Chapter 13

PORTUMNA, GALWAY, _Feb. 28._--I left Cork by an early train to-day, and passing through the counties of Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Queen's, and King's, reached this place after dark on a car from Parsonstown. The day was delightfully cool and bright. I had the carriage to myself almost all the way, and gave up all the time I could snatch from the constantly varying and often very beautiful scenery to reading a curious pamphlet which I picked up in Dublin entitled _Pour I'Irlande._ It purports to have been written by a "Canadian priest" living at Lurgan in Ireland, and to be a reply to M. de Mandat Grancey's volume, _Chez Paddy._ It is adorned with a frontispiece representing a monster of the Cerberus type on a monument, with three heads and three collars labelled respectively "Flattery," "Famine," and "Coercion." On the pedestal is the inscription--"1800 to 1887. Erected by the grateful Irish to the English Government." The text is in keeping with the frontispiece. In a passage devoted to the "atrocious evictions" of Glenbehy in 1887, the agent of the property is represented as "setting fire with petroleum" to the houses of two helpless men, and turning out "eighteen human beings into the highway in the depth of winter." Not a word is said of the agent's flat denial of these charges, nor a word of the advice given to the agent by Sir Redvers Buller that the mortgagee ought to level the cottages occupied by trespassers, nor a word about Father Quilter's letter to Colonel Turner, branding his flock as "poor slaves" of the League, and turning them over to "Mr. Roe or any other agent" to do as he liked with them, since they could not, or would not, keep their plighted faith given through their own priest.

This sort of ostrich fury is common enough among the regular drumbeaters of the Irish agitation. But it is not creditable to a "Canadian priest." Still less creditable is his direct arraignment of M. de Mandat Grancey's good faith and veracity upon the strength of what he describes as M. de Mandat Grancey's amplification and distortion of a story told by himself. This was a tale of a priest called out to confess one of his parishioners. The penitent accused himself of killing one man, and trying to kill several others. The priest, as the dreadful tale went on, made a tally on his sleeve, with chalk, of the crimes recited. "Good heavens! my son," he cried at last, "what had all these men done to you that you tried to send them all into eternity? Who were they?"

"Oh, Father, they were all bailiffs or tax-collectors!"

"You idiot!" exclaimed the confessor, angrily rubbing at his sleeve, "why didn't ye tell me that before instead of letting me spoil my best cassock?"

As I happened to have the book of M. de Mandat Grancey in my despatch-box, I compared it with the attack made upon it. The results were edifying. In the first place, M. de Mandat Grancey does not indicate the Canadian priest as his authority. He says that he heard the story, apparently at a dinner-table in France, from a _curé Irlandais_, who was endeavouring to impress upon his hearers "the sympathy of the clergy with the Land League." The "Canadian priest" now comes forward and makes it a count in his indictment against M. de Mandat Grancey that he is described as an "Irish curate," when he is in fact neither an Irishman nor a curate. What was more natural than that an ecclesiastic, claiming to live in Ireland, and telling stories in France about the sympathy of the Irish clergy with the Land League, should be taken by one of his auditors to be an Irish _curé_, particularly as the French _curé_ is, I believe, the equivalent of the Irish "parish priest"?

In the next place, the "Canadian priest" declares that the story "is as old as the Round Towers of Ireland," and that M. de Mandat Grancey represents him as making himself the hero of the tale. As a matter of fact, M. de Mandat Grancey does nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he expressly says that the _curé Irlandais_, who told the story, gave it to his hearers as having occurred not to himself at all, but "to one of his colleagues." Furthermore he is at the pains to add (_Chez Paddy_, p. 43) that the story, which was not to the taste of some of the French ecclesiastics who heard it, was related "as a simple pleasantry." "But," he adds, and this I suspect is the sting which has so exasperated the "Canadian priest," "he gave us to understand at the same time that this pleasantry struck the keynote of the state of mind of many Irish priests, and, he said, that he was himself the President of the League in his district."

In connection with Colonel Turner's statements as to the conduct of Father White at Milltown Malbay, and with the accounts given me of the conduct of Father Sheehan at Lixnaw, this side-light upon the relations of a certain class of the Irish clergy with the most violent henchmen of the League, is certainly noteworthy. I happen to have had some correspondence with friends of mine in Paris, who are friends also of M. de Mandat Grarncey, about his visit to Ireland before he made it, and I am quite certain that he went there, to put the case mildly, with no prejudices in favour of the English Government or against the Nationalists. Perhaps the extreme bitterness shown in the pamphlet of the "Canadian priest" may have been born of his disgust at finding that the sympathy of French Catholics with Catholic Ireland draws the line at priests who regard the assassination of "bailiffs and tax-collectors" as a pardonable, if not positively amusing, excess of patriotic zeal.

