Ireland Under Coercion Volume Ii Part 7

In November 1885 he had demanded, with other tenants of Mrs. Lewis, a reduction of 50 per cent. This would have given him his holding at a rental of 4, 7s. 6d. Mrs. Lewis refused the concession, and a month afterwards an attempt was made to blow up her son's house with dynamite.

Between that time and August 1886, all the efforts of her son, who was also her agent, to collect her dues by seizing beasts, were defeated by the driving away of the cattle, so that no remedy but an eviction was left to her. I take it for granted that Mrs. Lewis had a family to maintain, and debts of one sort and another to pay, as well as Mr.

Egan--but I observe this material difference between her position and his during the whole of this period of "strained relations" between herself and her tenant, that whereas she lay completely out of the enjoyment of the rent due her, being the interest on her capital, represented in her t.i.tle to the land, Mr. Egan remained in the complete enjoyment and use of the land. Clearly the tenant was in a better position than the landlord, and as we are dealing not with the history of Ireland in the past, but with the condition of Ireland at present, it appears to me to be quite beside the purpose to ask my sympathies for Mr. Egan on the ground that a century or half a century ago the ancestors of Mr. Egan may have been at the mercy of the ancestors of Mrs. Lewis. However that may have been, Mr. Egan seems to me now to have had legally much the advantage of Mrs. Lewis. Not only this. Both legally and materially Mr. Egan, the tenant-farmer at Woodford, seems to me to have had much the advantage of thousands of his countrymen living and earning their livelihood by their daily labour in such a typical American commonwealth, for example, as Ma.s.sachusetts. I have here with me the Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Ma.s.sachusetts. From this I learn that in 1876 the average yearly wages earned by workmen in Ma.s.sachusetts were $482.72, or in round numbers something over 96. Out of this amount the Ma.s.sachusetts workman had to feed, clothe, and house himself, and those dependent on him.

His outlay for rent alone was on the average $109.07, or in round numbers rather less than 22, making 22-1/2 per cent, of his earnings.

How was it with Mr. Egan? Out of his labour on his holding he got merchantable crops worth 60 sterling, or in round numbers $300, besides producing in the shape of vegetables and dairy stuff, pigs and poultry, certainly a very large proportion of the food necessary for his household, and raising and fattening beasts, worth at a low estimate 20 or $100 more. And while thus engaged, his outlay for rent, which included not only the house in which he lived, but the land out of which he got the returns of his labour expended upon it, was 8, 15s., or considerably less than one-half the outlay of the Ma.s.sachusetts workman upon the rent of nothing more than a roof to shelter himself and his family. Furthermore, the money thus paid out by the Ma.s.sachusetts workman for rent was simply a tribute paid for accommodation had and enjoyed, while out of every pound sterling paid as rent by the Irish tenant there reverted to his credit, so long as he continued to fulfil his legal obligations, a certain proportion, calculable, valuable, and saleable, in the form of his tenant-right.

I am not surprised to learn that the Recorder dismissed the suit brought by Mr. Egan, and gave costs against him. But the mere fact that in such circ.u.mstances it was possible for Egan to bring such a suit, and get a hearing for it, makes it quite clear that Americans of a sympathetic turn of mind can very easily find much more meritorious objects of sympathy than the Irish tenant-farmers of Galway without crossing the Atlantic in quest of them.

From Cloondadauv to Loughrea we had a long but very interesting drive, pa.s.sing on the way, and at no great distance from each other, Father Coen's neat, prosperous-looking presbytery of Ballinakill, and the shop and house of a local boat-builder named Tully, who is pleasantly known in the neighbourhood as "Dr. Tully," by reason of his recommendation of a very particular sort of "pills for landlords." The presbytery is now occupied by Father Coen, who finds it becoming his position as the moral teacher and guide of his people to be in arrears of two and a half years with the rent of his holding, and who is said to have entertained Mr.

Blunt and other sympathising statesmen very handsomely on their visit to Loughrea and Woodford,[15] "Dr." Tully being one of the guests invited to meet them.[16] Not far from this presbytery, Mr. Tener showed me the scene of one of the most cowardly murders which have disgraced this region. Of Loughrea, the objective of our drive this morning, Sir George Trevelyan, I am told, during his brief rule in Ireland, found it necessary to say that murder had there become an inst.i.tution. Woodford, previously a dull and law-abiding spot, was illuminated by a lurid light of modern progress about three years ago, upon the transfer thither in the summer of 1885 of a priest from Loughrea, familiarly known as "the firebrand priest."

