Ireland Under Coercion Volume Ii Part 4

"Oh, the new agent? Oh yes; I believe he's a very good man."

"You don't expect to be 'boycotted' for going to the Castle, do you?"

"And why should I be? But I haven't been inside of the Castle gates for twenty years. And--here they are!" he cried out suddenly, pulling up his horse just in time to avoid driving him up against a pair of iron gates inhospitably closed. It was by this time pitch dark. Not a light could we see within the enclosure. But presently a couple of shadowy forms appeared behind the iron gates; the iron gates creaked on their hinges, a masculine voice bade us drive in, and a policeman with a lantern advanced from a thicket of trees. All this had a fine martial and adventurous aspect, and my jarvey seemed to enjoy it as much as I.

We got directions from the friendly policeman as to the roads and the landmarks, and after once nearly running into a clump of trees found ourselves at last in an open courtyard, where men appeared and took charge of the car, the horse, and my luggage. We were in a quadrangle of the out-buildings attached to the old residence of the Clanricardes, which had escaped the fire of 1826. The late Marquis for a long time hesitated whether to reconstruct the castle on the old site (the walls are still standing), or to build an entirely new house on another site.

He finally chose the latter alternative, chiefly, I am told, under the advice of his oldest son, the late Lord Dunkellin, one of the most charming and deservedly popular men of his time. He was a great friend and admirer of Father Burke, whom he used to claim as a Galway cousin, and with whom I met him in Rome not long before his death in the summer of 1867. His brother, the present Marquis, I have never met, but Mr.

Tener, his present agent here, who pa.s.sed some time in America several years ago, learning from him that I wished to see this place, very courteously wrote to me asking me to make his house my headquarters. I found my way through queer pa.s.sages to a cheery little hall where my host met me, and taking me into a pleasant little parlour, enlivened by flowers, and a merrily blazing fire, presented me to Mrs. Tener.

Mr. Tener is an Ulster man from the County Cavan. He went with his wife on their bridal trip to America, and what he there saw of the peremptory fas.h.i.+on in which the authorities deal with conspiracies to resist the law seems not unnaturally to have made him a little impatient of the dilatory, not to say dawdling, processes of the law in his own country.

He gave me a very interesting account after dinner this evening of the situation in which he found affairs on this property, an account very different from those which I have seen in print. He is himself the owner of a small landed property in Cavan, and he has had a good deal of experience as an agent for other properties. "I have a very simple rule," he said to me, "in dealing with Irish tenants, and that is neither to do an injustice nor to submit to one." It was only, he said, after convincing himself that the Clanricarde tenants had no legitimate ground of complaint against the management of the estate, not removable upon a fair and candid discussion of all the issues involved between them and himself, that he consented to take charge of the property. That to do this was to run a certain personal risk, in the present state of the country, he was quite aware.

But he takes this part of the contract very coolly, telling me that the only real danger, he thinks, is incurred when he makes a journey of which he has to send a notice by telegraph--a remark which recalled to me the curious advice given me in Dublin to seal my letters, as a protection against "the Nationalist clerks in the post-offices." The park of Portumua Castle, which is very extensive, is patrolled by armed policemen, and whenever Mr. Tener drives out he is followed by a police car carrying two armed men.

"Against whom are all these precautions necessary?" I asked. "Against the evicted tenants, or against the local agents of the League?"

"Not at all against the tenants," he replied, "as you can satisfy yourself by talking with them. The trouble comes not from the tenants at all, nor from the people here at Portumna, but from mischievous and dangerous persons at Loughrea and Woodford. Woodford, mind you, not being Lord Clanricarde's place at all, though all the country has been roused about the cruel Clanricarde and his wicked Woodford evictions.

Woodford was simply the headquarters of the agitation against Lord Clanricarde and my predecessor, Mr. Joyce, and it has got the name of the 'c.o.c.kpit of Ireland,' because it was there that Mr. Dillon, in October 1886, opened the 'war against the landlords' with the 'Plan of Campaign.' It is an odd circ.u.mstance, by the way, worth noting, that when these apostles of Irish agitation went to Lord Clanricarde's property nearer the city of Gralway, and tried to stir the people up, they failed dismally, because the people there could understand no English, and the Irish agitators could speak no Iris.h.!.+ n.o.body has ever had the face to pretend that the Clanricarde estates were 'rack-rented.'