It was late when I reached Parsonstown, known of old in Irish story as Birr, from St. Brendan's Abbey of Biorra, and now a clean prosperous place, carefully looked after by the chief landlord of the region, the Earl of Rosse, who, while he inherits the astronomical tastes and the mathematical ability of his father, is not so absorbed in star-gazing as to be indifferent to his terrestrial duties and obligations. I have heard nothing but good of him, and of his management of his estates, from men of the most diverse political views. But I think it more important to get a look at the Clanricarde property, about which I have heard little but evil from anybody. The strongest point I have heard made in favour of the owner is, that he is habitually described by that dumb organ of a down-trodden people, _United Ireland_, as "the most vile Clanricarde."

I found a good car at the railway station, and set off at once for Portumna. Parsonstown was called by Sir William Petty, in his _Survey of Ireland_, the _umbilicus Hiberniæ_. It is the centre of Ireland, as a point near Newnham Paddox is of England, and the famous or infamous "Bog of Allan" stretches hence to Athlone. Our way fortunately took us westward. A light railway was laid down some years ago from Parsonstown to Portumna, but it did not pay, and it has now been abandoned.

"What has become of the road?" I asked my jarvey.

"Oh! they just take up the rails when they like, the people do."

"And what do they do with them?"

"Is it what they do with them? Oh; they make fences of them for the beasts."

He was a dry, shrewd old fellow, not very amiably disposed, I was sorry to find, towards my own country.

"Ah! it's America, sorr, that's been the ruin of us entirely."

"Pray, how is that?"

"It's the storms they send; and then the grain; and now they tell me it's the American beasts that's spoiling the market altogether for Ireland."

"Is that what your member tells you?"

"The member, sorr? which member?"

"The member of Parliament for your district, I mean. What is his name?"

"His name? Well, I'm not sure; and I don't know that I know the man at all. But I believe his name is Mulloy."

"Does he live in Portumna?"

"Oh no, not at all. I don't know at all where he lives, but I believe it's in Tullamore. But what would he know about America? Sure, any one can see it's the storms and the grain that is the death of us in Ireland."

"But I thought it was the landlords and the rents?"

"Oh, that's in Woodford and Loughrea; not here at all. There'll be no good till we get a war."

"Get a war? with whom? What do you want a war for?"

"Ah! it was the good time when we had the Crimean war--with the wheat all about Portumna. I'll show you the great store there was built. It's no use now. But we'll have a war. My son, he's a soldier now. He went out to America. But he didn't like it."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Oh, he didn't like it. He could get no work, but to be a porter, and it was too hard. So he came back in three months' time, and then he 'listed for a soldier. He's over in England now. He likes it very well. He's getting very good pay. They pay the soldiers well. There's a troop of Hussars here now. They bring a power of money to the place."

"What do they do with the wheat lands now?"

"Oh, they're for sheep; they do very well. Were you ever in Australia, sorr?" pointing to a place we were passing. "There was a man came here from Australia with a pot of money, and he bought that place; but he thought he was a bigger man than he was, and now he's found himself out. I think he would have done as well to stay in Australia where he was."

In quite a different vein he spoke of the landlord of another large seat, and of the way in which the people, some of them, had misbehaved--breaking open the graves of the family on the place, "and tossing the coffins and the bones about, and all for what?"

The view as we crossed the long and very fine bridge over the Shannon after dusk was very striking. It was not too dark to make out the course of the broad gleaming river, and the lights of the town made it seem larger, I daresay, than it really is. As we drove up the main street I told my jarvey to take me to the Castle.

"To the Castle, is it?" he replied, looking around at me with an astonished air.

"Yes," I said, "I am going to see Mr. Tener, the agent, who lives there, doesn't he?"

"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 passed 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 passages 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 fashion 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 'cockpit 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 circumstance, 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 Irish! Nobody 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 participation 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 asserts, 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, sturdy, 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 titles 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.

"I paid over money to them, sir," he replied.

"Yes," I said, "but did you pay over all the amount of the rent, or how much of it?"

