Part 20

On our return journey I had an admirable opportunity to talk with him as he walked by the wagon. I had called on a magistrate in the market-town, a Protestant gentleman, who had seemed very ignorant or uncommunicative. He had, however, suggested over-population as a reason for the condition of Irish affairs. This magistrate bore a military title. I handed to him the introduction given me at Cork by the “Riverend Lawrence O’Byrne.” Collins had suggested an officer of the market as suitable to introduce me. But I was in haste, and carried the letter. The magistrate said that he did not know the person. “No,” said Collins, on my return, “you were wrong in two things. You said you were from Philadelphia, and they are afraid of the Americans, or do not like them, and Father O’Byrne is not their kind of man.”

I told Collins that some papers in America had said that their magistrates should be elected, as with us in some States. He replied that they are appointed from the aristocracy, the land-holding class, and, of course, in cases of dispute between landlords and tenants, their sympathies are with their own class.

“If you were in America we should say that your head is level,” I said; but I had to interpret the slang.

“There has been a change in Ireland,” he added, “within some years. Formerly the wealthy classes and the learned could make _jupes_ of the Irish people, but of late years there has been more education, and the people see things differently. Ireland was a dark country before the Catholic emancipation. Before the passage of that act no Catholic could hold office in this country. Now many places are open to them in the excise and elsewhere.”

Collins intimated that the English are wrong in fearing the Catholic priests, for they counsel the people to peaceful measures, and they are the only persons who have sufficient authority over them to quiet them down. I spoke of Father Murphy and of priests who had presided at Land-League meetings.

“Yes,” said Collins, “when peaceful measures were advised.”

I replied that the government would not trust them because it thought that the people might become excited and burst from the priests’ control, and because they feared that the priests might deceive them. The remark did not please Collins. He said that the people were excited at the report of Father Murphy’s arrest because they are so united to their priests. “One is already in prison,” he said, “Father Sheehey; and many meetings have been held to petition the government to release him and other leaders of the Land-League movement.”

In a disturbed region in another part of the county Cork I was told of a priest who had refused to join the League. The members would not send their children to the national school under his supervision, and the people thus opposed to him did not call him Canon Desmond, but only Desmond. On the other hand, I was told of two influential priests lately sent out of Cork by the bishop for being too active in the Land League. They were placed in country curacies—promotion backward—on account of the influence of a wealthy Catholic clique, which does not in politics hold to the Conservative, late Lord Beaconsfield party, “like the Protestants,” but holds to the Liberal party, which is midway between the Conservatives and Land-Leaguers. It was added that one of these priests had gone to Rome to lay his case before the pope, not having been able to get the archbishop to interfere. The archbishop did not think it prudent to entertain the complaint.

Another of Collins’s remarks may seem unjust to the government. He said that men’s constitutions have changed. They are no longer able to live on potatoes. They must have Indian meal and bread and tea. “I think I would have been dead,” he said, “if I had been kept on potatoes; and when men’s constitutions are altered, any laws the government can make cannot have effect.” But it is free trade in Great Britain and Ireland that makes bread and tea cheap.

The great domestic manufactories of the people demand a word. Collins wore to market one day a gray frieze coat (there pronounced frize). Calling at the house, I found an old woman engaged in spinning wool for the boys’ clothing,—wool that had been beautifully carded at a factory. Collins’s coat seemed to be black and white wool mixed, but the frieze is often dyed blue or red, and is also used for women’s petticoats. The question of the want of manufactures is a great and somewhat puzzling one. At Dublin it was surprising to find that even the matches in my chamber were marked London. The want of coal has been given as one reason of the want of manufactories, but there is great and abundant water-power. The want of capital is also given as a cause of the lack of manufactures, and if we look into this point we come to two of the open sores of Ireland,—absent capitalists and want of national unity. In Guy’s Almanac may be found a list of landholders of one thousand acres and upwards in the county Cork, leaseholders of over ninety years being put down as absolute owners. There are three hundred and seventy-five of these landholders, of whom about two hundred have residences in the county, and the remainder are entirely non-resident,—nearly fifty per cent.! As regards the want of capital, I asked a Protestant banker why they did not combine and form companies to manufacture. He replied, “As soon as eight Irishmen combine to do a thing, nine will combine to oppose them.” The want of unity is owing, at least in part, to their being still two nations, if I may be allowed to say so, the conquerors and the conquered. Methodists and Quakers born in Ireland may be heard speaking contemptuously of the Irish. A woman of Scotch Presbyterian origin remarked, “It’s a common saying, it’s a blessed land and a cursed people.” A Friend in Dublin said to me that the Protestants of the North are as bitter as the Catholics, “and more blamable, as they have the Scriptures.” And I find the statement in my note-book that those who desired to be considered the “upper ten,” and Protestants from country localities, speak very contemptuously of the Land League. Finally, the laws are unequal, the qualification for voters being higher in Ireland than in England.

