Ireland Under Coercion Volume Ii Part 6

"No, I will not. Don't be afraid of your wife, but pay what you owe, like a man. You've got the money there in your pocket."

This was a good shot. Mickey couldn't resist it, and his countenance broke into a broad smile.

"Ah no! I've got it in two pockets. Begorra, it was the wife herself made up the money in two parcels, and she put one into each pocket, to be sure--and I wasn't to give your honour but one, if you would take it.

But there's the money, and I daresay it's all for the best."

On another occasion, when he was collecting the rents of a property in the county of Longford, one tenant came forward as the spokesman of the rest, admitted that the rents had been accepted fairly after a reduction under the Land Act, expressed the general wish of the tenants to meet their obligations, and wound up by asking a further abatement, "the times were so bad, and the money couldn't be got, it couldn't indeed!"

Mr. Tener listened patiently--to listen patiently is the most essential quality of an agent in Ireland--and finally said:--

"Very well, if you haven't got the money to pay in full, pay three-quarters of it, and I'll give you time for the rest."

"Thank your honour!" said Pat, "and that'll be thirty pounds--and here it is in one pound notes, and hard enough to get they are, these times!"

So Mr. Tener took the money, counted the notes twice over, and then, writing out a receipt, handed it to the tenant.

"All right, Pat, there's your receipt for thirty-nine pounds, and I'm glad to see ten-pound notes going about the country in these hard times!"

By mistake the "distressful" orator had put one ten-pound note into his parcel! He took his receipt, and went off without a word. But the combination to get an "abatement" broke down then and there, and the other tenants came forward and put down their money.

These incidents occurred to Mr. Tener himself. Not less amusing and instructive was a similar mistake on a larger scale made by an over-crafty tenant in dealing with one of Mr. Tener's friends a few years ago in the county of Leitrim. This tenant, whom we will call Denis, was the fugleman also of a combination. He was a cattle dealer as well as a farmer, and having spent a couple of hours in idly eloquent attempts to bring about a general abatement of the rents, he lost his patience.

"Ah, well, your honour!" he said, "I can't stay here all day talking like these men, I must go to the fair at Boyle. Will you take a deposit-receipt of the bank for ten pounds and give me the pound change?

that'll just be the nine pounds for the half-year's rent. But all the same, yer honour, those men are all farmers, and it's not out of the farm at all I made the ten pounds, it's out of the dealing!"

"But you couldn't deal without a farm, Denis, for the stock," said the agent, as he glanced at the receipt. He hastily turned it over, and went on, "Just indorse the receipt, and I'll consider your proposition."

The receipt was indorsed, and at once taken off by the agent's clerk to the bank to bring back pound-notes for it, while the agent quietly proceeded to fill out the regular form of receipt for a full year's rent, eighteen pounds. Denis noted what he supposed of course to be the agent's blunder, but like an astute person held his peace. The clerk came back with the notes. Denis took up his receipt, and the agent quietly began handing him note after note across the table.

"But, your honour!" exclaimed Denis, "what on earth are ye giving me all this money for?"

"It's your change," said the agent, quite imperturbably. "You gave me a bank receipt for one hundred pounds. I have given you a receipt for your full year's rent, and here are eighty-two pounds in notes, and with it eighteen s.h.i.+llings in silver--that's five per cent. reduction. I would have made it ten per cent., only you were so very sharp, first about not having the money, and then about the full receipt!"

In an instant all eyes were fastened upon Denis. Ichabod! the glory had departed. The chorus went up from his disenchanted followers:--

"Ah, glory be to G.o.d, you were not bright enough for the agent, Denis!"

And so that day the agent made a very full and handsome collection--and there was a slight reduction in the deposit-accounts of the local bank!

In the evening Mr. Tener gave me the details of some cases of direct intimidation with the names of the tenants concerned. One man, whose farm he visited, told him he had paid his rent not long before to the previous agent. "Well," said Mr. Tener, "show me your receipt!" On this the tenant said that he dare not keep the receipt about him, nor even in the house, lest it should be demanded by the emissaries of the League, who went round to keep the tenants up to the "Plan of Campaign," and that it was hidden in his stable. And he went out to the stable and brought it in.

This, he had reason to believe, was not an uncommon case.[12] The same man, wis.h.i.+ng to take a gra.s.s farm which the people hoped the agent would consent to have "cut up" was asked to give two names on a promissory-note to pay the rent. He demurred to this, and after a parley said, "Would a certificate do?" upon which he pulled out an old tobacco-box, and carefully unfolded from it a bank certificate of deposit for a hundred pounds sterling! This tenant held eleven Irish, or more than seventeen English, acres, and his yearly rent was 11, 16s.

6d.

The people before this agitation began were generally quiet, thrifty, and industrious. They were great sheep-raisers. An old law of the Irish Parliament had exempted sheep, but not cattle or crops, from distraint, with an eye to encouraging the woollen interest in Ireland.

As to the sale of tenant-right in Ireland, he told me a curious story.