"Oh! I paid as much as I thought they would think I ought to pay!" he responded, with that sly twinkle of the peasant's eye one sees so often in rural France.

"Oh! I understand," I said, laughing. "But if you come to terms now with Mr. Tener here, will you get that money back again?"

"Divil a penny of it!" he replied, with much emphasis.

Finally they got up together to take their leave, after a long whispered conversation together.

"And if we made it half the costs?"

"No!" said Mr. Tener good-naturedly but firmly; "not a penny off the costs."

"Well, we'll see the men, sir, just quietly, and we'll let you know what can be done"; and with that they wished us, most civilly, good-morning, and went their way.

We walked in the park for some time, and a wild, beautiful park it is, not the less beautiful for being given up, as it is, very much to the Dryads to deal with it as they list. It is as unlike a trim English park as possible; but it contains many very fine trees, and grand open sweeps of landscape. In a tangled copse are the ruins of an ancient Franciscan abbey, in one corner of which lie buried together, under a monumental mound of brickwork, the late Marquis of Clanricarde and his wife. The walls of the Castle, burned in 1826, are still standing, and so perfect that the building might easily enough have been restored. A keen-eyed, wiry old household servant, still here, told us the house was burned in the afternoon of January 6, 1826. There were three women-servants in the house--"Anna and Mary Meehan, and Mrs. Underwood, the housekeeper"; and they were getting the Castle ready for his Lordship's arrival, so little of an "absentee" was the late Lord Clanricarde, then only one year married to the daughter of George Canning. The fires were laid on in the upper rooms, and Mrs. Underwood went off upon an errand. When she came back all was in flames.

The deer-park is full of deer, now become quite wild. We heard them crashing through the undergrowth on all sides. There must be capital fishing, too, in the lake, and in the river of which it is an expansion.

While they were getting the cars ready for a drive, came up another son of the soil. This man I found had only a small interest in the battle on the Clanricarde estates, holding his homestead of another landlord. But he admitted he had gone in a manner into the "combination," in that he had paid a certain, not very large, sum, which he named, to the trustees, "just for peace and quiet." He considered it gone, past recovery; and he named another man with a small holding, but doing a considerable business in other ways, who had "paid £10 or more just not to be bothered." Upon this Mr. Tener told me of a shopkeeper at Loughrea in a large way of business, a man with seven or eight thousand pounds, who, finding his goods about to be seized after the agent had turned a sharp strategic corner on him, and unexpectedly got into his shop, was about to own up to his defeat, and make a fair settlement, when the secretary of the League appeared, and requested a private talk with him. In a quarter of an hour the tradesman reappeared looking rather sullen and crestfallen. He said he couldn't pay, and must let the goods be taken. So taken they were, and duly put up under the process and sold. He bought them in himself, paying all the costs.

