocating you, almost throws you back. But it
+is too late. You have been caught sight of. From all sides visions of
+horror are emerging to light, spectres are starting up; old hags that
+would have surprised Shakespeare himself, swarm round you, holding out
+their hand for a _copper_. The younger women don’t generally come to the
+front, not that their wants be less, but they know that coppers are not
+inexhaustible, and that the old ones must have the precedence. So they
+remain sadly in the background, and then, when you have emptied your
+pockets, there is a roar of benedictions fit to rend one’s heart with
+shame. They are so fearfully sincere! And how many times do we not throw
+to the winds of our caprice what would be sufficient to quench at least
+for one moment, the thirst which is raging in that hell! You fly from
+that den of horror, wondering whether the most horrible deserts would
+not be more merciful to those destitute creatures than the _liberties_ of
+the city of Dublin.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In your flight you fatally fall upon Nicholas Street, where all those
+dark alleys open. This is the way to the cathedral, and the great
+commercial artery of this side of the town. If any doubt remained in you
+after the insight you had of the houses of the poor in Dublin, about the
+way they live, that street alone would give you sufficient information.
+
+From end to end it is lined with a row of disgusting shops or stalls,
+where the refuse of the new and the ancient world seems to have come
+for an exhibition. Imagine the most hideous, ragged, repulsive rubbish
+in the dust-bins of two capitals, and you will get an idea of that
+shop-window display; rank bacon, rotten fish, festering bones, potatoes
+in full germination, wormy fruit, dusty crusts, sheep’s hearts, sausages
+which remind you of the Siege of Paris, and perhaps come from it; all
+that running in garlands or festoons in front of the stalls, or made
+into indescribable heaps, is doled out to the customers in diminutive
+half-pence morsels. At every turning of the street a public-house with
+its dim glass and sticky glutinous door. Now and then a pawnbroker with
+the three symbolic brass balls, and every twenty yards a rag and bone
+shop.
+
+The rag and bone trade is extremely active in Dublin, which numbers no
+less than 400 shops of that description, according to statistics. And
+that is not too many for a population which from times immemorial never
+wore a garment that was not second-hand. To a man Ireland dresses on the
+_reach-me-down_ system, and wears out the cast-off garments which have
+passed on the backs of ten or twelve successive owners. Battered hats,
+dilapidated gowns, threadbare coats arrive here by shiploads. When the
+whole world has had enough of them, when the Papoo savages and Guinea
+niggers have discarded their finery, and declared it to be no longer
+serviceable, there are still amateurs to be found for it in Dublin. Hence
+the most extraordinary variety, and the wildest incoherence of costume.
+Knee-breeches, tail coats, white gowns, cocked hats,—Paddy and his spouse
+are ready for anything. So destitute are they of personal property, that
+they do not even possess an outline of their own. Their normal get-up
+resembles a travesty, and their distress a carnival.
+
+The main point for them is to have a garment of any description to put
+on, since it is a thing understood that one cannot go about naked; and
+it does not very much matter after all what is the state of that garment,
+as it is so soon to leave their backs to go to the pawnbroker’s. This is
+a prominent figure in the daily drama of their wretched existence, the
+regulator of their humble exchequer through the coming and going of the
+necessaries of life, which they are obliged to part with periodically.
+
+“You see that pair of hob-nailed shoes?” one of them tells me, “For the
+last six months it has come here every Monday regularly and gone every
+Saturday. The possessor uses them only on Sundays; on week days he
+prefers enjoying his capital....”
+
+His capital!—one shilling and sixpence, for which he has to pay an
+interest of one penny a week; _i.e._, three hundred per cent. a year!
+
+Usury under all its forms blooms spontaneously on that dung-hill. By the
+side of the pawnbroker a _money office_ is almost always to be seen. It
+is an English institution, natural in a nation which is bursting with
+money, and consequently finds it difficult to make it render 3 or 4 per
+cent. What is England if not a colossal bank, which advances money upon
+any three given signatures as a security, if they come from people with a
+settled dwelling and a regular profession? Well, who would believe it?
+Paddy himself is admitted to partake of the onerous benefits of that
+credit, provided he work ever so little and be not too hopelessly worn
+out. For these small banking houses form a union and let each other know
+the state of their accounts. Upon the poor man’s signature accompanied by
+those of two of his fellows, five and seven pounds sterling will be lent
+to him, to be reimbursed by weekly instalments. But that resource, which
+is a powerful help for the strong energetic man, is almost invariably
+a cause of distress and ruin to the weak. The borrowed money ebbs out
+in worthless expenditure, in the buying of some articles of apparel or
+furniture, which soon takes the road to the pawnbroker’s; and the debt
+alone remains weighing with all its weight on poor Paddy. It is the last
+straw on the camel’s back, and he ends by falling down irremediably under
+it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE EMERALD ISLE.
+
+
+Nothing can be easier than to go from one end to the other of Ireland.
+Though her network of railways is not yet complete, great arteries
+radiate from Dublin in all directions and allow the island to be
+traversed from end to end, whether southward, westward, or northward,
+in less than seven or eight hours. The journey from south to north,
+following the great axis, is longer and more complicated, for it is
+necessary to change lines several times. The circular journey along the
+coasts is facilitated by excellent services of open coaches, that go
+through the regions not yet penetrated by railways. Lastly, one can, by
+following the Shannon, enter by steamboat almost to the very heart of the
+country.
+
+When one has gone through those various excursions, completed by riding
+and walking tours, and seen the island under its various aspects, one
+perceives that it presents in a general manner the appearance of a
+cup, with brims rising towards the sea; in other words, it consists in
+a vast central plain, protected on all its circumference by groups of
+hills and mountains, preventing the inroad of the ocean. Those mountains
+are in no part very high; the finest, those of Kerry, do not rise above
+1800 feet. But their very position on the brink of the Atlantic, the
+erosions undermining their base, the deep bays they delineate, the
+innumerable lakes hidden away in their bosoms, lend them a majesty far
+above their altitude. Bland and smiling in Wicklow, they are in Kerry of
+an unequalled serenity, while in Connemara they preserve unbroken the
+rude chaos of primeval cataclysms, and display on the north of Antrim’s
+table-land, towards the Giant’s Causeway, the most stupendous basaltic
+formations.
+
+Yet the normal, the truest aspect of Ireland, is represented by the
+central plain—a large, unbroken surface of green undulating waves, ever
+bathed in a damp and fresh atmosphere, shut in on the horizon by dark
+blue mountains.
+
+This aspect is of infinite sweetness; no land possesses it in a similar
+degree. It takes possession of you, it penetrates you like a caress and
+a harmony. One understands, when submitted to that entirely physical
+influence, the passionate tenderness that Irishmen feel for their
+country, and that is best illustrated by Moore’s poetry. The sky seems
+to have endeavoured to find the true chord in response to the earth, in
+order to give to all things those deliciously blended tones. The stars
+are nearly always seen through a light haze, and the sun itself shines
+but through a veil of vapours, into which it seems eager to disappear
+again. The shadows are not hard and well defined; they melt into each
+other by insensible gradations of tint. All is green, even the stones,
+clothed in moss; the walls, covered with ivy; the waters, hidden under
+a mantle of reeds and water-lilies. In other climes the fields, after a
+spring shower, take unto themselves the bravery that here is seen in all
+seasons. In the full heat of July the corn, the barley, the oats still
+keep their April dress. Do they ever ripen? They say they do, towards
+the end of October; but surely they never can get yellow. Yellow is not
+an Irish colour, nor is white. Ireland is indeed green Erin, the Emerald
+Isle. Never was name more truly given.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One could consider Ireland as a prodigious grass plot of some twenty
+million acres, constantly watered by rain. Water is everywhere: in the
+clouds that the winds of the Atlantic drive over her, and that the
+highlands of Scotland and Norway stop in their course; on the soil, where
+all hollows, great or small, become lakes; under the ground even, where
+the roots of vegetables, saturated and swollen like sponges, slowly
+change into peat. Ireland is the most liberally watered country in
+Europe, and yet, thanks to the constancy of the winds over her, one can
+scarcely say it is a damp country. The fall of water is on an average of
+926 millimetres in a year—a little over three feet. The ground, naturally
+of admirable fruitfulness, is still further favoured by the mildness and
+equableness of the climate on the shores.
+
+The flora almost recalls that of the Mediterranean coasts. The fauna
+presents the remarkable peculiarity of not possessing a single dangerous
+or even repulsive species—not one toad, not one reptile, except the most
+innocent among them all, the “friend of man,” the lizard. Legends say
+that St. Patrick, the Christian apostle of the isle, coming from Brittany
+in the 6th century, threw all the serpents into the sea, and all the
+toads after them; indeed, he is habitually represented in popular imagery
+as engaged in performing that miracle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An island possessing no backbone, and presenting generally the appearance
+of a cup, cannot have great rivers. In fact, almost all the rivers of
+Ireland, born within her girdle of mountains, soon lose themselves in the
+sea, forming at their mouth an estuary that takes the name of _Lough_, as
+do the lakes proper. One only creates an exception by the length of its
+course and the volume of its waters—the Shannon, rising in the central
+table-land, imprisoned, so to speak, at the bottom of the circular well,
+and whose course, impeded above Limerick by a barrier of rocks, form fine
+rapids, under which the waters flow in a majestic stream. With the tide,
+vessels of the heaviest tonnage can go up the river to Foynes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Indeed, the country lacks no harbours on those deeply indented shores.
+North, west, east, and south, Ireland counts no less than fourteen
+natural harbours, large enough to shelter whole fleets.
+
+But this gift, like all the others that Fate has showered on her, seems
+to have turned against her by bringing the nations of prey within those
+bays. Thrown as an outwork of Europe in the middle of the ocean, she
+seemed to be opening her arms to the Phœnicians, to the Scandinavians;
+later on to the Arabs, the Spaniards, and the English. A gust of wind
+was enough to reveal her to them; a favourable breeze to bring them back.
+To understand clearly the perils of such a post, and to see how much more
+still than the muzzle of Brittany, Ireland is Atlantic land, one must
+go to Valencia, the small islet on which come to shore the ends of the
+Transatlantic cables.
+
+More than in any other spot of Europe one feels at the farthest end of
+the world there. It seems as if, by stretching one’s arm, one would reach
+the United States. And, in fact, one is near enough as it is—five or six
+days by steam—almost within speaking distance with the telephone. So fast
+travel the storms from America that the telegram is hardly able to arrive
+before them. A sea-gull, borne on the wing of the hurricane, would cross
+that arm of the sea in a few hours. The breeze that blows in your face
+may have stirred the hair of a Brooklyn belle in the morning. There one
+feels how very small is our globe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Geologically, Ireland differs much from Great Britain. The island
+appeared much earlier, and its structure is special. Alone, its northern
+part, or Ulster, which, from a political point of view, forms such a
+striking contrast with the rest of the island, presents between Donegal
+Bay and Dundalk Bay, mountainous masses, entirely analogous with those of
+Scotland, towards which they advance, and of which they appear originally
+to have formed a part. They are basaltic rocks, or petrified streams of
+lava, while the mountains in Kerry or Connemara are red sandstone and
+slate, lying above the carbonaceous strata.
+
+What ought, in fact, to be considered as Ireland proper consists, then,
+of the eastern province or Leinster, the southern or Munster, and the
+western or Connaught. Ulster is in reality, as well by the nature of
+its soil as by the race and habits of the majority of its inhabitants,
+an annex and dependency of Scotland. The three other provinces, on the
+contrary, form a whole, as distinct from England or Scotland by the
+constitution and aspect of the land, as it is different by the race,
+genius, the traditions and beliefs of the population.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The most striking thing on a first sight of the Irish landscape is the
+total absence of trees of any kind. They are only seen in private parks.
+As far as the eye can see the plains spread in gentle undulations,
+covered with grass and intersected with stone walls; no single oak, elm,
+or shrub ever comes to break its monotony. The tree has become a lordly
+ensign. Wherever one sees it one may be certain the landlord’s mansion is
+not far.
+
+That radical disappearance of the forests, in a country once covered with
+them, is singular. A great many explanations have been given of this
+fact,—explanations that went back as far as some geological cataclysm.
+Such theories are no longer acceptable in these days. The most likely
+supposition is that all the available timber has gradually been felled
+down for domestic uses, and that indifference, poverty, incessant war,
+incertitude as to the present or future, have, from the remotest times,
+prevented those sad gaps being repaired.
+
+On the lower land the absence of timber is explained of itself by
+the apparition of deep layers of turf, whose depth is sometimes from
+forty-five to sixty feet, in which whole oak trees have been discovered
+in a more or less advanced state of carbonisation. At a certain stage of
+this transformation the ligneous tissue has become of such flexibility
+that the Irish cut it into stripes and use it to make straps, fishing
+nets, bands of all kinds,—not to mention the pious trifles, pipes, small
+figures carved with a knife, and various _souvenirs_ with which they
+pester the tourist.
+
+The turf pits are a great source of riches for Ireland, and furnish the
+only fuel commonly used by the lower classes. In the country one sees
+everywhere people engaged in extracting peat, cutting it into cakes,
+erecting these cakes in pyramids to be allowed to dry in the sun, or
+transporting them from one place to the other. The people working at it
+are, indeed, almost the only ones visible in the fields. One might think
+that the extracting and manipulating of the turf were the only industry
+of the country.
+
+There are two kinds of turf, the red and the black, according to the
+degree of carbonisation attained by the layers, and the nature of the
+vegetable matter that formed them. The finest is of such intense and
+brilliant black, that it might almost be mistaken for coal. Those vast
+reservoirs of fuel, known in Ireland by the name of _bog_, are a constant
+feature of the landscape in the valleys of the mountainous girdle as in
+the lower parts of the plain. The total depth of these open carbon mines
+is estimated at no less than sixty million cubic feet; they occupy an
+area almost equal to the seventh part of the total superficies of the
+island, and the lakes cover another seventh part.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One other striking peculiarity of the scenery in Ireland is the scarcity
+of cultivated fields. One can count them, dotted here and there, almost
+always planted with oats, potatoes, or turnips. The statistics of the
+Agricultural Society give, in round numbers, for twenty millions of acres
+of total surface, five millions, or a quarter in cultivated ground; that
+is, 150,000 acres only in cereals, 350,000 in turnips, one million and a
+half in potatoes, two million in artificial meadows. Ten million of acres
+are in natural meadows; the rest are fallow lands, bog or turf, waste
+land, roads and highways.
+
+Those roads and highways, as well as the bridges and all the public
+works depending upon the English Government, are admirably kept. It is
+clear that on that point Dublin Castle is resolved to give no handle to
+criticism. Those splendid tracks of road, laid across waste and desert
+land, even produce a curious effect, and one would be tempted to see an
+affectation about it, did they not, in the majority of cases, lead to
+some magnificent private property, spreading as far as one can see over
+hill and dale, always shut in by stone walls eight or ten feet high,
+enclosing an area of several miles.
+
+As for the conveyances that are seen on these Appian Ways they are of
+two kinds; either the smart carriage whose cockaded coachman drives
+magnificent horses, or the diminutive cart drawn by a small donkey,
+carrying, besides the grand-dame or child that drives it, a sort of
+conical-shaped utensil held in its place with cords and oftener filled
+with water than with milk. One must go to Morocco or Spain to see donkeys
+in such numbers as in Ireland.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One thing surprises in those endless pastures—it is to count so few
+grazing beasts on them. Not that they are altogether excluded; now and
+then one perceives on the intense green of the fields reddish or white
+spots that are cattle or sheep, the rounded haunch of a mare, the awkward
+frolics of a foal. On the brinks of rivers that one can almost always
+cross wading, one sometimes sees a few happy cows, their feet in the
+water, wide-eyed and munching dreamily. Here and there one sees geese,
+hens escorted by their chicks, pigs fraternally wallowing with children
+in the muddy ditch. But in a general way the landscape is wanting in
+animated life, and as poor in domestic animals as in labourers.
+
+As a contrast game is plentiful, as is natural in a land that is
+three-quarters uncultivated, where it is forbidden to carry arms, and
+where shooting is the exclusive privilege of a very small minority. Hares
+and rabbits seem to enjoy their immunity to the utmost, and everywhere
+their white breeches are seen scudding away in the dewy grass like
+fireworks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Villages are rare, and rarer still is farmhouse or homestead. Undulating
+ridges succeed to undulating ridges and still one sees no trace of
+any dwellings. One might think that these stone walls radiating over
+the fields had sprung there of their own accord, and that the hay is
+doomed to rot standing, after feeding the butterflies. Yet that cannot
+be—evidently some one must come now and then to cut this grass, make it
+into stacks and carry it away.... At last, by dint of stretching neck
+and legs you succeed in discovering far away on the horizon a spire
+that belongs to a big borough, a market-town rather, where those civic
+tillers of the soil dwell in houses similar to those of the _liberties_
+in Dublin.
+
+As for the mud cabin, generally described as the Irish peasant’s only
+home, it is now a thing of the past. One would hardly, and after much
+research, find some specimens of it in the farthest counties, at the end
+of Kerry or Mayo.
+
+True to say, when found, those specimens leave nothing to be desired for
+poverty and discomfort; no fire-place, no windows, no furniture; nothing
+but a roof of turf supported by a few poles on mud walls. The very pig
+that formerly shared its luxuries with the _genus homo_ and indicated a
+certain degree of relative comfort in his possessor, the pig himself has
+disappeared for ever.
+
+But those are exceptions, almost pre-historic cases. As a rule the mud
+cabin has been blotted out from the Irish soil—perhaps enlightened
+landlords systematically pursued its eradication; perhaps the peasants,
+tired of its tutelary protection, emigrated under other skies,—or more
+simply still, they took advantage of the last famine to die of hunger.
+Upon which came the rain, and two or three years sufficed to dilute the
+walls, render the mud house to the common reservoir, and wash out its
+very remembrance.
+
+The population of Ireland, it must be borne in mind, has been steadily
+decreasing for half a century. It was of 8,175,124 inhabitants in 1841;
+of 6,552,385 in 1851; 5,798,584 in 1861; 5,412,377 in 1871; and 5,174,836
+in 1881. By all appearances it must now have sunk under five millions. If
+this fish-eating race was not the most prolific under the sun it would
+have been blotted out long ago from the face of this planet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE RACE.
+
+
+The essential character of Irish scenery is, besides the green colour
+and the absence of trees, the frequent ruins that meet the eyes
+everywhere—one cannot go two steps without seeing them. Ruins of castles,
+abbeys, churches, or even humble private dwellings. There are quarters of
+large towns or boroughs, such as for instance the northern one in Galway,
+that might be taken at night, with their sinister looking rows of houses,
+roofless and with gaping walls, for a street in Herculaneum or Pompeii.
+When the ancient stone walls are those of a church or chapel, they
+generally serve as a setting for the legends of the countryside; there
+occurred all the terrifying tales of former days, there took place all
+the local miracles, and there still is the favourite haunt of illustrious
+spirits, of fairies and _banshee_.
+
+Almost in every case the graves of a hamlet come to group themselves at
+the foot of those ivy-clothed old walls, by an instinctive and touching
+effect of the Irishman’s passionate love for the traditions of his race;
+and those graves, generally covered with great slabs of stone, scattered
+among the tall grasses, wild and moss-grown, without cross or emblem of
+any sort, well accord with the melancholy aspect of the site.
+
+Sometimes near these ruins and graves is still seen, proudly raising its
+head, one of those monuments peculiar to the country and about which
+antiquaries are at such variance,—the round towers of Ireland: slender
+and bold turrets, slightly conical in shape, not unlike minarets 75 or
+80 feet high, upon a base 15 to 18 feet broad, and springing from the
+ground like obelisks. They are built of large stones, sometimes rough,
+sometimes cut, but always cemented together, a fact which gave rise
+to the opinion that they must be posterior to the invasion of Great
+Britain by the Romans. But that is simply begging the question and is
+justified by nothing; moreover, the absence of any tradition about the
+origin or use of those towers make such a tale appear in the highest
+degree improbable. A race was never seen to borrow the technical industry
+of another race to apply it to the construction of monuments that are
+essentially their own. Celtic civilization had attained in Ireland,
+centuries before the Romans, to a degree of perfection witnessed by the
+Brehon Code, compiled at least five or six centuries before the Christian
+era, and the first among human laws that substituted arbitrage to brute
+force. A people capable of submitting to the law of reason and who knew
+enough of mechanics to erect monoliths of twenty-four thousand cubic feet
+could well discover alone the art of mixing mortar, and need not borrow
+it from the Romans, who besides did not set foot in the country. Never
+was hypothesis more childish or more unfounded. The truth is that nothing
+is known about the round towers, as is the case with the _nurraghs_
+of Sardinia; that all those monuments are anterior to any positive
+traditions and have been built for uses of which we have no conception.
+At the most one might suppose from their aspect, which is that of inland
+lighthouses, that they may have been used as military or astronomical
+observatories, and, perhaps, bore on their summit a sacred fire visible
+throughout a whole district. In such a case the only guide to be followed
+with any certainty is the eternal fitness between organ and function.
+
+Eighty-three of these towers are still standing in Ireland, and their
+dilapidated condition allows it to be supposed that they may once have
+been much more numerous. Whatever may have been their origin, they
+remain so narrowly and so fitly associated in the popular imagination
+with the Irish idea of nationality that the image of a round tower
+naturally grew under the chisel of the sculptor, as an emblem of
+patriotism, on the tomb of O’Connell in the cemetery of Dublin.
+
+Megalithic monuments and dolmen are equally found in great numbers in
+Ireland. Donegal presents at Raphre a circus of raised stones absolutely
+similar to that of Stonehenge, while in Derry one sees in the Grianan of
+Aileach the finest fortified temple that was ever raised in honour of the
+sun. In many districts all the hills or mountains without exception are
+crowned with the funeral hillock or Celtic _rath_. As for the Druidical
+inscriptions in the _Ogham_ character, consisting of twenty-five
+combinations of oblique or vertical strokes corresponding to an equal
+number of sounds, they abound in all the counties. The most curious is
+that of the Cave of Dunloe, discovered by a labourer, in the vicinity
+of Killarney, in the year 1838; it may be considered a true Druidical
+library, of which the books are represented by the stones of the vaulted
+roof. Those characters have been deciphered now, thanks to bilingual
+inscriptions posterior to the Roman period.
+
+Lastly, the names of places and the geographical definitions are, in
+nine cases out of ten, of Celtic origin, according to the tables drawn
+out by Chalmers. The mountains are called _ben_, and the chains of hills
+_sliebh_, rocks are _carricks_ or _cloagh_, lakes _loughs_, an island
+_innis_, bogs _corks_, lands _curraghs_, hills _knocks_, rivers _anagh_.
+
+The Erse tongue, still spoken by a twelfth part of the population, is
+sister to the Gaelic and the Breton. It denominates a field _agh_, a
+ford _ath_, a village _bally_, a city _cahir_, _ban_ what is white or
+beautiful, _deargh_ what is red, _dua_ what is black, _beg_ what is
+small, and _mor_ what is big, _clar_ a plain, _teach_ a house, _donagh_ a
+church, _ross_ a wooded hillside.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As for the type of the Irish race it is undeniably Celtic, or at least
+essentially different from the Anglo-Saxon. The hair is black or brown,
+the eyes dark, the complexion pale, the nose short, the forehead bony.
+The general appearance is vigorous and active, the movements are quick
+and often graceful; the stature without being low, is nearer to middle
+height than is generally the case in a British country. The rudest
+peasant girls often have a sculptural grace of attitude; one sees them
+in the fields, carrying burdens on their head with that stateliness of
+Greek canephores which seems as a rule the exclusive attribute of the
+daughters of the East.
+
+Still more different from the English is the inner man; naturally
+mirthful and expansive, witty, careless, even giddy, quarrelsome from
+mere love of noise, prompt to enthusiasm or despondency, imbued with the
+love of literary form and legal subtleties, he is the Frenchman of the
+West, as the Pole or the Japanese are Frenchmen of the East. And always
+there has been an affinity of nature, a harmony of thought, between
+them and us. At once we feel we are cousins. Their ancestors formerly
+came in thousands to fight under our flag. Our revolutions were always
+felt in Ireland. So strong, for nations as well as individuals, is that
+mysterious tie of a common origin, or even the most remote consanguinity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Does this mean that the Irishman, thanks to his insular position, has
+escaped all cross breeding and remained pure Celt? Far from it. No
+country was oftener or more cruelly invaded than his. The stranger
+implanted himself in it, begat his children there, introduced in the race
+elements that are still recognizable; for example, that most peculiar
+expression of the eyes, the height of the cheek-bones, the outline of
+the temples and cranium, which are in many cases clearly Scandinavian.
+
+In the origin of history the primitive inhabitants of Erin, the Firbolgs
+(men with the skin of beasts) were vanquished by the Thuathan-de-Danan,
+“the fairy people,” who came from the East, and who founded the realm of
+Innisfallen, or Island of Fate. A Spanish invasion (probably Phenician),
+that of the Milesians, overthrew that establishment ten or twelve
+centuries before the Christian era, and three hundred years before the
+foundation of Rome. After that came an uninterrupted list of one hundred
+and ninety-seven Milesian kings, who reached to the arrival of the
+Northmen, in the eighth century of the present era. Under their rule
+Ireland enjoyed a profound peace. It was during this period of more than
+a thousand years that flourished and developed in the island of Erin
+an entirely original civilization, characterised by the Brehon Code,
+by customs of great gentleness, by institutions of admirable prudence,
+among others that of a national militia, the _Fiana-Erin_, or _Fenians_,
+who were recruited by voluntary enlistment, defended the country and
+maintained order therein, while the citizens pursued their various
+avocations,—agriculture, in which they excelled, fishing and navigation,
+for which they displayed some ability.
+
+Divided into five or six small independent kingdoms Ireland, without her
+militia, would have fallen an easy prey to the Britons, the Gauls, or the
+Caledonians, and later on to the Romans. Thanks to that national force,—a
+true civic guard, quartered during winter on the inhabitants, and ever
+popular, which proves that it knew how to preserve intact the tradition
+of Celtic virtues,—Ireland, alone almost among European nations, escaped
+a Roman invasion. After twelve hundred years the remembrance of the
+Fenians has remained so vivid in the hearts of the people that the Irish
+Republicans of America, when they resumed in our own days the struggle in
+arms against England, naturally chose the name of the ancient defenders
+of national independence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the fall of the Roman Empire and the dying out of the fear of
+invasion, the Fenian institution disappeared. The military instincts
+of the nation then manifested themselves at the exterior by frequent
+incursions made by Irish adventurers in England, Scotland, or Gaul. It
+was in one of those incursions off the coast of Brittany that Niall Mor,
+King of Tara, took prisoner, with several other young Christians, a
+boy named Sucoth, and whom they called _Patricius_ (Patrick) on account
+of his noble origin. This was at the end of the fourth century of our
+era. The prisoner was employed in tending flocks in Ireland, spent seven
+years there, and at last found an opportunity of escaping to his own
+country. When back in Brittany, he constantly thought with grief of the
+dreadful destiny of the Irish, who still remained in ignorance of the
+true religion, and vegetated in the darkness of Druidism. One night he
+had a prophetic dream, after which he resolved to dedicate himself to the
+evangelization of those unhappy heathens. To this effect he went to the
+town of Tours, where he assumed the religious habit, then on to Rome,
+where he entered the missionary seminary. In the year 432 he was at the
+Barefooted Augustines’ Convent, in Auxerre, when he heard of the death
+of Paladius, fifth apostolic missionary of the Holy See in the island of
+Erin. Patrick solicited and obtained the honour of succeeding him. He was
+made Archbishop _in partibus infidelium_, and set out with twenty other
+French priests.
+
+A certain number of Christians were already to be found in Ireland; but
+the bulk of the nation remained attached to its traditional worship,
+which was that of Chaldea and of Ancient Gaul, the worship of the sun or
+fire, as the principle of all life and purity.
+
+Yet the sons of Erin were not by any means barbarians; their civilization
+could rather be regarded as the most flourishing in Europe. They knew
+the art of weaving stuffs, and of working metals; their laws were wise
+and just, their customs hardy without ferocity. Patrick knew better than
+any one that he must think neither of hurrying their conversion nor
+of imposing it by force. He devoted himself with great adroitness to
+the task of winning the favour of the chiefs, tenderly handled all the
+national prejudices, loudly extolled the excellence of the Brehon Code,
+and succeeded at last in giving baptism to the Princes of Leinster. After
+this the new religion made such rapid progress that at the end of fifteen
+years Patrick was obliged to ask for thirty new Bishops from Rome,
+besides the numerous native priests who had already received ordination
+at his hands. When he died at the ripe age of one hundred and twenty
+years, Ireland had become Christian, and was rapidly being Latinised in
+the innumerable schools attached to the monasteries and churches. She
+even entered so eagerly in the new path as to deserve the name of “Isle
+of Saints” throughout the Roman world, and that for a long time it was
+enough to be Irish or to have visited Erin to become invested with
+almost a halo of sanctity.
+
+That transformation had been accomplished without violence or effusion
+of blood. Until the 8th century it was a source of honour and prosperity
+for Ireland, for the lustre of her own civilization was enhanced by her
+renown for piety, and all the neighbouring nations sent their sons in
+flocks to be instructed in her arts and her virtues.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the very virtues that made her a country of monks and scholars were
+doomed before long to become the source of all her misfortunes. When the
+Scandinavian invasions began to pour over the whole of Europe, Ireland,
+emasculated by an entirely mystical devotion, was found incapable of
+sustaining the shock of the Northmen. The disappearance of the Fenian
+Militia had for a long time left her without a national tie, given up to
+local rivalries, and broken in pieces, as it were, by the clan system. At
+the very time that she most urgently needed a powerful central authority
+to struggle against the _black_ and _white strangers_ from Norway and
+Denmark, she was found defenceless, and it was not her feeble belt of
+mountains, opening everywhere on deep bays, that could oppose a serious
+barrier to them, or guard her plains against their invasions.
+
+Pressed by hunger, the Scandinavians left their country in shoals. They
+threw themselves on the coasts of Great Britain, France, and Spain, as
+far as the basin of the Mediterranean. In no place were the people of
+Europe, already enfeebled by habits of comparative luxury, able to resist
+those giants of the North, who dauntlessly embarked in their otter-skin
+boats and dared to go up the Seine even to the very walls of Paris.
+Ireland was a prey marked out for them. If peradventure the invading
+party were not numerous enough and were beaten back by numbers, they
+would come back in thousands the following year and sweep all before
+them. Vainly did the sons of Erin fight with all the courage of despair;
+one after the other their chieftains were vanquished, and the foe
+definitely took up a position on the south-east coast, where he founded
+the cities of Strangford, Carlingford, and Wexford.
+
+Not content with reducing the Irish to bondage, the victors took a
+cunning and savage delight in humiliating and degrading them, lodging
+garnisaries under their roofs, interdicting, under pain of death, the
+exercise of all liberal arts as well as the carrying of arms, destroying
+schools, burning books to take possession of the gold boxes that
+protected their precious binding.
+
+Every ten or twelve years a liberator sprang up in the West or North,
+and tried to shake off the abhorred yoke. But the rebellion only made
+it weigh more heavily on the neck of the vanquished; and if it happened
+that a Brian Boru succeeded, after incredible efforts and heroism, in
+gathering troops numerous enough to inflict on the stranger a bloody
+defeat, such a day of glory was invariably followed by the most sinister
+morrow.
+
+After two centuries of slavery, interrupted by massacres, vain struggles,
+and impotent efforts, Ireland, once so prosperous, gradually sank in the
+darkest state of barbarism. The intestine dissensions and the rivalries
+between clans achieved the work of the Northern Conquerors. In the year
+1172 she was ripe for new masters, also of Scandinavian race, who were
+ready to swoop on her with their Anglo-Saxon bands, after passing, to
+come to her, through the duchy of Normandy and through Great Britain.
+
+Henry the Second of Anjou, King of England, was resolved to add Ireland
+to his possessions. All he wanted was a pretext. He found it in the state
+of practical schism and independence into which the insular Church
+had fallen. The members of its clergy no longer recognized the Roman
+discipline, did not observe Lent, and married like those of the Greek
+rite. Henry the Second solicited and obtained from Pope Adrian II. a bull
+authorizing him to invade the sister isle, in order to “re-establish
+therein the rule of the Holy See, stop the progress of vice, bring back
+respect for law and religion, and secure the payment of St. Peter’s
+pence.” But in spite of this formal authorization he was too much
+occupied with Aquitaine to be able to entertain seriously the idea of
+undertaking the conquest of Ireland, when one of his vassals, Strongbow,
+cut the knot by landing on the island at the head of a Welsh army, to
+carve himself a kingdom on the south-east coast.
+
+The way was open; Henry II. threw himself in it in his turn, and
+established himself in the east of the island, where, strong in the
+countenance of the clergy secured to him by the Papal bull, he received
+before long the homage of the principal native chieftains.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Limited at first to a territory enclosed within palisades, or _Pale_,
+which, during more than four centuries, enlarged or got narrowed,
+according to the fortune of war and the relative strength of the
+belligerent parties, the English rule was destined at last to spread
+over the whole of the island. But, of this seven-century struggle, the
+last word is not yet said. The wound is ever bleeding. Ireland has
+never accepted her defeat; she refuses to accept as valid a marriage
+consummated by a rape. Always she protested, either by direct rebellion,
+when she found the opportunity for it, as in 1640, in 1798, and in
+1848; either by the voice of her poets and orators, by the nocturnal
+raids of her _Whiteboys_ and _Ribbonmen_, by the plots of her Fenians,
+by the votes of her electors, by parliamentary obstruction, by passive
+resistance, by political or commercial interdict—opposed to the intruder;
+in a word, by all the means, legal or illegal, that offered to interrupt
+prescription.
+
+A striking, and, one may say, a unique example in history: after seven
+centuries of sustained effort on the part of the victor to achieve his
+conquest, this conquest is less advanced than on the morrow of Henry the
+Second’s landing at Waterford. An abyss still severs the two races, and
+time, instead of filling up that abyss, only seems to widen it. This
+phenomenon is of such exceptional and tragic interest; it beats with
+such crude light on the special physiology of two races and the general
+physiology of humanity, that one needs must stop first and try to unravel
+its tangible causes if one be desirous of comprehending what is taking
+place in the land of Erin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+HISTORICAL GRIEVANCES.
+
+
+The English, it must be admitted, are no amiable masters. Never, in any
+quarter of the globe, were they able to command the goodwill of the
+nations submitted to their rule, nor did they fascinate them by those
+brilliant qualities that often go a long way towards forgiveness of
+possible injuries. “Take yourself off there, that I may take your place,”
+seems always to have been the last word of their policy. Pure and simple
+extermination of autochthon races; such is their surest way to supremacy.
+One has seen it successively in America, on the Australian continent, in
+Tasmania, in New Zealand, where the native tribes hardly exist now more
+than as a memory. On the other hand, if the vanquished races were too
+numerous or too sturdy and prolific to be easily suppressed, as in India
+or Ireland, reconciliation never took place; conquest ever remained a
+doubtful and precarious fact.
+
+In Ireland, the question was made more complex by two elements
+that visibly took a predominant part in the relations between the
+conquerors and the conquered. In the first place, the island of Erin,
+having remained outside the pale of the Roman world and of barbaric
+invasions, possessed an indigenous and original civilization that made
+her peculiarly refractory to the establishment of the feudal system.
+Secondly, her very remoteness and her insular character inclined the
+immigrants to establish themselves there regretfully, to consider her
+always as a colony and a place of exile, where they only resided against
+their will. For the first four hundred years of their occupation they
+confined themselves to the eastern coast within the inclosed territory
+(varying with the fortune of war) that they called the _Pale_ or
+palisade, and outside which the Irish preserved their manners, their
+laws, and their own customs.
+
+In spite of this barrier, it happened in the course of time that the
+English colonists got pervaded by those customs and felt their contagion.
+At once the British Parliament had recourse to drastic laws in order to
+open a new abyss between the two races, and keep the mastery they had
+over the Irish. Such is the special object of an edict of Edward III.,
+known under the name of _Edict of Kilkenny_, and by which it is reputed
+high treason for any Englishman established in Ireland to have married
+an Irish-woman, to have legitimised an Irish child, or have held him in
+baptism, to have taken an Irish Christian name, to have worn the Irish
+dress, to have spoken the Erse tongue, to have let his moustache grow,
+or to have ridden saddleless, as was the Irish fashion; above all, to
+have submitted to the Brehon Code. Those divers crimes were punished by
+confiscation of property, and perpetual imprisonment of the offender.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such laws were a powerful obstacle to fusion, raised by the intruder
+himself. One sees at once the difference between, for instance, such a
+system and that established by the Norman invasion in Great Britain.
+
+Here the conqueror found a race made supple by Roman occupation and
+Danish rule; he established himself, by strength of arm, on the soil,
+covered it with strongholds, and everywhere substituted himself to the
+dispossessed masters; he at once implanted within his new dominions the
+French tongue, the feudal system, the powerful hierarchy that constituted
+its strength; he remained standing, iron-covered and in arms, over the
+prostrate bodies of the population in bondage, and repressed with such
+a high hand any attempt at rebellion, that the very idea of resistance
+must of necessity die out soon. On the other hand, having transplanted
+himself, and without any idea of return, in this new sphere, he
+immediately submitted to its influence; he incorporated himself with the
+ambient race to such a degree as soon to forget his own origin, and come
+after two or three generations to consider himself as purely of English
+breed.
+
+In Ireland, on the contrary, not only was the conqueror reduced by the
+imperfect state of his conquest to remain on the defensive, confined
+within the Pale on the eastern shore, within reach, so to say, of the
+mother country; not only could not he dream for a long time of obliging
+populations that escaped all action on his part to obey his manners and
+his laws; not only did he systematically keep those populations at arm’s
+length and avoided mixing with them; but periodical laws and edicts
+constantly came to remind them, on pain of terrible punishment, that he
+belonged to another race, and must guard with jealous care the integrity
+of its autonomy. Without any intercourse with the more distant tribes, he
+was at constant war with those of the borders of the Pale.
+
+And war was, at this period even still more than in our own days, mere
+rapine, raised to the dignity of a system. The English did not scruple to
+make incursions on their neighbour’s lands, to take away harvest, cattle,
+and women, after which they returned to their fortified territory.
+
+They did even worse: having heard of the ancient custom by which the
+Irish formerly accorded fire and candle light to their national militia
+or Fenians, the English revived it to their own profit; they quartered on
+the peasantry in their neighbourhood during all the winter, a soldier,
+who took his seat round the domestic hearth, shared the meals of the
+family, took possession of the best bed—nay, did not disdain to cast
+the eye of favour on the wife or daughter—and not the less remained
+a stranger, a foe, at the same time that he was a forced guest and a
+spy—for he was forbidden to speak the language, to adopt the dress,
+to imitate the manners of his victims.... The horror of that burden
+coming anew every year had once led to the suppression of the Fenian
+militia. How much more terrible was such servitude, enforced by the
+enemy! Constant were the rebellions, and always repressed with calculated
+barbarity—they only served as a pretext for new exactions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Still, in spite of all, a certain contagion of habits took place between
+the contiguous races. A few native chiefs insensibly began to imitate the
+manners of the English. The English were not long in discovering a way to
+reconcile them—by appealing to their basest impulses.
+
+Until then, the Irish had had no knowledge of individual property.
+With them land was, like the sky or the air they breathed, the common
+inheritance of those who occupied it. The members of a clan, indeed,
+paid the chieftain a tax or annual duty, but they did not conceive it
+as possible that this leader could look on himself as the master of the
+social fund to which they, like him, had a hereditary right. At the
+most they expected their harvest or cattle to be seized, in case of
+non-payment of the tax. There never had been an eviction of the tenant,
+as there had been no sale or transfer of the land by him occupied.
+Individual appropriation, as resulting from the feudal system, was such a
+new idea to the Irish that they were at first unable to grasp it.
+
+“What interest can you have in making your clan give up their land to the
+English, since you get it back in return for your homage?” would ask some
+of the native chieftains of those of their countrymen nearer the pale
+who had taken for some time to performing that commercial transaction.
+
+The neophytes of feudal law would then explain that in case of extension
+of the English conquest, their possession of the land would be guaranteed
+by the fact of the new title. What they took great care should not be
+discovered by the clan, was that they gave what did not belong to them,
+and sold the collective property of their followers, to receive it
+afterwards at the hands of the English as personal property.... This was
+seen clearly later on, when they began to sell it or raise mortgages
+on it. But that, the dawn of a gigantic fraud, nobody in Ireland could
+so much as suspect. The fraudulent origin of individual appropriation
+is nevertheless, even to our own day, the true root of the desperate
+resistance that the Irish tenant invariably opposes to eviction. Be it
+tradition, be it “cellular memory,” he is conscious of his primordial and
+superior right to that glebe once stolen from his forefathers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Stolen! if only it had been stolen once for all!... But to repeat
+Fitzgibbon’s (Lord Clare) saying, there is not in the whole of Ireland
+one field that has not been _at least three times_ unjustly taken from
+its legitimate possessors. And that spoliation was always accompanied by
+the most aggravating circumstances.
+
+It was indeed with Henry VIII. and Elizabeth that the true efforts of
+England to achieve the conquest of Erin were made, and from that time, to
+the antagonism of the two races, to the conflict of interests, was added
+religious hatred. Between puritanical England and Catholic Ireland began
+a duel to the death, into which each generation in turn has thrown itself
+for three centuries. Oppression begets rebellion, and rebellion expires
+drowned in blood. We have no intention of repeating that history in these
+pages; its details are to be found everywhere. Let us only recall its
+essential features.
+
+Towards the year 1565, Queen Elizabeth undertook the “plantation” of
+Ireland on a large scale, and set about it by the elementary process
+of dispossessing the owners of the soil in order to present Englishmen
+with their lands. The whole country rose, under the command of John
+Desmond, who called the Spaniards to his aid. Upon which England sent to
+Ireland, together with Sydney, Sussex, and Walter Raleigh, armies whose
+instructions were “the extermination of the Rebels.”
+
+“At Christmas,” wrote one of the English Generals, Sir Nicolas Malby,
+in the year 1576, “I entered Connaught, and soon finding that by mercy
+I should only succeed in having my throat cut, I preferred to adopt a
+different tactic. I therefore threw myself in the mountains with the
+settled determination of destroying these people by sword and fire,
+sparing neither the old nor the children. _I burnt down all their
+harvests and all their houses, and I put to the sword all that fell
+within my hands...._ This occurred in the country of Shane Burke. I did
+the same thing in that of Ullick Burke.”
+
+The other English Generals vied in ardour with this butcher; so much so
+that at the end of a few years of indiscriminate hangings, massacres,
+burnings of house and land, the whole of Munster was laid waste like a
+desert; a few wretches only were left to wander over it like ghosts,
+and they came voluntarily to offer their throat to the knife of Queen
+Elizabeth’s soldiers. The Virgin Queen then resolved to repeople that
+desert; she made proclamation that all the lands of the Desmonds were
+confiscated (more than 500,000 acres) and she offered them gratuitously
+to whosoever would “plant” them with the help of English labour. The
+grantees were to pay no duty to the Crown until six years had passed, and
+that duty was always to be of the lightest. In spite of these advantages
+colonization did not make much progress. The English at last understood
+that they must either give it up, or resign themselves to having the
+ground cultivated by the despoiled Irish who had survived the massacres.
+H ow could those wretched people have done otherwise than nourish the
+hope of revenge?
+
+That revenge was attempted in Ulster at the death of Elizabeth. It ended
+in new disasters, new tortures, new confiscations. The counties of
+Tyrone, Derry, Donegal, Armagh, Fermanagh, and Cavan,—in all about three
+million acres,—were then seized by the Crown and distributed in lots to
+Scotch settlers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the year 1641, under the reign of Charles I., a few Irishmen having
+emigrated to the continent, and having been initiated to modern military
+tactics in the ranks of the French army, attempted to liberate their
+country. They provoked a rising, succeeded in holding in check during
+eight years all the British forces, and in 1649 compelled the King of
+England to grant them by formal treaty the conditions they themselves
+dictated. But a few days later the head of Charles fell on the scaffold,
+and Cromwell in person, escorted by his son, by Ireton and Ludlow, made
+it his business to come and annul the treaty of Kilkenny.
+
+“For Jesus!... No quarter!...” Such was the battle-cry he gave to his
+Roundheads. Drogheda, then Wexford were taken by storm; men, women,
+and children were exterminated; Galway fell in 1652. The populations,
+exhausted by a war and famine of ten years’ duration, surrendered
+themselves to his mercy, and laid down their arms. Cromwell had only now
+to reap the fruits of his victory by making Ireland pay for it.
+
+His first idea was to complete the extermination of the native race,
+in order to replace it by English colonists. But even his gloomy soul
+recoiled before the only means that at once and for ever could put an
+end to “the Irish gangrene.” He adopted a middle course, of much less
+radical efficacy. This middle course consisted in transporting, or, as
+they called it at the time _transplanting_ all the Irish into the region
+bounded by the Shannon, there to be penned up like men infested with
+the plague, while all the rest of the territory was allotted to English
+families.
+
+The enterprise was conducted with truly puritanical method and rigour.
+Thousands of Irish were shipped as slaves to the West Indies, thousands
+of others were imprisoned in Connaught, under pain of death for whoever
+should cross its limits. All the land, carefully parcelled out, was
+divided by lot between the soldiers of Cromwell, upon agreement that they
+should consider themselves bound to expend their pay for three years on
+the improvement of it. But those fields, to yield up their value, had to
+be cultivated, and the English labourer declined to become a voluntary
+exile in order to cultivate them. Little by little the native peasantry
+came back to their old homes with the tenacity peculiar to their class,
+they founded families and reconstituted the Irish nation under the ten or
+twelve thousand landlords imposed over them by fraud and violence. Forty
+years after Cromwell’s death, these landlords had even forgotten how to
+speak the English language.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Restoration was not destined to heal any of those cruel wounds. Charles
+II. took little heed of Ireland, which he deemed too far off, and besides
+he thought it good policy not to disturb the new occupants in their
+possessions. He barely deemed it necessary to establish in Dublin a Court
+of Revision that sat only one year, examined no more than seven hundred
+cases out of a total of above three thousand that were submitted to it,
+and ordered the restitution of hardly a sixth part of the confiscated
+land.
+
+After the Revolution of 1688, nevertheless, the Irish only embraced with
+more ardour the cause of James II. when he landed in Ireland with a
+handful of men. Even after his defeat at the Boyne, they so successfully
+resisted William of Orange that he was compelled in 1691 to grant to
+them, by the treaty of Limerick, the free exercise of their religion
+and the political privileges that could help them to preserve it. But,
+like so many other charters, that one was soon to be violated. All the
+Irish Jacobites were compelled to expatriate themselves (numbers of them
+took service in France; more than fifty thousand Irishmen died under
+the _fleur-de-lis_ during the first half of the eighteenth century);
+four thousand others were evicted from one million of acres that
+William distributed among his followers. Soon to this already terrible
+repression were to be added all the rigours of the Penal Code, that code
+that proclaimed it a duty to spy, and a meritorious act to betray the
+Irishman at his hearth; that code of which Burke could say: “Never did
+the ingenious perversity of man put forth a machine more perfect, more
+thoughtfully elaborated, more calculated to oppress, to impoverish, to
+degrade a people, to lower in them human nature itself.”
+
+Under the network of that nameless despotism which attacked man in his
+dearest privileges, the rights of conscience, the sanctity of home,—under
+the weight of a legislation that in a manner forbade her the use of water
+and fire, that closed all careers before her, after having wrenched her
+last furrow from her keeping,—the Irish nation persisted in living and
+multiplying. Was it any wonder that in the depth of her collective soul
+she cherished dreams of revenge and justice?
+
+The American Emancipation and the French Revolution appeared to her
+as the dawn of regeneration. Alas! once again the glorious effort of
+1798,—the rebellion in arms, victory itself, were only to end in a
+complete wreck. As if Fate owed one more stroke of irony to this martyred
+nation, it was an Irish Parliament that by its own vote in 1800 abdicated
+the hardly recovered national independence. Pitt bought it wholesale for
+the price of 1,200,000 guineas.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not enough, however, to have taken from the Irishman his blood,
+his land, his religious faith, and his liberty: they must still prevent
+his prospering in commerce or industry. Political interest was here in
+accordance with avarice in giving this advice to the victor.
+
+Charles II. began by forbidding Ireland to export meat, butter, and
+cheese to England. At that time of slow maritime intercourse, no idea
+could be entertained of sending them to any other market. The Irish had
+to fall back on wool, which they exported to France and Spain. That was
+sufficient to arouse the jealousy of their pitiless masters. The export
+of wool, be it as raw material or in woven stuffs, was forbidden the
+Irish on pain of confiscation and fines.
+
+The effect of this harsh measure was two-fold: it prevented the abhorred
+Irish prospering; it secured to the English merchant the monopoly of
+Irish wool, which he could henceforth buy at his own price (generally at
+a quarter of the current price), and sell again at a lesser rate than
+all his competitors. It only remained for Ireland to make smugglers of
+all her fishermen; they crammed all the caverns on her coasts with wool,
+and during the winter, in spite of excisemen, they exchanged it for the
+wines and spirits of France and Spain. By the same occasion they exported
+soldiers and imported Catholic priests. Thus did Ireland keep losing her
+vital strength, by the constant departure of the most vigorous amongst
+her sons, at the same time that she inoculated in her blood two equally
+fatal poisons—alcohol and fanaticism.
+
+On the other hand, the Puritan weavers of Ulster were ruined like the
+wool-farmers. They emigrated to America, and England found no bitterer
+foes than their sons during the War of Independence.
+
+Some of the Irish tried to fall back on other industries, as the weaving
+of linen or ship-building. At once England interfered with an iron hand
+by establishing the most ruinous prohibitive duties on Irish linens,
+while at the same time her cotton fabrics came pouring over the country.
+To make doubly sure, England, by a special law, formally interdicted
+ship-building in Ireland as well as any direct trade with any foreign
+market whatsoever.
+
+One feels a sort of shame for the human kind in having to record
+such consistent acts of systematic cruelty. The violence of military
+retaliation, the sacking of towns or the massacre of vanquished foes,
+may be explained by the heat of combat, and are found in the annals of
+all countries. An economical compression exercised during ten or twelve
+generations on one nation by another nation of Shylocks is, happily, a
+fact without any parallel in history.
+
+From the beginning of the 18th century all industrial enterprise had thus
+been unmercifully forbidden to Ireland. All the factories were closed,
+the working population had been reduced to field labour, emigration or
+street-begging. This population therefore weighed still more heavily
+on the soil, still exaggerating its tendencies to subdivision; which
+tendencies, already a curse for Ireland, were to cause in the future new
+ferments of hatred and misery. All the attempts that Ireland made to
+free herself from those iron shackles were pitilessly repressed. She saw
+herself deprived of her right to commercial activity, as she had been of
+national conscience, of land, and religious or political freedom. And
+it is after having thus for centuries systematically trained the Irish
+to poverty, idleness, and drink, that England, crowning her work with
+calumny, dares to bring forward their vices as an excuse for herself!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These things are far from us already. But it would be erring greatly to
+imagine that in the eyes of the Irish they bear an antiquated character.
+Oral tradition, seconded by an indigenous literature, keeps the wound
+open and green. Yonder wretched beggar, dying of hunger and want upon
+the glebe once possessed by his ancestors, knows that they ruled where
+he now serves, bears their name with a touching pride, and sadly toils
+for others in a field that he believes to belong to himself. He is not
+ignorant of the way in which it was taken from him, at what date, and
+in what manner the event took place. How could he consider its present
+possessors otherwise than as his most cruel enemies?
+
+Let us imagine the French _émigrés_ brought back violently on the lands
+taken from them by the nation, and reduced to support their family by
+tilling their fields with their own hands. Let us suppose them compelled
+every year to pay an exorbitant rent to the usurper. Let us blot out
+from history’s page the milliard indemnity given to the _émigrés_
+and the amnesty passed over those things by five or six successive
+revolutions. Let us lastly add to these deadly rancours the weight of a
+religious persecution of three centuries, of the undisguised contempt
+of the victor, and of the most shocking political inequality.... Let
+that _émigré_, in a word, not only have lost caste, be spoliated and a
+serf, but also be a pariah, a kind of pestilent member of the community:
+then we shall gather some idea of the state of mind of the Irish people
+towards England; we shall understand that in truth the only mistake
+committed by Cromwell and the others in their system of colonization was
+to have not carried it to its full length, to have not exterminated all
+by fire or sword, and to have left a single son of Erin alive.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As a contrast to England and Ireland, let us place a historical fact
+of the same order, that of France with Corsica. Here also we find an
+insular race of markedly distinct character, of different language,
+different manners and traditions, the habit of independence and the
+clan-spirit,—all that can foster and serve resistance to annexation.
+But here the conquering nation is France, and she is a kind mother. She
+does not come, fire and sword in hand, to ravage the harvests of the
+vanquished, to take his land, to impose on him, together with a new
+faith, exceptional laws, and a brand of infamy. On the contrary, to them
+she opens her arms, she offers her wealth and her love. From the first
+day she admits Corsicans to the provincial parliaments, and twenty years
+later she receives their deputies in the Assemblée Nationale. From the
+first hour they feel they are Frenchmen, the equals of those born in the
+Ile de France. There are for them neither special taxes, nor political
+inferiority, nor rigours of any sort. Never was an inch of ground taken
+from them to be given to the continental families. Never were they
+treated like serfs to be trodden down without mercy. If there be an
+exception made, it is in their favour; as, for instance, the reduction
+of one half of all duties on imports; the free trade in tobacco; the
+enormous proportion of Corsicans admitted to all Government offices.
+
+But what a difference, too, in the results!... In less than a hundred
+years, the fusion between the two races is so perfect, the assimilation
+so complete, that one could not find to-day one man in Corsica to wish
+for a separation. Nay, rather, against such an enterprise, if any one
+were found to attempt it, all Corsica would rise in arms.
+
+If Great Britain had so willed it, Ireland might easily have become to
+her what Corsica is to us. Only, for the last seven hundred years, Great
+Britain has lacked what alone could have made that miracle possible,—a
+mother’s heart and love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+KILLARNEY.
+
+
+I know no place to compare with Killarney: so soft to the eye, so
+full of unspeakable grace. It is as a compendium of Ireland; all the
+characteristic features of the country are united there: the elegant
+“round towers,” drawing on the horizon the airy outline of their conic
+shafts; the soft moistness of the atmosphere, the tender blue of the sky,
+the intense green of the meadows, set off by long, black trails of peat,
+and the white, ochre, and red streaks which the grit-stone and clay-slate
+draw on the hill-side.
+
+Within the oval circus formed by the mountains of Kerry, the Killarney
+lakes succeed one another like small Mediterraneans, all dotted with
+lovely islands, where myrtle and rare ferns grow freely, fostered by a
+Lusitanian climate. Every one of those islands has its legend, its own
+saint, buried under some old moss-grown mound; its ruined castle, its
+ivy-clothed abbey, paved with tombstones and haunted by some _banshee_.
+They are like large baskets of flowers floating on the clear, silent
+waters, whose peace is only broken now and then by the jumping of a fish,
+or the clucking of some stray teal. All there unite to form a landscape
+of almost paradoxical beauty. You think you have landed in fairyland,
+outside the pale of ordinary life.
+
+The most illustrious of them is Innisfallen, where the monks wrote in the
+seventh century their famous _Annals_, the pride of the Bodleian Library.
+In viewing this enchanting island, you involuntarily fall to repeating
+the beautiful lines of Moore which you used to bungle in your school
+days, and of which you first realise the profound truth:
+
+    “_Sweet Innisfallen, fare thee well,_
+      _May calm and sunshine long be thine,_
+    _How fair thou art, let others tell,_
+      _While but to feel how fair be mine, etc._”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Along the shores of that range of lakes, two lordly domains display the
+noble arrangement of their parks: one is the seat of the Earl of Kenmare,
+lord-lieutenant of the county, late Lord Chamberlain to the Queen during
+the Gladstone Ministry. The other belongs to Captain Herbert of Muckross,
+late Member of Parliament. As far around as you can see the land belongs
+to either of those two landlords. Just as in the tale, down to the
+extremity of the valley, up to the very top of the far-away mountain,
+land and water, beasts and Christians, all belong to the “Marquis de
+Carabas.”
+
+Some restriction must be made, however. Changes have been introduced
+lately. Only a few years ago it was a thing understood that of the two
+members which the borough returned to Parliament one must be the heir
+presumptive of the house of Kenmare, the other the chief of the house
+of Muckross. That is over. Now-a-days the Kerry voters send whom Mr.
+Parnell likes to the House of Commons. But the air of the parks is still
+the property of the two owners; none may breathe it without their leave.
+I hasten to say that the permission is most courteously given by Lord
+Kenmare to all tourists, and as readily (if less liberally) sold on the
+Muckross grounds to anyone willing to pay one or two shillings, according
+to his approach walking or on horseback.
+
+The two parks are marvels, almost without other rivals in the world, for
+their prodigious extent, their admirably kept shrubberies and avenues,
+and the splendour and variety of the points of view which art has devised
+on the lakes. Those lakes themselves, with their islands, bays, and
+toy-peninsulas, their rippling brooks and foaming cascades, are only
+part of the beauties of the whole. Muckross is proud to possess the old
+abbey of the same name, and the Torc Cascade. Kenmare boasts Innisfallen,
+Ross Island, Saint Finian’s Tomb, the legendary ruins of O’Donoghue’s
+Castle, and a hundred other wonders. It is more regal than lordly, and
+there are indeed few royal residences which can boast such gardens.
+
+You go away dazzled, enchanted, intoxicated with verdure, ozone, and
+poetic sights. You come back the day following, you almost wish to take
+root there for a sort of contemplative life, where you would discard any
+heavier occupation than catching salmon, smoking endless cigarettes, and
+reading over your favourite authors. A rich artist, it is said, being
+pricked with a violent desire of that kind, offered I don’t know how much
+ready money to Lord Kenmare if he would grant him five hundred square
+yards of ground on Ross Island. The offer was declined.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a reverse side to the picture; and it could scarcely be less
+brilliant. Killarney is a sorry borough of about four or five thousand
+inhabitants, more miserable looking than words can express. Except in
+the great hotels which English enterprise has raised for fleecing the
+tourists attracted there by the beauty of the lakes, there is not a
+vestige of ease or prosperity. No busy workman, not one manufacture is
+to be seen. The miserable shops exhibit a few dusty wares which nobody
+seems anxious either to buy or to sell. There is a despondent stillness
+about, and people look tired with doing nothing. The women, all more or
+less “tattered and torn,” wear a poor rag of a shawl on their heads.
+Half-naked children, wild-haired, full of vermin, swarm out of all the
+small alleys which open on the one street of the town. Only the Anglican
+and Catholic churches rise above the sordid little dwellings with a
+substantial and well-to-do air.
+
+Go out of the village, follow the long walls which enclose the lordly
+seats, and after three or four miles you will find again the Irish
+country such as you have seen it everywhere. Turnip and barley fields,
+thin pastures, few trees or none at all. On the road-side occasionally
+is a consumptive cow, or a pig wallowing in mud fraternally with two or
+three bright-eyed urchins. Here and there a hovel with the traditional
+dung-hill and three hens. Nothing, in short, calculated to bring a new
+light on the agrarian crisis.
+
+It is in Kerry, however, that the malady has reached its most acute
+state, they all tell me. But you could not believe how hard it is to
+obtain any definite information about those matters. People who really
+know about it feel a sort of shame to bare their national wounds before a
+stranger, and besides, the diversity of judgments makes it difficult to
+draw something positive from them. Every man has his party feeling, and
+is wishing to enforce it upon you. Provided with a good number of letters
+of introduction, and everywhere received with perfect cordiality, I have
+talked already with people of all conditions—landlords, agents, farmers,
+doctors, priests, and labourers,—without having obtained as yet any but
+individual views. Home Rulers and Orangemen have made me hear arguments
+that I know by heart from having heard them repeated these last eight
+years, ever since the crisis entered its actual phase. This is not the
+thing we want: we want _espèces_, as they say in French law; specific
+illustration, direct symptoms of the Irish disease.
+
+And that is the difficulty. The habit of living among certain deformities
+so familiarises us with them that we are no longer able to perceive them,
+and still less to point them out. Moreover, when upon receiving a letter
+from London, a man is kind enough to ask you to dinner, to introduce
+you to his wife and daughters, to lend you his horse and trap, and to
+empty for your benefit his store of ready-made opinions, is it possible
+decently to ask him more? He has his own affairs, and cannot spend his
+time running with you through hill and dale in order to help you to
+unravel a sociological problem.
+
+By a stroke of good luck I met the scout I wanted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was returning from an excursion to the Gap of Dunloe when, on the banks
+of the river which waters the Kenmare estate, near the bridge, I noticed
+a man of about forty, of middle height, poorly but neatly clad, who was
+walking in front of me and gave evident signs of wishing to enter into
+conversation. I had been so harassed lately by the swarm of cicerones
+and incompetent guides who crowd all ways to the lakes and sights around
+Killarney, that I had grown suspicious, and pretended not to see the man.
+But he had his idea and stuck to it. Slackening his pace, he began to
+whistle _La Marseillaise_.
+
+That was saying plainly:—
+
+“You are French, and I am a friend of France like all Irishmen. You are
+welcome here.”
+
+Throughout the world it is the adopted form for such a declaration of
+love. On board a transatlantic steamer or in the sitting-rooms of a
+cosmopolite hotel, when a fair-haired or dark-haired new acquaintance
+seats herself to the piano and begins to play the march of Rouget de
+l’Isle, the French tourist can see his way: he is looked upon with no
+unfriendly eye.
+
+There were no dark or fair tresses here, but only a bearded
+pepper-and-salt quadragenarian, with the patent purpose of hooking me
+at the rate of half-a-crown an hour: so I remained obdurate. But he,
+suddenly making up his mind:—
+
+“Well, _Sor_,” he said to me with a soft voice and the most enticing
+smile, “how do you _loike_ our country?”
+
+“Your country? I should like it a great deal better if one could go
+about it without being pestered by guides at every turning,” I said, but
+half-remorsefully.
+
+“How true, sir! Those guides positively infest the place. And if they
+only knew their trade! But they are regular swindlers, beggars who steal
+the tourist’s money; the shame of Ireland, that is what they are!”
+
+The conversation then commenced, and to say the truth I have no reason
+to repent it. The fellow is well-informed, quick-witted, incredibly
+talkative, and in five minutes has given me really valuable information,
+besides biographical details about himself. He is called MacMahon like
+many others in this country, for I have seen that name over twenty
+village shops already. Is he any relation to the Maréchal? No; he makes
+no pretension to that. But after all it is not improbable that they come
+from one root, for my friend is not, of course, without his relationship
+with some of the numberless kings of Ireland.
+
+“And the Marshal is a great man, a brave soldier, a true Irishman. I have
+his picture at home. I’ll show it to you if you do me the honour to visit
+my humble roof, and accept a glass of ‘mountain dew.’”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My new acquaintance has been quill-driver at a land surveyor’s, and he
+knows many things. This, for instance: that all people here, from the
+most insignificant farmer to the biggest landowner, are in debt.
+
+“All that glitters is not gold,” he says, with a melancholy smile. “Do
+you see that large expanse of land, sir? Well, those who own it are not
+perhaps richer than I, and have not perhaps always as much pocket-money
+as would be convenient for them. Their annual income goes to pay the
+interest of an enormous debt, the hereditary obligations which weigh on
+the property, and the normal keeping of it. Mr. Herbert, the owner of
+Muckross, had to emigrate to America, where he is now an attorney’s
+clerk, for his daily bread. The shilling you give for entering his park
+goes to the scraping of it. As for Lord Kenmare, he never sees as much
+as the tenth part of the revenue of his property, let alone his being
+forbidden his own grounds under pain of being shot dead! Lady Kenmare
+lives there alone with her children under protection of a detachment of
+the police.” So the masters of those two noble estates are exiled from
+them, one by mortgage, the other by agrarian hatred. O, irony of things!
+
+“But Lord Kenmare’s not a bad landlord, is he?” I said to MacMahon.
+
+“Far from it. His tenants are eight hundred in number, and there are
+not three evicted in the year. I know personally twenty of them who owe
+him four years’ rent and are never troubled about it. But he has taken
+position against the League—that is enough. And then, don’t you know,
+sir, the best of landlords is not worth much in the eyes of his tenants.
+_They want the land and they will have it._ But this is my house. Please
+come in, sir.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus chattering, the communicative Celt had brought me to the entrance
+of a small low house in a by-street of Killarney. We entered a sort
+of kitchen-parlour on a level with the lane. No carpet or flooring of
+any kind but the simple beaten clay, a large old-fashioned chimney, a
+table, a few straw-covered chairs; on the walls a whole private museum
+in chromo-lithography: Pope Pius IX., the Marshal Duke of Magenta, Mr.
+Parnell, &c., and a branch of holy palm.
+
+Upon our coming, a poor creature, pale and emaciated, had risen without
+showing any surprise.
+
+“Mrs. MacMahon, _Sor_! Everilda Matilda, a French gentleman who honours
+our house by stopping a moment in it. Call the children, my dear; the
+gentleman will be pleased to see them, I think.”
+
+A tall girl with brown eyes first presents herself, then a boy between
+twelve and thirteen years old, then a variety of younger fry. I am told
+that Mary has passed successfully her “standards,” that Tim has just
+begun Latin with an ultimate view to become a priest “like his uncle
+Jack;” then the “mountain dew” is produced. It is a kind of home-made
+whisky, not unpalatable.
+
+At last mine host turns to his wife.
+
+“Supposing, my dear, you show your lace to the French gentleman, to let
+him see what you can do when you are not bed-ridden. Perhaps he will
+like to bring back some little remembrance of Killarney to his ‘lady.’”
+
+I was caught.
+
+Everilda Matilda instantly produced a box containing cuffs and collars
+of Irish point, and all that remains to me to do, if I am not ready to
+forfeit my rights to the qualification of gentleman, is to buy a few
+guineas’ worth. Hardly is the matter over, than MacMahon turns to the
+future ecclesiastic—
+
+“And you, Tim, will you not show the gentleman those sticks you polish so
+well?”
+
+Caught again!
+
+If each member of the family has his own private trade, the
+_mountain-dew_ threatens to be rather an expensive refreshment.
+
+“I am greatly obliged to you,” I said, “but I have got already a complete
+collection of _shillelaghs_.”
+
+MacMahon’s jaw fell visibly.
+
+“But we could perhaps make another arrangement, that would be more
+advantageous,” I continued quietly. “You know the country well, you tell
+me?”
+
+“As a man who has lived forty years in it and never left it.”
+
+“Well, let us have a pair of good hacks; you lead me for a couple of
+days across field and country, and show me a dozen authentic cases of
+eviction, agrarian violence, or boycottism. If you will undertake this,
+and I am satisfied with you, upon our return I will take the whole lot of
+lace.”
+
+You should have seen the glowing faces of the whole family! The affair
+was soon settled, and the day after we started.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THROUGH KERRY ON HORSEBACK.
+
+
+It was not two days but six that we spent, my guide and I, visiting
+the County Kerry in all directions, examining the crops, asking about
+prices, entering cottages and small farms, chatting with anyone that
+we supposed capable of giving us information. The rather unexpected
+conclusion I arrived at was that the agrarian crisis is more especially
+felt in the richest districts, while it can hardly be said to exist in
+the poorest parts. Kerry is, in that particular, a true copy of Ireland
+on a small scale. It may, in fact, be divided into two perfectly distinct
+regions—the plains of the north and the mountains of the south-west.
+Those regions offer characteristics as marked in an economical as in a
+geographical point of view.
+
+Another conclusion drawn from my personal intercourse with the Irish
+peasant was that nothing is to be got out of him by bullying and
+everything by gentle means. If you arrive at an inn and proceed, as
+do the English everywhere, to assume a harsh and arrogant tone, you
+will experience the greatest difficulties in obtaining even meagre
+fare in return for your money. They will pretend they have nothing in
+the house, that they are not in the habit of receiving travellers, and
+such like stories. If, on the contrary, you at once proclaim yourself
+delighted with the country, its manners and its inhabitants; if you risk
+a compliment to the hostess or a gentle pinch to the children’s cheek,
+the whole house is yours. They will instantly wring the neck of the
+solitary chicken promenading in front of the house; they will exhibit
+clean table-linen; they will rush to the neighbour and borrow a salad
+or some fruit; they will even unearth from some dark corner a bottle
+of old port. If you give this impromptu supper only half the praise it
+deserves, you may count on a luxurious breakfast for the next morning.
+These poor people are thus made. Their heart is warm; their sensibilities
+are quick. The least thing discourages them; the least thing electrifies
+them. In contradiction to the Anglo-Saxon serf, who despises his master
+if he treat him with gentleness, Paddy prefers a gracious word to all
+the guineas in the kingdom. The philosophical reason for the failure of
+the British in Ireland (and elsewhere) is perhaps chiefly to be found in
+their general want of human sympathy. The Englishman speaks too often
+like a slave-driver when he should speak like an elder brother.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                                THE PLAIN.
+
+The plains of North Kerry must be classed among the best land in
+the isle. This is not saying that they are first-class. But they
+evidently only need some outlay in drainage and manure and a few modern
+improvements in culture to rival our Normandy pastures. It is above
+all a land of grazing fields and butter; the grass in the meadows is
+green and luxuriant; the cows look strong and well. It is evident that
+the least effort would be sufficient to make agricultural enterprise a
+thriving business. But carelessness and want of thrift are plainly shown
+on all sides. Everywhere dung hills, placed just in front of the cottage
+doors, pour into the ditch the clearest of their virtue. The gardens are
+ill-kept, the fields transformed into bog for want of a drain seventy
+feet long. One sees oats so invaded by thistles that it must be a sheer
+impossibility to get the grain out. In other fields oats rot standing,
+because no one takes care to cut them in time. Nowhere is any sign shown
+of vigorous enterprise or activity. Not only do routine and sloth reign
+all over the country, but one might be tempted to believe in a general
+conspiracy for wasting the gratuitous gifts of Mother Nature without any
+profit to anybody.
+
+Yet the country looks relatively rich. The peasantry have good clothes,
+they despise potatoes, eat bread and meat, drink beer or tea, send
+their children to school, and appear peculiarly wide awake to their own
+interests. Are they really, as they declare, unable to pay their rents?
+That is possible, for the principal products of the country—corn, oats,
+barley, butter, beef, and mutton, wool and potatoes—have undergone for
+the last three years a considerable depreciation, estimated at from 15 to
+35 per cent. But this depreciation is evidently not felt by a diminution
+of comfort for the rural populations, here at least. The contrary might
+even be admitted. In any case there is evidently no question of a crisis
+of famine such as has so often been seen in this island for the last
+fifty years. The malady is something else. It is the malady of a people
+to whom it has been repeated for half a century that the land they live
+on has been stolen from them by strangers; a people who rightly or
+wrongly believe this to be the case; a people who have entered, under the
+direction of a central committee of politicians, on a regular struggle
+with the landlords; who profit by all economical incidents, especially
+the fall of prices, if not openly to denounce the treaty, at least to
+refuse to execute its articles.
+
+A few facts noted in passing will explain the situation better than all
+discourses.
+
+A large dairy farm, the finest I have yet seen in the country. The
+buildings are new, the fields covered with thick dark grass. I number
+sixty-five cows. All the dairy appointments are handsome and well-kept.
+The farmer looks prosperous. Clearly he lives at ease, judging by
+the furniture of the house, the quality of his clothes, by the very
+liberality with which he receives us, and by the brandy which he offers
+us (he is a friend of my guide). His rent is £100 a year. He does not
+mean to pay his next term. (_I don’t think I will pay this gale._) His
+landlord offers to him the sale of his land for a sum of eighteen years’
+rent, according to the official plan. If he followed that system all he
+would have to do would be to pay annually during forty-nine years the sum
+of £78, less by nearly a third than the present farm rent; he would then
+become a proprietor. He refuses. Why?
+
+“Indeed?” he says, with a wink, “engage myself for forty-nine years!...
+_Why! I shall have the land for nothing in two or three years!_...”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another well-to-do farmer driving in a dog-cart with his two daughters.
+The trap is new, the harness smart, the horse strong and well groomed.
+The damsels wear Dublin hats and white woollen dresses not unfashionable
+in cut.
+
+“That’s what enrages the landlords,” my guide says to me; “it is to see
+tenants come in this style to the Tralee races, cheerfully lose twenty
+guineas upon a horse, then, when the time for paying the rent arrives,
+coolly ask for a 40 per cent. reduction on their half-year’s rent....”
+
+“... And in fact it must be enough to make a saint swear!...” he adds
+philosophically. “But after all, the landlords might be content with the
+60 per cent. they get ... I am sure they get it cheap enough ... they
+may think themselves lucky to have even that much, as the interest of
+confiscated land!...”
+
+That notion of the land being held by its actual detentors through
+confiscation, may be unfounded in some cases, or even in the majority
+of cases, but none the less one finds it at the bottom of all Irish
+syllogisms. And in such cases the real value of the premiss is of little
+importance; what matters only is the conclusion drawn from it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few middling and small farmers.
+
+_Maurice Macnamara_, Shinnagh: rent, £48 a year; seventeen cows, eight
+pigs, two horses and one donkey; grass fields, oats, and potatoes; four
+children, of which one is over twenty years of age. Was able to pay his
+rent, but was forbidden to do so by the other tenants on the estate,
+and was in consequence seized by order of the landlord. His neighbours
+offered to help him to resist the execution. He begged to be left alone,
+and the moment of the sale having come, he personally bought all his
+cattle up to the sum due. Nett result of the operation: £11 to pay, over
+and above the six months’ rent. Personal opinion of Maurice Macnamara: it
+is better to pay £11 than to get a bullet through your head.
+
+_John McCarthy_, Gwingullier: £16 annual rent, due in May and November;
+two cows, one horse; oats and potatoes; nine children, the eldest
+seventeen. Has paid nothing to his landlord since 1883; owes actually £48
+to him, and as much to divers tradespeople or usurers. Does not know how
+he shall get out of it.
+
+_Patrick Murphy_, Colyherbeer, barony Trughanarkny; was evicted in
+November from his holding of £28; owed eighteen months’ rent. Received
+from his Landlord the offer of being reinstated in the farm on payment
+of half the sum due, on condition that he would let his crops be sold.
+Declined the offer, and is perfectly satisfied to receive from the League
+relief to the amount of £2 a-week. Never saw himself so well off before.
+
+_Margaret Callaghan_, a widow, close by the town of Kenmare: £8 16_s._
+4_d._ rent; one pig, six hens; three small children; four acres of
+potatoes, three acres waste. Has paid nothing for the last four years.
+Owes about £20 to various tradespeople. Is not harshly pressed by her
+landlord, and can practically be considered as owning her bit of ground.
+Will die of hunger, with her children, the first year the harvest is bad.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Molahiffe, on the road to Tralee.
+
+“This is Mr. Curtin’s house.”
+
+“And who may Mr. Curtin be?”
+
+“What! have you never heard of that affair?... He was killed last year by
+the Moonlighters.”
+
+“Killed?... Was he then a party man, a fierce Orangeman?”
+
+“Mr. Curtin?... Not a bit in the world. He was one of the most peaceable,
+the most Irish at heart, the most esteemed man in this part of the
+country. His misfortune was to own two rifles. The Moonlighters wanted
+those weapons. One night they came and demanded them. The ladies of the
+family were ready to give them up, when Mr. Curtin arrived and looked as
+if he were going to resist. At once a gun exploded in the passage, and he
+fell stone dead.... That was a warning to everybody. Since that time no
+one disobeys the moonlighters. But all the same it is unfortunate that
+the victim should have been Mr. Curtin.”
+
+These _Moonlighters_ are the direct descendants of the Whiteboys of
+olden times. They band together and gather at night for the purpose of
+invading a farm, a solitary house. They are always masked, but sometimes
+in a very elementary fashion, by pulling down their hat or cap over the
+face and making two holes through it for the eyes. Normally they ought to
+search only for arms and to take only arms. But everything degenerates,
+and the use of force often leads to the abuse of it. The Moonlighters
+not unfrequently demand a supper, a sum of money, not to speak of the
+company of some farm-wench to whom they may take a fancy. This impartial
+offering of violence to house and inmates might lead them far, were they
+not certain of the discretion of the victims. But the terror they inspire
+secures impunity to them.
+
+Though everybody in a district knows perfectly well who the intruders
+are, and though they have often been recognized in spite of the mask, no
+one dares to reveal their name. They are all too well aware that in case
+of denunciation a nocturnal bullet will come unerringly to the offender.
+Besides, a sort of poetical halo and a political mantle of immunity
+surrounds men who may sometimes, indeed, carry their zeal a little too
+far, but are after all soldiers in the good cause. The “legitimate”
+industry of the Moonlighters allows their excesses to be forgotten. A
+sort of general complicity covers and favours their expeditions.
+
+That complicity goes sometimes to great lengths—for instance the length
+of non-admitting the intervention of the police in a house where the
+Moonlighters are performing. The constables perambulating the country
+hear screams, desperate appeals for help in a farmhouse. They rush to it
+headlong and knock at the door. At once silence reigns. They are asked
+from the inside of the house what they want.
+
+“We heard screams. Do you not want protection?”
+
+“What business is that of yours?” is the answer. “Go on your way, and do
+not come interfering and preventing honest folks enjoying the possession
+of their house undisturbed!...”
+
+The unlucky constables can only beat a retreat and go their round, often
+to meet shortly with the Moonlighters, who will laugh at them, having
+comfortably finished their business.
+
+Before the judges the same thing occurs. Not a witness will give
+evidence. And if by chance a witness does speak, the jury take care to
+correct this grave breach of etiquette in their verdict.
+
+The witness, as well as the juryman, has often received a warning.
+Working alone in the fields, or following a lonely path, he has suddenly
+seen a little puff of white smoke going up from the bushes some feet in
+front of him, and he has heard a bullet whizzing over his head. It was a
+Moonlighter telling him:—
+
+“Be silent, or thou art a dead man.”
+
+Castleisland. A small town of little interest, after the pattern of most
+Irish boroughs. We stop for lunch at a tavern of rather good appearance,
+and clearly very popular with the natives. The innkeeper smokes a cigar
+with us. Is he satisfied with the state of affairs? Yes and no. Certainly
+he cannot complain—trade in liquor is rather brisk. But there are too
+many places where one can buy drink in the town—no less than fifty-one.
+
+“And do they all prosper?”
+
+“Nearly all.”
+
+“What may their average receipts be?”
+
+“I should say about £400 a year.”
+
+£400 multiplied by fifty-one gives £20,400, more than 510,000 francs. And
+there is not in this place any other industry than agriculture, while
+statistics I have this moment in my pocket inform me that the aggregate
+rental of Castleisland is not above £14,000. It is then evident that,
+times good, times bad, they drink every year here £6,000 worth more
+in beer and spirits than they would pay in rent to the landlords, if
+they chose to pay. This seems to be conclusive, as far as Castleisland
+is concerned. But is there really any reason why the tenants of this
+district should turn total abstainers for the special purpose of paying
+the claret and champagne bills of half-a-dozen absentees? Here is the
+whole problem in a nutshell.
+
+Tralee. The big town of the county, what we should call in France the
+_chef-lieu_, the seat of the assizes. They are opened precisely at this
+moment. There are on the rolls three men charged with agrarian murder. I
+proposed to go and be present at the trials, when I heard that the three
+cases were to be remanded to the next session, the representative of the
+Crown having come to the conclusion that the jury would systematically
+acquit the prisoners, as is so often the case in Ireland.
+
+The Chairman of the Assizes, Mr. Justice O’Brien, seized this occasion to
+declare, that in the course of an already long career he had never met
+with a jury having so little regard for their duty. “It must be known
+widely,” he added, “the law becomes powerless when the course of justice
+is systematically impeded by the very jurymen, as we see it in this
+country; in which case there is no longer any security for persons or
+property.”
+
+To which the people in Kerry answer that they do not care a bit for
+English law; what they want is good Irish laws, made in Dublin by an
+Irish Parliament.
+
+“It is quite true that we have no security here for persons or property,”
+a doctor of the town said to me in the evening. “The outrages were at
+first exclusively directed against the landlords, rightly or wrongly
+accused of injustice and harshness in their dealings with their tenants;
+but for the last two or three years the field of nocturnal aggression
+has enlarged greatly—a shot now serves to settle any personal quarrel
+and even trade accounts. In the beginning the jury at least made a
+distinction between the different motives that actuated the accused.
+Now they always acquit them, _because they no longer dare to find them
+guilty_.... What will you have?... Jurymen are but men. They prefer
+sending a ruffian at large to paying with their life a too subtle
+distinction between crimes of an agrarian character and those of another
+sort. A lump of lead is the most irresistible of arguments. One may
+assert that presently law has lost all influence in Kerry. It is rapine
+that reigns, hardly tempered by the decrees of the National League, which
+of course means only legitimate resistance to the landlords, and by the
+fund of righteousness possessed at heart by the nation. But let things go
+on thus only for two years more, we shall have gone back to the savage
+state.”
+
+“Some people tell me, however, that raiding for money is never seen in
+this part of Ireland.”
+
+“Raiding for money never seen! I would rather say it is the latest
+development of moonlighting. Any one who covets a piece of his
+neighbour’s land, who wishes to influence his vote for a board of
+guardians, who is animated by any motive of vulgar greed or spite, has
+only to set the Moonlighters in motion. The machinery is at hand.”
+
+“Could you really give me a few recent instances of moonlighting for
+money?”
+
+“Of course I could. There is one Daniel Moynihan, at Freemount, near
+Rathmore: in October, 1886, a party of six men with blackened faces
+entered his house at night, and breaking open a box, carried away all
+his money. In January, 1887, at Ballinillane, three men armed with guns
+entered Daniel Lyne’s house and asked for money, threatening to shoot him
+if he refused; they took away £6. At Faha, in March, 1887, a party of
+six armed men visited the house of Mr. E. Morrogh Bernard; they demanded
+money, and got what was in the house.”[2]
+
+“You don’t say the League has anything to do with such obvious cases of
+non-political moonlighting, do you? It is a well-known fact that the
+organization discountenances moonlighting as well as all other violent
+practices.”
+
+“It does in a manner, but at the same time, by forming in each district
+a kind of police of the League, an executive body ready for action, it
+singles out to malignant persons men who may be ready for a private job.”
+
+There is obviously considerable exaggeration, or, rather, distortion of
+facts, in the above statement, as in everything relating to the League
+on one side or the other. The truth is probably that ruffians, when they
+want a job in the house-breaking line, ask for nobody’s permission, but
+are only too glad to take moonlighting as a pretence; and thus, common
+breaches of the law which in ordinary times would go by their proper
+name, are now ascribed to Moonlighters. The bulk of the population, which
+is thoroughly honest, has only words of contempt and hatred for what,
+in justice, should rather be called a deviation than a development of
+moonlighting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Nine o’clock at night. In a hollow on the road to Milltown, a man tries
+to hide himself behind some shrubs; but perceiving that we do not belong
+to the neighbourhood he shows himself. He is a constable clad in
+uniform, the black helmet on his head, a loaded gun on his shoulder.
+
+“Why do you seek to avoid attention?”
+
+“Because we are watching that farm-house there on the height, my comrades
+and I; we have received information to the effect that some men propose
+to attack it one of these nights; now, we must try not to be seen by the
+people on the farm, for they would hasten to tell their assailants.”
+
+“What! these people would denounce you to those who come to rob them?”
+
+“Just so. We have to protect them against their will. Oh! it is indeed a
+nice trade to be a constable in Ireland!” &c. &c.
+
+Then follow professional complaints that throw a curious light on
+the relations between police and population. The unhappy constables
+are _boycotted_ personally and as a body. Nobody speaks to them. It
+is next to impossible for them to procure the first necessaries of
+life. Government has to distribute rations to them as to soldiers on a
+campaign. If they want a conveyance, a cart to transport a detachment
+of the public force where their presence is wanted, nobody—even among
+the principal interested—will give means of transport either for gold or
+silver. The Government have had to give the constabulary special traps
+that are constantly to be met on the roads, and that one recognizes by
+their blood-red colour.
+
+That police corps, _the Irish Constabulary Force_, is very numerous, and
+entails great expense—more than one million and a half sterling per year.
+The cost would hardly be half a million if the Irish police were on the
+same footing as the English force; that fact alone can give an adequate
+idea of the real state of things. Besides, numerous auxiliaries, called
+_Emergency men_, are always ready to give their help to the regular corps.
+
+Be they soldiers or policemen, Great Britain keeps nearly 50,000 armed
+men in Ireland. The male adult and able population of the island being
+under 500,000 men, of whom 200,000 at least are opposed to the agrarian
+and autonomist movement, one can assume that there is on an average one
+armed soldier or constable for every six unarmed Irishmen.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the dusty road before us are slowly walking five cows in rather an
+emaciated condition. Those beasts strike me by an odd appearance which
+I am unable to make out at first. When I am close to them I see what it
+is: _they have no tails_. The absence of that ornament gives the poor
+animals the awkwardest and most absurd look.
+
+I turn to my guide, who is laughing in his sleeve.
+
+“Look at their master!” he whispers in a low voice.
+
+“Well?”
+
+“The cows have no tails, and the man has no ears....”
+
+It is true. The unlucky wretch vainly endeavoured to hide his head, as
+round as a cheese, under the brim of his battered old hat; he did not
+succeed in hiding his deformity.
+
+“By Jove! who arranged you in this guise, you and your cows?” I said to
+the poor devil, stopping before him.
+
+He made a few grimaces before explaining; but the offer of a cigar, that
+rarely misses its effect, at last unloosed his tongue. He then told me
+that the Moonlighters had come with a razor to cut his ears, a week after
+having cut the tails of his cows as a warning.
+
+“And what could have been the motive of such cowardly, barbarous
+mutilation?”
+
+He had accepted work on a _boycotted_ farm, though the League had
+expressly forbidden it; in other words, he was what the Irish call a
+“land-grabber.”
+
+“Where are you going with your cows?”
+
+“To sell them at Listowel, if I may, which is not certain.”
+
+“Why is it not certain? Because they are unprovided with a tail? At the
+worst that would only prevent them being made into ox-tail soup,” I say,
+trying to enliven the conversation by an appropriate joke.
+
+“That’s not it,” answers the man. “But the interdict applies to the sale
+of the cows as well as to having any intercourse with me. I am forbidden
+to buy anything, and anyone speaking to me is fined two shillings.”
+
+He seemed to think this perfectly natural and even just, like the Leper
+of the “Cité d’Aoste,” or like common convicts when one talks to them of
+their punishment.
+
+“I gambled and I lost—so much the worse for me!...” all his resigned
+attitude seemed to say.
+
+“Perhaps they don’t know it yet in Listowel!” he resumed with a sigh, and
+hopefully pushed on with his cows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Have there been many cases of such agrarian mutilation in the country?”
+I ask MacMahon.
+
+“No,” said my guide. “Perhaps half a dozen or so within the year.[3]
+They used to be much more numerous, but somehow they seem to go out of
+fashion under the sway of the League. But there are still other ways
+of annoying the enemy; fires are very frequent, so are blows, personal
+injuries, and even murder, threatening letters, and, above all, verbal
+intimidation.”
