Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) by William Henry Hurlbert

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"And who made the Committee?"

"Oh, they made themselves, I suppose, sir. There was Sir Thomas
Esmonde--he was a convert, you know, of Father O'Neill--and Mr. Mayne
and Mr. John Dillon. And Dr. Dillon of Arklow, he was as busy as he
could be till the evictions were made in July. And then he was in
retreat. And I believe, sir, it is quite true that he wanted the Bishop
to let him come out of the retreat just to have a hand in the business."

The police sergeant, a very cool, sensible man, quite agreed with the
bailiff as to the influence upon the present situation of the
ex-gamekeeper Kinsella, and his friend Eyan. "If they were two
Invincibles, sir," he said, "these member fellows of the League couldn't
be in greater fear of them than they are. They say nothing, and do just
as they please. That Kinsella, when Mr. John Dillon was down here, just
told him before a lot of people that he 'wanted no words and no advice
from him,' and he's just in that surly way with all the people about."

As to the Brooke estate, I am told here it was bought more than twenty
years ago with a Landed Estates Court title from Colonel Forde, by the
grandfather of Mr. Brooke. He paid about L75,000 sterling for it. His
son died young, and the present owner came into it as a child, Mr. Vesey
being then the agent, who, during the minority, spent a great deal on
improving the property. Captain Hamilton came in as agent only a few
years ago. While the Act of 1881 was impending, an abatement was granted
of more than twenty per cent. In 1882 the tenants all paid except
eleven, who went into Court and got their rents cut down by the
Sub-Commissioners. There were appeals; and in 1885, after Court
valuations, the rents cut down by the Sub-Commissioners were restored in
several cases. There never was any rack-renting on the estate at all.
There are upon it in all more than a hundred tenants, twelve of whom are
Protestants, holding a little less in all than one-fourth of the
property.

There are fifteen judicial tenants, twenty-one lease-holders, and
seventy-seven hold from year to year.

The gross rental is a little over L2000 a year of which one-half goes to
Mr. Brooke's mother. Mr. Brooke himself is a wealthy man, at the head of
the most important firm of wine-merchants in Ireland, and he has
repeatedly spent on the property more than he took out of it.

The house of Sir Thomas Esmonde, M.P., was pointed out to me from the
road. "Sir Thomas is to marry an heiress, sir, isn't he, in America?"
asked an ingenuous inquirer. I avowed my ignorance on this point. "Oh,
well, they say so, for anyway the old house is being put in order for
now the first time in forty years."

We reached Arklow in time for luncheon, and drove to the large police
barracks there. These were formerly the quarters of the troops. Arklow
was one of the earliest settlements of the Anglo-Normans in Ireland
under Henry II., and once rejoiced in a castle and a monastery both now
obliterated; though a bit of an old tower here is said to have been
erected in his time. The town lives by fishing, and by shipping copper
and lead ore to South Wales. The houses are rather neat and well kept;
but the street was full of little ragged, merry mendicants.

We went into a small branch of the Bank of Ireland, and asked where we
should find the hotel. We were very civilly directed to "The Register's
Office over the way." This seemed odd enough. But reaching it we were
further puzzled to see the sign over the doorway of a "coach-builder"!
However, we rang the bell, and presently a maid-servant appeared, who
assured us that this was really the hotel, and that we could have
"whatever we liked" for luncheon. We liked what we found we could
get--chops, potatoes, and parsnips; and without too much delay these
were neatly served to us in a most remarkable room, ablaze with mural
ornaments and decorations, upon which every imaginable pigment of the
modern palette seemed to have been lavished, from a Nile-water-green
dado to a scarlet and silver frieze. There were five times as many
potatoes served to us as two men could possibly eat, and not one of them
was half-boiled. But otherwise the meal was well enough, and the service
excellent. Beer could be got for us, but the house had no licence, Lord
Carysfort, the owner of the property, thinking, so our hostess said,
that "there were too many licences in the town already." Lord Carysfort
is probably right; but it is not every owner of a house, or even of a
lease in Ireland, I fear, who would take such a view and act on it to
the detriment of his own property.

Dr. Dillon lives in the main square of Arklow in a very neat house. He
was absent at a funeral in the handsome Catholic church near by when we
called, but we were shown into his study, and he presently came in.

His study was that of a man of letters and of politics. Blue-books and
statistical works lay about in all directions, and on the table were the
March numbers of the _Nineteenth Century_, and the _Contemporary
Review_.

"You are abreast of the times, I see," I said to him, pointing to these
periodicals.

"Yes," he replied, "they have just come in; and there is a capital paper
by Mr. John Morley in this _Nineteenth Century_."

Nothing could be livelier than Dr. Dillon's interest in all that is
going on on both sides of the Atlantic, more positive than his opinions,
or more terse and clear than his way of putting them. He agreed entirely
with Father O'Neill as to the pressure put upon the Coolgreany tenants,
not so much by Mr. Brooke as by the agent, Captain Hamilton; but he
thought Mr. Brooke also to blame for his treatment of them.

