Part 6
The castle dates back to the days when it was necessary to have some stronghold, as the king said, "to curb the city as well as to defend it," and to provide a safe place for the custody of the royal treasure. It was located in the center of the present city of Dublin, but at the time was outside the original walls of the town, upon what is called Cork Hill, because Richard Boyle, the Earl of Cork, had his castle upon the slight elevation it now occupies. Meiller Fitzhenry, an illegitimate son of Henry II., designed and began the building. It was finished in 1213, and from that period has been the center of Irish history. Very little of the original structure remains--only a portion of the walls. The towers have been cut down and modernized. One of them is now used for a supper-room for social occasions, and a kitchen is on the lower floor. The other, which was originally a prison, and is the most complete surviving fragment of the ancient fortress, is a repository for historical documents and the records of the government for the last four or five centuries. There are three circular rooms, one above the other; the walls are nineteen feet thick in places, and four or five long, narrow cells are built into them like recesses and lighted only by a narrow strip at the far end. One of these cells has a secret chamber hidden in the wall, and accessible only by a revolving door, which is difficult to distinguish from the rest of the stone.
The tower has not been used as a prison since 1798 and 1803, the rebellions of Emmet and Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and the documents relating to their conspiracy are preserved there in the very cells where the men who were convicted by them lay awaiting trial and execution. The late Mr. Lecky, the historian, searched them thoroughly, and gave a surprising account of the character of the private papers that were seized with the effects of the patriots in those days. Love letters, poems, reflections on various subjects, rules of conduct, maxims of the sages, drafts of speeches, and proclamations in soaring language, and many attempts at literary work are mixed up with the reports of spies, informers, detectives, and officials,--some of them from comrades whose treachery was never suspected and which Mr. Lecky was not permitted to publish even at this late day. Some people think these malicious and incriminating documents should be destroyed lest they may sometime come to light and ruin the reputation of men who are highly esteemed by their fellow countrymen. But no one seems willing to give the instructions.
In 1583 a "trial by combat" took place in the courtyard of the castle between Connor MacCormack O'Connor and Teague Kilpatrick O'Connor to settle the responsibility for the murder of a clansman. The weapons were sword and shield. The lord justices and the councillors, the governor-general, the sheriffs, and other officials were present to witness the trial. As was the custom and usage in trials by combat, each man was made to take an oath that he believed his quarrel just, and was ready to maintain it to the death. After a fierce struggle Teague cut off the head of his cousin and presented it on the point of his sword to the lord justices. For many generations the Irish parliament used to assemble at the castle. The first was called in 1328, another in 1585, another in 1639, and the accounts of the expenses of the lord lieutenant show that during the two weeks that parliament was in session the viceregal household consumed ten bullocks, forty sheep, sixteen hogsheads of beer, and various other refreshments to a similar extent.
Oliver Cromwell, when in Dublin, resided at the castle, and in 1654 his youngest son was born there. While Henry Cromwell was viceroy he was driven from the castle and went to live at the viceregal lodge. In 1689, after the battle of the Boyne, in which William of Orange defeated James Stuart, the latter took possession of the castle, but slept there only one night.
The court of Dublin has been insignificant but lively, and has reflected the characteristics of the Irish nobility, who were as fond of a frolic as they were of a fight, and never allowed their sense of decorum or the laws of etiquette to interfere with their pleasure. A hundred years ago ladies, upon being presented for the first time, were solemnly kissed by the viceroy, which was more or less agreeable to him, according to the age and attractions of his guests. One of them who was noted for his wit remarked that he got his kisses as a spendthrift borrows from a usurer, "part in old wine, part in dubious paintings, and part in bright gold and silver." With all its wit and brilliancy the court has at times been noted for a low state of morality, and at one period that portion of the castle which contains the state apartments was nicknamed "hell's half-acre" by a satirist.
A figure of Justice which adorns the pediment of the main gate has been the object of much wit and satire for two centuries. Dean Swift once declared that she sat with her face to the viceroy and her back to the people. There are a few good portraits and other pictures in the residence portion of the building, including some pretty medallions in the wall of the throne-room, which are credited to Angelica Kauffman, but nobody knows when or how she happened to paint them.
The mantel of one of the rooms is of black Spanish oak taken from the cabin of the flagship of the Spanish Armada which was wrecked on the Irish coast after the great sea battle of 1588.