In November of that year, as I have already related, Mr. Egan and other tenants of Mrs. Lewis of Woodford made their demand for a 50 per cent.

reduction of their rents, upon the refusal of which an attempt was made with dynamite on the 18th December to blow up the house of Mrs. Lewis's son and agent. All the bailiffs in the region round about were warned to give up serving processes, and many of them were cowed into doing so.

One man, however, was not cowed. This was a gallant Irish soldier, discharged with honour after the Crimean war, and known in the country as "Balaklava," because he was one of the "n.o.ble six hundred," who there rode "into the jaws of death, into the valley of h.e.l.l." His name was Finlay, and he was a Catholic. At a meeting in Woodford, Father Coen (the priest now in arrears), it is said, looked significantly at Finlay, and said, "no process-server will be got to serve processes for Sir Henry Burke of Marble Hill." The words and the look were thrown away on the veteran who had faced the roar and the crash of the Russian guns, and later on, in December 1885, Finlay did his duty, and served the processes given to him. From that moment he and his wife were "boycotted." His own kinsfolk dared not speak to him. His house was attacked by night. He was a doomed man. On the 3d March 1886, about 2 o'clock P.M., he left his house--which Mr. Tener pointed out to me--to cut fuel in a wood belonging to Sir Henry Burke, at no great distance.

Twice he made the journey between his house and the wood. The third time he went and returned no more. His wife growing uneasy at his prolonged absence went out to look for him. She found his body riddled with bullets lying lifeless in the highway. The police who went into Woodford with the tale report the people as laughing and jeering at the agony of the widowed woman. She was with them, and, maddened by the savage conduct of these wretched creatures, she knelt down over-against the house of Father Egan, and called down the curse of G.o.d upon him.

On the next day things were worse. No one could be found to supply a coffin for the murdered man.[17] When the police called upon the priests to exert their influence and enforce some semblance at least of Christian and Catholic decency upon the people confided to their charge, the priests not only refused to do their duty, but floutingly referred the police to Lady Mary Burke. "He did her work," they said, "let her send a hea.r.s.e now to bury him." The lady thus insolently spoken of is one of the best of the Catholic women of Ireland. At her summons Father Burke, a few years only before his death, I remember, made a long winter journey, though in very bad health, from Dublin to Marble Hill to soothe the last hours and attend the death-bed of her husband.

No one who knew and loved him can wish him to have lived to hear from her lips such a tale of the degradation of Catholic priests in his own land of Galway.

Mr. Tener pointed out to me, at another place on the road, near Ballinagar, the deserted burying-ground in which, after much trouble, a grave was found for the brave old soldier who had escaped the Russian cannon-b.a.l.l.s to be so foully done to death by felons of his own race.

There the last rites were performed by Father Callaghy, a priest who was himself "boycotted" for resigning the presidency of the League in his parish, and for the still graver offence of paying his rent. For weeks it was necessary to guard the grave![18]

From that day to this no one has been brought to justice for this crime, committed in broad daylight, and within sight of the highway. Mr. Place, whom I saw at Portumna, told me that he believed the police had no moral doubt as to the murderer of Finlay, but that it was useless to think of getting legal evidence to convict him.

Mr. Tener tells me that when Mr. Wilfrid Blunt came to Woodford he went with Father Egan, and accompanied by the police, to see the widow of this murdered man, heard from her own lips the sickening story, and took notes of it. But when Mr. Rowlands, M.P., an English "friend of Home Rule," was examined the other day during the trial of Mr. Blunt, he was obliged to confess that though he had visited Woodford more than once, and conversed freely with Mr. Blunt about it, he had "never heard of the murder of Finlay."

Such an incident is apparently of little interest to politicians at Westminster. Fortunately for Ireland, it is of a nature to command more attention at the Vatican.

Nature has sketched the scenery of this part of Ireland with a free, bold hand. It is not so grand or so wild as the scenery of Western Donegal, but it has both a wildness and a grandeur of its own. Sir Henry Burke's seat of Marble Hill, as seen in the distance from the road, stands superbly, high up on a lofty range of wooded hills, from which it commands the country for miles. And no town I have seen in Ireland is more picturesquely placed than Loughrea. It has an almost Italian aspect as you approach it from Woodford. But no lake in Lombardy or Piedmont is so peculiarly and exquisitely tinted as the lough on which it stands.