On manufactures an Irish gentleman said to me, “There are lots of American shoes brought to Cork. Blacksmith’s tools, agricultural implements, and carpenter’s tools are brought to this country from America. There’s a finish and a style about them that they don’t do here.” A Catholic manufacturer attributed the want of manufactures to the lack of skill and knowledge in the people; but does this account for the decline in manufactures? As lately as 1837 there were one hundred thousand hides tanned yearly at Cork. It had seven iron-foundries, five factories of spades and shovels, numerous and extensive paper-mills, and two large houses making flint-glass.[168] But where are most of them now? My sprightly little landlady at Cork, a Catholic, expressed in very simple terms a natural reason for this decline, saying, “We want energy, for there’s not an atom of trade that the English did not spoil. There was a cotton-factory here in Cork, and the English sent their goods in and sold them a half-penny lower. They put their foot upon these things, bless them! They have crushed us out of the market in various ways. There is a little screed of linen manufacture in the North, but I believe that they cannot make it as good in England.”

However, Mr. Mahony, a successful manufacturer of tweeds at Blarney, says that manufactures are reviving in Ireland. He thinks that three hundred power-looms have been established within fifteen years. There is also ship-building in the north.

* * * * *

I talked with another working farmer. He had a tidy place near Cork, perhaps the neatest farm-house I saw, although there was no floor and no window in the principal room. Two hearty children and a domestic were present. The wife had been confined that morning, and the husband’s breath indicated potations. “Such,” said my landlady, who accompanied me, “do not employ a physician, but a ‘knowledgable woman.’ She is not recommended for skill in her profession, but ‘she is lucky.’ Had we gone into the room where the baby was, it would have been insisted on that we should take a glass of punch or we’d take away the beauty of the baby.”

Dan Donovan, the father, said that he had sixty-five acres, all tillable, for which he paid the landlord one hundred and forty-two pounds yearly. He was also obliged to pay twelve pounds a year to the widow of the man who rented the farm before him. His taxes amounted to about twenty-five pounds, if not more, making the whole outlay in money about eight hundred and fifty dollars a year for sixty-five acres. He had been there about four years, and was only a yearly tenant, but he had manured the farm and put it in heart. That he was one of the very thriving farmers was evidenced by his stock of eight cows, eight calves, a pair of horses and a foal, a pair of donkeys, and twelve pigs. He employed more hands than an American would employ on so small a farm,—four “boys” or laborers at six shillings a week and their diet and lodging, which cost him as much more. He told us that he could not get ahead at all. “I am in debt to my master. He’s a very intelligent man and fond of me. When I paid last year’s rent the landlord promised some abatement this year.”

Donovan is a voter. To a person of experience I mentioned how many hands Donovan employed. He answered, “He cannot get along with less, as he hauls manure from the city and hand-weeds.” The speaker himself has four persons hand-weeding grain-fields, “taking out thistles and dock-roots that a previous tenant left as a boon.”

On another walk I saw two men beside the road, one of them a remarkably neat old man, a farmer. They confirmed what I had heard, that very few around there could afford to save their hay and straw and feed cattle during the winter to manure their farms. “How do they manage, then?” I asked.

“Like that man,” pointing to a handsome field opposite; “let land at five pounds an acre to those who have manure-pits.”

Such, I understand, are men who, having donkey-carts, go around Cork gathering from houses the offal and garbage to throw into these pits.

I have said that Donovan was a voter, and this brings up the most serious complaint that the Irish have against the British government,—the inequality of the suffrage. This inequality does not exist in country districts. In counties in both countries the payment of an annual rent of twelve pounds entitles a man to vote for members of Parliament. But as Ireland is much poorer, doubtless the number of these voters is less. The inequality spoken of exists in boroughs. In England those living in towns have household suffrage, and even the lodger franchise; but in Irish towns the parliamentary voter must pay four pounds rent.

