Ireland Under Coercion Volume Ii Part 14

The farmers are a poor proud lot. They'd let a labourer die in the ditch!"

All that this poor man said was corroborated by another man of a higher cla.s.s, very familiar with the conditions of life and labour here, and indeed one of the most interesting men I have met in Ireland. Born the son of a labouring man, he was educated by a priest and educated himself, till he fitted himself for the charge of a small school, which he kept to such good purpose that in eighteen years he saved 1100, with which capital he resolved to begin life as a small farmer and shopkeeper. He had studied all the agricultural works he could get, and before he went fairly into the business, he travelled on the Continent, looking carefully into the methods of culture and manner of life of the people, especially in Italy and in Belgium. The Belgian farming gave him new ideas of what might be done in Ireland, and those ideas he has put into practice, with the best results.

"On the same land with my neighbours," he said, "I double their production. Where they get two tons of hay I get four or four and a half, where they get forty-five barrels of potatoes I get a hundred.

Only the other day I got 20 for a bullock I had taken pains with to fatten him up scientifically. Of course I had a small capital to start with: but where did I get that? Not from the Government. I earned and saved it myself; and then I wasn't above learning how best to use it."

He thinks the people here--though by no means what they might be with more thrift and knowledge--much better off than the same cla.s.s in many other parts of Ireland. There are no "Gombeen men" here, he says, and no usurious shopkeepers. "The people back each other in a friendly way when they need help." Many of the labourers, he says, are in debt to him, but he never presses them, and they are very patient with each other. They would do much better if any pains were taken to teach them. It is his belief that agricultural schools and model farms would do more than almost any measure that could be devised for bringing up the standard of comfort and prosperity here, and making the country quiet.

It is the opinion of this man that the people of this place have been led to regard the Papal Decree as a kind of attack on their liberties, and that they are quite as likely to resist as to obey it. For his own part, he thinks Ireland ought to have her own parliament, and make her own laws. He is not satisfied with the laws actually made, though he admits they are better than the older laws were. "The tenants get their own improvements now," he said, "and in old times the more a man improved the worse it was for him, the agent all the while putting up the rents."

But he does not want Irish independence. "The people that talk that way," he said, "have never travelled. They don't see how idle it is for Ireland to talk about supporting herself. She just can't do it."

Not less interesting was my talk to-day with quite a different person.

This was a keen-eyed, hawk-billed, wiry veteran of the '48. As a youth he had been out with "Meagher of the Sword," and his eyes glowed when he found that I had known that champion of Erin. "I was out at Ballinagar,"

he said; "there were five hundred men with guns, and five hundred pikemen." It struck me he would like to be going "out" again in the same fashion, but he had little respect for the "Nationalists."

"There's too many lawyers among them," he said, "too many lawyers and too many dealers. The lawyers are doing well, thanks to the League. Oh yes!" with a knowing chuckle, and a light of mischief in his eye; "the lawyers are doing very well! There's one little bit of a solicitor not far from here was of no good at all four years ago, and now they tell me he's made four thousand pounds in three years' time, good money, and got it all in hand! And there's another, I hear, has made six thousand. The lawyers that call themselves Nationalists, they just keep mischief agoing to further themselves. What do they care for the labourers? Why, no more than the farmers do--and what would become of the poor men! * *

* * here, he is making * * * * * * * and he keeps more poor men going than all the lawyers and all the farmers in the place a good part of the year."

"Are the labourers," I asked, "Nationalists?"

"They don't know what they are," he answered. "They hate the farmers, but they love Ireland, and they all stand together for the counthry!"

"How is it with the Plan of Campaign and the Boycotting?"

"Now what use have the labourers got for the Plan of Campaign? No more than for the moon! And for the Boycotting, I never liked it--but I was never afraid of it--and there's not been much of it here."

"Will the Papal Decree put a stop to what there is of it?"

"I wouldn't mind the Pope's Decree no more than that door!" he exclaimed indignantly. "Hasn't he enough, sure, to mind in Rome? Why didn't he defend his own country, not bothering about Ireland!"

"Are you not a Catholic, then?" I asked.

"Oh yes, I'm a Catholic, but I wouldn't mind the Decree. Only remember,"

he added, after a pause, "just this: it don't trouble me, for I've nothing to do with the Plan of Campaign--only I don't want the Pope to be meddlin' in matters that don't concern him."

"It's out of respect, then, for the Pope that you wouldn't mind the Decree?"

"Just that, intirely! It was some of them Englishmen wheedled it out of him, you may be sure, sir."

"I am told you went out to America once."

"Yes, I went there in '48, and I came back in '51."

"What made you go?" I asked.

"Is it what made me go?" he replied, with a sudden fierceness in his voice. "It was the evictions made me go; that we was put out of the good holding my father had, and his father before him; and I can never forgive it, never! But I came back; and it was * * * father that was the good man to me and to mine, else where would I be?"

I afterwards learned from * * * * that the evictions of which the old man spoke with so much bitterness were made in carrying out important improvements, and that it was quite true that his father had greatly befriended the emigrant when he got enough of the New World and came home.

