The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent Part 34

'Illigant, glory be to the Saints.'

'How's that, Mick? Sure, prices is low.'

'True for you, Jim, prices is low; but what we _has_ we _has_, for we pays n.o.body.'

And to that I will add another observation.

Somebody asked me:--

'If Ireland were to get Home Rule, what would become of the agitator?'

I replied:--

'He would be called a reformer, unless it paid him better to clamour for a fresh Union. He'd sell all his patriotism for five shillings, and his loyalty could be bought by a few gla.s.ses of whisky.'

And that's the whole truth of the matter.

CHAPTER XVIII

A GLANCE AT MY STEWARDSHIP

Davitt called the generation after O'Connell's 'a soulless age of pitiable cowardice.'

I should call the generation that was active in the early eighties 'a cowardly age of pitiless brutality.'

Times had begun to mend in Ireland from 1850, and had continued to do so until the ballot made the country a prey to self-seeking political agitators.

Mr. Gladstone considered that if you gave a scoundrel a vote it made him into a philanthropist, whereas events proved it made him an eager accessory of murder, outrage, and every other crime.

Yet this happened after Fenianism had practically died out in the early seventies.

I myself heard Mr. Gladstone say that landlords had been weighed in the balance and had not been found wanting, for the bad ones were exceptional.

None the less were they and their representatives delivered over to their natural opponents, who were egged on by the Land League and by its tacit or active supporters in the House of Commons.

Emphatically I repeat the a.s.sertion that neither Mr. Parnell nor the Land League would have been formidable without the active help of Mr.

Gladstone.

Before 1870 Kerry used to be represented by gentlemen of the county. The present members in 1904 are an attorney's clerk, an a.s.sistant schoolmaster, a Dublin baker, and a fourth of about the same cla.s.s.

This was no more foreseen by the landlords when the ballot was introduced any more than we antic.i.p.ated the way in which we were to be plundered. Many considered that the confiscation of the Irish Church, which had been established since the reign of Elizabeth, was an inroad into the rights of property very likely to be followed up by further aggressions, but we never looked for such a wholesale violation as ensued.

By the Act of 1870 no tenant could be turned out without being paid a sum averaging a fourth of the fee-simple in addition to being paid for his improvements, and there the most observant of us thought the worst had been reached.

When the Act of 1881 was pa.s.sed, I met Lord Spencer, one of the authors of it, and said to him:--

'This Act will have as much effect in settling Ireland as throwing a cup of dirty water into the Thames would have in creating a flood.'

My words were soon proved right, for the tenants, having obtained half the landlord's property by it, thought that by well working their voting and shooting powers they would get the remainder.

I have been getting away from my own experiences to give my own convictions. When you have meditated for twenty years amid the ruins of what you had been building up all your life long and know that it is due to Irish outrage and English misrule, there is a temptation to speak plainly on breaking silence.

The year 1878 was a wet year and yielded a bad harvest; 1879 was worse.

The prosperity of Ireland depends on its harvest, and starvation is the opportunity of the lying agitator.

On July 8, 1880, I gave evidence before the Royal Commission on Agriculture, being mainly examined by the president, the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, others on the board being Lord Carlingford, Mr.

Stansfeld, afterwards Lord, Mr. Joseph Cowen, and Mr. Mitch.e.l.l Henry.

Here are some of my statements on a then experience of thirty-one years:--

'The expenditure by landlords on farm buildings is as great in Ireland as in Scotland.'

'In the exceptional state of things I strongly disapprove of tenant-right in Ireland, which, as Lord Palmerston said, is landlord wrong.'

'Small holdings are a very bad thing in Ireland where they are not mixed with large holdings.'

'The distress in Kerry is considerable, but has been considerably exaggerated.'

'Every tenant in Ireland has six months to redeem after he is evicted.'

'I have never known a man leave a farm unless compelled.'

'I contradict the statement that tenants make improvements which tend to increase the letting value of the land.'

'You pay four times as much for spade tillage as for ploughing by horse.'

'Bad farming in Ireland is due to want of education and to the enhanced subdivision of the land. When the farmer gets higher up the social scale he will have more sense than to make beggars of his children by subdivision.'

'Distress has not produced the discontent.'

'Almost more land has been sold in Kerry than in any county in Ireland.'

Three months later, in my evidence before the Irish Land Act Commission, in answer to the Chairman, I stated that in my opinion it was simply impossible to arbitrate on rent. I had two tenants of my own whose yearly rent was 20 and whose valuation was 20. One of them in 1880 sold 135 worth of pigs and b.u.t.ter, and the other man's children were a.s.sisted in charity from my house, though both had equal means of success.

I also pointed out that there were then 300,000 occupiers of land in Ireland, whose holdings were under 8 Poor Law valuation, and these occupiers when their potatoes failed had nothing but relief works, starvation, or emigration. To give them their whole rent would not meet the difficulty.

I submitted a scheme of purchase, in which Baron Dowse was greatly interested, and I suggested that all holdings under 4 a year should be ejected at Petty Sessions, because it was a great hardship for the tenant of such a holding to have 2, 10s. costs put upon him.

I ended with:--

'There is a case in this county in connection with which there is likely to be very considerable disturbance. A man had a farm put up for sale and a Nationalist bought it at a very low figure, on the understanding that he was to keep it for the man's family; but as soon as he got it he turned Conservative and kept it.'

BARON DOWSE--'Turned what?'