+
+Such proceedings, I understand, are altogether disowned by the chiefs
+of the League, who only patronise _boycotting_. Let a farmer, small or
+great, decline to enter the organisation, or check it by paying his rent
+to the landlord without the reduction agreed to by the tenantry, or take
+the succession of an evicted tenant on his holding, or commit any other
+serious offence against the law of land war, he is at once boycotted.
+That is to say, he will no longer be able to sell his goods, to buy the
+necessaries of life, to have his horses shod, his corn milled, or even
+to exchange one word with a living soul, within a circuit of fifteen to
+twenty miles round his house. His servants are tampered with and induced
+to leave him, his tradespeople are made to shut their door in his face,
+his neighbours compelled to cut him. It is a kind of excommunication,
+social, political and commercial; an interdict sometimes aggravated with
+direct vexations. People come and play football on his oat fields, his
+potatoes are rooted out, his fish or cattle poisoned, his game destroyed.
+
+“But supposing that instead of bearing meekly such indignities, he shows
+a bold front, shoulders his gun and keeps watch?”
+
+“Then his business is settled. Some day or other, he will receive a
+bullet in his arm, if not in his head.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It will not perhaps be unnecessary to explain here the origin of that
+word _boycott_, so frequently used during the late few years. Everybody
+knows that on the British side of the Channel, but the French reader is
+not bound to remember it so exactly.
+
+In September, 1881, at a mass meeting held in Clare County, Mr. Parnell
+almost without being aware of the importance of his words, advised his
+friends, to exclude from the pale of social life whoever should eject
+a tenant for reason of an unpaid rent, or take the succession of the
+evicted farmer.
+
+The first application of that new penalty fell upon a certain Captain
+Boycott, a retired officer, who had applied himself to agriculture.
+Having had occasion to evict an obdurate defaulter, he saw himself within
+a few days forsaken by his servants, tabooed by his neighbours, reduced
+to dig out his own potatoes, and generally to become his own valet.
+
+The affair produced great sensation. The whole press talked about it.
+Legions of reporters flocked to the spot to follow the phases of the
+war waged between Captain Boycott and his opponents. Upon a memorable
+occasion a regular army of Orangemen, 7000 strong, they say, came over
+from Ulster to give a lift to him and help him to get in the harvest
+which threatened to rot standing. But the place became too hot for
+Captain Boycott. He was obliged to give way at last and leave his place
+in Connaught. (By the way, he ultimately returned there, and is now quite
+popular.)
+
+In the meanwhile his name, used as a proverb, or rather as a _verb_,
+has come to describe a way of intimidation, which at the hands of the
+League is a redoubtable weapon, more powerful than a hundred batteries of
+100-ton guns.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Could you show me anybody who is actually under boycott?”
+
+“Could I? That will not be difficult. There! Mr. Kennedy, beyond that
+clump of trees. He has been boycotted eighteen months.”
+
+“Do you think I might call on him?”
+
+“Certainly. But I shall ask leave to wait for you outside the gate, sir,
+on account of the League of course.——You may laugh at its verdict, not I.”
+
+Ten minutes later, I was at Mr. Kennedy’s gate. A little country house
+rather decayed, in the middle of grounds which no gardener has seen for
+at least two years. Nobody in sight. I try the bell-rope. It remains in
+my hand. I am then reduced to an energetic tattoo on the plate which
+shuts the lower part of the gate.
+
+Attracted by the unusual noise, a tall white-haired man makes his
+appearance at an upper window. Surprised at first, and even somewhat
+alarmed, he listens to my request, is reassured, and even comes to unbar
+the door. As I had hoped, he is not sorry to unloose his tongue a little,
+and with the best grace possible tells me the whole affair.
+
+“Yes, I am boycotted for having, single among all his tenants, paid to
+my landlord the entire rent of those meadows you see yonder. How do I
+take my situation? Well, as a philosopher. At the beginning, I thought
+it inconvenient to be deprived of new bread, to do without meat, and
+worse still, to be left without servants. But I have learnt by degrees
+to accommodate myself to my new condition. I have made provisions for
+a siege. I have found a few servants, strangers to the district, and
+made my arrangements to send my butter to Cork by rail. On the whole,
+there is not much to complain of. I should, of course, prefer things
+to follow their usual course. It is tedious at times to find oneself
+out of the pale of humanity. But you end by discovering that solitude
+has its advantages. You develop accomplishments up to that time latent
+in you. For instance, I shoe my horses myself; I have learnt to set a
+window pane, to sweep a chimney. My daughters have improved in cooking.
+We eat a great many chickens; now and then we kill a sheep; when we want
+butcher-meat, we must send rather far for it. The same for beer, wine,
+and many other commodities. It _is_ inconvenient—no more.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Listowel; a market day. Great animation on the market-place; tongues
+are busy; whisky seems to be flowing freely at every tap-room and
+tavern. But not much business is done, as far as I can judge. My guide
+calls my attention to two interesting phenomena that I should not,
+perhaps, have noticed otherwise.
+
+The first is a man in breeches, with bare calves, a _shillelagh_ under
+his arm, who seems to be a farmer in a small way. He approaches a
+wheel-barrow filled with big hob-nailed shoes, which a woman is dragging,
+and falls to examining them, evidently intent on buying a pair. Almost
+at the same moment, a boy of fifteen or sixteen comes to the other side
+of the woman and whispers something in her ear. She nods. At once the
+customer, turning very red in the face, lets go the pair of shoes and
+turns away. MacMahon says the man is a newly boycotted man and the boy an
+agent of the League, whose function consists in reporting the interdict
+to those who have not heard of it as yet.
+
+The other phenomenon is more remarkable. It is a stout gentleman in a
+shooting-jacket, carrying a double-barrelled gun of the latest model, and
+followed by a constable who also carries his regulation gun. The stout
+gentleman stops before a door where a smart _outside car_ with a servant
+in livery is waiting for him. He takes his seat; the constable jumps
+on after him. Is the stout gentleman under a writ of _habeas corpus_,
+I wonder, and is he going to be taken into the county jail? Not a bit
+of it. He is simply a landowner under threat of death, who has thought
+fit to indulge in a body-guard. He and the constable are henceforth
+inseparable.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A large tract of uncultivated land. It was farmed at £60 a year. The
+farmer was a sporting man, fond of races and the like. To simplify his
+work he had the whole property converted into pasture. But his expensive
+mode of living obliged him now and then to sell a few head of cattle. The
+hour came when he had not one calf left, and he found himself utterly
+incapable of paying his rent. He was evicted. Sure not to find another
+tenant, on account of the law laid down by the League that every evicted
+farm should be left unoccupied, the landlord had recourse to the only
+sort of _métayage_ known in Ireland. (_Métayage_, it should be explained,
+is the kind of farming used in most French provinces, where the owner of
+the land enters into yearly partnership with his tenant, and advances the
+necessary capital in the shape of manure, seed, beasts of burden, and
+machinery, on the understanding that the crops be shared equally between
+himself and the tenant.) To return to my Kerry landlord: he set up on
+his meadows a caretaker, with a salary of twenty-five shillings a week
+and forty cows to keep. At the end of the first month the tails of ten
+cows had been chopped off, while two of them had died from suspicious
+inflammation of the bowels. It became necessary to put the cows, and
+the caretaker as well, under the protection of a detachment of police.
+Cost: two pounds a week for each constable. Nett loss at the end of the
+half-year: £60. The landlord wisely judged that it would be much better
+to send his cows to the slaughter-house, to pay off caretaker and police,
+and to forget that he ever was a landowner.
+
+In the same district, another farm gone waste. The tenant did not pay.
+He was evicted, but had another holding close by, where he encamped, and
+from that vantage-ground sent the following ultimatum to his _ci-devant_
+landlord:—“The hay I have left on my late farm is worth £30. I demand
+fifteen for allowing you to mow and sell it; you shall not see a shilling
+of it on any other terms.” Fury of the landlord. Then he cools down,
+thinks better of it, offers ten pounds. The evicted tenant declines the
+offer; a whole army would not have brought him round. Meanwhile, the hay
+got rotten.
+
+By the road-side near Castlemaine, is a row of barracks, where men,
+women, and children are huddled together. Those are _League-huts_,
+that is to say, a temporary shelter which the League offers to ejected
+tenants, for having, upon its command, declined to pay their rent. The
+cabins from which the poor wretches have been turned out, although they
+had, as a rule, built them themselves, are within shooting distance, on
+the right hand. They bear evident traces of having been fired by the
+sheriff’s officers in order to make them uninhabitable, and they present
+the desolate aspect of homesteads adjoining a field of battle. Walls
+broken by the crowbar, doors ajar, rubbish and ruins everywhere. Is it
+politic on the part of the landlords to add the horrors of fire to those
+of eviction? Hardly so, the outsider will think. It adds nothing to
+the majesty of the law to wage war with inanimate things. The exercise
+of a right ought never to assume the appearance of an act of revenge.
+Wrongly or rightly, eviction by itself always bears an odious character;
+but to see the house you have built with your own hands burnt to the
+ground will ever seem to cry for vengeance to Heaven. And, after all,
+who is the gainer by such violence? The League. It takes care to retain
+the victims of eviction within sight of the scene of their woes, feeds
+them, harbours them, exhibits them as in an open museum, by the side of
+their destroyed homes. And it is a permanent, practical lesson for the
+passer-by, a realistic drama where the landlord appears torch in hand,
+while the League dries the tears of the afflicted and allows them £2 a
+week. That is the usual pay for one family.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A KERRY FARMER’S BUDGET.
+
+
+“I wonder how landlords can manage to live, under such conditions,” I
+said to my guide. “Are there any tenants left paying their rent?”
+
+“There are many. First, those who have been able to come to an agreement
+with their landlord about the reduction of 20, 25, 30 per cent. that they
+claimed; in such cases the landlord’s income is reduced, but at least
+he still retains a part of it. Then, there is the tenant’s live stock;
+he cannot prevent its being seized for rent, in case of execution, and
+consequently chooses to pay, if possible, or he would have to sell his
+cattle to avoid distress, which means ruin to the family. Lastly, there
+are the tenants who pay secretly, although pretending to adhere to the
+rules of the League—_backsliders_ they are called—a class more numerous
+than could be supposed at first sight.”
+
+Here MacMahon laughed. He went on:
+
+“I will tell you, Sir, a story I have heard lately, of a man in county
+Cork, who wanted to pay his landlord but dared not, on account of the
+other tenants on the estate. Coming across the landlord on a lone road
+(not improbably after many an unfruitful attempt for such a propitious
+opportunity) he stood before him in a threatening attitude. ‘Put your
+hand in my coat’s inside pocket!’ he said gruffly. The landlord did not
+understand at first what the man meant, and considering his look and
+address, was far from feeling reassured. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked
+uneasily. ‘I tell you, sir, put your hand in my coat’s inside pocket, and
+feel for what you find in it.’ At last the landlord did as he was bidden.
+He put his hand in the man’s pocket, and extracted from it a bundle of
+papers, carefully tied up, that looked like banknotes. At once the tenant
+took to his heels. ‘The devil a penny of rent you can ever say I paid
+you,’ said he, in the same strange threatening tone of voice, as he ran
+away. Still, the banknotes in the landlord’s hand were exactly to the
+amount of the rent due. As a rule, when the tenant is really able to pay
+his rent, he pays it.”
+
+Such has not been the general case, it seems, for the last three years.
+_In produce_, perhaps the Irish farmer might have paid his rent, as the
+crops have been, on the whole, fairly up to the average. In _money_, he
+cannot, because the fall of prices on hay, potatoes, beef, mutton, pork,
+and butter alike, in 1885, 1886, 1887, has been at least 20 per cent. on
+the former and average prices, which not only means no margin whatever of
+profit to the farmer, besides his necessary expenses, but in most cases
+the sheer impossibility of providing for the forthcoming outlay in seeds,
+manure, and labour.
+
+This may not be self-evident. Many a reader probably fails to see why
+a fall of 20 per cent. on the prices of agricultural produce must
+necessarily entail a total disability to pay the rent. “I can well
+understand the demand of a proportional reduction of rent in such cases,”
+he will say, “but not absolute non-payment.” To fully realise the
+situation, one must go into the details of a farmer’s life.
+
+Let us take the case of Denis O’Leary, a Kerry man, with fourteen acres
+of good land. He seems to be in easy circumstances; his house is clean
+and pretty; he owns three cows, two sows, ten sheep, and about a score
+hens. Denis O’Leary is a good man, industrious and thrifty, who does all
+the work on his farm, with the help of wife and three children. He likes
+his pipe of tobacco, and on Sundays, a glass of beer over the counter
+with a friend or two, but otherwise indulges in no expensive habits. On
+the whole he can be considered a pattern tenant, as well as one of the
+most fortunate of his class. His rent, which had been gradually raised by
+his landlord up to the sum of £11 6_s._, was in 1883 put down at £8 7_s._
+by the Land Commissioners.
+
+Such being the case, when we are told that the same Denis O’Leary, who
+was for five years able to pay the larger rent, is now unable to pay
+the smaller one, this may look absurd. Still, it is the simple truth.
+To ascertain the fact, it is only necessary to make the budget of the
+O’Leary family.
+
+The yearly expenditure, unavoidable and irreducible, is as follows:—
+
+EXPENDITURE.
+
+                                       £ _s._
+    Taxes, rates, and county cess      1  15
+    Turf (Royalty on)                  1  10
+    Clothing and shoes                 6  10
+    Meat                               2  15
+    Bread                              6  18
+    Beer and tobacco                   2   5
+    Oil, candles, sundries             2  15
+    Sugar and tea                      6   5
+    School fees                        0   7
+    Church subscription                0  10
+                                      ------
+          Total                       31  10
+
+Most assuredly there is nothing excessive in such a budget of expenditure
+for a family of four. If even it is possible for Denis O’Leary not to
+go beyond its narrow limits, it is because he consumes in kind a large
+proportion of the produce of his fourteen acres, namely, some hundred
+stones of potatoes, with a good deal of milk, eggs, and butter. This
+alimentary deduction duly made, he has still a certain quantity of
+agricultural produce (which shall be supposed here a constant quantity)
+to sell, as follows:—
+
+          1800 lbs. Potatoes.
+          2200  ”   Wheat.
+          1750  ”   Oats.
+            38  ”   Wool.
+           116  ”   Butter.
+          1000  ”   Straw.
+            25 dozen Eggs.
+             3 Pigs.
+             2 Calves.
+             3 Lambs.
+
+The above commodities have not, unfortunately, a constant value. They
+sell more or less, according to the fluctuations of prices on the market.
+In 1882, 1883, 1884, prices were high. Denis O’Leary’s revenue was
+consequently as under:—
+
+REVENUE (THREE YEARS AGO).
+
+                                       £ _s._
+    Sold: 1800 lbs. Potatoes           3   8
+          2200  ”   Wheat              9   0
+          1750  ”   Oats               6   4
+            38  ”   Wool               1  15
+           116  ”   Butter             5   7
+          1000  ”   Straw;             1   5
+            25 dozen Eggs              1   2
+             3 Pigs                    5  10
+             2 Calves                  6  15
+             3 Lambs                   3   5
+                                      ------
+          Total                       43  11
+
+When Denis O’Leary had deducted from his revenue of £43 11_s._ the yearly
+expenditure of £31 10_s._, he had still £12 1_s._ left. He was able,
+accordingly, to pay £8 _7s._ rent (or even £11 6_s._ before the judicial
+reduction), and the rent duly paid, he was still the proud nett gainer of
+four shillings under the old _régime_, of £3 14_s._ under the new.
+
+Unhappily, prices fell down in 1885, 1886, and 1887, to the tune of 25
+or 30 per cent. on nearly all agricultural produce, with the exception
+perhaps of oats and eggs, so that the revenue of the O’Leary family (all
+things otherwise equal) has come to be as under:—
+
+REVENUE (AT PRESENT).
+
+                                       £ _s._
+    Sold: 1800 lbs. Potatoes           2   8
+          2200  ”   Wheat              7   0
+          1750  ”   Oats               6   2
+            38  ”   Wool               1   5
+           116  ”   Butter             3  12
+          1000  ”   Straw              0  15
+            25 dozen Eggs              1   5
+             3 Pigs                    3   4
+             2 Calves                  4   8
+             3 Lambs                   2  10
+                                      ------
+          Total                       32   9
+
+Thus, the revenue and expenditure are nearly equal, with a slight balance
+of nineteen shillings, that could hardly be proffered for rent. Local
+usurers are not wanting, of course, who will advance to Denis O’Leary the
+necessary funds, at 10 or 15 per cent., if he wants to pay the landlord,
+all the same. But then his budget is no more in a state of equilibrium:
+deficit enters it, to widen every year up to the final catastrophe. In
+other words, Denis O’Leary cannot pay the rent, unless he draws on his
+capital. One may well understand that he should not relish the idea,
+considering especially that the landlord’s rack-rent has been reduced
+three years ago in the Land Court, and that the same landlord demurs to
+a fresh reduction, so obviously just and necessary that all landlords in
+England have granted it of their own free will these last three years.
+
+And Denis O’Leary is a wonder in his class: he is an industrious,
+hard-working, wise man, without a penny of previous debt. He has
+precisely the area of land adequate to his means, and the live-stock
+indispensable to manure the soil. He does not drink, he does not gamble,
+he is never ill, he has no old people to support, he has not experienced
+failures or mishaps of any kind, and his crops are fairly up to the
+average.
+
+Let us come back, however, to the world as it is, and see Man with his
+foibles, his usual neglects, errors, and mishaps. Let us suppose that
+he has more land on his hands than he can well manage to till, or that
+his holding, on the contrary, is too small for his wants. Let us suppose
+that instead of selling three pigs and two calves, he was not able to
+rear them, or lost them from disease; that instead of bringing to market
+1,800 lbs. of potatoes he had to buy some hundred-weight of the same for
+domestic consumption—the man is lost, irretrievably lost. Not only will
+he never be able to pay the landlord one farthing, but it will be enough
+that the crops should be slightly under the average to make a hopeless
+beggar of him—a case of outdoor or indoor relief for the parish.
+
+Now, these are the circumstances of six or seven tenants out of ten in
+the lowlands of Kerry, where they seem to be comparatively well off. If
+we leave the plains for the higher districts bordering on the sea, the
+question is simpler still. There is no need of long accounts here. The
+hour of irretrievable misery has struck long ago, and habitual hunger
+stares us in the face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                      UP IN THE MOUNTAINS.
+
+The mountains of Kerry are the finest in the island. They form its
+south-western angle, throwing out on the Atlantic the peninsula of
+Dingle, between the bay of the same name and the Kenmare River. As you
+leave the plain following the Cahirciveen road towards the coast, you see
+them develop their parallel ranges, which are divided by deep valleys.
+Some of these valleys are fertile, being watered by impetuous streams
+from the mountain side. But the general impression one receives is
+that of agricultural poverty, as is the case in nearly all mountainous
+countries in the world. Pastures are thinner, cattle less numerous,
+homesteads fewer and more miserable than in the plain. Human creatures
+themselves partake of the general look of wretchedness that prevails.
+They live on potatoes, milk, and porridge; seldom eat bread, meat never;
+wine, beer, tea, coffee are to them unknown luxuries. Their ill-shaped
+cottages are made of soft stone, with a thatched roof maintained by ropes
+made of straw. There they all sleep on a bed of rushes, which they share
+with the pig, when there is such a thing, for even the traditional pig
+has become now a symptom of wealth in a manner. On the beams of the roof
+roost perhaps half-a-dozen hens and chickens.
+
+Sloth and dirt hold here an undivided sway. Not a woman—and some are
+pretty—seems to mind the spots and holes in her garments; not one knows
+the use of soap or needle. They appear to have a rooted dislike for
+the comb; their hair falls on their back as is the fashion among the
+Australian aborigines, in nature’s simple disorder.
+
+Men look heavy and apathetic. They work as little as they can manage—one
+or two days out of seven, perhaps—and do not even think of seeking their
+sustenance from the sea, which is so close to them. The most they can do
+is to draw from it now and then a cart-load of seaweed to manure their
+miserable plot of ground. Their existence rolls on dull, idle, devoid of
+interest. It is the brute life in its most wretched and hideous state.
+Here is old Ireland as Gustave de Beaumont’s admirable book showed it
+to us fifty years ago. Hardly do those wretched products of Anglo-Saxon
+civilization receive a faint echo of the outer world when the electoral
+time comes.
+
+The consequence is that the agrarian crisis is reduced here to its
+simplest expression, _i.e._, sheer impossibility to pay the rent
+because of total absence of the £ _s._ _d._ wherewith. Elsewhere that
+impossibility may be half assumed; it is certainly mixed in the plain
+with bad will, goaded in the peasant’s heart by that dogged desire to
+possess the land which is so natural in him. In the mountain it is not a
+political fiction that holds the sway: famine is the king; and it is the
+spontaneous product of the very nature of things.
+
+For the naturally infertile soil has reached here to such a degree of
+subdivision that it is no longer sufficient even to feed those it bears.
+The greater part of those wretched holdings of five or six acres are
+let at the nominal price of about £4, to which must be added the taxes,
+poor-rates, and county-cess, increasing it by a quarter or a third. Four,
+five, six, sometimes ten or twelve beings with human faces squat on that
+bit of worthless ground and till it in the most primitive manner. Money,
+tools, intelligence, pluck, all are wanting there. Viewing things in the
+most optimist light, supposing the year to have been an exceptionally
+good one, the potato crop to have been plentiful, the cow to have hunted
+out on the hill-side the necessary grass for the making of a little
+butter, all that will be sufficient perhaps to prevent starvation. But
+where will the money be found to pay Queen and landlord?
+
+Let a child or an old person eat ever so little in the year, his food
+cannot but represent a value. Let that value be £4. Can six acres of
+mountain ground managed without skill or manure, render five, six, ten
+times £4 a year, and a rent in addition of five to six pounds? It is
+sheer impossibility.
+
+A few examples.
+
+James Garey, fifty years old, married, four children. Nominal rent £5
+14_s._ Two cows, one pig, eight chickens. About six acres of land.
+Cultivates only part of it, about three acres, where he grows potatoes;
+the remainder is pasture. Sold this year thirty shillings’ worth of
+butter; ate his potatoes from first to last; has not paid a farthing to
+his landlord for the last four years. Owes £6 to the draper-grocer; would
+never be able to pay his taxes if two of his children, who are out in
+domestic situations, did not send him the necessary amount to prevent
+execution.
+
+Widow Bridget Molony, sixty years old; five children; seven acres of
+land. Nominal rent £6 12_s._ Four cows, an eighteen-month-old calf, two
+pigs, twenty chickens. Sold £3 10_s._ of butter this year, £2 oats,
+15 shillings potatoes, and a pig for £3; just sent a calf to market,
+offering it for £1 15_s._; did not find purchaser. Thinks herself
+relatively lucky, as she is owing only two years’ rent to her landlord.
+Two of her children have situations at Liverpool, and help her to pay the
+taxes.
+
+Thomas Halloran, forty years. Three children, eight acres of land; rent
+£6 15_s._ Two cows, fifteen sheep, a pig, an ass, twelve chickens. Sold
+during the year ten shillingsworth of butter and ten sheep at twelve
+shillings a head. Has paid nothing to landlord since November, 1884.
+
+Michael Tuohy, seventy years old, three children, four grandchildren.
+Nine acres of land, £7 rent. A cow and five hens. Can no longer afford
+a pig. Sold only fifteen shillingsworth of butter this year, and had to
+get rid of two cows out of three to pay the ten per cent interest of a
+debt he has contracted with the National Bank. Owes four years’ rent to
+his landlord; hopes that his son, who has emigrated to the United States,
+will send him the money for the taxes; if the son doesn’t, he cannot see
+any way to save the last cow.
+
+Examples of that description could be multiplied _ad infinitum_; they
+are, so to say, the rule in the mountainous districts, where the holdings
+are for the most part beneath £10 rent, and totally unequal even to
+sustain the farmer.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Glenbeigh, between Kilarglin and Cahirciveen. This place was the
+theatre of several deplorable scenes in January last, on Mr. R. Winn’s
+property. That property, very extensive, but consisting of poor, not to
+say totally barren land, was put down at £2000 on the valuation roll.
+The aforesaid rent not having been paid during four or five years, the
+owner was of course in very strait circumstances; he had to go to some
+Jews, who substituted themselves in his place, and undertook to enforce
+payment. But the extreme poverty of the tenants proved even stronger than
+the energetic tribe. In consequence of the gradual subdivision of the
+land, they had come to hold diminutive scraps of it such as could not
+even grow the potatoes sufficient for their sustenance. After various
+judicial skirmishes, the plain result of which was to establish the utter
+incapacity of the peasants to give a penny, the council of creditors
+resolved in the depth of winter to undertake a wholesale campaign of
+evictions. Seventy-nine writs of ejectment were issued, and soon after
+the under-sheriff, backed by a strong detachment of mounted constables,
+arrived to evict the wretched families.
+
+The operations began at a certain Patrick Reardon’s, on a literally
+barren land, for which he was expected to pay £4 10_s._ a year. He was
+the father of eight children, but did not even possess a pig, not a pair
+of chickens. The furniture consisted of a bed, a rickety table and a
+kettle. Squatting on the ground with his whole family, according to the
+time-honoured custom, he waited for the executors of the law. Requested
+to pay, he answered that he possessed not one farthing; he was then
+informed that they were going to set fire to his cabin, in order to
+oblige him to evacuate the premises. The act soon followed the threat.
+A lighted match applied to the thatched roof, and in a few minutes the
+whole was in conflagration. All the neighbouring populations, who had run
+on to the scene of the tragedy, saluted the dreadful deed with hooting
+and execration.
+
+The myrmidons of the law pursued nevertheless the execution of their
+mandate. They went next to the dwelling of another tenant, Thomas
+Burke, inscribed on the list of debtors for a sum of £20. He had five
+children, and, like the above-mentioned, not one farthing to offer to the
+creditors. Order was given to set fire to his roof, but it was found to
+be so damp that fire would not take; so they had to attack the walls with
+the crowbar and pick-axe. The miserable inmates appeared then to the eyes
+of the indignant crowd, half naked, wan, emaciated, and starved; and so
+heartrending was the scene that with difficulty the representative of the
+League (who had come there for that very purpose) prevented the mob from
+stoning the bailiffs to death.
+
+Then came the turn of the third cottage. Two old men lived in it, Patrick
+and Thomas Diggin. The family of the former included ten persons; that of
+the latter, six. They owed a rent of £8, and had not a shilling between
+them all. Patrick’s wife, however, came forward, and declared she had
+just received £2 from her daughter, who was a servant in Belfast. Would
+they accept that, and stop the execution? The under-sheriff, whom the
+duties of his office oblige to back the bailiffs, urged them to accept
+the touching offer. They refused, and set fire to the roof. Then Patrick
+Diggin, an eighty-year-old man, was seen coming out of his home sobbing;
+he was followed by all his children and grandchildren. By an irresistible
+impulse of sympathy all crowd round him, offering what little they
+possess to the relief of that misery. The constables themselves, moved
+almost to tears, contribute their silver coin to the subscription which
+has been spontaneously organized. To carry the barbarous work further
+becomes an impossibility. The sheriff’s substitute gives the signal for
+departure, and the cavalcade follows amidst the derisive cries of the
+multitude.
+
+All those poor people, except one family, have since been re-installed on
+their holdings, and are now at work on their farms—a strange evidence of
+the uselessness and cruelty of eviction, to make tenants pay who cannot.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                          VALENTIA ISLAND.
+
+At Cahirciveen, I crossed the strait which divides the main land from the
+island of Valentia. This is the extreme point of the old continent, where
+the Transatlantic cables are placed. Good, honest, plucky fellows! what
+repose after the misery of Kerry! I am speaking of the fishermen of the
+island, a peculiar race who never ploughed any fields but those of the
+ocean. Every night they risk their lives on the giant billows, and earn
+their bread valiantly. They know nothing of sheep rot, potato disease, or
+landlordism; all they know is the management of their boats, the making
+and mending of their nets, and the art of making the deep yield food for
+their young. Strangers to the neighbouring world, they ignore even its
+language, and only talk the rude idiom of their ancestors, the Irish of
+the time of the O’Donoghue.
+
+Noble fellows! I shall not soon forget the night I spent there watching
+them as they were fishing between the Skellings, two enormous rocks that
+rise like Gothic cathedrals, about twelve miles from Bray Head, and on
+which the waves are eternally breaking with a thundering noise. My guide
+had warned me against offering them money; it would offend them, he said,
+so I did not do it. I simply drank with them a glass of whisky when they
+prepared to go home towards daybreak, the stars still shining. And,
+comparing their happy courage with the distress of Kerry, I wished them
+from the bottom of my heart never to become acquainted with agriculture
+on small holdings, under an English landlord.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+RURAL PHYSIOLOGY.
+
+
+We have glanced at a few facts presenting symptoms of the Irish disease,
+which were taken as chance guided us, in a ride through a south-western
+county. Similar symptoms are everywhere to be found through the island.
+To appreciate them at their right value, as even to comprehend them, it
+is essentially requisite to know, at least in its broader outlines, the
+physiology of landed property in this entirely agricultural country.
+
+Vast landed property and parcelled-out culture. This is the epitome of
+such a physiology. At the base of the social edifice we find the tenant,
+generally a Catholic and of indigenous race, occupying and cultivating
+after his own fashion the thousandth or ten thousandth part of a property
+ranging over an area of some hundred thousand acres. At the summit we
+find the landlord, almost invariably of English and Protestant race,
+ruling by right of primogeniture over this immense space.
+
+Does this right rest at its origin on confiscation and spoliation, as is
+averred by the Irish? That is of little importance from a legal point of
+view, for prescription has covered the spoliation by an occupation of two
+to eight centuries. It is of far greater importance from a moral point of
+view, because that grievance, ill or well founded, serves as a handle for
+all agrarian recriminations.
+
+In three out of five cases (so it has been shown by recent statistics)
+the landlord is an _absentee_, that is to say, he does not reside on
+his property, nor even in the kingdom, and spends abroad the money he
+raises on his lands. His income, from that source alone, is sometimes
+enormous—£10,000 a year—(Lord Greville, Westmeath; Lord Carisford,
+Wicklow; Mr. Wandesford, Kilkenny; Mr. King, Longford; Lord Inchiquin,
+Clare); £16,000 a year—(Lord Claremont, Louth; Mr. Naper, Meath; Lord
+Leconfield, Clare; Lord Ventry, Kerry); £26,000 and £32,000 a year—(Duke
+of Abercorn, Tyrone; Marquis of Clanricarde, Galway; Lord Kenmare,
+Kerry); £40,000, £80,000, and even £120,000 a year—(Mr. MacDonnell,
+Kildare; Marquis of Coningham, Cavan, Clare, and Donegal; Marquis of
+Londonderry, Down; Marquis of Downshire, &c.). Rent rolls of £4,000,
+£3,000, and £2,000 a year too plentiful to be mentioned.
+
+Three-fifths at least of those sums are lost every year for Ireland,
+and they go out of the island without having in any way helped to
+increase her capital in agricultural machinery, live stock, and general
+improvements of the land. As a natural consequence, the soil is
+ill-cultivated, ill-manured, insufficiently covered with cattle. For
+centuries its energies have suffered a constant draining, and nothing has
+been done to repair its losses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That soil has a tendency to subdivision in the hands of the tenants, who
+cultivate it by truly pre-historic methods. The figures are given in
+round numbers as follows:—
+
+Against 24,000 holdings of a value of above £500 a year there are in
+Ireland 85,000 holdings producing from £25 to £500 a year; 49,000 from
+£12 to £29 a year; 77,000 from £8 to £12 a year; 196,000 from £4 to £8 a
+year; lastly, 218,000 holdings of a revenue of _under £4 a year_.
+
+That is to say, out of six or seven hundred thousand families, living
+exclusively upon the product of the soil, more than two-thirds must get
+their sustenance from a wretched bit of ground, estimated by the owner
+himself at a value of £4 to £8 a year!
+
+To state such an economical paradox is to denounce it. Where there is
+nothing, the landlord, like the king, loses his rights. The situation,
+then, would already be strangely anomalous, even if the respective titles
+of landlord and tenant were of the clearest and most transparent kind.
+But it is complicated in Ireland by the most curious conceptions and
+customs in matters of landed property.
+
+To understand those conceptions and customs, a Frenchman must begin by
+putting aside all his Latin ideas. With us, since the Convention, one can
+always know by the Survey-Rolls to whom belongs absolutely such or such a
+piece of land. He who owns it is free to sell it, to give it, to let it
+as he pleases. His right is absolute; it is the right of “use and abuse,”
+according to the forcible expression of the Roman code. It passes with
+this absolute character to sons, grandsons, or legatees.
+
+In Ireland it is feudal law that obtains still; an estate is not a
+property, it is a fief. The lord of that estate is not the proprietor
+of it, he is an usufructuary, as it were, a life-tenant on it. He has
+only a limited right to his own land. He cannot sell it without the
+written consent of his substitute in the entail, and the authorization
+of the persons, often countless in numbers, that have some hereditary
+right on his property at the same time with him; most of the estates
+are encumbered with perpetual rents, served out either to the younger
+branches of the family, to old servants, or to creditors. All the
+titulary is free to alienate is his life interest, through some insurance
+combination with transfer of income.
+
+If we add that the said titulary is generally absent from his property,
+that he does not manage it personally, and that in many cases he does
+not even exactly know where it is to be found, we must own that it is no
+wonder he is considered as a stranger.
+
+A stranger he is besides, in race, by habits, by religion, by language.
+And yet this stranger,—precisely because his fief, practically
+inalienable, as it is immovable in its limits, has always been
+transmitted from father to eldest son in the family,—this stranger,
+of whom often nothing is known beyond his name, has a story, true or
+legendary, attached to him and to his title. It matters little that the
+revenue of the estate was scattered over five hundred heads, in the
+course of ten generations; the estate remains, and weighs on him with
+all its weight. We do not speak here of a mere geographical expression,
+of an area a hundred times parcelled out, altered, disfigured, in less
+than a century, but of land that for a thousand years, maybe, has changed
+neither form nor aspect.
+
+At night, by the fireside, old people will recall how in former days this
+land was the collective property of the clan; how they were defrauded by
+a political chief that treacherously gave it up to the English, in order
+to receive investiture from their hands; how, following the fortunes
+of twenty successive rebellions and repressions, it was confiscated,
+sequestered, given anew, till it came to the actual landlords. A special
+literature, ballads, popular imagery, little books, and penny papers
+constantly harp on that ancient spoliation. It is the only history
+studied under thatched roofs. The peasant breathes it in the atmosphere,
+imbibes it by all his pores.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Convinced that he has a hereditary right to the domain in general, the
+Irish peasant besides attributes to himself a special and prescriptive
+right to the plot of ground that he, like the landlord, occupies from
+father to son, though on a precarious tenure. This right is not purely
+imaginary; it was consecrated in the year 1860 by a special Act of
+Parliament, due to the initiative of Mr. Gladstone. Recognised from
+immemorial times in Ulster, it has always been claimed in all the other
+parts of Ireland; it is the _tenant right_, what in our own Picardy is
+called the _droit de marché_.
+
+It is well known in what consist this ancient prerogative of the Picardy
+farmer (Troplong in the Preface to his _Traité du Louage_, and Lefort
+in his _Histoire des contrats de location perpétuelle_, have treated it
+exhaustively): it is simply the privilege of preserving in perpetuity
+for him and for his heirs, the use of the ground for which he pays rent
+regularly.
+
+Not only is this privilege not denied to him, but he can transfer it
+to a third person, for a premium that goes by the name of _intrade_.
+The amount of that premium is often a third or even a half of the
+intrinsic value of the soil. Formerly this “_droit de marché_” applied
+to everything that can be let or hired; the labourers, the threshers,
+the shepherds of a domain, each claimed it in his own province as a
+hereditary monopoly. In modern days it is strictly limited to the hiring
+of servants, in the few districts where it survived the French revolution
+(in Péronne for instance).
+
+The thing that is only a curious exception in France has remained the
+rule in Ireland, where _tenant right_ has been in force for the last
+twenty-seven years. And what, after all, can be better founded than such
+a right? Has not the tenant, in the majority of cases, made his plot of
+ground what it is? Has he not tilled it, improved it, manured it, drained
+it according to his better knowledge; in a word, has he not _created_ it
+in its actual form?
+
+“Let us,” says the peasant, “admit the rights of the landlord. How could
+he deny me mine? Are they not legibly written in the furrow I have traced
+upon this earth, in the fruits I have made her bear?... The land is not
+a simple material, unreducible like a piece of gold. It is a chemical
+product, a conglomerate that is valuable especially by reason of all the
+substances I have mixed up with it during an occupation of ten, twenty,
+thirty years, or even more.... Who shall dare to deny the share I have
+brought into this company of which I am the acting manager, and deny that
+this share belongs to me?”
+
+Such a theory would doubtless appear sheer lunacy to the French
+proprietor who has paid for his land £400 per hectare, and who has let
+it for a fixed period at a fixed price, with the understanding that at
+the end of the contract he shall find it in good condition and shall then
+do what he pleases with it. That theory, however, is so well suited to
+Ireland, where custom has the force of law, that the landlord does not
+even think, practically, of disputing the _tenant’s right_.
+
+As a rule he is only too glad to let his land to the farmers who have
+traditionally occupied it, on condition that they pay the usual rent.
+
+But in practice, the Land Act of 1860, apparently so much in favour
+of the tenant, has produced disastrous effects. In the first place,
+by consecrating the right of the tenant only on improvements and
+enlargements made _with the landlord’s consent_. Thence the consequence
+that not only is the landlord never willing to spend a farthing on
+the improvements of the land, but also that he systematically opposes
+them, for fear he should have to pay for them in the end. Besides many
+landlords have signed their new leases only after the farmer has given
+them a formal renunciation to the tenant right; or else they have taken
+advantage of the pretext that offered itself, and raised the rent by way
+of compensation against all risks. Lastly, in many a place where this
+right has become positive, the rural usurers alone have profited by it by
+discounting it to the peasantry.
+
+The consequence is that the tenant right is often reduced practically
+to the implicit acknowledgment of the right of the farmer to occupy the
+land, so long as he pays his rent. It even happens not unfrequently that
+there is no lease and the occupancy goes on indefinitely without title.
+Doubtless this gives it only more value in the eyes of the peasant,
+naturally inclined to associate this absence of scrivening with the
+acknowledgment of his traditional rights.
+
+Having been able in certain cases to sell or hire his “interest,” he
+feels the more inclined to think himself entitled to divide it between
+his children. That division has become the rule, and what was once a farm
+of thirty to fifty acres turns out, at the third generation, parcelled
+in ten or twelve scraps of three to five acres. The landlord might have
+interfered in the beginning; he might have prevented such a division; he
+did not do it. Beside, that division of the land is recorded nowhere, has
+been the occasion of no formal deed; one member of the family answers
+for all the others, if necessary. How is one to unravel those private
+arrangements? And, after all, what does it matter, so long as the rents
+come in?
+
+They come in during ten, during twenty years. Then the harvest is bad,
+or the sub-dividing of the soil has arrived at the last limit compatible
+with the needs of those that cultivate it. The rent is no longer paid,
+and then the difficulties begin. How is one to appraise the improvements
+introduced in the land by the actual possessor, or by his forefathers?
+How can one find out what is due to him, even with the best intentions?
+Is the landlord to give him an indemnity before he evicts him? But then
+it means ruin to the landlord, who will have to pay precisely because he
+has not been paid himself. It is the squaring of the circle. When only
+very small holdings are in question, the difficulty is generally met by
+remaining in _statu quo_. But supposing the debt to be more important, or
+to have been transferred to a third person, which is often the case, the
+question becomes insoluble.
+
+Let us repeat that we must not consider these things from a French
+point of view. With us the idea of individual property is always of the
+clearest and simplest. The frequent sales and buying of land contribute
+still to make this idea of more actual and definite meaning to us.
+An hectare of grass or vine is, like any other goods, a merchandise
+that passes from hand to hand, and remains with the highest bidder. In
+Ireland the sales are rare, and in no case is it a question of absolute
+ownership; it is only a question about the respective and contradictory
+rights, some for life, some perpetual, some positive, others customary,
+of several persons over the same space of land, a space not to be
+transferred, not to be seized, and not to be fractionised. Is it any
+wonder that such contradictory pretensions should give rise to constant
+conflicts?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Everything concurs to shut in that rural world in a vicious circle. Not
+only does the peasant lack capital to improve his farming, but, assured
+of seeing his rent raised if he ventured on the least improvement, he is
+careful to make none. On his side the landlord, for dread of annoying
+contestations, opposes as much as lies in his power any amendment
+susceptible of being turned into a title for his tenant.
+
+Is there a succession of relatively good harvests? He immediately raises
+the rent. Are the following years bad? He refuses to return to the old
+rate, in principle at least, because he finds it inconvenient to curtail
+a revenue to which he has accustomed himself, because he does not like
+to appear to bow before the League, and also because, being liable to
+expropriation, he is unwilling to depreciate beforehand the value of his
+property, which is always valued according to its rent.
+
+Lastly, the holdings, being too often mere plots of ground, are hardly
+sufficient to keep the peasant and his family occupied, and do not always
+give him a sufficiency of food. And just because it is so, the unlucky
+wretch does not find work outside sufficient for the equilibrium of his
+poor finances. The class of agricultural labourers can hardly be said
+to exist in numerous districts, because everyone is a small farmer.
+The tenant then becomes completely sunk in his inaction; he becomes
+apathetic, and from a sluggard too often turns into a drunkard. His wife
+is ignorant and careless. She can neither sew, nor is she able to give
+a palatable taste to his monotonous fare. His children are pallid and
+dirty. Everything is sad, everything is unlovely around him; and, like a
+dagger festering in the wound, the thought that all his misery is due to
+the English usurper ever makes his heart bleed.
+
+To all these causes of poverty and despair must be added the general
+difficulties that weigh on agriculture in all countries of Europe,
+the lowered prices of transport, the clearings of land in America
+and Australia, the awful transatlantic competition, the disease of
+potatoes.... The picture being finished, one thing only surprises—it is
+to find one single Irish farmer left in the country.
+
+These explanations, with many others, were given me by a person that
+it is time I should introduce to the reader; for he is the incarnation
+of one of the essential wheels in the machinery of Irish landed
+property—Captain Pembroke Stockton, _land agent_.
+
+The captain is a small fair man, of slim figure, of military aspect,
+who received me this morning at an office where he employs half a dozen
+clerks. The room was lined with green-backed ledgers, or, to speak
+more exactly, with rows of tin boxes, of a chocolate colour. To-night
+he receives me in a pleasant villa, where he takes me in his phaeton,
+drawn by two magnificent horses. He may be about fifty-three years old.
+His calm, regular-featured countenance owes its peculiar character to
+the line that cuts his forehead transversely, and divides it into two
+parts, one white, the other bronzed by the sun; a mark left by the
+English forage-cap, which is like a small muffin, and is worn on one side
+of the head. The captain has seen service in India; he fought against
+Nana-Sahib, and even hung with his own hand a certain number of rebels,
+as he not unfrequently relates after dinner. He sold out when about
+thirty-five years of age, at a period when selling out still existed (in
+1869), and got for his commission £3200, which, besides a small personal
+competency, allowed him to marry a charming girl, dowerless, according to
+the excellent English habit; children came: means became too straitened,
+and, to enlarge them, he resolved to become a _land agent_.
+
+The land agent has no equivalent in France, except for house property.
+He is neither a notary, nor a steward, and yet he partakes of both,
+being the intermediary between landlord and tenant. It is he that draws
+up the leases and settlements; he who receives the rents, who sends out
+summons, who signs every six months the cheque impatiently expected by
+the landlord; he who represents him at law, he who negotiates his loans,
+mortgages, cessions of income, and all other banking operations. In a
+word, he is the landlord’s prime minister, the person who takes on his
+shoulders all the management of his affairs, and reduces his profession
+to the agreeable function of spending money. The land agent naturally
+resides as a rule in the vicinity of the estate. Therefore he knows
+everybody by name; knows all about the incumbrances, the resources
+of every tenant, the length and breadth of every field, the price of
+produce, the probable value of the harvest; all the threads are in his
+hands; the landlord counts upon him, approves everything he does, upholds
+his rigours, and submits to his tolerance. Is he not himself at his
+mercy? The agent keeps all his deeds of property; has personally written
+out every one of them; knows, in fact, a great deal more than himself
+about it.
+
+Let us premise that very considerable interests are in question, and
+that the rents are ciphered by thousands of pounds sterling. It is easy
+to understand that the agent must be not only a man of honour, a clever
+man, a business man, but above all a man presenting the most serious
+guarantees from a financial point of view.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That is sufficient to imply that they are not counted by dozens in
+every district; and that a land agent provided with all the necessary
+qualifications must before long govern all the principal estates in a
+county. From his office, situated in the principal county-town, he rules
+over ten, twenty, or thirty, square miles of land, cultivated by five or
+six thousand farmers, under some twenty landlords.
+
+Thence the natural consequence that the same policy generally prevails
+in all the administration of the landed property in one district. The
+personal character of the landlord may, indeed, influence it in some
+ways, but the character of the agent is of far greater importance. And
+thence this other consequence, not less serious for the farmer, and which
+gives the key to many an act of agrarian violence,—that in case of open
+war, in case of eviction especially, it is not only an affair between
+the landlord and the tenant, but also between the tenant and all the
+landlords in his county, through their one representative.
+
+Has he been evicted? It will be well-nigh impossible for him to get
+another farm in this county, where he was born, where his relations are
+living, where he has all his habits, all his roots, as it were. And no
+work to be had outside agricultural work.... Emigration only is open to
+him,—which is equivalent to saying that eviction must necessarily be
+followed by transportation.
+
+Let us imagine all the owners of houses in Paris, bound together in
+association, to be in the hands of a single agent; let us suppose that
+a dweller in one of those houses is turned out of it for quarrelling
+with his _concierge_ or for any other reason, and unable to find a house
+to live in; we shall then have an idea of the state of mind in which
+eviction places the Irish peasant. Let us add that this peasant has
+generally built with his own hand the hut that is taken from him; let us
+add that for him it is not only a question of knowing whether he shall
+have a roof over his head, but a question of being able to live by the
+only trade he has learnt.
+
+For many other reasons, the question of agencies on a large scale still
+contributes to make the problem more intricate.
+
+In all affairs personal intercourse brings an element the importance
+of which must not be overlooked. A man will display the greatest
+inflexibility in writing, who will hesitate to do so face to face with
+his opponent. If the landlord knew his tenants, if he lived among them,
+if he entered into their life and saw their misery, very often, may
+be, he would recoil before barbarous rigours, while the agent, by his
+very profession is obliged to act with the precision of a guillotine.
+The influence of women, so gentle and conciliatory, is absent from the
+system. Pity, sympathy, human contact, have no part in it. Can we wonder
+if harmony be destroyed?
+
+Examples are not wanting to show that a different system, a policy of
+gentleness, of direct and mutual concessions, and well directed efforts,
+bear very different results. I shall quote as an instance the case of an
+English lady, Miss Sherman Crawford, who bought, some twenty years ago,
+at a legal sale, a small half-ruined estate in Ireland. She went to live
+on it, and began by giving her ten or twelve tenants a written promise
+that they would get the benefit of all their improvements without having
+cause to fear that the rent should be raised. Then she made it a rule
+that everyone should come directly to her in case of difficulties, and
+not to an agent.
+
+She built a few sheds, repaired two or three cottages, on occasions lent
+a five pound note to facilitate the buying of a cow or pig. That was
+enough. In spite of the difference in race, religion, and language, she
+and her peasantry are on perfect terms with each other; her property of
+Timoleague thrives in the midst of general poverty and wretchedness;
+not an inch of ground lies uncultivated; the soil is well manured, well
+drained, well used; the people are happy and contented. To perform that
+miracle, all that was wanted was a little willingness, a little good
+management and gentleness.
+
+But then Miss Crawford’s property is neither too large nor too small.
+She brings there the capital needed, and allows it to circulate in the
+place. She sees everything with her own eyes, not with the eyes of an
+agent. She is not the titulary of an entailed estate, and has not given
+up its income to usurers. Her farms are large enough to allow her tenants
+to find their sustenance on them, for themselves and their families. In
+a word, her property is in everything the reverse of what is seen in all
+other parts of the island.
+
+And in truth, if delirious legislators had proposed to themselves the
+task of inventing a system of landed property that would give neither
+security to the owner nor peace to the tenant, where could they have
+succeeded better than with the Irish system? It is at once stupid and
+ferocious, absurd and monstrous. How true, alas! that human genius,
+so well able sometimes to profit by natural forces, excels also in
+sterilizing them, in making them homicides!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+EMIGRATION.
+
+
+Before setting foot in this country your notions are not unfrequently
+ready made about the characters of the inhabitants. You have gathered
+them from miscellaneous reading, novel-reading mostly, and what you
+expect is an Ireland poor certainly, but nevertheless gay, improvident,
+chivalrous, addicted to sound drinking, good eating, fond of practical
+jokes, not unmixed with riot and even blows; an Ireland, in short, such
+as Charles Lever and Carleton, Banim and Maxwell, Sam Lover and Thackeray
+have described; an Ireland where wit and humour are to be met at every
+step, where the last beggar has his little joke, where originality of
+thought, unexpectedness of action, fun inexhaustible, combine to form
+that eccentricity of manner which is ever associated with the idea of an
+Irishman.
+
+That such an Ireland was, not long ago, a reality, one cannot doubt.
+A whole literature, a rich collection of tales, novels and legends
+is there to witness to the fact. Its historical existence is as
+scientifically demonstrated as that of our “Régence.” The worldly
+exploits of the Duke of Richelieu are not better proved. But it is in
+vain you look to-day for that gay and careless Ireland; from Cape Clear
+to Malin Head, from Dublin to Galway, there is no vestige of it. She is
+dead and gone. Like Mr. Credit, bad payers have killed her. Between her
+and us there has been a great financial cataclysm where she has been
+wrecked: the _crash_ of the great famine of 1846-1847.
+
+Never did she rise from it. Forty years ago she contrived to exist
+somehow. The tenants were poor, to be sure, but the landlords were not,
+and they spent their money grandly. They led the usual life of rich
+country gentlemen, had large retinues of servants and horses, kept
+playing, drinking, and betting till they had only debts left, which
+course had at least the advantage of permitting their cash to circulate
+about the country. The local traffic was relatively large then. Butchers,
+coach-makers, wine-merchants, and horse-dealers made rapid fortunes. Few
+towns in Europe showed so much animation as Dublin, now so empty and so
+dull a place. Everybody was in debt with everybody; not one property
+was not mortgaged. It was the fashion at that time to pay only at the
+last extremity. A general complicity gave force of law to that habit.
+Lawsuits, of course, were plentiful, but what is there in a lawsuit
+to prevent a jolly squire from drinking hard, riding his horses at a
+break-neck pace, or galloping from morning till night behind his hounds?
+
+Then came the potato-disease; then the famine, which brought in two
+years a general liquidation. Everyone awoke to find himself ruined;
+there were in six months fifty thousand evictions. The largest fortunes,
+when they escaped the Encumbered Estates Court, established in 1849,
+remained loaded with such heavy burdens that the income of the titulary
+fell to nothing. One was obliged to pinch then, to sell the horses, and
+shut up the kennel. There was an end to fun, and if there remained here
+and there some inveterate boon companion who would not give up the good
+old customs, the _Moonlighters_ soon brought him to reason, poisoning
+his dogs and hunters, confiscating his arms, and at times mistaking the
+landlord for the game.
+
+There is no vestige left now of the easy-going ways of old. The large
+town-houses and country seats are deserted or let to strangers; the
+cellar is empty, the dining-room silent. A gust of hatred and misery has
+blown on the isle and left all hearts frozen.
+
+As for the peasant, the poor creature has too many cares for thinking
+of a joke now. Perhaps in other climes, under a clearer sky and warmer
+sun, he would revive, and find in his very distress the element for
+some witticism. But here, the damp atmosphere, united with persevering
+ill-fortune, has deluged and drowned for ever his Celtic good-humour.
+Hardly does he find now and then a glimpse of it at the bottom of an
+ale-jug or in the tumult of some election riot. If a quick repartee, one
+of his characteristic sallies, escapes him now, it is always bitter, and
+reminds you of the acrid genius of Swift.
+
+“How deliciously pure and fresh is the air in Dublin,” said Lady
+Carteret, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland’s wife, to the author of
+“Gulliver.”
+
+“For goodness’ sake, Madam, don’t breathe a word about it to the English.
+They would put a duty on it.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And his terrible satire about the famous “excess of population,” that
+favourite hobby of economists, who has not it in mind?
+
+“It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town
+or travel in the country, where they see the streets, the roads, and
+cabin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three,
+four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an
+alms ... I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number
+of children ... is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very
+great additional grievance; and therefore, whosoever could find out a
+fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, easy members
+of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his
+statue set up for a preserver of the nation. I shall now, therefore,
+humbly propose my own thoughts; which I hope will not be liable to the
+least objection.
+
+“I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in
+London that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a
+most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted,
+baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a
+fricassée or a ragout.
+
+“I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the
+hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand
+may be reserved for breed, whereof one-fourth part to be males ... that
+the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to
+the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising
+the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month so as to render
+them plump and fat for good tables. A child will make two dishes at an
+entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or
+hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and, seasoned with a little
+pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in
+winter.
+
+“I have reckoned, upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh twelve
+pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, will increase to
+twenty-eight pounds.
+
+“I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar’s child (in which
+list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers)
+to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no
+gentleman would refuse to give two shillings for the carcase of a good
+fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent
+nutritive meat. Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times
+require) may flay the carcase: the skin of which, artificially dressed,
+will make admirable gloves for ladies and summer boots for fine gentlemen.
+
+“As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose in
+the most convenient parts of it; and butchers we may be assured will not
+be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, then
+dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasted pigs....
+
+“I think the advantages, by the proposals I have made, are obvious and
+many, as well as of the highest importance: for first, as I have already
+observed, it would greatly lessen the number of papists, with whom we
+are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation, as well
+as our most dangerous enemies.... Whereas the maintenance of a hundred
+thousand children, from two years old and upwards, cannot be computed
+at less than ten shillings a piece per annum, the nation’s stock will
+be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, beside the profit
+of a new dish introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in
+the kingdom, who have any refinement in taste. And all the money will
+circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and
+manufacture.... Besides, this would be a great inducement to marriage,
+which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards or enforced by
+laws and penalties.”
+
+The grim sarcasm goes on in the same sinister, pitiless way up to the
+conclusion, which is worth the rest:
+
+“I profess in the sincerity of my heart that I have not the least
+personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work,
+having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing
+our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some
+pleasure to the rich. I have no children by which I can propose to get
+a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past
+child-bearing.”
+
+Modern Philanthropy is not quite so bold as the Dean of St. Patrick in
+suggesting remedies for the relief of the sufferings of Ireland. Its
+great panacea is emigration. The first thing which attracts the eye in
+villages and boroughs is a large showy placard representing a ship in
+full sail, with the following words in large capitals, “Emigration! ...
+free passage to Canada, Australia, New Zealand! ... free passage and a
+premium to emigrants for Queensland!...”
+
+Technical particulars follow; the agents’ addresses, the names of the
+outward-bound ships, &c.... These placards are everywhere. At each
+turning, on every wall they stare you in the face, and fascinate the
+starving man. Numerous and powerful emigration companies paid by colonies
+where hands are wanting, patronized by all that is influential in the
+kingdom, work unremittingly in recruiting that army of despair for a
+voluntary transportation. And thus a continuous stream of Irishmen is
+ebbing out through all the pores of the country.
+
+Shall we give the official figures? There are none given unfortunately
+for the years between 1847 and 1851, corresponding to the “famine
+clearances” or famine evictions. All that is known is that at that time
+the population of Ireland suddenly decreased by one million six hundred
+and twenty-two thousand inhabitants, without it being possible to say how
+many had died of starvation, how many had embarked pell-mell on hundreds
+of ships, how many had perished at sea, how many had survived. Since 1851
+the accounts are clear. It is known that 148,982 emigrants left Ireland
+in the eight last months of that year; 189,092 in 1852; 172,829 in 1853;
+139,312 in 1854. During the following years the emigration slackens its
+pace by degrees and falls to the rate of 75,000 heads a year. It rises
+again in 1863-64, and attains the figure of over 105,000. Then it settles
+again to its level: 60,000, where for a time it remains stationary. Since
+1880 it has risen again to 95,000, and over 100,000.
+
+Within thirty years, the period included between the 1st of May, 1851,
+and the 1st of May, 1881, Ireland has lost through emigration alone
+_two million five hundred and thirty-six thousand six hundred and
+twenty-seven_ of her children. The total for the last five years has not
+yet been published, but it certainly reaches half a million. From the
+year 1851, therefore, at least _three million_ Irish people of both sexes
+have left the island, that is to say, nearly the half of a population
+then reduced to six-and-a-half million souls.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Has, at least, the result of that frightful exodus been to eradicate
+pauperism? One would like to believe it. Theorists had promised it. But
+alas! stern statistics are there to answer their fallacies.
+
+Statistics inform us that the Ireland of 1887, with its present
+population, inferior to that of London, is poorer than it was in 1841,
+when it numbered eight million inhabitants. Twenty years ago the number
+of individuals admitted to workhouses was 114,594 out of six million
+inhabitants. To-day it is 316,165 out of a population diminished by a
+third. In 1884 the poor who received relief at home were 442,289. They
+are now 633,021. In other words, _one Irishman out of four_ lives on
+public charity—when he lives at all.
+
+Upon such facts, would you guess what monstrous conclusion the votaries
+of emigration at any price have come to? Simply this: that the
+blood-letting is not sufficient; that Ireland must be drained of another
+million inhabitants. Such is Lord Salisbury’s opinion. As if an area of
+20,194,602 statute acres, so favoured geographically, was not calculated
+to nourish twelve or fifteen million human beings rather than three!
+(This was the opinion of Gustave de Beaumont, after Arthur Young.) As if
+the emigration of every healthy and industrious adult was not a nett loss
+for the country, just as is the guinea taken away by any _absentee_!
+
+Is not his exit a sign of strength and energy in the emigrant? He was
+free to stay at home if he liked; to shut himself up in a workhouse and
+live there at the public expense. Has he not given by his very departure
+the best proof that he is not a useless member in the social body? What!
+you incite all that is able and active to go away, keeping only the
+weak, the old, the useless; to these you dole out what is necessary to
+keep up a flickering breath of life, and when poverty increases, you are
+surprised at it!
+
+I bear in mind the reasons alleged by politicians. Elizabeth and Cromwell
+have invoked them before, when recurring to more drastic but equally vain
+measures. But, here again, the calculation is wrong; the eternal justice
+of things has not permitted it to succeed.
+
+For all those whom the feudal system starves out of their native island
+take care, for the most part, not to go and fertilize with their work
+the British colonies. Vainly does the emigration agent offer them a
+free passage, grants of land, and even premiums in money. They prefer
+buying with their last penny a ticket which opens a free land to them.
+They go to the United States, where they thrive almost to a miracle, and
+this is a decisive answer to the masters of their race, who are also
+its calumniators. They multiply there so as to form already a fifth
+part (twelve millions) of the total population of the great American
+Republic. At the bar, in the press, in all liberal professions, they
+are a majority, and by their brilliant qualities, which often secure
+them the first rank, they exercise a real preponderance. But they never
+forget that they are Irish. They keep the unimpaired remembrance of their
+beloved country, dear to their heart in proportion as she is unhappy.
+They remember their home burnt to the ground, the old grandfather thrown
+on the road-side, the little ones crying at the withered breast of a
+pallid mother, the wrench of parting, the heart-rending farewell; then
+the contumely during the voyage—the hardships after the landing; and they
+swear an oath that all shall be paid some day, and, in the meanwhile,
+they contribute their dollars to the healing of an ever-bleeding wound.
+
+It is there that Fenianism was born. From their ranks come those
+conspirators who terrorize England with their periodic outrages. In all
+agrarian violence the hand of the emigrants is to be found. From 1848
+to 1864 they have sent thirteen million pounds to those of their family
+that have remained in Ireland; and, from 1864 to 1887, perhaps double
+that sum. But in those figures, given by Lord Dufferin, the secret funds
+brought to the service of an ever-increasing agitation are not reckoned.
+The _Invincibles_ were in their pay. The _Skirmishing Fund_ was entirely
+sustained by them. The National League lives, in a manner, upon their
+subsidies. When Mr. Parnell went to visit the United States, they were
+powerful enough to induce the Senate of Washington to give him the
+honours of the sitting—an exception which stands unique in history.
+
+The independence of Ireland is their dream, their ambition, their hope,
+their luxury in life. The day when this is accomplished, England will
+perhaps realize that the Irish emigration has been a political blunder,
+as it is an economical mistake and a moral crime.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                                     CORK.
+
+Wishing to see some of those who emigrate I have come to Cork. Cork is
+the great harbour of the South of Ireland, the gate that opens on America
+and Australia. From St. Patrick’s Bridge on the Lee a steamer took me to
+where three emigrant ships were at anchor ready to fly to other climes.
+I went on board two of them, one English, the other American. There
+was nothing particular to notice, except an under-deck disposed as a
+dormitory, as is the rule on board all maritime transports, so as to
+lodge four or five hundred steerage passengers. These passengers bring
+with them their bedding, which consists generally of a coarse blanket,
+and the staple part of their eatables. A canteen affords them, at
+reasonable prices, all drinks or extras that they may think fit to add to
+their ordinary fare.
+
+The impression I gather in these under-decks is rather a favourable one.
+There is as yet only the bare floor, but it is clean and well washed.
+Through the hatches, wide open, a pure and bracing air circulates freely.
+
+No doubt there will be some alteration after a few days’ voyage. But
+it is evident that the Queen’s administration keeps a sharp eye upon
+the emigration companies, and sees that all sanitary prescriptions
+are observed. One sees no longer now-a-days such scandalous spectacles
+as occurred in the years of the famine, when thousands of Irish were
+promiscuously heaped in the hold of _coffin-ships_, and died by hundreds
+before reaching the goal. Emigration is now one of the normal, it may be
+said one of the official, functions of social life in Ireland—a function
+which has its organs, laws, customs, and even its record-office. The
+companies keep their agents in all British possessions; they are informed
+of all the wants of those colonies; they know what specialists are in
+demand, what advantages are offered to the new-comer. They do their best
+to make the offer fit with the demand, and they seem to succeed.
+
+An old boatswain on board one of the emigrant ships tells me that life
+there is generally monotonous but quiet. The passengers do not mix or
+associate as quickly as one could imagine. Each of them pitches his own
+separate camp on the few square feet that chance gives him, and it is
+only after eight or ten days’ voyage that they begin to club together.
+The mothers tend their babies, the fathers smoke their pipes, the
+children play, the young people flirt. It appears that a relatively
+considerable number of marriages are prepared and even concluded in the
+crossing. There is nothing surprising in that, if we remember that the
+most numerous class of emigrants is composed of marriageable girls and
+men between twenty and twenty-five years of age.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few types of emigrants taken at the inns and public-houses on the
+quays. _John Moriarty_, of Ballinakilla, County Cork, 45 to 50 years
+old. A rural Micawber, dressed in a dilapidated black coat, a pair of
+green trousers, completely worn out at the knees, and crushed hat. A
+Catholic (he says _Cathioulic_). Squats with wife and children in a
+single room, almost devoid of furniture. Was to have embarked five days
+ago for Canada. The Board of Health did not allow it on account of one of
+the children having got the measles (an illness which assumes in Great
+Britain a most dangerous and infectious character). Makes no difficulty
+to tell me his whole history. Had a farm of thirteen acres. Was thriving
+more or less—rather less than more. But for the last seven years it has
+been an impossibility for him to make both ends meet.
+
+Strange as it may appear, the man is a Conservative in feeling.
+
+“Nothing to do in the country, with those _mob laws_ and agitation!” says
+he.
+
+“What mob laws?”
+
+“Well, the trash on fixity of tenure, fair rent and the rest.”
+
+“I thought they were favourable to the tenant.”
+
+“Favourable in one sense, yes, sir,” (_with a diplomatic air, as he
+fastens on me two little chocolate-coloured eyes_) “but disastrous in the
+end, because they allow one to sell his tenant-right at a discount. You
+believe that it will set you up, and it is the very stone that makes you
+sink. The banks are our ruin, don’t you see? Once they have taken hold
+of their man they don’t let him out before they have skinned him” (_a
+silence, then a sigh of mild envy_). “It is, indeed, a good trade that of
+banking!”
+
+He remains dreamy and seems to meditate the scheme of founding a bank in
+Canada.
+
+_Martin Mac Crea_, 22 years old, a shepherd of Drumcunning. A Catholic. A
+tall, pale, thin fellow, decently dressed, with a wide-awake look. Goes
+to Queensland. Why? “Because there is no opening in Ireland. The most you
+can do is to earn your bare sustenance.” It appears that in Queensland it
+is quite a different affair. The profession of shepherd pays there. Let
+a man bring or save the money necessary to buy half-a-dozen sheep, and
+let them graze at their will. Seven or eight years later their name is
+legion, and the man is rich.
+
+“But are you then quite free of ties here? Don’t you leave anybody, any
+relation, in Ireland?”
+
+“I was obliged to live far from them, and where I go I shall be more able
+to help them. Besides, the post reaches there.”
+
+“And the young ladies at Drumcunning. Do they allow you to go away
+without a protest?”
+
+A broad smile lights up Martin Mac Crea’s countenance. A further
+conversation informs me that his betrothed has gone before him to
+Brisbane, where she is a servant. He is going to meet her, and they shall
+settle together in the _bush_, keeping sheep on their own account.
+
+Let us hope she has waited for him. Queensland is far away!
+
+_Pat Coleman_, twenty years old. A friend to the former. Son of a small
+farmer with six children. Nothing to do at home. Prefers going to the
+Antipodes, to see if there is a way there to avoid dying of starvation,
+as happened to his grandfather.
+
+_Peter Doyle_, forty-three years old. A journeyman. A Presbyterian.
+Can’t find work at home; therefore emigrates. Was employed on railway
+construction, county Clare. Has been turned away, the line being
+completed and open to travellers. Had come to Cork in the hope of getting
+work, but found only insignificant jobs. Packed to Melbourne.
+
+_Dennis O’Rourke_, twenty-nine years old; of Enniscorthy, Wexford. An
+engine-maker; belongs to a class of which I had as yet met no specimen
+in Ireland, the workman-politician. Has already emigrated to the United
+States, where he spent three years. Wished to see his country again, and
+tried to set up a business on a small scale, first in Dublin, then at
+Cork; but it does not pay. Goes back to New York.
+
+“Do you know why? I am going to tell you. (_Fiercely_) I am going because
+this country is rotten to the core! Because it has no spirit left, not
+even that of rebellion! I am going because I will no longer bear on my
+back the weight of dukes and peers, of Queen, Prince of Wales, Royal
+family, and the whole lot of them! I am going where you can work and be
+free; where a man is worth another when he has got in his pocket two
+dollars honestly earned. That is where I go, and why I go.”
+
+“In short, you make England responsible for your misfortunes?”
+
+“England be damned!”
+
+It is O’Connell’s word. He was travelling in France, towards St. Omer,
+and found himself inside the mail-coach with an old officer of the first
+Empire who began forthwith to talk against the English. The great Irish
+agitator kept silent.
+
+“Don’t you hear me?” the other said at last, insolently.
+
+“I beg your pardon, I hear you perfectly well.”
+
+“And you don’t mind my treating your country as I do?”
+
+“England is not my country; I hate it more than you will ever do.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE LEAGUE.
+
+
+                                                                    ENNIS.
+
+The county Clare, and more especially Ennis, its chief town, have played
+an important part in the contemporary history of Ireland. It was here
+eight years ago (in 1879) that Mr. Parnell, at a great autumn meeting,
+gave his famous _mot d’ordre_ on social and political interdict.
+
+“If you refuse to pay unjust rents, if you refuse to take farms from
+which others have been evicted, the land question must be settled,
+and settled in a way that will be satisfactory to you. Now, what are
+you to do to a tenant who bids fora farm from which another has been
+evicted? You must shun him on the road-side where you meet him,—you must
+shun him in the shops,—you must shun him in the fair green, and in the
+market-place, and in the place of worship: by leaving him severely alone,
+by putting him in a moral Coventry; by isolating him from the rest of
+his countrymen, as if he were the leper of old, you must show him your
+detestation of the crime he has committed.”
+
+Those words contained a whole programme, faithfully carried out since,
+and which has already borne fruit. They took exceptional force from the
+fact that Mr. Parnell, at the time he pronounced them, was already the
+acknowledged leader of Irish opposition. They were in some sort the
+registration of birth of the League.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The League! Every moment, travelling through this island, one comes in
+contact with this power, mysterious though positive, anonymous and yet
+implicitly recognized. The League houses and feeds evicted families;
+it settles that such a landlord or such a farmer shall be boycotted;
+it decrees that the rents of such an estate shall be reduced 30 per
+cent.; that of such another the rents shall be lodged in the League’s
+own coffers; it patronises candidatures, chooses the place and time of
+meetings, presides over all the phases of social life. What is that
+League? is the question one asks.
+
+At first one naturally supposes it to be an electoral association such
+as exists in every free country. But little by little one perceives that
+it is a far bigger affair. Electoral associations are not in the habit
+of inspiring such persistent enthusiasm, of covering during eight long
+years the extent of a whole country; they do not send roots to the most
+remote villages, nor do they count among their members three-quarters
+of the adult population. It is not their custom either to fulminate
+excommunications, or if they do they have but little appreciable effect
+on the ordinary tenour of life. One never heard that they disposed of
+important capital, and one would be less surprised to hear that they
+had entered into a lawsuit with their printer about an unpaid bill for
+five or six thousand placards, than one would be to hear that they have
+several hundred thousand pounds in the bank.
+
+And yet it is precisely of hundred thousand pounds that one constantly
+hears in connection with the League. Where does it get all that money,
+in a country worn so threadbare as this? Whence is it that it is so
+universally respected, so religiously obeyed? All the smiles are for the
+League, while the functionaries of the Crown pocket only snubbings. All
+the doors open before the League, while they close and even barricade
+themselves at the bare mention of the Lord Lieutenant’s name.
+
+One observes these facts; compare and weigh them. Then the conclusion
+imposes itself quite naturally that the League is the only public power
+recognised by the bulk of the Irish nation. One already had a suspicion
+of being a spectator to a revolution, of which the violent deeds, instead
+of being concentrated over a period of two or three years, as we have
+seen at home, have spread over half a century. One understands that one
+has fallen in the midst of a civil war, not in the incipient state,
+but fully let loose, and that there exists in this island two rival
+authorities,—that of the Crown with the bayonets on its side; that of the
+League, possessing all hearts.
+
+Ireland, it is hardly necessary to repeat, has been in a state of
+rebellion since the beginning of the British Conquest. But it has
+been in a state of revolution only for a period of about forty years.
+Insurrection betrayed itself now by individual but constant acts of
+rebellion, of which one can easily follow the succession through past
+ages, now by collective risings like those of Thomas Fitzgerald in
+1534, of O’Neil in 1563, of Desmond in 1579, of Preston in 1642, of the
+Whiteboys in 1791, of the Oakboys in 1762, of the Steelboys in 1768, of
+Wolfe Tone in the course of the French Revolution, of Emmet in 1803,
+the New Whiteboys in 1807, of John Mitchell in 1848, of the Fenians in
+1865 and 1867. As for the agrarian revolution, born of an economical
+situation impossible to bear, it follows its course as regularly as a
+great river, ever getting larger and larger, widening its bed, swelling
+its volume with all the streams it meets, increasing in power at the
+same time that its waters get more depth and breadth. Even the soothing
+mixtures prescribed for it by the Parliamentary doctors have served as
+its tributaries. Its torrent has at length become irresistible.
+
+To discover its source, we must go back to the famine evictions of 1847.
+The heart-rending spectacle then presented by Ireland made it natural
+to look for a palliation to such misery. The malady was studied in all
+its aspects; much learned discussion took place at the bedside of the
+agonizing patient. It was the time when Disraeli developed his famous
+theory of “the three profits.” The land, if one was to believe him, must
+yield profit to three persons:—the Queen, the landlord, and the tenant.
+It appears this was arranged from the end of Time by the Great Architect
+of the Universe. The laws of Kepler are not more absolute. The unlucky
+thing is that the earth does not always fulfil its obligations, and too
+often refuses to yield up the three sacramental profits.
+
+Theorists endowed with less boldness thought to find a remedy by giving
+legal consecration to the tenant’s rights by the system of _the three
+F’s_, as it was called, that is to say, _Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure,
+and Free Sale_. Through endless resistance, after endless debating in the
+course of twenty parliamentary sessions, a whole _remedial_ legislation
+came to add its bulk to the already so intricate structure of Anglo-Saxon
+law.
+
+Now the custom of Ulster was extended to the whole of Ireland, and the
+right of the farmer over the improvements paid with his money became
+law (1860); now he was promised an indemnity in case of eviction, and
+the basis was laid of a system of amortization which must infallibly in
+the course of time have ended in creating a class of peasant landowners
+(1870).
+
+Already in the year 1849, the State had interfered between the landlords
+in difficulties and their tenants, by the creation of a special tribunal
+for obligatory liquidation,—_the Encumbered Estates Court_. It finally
+came to interfere between landlord and tenant by instituting a new court
+of arbitration, the _Land Court_, entrusted with the care of fixing the
+“fair” rent in each case.
+
+That Court was no sooner opened than 75,807 affairs were inscribed upon
+its roll. It judged in one year 15,676. But there remained still 60,101
+to be judged, and already the reductions of 18 to 27 per cent. imposed
+on the landlords appeared insufficient; already the farmers were loudly
+clamouring for further reductions.
+
+For in truth such remedies were too anodine for such rooted disease! But
+the wedge had nevertheless entered the tree. The State had appeared in
+the character of umpire between the landlord and the peasant. Henceforth
+all was or seemed possible.
+
+The essence of dogmas is to suffer no questioning. One cannot with
+impunity discuss for twenty years the basis of landed property’s law and
+the theory of “the three profits” before empty stomachs. As a parallel
+to these debates, the question of political rights for Ireland rose
+again, and ended insensibly by the conquest of the electoral franchise,
+of religious equality, and of national education. The moment arrived
+when the bulk of the population took an interest only in the truly vital
+question,—that of the soil. And all of a sudden they understood that
+there was only one remedy for the ills that weighed so grievously over
+them: Landlords and tenants cannot continue to live side by side. Either
+the one or the other must go.
+
+“Let the landlords decamp! They do not belong here,” said the peasants.
+
+“No, by G⸺! The peasants shall go,” answered the landlords; “the way is
+open....”
+
+It was thus that towards 1876 the Irish movement became agrarian, from
+being purely national. The League is the organ of that new function.
+
+Its primary idea belongs to two veterans of the Fenian plots, Michael
+Davitt and John Devoy. But what distinguishes it from those plots,
+besides a broader basis and larger aims, is that it acts in broad
+daylight, with face uncovered, appealing to all men of goodwill, using
+exclusively those constitutional weapons—the right of meeting, the right
+of association and coalition.
+
+“The Fenians saw only the green flag,” wrote John Devoy. “The men of
+to-day perceive that under its folds is the Irish land.” Nevertheless, it
+was to the remains of the Fenian associations that he and Michael Davitt
+had recourse at first to lay the foundations of the new association.
+They went to look for them even to the uttermost end of America, secured
+the co-operation of some of the most influential members of the Irish
+emigration, then came back to Europe, and summoned a great preliminary
+meeting at Irishtown.
+
+As ordinarily enough happens in such cases, their project was at first
+looked upon coldly by members of Parliament, who thought it impolitic,
+and violently opposed by the secret societies—Fenians or Ribbonmen—who
+thought it calculated to cool the Nationalist zeal. But under the too
+real sufferings produced by two years of famine (1876-1877), the agrarian
+tempest assumed such formidable proportions, that all resistance had to
+cease, and the politicians were compelled to lower their flag. For the
+chiefs of the autonomist party it was a question of no less than keeping
+or losing their mandate. Either they would adopt the new evangel, or
+they would be left lying, officers without troops, on the electoral
+battle-field. Most of them understood this in time.
+
+Mr. Parnell, the most conspicuous of all, had till then limited his part
+to the demand for a national government for Ireland, and his tactics to
+parliamentary obstruction. From an economical point of view he still
+remained, with all his party, on the level of worthy Mr. Butt’s _three
+F’s_. He was one of the first to understand that it was all over with
+Home Rule, and with his own political fortune, if he hesitated any longer
+to plunge into deeper waters.
+
+He made his plunge with characteristic resolution. “There is no longer
+any possibility of conciliation between landlord and tenant,” he said.
+“Since the one or the other must go out, it is better that the less
+numerous class should be the one to do it.” On the 8th of June, 1879,
+at Westport, he pronounced his famous, “Keep a firm grip on your
+homesteads!” From the 21st of October following the agrarian League
+promulgated circulars, which he signed as president.
+
+The League’s aim and watchword were—_The land for the peasant!_ Its means
+were the union of all the rural forces, the formation of a resistance
+fund for evicted farmers, the strike of tenants with a view to compelling
+the landlords to grant a reduction of rent; and incessant agitation in
+favour of a law for the liquidation of landed property, which would give
+the land into the hands of the cultivators by means of partial payments
+made during a certain number of years.
+
+The success of such a programme, seconded by the political leaders of
+Ireland, was certain. But its promoters never had dared to hope for a
+rush such as was experienced in a few weeks’ time. Adhesions poured in
+by thousands; all the social classes embraced it. The Catholic clergy
+themselves, after wavering one moment, found it advisable to follow in
+the footsteps of the revolutionary party, as the Deputies had done before
+them. Everywhere local boards were formed which put themselves at the
+disposal of the central committee. Almost everywhere the Catholic priest,
+his curates, not unfrequently the Anglican priest himself, were found
+among the members of the board.
+
+This is enough to show with what alacrity and unanimity the mobilisation
+of the agrarian army was effected. Far from weakening the Nationalist
+party, as was feared by its prebendaries, it came out of this tempered
+afresh, enlarged, associated with the every-day interests, tied
+indissolubly henceforth, for the majority of an agricultural population,
+to the most secret if the most ardent wish of their labourers’ heart.
+
+What remained to do was to endow the League with the resources wanted to
+carry out its programme; but it was not in a country practically ruined,
+a prey to the tortures of hunger, literally reduced to beggary, that
+those resources were to be found. Mr. Parnell set out for the land of
+dollars. He preached the new word there with complete success. Exotic
+branches of the League were established in the various States of America,
+in Canada, and Australia; the only thing remaining to do was to organize
+the _in partibus infidelium_ government that was to take in hand the
+direction of Ireland.
+
+But a short time since this government sat in a palace of the finest
+street in Dublin—Sackville Street. There it had its offices, reception
+rooms, council-room furnished with the orthodox green baize table, its
+ministerial departments, secretaries and writers, officially headed
+paper, its stamp, documents, accounts and red tape.
+
+After a recent movement on the offensive on the part of the enemy, the
+League had to decamp and put all this material in a place of safety.
+But though it be presently without a known place of abode, the League
+none the less pursues its work. Do not telegraphic wires keep it in
+communication with its agents throughout the length and breadth of the
+territory? Why were Transatlantic cables invented, if not for the purpose
+of opening permanent communications between the League and its American,
+Australian, and Asiatic colonies? In all the extent of its jurisdiction,
+which is that of the globe, the League is obeyed and respected; it
+possesses the confidence of its innumerable tributaries.
+
+Perhaps that comes from the fact that this committee, though it sometimes
+accented too much the professional character of its members, has at least
+the rare merit of faithfully serving its constituents and of being in
+perfect harmony of conscience with them. Perhaps this is due to the
+effect of direct subsidies; and we must see there something better than a
+mere coincidence,—a great lesson for the democracies of the future. One
+thing is certain: this government, after wielding power for eight years,
+have their party well in hand. They are able to do without red tape or
+scribbling. One word is enough to indicate their will, and if they lack
+secretaries, a hundred newspapers will carry this word to its address.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It would be a matter of some difficulty to appreciate rightly the
+financial resources of the League Competent judges estimate them at
+an income of two million francs. It receives on an average, from
+English-speaking countries, a thousand pounds a week. Now and then
+subscriptions slacken, and the incoming of money is smaller; but the
+least incident, such as a noisy arrest or a political law-suit, is
+sufficient to awaken the zeal of the leaguers. That zeal is always
+proportionate to the energy of resistance opposed by the Cabinet of St.
+James to the government of Sackville Street. If London so much as raises
+its head, at once Dublin, and behind Dublin the whole of Ireland, the
+whole of Irish America, Australia, the Cape, and the extreme depths of
+India, all are shaken to their very centre,—in other words, they pay.
+
+The chief treasurer of the League, Mr. Egan, giving account of his
+administration in October, 1882, after a space of three years, stated
+that during these three years £244,820 had passed through his hands. In
+this total one-third only came from insular contributors; all the rest
+came from abroad. £50,000 had been given in relief of distress; over
+£15,000 had been spent in State trials; nearly £148,000 had been expended
+through the general Land League and the Ladies’ Land League in support
+of evicted tenants, providing wooden houses, law costs, sheriffs’ sales,
+defence against ejectments and various local law proceedings, and upon
+the general expenses of the organization. A little over £31,900 remained
+to the account of the association.
+
+There are no reasons for supposing the normal receipts of the League to
+have diminished much since that period. More recently (in 1886) the “plan
+of campaign” has created new openings for it.
+
+This “plan of campaign,” one of the boldest conceptions ever accepted by
+a great political party, consists simply in lodging into the coffers of
+the League, and for its use, the rents that were pronounced excessive by
+its committee, and that the landlords refused to abate. Let us mention
+in passing that the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin publicly accepted the
+responsibility of this tremendous war-measure. It has, we must add,
+been exercised with obvious moderation, in specific cases only, and by
+way of example. The true weapon of the League, that which it used most
+liberally up to the present day, is the _boycotting_, or social interdict
+pitilessly pronounced against any one who disobeys its behests.
+
+From a legal point of view, the League has met with various fortunes.
+Suppressed in 1881 by an Act of Parliament, it was compelled to put on
+a mask and to disguise itself under the name of the _Ladies’ League_.
+A year later it underwent a new incarnation and became the _National
+League_.
+
+Now the Tory Ministry has suppressed it once more _proclaimed_ it, as
+they say (_clameur de haro_), in virtue of the special power conferred
+on it. It appears improbable that the health of the association should
+suffer much for this; on the contrary, it will probably be all the
+better for it. In former days it would have been content to undergo a
+fourth avatar by taking the name of _Celtic League_, _Irish Babies’
+League_, or any other name that would have done just as well to deride
+its adversaries. A special provision of the Coercion Act will prevent its
+having recourse to this expedient. By the 7th article of the Act, the
+Lord Lieutenant is empowered to suppress any _new_ association formed
+with a view to continuing the affairs of the old ones.
+
+But one never thinks of everything. Precisely because it is so explicit,
+the 7th article cannot apply to the _old_ Irish societies, different
+from the National League, and which can easily be substituted in its
+place. Those associations, _Home Rule Unions_, _Liberal Federations_,
+&c., are numerous through the country. One of them could easily accept
+the inheritance of the League, and it would be necessary to convoke
+Parliament to suppress it. If Parliament suppresses it, it will be easy
+to find something else. And so on for ever, through ages, to the crack
+of doom.... In the meanwhile there will be protestations, agitations,
+interpellations, and before the end, “the King, the ass” ... or the
+Ministry shall have died, as La Fontaine said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lord Salisbury may close two hundred offices of the League in the
+counties of Clare and Kerry. How shall he close the offices beyond the
+sea, which are the real ones?
+
+In fact, the League is indestructible, because it is impossible to get
+hold of it. One can arrest its chiefs, as has been done often enough,
+intercept its correspondence, oppose cavalry regiments to its public
+demonstrations, and retroactive measures to its secret acts; they
+cannot destroy the faith the Irish people have put in it; they cannot
+grapple with the essence of an association which rests on the most vital
+interests of the peasantry.
+
+Political persecution is fatally doomed to failure when exercised in a
+free country, if it does not begin by attacking the press and the right
+of meeting. And who shall dare to touch those two pillars of the British
+edifice? The English government is the government of opinion, or it is
+nothing: now, the opinion of the majority of Irishmen, of the majority of
+Scotchmen, and of an imposing minority of Englishmen, is in favour of the
+League.
+
+To say the truth, all parties are agreed _in petto_ upon the necessity
+of abolishing landlordism. It is only a question of settling who shall
+have the credit of doing it, and how it shall be managed so that neither
+the landlord’s creditors nor the public exchequer should suffer too
+much by that unavoidable liquidation. Therefore all the measures taken
+against an organism that incarnates such general feeling can only be an
+empty fooling, a holiday sport. Their only effect must be to awaken
+rural passions and provoke new acts of violence. One might even believe
+such was their only aim. For, to be able to ruin a perfectly lawful
+association like the League, in a country of free discussion, it is
+indispensable first to throw dishonour upon it.
+
+They have not yet succeeded in doing this, in spite of the most strenuous
+efforts. Not only has it always been impossible to charge the League with
+any act contrary to the current standard of morals, but it is beyond any
+doubt that its influence is especially directed towards the prevention of
+agrarian crimes, and even against individual resistance to landlordism.
+Wherever there is popular emotion or possible disorder, its delegates are
+present, and endeavour to enforce respect for the law. If it happen that
+the orations of some underlings overstep the mark, the general methods of
+the League none the less remain unimpeachable. It has taken for mandate
+the ruling of revolutionary action, the legalizing it, the task of giving
+it a scientific character. It is to its honour that it has succeeded up
+to the present day. One may reasonably suppose that it will not change
+its tactics at the hour when its true chief is no longer Mr. Parnell, but
+practically Mr. Gladstone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE CLERGY.
+
+
+From Kilrush, on the coast of Clare, an excellent service of steamers
+goes up the estuary of the Shannon to Foynes, where one takes the train
+to Limerick. It is a charming excursion, undertaken by all tourists.
+The Shannon here is of great breadth and majesty, flowing in an immense
+sheet of water, recalling the aspect of the great rivers of America. At
+the back you have the stormy ocean; in front, on the right, on the left,
+green hills dotted with snowy villas. Few trees or none, as is the rule
+in Ireland, but a light haze that softens all the outlines of the ground,
+magnifies the least shrubs, and lends to all the view a melting aspect of
+striking loveliness.
+
+The boats are few in number, though the depth of the channel would allow
+ships of the heaviest tonnage to go up to within five miles of Limerick.
+I notice hardly two or three sailing boats at anchor on this four hours’
+journey. What an admirable harbour for an active commerce would be that
+broad estuary, opening directly opposite to America, on the extreme
+point of the European continent. It is the natural point of arrival and
+departure for the Transatlantic steamers, which would reach New York in
+five days from there. Engineers have dreamed of this possibility. But
+to justify a maritime movement, and legitimise such enterprise, a great
+commerce, an industry that Ireland lacks, would be wanted. Gentlemen of
+an engineering turn, come back again in a century or two.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Tarbert, where we stop to take passengers, a fort opens its
+loop-holes, armed with guns, on the river. Redcoats are encamping at the
+foot of the fortress, and the morning breeze carries to us the rough
+voice of a non-commissioned officer drilling his men. One might imagine
+him addressing the _Invincibles_ across the ocean somewhat after this
+guise:
+
+“Here we are, keeping watch: If ever this alluring bay tempt you to come
+over, you shall find us ready to receive you!”...