There have been many personal attacks made upon Mr. Joyce and upon Lord Clanricarde, and Mr. Joyce has brought that well-known action against the Marquis for libel, and all this answers with the general public as an argument to show that the tenants on the Clanricarde property must have had great grievances, and must have been cruelly ground down and unable to pay their way. I will introduce you, if you will allow me, to the Catholic Bishop here, and to the resident Protestant clergyman, and to the manager of the bank, and they can help you to form your own judgment as to the state of the tenants. You will find that whatever quarrels they may have had with their landlord or his agent, they are now, and always have been, quite able to pay their rents, and I need not tell you that it is no longer in the power of a landlord or an agent to say what these rents shall be."[10]

"Mr. Dillon in that speech of his at Woodford (I have it here as published in _United Ireland_), you will see, openly advised, or rather ordered, the tenants here to club their rents, or, in plain English, the money due to their landlord, with the deliberate intent to confiscate to their own use, or, in their own jargon, 'grab,' the money of any one of their number who, after going into this dishonest combination, might find it working badly and wish to get out of it. Here is his own language:"--

I took the speech as reported in the _United Ireland_ of October 23rd, 1886, and therein found Mr. Dillon, M.P., using these words:--"If you mean to fight really, you must put the money aside for two reasons--first of all because you want the means to support the men who are hit first; and, secondly, because you want to prohibit traitors going behind your back. There is no way to deal with a traitor except to get his money under lock and key, and if you find that he pays his rent, and betrays the organisation, what will you do with him? I will tell you what to do with him. _Close upon his money, and use it for the organisation_. I have always opposed outrages. _This is a legal plan, and it is ten times more effective_."

Not a word here as to the morality of the proceeding thus recommended; but almost in the same breath in which he bade his ignorant hearers regard his plan as "legal," Mr. Dillon said to them, "_this must be done privately, and you must not inform the public where the money is placed_!"

Why not, if the plan was "legal"? Mr. Dillon, I believe, is not a lawyer, but he can hardly have deluded himself into thinking his plan of campaign "legal" in the face of the particular pains taken by his leader, Mr. Parnell, to disclaim all partic.i.p.ation in any such plans. A year before Mr. Dillon made this curious speech, Mr. Parnell, I remember, on the 11th of October 1885, speaking at Kildare, declared that he had "in no case during the last few years advised any combination among tenants against even rack-rents," and insisted that any combination of the sort which might exist should be regarded as an "isolated" combination, "confined to the tenants of individual estates, who, of their own accord, without any incitement from us, on the contrary, kept back by us, without any urging on our part, without any advice on our part, but stung by necessity, and the terrible realities of their position, may have formed such a combination among themselves to secure such a reduction of rent as will enable them to live in their own homes." From this language of Mr. Parnell in October 1885 to Mr.

Dillon's speech in October 1886, urging and advising the tenants to organise, exact contributions from every member of the organisation, and put these contributions under the control of third parties determined to confiscate the money subscribed by any member who might not find the organisation working to his advantage, is a rather long step! It covers all the distance between a cunning defensive evasion of the law, and an open aggressive violation of the law--not of the land only, but of common honesty. One of two things is clear: either these combinations are voluntary and "isolated," and intended, as Mr. Parnell a.s.serts, to secure such a reduction of rents as will enable the tenants, and each of them, to live peacefully and comfortably at home, and in that case any member of the combination who finds that he can attain his object better by leaving it has an absolute right to do this, and to demand the return of his money; or they are part of a system imposed upon the tenants by a moral coercion inconsistent with the most elementary ideas of private right and personal freedom. This makes the importance of Mr. Dillon's speech, that by his denunciation of any member who wishes to withdraw from this "voluntary" combination as a "traitor," and by his order to "close upon the money" of any such member, "and use it for the organisation," he brands the "organisation" as a subterranean despotism of a very cheap and nasty kind. The Government which tolerates the creation of such a Houndsditch tyranny as this within its dominions richly deserves to be overthrown. As for the people who submit themselves to it, I do not wonder that in his more lucid moments a Catholic priest like Father Quilter feels himself moved to denounce them as "poor slaves." Of course with a benevolent neutral like myself, the question always recurs, Who trained them to submit to this sort of thing? But I really am at a loss to see why a parcel of conspirators should be encouraged in the nineteenth century to bully Irish farmers out of their manhood and their money, because in the seventeenth century it pleased the stupid rulers of England, as the great Duke of Ormond indignantly said, to "put so general a discountenance upon the improvement of Ireland, as if it were resolved that to keep it low is to keep it safe."

On going back to the little drawing-room after dinner we found Mrs.

Tener among her flowers, busy with some literary work. It is not a gay life here, she admits, her nearest visiting acquaintance living some seven or eight miles away--but she takes long walks with a couple of stalwart dogs in her company, and has little fear of being molested.

"The tenants are in more danger," she thinks, "than the landlords or the agents"--nor do I see any reason to doubt this, remembering the Connells whom I saw at Edenvale, and the story of the "boycotted" Fitzmaurice brutally murdered in the presence of his daughter at Lixnaw on the 31st of January, as if by way of welcome to Lord Ripon and Mr. Morley on their arrival at Dublin.