The finest of all the rooms is St. Patrick's Hall, which was designed by the great Lord Chesterfield when he was lord lieutenant of Ireland, and has always been much admired by architects because of its proportions and its lofty painted ceilings representing events in Irish history. The banners of the twenty-four knights of St. Patrick are suspended from either side, and the crimson draperies and upholstering of Irish poplin give the apartment an attractive color. Duplicates of these banners hang in the choir of St. Patrick's Cathedral, where the knights used to meet before 1869, but they have always had their headquarters in the castle, and the Ulster king of arms, the executive officer of the order, is the master of ceremonies at the castle, senior officer in the household of the lord lieutenant, the highest authority on rank and precedent in Ireland, and his seal is necessary to give legal value to patents of Irish peerages. He decides all questions of etiquette, nominates the persons who are presented at the viceregal drawing-room, arranges for all ceremonies, and in processions of state he rides or walks immediately in front of the lord lieutenant, carrying the sword of state as the emblem of the authority of the king.
The office has been in existence since the Middle Ages. Its incumbent was formerly the custodian of the arms, the chief of the heralds, and the keeper of the royal jewels. He has an office in what is known as Bedford Tower, immediately facing the principal entrance to the viceroy's residence, with a large suite of rooms for his own use, and two or three clerks to look after his business. Otherwise the office carries no compensation except £20 a year and such few fees as are paid for searching the records of the Irish peerage and furnishing certificates of pedigree and title similar to those that are sought at the College of Heralds in London.
The office was held for many years by Sir Bernard Burke, the most eminent of modern genealogists, the originator and author of "Burke's Peerage," which is authority on all questions affecting the nobility. His successor was Sir Arthur Vicar, son of the late Colonel Vicar, who commanded the Sixty-first Irish Fusiliers, and is a cousin of half the nobility of Ireland. Sir Arthur is a bachelor, a member of the principal clubs of London and Dublin, president of the Kildare Archæological Society and of the "Ex-Libris Society," whose members follow the fad of collecting book plates. He is the highest authority on questions affecting the Irish nobility since the death of Sir Bernard Burke, and is the editor of "Lodge's Peerage," a volume which relates exclusively to them. Sir Arthur has been a great favorite with everybody. He is an amiable, gentle, witty man, with winning manner, a charming conversationalist, has a keen sense of humor, and has been the confidant of half the peers of Ireland in their sorrows and their difficulties.
In October, 1907, when preparations were being made to invest Lord Castledown as a knight of St. Patrick, it was discovered that the regalia of that order was missing, and no trace has ever been found of it, nor have the detectives obtained a single clew to the mystery. The jewels have an intrinsic value of quarter of a million dollars, but the historical and sentimental value of the articles stolen cannot be estimated. They were kept in a safe in the office of Sir Arthur Vicar as master at arms at the right of the entrance to his private quarters, and the room was usually occupied in the daytime by two clerks and carefully locked at night. This valuable property had been kept in that place for more than two hundred years, and nobody ever dreamed that it might be stolen. The discovery, which was kept secret for several months at the request of the police, caused a postponement of the ceremony, and the chief secretary for Ireland called for the resignation of Sir Arthur as master at arms on the ground that he failed to take proper precautions for the safety of the valuables in question. He was not accused or even suspected of having participated in the robbery, or having any knowledge of it, but there cannot be the slightest doubt that the theft was committed by some person familiar with affairs in the castle, and hence all the employees, everybody, from Lord Aberdeen down, has shared in the humiliation. Sir Arthur Vicar refused to resign, demanded a court of inquiry, and selected Timothy Healy, a member of parliament of the nationalist party from Dublin, as his counsel, and has ever since been appealing for vindication.
V.
THE REDEMPTION OF IRELAND
While the circumstances of the agricultural class in Ireland are by no means ideal, a great deal has been done to improve them. At the present rate of progress, however, it will take from twenty to twenty-five years, if not much longer, to accomplish the results intended by the Wyndham Land Act of 1903, which was expected to bring about the Irish millennium. That act provides that an owner of a large estate may sell to his tenants the holdings they occupy, and his untenanted land to any one who desires to buy it, in such tracts and at such prices as may be agreed upon, corresponding to the income now derived from that particular property. No landlord can sell a few acres here and there of good land under this act, although, of course, he is at liberty to dispose of any part of his estate at any time at any price that he may consider proper. But the terms and privileges of the Wyndham Act can only be enjoyed by a community of tenants in the purchase of the whole or a considerable portion of an estate. A board of commissioners which sits in the old-fashioned mansion in which the Duke of Wellington was born, on Merrion Street, Dublin, is authorized to use its discretion in the application of the law and in granting its privileges to those for whose benefit it is intended. Nothing can be done without their approval. The landlord and the tenants may arrange their own bargains to their own satisfaction, but they must be submitted to the board before they are carried out.
