Ireland Under Coercion Volume Ii Part 12

Then, pointing to a ridge of hills beyond us, he said: "It was Kilbride's father, sir, evicted seventeen tenants on these hills--poor labouring men, with their families, many years ago,--and now he's evicted himself, and a Member of Parliament!"

Father Maher's house stands well off from the highway. He was not at home, being "away at a service in the hills," but would be back before two o'clock. I left my name for him, with a memorandum of my purpose in calling, and we drove on to see the bailiff of the estate, Mr. Hind. On the way we met Father Norris, a curate of the parish, in a smart trap with a good horse, and had a brief colloquy with him. Mr. Hind we found busy afield; a quiet, staunch sort of man. He spoke of the situation very coolly and dispa.s.sionately. "The tenants in the main were a good set of men--as they had reason to be, Lord Lansdowne having been not only a fair landlord, but a liberal and enterprising promoter of local improvements." I had been told in Dublin that Lord Lansdowne had offered a subscription of 200 towards establishing creameries, and providing high-cla.s.s bulls for this estate. Similar offers had been cordially met by Lord Lansdowne's tenants in Kerry, and with excellent results. But here they were rejected almost scornfully, though accompanied by offers of abatement on the rents, which, in the case of Mr. Kilbride, for example, amounted to 20 per cent.

"How did this happen, the tenants being good men as you say?" I asked of Mr. Hind.

"Because they were unable to resist the pressure put on them by the two chief tenants, Kilbride and Dunne, with the help of the League. Kilbride and Dunne both lived very well." My information at Dublin was that Mr.

Kilbride had a fine house built by Lord Lansdowne, and a farm of seven hundred acres, at a rent of 760, 10s. Mr. Dunne, who co-operated with him, held four town lands comprising 1304 acres, at a yearly rent of 1348, 15s. Upon this property Lord Lansdowne had expended in drainage and works 1993, 11s. 9d., and in buildings 631, 15s. 4d., or in all very nearly two years' rental. On Mr. Kilbride's holdings Lord Lansdowne had expended in drainage works 1931, 6s. 3d., and in buildings 1247, 19s. 5d., or in all more than four years' rental. Mr. Kilbride held his lands on life leases. Mr. Dunne held his smallest holding of 84 acres on a yearly tenure; his two largest holdings, one on a lease for 31 years from 1874, and the other on a life lease, and his fourth holding of 172 acres on a life lease.

Where does the hardship appear in all this to Mr. Dunne or Mr. Kilbride?

On Mr. Kilbride's holdings, for instance, Lord Lansdowne expended over 3000, for which he added to the rent 130 a year, or about 4 per cent., while he himself stood to pay 6-1/2 per cent, on the loans he made from the Board of Works for the expenditure. In the same way it was with Mr.

Dunne's farms. They were mostly in gra.s.s, and Lord Lansdowne laid out more than 2500 on them, borrowed at the same rate from the Board, for which he added to the rent only 66 a year, or about 2-1/2 per cent. Mr.

Kilbride was a Poor-Law Guardian, and Mr. Dunne a Justice of the Peace.

The leases in both of these cases, and in those of other large tenants, seem to have been made at the instance of the tenants themselves, and afforded security against any advance in the rental during a time of high agricultural prices. And it would appear that for the last quarter of a century there has been no important advance in the rental. In 1887 the rental was only 300 higher than in 1862, though during the interval the landlord had laid out 20,000 on improvements in the shape of drainage, roads, labourers' cottages, and other permanent works.

Moreover, in fifteen years only one tenant has been evicted for non-payment of rent.

"Was there any ill-feeling towards the Marquis among the tenants?" I asked of Mr. Hind.

"Certainly not, and no reason for any. They were a good set of men, and they would never have gone into this fight, only for a few who were in trouble, and I'm sure that to-day most of them would be thankful if they could settle and get back. The best of them had money enough, and didn't like the fight at all."

All the trouble here seems to have originated with the adoption of the Plan of Campaign.

Lord Lansdowne, besides this estate in Queen's County, owns property in a wild, mountainous part of the county of Kerry. On this property the tenants occupy, for the most part, small holdings, the average rental being about 10, and many of the rentals much lower. They are not capitalist farmers at all, and few of them are able to average the profits of their industry, setting the gains of a good, against the losses of a bad, season. In October 1886, while Mr. Dillon was organising his Plan of Campaign, Lord Lansdowne visited his Kerry property to look into the condition of the people. The local Bank had just failed, and the shopkeepers and money-lenders were refusing credit and calling in loans. The pressure they put upon these small farmers, together with the fall in the price of dairy produce and of young stock at that time, caused real distress, and Lord Lansdowne, after looking into the situation, offered, of his own motion, abatements varying from 25 to 35 per cent, to all of them whose rents had not been judicially fixed under the Act of 1881, for a term of fifteen years.

As to these, Lord Lansdowne wrote a letter on the 21st of October 1886 (four days after the promulgation of the Plan of Campaign at Portumna on the Clanricarde property), to his agent, Mr. Townsend Trench. This letter was published. I have a copy of it given to me in Dublin, and it states the case as between the landlords and the tenants under judicial rents most clearly and temperately.