+
+The helm trembles; the boat goes on its course, and soon Tarbert melts
+behind us in the sunny haze.
+
+On board, the travellers resemble those seen in summer on all great
+rivers—merchants bent on a pleasure trip; judges and barristers, having
+taken leave of briefs; professors enjoying their holidays, with wives,
+daughters, sons, goods, and chattels—all have the sun-burnt complexion
+and the satisfied look one brings back from the seaside. They have been
+staying on the beautiful shores of the County Clare, and are returning
+home with a provision of health for one year. La Fontaine has already
+noticed that, travelling, one is sure to see “the monk poring over his
+breviary.” Here the proportion is far greater than in the ancient coach;
+it is not one priest we have on board, but a dozen, all sleek, fat, and
+prosperous, dressed in good stout broadcloth, as smooth as their rubicund
+faces, and provided with gold chains resting on comfortable abdomens.
+
+One remark, by the way. When you meet an Irish peasant on the road, he
+stops, wishes you good-day, and adds, “Please, sir, what is the time?”
+Not that he cares much to know. He is perfectly well able to read the
+time on the great clock of the heavens. But it is his own manner of
+saying, “I can see, sir, that you are a man of substance—one of the great
+ones of this earth—_since you have a watch_. My sincere congratulations!”
+
+Well, all those travelling priests possess chronometers—we are obliged
+to notice it, since it appears to be a sign of easy circumstances in
+Ireland—and the rest of their attire fully carries out that symptom.
+Under the undefinable cut that at once betrays a clerical garment,
+their black coat has all the softness of first quality cloth; their
+travelling bag is of good bright leather; their very umbrella has a look
+of smartness, and does not affect the lamentable droop that with us is
+always associated with the idea of a clerical umbrella. Some of them wear
+the Roman hat and collar, with a square-cut waistcoat and the ordinary
+trousers of the laity, and stockings of all the hues of the rainbow. A
+young curate sports violet-coloured ones, which he exhibits with some
+complacency. I ventured to ask him, in the course of conversation,
+whether he belonged to the Pope’s household. He answered with a blush of
+modesty that he had not that honour, and wore violet hose because he was
+fond of that colour.
+
+That is a matter of taste; but I have a right to suppose, young
+Levite, that the mitre and episcopal rochet—perhaps even the cardinal
+purple—hover at night over your ingenuous dreams.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                                 LIMERICK.
+
+Limerick is a big town of 40,000 inhabitants, celebrated for its hams,
+lace, and gloves. The objects of interest are an important linen factory,
+and another for military equipments, besides a stone mounted on a
+pedestal, and which served as a table for signing the famous treaty of
+1691—soon violated like all treaties, however. Opposite that historic
+stone, on the other side of the Shannon, the ancient castle of King John
+rears its proud head; it has a grim and gloomy look, with its seven
+towers, its thick walls and iron-bound gates.
+
+At the large hotel of the place I meet again three of my ecclesiastical
+fellow-travellers. They evidently know what is good for them, and would
+on no account stop at second-rate inns. One cannot blame them for it. But
+this is a sign of prosperity, added to all the others; a hotel at fifteen
+shillings a day, without counting the wine, seems at first sight suited
+to prelates rather than to humble clergymen. Yet these are only village
+and parish priests, as I gather from the book on which I sign my name
+after theirs. At dinner, where we sit side by side, I am compelled to
+see that the appetite of the reverend fathers is excellent, and that the
+_carte_ of the wines is a familiar object with them. They each have their
+favourite claret: one likes Léoville, another Château Margaux, while the
+third prefers Chambertin; and they drain the cup to the last drop. After
+dessert they remain last in the dining-room, in company with a bottle of
+port.
+
+At ten o’clock that night, entering it to get a cup of tea, I find the
+three seated round glasses of smoking toddy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These memorable events are not consigned here, it need hardly be said,
+for the vain satisfaction of recording that on a certain evening three
+Irish priests were tippling freely. They certainly had a perfect right
+to do so, if such was their bent. It is the most cherished privilege of
+a British subject; and of all capital sins proscribed by the Church,
+drunkenness is certainly the most innocent. But this remark, made
+without prejudice, during a chance meeting at an inn, carries out the
+general impression left by the Irish clergy—that of a corporation
+greatly enamoured of its comforts, endowed with good incomes, and whose
+sleekness forms a striking contrast with the general emaciation of their
+parishioners.
+
+Everywhere, in visiting this island, one meets with this typical pair
+of abbots, well dressed and well “groomed,” travelling comfortably
+together, and, to use a popular expression, “la coulant douce.” It is
+startling in this realm of poverty, the more startling because the
+Catholic clergy have no official means of existence, no salary paid
+them by the State. They owe all the money they spend to the private
+contributions of their admirers. Was there ever, they doubtlessly think,
+a more legitimate way of making money? That is probably why they make
+so little mystery of it, and disdain to hide when they exchange part of
+their income against a bottle of Chambertin. In other places, priests
+think that a certain reserve is expected of them; they prefer being
+securely shut in privacy before they carve a partridge or plentifully
+moisten a synod dinner. Here they are so secure in their position that
+they recoil from no profane glance.
+
+Their lives are, I am told, of exemplary purity. I have no difficulty in
+believing it, both because purity is a marked characteristic of the race,
+and because their faith has seemed to me simple as that of the Breton
+priests. There must be exceptions, and some were pointed out to me; but
+assuredly those exceptions are few in number. By many signs which do not
+deceive those who have some experience of life, one can see that the
+Irish priest has not the vices of the Italian or Spanish priest. He is
+a gormandizer to be sure, but he is chaste—perhaps for the very reason
+that he is so devoted to the pleasures of the table. His simplicity of
+heart is wonderful sometimes, and makes one think of those Mount Athos
+monks, nursed in the cloister from the tenderest age, and who know
+literally nothing of the exterior world. I heard two of them, old men
+both, who were quietly chatting in a corner of the railway carriage. Both
+had small, bald birds’ heads, shaven chins, and a quaint, old-fashioned
+look.
+
+“_I am next door to an idiot!_” one of them was saying, with curious
+complacency.
+
+“So am I,” answered the other; “so was I always, and I thank Almighty God
+for it!... for have you not noticed that all those grand, clever people
+often lose the faith?...”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Where does their income come from? That is a question doubly interesting
+to us Frenchmen, who every year pay out two million sterling for the
+budget of public worship. A placard seen everywhere in Limerick, and
+presenting a marked resemblance to the advertisement for a theatre, will
+help to tell us. This placard is to the effect that on the day after
+to-morrow a general ordination of young priests will take place in the
+Cathedral of St. John, by the hands of the Right Reverend X. O’Dyer,
+archbishop of the town (the name and quality in conspicuous characters),
+assisted by several other prelates and dignitaries. It proceeds to state
+that excursion trains have been established for the occasion, and that
+tickets for the ceremony may be procured, at the price of half-a-crown
+and one shilling, at No. 98, George Street.
+
+This is a booking-office, exactly like those we have in theatres. Plenty
+of placards, the plan of the church showing the number and position of
+each seat, a table of prices, and behind a little grated window a bearded
+old woman for the tickets,—nothing is wanting. One has only to choose
+one’s place, to pay the price down, and to take away the ticket. About
+twenty persons perform these various acts before my eyes. Evidently the
+receipt will be good. The cathedral of St. John, that proudly raises
+its brand-new spire above all the others, must be able to accommodate
+at least three or four thousand spectators. At 1_s._ 9_d._ per head on
+an average, that gives already a total of two or three hundred pounds.
+To this must be added the product of the collections and that of the
+wooden money-boxes, that open everywhere to receive the outcome of
+the generosity of the faithful; the total, we may be sure, cannot be
+otherwise than respectable. It is true that an ordination is not an
+every-day event, and that it must be an expensive affair to put on the
+stage. We must therefore suppose the ordinary income to be raised by way
+of semestrial and direct contribution.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This is how the thing is done: each parish priest has two Sundays in
+the year devoted to the taking his _dues_, as he calls it. On these
+days, instead of preaching, he exhibits a manuscript list upon which
+are inscribed by name all his tributaries, that is to say, all his
+parishioners, with the sums they have paid into his hands; this he reads
+publicly. As a rule he adds a running commentary to each name, either to
+praise the generosity of the donor, or, on the contrary, to complain of
+his stinginess. In the country, especially, the scene is not wanting in
+humour.
+
+“_Daniel MacCarthy_, four shillings and six-pence,” says the priest.
+“That’s not much for a farmer who keeps three cows and sold two calves
+this year. I will hope for him that he only meant that as a preliminary
+gift.... _Simon Redmond_, seven shillings and six-pence; he might have
+given ten shillings, as he did last year. He is not what we should call
+a progressive man.... _George Roehe_, two shillings and three-pence.
+_Richard MacKenna_, one shilling and three-pence. _Denis Twoney_, one
+shilling and nine-pence. Against those who do their best I have nothing
+to say. _Michael Murphy_, fifteen shillings. Now, I ask, could not he
+have made it a pound? The pity of it! _John Coleman_, five shillings.
+_Daniel Clune_, five shillings. _Cornelius Nagle_, five shillings. One
+would think they had agreed to do it.... _Henry Townsend_, Esq., of
+Townsend Manor, three pounds sterling. That’s what I call a subscriber!
+And he is a Protestant. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves to let a
+Protestant be more generous to your own church than you are.... _Harriet
+O’Connor_, one shilling and nine-pence. I will be bound she liked buying
+a new bonnet better than doing her duty. That is between her and her
+conscience. But I am afraid that at the Day of Judgment she won’t find it
+such a good investment.... _Mary Ann Cunningham_, twelve shillings and
+nine-pence. If everybody knew how to spare and how to use what they spare
+in the same way as this good lady, things would go better in this world
+and in the next, take my word for it.... _Colonel Lewis_, of Knockamore
+Villa, five pounds sterling. Another Protestant! Positively one might
+think one lived in a parish of heathens when one sees that the heretics
+alone seem to have some regard for the church!...”
+
+The reading goes on in this guise, adorned with reflections more or less
+pungent, and interrupted now and then by a repartee coming from the far
+end of the audience, and torn from the patient by the malignity of the
+attack; a general hilarity is then provoked without impairing in the
+least the reverence of the congregation for their priest or their church.
+This semestrial subscription, added to the weekly collections, the daily
+masses, the baptisms, weddings and burials, is amply sufficient to keep
+the church, the priest, and the priest’s house in a good state of repair.
+Most of the parish priests besides, have the habit of “binage,” that is
+to say they often say two or three masses a day, at different points of
+their sometimes very wide parish.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They are generally addressed by their christian name, prefaced by the
+name of _Father_: _Father James_, _Father Henry_, etc., and this title
+well describes the terms of filial familiarity of the flocks with their
+pastor,—a familiarity not unfrequently manifested by sound boxes on the
+ear for children, and good blows with the stick on the shoulders of
+his grown-up parishioners, but which does not preclude respect. In the
+streets one always sees the parish priest respectfully greeted by the
+passers by; many women kneel down to kiss his hand as in Italy or Spain.
+
+His authority is that of a patriarch, who not only wields spiritual
+power, but also, to a great extent, social and political power. He
+incarnates at once in himself the native faith so long proscribed in the
+country, resistance to the oppressor, heavenly hopes and compensation for
+human trials. As a consequence, his influence is great, for good as for
+ill.
+
+The faith of the Irish peasant is entire, unquestioning, absolute as that
+of a thirteenth century’s serf. One must see on Sundays those churches
+crowded to overflowing, and too narrow for the congregation who remain,
+silent and kneeling, on the steps and even outside the doors. One must
+see those ragged people, forming a chain by holding on to each other’s
+tatters, one behind the other, at a distance of 50 to 60 feet from the
+altar, a patch of dim light up there in the darkness of the church; or
+else they must be seen at some pilgrimage round a miraculous well or
+stream, like the Lough Derg, wallowing indiscriminately in the pond,
+washing therein their moral and physical uncleanliness, drinking the
+sacred water by the pailful, intoxicated with enthusiasm and hope.
+
+The devotees of Our Lady del Pilar, and of San Gennaro, are less
+expansive and less ardent. The Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Rosary, St.
+Philip of Neri, all the mystical armoury of the modern church have
+innumerable votaries in Ireland. One would perhaps experience some
+difficulty in finding there ten born Catholics not wearing next to their
+skin some amulet made of cloth or ivory, and invested in their eyes with
+supernatural powers. If I do not greatly err, St. Peter’s pence must find
+its more generous contributors amidst those poverty-stricken populations.
+To those imaginations of starved and half hysterical people the Roman
+pontiff appears in the far distance, all in white, in a halo of gold,
+like a superhuman vision of Justice and Pity in this world where they
+found neither the one nor the other.
+
+An Irish servant in London once asked my advice about the investment of
+her savings, some thirty pounds which she had scraped together at the
+Post Office Savings Bank. I congratulated her on her thrift, when the
+poor girl told me, her eyes bright with unshed tears:
+
+“It is for our Holy Father, that they keep in prison up there in Rome....
+I mean to bring him fifty pounds as soon as ever I get them.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Those things may tend to explain why the only prosperous trade in Ireland
+is the clerical trade. Every year the number of priests increases, though
+the population is decreasing. In 1871 they numbered 3,136; in 1881 they
+were 3,363, or an increase of 227, under the guidance of four archbishops
+and twenty-four bishops. The Catholic population is of three million
+persons; that gives one priest for about 900 inhabitants.
+
+It is generally admitted that each of these priests, with his church and
+his house, cannot cost much under £300 or £400 a year. That would give
+about £1,200,000 coming annually from the pockets of those labourers and
+servant girls. The tithe was never so heavy.
+
+This clergy is chiefly recruited from the class of small farmers and
+peasantry (by the reason that the other classes are for the majority
+Protestants); as a consequence the clergy share all the passions of
+their class. The agrarian revolution has no agents more active. Almost
+everywhere the parish priest is the president of the local Land League
+Board. In the stormiest meetings is always to be found a village Peter
+the Hermit, preaching the new crusade and denouncing the landlords
+with fiery eloquence; not to speak of the Sunday preaching, which is
+only another meeting closed against the police, and where landlords
+are handled with extraordinary freedom of language. One has seen Irish
+priests openly declare a shot to be an unimportant trifle, so long as
+it was sent after a landed proprietor. A few months ago a Dublin paper
+mentioned a parish in Donegal, where the priest, they asserted, had gone
+so far as to put the properties of the landlords in lottery, by tickets
+of ten shillings each. The verification of this fact would by no means
+be easy. But, given the state of mind of the Irish priest, the ardour he
+brings into the struggle, the boundless indulgence he displays towards
+agrarian outrages, the tale is by no means improbable; our Leaguers have
+done even worse. However surprising may be in our Continental eyes the
+spectacle of a whole clergy taking part against the lords in a social
+war, under the paternal eyes of their episcopate, we must remember that
+here everything tends to bring about this result:—religious passions,
+hereditary instinct, and personal interest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A priest who had the unlucky idea of pronouncing himself against the
+League would soon see his subsidies stopped. His flock would besides lose
+all confidence in him, and all respect for his person. I am told of a
+characteristic example of the kind of practical jokes indulged in such
+a case by the peasantry against the dissident pastor. A priest of the
+county Clare, seized by sudden scruples, took it into his head to abuse
+the League at the Sunday preaching, instead of sounding the usual praise
+in its honour. At once they sent him from the lower end of the church
+an old woman who begged to be heard directly in confession, before she
+could approach Holy Communion. The worthy man, grumbling a little at such
+an untimely fit of devotion, nevertheless acceded to her request with
+antique simplicity, and seated himself inside the confessional.
+
+“Father,” said the old woman in aloud voice, “I accuse myself of having
+this moment thought that you were a wicked bad man, who betrays his flock
+to take the part of their natural enemies....”
+
+“Amen!” answered all the congregation in a chorus.
+
+Without waiting for absolution the old woman had got up to go. The priest
+tried to imitate her. Impossible. They had placed on his seat a huge lump
+of pitch which glued him, attached him indissolubly to his place. To get
+him free they were obliged to go for help outside, to call strangers to
+the rescue. The whole village meanwhile were shaking with laughter, and
+thought the joke in the best possible taste.
+
+The Irish clergy go with the League, both because their temperament
+inclines them that way, and also because it is an imperious necessity
+of their situation; their case is rather similar to that of the _Home
+Rule_ members, who were compelled to enter the movement, whether they
+approved of it or not. However strong their hold on the mass of the rural
+population, their influence would vanish in a week if they tried to pull
+against the irresistible stream. Such sacrifices have never been a habit
+of the Roman Church.
+
+Indeed it is permitted to smile, when one sees the Tory Ministry
+soliciting the intervention of the Pope in the Irish crisis, and
+obtaining from him the sending of a special legate entrusted with the
+mission of bringing the Episcopate of Ireland back to less subversive
+ideas. It is well understood that the Pope of course sends his legate,
+and derives from his diplomatic compliance all the advantages it entails.
+But he is better aware than any one that unless he personally gave away
+one million sterling a year to the parish priests of Ireland, he would
+have little reasonable hope of success in asking them to shift their
+policy.
+
+Is it necessary to add that the Irish priest himself knows on occasion
+how to bring into his mundane relations the traditional suppleness and
+prudence of his order? A priest of Wexford, actively mixed up with the
+agrarian movement, was dining a few years ago at the house of Mr. C⸺,
+proprietor of a large landed estate in the county. Conversation turned
+upon the League, and no good was said of it. The priest listened in
+silence, without giving his sentiment either for or against the League.
+All of a sudden, with a look of assumed simplicity, he turned to his host—
+
+“Look here, Mr. C⸺,” he said, “Will you believe me? _Me impresshun is
+that there is no Land League._”
+
+The saintly man had for the last three months been vice-president of the
+board of the Land League in his district.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+FORT SAUNDERS.
+
+
+                                                                   GALWAY.
+
+Galway is an old Spanish colony, planted on the western coast of
+Ireland, and which kept for a long time intimate relations with the
+mother country. Things and people have retained the original stamp to an
+uncommon degree; but for the Irish names that are to be read on every
+shop, you could believe yourself in some ancient quarter of Seville.
+The women have the olive complexion, black hair, and red petticoat of
+the _mañolas_; the houses open on a courtyard, a thing unknown in other
+parts of Ireland, as well as in Great Britain; they have grated windows,
+peep-holes in the door, and are adorned with sculptures, in the Moorish
+style; the steeples of churches affect the shape of minarets; the very
+fishermen in the port, with the peculiar shape of their boat, sails and
+nets, and something indescribable in their general outline, remind you of
+the hardy sailors of Corunna.
+
+The remembrance of seven or eight centuries of busy trade with the
+Peninsula, does not show itself solely in faces, manners, or dwelling, it
+is to be found also in local tradition. Among others, there is the story
+of the Mayor Lynch Fitz-Stephen, who gave in 1493 such a fearful example
+of ruthless justice. His only son, whom he had sent to Spain to settle
+some important affair, was coming back with the Spanish correspondent of
+the family, bringing home a rich cargo, when he entered into a conspiracy
+with the crew, appropriated the merchandise, and threw overboard the
+unfortunate Spaniard. The crime was discovered, the culprit arrested, and
+brought to trial before his own father, who was exercising the right of
+high and low justice in the district, and by him condemned to the pain of
+death. The general belief was that the Mayor would contrive to find some
+pretext to give his son a respite; and in order to supply him with that
+pretext, his relations drew up a petition of grace, which they presented
+to him, covered with signatures. Lynch listened to their request, then
+merely told them to come back for an answer on a certain day he named.
+At the appointed time the suppliants appeared again; but the first sight
+which caught their eyes was the dead body of the Mayor’s son hanging from
+one of the grated windows of his house. An inscription, placed in 1524,
+on the walls of the cemetery of St. Nicholas, records the memory of that
+event.
+
+Galway is only a big borough nowadays, where ruins are nearly as numerous
+as inhabited dwellings. From the road that skirts the Bay, after leaving
+the harbour, the long islands of Arran may be seen rising on the west;
+from another road, which goes northwards, Lough Corrib appears, famous
+for its salmon fisheries. As an historic place, the county possessed
+already the field of Aughrim, celebrated for two centuries as the spot
+where James II. lost his last battle against William III.—a battle so
+murderous that the dogs of the country retained a taste for human flesh
+for three generations after. But since the last year it has acquired
+a new celebrity: another and no less epic battle has been fought at
+Woodford in August, 1886, for the agrarian cause. The account of it is
+worth telling. Never did the character of the struggle between League and
+landlord appear in such a glaring light. All the factors in the problem
+are there, each playing its own part. It is like a vertical cut opening
+Irish society down to its very core, and permitting to see it from basis
+to summit; a supplementary chapter to Balzac’s _Paysans_.
+
+Woodford is a pretty village seated on the shore of Lough Derg on the
+slope of the hills which divide Galway from Clare. The principal
+landowners there are the Marquis of Clanricarde, Sir Henry Burke, the
+Westmeath family, Colonel Daly, and Lord Dunsandle. Agrarian hatred is
+particularly alive in that district; the Galway man is bloodthirsty,
+and counts human life as nought. Five or six years ago Mr. Blake, Lord
+Clanricarde’s agent, was shot dead, and in March, 1886, a bailiff named
+Finley, a veteran of the Crimean war, had the same fate while he was
+going to proceed to an eviction on the account of Sir Henry Burke. The
+spot is shown still where the unfortunate man was murdered and his corpse
+left twenty-four hours without sepulture, nobody daring or willing to
+bear it away. A detachment of the police in the pay of the Property
+Defence Association having settled their barracks in the vicinity of
+Woodford, the inhabitants, about one thousand in number, organized a sort
+of grotesque pageant, which made its progress along the streets of the
+town behind a coffin bearing the inscription: _Down with landlordism!_
+then concluded by burning the coffin in sight of the barracks.
+
+There are two churches, one Protestant, the other Catholic. The faithful
+who attend the first are two in number, no mere nor less, which would be
+sufficient to show how legitimate it was for the Irish to protest when
+obliged to pay the tithes of an altogether alien worship. The second
+is headed by a jolly compeer, much beloved by his parishioners for his
+good humour and liberality, Father Caen, a pastor of the old school,
+whose boast it is that he keeps the best table and cellar, and has the
+prettiest nieces in the county. He is president of the local board of
+the League; the treasurer of that committee is the _guardian of the poor
+law_ of the district, what we would call “l’administrateur du bien des
+pauvres;” but the true agent of the League—the _Deus ex machina_ of the
+place—is the secretary, Father Egan, curate of the parish, an austere,
+thin, fanatic-looking man, a peasant’s son, with all the passions of his
+race, who sucked the hatred of landlords with his mother’s milk, and ever
+remembers that many of his kindred have been reduced to emigrate, and
+that an uncle of his went mad after being evicted. A feature to be noted
+down; that priest, tall, strong, sinewy, is an excellent shot and an
+inveterate poacher. Nothing would be easier for him than obtaining leave
+from the landowners to shoot on their grounds; but he scorns the leave.
+His delight is to lurk at night till he has shot some of their big game,
+or to head openly a _battue_ for a general slaughter five miles round.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One of the finest estates in the county is that of Lord Clanricarde, to
+which are attached three hundred and sixteen tenants.
+
+Hubert George De Burgh Canning, Marquis of Clanricarde and Baron
+Somerhill, was born 1832, according to the _Peerage_. He was never
+married, has no children, belongs to the House of Lords as Baron
+Somerhill, is a member of two or three great clubs, and lives in
+Piccadilly, at the Albany, a sort of caravanserai (not to say seraglio),
+almost exclusively a resort of rich bachelors. That is about all that is
+known of him. His tenants do not know him. The only glimpse they ever had
+of their landlord was on the following occasion. In 1874, at the funeral
+of the late Marquis, a man of about forty, with fair hair, who had come
+from London for the ceremony, was noticed among the mourners. He was said
+to be the new master. That was all: he disappeared as he had come. Save
+for that hazy and far-away remembrance, the landlord is for the Woodford
+people a mere name, a philosophical entity of whom they know nothing
+except that he has a land agent at Loughrea, a little neighbouring town,
+and that into the hands of that agent they must pay every year £19,634
+out of the product of the land. The tenants of Woodford are in that sum
+for about £1,000.
+
+The Marquis’s father died in 1874. Quite contrary to the present owner,
+he was the prototype of the Irish lord resident. Great sportsman,
+scatter-brain, violent, extravagant, but kind and open-handed, he was
+liked in spite of his numerous failings, and tradition helping him he was
+emphatically the master almost all his life long; a fact which he was
+wont to illustrate by boasting that if it pleased him to send his old
+grey mare to the House of Commons, the electors would be too happy to
+vote unanimously for the animal.
+
+In 1872, however, the Marquis’s tenants took it into their heads to cut
+the tradition, and gave their vote to a certain Captain Nolan, the _Home
+Rule_ candidate. The irascible nobleman took revenge for what he chose to
+consider as a personal insult by raising the rent of all bad electors.
+He went so far in that line that in 1882 the _Land Commissioners_ had
+to reduce them by half. That judgment could not, of course, have a
+retrospective effect and bring a restitution of the sums that had been
+paid in excess during the last ten years, and which varied from £50 to
+£100. It may be imagined how they must weigh still on the peasant’s
+heart, and what a well-prepared ground the agrarian movement was to find
+at Woodford. The successive murders of the land agent Blake and Bailiff
+Finlay were among the first and visible signs of that ferment of hatred.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Those crimes, which remained unpunished, and the responsibility of which
+is thrown at each other’s heads by the two parties, came with the usual
+accompaniment of fires, mutilations, verbal and written threats. The
+reign of terror had begun in the district; no bailiff was any longer
+willing to serve a writ or assignation. There came a time when the
+landlords nearly gave up all hope of finding a land agent to take the
+place of the one who had been murdered; at last they discovered the man—a
+certain Joyce, of Galway—a man who united an indomitable spirit with
+the most consummate skill; deeply versed in the art of talking to the
+peasant, a fine shot, carrying his potations well; ready for anything.
+A professional exploit had made his name famous in the neighbourhood.
+Having to serve writs upon several farmers, and being unable to find
+bailiffs willing to carry them, he made a general convocation in his
+office of all the debtors, with the pretext of submitting to them some
+mode of accommodation. The proposition being unanimously rejected, Joyce
+gets up, goes to the door, and after having turned the key, leans with
+his back against it; then, producing out of his pocket as many writs as
+there were farmers in his room, distributes them among the visitors. The
+poor devils were caught; according to the terms of the law, nothing but
+submission was left to them. It will not be unnecessary to add here that
+Joyce, a born Catholic, had been recently converted to Protestantism,
+which is reputed an abomination in Ireland, and consequently went by the
+name of the _renegade_. Such was the man who came to settle at Loughrea
+under protection of a special guard of constables, and hostilities soon
+began.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The harvest of 1885 had been but indifferent, and besides, by reason of
+American competition, the price of the chief local products had fallen
+down considerably—from about 15 to 20 per cent.—which implies for the
+farmer an utter impossibility to pay his rent, unless the nett profit he
+draws from the soil be estimated above 15 or 20 per cent. of his general
+receipt. Even in Ireland reasonable landlords are to be found. Those who
+understood the situation felt for their tenants, and, without waiting to
+be asked, granted a reduction of rent. At Woodford, Lord Dunsandle and
+Colonel Daly of their own impulse, and Sir H. Burke after some demur,
+gave up 15 per cent. of the unpaid rent.
+
+As for Lord Clanricarde, he gave not the least sign of existence. When
+the November term came, his tenants demanded a reduction of 25 per cent.,
+upon which Joyce declared that not a penny was to be given up. This
+seemed so hard that it was generally disbelieved; and an opinion spread
+itself that by applying personally to the landlord justice would be
+obtained. A collective address, signed by the 316 Woodford tenants, was
+accordingly drawn up and presented to him.
+
+The Marquis of Clanricarde vouchsafed no manner of answer. Then, Father
+Egan put himself in motion. He first obtained from the Bishop of Clonfert
+that he would send a second petition to the master, representing to
+him the true state of affairs, the reduction consented to by the other
+landlords, &c. Lord Clanricarde did not even acknowledge reception of the
+prelate’s letter. Let us state here, once for all, that he never swerved
+from the attitude he had adopted from the beginning, so aggressive in its
+very stolidity. Never once did he depart from that silence, except when
+he once wrote to the _Times_ that, personally, he did not object to the
+proposed reduction, but was in the habit of leaving to his agent the
+care of that sort of thing.
+
+Seeing that there was no satisfaction whatever to be expected from him,
+the Woodford tenants imitated their landlord, and henceforth gave no
+sign of life, or paid him a single farthing. In the month of April,
+1886, Joyce resorted to the legal ways and set up prosecutions against
+thirty-eight of the principal farmers, whose debt was £20 and above,
+assuming by that move the attitude of a moderate man who has to deal with
+obvious unwillingness to pay.
+
+And it was that which gave to the Woodford affair its peculiar character,
+which made it a _test case_, a decisive trial where the contending forces
+have measured their strength, where the inmost thought of the Irish
+peasant has shown itself in full light. If the chiefs of the League had
+singled it out from amidst a hundred (as, indeed, we may believe they
+did, whatever they might aver to the contrary), they could never have
+achieved a more complete demonstration of their power. Chance, however,
+had also its usual share in the turn which affairs took. Joyce, it
+appears, had began prosecutions against seventy-eight lesser tenants, and
+at the moment when success was on the point of crowning his efforts, the
+procedure was quashed for some legal flaw.
+
+As for the bigger ones, judgment had been entered against them, and the
+execution followed. The first step was the selling out in public court
+of the tenant’s interest in his holding. Ten of the men capitulated
+immediately, paying the rent in full with interest and law costs, that
+is to say, about 80 per cent. above the original debt. As for the
+twenty-eight others, fired by political passion, pride, and the ardent
+exhortations of Father Egan, they did not waver, and allowed the sale to
+proceed.
+
+Agreeably to the usage established since the League has been supreme in
+Ireland, not one bidder came forward at the sale. The representative of
+the landlord therefore remained master of the situation, and got for a
+few shillings the interest of the twenty-eight farmers—interest which, in
+certain cases, was worth £200 and more.
+
+It now remained to evict those tenants from their farms, and take
+possession in their place. Let us remark that, being certain of having
+allowed the landlord, through the sale, to help himself to a value
+of five or six times his due, those men were bound to consider such
+an eviction a gratuitous piece of cruelty. Well knowing before-hand
+that the eviction would by no means be an easy task, for all Ireland
+breathlessly followed the course of events, Joyce singled out amongst
+the twenty-eight defaulters, the four tenants for whom the eviction was
+sure to bear the hardest character, namely, Conroy, Fahey, Broderick,
+and Saunders. These were all people of comfortable means, who had for
+many years been established on their lands, who were profoundly attached
+to the house where their children or grand-children had been born, and
+which they had themselves built, enlarged and improved at great expense;
+rural _bourgeois_ rather than peasants; men that in a French country town
+should have been mayors, _adjoints_, or municipal councillors.
+
+For each of them eviction not only meant ruin, the voluntary and
+definitive loss of a small fortune laboriously acquired, and which could
+be estimated in each case at ten or twelve times the amount of the annual
+rent; it was, besides, the upsetting of all their dearest habits, the
+destruction of home, the end of domestic felicity. “Placed between this
+result and the choice of paying £30 or £40, which he has in his strong
+box, or which he will experience no difficulty in borrowing if he has
+them not—what country-bred man would hesitate?” thought Joyce. “Conroy,
+Fahey, Broderick, and Saunders shall pay! They shall pay, and after them
+the others must inevitably follow suit.”
+
+This was very sound reasoning. But Joyce calculated without the League
+and its agent, Father Egan. The four chosen victims did not pay. With a
+resolution that must really seem heroic to whoever knows the workings
+of a peasant’s soul, Conroy, Fahey, Broderick, and Saunders unanimously
+declared that the agent might expel them by force—_if he could_—but yield
+they would not.
+
+Ah! there was a fearful struggle. It was not without the most terrible
+inner combat that they kept their word. At home they had the money ready;
+nothing could be simpler than to go and pay it. Now and then temptation
+waxed almost too strong. James Broderick is an old man of seventy years.
+One day, called to Loughrea by the tempter, he went, in company with his
+friend Fahey.
+
+“Now, look here, Mr. Broderick,” Joyce said to him, “it goes to my heart
+to evict a good man like you from such a pretty house.... You have lived
+in it for these thirty years—it is the pearl of Woodford.... Let us make
+an arrangement about all this: you pay me down your rent with for costs,
+and I give you any length of time for the rest.... His lordship will
+even give you back the tenant-right for the price he paid himself,—fifty
+shillings.... Now what do you say?”...
+
+Old Broderick wavered; he was on the point of yielding.
+
+“Indeed, Mr. Joyce, you cannot do more than that,” ... he uttered in a
+trembling voice, involuntarily feeling for his pocket-book.
+
+But Fahey was there. He took the old man’s arm and drew him aside.
+
+“It is not _time_ that we want!” he said to him. “_What we want is to
+uphold the principle!_”
+
+Truly a great word. As fine as any recorded on History’s page, for those
+who know how to understand it rightly. If the peasants can remember a
+principle when their property is in question, verily one may say that the
+times are near being fulfilled!
+
+All conciliatory means were now exhausted. It only remained to have
+recourse to force. Joyce knew better than anyone what resistance he was
+going to encounter. Personally he thought he was going to meet death. He
+went resolutely nevertheless, but not without surrounding himself with a
+regular army.
+
+The bailiffs of the place refusing to act, some had to be sent for from
+Dublin. Those bailiffs, escorted by about a hundred emergency men, were
+supported besides by five hundred constables armed with rifles and
+revolvers. Woodford lies at a distance of about twenty miles from the
+nearest railway. The traps and horses necessary to carry all these people
+had to be sent down from Dublin, nobody consenting to give any manner of
+help. The same thing occurred for provisions and for the implements of
+the siege, pickaxes, levers, iron crowbars, which were indispensable to
+the assailants, and which were brought down with the army to Portumna.
+These preparations lasted three weeks. The mobilisation, decreed by Joyce
+at the end of July, could only be completed by the 17th of August.
+
+On the next day, the 18th, this army moved forward and left Portumna in a
+column, marching on Woodford.
+
+But on their side the Leaguers had not remained inactive.
+
+All the night long squads of voluntary workmen had been hard at work.
+When the police caravan arrived in sight of the village, they found the
+road barred by trees and heaps of stones placed across the way. They were
+obliged to dismount and go round by the fields.
+
+In the meantime, from the top of the neighbouring heights horns were
+signalling the appearance of the enemy; the chapel bells began to toll
+an alarm peal. From all the points of the compass an immense multitude
+of people hastened to come and take up their position on the hills of
+Woodford.
+
+When the bailiffs made their appearance, headed by Joyce, armed to the
+teeth, by the under-sheriff whom the duty of his charge obliged to
+preside at the execution, and leading on five hundred policemen, an
+indescribable, formidable howl rose up to heaven; the Irish _wail_ which
+partakes of the lion’s roar and of the human sob, of the yell of the
+expiring beast and of the rushing sound of waters.
+
+That lugubrious hooting was to last during two entire days, with
+full-stops, _da capo_, _decrescendo_ and _rinforzando_ of great effect.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first house attacked by the assailants was that of Conroy. It is a
+solid, comfortable-looking dwelling, built on the bank of Lough Derg.
+To the under-sheriff’s summons, the inhabitants, posted on the roof,
+answered only by derisive laughter. The door, which was of solid oak, was
+closed and barred inside. The order was given to break it open. A few
+minutes’ work sufficed to do it.
+
+When it fell crashing under the axes, it was perceived that a wall had
+been built behind it.... A triumphant shout rose from the crowd.
+
+“A breach must be made!” thundered Joyce. The stone wall was attacked.
+Immediately, from the roof, from the windows, poured a deluge of scalding
+hot lime-water, which fell on the assailants, blinded them, burnt them,
+and sent them back howling and dancing with pain. Again the crowd
+applauded, saluting with screams of laughter every ladleful of hot water
+that took effect. The custom of Galway authorizes, it appears, that
+singular way of defending one’s house. _It is no breach of the peace._
+One can scald the bailiffs without any qualms of conscience or fear of
+consequences.
+
+Nothing loth, the Conroy family freely used the permission. The miracle
+was that they did not use more murderous weapons. But the League’s
+agents were there holding back, according to their custom, the too fiery
+spirits, and keeping them within the bounds of legal hostilities. At
+their head the priest Egan was conspicuous, loudly advising the besieged,
+pointing out to them the uncovered assailants, telling them on what
+point to direct the effort of resistance. As for the police, mute and
+motionless, they beheld the drama without taking part in it. Four hours’
+work were needed to make the breach. At last the bailiffs were able to
+enter the house, expel the inhabitants, and take possession of it. They
+were obliged literally to carry away the youngest Miss Conroy, who
+desperately clung to the walls and furniture, and refused to come out of
+her own will.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Night came, and the bailiffs have no right to carry on their proceedings
+after sunset. They were therefore obliged to postpone their operations
+till the next day. What made matters worse was, that they must
+necessarily go back to Portumna, for they need expect to find no lodgings
+in Woodford. It is easy to foretell the complication of events that now
+followed.
+
+The whole of next day was employed in the eviction of Fahey. That of
+Broderick lasted another day, and caused the arrest of twenty-seven
+persons, for in spite of the League’s efforts heads were waxing hotter
+and hotter, and the combatants began to be rather too excited on both
+sides.
+
+But where resistance took a truly epic character was in the house of
+Thomas Saunders. With twenty-three comrades he held in check all assaults
+_during four entire days_. Not content with scalding the bailiffs by
+means of pumps and cauldrons installed on purpose, he had, by a stroke of
+genius, the idea of throwing on them hives of bees, that came out enraged
+from their cells and cruelly stung everything before them. Who knows
+that there may not be in this a precious indication for future warfare!
+European strategists may before long add “the chaste dew-drinkers,”
+as Victor Hugo called them, to the pigeons and the war-dogs. However
+that may be, Joyce’s mercenaries, burnt, stung, and crest-fallen, were
+compelled, for three nights running, to retreat on Portumna.
+
+The green flag meanwhile was proudly waving its folds on the summit of
+Saunders’ house, which enraptured Ireland, intoxicated with joy at the
+news of this unprecedented siege, immediately baptized _Fort Saunders_.
+Agitation was fast spreading over the whole country. The military
+authorities judged it indispensable to send down 200 mounted men, and to
+have the place patrolled at night. In Portumna councils of war were held,
+and serious thoughts were entertained of having recourse to the antique
+battering-ram and “tortoise” in order to approach the place and succeed
+in taking it. Three days passed in new preparations and supplementary
+armaments.
+
+At last, on the 27th of August, a new assault was attempted. It failed
+like all the others, but the law must, it was felt, at all costs, be
+enforced; the police interfered about some technical point, took the
+house at the bayonet’s point and made all its inmates prisoners.
+
+Thus ended, without effusion of blood, this memorable campaign; three
+weeks’ preparation, eight days’ fighting, a thousand men on foot,
+enormous expense had been required in order to succeed in evicting four
+tenants of the Marquis of Clanricarde, out of a number of 316, and that
+in the midst of scandalous scenes which gave the noisiest publicity to
+the agrarian cause. Everybody was of opinion that enough had been done,
+and evictions were stopped.
+
+The affair at Woodford marks a date in the annals of the Irish
+revolution. One has seen in it peasants living in relatively good
+circumstances fight for principles and go to the furthest ends of
+legality,—without overstepping them. Moreover, these events have taken
+place in a county famed for its violence and represented in Parliament
+by Mr. Matthew Harris, which is saying enough; (his motto was, till
+lately, “When you see a landlord, shoot him down like a partridge”).
+Three or four years sooner such events could not have taken place without
+involving fifteen or twenty deaths of persons. Here not a single one
+occurred. One could not but acknowledge that the honour of this was due
+to the League, to its moderating and constitutional influence. In vain
+it protested that it had nothing to do with those conflicts; its agents
+and its general instructions played the first part in it. Therefore it
+reaped all the fruits of this, came out of the ordeal greater, surrounded
+with a poetical halo, sovereign. History often has such ironies. At the
+price of their domestic happiness, four obscure heroes had just won in
+face of public opinion the cause of the serfs of the glebe against the
+lords.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.
+
+
+                                                                    SLIGO.
+
+In all the cabins I enter, the first object that meets my eyes on the
+wall, besides a portrait of Parnell or Gladstone, is, enshrined between
+the bit of sacred palm and the photograph of the emigrant son, a sheet of
+printed paper, sometimes put under a glass, and headed by these words,
+“The Plan of Campaign.” This is a summary of the instructions given by
+the League to its followers in November, 1886, and of the various means
+by which the position may be made untenable by the landlords.
+
+That order of the day of the agrarian army was, however, absent from the
+house furniture of one of my friends, Mat Cloney; he was a fisherman on
+the Garvogue, near Lough Gill, and close to the ruins of the Abbey of
+Sligo; an old man of hale and pleasing countenance, whose weather-beaten
+face was shaded by a plenteous crop of gray hair, and lighted up by two
+wonderfully bright blue eyes: a true Celt in manner and appearance. When
+I entered his cabin for the first time he was engaged in preparing his
+dinner; this consisted of a dried herring and a cold potato; but tearing
+down from a hook near the fire-place a small piece of bacon, the old man
+hastily rubbed it over a frying-pan, which he set on the dying embers; in
+it he placed the herring. A great noise and spluttering followed, then
+Mat, mindful of future feasts, thriftily hung his piece of bacon back on
+its hook, and the herring being done, sat down to his meagre repast.
+
+“You see, sir,” he said contentedly, “it gives it a relish.”
+
+I must not omit to say that poor as his fare was, he nevertheless offered
+me a share of it. I explained I had already lunched, and while he was
+discussing his meal, we entered into conversation.
+
+“You must be pretty well advanced in years,” I said, “though one would
+not think it to see how you manage your boat.”
+
+“_Shure_, sir, I was _borren_ in the _Ribillion_!”
+
+Let me here observe that this is the common answer given by many Irish
+peasants as to their age. The “Ribillion” seems to have made an epoch in
+their history, and they consider that any person over middle age must
+have been born during that momentous period. The date appears to matter
+little to them. So, though I entertained private doubts of Cloney’s being
+89 years old, I let that pass, and we went on talking.
+
+“Have you any children?”
+
+“_Shire_ I have!... Me sons they are fishermen, and me daughters are all
+marr’d, near here....”
+
+“And you live alone?”
+
+“Yes, sir, that I do.”
+
+“It must be a lonely life for you. Were you never tempted to marry again
+after your wife’s death? A fine man like you would have had no difficulty
+in finding a wife.”
+
+“Och, sir, after me ould woman died ... (with a burst of emotion) I
+always remained a _dacent widowman_ ... that I did!...”
+
+While we were talking I had been looking at the walls of the cabin, and I
+was surprised at finding none of the usual League’s documents upon them.
+I turned to Mat and expressed my surprise. Instantly Mat let fall the
+knife with which he was conveying a piece of herring to his mouth, and
+burst into loud execrations.
+
+“Och! the b⸺ villains!” he exclaimed; “the dirty never-do-well wh⸺! the
+de’il take them for his own! ... the whole lot is not worth a pennyworth
+o’ salt; ... etc., etc.”
+
+I confess I rather wondered at this violence. But as everyone has a
+perfect right to his own opinion, I did not press the point.
+
+“And you, sir, you be not English, are ye?” said Mat after a moment. He
+had suddenly grown calm again.
+
+“No, I am French.”
+
+“Och! _Shure_ the French are foine fellows. I had an uncle that fought
+the French for three days at Badajos, and he always said they were b⸺y
+devils, ... begging your pardon, sir, foine fellows they were.... Me
+uncle always said so, ... under _Bonney_ the French fought, ... b⸺d ...
+foine fellows, to be sure.... Me uncle also said they had no landlords
+down there. Now, is that true, sir?” added Mat Cloney, looking at me with
+a queer expression of countenance.
+
+No landlords? could that be true? He seemed to consider such a state of
+things suited to fairy-land.
+
+I explained that this was pure truth. In few words I told him how,
+shortly before the _Ribillion_ dear to his heart, the French peasants had
+risen as one man to get rid of their own landlords; how those landlords
+had for the most part emigrated and taken up arms against their country,
+which had caused the confiscation and sale of their lands. I added that
+those lands were now the property of the French labourers, who highly
+appreciate this state of affairs.
+
+Mat Cloney listened to me, his eyes glistening with interest. Therefore,
+I was rather surprised when I stopped, and he abruptly asked me, as a
+conclusion:
+
+“Do you know any of those Sligo gentlemen who come fishing about here,
+sir?”
+
+“Indeed, I do not. I am a total stranger in these parts. It was the
+manager at my hotel who sent me to you.”
+
+“That’s roight!” he exclaimed, as if relieved from some anxiety. “In that
+case, sir, I am going to show you something!...”
+
+He went to a corner of the cabin, and after some rummaging in an old
+sailor’s box, he produced from it a neatly folded paper which he placed
+into my hands. I opened it with some curiosity.
+
+It was a supplementary sheet of the _United Ireland_, of Dublin, where
+stood _in extenso_ the League’s Plan of Campaign.
+
+I looked at Mat Cloney. He was laughing silently. I at last understood
+the riddle. The sly fox was at heart with the League (he dubbed it _the
+Leg_; by the way, like many other Irishmen); but he judged it prudent in
+any case to dissemble such subversive feelings, when he had to do with an
+unknown person from the town; and being a peasant he rather overdid it.
+
+The ice was broken now. He let me study thoroughly the document he had
+lent me, and even enriched it with luminous commentaries, in the course
+of a pleasant day’s fishing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The “Plan of Campaign” seems to have had for its father Mr. John Dillon,
+one of the most universally, and the most deservedly, popular of the
+Irish members; at all events, it was introduced to the public by that
+gentleman in October, 1886, at an autumn meeting. Those mass meetings,
+held every year after the harvest, have now become an institution, a
+kind of _Witena-gemot_ of the Irish nation. People come to them from
+the farthest ends of the island, by rail, in jaunting-cars, on foot,
+on horseback, as the case may be; in such numbers that there is no
+room or shanty large enough in the country to lodge the assemblage. So
+they are open-air meetings. The particular one alluded to was convened
+at Woodford, which has become, since the memorable battle on the
+Clanricarde estate, a kind of Holy Place and agrarian Kaaba. Soon after
+the autumn meeting, the scheme was approved by the authorities, at the
+head-quarters of the League (although they prudently refrained from
+committing themselves officially to it), and expounded in the special
+supplement to the _United Ireland_, of which I hold a copy. It was to the
+following effect:—
+
+    Present rents, speaking roundly, are impossible. That the
+    landlords will press for them is certain. A fight for the
+    coming winter is therefore inevitable, and it behoves the
+    Irish tenantry to fight with a skill begotten by experience.
+    The first question they have to consider is how to meet the
+    November demand. Should combinations be formed on the lines of
+    branches of the National League, or merely by estates? We say
+    _by estates_ decidedly. Let branches of the National League,
+    if they will, take the initiative in getting the tenantry on
+    each estate to meet one another. But it should be distinctly
+    understood that the action or resolution of one estate was not
+    to bind any other, and the tenantry on every estate should be
+    free to decide upon their own course.
+
+    When they are assembled together, let them appoint an
+    intelligent and sturdy member of their body as chairman,
+    and, after consulting, decide by resolution on the amount of
+    abatement they will demand. A committee consisting, say, of
+    six and the chairman, should then be elected, to be called a
+    Managing Committee, and to take charge of the half-year’s rent
+    of the tenant, should the landlord refuse it.
+
+    Everyone should pledge himself (1) to abide by the decision of
+    the majority; (2) to hold no communication with the landlord
+    or any of his agents, except in presence of the body of the
+    tenantry; (3) to accept no settlement for himself which is not
+    given to every tenant on the estate.
+
+    On the rent-day, the tenantry should proceed to the rent-office
+    in a body. If the agent refuses to see them in a body, they
+    should on no account confer with him individually, but depute
+    the chairman to act as their spokesman and acquaint them of
+    the reduction which they require. No offer to accept the rent
+    “on account” should be agreed to. Should the agent refuse,
+    then EVERY TENANT MUST HAND TO THE MANAGING COMMITTEE THE
+    HALF-YEAR’S RENT WHICH HE TENDERED TO THE AGENT.
+
+    To prevent any attempt at a garnishee, this money should be
+    deposited by the Managing Committee with some one reliable
+    person, _whose name would not be known to any but the members
+    of the committee_.
+
+    This may be called the estate fund, and it should be absolutely
+    at the disposal of the Managing Committee for the purposes
+    of the fight. Broken tenants who are unable to contribute
+    the reduced half-year’s rent should at least contribute the
+    percentage demanded from the landlord, that is the difference
+    between the rent demanded and that which the tenantry offer
+    to pay. A broken tenant is not likely to be among the first
+    proceeded against, and no risk is incurred by the general body
+    in taking him on these terms.
+
+    Thus, practically a half-year’s rent of the estate is put
+    together to fight the landlord with. This is a fund which,
+    if properly utilised, will reduce to reason any landlord in
+    Ireland.
+
+    How should the fund be employed? The answer to this question
+    must to some extent depend upon the course the landlord will
+    pursue; but in general we should say it must be devoted to the
+    support of the tenants who are dispossessed either by sale or
+    ejectment.
+
+    It should be distributed by the committee to each evicted
+    tenant in the proportion of his contribution to the fund. A
+    half-year’s rent is supposed to maintain a tenant for a half
+    year, and based upon this calculation, a tenant who funded say
+    £50 would be entitled when evicted to receive £2 per week.
+
+    _But not one penny should go in law costs._ This should be made
+    an absolute rule. For to pay law costs, such as attorney’s
+    letters, writs and judgments incurred by the landlord, is to
+    arm your enemy for the quarrel and furnish him with provisions
+    to boot. In a determined fight there are no “law costs” on
+    the side of the tenantry, and they should remain out for ever
+    rather than pay those which the landlord incurs in fleecing
+    them.
+
+    Ejectment is the most common of the landlord’s remedies. Every
+    legal and constitutional obstacle which could oppose or delay
+    eviction should be had recourse to, for every hour by which the
+    sheriff is delayed in one eviction gives another brother tenant
+    so much more grace. There are only 310 days in the sheriff’s
+    year, and he must do all the evictions in a whole county within
+    the time.
+
+    If, after eviction, a tenant is re-admitted as caretaker he
+    should go in, but _never_ upon the understanding that he would
+    care any other farm but his own. Should the tenant not be
+    re-admitted, shelter must be procured for him immediately by
+    the Managing Committee, and then, if necessary, a day appointed
+    when all would assemble to build him a hut on some spot
+    convenient to the farm where the landlord could not disturb
+    him. Wooden huts, such as those supplied by the League, waste
+    too much of the funds and become valueless when the tenant is
+    re-admitted.
+
+    Sale is the resort of the landlord when he proceeds by writ
+    or process as an ordinary creditor. From eight to twelve days
+    are allowed after service of the writ before judgment can be
+    marked. The sheriff may seize cattle if he finds them on the
+    farm, or he may seize and sell the tenant’s interest in the
+    farm. A tenant who has his mind made up for the fight will
+    have his cattle turned into money before the judgment comes
+    on. Every tenant who neglects to dispose of them is preparing
+    himself to accept the landlord’s terms, for he will not wish
+    to see the emergency men profit by taking his cattle at some
+    nominal price, and if he buys he is in reality handing the
+    landlord the amount of his demand. Sale of a farm is not of so
+    much consequence. Every farm sold in this manner during the
+    agitation either has come or is bound to come back to its owner
+    even on better terms than he first held it. But if a man has
+    a very valuable interest in his farm, he can place it beyond
+    the sheriff’s power by mortgaging it to some one to whom he
+    owes money. Mortgage effected thus for a _bonâ fide_ debt or
+    consideration bars the sheriff’s power of conveyance at a sale.
+    If the landlord or emergency men be represented, the cattle
+    should not be allowed to go at a nominal sum. They should be
+    run up to their price, and, if possible, left in the hands of
+    emergency men at full price. It should be borne in mind that if
+    the full price be not realised the sheriff could seize again
+    for the balance.
+
+    In bidding for a farm it should also be run to amount of debt,
+    but by a man of straw, or some one who, if it were knocked
+    down, would ask the sheriff for time to pay. By making the
+    landlord’s bidder run it up to the amount of debt and costs,
+    and leaving it on his hands, the sheriff cannot follow the
+    tenant further. No auction fees should be allowed. A farm held
+    on a lease for a life or lives, any one of which is extant,
+    cannot be sold by the sheriff. After sale a tenant is still
+    in possession of holding until a fresh writ is served and a
+    judgment for title marked against him. All this involves the
+    landlord in fresh costs. The eviction may then follow, and the
+    observations above recorded in case of ejectment or eviction
+    apply here.
+
+    Distress, another of the landlord’s remedies, cannot be
+    resorted to for more than one year’s rent. Few landlords can
+    have recourse to this without exposing themselves to actions.
+    The chief points to attend to are:—That distress must be made
+    by landlord or known agent, or bailiff authorized by warrant
+    signed by the landlord or known agent; that particulars of
+    distress be served; seizure on Sunday is unlawful; seizure
+    before sunrise or after sunset is unlawful; or for any rent
+    due more than one year. Distress is illegal if growing crops
+    be seized, or the implements of a man’s trade; and if other
+    property be on farm to ensure landlord’s demand, it is
+    illegal to seize beasts of the plough, sheep, or implements
+    of husbandry necessary for the cultivation of the land. These
+    points should be carefully watched when landlord has recourse
+    to distress.
+
+    Bankruptcy proceedings are too costly a machinery for general
+    use, and no landlord is likely to have recourse to them.
+
+    It is unnecessary to add that landlords, and their partisans on
+    the magisterial bench and among the Crown officials, will do
+    all in their power to twist the operation of the law so as to
+    harass the tenants.
+
+    A tenant taking possession of his house to shelter his family
+    from the severity of the winter is not likely to escape. A
+    summons for trespass must be preceded by a warning to the
+    tenant if he be found in possession. We have known a case where
+    the father complied with this warning, and on the bailiff’s
+    next visit the mother only was found, and she complied. Next
+    time the eldest daughter only was in possession, and so on
+    through the length of a long family, such as an evicted tenant
+    nearly always has. A goodly time had been saved before the
+    father’s turn came again. He was fined and went to gaol. The
+    prison then lost its terror for him. When he came out he stuck
+    boldly to his home, and he soon won the victory which rewards
+    determination.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    The fullest publicity should be given to evictions, and every
+    effort made to enlist public sympathy. That the farms thus
+    unjustly evicted will be left severally alone, and everyone
+    who aids the eviction shunned, is scarcely necessary to say.
+    But the man who tries boycotting for a personal purpose is a
+    worse enemy than the evicting landlord, and should be expelled
+    from any branch of the League or combination of tenants. No
+    landlord should get one penny rent on any part of his estates,
+    wherever situated, so long as he has one tenant unjustly
+    evicted. This policy strikes not only at the landlord but the
+    whole ungodly crew of agents, attorneys, and bum-bailiffs.
+    Tenants should be the first to show their sympathy with
+    one another, and prompt publicity should be given to every
+    eviction, that the tenants of the evictor wherever he holds
+    property may show their sympathy.
+
+    Such a policy indicates a fight which has no half-heartedness
+    about it, and it is the only fight which will win.
+
+Well may the author of the “Plan of Campaign” wind up his catechism by
+the appropriate remark that “such a policy indicates a fight which has no
+half-heartedness about it.” Never before was such a tremendous weapon of
+social war put in motion. Never before, in the whole course of history,
+was such a forcible ultimatum drafted for the consideration of the
+adverse party.
+
+Leaving details aside, and the minute instructions on the true mode of
+skirmishing with the myrmidons of the law, the idea of using the very
+rent claimed by the landlord as a provision for feeding the struggle
+against him is in itself perfection—a real masterpiece of strategy. An
+artist can only feel the warmest admiration for such a combination of
+everything that is most pleasant to the heart of the agrarian warrior
+and most deadly to the landlord’s cause. As an orator of the League (Mr.
+W. O’Brien) has put it: “We have discovered a weapon against landlordism,
+the mere threat and terror of which have already brought down
+rack-renters to their knees. We have discovered a weapon which feudal
+landlordism can no more resist than a suit of armour of the middle ages
+can resist modern artillery.” And the country where such an admirable
+paper has been penned by its political leaders is supposed by its foes to
+be unable to rule its own affairs! This is unfairness with a vengeance.
+Let those meet its provisions, since they are so very clever.
+
+The wonder, however, is not that such a policy should have been dreamed
+of. Similar plans of warfare have more than once been drawn out in the
+council chamber of parties. The wonder is that this one should have been
+deemed practicable by the farmers of Ireland; that it should have been
+unanimously accepted by them; and, what is more, put at once into effect.
+Another wonder is that it should have been found _lawful_, on the best
+legal authority, and that it should have remained unopposed by the “Four
+Courts” and “the Castle.” The greatest wonder of all is that it should
+have enlisted the warm and public support not only of the lower ranks of
+the clergy all over the island, but of the Episcopate itself; not only
+of the Episcopate but of the Pope, since neither his special envoy in
+Ireland nor his Holiness personally in any encyclical letter, have spoken
+one word in condemnation of the “Plan of Campaign.”
+
+It has been in operation now for over one year; it has spread as far
+as the leaders of the League have deemed it expedient, for thus far
+they seem to have used it only moderately. “We did not desire,” they
+say, “and we do not desire now that the ‘Plan of Campaign’ should be
+adopted anywhere, except where the tenants have a just and moderate and
+unimpeachable case.” But, none the less, it hangs as a formidable threat
+over the heads of the doomed landlords. At a moment’s notice it may be
+extended to the whole island, as it has been already to some hundred
+estates in twenty-two counties.
+
+An idea of the state of affairs may be gathered from the account given by
+the _Freeman’s Journal_ (December 3, 1886) of the scene witnessed on Lord
+de Freyne’s property in county Sligo. His tenants asked for an abatement
+of 20 per cent., and, being refused, they decided to adopt the “Plan of
+Campaign.”
+
+    There is nothing in the nature of a town or even a village
+    at Kilfree Junction, there being only two or three one-story
+    thatched cottages within sight of it. In one of these, the
+    nearest to the station, the rents were received by Mr. William
+    Redmond, M.P.; the Rev. Canon O’Donoghue, D.D.; Rev. Father
+    Henry, C.C.; and the Rev. Father Filan, C.C. The operations of
+    receiving the rents, entering amounts, and giving receipts to
+    the tenants occupied the greater part of the day, commencing
+    in early morning and continuing far in the afternoon. Although
+    the situation was rather a depressing one for the poor people
+    exposed to all the severity of the elements, they seemed
+    to be one and all animated by the greatest enthusiasm. The
+    interior of the cottage in which the rents were being collected
+    presented a spectacle really unique in its way. The first room,
+    a sort of combination of kitchen, sitting-room, and shop, was
+    crowded almost to suffocation by men and a few women, who were
+    sheltering from the snow which fell in great white flakes
+    without. There was no grate, but a few turf sods burned on
+    the hearth, while above them hung a kettle, suspended from an
+    iron hook fixed from the quaint old chimney. In the centre of
+    the bedroom leading off the apartment was a small table, at
+    which Mr. Redmond, M.P., the clergymen whose names are given
+    above, and one of the leading members of the local branch of
+    the National League were seated receiving the tenants’ rents.
+    The room was densely crowded, but the utmost order and decorum
+    prevailed, and the whole proceedings were conducted in the most
+    punctilious and business-like manner.
+
+    The tenant handed the money to one of the gentlemen at the
+    table, his name was duly entered with the amount paid by him
+    into a book, and he was handed back a printed receipt for the
+    amount which he had lodged.
+
+    As the day wore on, the pile of bank notes upon the table
+    mounted higher and higher, and the rows of glistening
+    sovereigns grew longer and longer, until they stretched across
+    the table like streams of yellow ore. It was difficult to
+    realise how those bleak western plains had ever produced so
+    much money, and the conviction seemed to force itself upon the
+    mind that a considerable part of it had either been earned by
+    work across the Channel, or in remittances from friends and
+    relations on the other side of the broad Atlantic.
+
+    “Father,” exclaimed one of the younger men, pushing excitedly
+    his aged parent into the room where the rents were being paid
+    over, “come along; you have lived to strike a blow for freedom
+    and Ireland.” The words were uttered with earnestness and
+    enthusiasm. There are upwards of 300 tenants upon this estate
+    alone who have adopted the “Plan,” and a further sitting will
+    be necessary in order to receive the remaining lodgments.
+
+    A couple of policemen, who looked chilled and spiritless,
+    walked about the platform, but made no attempt to interfere
+    with the proceedings.
+
+It would be useless to add the least comment to such a picture. When
+similar scenes are witnessed everywhere over a country, and accepted by
+every one as the natural consummation of events, and the law is impotent
+to prevent them, the Revolution is not impending—it is practically
+accomplished in the mind of all classes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+SCOTTISH IRELAND.
+
+
+                                                              ENNISKILLEN.
+
+If you did not know beforehand that you are entering a new Ireland
+through Enniskillen, an Ireland, Scotch, Protestant, manufacturing, a
+glance through the carriage-window would suffice to reveal the fact.
+Over the hill, on the right, a fine country-house waves to the wind, as
+a defiance to the League, his orange-coloured flag, the colours of the
+“_Unionists_.” The landlords of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, who are
+Orangemen, as well as others, dare not proclaim their opinions so boldly,
+hoist them at the top of the main mast, so to say; for it might simply
+cost them their lives. You must come to “loyal Ulster” to see such acts
+of daring, for the simple reason that they are without danger here.
+
+Another symptom, more eloquent still than the colour of the flag, is
+the aspect of the landscape; no more uncultivated fields, no more
+endless bogs and fens. Instead of those long, red, or black streaks
+of peat, alternating with consumptive oat and potato-fields, green,
+fat meadows, mown by steam, studded with cows, in the most prosperous
+condition, spread themselves before your eyes. Some trees are to be seen
+now. The hedges are in good repair, the horses well harnessed to solid
+carts; the hay-stacks have a symmetrical outline, and vast fields of
+flax nod under the breeze; the farm-houses are well built, flanked by
+neat kitchen-gardens; in short, all gives the general impression of a
+properly cultivated land. Nothing like the agricultural opulence of Kent
+or Warwickshire though, but the normal state of a tolerably good land,
+where human industry is not fighting against an accumulation of almost
+insuperable obstacles.
+
+Is it that the law is different in Ulster? Not so, but the custom is.
+From immemorial times the tenant-right has been admitted here; and in
+consequence the farmer has never hesitated to introduce the necessary
+improvements, and to invest his hoard in the land, sure as he is to
+profit by it.
+
+That tenant is three times out of five of Scotch origin; three times out
+of five he belongs to the Protestant persuasion (Episcopal, Presbyterian,
+Methodist); there is not between him and his landlord the antagonism of
+race and worship which is to be found in other provinces. The landlord
+himself fulfils his duty better, and does not affect to spend abroad
+the money he draws from his estate; often that landlord is some guild
+or municipal corporation of London or elsewhere, which perhaps does not
+make the best use possible of its income, but is nevertheless obliged
+to justify more or less its privilege by some philanthropic foundation,
+trials of culture on the large scale, innovation, and examples.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lastly, Ulster is a neighbour to Scotland, and belongs to the same
+geological, ethnological, commercial, and religious system. Capital is
+less timorous here. It ventures to come, to stay, to circulate. By the
+side of agriculture there are important factories, which help to sustain
+and feed it. Instead of keeping invariably to oats, turnips, and the
+time-honoured potato, the farmers grow flax on a large scale for the
+400,000 spindles which are spinning at Belfast, Dundalk, and Drogheda.
+
+A certain tendency to aggregate small holdings, and to constitute in
+that way great and middling farms, has been developing lately in Ulster.
+The peasants are better lodged and fed than elsewhere in Ireland. They
+find day-work more easily because agriculture is conducted there on more
+scientific principles, and they are not condemned to remain idle four
+days out of seven. In short, the economic condition of Scotch Ireland,
+without being such as to be offered as a pattern to the civilised world,
+is about as good as possible under the feudal _régime_ and landlordism.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                              LONDONDERRY.
+
+The signs of that relative prosperity are obvious. Thus in the
+neighbourhood of Derry (we say Londonderry, but the natives all say
+Derry), you observe with pleasure a line of tramcars moved by steam
+machinery, which puts remote places in communication with the railway.
+The carriages are of superior make, divided into three classes, towed
+by an engine heated with petroleum. Coming, as you do, out of Mayo and
+Galway, that steam tramway puffs in your face a breath of civilisation.
+You seem to enter a different world.
+
+Derry, with its active traffic, its elegant iron bridge over the
+Foyle, the fine, new buildings which attest its wealth, justifies that
+impression. It is the capital of the famous “Ulster plantation” of James
+I., entrusted by him to the “Honourable Irish Company,” which included
+twelve guilds of the city of London. For a century or two those grants of
+land did not answer as had been expected. But they have ended, in the
+course of time, by being prosperous. The municipal estates of Coleraine
+and Derry are accounted now the most flourishing in the island.
+
+Yet it does not follow that the tenant’s situation is very brilliant,
+even in Ulster. One of the counties of the province, Donegal, is the
+poorest in all Ireland, and two or three others are not much better. Even
+in the richest parts the tenant bears chafingly the yoke of landlordism.
+The Antrim Tenant Association went so far this year as to ask for a 50
+per cent. reduction on rent, owing to the low price of produce and the
+sheer impossibility of going on paying at the previous rate. It must be
+noted that tenant-right being rigorously observed in Ulster, the farmer
+always pays when he is able; for any remissness in paying would diminish
+by as much the value of his share in the proprietorship, which is
+estimated on an average at 8 or 10 times the annual farm rent.
+
+The newspapers of the county, even when unfavourable to agrarian
+revendications, unanimously acknowledge that by reason of the constant
+going down of prices, resulting from American competition, the present
+condition of the agriculturist is about as bad as it was in the worst
+famine times. All the farmers without exception, be they of Scotch or
+Irish race, aver that they actually pay from their own pockets every
+penny they give the landlords; that is to say, they borrow it in the
+shape of a loan on the value of their tenant-right.
+
+Such a state of things cannot continue. It explains how it is that
+Presbyterian peasants, the most ardent enemies of Papistry—in theory—none
+the less give the majority, even in Ulster itself, to the representatives
+of Home Rule and the liquidation of landed property.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                        PORTRUSH AND THE GIANT’S CAUSEWAY.
+
+Portrush is a delicious sea-side place, at the mouth of Lough Foyle,
+on the most wonderful coast in Europe; it is seated on the edge of the
+Antrim table-land, which is of volcanic origin: probably a dependency
+of Scotland geologically, rather than belonging properly to Ireland, to
+which it came and welded itself, at some unknown epoch. The traveller
+has there the agreeable surprise of a delightful hotel—one should say a
+perfect one—a regular miracle of comfort; and the still greater surprise
+of seeing there the only electric railway actually working on this
+planet. That bijou-line is used to take the visitors to the wonder of
+Ireland, the Giant’s Causeway. It ascends on the sea-side an acclivity
+of about three to four hundred yards, and runs over a length of five
+miles up to Bushmills, where the generators of electricity are set to
+work by hydraulic power. Nothing is so fresh or unexpected as that
+drive in open carriages. The train ascends lustily along the electric
+guiding-rail in the midst of a well-nourished fire of sparkles called
+to life by its iron hoofs. As it rises higher the prospect gets wider
+and wider, and you get a view of the Scotch mountains only fifteen miles
+distant, while the most extraordinary basaltic formations are following
+one another under your eye along the coast.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Antrim table-land, so geologists tell us, was formed by a layer of
+lava three or four hundred yards high, spread over the chalky bottom of
+the sea. Of the volcanoes which vomited that lava no vestige is to be
+seen to-day. The glaciers, tumbling down from the neighbouring heights,
+have cleared them away. In times remote, that table-land extended across
+to Scotland, to which it united Ireland as by a sort of prodigious bridge
+of lava. But the unremitting, incessant, work of the waters has eaten
+away by degrees the cretaceous masses which supported it. The arches
+of the bridge were then dislocated and precipitated into the ocean.
+Only some traces of it on both sides are left standing now: the Giant’s
+Causeway in Ireland, the point of Cantire in Scotland, and between the
+two, the little Island of Rathlin.
+
+Along the coast of Antrim the waves continuing their destructive work, go
+on gnawing the foundations of the cliffs, which they dig and carve like
+lacework. Numberless grottoes, rocky needles shaped into the likeness of
+steeples, deep chasms at the bottom of which the foaming waters are for
+ever contending, are the result of that perennial work.
+
+Occasionally, as at Dunluce, to the fantastic work of nature, some ruin
+that was once an illustrious stronghold, whose walls, literally hanging
+over the abyss, seem to be attached to the firm ground only by a curved
+arch of half-a-yard’s breadth, adds an element of tragic poetry. Under
+the rock which bear those dilapidated walls, the sea has dug for itself
+caves which are resounding night and day with the deafening noise of the
+beating waves. It is grand and terrible in summer; one can imagine what
+it must be when the tempest of a winter night unloosens its fury within
+those caverns.
+
+Naturally they are, more than any other place in the world, rich in
+legendary lore. The M’Quillans, to whom belonged Dunluce Castle, boast
+an antiquity which outshines greatly that of the descendants of the
+Crusaders. These are not people to be content, like Montesquieu, with two
+or three hundred years of acknowledged nobility. They came from Babylon,
+it appears, at an epoch exceptionally prehistoric, and can trace their
+origin back to 4,000 years ago. The only branch in existence now dwells
+in Scotland, and bear the title of lords of Antrim and Dunluce.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Bushmills the electric train stops. There you alight and take your
+seat in the car which brings you to the Causeway Hotel. Here, as the
+air is decidedly bracing, and the majority of the tourists English,
+luncheon is ready, as you may imagine. The classic salmon despatched in
+company with a glass of ale or porter, the only thing to do is to look to
+business and visit the marvels of the place. A wall, which the provident
+administration of the hotel have raised for purposes of safety, hides
+them as yet from your sight. When you have passed that obstacle you find
+yourself within a sort of circus, delineated by the cliffs, and at the
+extremity of which descends a path that looks anything but safe. Total
+absence of causeway. Where must we look for it? This a swarm of guides,
+cicerones, boatmen, beggars of all descriptions, offer to show you. They
+all speak at the same time, fight, wrangle, make you deaf with their
+jabbering. Wise is he who sends them to the devil, and follows peacefully
+the pathway which goes to the extremity of the circuit, turns alone round
+the foot of the cliff on the right, and penetrates, unaccompanied, into
+the neighbouring bay. He will have the joy of a powerful, wholly personal
+sensation, unalloyed by any impure element. But alas! how is one to guess
+that? You think you are doing the right thing in giving the lead to a
+professional guide. You choose among the howling crew the less ruffianly
+face, and you deliver yourself into the hands of a cicerone. Fatal error!
+Henceforward you cease to belong to yourself. You are no longer a being
+endowed with reason and volition, with the free exercise of your rights;
+you are an article of luggage in the hands of a porter, a disarmed
+traveller in the power of a Calabrian desperado.
+
+Instead of taking you to the bay on the right, the arbiter of your
+destiny begins by laying down as a dogma that the only means of seeing
+the causeway properly is to approach it by sea. On the same occasion you
+shall visit the marine caves. Allured by that programme, you follow the
+man, and you embark with him in a boat rowed by two oarsmen, who greet
+your advent rapturously.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Five minutes later you find yourself in total darkness under the oozing
+vault of a cavern, where the fluctuations of the mountainous waves now
+let the boat sink suddenly five or six yards down, now heave it up
+against the roof, and threaten to shiver your skull to pieces. In the
+midst of that frantic jogging and tossing the guide lights up a Bengal
+flame, in order to display to better advantage the variegated tints of
+the damp walls, or, it may be, to create the said tints, if they do not
+exist. Then he lets off a pistol in your ear to awake the echoes of the
+cavern, which answer to the call with deafening unanimity.
+
+This is the “psychological moment.” The rowers, laying down their oars,
+take off their caps and hold them to you, explaining at the same time
+that gunpowder is expensive. You hasten to accede to the request, and
+soon after you find yourself, not without pleasure, in the daylight again.
+
+Not for long, however; for you are expected to do another cavern. You
+submit meekly to the programme. Again that homicidal tossing; another
+Bengal flame; a second pistol shot. This time the boatmen offer you a box
+of geological specimens. As it is, you happen to abhor geology; but how
+is one to resist people who have him in their power in a marine cave?
+
+Liberation comes in time. You breathe again. The miscreants have the face
+to mention a third cavern! But this time you rebel. “No more caverns! The
+causeway instantly!”
+
+You double a little promontory, and after two or three oar-strokes you
+land on what seems to you at first a quay with a pavement made with
+hexagon slabs.
+
+“Here you are, sir! This is the Giant’s Causeway.” Let us confess it
+candidly: the first impression is disappointment. Is it then that
+famous Causeway, that unrivalled wonder? You are ready to believe in
+a mystification. But this is only a passing impression for which the
+guides, not the Causeway, are responsible.
+
+The truth is, you must not approach it by sea if you wish to see it well.
+It is by land only that it can be understood, like a symphony which
+would lose half its charm if executed in the open air. The treason of
+the guides is so cruel that it really cries for vengeance and must be
+denounced.
+
+At last you have managed to get rid of them, and leaving the Causeway,
+you have climbed up the steep neighbouring cliffs. And now looking round,
+you are struck with stupefaction and rapture at the spectacle which
+offers itself to your eyes. That sort of quay or footpath you deemed at
+first mean or insignificant is in reality, when viewed properly, the most
+stupendous whim of nature. Imagine a formidable array of forty thousand
+columns of prismatic shape (some one gifted with patience has numbered
+them), rising tall and majestic, and pressed against each other so as
+to form a continuous, almost level pavement, which emerges from the sea
+like a quay of marble. The symmetry of that pavement is so remarkable,
+all those shafts of columns are so well clamped together, that it seems
+almost impossible to admit that this is not human work. You fancy you are
+walking on the hexagonal slabs of some Babylonian palace, whose walls the
+storm has destroyed. These paving-stones are neat and even, about one
+foot wide, and perfectly regular. Towards the middle of the quay they
+rise in a sort of swelling, which permits one to study their anatomy and
+to perceive that they are really formed by the section of as many upright
+parallel prismatic columns.
+
+There are three Causeways,—the Great, the Little, and the Middle
+Causeway. They occupy the centre of a semi-circular bay, formed by lofty
+cliffs, which let you see under a thin covering of clay and grass other
+rows of basaltic columns that show their profile, and have been called
+“the Organ.” On the right the bay is limited by a jutting rock, above
+which tower two or three needles—“the Chimneypots.” A local tradition
+relates that the Invincible Armada, driven against the cliffs by a strong
+gale, mistook the needles for the towers of Dunluce, and stormed them
+uselessly a whole day long.
+
+Beyond those basaltic piers a spring of sweet water forms the “Giant’s
+Well;” further on a rock, roughly shaped as a church desk, is called
+“the Pulpit.” All those sports of nature compose a whole truly unique
+and wonderful. Neither the Alps, nor the chain of the Andes, nor Mount
+Vesuvius, nor Etna, can give you such an impression of grandeur—are able
+to that degree to put you as it were into communion with the mysteries of
+labouring Nature.
+
+What strikes you further about those basaltic formations is that they
+are both colossal, like all works directly resulting from the great
+cosmic forces, and at the same time almost Greek by the quality and
+symmetry of their arrangements. For once the volcanos seem to have had
+the whim to work according to the canons of art. It is both human and
+super-human—verily a Giant’s Causeway!
+
+The Giant Fin M’Coul, so the legend says, was the guardian genius of
+Ireland. He had for a rival a certain Scotch Giant of mighty conceit and
+insolence, whose boast it was that none could beat him. The sea alone,
+if that Scotch braggart was to be believed, prevented his coming to let
+M’Coul feel the might of his arm, as he was afraid of getting a cold if
+he attempted to swim across the Straits. So he remained at home. M’Coul
+was riled at last by that swaggering. “Since thou art afraid to get
+wet,” he cried to his rival, “I am going to throw a causeway between
+Scotland and Ireland, and we shall see then whether thou darest use it!”
+The building of the bridge took only a few thousand years, and then the
+Scot, having no pretence left, accepted the challenge, was beaten flat,
+and obliged to eat humble pie. After which, with true Irish generosity,
+the good-natured giant gave him his daughter in marriage, and allowed him
+to come and settle near him, which the Scot accepted, nothing loth, Erin
+being an infinitely sweeter and generally superior country to his own.
+But perhaps, after all, M’Coul found no cause to rejoice over the match
+he had arranged for his daughter, as he subsequently allowed the sea to
+destroy his work so as to prevent any more Scots from settling in his
+dominions. Only some of its piles remain standing, one of which is the
+Isle of Rathlin, half-way across the Straits.
+
+The legend, as you see, is not so foolish. It answers at all points
+to geological data, and even to historic truth, viz., the invasion of
+Ulster by the Scots. But, let its origin be what it may, the fact remains
+that the Giant’s Causeway, with its neighbour, Portnoffen Bay, the most
+perfect amphitheatre in the world, with the marvellous colonnade of
+the Pleaskin, Dunluce Castle, Dunseverick, and the bridge of rope of
+Carrick-a-Rede, thrown over a chasm that measures a hundred feet above
+the waters,—constitute one of the grandest, most moving spectacles
+that the traveller may see. You can go round the world without having
+such extraordinary sights. Add to it that few of the gems of nature
+are of so easy an access. From Paris you can be on the coast of Antrim
+in twenty hours, by London, Liverpool, and Belfast. Portrush, with its
+admirable sea-shore, its electric railway, and stupendous cliffs, is
+the ideal frame for a honeymoon excursion. I had resolved to recommend
+it to tourists, and to point out the guides of the Causeway to public
+execration. Now I have done my duty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                                  BELFAST.
+
+The capital of Ulster is naturally the most flourishing town of Ireland.
+Whereas the others decrease in population and wealth, Belfast is rapidly
+thriving. From 20,000 inhabitants, which it numbered at the beginning
+of the century, it has risen in eighty years to 210,000. Another ten
+years and it will outdo Dublin itself. It is a manufacturing city as
+well as a big trading port. By an exception, unique in the island, it
+occupies a great number of workers, male and female—60,000, at the
+lowest computation—for the most part, in the weaving trade and naval
+construction. A single linen factory, that of Messrs. Mulholland, gives
+work to 29,000 pairs of hands. It is those weaving looms which utilize
+the product of the 110,000 acres of flax fields in Ulster. Out of
+nineteen ships of over 300 tons annually built in the docks of the island
+eighteen come out of the Belfast wharves. It is, in short, the maritime
+gate of Irish import and export—the insular suburb of Liverpool and
+Glasgow.
+
+As a consequence, signs of prosperity are showing themselves everywhere.
+The public walks are vast and carefully kept, the houses well built, the
+shops substantial and elegant, the educational establishments important
+and richly endowed. The town has a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon aspect. London
+fashions are scrupulously followed there. If you enter the Botanical
+Garden, maintained by voluntary contributions, you find there the
+lawn-tennis, the dresses, the ways of the metropolis. If you follow the
+road up to Cave Hill, one of the heights on the western side of Belfast,
+you embrace a vast landscape, where the flying steamers on the Lagan, the
+smoking factory-chimneys, the innumerable and opulent villas round its
+shores, all speak of wealth and prosperity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The population is about equally divided between Protestants and
+Catholics. The consequence is that party hatred and the struggle for
+local influence are far more ardent and long-lived here than in places
+where one of the two elements has an overwhelming majority. Electoral
+scuffles easily turn to bloody battles; political anniversaries—that of
+the Battle of the Boyne, above all—are a pretext for manifestations which
+often degenerate into regular battles.
+
+Belfast is the bulwark of Orangeism; and Orangeism may be described as
+Protestant and loyalist fanaticism, as opposed to Catholic and national
+fanaticism. Shankhill Road, which is frequently used as a battle-field by
+the antagonistic parties, is a long suburb which divides as a frontier
+line the Orangeist from the Irish quarters.
+
+Hardly one pay-day passes without the public-houses of that suburb being
+the theatre of some pugilistic feat accomplished by some voluntary
+representatives of the opposite camps. If the police happen to rush into
+the fray, reinforcements are called from either side; stones, cudgels,
+revolvers come to the rescue, and, on the morrow, the jails are filled
+with prisoners, and the hospitals with the dead and the wounded.
+
+Sad to relate, it is the clergy on both sides who incite them to those
+fratricidal struggles. There are certain Protestant preachers who are
+in no way behindhand in bitterness and virulent abuse with the most
+fanatic priest of Roscommon or Mayo. I have heard personally in Falls
+Road a Methodist preaching in the open air incite his audience to the
+extermination of Papists in strains which the creatures of Cromwell would
+not have disowned.
+
+In order that nothing should be missing to the parallel, Ulster has its
+Orangeist League, not unlike the National League of Ireland (save for
+the respect of legality and the general moderation of proceedings).
+That League is formed into battalions and companies which are privately
+drilled, they say, and lose no occasion to make a pageant in the streets
+with accompaniment of trumpets and drums, and whose ways remind one of
+the Salvation Army.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the whole, Ulster is the only province of Ireland where the Unionist
+forces are about equally matched with the party of Home Rule; that is
+to say, the former command a majority in Antrim, part of Down, part
+of Armagh, part of Derry and Donegal, whilst the Home Rulers have the
+stronger array of voters in the remaining parts of the province. Except
+in the above-delineated band of north-eastern territory, the result of
+the elections is always taken for granted beforehand all over the island,
+and is for—Home Rule. But this is not saying that the contest is at all
+passionate even in Belfast. I happened to be there on the occasion of the
+General Election of 1886, and was most struck by the comparative calm of
+the population pending the momentous ballot. I could not help expressing
+my surprise, over the mahogany, to my host, a wealthy mill-owner, a
+zealous Presbyterian, and an active Orangeist into the bargain, to whom
+an English friend had given me a letter of introduction.
+
+“You wonder at our calm?” he said. “The explanation is very simple. In
+Ireland the respective position of parties can hardly be much altered by
+the incidents of the struggle. Whether the Home Rulers take one seat from
+us or we gain one on them, we shall neither of us be much benefited by
+it. It is in Great Britain that the true battle is taking place. Let us
+suppose that Mr. Gladstone, instead of finding himself in a minority in
+the next Parliament, returns to the House with a majority. This majority
+can in no case be very strong, and we may still doubt that it will
+consent to follow him to the end in the path he has chosen. But let us go
+farther, and suppose Home Rule to have been voted by this majority,—let
+us suppose it to have been voted by the Upper House,—a still more
+unlikely contingency. Well, our decision is taken irrevocably. We are
+perfectly resolved not to bow to such a vote, and not to submit to Home
+Rule.”
+
+“What! shall you rebel against the constitution?”
+
+“Against the constitution, no. But if needs must be against Mr. Gladstone
+and his party. We shall appeal from the ignorant electors to the better
+informed ones. We shall protest against a decision that would in a way
+deprive us of our rights as British subjects. And in the meanwhile we
+shall refuse to acknowledge a Dublin Parliament. We shall refuse to pay
+the taxes that it may fix upon, or to obey the laws it may vote. We shall
+repeat loudly that we are Englishmen, and will not be anything else; that
+we depend on the British Parliament and recognize no other authority; and
+we shall see then if our appeal raise no echo in the United Kingdom!”
+
+“But still, the right of making laws generally entails the power of
+enforcing them. What shall you do on the day when the Dublin Parliament,
+having voted the taxes for you as for the rest of Ireland, shall send
+tax-gatherers to collect them?”
+
+“_We shall receive them with rifle-shots._”
+
+“What! are you going to tell me that you, sir, ‘worth’ half a
+million sterling, if the public voice speaks the truth, that this
+fat gentleman there, the father of those two pretty daughters, that
+this respectable doctor in gold spectacles, and all your other guests
+to-night, all peace-loving, middle-aged gentlemen, comfortable and
+with good rent-rolls, seriously entertain the idea of buckling on your
+shooting-gaiters and going to battle in the street?”
+
+“We shall go, if we are obliged, rather than submit to the Dublin
+people!... After all, have we not a right to remain English, if it suits
+us?... The very principle of Home Rule, if it is adopted, implies that we
+shall govern ourselves as it seems good to us. Well, here in Ulster, we
+are nearly two million loyalist Protestants, who cherish the pretension
+of not being given over to the three million Papists entrusted with the
+making of the Dublin Parliament,—who shall dare to deny this right to us?”
+
+“Mr. Parnell and his friends will certainly deny it as soon as their
+programme is embodied into law. They will say to you, ‘Henceforth Ireland
+shall govern herself. Let those who do not like it go away.’”
+
+“But it is precisely what we shall never do!... Our title to the Irish
+soil is as good as the Parnellites’.... Let them try to dislodge us, and
+they shall have a warm welcome, I promise you.”
+
+In the course of conversation my worthy interlocutor had let the number
+of 100,000 Orangemen, armed to the teeth and ready to defend Ulster
+against the Home Rulers, escape him. I took advantage of this to ask
+him for a few details on this organization. I learnt this: that the
+Orangeist army is by no means a fallacy, as one might imagine, and that
+it forms a sort of latent militia, with its active forces, and its
+reserve. At first, established as a kind of freemasonry, and formed in
+“circles” or “lodges,” it comprises actually four divisions, subdivided
+into twenty-two brigades: each of these brigades consists of two or
+three regiments, infantry, cavalry, and artillery; in each regiment are
+sections and companies, each composed of affiliates belonging to the same
+district. Three divisions are recruited in Ulster proper; the fourth in
+Dublin and Cork, in Wicklow and in King’s County. All those affiliates
+take the engagement to observe passive obedience and to render personal
+service on the first requisition of their supreme council; they furnish
+their own arms and recognise the authority of a commander-in-chief.
+
+Does all this have any substantial existence besides what it has on
+paper? Do the Orangemen secretly drill, as it is averred, both for the
+infantry and the cavalry manœuvres? Is it true that most of the volunteer
+companies in Ulster are exclusively Orange companies? Lastly, are those
+volunteers really ready in case of an open rupture with Dublin, to
+take up their arms and fight for their cause?... Many people think it
+doubtful. The Home Rulers especially think it pure moonshine and humbug.
+I remember one of their papers publishing the following advertisement
+last year to show in what esteem they held the Ulster army:
+
+    ROTTEN EGGS! ROTTEN EGGS! ROTTEN EGGS!
+
+    _Wanted: 100,000 rotten eggs, to be delivered in Tipperary,
+    worthily to welcome 20,000 Orangemen, armed with rifles and
+    guns, under command of the illustrious Johnson. Offers to be
+    addressed to the printing office of this paper._
+
+This certainly does not indicate a very exalted idea of the valour of the
+Orangeist forces on the part of the southern populations. But that does
+not mean that no other sugar plums shall be exchanged. In all civil wars
+such pleasantries take place, yet they do not prevent rivers of blood
+being shed. One fact alone is beyond doubt, that the Orange organization
+has immense ramifications among the regular troops, and is openly
+favoured by General Wolseley; that a large number of retired officers
+have entered it; that one would perhaps find it difficult to find one
+among the Queen’s regiments ready to fire on the loyalists, and that
+the most ardent partisans of Home Rule hesitate to grant to the Irish
+Parliament the faculty of raising an armed force.