Presently two cars appeared. We got upon one, Mr. Tener driving a spirited nag, and taking on the seat with him a loaded carbine-rifle. Two armed policeman followed us upon the other, keeping at such a distance as would enable them easily to cover any one approaching from either side of the roadway. It quite took me back to the delightful days of 1866 in Mexico, when we used to ride out to picnics at the Rincon at Orizaba armed to the teeth, and ready at a moment's notice to throw the four-in-hand mule-wagons into a hollow square, and prepare to receive cavalry. As it seems to be perfectly well understood that the regular price paid for shooting a designated person (they call it "knocking" him in these parts) is the ridiculously small sum of four pounds, and that two persons who divide this sum are always detailed by the organisers of outrage to "knock" an objectionable individual, it is obvious that too much care can hardly be taken by prudent people in coming and going through such a country. Fortunately for the people most directly concerned to avoid these unpleasantnesses a systematic leakage seems to exist in the machinery of mischief. The places where the oaths of this local "Mafia" are administered, for instance, are well known. A roadside near a chapel is frequently selected--and this for two or three obvious reasons. The sanctity of the spot may be supposed to impress the neophyte; and if the police or any other undesirable people should suddenly come upon the officiating adepts and the expectant acolyte, a group on the roadside is not necessarily a criminal gathering--though I do not see why, in such times, our old American college definition of a "group" as a gathering of "three or more persons" should not be adopted by the authorities, and held to make such a gathering liable to dispersion by the police, as our "groups" used to be subject to proctorial punishment. Mills are another favourite resort of the law-breakers. Mr. Tener tells me that a large mill between this place and Loughrea is a great centre of trouble, not wholly to the disadvantage of the astute miller, who finds it not only brings grist to his mill, but takes away grist from another mill belonging to a couple of worthy ladies, and once quite prosperous. It is no uncommon thing, it appears, for the same person to be put through the ceremony of swearing fidelity more than once, and at more than one place, with the not unnatural result, however, of diminishing the pressure of the oath upon his conscience or his fears, and also of alienating his affections, as he is expected to pay down two shillings on each occasion. Once a member, he contributes a penny a week to the general fund. It seems also to be an open secret who the disbursing treasurers are of this fund, from whom the members, detailed to do the dark bidding of the "organisation," receive their wage. "A stout gentleman with sandy hair and wearing glasses" was the description given to me of one such functionary. When so much is known of the methods and the men, why is it that so many crimes are committed with virtual impunity? For two sufficient reasons. Witnesses cannot be got to testify, or trusted, if they do testify, to speak the truth; and it is idle to expect juries of the vicinage in nine cases out of ten will do their duty. Political cowardice having made it impossible to transfer the venue in cases of Irish crime, as to which all the authorities were agreed about these points, from Ireland into Great Britain, it is found that even to transfer the trial of "Moonlighters" from Clare or Kerry into Wicklow, for example, has a most instructive effect, opening the eyes of the people of Wicklow to a state of things in their own island, of which happily for themselves they were previously as ignorant as the people of Surrey or of Middlesex. This explains the indignant wish expressed to me some time ago in a letter from a priest in another part of Ireland, that "martial law" might be proclaimed in Clare and Kerry to "stamp out the Moonlighters, those pests of society." That in Clare and Kerry priests should be found not only disposed to wink at and condone the proceedings of these "pests of society," but openly to co-operate with them under the pretext of a "national" movement, is surely a thing equally intolerable by the Church and dangerous to the cause of Irish autonomy. This I am glad to say is strongly felt, and has been on more than one occasion very vigorously stated by one of the most eminent and estimable of Irish ecclesiastics, the Bishop-Coadjutor of Clonfert, upon whom I called this morning. Dr. Healy, who is a senator of the Royal University of Ireland, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, presides over that part of the diocese of Clonfort which includes Portumna and Woodford. He lives in a handsome and commodious, but simple and unpretentious house, set in ample grounds well-planted, and commanding a wide view of a most agreeable country. We were ushered into a well-furnished study, and the bishop came in at once to greet us with the most cordial courtesy. He is a frank, dignified, unaffected man, and in his becoming episcopal purple, with the gold chain and cross, looked every inch a bishop. I was particularly anxious to see Dr. Healy, as a type of the high-minded and courageous ecclesiastics who, in Ireland, have resolutely refused to subordinate their duties and their authority as ecclesiastics to the convenience and the policy of an organisation absolutely controlled by Mr. Parnell, who not only is not a Catholic, but who is an open ally and associate of the bitterest enemies of the Catholic Church in France and in England. Protestant historians affirm that Pope Innocent was one of the financial backers of William of Orange when he set sail from Holland to crush the Catholic faith in Great Britain and Ireland, and drive the Catholic house of Stuart into exile. But it was reserved for the nineteenth century to witness the strange spectacle of men, calling themselves Irishmen and Catholics, deliberately slandering and assailing in concord with a non-Catholic political leader the consecrated pastors and masters of the Church in Ireland. When in order to explain what they themselves concede to be "the absence from the popular ranks of the best of the priesthood," Nationalist writers find it necessary to denounce Cardinal Cullen and Cardinal M'Cabe as "anti-Irish "; and to sneer at men like Dr. Healy as "Castle Bishops," it is impossible not to be reminded of the three "patriotic" tailors of Tooley Street.

Bishop Healy looks upon the systematic development of a substantial peasant proprietary throughout Ireland as the economic hope of the country, and he regards therefore the actual "campaigning" of the self-styled "Nationalists" as essentially anti-national, inasmuch as its methods are demoralising the people of Ireland, and destroying that respect for law and for private rights which lies at the foundation of civil order and of property. In his opinion, "Home Rule," to the people in general, means simply ownership of the land which they are to live on, and to live by. How that ownership shall be brought about peaceably, fairly, and without wrong or outrage to any man or class of men is a problem of politics to be worked out by politicians, and by public men. That men, calling themselves Catholics, should be led on to attempt to bring this or any other object about by immoral and criminal means is quite another matter, and a matter falling within the domain, not of the State primarily, but of the Church.