"It might, I think," says the Marquis, "be very fairly argued, that the State having imposed the terms of a contract on landlord and tenant, that contract should not be interfered with except by the State.

"The punctual payment of the 'judicial rent' was the one advantage to which the landlords were desired to look when, in 1881, they were deprived of many of the most valuable attributes of ownership.

"It was distinctly stipulated that the enormous privileges which were suddenly and unexpectedly conferred upon the tenants were to be enjoyed by them conditionally upon the fulfilment on their part of the statutory obligations specified in the Act. Of those, by far the most important was the punctual payment of the rent fixed by the Court for the judicial term.

"This obligation being unfulfilled, the landlord might reasonably claim that he should be free to exercise his own discretion in determining whether any given tenancy should or should not be perpetuated.

"In many cases [such cases are probably not so numerous on my estate as upon many others] the resumption of the holding, and the consolidation of adjoining farms, would be clearly advantageous to the whole community. In the congested districts the consolidation of farms is the only solution that I have seen suggested for meeting a chronic difficulty.

"I have no reason to believe that the Judicial Rents in force on my estate are such that, upon an average of the yield and prices of agricultural produce, my tenants would find it difficult to pay them."

In spite of all these considerations Lord Lansdowne instructed Mr.

Trench to grant to these tenants under judicial leases an abatement of 20 per cent. on the November gale of 1886. This abatement, freely offered, was gladly accepted. There had been no outrages or disturbances on the Kerry properties, and the relations of the landlord with his tenants, before and after this visit of Lord Lansdowne to Kerry, and these reductions which followed it, had been, and continued to be, excellent.

But the tale of Kerry reached Luggacurren; and certain of the tenants on the latter estate were moved by it to demand for the Queen's County property identical treatment with that accorded to the very differently situated property in Kerry.

The leaders of the Luggacurren movement, I gather from Mr. Hind, never pretended inability to pay their rents. They simply demanded abatements of 35 per cent. on non-judicial, and 25 per cent. on judicial, rents as their due, on the ground that they should be treated like the tenants in Kerry: and the Plan of Campaign being by this time in full operation in more than one part of Ireland, they threatened to resort to it if their demand was refused. Lord Lansdowne at once declared that he would not repeat at Luggacurren his concession made in Kerry as to the rents judicially fixed; but he offered on a fair consideration of the non-judicial rents to make abatements on them ranging from 15 to 25 per cent.

The offer was refused, and the war began. On the 23d of March 1887 Mr.

Kilbride was evicted. One week afterwards, on the 29th of March, he got up in the rooms of the National League in Dublin, and openly declared that "the Luggacurren evictions differed from most other evictions in this, that they were able to pay the rent. It was a fight," he exultingly exclaimed, "of intelligence against intelligence; it was diamond cut diamond!" In other words, it was a struggle, not for justice, but for victory.

On all these points, and others furnished to me at Dublin touching this estate, much light was thrown by the bailiff, who had not been concerned in the evictions. He told me what he knew, and then very obligingly offered to conduct me to the lodge, where we should find Mr. Hutchins, who has charge now of the properties taken up by Mr. Kavanagh's Land Corporation. My patriotic jarvey from Athy made no objection to my giving the bailiff a lift, and we drove off to the lodge. On the way the jarvey good-naturedly exclaimed, "Ah! there comes Mr. Lynch," and even offered to pull up that the magistrate might overtake us.

We found Mr. Hutchins at home, a cool, quiet, energetic, northern man, who seems to be handling the difficult situation here with great firmness and prudence. Mrs. Hutchins, who has lived here now for nearly a year--a life not unlike that of the wife of an American officer on the Far Western frontier--very amicably asked me to lunch, and Mr. Hutchins offered to show me the holdings of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Kilbride. Mr. Lynch proposed that we should all go on my car, but I remembered the protest of the jarvey, and sending him to await me at Father Maher's, I drove off with Mr. Hutchins. As we drove along, he confirmed the jarvey's hint as to the difference between the views and conduct of the parish priest and the views and conduct of his more fiery curate. This is a very common state of affairs, I find, all over Ireland.

The house of Mr. Dunne is that of a large gentleman farmer. It is very well fitted up, but it was plain that the tenants had done little or nothing to make or keep it a "house beautiful." The walls had never been papered, and the wood-work showed no recent traces of the brush. "He spent more money on horse-racing than on housekeeping," said a shrewd old man who was in the house. In fact, Mr. Dunne, I am told, entered a horse for the races at the Curragh after he had undergone what Mr.

Gladstone calls "the sentence of death" of an eviction!

Some of the doors bore marks of the crowbar but no great mischief had been done to them or to the large fine windows. The only serious damage done during the eviction was the cutting of a hole through the roof. An upper room had been provisioned to stand a siege, and so scientifically barricaded with logs and trunks of trees that after several vain attempts to break through the door the a.s.sailants climbed to the roof, and in twenty minutes cut their way in from without. The dining and drawing rooms were those of a gentleman's residence, and one of the party remembered attending here a social festivity got up with much display.