One woman, a widow, whom he named, owed two year' rent on a holding in Ulster at 4 a year. She was abundantly able to pay, but for her own reasons preferred to be evicted, and, finally, by an understanding with him, offered her tenant-right for sale. A man who had made money in iron-mines in the County of Durham was a bidder, and finally offered 240 for the holding. It was knocked down to him. He then saw the agent, who told him he had paid too much. The woman was then appealed to, and she admitted that the agent was right. But it was shown that others had offered 200, and the woman finally agreed to take, and received, that amount in gold, being fifty years' purchase!

CHAPTER X.

DUBLIN, _Thursday, March 1._--This has been a crowded day. I left Portumna very early on a car with Mr. Tener, intending to visit the scene of his latest collision with the "National" government of Ireland, on my way to Loughrea. It was a bright spring morning, more like April in Italy than like March in America, and the country is full of natural beauty. We made our first halt at the derelict house of Martin Kenny, one of the "victims" of the famous "Woodford evictions," so called, as I have said, because Woodford is the nearest town.[13] The eviction here took place October 21st, 1887. The house has been dismantled by the neighbours since that time, each man carrying off a door, or a shutter, or whatever best suited him. One of the constables who followed us as Mr. Tener's body-guard had been present at the eviction. He came into the house with us, and very graphically described the performance. The house was still full of heavy stones taken into it, partly to block the entrances, and partly as ammunition; and trunks of trees used as _chevaux defrise_ still protruded through the door and the window. These trees had been cut down by the garrison in the woodlands here and there all over the property. I asked if the law in Ireland punished depredations of this sort, and was informed that trees planted by tenants, if registered by them within a certain time, are the property of the tenants. This would astonish our landlords in America, where the tenant who sticks so much as a sunflower into his garden-patch makes a present of it to his landlord.[14]

I asked if the place made a long defence. Mr. Tener and the constable both laughed, and the former told me that when the storming party arrived shortly after daybreak, they found the house garrisoned only by some small boys, who had been left there to keep watch. The men were fast asleep at some other place. The small boys ran away as fast as possible to give the alarm, but the police went in, and in a jiffey pulled to pieces the elaborate defences prepared to repel them. Father Coen, the constable said, got to Kenny's house an hour after it was all over, with a mob of people howling and groaning. But the work had been done, and other work also at the Castle of Cloondadauv, to which we next drove.

This place takes its truly awe-inspiring name from a ruined Norman tower standing on a picturesque promontory of no great height, which juts out into the lovely lake here made by the Shannon. At no great expense this tower might be so restored as to make an ideal fis.h.i.+ng-box. It now simply adorns the holding formerly occupied by Mr. John Stanislaus Burke, a former tenant of Lord Clanricarde. The story of its capture on the 17th of September is worth telling.

Some days before the evictions were to come off, a meeting was held at Woodford or Loughrea, at which one of the speakers, the patriotic Dr.

Tully, rather incautiously and exultingly told his hearers that the defence in 1886 of the tenant's house known as "Fort Saunders" had been a grand and gallant affair indeed, but that next time "the exterminators would have to storm a castle"!

This put Mr. Tener at once on the alert, and as Mr. Burke of Cloondadauv was set down for eviction, it didn't require much cogitation to fix upon the fortress destined to be "stormed." So he set about the campaign. The County Inspector of the constabulary, who had made a secret reconnaissance, reported that he found the place too strong to be taken if defended, except "by artillery." So it was determined to take it by surprise.

When the previous evictions were made, the agent and the public forces had marched from Portumna by the highway to Woodford, so that, of course, their advent was announced by the scouts and sentinels of the League from hill to hill long before they reached the scene of action, and abundant time was given to the agitators for organising a "reception." Mr. Tener profited by the experience of his predecessors.

He contrived to get his force of constabulary through the town of Portumna without attracting any popular attention. And as early rising is not a popular virtue here, he resolved to steal a march on the defenders of Cloondadauv.

He had brought up certain large boats to Portumna, and put them on the lake. Rousing his men before dawn, he soon had them all embarked, and on their way swiftly and silently by the river and the lake to Cloondadauv.

They reached the promontory by daybreak, and as soon as the hour of legal action had arrived they were landed, and surrounded the "castle."

The ancient portal was found to be blocked with heavy stones and trunks of trees, nor did any adit appear to be available, till a young gentleman who had accompanied the party as a volunteer, discovered in one wall of the tower, at some little height from the ground, the vent of one of those conduits not infrequently found running down through the walls of old castles, which were used sometimes as waste-ways for rubbish from above, and sometimes to receive water-pipes from below.

Looking up into this vent, he saw a rope hanging free within it. Upon this he hauled resolutely, and finding it firmly attached above, came to the conclusion that it must have been fixed there by the garrison as a means of access to the interior.