+
+In conclusion, the last word in Ulster may very well be said by the
+Orangemen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+LEX LICINIA.
+
+
+It would have been pleasant to conclude these pages without recording
+too harsh a judgment against England, one of the two or three nations
+for ever dear to the thinker; one of those who possess a brain of her
+own, not merely a chain of nervous nodosities presiding over the organic
+functions; one of those who lead the Human Race along the hard road
+where it toilingly drags its miseries and delusions. It would have been
+pleasant at least to find some kind of extenuating circumstances for
+the attitude she maintains doggedly towards Ireland. But this is sheer
+impossibility.
+
+All that can be pleaded on behalf of England is that she is truly
+unconscious of the wrong she has been doing for centuries, and that
+she firmly believes herself to have acted within her rights. Nations,
+still more than individuals, are the slaves of their temperament, of
+their faults and their qualities. Shall we call the tiger a murderer,
+or reproach vultures because they feed on human flesh? They obey their
+instincts, and merely follow the dictates of nature. So it is with
+nations. Considered no longer in the individuals that compose it, or in
+the intellectual _élite_ that speaks in its name, but in the fifteen or
+twenty generations that have woven the woof of its annals, a people is an
+irresponsible and blind organism, fatefully obeying its impulses, be they
+noble or base.
+
+Try to talk with a Protestant landlord about the wrongs and grievances of
+Ireland. He will tell you in all good faith that the Irish alone are to
+blame. Ignorant, slothful, given to drink, sly and cunning, a nation of
+liars,—weak, in a word, and vanquished beforehand,—this is the verdict he
+pronounces on them from the height of his respectable rent-roll. If they
+have failed in the struggle for life, it is because they came into it
+badly armed and unprepared. So much the worse for them,—let them make way
+for the stronger ones! Such is the theory.
+
+There can be no doubt that it is put forward in all sincerity by a
+majority of Englishmen. But this does not prove that it rests on any
+sound foundation. It only proves once more that they are incapable of
+understanding anything about the Irish temperament.[4] This reasoning
+is merely the classic sophistry. They mistake the effect for the cause,
+and are blind to the fact that those vices they so bitterly reproach
+the Irish with, are the inevitable result of three centuries of bad
+administration and England’s own work. Wherever it has been liberated
+from the English yoke, has not, on the contrary, the Irish race displayed
+abundant energy, activity, genius? Do not the Irish hold the first rank
+in the United States, in Canada, in Southern America, in Australia,
+wherever emigration has carried them. In England even are they not at
+the head of all liberal professions, letters, the daily press, the bar,
+science? Those who have seen and closely studied that nation, crushed
+under its secular burden, ground under the heel of the conqueror, cannot
+but feel surprised at the bare fact that it survives; and this fact
+alone presupposes the most admirable gifts. One could even question
+whether, deprived of the Irish Celt element, for leaven, for chiefs, for
+counsellors, in letters, and in assemblies, the heavy Anglo-Saxon race
+could ever have founded its flourishing colonies. These prosper, one may
+say, in direct proportion to the number of Irish that come to them, even
+as the mother island slowly decays in direct proportion to the number of
+her children that are driven from her shores.
+
+Why should such slanderous explanations be sought for a fact sufficiently
+explained by history? The great misfortune of Ireland is not to be a
+nation less richly gifted than its conqueror, but only to be too small a
+nation, established in an open island. The Irish have been neither more
+vicious, nor more fanatical, nor more slothful than the English; they
+have been less numerous, less well armed; and John Bull, according to his
+deplorable custom, has taken advantage of their weakness for bullying
+them, for levying heavy toll on them, for bleeding them to death without
+mercy. He has taken their land, their freedom, their industry, and still
+wrests from them the product of their labour. And, to crown all, he dares
+to call them to account for their misery as for a crime—this misery,
+which is his own work, with all its wretched following of vices and
+degradation.
+
+Before such a sight as this involuntary indignation must be felt. One
+wishes to say to the English—
+
+“You pirates, begin first by giving back to Ireland all you have taken
+from her, and you shall see then if she be guilty of this poverty you
+consider as a crime! Let us reckon. Give her back her land, which
+your nobles occupy. Give her back the bravest of her sons, that you
+have driven to emigration. Give her back the habit of work which you
+have destroyed in her. Give her back the wealth which you prevented
+her accumulating, by forbidding her commerce and industry. Give her
+back the millions which you still exact every year upon the produce of
+her agricultural energy. Give her back the experience of freedom that
+you have so long crushed in her. Give her back the faculty of coolly
+reasoning about her beliefs, which persecution took from her. Give her
+back the right of self-government according to her genius, her manners,
+her will, that right which you declare sacred and imprescriptible for
+every nation, that you grant to your most insignificant colonies, to the
+meanest island of your Empire, and which you refuse to her, the biggest
+of all. Give her back all this, and let us see then if Ireland be all you
+say.”
+
+“Alas! from that national inheritance of which you robbed her one can
+only find now, recognise and therefore give back, the land and the money.
+The land stands always there; and money is not wanting in your coffers.
+A good impulse, then! All has to be paid for in this world—defeat and
+failure like anything else. If one lose a game, one must know how to
+pay for it gallantly. If one has, personally, or in the person of one’s
+father, committed an unjust act, one must know how to atone for it.
+Your railway companies give indemnities to the families of those they
+have crushed to death. Yourselves, as a nation, have paid in the Alabama
+affair, once convinced of being in the wrong. Here also, in Ireland,
+the hour of Justice has come. Evidence is over. Your work rises in your
+throat and sickens you. You cannot any longer doubt, and your writers
+daily repeat it, that the cause of all Ireland’s sufferings is in your
+spoliation, complicated by your administration. Well, the remedy is
+clear. Ireland herself points it out to you, and your conscience whispers
+it: you must give back her inheritance to Ireland, with the right of
+administering it according to her own lights.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+England is fond of comparing herself to Rome, though it is Carthage
+rather that she resembles. She can find in Roman history a precedent for
+the solution that is obviously suited to Ireland. The _Lex Licinia_,
+promulgated in the year 376 before the Christian era, limited to 500
+arpents, that is to say, almost exactly 500 acres, the extent of land
+that the patricians were entitled to possess in a conquered country.
+This was the law that the Gracchi wanted to bring to life again, and for
+which they paid the penalty of death. It has long been believed, and
+Mably repeated it with Montesquieu, that the question was the dividing
+of private property between all the citizens. Niebuhr and Savigny have
+re-established historical truth, and shown that the question at issue
+was merely the limitation of, or atonement for, usurpations that ruined
+the State by ruining the rural populations. It is a Licinian Law that is
+wanted in Ireland, and it is to be hoped that England will give it to her
+before long.
+
+The disease of Ireland may be defined: the feudal system or landlordism,
+complicated by absenteeism and usury, having for its consequences extreme
+penury of capital, rural pauperism, and the incapacity for struggling
+against American competition.
+
+The case of Ireland, more acute by reason of its special sphere, is only
+a striking instance of a fact that the legislators of the old world must
+necessarily take into account henceforth, the fact that the immense area
+of land newly cleared in the two Americas, in Australia, and India,
+are, four-fifths of them at least, the property of those that cultivate
+them personally. They have no other burden to bear than taxes, and are
+therefore in a condition of crushing superiority in the struggle with the
+countries in which dual ownership obtains. With an equal fruitfulness
+(and that of virgin soil is almost always greater), it is clear that
+the soil which supports only those that cultivate it, instead of two or
+three superposed classes of participants in its products, must always be
+able to give those products at a lesser cost price, and therefore will
+be able to throw them on the market at a lower rate. It is not merely
+common sense, it is the immutable course of human progress that condemns
+landlordism to disappear ere long from the face of the globe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Reduced to its elementary terms, the Irish question stands thus: 12,000
+landowners, of foreign origin, possessing almost the whole of the
+island; 1940 of these proprietors detaining two-thirds of this soil; 744
+holding the half of it. All these lands parcelled out into insufficient
+holdings, and cultivated by 720,000 native farmers, for the most part
+entirely devoid of capital. The agricultural product of the island,
+divided between two schedules on the official rolls of the income tax:
+the first one of £2,691,788 only, representing the income of the
+720,000 Irish farmers and their families; the second, of £13,192,758,
+representing the income of the 12,000 English landlords. The half at
+least of this sum leaving the island every year, and being spent outside
+it by the _absentee_ landlords. Not one farthing of this lordly income
+coming back to the soil, either directly or indirectly, in the shape of
+manure, buildings, or agricultural improvements; nor to industry, which
+is nil. General pauperism, resulting from the feudal organization that
+stops development of wealth in its germ, and more and more unfits the
+country for a struggle with the more normally organized nations. Unpaid
+rents, landlords and tenants eaten up by usurers, a permanent conflict of
+interests shown at each term by three or four thousand evictions, without
+mentioning the still more numerous cases in which eviction is not carried
+out because it would prove useless. A universal bankruptcy; a chronic
+state of social war; a growing contempt of the law; agrarian violence;
+the suspension of public liberties; a gradual return of the soil and
+its inhabitants to the savage condition; a constant augmentation in the
+area of uncultivated land; a regular emigration of the adult and able
+population; a quarter of the remaining inhabitants living at the expense
+of the ratepayers, either on outdoor relief or in the workhouses;
+financial grievances, added to historical and political grievances;
+hunger sharpening the rancour of the vanquished race; its hatred of the
+conqueror shown periodically by the return to the House of Commons of
+85 members whose only mandate is to obstruct the regular working of the
+British machinery. Such is the epitome of the results obtained in Ireland
+by the English after an occupation of seven centuries. Never did history
+register such a scandalous failure.
+
+Vainly do Oxford and Cambridge, in order to explain or palliate it,
+resort to all their scholastic sophistry. Vainly it is endeavoured
+to discover its cause in some inherent vice of the Irish race, in
+their ignorance, their religion, their laziness, and even a sort of
+“melancholy” imparted to them, it is alleged, by the neighbourhood of the
+ocean (_sic_).
+
+Ireland is not the only country edged by the Atlantic: neither is it
+the saddest. Her children are not in any marked degree more illiterate
+now-a-days than those of England, and if they were so for a long
+time—when they had to slip off to unlawful and clandestine “hedge
+schools” if they wanted to learn their alphabet—we know too well who was
+responsible for such an outrage on civilization. The Celts of Erin are
+Roman Catholics, it is true, but after all there are on our planet a
+certain number of nations who have not died yet of this religion. As for
+their political capacity, they vindicate it every day by the wisdom and
+firmness they display in sustaining the struggle against the oppressor.
+
+One must bow to evidence and do justice to Ireland. And for this there
+are not two formulas. There is only one, in two articles:
+
+1.—Expropriation of the landlords with a fair indemnity, to the profit of
+the Irish tenantry.
+
+2.—The extension to Ireland of Home Rule, which is the invariable rule
+of all British possessions, near or far, guaranteed of course by all the
+precautions judged necessary for the security and unity of the United
+Kingdom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is the glory of Mr. Gladstone to have understood and to have had the
+moral courage to declare that there is no other solution. And as we
+think of this, is it not a strong argument in favour of the superior
+justice of agrarian revendications in Ireland, that it should have
+imposed itself to the reason of that illustrious politician, the most
+English assuredly of all the statesmen that have succeeded each other
+in office since the time of William Pitt? Those common reasoners who
+rebel against a necessary restitution, should think of this. Here is an
+old man seventy-eight years of age, who, ever since he left Eton, had no
+other care, no other occupation than the affairs of his country; the most
+energetic, the most active and brilliant of leaders, the most experienced
+in finance; of all the orators in the British Parliament the most lucid
+and pungent; a refined scholar, an accomplished Hellenist, the possessor
+of an hereditary fortune that frees him from domestic cares, the son
+of a British merchant-prince, and the father of an Anglican clergyman,
+himself Protestant to the core, and fond of officiating in the place of
+his son in the church of Hawarden; a man whose predominant quality is
+his earnestness, and whose supreme rule of conduct is a well-regulated
+love of his country. This statesman, who has been ten times in office
+since the year, already so far from us, when he entered it under the
+leadership of Robert Peel, and who knows everything about the affairs
+of his country at home and abroad, has made his life-study of the Irish
+question. Twenty times in forty years has he attempted to grapple with
+it, to unravel it, to solve it. All the remedial measures that have
+been applied to the wounds of Ireland since 1860 had him for their
+initiator. He was the first to realize the odious wrong of an established
+Anglican Church in that Catholic country. To him is due the political
+and intellectual enfranchisement of the Irish; it was he who gave them
+national schools and who put them (by dint of what Titanic struggles!)
+on the same electoral footing as the other British subjects. It was he
+who promoted, defended, and succeeded in passing all the Land Bills meant
+to soften the wretched fate of the Irish serf. Lastly, one must not
+forget it, he never hesitated, when he thought it necessary, to claim
+laws of repression against agrarian violence. Mr. Gladstone is assuredly
+no anarchist. He is neither a madman nor is he in his dotage. Never was
+his genius clearer, his word more eloquent. Add to this that this man,
+enamoured of power like all those who have passed their life in it, knew
+that he was courting a certain fall when he proposed his solution of the
+Irish question, and could entertain no doubt of the schism that would
+take place in his party on the subject....
+
+And yet his conscience could oppose no resistance to the blinding light
+of facts. He clearly saw that palliatives were insufficient, and that
+there was an urgent need to take the evil at its root. As a conclusion to
+half a century spent in studying the case, and to twenty local attempts
+at healing it, after two or three thousand nights spent in the House
+of Commons in discussing the question under all its aspects, he comes
+forward to say: “_Justice to Ireland!_ we must give back to her what was
+taken from her—her inheritance and her freedom!”
+
+Can one suppose for a moment that Mr. Gladstone came to such a conclusion
+without the most decisive and powerful motives? Can anyone feel himself
+strong enough to hold opinions better founded than his on this matter? We
+must congratulate his adversaries on their happy self-confidence; but we
+cannot do so on their moral sense or on their modesty.
+
+
+I.—MR. GLADSTONE’S SCHEME.
+
+Mr. Gladstone’s scheme was framed in two organic Bills. By the first the
+British Government undertook to expropriate the landlords, and to redeem
+the Irish lands on a basis of twenty times the actual rent, to be paid
+in English Consols, at par. These lands would then be sold to the Irish
+tenants at a discount of 20 per cent., payable in forty-nine years by
+instalments equal to about half the former rent. The second Bill provided
+for the local government of Ireland, while it reserved for Great Britain
+the general control of the revenue and the right of keeping military
+forces in the island. Thanks to a coalition of a fraction of the Liberal
+party with the Tories, this programme fell to the ground at the General
+Election of 1886, and was set aside by Parliament.
+
+It may be that the loss is not much to be regretted. Very likely Mr.
+Gladstone’s scheme was, in his own thoughts, only meant as a trial, what
+we call a _ballon d’essai_. Excellent in its twofold principle, his
+solution had the very serious drawback of substituting, in the place
+of the 12,000 present landlords of Ireland—a single one, the State.
+It looked as if it solved all difficulties, and perhaps it would have
+caused fresh complications. In fact, it amounted to requiring that the
+unavoidable liquidation should be paid—by which people? By those who
+could least afford it—the Irish tenants. Whence might the poor devils
+have taken the money for their annuities? And even admitting that they
+could have found it, can one refuse to see that their culture, so
+wretched already, would have become still poorer? Has ever man chosen, to
+buy an estate, the moment when he is a confirmed bankrupt?
+
+But it would have been to them a nett gain of one-half on their actual
+rent, it will be objected.
+
+A nett gain of one-half _on nothing_, then, as they cannot afford to pay
+any rent just now, unless they deduct it from their capital (supposing
+that they have any), and there is no reason to suppose that things will
+be better for the next fifty years.
+
+Besides, if you admit that by paying for forty-nine years half the actual
+rent as judicially fixed, the Irish tenants ought to have the ownership
+of the land, why, in the name of all that is fair, refuse to see that
+they have paid it more than ten times already, in the shape of excessive
+rent?
+
+“They were free not to pay it and go out, with their goods and chattels,”
+says my old friend, the Economist. I answer: No. They were not, for a
+thousand reasons, and had to obey the will of the vampires, as long as it
+was strictly possible.
+
+Either the tenants, having become proprietors in name but not in reality
+(or, as it were, proprietors of a shadow of land mortgaged for half a
+century), would have paid their annuity,—and in that case they were as
+poor as before; or they would not have paid it, and then the Liberal
+party would have heard a fine din!
+
+In fact the Gladstone plan rested on an entirely chimerical hope: that of
+settling the Irish question without its costing a penny to the British
+Exchequer. To entertain such a hope is clearly to prove that one sees
+indeed the evil, but without descrying its deeper cause.
+
+This cause lies in the IMPOSSIBILITY to the modern tenants, in the face
+of the competition of better organized countries, and generally under the
+present conditions of the world’s agriculture, TO PAY ANY RENT WHATEVER.
+
+The Irish tenant is a bankrupt, because he has paid, for too long a time
+already, the rent that he could not afford. The land is impoverished for
+the very same reason. Now, to sell it to a penniless buyer is absurd
+enough; but to pretend to believe that the penniless buyer shall render
+it prosperous and make it yield riches, is perhaps more absurd still.
+
+Such illusions ought to be discarded. If England really wants to settle
+the Irish question, as her honour and her true interest both command her
+to do, she must manfully accept the idea of a pecuniary sacrifice and a
+real restitution. It would be useless to cheat herself into acceptance of
+half-measures. She had much better weigh the real cost of an imperious
+duty, pay it, and square matters once for all.
+
+Not only must she give, _gratuitously give away_ as a present, the land
+to the Irish tenant, but she must provide him, at the lowest rate of
+interest, with the capital necessary for putting that land in working
+order.
+
+This consummation might perhaps be attained at a lesser cost than would
+at first sight appear possible,—let us name a figure,—at a cost of one
+milliard francs, or £40,000,000. But this milliard should be forthcoming
+in cash, presented by the British nation to the sister isle as a free
+gift, a premium paid for peace, or rather a lump sum of conscience-money,
+such as we see sometimes advertised in the columns of the _Times_.
+
+
+II.—AN OUTSIDER’S SUGGESTION.
+
+The ideal solution for the innumerable difficulties of the Irish question
+would evidently be the _tabula rasa_,—the hypothesis that would transform
+Ireland into a newly-discovered island of virgin soil, barren and
+uninhabited, where England had just planted her flag, and out of which
+she wished to get the fullest value in the shortest possible time.
+
+What would her policy be in such a case? She would begin by surveying
+the whole extent of her new acquisition, by parcelling it out in lots
+carefully, then by calling in colonists and capital.
+
+To the immigrants that came without any other wealth than their stalwart
+arms, she would make gratuitous concessions of small lots of land,
+accompanied by seeds, agricultural implements, and an exemption from
+taxes during a limited period of time. To those who came with capital,
+she would give more important plots of ground, either demanding a premium
+of occupation more or less high, shortening the period of exemption for
+taxes, or again elevating the rate of those taxes. Most likely, too,
+she would favour the establishment of an Agricultural Bank that would
+advance to the new colonists such moneys as they desired, according to
+their wants, their chances of success, and the individual securities they
+presented.
+
+In reality it cannot be supposed that in Ireland the past, the vested
+interests and the settled habits of centuries, can be erased. But at
+least one can try to come near to this ideal; and besides, this island
+presents, over the barren and uncultivated one, the advantage of having
+a ready-made population; the country, its climate, its soil, are known;
+there is a large proportion of able workmen, valuable house property,
+no inconsiderable provision in agricultural implements, not to mention
+several thousand head of horse, oxen, sheep, and pigs ready imported.
+
+The advantages of this over a virgin island are, therefore, very clear;
+they are visibly stronger than the drawbacks, and success is certain if
+measures of the kind we allude to are vigorously carried out.
+
+England, then, must begin by buying out, not only the properties of the
+landlords, but also, and this is only justice, the interest that a large
+number of farmers possess in those lands under the name of tenant-right.
+The area of cultivated land in Ireland (exclusive of towns) is, in round
+numbers, fifteen million acres. Before all, the basis of indemnity
+granted to the landlords must be fixed.
+
+Mr. Gladstone proposed the basis of twenty times the actual rent, as
+judicially fixed. This seems an exorbitant price, for various reasons.
+The first reason is that no leased land under the sun normally yields
+to its owner, at present, anything like the interest supposed by such a
+valuation. The second reason is that the landlords’ property in Ireland
+has actually no real value whatever; it could not find a purchaser,
+probably, at the price of three times the nominal rent, were it put up
+for sale (let anyone who commands capital, and who looks for a secure
+investment, consider whether he would ever dream of buying Irish land,
+just now, at any price). The third reason is that the true responsibility
+of the Irish disease rests with those very landlords who never did
+their duty by the country. Granted that their faults (one would rather
+say crimes) ought to be covered by the benefit of prescription, and
+that a fair indemnity ought to be given them or their creditors if
+they are dispossessed by measures of public sanitation, it would look
+ridiculous,—indecent to go to the length of rewarding them for their
+moral and economical failure by a disproportionate indemnity taken out of
+the pocket of the British taxpayer.
+
+When one hears, therefore, Mr. Gladstone speak of giving the landlords
+twenty times the nominal rent of their land, one is reduced to admit
+that his idea was to bribe them into acquiescence to his scheme by an
+exorbitant premium. The Irish landlords did not understand their true
+interest; they did not see that they should have thrown into the scale
+the weight of their votes. Very likely they were wrong. They may say
+good-bye to the Gladstone indemnity; they will never see it again. For
+the longer they wait to settle this question, the more must farm-rent
+dwindle away and indemnity shrink to nothingness.
+
+It seems that, at present, in fixing it on the basis of twelve times the
+judicial rent, the British nation would show great liberality. It would
+be equivalent to saying that Irish land, as an investment, is worth
+one-third the capital in English Consols that bears the same interest,
+which is certainly paying it an unexpected compliment.
+
+As for the tenant-right of the farmer, which it is equally indispensable
+to redeem if all is to be cleared and there are to be no more conflicts
+of interests, let us admit that it is worth, on the whole, three or
+four times the judicial rent. Very likely again this is excessive. But
+this matters little practically, as will be shown further on. We find
+thus, for the aggregate interest vested in the Irish soil and subject to
+indemnity, a common rate of sixteen times the judicial rent.
+
+The average of this judicial rent is ten shillings per acre. For fifteen
+millions of cultivated acres to be redeemed, this would therefore give a
+total sum of 120 millions sterling to be paid. Thanks to this indemnity
+of expropriation, the English nation would become absolutely free to
+dispose of these lands as she pleased.
+
+But where are those 120 million pounds to be found? and they must be
+found over and above the capital necessary for the working of these
+lands, since we admitted in principle that it would be necessary to find
+it in most cases. This is the way:
+
+As a first outlay, we have admitted that the British Exchequer would put
+down £40,000,000 sterling in the shape of Consols at par. That capital
+represents an interest of about one million sterling and a quarter, or
+an annual tax of about ninepence per head. This certainly would not be
+a high price to pay for such a precious advantage as the suppression of
+the Irish plague. There is no decade in which a great nation does not pay
+more for some unlucky and useless venture—the Afghanistan campaign, as a
+case in point.
+
+To these 40 millions sterling, sacrificed by the wealthiest of European
+nations to its internal peace, shall be added the resources proper to
+Ireland. These are no despicable ones. Ireland, taxed much lower than
+Great Britain, nevertheless contributes no less than eight millions
+sterling, in round numbers, to the general revenue of the United Kingdom.
+
+Of these £8,000,000 about £4,286,519 go to the keeping of the army
+of occupation and the administration of finances; in other words, to
+the services meant to remain “imperial” in the hypothesis of Home
+Rule. About £3,744,462 are paid for the services that would, in this
+hypothesis, come into the province of the Irish Parliament, viz., public
+works, law courts, tax-gathering, local administration, registrations,
+land-surveying, lunatic asylums, schools, prisons, and the like. It seems
+that a new and poor country, as we suppose Ireland to turn out, ought
+not to pay for such services as liberally as does wealthy England, and
+that a reduction of a third on these heads, or £1,250,000, is perfectly
+feasible. That is about the income for £40,000,000 in English Consols.
+Here, then, we have sufficient provision for a second milliard in the
+shape of _interest_.
+
+The interest for the third milliard would easily be raised in the shape
+of additional taxes, if Irish agriculture were freed from any other
+charges. That would only increase the annual taxation by about a sixth
+part, and would not even then put it on a level with the incidence
+of English taxation. Ireland, on her side, might well do this slight
+sacrifice to the cause of social and political peace.
+
+There, then, we have the £120,000,000 wanted (in the shape of a special
+loan, emitted and guaranteed by England), which are found—a third by each
+of the high contracting parties; a third by a reduction of 33 per cent.
+on all services that would have become purely Irish.
+
+How ought this magnificent lump of money to be used to make it bear
+all it can? By lodging the whole in the coffers of a special _Bank of
+Liquidation_, that would be entrusted with all the operation. This bank,
+strong in her guaranteed capital of £120,000,000, invested, if necessary,
+with the power of emitting special paper-money, begins by paying all the
+lands on the basis fixed upon by law. This implies only, at the most, an
+outlay of £90,000,000. These lands the bank divides into three classes.
+
+_Class A._—The fee simple of the first class, composed of the holdings
+under £10 a year, is simply transferred to their actual holders (as would
+be done in an infant colony in order to attract inhabitants), subject to
+the single proviso that these lands shall be cultivated after a given
+system, and according to certain rules, and taken back by the public
+domain, if this condition be not observed.
+
+Let us remark, in passing, that this free gift will, in the majority of
+cases, be only the legalization of a _de facto_ gratuitous occupation,
+most of these small tenants having, for the last three or four years,
+stopped paying any rent to the landlords.
+
+Where, in that case, will be their advantage? it might be asked. They
+will be no richer for having become landowners in point of law, as they
+are now in fact.
+
+This is a material error, as shown by the example of our peasant
+proprietors in France. One of the chief reasons that prevent the small
+Irish tenant endeavouring to get all he can out of his land is precisely
+the rooted wish in his mind not to work for the benefit of the landlord.
+From the day that he shall be certain of keeping the entire fruit of
+his labour to himself, he will emulate the French Celt; he will submit
+himself to the hardest privations and the most unremitting toil; he will
+abundantly manure his land, ceaselessly tend it, turn it again and again;
+he will make it yield all it can. Anyhow, if he does not, he will have
+only himself to blame for it.
+
+_Class B._—The second class of land, composed of holdings from 15 to 20
+acres and over, is sold to its actual holders for the price of their
+tenant right, if they be willing to accept this privilege. In the
+contrary case, the tenant right is paid down to them at the rate fixed
+upon by experts, and the fee simple is put up for sale by auction. The
+ultimate proprietors of these domains of average extent receive, by the
+hands of the local agents for the _Bank of Liquidation_, every facility
+to form themselves into unions for the collective culture of their land.
+They remain, however, free to cultivate it themselves and in their own
+fashion.
+
+_Class C._—The third portion of the soil, formed by the choicest land,
+shall be put aside in each district to form a great domain where
+experiments shall be tried and examples given in agriculture—a domain
+managed by official agronomists, and cultivated by associations of
+agricultural labourers, salaried partly in kind on the product of the
+land, partly by participation in the nett profits. Not only shall there
+be introduced on those great domains, together with the finest breeds of
+cattle, the most perfect and scientific modes of culture, but, besides,
+public demonstrations and lectures shall be made, agricultural pupils
+shall be formed, and seeds of first quality shall be given at cost
+price. These model-farms alone remain the property of the State, and are
+inalienable.
+
+Thus would be constituted at once, together with a class of peasant
+proprietors, the middle and great cultures which are equally wanting in
+Ireland.
+
+Special laws abolish entail in the island, submit to expropriation (for
+25 years at least) any owner non-resident on his property, and forbid,
+under pain of heavy fines, to hold or give on lease any parcel of land
+under 12 acres.
+
+Other laws, imitated from the _Homestead Exemption_ of the United States,
+protect the peasant against debt. The _Liquidation Bank_, after having
+set the new system in motion, secures its working by advancing at the
+lowest rate of interest the capital wanted by the small and middling
+landowners, which must before long kill usury and drive it from the
+country. This bank is, in every sense, the organ and focus of a fiduciary
+circulation that is amply sufficient, on this broad basis, for all the
+financial wants of agricultural industry.
+
+Thus, the whole revenue of the land remaining in the country, circulating
+freely, and incessantly undergoing its normal transformations, health
+returns by degrees to the social body. There is no longer any question
+of “unemployed” labourers; on the contrary, it is rather hands that are
+wanted on all those flourishing estates which have day-work to offer, not
+only to the owners of small holdings, but even to the unemployed of Great
+Britain.
+
+And so England begins rapidly, though indirectly, to recover her advance,
+owing to the quick increase in the returns of the Income Tax; in perhaps
+four or five years, that increase covers the interest of her £40,000,000.
+It comes to say that her real outlay turns out to be only a tenth or
+a twelfth part of that advance. Emigration suddenly receives a check.
+Nay, a new, liberated, prosperous Ireland sees her children flock back
+to her shores from abroad, enriched and reconciled, bringing home their
+capital with their experience. For the Irishman ever keeps in his heart
+unimpaired the love of his mother country, and will return to her as soon
+as he can.
+
+Let us carry our hypothesis further.
+
+At the same time when she gave up the responsibilities of the
+local government of Ireland, England has transmitted them to the
+representatives of the Irish nation.
+
+Are those representatives to form immediately a single Parliament sitting
+at Dublin, or are they for the present to be divided into four provincial
+assemblies for Leinster, Munster, Connaught, and Ulster? This question
+is of small importance, at least at the beginning. Let the first step
+be taken; an united Ireland will only be a matter of time. The best
+way in such cases is to follow the expressed wish of the populations;
+and supposing that Ulster, or at least a part of Ulster, vote for the
+continuation of the present _régime_, why should not those territories be
+excepted from the new arrangements, and either be left _in statu quo_ or
+joined politically to Scotland, of which they are a geological as well
+as an ethnical dependency? But I cannot help thinking that if the above
+system was submitted to the Antrim tenants themselves, they would not be
+backward to see its advantages.
+
+On the whole question the last word should remain to the voter. If a
+majority of the electors of Scottish Ireland spoke in favour of Home
+Rule, what could be objected to them? That they will eventually be
+oppressed by the Catholics? No great fear of that, I should think; and
+besides, efficient measures could be taken, guarantees found against
+that danger; but no such caution will be really wanted. The influence of
+the Catholic clergy in Ireland has for its principal basis the political
+state of the country. The day when difficulties are cleared up, national
+education will soon have put an end to the reign of clericalism in
+Ireland as elsewhere.
+
+One cannot help feeling firmly convinced that Mr. Gladstone’s formula,
+“Home Rule and Abolition of Landlordism,” taken in its most general
+meaning, and applied with a spirit both prudent and liberal, will suffice
+to heal in a few years the disease of Ireland. Public wealth will rise by
+degrees, feelings of hatred will die away, the rapidity of the cure will
+take the world by surprise. Has not already the adoption of the Irish
+programme by a large number of Englishmen belonging to the Liberal party
+been sufficient to bring about a partial reconciliation between the two
+countries? We have seen Irish orators come and preach the Liberal gospel
+in England, and reciprocally, English orators go and bring the word
+of peace to Ireland. That alone is an augury of success, a symptom of
+healing and pacification.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Will it be objected that this is a Utopian picture, an unpractical
+scheme, or simply one of difficult execution? As for me, the more I look
+into the matter, the more settled grows my belief that three things only
+are requisite for substituting so much good for so much evil, viz.,
+money, steadiness of purpose and conscience. Nobody will say that the
+English have ever shown a lack of steadiness in the pursuit of success;
+money they have in abundance; will they be wanting in conscience? This is
+scarcely to be feared. Conscientiousness of a more or less enlightened
+kind is a characteristic of the Englishman, and it is his highest praise.
+Men are constantly to be met in England who rule their conduct on the
+principles of an inward law. It is true that, by a natural consequence,
+many are good only in name, and their display of conscience is only a
+sham; but as our great moralist has said, “Hypocrisy is a homage which
+vice renders to virtue,” and wherever vice is obliged to wear a mask,
+virtue is bound to conquer.
+
+A great transformation, the instruments of which are the press, the
+steam-engine, and the telegraph, has been slowly developing throughout
+the world during the last few years: a new and powerful influence has
+been born that might be named “obligatory justice through publicity.”
+Tennyson has spoken of “the fierce light that beats upon a throne;”
+thrones now-a-days scarcely exist except in name; the will of the people
+has taken their place. But let Governments call themselves republics or
+monarchies, they are equally submitted to that pitiless ray of light
+which is the ever-wakeful eye of the press, the uncompromising publicity
+which ignores either rank or station. How many examples of it have we
+not seen at home! To quote a recent one, take that wretched Schnæbelé
+affair. Only fifteen years ago there would have been found in it reasons
+ten times sufficient to bring about a war for those who wanted it. Not
+so in our days. In less than twenty-four hours the press had brought to
+light the most minute details of the affair, exposed the naked truth to
+the eyes of the world, photographed the place where the incident had
+occurred, submitted, in short, to the great public judge all the evidence
+of the case. One had to tender apologies under pain of being called the
+aggressor, and the whole affair evaporated into smoke.
+
+Such results are perhaps the clearest gain that modern progress has given
+us. If our age has a superiority over the preceding ages, it is assuredly
+to have succeeded in making injustice more difficult to practise. More
+and more henceforward will great national crimes become impossible. Mr.
+Gladstone’s chief merit will be to have understood it before anybody
+in England, and to have been emphatically the man of his time. In spite
+of friends and adversaries he has dared to utter the truth, and say:
+“We must give back to Ireland what we have taken from her. The good of
+England imperiously demands that sacrifice, for we are entering an age
+when the honour of a great nation should not even be suspected.”
+
+He is actually the only statesman in Europe who follows a policy of
+principle; the only one seeking the triumph of his opinions by the
+sole help of reason. All the others, from the most famous to the most
+obscure or passing politician, are only jobbers. Disraeli had too much
+of the mountebank about him to have been able to secure the respect
+of posterity. Gortschakoff was only a courtier of the old school;
+Cavour a clever lawyer; Thiers a dwarf, in a moral and political, as
+in a physical, sense. Bismarck profits by a state of affairs which
+he did little or nothing to create, and at the most is the belated
+representative in our times of fossil feudalism. Gladstone alone is a
+truly modern statesman, and therefore is destined to be set by history
+above all his contemporaries, if only he succeeds in carrying out
+his great enterprise; for the more we go the more nations shall be
+restricted to politics of principle, both because all other systems are
+exploded, and because the diffusion of learning will be for the future an
+almost insuperable obstacle to petty or brutal diplomatic conspiracies.
+
+Great Britain, it is earnestly to be hoped, will consent to follow
+her great leader in the way he has shown to her. She is offered the
+most splendid opportunity of doing what no nation has achieved as
+yet,—atoning, of her own free will, for centuries of injustice, and
+trying one of the noblest social experiments that can ever be attempted.
+It would be the beginning of a new era in the history of human societies,
+and pure glory for those who initiated it. Not only could such results
+be attained at little cost, but the most obvious, the most pressing
+interest of England invites her to the enterprise. Let her make haste.
+After having affirmed for half a century the sovereignty of peoples, and
+their right to govern themselves according to their will, she cannot give
+herself the lie at home. After having protested against Bomba and the
+Bulgarian atrocities, she cannot in her own dominions remain beneath “the
+unspeakable Turk.” After having assumed before the world the attitude of
+a systematic foe to slave-trade and all kinds of oppression or cruelty,
+after having carried it even to maudlin sensitiveness, as in the case
+of pigeon-shooting, “birds’ corpses on women’s hats,” and the like, she
+cannot decently carry on the slow destruction of a sister race through
+starvation. She cannot and she will not do it, for it would be branding
+herself for ever as Queen of Humbug, Empress of Sham.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+[1] Absenteeism, in its present form, seems to date only from Grattan’s
+Parliament, but in some shape or another it may be said to date from the
+British invasion of Ireland, and to result from the very nature of an
+insular kingdom transferred wholesale to the nobility of a neighbouring
+state.
+
+[2] A later instance. On August 30th, 1887, two men armed with guns and
+wearing masks entered the house of Mr. R. Blennerhasset, at Kells, near
+Cahirciveen; they went upstairs to Mrs. Blennerhasset’s room and demanded
+money, which they got to the amount of about £2.
+
+[3] My guide was quite right. In a statistical table of trials between
+July, 1885, and July, 1886, for the County Kerry, I find the following
+items: _maiming cattle_, 9; _injury to person_, 7; _murders_, 3; _firing
+at persons_, 8; _firing into houses_, 15; _threatening letters_, 125;
+_intimidation_, 36; _malicious injury_, 22; _arson_, 19; _assaults_, 22.
+The above figures, it should be observed, only relate to outrages brought
+home to their authors; there can be no doubt that a much larger number of
+agrarian outrages remain unpunished.
+
+[4] See Appendix, p. 331.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+_EXTRACTS FROM SOME LETTERS ADDRESSED WITHIN THE LAST TWO YEARS TO AN
+IRISH LANDLORD BY HIS TENANTS._
+
+
+The _Times_ has published, on October 10, 1887, an exceedingly
+interesting batch of letters selected from some three hundred addressed
+within the last two years to an Irish landowner by his tenants. As the
+editor of those letters wrote most appropriately, there is perhaps no
+means whereby truer insight can be obtained into the ways and habits of
+the Irish peasantry than by studying the letters written by the people
+themselves. Typically enough, however, the same editor only saw in those
+letters how “unbusiness-like and illogical is the Irish tenant,” and
+“the various reasons that an Irishman gives for not paying his rent. One
+is unable to pay because his uncle is confined to bed, and his daughter
+suffering from a sore eye; another because a relative has died; a third
+because his brother-in-law has brought an action against him for money
+lent, and he has had to pay; one because his family is small, and another
+because it is large; another—and this is the most common excuse—because
+he has been unable to sell his stock; another because his wife has a sore
+hand; another because of the death of a cow; another because the weather
+is severe and there is a sheriff’s bailiff obstructing him from making up
+the rent; another because it was God’s will to take all the means he had;
+another because of the agitation.”
+
+Reasons which, it may be seen, appear to the English eye entirely
+ridiculous and unbusiness-like.
+
+What strikes a Frenchman most, on the other hand, in the letters, is
+their touching simplicity, the appalling instability of a budget that
+the least domestic mishap is enough to upset, and the fruitless attempt
+of the poor man to penetrate into the real cause of the burden under
+which he is panting; in the comments, the utter incapacity of the
+British landlord to understand his Irish tenantry even when he is a good
+landlord, which is obviously (perhaps too obviously) the case here.
+
+The letters are thus characteristic in more than one sense. Whatever the
+angle under which they are read, they undoubtedly remain first-class
+documentary evidence.
+
+                                                  _8th Jany., 1887._
+
+    To * * * *, Esq.
+
+    SIR,—I received a letter yesterday from Mr. G⸺ who demanded the
+    payment of £31 0_s._ 6_d._, rent due up to 29 Sept. 1886. I was
+    in with Mr. G⸺ this day & he told me that he had no further
+    instructions than what was contained in his note. Now my Uncle
+    has been confined through illness to his bed since last June,
+    & my daughter has been under medical treatment since last
+    September for a sore eye which proceeded from a bad tooth, & I
+    even had to pay the Dentist ten shillings for extracting it, as
+    the Doctor could not do so. I trust you will kindly take into
+    consideration my position and stay proceedings, & I will send
+    you £18 next Saturday & the remainder about the 13th February,
+    the day after fair of K⸺.
+
+                          Your obedt. Servant
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following is also from the same man:—
+
+    SIR,—I would have sent you the remainder of the rent on the day
+    mentioned but the old man died & I had extra expenses but if
+    you would kindly wait until about the 25th of March I will be
+    able to let you have it.
+
+                         Your obedient servant
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                  _9th March, 1887._
+
+    SIR,—I have yours of the 4th inst. & am very sorry to say
+    I have met a reverse & cant pay up to my word. I took a
+    Brother-in-law to live with me—he was a tenant of your
+    property who lost the power of his limbs & obliged to get into
+    Hospital, his daughter my niece who I reared went to America
+    she died there after saving a good deal of money her father
+    after much trouble got £200 of it & after being 17 years in the
+    Hospital he had to leave it having means to live & he requested
+    to come to live with me which I allowed, & being maintained as
+    one of my family for 12 months up to Wedy. last he now sued me
+    for £50 which he lent me while here. He is at other lodgings
+    & subject to evil advice but he fell out with me while here &
+    since has been most ungrateful. I done my best to get this law
+    put back but failed & had to pay the money I had made to pay
+    my rent. I am much grieved being obliged to ask to the middle
+    of next month to pay it. I wont have any fairs sooner to sell
+    my stores but I will surly have it about the 20th April if not
+    sooner. You may be sure only what happened me I would have paid
+    up to my promise.
+
+                             Your obt servt
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                       _10th March._
+
+    MR. ⸺. After all I built & what I ow in shops & from the loss
+    of sheep I am not abell to pay but if you forgive me this half
+    year’s rent you will save me from destruction, and if so I
+    will keep it a profound sacred. I promis I will never again
+    ask anything of you & will be punctual in future, my family
+    is small & my health not good to go travell. I brought a dale
+    of money in to this farm 5 years ago and it is all gon now. I
+    apeal to your kind genariss hart to do this for me & may the
+    almitey god give your self & your children the Kingdom of hevan.
+
+                       I remain most respectfully
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                      _January 9th._
+
+    DEAR SIR,—In reply to youre noat I am verrey sorrey that I can
+    do nothing at the presant it is out of my power I have nothing
+    to sell unlss I sell what I have to ate my self and seven
+    littel children. I had but one calf to sell to pay you and it
+    was the will of provedence to take him, he died. I have but one
+    cow & I had hur in the fair of N⸺ and all I could get for her
+    was four pounds, so if you presede with the law as yore lawyer
+    sayes he will I must sell hur to pay you
+
+                          Your humbel tennant
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                        _August 31._
+
+    SIR, — I promised the rent after the fair of K⸺ in June. I had
+    three calves in it & covld not sell. I took three months grass
+    for them to see could I do better. I intend to have them in D⸺
+    on the 12th & if I sell them I will send the rent after that. I
+    would have wrote only expecting to have the rent before this.
+    My wife took a sore hand & is in hospital this two months & is
+    in it still so its poor times with me.
+
+                              Your tennant
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                       _11th March._
+
+    SIR,—In reply to your letter dated 5th inst. I beg to ask your
+    honour the favour of a few days grace. I hope to be able to
+    meet your demands by the time you call to collect your rents in
+    April. In the meantime I might have an opportunity of setting
+    the fields in Con acre.
+
+    Being a lone widow with two helpless children one of them of
+    weak intellect I hope your honour will kindly consider my case.
+
+    I am Sir your Honour’s most obedient & humble servant
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                       _January 19._
+
+    SIR,—I received your letter, it is not in my power to make
+    money for you now as I had to borrow some of your last rent
+    which is not all paid yeat on account of the death of my fine
+    cow that died. I will use my best endavours against May.
+
+                             Your ob. servt
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                     _September 26._
+
+    DEAR SIR,—I make apail to you at the present time that I am
+    endeavring at this time to make up the rent. Now I would have
+    it sooner but the weather for the harvest was savere, sore I
+    could not help it Der Sir, there is a man who is a Sheirf’s
+    baliff is going to injure me & to obstruct me in making up
+    the rent for you which I would hope soon to have value for.
+    Dear Sir I apail to you that you will not allow but Dis allow
+    injuring a poor tenant who is endeavring to make up the rent.
+    I would say one thing that I believe he is at least without
+    maners. I apail to you that you will not allow to obstruct
+    making out rent as quck as posible. one thing I wonder much
+    that you would permit him or such as him any place. I will
+    refrain on that presnt. I will ask this request off Mr. ⸺ as
+    soon as I can get the rent will he be kind enough to take it
+    from me. I will ask the favour of you to give return as it may
+    plaise you. Excuse my hand riting.
+
+                              Yours truly
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                       _August 2nd._
+
+    MR. ⸺. I received Mr. G⸺’s letter on the 31st of July. I am
+    sorry I am not able to pay at preasant. I am willing to pay my
+    rent but it was God’s will to take all the mains I had intended
+    to meet you. I hope you will be so kind to give time untell
+    October, as it is so hard to make money
+
+                           Your obt. servent
+
+                                                            PAT. F⸺.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                      _Wensdy 19th._
+
+    * * * * Esq. SIR,—I received your letter & will send you the
+    rent as soon as I can. There was no price for cattle in the
+    fairs that is past, in fact the could not be sold atol. I
+    expect to make the rent in the fair of K⸺. I could always pay
+    my rent but this cursed agetation has destroyed our country but
+    I hope the worst of it is over
+
+                     I remain Your Obedient Servant
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following letters also relate to the payment of rent:—
+
+                                                       _October 10._
+
+    SIR,—I did not receive your letter ontill this Day. It has
+    given me a great surprise I hope your Honour will not put me to
+    cost I have a little best to sell, and after the fair in C⸺, a
+    thursday I will send it to yo and I hop yo will not put me to
+    cost. I hop your honour will feel for me
+
+                                 truly
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                      _October 4th._
+
+    MR. ⸺. SIR,—I was again disappointed in the fair at N⸺ in
+    selling my cattle and I must ask time of you till I get sale
+    for if possible I will sell them in the fair of C⸺ do not once
+    imagine that I am not enclined to pay but I never was offered
+    a price for my cattle. I was speaking to some of the tenants
+    and the would wish to see you in N⸺ the rent day as the want to
+    know what you want for your land
+
+                          Yours respectfully,
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    SIR,—I was very sory to see your hon goeing back without the
+    rient.
+
+    I was willing to pay that day but I could not. I send you my
+    half-year’s rent £13 10, so I hope your hon will luck after
+    turf for me there is no ous in asking it of Mr. F⸺ There is to
+    banks idle on the tients part on F⸺ and Mrs. N⸺ has 30 banks
+    set this year so I count it very unfare if we doent get one The
+    old men was geoing to kill us when we did not pay your hon the
+    day you ware in N⸺ We ware all sory we did not settle that day
+
+                     I remane your obdient servant
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+    rember the tturf.
+
+The following is in the same handwriting as the last, but signed by
+another tenant:—
+
+    DEAR SIR,—You spoke of referring to Mr. F⸺ for turf, we did not
+    like to intrupeed (query, interrupt) yur hon at that time. Well
+    sir there is too banks of your own on the tients part an Mrs.
+    N⸺ is giveing turf to men on the five different estates Every
+    one that wonted turf got it but two tients no one els wonts it
+    besids, so I hope your hon will luck to us. I am willing to pay
+    my way if I get a chance. N⸺ D⸺ has turf this 40 years No one
+    wants it but P⸺ F⸺ & M⸺ T⸺. We would pay your hon ondly for the
+    rest
+
+                    Believe me Your obedient servent
+
+                                                              M⸺ T⸺.
+
+    do what your hon can about the turf
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                 _November 23rd 86._
+
+    HONOURED SIR,—I got both your letters & replidd to the first
+    & directed it to D⸺ in which I asked for a little time to pay
+    the rent I had some young cattle in the fair of K⸺ and did not
+    sell them. It will greatly oblige me if your Honour will give
+    me time untill the Christmas fair of F⸺ as I have some pigs to
+    sell that will meet this rent & that would leave me the cattle
+    to meet the May rent as the young cattle I have is not fit to
+    sell at preasant.
+
+    I feel sorry to have to trespass on your Honour, but the times
+    are bad and it is hard to make money, but I hope we will soon
+    have better times under the present Government, and that all
+    those mob laws will soon be at an end.
+
+                     I remain your humble servant,
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It shows a curious state of things when a would-be tenant thinks it
+necessary to assure the landlord that he knows the farm belongs to him:—
+
+                                                   _April 12, 1887._
+
+    To Mr. * * * *
+
+    SIR,—Just a few lines to let your honour know that my father
+    is very delicate for the past tow months and not expected to
+    recover. I would like to let your honour know that it was mee
+    that minded your Property for the last ten years. I know that
+    this place always belongs to you and that the emprovements cost
+    no one But your self a shilling. I would like to know how mutch
+    my father is in your dept.
+
+                 I remain your honors faiteful servant,
+
+                                                           JAMES T⸺.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following contain offers of cattle in lieu of rent, a form of payment
+which Irish tenants are always anxious to adopt if they can, for though
+they declare there will be no difference about the price, they always
+expect the landlord to give them considerably more than the market value:—
+
+                                                       _January 18._
+
+    DEAR SIR,—I am not able to answer you with money at present. I
+    have the heifer that I told you of and if you wish I will send
+    her to T⸺ for you, and I expect your honor and I wont differ.
+
+                         Your obedient servent,
+
+                                                        PATRICK F⸺Y.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                         _Jany 5th._
+
+    SIR,—I have 5 nice bullocks to sell if you would buy them. I
+    have no other way of paying the rent.
+
+                                                              F⸺ D⸺.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                     _October 14th._
+
+    DEAR SIR and pleas your honour,—I hope in you that you wont
+    buy all the cattle you want in S⸺ town. Patrick D⸺ has a lot
+    greasing with the father-in-law at C⸺; he intends to meet your
+    honour with them. Pleas, Sir, leave room for three Bullocks, I
+    have them greasing with you above the road all the summer.
+
+                         Your faithful servant,
+
+                                                          MICHL. T⸺.
+
+    I am setten some of my children and it has left me bare in
+    monney.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+                                                        _Novr 12th._
+
+    DEAR SIR,—I will give three two-year-old Bullicks good owns for
+    next May rent. I will leave the vallue to your honour when you
+    come down before Christamas. I was offered £15 pounds for the
+    three last June; £5 each from Mr. ⸺ the Miller of C⸺. I never
+    took them out since. I have no father for them. Your honour has
+    plenty of straw to give them, the will make good Bullocks on
+    it. Your honour must get them les than vallue
+
+                     Your truly faithfull servent,
+
+                                                             * * * *
+
+
+THE END.
+
+BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRELAND'S DISEASE ***
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+    text-align: center;
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+    text-indent: 0em;
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+<body>
+<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ireland&#039;s disease, by Philippe Daryl</p>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Ireland&#039;s disease</p>
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Philippe Daryl</p>
+<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February 9, 2023 [eBook #69993]</p>
+<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>
+  <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: deaurider and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</p>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRELAND&#039;S DISEASE ***</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_i"></a>[i]</span></p>
+
+<p class="center larger">IRELAND’S DISEASE.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ii"></a>[ii]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iii"></a>[iii]</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage larger">IRELAND’S DISEASE</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage">NOTES AND IMPRESSIONS<br>
+<span class="smaller">BY</span><br>
+PHILIPPE DARYL</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage"><i>THE AUTHOR’S ENGLISH VERSION</i></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">LONDON</span><br>
+GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS<br>
+<span class="smaller">BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL<br>
+GLASGOW AND NEW YORK</span><br>
+1888</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iv"></a>[iv]</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller">LONDON<br>
+BRADBURY, AGNEW, &amp; CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_v"></a>[v]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak">PREFACE.</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>These pages were first published in the
+shape of letters addressed from Ireland to
+<i>Le Temps</i>, during the summer months of 1886
+and 1887.</p>
+
+<p>A few extracts from those letters having found
+their way to the columns of the leading British
+papers, they became the occasion of somewhat
+premature, and, it seemed to the author, somewhat
+unfair conclusions, as to their general
+purport and bearing.</p>
+
+<p>A fiery correspondent of a London evening
+paper, in particular, who boldly signed
+“J. J. M.” for his name, went so far as to
+denounce the author as “an ally of the <i>Times</i>,
+in the congenial task of vilifying the Irish<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vi"></a>[vi]</span>
+people by grotesque and ridiculous caricatures,”
+which charge was then summarily met
+as follows:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="center"><i>To the Editor of the <span class="smcap">Pall Mall Gazette</span>.</i></p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—</p>
+
+<p>Let me hope, for the sake of “J. J. M.’s” mental condition,
+that he never set eyes upon my Irish sketches in
+<i>Le Temps</i>, about which he volunteers an opinion. If, however,
+he has actually seen my prose in the flesh, and he still
+clings to his hobby that I am hostile to the Irish cause or
+unsympathetic with the Irish race, why then I can only urge
+upon his friends the advisability of a strait waistcoat, a
+brace of mad doctors, and an early berth in a lunatic asylum.
+I never heard in my life of a sadder case of raving delusion.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Yours obediently,</p>
+
+<p class="right">PHILIPPE DARYL.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Paris</span>, <i>September 18, 1887</i>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Thus ended the controversy. There was no
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>Allowance should be made, of course, for the
+natural sensitiveness of Irishmen on everything
+that relates to their noble and unhappy country.
+But, what! Do they entertain, for one moment,
+the idea that everything is right and normal in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vii"></a>[vii]</span>
+it? In that case there can be no cause of
+complaint for them, and things ought to remain
+as they are. All right-minded people will
+understand, on the contrary, that the redress
+of Irish wrongs can only come out of a sincere
+and assiduous exposure of the real state of
+affairs, which is not healthy but pathological,
+and, as such, manifests itself by peculiar symptoms.</p>
+
+<p>However it may be, a natural though perhaps
+morbid desire of submitting the case to
+the English-reading public was the consequence
+of those exceedingly brief and abortive
+polemics.</p>
+
+<p>The Author was already engaged in the not
+over-congenial task of putting his own French
+into English, or what he hoped might do duty as
+such, when Messrs. George Routledge &amp; Sons,
+the London publishers of his <i>Public Life
+in England</i>, kindly proposed to introduce
+<i>Ireland’s Disease</i> to British society. The offer<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_viii"></a>[viii]</span>
+was heartily accepted, and so it came to pass
+that the English version is to appear in book
+form on the same day as the French one.</p>
+
+<p>The special conditions of the case made it, of
+course, a duty to the author to strictly retain
+in his text every line that he had written
+down in the first instance, however little palatable
+it might prove to some English readers
+and fatal to his own literary or other prospects
+in England. That should be his excuse for
+sticking desperately to words which, like
+Tauchnitz editions, were not originally intended
+for circulation in Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Ph. D.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Paris</span>, <i>Nov. 10th, 1887</i>.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ix"></a>[ix]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdpg smaller">PAGE</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>INTRODUCTION</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#INTRODUCTION">1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER I.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">First Sensations</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">5</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER II.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Dublin Life</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">17</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER III.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Poor of Dublin</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">31</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER IV.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Emerald Isle</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">46</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER V.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Race</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">60</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VI.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Historical Grievances</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">76</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VII.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Killarney</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">96</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER VIII.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Through Kerry on Horseback</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">109</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_x"></a>[x]</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER IX.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">A Kerry Farmer’s Budget</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">139</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER X.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Rural Physiology</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">157</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XI.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Emigration</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">177</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XII.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The League</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">197</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIII.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Clergy</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">215</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XIV.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Fort Saunders</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">234</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XV.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Plan of Campaign</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">256</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVI.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Scottish Ireland</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">271</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER XVII.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Lex Licinia</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">296</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="in1">&#160;&#160;I.—The Gladstone Scheme</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Page_309">309</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="in1">II.—An Outsider’s Suggestion</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Page_313">313</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr class="mt">
+    <td>APPENDIX</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPENDIX">331</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1"></a>[1]</span></p>
+
+<h1>IRELAND’S DISEASE.</h1>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION.</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It is indeed a chronic and constitutional disease
+that Ireland is labouring under. Twice within the
+last fifteen months it has been my fortune to visit the
+Sister Isle; first in the summer of 1886, at the apparently
+decisive hour when the die of her destiny was
+being cast in the ballot-box, and her children seemed
+on the point of starting upon a new life; then again,
+twelve months after, in the summer of 1887, when I
+found her a prey to the very same local disorders and
+to the same general anxiety that I had previously
+observed.</p>
+
+<p>Last year it looked as if the solution was nigh,
+if Mr. Gladstone’s spirited eloquence was going to
+carry the English nation along with it. The seasons,
+however, have followed one another in due course,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2"></a>[2]</span>
+bringing with them the usual run of unpaid rent,
+eviction, and reciprocal violence; a new Crimes Act
+has been added to the long record of similar measures
+that the British Parliament has scored against Ireland
+in eighty-seven years of so-called Union; a few cabins
+have disappeared, have been unroofed or burnt down
+by the arm of the bailiff; a few more skulls have been
+broken; some hundred thousand more wretched beings
+have embarked in emigrant ships for the United States
+or Queensland; some more hunger-stricken women
+and children have swollen the list of obscure victims
+that green Erin annually pays to the Anglo-Saxon
+Minotaur. But nothing essential is altered. Things
+are in the same places and passions at the same pitch.
+The two nations are facing each other with defiance
+in their eyes, threats in their mouths, revolvers or
+dynamite in hand. The problem has not advanced
+one step. Social war is still there, filling the hearts,
+paralysing the action, poisoning the springs of life.
+It may be read in the alarmed looks of mothers, in the
+sullen faces of men; it is lurking behind every
+hedge.</p>
+
+<p>Before such an unparalleled case of a whole race’s
+physiological misery, how could one help being seized
+with an ardent curiosity mingled with pity? Who
+would not wish to plunge to the bottom of the matter,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>[3]</span>
+to make out, if possible, the secret of the evil, to
+deduce from it a lesson, and, may be, a general law?</p>
+
+<p>That want I have felt most deeply, and I have tried
+to gratify it by personal observation; looking at things
+through my own spectacles, without animus or hatred,
+passion or prejudice, as they came under my gaze;
+noting down what seemed to be characteristic; above
+all, avoiding like poison the contact of the professional
+politician on either side: then drawing my own conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>I need hardly add that for the intelligence of what
+I saw, I have always availed myself of the printed
+sources of information, such as the standard works on
+Irish history, Black’s excellent <i>Guide to Ireland</i>, the
+Parliamentary Reports, the national literature, and
+last but not least the graphic accounts of current
+events published by the English and native press. Of
+the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, especially, I must state that I
+have found its files a mine of precise, well digested,
+and thoroughly reliable information on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>That my studies are above correction, I will not
+venture to hope. That they are in every case
+founded on facts, and, to the best of my belief,
+accurate, I earnestly vouch. As far as possible, I
+have made a point of giving the names of the persons
+mentioned. When it might have been inconvenient to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a>[4]</span>
+them, however, or when delicacy forbade such a liberty,
+I have either suppressed the name or substituted a
+fictitious one. It should be understood that what I
+wanted, as a total stranger in the country, and what
+my French readers wanted, were not personal but
+typical instances.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>[5]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.<br>
+<span class="smaller">FIRST SENSATIONS.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Dublin.</span></p>
+
+<p>Hardly have you set foot on the quay at Kingstown,
+than you feel on an altogether different ground
+from England. Between Dover and Calais the contrast
+is not more striking. Kingstown is a pretty
+little place, whose harbour is used by the steamers
+from Holyhead, and whither Dublin shopkeepers resort
+in summer. Half a century back, it was only a
+fishermen’s village of the most rudimentary description.
+But George IV., late Prince Regent, having
+done that promontory the honour to embark there
+when leaving Ireland, the place became the fashion.
+In memory of the glorious event, the citizens of Dublin
+raised on that spot a pyramid which rests on four
+cannon balls, and bears on its top the royal crown
+with the names of all the engineers, architects,
+captains, and harbour officials who had anything
+to do with the business. Villas soon sprang up round<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>[6]</span>
+it, and from that time Kingstown went on thriving.
+A splendid pier bent round upon itself like a forearm
+on its humerus, makes it the safest harbour in
+Ireland, and the railway puts it in communication
+with Dublin in twenty minutes. It is the Portici of a
+bay that could vie with the Bay of Naples, did it boast
+its Vesuvius and sun, and did not the shoals which
+form its bottom get often bare and dry at low tide.</p>
+
+<p>You land then at Kingstown, early in the morning
+after a four hours’ crossing, having started the evening
+before by the express from Euston Station. And immediately
+you feel that you are no longer in England.
+The language is the same, no doubt, though talked
+with a peculiar accent or <i>brogue</i>. The custom-house
+officers are English; so are the policemen and redcoats
+who air themselves on the quay; but the general
+type is no longer English, and the manners are still less
+so. Loud talk, violent gesticulation, jokes and laughter
+everywhere; brown hair, sparkling dark eyes: you
+could imagine you are at Bordeaux or at Nantes.</p>
+
+<p>The guard who asks for your ticket, the very train
+you get in, have something peculiar, undefinable,
+thoroughly un-English. The old lame newspaper-man
+who hands you <i>The Irish Times</i> or the <i>Freeman’s
+Journal</i> at the carriage-door, indulges witticisms
+while giving you back your change, which not one<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>[7]</span>
+of Mr. Smith’s well-conducted lads ever permits
+himself along a British line. As for the passengers
+they are more un-English than anything else. This
+lady with the olive complexion and brown hair, may
+be termed an English subject; but for all that she
+has not probably one globule of Anglo-Saxon blood
+in her veins. That gentleman in the grey suit has
+evidently an English tailor, but the flesh-and-bone
+lining of his coat is of an altogether different
+make. As for the little man in black who is
+curling himself cosily in the corner opposite to you, not
+only is he unmistakeably a Roman Catholic priest, but
+you must positively hear him talk, to give up the idea
+that he is a Breton just out of the Saint Brieux
+Seminary. High cheek-bones, bilious complexion,
+small tobacco-coloured eyes, lank hair, nothing is
+missing from the likeness.</p>
+
+<p>Here is Dublin. The train takes us to the very
+heart of the town, and there stops between a pretty
+public garden and the banks of the Liffey. The weather
+is cool and clear. Inside the station cabs and cars
+are waiting for travellers and their luggage. <i>Waiting</i>,
+not contending eagerly for their patronage as they do
+in London, where any possible customer is quickly
+surrounded by half-a-dozen rival drivers. “<i>Hansom,
+sir?... Hansom, sir?</i>” The Dublin cabman is more<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>[8]</span>
+indolent. He keeps dozing on his seat or leisurely
+gossiping with his mates. “Why trouble oneself
+for nothing? The traveller knows how to call for a
+cab, I suppose!” So speaks the whole attitude of
+these philosophers in the Billycock hats.</p>
+
+<p>This, however, will not prevent their being as unscrupulous
+as any of their fellow-drivers in any part
+of the globe, when it comes to settling the fare.
+“How much?” “Five bob.” On verification you
+find that two shillings is all the rogue is entitled to.
+You give the two shillings, he pockets them and
+rattles away laughing. The job was a failure; no
+more.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Dublin is a big city, thickly populated, crossed by
+wide thoroughfares, provided with fine public gardens
+and splendid parks, which are here called <i>greens</i>, and
+adorned with an extraordinary number of statues.
+Its traffic and industry are important: visibly, this is a
+capital. More than a capital; the focus of a nationality.
+Everything in the streets proclaims it: sign-boards,
+monuments, countenances, manners. Those marble
+statues you see at every step are the effigies of the
+patriots who fought for the rights of Ireland. That
+palace with the noble colonnade, in the heart and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span>
+finest part of the town, is the very building where
+the Irish Parliament, abolished in 1800 by the Act
+of Union, held its assemblies. Now-a-days the Bank
+directors meet in the room where once met the representatives
+of the nation. But they seem to have been
+careful not to change anything in the general arrangement,
+in case it was wanted to-morrow for some
+<i>Assemblée Constituante</i>. You may enter it: the door is
+open for every one. On the right you see what was
+the House of Lords, a rectangular hall with an open
+ceiling, historic hangings, and the statue of some
+royalties. On the left, the House of Commons. Here,
+mahogany counters stand in place of the members
+benches, and where sounded once the clash of
+argument, you hear now the tinkling of gold coins.</p>
+
+<p>Let old times come again; let Westminster give
+back to the Sister-Isle the autonomy she mourns,
+and, as a stage machinery, the Bank will vanish
+before the Parliament. It will be an affair of a
+night’s work for the upholsterers.</p>
+
+<p>In front of that building, which is the City Hall, it
+is not the British flag (though perhaps the law should
+insist upon it) that is hanging aloft. It is the green flag
+of Erin with the harp and the three towers. Everywhere
+there are calls on the national feeling. <i>Hibernian
+House</i>, <i>Hibernian Hotel</i>, <i>Erin Stores</i>, <i>Irish<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>[10]</span>
+poplins</i>, <i>Irish gloves</i>, <i>Irish whisky</i>. Above all Irish
+whisky! one could not get comfortably drunk with
+Scotch whisky, that is evident.</p>
+
+<p>If you visit a museum or picture-gallery you will
+find Art exiled in the background, and patriotism
+shining to the fore. Bating a fine Giorgione, a
+valuable Potter, a Van Steen of large size and extraordinary
+quality, a rare Cornelius Béga and a few
+others, the collection is not worth much, and would
+not fetch its million francs at the <i>Hotel des Ventes</i>, in
+the Rue Drouot. It is only a pretext for a national
+collection of portraits where are represented all the
+glories of Ireland, from Jonathan Swift, Laurence
+Sterne, Steele, Sheridan, Edmund Burke to Moore,
+Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the Duke of Wellington,
+and above all, O’Connell, “the liberator;” and Henry
+Grattan, esquire, “true representative of the people,
+father of liberty, author of the emancipation.”</p>
+
+<p>Those things take hold of you as soon as you
+arrive at Dublin. Like a flash of lightning they
+bring light upon many things about <i>Home Rule</i>
+which had remained hazy to your continental heedlessness.
+A nation with such memories kept up with
+such jealous care must know what it wants, and will
+have it in the end. Such signs are the manifestation
+of a national soul, of a distinct personality in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>[11]</span>
+great human family. When all, from alderman to
+beggar, have one sole aim, they are bound to
+reach it sooner or later. Here, if the Town Hall has
+its green flag, the urchin in the street has his sugarplum,
+shaped into the effigy of Parnell or Gladstone.
+Never, since the Venice and the Lombardy of 1859,
+was there such a passionate outburst of national
+feeling.</p>
+
+<p>In the central part of the town, several streets are
+really fine with their rows of large houses, their gorgeous
+shops and numberless statues. The women are
+generally good-looking; well built, well gloved, well
+shod. They move gracefully, and with a vivacity which
+is quite southern. They look gentle and modest,
+and dress almost as well as Frenchwomen, of
+whom they have the quiet grace. The youngest
+ones wear their brown hair floating behind, and
+that hair, fine in the extreme, made more supple
+by the moistness of an insular climate, is crossed
+now and then by a most lovely glimmer of golden
+light.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the men have acquired the significant
+habit of carrying large knotty cudgels in place of
+walking sticks. Other signs show a state of latent
+crisis, a sort of momentary truce between classes: for
+instance, the abundance of personal weapons, pneumatic<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>[12]</span>
+rifles, pocket revolvers, &amp;c., which are to be
+seen in the armourers’ shop windows.</p>
+
+<p>But what gives the principal streets of Dublin their
+peculiar character is the perpetual presence at every
+hour of the day of long rows of loiterers, which
+only one word could describe, and that is <i>lazzaroni</i>.
+As in Naples they stop there by hundreds; some
+in a sitting posture, or stretched at full length on
+the bare stone, others standing with their backs to
+the wall, all staring vaguely in front of them, doing
+nothing, hardly saying more, mesmerised by a sort of
+passive contemplation, and absorbed in the dull
+voluptuousness of inaction.</p>
+
+<p>What do they live upon? When do they eat?
+Where do they sleep? Mystery. They probably
+accept now and then some occasional job which may
+bring them a sixpence. At such times they disappear
+and are mixed among the laborious population;
+you don’t notice them. But their normal
+function is to be idle, to hem as a human fringe the
+public monuments.</p>
+
+<p>Some places they seem to affect particularly;
+Nelson’s Pillar amongst others. Whenever you pass
+it you are sure to see four rows of loungers seated on
+the pedestal, with legs dangling, pressed against each
+other like sardines.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>[13]</span></p>
+
+<p>Numerous tramcars, light and quick, cross Dublin
+in all directions. Five or six railway stations are the
+heads of so many iron lines radiating fan-wise over
+Ireland. All bear their national stamp; but what
+possesses that character in the highest degree is that
+airy vehicle called a jaunting-car.</p>
+
+<p>Imagine a pleasure car where the seats, instead of
+being perpendicular to the shafts, are parallel with
+them, disposed back to back and perched on
+two very high wheels. You climb to your place
+under difficulties; then the driver seated sideways
+like you (unless the number of travellers obliges him
+to assume the rational position), lashes his horse,
+which plunges straightway into a mad career.</p>
+
+<p>This style of locomotion rather startles you at
+first, not only on account of its novelty, but
+also by reason of the indifferent equilibrium you
+are able to maintain. Jostled over the pavement,
+threatened every moment to see yourself projected
+into space, at a tangent, you involuntarily grasp
+the nickel handle which is there for that purpose,
+just as a tyro horseman instinctively clutches the
+mane of his steed. But one gets used in time to
+the Irish car, and even comes to like it. First, it goes
+at breakneck speed, which is not without its charm;
+then you have no time to be bored, considering that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>[14]</span>
+the care of preserving your neck gives you plenty of
+occupation; lastly, you have the satisfaction of facing
+constantly the shop windows and foot paths against
+which you are likely to be tossed at any moment.
+Those are serious advantages, which other countries’
+cabs do not offer. To be candid, they are unaccompanied
+by other merits.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>In that equipage you go to the Phœnix Park, the
+Dublin “Bois de Boulogne.” It is a wide timbered
+expanse of some two thousand acres, full of tame
+deer, where all that is young in the place may be seen
+flirting, cricketing, playing all sorts of games, but
+above all, bicycling. Bicycles seem to be the ruling
+passion of the Dublin youth. I have seen more
+than a hundred at a time in a single lane near the
+Wellington Obelisk. By the way, this was the
+very avenue where Lord Frederick Cavendish and
+Mr. Burke were murdered five years ago by the
+<i>Invincibles</i>. A cross marks the place where the two
+corpses were discovered.</p>
+
+<p>The Castle, which the two English officials had
+the imprudence to leave that day, is the Lord-Lieutenant’s
+official residence. It has not the picturesque
+majesty of the castles of Edinburgh or Stirling.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>[15]</span>
+Instead of rising proudly on some cloud-ascending
+rock and lording over the town, it seems to hide “its
+diminished head” under a little hillock in the central
+quarters. You must literally stumble over its walls
+to become aware of their existence; and you understand
+then why the name of <i>Dublin Castle</i> is for
+the Irish synonymous with despotism and oppression.</p>
+
+<p>This is no Government office of the ordinary type,
+the dwelling of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland is a
+regular stronghold, encircled with ramparts, bristling
+with towers, shut up with portcullis, draw-bridge and
+iron bars. In the inner Castle yard are situated the
+apartments of the pro-consul, the lodgings of his
+dependants of all degrees, the offices where decrees
+are engrossed, the pigeon-holes where they are heaped,
+all forming a sort of separate city entrenched within
+its fortifications.</p>
+
+<p>A very gem is the Royal Chapel, with its marvellous
+oak wainscoting, which twenty generations of carvers
+have concurred to elaborate. The reception-rooms,
+the hall of the Order of St. Patrick, where <i>drawing-rooms</i>
+are held, form the kernel of the fortress.</p>
+
+<p>The barracks of the English soldiers and of those
+giant constables whom you see about the town are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>[16]</span>
+also fortified with walls, and form a line of detached
+forts round the central stronghold.</p>
+
+<p>England is encamped at Dublin, with loaded guns
+and levelled rifles, even as she is encamped at
+Gibraltar, in Egypt, and in India.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>[17]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.<br>
+<span class="smaller">DUBLIN LIFE.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>As there is little aristocracy in Dublin there are few
+lordly dwellings besides the Vice-regal castle. This
+is very striking in this country of lords and serfs.
+The masters of the land, mostly of English origin,
+do not care at all to live in the capital of Ireland;
+all the time that they do not spend on their property
+they prefer to beguile away in London, Paris, Naples
+or elsewhere. Few of their tradesmen are Irish;
+and the greatest part of the rents they raise on their
+lands merely accumulate in the banks of Dublin
+to be afterwards spent on the foreign markets.
+Thence this consequence, which explains many
+things:—The clearest of the nett product of the
+country’s one industry—agricultural industry,—is
+poured outside it every year, without having circulated
+in Ireland, without having strengthened the local
+commerce or even invigorated agriculture itself, without
+having contributed to the well-being of a single<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>[18]</span>
+Irishman. Let us set down this nett product, the
+Irish aggregate rental, at its lowest estimate,
+£8,000,000 per annum, a sum much inferior to
+the nominal one, and admit that one-half of it is
+sent abroad to absentee landlords. There we have
+£4,000,000 leaving the island every year without
+conferring the slightest benefit to any one of its
+inhabitants. In ten years’ time that represents
+40 millions sterling; in fifty years, 200 millions
+sterling, or five milliards francs, that Ireland has, so
+to speak, thrown into the sea, for that is to her the
+precise equivalent of such a continuous deperdition
+of capital.... And this has lasted for three
+centuries!...<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> What country would not be worn
+threadbare by such usage? What nation could resist
+it? Which individual, submitting to such periodical
+blood-lettings, would not succumb to anæmia?</p>
+
+<p>This anæmia betrays itself, even in Dublin, by many
+a symptom. For example, it is not long before one
+discovers that the finest shops, in the seven or eight
+principal streets, are a mere empty pretence; great
+windows displaying all the wares possessed by the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>[19]</span>
+merchant and beyond which the stock is <i>nil</i>. Money
+is so scarce that if you want to exchange a five
+pound note, in nine cases out of ten you do not get
+your right amount of change in specie. They give
+you back a quantity of small Irish banknotes, plus
+the change in half-crowns and shillings, and that not
+without having caused you to wait a long time while
+the important transaction was entered in and brought
+to a termination, and then only by the united energies
+of half the neighbourhood.</p>
+
+<p>There is not in all the city one tolerable <i>restaurant</i>
+or <i>café</i> where a stranger can read the papers or obtain
+a decent beefsteak. The two or three pretentious
+taverns that aspire to fulfil that purpose are horrible
+dens, where, without the civilized accompaniment of
+napkins, they give you slices of cow, tough as leather,
+which are charged for at Bignon’s prices.</p>
+
+<p>Necessity compels you to fall back on the hotels,
+where they pitilessly give you the same fare night
+after night,—salmon and roast beef. The first day
+this can be borne, for the Shannon salmon deserves
+its reputation; the second day one begins to find it
+indigestible; the third, one would like to see all the
+salmon of Ireland choking the head waiter. The
+fourth, one takes the train rather than remain any
+longer exposed to this implacable fare.... Vain<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>[20]</span>
+hope! it pursues you everywhere: on the shores of
+Kingstown or those of Blackrock, in the pretty town
+of Bray, or at the furthermost end of Wicklow’s lakes.
+It is impossible to travel in Ireland without taking a
+dislike to salmon that will last the term of your
+natural life.</p>
+
+<p>And yet the fresh herrings of the Bay of Dublin
+are eating fit for the gods, and the good wives sell
+them in the streets at three a penny. Do not
+hope to taste them, however, unless you do your own
+marketing, and insist, with conditional threats, upon
+having your herrings brought up for breakfast. You
+will have a fight to sustain; you will run the risk
+of appearing in the eyes of the waiter as a man of no
+breeding, one who does not shrink from exhibiting
+his morbid tastes to the public view. But your pains
+and your humiliations will be rewarded by such
+a dish as is not often to be met with in this vale
+of tears and bad cooking.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Dublin possesses three theatres, not including the
+future Opera-House, for which a site has already
+been chosen. The Gaiety, the most elegant of the
+three, gives musical burlesques that are rather entertaining,
+though they come straight from London.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>[21]</span>
+But they are acted by Irishmen and Irishwomen, with
+all the dash, the brilliancy, the wit of the Celt. The
+comic actor of the company neglects nothing to
+amuse his audience; extravagant costumes, insane
+grimaces, jigs danced in brogues, impromptu verses on
+the events of the day,—he has any number of tricks
+at his command. That gentleman would score a
+sure success at the <i>Concert des Ambassadeurs</i>, with
+the ditty that actually delights the hearts of the
+Dublin public—“<i>That’s all</i>;” it is about as stupid
+as the general literature of the Champs Elysées.
+The accomplished and fascinating <i>corps de ballet</i>
+exhibit tights of such indiscretion as the Lord Chamberlain
+would assuredly not tolerate in London. Is
+it that his jurisdiction does not extend to the sister
+isle; or does the thing which would imperil the virtue
+of club-loungers in Pall Mall appear to him without
+danger for those of Kildare Street? The problem
+would be worth studying. However that be, a
+boxfull of young officers in H. B. M.’s service seem
+greatly exhilarated by the display of ankles of
+the ladies, unless it be by the port wine of the
+mess.</p>
+
+<p>These officers, in plain clothes as they are always
+when out of duty, are nevertheless easy to recognise
+and seem about the only <i>swells</i> visible in the boxes.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>[22]</span>
+The rest of the audience manifestly belong to the
+commercial and working classes.</p>
+
+<p>For it is a fact that there is in Dublin no more
+upper middle class than there is aristocracy. The
+upper middle class seem not to exist, or to be only
+represented by tradespeople, the liberal professions,
+or the students. But these young men being, after
+the excellent English custom, lodged at the University,
+do not count in the pleasure-seeking public.
+In other words, they spend the evening in their
+rooms drinking toddy, instead of spending it, as with
+us, drinking small-beer in <i>brasseries</i>.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The University of Dublin, or rather, to speak more
+exactly, Trinity College, rises opposite Grattan’s
+Parliament, in the very heart of the town. It
+is an agglomeration of buildings of sufficiently
+good style, separated by spacious courts, and surrounded
+by about thirty acres of ground planted
+with ancient trees. Technical museums, lecture-rooms,
+refectories, rooms for the Fellows and the
+pupils are all to be found there. There is a Section
+of Theology, one for Letters and Science, a Musical
+Section, a School of Medicine, a Law School, an
+Engineering School. Students and Masters all wear,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>[23]</span>
+as in Oxford or Cambridge, the stuff gown and the
+kind of black <i>Schapska</i>, which is the University head-covering
+throughout the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>Thinking of this, why is it we see so many Eastern
+head-dresses in the school of the west? With us
+the cap of the professors is the same that Russian
+popes wear. The Anglo-Saxons take theirs from
+Polish Lancers. That is an anomaly in the history
+of dress which ought to attract the meditations of
+academies.</p>
+
+<p>Another anomaly, peculiar to Trinity College, is
+that the porters (most polite and benevolent of men)
+are provided with black velvet jockey caps, like the
+Yeomen of the Queen. They take the visitors through
+the museums of the place, and show them the plaster
+cast taken from the dead face of Swift, the harp of
+Brian Boru, and other relics of a more or less authentic
+character. The Dining Hall is ornamented with
+full-length portraits of the local celebrities. The
+library, one of the finest in the world, is proud of
+possessing, among many other riches, the manuscript
+(in the Erse tongue), of the “Seven times fifty
+Stories,” which the bards of the Second Order of
+Druids used to recite, on ancient feast days, before the
+assembled kings and chieftains. Those venerable tales
+are subdivided into Destructions, Massacres, Battles,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>[24]</span>
+Invasions, Sieges, Pillages, Raids of Cattle, Rapes of
+Women, Loves, Marriages, Exiles, Navigations,
+Marches, Voyages, Grottoes, Visions, Pomps, and
+Tragedies. This shows that “documentary literature”
+was not invented yesterday: all the primitive life of
+Celtic Ireland is told there.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The undergraduates at Trinity College do not
+seem, as a rule, like those of Oxford and Cambridge,
+to belong to the privileged or unoccupied classes.
+They are embryo doctors, professors, or engineers,
+who work with all their might to gain one of the
+numerous scholarships given by competition at the
+University. These competitions evidently excite an
+ardent emulation. I chanced to pass before the
+Examination Hall at the moment when the Rector at
+the top of the steps proclaimed the name of the candidate
+who had just won the Fellowship. Five hundred
+students at least, grouped at the gate, had been
+waiting for an hour to hear it, and saluted it with frantic
+cheers.</p>
+
+<p>The Fellowship gives a right to board and lodging
+for seven years, with a stipend of some £400. It is a
+kind of prebend that implies few duties and leaves
+the titulary free to give himself up to his favourite<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>[25]</span>
+studies. It has been the fashion in a certain set in
+France to go into ecstasies over this institution, and
+to regret that it should not have entered our own
+customs. The life of a Fellow at Oxford, Cambridge,
+or Dublin, was fondly represented to us as an ideal
+existence, freed from material cares, devoted exclusively
+to the culture of the mind. If we look at things
+more closely, we shall see that this opinion is wide of
+the mark. We find some of the prebendaries poorly
+lodged enough, submitted, by the exigencies of life
+in a community, to many a puerile rule, imprisoned
+within the narrow circle of scholastic ideas, and in too
+many cases buried up to the eyes in the sands of
+routine, if not in sloth, or drunkenness.</p>
+
+<p>After all, for what strong, manly work is the world
+indebted to these much-praised Fellows?... The
+true effort of science or letters was never brought forth
+in these abbeys of Thelema of pedantry. Indeed it is
+much sooner born of individual struggle and large
+contact with the outside world. Even in the English
+Universities there is now a marked tendency to
+demand from the Fellow a work of positive utility in
+exchange for his salary. He must take his part in
+educating the pupils, help in the examinations, and in
+elaborating programmes; his life is much the same
+as that of our <i>Agrégés de Facultés</i>, with a something<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>[26]</span>
+in it of lesser freedom and a semi-priestly character,
+if he be a bachelor. But he is free to marry now, and
+has been for a few years, on condition that he lives
+outside the college buildings.</p>
+
+<p>The students, fourteen hundred in number, live
+two by two, in rooms of extreme simplicity, which
+they are at liberty to decorate according to their taste
+or means, with carpets, prints, and flowers. The
+names of the occupants are written over each door.
+The rooms generally include a small ante-chamber
+and a closet with glass doors. Women of venerable
+age and extraordinary ugliness are charged with the
+care of those young Cenobites’ abode.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Trinity College was founded by Queen Elizabeth
+when she undertook the task of Anglicizing Ireland,
+and it has remained to our own day one of the
+strongholds of the conquering race. It is only since
+the year 1873 that the chairs and offices of this
+University have been accessible to Roman Catholics.
+Up to that time they were exclusively reserved for
+Anglicans, and Mr. Matthew Arnold would exclaim
+with good reason that such a state of things was the
+most scandalous in Europe. In France, he said,
+Protestant masters occupied all the chairs to which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>[27]</span>
+their merits entitled them; in Germany, Catholic
+professors taught history or philosophy at Bonn and
+elsewhere; while, in Catholic Ireland, the one University
+the country possessed remained closed during two
+centuries to all students that were not of the Protestant
+persuasion, and for three-quarters of the
+present century a Catholic could neither attain to a
+chair or to any degree of influence in it.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the year 1845 that the movement began
+which was to triumph definitely in 1873, under the
+initiative of Mr. Gladstone. A certain Mr. Denis
+Caulfield Heron went up in that year for the competition
+for a fellowship, and took the first place. When
+he was, according to custom, invited to sign the Thirty-Nine
+Articles and to communicate in the University
+chapel, he opposed an absolute refusal, declaring himself
+to be a Roman Catholic; whereupon he was disqualified
+by the University Council. Mr. Heron
+exposed this judgment before the public, and succeeded
+in winning opinion to his side. But it proved an
+impossibility to make the Council recall their decision.
+The only thing Mr. Heron obtained, after
+a protracted struggle, was the creation of a new
+class of fellowships, accessible to Roman Catholics.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, in 1873 the College authorities at last
+made up their minds to render the offices and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>[28]</span>
+emoluments of the University independent of any
+sectarian denomination; nevertheless the Anglican
+spirit remains alive within its precincts, and manifests
+itself in the clearest manner upon occasions.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Intellectual life is alive in Dublin, as many a
+learned or literary society, a flourishing review, four
+great daily and several weekly papers, can testify.
+The daily papers especially are edited with a spirit
+and humour truly characteristic. It is a well known
+fact that the Sister Isle contributes a third at least
+to the recruiting of the Anglo-Saxon press, not only in
+Great Britain, but in the United States, in Australia,
+and in the whole of the English speaking world. The
+Irishman a writer or a soldier born, as the Englishman
+is a born shopkeeper. The consequence is that
+the great papers in Dublin, the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i>, the
+<i>Irish Times</i>, <i>United Ireland</i>, the <i>Express</i>, the <i>Evening
+Telegraph</i>, are admirably edited each in its own
+line.</p>
+
+<p>But the same thing can hardly be said of the illustrated
+and coloured sheets that accompany the weeklies,
+and which are placarded everywhere. Those
+prints, bearing upon the political topics of the day, may
+possess the merit of teaching the crowd the lesson<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>[29]</span>
+to be drawn from events; but they are lamentably
+inefficient from an artistic point of view.</p>
+
+<p>Ireland, decidedly, shines no more than does our
+own Brittany in the plastic arts. Her best painter
+has been Maclise, and he is by no means a great
+master. However, her coloured prints delight the
+hearts of the good people of Dublin. An old newspaper-seller,
+smoking her pipe at the corner of
+Leinster Street, holds her sides for very laughter as
+she contemplates the cartoon given this day by the
+<i>Weekly News</i>; it represents a mob of Orangemen
+in the act of pelting the Queen’s police with stones at
+Belfast. Underneath run the words: “<i>Behold loyal
+Ulster!</i>”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The quays of the Liffey are lined with book-shops
+like those of the Seine in Paris, to which they present
+a certain likeness. Following the quays from the
+west, one passes the building where sit the four
+Supreme Courts—Chancery, Exchequer, Queen’s
+Bench, and Common Pleas. The statues of Faith,
+Justice, Wisdom, and Piety rise under its Corinthian
+peristyle, which caused the typical Irish peasant, the
+Paddy of legend, to exclaim:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>[30]</span></p>
+
+<p>“They did well to place them outside, for no one
+will ever meet them inside!”</p>
+
+<p>The judges, chosen by the Queen’s government,
+bear the title of <i>Chief Justice</i> or <i>Baron</i>. There are
+four at each tribunal, each provided with a salary
+ranging from three to eight thousand pounds a year.
+They sit in groups of three, bewigged and clad in
+violet gowns, with peach-coloured facings, at the
+extremity of a recess screened by red curtains. Before
+them sit the barristers and clerks in black gowns and
+horsehair wigs. The writs and briefs of procedure,
+written out upon awe-inspiring sheets of foolscap
+paper, are piled up within capacious green bags, such
+as are only seen with us at the Comédie Française
+when they play <i>Les Plaideurs</i>. The judges appear to
+be a prey to overwhelming <i>ennui</i>, so do the barristers.