I have seen an estimate that in England two men out of five are voters; and in Ireland only one out of five is a voter. As to the operation of this high property qualification, we may observe that the county of Cork, having a population in 1871 of over five hundred thousand, returns under fifteen thousand votes. The city, having within the parliamentary boundary nearly ninety-eight thousand, gives under five thousand votes! But here is an illustration of the old rotten borough system of England: The county of Cork, with over fourteen thousand voters, elects two members at large. The city of Cork, with over four thousand six hundred voters, elects two members, while four boroughs in the county elect each a member; Bandon having four hundred and thirty voters, Mallow two hundred and ninety-three, Youghal two hundred and eighty-nine, Kinsale one hundred and ninety-four.

If, now, we come to teachers as voters, I hear that of the teachers of Ireland not more than one-twentieth can vote for members. This probably refers to teachers of national schools, nearly resembling our public schools.

* * * * *

I boarded some days at a castle, the residence of a gentleman who formerly belonged to one of the learned professions. Had his tenants been paying rent, it is possible that I should not have been received as a boarder. To this castle I went by rail. On the way I saw soldiers, of course, but they were so common that I hardly noticed them. The castle was a handsome stone building in a grove. The wall of the old part measured six feet in the embrasures of the windows. The new part measured three feet. I was shown into a great parlor, barely furnished, with a turf fire in the grate. It was in June. I call my host Mr. Loftus. The family were Protestant and Conservative, holding to the Church of Ireland, as the Episcopal Church is called since its disestablishment.

The tenants of Mr. Loftus sent a delegation to him. They offered rent on the basis of Griffith’s valuation, which Mr. Loftus declined. He offered to allow them about one-fourth of the proposed reduction, or over sixteen per cent. on the rate of rent. But they went away without accepting his offer. Not to receive his rents was inconvenient for him, to say the least, as he had annuities to pay and bills to meet. Here I may add that a lawyer in Cork told me that the present unsettled state of affairs puts everybody on his guard against spending money, and so the laborers suffer. Some landlords have gone without their rent for two years, perhaps longer. Thus the bottom seems to be dropping out of society.

Another peculiarity in Irish affairs is the subletting of land; thus I heard of a farmer who has three landlords above him. To begin at the top, Mr. Prior lets land to the Osbornes, who get it from him on a perpetual lease for two shillings and sixpence per acre. The Osbornes let land to Daniel McBride, who has bought out a lease, but who has to pay also ten shillings and three pence per acre. Daniel McBride has other occupations, and does not work the land himself, but rents to a farmer, who takes a portion of the land, and pays McBride seventeen shillings per acre. As said farmer holds thirty-six acres, possibly he has one or two laborers’ houses which he rents out to men who would thus have four landlords above them.

To return to Mr. Loftus, the gentleman with whom I boarded. He spoke to me of the condition of the laborers in this district, which is but a poor one. It is natural for the aristocracy to look at this point, when farmers who are refusing them rent are themselves receiving rent from laborers. “The farmers of this country,” said Mr. Loftus, “are the worst in the world. They drive the laborers very hard, and treat them badly. Often they do not give them a house fit to put a pig into. The houses are roofed with sods, as they want the straw for farming purposes. Nearly all the poor people lie on straw beds, and it is hard to get straw from the farmers. They allow the laborer about one-fourth of an acre for his potato-patch, and charge him rent of from two pounds to four pounds, sometimes in advance. The laborer’s wages may be counted at one shilling a day the year round, and as his wife works in harvest, we may reckon hers at sixpence a day for six months. I speak only of my own neighborhood. I do not know the rates in others. There is near here a cluster of about a dozen cabins, all upon one farm. They are mud-walled and wretchedly roofed. A quarter of an acre of miserable boggy land is set apart for each tenant, and there is a large pool of stagnant water opposite each house. The tenant pays in advance three pounds and ten shillings yearly. The farmer sometimes makes the whole rent of his farm by what he receives from these people. I think the place a nuisance, and liable to breed a fever. None of these houses have windows, and many have no doors, except bunches of furze. The walls are propped up on the outside with pieces of bogwood to keep them from tumbling down.”

The laborer, having no outbuildings, must necessarily protect his precious domestic animals under his own roof. Most laborers have a goat, and the poorest have poultry, but since the potato famine pigs have not been kept as before. Sometimes, however, there is a donkey.

“The children of the laborer,” said Mr. Loftus, “go to the national school until they are about twelve years old. In most cases they go winter and summer without shoes and stockings. The laborer takes great pride and pleasure in being able to send his children to school. Laborers go to mass on Sunday, and in the afternoon may often be seen in the house, or beside a ditch, reading a newspaper. After mass they play ball in parties against each other, or have a fiddler and dance on the green or under trees. And they play cards, especially in Dublin county, where you can see them on Sundays playing on the banks of the ditches,”—i.e., under shelter of a wall.