As to this, Bishop Healy, who was in Rome not very long ago, and who, while in Rome, had more than one audience of His Holiness by command, has no doubt whatever that the Vatican will insist upon the abandonment and repudiation by Catholics of boycotting, and "plans of campaign," and all such devices of evil. Nor has the Bishop any doubt that whenever the Holy Father speaks the priests and the people of Ireland will obey.

To say this, of course, is only to say that the Bishop believes the priests of Ireland to be honest priests, and the people of Ireland to be good Catholics.

If he is mistaken in this it will be a doleful thing, not for the Church, but for the Irish priests, and for the Irish people. No Irishman who witnessed the magnificent display made at Rome this year, of the scope and power of the Catholic Church, can labour under any delusions on that point.

From the Bishop's residence we went to call upon the Protestant rector of Portumna, Mr. Crawford. The handsome Anglican church stands within an angle of the park, and the parsonage is a very substantial mansion. Mr. Crawford, the present rector, who is a man of substance, holds a fine farm of the Clanricarde estate, at a peppercorn rent, and he is tenant also of another holding at £118 a year, as to which he has brought the agent into Court, with the object, as he avers, of setting an example to the other tenants, and inducing them, like himself, to fight under the law instead of against it. He is not, however, in arrears, and in that respect sets a better example, I am sorry to say, than the Catholic priest, Father Coen, who made himself so conspicuous here on the occasion of the much bewritten Woodford evictions. The case of Father Coen is most instructive, and most unpleasant. He occupies an excellent house on a holding of twenty-three acres of good laud, with a garden--in short, a handsome country residence, which was provided by the late Lord Clanricarde, expressly for the accommodation of whoever might be the Catholic priest in that part of his estate. For all this the rent is fixed at the absurd and nominal sum of two guineas a year! Yet Father Coen, who now enjoys the mansion, and has a substantial income from the parish, is actually two years and a half in arrears with this rent! This fact Mr. Tener mentioned to the Bishop, whose countenance naturally darkened. "What am I to do in such a case, my lord?" asked Mr. Tener. "Do?" said the Bishop, "do your plain duty, and proceed against him according to law." But suppose he were proceeded against and evicted, as in America he certainly would be, who can doubt that he would instantly be paraded, before the world, on both sides of the Atlantic as a "martyr," suffering for the holy cause of an oppressed and down-trodden people, at the hands of a "most vile" Marquis, and of a remorse-less and blood-thirsty agent?[11] Mr. Crawford, a tall, fine-looking man, talked very fully and freely about the situation here. He came to Portumna about eight years ago; one of his reasons for accepting the position here offered him being that he wished to take over a piece of property near Woodford from his brother-in-law, who found he could not manage it. As a practical farmer, and a straightforward capable man of business, he has gradually acquired the general confidence of the tenants here. That they are, as a rule, quite able to pay the rents which they have been "coerced" into refusing to pay, he fully believes. He told me of cases in which Catholic tenants of Lord Clanricarde came to him when the agitation began about the Plan of Campaign, and begged him privately to take the money for their rents, and hold it for them till the time should come for a settlement.

The reason for this was that they did not wish to be obliged to give over the money into the "Trust" created by the Campaigners, and wanted it to be safely put beyond the reach of these obliging "friends." One very shrewd tenant came to him and begged him to buy some beasts, in order that he might pay his rent out of the proceeds. The man owed £15 to the Clanricarde property. Mr. Crawford did not particularly want to buy his beasts, but eventually agreed to do so, and gave him £50 for them. The man went off with the money, but he never paid the rent! Mr. Crawford discovering this called him to account, and refused to grant him some further favour which he asked. The result is that the "distressed tenant" now cuts Mr. Crawford when he meets him, and is the prosperous owner of quite a small herd of cattle.

Mr. Crawford's opinion of the mischief done by the methods and spirit of the National League in this place is quite in accord with the opinions of the Bishop-Coadjutor. Power without responsibility, which made the Cæesars madmen, easily turns the heads of village tyrants, and there is something positively grotesque in the excesses of this subterranean "Home Rule." Mr. Crawford told me of a case here, in which a tenant farmer, whom he named, came to him in great wrath, not unmingled with terror, to say that the League had ordered him, on pain of being boycotted, to give up his holding to the heirs of a woman from whom, twenty years ago, he had bought, for £100 in cash, the tenant-right of her deceased husband! There was no question of refunding the £100. He was merely to consider himself a "land-grabber," and evict himself for the benefit of those heirs who had never done a stroke of work on the property for twenty years, and who had no shadow of a legal or moral claim on it, except that the oldest of them was an active member of the local League!