+The public, not being paid as highly as they
+are for remaining in this sleepy atmosphere, keep
+constantly going in and out. Now and then, however,
+Irish wit must have its due: some one delivers
+himself of a spicy remark; everyone wakes up a bit
+to laugh, after which business quietly resumes its dull
+course.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>[31]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE POOR OF DUBLIN.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Private houses are built in Dublin on the general
+type adopted throughout the British Isles: a basement
+opening on the railed area which runs along
+the pavement, a ground floor, a first floor, sometimes
+a second one. Above the front door a pane of glass
+lighted with gas. It is the custom of the country to
+place there one’s artistic treasures,—a china vase, a
+bust, or a small plaster horse. The small horse especially
+is a great favourite. You see it in a thousand
+copies which all came out of the same cast. In the
+suburbs you notice pretty often a window decorated
+with plants that are seen behind the glass panes,—Breton
+fashion,—and, striking circumstance, in Ireland
+also it is the uninteresting geranium which is the
+favourite flower of the poor. Inside the house the
+accommodation is nearly the same as in England. It
+is well known that nothing is more like an English
+house than another English house. But here, to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>[32]</span>
+classical furniture, horse-hair and mahogany armchairs,
+and oil-cloth floor, is added a mural decoration
+of coloured prints and Roman Catholic chromolithographs,
+Saint Patrick, the Pope Leo XIII., the
+“Good Shepherd giving His life for the sheep,” surrounded
+by dried branches of holy palm, rosaries and
+scapularies. An ornament greatly appreciated on the
+chimney-piece is a glass vessel full of miraculous water
+in which swims a reduction of the tools of the Passion,
+the cross, the ladder, the hammer, the nails, and the
+crown of thorns.</p>
+
+<p>Eighty-seven per cent. of the Dublin population
+belong to the Roman Catholic religion. The proportion
+is higher in some other Irish counties: in
+Connaught it rises to ninety-five per cent.; nowhere,
+even in Protestant Ulster, does it descend lower than
+forty-five per cent.</p>
+
+<p>And those Catholics are not so only in name. The
+greater number follow the services of the Church,
+observe all the rites, maintain a direct and constant
+intercourse with the priests. The sincerity of
+their faith is particularly striking, and is not to be
+found in the same degree even in Italy or in Spain.
+For with them the Roman faith is narrowly bound
+with traditions most dear to their race; it remains
+one of the external forms of protestation against the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>[33]</span>
+conquest, and has been, till quite lately, a stigma of
+political incapacity. To the glamour of the traditional
+religion is added the poetry of persecution and
+the rancour of the vanquished. This religion is the
+one that is not professed by the hated Englishman:
+what a reason to love it above all the others! We
+must remember that in Dublin, amidst a population
+nine-tenths of which are devout Catholics, and where
+the remaining tenth is alone Protestant (Episcopalian’
+Presbyterian, Methodist, &amp;c.), the cathedral is in the
+hands of the Anglican minority with all the ancient
+basilics, whilst the worship of the majority is sheltered
+in modern and vulgar buildings. The conquering race
+has invaded Saint Patrick’s Baptistery as well as the
+Royal Castle, and the Senate of the University. A
+threefold reason for rancour to these who were thus
+deprived of the three sanctuaries of faith, public power,
+and learning.</p>
+
+<p>Such spoliations are those which a vanquished race
+cannot forget, because they bring constantly their
+sore under their eyes. Now the Irish have the artless
+vanity of the chivalrous races, and the wounds
+inflicted to their self-love are perhaps more cruel than
+the others.</p>
+
+<p>This vanity is frequently exhibited in a certain
+taste for show, and in a slight touch of the mountebank.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>[34]</span>
+The least apothecary’s shop in Dublin goes
+by the pompous name of <i>Medical Hall</i>; the smallest
+free school is an academy; and it is well known that
+every single Irishman is descended straight from the
+“ould kings of Oireland.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>There is a great deal of misery in Dublin; 6,036 of
+her inhabitants are inmates of the workhouse; 4,281
+are the recipients of outdoor relief; 19,332 are without
+a known trade or profession and without means of
+living. It makes about 30,000 paupers in a town of
+250,000 inhabitants. Besides those officially recognised
+paupers, how many others whose distress is no
+less terrible for not being classed!</p>
+
+<p>I had the first sight of that misery on the quay of
+the Liffey. It was a dishevelled woman walking as in
+a trance, her eyes settled, immoveable. Barefooted,
+dressed in a yellowish tattered shawl which hardly
+covered her withered breast, and in a horrible nondescript
+silk petticoat once black, through which her
+thighs appeared. She was pale and silent, and
+she seemed to be lost in some unutterable grief.
+I spoke to her—she did not answer. I put a
+piece of money in her hand, she took it without<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>[35]</span>
+a word, without even looking at it. She went her
+way.</p>
+
+<p>I thought I had seen the ghost of the <i>Shan Van
+Vocht</i>, “The Poor Old Woman,” as the Irish sorrowfully
+call their country. She went with long
+strides towards the police court—a new building,
+not far from Richmond Bridge. I went in after
+her.</p>
+
+<p>In the courtyard, groups of beings with human faces
+were crouching on the ground—so black, so dirty, so
+tattered were they, that they made me think of the
+Australian aborigines and Fuegian savages, of the
+most unenlightened and degraded tribes of the globe.
+Most of them bore outwardly the semblance of women.
+The males were standing with their backs against the
+wall in that listless attitude of the “unemployed” in
+Dublin.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>An ill-kept staircase leads to the audience room.
+The walls are whitewashed, the ceiling a skylight,
+white wooden benches round the room.</p>
+
+<p>In the chair, the police judge; he is a yellow-haired
+man with a benevolent countenance, dressed in a
+frock coat. Clerks and counsel are alike gownless
+and wigless; everything is conducted in a homely<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>[36]</span>
+manner. The accused follow each other in single file.
+The witness (nearly always a constable) states what
+he has seen. The judge asks the delinquent if he has
+anything to say in his defence, and after a quick
+colloquy he pronounces his sentence. Generally it is a
+fine of two or three shillings or a day’s imprisonment
+for each unpaid shilling.</p>
+
+<p>One of the prisoners has just been condemned to
+pay a fine of half a crown for obvious drunkenness;
+he does not possess a farthing, but seems to be endowed
+with a humorous turn of mind.</p>
+
+<p>“Your honour could as well have said half a
+sovereign! It would have looked more respectable,
+and the result would have been the same,” he says,
+turning his pockets inside out. A guffaw of laughter
+joined in by the judge himself, who does not think it
+his duty to be offended by the remark; after which
+he calls out for number two.</p>
+
+<p>Number two is a boy fifteen or sixteen years old;
+he has a sweet intelligent countenance in spite of the
+indescribable rags that cover his body. Tears stand
+in his eyes and his lips are tremulous. Nothing in
+him of the habitual offender. The accusation that he
+is lying under seems to be: “Theft of a pork-chop in
+an open shop-window.” A single witness is called, a
+little maid five years old; so small that her head does<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>[37]</span>
+not even reach the top of the witness-box. They bring
+her a footstool, on which she climbs to give her
+evidence.</p>
+
+<p>She has seen the boy, she says, near the shop
+window, looking wistfully for a long time on the
+chops and finally pocketing one. However, her account
+is not very clear. All those people make her
+shy, and she does not speak out loud, so the clerk
+takes the trouble to read over to her the evidence she
+has just given. Does she know how to write? Can
+she sign her name? Yes. They place a pen in her
+fingers, and with infinite trouble, bending her small
+fair head, shooting out her lips, she writes on the legal
+parchment with her tiny trembling hand her name
+and surname: <i>Maggie Flanagan</i>.</p>
+
+<p>“Well! prisoner, what have you to say?”</p>
+
+<p>The unfortunate boy stammers that he was hungry,
+that there was not a penny in the house, and that he
+had no work.</p>
+
+<p>“What is your father’s trade?”</p>
+
+<p>“He is gone to Australia, your honour. Mother
+has been left with four children. I am the eldest.
+We had eaten nothing for two days.”</p>
+
+<p>One feels he is speaking the truth. Every heart is
+moved.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a shrill voice bursts out from the lower<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>[38]</span>
+end of the room, wailing: “Oh, your honour, don’t
+send him to jail!...”</p>
+
+<p>It is the woman I saw on the quay; the one that I
+followed to that Purgatory. The mother of the
+culprit very likely.</p>
+
+<p>“I am obliged to remand you for a week in order
+to examine the circumstances of the case,” the judge
+says, in a manner that shows he is anxious to arrange
+the affair with kindness.</p>
+
+<p>The prisoner goes out of the dock following the
+warder, and disappears through a small side door.</p>
+
+<p>The mother has gone away without waiting, and I
+hurry to follow her. But she walks so fast that I
+can hardly keep pace with her.</p>
+
+<p>She passes again on the bridge, walks along the
+quay, plunges in a by-street, goes up towards the
+south-western quarters of Dublin, called the <i>liberties</i>
+of the town. Suddenly I lose sight of her at the
+corner of a narrow lane, and after winding round and
+round I am obliged to renounce coming up with her.
+There is a way of course to come to the relief of
+those poor creatures, by sending one’s subscription to
+the judge according to the British fashion. But I
+wanted to see them at home in their den, wallowing
+in their squalor, to see whether men or destiny bear
+the responsibility for such dark distress.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>[39]</span></p>
+
+<p>Alas! examples are not wanting, and I have only
+to cross the first door that opens before me. Along
+these lanes yawn dark alleys from which hundreds of
+half-naked children are swarming out. All ages are
+represented; they are in the most fantastical and
+unexpected attire. One has got on breeches fastened
+under the shoulders by a piece of cord in lieu of
+braces; the same is full of holes large enough for his
+head to go through. Another has no shirt, and trails
+in the gutter the jagged skirt of a coat slashed like a
+doublet, and with only one sleeve left. They are all
+of them so extravagantly slovenly that it seems to be
+a competition for rags.</p>
+
+<p>A baby two or three years old strikes me particularly.
+It is absolutely naked, and so very, very dirty
+that dirt has formed a sort of bronzed skin over his
+little body, and he is like a juvenile nigger. As he
+came into the world so he has remained. Neither
+soap nor water ever moistened his skin. He has not
+even undergone the washing that the mother-cat
+applies so industriously with her tongue on her newborn
+kittens.</p>
+
+<p>Yet his mother loves him, squalid and black
+as he is. Just now a cart passed, and the baby
+was running under the wheels; the mother sprang
+out of her lair with the roar of a tigress, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>[40]</span>
+pounced upon her child, which she jealously carried
+away.</p>
+
+<p>Never in London did I hear such accents. Far
+from me to hint that English mothers do not love
+their babies: but they love them after their own
+fashion, without showers of kisses or demonstrative
+ways.</p>
+
+<p>And this is the distinctive feature which divides the
+Irish pariahs from those of the London East-End.
+They love each other, and they know how to put that
+love into words. Their distress, perhaps deeper than
+English poverty, bears not the same hard, selfish
+character—tenderness and love are not unknown
+to them. They try to help and comfort one another
+in their misery. Thackeray has remarked it long
+ago: let an Irishman be as poor as you like; he will
+always contrive to find another Irishman poorer still,
+whom he will serve and oblige, and make the partaker
+of his good or bad luck. And it is absolutely true.
+That fraternal instinct, so unknown to the Anglo-Saxon,
+nay, so contrary to his nature, shows itself
+here at every step.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>But the misery is none the less terrible here;
+indeed, there are no adequate words in the dictionary<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>[41]</span>
+to express it. No description can give an idea of
+those nameless dens, sordid, dilapidated stairs, miserable
+pieces of furniture, nondescript utensils invariably
+diverted from their original destination. And in that
+lamentable frame, those swarming families squatting
+in their filth; the starved look of the mothers under
+the tattered shawl that ever covers their heads, the
+hungry little faces of their whelps....</p>
+
+<p>A sickening smell, recalling that of ill-ventilated
+hospitals, comes out of those lairs and suffocating you,
+almost throws you back. But it is too late. You
+have been caught sight of. From all sides visions of
+horror are emerging to light, spectres are starting up;
+old hags that would have surprised Shakespeare himself,
+swarm round you, holding out their hand for a
+<i>copper</i>. The younger women don’t generally come to
+the front, not that their wants be less, but they know
+that coppers are not inexhaustible, and that the old
+ones must have the precedence. So they remain
+sadly in the background, and then, when you have
+emptied your pockets, there is a roar of benedictions
+fit to rend one’s heart with shame. They are so fearfully
+sincere! And how many times do we not throw
+to the winds of our caprice what would be sufficient
+to quench at least for one moment, the thirst which is
+raging in that hell! You fly from that den of horror,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>[42]</span>
+wondering whether the most horrible deserts would
+not be more merciful to those destitute creatures than
+the <i>liberties</i> of the city of Dublin.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>In your flight you fatally fall upon Nicholas Street,
+where all those dark alleys open. This is the way to
+the cathedral, and the great commercial artery of
+this side of the town. If any doubt remained in you
+after the insight you had of the houses of the poor in
+Dublin, about the way they live, that street alone
+would give you sufficient information.</p>
+
+<p>From end to end it is lined with a row of disgusting
+shops or stalls, where the refuse of the new
+and the ancient world seems to have come for an
+exhibition. Imagine the most hideous, ragged, repulsive
+rubbish in the dust-bins of two capitals,
+and you will get an idea of that shop-window display;
+rank bacon, rotten fish, festering bones, potatoes
+in full germination, wormy fruit, dusty crusts, sheep’s
+hearts, sausages which remind you of the Siege of
+Paris, and perhaps come from it; all that running in
+garlands or festoons in front of the stalls, or made
+into indescribable heaps, is doled out to the customers
+in diminutive half-pence morsels. At every turning
+of the street a public-house with its dim glass and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>[43]</span>
+sticky glutinous door. Now and then a pawnbroker
+with the three symbolic brass balls, and every twenty
+yards a rag and bone shop.</p>
+
+<p>The rag and bone trade is extremely active in
+Dublin, which numbers no less than 400 shops of that
+description, according to statistics. And that is not
+too many for a population which from times immemorial
+never wore a garment that was not second-hand.
+To a man Ireland dresses on the <i>reach-me-down</i>
+system, and wears out the cast-off garments
+which have passed on the backs of ten or twelve successive
+owners. Battered hats, dilapidated gowns,
+threadbare coats arrive here by shiploads. When the
+whole world has had enough of them, when the Papoo
+savages and Guinea niggers have discarded their
+finery, and declared it to be no longer serviceable,
+there are still amateurs to be found for it in Dublin.
+Hence the most extraordinary variety, and the wildest
+incoherence of costume. Knee-breeches, tail coats,
+white gowns, cocked hats,—Paddy and his spouse
+are ready for anything. So destitute are they
+of personal property, that they do not even possess
+an outline of their own. Their normal get-up resembles
+a travesty, and their distress a carnival.</p>
+
+<p>The main point for them is to have a garment of
+any description to put on, since it is a thing understood<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>[44]</span>
+that one cannot go about naked; and it does
+not very much matter after all what is the state of
+that garment, as it is so soon to leave their backs to
+go to the pawnbroker’s. This is a prominent figure
+in the daily drama of their wretched existence, the
+regulator of their humble exchequer through the
+coming and going of the necessaries of life, which
+they are obliged to part with periodically.</p>
+
+<p>“You see that pair of hob-nailed shoes?” one of
+them tells me, “For the last six months it has come
+here every Monday regularly and gone every Saturday.
+The possessor uses them only on Sundays;
+on week days he prefers enjoying his capital....”</p>
+
+<p>His capital!—one shilling and sixpence, for which
+he has to pay an interest of one penny a week; <i>i.e.</i>,
+three hundred per cent. a year!</p>
+
+<p>Usury under all its forms blooms spontaneously
+on that dung-hill. By the side of the pawnbroker a
+<i>money office</i> is almost always to be seen. It is an
+English institution, natural in a nation which is
+bursting with money, and consequently finds it difficult
+to make it render 3 or 4 per cent. What is
+England if not a colossal bank, which advances
+money upon any three given signatures as a security,
+if they come from people with a settled dwelling and
+a regular profession? Well, who would believe it?<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>[45]</span>
+Paddy himself is admitted to partake of the onerous
+benefits of that credit, provided he work ever so little
+and be not too hopelessly worn out. For these
+small banking houses form a union and let each
+other know the state of their accounts. Upon the
+poor man’s signature accompanied by those of two
+of his fellows, five and seven pounds sterling will be
+lent to him, to be reimbursed by weekly instalments.
+But that resource, which is a powerful help for the
+strong energetic man, is almost invariably a cause of
+distress and ruin to the weak. The borrowed money
+ebbs out in worthless expenditure, in the buying of
+some articles of apparel or furniture, which soon
+takes the road to the pawnbroker’s; and the debt
+alone remains weighing with all its weight on poor
+Paddy. It is the last straw on the camel’s back, and
+he ends by falling down irremediably under it.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>[46]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE EMERALD ISLE.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Nothing can be easier than to go from one end to
+the other of Ireland. Though her network of railways
+is not yet complete, great arteries radiate from
+Dublin in all directions and allow the island to be
+traversed from end to end, whether southward, westward,
+or northward, in less than seven or eight hours.
+The journey from south to north, following the great
+axis, is longer and more complicated, for it is necessary
+to change lines several times. The circular
+journey along the coasts is facilitated by excellent
+services of open coaches, that go through the regions
+not yet penetrated by railways. Lastly, one can, by
+following the Shannon, enter by steamboat almost
+to the very heart of the country.</p>
+
+<p>When one has gone through those various excursions,
+completed by riding and walking tours, and seen
+the island under its various aspects, one perceives that
+it presents in a general manner the appearance of a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>[47]</span>
+cup, with brims rising towards the sea; in other
+words, it consists in a vast central plain, protected on
+all its circumference by groups of hills and mountains,
+preventing the inroad of the ocean. Those
+mountains are in no part very high; the finest, those
+of Kerry, do not rise above 1800 feet. But their
+very position on the brink of the Atlantic, the erosions
+undermining their base, the deep bays they delineate,
+the innumerable lakes hidden away in their bosoms,
+lend them a majesty far above their altitude. Bland
+and smiling in Wicklow, they are in Kerry of an
+unequalled serenity, while in Connemara they preserve
+unbroken the rude chaos of primeval cataclysms,
+and display on the north of Antrim’s table-land,
+towards the Giant’s Causeway, the most
+stupendous basaltic formations.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the normal, the truest aspect of Ireland, is
+represented by the central plain—a large, unbroken
+surface of green undulating waves, ever bathed in a
+damp and fresh atmosphere, shut in on the horizon
+by dark blue mountains.</p>
+
+<p>This aspect is of infinite sweetness; no land possesses
+it in a similar degree. It takes possession of
+you, it penetrates you like a caress and a harmony.
+One understands, when submitted to that entirely
+physical influence, the passionate tenderness that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>[48]</span>
+Irishmen feel for their country, and that is best illustrated
+by Moore’s poetry. The sky seems to have
+endeavoured to find the true chord in response to the
+earth, in order to give to all things those deliciously
+blended tones. The stars are nearly always seen
+through a light haze, and the sun itself shines but
+through a veil of vapours, into which it seems eager
+to disappear again. The shadows are not hard and
+well defined; they melt into each other by insensible
+gradations of tint. All is green, even the stones,
+clothed in moss; the walls, covered with ivy; the
+waters, hidden under a mantle of reeds and water-lilies.
+In other climes the fields, after a spring
+shower, take unto themselves the bravery that here is
+seen in all seasons. In the full heat of July the corn,
+the barley, the oats still keep their April dress. Do
+they ever ripen? They say they do, towards the end
+of October; but surely they never can get yellow.
+Yellow is not an Irish colour, nor is white. Ireland is
+indeed green Erin, the Emerald Isle. Never was
+name more truly given.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>One could consider Ireland as a prodigious grass
+plot of some twenty million acres, constantly watered
+by rain. Water is everywhere: in the clouds<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>[49]</span>
+that the winds of the Atlantic drive over her, and
+that the highlands of Scotland and Norway stop in
+their course; on the soil, where all hollows, great or
+small, become lakes; under the ground even, where
+the roots of vegetables, saturated and swollen like
+sponges, slowly change into peat. Ireland is the most
+liberally watered country in Europe, and yet, thanks
+to the constancy of the winds over her, one can
+scarcely say it is a damp country. The fall of water
+is on an average of 926 millimetres in a year—a little
+over three feet. The ground, naturally of admirable
+fruitfulness, is still further favoured by the mildness
+and equableness of the climate on the shores.</p>
+
+<p>The flora almost recalls that of the Mediterranean
+coasts. The fauna presents the remarkable peculiarity
+of not possessing a single dangerous or even repulsive
+species—not one toad, not one reptile, except the most
+innocent among them all, the “friend of man,” the
+lizard. Legends say that St. Patrick, the Christian
+apostle of the isle, coming from Brittany in the 6th
+century, threw all the serpents into the sea, and all
+the toads after them; indeed, he is habitually represented
+in popular imagery as engaged in performing
+that miracle.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>[50]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>An island possessing no backbone, and presenting
+generally the appearance of a cup, cannot have great
+rivers. In fact, almost all the rivers of Ireland, born
+within her girdle of mountains, soon lose themselves
+in the sea, forming at their mouth an estuary that
+takes the name of <i>Lough</i>, as do the lakes proper.
+One only creates an exception by the length of its
+course and the volume of its waters—the Shannon,
+rising in the central table-land, imprisoned, so to
+speak, at the bottom of the circular well, and whose
+course, impeded above Limerick by a barrier of rocks,
+form fine rapids, under which the waters flow in a
+majestic stream. With the tide, vessels of the heaviest
+tonnage can go up the river to Foynes.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Indeed, the country lacks no harbours on those
+deeply indented shores. North, west, east, and south,
+Ireland counts no less than fourteen natural harbours,
+large enough to shelter whole fleets.</p>
+
+<p>But this gift, like all the others that Fate has showered
+on her, seems to have turned against her by bringing
+the nations of prey within those bays. Thrown as an
+outwork of Europe in the middle of the ocean, she
+seemed to be opening her arms to the Phœnicians, to
+the Scandinavians; later on to the Arabs, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>[51]</span>
+Spaniards, and the English. A gust of wind was
+enough to reveal her to them; a favourable breeze to
+bring them back. To understand clearly the perils
+of such a post, and to see how much more still than
+the muzzle of Brittany, Ireland is Atlantic land, one
+must go to Valencia, the small islet on which come to
+shore the ends of the Transatlantic cables.</p>
+
+<p>More than in any other spot of Europe one feels at
+the farthest end of the world there. It seems as if, by
+stretching one’s arm, one would reach the United
+States. And, in fact, one is near enough as it is—five
+or six days by steam—almost within speaking
+distance with the telephone. So fast travel the
+storms from America that the telegram is hardly
+able to arrive before them. A sea-gull, borne on the
+wing of the hurricane, would cross that arm of the sea
+in a few hours. The breeze that blows in your face
+may have stirred the hair of a Brooklyn belle in the
+morning. There one feels how very small is our
+globe.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Geologically, Ireland differs much from Great
+Britain. The island appeared much earlier, and its
+structure is special. Alone, its northern part, or Ulster,
+which, from a political point of view, forms such a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52"></a>[52]</span>
+striking contrast with the rest of the island, presents
+between Donegal Bay and Dundalk Bay, mountainous
+masses, entirely analogous with those of Scotland,
+towards which they advance, and of which they
+appear originally to have formed a part. They are
+basaltic rocks, or petrified streams of lava, while
+the mountains in Kerry or Connemara are red
+sandstone and slate, lying above the carbonaceous
+strata.</p>
+
+<p>What ought, in fact, to be considered as Ireland
+proper consists, then, of the eastern province or
+Leinster, the southern or Munster, and the western or
+Connaught. Ulster is in reality, as well by the nature
+of its soil as by the race and habits of the majority of
+its inhabitants, an annex and dependency of Scotland.
+The three other provinces, on the contrary, form a
+whole, as distinct from England or Scotland by the
+constitution and aspect of the land, as it is different
+by the race, genius, the traditions and beliefs of the
+population.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The most striking thing on a first sight of the Irish
+landscape is the total absence of trees of any kind.
+They are only seen in private parks. As far as the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53"></a>[53]</span>
+eye can see the plains spread in gentle undulations,
+covered with grass and intersected with stone walls;
+no single oak, elm, or shrub ever comes to break its
+monotony. The tree has become a lordly ensign.
+Wherever one sees it one may be certain the landlord’s
+mansion is not far.</p>
+
+<p>That radical disappearance of the forests, in a
+country once covered with them, is singular. A great
+many explanations have been given of this fact,—explanations
+that went back as far as some geological
+cataclysm. Such theories are no longer acceptable
+in these days. The most likely supposition is that
+all the available timber has gradually been felled
+down for domestic uses, and that indifference, poverty,
+incessant war, incertitude as to the present or future,
+have, from the remotest times, prevented those sad
+gaps being repaired.</p>
+
+<p>On the lower land the absence of timber is
+explained of itself by the apparition of deep layers
+of turf, whose depth is sometimes from forty-five
+to sixty feet, in which whole oak trees have been
+discovered in a more or less advanced state of carbonisation.
+At a certain stage of this transformation
+the ligneous tissue has become of such flexibility that
+the Irish cut it into stripes and use it to make straps,
+fishing nets, bands of all kinds,—not to mention the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a>[54]</span>
+pious trifles, pipes, small figures carved with a knife,
+and various <i>souvenirs</i> with which they pester the
+tourist.</p>
+
+<p>The turf pits are a great source of riches for Ireland,
+and furnish the only fuel commonly used by
+the lower classes. In the country one sees everywhere
+people engaged in extracting peat, cutting it
+into cakes, erecting these cakes in pyramids to be
+allowed to dry in the sun, or transporting them from
+one place to the other. The people working at it are,
+indeed, almost the only ones visible in the fields. One
+might think that the extracting and manipulating
+of the turf were the only industry of the
+country.</p>
+
+<p>There are two kinds of turf, the red and the black,
+according to the degree of carbonisation attained by
+the layers, and the nature of the vegetable matter
+that formed them. The finest is of such intense and
+brilliant black, that it might almost be mistaken for
+coal. Those vast reservoirs of fuel, known in Ireland
+by the name of <i>bog</i>, are a constant feature of the
+landscape in the valleys of the mountainous girdle
+as in the lower parts of the plain. The total depth
+of these open carbon mines is estimated at no less
+than sixty million cubic feet; they occupy an area
+almost equal to the seventh part of the total<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55"></a>[55]</span>
+superficies of the island, and the lakes cover another
+seventh part.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>One other striking peculiarity of the scenery in
+Ireland is the scarcity of cultivated fields. One can
+count them, dotted here and there, almost always
+planted with oats, potatoes, or turnips. The statistics
+of the Agricultural Society give, in round numbers,
+for twenty millions of acres of total surface, five
+millions, or a quarter in cultivated ground; that is,
+150,000 acres only in cereals, 350,000 in turnips, one
+million and a half in potatoes, two million in artificial
+meadows. Ten million of acres are in natural meadows;
+the rest are fallow lands, bog or turf, waste
+land, roads and highways.</p>
+
+<p>Those roads and highways, as well as the bridges
+and all the public works depending upon the English
+Government, are admirably kept. It is clear that on
+that point Dublin Castle is resolved to give no handle
+to criticism. Those splendid tracks of road, laid
+across waste and desert land, even produce a curious
+effect, and one would be tempted to see an affectation
+about it, did they not, in the majority of cases, lead
+to some magnificent private property, spreading as
+far as one can see over hill and dale, always shut in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a>[56]</span>
+by stone walls eight or ten feet high, enclosing an
+area of several miles.</p>
+
+<p>As for the conveyances that are seen on these
+Appian Ways they are of two kinds; either the
+smart carriage whose cockaded coachman drives magnificent
+horses, or the diminutive cart drawn by a
+small donkey, carrying, besides the grand-dame or child
+that drives it, a sort of conical-shaped utensil held in
+its place with cords and oftener filled with water than
+with milk. One must go to Morocco or Spain to see
+donkeys in such numbers as in Ireland.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>One thing surprises in those endless pastures—it is
+to count so few grazing beasts on them. Not that
+they are altogether excluded; now and then one
+perceives on the intense green of the fields reddish
+or white spots that are cattle or sheep, the rounded
+haunch of a mare, the awkward frolics of a foal. On
+the brinks of rivers that one can almost always cross
+wading, one sometimes sees a few happy cows, their
+feet in the water, wide-eyed and munching dreamily.
+Here and there one sees geese, hens escorted by their
+chicks, pigs fraternally wallowing with children in the
+muddy ditch. But in a general way the landscape is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[57]</span>
+wanting in animated life, and as poor in domestic
+animals as in labourers.</p>
+
+<p>As a contrast game is plentiful, as is natural in a
+land that is three-quarters uncultivated, where it is
+forbidden to carry arms, and where shooting is the
+exclusive privilege of a very small minority. Hares
+and rabbits seem to enjoy their immunity to the
+utmost, and everywhere their white breeches are
+seen scudding away in the dewy grass like fireworks.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Villages are rare, and rarer still is farmhouse or
+homestead. Undulating ridges succeed to undulating
+ridges and still one sees no trace of any dwellings.
+One might think that these stone walls radiating over
+the fields had sprung there of their own accord, and
+that the hay is doomed to rot standing, after feeding
+the butterflies. Yet that cannot be—evidently some
+one must come now and then to cut this grass, make
+it into stacks and carry it away.... At last, by dint
+of stretching neck and legs you succeed in discovering
+far away on the horizon a spire that belongs to a
+big borough, a market-town rather, where those civic
+tillers of the soil dwell in houses similar to those of
+the <i>liberties</i> in Dublin.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58"></a>[58]</span></p>
+
+<p>As for the mud cabin, generally described as the
+Irish peasant’s only home, it is now a thing of the
+past. One would hardly, and after much research,
+find some specimens of it in the farthest counties, at
+the end of Kerry or Mayo.</p>
+
+<p>True to say, when found, those specimens leave
+nothing to be desired for poverty and discomfort; no
+fire-place, no windows, no furniture; nothing but a
+roof of turf supported by a few poles on mud walls.
+The very pig that formerly shared its luxuries with
+the <i>genus homo</i> and indicated a certain degree of
+relative comfort in his possessor, the pig himself has
+disappeared for ever.</p>
+
+<p>But those are exceptions, almost pre-historic cases.
+As a rule the mud cabin has been blotted out from
+the Irish soil—perhaps enlightened landlords systematically
+pursued its eradication; perhaps the
+peasants, tired of its tutelary protection, emigrated
+under other skies,—or more simply still, they took
+advantage of the last famine to die of hunger. Upon
+which came the rain, and two or three years sufficed
+to dilute the walls, render the mud house to the
+common reservoir, and wash out its very remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>The population of Ireland, it must be borne in
+mind, has been steadily decreasing for half a century.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59"></a>[59]</span>
+It was of 8,175,124 inhabitants in 1841; of 6,552,385
+in 1851; 5,798,584 in 1861; 5,412,377 in 1871; and
+5,174,836 in 1881. By all appearances it must now
+have sunk under five millions. If this fish-eating
+race was not the most prolific under the sun it would
+have been blotted out long ago from the face of this
+planet.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60"></a>[60]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE RACE.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The essential character of Irish scenery is, besides
+the green colour and the absence of trees, the frequent
+ruins that meet the eyes everywhere—one cannot go
+two steps without seeing them. Ruins of castles,
+abbeys, churches, or even humble private dwellings.
+There are quarters of large towns or boroughs, such
+as for instance the northern one in Galway, that
+might be taken at night, with their sinister looking rows
+of houses, roofless and with gaping walls, for a street
+in Herculaneum or Pompeii. When the ancient stone
+walls are those of a church or chapel, they generally
+serve as a setting for the legends of the countryside;
+there occurred all the terrifying tales of former
+days, there took place all the local miracles, and there
+still is the favourite haunt of illustrious spirits, of
+fairies and <i>banshee</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Almost in every case the graves of a hamlet come
+to group themselves at the foot of those ivy-clothed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61"></a>[61]</span>
+old walls, by an instinctive and touching effect of the
+Irishman’s passionate love for the traditions of his
+race; and those graves, generally covered with great
+slabs of stone, scattered among the tall grasses, wild
+and moss-grown, without cross or emblem of any
+sort, well accord with the melancholy aspect of the
+site.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes near these ruins and graves is still seen,
+proudly raising its head, one of those monuments
+peculiar to the country and about which antiquaries
+are at such variance,—the round towers of Ireland:
+slender and bold turrets, slightly conical in shape, not
+unlike minarets 75 or 80 feet high, upon a base
+15 to 18 feet broad, and springing from the ground
+like obelisks. They are built of large stones, sometimes
+rough, sometimes cut, but always cemented
+together, a fact which gave rise to the opinion that
+they must be posterior to the invasion of Great
+Britain by the Romans. But that is simply begging
+the question and is justified by nothing; moreover,
+the absence of any tradition about the origin or use
+of those towers make such a tale appear in the
+highest degree improbable. A race was never seen
+to borrow the technical industry of another race
+to apply it to the construction of monuments that are
+essentially their own. Celtic civilization had attained<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62"></a>[62]</span>
+in Ireland, centuries before the Romans, to a degree
+of perfection witnessed by the Brehon Code, compiled
+at least five or six centuries before the
+Christian era, and the first among human laws that
+substituted arbitrage to brute force. A people
+capable of submitting to the law of reason and who
+knew enough of mechanics to erect monoliths of
+twenty-four thousand cubic feet could well discover
+alone the art of mixing mortar, and need not borrow
+it from the Romans, who besides did not set foot in the
+country. Never was hypothesis more childish or more
+unfounded. The truth is that nothing is known about
+the round towers, as is the case with the <i>nurraghs</i> of
+Sardinia; that all those monuments are anterior to
+any positive traditions and have been built for uses
+of which we have no conception. At the most one
+might suppose from their aspect, which is that of
+inland lighthouses, that they may have been used
+as military or astronomical observatories, and, perhaps,
+bore on their summit a sacred fire visible throughout
+a whole district. In such a case the only guide to be
+followed with any certainty is the eternal fitness
+between organ and function.</p>
+
+<p>Eighty-three of these towers are still standing in
+Ireland, and their dilapidated condition allows it to
+be supposed that they may once have been much<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63"></a>[63]</span>
+more numerous. Whatever may have been their
+origin, they remain so narrowly and so fitly associated
+in the popular imagination with the Irish idea of
+nationality that the image of a round tower naturally
+grew under the chisel of the sculptor, as an emblem of
+patriotism, on the tomb of O’Connell in the cemetery
+of Dublin.</p>
+
+<p>Megalithic monuments and dolmen are equally
+found in great numbers in Ireland. Donegal presents
+at Raphre a circus of raised stones absolutely similar
+to that of Stonehenge, while in Derry one sees in
+the Grianan of Aileach the finest fortified temple
+that was ever raised in honour of the sun. In many
+districts all the hills or mountains without exception
+are crowned with the funeral hillock or Celtic <i>rath</i>.
+As for the Druidical inscriptions in the <i>Ogham</i>
+character, consisting of twenty-five combinations of
+oblique or vertical strokes corresponding to an equal
+number of sounds, they abound in all the counties.
+The most curious is that of the Cave of Dunloe, discovered
+by a labourer, in the vicinity of Killarney,
+in the year 1838; it may be considered a true
+Druidical library, of which the books are represented
+by the stones of the vaulted roof. Those characters
+have been deciphered now, thanks to bilingual inscriptions
+posterior to the Roman period.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a>[64]</span></p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the names of places and the geographical
+definitions are, in nine cases out of ten, of Celtic
+origin, according to the tables drawn out by Chalmers.
+The mountains are called <i>ben</i>, and the chains of hills
+<i>sliebh</i>, rocks are <i>carricks</i> or <i>cloagh</i>, lakes <i>loughs</i>, an
+island <i>innis</i>, bogs <i>corks</i>, lands <i>curraghs</i>, hills <i>knocks</i>,
+rivers <i>anagh</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The Erse tongue, still spoken by a twelfth part of
+the population, is sister to the Gaelic and the Breton.
+It denominates a field <i>agh</i>, a ford <i>ath</i>, a village <i>bally</i>,
+a city <i>cahir</i>, <i>ban</i> what is white or beautiful, <i>deargh</i>
+what is red, <i>dua</i> what is black, <i>beg</i> what is small, and
+<i>mor</i> what is big, <i>clar</i> a plain, <i>teach</i> a house, <i>donagh</i> a
+church, <i>ross</i> a wooded hillside.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>As for the type of the Irish race it is undeniably
+Celtic, or at least essentially different from the Anglo-Saxon.
+The hair is black or brown, the eyes dark,
+the complexion pale, the nose short, the forehead
+bony. The general appearance is vigorous and active,
+the movements are quick and often graceful; the stature
+without being low, is nearer to middle height than is
+generally the case in a British country. The rudest
+peasant girls often have a sculptural grace of attitude;
+one sees them in the fields, carrying burdens on their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>[65]</span>
+head with that stateliness of Greek canephores which
+seems as a rule the exclusive attribute of the daughters
+of the East.</p>
+
+<p>Still more different from the English is the inner
+man; naturally mirthful and expansive, witty, careless,
+even giddy, quarrelsome from mere love of noise,
+prompt to enthusiasm or despondency, imbued with
+the love of literary form and legal subtleties, he is
+the Frenchman of the West, as the Pole or the
+Japanese are Frenchmen of the East. And always
+there has been an affinity of nature, a harmony of
+thought, between them and us. At once we feel we are
+cousins. Their ancestors formerly came in thousands
+to fight under our flag. Our revolutions were always
+felt in Ireland. So strong, for nations as well as
+individuals, is that mysterious tie of a common origin,
+or even the most remote consanguinity.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Does this mean that the Irishman, thanks to his
+insular position, has escaped all cross breeding and
+remained pure Celt? Far from it. No country was
+oftener or more cruelly invaded than his. The stranger
+implanted himself in it, begat his children there, introduced
+in the race elements that are still recognizable;
+for example, that most peculiar expression<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66"></a>[66]</span>
+of the eyes, the height of the cheek-bones, the outline
+of the temples and cranium, which are in many cases
+clearly Scandinavian.</p>
+
+<p>In the origin of history the primitive inhabitants of
+Erin, the Firbolgs (men with the skin of beasts) were
+vanquished by the Thuathan-de-Danan, “the fairy
+people,” who came from the East, and who founded
+the realm of Innisfallen, or Island of Fate. A
+Spanish invasion (probably Phenician), that of the
+Milesians, overthrew that establishment ten or twelve
+centuries before the Christian era, and three hundred
+years before the foundation of Rome. After that
+came an uninterrupted list of one hundred and
+ninety-seven Milesian kings, who reached to the
+arrival of the Northmen, in the eighth century of
+the present era. Under their rule Ireland enjoyed
+a profound peace. It was during this period of
+more than a thousand years that flourished and
+developed in the island of Erin an entirely original
+civilization, characterised by the Brehon Code, by
+customs of great gentleness, by institutions of admirable
+prudence, among others that of a national
+militia, the <i>Fiana-Erin</i>, or <i>Fenians</i>, who were recruited
+by voluntary enlistment, defended the country
+and maintained order therein, while the citizens
+pursued their various avocations,—agriculture, in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67"></a>[67]</span>
+which they excelled, fishing and navigation, for which
+they displayed some ability.</p>
+
+<p>Divided into five or six small independent kingdoms
+Ireland, without her militia, would have fallen an easy
+prey to the Britons, the Gauls, or the Caledonians,
+and later on to the Romans. Thanks to that national
+force,—a true civic guard, quartered during winter on
+the inhabitants, and ever popular, which proves that
+it knew how to preserve intact the tradition of Celtic
+virtues,—Ireland, alone almost among European
+nations, escaped a Roman invasion. After twelve
+hundred years the remembrance of the Fenians has
+remained so vivid in the hearts of the people that the
+Irish Republicans of America, when they resumed
+in our own days the struggle in arms against England,
+naturally chose the name of the ancient defenders of
+national independence.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>With the fall of the Roman Empire and the dying
+out of the fear of invasion, the Fenian institution disappeared.
+The military instincts of the nation then
+manifested themselves at the exterior by frequent
+incursions made by Irish adventurers in England,
+Scotland, or Gaul. It was in one of those incursions
+off the coast of Brittany that Niall Mor, King of Tara,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68"></a>[68]</span>
+took prisoner, with several other young Christians, a
+boy named Sucoth, and whom they called <i>Patricius</i>
+(Patrick) on account of his noble origin. This was at
+the end of the fourth century of our era. The prisoner
+was employed in tending flocks in Ireland, spent seven
+years there, and at last found an opportunity of escaping
+to his own country. When back in Brittany, he
+constantly thought with grief of the dreadful destiny
+of the Irish, who still remained in ignorance of the
+true religion, and vegetated in the darkness of
+Druidism. One night he had a prophetic dream,
+after which he resolved to dedicate himself to the
+evangelization of those unhappy heathens. To this
+effect he went to the town of Tours, where he assumed
+the religious habit, then on to Rome, where he entered
+the missionary seminary. In the year 432 he was at
+the Barefooted Augustines’ Convent, in Auxerre, when
+he heard of the death of Paladius, fifth apostolic missionary
+of the Holy See in the island of Erin. Patrick
+solicited and obtained the honour of succeeding him.
+He was made Archbishop <i>in partibus infidelium</i>, and
+set out with twenty other French priests.</p>
+
+<p>A certain number of Christians were already to be
+found in Ireland; but the bulk of the nation remained
+attached to its traditional worship, which
+was that of Chaldea and of Ancient Gaul, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69"></a>[69]</span>
+worship of the sun or fire, as the principle of all life
+and purity.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the sons of Erin were not by any means barbarians;
+their civilization could rather be regarded
+as the most flourishing in Europe. They knew the
+art of weaving stuffs, and of working metals; their
+laws were wise and just, their customs hardy without
+ferocity. Patrick knew better than any one that he
+must think neither of hurrying their conversion nor
+of imposing it by force. He devoted himself with
+great adroitness to the task of winning the favour
+of the chiefs, tenderly handled all the national prejudices,
+loudly extolled the excellence of the Brehon
+Code, and succeeded at last in giving baptism to the
+Princes of Leinster. After this the new religion
+made such rapid progress that at the end of fifteen
+years Patrick was obliged to ask for thirty new
+Bishops from Rome, besides the numerous native
+priests who had already received ordination at his
+hands. When he died at the ripe age of one hundred
+and twenty years, Ireland had become Christian, and
+was rapidly being Latinised in the innumerable
+schools attached to the monasteries and churches.
+She even entered so eagerly in the new path as to
+deserve the name of “Isle of Saints” throughout the
+Roman world, and that for a long time it was enough<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70"></a>[70]</span>
+to be Irish or to have visited Erin to become invested
+with almost a halo of sanctity.</p>
+
+<p>That transformation had been accomplished without
+violence or effusion of blood. Until the 8th
+century it was a source of honour and prosperity for
+Ireland, for the lustre of her own civilization was
+enhanced by her renown for piety, and all the neighbouring
+nations sent their sons in flocks to be instructed
+in her arts and her virtues.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>But the very virtues that made her a country of
+monks and scholars were doomed before long to
+become the source of all her misfortunes. When the
+Scandinavian invasions began to pour over the whole
+of Europe, Ireland, emasculated by an entirely
+mystical devotion, was found incapable of sustaining
+the shock of the Northmen. The disappearance of the
+Fenian Militia had for a long time left her without a
+national tie, given up to local rivalries, and broken in
+pieces, as it were, by the clan system. At the very
+time that she most urgently needed a powerful
+central authority to struggle against the <i>black</i> and
+<i>white strangers</i> from Norway and Denmark, she
+was found defenceless, and it was not her feeble belt<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71"></a>[71]</span>
+of mountains, opening everywhere on deep bays, that
+could oppose a serious barrier to them, or guard her
+plains against their invasions.</p>
+
+<p>Pressed by hunger, the Scandinavians left their
+country in shoals. They threw themselves on the
+coasts of Great Britain, France, and Spain, as far as
+the basin of the Mediterranean. In no place were
+the people of Europe, already enfeebled by habits of
+comparative luxury, able to resist those giants of the
+North, who dauntlessly embarked in their otter-skin
+boats and dared to go up the Seine even to the very
+walls of Paris. Ireland was a prey marked out for
+them. If peradventure the invading party were not
+numerous enough and were beaten back by numbers,
+they would come back in thousands the following
+year and sweep all before them. Vainly did the
+sons of Erin fight with all the courage of despair;
+one after the other their chieftains were vanquished,
+and the foe definitely took up a position on the south-east
+coast, where he founded the cities of Strangford,
+Carlingford, and Wexford.</p>
+
+<p>Not content with reducing the Irish to bondage,
+the victors took a cunning and savage delight in
+humiliating and degrading them, lodging garnisaries
+under their roofs, interdicting, under pain of
+death, the exercise of all liberal arts as well as the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72"></a>[72]</span>
+carrying of arms, destroying schools, burning books
+to take possession of the gold boxes that protected
+their precious binding.</p>
+
+<p>Every ten or twelve years a liberator sprang up in
+the West or North, and tried to shake off the abhorred
+yoke. But the rebellion only made it weigh more
+heavily on the neck of the vanquished; and if it
+happened that a Brian Boru succeeded, after incredible
+efforts and heroism, in gathering troops numerous
+enough to inflict on the stranger a bloody defeat, such
+a day of glory was invariably followed by the most
+sinister morrow.</p>
+
+<p>After two centuries of slavery, interrupted by massacres,
+vain struggles, and impotent efforts, Ireland,
+once so prosperous, gradually sank in the darkest
+state of barbarism. The intestine dissensions and the
+rivalries between clans achieved the work of the
+Northern Conquerors. In the year 1172 she was ripe
+for new masters, also of Scandinavian race, who were
+ready to swoop on her with their Anglo-Saxon bands,
+after passing, to come to her, through the duchy of
+Normandy and through Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>Henry the Second of Anjou, King of England, was
+resolved to add Ireland to his possessions. All he
+wanted was a pretext. He found it in the state of
+practical schism and independence into which the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73"></a>[73]</span>
+insular Church had fallen. The members of its clergy
+no longer recognized the Roman discipline, did not
+observe Lent, and married like those of the Greek
+rite. Henry the Second solicited and obtained from
+Pope Adrian II. a bull authorizing him to invade the
+sister isle, in order to “re-establish therein the rule of
+the Holy See, stop the progress of vice, bring back
+respect for law and religion, and secure the payment
+of St. Peter’s pence.” But in spite of this formal
+authorization he was too much occupied with Aquitaine
+to be able to entertain seriously the idea of
+undertaking the conquest of Ireland, when one of his
+vassals, Strongbow, cut the knot by landing on the
+island at the head of a Welsh army, to carve himself
+a kingdom on the south-east coast.</p>
+
+<p>The way was open; Henry II. threw himself in it
+in his turn, and established himself in the east of the
+island, where, strong in the countenance of the clergy
+secured to him by the Papal bull, he received before
+long the homage of the principal native chieftains.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Limited at first to a territory enclosed within palisades,
+or <i>Pale</i>, which, during more than four centuries,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74"></a>[74]</span>
+enlarged or got narrowed, according to the
+fortune of war and the relative strength of the belligerent
+parties, the English rule was destined at last to
+spread over the whole of the island. But, of this
+seven-century struggle, the last word is not yet said.
+The wound is ever bleeding. Ireland has never
+accepted her defeat; she refuses to accept as valid a
+marriage consummated by a rape. Always she protested,
+either by direct rebellion, when she found the
+opportunity for it, as in 1640, in 1798, and in 1848;
+either by the voice of her poets and orators, by the
+nocturnal raids of her <i>Whiteboys</i> and <i>Ribbonmen</i>, by the
+plots of her Fenians, by the votes of her electors,
+by parliamentary obstruction, by passive resistance,
+by political or commercial interdict—opposed to the
+intruder; in a word, by all the means, legal or illegal,
+that offered to interrupt prescription.</p>
+
+<p>A striking, and, one may say, a unique example in
+history: after seven centuries of sustained effort on
+the part of the victor to achieve his conquest, this
+conquest is less advanced than on the morrow of
+Henry the Second’s landing at Waterford. An abyss
+still severs the two races, and time, instead of filling
+up that abyss, only seems to widen it. This phenomenon
+is of such exceptional and tragic interest; it
+beats with such crude light on the special physiology<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75"></a>[75]</span>
+of two races and the general physiology of humanity,
+that one needs must stop first and try to unravel its
+tangible causes if one be desirous of comprehending
+what is taking place in the land of Erin.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76"></a>[76]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.<br>
+<span class="smaller">HISTORICAL GRIEVANCES.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The English, it must be admitted, are no amiable
+masters. Never, in any quarter of the globe, were
+they able to command the goodwill of the nations
+submitted to their rule, nor did they fascinate them by
+those brilliant qualities that often go a long way
+towards forgiveness of possible injuries. “Take yourself
+off there, that I may take your place,” seems
+always to have been the last word of their policy.
+Pure and simple extermination of autochthon races;
+such is their surest way to supremacy. One has seen
+it successively in America, on the Australian continent,
+in Tasmania, in New Zealand, where the native tribes
+hardly exist now more than as a memory. On the
+other hand, if the vanquished races were too numerous
+or too sturdy and prolific to be easily suppressed,
+as in India or Ireland, reconciliation never took place;
+conquest ever remained a doubtful and precarious
+fact.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77"></a>[77]</span></p>
+
+<p>In Ireland, the question was made more complex
+by two elements that visibly took a predominant
+part in the relations between the conquerors and the
+conquered. In the first place, the island of Erin,
+having remained outside the pale of the Roman world
+and of barbaric invasions, possessed an indigenous
+and original civilization that made her peculiarly refractory
+to the establishment of the feudal system.
+Secondly, her very remoteness and her insular character
+inclined the immigrants to establish themselves
+there regretfully, to consider her always as a colony
+and a place of exile, where they only resided against
+their will. For the first four hundred years of their
+occupation they confined themselves to the eastern
+coast within the inclosed territory (varying with the
+fortune of war) that they called the <i>Pale</i> or palisade,
+and outside which the Irish preserved their manners,
+their laws, and their own customs.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of this barrier, it happened in the course of
+time that the English colonists got pervaded by those
+customs and felt their contagion. At once the British
+Parliament had recourse to drastic laws in order to
+open a new abyss between the two races, and keep
+the mastery they had over the Irish. Such is
+the special object of an edict of Edward III.,
+known under the name of <i>Edict of Kilkenny</i>, and by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78"></a>[78]</span>
+which it is reputed high treason for any Englishman
+established in Ireland to have married an Irish-woman,
+to have legitimised an Irish child, or have
+held him in baptism, to have taken an Irish
+Christian name, to have worn the Irish dress, to have
+spoken the Erse tongue, to have let his moustache
+grow, or to have ridden saddleless, as was the Irish
+fashion; above all, to have submitted to the Brehon
+Code. Those divers crimes were punished by confiscation
+of property, and perpetual imprisonment of the
+offender.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Such laws were a powerful obstacle to fusion, raised
+by the intruder himself. One sees at once the difference
+between, for instance, such a system and that
+established by the Norman invasion in Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>Here the conqueror found a race made supple by
+Roman occupation and Danish rule; he established
+himself, by strength of arm, on the soil, covered it
+with strongholds, and everywhere substituted himself
+to the dispossessed masters; he at once implanted
+within his new dominions the French tongue, the
+feudal system, the powerful hierarchy that constituted
+its strength; he remained standing, iron-covered
+and in arms, over the prostrate bodies of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79"></a>[79]</span>
+population in bondage, and repressed with such a
+high hand any attempt at rebellion, that the very idea
+of resistance must of necessity die out soon. On the
+other hand, having transplanted himself, and without
+any idea of return, in this new sphere, he immediately
+submitted to its influence; he incorporated himself
+with the ambient race to such a degree as soon to
+forget his own origin, and come after two or three
+generations to consider himself as purely of English
+breed.</p>
+
+<p>In Ireland, on the contrary, not only was the conqueror
+reduced by the imperfect state of his conquest
+to remain on the defensive, confined within the Pale
+on the eastern shore, within reach, so to say, of the
+mother country; not only could not he dream for a
+long time of obliging populations that escaped all
+action on his part to obey his manners and his laws;
+not only did he systematically keep those populations
+at arm’s length and avoided mixing with them; but
+periodical laws and edicts constantly came to remind
+them, on pain of terrible punishment, that he belonged
+to another race, and must guard with jealous care the
+integrity of its autonomy. Without any intercourse
+with the more distant tribes, he was at constant war
+with those of the borders of the Pale.</p>
+
+<p>And war was, at this period even still more than in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80"></a>[80]</span>
+our own days, mere rapine, raised to the dignity of a
+system. The English did not scruple to make incursions
+on their neighbour’s lands, to take away harvest,
+cattle, and women, after which they returned to their
+fortified territory.</p>
+
+<p>They did even worse: having heard of the ancient
+custom by which the Irish formerly accorded fire and
+candle light to their national militia or Fenians, the
+English revived it to their own profit; they quartered
+on the peasantry in their neighbourhood during all
+the winter, a soldier, who took his seat round the
+domestic hearth, shared the meals of the family, took
+possession of the best bed—nay, did not disdain to
+cast the eye of favour on the wife or daughter—and
+not the less remained a stranger, a foe, at the same
+time that he was a forced guest and a spy—for he
+was forbidden to speak the language, to adopt the
+dress, to imitate the manners of his victims.... The
+horror of that burden coming anew every year
+had once led to the suppression of the Fenian militia.
+How much more terrible was such servitude, enforced
+by the enemy! Constant were the rebellions, and
+always repressed with calculated barbarity—they only
+served as a pretext for new exactions.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81"></a>[81]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Still, in spite of all, a certain contagion of habits
+took place between the contiguous races. A few
+native chiefs insensibly began to imitate the manners
+of the English. The English were not long in discovering
+a way to reconcile them—by appealing to
+their basest impulses.</p>
+
+<p>Until then, the Irish had had no knowledge of
+individual property. With them land was, like the
+sky or the air they breathed, the common inheritance
+of those who occupied it. The members of a clan,
+indeed, paid the chieftain a tax or annual duty, but
+they did not conceive it as possible that this leader
+could look on himself as the master of the social fund
+to which they, like him, had a hereditary right. At
+the most they expected their harvest or cattle to
+be seized, in case of non-payment of the tax.
+There never had been an eviction of the tenant,
+as there had been no sale or transfer of the
+land by him occupied. Individual appropriation,
+as resulting from the feudal system, was such a
+new idea to the Irish that they were at first unable to
+grasp it.</p>
+
+<p>“What interest can you have in making your clan
+give up their land to the English, since you get it
+back in return for your homage?” would ask some
+of the native chieftains of those of their countrymen<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82"></a>[82]</span>
+nearer the pale who had taken for some time to
+performing that commercial transaction.</p>
+
+<p>The neophytes of feudal law would then explain
+that in case of extension of the English conquest,
+their possession of the land would be guaranteed by
+the fact of the new title. What they took great care
+should not be discovered by the clan, was that they
+gave what did not belong to them, and sold the
+collective property of their followers, to receive it
+afterwards at the hands of the English as personal
+property.... This was seen clearly later on,
+when they began to sell it or raise mortgages on it.
+But that, the dawn of a gigantic fraud, nobody in
+Ireland could so much as suspect. The fraudulent
+origin of individual appropriation is nevertheless,
+even to our own day, the true root of the desperate
+resistance that the Irish tenant invariably opposes to
+eviction. Be it tradition, be it “cellular memory,” he
+is conscious of his primordial and superior right to
+that glebe once stolen from his forefathers.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Stolen! if only it had been stolen once for all!...
+But to repeat Fitzgibbon’s (Lord Clare) saying,
+there is not in the whole of Ireland one field that
+has not been <i>at least three times</i> unjustly taken from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83"></a>[83]</span>
+its legitimate possessors. And that spoliation was
+always accompanied by the most aggravating circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>It was indeed with Henry VIII. and Elizabeth that
+the true efforts of England to achieve the conquest of
+Erin were made, and from that time, to the antagonism
+of the two races, to the conflict of interests, was added
+religious hatred. Between puritanical England and
+Catholic Ireland began a duel to the death, into which
+each generation in turn has thrown itself for three
+centuries. Oppression begets rebellion, and rebellion
+expires drowned in blood. We have no intention of
+repeating that history in these pages; its details are
+to be found everywhere. Let us only recall its essential
+features.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the year 1565, Queen Elizabeth undertook
+the “plantation” of Ireland on a large scale, and
+set about it by the elementary process of dispossessing
+the owners of the soil in order to present
+Englishmen with their lands. The whole country
+rose, under the command of John Desmond, who
+called the Spaniards to his aid. Upon which England
+sent to Ireland, together with Sydney, Sussex, and
+Walter Raleigh, armies whose instructions were “the
+extermination of the Rebels.”</p>
+
+<p>“At Christmas,” wrote one of the English Generals,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84"></a>[84]</span>
+Sir Nicolas Malby, in the year 1576, “I entered
+Connaught, and soon finding that by mercy I should
+only succeed in having my throat cut, I preferred to
+adopt a different tactic. I therefore threw myself in
+the mountains with the settled determination of
+destroying these people by sword and fire, sparing
+neither the old nor the children. <i>I burnt down all
+their harvests and all their houses, and I put to the
+sword all that fell within my hands....</i> This
+occurred in the country of Shane Burke. I did the
+same thing in that of Ullick Burke.”</p>
+
+<p>The other English Generals vied in ardour with
+this butcher; so much so that at the end of a few
+years of indiscriminate hangings, massacres, burnings
+of house and land, the whole of Munster was laid
+waste like a desert; a few wretches only were left to
+wander over it like ghosts, and they came voluntarily to
+offer their throat to the knife of Queen Elizabeth’s
+soldiers. The Virgin Queen then resolved to repeople
+that desert; she made proclamation that all the lands of
+the Desmonds were confiscated (more than 500,000
+acres) and she offered them gratuitously to whosoever
+would “plant” them with the help of English labour.
+The grantees were to pay no duty to the Crown until
+six years had passed, and that duty was always to be of
+the lightest. In spite of these advantages colonization<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85"></a>[85]</span>
+did not make much progress. The English at last
+understood that they must either give it up, or resign
+themselves to having the ground cultivated by the
+despoiled Irish who had survived the massacres.
+H ow could those wretched people have done otherwise
+than nourish the hope of revenge?</p>
+
+<p>That revenge was attempted in Ulster at the death
+of Elizabeth. It ended in new disasters, new tortures,
+new confiscations. The counties of Tyrone, Derry,
+Donegal, Armagh, Fermanagh, and Cavan,—in all
+about three million acres,—were then seized by the
+Crown and distributed in lots to Scotch settlers.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>In the year 1641, under the reign of Charles I., a
+few Irishmen having emigrated to the continent, and
+having been initiated to modern military tactics in
+the ranks of the French army, attempted to liberate
+their country. They provoked a rising, succeeded in
+holding in check during eight years all the British
+forces, and in 1649 compelled the King of England to
+grant them by formal treaty the conditions they
+themselves dictated. But a few days later the head
+of Charles fell on the scaffold, and Cromwell in
+person, escorted by his son, by Ireton and Ludlow,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86"></a>[86]</span>
+made it his business to come and annul the treaty of
+Kilkenny.</p>
+
+<p>“For Jesus!... No quarter!...” Such was
+the battle-cry he gave to his Roundheads. Drogheda,
+then Wexford were taken by storm; men, women,
+and children were exterminated; Galway fell in
+1652. The populations, exhausted by a war and
+famine of ten years’ duration, surrendered themselves
+to his mercy, and laid down their arms. Cromwell
+had only now to reap the fruits of his victory by
+making Ireland pay for it.</p>
+
+<p>His first idea was to complete the extermination of
+the native race, in order to replace it by English colonists.
+But even his gloomy soul recoiled before the
+only means that at once and for ever could put an end
+to “the Irish gangrene.” He adopted a middle course,
+of much less radical efficacy. This middle course consisted
+in transporting, or, as they called it at the time
+<i>transplanting</i> all the Irish into the region bounded by
+the Shannon, there to be penned up like men infested
+with the plague, while all the rest of the territory was
+allotted to English families.</p>
+
+<p>The enterprise was conducted with truly puritanical
+method and rigour. Thousands of Irish were shipped
+as slaves to the West Indies, thousands of others were
+imprisoned in Connaught, under pain of death for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87"></a>[87]</span>
+whoever should cross its limits. All the land, carefully
+parcelled out, was divided by lot between the
+soldiers of Cromwell, upon agreement that they should
+consider themselves bound to expend their pay for
+three years on the improvement of it. But those fields,
+to yield up their value, had to be cultivated, and the
+English labourer declined to become a voluntary exile
+in order to cultivate them. Little by little the native
+peasantry came back to their old homes with the
+tenacity peculiar to their class, they founded families
+and reconstituted the Irish nation under the ten or
+twelve thousand landlords imposed over them by fraud
+and violence. Forty years after Cromwell’s death,
+these landlords had even forgotten how to speak the
+English language.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Restoration was not destined to heal any of those
+cruel wounds. Charles II. took little heed of Ireland,
+which he deemed too far off, and besides he thought it
+good policy not to disturb the new occupants in their
+possessions. He barely deemed it necessary to
+establish in Dublin a Court of Revision that sat only
+one year, examined no more than seven hundred cases<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88"></a>[88]</span>
+out of a total of above three thousand that were submitted
+to it, and ordered the restitution of hardly a
+sixth part of the confiscated land.</p>
+
+<p>After the Revolution of 1688, nevertheless, the
+Irish only embraced with more ardour the cause of
+James II. when he landed in Ireland with a handful
+of men. Even after his defeat at the Boyne, they so
+successfully resisted William of Orange that he was
+compelled in 1691 to grant to them, by the treaty of
+Limerick, the free exercise of their religion and the
+political privileges that could help them to preserve
+it. But, like so many other charters, that one was
+soon to be violated. All the Irish Jacobites were
+compelled to expatriate themselves (numbers of them
+took service in France; more than fifty thousand
+Irishmen died under the <i>fleur-de-lis</i> during the
+first half of the eighteenth century); four thousand
+others were evicted from one million of acres that
+William distributed among his followers. Soon to
+this already terrible repression were to be added
+all the rigours of the Penal Code, that code that proclaimed
+it a duty to spy, and a meritorious act to
+betray the Irishman at his hearth; that code of
+which Burke could say: “Never did the ingenious
+perversity of man put forth a machine more perfect,
+more thoughtfully elaborated, more calculated to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89"></a>[89]</span>
+oppress, to impoverish, to degrade a people, to lower
+in them human nature itself.”</p>
+
+<p>Under the network of that nameless despotism
+which attacked man in his dearest privileges, the
+rights of conscience, the sanctity of home,—under
+the weight of a legislation that in a manner forbade
+her the use of water and fire, that closed all careers
+before her, after having wrenched her last furrow from
+her keeping,—the Irish nation persisted in living
+and multiplying. Was it any wonder that in the
+depth of her collective soul she cherished dreams of
+revenge and justice?</p>
+
+<p>The American Emancipation and the French Revolution
+appeared to her as the dawn of regeneration.
+Alas! once again the glorious effort of 1798,—the
+rebellion in arms, victory itself, were only to end in a
+complete wreck. As if Fate owed one more stroke of
+irony to this martyred nation, it was an Irish Parliament
+that by its own vote in 1800 abdicated the
+hardly recovered national independence. Pitt bought
+it wholesale for the price of 1,200,000 guineas.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It was not enough, however, to have taken from
+the Irishman his blood, his land, his religious faith,
+and his liberty: they must still prevent his prospering<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a>[90]</span>
+in commerce or industry. Political interest was here
+in accordance with avarice in giving this advice to
+the victor.</p>
+
+<p>Charles II. began by forbidding Ireland to export
+meat, butter, and cheese to England. At that time
+of slow maritime intercourse, no idea could be
+entertained of sending them to any other market.
+The Irish had to fall back on wool, which they exported
+to France and Spain. That was sufficient to
+arouse the jealousy of their pitiless masters. The
+export of wool, be it as raw material or in woven
+stuffs, was forbidden the Irish on pain of confiscation
+and fines.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of this harsh measure was two-fold: it
+prevented the abhorred Irish prospering; it secured
+to the English merchant the monopoly of Irish wool,
+which he could henceforth buy at his own price
+(generally at a quarter of the current price), and sell
+again at a lesser rate than all his competitors. It
+only remained for Ireland to make smugglers of all
+her fishermen; they crammed all the caverns on her
+coasts with wool, and during the winter, in spite of
+excisemen, they exchanged it for the wines and
+spirits of France and Spain. By the same occasion
+they exported soldiers and imported Catholic priests.
+Thus did Ireland keep losing her vital strength, by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91"></a>[91]</span>
+the constant departure of the most vigorous amongst
+her sons, at the same time that she inoculated in
+her blood two equally fatal poisons—alcohol and
+fanaticism.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, the Puritan weavers of Ulster
+were ruined like the wool-farmers. They emigrated
+to America, and England found no bitterer foes
+than their sons during the War of Independence.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the Irish tried to fall back on other industries,
+as the weaving of linen or ship-building. At
+once England interfered with an iron hand by establishing
+the most ruinous prohibitive duties on Irish
+linens, while at the same time her cotton fabrics came
+pouring over the country. To make doubly sure,
+England, by a special law, formally interdicted ship-building
+in Ireland as well as any direct trade with
+any foreign market whatsoever.</p>
+
+<p>One feels a sort of shame for the human kind in
+having to record such consistent acts of systematic
+cruelty. The violence of military retaliation, the
+sacking of towns or the massacre of vanquished foes,
+may be explained by the heat of combat, and are
+found in the annals of all countries. An economical
+compression exercised during ten or twelve generations
+on one nation by another nation of Shylocks is,
+happily, a fact without any parallel in history.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92"></a>[92]</span></p>
+
+<p>From the beginning of the 18th century all
+industrial enterprise had thus been unmercifully
+forbidden to Ireland. All the factories were closed,
+the working population had been reduced to field
+labour, emigration or street-begging. This population
+therefore weighed still more heavily on the soil,
+still exaggerating its tendencies to subdivision;
+which tendencies, already a curse for Ireland, were
+to cause in the future new ferments of hatred
+and misery. All the attempts that Ireland made to
+free herself from those iron shackles were pitilessly
+repressed. She saw herself deprived of her right to
+commercial activity, as she had been of national
+conscience, of land, and religious or political freedom.
+And it is after having thus for centuries systematically
+trained the Irish to poverty, idleness, and
+drink, that England, crowning her work with calumny,
+dares to bring forward their vices as an excuse for
+herself!</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>These things are far from us already. But it would
+be erring greatly to imagine that in the eyes of the
+Irish they bear an antiquated character. Oral tradition,
+seconded by an indigenous literature, keeps
+the wound open and green. Yonder wretched beggar,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>[93]</span>
+dying of hunger and want upon the glebe once possessed
+by his ancestors, knows that they ruled where
+he now serves, bears their name with a touching
+pride, and sadly toils for others in a field that he
+believes to belong to himself. He is not ignorant of
+the way in which it was taken from him, at what date,
+and in what manner the event took place. How
+could he consider its present possessors otherwise
+than as his most cruel enemies?</p>
+
+<p>Let us imagine the French <i>émigrés</i> brought back
+violently on the lands taken from them by the nation,
+and reduced to support their family by tilling their
+fields with their own hands. Let us suppose them
+compelled every year to pay an exorbitant rent to
+the usurper. Let us blot out from history’s page
+the milliard indemnity given to the <i>émigrés</i> and the
+amnesty passed over those things by five or six successive
+revolutions. Let us lastly add to these deadly
+rancours the weight of a religious persecution of three
+centuries, of the undisguised contempt of the victor,
+and of the most shocking political inequality....
+Let that <i>émigré</i>, in a word, not only have lost caste,
+be spoliated and a serf, but also be a pariah, a kind of
+pestilent member of the community: then we shall
+gather some idea of the state of mind of the Irish
+people towards England; we shall understand that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94"></a>[94]</span>
+in truth the only mistake committed by Cromwell
+and the others in their system of colonization was
+to have not carried it to its full length, to have not
+exterminated all by fire or sword, and to have left
+a single son of Erin alive.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>As a contrast to England and Ireland, let us place
+a historical fact of the same order, that of France
+with Corsica. Here also we find an insular race of
+markedly distinct character, of different language,
+different manners and traditions, the habit of independence
+and the clan-spirit,—all that can foster
+and serve resistance to annexation. But here the
+conquering nation is France, and she is a kind
+mother. She does not come, fire and sword in hand,
+to ravage the harvests of the vanquished, to take his
+land, to impose on him, together with a new faith,
+exceptional laws, and a brand of infamy. On the
+contrary, to them she opens her arms, she offers her
+wealth and her love. From the first day she admits
+Corsicans to the provincial parliaments, and twenty
+years later she receives their deputies in the
+Assemblée Nationale. From the first hour they
+feel they are Frenchmen, the equals of those born
+in the Ile de France. There are for them neither<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95"></a>[95]</span>
+special taxes, nor political inferiority, nor rigours of
+any sort. Never was an inch of ground taken from
+them to be given to the continental families. Never
+were they treated like serfs to be trodden down
+without mercy. If there be an exception made, it
+is in their favour; as, for instance, the reduction of
+one half of all duties on imports; the free trade in
+tobacco; the enormous proportion of Corsicans
+admitted to all Government offices.</p>
+
+<p>But what a difference, too, in the results!... In
+less than a hundred years, the fusion between the
+two races is so perfect, the assimilation so complete,
+that one could not find to-day one man in Corsica
+to wish for a separation. Nay, rather, against such
+an enterprise, if any one were found to attempt it, all
+Corsica would rise in arms.</p>
+
+<p>If Great Britain had so willed it, Ireland might
+easily have become to her what Corsica is to us.
+Only, for the last seven hundred years, Great Britain
+has lacked what alone could have made that miracle
+possible,—a mother’s heart and love.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96"></a>[96]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.<br>
+<span class="smaller">KILLARNEY.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I know no place to compare with Killarney: so
+soft to the eye, so full of unspeakable grace. It is
+as a compendium of Ireland; all the characteristic
+features of the country are united there: the elegant
+“round towers,” drawing on the horizon the airy
+outline of their conic shafts; the soft moistness of the
+atmosphere, the tender blue of the sky, the intense
+green of the meadows, set off by long, black trails of
+peat, and the white, ochre, and red streaks which the
+grit-stone and clay-slate draw on the hill-side.</p>
+
+<p>Within the oval circus formed by the mountains of
+Kerry, the Killarney lakes succeed one another like
+small Mediterraneans, all dotted with lovely islands,
+where myrtle and rare ferns grow freely, fostered by a
+Lusitanian climate. Every one of those islands has
+its legend, its own saint, buried under some old moss-grown
+mound; its ruined castle, its ivy-clothed
+abbey, paved with tombstones and haunted by some<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97"></a>[97]</span>
+<i>banshee</i>. They are like large baskets of flowers
+floating on the clear, silent waters, whose peace is
+only broken now and then by the jumping of a fish,
+or the clucking of some stray teal. All there unite
+to form a landscape of almost paradoxical beauty.
+You think you have landed in fairyland, outside the
+pale of ordinary life.</p>
+
+<p>The most illustrious of them is Innisfallen, where
+the monks wrote in the seventh century their famous
+<i>Annals</i>, the pride of the Bodleian Library. In viewing
+this enchanting island, you involuntarily fall to
+repeating the beautiful lines of Moore which you
+used to bungle in your school days, and of which you
+first realise the profound truth:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Sweet Innisfallen, fare thee well,</i></div>
+  <div class="verse indent2"><i>May calm and sunshine long be thine,</i></div>
+  <div class="verse indent0"><i>How fair thou art, let others tell,</i></div>
+  <div class="verse indent2"><i>While but to feel how fair be mine, etc.</i>”</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Along the shores of that range of lakes, two lordly
+domains display the noble arrangement of their parks:
+one is the seat of the Earl of Kenmare, lord-lieutenant
+of the county, late Lord Chamberlain to the Queen
+during the Gladstone Ministry. The other belongs
+to Captain Herbert of Muckross, late Member of
+Parliament. As far around as you can see the land<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98"></a>[98]</span>
+belongs to either of those two landlords. Just as in
+the tale, down to the extremity of the valley, up to
+the very top of the far-away mountain, land and
+water, beasts and Christians, all belong to the “Marquis
+de Carabas.”</p>
+
+<p>Some restriction must be made, however. Changes
+have been introduced lately. Only a few years ago
+it was a thing understood that of the two members
+which the borough returned to Parliament one must
+be the heir presumptive of the house of Kenmare, the
+other the chief of the house of Muckross. That is
+over. Now-a-days the Kerry voters send whom Mr.
+Parnell likes to the House of Commons. But the air
+of the parks is still the property of the two owners;
+none may breathe it without their leave. I hasten to
+say that the permission is most courteously given by
+Lord Kenmare to all tourists, and as readily (if less
+liberally) sold on the Muckross grounds to anyone
+willing to pay one or two shillings, according to his
+approach walking or on horseback.</p>
+
+<p>The two parks are marvels, almost without other
+rivals in the world, for their prodigious extent, their
+admirably kept shrubberies and avenues, and the
+splendour and variety of the points of view which
+art has devised on the lakes. Those lakes themselves,
+with their islands, bays, and toy-peninsulas, their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99"></a>[99]</span>
+rippling brooks and foaming cascades, are only part
+of the beauties of the whole. Muckross is proud to
+possess the old abbey of the same name, and the
+Torc Cascade. Kenmare boasts Innisfallen, Ross
+Island, Saint Finian’s Tomb, the legendary ruins of
+O’Donoghue’s Castle, and a hundred other wonders.
+It is more regal than lordly, and there are indeed few
+royal residences which can boast such gardens.</p>
+
+<p>You go away dazzled, enchanted, intoxicated with
+verdure, ozone, and poetic sights. You come back
+the day following, you almost wish to take root there
+for a sort of contemplative life, where you would discard
+any heavier occupation than catching salmon,
+smoking endless cigarettes, and reading over your
+favourite authors. A rich artist, it is said, being
+pricked with a violent desire of that kind, offered I
+don’t know how much ready money to Lord Kenmare
+if he would grant him five hundred square yards of
+ground on Ross Island. The offer was declined.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>There is a reverse side to the picture; and it could
+scarcely be less brilliant. Killarney is a sorry borough
+of about four or five thousand inhabitants, more
+miserable looking than words can express. Except
+in the great hotels which English enterprise has<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100"></a>[100]</span>
+raised for fleecing the tourists attracted there by the
+beauty of the lakes, there is not a vestige of ease or
+prosperity. No busy workman, not one manufacture
+is to be seen. The miserable shops exhibit a few
+dusty wares which nobody seems anxious either to
+buy or to sell. There is a despondent stillness about,
+and people look tired with doing nothing. The
+women, all more or less “tattered and torn,” wear a
+poor rag of a shawl on their heads. Half-naked
+children, wild-haired, full of vermin, swarm out of all
+the small alleys which open on the one street of the
+town. Only the Anglican and Catholic churches rise
+above the sordid little dwellings with a substantial
+and well-to-do air.</p>
+
+<p>Go out of the village, follow the long walls which
+enclose the lordly seats, and after three or four miles
+you will find again the Irish country such as you have
+seen it everywhere. Turnip and barley fields, thin
+pastures, few trees or none at all. On the road-side
+occasionally is a consumptive cow, or a pig wallowing in
+mud fraternally with two or three bright-eyed urchins.
+Here and there a hovel with the traditional dung-hill
+and three hens. Nothing, in short, calculated to bring
+a new light on the agrarian crisis.</p>
+
+<p>It is in Kerry, however, that the malady has reached
+its most acute state, they all tell me. But you could<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101"></a>[101]</span>
+not believe how hard it is to obtain any definite information
+about those matters. People who really know
+about it feel a sort of shame to bare their national
+wounds before a stranger, and besides, the diversity
+of judgments makes it difficult to draw something
+positive from them. Every man has his party feeling,
+and is wishing to enforce it upon you. Provided with
+a good number of letters of introduction, and everywhere
+received with perfect cordiality, I have talked
+already with people of all conditions—landlords,
+agents, farmers, doctors, priests, and labourers,—without
+having obtained as yet any but individual views.
+Home Rulers and Orangemen have made me hear
+arguments that I know by heart from having heard
+them repeated these last eight years, ever since the
+crisis entered its actual phase. This is not the thing
+we want: we want <i>espèces</i>, as they say in French law;
+specific illustration, direct symptoms of the Irish
+disease.</p>
+
+<p>And that is the difficulty. The habit of living
+among certain deformities so familiarises us with
+them that we are no longer able to perceive them,
+and still less to point them out. Moreover, when
+upon receiving a letter from London, a man is
+kind enough to ask you to dinner, to introduce you
+to his wife and daughters, to lend you his horse and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102"></a>[102]</span>
+trap, and to empty for your benefit his store of ready-made
+opinions, is it possible decently to ask him
+more? He has his own affairs, and cannot spend his
+time running with you through hill and dale in order
+to help you to unravel a sociological problem.</p>
+
+<p>By a stroke of good luck I met the scout I wanted.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>I was returning from an excursion to the Gap of
+Dunloe when, on the banks of the river which waters
+the Kenmare estate, near the bridge, I noticed a man of
+about forty, of middle height, poorly but neatly clad,
+who was walking in front of me and gave evident signs
+of wishing to enter into conversation. I had been so
+harassed lately by the swarm of cicerones and incompetent
+guides who crowd all ways to the lakes
+and sights around Killarney, that I had grown
+suspicious, and pretended not to see the man. But
+he had his idea and stuck to it. Slackening his pace,
+he began to whistle <i>La Marseillaise</i>.</p>
+
+<p>That was saying plainly:—</p>
+
+<p>“You are French, and I am a friend of France like
+all Irishmen. You are welcome here.”</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the world it is the adopted form for
+such a declaration of love. On board a transatlantic
+steamer or in the sitting-rooms of a cosmopolite hotel,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103"></a>[103]</span>
+when a fair-haired or dark-haired new acquaintance
+seats herself to the piano and begins to play the
+march of Rouget de l’Isle, the French tourist can see
+his way: he is looked upon with no unfriendly eye.</p>
+
+<p>There were no dark or fair tresses here, but only a
+bearded pepper-and-salt quadragenarian, with the
+patent purpose of hooking me at the rate of half-a-crown
+an hour: so I remained obdurate. But he,
+suddenly making up his mind:—</p>
+
+<p>“Well, <i>Sor</i>,” he said to me with a soft voice and
+the most enticing smile, “how do you <i>loike</i> our
+country?”</p>
+
+<p>“Your country? I should like it a great deal
+better if one could go about it without being pestered
+by guides at every turning,” I said, but half-remorsefully.</p>
+
+<p>“How true, sir! Those guides positively infest the
+place. And if they only knew their trade! But they
+are regular swindlers, beggars who steal the tourist’s
+money; the shame of Ireland, that is what they
+are!”</p>
+
+<p>The conversation then commenced, and to say the
+truth I have no reason to repent it. The fellow is
+well-informed, quick-witted, incredibly talkative, and
+in five minutes has given me really valuable information,
+besides biographical details about himself. He<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104"></a>[104]</span>
+is called MacMahon like many others in this country,
+for I have seen that name over twenty village shops
+already. Is he any relation to the Maréchal? No;
+he makes no pretension to that. But after all it is
+not improbable that they come from one root, for my
+friend is not, of course, without his relationship with
+some of the numberless kings of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>“And the Marshal is a great man, a brave soldier,
+a true Irishman. I have his picture at home. I’ll
+show it to you if you do me the honour to visit my
+humble roof, and accept a glass of ‘mountain dew.’”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>My new acquaintance has been quill-driver at a
+land surveyor’s, and he knows many things. This,
+for instance: that all people here, from the most insignificant
+farmer to the biggest landowner, are in debt.</p>
+
+<p>“All that glitters is not gold,” he says, with a
+melancholy smile. “Do you see that large expanse
+of land, sir? Well, those who own it are not perhaps
+richer than I, and have not perhaps always
+as much pocket-money as would be convenient
+for them. Their annual income goes to pay the
+interest of an enormous debt, the hereditary obligations
+which weigh on the property, and the normal
+keeping of it. Mr. Herbert, the owner of Muckross,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105"></a>[105]</span>
+had to emigrate to America, where he is now an
+attorney’s clerk, for his daily bread. The shilling
+you give for entering his park goes to the scraping of
+it. As for Lord Kenmare, he never sees as much as
+the tenth part of the revenue of his property, let
+alone his being forbidden his own grounds under
+pain of being shot dead! Lady Kenmare lives there
+alone with her children under protection of a detachment
+of the police.” So the masters of those two
+noble estates are exiled from them, one by mortgage,
+the other by agrarian hatred. O, irony of things!</p>
+
+<p>“But Lord Kenmare’s not a bad landlord, is he?”
+I said to MacMahon.</p>
+
+<p>“Far from it. His tenants are eight hundred in
+number, and there are not three evicted in the year.
+I know personally twenty of them who owe him four
+years’ rent and are never troubled about it. But he
+has taken position against the League—that is
+enough. And then, don’t you know, sir, the best of
+landlords is not worth much in the eyes of his tenants.
+<i>They want the land and they will have it.</i> But this is
+my house. Please come in, sir.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Thus chattering, the communicative Celt had
+brought me to the entrance of a small low house<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a>[106]</span>
+in a by-street of Killarney. We entered a sort
+of kitchen-parlour on a level with the lane. No
+carpet or flooring of any kind but the simple beaten
+clay, a large old-fashioned chimney, a table, a few
+straw-covered chairs; on the walls a whole private
+museum in chromo-lithography: Pope Pius IX., the
+Marshal Duke of Magenta, Mr. Parnell, &amp;c., and a
+branch of holy palm.</p>
+
+<p>Upon our coming, a poor creature, pale and
+emaciated, had risen without showing any surprise.</p>
+
+<p>“Mrs. MacMahon, <i>Sor</i>! Everilda Matilda, a
+French gentleman who honours our house by
+stopping a moment in it. Call the children, my
+dear; the gentleman will be pleased to see them, I
+think.”</p>
+
+<p>A tall girl with brown eyes first presents herself,
+then a boy between twelve and thirteen years old,
+then a variety of younger fry. I am told that Mary
+has passed successfully her “standards,” that Tim
+has just begun Latin with an ultimate view to become
+a priest “like his uncle Jack;” then the “mountain
+dew” is produced. It is a kind of home-made
+whisky, not unpalatable.</p>
+
+<p>At last mine host turns to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>“Supposing, my dear, you show your lace to the
+French gentleman, to let him see what you can do<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107"></a>[107]</span>
+when you are not bed-ridden. Perhaps he will like
+to bring back some little remembrance of Killarney
+to his ‘lady.’”</p>
+
+<p>I was caught.</p>
+
+<p>Everilda Matilda instantly produced a box containing
+cuffs and collars of Irish point, and all that
+remains to me to do, if I am not ready to forfeit my
+rights to the qualification of gentleman, is to buy a
+few guineas’ worth. Hardly is the matter over, than
+MacMahon turns to the future ecclesiastic—</p>
+
+<p>“And you, Tim, will you not show the gentleman
+those sticks you polish so well?”</p>
+
+<p>Caught again!</p>
+
+<p>If each member of the family has his own private
+trade, the <i>mountain-dew</i> threatens to be rather an
+expensive refreshment.</p>
+
+<p>“I am greatly obliged to you,” I said, “but I have
+got already a complete collection of <i>shillelaghs</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>MacMahon’s jaw fell visibly.</p>
+
+<p>“But we could perhaps make another arrangement,
+that would be more advantageous,” I continued
+quietly. “You know the country well, you tell me?”</p>
+
+<p>“As a man who has lived forty years in it and
+never left it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, let us have a pair of good hacks; you lead
+me for a couple of days across field and country, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108"></a>[108]</span>
+show me a dozen authentic cases of eviction, agrarian
+violence, or boycottism. If you will undertake this,
+and I am satisfied with you, upon our return I will
+take the whole lot of lace.”</p>
+
+<p>You should have seen the glowing faces of the
+whole family! The affair was soon settled, and the
+day after we started.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>[109]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.<br>
+<span class="smaller">THROUGH KERRY ON HORSEBACK.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It was not two days but six that we spent, my
+guide and I, visiting the County Kerry in all directions,
+examining the crops, asking about prices, entering
+cottages and small farms, chatting with anyone
+that we supposed capable of giving us information.
+The rather unexpected conclusion I arrived at was
+that the agrarian crisis is more especially felt in the
+richest districts, while it can hardly be said to exist in
+the poorest parts. Kerry is, in that particular, a true
+copy of Ireland on a small scale. It may, in fact, be
+divided into two perfectly distinct regions—the plains
+of the north and the mountains of the south-west.
+Those regions offer characteristics as marked in an
+economical as in a geographical point of view.</p>
+
+<p>Another conclusion drawn from my personal intercourse
+with the Irish peasant was that nothing is to
+be got out of him by bullying and everything by
+gentle means. If you arrive at an inn and proceed, as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110"></a>[110]</span>
+do the English everywhere, to assume a harsh and
+arrogant tone, you will experience the greatest difficulties
+in obtaining even meagre fare in return for
+your money. They will pretend they have nothing
+in the house, that they are not in the habit of receiving
+travellers, and such like stories. If, on the contrary,
+you at once proclaim yourself delighted with the
+country, its manners and its inhabitants; if you risk
+a compliment to the hostess or a gentle pinch to the
+children’s cheek, the whole house is yours. They will
+instantly wring the neck of the solitary chicken promenading
+in front of the house; they will exhibit
+clean table-linen; they will rush to the neighbour
+and borrow a salad or some fruit; they will even
+unearth from some dark corner a bottle of old port.
+If you give this impromptu supper only half the
+praise it deserves, you may count on a luxurious
+breakfast for the next morning. These poor people
+are thus made. Their heart is warm; their sensibilities
+are quick. The least thing discourages them;
+the least thing electrifies them. In contradiction to the
+Anglo-Saxon serf, who despises his master if he treat
+him with gentleness, Paddy prefers a gracious word
+to all the guineas in the kingdom. The philosophical
+reason for the failure of the British in Ireland (and
+elsewhere) is perhaps chiefly to be found in their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111"></a>[111]</span>
+general want of human sympathy. The Englishman
+speaks too often like a slave-driver when he should
+speak like an elder brother.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">The Plain.</span></p>
+
+<p>The plains of North Kerry must be classed among
+the best land in the isle. This is not saying that they
+are first-class. But they evidently only need some
+outlay in drainage and manure and a few modern
+improvements in culture to rival our Normandy
+pastures. It is above all a land of grazing fields
+and butter; the grass in the meadows is green and
+luxuriant; the cows look strong and well. It is
+evident that the least effort would be sufficient to
+make agricultural enterprise a thriving business. But
+carelessness and want of thrift are plainly shown on
+all sides. Everywhere dung hills, placed just in front
+of the cottage doors, pour into the ditch the clearest
+of their virtue. The gardens are ill-kept, the fields
+transformed into bog for want of a drain seventy
+feet long. One sees oats so invaded by thistles that it
+must be a sheer impossibility to get the grain out.
+In other fields oats rot standing, because no one
+takes care to cut them in time. Nowhere is any sign<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a>[112]</span>
+shown of vigorous enterprise or activity. Not only
+do routine and sloth reign all over the country, but
+one might be tempted to believe in a general conspiracy
+for wasting the gratuitous gifts of Mother
+Nature without any profit to anybody.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the country looks relatively rich. The peasantry
+have good clothes, they despise potatoes, eat bread
+and meat, drink beer or tea, send their children to
+school, and appear peculiarly wide awake to their
+own interests. Are they really, as they declare,
+unable to pay their rents? That is possible, for the
+principal products of the country—corn, oats, barley,
+butter, beef, and mutton, wool and potatoes—have
+undergone for the last three years a considerable
+depreciation, estimated at from 15 to 35 per cent.
