The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent Part 11

'What cavalry, my lord? Why, there was none.

'Oh ho,' says the judge. 'And where was the artillery?'

'Faith, my lord, there was as much artillery as there was cavalry, and that would not get in the way of a donkey race.'

Then Morris, with appropriate solemnity, proceeded to read out the newspaper account for the benefit of the audience. The whole Court was convulsed with laughter, in which the prisoners in the dock heartily joined.

After the trial was over, a parish priest came to congratulate Morris, and said to him:--

'My lord, you have laughed Fenianism out of Limerick.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mrs. Hussey]

CHAPTER VIII

MYSELF, SOME FACTS, AND MANY STORIES

In 1850 I became agent to the Colthurst property, which consisted of most of the parish of Ballyvourney, one estate alone containing about twenty-three thousand acres. The rental was then over 4600. There were only three slated houses on the property, hardly any out-buildings, only seven miles of road under contract, and about twenty acres planted.

By 1880 the landlord had expended 30,000 on improvements, there were over one hundred slated houses, about sixty miles of roads, and over four hundred acres planted.

Under the Land Act of 1881 the rent was reduced to 3600.

That was the encouragement officially given to the landlord for a.s.sisting in the improvement of his property.

From the time of Moses downwards, the policy of all Governments has been to give relief to the debtor. By the Enc.u.mbered Estate Act, which was pa.s.sed just after the famine, special relief was given to the creditor.

What the English view was may be taken from the _Times_--

'In a few years more, a Celtic Irishman will be as rare in Connemara as is the Red Indian on the sh.o.r.es of Manhattan.'

That is to say, English capital was at last to flow into Ireland for the purchase of enc.u.mbered estates, but the antic.i.p.ation of course was erroneous.

English capital was placed for preference in Turkish and in Egyptian bonds, to the great loss of all concerned. As for Ireland, out of the first twenty millions realised by the new Court, over seventeen was Irish money; and at the outset there was an inevitable downward tendency of prices which involved heavy depreciation.

Credit was destroyed in Ireland, and every man who owed a s.h.i.+lling was utterly ruined. Had the Government given loans at a reasonable rate of interest, which would have amply repaid them, all this could have been saved. As it was, properties were sold like chairs and tables at a paltry auction, and in thousands of cases the judge expressed himself satisfied that the rent could have been considerably increased.

I knew one unfortunate shopkeeper who paid 6000 for a property under these circ.u.mstances; and in place of an increase of rent, the confiscators--that is to say the commissioners imposed by Mr.

Gladstone--took a third of the rental off him.

Those purchasers who were English conceived when they bought properties that they would get as much from them as the solvent tenants were willing to pay. The legislation of Mr. Gladstone in coalition with the blunderbuss soon put an end to the pleasing delusion. It was one more of the English mistakes about Ireland, where, when the tenant is content to pay, the British Government and the Land League both combine to prevent him from offering a reasonable rent to a landlord.

As a matter of fact, even the most seditionary organs confessed that the tenants gained little and lost much by the change from the old type of landlord to the new, for the latter, being practical men, had no sympathy for the man who was permanently behindhand with his rent. And no one can say that this habitual arrear was a healthy stimulus to the moral wellbeing of the tenant himself, though he felt aggrieved at its being checked.

There is not the least need to sketch how I gradually became one of the largest land agents in Ireland. It has been published in other books, and would only prove wearisome if set out in detail in this volume. So I will merely observe that only two years after the big Fenian rising, as it was called--which I should describe as being composed of a rabble of less importance than the ragam.u.f.fins led by Wat Tyler--so little was I impressed by its magnitude that I went to live at Edenburn. There I laid out a lot of money in rebuilding the house, spending over 2000 in additions. This was most idiotic of me, because I had not counted on the infernal devices of Mr. Gladstone to render Ireland uninhabitable for peaceful and law-abiding folk.

When I first settled down there, labourers were working at eightpence or tenpence a day. Now the lowest rate is two s.h.i.+llings. The labourer rectified this rate by emigration, and if the farmers, who could more advantageously have emigrated, had done so, the cry for compulsory reduction would never have arisen.

Thus far I have dealt with facts and myself as concerned in them, but I propose now to relate a few stories, a thing more congenial to my temperament than any other form of conversational exercise. Whether it will equally commend itself to the reader is a matter on which I, as an aged novice in literature, though hopeful, am of course uncertain.

Indeed I am in exactly the predicament of a farmer's wife who was asked by the Dowager Lady G.o.dfrey, after a month of marriage, how she liked her husband.

'I had plenty of recommendation with him,' was the reply, 'but I have not had enough trial of him yet to say for sure.'

There is a story about a honeymoon couple at Killarney which is worth telling.

The bridegroom had a valet, a good, faithful fellow, long in his service, but talkative, a thing his master loathed. He said to him:--

'John, I've often told you to hold your tongue about my affairs. This time I emphatically mean it. If you tell the people in the hotel that I am on my honeymoon, I'll sack you on the spot.'

So John promised to be as silent as the grave, but on the third afternoon, as the happy pair were ascending the stairs of the Victoria Hotel, they saw by the giggles and smirks of the chambermaids that their secret had been discovered.

The bridegroom rang his bell and went for John in a towering pa.s.sion, but the fellow held his ground.

'Is it not unfair the way you are taking on? Sure the other servants did ask me if you were on your honeymoon, but I was even with them, for I told them "devil a bit, your honour was not going to marry the lady until next month."'

I do not know how that alliance turned out, but the happy pair left the hotel early next morning.

I can tell rather more about the matrimonial experiences of an Archdeacon at Cork, who married firstly a woman who was very fond of society. She died, and he then married another, who grew very stout. She also died, and the indefatigable cleric married as his third experiment a widow cursed with a very violent temper.

He was one day chaffed on the practical demonstration he had given to the Romish doctrine of the celibacy of the Church, when he said:--

'After all they were a trial, for I married the world, the flesh, and lastly the devil, and now I tremble whenever I think of recognition in eternity.'

This Cork story comes naturally, because at that time I was living near Cork and very happily too.

Now and again we took trips up to Dublin when I had business there.

I am not much of a playgoer, but in Dublin we always went to the theatre on the chance of hearing some of the proverbial wit of its gallery.

On one occasion, a lady in the play, when her lover had had some doubt of her fidelity, exclaimed:--

'Would there were a mirror in my side that you could see into my heart.'

Whereupon a voice from the G.o.ds shouted:--

'Would not a pain [_i.e._ pane] in your stomach do as well. I have one myself.'

Lord Chancellor Brady was of a notoriously convivial temperament, which did not prevent him being an admirable lawyer when he would allow his wits to get their heads above water, so to speak, though it was little enough that he used to dilute his spirits.

When Jenny Lind sang in some Italian opera, he occupied a seat in the vice-regal box, and gazed at her through a portentously enormous _lorgnette_.

This was too much for a wag in the gallery, who yelled:--