Nor was this unique.

In another case, the children of a tenant, who died forty years ago, came forward and called upon the League to boycott an old man who had been in possession of the holding during nearly half a century. In a third case, a tenant-farmer, some ten years ago, had in his employ as herd a man who fell ill and died. He put into the vacant place an honest, capable young fellow, who still holds it, and has faithfully and efficiently served him. Only the other day this tenant-farmer was warned by the League to expect trouble, unless he dismissed this herd, and put into his place the son, now grown to man's estate, of the herd who died ten years ago!

It is amusing, if not instructive, to find the hereditary principle, just now threatened in its application to the British Senate, cropping out afresh as an element in the regeneration of Irish agriculture and the land tenure of Ireland!

On our way back to the Castle we called on Mr. Place, the manager of the Portumna Branch of the Hibernian Bank, who lives in the town. He was amusing himself, after the labour of the day in the bank, with some amateur work as a carpenter, but received us very cordially. He said there was no doubt that the deposits in the bank had increased considerably since the adoption of the Plan of Campaign on the Clanricarde property. Money was paid into the bank continually by persons who wished the fact of their payments kept secret; and he knew of more than one case in which tenants, whose stock had been seized by the agent for the rents, were much delighted at the seizure, since it had paid off their rents, and so enabled them to retain their holdings and keep out of the grasp of the League, even though to do this they had undergone a forced sale and been muleted in costs.

It was his opinion that the tenants on the Clanricarde property, who are not in arrears, would gladly accept a twenty-five per cent. reduction, and do very well by accepting it. But they are constrained into a hostile attitude by the tenants who are in arrears, some of them for several years (as, for example, Father Coen), although I find, to my astonishment, that in Ireland the landlord has no power to distrain for more than a twelvemonth's rent, no matter how far back the arrears may run.

Mr. Place seems to think it would be well to put all the creditors of the tenants on one footing with the landlords. The shopkeepers and other creditors, he thinks, in that event would see many things in quite a new light.

What is called the new Castle of Portumna is a large and handsome building of the Mansard type, standing on an eminence in the park, at some distance from the original seat. The building was finished not long before the death of his father, the late Marquis. It has never been occupied, save by a large force of police quartered in it not very long ago by Mr. Tener in readiness for an expedition against the Castle of Cloondadauv, to the scene of which he promises to drive me to-morrow on my way back to Dublin. It is thoroughly well built, and might easily be made a most delightful residence. The views which it commands of the Shannon are magnificent, and there are many fine trees about it.

The old man who has charge of it is a typical Galway retainer of the old school. The "boys," he says, once tried to "boycott" him because he was the pound-master; but he showed fight, and they let him alone. He pointed out to me from the top of the house, in the distance, the residences of Colonel Hickie, and of the young Lord Avonmore, who lately succeeded on the death of his brother in the recent Egyptian expedition. The place is now shut up, and the owners live in France.

We visited too the Portumna Union before driving home. The buildings of this Union are extensive for the place, and well built, and it seems to be well-ordered and neatly kept--thanks, in no small degree, I suspect, to the influence of the Sisters who have charge of the hospital, but whose benign spirit shows itself not only in the flower-garden which they have called into being, but in many details of the administration beyond their special control.

The contrast was very striking between the atmosphere of this unpretending refuge of the helpless and that of certain of the "laicised" hospitals of France, which I not long ago visited, from which the devoted nuns have been expelled to make way for hired nurses. I made a remark to this effect to the clerk of the Union, Mr. Lavan, whom we found in his office.

"Oh, yes," he said, "I have no doubt of that. We owe more than I can say to the Sisters, but I don't know how long we should have them here if the local guardians could have their way."