+But this depreciation is evidently not felt by a diminution
+of comfort for the rural populations, here at least.
+The contrary might even be admitted. In any case
+there is evidently no question of a crisis of famine
+such as has so often been seen in this island for the
+last fifty years. The malady is something else. It
+is the malady of a people to whom it has been
+repeated for half a century that the land they live
+on has been stolen from them by strangers; a people
+who rightly or wrongly believe this to be the case; a
+people who have entered, under the direction of a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113"></a>[113]</span>
+central committee of politicians, on a regular struggle
+with the landlords; who profit by all economical
+incidents, especially the fall of prices, if not openly to
+denounce the treaty, at least to refuse to execute its
+articles.</p>
+
+<p>A few facts noted in passing will explain the situation
+better than all discourses.</p>
+
+<p>A large dairy farm, the finest I have yet seen in
+the country. The buildings are new, the fields covered
+with thick dark grass. I number sixty-five cows.
+All the dairy appointments are handsome and well-kept.
+The farmer looks prosperous. Clearly he lives
+at ease, judging by the furniture of the house, the
+quality of his clothes, by the very liberality with
+which he receives us, and by the brandy which he
+offers us (he is a friend of my guide). His rent is
+£100 a year. He does not mean to pay his next
+term. (<i>I don’t think I will pay this gale.</i>) His landlord
+offers to him the sale of his land for a sum of
+eighteen years’ rent, according to the official plan.
+If he followed that system all he would have to do
+would be to pay annually during forty-nine years the
+sum of £78, less by nearly a third than the present
+farm rent; he would then become a proprietor. He
+refuses. Why?</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed?” he says, with a wink, “engage myself<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a>[114]</span>
+for forty-nine years!... <i>Why! I shall have the land
+for nothing in two or three years!</i>...”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Another well-to-do farmer driving in a dog-cart
+with his two daughters. The trap is new, the harness
+smart, the horse strong and well groomed. The
+damsels wear Dublin hats and white woollen dresses
+not unfashionable in cut.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s what enrages the landlords,” my guide
+says to me; “it is to see tenants come in this style
+to the Tralee races, cheerfully lose twenty guineas
+upon a horse, then, when the time for paying the rent
+arrives, coolly ask for a 40 per cent. reduction on their
+half-year’s rent....”</p>
+
+<p>“... And in fact it must be enough to make a
+saint swear!...” he adds philosophically. “But after
+all, the landlords might be content with the 60 per
+cent. they get ... I am sure they get it cheap
+enough ... they may think themselves lucky to
+have even that much, as the interest of confiscated
+land!...”</p>
+
+<p>That notion of the land being held by its actual
+detentors through confiscation, may be unfounded in
+some cases, or even in the majority of cases, but
+none the less one finds it at the bottom of all Irish<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115"></a>[115]</span>
+syllogisms. And in such cases the real value of
+the premiss is of little importance; what matters
+only is the conclusion drawn from it.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>A few middling and small farmers.</p>
+
+<p><i>Maurice Macnamara</i>, Shinnagh: rent, £48 a year;
+seventeen cows, eight pigs, two horses and one donkey;
+grass fields, oats, and potatoes; four children, of which
+one is over twenty years of age. Was able to pay his
+rent, but was forbidden to do so by the other tenants
+on the estate, and was in consequence seized by order
+of the landlord. His neighbours offered to help him
+to resist the execution. He begged to be left alone,
+and the moment of the sale having come, he personally
+bought all his cattle up to the sum due. Nett result
+of the operation: £11 to pay, over and above the six
+months’ rent. Personal opinion of Maurice Macnamara:
+it is better to pay £11 than to get a bullet
+through your head.</p>
+
+<p><i>John McCarthy</i>, Gwingullier: £16 annual rent,
+due in May and November; two cows, one horse;
+oats and potatoes; nine children, the eldest
+seventeen. Has paid nothing to his landlord since
+1883; owes actually £48 to him, and as much to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a>[116]</span>
+divers tradespeople or usurers. Does not know how
+he shall get out of it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Patrick Murphy</i>, Colyherbeer, barony Trughanarkny;
+was evicted in November from his holding
+of £28; owed eighteen months’ rent. Received
+from his Landlord the offer of being reinstated in the
+farm on payment of half the sum due, on condition
+that he would let his crops be sold. Declined the
+offer, and is perfectly satisfied to receive from the
+League relief to the amount of £2 a-week. Never
+saw himself so well off before.</p>
+
+<p><i>Margaret Callaghan</i>, a widow, close by the town
+of Kenmare: £8 16<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i> rent; one pig, six hens;
+three small children; four acres of potatoes, three
+acres waste. Has paid nothing for the last four
+years. Owes about £20 to various tradespeople.
+Is not harshly pressed by her landlord, and can
+practically be considered as owning her bit of
+ground. Will die of hunger, with her children, the
+first year the harvest is bad.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Molahiffe, on the road to Tralee.</p>
+
+<p>“This is Mr. Curtin’s house.”</p>
+
+<p>“And who may Mr. Curtin be?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117"></a>[117]</span></p>
+
+<p>“What! have you never heard of that affair?...
+He was killed last year by the Moonlighters.”</p>
+
+<p>“Killed?... Was he then a party man, a fierce
+Orangeman?”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Curtin?... Not a bit in the world. He
+was one of the most peaceable, the most Irish at
+heart, the most esteemed man in this part of the
+country. His misfortune was to own two rifles.
+The Moonlighters wanted those weapons. One
+night they came and demanded them. The ladies
+of the family were ready to give them up, when
+Mr. Curtin arrived and looked as if he were going
+to resist. At once a gun exploded in the passage,
+and he fell stone dead.... That was a warning to
+everybody. Since that time no one disobeys the
+moonlighters. But all the same it is unfortunate
+that the victim should have been Mr. Curtin.”</p>
+
+<p>These <i>Moonlighters</i> are the direct descendants of the
+Whiteboys of olden times. They band together and
+gather at night for the purpose of invading a farm,
+a solitary house. They are always masked, but
+sometimes in a very elementary fashion, by pulling
+down their hat or cap over the face and making two
+holes through it for the eyes. Normally they ought
+to search only for arms and to take only arms. But
+everything degenerates, and the use of force often leads<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118"></a>[118]</span>
+to the abuse of it. The Moonlighters not unfrequently
+demand a supper, a sum of money, not to speak of
+the company of some farm-wench to whom they may
+take a fancy. This impartial offering of violence to
+house and inmates might lead them far, were they
+not certain of the discretion of the victims. But the
+terror they inspire secures impunity to them.</p>
+
+<p>Though everybody in a district knows perfectly well
+who the intruders are, and though they have often
+been recognized in spite of the mask, no one dares to
+reveal their name. They are all too well aware that
+in case of denunciation a nocturnal bullet will come
+unerringly to the offender. Besides, a sort of poetical
+halo and a political mantle of immunity surrounds
+men who may sometimes, indeed, carry their zeal a
+little too far, but are after all soldiers in the good
+cause. The “legitimate” industry of the Moonlighters
+allows their excesses to be forgotten. A sort
+of general complicity covers and favours their expeditions.</p>
+
+<p>That complicity goes sometimes to great lengths—for
+instance the length of non-admitting the intervention
+of the police in a house where the Moonlighters
+are performing. The constables perambulating the
+country hear screams, desperate appeals for help
+in a farmhouse. They rush to it headlong and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>[119]</span>
+knock at the door. At once silence reigns. They
+are asked from the inside of the house what they
+want.</p>
+
+<p>“We heard screams. Do you not want protection?”</p>
+
+<p>“What business is that of yours?” is the answer.
+“Go on your way, and do not come interfering and
+preventing honest folks enjoying the possession of
+their house undisturbed!...”</p>
+
+<p>The unlucky constables can only beat a retreat and
+go their round, often to meet shortly with the Moonlighters,
+who will laugh at them, having comfortably
+finished their business.</p>
+
+<p>Before the judges the same thing occurs. Not a
+witness will give evidence. And if by chance a witness
+does speak, the jury take care to correct this
+grave breach of etiquette in their verdict.</p>
+
+<p>The witness, as well as the juryman, has often received
+a warning. Working alone in the fields, or
+following a lonely path, he has suddenly seen a little
+puff of white smoke going up from the bushes some
+feet in front of him, and he has heard a bullet
+whizzing over his head. It was a Moonlighter telling
+him:—</p>
+
+<p>“Be silent, or thou art a dead man.”</p>
+
+<p>Castleisland. A small town of little interest,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120"></a>[120]</span>
+after the pattern of most Irish boroughs. We stop
+for lunch at a tavern of rather good appearance, and
+clearly very popular with the natives. The innkeeper
+smokes a cigar with us. Is he satisfied with the state
+of affairs? Yes and no. Certainly he cannot complain—trade
+in liquor is rather brisk. But there are
+too many places where one can buy drink in the
+town—no less than fifty-one.</p>
+
+<p>“And do they all prosper?”</p>
+
+<p>“Nearly all.”</p>
+
+<p>“What may their average receipts be?”</p>
+
+<p>“I should say about £400 a year.”</p>
+
+<p>£400 multiplied by fifty-one gives £20,400, more
+than 510,000 francs. And there is not in this place
+any other industry than agriculture, while statistics
+I have this moment in my pocket inform me that
+the aggregate rental of Castleisland is not above
+£14,000. It is then evident that, times good, times
+bad, they drink every year here £6,000 worth more in
+beer and spirits than they would pay in rent to the
+landlords, if they chose to pay. This seems to be
+conclusive, as far as Castleisland is concerned. But is
+there really any reason why the tenants of this district
+should turn total abstainers for the special purpose of
+paying the claret and champagne bills of half-a-dozen
+absentees? Here is the whole problem in a nutshell.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121"></a>[121]</span></p>
+
+<p>Tralee. The big town of the county, what we
+should call in France the <i>chef-lieu</i>, the seat of the
+assizes. They are opened precisely at this moment.
+There are on the rolls three men charged with agrarian
+murder. I proposed to go and be present at the
+trials, when I heard that the three cases were to be
+remanded to the next session, the representative of
+the Crown having come to the conclusion that the
+jury would systematically acquit the prisoners, as is
+so often the case in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>The Chairman of the Assizes, Mr. Justice O’Brien,
+seized this occasion to declare, that in the course of
+an already long career he had never met with a jury
+having so little regard for their duty. “It must be
+known widely,” he added, “the law becomes powerless
+when the course of justice is systematically impeded
+by the very jurymen, as we see it in this country; in
+which case there is no longer any security for persons
+or property.”</p>
+
+<p>To which the people in Kerry answer that they do
+not care a bit for English law; what they want is
+good Irish laws, made in Dublin by an Irish Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>“It is quite true that we have no security here for
+persons or property,” a doctor of the town said to me
+in the evening. “The outrages were at first exclusively<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a>[122]</span>
+directed against the landlords, rightly or wrongly
+accused of injustice and harshness in their dealings
+with their tenants; but for the last two or three
+years the field of nocturnal aggression has enlarged
+greatly—a shot now serves to settle any personal
+quarrel and even trade accounts. In the beginning
+the jury at least made a distinction between the
+different motives that actuated the accused. Now
+they always acquit them, <i>because they no longer dare
+to find them guilty</i>.... What will you have?...
+Jurymen are but men. They prefer sending a ruffian
+at large to paying with their life a too subtle distinction
+between crimes of an agrarian character and
+those of another sort. A lump of lead is the most
+irresistible of arguments. One may assert that
+presently law has lost all influence in Kerry. It
+is rapine that reigns, hardly tempered by the decrees
+of the National League, which of course means only
+legitimate resistance to the landlords, and by the
+fund of righteousness possessed at heart by the
+nation. But let things go on thus only for two
+years more, we shall have gone back to the savage
+state.”</p>
+
+<p>“Some people tell me, however, that raiding for
+money is never seen in this part of Ireland.”</p>
+
+<p>“Raiding for money never seen! I would rather<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123"></a>[123]</span>
+say it is the latest development of moonlighting.
+Any one who covets a piece of his neighbour’s land,
+who wishes to influence his vote for a board of
+guardians, who is animated by any motive of vulgar
+greed or spite, has only to set the Moonlighters in
+motion. The machinery is at hand.”</p>
+
+<p>“Could you really give me a few recent instances
+of moonlighting for money?”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course I could. There is one Daniel Moynihan,
+at Freemount, near Rathmore: in October,
+1886, a party of six men with blackened faces
+entered his house at night, and breaking open a
+box, carried away all his money. In January, 1887,
+at Ballinillane, three men armed with guns entered
+Daniel Lyne’s house and asked for money, threatening
+to shoot him if he refused; they took away £6.
+At Faha, in March, 1887, a party of six armed men
+visited the house of Mr. E. Morrogh Bernard; they
+demanded money, and got what was in the house.”<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>“You don’t say the League has anything to do
+with such obvious cases of non-political moonlighting,
+do you? It is a well-known fact that the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124"></a>[124]</span>
+organization discountenances moonlighting as well as
+all other violent practices.”</p>
+
+<p>“It does in a manner, but at the same time, by
+forming in each district a kind of police of the League,
+an executive body ready for action, it singles out to
+malignant persons men who may be ready for a
+private job.”</p>
+
+<p>There is obviously considerable exaggeration, or,
+rather, distortion of facts, in the above statement, as
+in everything relating to the League on one side or
+the other. The truth is probably that ruffians, when
+they want a job in the house-breaking line, ask for
+nobody’s permission, but are only too glad to take
+moonlighting as a pretence; and thus, common
+breaches of the law which in ordinary times would go
+by their proper name, are now ascribed to Moonlighters.
+The bulk of the population, which is thoroughly
+honest, has only words of contempt and hatred for
+what, in justice, should rather be called a deviation
+than a development of moonlighting.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Nine o’clock at night. In a hollow on the road to
+Milltown, a man tries to hide himself behind some
+shrubs; but perceiving that we do not belong to the
+neighbourhood he shows himself. He is a constable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>[125]</span>
+clad in uniform, the black helmet on his head, a
+loaded gun on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>“Why do you seek to avoid attention?”</p>
+
+<p>“Because we are watching that farm-house there on
+the height, my comrades and I; we have received information
+to the effect that some men propose to
+attack it one of these nights; now, we must try not to
+be seen by the people on the farm, for they would
+hasten to tell their assailants.”</p>
+
+<p>“What! these people would denounce you to those
+who come to rob them?”</p>
+
+<p>“Just so. We have to protect them against their
+will. Oh! it is indeed a nice trade to be a constable
+in Ireland!” &amp;c. &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>Then follow professional complaints that throw a
+curious light on the relations between police and
+population. The unhappy constables are <i>boycotted</i>
+personally and as a body. Nobody speaks to them.
+It is next to impossible for them to procure the first
+necessaries of life. Government has to distribute
+rations to them as to soldiers on a campaign. If they
+want a conveyance, a cart to transport a detachment
+of the public force where their presence is wanted,
+nobody—even among the principal interested—will
+give means of transport either for gold or silver. The
+Government have had to give the constabulary special<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126"></a>[126]</span>
+traps that are constantly to be met on the roads, and
+that one recognizes by their blood-red colour.</p>
+
+<p>That police corps, <i>the Irish Constabulary Force</i>, is
+very numerous, and entails great expense—more than
+one million and a half sterling per year. The cost
+would hardly be half a million if the Irish police were
+on the same footing as the English force; that fact
+alone can give an adequate idea of the real state of
+things. Besides, numerous auxiliaries, called <i>Emergency
+men</i>, are always ready to give their help to the
+regular corps.</p>
+
+<p>Be they soldiers or policemen, Great Britain keeps
+nearly 50,000 armed men in Ireland. The male adult
+and able population of the island being under
+500,000 men, of whom 200,000 at least are opposed
+to the agrarian and autonomist movement, one
+can assume that there is on an average one
+armed soldier or constable for every six unarmed
+Irishmen.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>On the dusty road before us are slowly walking
+five cows in rather an emaciated condition. Those
+beasts strike me by an odd appearance which I am
+unable to make out at first. When I am close
+to them I see what it is: <i>they have no tails</i>. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127"></a>[127]</span>
+absence of that ornament gives the poor animals the
+awkwardest and most absurd look.</p>
+
+<p>I turn to my guide, who is laughing in his sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>“Look at their master!” he whispers in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>“Well?”</p>
+
+<p>“The cows have no tails, and the man has no
+ears....”</p>
+
+<p>It is true. The unlucky wretch vainly endeavoured
+to hide his head, as round as a cheese, under the brim
+of his battered old hat; he did not succeed in
+hiding his deformity.</p>
+
+<p>“By Jove! who arranged you in this guise, you
+and your cows?” I said to the poor devil, stopping
+before him.</p>
+
+<p>He made a few grimaces before explaining; but
+the offer of a cigar, that rarely misses its effect, at
+last unloosed his tongue. He then told me that the
+Moonlighters had come with a razor to cut his ears, a
+week after having cut the tails of his cows as a
+warning.</p>
+
+<p>“And what could have been the motive of such
+cowardly, barbarous mutilation?”</p>
+
+<p>He had accepted work on a <i>boycotted</i> farm, though
+the League had expressly forbidden it; in other
+words, he was what the Irish call a “land-grabber.”</p>
+
+<p>“Where are you going with your cows?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128"></a>[128]</span></p>
+
+<p>“To sell them at Listowel, if I may, which is not
+certain.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why is it not certain? Because they are unprovided
+with a tail? At the worst that would only
+prevent them being made into ox-tail soup,” I say,
+trying to enliven the conversation by an appropriate
+joke.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s not it,” answers the man. “But the interdict
+applies to the sale of the cows as well as to
+having any intercourse with me. I am forbidden to
+buy anything, and anyone speaking to me is fined
+two shillings.”</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to think this perfectly natural and even
+just, like the Leper of the “Cité d’Aoste,” or like
+common convicts when one talks to them of their
+punishment.</p>
+
+<p>“I gambled and I lost—so much the worse for
+me!...” all his resigned attitude seemed to say.</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps they don’t know it yet in Listowel!” he
+resumed with a sigh, and hopefully pushed on with
+his cows.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>“Have there been many cases of such agrarian
+mutilation in the country?” I ask MacMahon.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” said my guide. “Perhaps half a dozen or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129"></a>[129]</span>
+so within the year.<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> They used to be much more
+numerous, but somehow they seem to go out of
+fashion under the sway of the League. But there are
+still other ways of annoying the enemy; fires are very
+frequent, so are blows, personal injuries, and even
+murder, threatening letters, and, above all, verbal
+intimidation.”</p>
+
+<p>Such proceedings, I understand, are altogether disowned
+by the chiefs of the League, who only patronise
+<i>boycotting</i>. Let a farmer, small or great, decline to
+enter the organisation, or check it by paying his rent
+to the landlord without the reduction agreed to by
+the tenantry, or take the succession of an evicted
+tenant on his holding, or commit any other serious
+offence against the law of land war, he is at once
+boycotted. That is to say, he will no longer be able
+to sell his goods, to buy the necessaries of life, to
+have his horses shod, his corn milled, or even to
+exchange one word with a living soul, within a circuit
+of fifteen to twenty miles round his house. His<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130"></a>[130]</span>
+servants are tampered with and induced to leave him,
+his tradespeople are made to shut their door in his
+face, his neighbours compelled to cut him. It is a
+kind of excommunication, social, political and commercial;
+an interdict sometimes aggravated with
+direct vexations. People come and play football on
+his oat fields, his potatoes are rooted out, his fish or
+cattle poisoned, his game destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>“But supposing that instead of bearing meekly
+such indignities, he shows a bold front, shoulders his
+gun and keeps watch?”</p>
+
+<p>“Then his business is settled. Some day or other,
+he will receive a bullet in his arm, if not in his head.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It will not perhaps be unnecessary to explain here
+the origin of that word <i>boycott</i>, so frequently used
+during the late few years. Everybody knows that on
+the British side of the Channel, but the French reader
+is not bound to remember it so exactly.</p>
+
+<p>In September, 1881, at a mass meeting held in
+Clare County, Mr. Parnell almost without being aware
+of the importance of his words, advised his friends, to
+exclude from the pale of social life whoever should
+eject a tenant for reason of an unpaid rent, or take
+the succession of the evicted farmer.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131"></a>[131]</span></p>
+
+<p>The first application of that new penalty fell upon
+a certain Captain Boycott, a retired officer, who had
+applied himself to agriculture. Having had occasion
+to evict an obdurate defaulter, he saw himself within
+a few days forsaken by his servants, tabooed by his
+neighbours, reduced to dig out his own potatoes, and
+generally to become his own valet.</p>
+
+<p>The affair produced great sensation. The whole
+press talked about it. Legions of reporters flocked
+to the spot to follow the phases of the war waged
+between Captain Boycott and his opponents. Upon
+a memorable occasion a regular army of Orangemen,
+7000 strong, they say, came over from Ulster to
+give a lift to him and help him to get in the harvest
+which threatened to rot standing. But the place became
+too hot for Captain Boycott. He was obliged to
+give way at last and leave his place in Connaught.
+(By the way, he ultimately returned there, and is now
+quite popular.)</p>
+
+<p>In the meanwhile his name, used as a proverb, or
+rather as a <i>verb</i>, has come to describe a way of intimidation,
+which at the hands of the League is a
+redoubtable weapon, more powerful than a hundred
+batteries of 100-ton guns.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132"></a>[132]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>“Could you show me anybody who is actually
+under boycott?”</p>
+
+<p>“Could I? That will not be difficult. There!
+Mr. Kennedy, beyond that clump of trees. He has
+been boycotted eighteen months.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you think I might call on him?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly. But I shall ask leave to wait for
+you outside the gate, sir, on account of the League of
+course.——You may laugh at its verdict, not I.”</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes later, I was at Mr. Kennedy’s gate.
+A little country house rather decayed, in the
+middle of grounds which no gardener has seen for at
+least two years. Nobody in sight. I try the bell-rope.
+It remains in my hand. I am then reduced
+to an energetic tattoo on the plate which shuts the
+lower part of the gate.</p>
+
+<p>Attracted by the unusual noise, a tall white-haired
+man makes his appearance at an upper window.
+Surprised at first, and even somewhat alarmed, he
+listens to my request, is reassured, and even comes to
+unbar the door. As I had hoped, he is not sorry to
+unloose his tongue a little, and with the best grace
+possible tells me the whole affair.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I am boycotted for having, single among all
+his tenants, paid to my landlord the entire rent of
+those meadows you see yonder. How do I take my<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133"></a>[133]</span>
+situation? Well, as a philosopher. At the beginning,
+I thought it inconvenient to be deprived of new
+bread, to do without meat, and worse still, to be left
+without servants. But I have learnt by degrees to
+accommodate myself to my new condition. I have
+made provisions for a siege. I have found a few
+servants, strangers to the district, and made my
+arrangements to send my butter to Cork by rail. On
+the whole, there is not much to complain of. I
+should, of course, prefer things to follow their usual
+course. It is tedious at times to find oneself out of
+the pale of humanity. But you end by discovering
+that solitude has its advantages. You develop
+accomplishments up to that time latent in you. For
+instance, I shoe my horses myself; I have learnt
+to set a window pane, to sweep a chimney. My
+daughters have improved in cooking. We eat a great
+many chickens; now and then we kill a sheep; when
+we want butcher-meat, we must send rather far for
+it. The same for beer, wine, and many other commodities.
+It <i>is</i> inconvenient—no more.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>At Listowel; a market day. Great animation on
+the market-place; tongues are busy; whisky seems
+to be flowing freely at every tap-room and tavern.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134"></a>[134]</span>
+But not much business is done, as far as I can judge.
+My guide calls my attention to two interesting
+phenomena that I should not, perhaps, have noticed
+otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>The first is a man in breeches, with bare calves, a
+<i>shillelagh</i> under his arm, who seems to be a farmer in
+a small way. He approaches a wheel-barrow filled
+with big hob-nailed shoes, which a woman is dragging,
+and falls to examining them, evidently intent on
+buying a pair. Almost at the same moment, a boy
+of fifteen or sixteen comes to the other side of the
+woman and whispers something in her ear. She
+nods. At once the customer, turning very red in
+the face, lets go the pair of shoes and turns away.
+MacMahon says the man is a newly boycotted man
+and the boy an agent of the League, whose function
+consists in reporting the interdict to those who have
+not heard of it as yet.</p>
+
+<p>The other phenomenon is more remarkable. It is
+a stout gentleman in a shooting-jacket, carrying
+a double-barrelled gun of the latest model, and
+followed by a constable who also carries his regulation
+gun. The stout gentleman stops before a door
+where a smart <i>outside car</i> with a servant in livery
+is waiting for him. He takes his seat; the constable
+jumps on after him. Is the stout gentleman under a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135"></a>[135]</span>
+writ of <i>habeas corpus</i>, I wonder, and is he going to be
+taken into the county jail? Not a bit of it. He is
+simply a landowner under threat of death, who has
+thought fit to indulge in a body-guard. He and the
+constable are henceforth inseparable.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>A large tract of uncultivated land. It was farmed
+at £60 a year. The farmer was a sporting man, fond
+of races and the like. To simplify his work he had
+the whole property converted into pasture. But his
+expensive mode of living obliged him now and then
+to sell a few head of cattle. The hour came when
+he had not one calf left, and he found himself utterly
+incapable of paying his rent. He was evicted.
+Sure not to find another tenant, on account of the
+law laid down by the League that every evicted farm
+should be left unoccupied, the landlord had recourse
+to the only sort of <i>métayage</i> known in Ireland.
+(<i>Métayage</i>, it should be explained, is the kind of
+farming used in most French provinces, where the
+owner of the land enters into yearly partnership with
+his tenant, and advances the necessary capital in
+the shape of manure, seed, beasts of burden, and
+machinery, on the understanding that the crops be
+shared equally between himself and the tenant.)<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136"></a>[136]</span>
+To return to my Kerry landlord: he set up on his
+meadows a caretaker, with a salary of twenty-five
+shillings a week and forty cows to keep. At the end of
+the first month the tails of ten cows had been chopped
+off, while two of them had died from suspicious inflammation
+of the bowels. It became necessary to put
+the cows, and the caretaker as well, under the protection
+of a detachment of police. Cost: two pounds a
+week for each constable. Nett loss at the end of the
+half-year: £60. The landlord wisely judged that it
+would be much better to send his cows to the
+slaughter-house, to pay off caretaker and police, and
+to forget that he ever was a landowner.</p>
+
+<p>In the same district, another farm gone waste.
+The tenant did not pay. He was evicted, but had
+another holding close by, where he encamped, and
+from that vantage-ground sent the following ultimatum
+to his <i>ci-devant</i> landlord:—“The hay I have
+left on my late farm is worth £30. I demand fifteen
+for allowing you to mow and sell it; you shall
+not see a shilling of it on any other terms.” Fury
+of the landlord. Then he cools down, thinks
+better of it, offers ten pounds. The evicted tenant
+declines the offer; a whole army would not
+have brought him round. Meanwhile, the hay got
+rotten.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137"></a>[137]</span></p>
+
+<p>By the road-side near Castlemaine, is a row of
+barracks, where men, women, and children are
+huddled together. Those are <i>League-huts</i>, that is to
+say, a temporary shelter which the League offers to
+ejected tenants, for having, upon its command, declined
+to pay their rent. The cabins from which the poor
+wretches have been turned out, although they had,
+as a rule, built them themselves, are within shooting
+distance, on the right hand. They bear evident traces
+of having been fired by the sheriff’s officers in order to
+make them uninhabitable, and they present the desolate
+aspect of homesteads adjoining a field of battle. Walls
+broken by the crowbar, doors ajar, rubbish and ruins
+everywhere. Is it politic on the part of the landlords
+to add the horrors of fire to those of eviction?
+Hardly so, the outsider will think. It adds nothing
+to the majesty of the law to wage war with inanimate
+things. The exercise of a right ought never to
+assume the appearance of an act of revenge.
+Wrongly or rightly, eviction by itself always bears an
+odious character; but to see the house you have built
+with your own hands burnt to the ground will ever
+seem to cry for vengeance to Heaven. And, after all,
+who is the gainer by such violence? The League.
+It takes care to retain the victims of eviction within
+sight of the scene of their woes, feeds them, harbours<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138"></a>[138]</span>
+them, exhibits them as in an open museum, by the
+side of their destroyed homes. And it is a permanent,
+practical lesson for the passer-by, a realistic drama
+where the landlord appears torch in hand, while the
+League dries the tears of the afflicted and allows
+them £2 a week. That is the usual pay for one
+family.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139"></a>[139]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.<br>
+<span class="smaller">A KERRY FARMER’S BUDGET.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>“I wonder how landlords can manage to live, under
+such conditions,” I said to my guide. “Are there any
+tenants left paying their rent?”</p>
+
+<p>“There are many. First, those who have been able
+to come to an agreement with their landlord about
+the reduction of 20, 25, 30 per cent. that they claimed;
+in such cases the landlord’s income is reduced, but at
+least he still retains a part of it. Then, there is
+the tenant’s live stock; he cannot prevent its being
+seized for rent, in case of execution, and consequently
+chooses to pay, if possible, or he would have to sell
+his cattle to avoid distress, which means ruin to the
+family. Lastly, there are the tenants who pay
+secretly, although pretending to adhere to the rules of
+the League—<i>backsliders</i> they are called—a class more
+numerous than could be supposed at first sight.”</p>
+
+<p>Here MacMahon laughed. He went on:</p>
+
+<p>“I will tell you, Sir, a story I have heard lately, of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140"></a>[140]</span>
+a man in county Cork, who wanted to pay his landlord
+but dared not, on account of the other tenants
+on the estate. Coming across the landlord on a lone
+road (not improbably after many an unfruitful attempt
+for such a propitious opportunity) he stood before
+him in a threatening attitude. ‘Put your hand in my
+coat’s inside pocket!’ he said gruffly. The landlord
+did not understand at first what the man meant, and
+considering his look and address, was far from feeling
+reassured. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked uneasily.
+‘I tell you, sir, put your hand in my coat’s inside
+pocket, and feel for what you find in it.’ At last the
+landlord did as he was bidden. He put his hand in
+the man’s pocket, and extracted from it a bundle of
+papers, carefully tied up, that looked like banknotes.
+At once the tenant took to his heels. ‘The devil a
+penny of rent you can ever say I paid you,’ said he, in
+the same strange threatening tone of voice, as he ran
+away. Still, the banknotes in the landlord’s hand
+were exactly to the amount of the rent due. As a
+rule, when the tenant is really able to pay his rent, he
+pays it.”</p>
+
+<p>Such has not been the general case, it seems, for
+the last three years. <i>In produce</i>, perhaps the Irish
+farmer might have paid his rent, as the crops have
+been, on the whole, fairly up to the average. In<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141"></a>[141]</span>
+<i>money</i>, he cannot, because the fall of prices on hay,
+potatoes, beef, mutton, pork, and butter alike, in 1885,
+1886, 1887, has been at least 20 per cent. on the
+former and average prices, which not only means no
+margin whatever of profit to the farmer, besides his
+necessary expenses, but in most cases the sheer impossibility
+of providing for the forthcoming outlay in
+seeds, manure, and labour.</p>
+
+<p>This may not be self-evident. Many a reader probably
+fails to see why a fall of 20 per cent. on the
+prices of agricultural produce must necessarily entail
+a total disability to pay the rent. “I can well understand
+the demand of a proportional reduction of rent
+in such cases,” he will say, “but not absolute non-payment.”
+To fully realise the situation, one must
+go into the details of a farmer’s life.</p>
+
+<p>Let us take the case of Denis O’Leary, a Kerry
+man, with fourteen acres of good land. He seems to
+be in easy circumstances; his house is clean and
+pretty; he owns three cows, two sows, ten sheep,
+and about a score hens. Denis O’Leary is a good
+man, industrious and thrifty, who does all the work on
+his farm, with the help of wife and three children.
+He likes his pipe of tobacco, and on Sundays, a glass
+of beer over the counter with a friend or two,
+but otherwise indulges in no expensive habits. On<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142"></a>[142]</span>
+the whole he can be considered a pattern tenant, as well
+as one of the most fortunate of his class. His rent,
+which had been gradually raised by his landlord up to
+the sum of £11 6<i>s.</i>, was in 1883 put down at £8 7<i>s.</i>
+by the Land Commissioners.</p>
+
+<p>Such being the case, when we are told that the same
+Denis O’Leary, who was for five years able to pay the
+larger rent, is now unable to pay the smaller one, this
+may look absurd. Still, it is the simple truth. To
+ascertain the fact, it is only necessary to make the
+budget of the O’Leary family.</p>
+
+<p>The yearly expenditure, unavoidable and irreducible,
+is as follows:—</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Expenditure.</span></p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">£</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><i>s.</i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Taxes, rates, and county cess</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1</td>
+    <td class="tdr">15</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Turf (Royalty on)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1</td>
+    <td class="tdr">10</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Clothing and shoes</td>
+    <td class="tdr">6</td>
+    <td class="tdr">10</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Meat</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+    <td class="tdr">15</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Bread</td>
+    <td class="tdr">6</td>
+    <td class="tdr">18</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Beer and tobacco</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Oil, candles, sundries</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+    <td class="tdr">15</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Sugar and tea</td>
+    <td class="tdr">6</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>School fees</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+    <td class="tdr">7</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Church subscription</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+    <td class="tdr">10</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="in1">Total</td>
+    <td class="tdr total">31</td>
+    <td class="tdr total">10</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Most assuredly there is nothing excessive in such
+a budget of expenditure for a family of four. If even
+it is possible for Denis O’Leary not to go beyond its<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143"></a>[143]</span>
+narrow limits, it is because he consumes in kind a large
+proportion of the produce of his fourteen acres, namely,
+some hundred stones of potatoes, with a good deal of
+milk, eggs, and butter. This alimentary deduction
+duly made, he has still a certain quantity of agricultural
+produce (which shall be supposed here a constant
+quantity) to sell, as follows:—</p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">1800</td>
+    <td>lbs. Potatoes.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">2200</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Wheat.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">1750</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Oats.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">38</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Wool.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">116</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Butter.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">1000</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Straw.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">25</td>
+    <td>dozen Eggs.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td>Pigs.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+    <td>Calves.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td>Lambs.</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The above commodities have not, unfortunately, a
+constant value. They sell more or less, according to
+the fluctuations of prices on the market. In 1882,
+1883, 1884, prices were high. Denis O’Leary’s revenue
+was consequently as under:—</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Revenue (Three years ago).</span></p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">£</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><i>s.</i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Sold:</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1800</td>
+    <td>lbs. Potatoes</td>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td class="tdr">8</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">2200</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Wheat</td>
+    <td class="tdr">9</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">1750</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Oats</td>
+    <td class="tdr">6</td>
+    <td class="tdr">4</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">38</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Wool</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1</td>
+    <td class="tdr">15</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">116</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Butter</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5</td>
+    <td class="tdr">7</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144"></a>[144]</span>1000</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Straw;</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">25</td>
+    <td>dozen Eggs</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td>Pigs</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5</td>
+    <td class="tdr">10</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+    <td>Calves</td>
+    <td class="tdr">6</td>
+    <td class="tdr">15</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td>Lambs</td>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="in1">Total</td>
+    <td class="tdr total">43</td>
+    <td class="tdr total">11</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>When Denis O’Leary had deducted from his revenue
+of £43 11<i>s.</i> the yearly expenditure of £31 10<i>s.</i>, he
+had still £12 1<i>s.</i> left. He was able, accordingly, to
+pay £8 <i>7s.</i> rent (or even £11 6<i>s.</i> before the judicial
+reduction), and the rent duly paid, he was still the
+proud nett gainer of four shillings under the old
+<i>régime</i>, of £3 14<i>s.</i> under the new.</p>
+
+<p>Unhappily, prices fell down in 1885, 1886, and 1887,
+to the tune of 25 or 30 per cent. on nearly all agricultural
+produce, with the exception perhaps of oats
+and eggs, so that the revenue of the O’Leary family
+(all things otherwise equal) has come to be as
+under:—</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Revenue (at present).</span></p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">£</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><i>s.</i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Sold:</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1800</td>
+    <td>lbs. Potatoes</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+    <td class="tdr">8</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">2200</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Wheat</td>
+    <td class="tdr">7</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">1750</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Oats</td>
+    <td class="tdr">6</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">38</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Wool</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">116</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Butter</td>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td class="tdr">12</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">1000</td>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> Straw</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+    <td class="tdr">15</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">25</td>
+    <td>dozen Eggs</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td>Pigs</td>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td class="tdr">4</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+    <td>Calves</td>
+    <td class="tdr">4</td>
+    <td class="tdr">8</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td>Lambs</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2</td>
+    <td class="tdr">10</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="in1">Total</td>
+    <td class="tdr total">32</td>
+    <td class="tdr total">9</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145"></a>[145]</span></p>
+
+<p>Thus, the revenue and expenditure are nearly equal,
+with a slight balance of nineteen shillings, that could
+hardly be proffered for rent. Local usurers are not
+wanting, of course, who will advance to Denis O’Leary
+the necessary funds, at 10 or 15 per cent., if he wants
+to pay the landlord, all the same. But then his
+budget is no more in a state of equilibrium: deficit
+enters it, to widen every year up to the final catastrophe.
+In other words, Denis O’Leary cannot pay
+the rent, unless he draws on his capital. One may
+well understand that he should not relish the idea,
+considering especially that the landlord’s rack-rent
+has been reduced three years ago in the Land Court,
+and that the same landlord demurs to a fresh reduction,
+so obviously just and necessary that all landlords
+in England have granted it of their own free will
+these last three years.</p>
+
+<p>And Denis O’Leary is a wonder in his class: he is
+an industrious, hard-working, wise man, without a
+penny of previous debt. He has precisely the area of
+land adequate to his means, and the live-stock indispensable
+to manure the soil. He does not drink, he
+does not gamble, he is never ill, he has no old people
+to support, he has not experienced failures or mishaps
+of any kind, and his crops are fairly up to the
+average.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146"></a>[146]</span></p>
+
+<p>Let us come back, however, to the world as it is,
+and see Man with his foibles, his usual neglects, errors,
+and mishaps. Let us suppose that he has more land
+on his hands than he can well manage to till, or that
+his holding, on the contrary, is too small for his wants.
+Let us suppose that instead of selling three pigs and
+two calves, he was not able to rear them, or lost them
+from disease; that instead of bringing to market
+1,800 lbs. of potatoes he had to buy some hundred-weight
+of the same for domestic consumption—the man
+is lost, irretrievably lost. Not only will he never be
+able to pay the landlord one farthing, but it will be
+enough that the crops should be slightly under the
+average to make a hopeless beggar of him—a case of
+outdoor or indoor relief for the parish.</p>
+
+<p>Now, these are the circumstances of six or seven
+tenants out of ten in the lowlands of Kerry, where
+they seem to be comparatively well off. If we leave
+the plains for the higher districts bordering on the
+sea, the question is simpler still. There is no need of
+long accounts here. The hour of irretrievable misery
+has struck long ago, and habitual hunger stares us in
+the face.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147"></a>[147]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Up in the Mountains.</span></p>
+
+<p>The mountains of Kerry are the finest in the island.
+They form its south-western angle, throwing out on
+the Atlantic the peninsula of Dingle, between the bay
+of the same name and the Kenmare River. As you
+leave the plain following the Cahirciveen road
+towards the coast, you see them develop their
+parallel ranges, which are divided by deep valleys.
+Some of these valleys are fertile, being watered by
+impetuous streams from the mountain side. But the
+general impression one receives is that of agricultural
+poverty, as is the case in nearly all mountainous countries
+in the world. Pastures are thinner, cattle less
+numerous, homesteads fewer and more miserable than
+in the plain. Human creatures themselves partake
+of the general look of wretchedness that prevails.
+They live on potatoes, milk, and porridge; seldom eat
+bread, meat never; wine, beer, tea, coffee are to them
+unknown luxuries. Their ill-shaped cottages are
+made of soft stone, with a thatched roof maintained
+by ropes made of straw. There they all sleep on a bed
+of rushes, which they share with the pig, when there
+is such a thing, for even the traditional pig has become
+now a symptom of wealth in a manner. On the
+beams of the roof roost perhaps half-a-dozen hens
+and chickens.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148"></a>[148]</span></p>
+
+<p>Sloth and dirt hold here an undivided sway. Not
+a woman—and some are pretty—seems to mind the
+spots and holes in her garments; not one knows the
+use of soap or needle. They appear to have a rooted
+dislike for the comb; their hair falls on their back as
+is the fashion among the Australian aborigines, in
+nature’s simple disorder.</p>
+
+<p>Men look heavy and apathetic. They work as
+little as they can manage—one or two days out of
+seven, perhaps—and do not even think of seeking their
+sustenance from the sea, which is so close to them. The
+most they can do is to draw from it now and then a
+cart-load of seaweed to manure their miserable plot
+of ground. Their existence rolls on dull, idle, devoid
+of interest. It is the brute life in its most wretched
+and hideous state. Here is old Ireland as Gustave de
+Beaumont’s admirable book showed it to us fifty years
+ago. Hardly do those wretched products of Anglo-Saxon
+civilization receive a faint echo of the outer
+world when the electoral time comes.</p>
+
+<p>The consequence is that the agrarian crisis is reduced
+here to its simplest expression, <i>i.e.</i>, sheer impossibility
+to pay the rent because of total absence
+of the £ <i>s.</i> <i>d.</i> wherewith. Elsewhere that impossibility
+may be half assumed; it is certainly mixed in the
+plain with bad will, goaded in the peasant’s heart by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149"></a>[149]</span>
+that dogged desire to possess the land which is so
+natural in him. In the mountain it is not a political
+fiction that holds the sway: famine is the king; and
+it is the spontaneous product of the very nature of
+things.</p>
+
+<p>For the naturally infertile soil has reached here to
+such a degree of subdivision that it is no longer sufficient
+even to feed those it bears. The greater part of
+those wretched holdings of five or six acres are let at
+the nominal price of about £4, to which must be added
+the taxes, poor-rates, and county-cess, increasing it by
+a quarter or a third. Four, five, six, sometimes ten or
+twelve beings with human faces squat on that bit of
+worthless ground and till it in the most primitive
+manner. Money, tools, intelligence, pluck, all are wanting
+there. Viewing things in the most optimist light,
+supposing the year to have been an exceptionally
+good one, the potato crop to have been plentiful, the
+cow to have hunted out on the hill-side the necessary
+grass for the making of a little butter, all that will be
+sufficient perhaps to prevent starvation. But where
+will the money be found to pay Queen and landlord?</p>
+
+<p>Let a child or an old person eat ever so little in
+the year, his food cannot but represent a value. Let
+that value be £4. Can six acres of mountain ground<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150"></a>[150]</span>
+managed without skill or manure, render five, six, ten
+times £4 a year, and a rent in addition of five to six
+pounds? It is sheer impossibility.</p>
+
+<p>A few examples.</p>
+
+<p>James Garey, fifty years old, married, four children.
+Nominal rent £5 14<i>s.</i> Two cows, one pig, eight
+chickens. About six acres of land. Cultivates only
+part of it, about three acres, where he grows potatoes;
+the remainder is pasture. Sold this year thirty
+shillings’ worth of butter; ate his potatoes from first
+to last; has not paid a farthing to his landlord for
+the last four years. Owes £6 to the draper-grocer;
+would never be able to pay his taxes if two of his
+children, who are out in domestic situations, did not
+send him the necessary amount to prevent execution.</p>
+
+<p>Widow Bridget Molony, sixty years old; five
+children; seven acres of land. Nominal rent £6 12<i>s.</i>
+Four cows, an eighteen-month-old calf, two pigs,
+twenty chickens. Sold £3 10<i>s.</i> of butter this year,
+£2 oats, 15 shillings potatoes, and a pig for £3;
+just sent a calf to market, offering it for £1 15<i>s.</i>; did
+not find purchaser. Thinks herself relatively lucky,
+as she is owing only two years’ rent to her landlord.
+Two of her children have situations at Liverpool, and
+help her to pay the taxes.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Halloran, forty years. Three children,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151"></a>[151]</span>
+eight acres of land; rent £6 15<i>s.</i> Two cows, fifteen
+sheep, a pig, an ass, twelve chickens. Sold during the
+year ten shillingsworth of butter and ten sheep at
+twelve shillings a head. Has paid nothing to landlord
+since November, 1884.</p>
+
+<p>Michael Tuohy, seventy years old, three children,
+four grandchildren. Nine acres of land, £7 rent. A
+cow and five hens. Can no longer afford a pig. Sold
+only fifteen shillingsworth of butter this year, and had
+to get rid of two cows out of three to pay the ten per
+cent interest of a debt he has contracted with the
+National Bank. Owes four years’ rent to his landlord;
+hopes that his son, who has emigrated to the
+United States, will send him the money for the
+taxes; if the son doesn’t, he cannot see any way to
+save the last cow.</p>
+
+<p>Examples of that description could be multiplied
+<i>ad infinitum</i>; they are, so to say, the rule in the
+mountainous districts, where the holdings are for
+the most part beneath £10 rent, and totally unequal
+even to sustain the farmer.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Glenbeigh, between Kilarglin and Cahirciveen.
+This place was the theatre of several deplorable
+scenes in January last, on Mr. R. Winn’s property.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152"></a>[152]</span>
+That property, very extensive, but consisting of poor,
+not to say totally barren land, was put down at
+£2000 on the valuation roll. The aforesaid rent not
+having been paid during four or five years, the owner
+was of course in very strait circumstances; he had
+to go to some Jews, who substituted themselves in his
+place, and undertook to enforce payment. But the
+extreme poverty of the tenants proved even stronger
+than the energetic tribe. In consequence of the
+gradual subdivision of the land, they had come to
+hold diminutive scraps of it such as could not even
+grow the potatoes sufficient for their sustenance.
+After various judicial skirmishes, the plain result
+of which was to establish the utter incapacity of the
+peasants to give a penny, the council of creditors
+resolved in the depth of winter to undertake a wholesale
+campaign of evictions. Seventy-nine writs of
+ejectment were issued, and soon after the under-sheriff,
+backed by a strong detachment of mounted
+constables, arrived to evict the wretched families.</p>
+
+<p>The operations began at a certain Patrick Reardon’s,
+on a literally barren land, for which he was expected
+to pay £4 10<i>s.</i> a year. He was the father of eight
+children, but did not even possess a pig, not a pair of
+chickens. The furniture consisted of a bed, a rickety
+table and a kettle. Squatting on the ground with his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153"></a>[153]</span>
+whole family, according to the time-honoured custom,
+he waited for the executors of the law. Requested
+to pay, he answered that he possessed not one
+farthing; he was then informed that they were going
+to set fire to his cabin, in order to oblige him to
+evacuate the premises. The act soon followed the
+threat. A lighted match applied to the thatched roof,
+and in a few minutes the whole was in conflagration.
+All the neighbouring populations, who had run on to
+the scene of the tragedy, saluted the dreadful deed
+with hooting and execration.</p>
+
+<p>The myrmidons of the law pursued nevertheless
+the execution of their mandate. They went next to
+the dwelling of another tenant, Thomas Burke,
+inscribed on the list of debtors for a sum of £20. He
+had five children, and, like the above-mentioned, not
+one farthing to offer to the creditors. Order was
+given to set fire to his roof, but it was found to be so
+damp that fire would not take; so they had to attack
+the walls with the crowbar and pick-axe. The
+miserable inmates appeared then to the eyes of the
+indignant crowd, half naked, wan, emaciated, and
+starved; and so heartrending was the scene that with
+difficulty the representative of the League (who had
+come there for that very purpose) prevented the mob
+from stoning the bailiffs to death.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154"></a>[154]</span></p>
+
+<p>Then came the turn of the third cottage. Two old
+men lived in it, Patrick and Thomas Diggin. The
+family of the former included ten persons; that of
+the latter, six. They owed a rent of £8, and had not
+a shilling between them all. Patrick’s wife, however,
+came forward, and declared she had just received £2
+from her daughter, who was a servant in Belfast.
+Would they accept that, and stop the execution?
+The under-sheriff, whom the duties of his office oblige
+to back the bailiffs, urged them to accept the touching
+offer. They refused, and set fire to the roof. Then
+Patrick Diggin, an eighty-year-old man, was seen
+coming out of his home sobbing; he was followed by
+all his children and grandchildren. By an irresistible
+impulse of sympathy all crowd round him, offering
+what little they possess to the relief of that misery.
+The constables themselves, moved almost to tears,
+contribute their silver coin to the subscription which
+has been spontaneously organized. To carry the
+barbarous work further becomes an impossibility. The
+sheriff’s substitute gives the signal for departure, and
+the cavalcade follows amidst the derisive cries of the
+multitude.</p>
+
+<p>All those poor people, except one family, have since
+been re-installed on their holdings, and are now at
+work on their farms—a strange evidence of the uselessness<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155"></a>[155]</span>
+and cruelty of eviction, to make tenants pay
+who cannot.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Valentia Island.</span></p>
+
+<p>At Cahirciveen, I crossed the strait which divides
+the main land from the island of Valentia. This is
+the extreme point of the old continent, where the
+Transatlantic cables are placed. Good, honest, plucky
+fellows! what repose after the misery of Kerry! I
+am speaking of the fishermen of the island, a peculiar
+race who never ploughed any fields but those of the
+ocean. Every night they risk their lives on the giant
+billows, and earn their bread valiantly. They know
+nothing of sheep rot, potato disease, or landlordism;
+all they know is the management of their
+boats, the making and mending of their nets, and the
+art of making the deep yield food for their young.
+Strangers to the neighbouring world, they ignore even
+its language, and only talk the rude idiom of their
+ancestors, the Irish of the time of the O’Donoghue.</p>
+
+<p>Noble fellows! I shall not soon forget the night I
+spent there watching them as they were fishing
+between the Skellings, two enormous rocks that rise
+like Gothic cathedrals, about twelve miles from Bray
+Head, and on which the waves are eternally breaking<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156"></a>[156]</span>
+with a thundering noise. My guide had warned me
+against offering them money; it would offend them,
+he said, so I did not do it. I simply drank with
+them a glass of whisky when they prepared to go
+home towards daybreak, the stars still shining.
+And, comparing their happy courage with the distress
+of Kerry, I wished them from the bottom of my
+heart never to become acquainted with agriculture on
+small holdings, under an English landlord.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157"></a>[157]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.<br>
+<span class="smaller">RURAL PHYSIOLOGY.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>We have glanced at a few facts presenting symptoms
+of the Irish disease, which were taken as chance
+guided us, in a ride through a south-western county.
+Similar symptoms are everywhere to be found through
+the island. To appreciate them at their right value,
+as even to comprehend them, it is essentially requisite
+to know, at least in its broader outlines, the physiology
+of landed property in this entirely agricultural
+country.</p>
+
+<p>Vast landed property and parcelled-out culture. This
+is the epitome of such a physiology. At the base of the
+social edifice we find the tenant, generally a Catholic
+and of indigenous race, occupying and cultivating after
+his own fashion the thousandth or ten thousandth
+part of a property ranging over an area of some
+hundred thousand acres. At the summit we find
+the landlord, almost invariably of English and Protestant<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158"></a>[158]</span>
+race, ruling by right of primogeniture over this
+immense space.</p>
+
+<p>Does this right rest at its origin on confiscation and
+spoliation, as is averred by the Irish? That is of
+little importance from a legal point of view, for prescription
+has covered the spoliation by an occupation
+of two to eight centuries. It is of far greater importance
+from a moral point of view, because that
+grievance, ill or well founded, serves as a handle for all
+agrarian recriminations.</p>
+
+<p>In three out of five cases (so it has been shown by
+recent statistics) the landlord is an <i>absentee</i>, that is to
+say, he does not reside on his property, nor even in
+the kingdom, and spends abroad the money he
+raises on his lands. His income, from that source
+alone, is sometimes enormous—£10,000 a year—(Lord
+Greville, Westmeath; Lord Carisford,
+Wicklow; Mr. Wandesford, Kilkenny; Mr. King,
+Longford; Lord Inchiquin, Clare); £16,000 a year—(Lord
+Claremont, Louth; Mr. Naper, Meath; Lord
+Leconfield, Clare; Lord Ventry, Kerry); £26,000
+and £32,000 a year—(Duke of Abercorn, Tyrone;
+Marquis of Clanricarde, Galway; Lord Kenmare,
+Kerry); £40,000, £80,000, and even £120,000 a year—(Mr.
+MacDonnell, Kildare; Marquis of Coningham,
+Cavan, Clare, and Donegal; Marquis of Londonderry,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159"></a>[159]</span>
+Down; Marquis of Downshire, &amp;c.). Rent
+rolls of £4,000, £3,000, and £2,000 a year too
+plentiful to be mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>Three-fifths at least of those sums are lost every
+year for Ireland, and they go out of the island
+without having in any way helped to increase her
+capital in agricultural machinery, live stock, and
+general improvements of the land. As a natural
+consequence, the soil is ill-cultivated, ill-manured,
+insufficiently covered with cattle. For centuries its
+energies have suffered a constant draining, and
+nothing has been done to repair its losses.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>That soil has a tendency to subdivision in the
+hands of the tenants, who cultivate it by truly
+pre-historic methods. The figures are given in round
+numbers as follows:—</p>
+
+<p>Against 24,000 holdings of a value of above £500
+a year there are in Ireland 85,000 holdings producing
+from £25 to £500 a year; 49,000 from £12 to £29
+a year; 77,000 from £8 to £12 a year; 196,000 from
+£4 to £8 a year; lastly, 218,000 holdings of a
+revenue of <i>under £4 a year</i>.</p>
+
+<p>That is to say, out of six or seven hundred thousand
+families, living exclusively upon the product of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160"></a>[160]</span>
+soil, more than two-thirds must get their sustenance
+from a wretched bit of ground, estimated by the
+owner himself at a value of £4 to £8 a year!</p>
+
+<p>To state such an economical paradox is to
+denounce it. Where there is nothing, the landlord,
+like the king, loses his rights. The situation, then,
+would already be strangely anomalous, even if the
+respective titles of landlord and tenant were of the
+clearest and most transparent kind. But it is complicated
+in Ireland by the most curious conceptions and
+customs in matters of landed property.</p>
+
+<p>To understand those conceptions and customs, a
+Frenchman must begin by putting aside all his
+Latin ideas. With us, since the Convention, one can
+always know by the Survey-Rolls to whom belongs
+absolutely such or such a piece of land. He who
+owns it is free to sell it, to give it, to let it as he
+pleases. His right is absolute; it is the right of
+“use and abuse,” according to the forcible expression
+of the Roman code. It passes with this absolute
+character to sons, grandsons, or legatees.</p>
+
+<p>In Ireland it is feudal law that obtains still;
+an estate is not a property, it is a fief. The lord of
+that estate is not the proprietor of it, he is an
+usufructuary, as it were, a life-tenant on it. He has
+only a limited right to his own land. He cannot sell<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161"></a>[161]</span>
+it without the written consent of his substitute in the
+entail, and the authorization of the persons, often
+countless in numbers, that have some hereditary right
+on his property at the same time with him; most of
+the estates are encumbered with perpetual rents,
+served out either to the younger branches of the
+family, to old servants, or to creditors. All the titulary
+is free to alienate is his life interest, through some
+insurance combination with transfer of income.</p>
+
+<p>If we add that the said titulary is generally absent
+from his property, that he does not manage it personally,
+and that in many cases he does not even
+exactly know where it is to be found, we must own
+that it is no wonder he is considered as a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>A stranger he is besides, in race, by habits,
+by religion, by language. And yet this stranger,—precisely
+because his fief, practically inalienable, as it
+is immovable in its limits, has always been transmitted
+from father to eldest son in the family,—this
+stranger, of whom often nothing is known beyond his
+name, has a story, true or legendary, attached to him
+and to his title. It matters little that the revenue of
+the estate was scattered over five hundred heads, in
+the course of ten generations; the estate remains,
+and weighs on him with all its weight. We do not
+speak here of a mere geographical expression, of an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162"></a>[162]</span>
+area a hundred times parcelled out, altered, disfigured,
+in less than a century, but of land that for a
+thousand years, maybe, has changed neither form nor
+aspect.</p>
+
+<p>At night, by the fireside, old people will recall how
+in former days this land was the collective property
+of the clan; how they were defrauded by a political
+chief that treacherously gave it up to the English, in
+order to receive investiture from their hands; how,
+following the fortunes of twenty successive rebellions
+and repressions, it was confiscated, sequestered, given
+anew, till it came to the actual landlords. A special
+literature, ballads, popular imagery, little books, and
+penny papers constantly harp on that ancient spoliation.
+It is the only history studied under thatched
+roofs. The peasant breathes it in the atmosphere,
+imbibes it by all his pores.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Convinced that he has a hereditary right to the
+domain in general, the Irish peasant besides attributes
+to himself a special and prescriptive right to the plot of
+ground that he, like the landlord, occupies from father
+to son, though on a precarious tenure. This right is
+not purely imaginary; it was consecrated in the
+year 1860 by a special Act of Parliament, due to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163"></a>[163]</span>
+initiative of Mr. Gladstone. Recognised from immemorial
+times in Ulster, it has always been claimed in
+all the other parts of Ireland; it is the <i>tenant right</i>,
+what in our own Picardy is called the <i>droit de
+marché</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is well known in what consist this ancient prerogative
+of the Picardy farmer (Troplong in the Preface
+to his <i>Traité du Louage</i>, and Lefort in his <i>Histoire des
+contrats de location perpétuelle</i>, have treated it exhaustively):
+it is simply the privilege of preserving in
+perpetuity for him and for his heirs, the use of the
+ground for which he pays rent regularly.</p>
+
+<p>Not only is this privilege not denied to him, but he
+can transfer it to a third person, for a premium that
+goes by the name of <i>intrade</i>. The amount of that
+premium is often a third or even a half of the intrinsic
+value of the soil. Formerly this “<i>droit de marché</i>”
+applied to everything that can be let or hired; the
+labourers, the threshers, the shepherds of a domain,
+each claimed it in his own province as a hereditary
+monopoly. In modern days it is strictly limited to
+the hiring of servants, in the few districts where it
+survived the French revolution (in Péronne for
+instance).</p>
+
+<p>The thing that is only a curious exception in
+France has remained the rule in Ireland, where <i>tenant<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164"></a>[164]</span>
+right</i> has been in force for the last twenty-seven
+years. And what, after all, can be better founded
+than such a right? Has not the tenant, in the
+majority of cases, made his plot of ground what it is?
+Has he not tilled it, improved it, manured it, drained
+it according to his better knowledge; in a word, has
+he not <i>created</i> it in its actual form?</p>
+
+<p>“Let us,” says the peasant, “admit the rights of the
+landlord. How could he deny me mine? Are they
+not legibly written in the furrow I have traced upon
+this earth, in the fruits I have made her bear?...
+The land is not a simple material, unreducible like a
+piece of gold. It is a chemical product, a conglomerate
+that is valuable especially by reason of all the
+substances I have mixed up with it during an occupation
+of ten, twenty, thirty years, or even more....
+Who shall dare to deny the share I have brought into
+this company of which I am the acting manager, and
+deny that this share belongs to me?”</p>
+
+<p>Such a theory would doubtless appear sheer lunacy
+to the French proprietor who has paid for his land £400
+per hectare, and who has let it for a fixed period at a
+fixed price, with the understanding that at the end of
+the contract he shall find it in good condition and shall
+then do what he pleases with it. That theory, however,
+is so well suited to Ireland, where custom has<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165"></a>[165]</span>
+the force of law, that the landlord does not even think,
+practically, of disputing the <i>tenant’s right</i>.</p>
+
+<p>As a rule he is only too glad to let his land to the
+farmers who have traditionally occupied it, on condition
+that they pay the usual rent.</p>
+
+<p>But in practice, the Land Act of 1860, apparently
+so much in favour of the tenant, has produced
+disastrous effects. In the first place, by consecrating
+the right of the tenant only on improvements and enlargements
+made <i>with the landlord’s consent</i>. Thence
+the consequence that not only is the landlord never
+willing to spend a farthing on the improvements of
+the land, but also that he systematically opposes
+them, for fear he should have to pay for them in the
+end. Besides many landlords have signed their new
+leases only after the farmer has given them a formal
+renunciation to the tenant right; or else they have
+taken advantage of the pretext that offered itself, and
+raised the rent by way of compensation against all
+risks. Lastly, in many a place where this right has
+become positive, the rural usurers alone have profited
+by it by discounting it to the peasantry.</p>
+
+<p>The consequence is that the tenant right is often reduced
+practically to the implicit acknowledgment of the
+right of the farmer to occupy the land, so long as he
+pays his rent. It even happens not unfrequently that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166"></a>[166]</span>
+there is no lease and the occupancy goes on indefinitely
+without title. Doubtless this gives it only
+more value in the eyes of the peasant, naturally inclined
+to associate this absence of scrivening with the
+acknowledgment of his traditional rights.</p>
+
+<p>Having been able in certain cases to sell or hire his
+“interest,” he feels the more inclined to think himself
+entitled to divide it between his children. That
+division has become the rule, and what was once a
+farm of thirty to fifty acres turns out, at the third
+generation, parcelled in ten or twelve scraps of three
+to five acres. The landlord might have interfered
+in the beginning; he might have prevented such a
+division; he did not do it. Beside, that division of
+the land is recorded nowhere, has been the occasion
+of no formal deed; one member of the family
+answers for all the others, if necessary. How is one
+to unravel those private arrangements? And, after
+all, what does it matter, so long as the rents come
+in?</p>
+
+<p>They come in during ten, during twenty years.
+Then the harvest is bad, or the sub-dividing of the
+soil has arrived at the last limit compatible with the
+needs of those that cultivate it. The rent is no
+longer paid, and then the difficulties begin. How is
+one to appraise the improvements introduced in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167"></a>[167]</span>
+land by the actual possessor, or by his forefathers?
+How can one find out what is due to him, even with
+the best intentions? Is the landlord to give him an
+indemnity before he evicts him? But then it means
+ruin to the landlord, who will have to pay precisely
+because he has not been paid himself. It is the
+squaring of the circle. When only very small
+holdings are in question, the difficulty is generally
+met by remaining in <i>statu quo</i>. But supposing the
+debt to be more important, or to have been transferred
+to a third person, which is often the case, the
+question becomes insoluble.</p>
+
+<p>Let us repeat that we must not consider these
+things from a French point of view. With us the idea
+of individual property is always of the clearest and
+simplest. The frequent sales and buying of land
+contribute still to make this idea of more actual and
+definite meaning to us. An hectare of grass or vine
+is, like any other goods, a merchandise that passes
+from hand to hand, and remains with the highest
+bidder. In Ireland the sales are rare, and in no case
+is it a question of absolute ownership; it is only
+a question about the respective and contradictory
+rights, some for life, some perpetual, some positive,
+others customary, of several persons over the same
+space of land, a space not to be transferred, not to be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168"></a>[168]</span>
+seized, and not to be fractionised. Is it any wonder
+that such contradictory pretensions should give rise to
+constant conflicts?</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Everything concurs to shut in that rural world in
+a vicious circle. Not only does the peasant lack
+capital to improve his farming, but, assured of seeing
+his rent raised if he ventured on the least improvement,
+he is careful to make none. On his side the
+landlord, for dread of annoying contestations, opposes
+as much as lies in his power any amendment susceptible
+of being turned into a title for his tenant.</p>
+
+<p>Is there a succession of relatively good harvests?
+He immediately raises the rent. Are the following
+years bad? He refuses to return to the old rate, in
+principle at least, because he finds it inconvenient to
+curtail a revenue to which he has accustomed himself,
+because he does not like to appear to bow before the
+League, and also because, being liable to expropriation,
+he is unwilling to depreciate beforehand the
+value of his property, which is always valued according
+to its rent.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the holdings, being too often mere plots of
+ground, are hardly sufficient to keep the peasant and
+his family occupied, and do not always give him a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169"></a>[169]</span>
+sufficiency of food. And just because it is so, the
+unlucky wretch does not find work outside sufficient
+for the equilibrium of his poor finances. The
+class of agricultural labourers can hardly be said
+to exist in numerous districts, because everyone
+is a small farmer. The tenant then becomes
+completely sunk in his inaction; he becomes apathetic,
+and from a sluggard too often turns into a
+drunkard. His wife is ignorant and careless. She
+can neither sew, nor is she able to give a palatable
+taste to his monotonous fare. His children are pallid
+and dirty. Everything is sad, everything is unlovely
+around him; and, like a dagger festering in the
+wound, the thought that all his misery is due to the
+English usurper ever makes his heart bleed.</p>
+
+<p>To all these causes of poverty and despair must be
+added the general difficulties that weigh on agriculture
+in all countries of Europe, the lowered prices of
+transport, the clearings of land in America and
+Australia, the awful transatlantic competition, the
+disease of potatoes.... The picture being finished,
+one thing only surprises—it is to find one single Irish
+farmer left in the country.</p>
+
+<p>These explanations, with many others, were given
+me by a person that it is time I should introduce
+to the reader; for he is the incarnation of one of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170"></a>[170]</span>
+the essential wheels in the machinery of Irish
+landed property—Captain Pembroke Stockton, <i>land
+agent</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The captain is a small fair man, of slim figure, of
+military aspect, who received me this morning at an
+office where he employs half a dozen clerks. The
+room was lined with green-backed ledgers, or, to
+speak more exactly, with rows of tin boxes, of a
+chocolate colour. To-night he receives me in a pleasant
+villa, where he takes me in his phaeton, drawn by
+two magnificent horses. He may be about fifty-three
+years old. His calm, regular-featured countenance
+owes its peculiar character to the line that cuts
+his forehead transversely, and divides it into two parts,
+one white, the other bronzed by the sun; a mark left
+by the English forage-cap, which is like a small muffin,
+and is worn on one side of the head. The captain
+has seen service in India; he fought against Nana-Sahib,
+and even hung with his own hand a certain
+number of rebels, as he not unfrequently relates after
+dinner. He sold out when about thirty-five years of
+age, at a period when selling out still existed (in 1869),
+and got for his commission £3200, which, besides a
+small personal competency, allowed him to marry a
+charming girl, dowerless, according to the excellent
+English habit; children came: means became too<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171"></a>[171]</span>
+straitened, and, to enlarge them, he resolved to
+become a <i>land agent</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The land agent has no equivalent in France, except
+for house property. He is neither a notary, nor a
+steward, and yet he partakes of both, being the intermediary
+between landlord and tenant. It is he that
+draws up the leases and settlements; he who receives
+the rents, who sends out summons, who signs every
+six months the cheque impatiently expected by
+the landlord; he who represents him at law, he
+who negotiates his loans, mortgages, cessions of
+income, and all other banking operations. In a
+word, he is the landlord’s prime minister, the person
+who takes on his shoulders all the management of his
+affairs, and reduces his profession to the agreeable
+function of spending money. The land agent naturally
+resides as a rule in the vicinity of the estate.
+Therefore he knows everybody by name; knows all
+about the incumbrances, the resources of every tenant,
+the length and breadth of every field, the price of
+produce, the probable value of the harvest; all
+the threads are in his hands; the landlord counts
+upon him, approves everything he does, upholds his
+rigours, and submits to his tolerance. Is he not himself
+at his mercy? The agent keeps all his deeds of
+property; has personally written out every one of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172"></a>[172]</span>
+them; knows, in fact, a great deal more than himself
+about it.</p>
+
+<p>Let us premise that very considerable interests are in
+question, and that the rents are ciphered by thousands
+of pounds sterling. It is easy to understand that the
+agent must be not only a man of honour, a clever man,
+a business man, but above all a man presenting the
+most serious guarantees from a financial point of view.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>That is sufficient to imply that they are not counted
+by dozens in every district; and that a land agent
+provided with all the necessary qualifications must
+before long govern all the principal estates in a
+county. From his office, situated in the principal
+county-town, he rules over ten, twenty, or thirty, square
+miles of land, cultivated by five or six thousand
+farmers, under some twenty landlords.</p>
+
+<p>Thence the natural consequence that the same
+policy generally prevails in all the administration
+of the landed property in one district. The personal
+character of the landlord may, indeed, influence
+it in some ways, but the character of the
+agent is of far greater importance. And thence this
+other consequence, not less serious for the farmer, and
+which gives the key to many an act of agrarian<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173"></a>[173]</span>
+violence,—that in case of open war, in case of eviction
+especially, it is not only an affair between the
+landlord and the tenant, but also between the tenant
+and all the landlords in his county, through their
+one representative.</p>
+
+<p>Has he been evicted? It will be well-nigh impossible
+for him to get another farm in this county,
+where he was born, where his relations are living,
+where he has all his habits, all his roots, as it were.
+And no work to be had outside agricultural work....
+Emigration only is open to him,—which is equivalent
+to saying that eviction must necessarily be followed
+by transportation.</p>
+
+<p>Let us imagine all the owners of houses in Paris,
+bound together in association, to be in the hands of a
+single agent; let us suppose that a dweller in one of
+those houses is turned out of it for quarrelling with his
+<i>concierge</i> or for any other reason, and unable to find a
+house to live in; we shall then have an idea of the
+state of mind in which eviction places the Irish
+peasant. Let us add that this peasant has generally
+built with his own hand the hut that is taken from
+him; let us add that for him it is not only a question
+of knowing whether he shall have a roof over his
+head, but a question of being able to live by the only
+trade he has learnt.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174"></a>[174]</span></p>
+
+<p>For many other reasons, the question of agencies
+on a large scale still contributes to make the problem
+more intricate.</p>
+
+<p>In all affairs personal intercourse brings an element
+the importance of which must not be overlooked. A
+man will display the greatest inflexibility in writing,
+who will hesitate to do so face to face with his opponent.
+If the landlord knew his tenants, if he lived among
+them, if he entered into their life and saw their
+misery, very often, may be, he would recoil before
+barbarous rigours, while the agent, by his very profession
+is obliged to act with the precision of a
+guillotine. The influence of women, so gentle and
+conciliatory, is absent from the system. Pity,
+sympathy, human contact, have no part in it. Can
+we wonder if harmony be destroyed?</p>
+
+<p>Examples are not wanting to show that a different
+system, a policy of gentleness, of direct and mutual
+concessions, and well directed efforts, bear very
+different results. I shall quote as an instance the
+case of an English lady, Miss Sherman Crawford,
+who bought, some twenty years ago, at a legal sale,
+a small half-ruined estate in Ireland. She went to
+live on it, and began by giving her ten or twelve
+tenants a written promise that they would get the
+benefit of all their improvements without having cause<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175"></a>[175]</span>
+to fear that the rent should be raised. Then she made
+it a rule that everyone should come directly to her in
+case of difficulties, and not to an agent.</p>
+
+<p>She built a few sheds, repaired two or three cottages,
+on occasions lent a five pound note to facilitate the
+buying of a cow or pig. That was enough. In spite
+of the difference in race, religion, and language, she
+and her peasantry are on perfect terms with each
+other; her property of Timoleague thrives in the
+midst of general poverty and wretchedness; not an
+inch of ground lies uncultivated; the soil is well
+manured, well drained, well used; the people are
+happy and contented. To perform that miracle, all
+that was wanted was a little willingness, a little good
+management and gentleness.</p>
+
+<p>But then Miss Crawford’s property is neither too
+large nor too small. She brings there the capital
+needed, and allows it to circulate in the place. She
+sees everything with her own eyes, not with the eyes
+of an agent. She is not the titulary of an entailed
+estate, and has not given up its income to usurers.
+Her farms are large enough to allow her tenants to
+find their sustenance on them, for themselves and
+their families. In a word, her property is in everything
+the reverse of what is seen in all other parts of
+the island.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176"></a>[176]</span></p>
+
+<p>And in truth, if delirious legislators had proposed
+to themselves the task of inventing a system of landed
+property that would give neither security to the
+owner nor peace to the tenant, where could they have
+succeeded better than with the Irish system? It is
+at once stupid and ferocious, absurd and monstrous.
+How true, alas! that human genius, so well able sometimes
+to profit by natural forces, excels also in
+sterilizing them, in making them homicides!</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177"></a>[177]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.<br>
+<span class="smaller">EMIGRATION.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Before setting foot in this country your notions
+are not unfrequently ready made about the characters
+of the inhabitants. You have gathered them from
+miscellaneous reading, novel-reading mostly, and what
+you expect is an Ireland poor certainly, but nevertheless
+gay, improvident, chivalrous, addicted to sound
+drinking, good eating, fond of practical jokes, not
+unmixed with riot and even blows; an Ireland, in
+short, such as Charles Lever and Carleton, Banim and
+Maxwell, Sam Lover and Thackeray have described;
+an Ireland where wit and humour are to be met at
+every step, where the last beggar has his little joke,
+where originality of thought, unexpectedness of action,
+fun inexhaustible, combine to form that eccentricity of
+manner which is ever associated with the idea of an
+Irishman.</p>
+
+<p>That such an Ireland was, not long ago, a reality,
+one cannot doubt. A whole literature, a rich<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178"></a>[178]</span>
+collection of tales, novels and legends is there to witness
+to the fact. Its historical existence is as scientifically
+demonstrated as that of our “Régence.” The
+worldly exploits of the Duke of Richelieu are not
+better proved. But it is in vain you look to-day for
+that gay and careless Ireland; from Cape Clear to
+Malin Head, from Dublin to Galway, there is no
+vestige of it. She is dead and gone. Like Mr. Credit,
+bad payers have killed her. Between her and us there
+has been a great financial cataclysm where she has
+been wrecked: the <i>crash</i> of the great famine of 1846-1847.</p>
+
+<p>Never did she rise from it. Forty years ago she
+contrived to exist somehow. The tenants were poor,
+to be sure, but the landlords were not, and they spent
+their money grandly. They led the usual life of rich
+country gentlemen, had large retinues of servants and
+horses, kept playing, drinking, and betting till they
+had only debts left, which course had at least the advantage
+of permitting their cash to circulate about
+the country. The local traffic was relatively large
+then. Butchers, coach-makers, wine-merchants, and
+horse-dealers made rapid fortunes. Few towns in
+Europe showed so much animation as Dublin, now
+so empty and so dull a place. Everybody was in
+debt with everybody; not one property was not mortgaged.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179"></a>[179]</span>
+It was the fashion at that time to pay only at
+the last extremity. A general complicity gave force
+of law to that habit. Lawsuits, of course, were plentiful,
+but what is there in a lawsuit to prevent a jolly
+squire from drinking hard, riding his horses at a
+break-neck pace, or galloping from morning till night
+behind his hounds?</p>
+
+<p>Then came the potato-disease; then the famine,
+which brought in two years a general liquidation.
+Everyone awoke to find himself ruined; there were in
+six months fifty thousand evictions. The largest fortunes,
+when they escaped the Encumbered Estates
+Court, established in 1849, remained loaded with such
+heavy burdens that the income of the titulary fell to
+nothing. One was obliged to pinch then, to sell the
+horses, and shut up the kennel. There was an end to fun,
+and if there remained here and there some inveterate
+boon companion who would not give up the good old
+customs, the <i>Moonlighters</i> soon brought him to reason,
+poisoning his dogs and hunters, confiscating his
+arms, and at times mistaking the landlord for the game.</p>
+
+<p>There is no vestige left now of the easy-going ways
+of old. The large town-houses and country seats are
+deserted or let to strangers; the cellar is empty, the
+dining-room silent. A gust of hatred and misery has
+blown on the isle and left all hearts frozen.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180"></a>[180]</span></p>
+
+<p>As for the peasant, the poor creature has too many
+cares for thinking of a joke now. Perhaps in other
+climes, under a clearer sky and warmer sun, he would
+revive, and find in his very distress the element for
+some witticism. But here, the damp atmosphere, united
+with persevering ill-fortune, has deluged and drowned
+for ever his Celtic good-humour. Hardly does he find
+now and then a glimpse of it at the bottom of an ale-jug
+or in the tumult of some election riot. If a quick
+repartee, one of his characteristic sallies, escapes him
+now, it is always bitter, and reminds you of the acrid
+genius of Swift.</p>
+
+<p>“How deliciously pure and fresh is the air in Dublin,”
+said Lady Carteret, the Lord Lieutenant of
+Ireland’s wife, to the author of “Gulliver.”</p>
+
+<p>“For goodness’ sake, Madam, don’t breathe a word
+about it to the English. They would put a duty
+on it.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>And his terrible satire about the famous “excess of
+population,” that favourite hobby of economists, who
+has not it in mind?</p>
+
+<p>“It is a melancholy object to those who walk
+through this great town or travel in the country,
+where they see the streets, the roads, and cabin-doors<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181"></a>[181]</span>
+crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by
+three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning
+every passenger for an alms ... I think it is
+agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of
+children ... is in the present deplorable state of
+the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and
+therefore, whosoever could find out a fair, cheap, and
+easy method of making these children sound, easy
+members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well
+of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver
+of the nation. I shall now, therefore, humbly
+propose my own thoughts; which I hope will not be
+liable to the least objection.</p>
+
+<p>“I have been assured by a very knowing American
+of my acquaintance in London that a young healthy
+child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious,
+nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed,
+roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that
+it will equally serve in a fricassée or a ragout.</p>
+
+<p>“I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration
+that of the hundred and twenty thousand
+children already computed, twenty thousand may be
+reserved for breed, whereof one-fourth part to be
+males ... that the remaining hundred thousand
+may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons
+of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182"></a>[182]</span>
+advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in
+the last month so as to render them plump and fat
+for good tables. A child will make two dishes at an
+entertainment for friends, and when the family dines
+alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable
+dish, and, seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be
+very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in
+winter.</p>
+
+<p>“I have reckoned, upon a medium, that a child
+just born will weigh twelve pounds, and in a solar year,
+if tolerably nursed, will increase to twenty-eight
+pounds.</p>
+
+<p>“I have already computed the charge of nursing a
+beggar’s child (in which list I reckon all cottagers,
+labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about
+two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe
+no gentleman would refuse to give two shillings for the
+carcase of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will
+make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat. Those
+who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times
+require) may flay the carcase: the skin of which,
+artificially dressed, will make admirable gloves for
+ladies and summer boots for fine gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p>“As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed
+for this purpose in the most convenient parts
+of it; and butchers we may be assured will not be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183"></a>[183]</span>
+wanting; although I rather recommend buying the
+children alive, then dressing them hot from the knife,
+as we do roasted pigs....</p>
+
+<p>“I think the advantages, by the proposals I have
+made, are obvious and many, as well as of the highest
+importance: for first, as I have already observed, it
+would greatly lessen the number of papists, with
+whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal
+breeders of the nation, as well as our most dangerous
+enemies.... Whereas the maintenance of a
+hundred thousand children, from two years old and
+upwards, cannot be computed at less than ten shillings
+a piece per annum, the nation’s stock will be thereby
+increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, beside
+the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all
+gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom, who have any
+refinement in taste. And all the money will circulate
+among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own
+growth and manufacture.... Besides, this would
+be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise
+nations have either encouraged by rewards or enforced
+by laws and penalties.”</p>
+
+<p>The grim sarcasm goes on in the same sinister, pitiless
+way up to the conclusion, which is worth the rest:</p>
+
+<p>“I profess in the sincerity of my heart that I have
+not the least personal interest in endeavouring to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184"></a>[184]</span>
+promote this necessary work, having no other
+motive than the public good of my country, by
+advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving
+the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich.
+I have no children by which I can propose to get a
+single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and
+my wife past child-bearing.”</p>
+
+<p>Modern Philanthropy is not quite so bold as the
+Dean of St. Patrick in suggesting remedies for the
+relief of the sufferings of Ireland. Its great panacea
+is emigration. The first thing which attracts the eye
+in villages and boroughs is a large showy placard
+representing a ship in full sail, with the following
+words in large capitals, “Emigration! ... free
+passage to Canada, Australia, New Zealand! ...
+free passage and a premium to emigrants for Queensland!...”</p>
+
+<p>Technical particulars follow; the agents’ addresses,
+the names of the outward-bound ships, &amp;c....
+These placards are everywhere. At each turning, on
+every wall they stare you in the face, and fascinate
+the starving man. Numerous and powerful emigration
+companies paid by colonies where hands are
+wanting, patronized by all that is influential in the
+kingdom, work unremittingly in recruiting that army
+of despair for a voluntary transportation. And thus<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185"></a>[185]</span>
+a continuous stream of Irishmen is ebbing out through
+all the pores of the country.</p>
+
+<p>Shall we give the official figures? There are none
+given unfortunately for the years between 1847 and
+1851, corresponding to the “famine clearances” or
+famine evictions. All that is known is that at that
+time the population of Ireland suddenly decreased by
+one million six hundred and twenty-two thousand inhabitants,
+without it being possible to say how many
+had died of starvation, how many had embarked pell-mell
+on hundreds of ships, how many had perished
+at sea, how many had survived. Since 1851
+the accounts are clear. It is known that 148,982
+emigrants left Ireland in the eight last months
+of that year; 189,092 in 1852; 172,829 in 1853;
+139,312 in 1854. During the following years the
+emigration slackens its pace by degrees and falls to
+the rate of 75,000 heads a year. It rises again in
+1863-64, and attains the figure of over 105,000.
+Then it settles again to its level: 60,000, where for a
+time it remains stationary. Since 1880 it has risen
+again to 95,000, and over 100,000.</p>
+
+<p>Within thirty years, the period included between the
+1st of May, 1851, and the 1st of May, 1881, Ireland has
+lost through emigration alone <i>two million five hundred
+and thirty-six thousand six hundred and twenty-seven</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186"></a>[186]</span>
+of her children. The total for the last five years
+has not yet been published, but it certainly reaches
+half a million. From the year 1851, therefore, at
+least <i>three million</i> Irish people of both sexes have left
+the island, that is to say, nearly the half of a population
+then reduced to six-and-a-half million souls.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Has, at least, the result of that frightful exodus been
+to eradicate pauperism? One would like to believe it.
+Theorists had promised it. But alas! stern statistics
+are there to answer their fallacies.</p>
+
+<p>Statistics inform us that the Ireland of 1887, with
+its present population, inferior to that of London, is
+poorer than it was in 1841, when it numbered eight
+million inhabitants. Twenty years ago the number
+of individuals admitted to workhouses was 114,594
+out of six million inhabitants. To-day it is 316,165
+out of a population diminished by a third. In 1884
+the poor who received relief at home were 442,289.
+They are now 633,021. In other words, <i>one Irishman
+out of four</i> lives on public charity—when he
+lives at all.</p>
+
+<p>Upon such facts, would you guess what monstrous
+conclusion the votaries of emigration at any price
+have come to? Simply this: that the blood-letting<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187"></a>[187]</span>
+is not sufficient; that Ireland must be drained of
+another million inhabitants. Such is Lord Salisbury’s
+opinion. As if an area of 20,194,602 statute acres,
+so favoured geographically, was not calculated to
+nourish twelve or fifteen million human beings rather
+than three! (This was the opinion of Gustave de
+Beaumont, after Arthur Young.) As if the emigration
+of every healthy and industrious adult was not
+a nett loss for the country, just as is the guinea taken
+away by any <i>absentee</i>!</p>
+
+<p>Is not his exit a sign of strength and energy in the
+emigrant? He was free to stay at home if he liked; to
+shut himself up in a workhouse and live there at the
+public expense. Has he not given by his very
+departure the best proof that he is not a useless
+member in the social body? What! you incite all
+that is able and active to go away, keeping only the
+weak, the old, the useless; to these you dole out what
+is necessary to keep up a flickering breath of life, and
+when poverty increases, you are surprised at it!</p>
+
+<p>I bear in mind the reasons alleged by politicians.
+Elizabeth and Cromwell have invoked them before,
+when recurring to more drastic but equally vain
+measures. But, here again, the calculation is wrong;
+the eternal justice of things has not permitted it to
+succeed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188"></a>[188]</span></p>
+
+<p>For all those whom the feudal system starves out
+of their native island take care, for the most part,
+not to go and fertilize with their work the British
+colonies. Vainly does the emigration agent offer
+them a free passage, grants of land, and even premiums
+in money. They prefer buying with their last
+penny a ticket which opens a free land to them. They
+go to the United States, where they thrive almost
+to a miracle, and this is a decisive answer to the
+masters of their race, who are also its calumniators.
+They multiply there so as to form already a fifth part
+(twelve millions) of the total population of the great
+American Republic. At the bar, in the press, in all
+liberal professions, they are a majority, and by their
+brilliant qualities, which often secure them the first
+rank, they exercise a real preponderance. But they
+never forget that they are Irish. They keep the unimpaired
+remembrance of their beloved country, dear
+to their heart in proportion as she is unhappy. They
+remember their home burnt to the ground, the old
+grandfather thrown on the road-side, the little ones
+crying at the withered breast of a pallid mother, the
+wrench of parting, the heart-rending farewell; then
+the contumely during the voyage—the hardships
+after the landing; and they swear an oath that all
+shall be paid some day, and, in the meanwhile, they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189"></a>[189]</span>
+contribute their dollars to the healing of an ever-bleeding
+wound.</p>
+
+<p>It is there that Fenianism was born. From their
+ranks come those conspirators who terrorize England
+with their periodic outrages. In all agrarian
+violence the hand of the emigrants is to be found.
+From 1848 to 1864 they have sent thirteen million
+pounds to those of their family that have remained in
+Ireland; and, from 1864 to 1887, perhaps double
+that sum. But in those figures, given by Lord
+Dufferin, the secret funds brought to the service of
+an ever-increasing agitation are not reckoned. The
+<i>Invincibles</i> were in their pay. The <i>Skirmishing Fund</i>
+was entirely sustained by them. The National League
+lives, in a manner, upon their subsidies. When
+Mr. Parnell went to visit the United States, they were
+powerful enough to induce the Senate of Washington
+to give him the honours of the sitting—an exception
+which stands unique in history.</p>
+
+<p>The independence of Ireland is their dream, their
+ambition, their hope, their luxury in life. The day
+when this is accomplished, England will perhaps
+realize that the Irish emigration has been a political
+blunder, as it is an economical mistake and a moral
+crime.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190"></a>[190]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Cork.</span></p>
+
+<p>Wishing to see some of those who emigrate I have
+come to Cork. Cork is the great harbour of the
+South of Ireland, the gate that opens on America
+and Australia. From St. Patrick’s Bridge on the
+Lee a steamer took me to where three emigrant
+ships were at anchor ready to fly to other climes. I
+went on board two of them, one English, the other
+American. There was nothing particular to notice,
+except an under-deck disposed as a dormitory, as
+is the rule on board all maritime transports, so as to
+lodge four or five hundred steerage passengers. These
+passengers bring with them their bedding, which consists
+generally of a coarse blanket, and the staple part
+of their eatables. A canteen affords them, at reasonable
+prices, all drinks or extras that they may think
+fit to add to their ordinary fare.</p>
+
+<p>The impression I gather in these under-decks is
+rather a favourable one. There is as yet only the
+bare floor, but it is clean and well washed. Through
+the hatches, wide open, a pure and bracing air circulates
+freely.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt there will be some alteration after a few
+days’ voyage. But it is evident that the Queen’s
+administration keeps a sharp eye upon the emigration
+companies, and sees that all sanitary prescriptions<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191"></a>[191]</span>
+are observed. One sees no longer now-a-days such
+scandalous spectacles as occurred in the years of the
+famine, when thousands of Irish were promiscuously
+heaped in the hold of <i>coffin-ships</i>, and died by
+hundreds before reaching the goal. Emigration is now
+one of the normal, it may be said one of the official,
+functions of social life in Ireland—a function which
+has its organs, laws, customs, and even its record-office.