The delicate grey-green of the sparkling waters reminded me of the singular and well-defined belts and stretches of chrysoprase upon which you sometimes come in sailing through the dark azure of the Southern Seas. I have never before seen precisely such a hue in any body of fresh water. The lake is incorrectly described, Mr. Tener tells me, in the guide-books, as being one of the many curious developments of the Lower Shannon. It is fed by springs, but if, like the river-lakes, it was formed by a solution of the limestone, this fact may have some chemical relation with its very peculiar colour. It contains three picturesque islands. No stream flows into it, but two streams issue from it. The town of Loughrea is an ancient holding of the De Burghs, and the estate-office of Lord Clanricarde is here in one wing of a great barrack, standing, as I understood Mr. Tener to say, on the site of a former fortress of the family. Lord Clanricarde's property here is put down by Mr. Hussey de Burgh at 49,025 acres in County Galway, valued at 19,634, and at 3576 acres in the county of the City of Galway, valued at 1202. These, I believe, are statute acres, and in estimating the relation of Irish rentals to Irish land this fact must be always ascertained. Of the so-called "Woodford" property the present rental is no more than 1900, payable by 260 tenants. The Poor-Law valuation for taxes is 2400. There was a revision of the whole Galway property made by the father of the present Marquis. Of the 260 Woodford holdings only twelve were increased, in no case more than 6-1/4 per cent, over the valuation. In 1882 six of these twelve tenants applied to the Land Court. The rents were in no case restored to the figures before 1872, but about 7 per cent. was taken off the increased rental. The a.s.sertion repeatedly made that in 1882 rents were reduced by the Land Court 50 per cent. on the Clanricarde estates, Mr. Tener tells me, is absolutely false. In the first year of the Court no reduction went beyond 10 per cent., and in later years, even under the panic of low prices, the average has not exceeded 20 per cent.

After making arrangements for a car to take me on to Woodlawn, where I was to catch the Dublin train, I went out with Mr. Tener to look at the town.

My drive from Loughrea to Woodlawn was delightful. It took me over a long stretch of the best hunting country of Galway, and my jarvey was a Galwegian of the type dear to the heart of Lever. He was a "Nationalist"

after his fashion, but he did not hesitate to come rattling up through the town to the Estate Office to take me up; and after we got fairly off upon the highway, he spoke with more freedom than respect of all sorts and conditions of men in and about Loughrea.

"He's a sharp little man, that Mr. Tener," he said, "and he gave the boys a most beautiful beating at Burke's place."

This was said with genuine gusto, and not at all in the querulous spirit of the delightful member of Parliament who complained at Westminster with unconscious humour that the agent and the police in that case had "dishonourably" stolen a march on the defenders of Cloondadauv!

"But we've beaten them entirely," he said, with equal zest, "at Marble Hill. Sir Henry has agreed to pay all the costs, and the living expenses too, of the poor men that were put out.[19] I didn't ever think we'd get that; but ye see the truth is," he added confidentially, "he must have the money, Sir Henry--he's lying out of a deal, and then there's heavy charges on the property. A fine property it is indeed!"

"In fact," I said, "you put Sir Henry to the wall. Is that it?"

"Well, it's like that. But we shan't get that out of Clanricarde, I'm thinking. He's got a power o' money they tell me; and he's that of the ould Burke blood, he won't mind fighting just as long as you like!"

As we drove along, he pointed out to me several fine stretches of hunting country, and, to my surprise, informed me that only the other day "there was as fine a meet as ever you saw, more than a hundred ladies and gentlemen--a grand sight it was."

I asked if the hunting had not been "put down by the League."

"Oh, now then, sir, who'd be wanting to put down the hunting here in Galway?--and Ballinasloe? Were you ever at Ballinasloe? just the grandest horse fair there is in the whole wide world!"

I insisted that I had always heard a great deal about the opposition of the League to hunting.

"Oh, that'll be some little lawyer fellow," he replied, "like that Healy, that can't sit on a horse! It's the grandest country in all the world for riding over. What for wouldn't they ride over it?"

"Were there many went out to America from about Loughrea?"

"Oh, yes; they were always coming and going. But as many came back."

"Why?"

"Oh, they didn't like the country. It wasn't as good a country, was it, as old Ireland? And they had to work too hard; and then some of them got money, and they'd like to spend it in the old place."

The country about Woodlawn is very picturesque and well wooded, and for a long distance we followed the neatly-kept stone walls of the large and handsome park of Lord Ashtown.