PORTUMNA, _Feb. 29th._--Early this morning two of the "evicted" tenants, and an ex-bailiff of the property here, came by appointment to discuss the situation with Mr. Tener. He asked me to attend the conference, and upon learning that I was an American, they expressed their perfect willingness that I should do so. The tenants were quiet, st.u.r.dy, intelligent-looking men. I asked one of them if he objected to telling me whether he thought the rent he had refused to pay excessive, or whether he was simply unable to pay it.

"I had the money, sir, to pay the rent," he replied, "and I wanted to pay the rent--only I wouldn't be let."

"Who wouldn't let you?" I asked.

"The people that were in with the League."

"Was your holding worth anything to you?" I asked.

"It was indeed. Two or three years ago I could have sold my right for a matter of three hundred pounds."

"Yes!" interrupted the other tenant, "and a bit before that for six hundred pounds."

"Is it not worth three hundred pounds to you now?"

"No," said Mr. Tener, "for he has lost it by refusing the settlement I offered to make, and driving us into proceedings against him, and allowing his six months' equity of redemption to lapse."

"And sure, if we had it, no one would be let to buy it now, sir," said the tenant. "But it's we that hope Mr. Tener here will let us come back on the holdings--that is, if we'd be protected coming back."

"Now, do you see," said Mr. Tener, "what it is you ask me to do? You ask me to make you a present outright of the property you chose foolishly to throw away, and to do this after you have put the estate to endless trouble and expense; don't you think that is asking me to do a good deal?"

The tenants looked at one another, at Mr. Tener, and at me, and the ex-bailiff smiled.

"You must see this," said Mr. Tener, "but I am perfectly willing now to say to you, in the presence of this gentleman, that in spite of all, I am quite willing to do what you ask, and to let you come back into the t.i.tles you have forfeited, for I would rather have you back on the property than strangers--"

"And, indeed, we're sure you would."

"But understand, you must pay down a year's rent and the costs you have put us to."

"Ah! sure you wouldn't have us to pay the costs?"

"But indeed I will," responded Mr. Tener; "you mustn't for a moment suppose I will have any question about that. You brought all this trouble on yourselves, and on us; and while I am ready and willing to deal more than fairly, to deal liberally with you about the arrears--and to give you time--the costs you must pay."

"And what would they be, the costs?" queried one of the tenants anxiously.

"Oh, that I can't tell you, for I don't know," said Mr. Tener, "but they shall not be anything beyond the strict necessary costs."

"And if we come back would we be protected?"

"Of course you will have protection. But why do you want protection?

Here you are, a couple of strong grown men, with men-folk of your families. See here! why don't you go to such an one, and such an one,"

naming other tenants; "you know them well. Go to them quietly and sound them to see if they will come back on the same terms with you; form a combination to be honest and to stand by your rights, and defy and break up the other dishonest combination you go in fear of! Is it not a shame for men like you to lie down and let those fellows walk over you, and drive you out of your livelihood and your homes?"

The tenants looked at each other, and at the rest of us. "I think," said one of them at last, "I think ---- and ----," naming two men, "would come with us. Of course," turning to Mr. Tener, "you wouldn't discover on us, sir."

"Discover on you! Certainly not," said Mr. Tener. "But why don't you make up your minds to be men, and 'discover' on yourselves, and defy these fellows?"

"And the cattle, sir? would we get protection for the cattle? They'd be murdered else entirely."

"Of course," said Mr. Tener, "the police would endeavour to protect the cattle."

Then, turning to me, he said, "That is a very reasonable question. These scoundrels, when they are afraid to tackle the men put under their ban, go about at night, and mutilate and torture and kill the poor beasts. I remember a case," he went on, "in Roscommon, where several head of cattle mysteriously disappeared. They could be found nowhere. No trace of them could be got. But long weeks after they vanished, some lads in a field several miles away saw numbers of crows hovering over a particular point. They went there, and there at the bottom of an abandoned coal-shaft lay the shattered remains of these lost cattle. The poor beasts had been driven blindfold over the fields and down into this pit, where, with broken limbs, and maimed, they all miserably died of hunger."

"Yes," said one of the tenants, "and our cattle'd be driven into the Shannon, and drownded, and washed away."

"You must understand," interposed Mr. Tener "that when cattle are thus maliciously destroyed the owners can recover nothing unless the remains of the poor beasts are found and identified within three days."

The disgust which I felt and expressed at these revelations seemed to encourage the tenants. One of them said that before the evictions came off certain of the National Leaguers visited him, and told him he must resist the officers. "I consulted my sister," he said, "and she said, 'Don't you be such a fool as to be doing that; we'll all be ruined entirely by those rascals and rogues of the League.' And I didn't resist. But only the other day I went to a priest in the trouble we are in, and what do you think he said to me? He said, 'Why didn't you do as you were bid? then you would be helped,' and he would do nothing for us!

Would you think that right, sir, in your country?"

"I should think in my country," I replied, "that a priest who behaved in that way ought to be unfrocked."

"Did you pay over all your rent into the hands of the trustees of the League?" I asked of one of these tenants.