+The companies keep their agents in all
+British possessions; they are informed of all the
+wants of those colonies; they know what specialists
+are in demand, what advantages are offered to the
+new-comer. They do their best to make the offer fit
+with the demand, and they seem to succeed.</p>
+
+<p>An old boatswain on board one of the emigrant
+ships tells me that life there is generally monotonous
+but quiet. The passengers do not mix or associate
+as quickly as one could imagine. Each of them
+pitches his own separate camp on the few square feet
+that chance gives him, and it is only after eight or
+ten days’ voyage that they begin to club together.
+The mothers tend their babies, the fathers smoke
+their pipes, the children play, the young people flirt.
+It appears that a relatively considerable number of
+marriages are prepared and even concluded in the
+crossing. There is nothing surprising in that, if we<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192"></a>[192]</span>
+remember that the most numerous class of emigrants
+is composed of marriageable girls and men between
+twenty and twenty-five years of age.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>A few types of emigrants taken at the inns and
+public-houses on the quays. <i>John Moriarty</i>, of Ballinakilla,
+County Cork, 45 to 50 years old. A rural
+Micawber, dressed in a dilapidated black coat, a pair
+of green trousers, completely worn out at the knees,
+and crushed hat. A Catholic (he says <i>Cathioulic</i>).
+Squats with wife and children in a single room,
+almost devoid of furniture. Was to have embarked
+five days ago for Canada. The Board of Health did
+not allow it on account of one of the children having
+got the measles (an illness which assumes in Great
+Britain a most dangerous and infectious character).
+Makes no difficulty to tell me his whole history.
+Had a farm of thirteen acres. Was thriving more or
+less—rather less than more. But for the last seven
+years it has been an impossibility for him to make
+both ends meet.</p>
+
+<p>Strange as it may appear, the man is a Conservative
+in feeling.</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing to do in the country, with those <i>mob
+laws</i> and agitation!” says he.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193"></a>[193]</span></p>
+
+<p>“What mob laws?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, the trash on fixity of tenure, fair rent and
+the rest.”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought they were favourable to the
+tenant.”</p>
+
+<p>“Favourable in one sense, yes, sir,” (<i>with a diplomatic
+air, as he fastens on me two little chocolate-coloured
+eyes</i>) “but disastrous in the end, because they allow one
+to sell his tenant-right at a discount. You believe that
+it will set you up, and it is the very stone that makes
+you sink. The banks are our ruin, don’t you see?
+Once they have taken hold of their man they don’t
+let him out before they have skinned him” (<i>a silence,
+then a sigh of mild envy</i>). “It is, indeed, a good trade
+that of banking!”</p>
+
+<p>He remains dreamy and seems to meditate the
+scheme of founding a bank in Canada.</p>
+
+<p><i>Martin Mac Crea</i>, 22 years old, a shepherd of
+Drumcunning. A Catholic. A tall, pale, thin fellow,
+decently dressed, with a wide-awake look. Goes to
+Queensland. Why? “Because there is no opening
+in Ireland. The most you can do is to earn your
+bare sustenance.” It appears that in Queensland
+it is quite a different affair. The profession of shepherd
+pays there. Let a man bring or save the money
+necessary to buy half-a-dozen sheep, and let them<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194"></a>[194]</span>
+graze at their will. Seven or eight years later their
+name is legion, and the man is rich.</p>
+
+<p>“But are you then quite free of ties here? Don’t
+you leave anybody, any relation, in Ireland?”</p>
+
+<p>“I was obliged to live far from them, and where I
+go I shall be more able to help them. Besides, the
+post reaches there.”</p>
+
+<p>“And the young ladies at Drumcunning. Do they
+allow you to go away without a protest?”</p>
+
+<p>A broad smile lights up Martin Mac Crea’s countenance.
+A further conversation informs me that his
+betrothed has gone before him to Brisbane, where
+she is a servant. He is going to meet her, and they
+shall settle together in the <i>bush</i>, keeping sheep on
+their own account.</p>
+
+<p>Let us hope she has waited for him. Queensland
+is far away!</p>
+
+<p><i>Pat Coleman</i>, twenty years old. A friend to the
+former. Son of a small farmer with six children.
+Nothing to do at home. Prefers going to the Antipodes,
+to see if there is a way there to avoid dying
+of starvation, as happened to his grandfather.</p>
+
+<p><i>Peter Doyle</i>, forty-three years old. A journeyman.
+A Presbyterian. Can’t find work at home; therefore
+emigrates. Was employed on railway construction,
+county Clare. Has been turned away, the line being<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195"></a>[195]</span>
+completed and open to travellers. Had come to Cork
+in the hope of getting work, but found only insignificant
+jobs. Packed to Melbourne.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dennis O’Rourke</i>, twenty-nine years old; of Enniscorthy,
+Wexford. An engine-maker; belongs to a
+class of which I had as yet met no specimen in
+Ireland, the workman-politician. Has already emigrated
+to the United States, where he spent three
+years. Wished to see his country again, and tried to
+set up a business on a small scale, first in Dublin, then
+at Cork; but it does not pay. Goes back to New
+York.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you know why? I am going to tell you.
+(<i>Fiercely</i>) I am going because this country is rotten
+to the core! Because it has no spirit left, not even
+that of rebellion! I am going because I will no
+longer bear on my back the weight of dukes and
+peers, of Queen, Prince of Wales, Royal family, and
+the whole lot of them! I am going where you can
+work and be free; where a man is worth another
+when he has got in his pocket two dollars honestly
+earned. That is where I go, and why I go.”</p>
+
+<p>“In short, you make England responsible for your
+misfortunes?”</p>
+
+<p>“England be damned!”</p>
+
+<p>It is O’Connell’s word. He was travelling in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196"></a>[196]</span>
+France, towards St. Omer, and found himself inside
+the mail-coach with an old officer of the first Empire
+who began forthwith to talk against the English.
+The great Irish agitator kept silent.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t you hear me?” the other said at last,
+insolently.</p>
+
+<p>“I beg your pardon, I hear you perfectly well.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you don’t mind my treating your country as
+I do?”</p>
+
+<p>“England is not my country; I hate it more than
+you will ever do.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_197"></a>[197]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE LEAGUE.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Ennis.</span></p>
+
+<p>The county Clare, and more especially Ennis,
+its chief town, have played an important part in the
+contemporary history of Ireland. It was here eight
+years ago (in 1879) that Mr. Parnell, at a great autumn
+meeting, gave his famous <i>mot d’ordre</i> on social and
+political interdict.</p>
+
+<p>“If you refuse to pay unjust rents, if you refuse to
+take farms from which others have been evicted, the
+land question must be settled, and settled in a way
+that will be satisfactory to you. Now, what are you to
+do to a tenant who bids fora farm from which another
+has been evicted? You must shun him on the road-side
+where you meet him,—you must shun him in the
+shops,—you must shun him in the fair green, and in
+the market-place, and in the place of worship: by
+leaving him severely alone, by putting him in a moral
+Coventry; by isolating him from the rest of his
+countrymen, as if he were the leper of old, you must<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_198"></a>[198]</span>
+show him your detestation of the crime he has
+committed.”</p>
+
+<p>Those words contained a whole programme, faithfully
+carried out since, and which has already borne fruit.
+They took exceptional force from the fact that Mr.
+Parnell, at the time he pronounced them, was already
+the acknowledged leader of Irish opposition. They were
+in some sort the registration of birth of the League.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The League! Every moment, travelling through
+this island, one comes in contact with this power,
+mysterious though positive, anonymous and yet implicitly
+recognized. The League houses and feeds
+evicted families; it settles that such a landlord or such
+a farmer shall be boycotted; it decrees that the rents
+of such an estate shall be reduced 30 per cent.; that
+of such another the rents shall be lodged in the League’s
+own coffers; it patronises candidatures, chooses the
+place and time of meetings, presides over all the
+phases of social life. What is that League? is the
+question one asks.</p>
+
+<p>At first one naturally supposes it to be an electoral
+association such as exists in every free country. But
+little by little one perceives that it is a far bigger
+affair. Electoral associations are not in the habit of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_199"></a>[199]</span>
+inspiring such persistent enthusiasm, of covering during
+eight long years the extent of a whole country; they
+do not send roots to the most remote villages, nor do
+they count among their members three-quarters of the
+adult population. It is not their custom either to
+fulminate excommunications, or if they do they have
+but little appreciable effect on the ordinary tenour of
+life. One never heard that they disposed of important
+capital, and one would be less surprised to hear that
+they had entered into a lawsuit with their printer about
+an unpaid bill for five or six thousand placards, than
+one would be to hear that they have several hundred
+thousand pounds in the bank.</p>
+
+<p>And yet it is precisely of hundred thousand pounds
+that one constantly hears in connection with the
+League. Where does it get all that money, in a
+country worn so threadbare as this? Whence is it that
+it is so universally respected, so religiously obeyed?
+All the smiles are for the League, while the functionaries
+of the Crown pocket only snubbings. All
+the doors open before the League, while they close
+and even barricade themselves at the bare mention of
+the Lord Lieutenant’s name.</p>
+
+<p>One observes these facts; compare and weigh them.
+Then the conclusion imposes itself quite naturally
+that the League is the only public power recognised<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_200"></a>[200]</span>
+by the bulk of the Irish nation. One already had a
+suspicion of being a spectator to a revolution, of which
+the violent deeds, instead of being concentrated over a
+period of two or three years, as we have seen at home,
+have spread over half a century. One understands that
+one has fallen in the midst of a civil war, not in the
+incipient state, but fully let loose, and that there exists
+in this island two rival authorities,—that of the Crown
+with the bayonets on its side; that of the League,
+possessing all hearts.</p>
+
+<p>Ireland, it is hardly necessary to repeat, has been
+in a state of rebellion since the beginning of the
+British Conquest. But it has been in a state of
+revolution only for a period of about forty years.
+Insurrection betrayed itself now by individual but
+constant acts of rebellion, of which one can easily
+follow the succession through past ages, now by
+collective risings like those of Thomas Fitzgerald in
+1534, of O’Neil in 1563, of Desmond in 1579, of
+Preston in 1642, of the Whiteboys in 1791, of the
+Oakboys in 1762, of the Steelboys in 1768, of Wolfe
+Tone in the course of the French Revolution, of
+Emmet in 1803, the New Whiteboys in 1807, of
+John Mitchell in 1848, of the Fenians in 1865 and
+1867. As for the agrarian revolution, born of an
+economical situation impossible to bear, it follows its<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_201"></a>[201]</span>
+course as regularly as a great river, ever getting
+larger and larger, widening its bed, swelling its volume
+with all the streams it meets, increasing in power at
+the same time that its waters get more depth and
+breadth. Even the soothing mixtures prescribed for
+it by the Parliamentary doctors have served as its
+tributaries. Its torrent has at length become irresistible.</p>
+
+<p>To discover its source, we must go back to the
+famine evictions of 1847. The heart-rending spectacle
+then presented by Ireland made it natural to look for
+a palliation to such misery. The malady was studied
+in all its aspects; much learned discussion took place
+at the bedside of the agonizing patient. It was the
+time when Disraeli developed his famous theory of
+“the three profits.” The land, if one was to believe
+him, must yield profit to three persons:—the Queen,
+the landlord, and the tenant. It appears this was
+arranged from the end of Time by the Great Architect
+of the Universe. The laws of Kepler are not
+more absolute. The unlucky thing is that the earth
+does not always fulfil its obligations, and too often
+refuses to yield up the three sacramental profits.</p>
+
+<p>Theorists endowed with less boldness thought to
+find a remedy by giving legal consecration to the
+tenant’s rights by the system of <i>the three F’s</i>, as it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_202"></a>[202]</span>
+was called, that is to say, <i>Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure,
+and Free Sale</i>. Through endless resistance, after
+endless debating in the course of twenty parliamentary
+sessions, a whole <i>remedial</i> legislation came
+to add its bulk to the already so intricate structure of
+Anglo-Saxon law.</p>
+
+<p>Now the custom of Ulster was extended to the
+whole of Ireland, and the right of the farmer over
+the improvements paid with his money became law
+(1860); now he was promised an indemnity in case of
+eviction, and the basis was laid of a system of
+amortization which must infallibly in the course of
+time have ended in creating a class of peasant landowners
+(1870).</p>
+
+<p>Already in the year 1849, the State had interfered
+between the landlords in difficulties and their
+tenants, by the creation of a special tribunal for
+obligatory liquidation,—<i>the Encumbered Estates Court</i>.
+It finally came to interfere between landlord and
+tenant by instituting a new court of arbitration, the
+<i>Land Court</i>, entrusted with the care of fixing the
+“fair” rent in each case.</p>
+
+<p>That Court was no sooner opened than 75,807
+affairs were inscribed upon its roll. It judged in one
+year 15,676. But there remained still 60,101 to be
+judged, and already the reductions of 18 to 27 per<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_203"></a>[203]</span>
+cent. imposed on the landlords appeared insufficient;
+already the farmers were loudly clamouring for
+further reductions.</p>
+
+<p>For in truth such remedies were too anodine for
+such rooted disease! But the wedge had nevertheless
+entered the tree. The State had appeared
+in the character of umpire between the landlord
+and the peasant. Henceforth all was or seemed
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>The essence of dogmas is to suffer no questioning.
+One cannot with impunity discuss for twenty
+years the basis of landed property’s law and the
+theory of “the three profits” before empty stomachs.
+As a parallel to these debates, the question of political
+rights for Ireland rose again, and ended insensibly
+by the conquest of the electoral franchise, of religious
+equality, and of national education. The moment
+arrived when the bulk of the population took an interest
+only in the truly vital question,—that of the soil.
+And all of a sudden they understood that there
+was only one remedy for the ills that weighed so
+grievously over them: Landlords and tenants cannot
+continue to live side by side. Either the one or the
+other must go.</p>
+
+<p>“Let the landlords decamp! They do not belong
+here,” said the peasants.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_204"></a>[204]</span></p>
+
+<p>“No, by G⸺! The peasants shall go,” answered
+the landlords; “the way is open....”</p>
+
+<p>It was thus that towards 1876 the Irish movement
+became agrarian, from being purely national. The
+League is the organ of that new function.</p>
+
+<p>Its primary idea belongs to two veterans of the
+Fenian plots, Michael Davitt and John Devoy. But
+what distinguishes it from those plots, besides a
+broader basis and larger aims, is that it acts in broad
+daylight, with face uncovered, appealing to all men
+of goodwill, using exclusively those constitutional
+weapons—the right of meeting, the right of association
+and coalition.</p>
+
+<p>“The Fenians saw only the green flag,” wrote
+John Devoy. “The men of to-day perceive that
+under its folds is the Irish land.” Nevertheless, it
+was to the remains of the Fenian associations that he
+and Michael Davitt had recourse at first to lay the
+foundations of the new association. They went to
+look for them even to the uttermost end of America,
+secured the co-operation of some of the most influential
+members of the Irish emigration, then came back to
+Europe, and summoned a great preliminary meeting
+at Irishtown.</p>
+
+<p>As ordinarily enough happens in such cases,
+their project was at first looked upon coldly by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_205"></a>[205]</span>
+members of Parliament, who thought it impolitic,
+and violently opposed by the secret societies—Fenians
+or Ribbonmen—who thought it calculated to cool
+the Nationalist zeal. But under the too real sufferings
+produced by two years of famine (1876-1877),
+the agrarian tempest assumed such formidable proportions,
+that all resistance had to cease, and the
+politicians were compelled to lower their flag. For
+the chiefs of the autonomist party it was a question
+of no less than keeping or losing their mandate.
+Either they would adopt the new evangel, or they
+would be left lying, officers without troops, on the
+electoral battle-field. Most of them understood this
+in time.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Parnell, the most conspicuous of all, had till
+then limited his part to the demand for a national
+government for Ireland, and his tactics to parliamentary
+obstruction. From an economical point of
+view he still remained, with all his party, on the level
+of worthy Mr. Butt’s <i>three F’s</i>. He was one of the
+first to understand that it was all over with Home
+Rule, and with his own political fortune, if he hesitated
+any longer to plunge into deeper waters.</p>
+
+<p>He made his plunge with characteristic resolution.
+“There is no longer any possibility of conciliation
+between landlord and tenant,” he said. “Since the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206"></a>[206]</span>
+one or the other must go out, it is better that the
+less numerous class should be the one to do it.” On
+the 8th of June, 1879, at Westport, he pronounced
+his famous, “Keep a firm grip on your homesteads!”
+From the 21st of October following the agrarian
+League promulgated circulars, which he signed as
+president.</p>
+
+<p>The League’s aim and watchword were—<i>The
+land for the peasant!</i> Its means were the union
+of all the rural forces, the formation of a resistance
+fund for evicted farmers, the strike of tenants
+with a view to compelling the landlords to grant a
+reduction of rent; and incessant agitation in favour
+of a law for the liquidation of landed property, which
+would give the land into the hands of the cultivators
+by means of partial payments made during a certain
+number of years.</p>
+
+<p>The success of such a programme, seconded by the
+political leaders of Ireland, was certain. But its
+promoters never had dared to hope for a rush such as
+was experienced in a few weeks’ time. Adhesions
+poured in by thousands; all the social classes embraced
+it. The Catholic clergy themselves, after
+wavering one moment, found it advisable to follow in
+the footsteps of the revolutionary party, as the
+Deputies had done before them. Everywhere local<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_207"></a>[207]</span>
+boards were formed which put themselves at the
+disposal of the central committee. Almost everywhere
+the Catholic priest, his curates, not unfrequently
+the Anglican priest himself, were found among the
+members of the board.</p>
+
+<p>This is enough to show with what alacrity and
+unanimity the mobilisation of the agrarian army was
+effected. Far from weakening the Nationalist party,
+as was feared by its prebendaries, it came out of this
+tempered afresh, enlarged, associated with the every-day
+interests, tied indissolubly henceforth, for the
+majority of an agricultural population, to the most
+secret if the most ardent wish of their labourers’
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>What remained to do was to endow the League with
+the resources wanted to carry out its programme; but
+it was not in a country practically ruined, a prey to
+the tortures of hunger, literally reduced to beggary,
+that those resources were to be found. Mr. Parnell
+set out for the land of dollars. He preached the new
+word there with complete success. Exotic branches
+of the League were established in the various States of
+America, in Canada, and Australia; the only thing
+remaining to do was to organize the <i>in partibus
+infidelium</i> government that was to take in hand the
+direction of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_208"></a>[208]</span></p>
+
+<p>But a short time since this government sat in a
+palace of the finest street in Dublin—Sackville Street.
+There it had its offices, reception rooms, council-room
+furnished with the orthodox green baize table,
+its ministerial departments, secretaries and writers,
+officially headed paper, its stamp, documents, accounts
+and red tape.</p>
+
+<p>After a recent movement on the offensive on the
+part of the enemy, the League had to decamp and put
+all this material in a place of safety. But though it
+be presently without a known place of abode, the
+League none the less pursues its work. Do not telegraphic
+wires keep it in communication with its agents
+throughout the length and breadth of the territory?
+Why were Transatlantic cables invented, if not for the
+purpose of opening permanent communications between
+the League and its American, Australian, and
+Asiatic colonies? In all the extent of its jurisdiction,
+which is that of the globe, the League is obeyed and
+respected; it possesses the confidence of its innumerable
+tributaries.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps that comes from the fact that this committee,
+though it sometimes accented too much the
+professional character of its members, has at least the
+rare merit of faithfully serving its constituents and of
+being in perfect harmony of conscience with them.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_209"></a>[209]</span>
+Perhaps this is due to the effect of direct subsidies;
+and we must see there something better than a mere
+coincidence,—a great lesson for the democracies of
+the future. One thing is certain: this government,
+after wielding power for eight years, have their party
+well in hand. They are able to do without red tape
+or scribbling. One word is enough to indicate their
+will, and if they lack secretaries, a hundred newspapers
+will carry this word to its address.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It would be a matter of some difficulty to appreciate
+rightly the financial resources of the League
+Competent judges estimate them at an income of two
+million francs. It receives on an average, from
+English-speaking countries, a thousand pounds a
+week. Now and then subscriptions slacken, and the
+incoming of money is smaller; but the least incident,
+such as a noisy arrest or a political law-suit, is
+sufficient to awaken the zeal of the leaguers. That
+zeal is always proportionate to the energy of resistance
+opposed by the Cabinet of St. James to the
+government of Sackville Street. If London so much
+as raises its head, at once Dublin, and behind Dublin
+the whole of Ireland, the whole of Irish America,
+Australia, the Cape, and the extreme depths of India,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_210"></a>[210]</span>
+all are shaken to their very centre,—in other words,
+they pay.</p>
+
+<p>The chief treasurer of the League, Mr. Egan, giving
+account of his administration in October, 1882,
+after a space of three years, stated that during these
+three years £244,820 had passed through his hands.
+In this total one-third only came from insular contributors;
+all the rest came from abroad. £50,000 had
+been given in relief of distress; over £15,000 had
+been spent in State trials; nearly £148,000 had been
+expended through the general Land League and the
+Ladies’ Land League in support of evicted tenants,
+providing wooden houses, law costs, sheriffs’ sales,
+defence against ejectments and various local law
+proceedings, and upon the general expenses of the
+organization. A little over £31,900 remained to
+the account of the association.</p>
+
+<p>There are no reasons for supposing the normal
+receipts of the League to have diminished much since
+that period. More recently (in 1886) the “plan of
+campaign” has created new openings for it.</p>
+
+<p>This “plan of campaign,” one of the boldest conceptions
+ever accepted by a great political party,
+consists simply in lodging into the coffers of the
+League, and for its use, the rents that were pronounced
+excessive by its committee, and that the landlords<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_211"></a>[211]</span>
+refused to abate. Let us mention in passing that the
+Catholic Archbishop of Dublin publicly accepted the
+responsibility of this tremendous war-measure. It
+has, we must add, been exercised with obvious
+moderation, in specific cases only, and by way of
+example. The true weapon of the League, that which
+it used most liberally up to the present day, is the
+<i>boycotting</i>, or social interdict pitilessly pronounced
+against any one who disobeys its behests.</p>
+
+<p>From a legal point of view, the League has met with
+various fortunes. Suppressed in 1881 by an Act of
+Parliament, it was compelled to put on a mask and
+to disguise itself under the name of the <i>Ladies’ League</i>.
+A year later it underwent a new incarnation and
+became the <i>National League</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Now the Tory Ministry has suppressed it once more
+<i>proclaimed</i> it, as they say (<i>clameur de haro</i>), in virtue
+of the special power conferred on it. It appears
+improbable that the health of the association should
+suffer much for this; on the contrary, it will probably be
+all the better for it. In former days it would have been
+content to undergo a fourth avatar by taking the
+name of <i>Celtic League</i>, <i>Irish Babies’ League</i>, or any
+other name that would have done just as well to
+deride its adversaries. A special provision of the
+Coercion Act will prevent its having recourse to this<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_212"></a>[212]</span>
+expedient. By the 7th article of the Act, the Lord
+Lieutenant is empowered to suppress any <i>new</i> association
+formed with a view to continuing the affairs of
+the old ones.</p>
+
+<p>But one never thinks of everything. Precisely
+because it is so explicit, the 7th article cannot apply
+to the <i>old</i> Irish societies, different from the National
+League, and which can easily be substituted in its
+place. Those associations, <i>Home Rule Unions</i>, <i>Liberal
+Federations</i>, &amp;c., are numerous through the country.
+One of them could easily accept the inheritance of
+the League, and it would be necessary to convoke
+Parliament to suppress it. If Parliament suppresses
+it, it will be easy to find something else.
+And so on for ever, through ages, to the crack of
+doom.... In the meanwhile there will be protestations,
+agitations, interpellations, and before the end,
+“the King, the ass” ... or the Ministry shall have
+died, as La Fontaine said.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Lord Salisbury may close two hundred offices of
+the League in the counties of Clare and Kerry. How
+shall he close the offices beyond the sea, which are
+the real ones?</p>
+
+<p>In fact, the League is indestructible, because it is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_213"></a>[213]</span>
+impossible to get hold of it. One can arrest its chiefs,
+as has been done often enough, intercept its correspondence,
+oppose cavalry regiments to its public
+demonstrations, and retroactive measures to its secret
+acts; they cannot destroy the faith the Irish people
+have put in it; they cannot grapple with the essence
+of an association which rests on the most vital interests
+of the peasantry.</p>
+
+<p>Political persecution is fatally doomed to failure
+when exercised in a free country, if it does not begin
+by attacking the press and the right of meeting. And
+who shall dare to touch those two pillars of the British
+edifice? The English government is the government
+of opinion, or it is nothing: now, the opinion of the
+majority of Irishmen, of the majority of Scotchmen,
+and of an imposing minority of Englishmen, is in
+favour of the League.</p>
+
+<p>To say the truth, all parties are agreed <i>in petto</i>
+upon the necessity of abolishing landlordism. It is
+only a question of settling who shall have the credit
+of doing it, and how it shall be managed so that
+neither the landlord’s creditors nor the public exchequer
+should suffer too much by that unavoidable liquidation.
+Therefore all the measures taken against an
+organism that incarnates such general feeling can
+only be an empty fooling, a holiday sport. Their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_214"></a>[214]</span>
+only effect must be to awaken rural passions and
+provoke new acts of violence. One might even
+believe such was their only aim. For, to be able to
+ruin a perfectly lawful association like the League, in
+a country of free discussion, it is indispensable first to
+throw dishonour upon it.</p>
+
+<p>They have not yet succeeded in doing this, in spite
+of the most strenuous efforts. Not only has it always
+been impossible to charge the League with any act
+contrary to the current standard of morals, but it is beyond
+any doubt that its influence is especially directed
+towards the prevention of agrarian crimes, and even
+against individual resistance to landlordism. Wherever
+there is popular emotion or possible disorder,
+its delegates are present, and endeavour to enforce
+respect for the law. If it happen that the orations of
+some underlings overstep the mark, the general
+methods of the League none the less remain unimpeachable.
+It has taken for mandate the ruling of
+revolutionary action, the legalizing it, the task of
+giving it a scientific character. It is to its honour
+that it has succeeded up to the present day. One
+may reasonably suppose that it will not change its
+tactics at the hour when its true chief is no longer
+Mr. Parnell, but practically Mr. Gladstone.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_215"></a>[215]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE CLERGY.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>From Kilrush, on the coast of Clare, an excellent
+service of steamers goes up the estuary of the Shannon
+to Foynes, where one takes the train to Limerick. It
+is a charming excursion, undertaken by all tourists.
+The Shannon here is of great breadth and majesty,
+flowing in an immense sheet of water, recalling the
+aspect of the great rivers of America. At the back
+you have the stormy ocean; in front, on the right,
+on the left, green hills dotted with snowy villas. Few
+trees or none, as is the rule in Ireland, but a light
+haze that softens all the outlines of the ground,
+magnifies the least shrubs, and lends to all the view a
+melting aspect of striking loveliness.</p>
+
+<p>The boats are few in number, though the depth of
+the channel would allow ships of the heaviest tonnage to
+go up to within five miles of Limerick. I notice hardly
+two or three sailing boats at anchor on this four
+hours’ journey. What an admirable harbour for an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_216"></a>[216]</span>
+active commerce would be that broad estuary, opening
+directly opposite to America, on the extreme
+point of the European continent. It is the natural
+point of arrival and departure for the Transatlantic
+steamers, which would reach New York in five days
+from there. Engineers have dreamed of this possibility.
+But to justify a maritime movement, and
+legitimise such enterprise, a great commerce, an
+industry that Ireland lacks, would be wanted. Gentlemen
+of an engineering turn, come back again in a
+century or two.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>At Tarbert, where we stop to take passengers, a
+fort opens its loop-holes, armed with guns, on the
+river. Redcoats are encamping at the foot of the
+fortress, and the morning breeze carries to us the
+rough voice of a non-commissioned officer drilling his
+men. One might imagine him addressing the <i>Invincibles</i>
+across the ocean somewhat after this guise:</p>
+
+<p>“Here we are, keeping watch: If ever this alluring
+bay tempt you to come over, you shall find us
+ready to receive you!”...</p>
+
+<p>The helm trembles; the boat goes on its course,
+and soon Tarbert melts behind us in the sunny haze.</p>
+
+<p>On board, the travellers resemble those seen in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_217"></a>[217]</span>
+summer on all great rivers—merchants bent on a
+pleasure trip; judges and barristers, having taken
+leave of briefs; professors enjoying their holidays, with
+wives, daughters, sons, goods, and chattels—all have
+the sun-burnt complexion and the satisfied look one
+brings back from the seaside. They have been staying
+on the beautiful shores of the County Clare, and are
+returning home with a provision of health for one
+year. La Fontaine has already noticed that, travelling,
+one is sure to see “the monk poring over his
+breviary.” Here the proportion is far greater than in
+the ancient coach; it is not one priest we have on
+board, but a dozen, all sleek, fat, and prosperous,
+dressed in good stout broadcloth, as smooth as their
+rubicund faces, and provided with gold chains resting
+on comfortable abdomens.</p>
+
+<p>One remark, by the way. When you meet an Irish
+peasant on the road, he stops, wishes you good-day,
+and adds, “Please, sir, what is the time?” Not that
+he cares much to know. He is perfectly well able to
+read the time on the great clock of the heavens. But
+it is his own manner of saying, “I can see, sir, that
+you are a man of substance—one of the great ones of
+this earth—<i>since you have a watch</i>. My sincere congratulations!”</p>
+
+<p>Well, all those travelling priests possess chronometers—we<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_218"></a>[218]</span>
+are obliged to notice it, since it appears
+to be a sign of easy circumstances in Ireland—and
+the rest of their attire fully carries out that symptom.
+Under the undefinable cut that at once betrays a
+clerical garment, their black coat has all the softness
+of first quality cloth; their travelling bag is of good
+bright leather; their very umbrella has a look of smartness,
+and does not affect the lamentable droop that
+with us is always associated with the idea of a clerical
+umbrella. Some of them wear the Roman hat and
+collar, with a square-cut waistcoat and the ordinary
+trousers of the laity, and stockings of all the hues of
+the rainbow. A young curate sports violet-coloured
+ones, which he exhibits with some complacency. I
+ventured to ask him, in the course of conversation,
+whether he belonged to the Pope’s household. He
+answered with a blush of modesty that he had not
+that honour, and wore violet hose because he was
+fond of that colour.</p>
+
+<p>That is a matter of taste; but I have a right to
+suppose, young Levite, that the mitre and episcopal
+rochet—perhaps even the cardinal purple—hover at
+night over your ingenuous dreams.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_219"></a>[219]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Limerick.</span></p>
+
+<p>Limerick is a big town of 40,000 inhabitants,
+celebrated for its hams, lace, and gloves. The objects
+of interest are an important linen factory, and another
+for military equipments, besides a stone mounted on
+a pedestal, and which served as a table for signing
+the famous treaty of 1691—soon violated like all
+treaties, however. Opposite that historic stone, on
+the other side of the Shannon, the ancient castle of
+King John rears its proud head; it has a grim and
+gloomy look, with its seven towers, its thick walls and
+iron-bound gates.</p>
+
+<p>At the large hotel of the place I meet again three
+of my ecclesiastical fellow-travellers. They evidently
+know what is good for them, and would on no account
+stop at second-rate inns. One cannot blame them
+for it. But this is a sign of prosperity, added to all the
+others; a hotel at fifteen shillings a day, without
+counting the wine, seems at first sight suited to
+prelates rather than to humble clergymen. Yet these
+are only village and parish priests, as I gather from
+the book on which I sign my name after theirs. At
+dinner, where we sit side by side, I am compelled to
+see that the appetite of the reverend fathers is excellent,
+and that the <i>carte</i> of the wines is a familiar
+object with them. They each have their favourite<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_220"></a>[220]</span>
+claret: one likes Léoville, another Château Margaux,
+while the third prefers Chambertin; and they drain
+the cup to the last drop. After dessert they remain
+last in the dining-room, in company with a bottle of
+port.</p>
+
+<p>At ten o’clock that night, entering it to get a cup
+of tea, I find the three seated round glasses of smoking
+toddy.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>These memorable events are not consigned here, it
+need hardly be said, for the vain satisfaction of
+recording that on a certain evening three Irish priests
+were tippling freely. They certainly had a perfect
+right to do so, if such was their bent. It is the most
+cherished privilege of a British subject; and of all
+capital sins proscribed by the Church, drunkenness is
+certainly the most innocent. But this remark, made
+without prejudice, during a chance meeting at an inn,
+carries out the general impression left by the Irish
+clergy—that of a corporation greatly enamoured of
+its comforts, endowed with good incomes, and whose
+sleekness forms a striking contrast with the general
+emaciation of their parishioners.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere, in visiting this island, one meets with
+this typical pair of abbots, well dressed and well<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_221"></a>[221]</span>
+“groomed,” travelling comfortably together, and, to
+use a popular expression, “la coulant douce.” It is
+startling in this realm of poverty, the more startling
+because the Catholic clergy have no official means of
+existence, no salary paid them by the State. They
+owe all the money they spend to the private contributions
+of their admirers. Was there ever, they doubtlessly
+think, a more legitimate way of making money?
+That is probably why they make so little mystery
+of it, and disdain to hide when they exchange part of
+their income against a bottle of Chambertin. In other
+places, priests think that a certain reserve is expected
+of them; they prefer being securely shut in privacy
+before they carve a partridge or plentifully moisten
+a synod dinner. Here they are so secure in their
+position that they recoil from no profane glance.</p>
+
+<p>Their lives are, I am told, of exemplary purity. I
+have no difficulty in believing it, both because purity
+is a marked characteristic of the race, and because
+their faith has seemed to me simple as that of the
+Breton priests. There must be exceptions, and some
+were pointed out to me; but assuredly those exceptions
+are few in number. By many signs which do
+not deceive those who have some experience of life,
+one can see that the Irish priest has not the vices of
+the Italian or Spanish priest. He is a gormandizer<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_222"></a>[222]</span>
+to be sure, but he is chaste—perhaps for the very
+reason that he is so devoted to the pleasures of the
+table. His simplicity of heart is wonderful sometimes,
+and makes one think of those Mount Athos
+monks, nursed in the cloister from the tenderest age,
+and who know literally nothing of the exterior world.
+I heard two of them, old men both, who were quietly
+chatting in a corner of the railway carriage. Both
+had small, bald birds’ heads, shaven chins, and a quaint,
+old-fashioned look.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>I am next door to an idiot!</i>” one of them was
+saying, with curious complacency.</p>
+
+<p>“So am I,” answered the other; “so was I always,
+and I thank Almighty God for it!... for have
+you not noticed that all those grand, clever people
+often lose the faith?...”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Where does their income come from? That is a
+question doubly interesting to us Frenchmen, who
+every year pay out two million sterling for the budget
+of public worship. A placard seen everywhere in
+Limerick, and presenting a marked resemblance to
+the advertisement for a theatre, will help to tell us.
+This placard is to the effect that on the day after to-morrow
+a general ordination of young priests will<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_223"></a>[223]</span>
+take place in the Cathedral of St. John, by the hands
+of the Right Reverend X. O’Dyer, archbishop of the
+town (the name and quality in conspicuous characters),
+assisted by several other prelates and dignitaries.
+It proceeds to state that excursion trains have
+been established for the occasion, and that tickets for
+the ceremony may be procured, at the price of half-a-crown
+and one shilling, at No. 98, George Street.</p>
+
+<p>This is a booking-office, exactly like those we have
+in theatres. Plenty of placards, the plan of the church
+showing the number and position of each seat, a table of
+prices, and behind a little grated window a bearded old
+woman for the tickets,—nothing is wanting. One has
+only to choose one’s place, to pay the price down, and
+to take away the ticket. About twenty persons perform
+these various acts before my eyes. Evidently
+the receipt will be good. The cathedral of St. John,
+that proudly raises its brand-new spire above all the
+others, must be able to accommodate at least three
+or four thousand spectators. At 1<i>s.</i> 9<i>d.</i> per head on
+an average, that gives already a total of two or three
+hundred pounds. To this must be added the product
+of the collections and that of the wooden money-boxes,
+that open everywhere to receive the outcome of the
+generosity of the faithful; the total, we may be sure,
+cannot be otherwise than respectable. It is true that an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_224"></a>[224]</span>
+ordination is not an every-day event, and that it must
+be an expensive affair to put on the stage. We must
+therefore suppose the ordinary income to be raised by
+way of semestrial and direct contribution.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>This is how the thing is done: each parish priest
+has two Sundays in the year devoted to the taking
+his <i>dues</i>, as he calls it. On these days, instead of
+preaching, he exhibits a manuscript list upon which
+are inscribed by name all his tributaries, that is to
+say, all his parishioners, with the sums they have
+paid into his hands; this he reads publicly. As a
+rule he adds a running commentary to each name,
+either to praise the generosity of the donor, or, on the
+contrary, to complain of his stinginess. In the country,
+especially, the scene is not wanting in humour.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Daniel MacCarthy</i>, four shillings and six-pence,”
+says the priest. “That’s not much for a farmer who
+keeps three cows and sold two calves this year. I
+will hope for him that he only meant that as a preliminary
+gift.... <i>Simon Redmond</i>, seven shillings
+and six-pence; he might have given ten shillings, as
+he did last year. He is not what we should call a
+progressive man.... <i>George Roehe</i>, two shillings and
+three-pence. <i>Richard MacKenna</i>, one shilling and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_225"></a>[225]</span>
+three-pence. <i>Denis Twoney</i>, one shilling and nine-pence.
+Against those who do their best I have
+nothing to say. <i>Michael Murphy</i>, fifteen shillings.
+Now, I ask, could not he have made it a pound?
+The pity of it! <i>John Coleman</i>, five shillings. <i>Daniel
+Clune</i>, five shillings. <i>Cornelius Nagle</i>, five shillings.
+One would think they had agreed to do it.... <i>Henry
+Townsend</i>, Esq., of Townsend Manor, three pounds
+sterling. That’s what I call a subscriber! And
+he is a Protestant. You ought to be ashamed of
+yourselves to let a Protestant be more generous to
+your own church than you are.... <i>Harriet O’Connor</i>,
+one shilling and nine-pence. I will be bound she
+liked buying a new bonnet better than doing her
+duty. That is between her and her conscience. But
+I am afraid that at the Day of Judgment she won’t
+find it such a good investment.... <i>Mary Ann Cunningham</i>,
+twelve shillings and nine-pence. If everybody
+knew how to spare and how to use what they
+spare in the same way as this good lady, things would
+go better in this world and in the next, take my word
+for it.... <i>Colonel Lewis</i>, of Knockamore Villa, five
+pounds sterling. Another Protestant! Positively one
+might think one lived in a parish of heathens when
+one sees that the heretics alone seem to have some
+regard for the church!...”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_226"></a>[226]</span></p>
+
+<p>The reading goes on in this guise, adorned with
+reflections more or less pungent, and interrupted now
+and then by a repartee coming from the far end of
+the audience, and torn from the patient by the malignity
+of the attack; a general hilarity is then provoked
+without impairing in the least the reverence of the
+congregation for their priest or their church. This
+semestrial subscription, added to the weekly collections,
+the daily masses, the baptisms, weddings and
+burials, is amply sufficient to keep the church, the
+priest, and the priest’s house in a good state of
+repair. Most of the parish priests besides, have the
+habit of “binage,” that is to say they often say two
+or three masses a day, at different points of their
+sometimes very wide parish.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>They are generally addressed by their christian
+name, prefaced by the name of <i>Father</i>: <i>Father James</i>,
+<i>Father Henry</i>, etc., and this title well describes the
+terms of filial familiarity of the flocks with their
+pastor,—a familiarity not unfrequently manifested by
+sound boxes on the ear for children, and good blows
+with the stick on the shoulders of his grown-up
+parishioners, but which does not preclude respect.
+In the streets one always sees the parish priest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_227"></a>[227]</span>
+respectfully greeted by the passers by; many women
+kneel down to kiss his hand as in Italy or
+Spain.</p>
+
+<p>His authority is that of a patriarch, who not only
+wields spiritual power, but also, to a great extent,
+social and political power. He incarnates at once in
+himself the native faith so long proscribed in the
+country, resistance to the oppressor, heavenly hopes
+and compensation for human trials. As a consequence,
+his influence is great, for good as for ill.</p>
+
+<p>The faith of the Irish peasant is entire, unquestioning,
+absolute as that of a thirteenth century’s serf.
+One must see on Sundays those churches crowded to
+overflowing, and too narrow for the congregation who
+remain, silent and kneeling, on the steps and even
+outside the doors. One must see those ragged
+people, forming a chain by holding on to each other’s
+tatters, one behind the other, at a distance of 50 to
+60 feet from the altar, a patch of dim light up there
+in the darkness of the church; or else they must be
+seen at some pilgrimage round a miraculous well or
+stream, like the Lough Derg, wallowing indiscriminately
+in the pond, washing therein their moral and
+physical uncleanliness, drinking the sacred water by
+the pailful, intoxicated with enthusiasm and hope.</p>
+
+<p>The devotees of Our Lady del Pilar, and of San<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_228"></a>[228]</span>
+Gennaro, are less expansive and less ardent. The
+Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Rosary, St. Philip of Neri,
+all the mystical armoury of the modern church have
+innumerable votaries in Ireland. One would perhaps
+experience some difficulty in finding there ten born
+Catholics not wearing next to their skin some amulet
+made of cloth or ivory, and invested in their eyes
+with supernatural powers. If I do not greatly err,
+St. Peter’s pence must find its more generous contributors
+amidst those poverty-stricken populations.
+To those imaginations of starved and half hysterical
+people the Roman pontiff appears in the far distance,
+all in white, in a halo of gold, like a superhuman
+vision of Justice and Pity in this world where they
+found neither the one nor the other.</p>
+
+<p>An Irish servant in London once asked my advice
+about the investment of her savings, some thirty
+pounds which she had scraped together at the Post
+Office Savings Bank. I congratulated her on her
+thrift, when the poor girl told me, her eyes bright
+with unshed tears:</p>
+
+<p>“It is for our Holy Father, that they keep in prison
+up there in Rome.... I mean to bring him fifty
+pounds as soon as ever I get them.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_229"></a>[229]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Those things may tend to explain why the only
+prosperous trade in Ireland is the clerical trade.
+Every year the number of priests increases, though
+the population is decreasing. In 1871 they numbered
+3,136; in 1881 they were 3,363, or an increase of 227,
+under the guidance of four archbishops and twenty-four
+bishops. The Catholic population is of three
+million persons; that gives one priest for about 900
+inhabitants.</p>
+
+<p>It is generally admitted that each of these priests,
+with his church and his house, cannot cost much under
+£300 or £400 a year. That would give about
+£1,200,000 coming annually from the pockets of
+those labourers and servant girls. The tithe was never
+so heavy.</p>
+
+<p>This clergy is chiefly recruited from the class of
+small farmers and peasantry (by the reason that
+the other classes are for the majority Protestants); as
+a consequence the clergy share all the passions of their
+class. The agrarian revolution has no agents more
+active. Almost everywhere the parish priest is the
+president of the local Land League Board. In the
+stormiest meetings is always to be found a village Peter
+the Hermit, preaching the new crusade and denouncing
+the landlords with fiery eloquence; not to speak of
+the Sunday preaching, which is only another meeting<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_230"></a>[230]</span>
+closed against the police, and where landlords are
+handled with extraordinary freedom of language.
+One has seen Irish priests openly declare a shot to be
+an unimportant trifle, so long as it was sent after a
+landed proprietor. A few months ago a Dublin paper
+mentioned a parish in Donegal, where the priest, they
+asserted, had gone so far as to put the properties of
+the landlords in lottery, by tickets of ten shillings each.
+The verification of this fact would by no means be
+easy. But, given the state of mind of the Irish priest,
+the ardour he brings into the struggle, the boundless
+indulgence he displays towards agrarian outrages, the
+tale is by no means improbable; our Leaguers have
+done even worse. However surprising may be in our
+Continental eyes the spectacle of a whole clergy taking
+part against the lords in a social war, under the
+paternal eyes of their episcopate, we must remember
+that here everything tends to bring about this result:—religious
+passions, hereditary instinct, and personal
+interest.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>A priest who had the unlucky idea of pronouncing
+himself against the League would soon see his subsidies
+stopped. His flock would besides lose all confidence
+in him, and all respect for his person. I am<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_231"></a>[231]</span>
+told of a characteristic example of the kind of practical
+jokes indulged in such a case by the peasantry against
+the dissident pastor. A priest of the county Clare,
+seized by sudden scruples, took it into his head to
+abuse the League at the Sunday preaching, instead of
+sounding the usual praise in its honour. At once they
+sent him from the lower end of the church an old
+woman who begged to be heard directly in confession,
+before she could approach Holy Communion. The
+worthy man, grumbling a little at such an untimely fit
+of devotion, nevertheless acceded to her request with
+antique simplicity, and seated himself inside the
+confessional.</p>
+
+<p>“Father,” said the old woman in aloud voice, “I
+accuse myself of having this moment thought that you
+were a wicked bad man, who betrays his flock to take
+the part of their natural enemies....”</p>
+
+<p>“Amen!” answered all the congregation in a chorus.</p>
+
+<p>Without waiting for absolution the old woman had
+got up to go. The priest tried to imitate her. Impossible.
+They had placed on his seat a huge lump
+of pitch which glued him, attached him indissolubly
+to his place. To get him free they were obliged to go
+for help outside, to call strangers to the rescue. The
+whole village meanwhile were shaking with laughter,
+and thought the joke in the best possible taste.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_232"></a>[232]</span></p>
+
+<p>The Irish clergy go with the League, both because
+their temperament inclines them that way, and also
+because it is an imperious necessity of their situation;
+their case is rather similar to that of the <i>Home Rule</i>
+members, who were compelled to enter the movement,
+whether they approved of it or not. However strong
+their hold on the mass of the rural population, their
+influence would vanish in a week if they tried to pull
+against the irresistible stream. Such sacrifices have
+never been a habit of the Roman Church.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed it is permitted to smile, when one sees the
+Tory Ministry soliciting the intervention of the Pope
+in the Irish crisis, and obtaining from him the sending
+of a special legate entrusted with the mission of
+bringing the Episcopate of Ireland back to less subversive
+ideas. It is well understood that the Pope of
+course sends his legate, and derives from his diplomatic
+compliance all the advantages it entails. But
+he is better aware than any one that unless he personally
+gave away one million sterling a year to the
+parish priests of Ireland, he would have little reasonable
+hope of success in asking them to shift their
+policy.</p>
+
+<p>Is it necessary to add that the Irish priest himself
+knows on occasion how to bring into his mundane
+relations the traditional suppleness and prudence of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_233"></a>[233]</span>
+his order? A priest of Wexford, actively mixed up
+with the agrarian movement, was dining a few years
+ago at the house of Mr. C⸺, proprietor of a large
+landed estate in the county. Conversation turned
+upon the League, and no good was said of it. The
+priest listened in silence, without giving his sentiment
+either for or against the League. All of a sudden,
+with a look of assumed simplicity, he turned to his
+host—</p>
+
+<p>“Look here, Mr. C⸺,” he said, “Will you
+believe me? <i>Me impresshun is that there is no Land
+League.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>The saintly man had for the last three months been
+vice-president of the board of the Land League in
+his district.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_234"></a>[234]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.<br>
+<span class="smaller">FORT SAUNDERS.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Galway.</span></p>
+
+<p>Galway is an old Spanish colony, planted on the
+western coast of Ireland, and which kept for a long
+time intimate relations with the mother country.
+Things and people have retained the original stamp
+to an uncommon degree; but for the Irish names that
+are to be read on every shop, you could believe yourself
+in some ancient quarter of Seville. The women
+have the olive complexion, black hair, and red petticoat
+of the <i>mañolas</i>; the houses open on a courtyard,
+a thing unknown in other parts of Ireland, as well
+as in Great Britain; they have grated windows, peep-holes
+in the door, and are adorned with sculptures, in
+the Moorish style; the steeples of churches affect
+the shape of minarets; the very fishermen in the port,
+with the peculiar shape of their boat, sails and nets,
+and something indescribable in their general outline,
+remind you of the hardy sailors of Corunna.</p>
+
+<p>The remembrance of seven or eight centuries of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_235"></a>[235]</span>
+busy trade with the Peninsula, does not show itself
+solely in faces, manners, or dwelling, it is to be
+found also in local tradition. Among others, there
+is the story of the Mayor Lynch Fitz-Stephen, who
+gave in 1493 such a fearful example of ruthless justice.
+His only son, whom he had sent to Spain to settle
+some important affair, was coming back with the
+Spanish correspondent of the family, bringing home
+a rich cargo, when he entered into a conspiracy with
+the crew, appropriated the merchandise, and threw
+overboard the unfortunate Spaniard. The crime was
+discovered, the culprit arrested, and brought to trial
+before his own father, who was exercising the right
+of high and low justice in the district, and by him
+condemned to the pain of death. The general belief
+was that the Mayor would contrive to find some pretext
+to give his son a respite; and in order to supply
+him with that pretext, his relations drew up a petition
+of grace, which they presented to him, covered with
+signatures. Lynch listened to their request, then
+merely told them to come back for an answer on a
+certain day he named. At the appointed time the
+suppliants appeared again; but the first sight which
+caught their eyes was the dead body of the Mayor’s
+son hanging from one of the grated windows of his
+house. An inscription, placed in 1524, on the walls<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_236"></a>[236]</span>
+of the cemetery of St. Nicholas, records the memory
+of that event.</p>
+
+<p>Galway is only a big borough nowadays, where
+ruins are nearly as numerous as inhabited dwellings.
+From the road that skirts the Bay, after leaving the
+harbour, the long islands of Arran may be seen
+rising on the west; from another road, which goes
+northwards, Lough Corrib appears, famous for its
+salmon fisheries. As an historic place, the county
+possessed already the field of Aughrim, celebrated for
+two centuries as the spot where James II. lost his last
+battle against William III.—a battle so murderous
+that the dogs of the country retained a taste for human
+flesh for three generations after. But since the last
+year it has acquired a new celebrity: another and no
+less epic battle has been fought at Woodford in
+August, 1886, for the agrarian cause. The account
+of it is worth telling. Never did the character of the
+struggle between League and landlord appear in such
+a glaring light. All the factors in the problem are
+there, each playing its own part. It is like a vertical
+cut opening Irish society down to its very core, and
+permitting to see it from basis to summit; a supplementary
+chapter to Balzac’s <i>Paysans</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Woodford is a pretty village seated on the shore of
+Lough Derg on the slope of the hills which divide<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_237"></a>[237]</span>
+Galway from Clare. The principal landowners there
+are the Marquis of Clanricarde, Sir Henry Burke,
+the Westmeath family, Colonel Daly, and Lord Dunsandle.
+Agrarian hatred is particularly alive in that
+district; the Galway man is bloodthirsty, and counts
+human life as nought. Five or six years ago Mr.
+Blake, Lord Clanricarde’s agent, was shot dead,
+and in March, 1886, a bailiff named Finley, a
+veteran of the Crimean war, had the same fate
+while he was going to proceed to an eviction on
+the account of Sir Henry Burke. The spot is shown
+still where the unfortunate man was murdered and
+his corpse left twenty-four hours without sepulture,
+nobody daring or willing to bear it away. A detachment
+of the police in the pay of the Property Defence
+Association having settled their barracks in the
+vicinity of Woodford, the inhabitants, about one
+thousand in number, organized a sort of grotesque
+pageant, which made its progress along the streets of
+the town behind a coffin bearing the inscription:
+<i>Down with landlordism!</i> then concluded by burning
+the coffin in sight of the barracks.</p>
+
+<p>There are two churches, one Protestant, the other
+Catholic. The faithful who attend the first are two
+in number, no mere nor less, which would be sufficient
+to show how legitimate it was for the Irish to protest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_238"></a>[238]</span>
+when obliged to pay the tithes of an altogether alien
+worship. The second is headed by a jolly compeer,
+much beloved by his parishioners for his good humour
+and liberality, Father Caen, a pastor of the old school,
+whose boast it is that he keeps the best table and
+cellar, and has the prettiest nieces in the county.
+He is president of the local board of the League;
+the treasurer of that committee is the <i>guardian of
+the poor law</i> of the district, what we would call
+“l’administrateur du bien des pauvres;” but the true
+agent of the League—the <i>Deus ex machina</i> of the place—is
+the secretary, Father Egan, curate of the parish,
+an austere, thin, fanatic-looking man, a peasant’s son,
+with all the passions of his race, who sucked the
+hatred of landlords with his mother’s milk, and ever
+remembers that many of his kindred have been
+reduced to emigrate, and that an uncle of his went
+mad after being evicted. A feature to be noted
+down; that priest, tall, strong, sinewy, is an excellent
+shot and an inveterate poacher. Nothing would be
+easier for him than obtaining leave from the landowners
+to shoot on their grounds; but he scorns the
+leave. His delight is to lurk at night till he has shot
+some of their big game, or to head openly a <i>battue</i>
+for a general slaughter five miles round.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_239"></a>[239]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>One of the finest estates in the county is that of
+Lord Clanricarde, to which are attached three hundred
+and sixteen tenants.</p>
+
+<p>Hubert George De Burgh Canning, Marquis of
+Clanricarde and Baron Somerhill, was born 1832,
+according to the <i>Peerage</i>. He was never married,
+has no children, belongs to the House of Lords as
+Baron Somerhill, is a member of two or three great
+clubs, and lives in Piccadilly, at the Albany, a sort
+of caravanserai (not to say seraglio), almost exclusively
+a resort of rich bachelors. That is about
+all that is known of him. His tenants do not
+know him. The only glimpse they ever had of
+their landlord was on the following occasion. In 1874,
+at the funeral of the late Marquis, a man of about
+forty, with fair hair, who had come from London for
+the ceremony, was noticed among the mourners.
+He was said to be the new master. That was all:
+he disappeared as he had come. Save for that hazy
+and far-away remembrance, the landlord is for the
+Woodford people a mere name, a philosophical entity
+of whom they know nothing except that he has a land
+agent at Loughrea, a little neighbouring town, and that
+into the hands of that agent they must pay every year
+£19,634 out of the product of the land. The tenants
+of Woodford are in that sum for about £1,000.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_240"></a>[240]</span></p>
+
+<p>The Marquis’s father died in 1874. Quite contrary
+to the present owner, he was the prototype of the
+Irish lord resident. Great sportsman, scatter-brain,
+violent, extravagant, but kind and open-handed, he
+was liked in spite of his numerous failings, and tradition
+helping him he was emphatically the master
+almost all his life long; a fact which he was wont to
+illustrate by boasting that if it pleased him to send his
+old grey mare to the House of Commons, the electors
+would be too happy to vote unanimously for the
+animal.</p>
+
+<p>In 1872, however, the Marquis’s tenants took it
+into their heads to cut the tradition, and gave their
+vote to a certain Captain Nolan, the <i>Home Rule</i>
+candidate. The irascible nobleman took revenge for
+what he chose to consider as a personal insult by
+raising the rent of all bad electors. He went so far
+in that line that in 1882 the <i>Land Commissioners</i> had
+to reduce them by half. That judgment could not,
+of course, have a retrospective effect and bring a
+restitution of the sums that had been paid in excess
+during the last ten years, and which varied from £50
+to £100. It may be imagined how they must weigh
+still on the peasant’s heart, and what a well-prepared
+ground the agrarian movement was to find at Woodford.
+The successive murders of the land agent<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_241"></a>[241]</span>
+Blake and Bailiff Finlay were among the first and
+visible signs of that ferment of hatred.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Those crimes, which remained unpunished, and the
+responsibility of which is thrown at each other’s heads
+by the two parties, came with the usual accompaniment
+of fires, mutilations, verbal and written threats.
+The reign of terror had begun in the district; no
+bailiff was any longer willing to serve a writ or
+assignation. There came a time when the landlords
+nearly gave up all hope of finding a land agent to take
+the place of the one who had been murdered; at last
+they discovered the man—a certain Joyce, of Galway—a
+man who united an indomitable spirit with the
+most consummate skill; deeply versed in the art of
+talking to the peasant, a fine shot, carrying his potations
+well; ready for anything. A professional
+exploit had made his name famous in the neighbourhood.
+Having to serve writs upon several farmers,
+and being unable to find bailiffs willing to carry them,
+he made a general convocation in his office of all the
+debtors, with the pretext of submitting to them some
+mode of accommodation. The proposition being
+unanimously rejected, Joyce gets up, goes to the door,
+and after having turned the key, leans with his back<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_242"></a>[242]</span>
+against it; then, producing out of his pocket as many
+writs as there were farmers in his room, distributes
+them among the visitors. The poor devils were
+caught; according to the terms of the law, nothing
+but submission was left to them. It will not be unnecessary
+to add here that Joyce, a born Catholic, had
+been recently converted to Protestantism, which is
+reputed an abomination in Ireland, and consequently
+went by the name of the <i>renegade</i>. Such was the
+man who came to settle at Loughrea under protection
+of a special guard of constables, and hostilities soon
+began.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The harvest of 1885 had been but indifferent, and
+besides, by reason of American competition, the price
+of the chief local products had fallen down considerably—from
+about 15 to 20 per cent.—which implies
+for the farmer an utter impossibility to pay his rent,
+unless the nett profit he draws from the soil be estimated
+above 15 or 20 per cent. of his general receipt.
+Even in Ireland reasonable landlords are to be found.
+Those who understood the situation felt for their
+tenants, and, without waiting to be asked, granted a
+reduction of rent. At Woodford, Lord Dunsandle and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_243"></a>[243]</span>
+Colonel Daly of their own impulse, and Sir H. Burke
+after some demur, gave up 15 per cent. of the unpaid
+rent.</p>
+
+<p>As for Lord Clanricarde, he gave not the least sign
+of existence. When the November term came, his
+tenants demanded a reduction of 25 per cent., upon
+which Joyce declared that not a penny was to be
+given up. This seemed so hard that it was generally
+disbelieved; and an opinion spread itself that by
+applying personally to the landlord justice would be
+obtained. A collective address, signed by the 316
+Woodford tenants, was accordingly drawn up and
+presented to him.</p>
+
+<p>The Marquis of Clanricarde vouchsafed no manner
+of answer. Then, Father Egan put himself in motion.
+He first obtained from the Bishop of Clonfert that he
+would send a second petition to the master, representing
+to him the true state of affairs, the reduction
+consented to by the other landlords, &amp;c. Lord Clanricarde
+did not even acknowledge reception of the
+prelate’s letter. Let us state here, once for all, that
+he never swerved from the attitude he had adopted
+from the beginning, so aggressive in its very stolidity.
+Never once did he depart from that silence, except
+when he once wrote to the <i>Times</i> that, personally, he
+did not object to the proposed reduction, but was in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_244"></a>[244]</span>
+the habit of leaving to his agent the care of that sort
+of thing.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing that there was no satisfaction whatever to
+be expected from him, the Woodford tenants imitated
+their landlord, and henceforth gave no sign of
+life, or paid him a single farthing. In the month of
+April, 1886, Joyce resorted to the legal ways and set
+up prosecutions against thirty-eight of the principal
+farmers, whose debt was £20 and above, assuming by
+that move the attitude of a moderate man who has to
+deal with obvious unwillingness to pay.</p>
+
+<p>And it was that which gave to the Woodford affair
+its peculiar character, which made it a <i>test case</i>, a
+decisive trial where the contending forces have
+measured their strength, where the inmost thought
+of the Irish peasant has shown itself in full light. If
+the chiefs of the League had singled it out from amidst
+a hundred (as, indeed, we may believe they did, whatever
+they might aver to the contrary), they could
+never have achieved a more complete demonstration
+of their power. Chance, however, had also its usual
+share in the turn which affairs took. Joyce, it
+appears, had began prosecutions against seventy-eight
+lesser tenants, and at the moment when success was
+on the point of crowning his efforts, the procedure
+was quashed for some legal flaw.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_245"></a>[245]</span></p>
+
+<p>As for the bigger ones, judgment had been entered
+against them, and the execution followed. The first
+step was the selling out in public court of the tenant’s
+interest in his holding. Ten of the men capitulated
+immediately, paying the rent in full with interest and
+law costs, that is to say, about 80 per cent. above the
+original debt. As for the twenty-eight others, fired
+by political passion, pride, and the ardent exhortations
+of Father Egan, they did not waver, and allowed
+the sale to proceed.</p>
+
+<p>Agreeably to the usage established since the League
+has been supreme in Ireland, not one bidder came forward
+at the sale. The representative of the landlord
+therefore remained master of the situation, and got
+for a few shillings the interest of the twenty-eight
+farmers—interest which, in certain cases, was worth
+£200 and more.</p>
+
+<p>It now remained to evict those tenants from their
+farms, and take possession in their place. Let us
+remark that, being certain of having allowed the
+landlord, through the sale, to help himself to a value
+of five or six times his due, those men were bound to
+consider such an eviction a gratuitous piece of cruelty.
+Well knowing before-hand that the eviction would by
+no means be an easy task, for all Ireland breathlessly
+followed the course of events, Joyce singled out<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_246"></a>[246]</span>
+amongst the twenty-eight defaulters, the four tenants
+for whom the eviction was sure to bear the hardest
+character, namely, Conroy, Fahey, Broderick, and
+Saunders. These were all people of comfortable
+means, who had for many years been established on
+their lands, who were profoundly attached to the
+house where their children or grand-children had
+been born, and which they had themselves built,
+enlarged and improved at great expense; rural
+<i>bourgeois</i> rather than peasants; men that in a French
+country town should have been mayors, <i>adjoints</i>, or
+municipal councillors.</p>
+
+<p>For each of them eviction not only meant ruin, the
+voluntary and definitive loss of a small fortune
+laboriously acquired, and which could be estimated in
+each case at ten or twelve times the amount of the
+annual rent; it was, besides, the upsetting of all their
+dearest habits, the destruction of home, the end of
+domestic felicity. “Placed between this result and
+the choice of paying £30 or £40, which he has in his
+strong box, or which he will experience no difficulty
+in borrowing if he has them not—what country-bred
+man would hesitate?” thought Joyce. “Conroy,
+Fahey, Broderick, and Saunders shall pay! They
+shall pay, and after them the others must inevitably
+follow suit.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_247"></a>[247]</span></p>
+
+<p>This was very sound reasoning. But Joyce calculated
+without the League and its agent, Father Egan.
+The four chosen victims did not pay. With a resolution
+that must really seem heroic to whoever knows
+the workings of a peasant’s soul, Conroy, Fahey,
+Broderick, and Saunders unanimously declared that
+the agent might expel them by force—<i>if he could</i>—but
+yield they would not.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! there was a fearful struggle. It was not
+without the most terrible inner combat that they kept
+their word. At home they had the money ready;
+nothing could be simpler than to go and pay it.
+Now and then temptation waxed almost too strong.
+James Broderick is an old man of seventy years.
+One day, called to Loughrea by the tempter, he went,
+in company with his friend Fahey.</p>
+
+<p>“Now, look here, Mr. Broderick,” Joyce said to him,
+“it goes to my heart to evict a good man like you
+from such a pretty house.... You have lived in it
+for these thirty years—it is the pearl of Woodford....
+Let us make an arrangement about all this: you
+pay me down your rent with for costs, and I
+give you any length of time for the rest.... His
+lordship will even give you back the tenant-right for
+the price he paid himself,—fifty shillings.... Now
+what do you say?”...</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_248"></a>[248]</span></p>
+
+<p>Old Broderick wavered; he was on the point of
+yielding.</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed, Mr. Joyce, you cannot do more than that,”
+... he uttered in a trembling voice, involuntarily
+feeling for his pocket-book.</p>
+
+<p>But Fahey was there. He took the old man’s arm
+and drew him aside.</p>
+
+<p>“It is not <i>time</i> that we want!” he said to him.
+“<i>What we want is to uphold the principle!</i>”</p>
+
+<p>Truly a great word. As fine as any recorded on
+History’s page, for those who know how to understand
+it rightly. If the peasants can remember a
+principle when their property is in question, verily
+one may say that the times are near being fulfilled!</p>
+
+<p>All conciliatory means were now exhausted. It
+only remained to have recourse to force. Joyce knew
+better than anyone what resistance he was going to
+encounter. Personally he thought he was going to
+meet death. He went resolutely nevertheless, but
+not without surrounding himself with a regular
+army.</p>
+
+<p>The bailiffs of the place refusing to act, some had
+to be sent for from Dublin. Those bailiffs, escorted
+by about a hundred emergency men, were supported
+besides by five hundred constables armed with rifles
+and revolvers. Woodford lies at a distance of about<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_249"></a>[249]</span>
+twenty miles from the nearest railway. The traps and
+horses necessary to carry all these people had to be
+sent down from Dublin, nobody consenting to give
+any manner of help. The same thing occurred for
+provisions and for the implements of the siege, pickaxes,
+levers, iron crowbars, which were indispensable
+to the assailants, and which were brought down with
+the army to Portumna. These preparations lasted
+three weeks. The mobilisation, decreed by Joyce at
+the end of July, could only be completed by the 17th
+of August.</p>
+
+<p>On the next day, the 18th, this army moved forward
+and left Portumna in a column, marching on
+Woodford.</p>
+
+<p>But on their side the Leaguers had not remained
+inactive.</p>
+
+<p>All the night long squads of voluntary workmen
+had been hard at work. When the police caravan
+arrived in sight of the village, they found the road
+barred by trees and heaps of stones placed across the
+way. They were obliged to dismount and go round
+by the fields.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, from the top of the neighbouring
+heights horns were signalling the appearance of the
+enemy; the chapel bells began to toll an alarm peal.
+From all the points of the compass an immense<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_250"></a>[250]</span>
+multitude of people hastened to come and take up
+their position on the hills of Woodford.</p>
+
+<p>When the bailiffs made their appearance, headed
+by Joyce, armed to the teeth, by the under-sheriff
+whom the duty of his charge obliged to preside at the
+execution, and leading on five hundred policemen,
+an indescribable, formidable howl rose up to heaven;
+the Irish <i>wail</i> which partakes of the lion’s roar and of
+the human sob, of the yell of the expiring beast and
+of the rushing sound of waters.</p>
+
+<p>That lugubrious hooting was to last during two
+entire days, with full-stops, <i>da capo</i>, <i>decrescendo</i> and
+<i>rinforzando</i> of great effect.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The first house attacked by the assailants was that
+of Conroy. It is a solid, comfortable-looking dwelling,
+built on the bank of Lough Derg. To the
+under-sheriff’s summons, the inhabitants, posted on
+the roof, answered only by derisive laughter. The
+door, which was of solid oak, was closed and barred
+inside. The order was given to break it open. A
+few minutes’ work sufficed to do it.</p>
+
+<p>When it fell crashing under the axes, it was perceived
+that a wall had been built behind it.... A
+triumphant shout rose from the crowd.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_251"></a>[251]</span></p>
+
+<p>“A breach must be made!” thundered Joyce. The
+stone wall was attacked. Immediately, from the roof,
+from the windows, poured a deluge of scalding hot
+lime-water, which fell on the assailants, blinded them,
+burnt them, and sent them back howling and dancing
+with pain. Again the crowd applauded, saluting with
+screams of laughter every ladleful of hot water that
+took effect. The custom of Galway authorizes, it
+appears, that singular way of defending one’s house.
+<i>It is no breach of the peace.</i> One can scald the bailiffs
+without any qualms of conscience or fear of consequences.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing loth, the Conroy family freely used the
+permission. The miracle was that they did not use
+more murderous weapons. But the League’s agents
+were there holding back, according to their custom,
+the too fiery spirits, and keeping them within the
+bounds of legal hostilities. At their head the priest
+Egan was conspicuous, loudly advising the besieged,
+pointing out to them the uncovered assailants, telling
+them on what point to direct the effort of resistance.
+As for the police, mute and motionless, they beheld
+the drama without taking part in it. Four hours’
+work were needed to make the breach. At last
+the bailiffs were able to enter the house, expel the
+inhabitants, and take possession of it. They were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_252"></a>[252]</span>
+obliged literally to carry away the youngest Miss
+Conroy, who desperately clung to the walls and furniture,
+and refused to come out of her own will.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Night came, and the bailiffs have no right to carry
+on their proceedings after sunset. They were therefore
+obliged to postpone their operations till the next
+day. What made matters worse was, that they must
+necessarily go back to Portumna, for they need expect
+to find no lodgings in Woodford. It is easy to
+foretell the complication of events that now followed.</p>
+
+<p>The whole of next day was employed in the eviction
+of Fahey. That of Broderick lasted another
+day, and caused the arrest of twenty-seven persons,
+for in spite of the League’s efforts heads were waxing
+hotter and hotter, and the combatants began to be
+rather too excited on both sides.</p>
+
+<p>But where resistance took a truly epic character
+was in the house of Thomas Saunders. With twenty-three
+comrades he held in check all assaults <i>during
+four entire days</i>. Not content with scalding the
+bailiffs by means of pumps and cauldrons installed
+on purpose, he had, by a stroke of genius, the idea
+of throwing on them hives of bees, that came out
+enraged from their cells and cruelly stung everything<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_253"></a>[253]</span>
+before them. Who knows that there may not be in
+this a precious indication for future warfare! European
+strategists may before long add “the chaste dew-drinkers,”
+as Victor Hugo called them, to the pigeons
+and the war-dogs. However that may be, Joyce’s
+mercenaries, burnt, stung, and crest-fallen, were compelled,
+for three nights running, to retreat on Portumna.</p>
+
+<p>The green flag meanwhile was proudly waving its
+folds on the summit of Saunders’ house, which
+enraptured Ireland, intoxicated with joy at the news
+of this unprecedented siege, immediately baptized
+<i>Fort Saunders</i>. Agitation was fast spreading over
+the whole country. The military authorities judged
+it indispensable to send down 200 mounted men, and
+to have the place patrolled at night. In Portumna
+councils of war were held, and serious thoughts were
+entertained of having recourse to the antique battering-ram
+and “tortoise” in order to approach the
+place and succeed in taking it. Three days passed
+in new preparations and supplementary armaments.</p>
+
+<p>At last, on the 27th of August, a new assault was
+attempted. It failed like all the others, but the law
+must, it was felt, at all costs, be enforced; the police
+interfered about some technical point, took the house
+at the bayonet’s point and made all its inmates
+prisoners.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_254"></a>[254]</span></p>
+
+<p>Thus ended, without effusion of blood, this memorable
+campaign; three weeks’ preparation, eight days’
+fighting, a thousand men on foot, enormous expense
+had been required in order to succeed in evicting four
+tenants of the Marquis of Clanricarde, out of a number
+of 316, and that in the midst of scandalous scenes
+which gave the noisiest publicity to the agrarian cause.
+Everybody was of opinion that enough had been done,
+and evictions were stopped.</p>
+
+<p>The affair at Woodford marks a date in the annals
+of the Irish revolution. One has seen in it peasants
+living in relatively good circumstances fight for principles
+and go to the furthest ends of legality,—without
+overstepping them. Moreover, these events have
+taken place in a county famed for its violence and
+represented in Parliament by Mr. Matthew Harris,
+which is saying enough; (his motto was, till lately,
+“When you see a landlord, shoot him down like a
+partridge”). Three or four years sooner such events
+could not have taken place without involving fifteen
+or twenty deaths of persons. Here not a single one
+occurred. One could not but acknowledge that the
+honour of this was due to the League, to its moderating
+and constitutional influence. In vain it protested
+that it had nothing to do with those conflicts;
+its agents and its general instructions played the first<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_255"></a>[255]</span>
+part in it. Therefore it reaped all the fruits of this,
+came out of the ordeal greater, surrounded with a
+poetical halo, sovereign. History often has such
+ironies. At the price of their domestic happiness,
+four obscure heroes had just won in face of public
+opinion the cause of the serfs of the glebe against the
+lords.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_256"></a>[256]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Sligo.</span></p>
+
+<p>In all the cabins I enter, the first object that meets
+my eyes on the wall, besides a portrait of Parnell or
+Gladstone, is, enshrined between the bit of sacred
+palm and the photograph of the emigrant son, a sheet
+of printed paper, sometimes put under a glass, and
+headed by these words, “The Plan of Campaign.”
+This is a summary of the instructions given by the
+League to its followers in November, 1886, and of the
+various means by which the position may be made
+untenable by the landlords.</p>
+
+<p>That order of the day of the agrarian army was,
+however, absent from the house furniture of one of my
+friends, Mat Cloney; he was a fisherman on the Garvogue,
+near Lough Gill, and close to the ruins of the
+Abbey of Sligo; an old man of hale and pleasing
+countenance, whose weather-beaten face was shaded
+by a plenteous crop of gray hair, and lighted up by
+two wonderfully bright blue eyes: a true Celt in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_257"></a>[257]</span>
+manner and appearance. When I entered his cabin
+for the first time he was engaged in preparing his
+dinner; this consisted of a dried herring and a cold
+potato; but tearing down from a hook near the fire-place
+a small piece of bacon, the old man hastily
+rubbed it over a frying-pan, which he set on the dying
+embers; in it he placed the herring. A great noise
+and spluttering followed, then Mat, mindful of future
+feasts, thriftily hung his piece of bacon back on its
+hook, and the herring being done, sat down to his
+meagre repast.</p>
+
+<p>“You see, sir,” he said contentedly, “it gives it a
+relish.”</p>
+
+<p>I must not omit to say that poor as his fare was, he
+nevertheless offered me a share of it. I explained I had
+already lunched, and while he was discussing his meal,
+we entered into conversation.</p>
+
+<p>“You must be pretty well advanced in years,” I
+said, “though one would not think it to see how you
+manage your boat.”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Shure</i>, sir, I was <i>borren</i> in the <i>Ribillion</i>!”</p>
+
+<p>Let me here observe that this is the common
+answer given by many Irish peasants as to their age.
+The “Ribillion” seems to have made an epoch in their
+history, and they consider that any person over middle
+age must have been born during that momentous<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_258"></a>[258]</span>
+period. The date appears to matter little to them. So,
+though I entertained private doubts of Cloney’s being
+89 years old, I let that pass, and we went on talking.</p>
+
+<p>“Have you any children?”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Shire</i> I have!... Me sons they are fishermen,
+and me daughters are all marr’d, near here....”</p>
+
+<p>“And you live alone?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, sir, that I do.”</p>
+
+<p>“It must be a lonely life for you. Were you never
+tempted to marry again after your wife’s death? A
+fine man like you would have had no difficulty in
+finding a wife.”</p>
+
+<p>“Och, sir, after me ould woman died ... (with a
+burst of emotion) I always remained a <i>dacent widowman</i> ...
+that I did!...”</p>
+
+<p>While we were talking I had been looking at the
+walls of the cabin, and I was surprised at finding
+none of the usual League’s documents upon them. I
+turned to Mat and expressed my surprise. Instantly
+Mat let fall the knife with which he was conveying a
+piece of herring to his mouth, and burst into loud
+execrations.</p>
+
+<p>“Och! the b⸺ villains!” he exclaimed; “the
+dirty never-do-well wh⸺! the de’il take them for
+his own! ... the whole lot is not worth a pennyworth
+o’ salt; ... etc., etc.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_259"></a>[259]</span></p>
+
+<p>I confess I rather wondered at this violence. But
+as everyone has a perfect right to his own opinion,
+I did not press the point.</p>
+
+<p>“And you, sir, you be not English, are ye?” said
+Mat after a moment. He had suddenly grown calm
+again.</p>
+
+<p>“No, I am French.”</p>
+
+<p>“Och! <i>Shure</i> the French are foine fellows. I had
+an uncle that fought the French for three days
+at Badajos, and he always said they were b⸺y
+devils, ... begging your pardon, sir, foine fellows
+they were.... Me uncle always said so, ...
+under <i>Bonney</i> the French fought, ... b⸺d ...
+foine fellows, to be sure.... Me uncle also said
+they had no landlords down there. Now, is that true,
+sir?” added Mat Cloney, looking at me with a queer
+expression of countenance.</p>
+
+<p>No landlords? could that be true? He seemed to
+consider such a state of things suited to fairy-land.</p>
+
+<p>I explained that this was pure truth. In few words
+I told him how, shortly before the <i>Ribillion</i> dear to
+his heart, the French peasants had risen as one man
+to get rid of their own landlords; how those landlords
+had for the most part emigrated and taken up arms
+against their country, which had caused the confiscation
+and sale of their lands. I added that those lands<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_260"></a>[260]</span>
+were now the property of the French labourers, who
+highly appreciate this state of affairs.</p>
+
+<p>Mat Cloney listened to me, his eyes glistening with
+interest. Therefore, I was rather surprised when I
+stopped, and he abruptly asked me, as a conclusion:</p>
+
+<p>“Do you know any of those Sligo gentlemen who
+come fishing about here, sir?”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed, I do not. I am a total stranger in these
+parts. It was the manager at my hotel who sent me
+to you.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s roight!” he exclaimed, as if relieved from
+some anxiety. “In that case, sir, I am going to show
+you something!...”</p>
+
+<p>He went to a corner of the cabin, and after some
+rummaging in an old sailor’s box, he produced from
+it a neatly folded paper which he placed into my
+hands. I opened it with some curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>It was a supplementary sheet of the <i>United Ireland</i>,
+of Dublin, where stood <i>in extenso</i> the League’s Plan
+of Campaign.</p>
+
+<p>I looked at Mat Cloney. He was laughing silently.
+I at last understood the riddle. The sly fox was at
+heart with the League (he dubbed it <i>the Leg</i>; by the
+way, like many other Irishmen); but he judged it
+prudent in any case to dissemble such subversive
+feelings, when he had to do with an unknown person<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_261"></a>[261]</span>
+from the town; and being a peasant he rather overdid
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The ice was broken now. He let me study
+thoroughly the document he had lent me, and even
+enriched it with luminous commentaries, in the course
+of a pleasant day’s fishing.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The “Plan of Campaign” seems to have had for its
+father Mr. John Dillon, one of the most universally, and
+the most deservedly, popular of the Irish members; at
+all events, it was introduced to the public by that
+gentleman in October, 1886, at an autumn meeting.
+Those mass meetings, held every year after the
+harvest, have now become an institution, a kind of
+<i>Witena-gemot</i> of the Irish nation. People come to
+them from the farthest ends of the island, by rail, in
+jaunting-cars, on foot, on horseback, as the case may
+be; in such numbers that there is no room or shanty
+large enough in the country to lodge the assemblage.
+So they are open-air meetings. The particular one
+alluded to was convened at Woodford, which has
+become, since the memorable battle on the Clanricarde
+estate, a kind of Holy Place and agrarian
+Kaaba. Soon after the autumn meeting, the scheme
+was approved by the authorities, at the head-quarters<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_262"></a>[262]</span>
+of the League (although they prudently refrained
+from committing themselves officially to it), and expounded
+in the special supplement to the <i>United
+Ireland</i>, of which I hold a copy. It was to the
+following effect:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>Present rents, speaking roundly, are impossible. That the landlords
+will press for them is certain. A fight for the coming winter is therefore
+inevitable, and it behoves the Irish tenantry to fight with a skill
+begotten by experience. The first question they have to consider is
+how to meet the November demand. Should combinations be formed
+on the lines of branches of the National League, or merely by estates?
+We say <i>by estates</i> decidedly. Let branches of the National League, if
+they will, take the initiative in getting the tenantry on each estate to
+meet one another. But it should be distinctly understood that the
+action or resolution of one estate was not to bind any other, and the
+tenantry on every estate should be free to decide upon their own course.</p>
+
+<p>When they are assembled together, let them appoint an intelligent
+and sturdy member of their body as chairman, and, after consulting, decide
+by resolution on the amount of abatement they will demand. A
+committee consisting, say, of six and the chairman, should then be
+elected, to be called a Managing Committee, and to take charge of the
+half-year’s rent of the tenant, should the landlord refuse it.</p>
+
+<p>Everyone should pledge himself (1) to abide by the decision of the
+majority; (2) to hold no communication with the landlord or any of his
+agents, except in presence of the body of the tenantry; (3) to accept
+no settlement for himself which is not given to every tenant on the
+estate.</p>
+
+<p>On the rent-day, the tenantry should proceed to the rent-office in a
+body. If the agent refuses to see them in a body, they should on no
+account confer with him individually, but depute the chairman to act as
+their spokesman and acquaint them of the reduction which they require.
+No offer to accept the rent “on account” should be agreed to. Should
+the agent refuse, then <span class="smcap">every tenant must hand to the Managing
+Committee the half-year’s rent which he tendered to
+the agent</span>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_263"></a>[263]</span></p>
+
+<p>To prevent any attempt at a garnishee, this money should be deposited
+by the Managing Committee with some one reliable person,
+<i>whose name would not be known to any but the members of the committee</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This may be called the estate fund, and it should be absolutely at the
+disposal of the Managing Committee for the purposes of the fight.
+Broken tenants who are unable to contribute the reduced half-year’s
+rent should at least contribute the percentage demanded from the landlord,
+that is the difference between the rent demanded and that which
+the tenantry offer to pay. A broken tenant is not likely to be among
+the first proceeded against, and no risk is incurred by the general body
+in taking him on these terms.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, practically a half-year’s rent of the estate is put together to
+fight the landlord with. This is a fund which, if properly utilised, will
+reduce to reason any landlord in Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>How should the fund be employed? The answer to this question
+must to some extent depend upon the course the landlord will pursue;
+but in general we should say it must be devoted to the support of the
+tenants who are dispossessed either by sale or ejectment.</p>
+
+<p>It should be distributed by the committee to each evicted tenant in
+the proportion of his contribution to the fund. A half-year’s rent is
+supposed to maintain a tenant for a half year, and based upon this
+calculation, a tenant who funded say £50 would be entitled when evicted
+to receive £2 per week.</p>
+
+<p><i>But not one penny should go in law costs.</i> This should be made an
+absolute rule. For to pay law costs, such as attorney’s letters, writs and
+judgments incurred by the landlord, is to arm your enemy for the quarrel
+and furnish him with provisions to boot. In a determined fight there
+are no “law costs” on the side of the tenantry, and they should remain
+out for ever rather than pay those which the landlord incurs in fleecing
+them.</p>
+
+<p>Ejectment is the most common of the landlord’s remedies. Every
+legal and constitutional obstacle which could oppose or delay eviction
+should be had recourse to, for every hour by which the sheriff is delayed
+in one eviction gives another brother tenant so much more grace. There
+are only 310 days in the sheriff’s year, and he must do all the evictions
+in a whole county within the time.</p>
+
+<p>If, after eviction, a tenant is re-admitted as caretaker he should go in,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_264"></a>[264]</span>
+but <i>never</i> upon the understanding that he would care any other farm but
+his own. Should the tenant not be re-admitted, shelter must be procured
+for him immediately by the Managing Committee, and then, if
+necessary, a day appointed when all would assemble to build him a hut
+on some spot convenient to the farm where the landlord could not disturb
+him. Wooden huts, such as those supplied by the League, waste
+too much of the funds and become valueless when the tenant is re-admitted.</p>
+
+<p>Sale is the resort of the landlord when he proceeds by writ or process
+as an ordinary creditor. From eight to twelve days are allowed after
+service of the writ before judgment can be marked. The sheriff may
+seize cattle if he finds them on the farm, or he may seize and sell the
+tenant’s interest in the farm. A tenant who has his mind made up for
+the fight will have his cattle turned into money before the judgment
+comes on. Every tenant who neglects to dispose of them is preparing
+himself to accept the landlord’s terms, for he will not wish to see the
+emergency men profit by taking his cattle at some nominal price,
+and if he buys he is in reality handing the landlord the amount of his
+demand. Sale of a farm is not of so much consequence. Every farm
+sold in this manner during the agitation either has come or is bound to
+come back to its owner even on better terms than he first held it. But
+if a man has a very valuable interest in his farm, he can place it beyond
+the sheriff’s power by mortgaging it to some one to whom he owes
+money. Mortgage effected thus for a <i>bonâ fide</i> debt or consideration
+bars the sheriff’s power of conveyance at a sale. If the landlord or
+emergency men be represented, the cattle should not be allowed to go
+at a nominal sum. They should be run up to their price, and, if possible,
+left in the hands of emergency men at full price. It should be
+borne in mind that if the full price be not realised the sheriff could seize
+again for the balance.</p>
+
+<p>In bidding for a farm it should also be run to amount of debt, but by
+a man of straw, or some one who, if it were knocked down, would ask
+the sheriff for time to pay. By making the landlord’s bidder run it up
+to the amount of debt and costs, and leaving it on his hands, the sheriff
+cannot follow the tenant further. No auction fees should be allowed.
+A farm held on a lease for a life or lives, any one of which is extant,
+cannot be sold by the sheriff. After sale a tenant is still in possession<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_265"></a>[265]</span>
+of holding until a fresh writ is served and a judgment for title marked
+against him. All this involves the landlord in fresh costs. The eviction
+may then follow, and the observations above recorded in case of ejectment
+or eviction apply here.</p>
+
+<p>Distress, another of the landlord’s remedies, cannot be resorted to for
+more than one year’s rent. Few landlords can have recourse to this
+without exposing themselves to actions. The chief points to attend to
+are:—That distress must be made by landlord or known agent, or bailiff
+authorized by warrant signed by the landlord or known agent; that
+particulars of distress be served; seizure on Sunday is unlawful; seizure
+before sunrise or after sunset is unlawful; or for any rent due more
+than one year. Distress is illegal if growing crops be seized, or the
+implements of a man’s trade; and if other property be on farm to
+ensure landlord’s demand, it is illegal to seize beasts of the plough,
+sheep, or implements of husbandry necessary for the cultivation of the
+land. These points should be carefully watched when landlord has
+recourse to distress.</p>
+
+<p>Bankruptcy proceedings are too costly a machinery for general use,
+and no landlord is likely to have recourse to them.</p>
+
+<p>It is unnecessary to add that landlords, and their partisans on the
+magisterial bench and among the Crown officials, will do all in their
+power to twist the operation of the law so as to harass the tenants.</p>
+
+<p>A tenant taking possession of his house to shelter his family from the
+severity of the winter is not likely to escape. A summons for trespass
+must be preceded by a warning to the tenant if he be found in possession.
+We have known a case where the father complied with this
+warning, and on the bailiff’s next visit the mother only was found, and
+she complied. Next time the eldest daughter only was in possession,
+and so on through the length of a long family, such as an evicted tenant
+nearly always has. A goodly time had been saved before the father’s
+turn came again. He was fined and went to gaol. The prison then
+lost its terror for him. When he came out he stuck boldly to his home,
+and he soon won the victory which rewards determination.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The fullest publicity should be given to evictions, and every effort
+made to enlist public sympathy. That the farms thus unjustly evicted<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_266"></a>[266]</span>
+will be left severally alone, and everyone who aids the eviction shunned,
+is scarcely necessary to say. But the man who tries boycotting for a
+personal purpose is a worse enemy than the evicting landlord, and
+should be expelled from any branch of the League or combination of
+tenants. No landlord should get one penny rent on any part of his
+estates, wherever situated, so long as he has one tenant unjustly evicted.