"The most beautiful and biggest trees in all Ireland, sorr," said the jarvey, "and it's a great pity, it is, ye can't stay to let me drive you all over it, for the finest part of the park is just what you can't see from this road. Oh, her ladyship would never object to any gentleman driving about to see the beauties of the place. She is a very good woman, is her ladyship. She gave work the last Christmas to thirty-two men, and there wasn't another house in the country there that had work for more than ten or twelve. A very good woman she is, indeed."

"Yes, that is a very handsome church, it is indeed. It is the Protestant Church. Lord Ashtown built it; he was a very good man too, and did a power of good--building and making roads, and giving work to the people.

He was buried there in that Castle, over the station--Trench's Castle, they called it."

"All that lumber there by the station?"

"That came out of the Ashtown woods. They were always cutting down the trees; there was so many of them you might be cutting for years--you would never get to the end of them."

Woodlawn Station is one of the neatest and prettiest railway stations I have seen in Ireland--more like a picturesque stone cottage, green and gay with flowers, than like a station. The station-master's family of cheery well-dressed lads and la.s.ses went and came about the bright fire in the waiting-room in a friendly un.o.btrusive fashion, chatting with the policeman and the porter and the pa.s.sengers. It was hard to believe one's-self within an easy drive of the "c.o.c.kpit of Ireland."

CHAPTER XI.

BORRIS, _Friday, March 2d._--This is the land of the Kavanaghs, and a lovely, picturesque, richly-wooded land it is. I left Dublin with Mr.

Gyles by an afternoon train; the weather almost like June. We ran from the County of Dublin into Kildare, and from Kildare into Carlow, through hills; rural scenery quite unlike anything I have hitherto seen in Ireland. At Bagnalstown, a very pretty place, with a spire which takes the eye, our host joined us, and came on with us to this still more attractive spot. Borris has been the seat of his family for many centuries. The MacMorroghs of Leinster, whom the Kavanaghs lineally represent, dwelt here long before Dermot MacMorrogh, finding his elective throne in Leinster too hot to hold him, went off into Aquitaine, to get that famous "letter of marque" from Henry II. of England, with the help of which this king without a kingdom induced Richard de Clare, an earl without an earldom, to lend him a hand and bring the Normans into Ireland. Many of this race lie buried in the ruins of St. Mullen's Abbey, on the Barrow, in this county. But none of them, I opine, ever did such credit to the name as its present representative, Arthur MacMorrogh Kavanagh.

I had some correspondence with Mr. Kavanagh several years ago, when he sent me, through my correspondent for publication in New York, a very striking statement of his views on the then condition of Irish affairs--views since abundantly vindicated; and like most people who have paid any attention to the recent history of Ireland, I knew how wonderful an ill.u.s.tration his whole career has been of what philosophers call the superiority of man to his accidents, and plain people the power of the will. But I knew this only imperfectly. His servant brought him up to the carriage and placed him in it. This it was impossible not to see. But I had not talked with him for five minutes before it quite pa.s.sed out of my mind. Never was there such a justification of the paradoxical t.i.tle which Wilkinson gave to his once famous book, _The Human Body, and its Connexion with Man_,--never such a living refutation of the theory that it is the thumb which differentiates man from the lower animals. Twenty times this evening I have been reminded of the retort I heard made the other day at Cork by a lawyer, who knows Mr.

Kavanagh well, to a priest of "Nationalist" proclivities, who knows him not at all. Some allusion having been made to Borris, the lawyer said to me, "You will see at Borris the best and ablest Irishman alive." On this the priest testily and tartly broke in, "Do you mean the man without hands or feet?"

"I mean," replied the lawyer, very quietly, "the man in whom all that has gone in you or me to arms and legs has gone to heart and head!"

Borris House stands high in the heart of an extensive and n.o.bly wooded park, and commands one of the finest landscapes I have seen in Ireland.

As we stood and gazed upon it from the hall door, the distant hills were touched with a soft purple light such as transfigures the Apennines at sunset.

"You should see this view in June," said Mrs, Kavanagh, "we are all brown and bare now."

Brown and bare, like most other terms, are relative. To the eye of an American this whole region now seems a sea of verdure, less clear and fresh, I can easily suppose, than it may be in the early summer, but verdure still. And one must get into the Adirondacks, or up among the mountains of Western Virginia, to find on our Atlantic slope such trees as I have this evening seen. One grand ilex near the house could hardly be matched in the Villa d'Este.