It was curious to see the old grudge fresh and fierce in the old man's heart, but side by side with it the lion lying down with the lamb--a warm and genuine recognition of the kindness and help bestowed on himself. His resentment against the landlord's action in one generation did not in the least interfere with his recognition of the landlord's usefulness and liberality in the next generation.

"You didn't like America?" I said. "Where did you live there?"

"I lived at North Brookfield in Ma.s.sachusetts, a year or two," he replied, "with Governor Amasa Walker. Did you know him? He was a good man; he was fond of the people, but he thought too much of the nagurs."

"Yes," I answered; "I know all about him, and he was, as you say, a very good man, even if he was an abolitionist. But why didn't you stay in North Brookfield?"

"Oh, it was a poor country indeed! A blast of wind would blow all the ground away there was! It does no good to the people, going to America,"

he said; "they come back worse than they went!"

He is at work now in some quarries here.

"The quarrymen get six shillings a week," he said, "with bread and tea and b.u.t.ter and meat three times a week. With nine shillings a week and board, a man'll make himself bigger than * * *!"

"Was the country quiet now?"

"This country here? Oh! it's very quiet; with potatoes at 3s. 6d. a barrel, it's a good year for the people. They're a very quiet people,"--in corroboration apparently of which statement he told me a story of a coroner's jury called to sit on the body of a man found on the highway shot through the head, which returned an unanimous verdict of "Died by the visitation of G.o.d."

This country is dominated by the Rocky Hills climbing up to Cullenagh, which divides the Barrow valley from the Nore. We drove this afternoon to * a most lovely place. The mansion there is now shut up and dismantled, but the park and the grounds are very beautiful, with a beauty rather enhanced than diminished by the somewhat unkempt luxuriance of the vegetation. We pa.s.sed a now well-grown tree planted by the Prince of Wales * * * * * * and drove over many miles of excellent road made by * * * * * * * * employs * * * * * * * * regularly, * * *

men as labourers, cartmen and masons, to whom he pays out annually the sum of * * Mr. * * who, by the way, rather resented my asking him if he came of one of the Cromwellian English families so numerous here, and informed me that his people came over with Strongbow--a.s.sures me that but for these works of * * * * these men under him would be literally without occupation. In addition to these there are about a dozen more men employed * * as gamekeepers and plantation-men. At the * * places belonging to * * * * * * * * * * above eighty men find constant employment, and receive regular wages amounting to over 4000. Were * *

* * dispossessed or driven out of Ireland, all this outlay would come to an end, and with what result to these working-men? As things now are, while * * * working-men receive a regular wage of five shillings, the same men, as farmers' labourers, would receive, now and then, five shillings a week, and that without food! I saw enough in the course of our afternoon's drive to satisfy me that my informant of the morning had probably not overstated matters when he told me that for at least seventy per cent. of the work done by the labourers here, from November to May, they have to look to the landlords. On the property of * * as well as on the neighbouring properties * * * * * * * the houses have been generally put up by the landlords. We called in the course of the afternoon upon a labouring man who lives with his wife in a very neat, cozy, and quite new house, built recently for him by * *. These good people have been living on this property for now nearly half a century.

Their new house having been built for them, * * has had an agreement prepared, under which it may be secured to them. The terms have all been discussed and found satisfactory, but the old labourer now hesitates about signing the agreement. He gives, and can be got to give, no reason for this; but when we drove up he came out to greet us in the most friendly manner. We went in and found his wife, a shrewd, sharp-eyed, little old dame, with whom * * * * fell into a confabulation, while I went into the next room with the labourer himself. The house was neatly furnished--with little ornaments and photographs on the mantel-shelf, and nothing of the happy-go-lucky look so common about the houses of the working people in Ireland, as well as about the houses of the lesser squires.

I paid him a compliment on the appearance of his house and grounds.

"Yes, sir!" he answered: "it's a very good place it is, and * * * * has built it just to please us."

"But I am told you want to leave it?"

"Ah, no, that is not so, sir, indeed at all! We've three children you see, sir, in America--two girls and a boy we have."

"And where are they?"

"Ah, the girls they're not in any factory at all. They're like leddies, living out in a place they call * * in Ma.s.sachusetts; and the lad, he was on a farm there. But we don't know where he is nor his sisters any more just now. And the wife, she thinks she would like to go out to America and see the children."

"Do you hear from them regularly?"

"Well, it's only a few pounds they send, but they're doing very well.

Domestics they are, quite like leddies; there's their pictures on the shelf."

"But what would you do there?"

"Ah! we'd have lodgings, the wife says, sir. But I like the ould place myself."

"I think you are quite right there," I replied. "And do you get work here from the farmers as the labourers do in my country?"

"Work from the farmers, sir?" he answered, rather sharply. "What they can't help we get, but no more! If the farmers in America is like them, it's not I would be going there! The farmers! For the farmers, a labourer, sir, is not of the race of Adam! They think any place good enough for a labourer--any place and any food! Is the farmers that way in America?"

"Well, I don't know that they are so very much more liberal than your farmers are," I replied; "but I think they'd have to treat you as being of the race of Adam! But are not the farmers here, or the Guardians, obliged to build houses for the labourers? I thought there was an Act of Parliament about that?"