When such agreements are reached and approved by the commission, --including the area sold, the price, and other terms,--the government is expected to furnish the purchase money from the public treasury. The landlord is entitled to receive the cash in full, and the tenant, who pays nothing, gives a mortgage, as we would call it, upon the property to the government for sixty-eight years or less, and agrees to pay an annual installment of 3-1/4; per cent of the purchase price, of which 2-3/4; per cent is interest and 1/2; per cent goes into a sinking fund to cover the purchase money at the end of sixty-eight years. A purchaser may pay off the mortgage at any time he pleases, and receive a clear title to the land; or he may sell it whenever he chooses, subject to the mortgage, which follows the land and not the person. If he is unable to pay his annuities, the government can turn him out and dispose of the land, subject to the same terms and conditions, to another person. It can make no allowance for crop failures or cattle diseases. It cannot extend or modify its credits.
Nearly all of the landlords are willing to sell their estates; many are glad to get rid of them, because the average tenantry in Ireland are a very determined class, and are always making trouble. There have been almost continuous disturbances over land questions of one form or another in Ireland since the beginning of time. The rents are low compared with the American standard, but have been difficult to collect, and when there is a failure of crops they cannot be collected at all. The landlords complain that all the laws that have been enacted of late years are entirely in the interest of the tenants; that the landlord has no show at all. And perhaps that is true, because public sympathy is invariably with the tenants, and they cast many votes, while the landlord has only one, even if he tries to vote at all.
Since 1881 the land courts have adjusted the rents of 360,135 farmer tenants, involving 10,731,804 acres of land. The total rents paid for these lands annually before adjustment was £7,206,079. They were reduced by judicial order to a total of £5,715,158, a difference of about $7,500,000 a year in American money, in favor of the tenants.
Therefore it is perfectly natural that landowners--and especially those who have had a good deal of trouble with their tenants--are anxious to dispose of their estates for cash, which they can invest to much better advantage. The Duke of Leinster, for example, who is a minor, has realized more than £800,000 in cash, which his trustees have invested in brewery stocks, railway bonds, and other securities which pay regular dividends and give him no anxiety.
Mr. Bailey, one of the commissioners, told me that the good estates have been disposed of without difficulty. The disposition of the poor land has been more difficult, because the tenants are not as eager to get it, the owner is not always satisfied with the price, and the commission is not willing to make advances upon small bits of land among the bogs and rocks and other tracts of unfertile soil that would not be considered good security by anybody. The commissioners have treated these transactions very much as they would have done if they were mortgage bankers. They have refused to make advances on land that a banker would not have considered good security. They have not been willing to make advances on farms that cannot be made to pay. There have been complications in certain cases that have perplexed them, but, as a rule, the law has been working out in a most satisfactory and gratifying manner. The chief object of the commission and the purpose of the law has been to break up the great estates of Ireland so far as possible in farms of not more than one hundred acres, and sell them to the occupants, so as to create a nation of peasant proprietors, and that, he says, is being accomplished more rapidly than any one had reason to expect. Of course Mr. Bailey does not pretend that everybody is satisfied. That would be impossible. The millennium has not yet come, and the Wyndham Act has not brought it, although it has undoubtedly done more than any previous legislation to promote peace in this distracted country, and offers promises of future prosperity and contentment.
Naturally some of the landowners have not been willing to sell their property, and their tenants have been trying to force them to do so. That accounts for the "cattle driving" and similar disturbances that you read about in the newspaper cablegrams from Ireland. It is to be regretted that the tendency of the newspapers is to publish sensational occurrences and unfortunate events. If a man commits a great crime it is advertised from one end of the world to the other. If he does a good deed very little is said about it, and a false impression concerning conditions in Ireland has been created by the widespread publication of every little outrage or disturbance that occurs over there, while the enormous usefulness and the satisfactory application of the Wyndham Land Act has been almost entirely neglected by newspaper writers.