“What games do they play?” I asked.

“Forty-five and spoil five,” he replied.

The laborer has no political privileges. Unless he pays a rent of over five pounds he pays no poor-rates, and no other taxes except the county or grand jury cess, and for malicious injuries, such as burnings. He pays this tax, but is not allowed to vote. “Would you put us under the Papists?” once cried an Irish Protestant on the question of universal suffrage.

On one occasion, when Mr. Loftus’s man was driving for me, he spoke of the desire or the efforts of the laborer to keep his little family together, for in the unions or poor-houses the sexes are separated. Mr. Loftus pointed out to me a building which he called the curse of the country. It is a union. “Children,” he said, “brought up there are well fed, and idle, and never want to work.” The number of these houses and the amount of money paid to sustain them seem almost incredible. Mr. Loftus’s district is very heavily taxed, about five shillings in the pound, or twenty-five per cent. on the valuation of a man’s annual income. The farmer pays this rate, but the landlord allows him half. The county of Cork, with a population of about five hundred thousand, has sixteen poor-houses. The one in Mr. Loftus’s district contains about four hundred inmates, and the one in Cork over one thousand. The Cork poor-rate amounts to from two and one-quarter to four shillings a pound annually on every pound valuation of houses and lands, but the valuation for taxes is only about sixty per cent. of the annual income.

When the country is poorest these taxes are heaviest. Very few who go into the unions ever get out, excepting children. Said a guardian of the poor, “What causes the immense number of paupers in Ireland is the able-bodied persons going away and leaving the old. All the lower classes here speak of America as their home or final place of settlement. When the people send part of the money for their children, the board of poor-law guardians will sometimes supplement it gratuitously and send the children out. And at their own expense the board sometimes sends out lots of young women that are in the unions.”

The region in which Mr. Loftus lives is a disturbed one. On a recent Sunday a Land-League meeting was to be held in the town. It had been extensively advertised in the newspapers. On the day before the meeting was to be held the lord lieutenant issued a proclamation forbidding it. About two hundred dragoons and infantry and one hundred armed police arrived at the town, bringing with them provisions, as no farmer nor storekeeper would dare to sell any to them. One storekeeper had already been boycotted for not joining the Land League. On the appointed Sunday, after mass, or about one o’clock, some five or six thousand people came together, with bands of music. Five or six Roman Catholic clergymen were among them. The people desired still to hold the meeting by erecting a platform on some other spot. Two stipendiary, or salaried, magistrates were present, and with them the priests entered into an agreement that the soldiers and police should not interfere with the people if they listened to no speeches, but simply formed in an orderly procession and paraded in the town. The affair went off peaceably, and the people went quietly home, although feeling much discontent at the action of the priests. If they had not obeyed the contract, the priests would have retired and left them to the mercy of the armed men.

At dinner, one day, in the course of conversation, Mr. Loftus said, “The country is well enough if it was left alone.”

“But,” said I, “you approve perhaps of one agitator, O’Connell; you like the effects of Catholic emancipation?”

“O’Connell!” he cried; “the best man Ireland ever produced; a clever man. Not such a fellow as this Parnell, that nobody knows where he sprung from; not fit to clane O’Connell’s shoes in cleverness. O’Connell never allowed any quarrelling or disturbance. He kept up the agitation, but the people were kept in order. The repeal collections were kept up, but there was nothing like the burning, wounding, and killing that is going on in these times.”

I asked whether there might not be a home parliament for local affairs, and delegates to a general parliament. He answered that the people are so much given to contention that they could not carry on affairs. “If half a dozen of them,” he added, “come together at a poor-law meeting, they can’t behave themselves.”

* * * * *

After my return to Cork, an acquaintance advised me to visit a town in the southwest, where manners are more primitive. Accordingly I travelled thither, where women in a shop may be heard talking the Irish language. I went third-class. The railway terminated at the town. Falling into conversation with an intelligent fellow-traveller, he said that he had many men constructing a road. He was a steward or overseer. Looking out at the country, I asked, “Why are there no barns?”

“They have nothing to put into barns,” he replied. “They sell their hay in the fields, and thresh their grain and get it quickly into market. They even sell their straw sometimes to meet their rent. Then when spring comes the landlord endorses for them in the bank. This answers for one year. On the next year the farmer must go to a money-lender, to whom he signs a note for twenty-five pounds, receiving only twenty pounds.”

An intelligent Protestant, to whom I read this statement, made some corrections. He said that the landlord would only endorse for the rent, and the money-lender would charge ten or fifteen per cent.