+This policy strikes not only at the landlord but the whole ungodly crew
+of agents, attorneys, and bum-bailiffs. Tenants should be the first to
+show their sympathy with one another, and prompt publicity should be
+given to every eviction, that the tenants of the evictor wherever he
+holds property may show their sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Such a policy indicates a fight which has no half-heartedness about it,
+and it is the only fight which will win.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Well may the author of the “Plan of Campaign”
+wind up his catechism by the appropriate remark that
+“such a policy indicates a fight which has no half-heartedness
+about it.” Never before was such a tremendous
+weapon of social war put in motion. Never
+before, in the whole course of history, was such a
+forcible ultimatum drafted for the consideration of the
+adverse party.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving details aside, and the minute instructions
+on the true mode of skirmishing with the myrmidons
+of the law, the idea of using the very rent claimed by
+the landlord as a provision for feeding the struggle
+against him is in itself perfection—a real masterpiece
+of strategy. An artist can only feel the
+warmest admiration for such a combination of everything<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_267"></a>[267]</span>
+that is most pleasant to the heart of the agrarian
+warrior and most deadly to the landlord’s cause. As
+an orator of the League (Mr. W. O’Brien) has put it:
+“We have discovered a weapon against landlordism,
+the mere threat and terror of which have already
+brought down rack-renters to their knees. We have
+discovered a weapon which feudal landlordism can no
+more resist than a suit of armour of the middle ages
+can resist modern artillery.” And the country where
+such an admirable paper has been penned by its
+political leaders is supposed by its foes to be unable
+to rule its own affairs! This is unfairness with a
+vengeance. Let those meet its provisions, since they
+are so very clever.</p>
+
+<p>The wonder, however, is not that such a policy
+should have been dreamed of. Similar plans of warfare
+have more than once been drawn out in the
+council chamber of parties. The wonder is that this one
+should have been deemed practicable by the farmers
+of Ireland; that it should have been unanimously
+accepted by them; and, what is more, put at once
+into effect. Another wonder is that it should have
+been found <i>lawful</i>, on the best legal authority, and
+that it should have remained unopposed by the “Four
+Courts” and “the Castle.” The greatest wonder of
+all is that it should have enlisted the warm and public<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_268"></a>[268]</span>
+support not only of the lower ranks of the clergy all
+over the island, but of the Episcopate itself; not only
+of the Episcopate but of the Pope, since neither his
+special envoy in Ireland nor his Holiness personally in
+any encyclical letter, have spoken one word in condemnation
+of the “Plan of Campaign.”</p>
+
+<p>It has been in operation now for over one year; it
+has spread as far as the leaders of the League have
+deemed it expedient, for thus far they seem to have
+used it only moderately. “We did not desire,” they
+say, “and we do not desire now that the ‘Plan of
+Campaign’ should be adopted anywhere, except where
+the tenants have a just and moderate and unimpeachable
+case.” But, none the less, it hangs as a formidable
+threat over the heads of the doomed landlords. At a
+moment’s notice it may be extended to the whole
+island, as it has been already to some hundred estates
+in twenty-two counties.</p>
+
+<p>An idea of the state of affairs may be gathered
+from the account given by the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i>
+(December 3, 1886) of the scene witnessed on Lord
+de Freyne’s property in county Sligo. His tenants
+asked for an abatement of 20 per cent., and, being
+refused, they decided to adopt the “Plan of Campaign.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_269"></a>[269]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>There is nothing in the nature of a town or even a village at Kilfree
+Junction, there being only two or three one-story thatched cottages
+within sight of it. In one of these, the nearest to the station, the rents
+were received by Mr. William Redmond, M.P.; the Rev. Canon
+O’Donoghue, D.D.; Rev. Father Henry, C.C.; and the Rev. Father
+Filan, C.C. The operations of receiving the rents, entering amounts,
+and giving receipts to the tenants occupied the greater part of the day,
+commencing in early morning and continuing far in the afternoon.
+Although the situation was rather a depressing one for the poor people
+exposed to all the severity of the elements, they seemed to be one and
+all animated by the greatest enthusiasm. The interior of the cottage in
+which the rents were being collected presented a spectacle really unique
+in its way. The first room, a sort of combination of kitchen, sitting-room,
+and shop, was crowded almost to suffocation by men and a few
+women, who were sheltering from the snow which fell in great white
+flakes without. There was no grate, but a few turf sods burned on the
+hearth, while above them hung a kettle, suspended from an iron hook
+fixed from the quaint old chimney. In the centre of the bedroom leading
+off the apartment was a small table, at which Mr. Redmond, M.P.,
+the clergymen whose names are given above, and one of the leading
+members of the local branch of the National League were seated receiving
+the tenants’ rents. The room was densely crowded, but the
+utmost order and decorum prevailed, and the whole proceedings were
+conducted in the most punctilious and business-like manner.</p>
+
+<p>The tenant handed the money to one of the gentlemen at the table,
+his name was duly entered with the amount paid by him into a book,
+and he was handed back a printed receipt for the amount which he had
+lodged.</p>
+
+<p>As the day wore on, the pile of bank notes upon the table mounted
+higher and higher, and the rows of glistening sovereigns grew longer
+and longer, until they stretched across the table like streams of yellow
+ore. It was difficult to realise how those bleak western plains had ever
+produced so much money, and the conviction seemed to force itself upon
+the mind that a considerable part of it had either been earned by work
+across the Channel, or in remittances from friends and relations on the
+other side of the broad Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p>“Father,” exclaimed one of the younger men, pushing excitedly his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_270"></a>[270]</span>
+aged parent into the room where the rents were being paid over, “come
+along; you have lived to strike a blow for freedom and Ireland.” The
+words were uttered with earnestness and enthusiasm. There are upwards
+of 300 tenants upon this estate alone who have adopted the
+“Plan,” and a further sitting will be necessary in order to receive the
+remaining lodgments.</p>
+
+<p>A couple of policemen, who looked chilled and spiritless, walked
+about the platform, but made no attempt to interfere with the proceedings.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It would be useless to add the least comment to
+such a picture. When similar scenes are witnessed
+everywhere over a country, and accepted by every one
+as the natural consummation of events, and the law
+is impotent to prevent them, the Revolution is not
+impending—it is practically accomplished in the
+mind of all classes.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_271"></a>[271]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.<br>
+<span class="smaller">SCOTTISH IRELAND.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Enniskillen.</span></p>
+
+<p>If you did not know beforehand that you are
+entering a new Ireland through Enniskillen, an Ireland,
+Scotch, Protestant, manufacturing, a glance
+through the carriage-window would suffice to reveal
+the fact. Over the hill, on the right, a fine country-house
+waves to the wind, as a defiance to the League, his
+orange-coloured flag, the colours of the “<i>Unionists</i>.”
+The landlords of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught,
+who are Orangemen, as well as others, dare not proclaim
+their opinions so boldly, hoist them at the top of the
+main mast, so to say; for it might simply cost them
+their lives. You must come to “loyal Ulster” to see
+such acts of daring, for the simple reason that they
+are without danger here.</p>
+
+<p>Another symptom, more eloquent still than the
+colour of the flag, is the aspect of the landscape; no
+more uncultivated fields, no more endless bogs and
+fens. Instead of those long, red, or black streaks of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_272"></a>[272]</span>
+peat, alternating with consumptive oat and potato-fields,
+green, fat meadows, mown by steam, studded with
+cows, in the most prosperous condition, spread themselves
+before your eyes. Some trees are to be seen
+now. The hedges are in good repair, the horses well
+harnessed to solid carts; the hay-stacks have a symmetrical
+outline, and vast fields of flax nod under the
+breeze; the farm-houses are well built, flanked by
+neat kitchen-gardens; in short, all gives the general
+impression of a properly cultivated land. Nothing
+like the agricultural opulence of Kent or Warwickshire
+though, but the normal state of a tolerably good
+land, where human industry is not fighting against an
+accumulation of almost insuperable obstacles.</p>
+
+<p>Is it that the law is different in Ulster? Not so,
+but the custom is. From immemorial times the
+tenant-right has been admitted here; and in consequence
+the farmer has never hesitated to introduce the
+necessary improvements, and to invest his hoard in
+the land, sure as he is to profit by it.</p>
+
+<p>That tenant is three times out of five of Scotch
+origin; three times out of five he belongs to the Protestant
+persuasion (Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist);
+there is not between him and his landlord the
+antagonism of race and worship which is to be found in
+other provinces. The landlord himself fulfils his duty<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_273"></a>[273]</span>
+better, and does not affect to spend abroad the money
+he draws from his estate; often that landlord is some
+guild or municipal corporation of London or elsewhere,
+which perhaps does not make the best use
+possible of its income, but is nevertheless obliged to
+justify more or less its privilege by some philanthropic
+foundation, trials of culture on the large scale, innovation,
+and examples.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Lastly, Ulster is a neighbour to Scotland, and
+belongs to the same geological, ethnological, commercial,
+and religious system. Capital is less timorous
+here. It ventures to come, to stay, to circulate. By
+the side of agriculture there are important factories,
+which help to sustain and feed it. Instead of keeping
+invariably to oats, turnips, and the time-honoured
+potato, the farmers grow flax on a large scale for the
+400,000 spindles which are spinning at Belfast,
+Dundalk, and Drogheda.</p>
+
+<p>A certain tendency to aggregate small holdings,
+and to constitute in that way great and middling farms,
+has been developing lately in Ulster. The peasants
+are better lodged and fed than elsewhere in Ireland.
+They find day-work more easily because agriculture is
+conducted there on more scientific principles, and they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_274"></a>[274]</span>
+are not condemned to remain idle four days out of
+seven. In short, the economic condition of Scotch
+Ireland, without being such as to be offered as a
+pattern to the civilised world, is about as good as
+possible under the feudal <i>régime</i> and landlordism.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Londonderry.</span></p>
+
+<p>The signs of that relative prosperity are obvious.
+Thus in the neighbourhood of Derry (we say Londonderry,
+but the natives all say Derry), you observe
+with pleasure a line of tramcars moved by steam
+machinery, which puts remote places in communication
+with the railway. The carriages are of superior
+make, divided into three classes, towed by an
+engine heated with petroleum. Coming, as you do,
+out of Mayo and Galway, that steam tramway puffs
+in your face a breath of civilisation. You seem to
+enter a different world.</p>
+
+<p>Derry, with its active traffic, its elegant iron bridge
+over the Foyle, the fine, new buildings which attest
+its wealth, justifies that impression. It is the capital
+of the famous “Ulster plantation” of James I., entrusted
+by him to the “Honourable Irish Company,”
+which included twelve guilds of the city of London.
+For a century or two those grants of land did not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_275"></a>[275]</span>
+answer as had been expected. But they have
+ended, in the course of time, by being prosperous.
+The municipal estates of Coleraine and Derry are
+accounted now the most flourishing in the island.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it does not follow that the tenant’s situation is
+very brilliant, even in Ulster. One of the counties
+of the province, Donegal, is the poorest in all Ireland,
+and two or three others are not much better. Even
+in the richest parts the tenant bears chafingly the
+yoke of landlordism. The Antrim Tenant Association
+went so far this year as to ask for a 50 per cent.
+reduction on rent, owing to the low price of produce
+and the sheer impossibility of going on paying at the
+previous rate. It must be noted that tenant-right
+being rigorously observed in Ulster, the farmer always
+pays when he is able; for any remissness in paying
+would diminish by as much the value of his share in
+the proprietorship, which is estimated on an average
+at 8 or 10 times the annual farm rent.</p>
+
+<p>The newspapers of the county, even when unfavourable
+to agrarian revendications, unanimously
+acknowledge that by reason of the constant going
+down of prices, resulting from American competition,
+the present condition of the agriculturist is about
+as bad as it was in the worst famine times. All
+the farmers without exception, be they of Scotch or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_276"></a>[276]</span>
+Irish race, aver that they actually pay from their own
+pockets every penny they give the landlords; that is
+to say, they borrow it in the shape of a loan on the
+value of their tenant-right.</p>
+
+<p>Such a state of things cannot continue. It explains
+how it is that Presbyterian peasants, the most ardent
+enemies of Papistry—in theory—none the less give
+the majority, even in Ulster itself, to the representatives
+of Home Rule and the liquidation of landed
+property.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Portrush and the Giant’s Causeway.</span></p>
+
+<p>Portrush is a delicious sea-side place, at the mouth
+of Lough Foyle, on the most wonderful coast in
+Europe; it is seated on the edge of the Antrim
+table-land, which is of volcanic origin: probably a
+dependency of Scotland geologically, rather than
+belonging properly to Ireland, to which it came and
+welded itself, at some unknown epoch. The traveller
+has there the agreeable surprise of a delightful hotel—one
+should say a perfect one—a regular miracle of
+comfort; and the still greater surprise of seeing
+there the only electric railway actually working on
+this planet. That bijou-line is used to take the
+visitors to the wonder of Ireland, the Giant’s Causeway.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_277"></a>[277]</span>
+It ascends on the sea-side an acclivity of
+about three to four hundred yards, and runs over a
+length of five miles up to Bushmills, where the
+generators of electricity are set to work by hydraulic
+power. Nothing is so fresh or unexpected as that drive
+in open carriages. The train ascends lustily along the
+electric guiding-rail in the midst of a well-nourished
+fire of sparkles called to life by its iron hoofs. As it
+rises higher the prospect gets wider and wider, and
+you get a view of the Scotch mountains only fifteen
+miles distant, while the most extraordinary basaltic
+formations are following one another under your eye
+along the coast.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The Antrim table-land, so geologists tell us,
+was formed by a layer of lava three or four hundred
+yards high, spread over the chalky bottom of the sea.
+Of the volcanoes which vomited that lava no vestige
+is to be seen to-day. The glaciers, tumbling down
+from the neighbouring heights, have cleared them away.
+In times remote, that table-land extended across to
+Scotland, to which it united Ireland as by a sort
+of prodigious bridge of lava. But the unremitting,
+incessant, work of the waters has eaten away by
+degrees the cretaceous masses which supported it.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_278"></a>[278]</span>
+The arches of the bridge were then dislocated and
+precipitated into the ocean. Only some traces of it
+on both sides are left standing now: the Giant’s
+Causeway in Ireland, the point of Cantire in Scotland,
+and between the two, the little Island of Rathlin.</p>
+
+<p>Along the coast of Antrim the waves continuing
+their destructive work, go on gnawing the foundations
+of the cliffs, which they dig and carve like lacework.
+Numberless grottoes, rocky needles shaped into the
+likeness of steeples, deep chasms at the bottom of
+which the foaming waters are for ever contending, are
+the result of that perennial work.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally, as at Dunluce, to the fantastic work of
+nature, some ruin that was once an illustrious stronghold,
+whose walls, literally hanging over the abyss,
+seem to be attached to the firm ground only by a
+curved arch of half-a-yard’s breadth, adds an element
+of tragic poetry. Under the rock which bear those
+dilapidated walls, the sea has dug for itself caves
+which are resounding night and day with the deafening
+noise of the beating waves. It is grand and
+terrible in summer; one can imagine what it must be
+when the tempest of a winter night unloosens its fury
+within those caverns.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally they are, more than any other place in the
+world, rich in legendary lore. The M’Quillans, to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_279"></a>[279]</span>
+whom belonged Dunluce Castle, boast an antiquity
+which outshines greatly that of the descendants of
+the Crusaders. These are not people to be content,
+like Montesquieu, with two or three hundred years
+of acknowledged nobility. They came from Babylon,
+it appears, at an epoch exceptionally prehistoric,
+and can trace their origin back to 4,000 years ago.
+The only branch in existence now dwells in Scotland,
+and bear the title of lords of Antrim and
+Dunluce.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>At Bushmills the electric train stops. There you
+alight and take your seat in the car which brings
+you to the Causeway Hotel. Here, as the air is
+decidedly bracing, and the majority of the tourists
+English, luncheon is ready, as you may imagine.
+The classic salmon despatched in company with a
+glass of ale or porter, the only thing to do is to look
+to business and visit the marvels of the place. A
+wall, which the provident administration of the hotel
+have raised for purposes of safety, hides them as yet
+from your sight. When you have passed that
+obstacle you find yourself within a sort of circus,
+delineated by the cliffs, and at the extremity of
+which descends a path that looks anything but safe.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_280"></a>[280]</span>
+Total absence of causeway. Where must we look for
+it? This a swarm of guides, cicerones, boatmen,
+beggars of all descriptions, offer to show you. They
+all speak at the same time, fight, wrangle, make you
+deaf with their jabbering. Wise is he who sends
+them to the devil, and follows peacefully the pathway
+which goes to the extremity of the circuit, turns alone
+round the foot of the cliff on the right, and penetrates,
+unaccompanied, into the neighbouring bay. He will
+have the joy of a powerful, wholly personal sensation,
+unalloyed by any impure element. But alas! how is
+one to guess that? You think you are doing the
+right thing in giving the lead to a professional guide.
+You choose among the howling crew the less ruffianly
+face, and you deliver yourself into the hands of a
+cicerone. Fatal error! Henceforward you cease to
+belong to yourself. You are no longer a being
+endowed with reason and volition, with the free
+exercise of your rights; you are an article of luggage
+in the hands of a porter, a disarmed traveller in the
+power of a Calabrian desperado.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of taking you to the bay on the right, the
+arbiter of your destiny begins by laying down as a
+dogma that the only means of seeing the causeway
+properly is to approach it by sea. On the same occasion
+you shall visit the marine caves. Allured by that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_281"></a>[281]</span>
+programme, you follow the man, and you embark
+with him in a boat rowed by two oarsmen, who greet
+your advent rapturously.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Five minutes later you find yourself in total darkness
+under the oozing vault of a cavern, where the
+fluctuations of the mountainous waves now let the
+boat sink suddenly five or six yards down, now heave
+it up against the roof, and threaten to shiver your
+skull to pieces. In the midst of that frantic jogging
+and tossing the guide lights up a Bengal flame, in
+order to display to better advantage the variegated
+tints of the damp walls, or, it may be, to create the
+said tints, if they do not exist. Then he lets off a
+pistol in your ear to awake the echoes of the cavern,
+which answer to the call with deafening unanimity.</p>
+
+<p>This is the “psychological moment.” The rowers,
+laying down their oars, take off their caps and hold
+them to you, explaining at the same time that gunpowder
+is expensive. You hasten to accede to the
+request, and soon after you find yourself, not without
+pleasure, in the daylight again.</p>
+
+<p>Not for long, however; for you are expected to do
+another cavern. You submit meekly to the programme.
+Again that homicidal tossing; another<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_282"></a>[282]</span>
+Bengal flame; a second pistol shot. This time the
+boatmen offer you a box of geological specimens. As
+it is, you happen to abhor geology; but how is one
+to resist people who have him in their power in a
+marine cave?</p>
+
+<p>Liberation comes in time. You breathe again.
+The miscreants have the face to mention a third
+cavern! But this time you rebel. “No more caverns!
+The causeway instantly!”</p>
+
+<p>You double a little promontory, and after two or
+three oar-strokes you land on what seems to you at
+first a quay with a pavement made with hexagon
+slabs.</p>
+
+<p>“Here you are, sir! This is the Giant’s Causeway.”
+Let us confess it candidly: the first impression is
+disappointment. Is it then that famous Causeway,
+that unrivalled wonder? You are ready to believe in
+a mystification. But this is only a passing impression
+for which the guides, not the Causeway, are responsible.</p>
+
+<p>The truth is, you must not approach it by sea if you
+wish to see it well. It is by land only that it can be
+understood, like a symphony which would lose half
+its charm if executed in the open air. The treason
+of the guides is so cruel that it really cries for
+vengeance and must be denounced.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_283"></a>[283]</span></p>
+
+<p>At last you have managed to get rid of them, and
+leaving the Causeway, you have climbed up the steep
+neighbouring cliffs. And now looking round, you are
+struck with stupefaction and rapture at the spectacle
+which offers itself to your eyes. That sort of quay
+or footpath you deemed at first mean or insignificant
+is in reality, when viewed properly, the most
+stupendous whim of nature. Imagine a formidable
+array of forty thousand columns of prismatic shape
+(some one gifted with patience has numbered them),
+rising tall and majestic, and pressed against each
+other so as to form a continuous, almost level pavement,
+which emerges from the sea like a quay of
+marble. The symmetry of that pavement is so remarkable,
+all those shafts of columns are so well
+clamped together, that it seems almost impossible to
+admit that this is not human work. You fancy you
+are walking on the hexagonal slabs of some Babylonian
+palace, whose walls the storm has destroyed.
+These paving-stones are neat and even, about
+one foot wide, and perfectly regular. Towards the
+middle of the quay they rise in a sort of swelling,
+which permits one to study their anatomy
+and to perceive that they are really formed by
+the section of as many upright parallel prismatic
+columns.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_284"></a>[284]</span></p>
+
+<p>There are three Causeways,—the Great, the Little,
+and the Middle Causeway. They occupy the centre
+of a semi-circular bay, formed by lofty cliffs, which
+let you see under a thin covering of clay and grass
+other rows of basaltic columns that show their profile,
+and have been called “the Organ.” On the
+right the bay is limited by a jutting rock, above
+which tower two or three needles—“the Chimneypots.”
+A local tradition relates that the Invincible
+Armada, driven against the cliffs by a strong gale,
+mistook the needles for the towers of Dunluce, and
+stormed them uselessly a whole day long.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond those basaltic piers a spring of sweet water
+forms the “Giant’s Well;” further on a rock, roughly
+shaped as a church desk, is called “the Pulpit.” All
+those sports of nature compose a whole truly unique
+and wonderful. Neither the Alps, nor the chain of
+the Andes, nor Mount Vesuvius, nor Etna, can
+give you such an impression of grandeur—are able to
+that degree to put you as it were into communion
+with the mysteries of labouring Nature.</p>
+
+<p>What strikes you further about those basaltic
+formations is that they are both colossal, like all
+works directly resulting from the great cosmic forces,
+and at the same time almost Greek by the quality
+and symmetry of their arrangements. For once the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_285"></a>[285]</span>
+volcanos seem to have had the whim to work according
+to the canons of art. It is both human and
+super-human—verily a Giant’s Causeway!</p>
+
+<p>The Giant Fin M’Coul, so the legend says, was
+the guardian genius of Ireland. He had for a rival
+a certain Scotch Giant of mighty conceit and insolence,
+whose boast it was that none could beat him.
+The sea alone, if that Scotch braggart was to be
+believed, prevented his coming to let M’Coul feel
+the might of his arm, as he was afraid of getting a
+cold if he attempted to swim across the Straits. So
+he remained at home. M’Coul was riled at last by
+that swaggering. “Since thou art afraid to get wet,”
+he cried to his rival, “I am going to throw a causeway
+between Scotland and Ireland, and we shall see
+then whether thou darest use it!” The building of
+the bridge took only a few thousand years, and then
+the Scot, having no pretence left, accepted the challenge,
+was beaten flat, and obliged to eat humble pie.
+After which, with true Irish generosity, the good-natured
+giant gave him his daughter in marriage, and
+allowed him to come and settle near him, which the
+Scot accepted, nothing loth, Erin being an infinitely
+sweeter and generally superior country to his own.
+But perhaps, after all, M’Coul found no cause to
+rejoice over the match he had arranged for his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_286"></a>[286]</span>
+daughter, as he subsequently allowed the sea to
+destroy his work so as to prevent any more Scots
+from settling in his dominions. Only some of its
+piles remain standing, one of which is the Isle of
+Rathlin, half-way across the Straits.</p>
+
+<p>The legend, as you see, is not so foolish. It answers
+at all points to geological data, and even to historic
+truth, viz., the invasion of Ulster by the Scots. But,
+let its origin be what it may, the fact remains that
+the Giant’s Causeway, with its neighbour, Portnoffen
+Bay, the most perfect amphitheatre in the world,
+with the marvellous colonnade of the Pleaskin, Dunluce
+Castle, Dunseverick, and the bridge of rope of
+Carrick-a-Rede, thrown over a chasm that measures
+a hundred feet above the waters,—constitute one
+of the grandest, most moving spectacles that the
+traveller may see. You can go round the world without
+having such extraordinary sights. Add to it
+that few of the gems of nature are of so easy an
+access. From Paris you can be on the coast of Antrim
+in twenty hours, by London, Liverpool, and Belfast.
+Portrush, with its admirable sea-shore, its electric
+railway, and stupendous cliffs, is the ideal frame for a
+honeymoon excursion. I had resolved to recommend
+it to tourists, and to point out the guides of the Causeway
+to public execration. Now I have done my duty.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_287"></a>[287]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Belfast.</span></p>
+
+<p>The capital of Ulster is naturally the most flourishing
+town of Ireland. Whereas the others decrease in
+population and wealth, Belfast is rapidly thriving.
+From 20,000 inhabitants, which it numbered at the
+beginning of the century, it has risen in eighty years
+to 210,000. Another ten years and it will outdo
+Dublin itself. It is a manufacturing city as well as a
+big trading port. By an exception, unique in the
+island, it occupies a great number of workers, male
+and female—60,000, at the lowest computation—for
+the most part, in the weaving trade and naval construction.
+A single linen factory, that of Messrs.
+Mulholland, gives work to 29,000 pairs of hands. It
+is those weaving looms which utilize the product of
+the 110,000 acres of flax fields in Ulster. Out of
+nineteen ships of over 300 tons annually built in the
+docks of the island eighteen come out of the Belfast
+wharves. It is, in short, the maritime gate of Irish
+import and export—the insular suburb of Liverpool
+and Glasgow.</p>
+
+<p>As a consequence, signs of prosperity are showing
+themselves everywhere. The public walks are vast
+and carefully kept, the houses well built, the shops
+substantial and elegant, the educational establishments
+important and richly endowed. The town has<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_288"></a>[288]</span>
+a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon aspect. London fashions
+are scrupulously followed there. If you enter the
+Botanical Garden, maintained by voluntary contributions,
+you find there the lawn-tennis, the dresses, the
+ways of the metropolis. If you follow the road up to
+Cave Hill, one of the heights on the western side of
+Belfast, you embrace a vast landscape, where the
+flying steamers on the Lagan, the smoking factory-chimneys,
+the innumerable and opulent villas round
+its shores, all speak of wealth and prosperity.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The population is about equally divided between
+Protestants and Catholics. The consequence is that
+party hatred and the struggle for local influence are
+far more ardent and long-lived here than in places
+where one of the two elements has an overwhelming
+majority. Electoral scuffles easily turn to bloody
+battles; political anniversaries—that of the Battle of
+the Boyne, above all—are a pretext for manifestations
+which often degenerate into regular battles.</p>
+
+<p>Belfast is the bulwark of Orangeism; and Orangeism
+may be described as Protestant and loyalist fanaticism,
+as opposed to Catholic and national fanaticism.
+Shankhill Road, which is frequently used as a battle-field
+by the antagonistic parties, is a long suburb<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_289"></a>[289]</span>
+which divides as a frontier line the Orangeist from
+the Irish quarters.</p>
+
+<p>Hardly one pay-day passes without the public-houses
+of that suburb being the theatre of some pugilistic
+feat accomplished by some voluntary representatives
+of the opposite camps. If the police
+happen to rush into the fray, reinforcements are
+called from either side; stones, cudgels, revolvers
+come to the rescue, and, on the morrow, the jails are
+filled with prisoners, and the hospitals with the dead
+and the wounded.</p>
+
+<p>Sad to relate, it is the clergy on both sides who
+incite them to those fratricidal struggles. There are
+certain Protestant preachers who are in no way behindhand
+in bitterness and virulent abuse with the
+most fanatic priest of Roscommon or Mayo. I have
+heard personally in Falls Road a Methodist preaching
+in the open air incite his audience to the extermination
+of Papists in strains which the creatures of
+Cromwell would not have disowned.</p>
+
+<p>In order that nothing should be missing to the
+parallel, Ulster has its Orangeist League, not unlike
+the National League of Ireland (save for the respect
+of legality and the general moderation of proceedings).
+That League is formed into battalions and
+companies which are privately drilled, they say, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_290"></a>[290]</span>
+lose no occasion to make a pageant in the streets
+with accompaniment of trumpets and drums, and
+whose ways remind one of the Salvation Army.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>On the whole, Ulster is the only province of Ireland
+where the Unionist forces are about equally matched
+with the party of Home Rule; that is to say, the
+former command a majority in Antrim, part of Down,
+part of Armagh, part of Derry and Donegal, whilst
+the Home Rulers have the stronger array of voters
+in the remaining parts of the province. Except in
+the above-delineated band of north-eastern territory,
+the result of the elections is always taken for granted
+beforehand all over the island, and is for—Home
+Rule. But this is not saying that the contest is at
+all passionate even in Belfast. I happened to be there
+on the occasion of the General Election of 1886, and
+was most struck by the comparative calm of the
+population pending the momentous ballot. I could
+not help expressing my surprise, over the mahogany,
+to my host, a wealthy mill-owner, a zealous Presbyterian,
+and an active Orangeist into the bargain, to
+whom an English friend had given me a letter of
+introduction.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_291"></a>[291]</span></p>
+
+<p>“You wonder at our calm?” he said. “The explanation
+is very simple. In Ireland the respective
+position of parties can hardly be much altered by the
+incidents of the struggle. Whether the Home Rulers
+take one seat from us or we gain one on them, we
+shall neither of us be much benefited by it. It is in
+Great Britain that the true battle is taking place.
+Let us suppose that Mr. Gladstone, instead of finding
+himself in a minority in the next Parliament, returns
+to the House with a majority. This majority can in
+no case be very strong, and we may still doubt that
+it will consent to follow him to the end in the path
+he has chosen. But let us go farther, and suppose
+Home Rule to have been voted by this majority,—let
+us suppose it to have been voted by the Upper
+House,—a still more unlikely contingency. Well, our
+decision is taken irrevocably. We are perfectly resolved
+not to bow to such a vote, and not to submit
+to Home Rule.”</p>
+
+<p>“What! shall you rebel against the constitution?”</p>
+
+<p>“Against the constitution, no. But if needs must
+be against Mr. Gladstone and his party. We shall
+appeal from the ignorant electors to the better informed
+ones. We shall protest against a decision
+that would in a way deprive us of our rights as British<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_292"></a>[292]</span>
+subjects. And in the meanwhile we shall refuse to
+acknowledge a Dublin Parliament. We shall refuse
+to pay the taxes that it may fix upon, or to obey the
+laws it may vote. We shall repeat loudly that we are
+Englishmen, and will not be anything else; that we
+depend on the British Parliament and recognize no
+other authority; and we shall see then if our appeal
+raise no echo in the United Kingdom!”</p>
+
+<p>“But still, the right of making laws generally
+entails the power of enforcing them. What shall
+you do on the day when the Dublin Parliament,
+having voted the taxes for you as for the rest
+of Ireland, shall send tax-gatherers to collect
+them?”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>We shall receive them with rifle-shots.</i>”</p>
+
+<p>“What! are you going to tell me that you, sir,
+‘worth’ half a million sterling, if the public voice
+speaks the truth, that this fat gentleman there, the
+father of those two pretty daughters, that this respectable
+doctor in gold spectacles, and all your other
+guests to-night, all peace-loving, middle-aged gentlemen,
+comfortable and with good rent-rolls, seriously
+entertain the idea of buckling on your shooting-gaiters
+and going to battle in the street?”</p>
+
+<p>“We shall go, if we are obliged, rather than submit
+to the Dublin people!... After all, have we not a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_293"></a>[293]</span>
+right to remain English, if it suits us?... The very
+principle of Home Rule, if it is adopted, implies that
+we shall govern ourselves as it seems good to us.
+Well, here in Ulster, we are nearly two million loyalist
+Protestants, who cherish the pretension of not being
+given over to the three million Papists entrusted with
+the making of the Dublin Parliament,—who shall dare
+to deny this right to us?”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Parnell and his friends will certainly deny it
+as soon as their programme is embodied into law.
+They will say to you, ‘Henceforth Ireland shall
+govern herself. Let those who do not like it go
+away.’”</p>
+
+<p>“But it is precisely what we shall never do!... Our
+title to the Irish soil is as good as the Parnellites’....
+Let them try to dislodge us, and they shall have a warm
+welcome, I promise you.”</p>
+
+<p>In the course of conversation my worthy interlocutor
+had let the number of 100,000 Orangemen, armed to the
+teeth and ready to defend Ulster against the Home
+Rulers, escape him. I took advantage of this to ask
+him for a few details on this organization. I learnt
+this: that the Orangeist army is by no means a fallacy,
+as one might imagine, and that it forms a sort of
+latent militia, with its active forces, and its reserve.
+At first, established as a kind of freemasonry, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_294"></a>[294]</span>
+formed in “circles” or “lodges,” it comprises actually
+four divisions, subdivided into twenty-two brigades:
+each of these brigades consists of two or three
+regiments, infantry, cavalry, and artillery; in each
+regiment are sections and companies, each composed
+of affiliates belonging to the same district. Three
+divisions are recruited in Ulster proper; the fourth in
+Dublin and Cork, in Wicklow and in King’s County.
+All those affiliates take the engagement to observe
+passive obedience and to render personal service on
+the first requisition of their supreme council; they
+furnish their own arms and recognise the authority of
+a commander-in-chief.</p>
+
+<p>Does all this have any substantial existence besides
+what it has on paper? Do the Orangemen secretly
+drill, as it is averred, both for the infantry and the
+cavalry manœuvres? Is it true that most of the volunteer
+companies in Ulster are exclusively Orange
+companies? Lastly, are those volunteers really ready
+in case of an open rupture with Dublin, to take up
+their arms and fight for their cause?... Many
+people think it doubtful. The Home Rulers especially
+think it pure moonshine and humbug. I
+remember one of their papers publishing the following
+advertisement last year to show in what esteem they
+held the Ulster army:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_295"></a>[295]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Rotten Eggs! Rotten Eggs! Rotten Eggs!</span></p>
+
+<p><i>Wanted: 100,000 rotten eggs, to be delivered in Tipperary,
+worthily to welcome 20,000 Orangemen, armed
+with rifles and guns, under command of the illustrious
+Johnson. Offers to be addressed to the printing office
+of this paper.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>This certainly does not indicate a very exalted idea
+of the valour of the Orangeist forces on the part of the
+southern populations. But that does not mean that
+no other sugar plums shall be exchanged. In all civil
+wars such pleasantries take place, yet they do not
+prevent rivers of blood being shed. One fact alone is
+beyond doubt, that the Orange organization has
+immense ramifications among the regular troops, and
+is openly favoured by General Wolseley; that a
+large number of retired officers have entered it;
+that one would perhaps find it difficult to find one
+among the Queen’s regiments ready to fire on the
+loyalists, and that the most ardent partisans of Home
+Rule hesitate to grant to the Irish Parliament the
+faculty of raising an armed force.</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion, the last word in Ulster may very well
+be said by the Orangemen.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_296"></a>[296]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.<br>
+<span class="smaller">LEX LICINIA.</span></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It would have been pleasant to conclude these
+pages without recording too harsh a judgment
+against England, one of the two or three nations for
+ever dear to the thinker; one of those who possess a
+brain of her own, not merely a chain of nervous
+nodosities presiding over the organic functions; one of
+those who lead the Human Race along the hard road
+where it toilingly drags its miseries and delusions. It
+would have been pleasant at least to find some kind
+of extenuating circumstances for the attitude she
+maintains doggedly towards Ireland. But this is
+sheer impossibility.</p>
+
+<p>All that can be pleaded on behalf of England is
+that she is truly unconscious of the wrong she has
+been doing for centuries, and that she firmly
+believes herself to have acted within her rights.
+Nations, still more than individuals, are the slaves of
+their temperament, of their faults and their qualities.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_297"></a>[297]</span>
+Shall we call the tiger a murderer, or reproach
+vultures because they feed on human flesh? They
+obey their instincts, and merely follow the dictates of
+nature. So it is with nations. Considered no longer
+in the individuals that compose it, or in the intellectual
+<i>élite</i> that speaks in its name, but in the fifteen or
+twenty generations that have woven the woof of its
+annals, a people is an irresponsible and blind organism,
+fatefully obeying its impulses, be they noble or
+base.</p>
+
+<p>Try to talk with a Protestant landlord about the
+wrongs and grievances of Ireland. He will tell you
+in all good faith that the Irish alone are to blame.
+Ignorant, slothful, given to drink, sly and cunning, a
+nation of liars,—weak, in a word, and vanquished
+beforehand,—this is the verdict he pronounces on
+them from the height of his respectable rent-roll. If
+they have failed in the struggle for life, it is because
+they came into it badly armed and unprepared. So
+much the worse for them,—let them make way for the
+stronger ones! Such is the theory.</p>
+
+<p>There can be no doubt that it is put forward in all
+sincerity by a majority of Englishmen. But this does
+not prove that it rests on any sound foundation. It
+only proves once more that they are incapable of
+understanding anything about the Irish<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_298"></a>[298]</span>
+temperament.<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> This reasoning is merely the classic sophistry.
+They mistake the effect for the cause, and are blind
+to the fact that those vices they so bitterly reproach
+the Irish with, are the inevitable result of three
+centuries of bad administration and England’s own
+work. Wherever it has been liberated from the
+English yoke, has not, on the contrary, the Irish race
+displayed abundant energy, activity, genius? Do not
+the Irish hold the first rank in the United States, in
+Canada, in Southern America, in Australia, wherever
+emigration has carried them. In England even are
+they not at the head of all liberal professions,
+letters, the daily press, the bar, science? Those who
+have seen and closely studied that nation, crushed
+under its secular burden, ground under the heel of the
+conqueror, cannot but feel surprised at the bare fact
+that it survives; and this fact alone presupposes the
+most admirable gifts. One could even question
+whether, deprived of the Irish Celt element, for leaven,
+for chiefs, for counsellors, in letters, and in assemblies,
+the heavy Anglo-Saxon race could ever have founded
+its flourishing colonies. These prosper, one may say,
+in direct proportion to the number of Irish that
+come to them, even as the mother island slowly decays<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_299"></a>[299]</span>
+in direct proportion to the number of her children
+that are driven from her shores.</p>
+
+<p>Why should such slanderous explanations be sought
+for a fact sufficiently explained by history? The great
+misfortune of Ireland is not to be a nation less richly
+gifted than its conqueror, but only to be too small
+a nation, established in an open island. The Irish have
+been neither more vicious, nor more fanatical, nor
+more slothful than the English; they have been less
+numerous, less well armed; and John Bull, according
+to his deplorable custom, has taken advantage of their
+weakness for bullying them, for levying heavy toll on
+them, for bleeding them to death without mercy. He
+has taken their land, their freedom, their industry,
+and still wrests from them the product of their labour.
+And, to crown all, he dares to call them to account
+for their misery as for a crime—this misery, which is
+his own work, with all its wretched following of vices
+and degradation.</p>
+
+<p>Before such a sight as this involuntary indignation
+must be felt. One wishes to say to the English—</p>
+
+<p>“You pirates, begin first by giving back to Ireland
+all you have taken from her, and you shall see then
+if she be guilty of this poverty you consider as a
+crime! Let us reckon. Give her back her land,
+which your nobles occupy. Give her back the bravest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_300"></a>[300]</span>
+of her sons, that you have driven to emigration. Give
+her back the habit of work which you have destroyed
+in her. Give her back the wealth which you prevented
+her accumulating, by forbidding her commerce and
+industry. Give her back the millions which you still
+exact every year upon the produce of her agricultural
+energy. Give her back the experience of freedom
+that you have so long crushed in her. Give her back
+the faculty of coolly reasoning about her beliefs, which
+persecution took from her. Give her back the right of
+self-government according to her genius, her manners,
+her will, that right which you declare sacred and
+imprescriptible for every nation, that you grant to
+your most insignificant colonies, to the meanest
+island of your Empire, and which you refuse to her,
+the biggest of all. Give her back all this, and let us
+see then if Ireland be all you say.”</p>
+
+<p>“Alas! from that national inheritance of which
+you robbed her one can only find now, recognise
+and therefore give back, the land and the money.
+The land stands always there; and money is not
+wanting in your coffers. A good impulse, then! All
+has to be paid for in this world—defeat and failure
+like anything else. If one lose a game, one must
+know how to pay for it gallantly. If one has, personally,
+or in the person of one’s father, committed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_301"></a>[301]</span>
+an unjust act, one must know how to atone for it.
+Your railway companies give indemnities to the
+families of those they have crushed to death. Yourselves,
+as a nation, have paid in the Alabama affair,
+once convinced of being in the wrong. Here also, in
+Ireland, the hour of Justice has come. Evidence is
+over. Your work rises in your throat and sickens
+you. You cannot any longer doubt, and your writers
+daily repeat it, that the cause of all Ireland’s
+sufferings is in your spoliation, complicated by your
+administration. Well, the remedy is clear. Ireland
+herself points it out to you, and your conscience
+whispers it: you must give back her inheritance to
+Ireland, with the right of administering it according
+to her own lights.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>England is fond of comparing herself to Rome,
+though it is Carthage rather that she resembles. She
+can find in Roman history a precedent for the solution
+that is obviously suited to Ireland. The <i>Lex
+Licinia</i>, promulgated in the year 376 before the
+Christian era, limited to 500 arpents, that is to say,
+almost exactly 500 acres, the extent of land that the
+patricians were entitled to possess in a conquered<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_302"></a>[302]</span>
+country. This was the law that the Gracchi wanted
+to bring to life again, and for which they paid the
+penalty of death. It has long been believed, and
+Mably repeated it with Montesquieu, that the question
+was the dividing of private property between all the
+citizens. Niebuhr and Savigny have re-established
+historical truth, and shown that the question at issue
+was merely the limitation of, or atonement for, usurpations
+that ruined the State by ruining the rural populations.
+It is a Licinian Law that is wanted in Ireland,
+and it is to be hoped that England will give it to her
+before long.</p>
+
+<p>The disease of Ireland may be defined: the feudal
+system or landlordism, complicated by absenteeism
+and usury, having for its consequences extreme
+penury of capital, rural pauperism, and the incapacity
+for struggling against American competition.</p>
+
+<p>The case of Ireland, more acute by reason of its
+special sphere, is only a striking instance of a fact
+that the legislators of the old world must necessarily
+take into account henceforth, the fact that the
+immense area of land newly cleared in the two
+Americas, in Australia, and India, are, four-fifths of
+them at least, the property of those that cultivate
+them personally. They have no other burden to bear<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_303"></a>[303]</span>
+than taxes, and are therefore in a condition of crushing
+superiority in the struggle with the countries in
+which dual ownership obtains. With an equal fruitfulness
+(and that of virgin soil is almost always
+greater), it is clear that the soil which supports only
+those that cultivate it, instead of two or three superposed
+classes of participants in its products, must
+always be able to give those products at a lesser cost
+price, and therefore will be able to throw them on the
+market at a lower rate. It is not merely common
+sense, it is the immutable course of human progress
+that condemns landlordism to disappear ere long from
+the face of the globe.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Reduced to its elementary terms, the Irish question
+stands thus: 12,000 landowners, of foreign origin,
+possessing almost the whole of the island; 1940 of
+these proprietors detaining two-thirds of this soil; 744
+holding the half of it. All these lands parcelled out
+into insufficient holdings, and cultivated by 720,000
+native farmers, for the most part entirely devoid of
+capital. The agricultural product of the island,
+divided between two schedules on the official rolls of
+the income tax: the first one of £2,691,788 only,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_304"></a>[304]</span>
+representing the income of the 720,000 Irish farmers
+and their families; the second, of £13,192,758, representing
+the income of the 12,000 English landlords.
+The half at least of this sum leaving the island every
+year, and being spent outside it by the <i>absentee</i> landlords.
+Not one farthing of this lordly income coming
+back to the soil, either directly or indirectly, in the
+shape of manure, buildings, or agricultural improvements;
+nor to industry, which is nil. General
+pauperism, resulting from the feudal organization
+that stops development of wealth in its germ, and
+more and more unfits the country for a struggle with
+the more normally organized nations. Unpaid rents,
+landlords and tenants eaten up by usurers, a permanent
+conflict of interests shown at each term by three
+or four thousand evictions, without mentioning the
+still more numerous cases in which eviction is not
+carried out because it would prove useless. A universal
+bankruptcy; a chronic state of social war;
+a growing contempt of the law; agrarian violence;
+the suspension of public liberties; a gradual return of
+the soil and its inhabitants to the savage condition; a
+constant augmentation in the area of uncultivated
+land; a regular emigration of the adult and able
+population; a quarter of the remaining inhabitants
+living at the expense of the ratepayers, either on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_305"></a>[305]</span>
+outdoor relief or in the workhouses; financial grievances,
+added to historical and political grievances;
+hunger sharpening the rancour of the vanquished
+race; its hatred of the conqueror shown periodically
+by the return to the House of Commons of 85 members
+whose only mandate is to obstruct the regular
+working of the British machinery. Such is the
+epitome of the results obtained in Ireland by the
+English after an occupation of seven centuries. Never
+did history register such a scandalous failure.</p>
+
+<p>Vainly do Oxford and Cambridge, in order to
+explain or palliate it, resort to all their scholastic
+sophistry. Vainly it is endeavoured to discover its
+cause in some inherent vice of the Irish race, in their
+ignorance, their religion, their laziness, and even a
+sort of “melancholy” imparted to them, it is alleged,
+by the neighbourhood of the ocean (<i>sic</i>).</p>
+
+<p>Ireland is not the only country edged by the
+Atlantic: neither is it the saddest. Her children are
+not in any marked degree more illiterate now-a-days
+than those of England, and if they were so for a long
+time—when they had to slip off to unlawful and
+clandestine “hedge schools” if they wanted to learn
+their alphabet—we know too well who was responsible
+for such an outrage on civilization. The Celts of
+Erin are Roman Catholics, it is true, but after all there<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_306"></a>[306]</span>
+are on our planet a certain number of nations who
+have not died yet of this religion. As for their
+political capacity, they vindicate it every day by the
+wisdom and firmness they display in sustaining the
+struggle against the oppressor.</p>
+
+<p>One must bow to evidence and do justice to Ireland.
+And for this there are not two formulas. There is
+only one, in two articles:</p>
+
+<p>1.—Expropriation of the landlords with a fair
+indemnity, to the profit of the Irish tenantry.</p>
+
+<p>2.—The extension to Ireland of Home Rule, which
+is the invariable rule of all British possessions, near
+or far, guaranteed of course by all the precautions
+judged necessary for the security and unity of the
+United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It is the glory of Mr. Gladstone to have understood
+and to have had the moral courage to declare that
+there is no other solution. And as we think of this,
+is it not a strong argument in favour of the superior
+justice of agrarian revendications in Ireland, that it
+should have imposed itself to the reason of that
+illustrious politician, the most English assuredly of
+all the statesmen that have succeeded each other in
+office since the time of William Pitt? Those common<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_307"></a>[307]</span>
+reasoners who rebel against a necessary restitution,
+should think of this. Here is an old man seventy-eight
+years of age, who, ever since he left Eton, had
+no other care, no other occupation than the affairs of
+his country; the most energetic, the most active and
+brilliant of leaders, the most experienced in finance;
+of all the orators in the British Parliament the most
+lucid and pungent; a refined scholar, an accomplished
+Hellenist, the possessor of an hereditary fortune that
+frees him from domestic cares, the son of a British
+merchant-prince, and the father of an Anglican
+clergyman, himself Protestant to the core, and fond
+of officiating in the place of his son in the church of
+Hawarden; a man whose predominant quality is his
+earnestness, and whose supreme rule of conduct is a
+well-regulated love of his country. This statesman,
+who has been ten times in office since the year, already
+so far from us, when he entered it under the leadership
+of Robert Peel, and who knows everything about the
+affairs of his country at home and abroad, has made
+his life-study of the Irish question. Twenty times in
+forty years has he attempted to grapple with it, to
+unravel it, to solve it. All the remedial measures
+that have been applied to the wounds of Ireland since
+1860 had him for their initiator. He was the first to
+realize the odious wrong of an established Anglican<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_308"></a>[308]</span>
+Church in that Catholic country. To him is due the
+political and intellectual enfranchisement of the Irish;
+it was he who gave them national schools and who
+put them (by dint of what Titanic struggles!) on the
+same electoral footing as the other British subjects.
+It was he who promoted, defended, and succeeded in
+passing all the Land Bills meant to soften the wretched
+fate of the Irish serf. Lastly, one must not forget it,
+he never hesitated, when he thought it necessary, to
+claim laws of repression against agrarian violence.
+Mr. Gladstone is assuredly no anarchist. He is
+neither a madman nor is he in his dotage. Never
+was his genius clearer, his word more eloquent. Add
+to this that this man, enamoured of power like all
+those who have passed their life in it, knew that he
+was courting a certain fall when he proposed his solution
+of the Irish question, and could entertain no
+doubt of the schism that would take place in his
+party on the subject....</p>
+
+<p>And yet his conscience could oppose no resistance
+to the blinding light of facts. He clearly saw that
+palliatives were insufficient, and that there was an
+urgent need to take the evil at its root. As a conclusion
+to half a century spent in studying the case, and to
+twenty local attempts at healing it, after two or three
+thousand nights spent in the House of Commons in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_309"></a>[309]</span>
+discussing the question under all its aspects, he comes
+forward to say: “<i>Justice to Ireland!</i> we must give
+back to her what was taken from her—her inheritance
+and her freedom!”</p>
+
+<p>Can one suppose for a moment that Mr. Gladstone
+came to such a conclusion without the most decisive
+and powerful motives? Can anyone feel himself
+strong enough to hold opinions better founded than
+his on this matter? We must congratulate his
+adversaries on their happy self-confidence; but
+we cannot do so on their moral sense or on their
+modesty.</p>
+
+<h3>I.—<span class="smcap">Mr. Gladstone’s Scheme.</span></h3>
+
+<p>Mr. Gladstone’s scheme was framed in two
+organic Bills. By the first the British Government
+undertook to expropriate the landlords, and to
+redeem the Irish lands on a basis of twenty times
+the actual rent, to be paid in English Consols, at par.
+These lands would then be sold to the Irish tenants
+at a discount of 20 per cent., payable in forty-nine
+years by instalments equal to about half the former
+rent. The second Bill provided for the local government
+of Ireland, while it reserved for Great Britain
+the general control of the revenue and the right of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_310"></a>[310]</span>
+keeping military forces in the island. Thanks to a
+coalition of a fraction of the Liberal party with the
+Tories, this programme fell to the ground at the
+General Election of 1886, and was set aside by
+Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>It may be that the loss is not much to be regretted.
+Very likely Mr. Gladstone’s scheme was, in his own
+thoughts, only meant as a trial, what we call a <i>ballon
+d’essai</i>. Excellent in its twofold principle, his solution
+had the very serious drawback of substituting, in
+the place of the 12,000 present landlords of Ireland—a
+single one, the State. It looked as if it
+solved all difficulties, and perhaps it would have
+caused fresh complications. In fact, it amounted to
+requiring that the unavoidable liquidation should be
+paid—by which people? By those who could least
+afford it—the Irish tenants. Whence might the poor
+devils have taken the money for their annuities?
+And even admitting that they could have found it,
+can one refuse to see that their culture, so wretched
+already, would have become still poorer? Has ever
+man chosen, to buy an estate, the moment when he is
+a confirmed bankrupt?</p>
+
+<p>But it would have been to them a nett gain of one-half
+on their actual rent, it will be objected.</p>
+
+<p>A nett gain of one-half <i>on nothing</i>, then, as they<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_311"></a>[311]</span>
+cannot afford to pay any rent just now, unless they
+deduct it from their capital (supposing that they have
+any), and there is no reason to suppose that things
+will be better for the next fifty years.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, if you admit that by paying for forty-nine
+years half the actual rent as judicially fixed, the Irish
+tenants ought to have the ownership of the land, why,
+in the name of all that is fair, refuse to see that they
+have paid it more than ten times already, in the
+shape of excessive rent?</p>
+
+<p>“They were free not to pay it and go out, with
+their goods and chattels,” says my old friend, the
+Economist. I answer: No. They were not, for a
+thousand reasons, and had to obey the will of the
+vampires, as long as it was strictly possible.</p>
+
+<p>Either the tenants, having become proprietors in
+name but not in reality (or, as it were, proprietors of
+a shadow of land mortgaged for half a century),
+would have paid their annuity,—and in that case
+they were as poor as before; or they would not have
+paid it, and then the Liberal party would have heard
+a fine din!</p>
+
+<p>In fact the Gladstone plan rested on an entirely
+chimerical hope: that of settling the Irish question
+without its costing a penny to the British Exchequer.
+To entertain such a hope is clearly to prove that one<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_312"></a>[312]</span>
+sees indeed the evil, but without descrying its deeper
+cause.</p>
+
+<p>This cause lies in the <span class="smcap">impossibility</span> to the modern
+tenants, in the face of the competition of better
+organized countries, and generally under the present
+conditions of the world’s agriculture, <span class="smcap">to pay any
+rent whatever</span>.</p>
+
+<p>The Irish tenant is a bankrupt, because he has
+paid, for too long a time already, the rent that he
+could not afford. The land is impoverished for the
+very same reason. Now, to sell it to a penniless
+buyer is absurd enough; but to pretend to believe
+that the penniless buyer shall render it prosperous
+and make it yield riches, is perhaps more absurd still.</p>
+
+<p>Such illusions ought to be discarded. If England
+really wants to settle the Irish question, as her honour
+and her true interest both command her to do, she
+must manfully accept the idea of a pecuniary sacrifice
+and a real restitution. It would be useless to cheat
+herself into acceptance of half-measures. She had
+much better weigh the real cost of an imperious duty,
+pay it, and square matters once for all.</p>
+
+<p>Not only must she give, <i>gratuitously give away</i> as a
+present, the land to the Irish tenant, but she must
+provide him, at the lowest rate of interest, with the
+capital necessary for putting that land in working order.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_313"></a>[313]</span></p>
+
+<p>This consummation might perhaps be attained
+at a lesser cost than would at first sight appear
+possible,—let us name a figure,—at a cost of one
+milliard francs, or £40,000,000. But this milliard
+should be forthcoming in cash, presented by the
+British nation to the sister isle as a free gift, a
+premium paid for peace, or rather a lump sum of
+conscience-money, such as we see sometimes advertised
+in the columns of the <i>Times</i>.</p>
+
+<h3>II.—<span class="smcap">An Outsider’s Suggestion.</span></h3>
+
+<p>The ideal solution for the innumerable difficulties
+of the Irish question would evidently be the <i>tabula
+rasa</i>,—the hypothesis that would transform Ireland
+into a newly-discovered island of virgin soil, barren
+and uninhabited, where England had just planted her
+flag, and out of which she wished to get the fullest
+value in the shortest possible time.</p>
+
+<p>What would her policy be in such a case? She
+would begin by surveying the whole extent of her
+new acquisition, by parcelling it out in lots carefully,
+then by calling in colonists and capital.</p>
+
+<p>To the immigrants that came without any other
+wealth than their stalwart arms, she would make
+gratuitous concessions of small lots of land, accompanied<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_314"></a>[314]</span>
+by seeds, agricultural implements, and an
+exemption from taxes during a limited period of time.
+To those who came with capital, she would give more
+important plots of ground, either demanding a premium
+of occupation more or less high, shortening the
+period of exemption for taxes, or again elevating the
+rate of those taxes. Most likely, too, she would
+favour the establishment of an Agricultural Bank that
+would advance to the new colonists such moneys as
+they desired, according to their wants, their chances
+of success, and the individual securities they presented.</p>
+
+<p>In reality it cannot be supposed that in Ireland the
+past, the vested interests and the settled habits of
+centuries, can be erased. But at least one can try to
+come near to this ideal; and besides, this island presents,
+over the barren and uncultivated one, the
+advantage of having a ready-made population; the
+country, its climate, its soil, are known; there is a
+large proportion of able workmen, valuable house
+property, no inconsiderable provision in agricultural
+implements, not to mention several thousand head
+of horse, oxen, sheep, and pigs ready imported.</p>
+
+<p>The advantages of this over a virgin island are,
+therefore, very clear; they are visibly stronger than
+the drawbacks, and success is certain if measures of
+the kind we allude to are vigorously carried out.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_315"></a>[315]</span></p>
+
+<p>England, then, must begin by buying out, not only
+the properties of the landlords, but also, and this is
+only justice, the interest that a large number of
+farmers possess in those lands under the name of
+tenant-right. The area of cultivated land in Ireland
+(exclusive of towns) is, in round numbers, fifteen million
+acres. Before all, the basis of indemnity granted
+to the landlords must be fixed.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gladstone proposed the basis of twenty times
+the actual rent, as judicially fixed. This seems an
+exorbitant price, for various reasons. The first reason
+is that no leased land under the sun normally yields
+to its owner, at present, anything like the interest
+supposed by such a valuation. The second reason is
+that the landlords’ property in Ireland has actually
+no real value whatever; it could not find a purchaser,
+probably, at the price of three times the nominal rent,
+were it put up for sale (let anyone who commands
+capital, and who looks for a secure investment, consider
+whether he would ever dream of buying Irish
+land, just now, at any price). The third reason is
+that the true responsibility of the Irish disease rests
+with those very landlords who never did their duty
+by the country. Granted that their faults (one would
+rather say crimes) ought to be covered by the benefit
+of prescription, and that a fair indemnity ought to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_316"></a>[316]</span>
+be given them or their creditors if they are dispossessed
+by measures of public sanitation, it would look
+ridiculous,—indecent to go to the length of rewarding
+them for their moral and economical failure by a disproportionate
+indemnity taken out of the pocket of
+the British taxpayer.</p>
+
+<p>When one hears, therefore, Mr. Gladstone speak of
+giving the landlords twenty times the nominal rent of
+their land, one is reduced to admit that his idea was
+to bribe them into acquiescence to his scheme by an
+exorbitant premium. The Irish landlords did not
+understand their true interest; they did not see that
+they should have thrown into the scale the weight of
+their votes. Very likely they were wrong. They may
+say good-bye to the Gladstone indemnity; they will
+never see it again. For the longer they wait to settle
+this question, the more must farm-rent dwindle away
+and indemnity shrink to nothingness.</p>
+
+<p>It seems that, at present, in fixing it on the basis
+of twelve times the judicial rent, the British nation
+would show great liberality. It would be equivalent
+to saying that Irish land, as an investment, is worth
+one-third the capital in English Consols that bears
+the same interest, which is certainly paying it an
+unexpected compliment.</p>
+
+<p>As for the tenant-right of the farmer, which it is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_317"></a>[317]</span>
+equally indispensable to redeem if all is to be cleared
+and there are to be no more conflicts of interests, let
+us admit that it is worth, on the whole, three or four
+times the judicial rent. Very likely again this is
+excessive. But this matters little practically, as will
+be shown further on. We find thus, for the aggregate
+interest vested in the Irish soil and subject to indemnity,
+a common rate of sixteen times the judicial
+rent.</p>
+
+<p>The average of this judicial rent is ten shillings per
+acre. For fifteen millions of cultivated acres to be
+redeemed, this would therefore give a total sum of
+120 millions sterling to be paid. Thanks to this indemnity
+of expropriation, the English nation would
+become absolutely free to dispose of these lands as
+she pleased.</p>
+
+<p>But where are those 120 million pounds to be
+found? and they must be found over and above the
+capital necessary for the working of these lands, since
+we admitted in principle that it would be necessary
+to find it in most cases. This is the way:</p>
+
+<p>As a first outlay, we have admitted that the British
+Exchequer would put down £40,000,000 sterling in
+the shape of Consols at par. That capital represents
+an interest of about one million sterling and a quarter,
+or an annual tax of about ninepence per head. This<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_318"></a>[318]</span>
+certainly would not be a high price to pay for such a
+precious advantage as the suppression of the Irish
+plague. There is no decade in which a great nation
+does not pay more for some unlucky and useless
+venture—the Afghanistan campaign, as a case in
+point.</p>
+
+<p>To these 40 millions sterling, sacrificed by the
+wealthiest of European nations to its internal peace,
+shall be added the resources proper to Ireland. These
+are no despicable ones. Ireland, taxed much lower
+than Great Britain, nevertheless contributes no less
+than eight millions sterling, in round numbers, to the
+general revenue of the United Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>Of these £8,000,000 about £4,286,519 go to the
+keeping of the army of occupation and the administration
+of finances; in other words, to the services
+meant to remain “imperial” in the hypothesis of
+Home Rule. About £3,744,462 are paid for the
+services that would, in this hypothesis, come into the
+province of the Irish Parliament, viz., public works,
+law courts, tax-gathering, local administration, registrations,
+land-surveying, lunatic asylums, schools,
+prisons, and the like. It seems that a new and poor
+country, as we suppose Ireland to turn out, ought not
+to pay for such services as liberally as does wealthy
+England, and that a reduction of a third on these<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_319"></a>[319]</span>
+heads, or £1,250,000, is perfectly feasible. That is
+about the income for £40,000,000 in English Consols.
+Here, then, we have sufficient provision for a second
+milliard in the shape of <i>interest</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The interest for the third milliard would easily be
+raised in the shape of additional taxes, if Irish agriculture
+were freed from any other charges. That would
+only increase the annual taxation by about a sixth
+part, and would not even then put it on a level with
+the incidence of English taxation. Ireland, on her
+side, might well do this slight sacrifice to the cause
+of social and political peace.</p>
+
+<p>There, then, we have the £120,000,000 wanted (in
+the shape of a special loan, emitted and guaranteed by
+England), which are found—a third by each of the
+high contracting parties; a third by a reduction of 33
+per cent. on all services that would have become
+purely Irish.</p>
+
+<p>How ought this magnificent lump of money to be
+used to make it bear all it can? By lodging the
+whole in the coffers of a special <i>Bank of Liquidation</i>,
+that would be entrusted with all the operation.
+This bank, strong in her guaranteed capital of
+£120,000,000, invested, if necessary, with the power
+of emitting special paper-money, begins by paying all
+the lands on the basis fixed upon by law. This<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_320"></a>[320]</span>
+implies only, at the most, an outlay of £90,000,000.
+These lands the bank divides into three classes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Class A.</i>—The fee simple of the first class, composed
+of the holdings under £10 a year, is simply
+transferred to their actual holders (as would be
+done in an infant colony in order to attract inhabitants),
+subject to the single proviso that these lands
+shall be cultivated after a given system, and according
+to certain rules, and taken back by the public domain,
+if this condition be not observed.</p>
+
+<p>Let us remark, in passing, that this free gift will, in
+the majority of cases, be only the legalization of a
+<i>de facto</i> gratuitous occupation, most of these small
+tenants having, for the last three or four years, stopped
+paying any rent to the landlords.</p>
+
+<p>Where, in that case, will be their advantage? it
+might be asked. They will be no richer for having
+become landowners in point of law, as they are now in
+fact.</p>
+
+<p>This is a material error, as shown by the example
+of our peasant proprietors in France. One of the
+chief reasons that prevent the small Irish tenant
+endeavouring to get all he can out of his land is precisely
+the rooted wish in his mind not to work
+for the benefit of the landlord. From the day that he
+shall be certain of keeping the entire fruit of his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_321"></a>[321]</span>
+labour to himself, he will emulate the French Celt;
+he will submit himself to the hardest privations and
+the most unremitting toil; he will abundantly manure
+his land, ceaselessly tend it, turn it again and again;
+he will make it yield all it can. Anyhow, if he does
+not, he will have only himself to blame for it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Class B.</i>—The second class of land, composed of
+holdings from 15 to 20 acres and over, is sold
+to its actual holders for the price of their tenant
+right, if they be willing to accept this privilege. In
+the contrary case, the tenant right is paid down to
+them at the rate fixed upon by experts, and the fee
+simple is put up for sale by auction. The ultimate
+proprietors of these domains of average extent
+receive, by the hands of the local agents for the <i>Bank
+of Liquidation</i>, every facility to form themselves into
+unions for the collective culture of their land. They
+remain, however, free to cultivate it themselves and in
+their own fashion.</p>
+
+<p><i>Class C.</i>—The third portion of the soil, formed by
+the choicest land, shall be put aside in each district to
+form a great domain where experiments shall be tried
+and examples given in agriculture—a domain managed
+by official agronomists, and cultivated by associations
+of agricultural labourers, salaried partly in kind on
+the product of the land, partly by participation in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_322"></a>[322]</span>
+nett profits. Not only shall there be introduced on
+those great domains, together with the finest breeds
+of cattle, the most perfect and scientific modes of
+culture, but, besides, public demonstrations and
+lectures shall be made, agricultural pupils shall be
+formed, and seeds of first quality shall be given at cost
+price. These model-farms alone remain the property
+of the State, and are inalienable.</p>
+
+<p>Thus would be constituted at once, together
+with a class of peasant proprietors, the middle
+and great cultures which are equally wanting in
+Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>Special laws abolish entail in the island, submit to
+expropriation (for 25 years at least) any owner non-resident
+on his property, and forbid, under pain of
+heavy fines, to hold or give on lease any parcel of
+land under 12 acres.</p>
+
+<p>Other laws, imitated from the <i>Homestead Exemption</i>
+of the United States, protect the peasant against debt.
+The <i>Liquidation Bank</i>, after having set the new system
+in motion, secures its working by advancing at the
+lowest rate of interest the capital wanted by the
+small and middling landowners, which must before
+long kill usury and drive it from the country. This
+bank is, in every sense, the organ and focus of a fiduciary
+circulation that is amply sufficient, on this broad<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_323"></a>[323]</span>
+basis, for all the financial wants of agricultural
+industry.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, the whole revenue of the land remaining in
+the country, circulating freely, and incessantly undergoing
+its normal transformations, health returns by
+degrees to the social body. There is no longer any
+question of “unemployed” labourers; on the contrary,
+it is rather hands that are wanted on all those flourishing
+estates which have day-work to offer, not only to
+the owners of small holdings, but even to the unemployed
+of Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>And so England begins rapidly, though indirectly,
+to recover her advance, owing to the quick increase
+in the returns of the Income Tax; in perhaps four or
+five years, that increase covers the interest of her
+£40,000,000. It comes to say that her real outlay
+turns out to be only a tenth or a twelfth part of that
+advance. Emigration suddenly receives a check.
+Nay, a new, liberated, prosperous Ireland sees her
+children flock back to her shores from abroad, enriched
+and reconciled, bringing home their capital
+with their experience. For the Irishman ever keeps
+in his heart unimpaired the love of his mother
+country, and will return to her as soon as he can.</p>
+
+<p>Let us carry our hypothesis further.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time when she gave up the responsibilities<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_324"></a>[324]</span>
+of the local government of Ireland, England
+has transmitted them to the representatives of the
+Irish nation.</p>
+
+<p>Are those representatives to form immediately a
+single Parliament sitting at Dublin, or are they for
+the present to be divided into four provincial
+assemblies for Leinster, Munster, Connaught, and
+Ulster? This question is of small importance, at
+least at the beginning. Let the first step be taken;
+an united Ireland will only be a matter of time. The
+best way in such cases is to follow the expressed wish
+of the populations; and supposing that Ulster, or at
+least a part of Ulster, vote for the continuation of the
+present <i>régime</i>, why should not those territories be
+excepted from the new arrangements, and either be
+left <i>in statu quo</i> or joined politically to Scotland,
+of which they are a geological as well as an ethnical
+dependency? But I cannot help thinking that if the
+above system was submitted to the Antrim tenants
+themselves, they would not be backward to see its
+advantages.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole question the last word should remain
+to the voter. If a majority of the electors of Scottish
+Ireland spoke in favour of Home Rule, what could be
+objected to them? That they will eventually be
+oppressed by the Catholics? No great fear of that, I<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_325"></a>[325]</span>
+should think; and besides, efficient measures could be
+taken, guarantees found against that danger; but no
+such caution will be really wanted. The influence of
+the Catholic clergy in Ireland has for its principal
+basis the political state of the country. The day when
+difficulties are cleared up, national education will
+soon have put an end to the reign of clericalism in
+Ireland as elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>One cannot help feeling firmly convinced that Mr.
+Gladstone’s formula, “Home Rule and Abolition
+of Landlordism,” taken in its most general meaning,
+and applied with a spirit both prudent and liberal,
+will suffice to heal in a few years the disease of
+Ireland. Public wealth will rise by degrees, feelings
+of hatred will die away, the rapidity of the cure will
+take the world by surprise. Has not already the
+adoption of the Irish programme by a large number
+of Englishmen belonging to the Liberal party been
+sufficient to bring about a partial reconciliation between
+the two countries? We have seen Irish orators come
+and preach the Liberal gospel in England, and reciprocally,
+English orators go and bring the word of
+peace to Ireland. That alone is an augury of success,
+a symptom of healing and pacification.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_326"></a>[326]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Will it be objected that this is a Utopian picture,
+an unpractical scheme, or simply one of difficult execution?
+As for me, the more I look into the matter,
+the more settled grows my belief that three things
+only are requisite for substituting so much good for so
+much evil, viz., money, steadiness of purpose and conscience.
+Nobody will say that the English have ever
+shown a lack of steadiness in the pursuit of success;
+money they have in abundance; will they be wanting
+in conscience? This is scarcely to be feared. Conscientiousness
+of a more or less enlightened kind is a
+characteristic of the Englishman, and it is his highest
+praise. Men are constantly to be met in England
+who rule their conduct on the principles of an inward
+law. It is true that, by a natural consequence,
+many are good only in name, and their display
+of conscience is only a sham; but as our great
+moralist has said, “Hypocrisy is a homage which
+vice renders to virtue,” and wherever vice is obliged
+to wear a mask, virtue is bound to conquer.</p>
+
+<p>A great transformation, the instruments of which
+are the press, the steam-engine, and the telegraph,
+has been slowly developing throughout the world
+during the last few years: a new and powerful influence
+has been born that might be named “obligatory
+justice through publicity.” Tennyson has spoken of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_327"></a>[327]</span>
+“the fierce light that beats upon a throne;” thrones
+now-a-days scarcely exist except in name; the will of
+the people has taken their place. But let Governments
+call themselves republics or monarchies, they
+are equally submitted to that pitiless ray of light
+which is the ever-wakeful eye of the press, the uncompromising
+publicity which ignores either rank or
+station. How many examples of it have we not seen
+at home! To quote a recent one, take that wretched
+Schnæbelé affair. Only fifteen years ago there would
+have been found in it reasons ten times sufficient to
+bring about a war for those who wanted it. Not so
+in our days. In less than twenty-four hours the press
+had brought to light the most minute details of the
+affair, exposed the naked truth to the eyes of the
+world, photographed the place where the incident had
+occurred, submitted, in short, to the great public
+judge all the evidence of the case. One had to
+tender apologies under pain of being called the
+aggressor, and the whole affair evaporated into smoke.</p>
+
+<p>Such results are perhaps the clearest gain that
+modern progress has given us. If our age has a
+superiority over the preceding ages, it is assuredly to
+have succeeded in making injustice more difficult to
+practise. More and more henceforward will great
+national crimes become impossible. Mr. Gladstone’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_328"></a>[328]</span>
+chief merit will be to have understood it before
+anybody in England, and to have been emphatically
+the man of his time. In spite of friends and adversaries
+he has dared to utter the truth, and say: “We
+must give back to Ireland what we have taken from
+her. The good of England imperiously demands
+that sacrifice, for we are entering an age when the
+honour of a great nation should not even be suspected.”</p>
+
+<p>He is actually the only statesman in Europe who
+follows a policy of principle; the only one seeking
+the triumph of his opinions by the sole help of reason.
+All the others, from the most famous to the most
+obscure or passing politician, are only jobbers. Disraeli
+had too much of the mountebank about him to
+have been able to secure the respect of posterity.
+Gortschakoff was only a courtier of the old school;
+Cavour a clever lawyer; Thiers a dwarf, in a
+moral and political, as in a physical, sense.
+Bismarck profits by a state of affairs which he did
+little or nothing to create, and at the most is the
+belated representative in our times of fossil feudalism.
+Gladstone alone is a truly modern statesman, and
+therefore is destined to be set by history above all
+his contemporaries, if only he succeeds in carrying
+out his great enterprise; for the more we go the more<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_329"></a>[329]</span>
+nations shall be restricted to politics of principle,
+both because all other systems are exploded, and
+because the diffusion of learning will be for the
+future an almost insuperable obstacle to petty or
+brutal diplomatic conspiracies.</p>
+
+<p>Great Britain, it is earnestly to be hoped, will consent
+to follow her great leader in the way he has
+shown to her. She is offered the most splendid
+opportunity of doing what no nation has achieved as
+yet,—atoning, of her own free will, for centuries of
+injustice, and trying one of the noblest social experiments
+that can ever be attempted. It would be the
+beginning of a new era in the history of human
+societies, and pure glory for those who initiated it.
+Not only could such results be attained at little cost,
+but the most obvious, the most pressing interest of
+England invites her to the enterprise. Let her make
+haste. After having affirmed for half a century the
+sovereignty of peoples, and their right to govern
+themselves according to their will, she cannot give
+herself the lie at home. After having protested
+against Bomba and the Bulgarian atrocities, she
+cannot in her own dominions remain beneath “the
+unspeakable Turk.” After having assumed before
+the world the attitude of a systematic foe to slave-trade
+and all kinds of oppression or cruelty, after<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_330"></a>[330]</span>
+having carried it even to maudlin sensitiveness, as
+in the case of pigeon-shooting, “birds’ corpses on
+women’s hats,” and the like, she cannot decently carry
+on the slow destruction of a sister race through
+starvation. She cannot and she will not do it, for it
+would be branding herself for ever as Queen of
+Humbug, Empress of Sham.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2 class="nobreak">FOOTNOTES</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> Absenteeism, in its present form, seems to date only from Grattan’s
+Parliament, but in some shape or another it may be said to date from
+the British invasion of Ireland, and to result from the very nature of
+an insular kingdom transferred wholesale to the nobility of a neighbouring
+state.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> A later instance. On August 30th, 1887, two men armed with
+guns and wearing masks entered the house of Mr. R. Blennerhasset, at
+Kells, near Cahirciveen; they went upstairs to Mrs. Blennerhasset’s
+room and demanded money, which they got to the amount of about £2.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> My guide was quite right. In a statistical table of trials between
+July, 1885, and July, 1886, for the County Kerry, I find the following
+items: <i>maiming cattle</i>, 9; <i>injury to person</i>, 7; <i>murders</i>, 3; <i>firing at
+persons</i>, 8; <i>firing into houses</i>, 15; <i>threatening letters</i>, 125; <i>intimidation</i>,
+36; <i>malicious injury</i>, 22; <i>arson</i>, 19; <i>assaults</i>, 22. The above figures,
+it should be observed, only relate to outrages brought home to their
+authors; there can be no doubt that a much larger number of agrarian
+outrages remain unpunished.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> <a href="#APPENDIX">See Appendix, p. 331.</a></p>
+
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_331"></a>[331]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX">APPENDIX.<br>
+<i class="smaller">EXTRACTS FROM SOME LETTERS ADDRESSED
+WITHIN THE LAST TWO YEARS TO AN IRISH
+LANDLORD BY HIS TENANTS.</i></h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The <i>Times</i> has published, on October 10, 1887, an
+exceedingly interesting batch of letters selected from
+some three hundred addressed within the last two
+years to an Irish landowner by his tenants. As the
+editor of those letters wrote most appropriately, there
+is perhaps no means whereby truer insight can be obtained
+into the ways and habits of the Irish peasantry
+than by studying the letters written by the people
+themselves. Typically enough, however, the same
+editor only saw in those letters how “unbusiness-like
+and illogical is the Irish tenant,” and “the various
+reasons that an Irishman gives for not paying his rent.
+One is unable to pay because his uncle is confined to
+bed, and his daughter suffering from a sore eye;
+another because a relative has died; a third because<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_332"></a>[332]</span>
+his brother-in-law has brought an action against him
+for money lent, and he has had to pay; one because
+his family is small, and another because it is large;
+another—and this is the most common excuse—because
+he has been unable to sell his stock; another
+because his wife has a sore hand; another because of
+the death of a cow; another because the weather is
+severe and there is a sheriff’s bailiff obstructing him
+from making up the rent; another because it was
+God’s will to take all the means he had; another
+because of the agitation.”</p>
+
+<p>Reasons which, it may be seen, appear to the
+English eye entirely ridiculous and unbusiness-like.</p>
+
+<p>What strikes a Frenchman most, on the other hand,
+in the letters, is their touching simplicity, the appalling
+instability of a budget that the least domestic
+mishap is enough to upset, and the fruitless attempt
+of the poor man to penetrate into the real cause of
+the burden under which he is panting; in the comments,
+the utter incapacity of the British landlord to
+understand his Irish tenantry even when he is a good
+landlord, which is obviously (perhaps too obviously)
+the case here.</p>
+
+<p>The letters are thus characteristic in more than one
+sense. Whatever the angle under which they are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_333"></a>[333]</span>
+read, they undoubtedly remain first-class documentary
+evidence.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>8th Jany., 1887.</i></p>
+
+<p>To * * * *, Esq.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I received a letter yesterday from Mr. G⸺ who
+demanded the payment of £31 0<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i>, rent due up to 29 Sept.
+1886. I was in with Mr. G⸺ this day &amp; he told me that
+he had no further instructions than what was contained in his
+note. Now my Uncle has been confined through illness to his
+bed since last June, &amp; my daughter has been under medical
+treatment since last September for a sore eye which proceeded
+from a bad tooth, &amp; I even had to pay the Dentist ten shillings
+for extracting it, as the Doctor could not do so. I trust you will
+kindly take into consideration my position and stay proceedings,
+&amp; I will send you £18 next Saturday &amp; the remainder about the
+13th February, the day after fair of K⸺.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your obedt. Servant</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The following is also from the same man:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I would have sent you the remainder of the rent on
+the day mentioned but the old man died &amp; I had extra expenses
+but if you would kindly wait until about the 25th of March I will
+be able to let you have it.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your obedient servant</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>9th March, 1887.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I have yours of the 4th inst. &amp; am very sorry to say I
+have met a reverse &amp; cant pay up to my word. I took a
+Brother-in-law to live with me—he was a tenant of your property<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_334"></a>[334]</span>
+who lost the power of his limbs &amp; obliged to get into Hospital,
+his daughter my niece who I reared went to America she died
+there after saving a good deal of money her father after much
+trouble got £200 of it &amp; after being 17 years in the Hospital he
+had to leave it having means to live &amp; he requested to come to
+live with me which I allowed, &amp; being maintained as one of my
+family for 12 months up to Wedy. last he now sued me for
+£50 which he lent me while here. He is at other lodgings &amp;
+subject to evil advice but he fell out with me while here &amp; since
+has been most ungrateful. I done my best to get this law put
+back but failed &amp; had to pay the money I had made to pay my
+rent. I am much grieved being obliged to ask to the middle of
+next month to pay it. I wont have any fairs sooner to sell my
+stores but I will surly have it about the 20th April if not sooner.
+You may be sure only what happened me I would have paid up
+to my promise.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your obt servt</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>10th March.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mr. ⸺.</span> After all I built &amp; what I ow in shops &amp; from
+the loss of sheep I am not abell to pay but if you forgive me
+this half year’s rent you will save me from destruction, and if so
+I will keep it a profound sacred. I promis I will never again
+ask anything of you &amp; will be punctual in future, my family is
+small &amp; my health not good to go travell. I brought a dale of
+money in to this farm 5 years ago and it is all gon now. I
+apeal to your kind genariss hart to do this for me &amp; may the
+almitey god give your self &amp; your children the Kingdom of
+hevan.</p>
+
+<p class="center">I remain most respectfully</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_335"></a>[335]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>January 9th.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—In reply to youre noat I am verrey sorrey that
+I can do nothing at the presant it is out of my power I have nothing
+to sell unlss I sell what I have to ate my self and seven littel
+children. I had but one calf to sell to pay you and it was the
+will of provedence to take him, he died. I have but one cow &amp;
+I had hur in the fair of N⸺ and all I could get for her was
+four pounds, so if you presede with the law as yore lawyer sayes
+he will I must sell hur to pay you</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your humbel tennant</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>August 31.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>, — I promised the rent after the fair of K⸺ in June.
+I had three calves in it &amp; covld not sell. I took three months
+grass for them to see could I do better. I intend to have them
+in D⸺ on the 12th &amp; if I sell them I will send the rent
+after that. I would have wrote only expecting to have the rent
+before this. My wife took a sore hand &amp; is in hospital this two
+months &amp; is in it still so its poor times with me.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your tennant</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>11th March.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—In reply to your letter dated 5th inst. I beg to ask your
+honour the favour of a few days grace. I hope to be able to
+meet your demands by the time you call to collect your rents in
+April. In the meantime I might have an opportunity of setting
+the fields in Con acre.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_336"></a>[336]</span></p>
+
+<p>Being a lone widow with two helpless children one of them
+of weak intellect I hope your honour will kindly consider my
+case.</p>
+
+<p>I am Sir your Honour’s most obedient &amp; humble servant</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>January 19.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I received your letter, it is not in my power to make
+money for you now as I had to borrow some of your last rent
+which is not all paid yeat on account of the death of my fine cow
+that died. I will use my best endavours against May.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your ob. servt</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>September 26.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—I make apail to you at the present time that
+I am endeavring at this time to make up the rent. Now I would
+have it sooner but the weather for the harvest was savere, sore I
+could not help it Der Sir, there is a man who is a Sheirf’s baliff is
+going to injure me &amp; to obstruct me in making up the rent for
+you which I would hope soon to have value for. Dear Sir I
+apail to you that you will not allow but Dis allow injuring a
+poor tenant who is endeavring to make up the rent. I would
+say one thing that I believe he is at least without maners. I
+apail to you that you will not allow to obstruct making out rent
+as quck as posible. one thing I wonder much that you would
+permit him or such as him any place. I will refrain on that
+presnt. I will ask this request off Mr. ⸺ as soon as I can<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_337"></a>[337]</span>
+get the rent will he be kind enough to take it from me. I will
+ask the favour of you to give return as it may plaise you. Excuse
+my hand riting.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Yours truly</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>August 2nd.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mr. ⸺.</span> I received Mr. G⸺’s letter on the 31st of
+July. I am sorry I am not able to pay at preasant. I am
+willing to pay my rent but it was God’s will to take all the mains
+I had intended to meet you. I hope you will be so kind to give
+time untell October, as it is so hard to make money</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your obt. servent</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Pat. F⸺.</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>Wensdy 19th.</i></p>
+
+<p>* * * * Esq. <span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I received your letter &amp; will send
+you the rent as soon as I can. There was no price for cattle in
+the fairs that is past, in fact the could not be sold atol. I expect
+to make the rent in the fair of K⸺. I could always pay my
+rent but this cursed agetation has destroyed our country but I
+hope the worst of it is over</p>
+
+<p class="center">I remain Your Obedient Servant</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_338"></a>[338]</span></p>
+
+<p>The following letters also relate to the payment of
+rent:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>October 10.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I did not receive your letter ontill this Day. It has
+given me a great surprise I hope your Honour will not put me
+to cost I have a little best to sell, and after the fair in C⸺,
+a thursday I will send it to yo and I hop yo will not put me to
+cost. I hop your honour will feel for me</p>
+
+<p class="center">truly</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>October 4th.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mr. ⸺.</span> <span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I was again disappointed in the fair at
+N⸺ in selling my cattle and I must ask time of you till I
+get sale for if possible I will sell them in the fair of C⸺ do
+not once imagine that I am not enclined to pay but I never was
+offered a price for my cattle. I was speaking to some of the
+tenants and the would wish to see you in N⸺ the rent day
+as the want to know what you want for your land</p>
+
+<p class="center">Yours respectfully,</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I was very sory to see your hon goeing back without
+the rient.</p>
+
+<p>I was willing to pay that day but I could not. I send you my
+half-year’s rent £13 10, so I hope your hon will luck after turf
+for me there is no ous in asking it of Mr. F⸺ There is to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_339"></a>[339]</span>
+banks idle on the tients part on F⸺ and Mrs. N⸺ has
+30 banks set this year so I count it very unfare if we doent get
+one The old men was geoing to kill us when we did not pay
+your hon the day you ware in N⸺ We ware all sory we did
+not settle that day</p>
+
+<p class="center">I remane your obdient servant</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+<p>rember the tturf.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The following is in the same handwriting as the
+last, but signed by another tenant:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—You spoke of referring to Mr. F⸺ for turf,
+we did not like to intrupeed (query, interrupt) yur hon at that time.
+Well sir there is too banks of your own on the tients part
+an Mrs. N⸺ is giveing turf to men on the five different
+estates Every one that wonted turf got it but two tients no
+one els wonts it besids, so I hope your hon will luck to us. I
+am willing to pay my way if I get a chance. N⸺ D⸺
+has turf this 40 years No one wants it but P⸺ F⸺ &amp;
+M⸺ T⸺. We would pay your hon ondly for the rest</p>
+
+<p class="center">Believe me Your obedient servent</p>
+
+<p class="right">M⸺ T⸺.</p>
+
+<p>do what your hon can about the turf</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>November 23rd 86.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Honoured Sir</span>,—I got both your letters &amp; replidd to the
+first &amp; directed it to D⸺ in which I asked for a little time to
+pay the rent I had some young cattle in the fair of K⸺<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_340"></a>[340]</span>
+and did not sell them. It will greatly oblige me if your Honour
+will give me time untill the Christmas fair of F⸺ as I have
+some pigs to sell that will meet this rent &amp; that would leave me
+the cattle to meet the May rent as the young cattle I have is
+not fit to sell at preasant.</p>
+
+<p>I feel sorry to have to trespass on your Honour, but the times
+are bad and it is hard to make money, but I hope we will soon
+have better times under the present Government, and that all
+those mob laws will soon be at an end.</p>
+
+<p class="center">I remain your humble servant,</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It shows a curious state of things when a would-be
+tenant thinks it necessary to assure the landlord that
+he knows the farm belongs to him:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>April 12, 1887.</i></p>
+
+<p>To Mr. * * * *</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—Just a few lines to let your honour know that my
+father is very delicate for the past tow months and not expected
+to recover. I would like to let your honour know that it was mee
+that minded your Property for the last ten years. I know that
+this place always belongs to you and that the emprovements
+cost no one But your self a shilling. I would like to know how
+mutch my father is in your dept.</p>
+
+<p class="center">I remain your honors faiteful servant,</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">James T⸺.</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_341"></a>[341]</span></p>
+
+<p>The following contain offers of cattle in lieu of rent,
+a form of payment which Irish tenants are always
+anxious to adopt if they can, for though they declare
+there will be no difference about the price, they always
+expect the landlord to give them considerably more
+than the market value:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>January 18.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—I am not able to answer you with money at present.
+I have the heifer that I told you of and if you wish I will
+send her to T⸺ for you, and I expect your honor and I
+wont differ.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your obedient servent,</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Patrick F⸺y.</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>Jany 5th.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>,—I have 5 nice bullocks to sell if you would buy them.
+I have no other way of paying the rent.</p>
+
+<p class="right">F⸺ D⸺.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>October 14th.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span> and pleas your honour,—I hope in you that
+you wont buy all the cattle you want in S⸺ town. Patrick
+D⸺ has a lot greasing with the father-in-law at C⸺;
+he intends to meet your honour with them. Pleas, Sir, leave
+room for three Bullocks, I have them greasing with you above
+the road all the summer.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your faithful servant,</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Michl. T⸺.</span></p>
+
+<p>I am setten some of my children and it has left me bare in
+monney.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_342"></a>[342]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="right"><i>Novr 12th.</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,—I will give three two-year-old Bullicks good
+owns for next May rent. I will leave the vallue to your honour
+when you come down before Christamas. I was offered £15 pounds
+for the three last June; £5 each from Mr. ⸺ the Miller of
+C⸺. I never took them out since. I have no father for
+them. Your honour has plenty of straw to give them, the will
+make good Bullocks on it. Your honour must get them les
+than vallue</p>
+
+<p class="center">Your truly faithfull servent,</p>
+
+<p class="right">* * * *</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="titlepage">THE END.</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller">BRADBURY, AGNEW, &amp; CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.</p>
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