There have, however, been a good many little disturbances occasioned by the efforts of the tenants of certain estates, particularly those that are now devoted to cattle-breeding, to force their landlords to divide up the pastures and sell them. At present there is more money in the cattle and sheep business than in any other kind of farming in Ireland, and, as you drive out into the interior, you can see the loveliest pastures in the world filled with fat, sleek animals feeding upon the luscious grass. I do not believe there are richer or more beautiful pastures in any land, and Irish beef and mutton command a premium because of their flavor and tenderness. Hence prosperous cattle-breeders cannot be blamed for refusing to sell their pastures and go out of business, and there is no law to compel them to do so. But the rough and reckless elements in the villages, and in many cases among their own tenantry, often try to persecute them by cattle and sheep "driving," as it is called, until they are willing to cry quits. The popular method is to break down the gates or the hedges,--they do not have fences in Ireland,--turn the cattle and sheep into the road, and run them as far as possible away from their proper pastures, scattering them over the country. This is done in the night, and the next morning the owner is compelled to take such measures to recover as many of the strays as he can. Various means are adopted to prevent such outrages. Armed guards are employed who defend their cattle, sometimes at the cost of life and bloodshed, which, of course, provokes bad feeling and greater trouble. Hundreds of men have been arrested and punished by long terms of imprisonment, but "cattle-driving" still goes on in various parts of the country with some serious results. But it is comparatively insignificant when compared with the great good that is being accomplished by the breaking up of the big estates whose owners are willing to dispose of them.
Thus far the Wyndham Act has been carried out without much friction; the chief difficulty having arisen from the eagerness of the landlords to dispose of their estates, which is so much greater than anticipated, that the funds provided have not been sufficient, and the landlords who have sold their property have been compelled to wait for their pay. In November, 1908, Mr. Augustine Birrell, chief secretary for Ireland in the British cabinet, introduced into the House of Commons a bill for the appropriation of more than $760,000,000, to be raised by an issue of bonds to pay for the estates that have already been sold and for those that may be sold in the future. That amount of money he asserted would be necessary to carry out the plans of the government under the Land Act of 1903.
This proposition of Mr. Birrell is without doubt the most stupendous munificence ever offered by any government to its subjects. The money thus appropriated does not pay for any service performed. It is a direct appropriation from the public treasury to the people of Ireland for the simple purpose of relieving their poverty and placing them in circumstances which will permit them to enjoy life without the hardships and sufferings and fruitless labor which they and their forefathers have for generations endured.
The advances of the British government to the Irish peasants, if this bill becomes a law, will reach nearly $1,000,000,000, but it is to be repaid by them in small installments. Mr. Birrell, in his explanation of the purpose of the bill to the House of Commons, stated that up to the 31st of October £25,000,000 in round numbers (which amounts to about $125,000,000 in our money) had already been expended by the estates commissioners in purchasing farms from the large landholders in Ireland for the benefit of the tenants who occupy them, and that £52,000,000 (which is the equivalent of about $260,000,000) is due to other landowners who have sold their estates under the Act of 1903. These transactions have been completed with the exception of payment of the price.
The transactions concluded under the Land Act of 1903 up to Oct. 31, 1908, provide farms for about 126,000 Irish families, at a cost of $385,000,000 to the British treasury, which is to be refunded by the owners of the farms in sixty-eight years, with interest at 3-1/4; per cent. Three-fourths of 1 per cent of this annual interest, to be paid by the man who owns the farm, goes into a sinking fund to meet the principal of bonds which have been issued to provide the purchase money. The remaining 2-1/2; per cent is paid by the farmer in lieu of rent, and is used to meet the annual interest upon the bonds. Thus the farmer gets his land in perpetuity by the payment of sixty-eight annual installments of an amount equal to 3-1/4; per cent of its present value. The average cost of the 126,000 farms thus far purchased is $1,790.
The British government advances the money and becomes responsible for the payment of the interest and principal. The annual interest is only a trifle. In some cases it is only a shilling a week, and it runs up to as high as a pound or two a week in special cases, the average being estimated at $59 a year for the 126,000 farms, or $5 a month for the purchase of a farm, and whatever improvements may happen to be upon the land. If these improvements are not adequate, if the house is not comfortable, and if barns, stables, fences, and other permanent improvements are needed, the government advances the money to provide for them upon the same terms,--sixty-eight annual payments of 3-1/4; per cent of the cost.
Mr. Birrell in his explanation estimated on Oct. 31, 1908, that the additional sum of $760,000,000 will be necessary to complete the work, to provide every family in the rural districts of Ireland with a farm of their own, and with the intention of doing that he asks an appropriation of that amount, which will bring the cost of the Irish land policy of the British government up to nearly $900,000,000.
This does not include the expenditures of the Congested Districts Board, which have been $440,000 annually for several years, and in the future are to be $1,250,000 a year.
Nor does it include several millions of dollars which have been expended under previous land acts, to purchase farms for the tenant occupiers.
Nor does it include the $25,000,000 appropriated several years ago upon the motion of James Bryce, now British ambassador at Washington, to build cottages for the agricultural laborers,--the farm hands of Ireland.