In explanation of this, he went on to tell me that these local guardians, who are elected, are hostile to the whole administration, because of its relations with the Local Government Board at Dublin, which controls their generous tendency to expend the money of the ratepayers. By way of expressing their feelings, therefore, they have been trying to cut down, not only the salary of the clerk, but that of the Catholic chaplain of the Union; and as there is a good deal of irreligious feeling among the agitators here, it is his impression that they would make things disagreeable for the Sisters also were they in any way to get the management into their own hands. That there cannot be much real distress in this neighbourhood appears from two facts. There are now but 130 inmates of this Union, out of a population of 12,900, and the outlay for out-of-door relief averages between eight and ten pounds a week.

In the quiet, neat chapel two or three of the inmates were kneeling at prayers; and others whom we saw in the kitchen and about the offices had nothing of the "workhouse" look which is so painful in the ordinary inmates of an English or American almshouse.

"The trouble with the place," said Mr. Lavan, "is that they like it too well. It takes an eviction almost to get them out of it."

We sat down with Mr. Lavan in his office, and had an interesting talk with him.

He is the agent of Mr. Mathews, who lives between Woodford and Portumna. Mr. Mathews is a resident landlord, he says, who has constantly employed and has lived on friendly terms with his tenants, numbering twenty, who hold now under judicial rents. On these judicial rents two years ago they were allowed a further reduction of 15 per cent. Last year they were allowed 20 per cent. This year he offered them a reduction of 25 per cent., which they rejected, demanding 35 per cent.

This demand Mr. Lavan considers to be unreasonable in the extreme, and he attributes it to the influence of the National Leaguers here, whose representatives among the local guardians constantly vote away the money of the ratepayers in "relief to evicted tenants who have ample means and can in no respect be called destitute." In his opinion the effect of the Nationalist agitation here has been to upset all ideas of right and wrong in the minds of the people where any question arises between tenants and landlords. He told a story, confirmed by Mr. Tener, of a bailiff, whom he named, on the Clanricarde property here, who was compelled two years ago to resign his place in order to prevent the "boycotting" of his mother who keeps a shop on the farm. He was familiar, too, with the details of a story told me by one of the Clanricarde tenants, a farmer near Loughrea who holds a farm at £90 a year. This man was forced to subscribe to the Plan of Campaign. The agent proceeded against him for the rent due, and he incurred costs of £10. His sheep and crop were then seized.

He begged the local leaders to "permit" him to pay his rent, as he was able to do it _without drawing out the funds in their hands_! They refused, and so compelled him to allow his property to be publicly sold, and to incur further costs of £10. "His farm lies so near the town that he did not dare to risk the vengeance of the local ruffians."

Mr. Lavan gave me the name also of another man who is now actually under a "boycott," because he has ventured to resist the modest demand made by the son of a man whose tenant-right he bought, paying him £100 for it, twenty years ago, that he shall give up his farm without being reimbursed for his outlay made to purchase it! In other words, after twenty years' peaceable possession of a piece of property, bought and paid for, this tenant-farmer is treated as a "land-grabber" by the self-installed "Nationalist" government of Ireland, because he will not submit to be robbed both of the money which he paid for his tenant-right, and of his tenant-right!

Obviously in such a case as this the "war against landlordism" is simply a war against property and against private rights. Priests of the Catholic Church who not only countenance but aid and abet such proceedings certainly go even beyond Dr. M'Glynn. Dr. M'Glynn, so far as I know, stops at the confiscation of all private property in rent by the State for the State. But here is simply a confiscation of the property of A for the benefit of B, such as might happen if B, being armed and meeting A unarmed in a forest, should confiscate the watch and chain of A, bought by A of B's lamented but unthrifty father twenty years before!

After dinner to-night Mr. Tener gave me some interesting and edifying accounts of his experience in other parts of Ireland.

Some time ago, before the Plan of Campaign was adopted, one of his tenants in Cavan came to him with a doleful story of the bad times and the low prices, and wound up by saying he could pay no more than half a year's rent.

"Now his rent had been reduced under the Land Act," said Mr, Tener, "and I had voluntarily thrown off a lot of arrears, so I looked at him quietly and said, 'Mickey, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You have been very well treated, and you can perfectly well pay your rent. Your wife would be ashamed of you if she knew you were trying to get out of it.'"

"Ah no, your honour!" he briskly replied; "indade she would approve it. If you won't discover on me, I'll tell you the truth. It was the wife herself, she's a great schollard, and reads the papers, that tould me not to pay you more than half the rent--for she says there's a new Act coming to wipe it all out. Will you take the half-year?"

"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 shillings 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 God, 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, wishing to take a grass 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!