A large cattle-yard has been established on this place, with an original, and, as I was a.s.sured, most successful weighing-machine by the Land Corporation. We found it full of very fine-looking cattle, and Mr.

Hutchins seems to think the operation of managing the estate as a kind of "ranch" decidedly promising. "I am not a bit sorry for Mr. Dunne," he said, "but I am very sorry for other quiet, good tenants who have been deluded or driven into giving up valuable holdings to keep him and Mr.

Kilbride company, and give colour to the vapourings of Mr. William O'Brien."

The cases of some of these tenants were instructive. One poor man, Knowles, had gone out to America, and regularly sent home money to his family to pay the rent. They found other uses for it, and when the storm came he was two years and a half in arrears. In another instance, two brothers held contiguous holdings, and were in a manner partners. One was fonder of Athy than of agriculture; the other a steady husbandman.

Four years' arrears had grown up against the one; only a half-year's gale against the other. Clearly this difference originated outside of the fall of prices! In a third case, a tenant wrote to Mr. Trench begging to have something done, as he had the money to pay, and wanted to pay, but "didn't dare."

From Mr. Dunne's we drove to Mr. Kilbride's, another ample, very comfortable house--not so thoroughly well fitted up with bathroom and other modern appurtenances as Mr. Dunne's perhaps--but still a very good house. It stands on a large green knoll, rather bare of trees, and commands a fine sweep of landscape.

Mr. Hutchins drove me to the little road which leads up past the "Land League village" to the house of Father Maher, and there set me down.

I walked up and found the curate at home--a tall, slender, well-made young priest, with a keen, intelligent face. He received me very politely, and, when I showed him the card of an eminent dignitary of the Church, with cordiality.

I found him full of sympathy with the people of his parish, but neither vehement nor unfair. He did not deny that there were tenants on Lord Lansdowne's estate who were amply able to pay their rents; but he did most emphatically a.s.sert that there were not a few of them who really could not pay their rents.

"I a.s.sure you," he said, "there are some of them who cannot even pay their dues to their priest, and when I say that, you will know how pinched and driven they must indeed be." It was in view of these tenants that he seemed to justify the course of Mr. Dunne and Mr. Kilbride.

"They must all stand or fall together." He had nothing to say to the discredit of Lord Lansdowne; but he spoke with some bitterness of the agent, Mr. Townsend Trench, as having protested against Lord Lansdowne's making reductions here while he had himself made the same reductions on the neighbouring estate of Mrs. Adair.

"In truth," he said, "Mr. Trench has made all this trouble worse all along. He is too much of a Napoleon"--and with a humorous twinkle in his eye as he spoke--"too much of a Napoleon the Third.

"I was just reading his father's book when you came in. Here it is," and he handed me a copy of Trench's _Realities of Irish Life_.

"Did you ever read it? This Mr. Trench, the father, was a kind of Napoleon among agents in his own time, and the son, you see, thinks it ought to be understood that he is quite as great a man as his father.

Did you never hear how he found a lot of his father's ma.n.u.scripts once, and threw them all in the fire, calling out as he did so, 'There goes some more of my father's vanity?'"

About his people, and with his people, Father Maher said he "felt most strongly." How could he help it? He was himself the son of an evicted father.

"Of course, Father Maher," I said, "you will understand that I wish to get at both sides of this question and of all questions here. Pray tell me then, where I shall find the story of the Luggacurren property most fully and fairly set forth in print?"

Without a moment's hesitation he replied, "By far the best and fairest account of the whole matter you will get in the Irish correspondence of the London _Times_."

How the conflict would end he could not say. But he was at a loss to see how it could pay Lord Lansdowne to maintain it.

He very civilly pressed me to stay and lunch with him, but when I told him I had already accepted an invitation from Mr. Hutchins, he very kindly bestirred himself to find my jarvey.

I hastened back to the lodge, where I found a very pleasant little company. They were all rather astonished, I thought, by the few words I had to say of Father Maher, and especially by his frank and sensible recommendation of the reports in the London _Times_ as the best account I could find of the Luggacurren difficulty. To this they could not demur, but things have got, or are getting, in Ireland, I fear, to a point at which candour, on one side or the other of the burning questions here debated, is regarded with at least as much suspicion as the most deliberate misrepresentation. As to Mr. Town send Trench, what Father Maher failed to tell me, I was here told: That down to the time of the actual evictions he offered to take six months' rent from the tenants, give them a clean book, and pay all the costs. To refuse this certainly looks like a "war measure."

But for the loneliness of her life here, Mrs. Hutchins tells me she would find it delightful. The country is exceedingly lovely in the summer and autumn months.

When my car came out to take me back to Athy, I found my jarvey in excellent spirits, and quite friendly even with Mr. Hutchins himself. He kept up a running fire of lively commentaries upon the residents whose estates we pa.s.sed.