Like an adventurous young tar, he bade his comrades stand by, and nimbly "swarmed" up the rope, without thought or care of what might await him at the top. In a few moments his shouts from above proclaimed the capture of the stronghold. It was absolutely deserted; the garrison, confident that no attack would that day be made, had gone off to the nearest village. The interior of the castle was found filled with munitions of war, in the shape of huge beams and piles of stones laboriously carried up the winding stairs, and heaped on all the landing-places in readiness for use. On the flat roof of the castle was established a sort of furnace for heating water or oil, to be poured down upon the besiegers; and crowbars lay there in readiness to loosen out and dislodge the battlements, and topple them over upon the a.s.sailants.

The officers soon made their way all over the building, and thence proceeded to the residence of Mr. Burke near by, a large and very commodious house. All the formalities were gone through with, a detachment of policemen was put in charge, and the rest of the forces set out on their return to Portumna, before the organised "defenders" of Cloondadauv, hastily called out of their comfortable beds or from their breakfast-tables had realised the situation, and got the populace into motion. A ma.s.s meeting was held in the neighbourhood, and many speeches were made. But the castle and the farm-house and the holding all remain in the hands of a cool, quiet, determined-looking young Ulsterman, who tells me that he is getting on very well, and feels quite able with his police-guard to protect himself. "Once in a while," he said, "they come here from Loughrea with English Parliament-men, and stand outside of the gate, and call me 'Clanricarde's dog,' and make like speeches at me; but I don't mind them, and they see it, and go away again."

Of Mr. Burke, the evicted tenant here, Mr. Crawford, the Protestant clergyman at Portumna, told me that he was abundantly able to pay his rent. The whole debt for which Burke was evicted was 115; and Mr.

Crawford said he had himself offered Burke 300 for the holding. Burke would have gladly taken this, but "the League wouldn't let him." When his right was put up for sale at Galway for 5, he did not dare to buy it in, and he is now living with his wife and children on the League funds. Lord Clanricarde's agent offered to take him back and restore his right if he would pay what he owed; but he dared not accept. This farm comprises over one hundred and ten English acres, which Burke held at a rent--fixed by the Land Court--of 77, the valuation for taxes being 83.

To call the eviction of such a tenant in such circ.u.mstances from such a holding a "sentence of death," is making ducks and drakes of the English language. Mr. Crawford's opinion, founded upon a thorough personal knowledge of the region, is that there is no exceptional distress in this part of Ireland, and that over-renting has nothing to do with such distress as does exist here. The case of a man named Egan, one of the "victims" of the Woodford evictions of 1886, certainly bears out this view of the matter. Egan, who was a tenant, not at all of Lord Clanricarde, but of a certain Mrs. Lewis, had occupied for twenty years a holding of about sixteen Irish acres, or more than twenty English acres. This he held at a yearly rental of 8, 15s., being 9d. over the valuation.

In August 1886 he was evicted for refusing to pay one year's rent then due. At that time the crops standing on the land were valued by him at 60, 13s. He also owned six beasts. In other words, this man, when he was called upon to pay a debt of 8, 15s. had in his own possession, beside the valuable tenant-right of his holding, more than a hundred pounds sterling of merchantable a.s.sets. He refused to pay, and he was evicted.

This was in August 1886. But such are the ideas now current in Ireland as to the relations of landlord and tenant, that immediately after his eviction Egan sent his daughter to gather some cabbages off the farm as if nothing had happened. The Emergency men in charge actually objected, and sent the damsel away. Thereupon Egan, on the 6th of September, served a legal notice on Mrs. Lewis, his landlady, requiring her either to let him take all the crops on the farm, or to pay him their value, estimated by him, as I have said, at 60, 13s. Two days after this, on the 8th of September, more than a hundred men came to the place by night and removed the greater portion of the crops. Not wis.h.i.+ng a return of these visitors, Mrs. Lewis, on the 16th of September, sent word to Egan to come and take away what was left of the crops; one of the horses employed in the nocturnal harvest of September 8th having been seized by the police and identified as belonging to Egan. Egan did not respond; but in July 1887 he brought an action against his landlady to recover 100 sterling for her "detention of his goods," and her "conversion of the same to her own use "!

The case was heard by the Recorder at Kilmainham, and the facts which I have briefly recited were established by the evidence. The daughter of this extraordinary "victim" Egan appeared as a witness, so "fas.h.i.+onably dressed" as to attract a remark on the subject from the defendant's counsel. To this she replied that "her brothers in America sent her money."

"If your brothers in America sent you money for such purposes," not unnaturally observed the Recorder, "why did they allow your father to sacrifice crops worth 60 for the non-payment of 8, 15s.?"

"They were tired of that," said the young lady airily; "the land wasn't worth the rent!"

That is to say, a farm which yielded a crop of 60, and pastured several head of cattle, was not worth 8, 15s. a year. Certainly it was not worth 8, 15s. a year if the tenant under the operation of the existing or the impending laws of Great Britain in Ireland could get, or hope to get it for the half of that rent, or for no rent at all.

But this being thus, on what grounds are the rest of mankind invited to regard this excellent man as a "victim" worthy of sympathy and of material aid? How had he come to be in arrears of a year in August 1886?

The proceedings at Kilmainham tell us this.