"Two of the most respectable of them," said Dr. Dillon, "went to see Mr.
Brooke in Dublin, and he wouldn't listen to them. On the contrary, he
absolutely put them out of his office without hearing a word they had to
say."[22]

I found Dr. Dillon a strong disciple of Mr. Henry George, and a firm
believer in the doctrine of the "nationalisation of the land." "It is
certain to come," he said, "as certain to come in Great Britain as in
Ireland, and the sooner the better. The movement about the sewerage
rates in London," he added, "is the first symptom of the land war in
London. It is the thin edge of the wedge to break down landlordism in
the British metropolis."

He is watching American politics, too, very closely, and inclines to
sympathise with President Cleveland. Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia, he
tells me, in his passage through Ireland the other day, did not hesitate
to express his conviction that President Cleveland would be re-elected.

Dr. Dillon was so earnest and so interesting that the time slipped by
very fast, until a casual glance at my watch showed me that we must make
great haste to catch the Dublin train.

We left therefore rather hurriedly, but before reaching the station we
saw the Dublin train go careering by, its white pennon of smoke and
vapour curling away along the valley.

I made the best of it, however, and letting Mr. Holmes depart by a train
which took him home, I found a smart jarvey with a car, and drove out to
Glenart Castle, the beautiful house of the Earl of Carysfort. This is a
very handsome modern house, built in a castellated style of a very good
whitish grey marble, with extensive and extremely well-kept terraced
gardens and conservatories.

It stands very well on one high bank of the river, a residence of the
Earl of Wicklow occupying the other bank. My jarvey called my attention
to the excellence of the roads, on which he said Lord Carysfort has
spent "a deal of money," as well as upon the gardens of the new Castle.
The head-gardener, an Englishman, told me he found the native labourers
very intelligent and willing both to learn and to work. Evidently here
is another centre of useful and civilising influences, not managed by an
"absentee."[23]

CHAPTER XIV.

DUBLIN, _Friday, March 9th._--At 7.40 this morning I took the train for
Athy to visit the Luggacurren estates of Lord Lansdowne. Mr. Lynch, a
resident magistrate here, some time ago kindly offered to show me over
the place, but I thought it as well to take my chance with the people of
Athy who are reported to have been very hot over the whole matter here,
and so wrote to Mr. Lynch that I would find him at the Lodge, which is
the headquarters of the property.

Athy is a neat, well-built little town, famous of old as a frontier
fortress of Kildare. An embattled tower, flanked by small square
turrets, guards a picturesque old bridge here over the Barrow, the
bridge being known in the country as "Crom-a-boo," from the old war-cry
of the Fitz-Geralds. It is a busy place now; and there was quite a
bustle at the very pretty little station. I asked a friendly old porter
which was the best hotel in the town. "The best? Ah! there's only one,
and it's not the best--but there are worse--and it's Kavanagh's." I
found it easily enough, and was ushered by a civil man, who emerged from
the shop which occupies part of it, into a sort of reading-room with a
green table. A rather slatternly but very active girl soon converted
this into a neat breakfast-table, and gave me an excellent breakfast.
The landlord found me a good car, and off I set for the residence of
Father Maher, the curate of whom I had heard as one of the most fiery
and intractable of the National League priests in this part of Ireland.

My jarvey was rather taciturn at first, but turned out to be something
of a politician. He wanted Home Rule, one of his reasons being that then
they "wouldn't let the Americans come and ruin them altogether, driving
out the grain from the markets." About this he was very clear and
positive. "Oh, it doesn't matter now whether the land is good or bad,
America has just ruined the farmers entirely."

I told him I had always heard this achievement attributed to England.
"Oh! that was quite a mistake! What the English did was to punish the
men that stood up for Ireland. There was Mr. O'Brien. But for him there
wasn't a man of Lord Lansdowne's people would have had the heart to
stand up. He did it all; and now, what were they doing to him? They were
putting him on a cold plank-bed on a stone floor in a damp cell!"

"But the English put all their prisoners in those cells, don't they?" I
asked.

"And what of it, sir?" he retorted. "They're good enough for most of
them, but not for a gentleman like Mr. O'Brien, that would spill the
last drop of his heart's blood for Ireland!"

"But," I said, "they're doing just the same thing with Mr. Gilhooly, I
hear."

"And who is Mr. Gilhooly, now? And it's not for the likes of him to
complain and be putting on airs as if he was Mr. O'Brien!"

"Yes, it is a fine country for hunting!"

"Was it ever put down here, the hunting?"

"No, indeed! Sure, the people wouldn't let it be!"

"Not if Mr. O'Brien told them they must?" I queried.

"Mr. O'Brien; ah, he wouldn't think of such a thing! It brings money all
the time to Athy, and sells the horses."

As to the troubles at Luggacurren, he was not very clear. "It was a
beautiful place, Mr. Dunne's; we'd see it presently. And Mr. Dunne, he
was a good one for sport. It was that, your honour, that got him into
the trouble"--

"And Mr. Kilbride?"

"Oh, Mr. Kilbride's place was a very good place too, but not like Mr.
Dunne's. And he was doing very well, Mr. Kilbride. He was getting a good
living from the League, and he was a Member of Parliament. Oh, yes, he
wasn't the only one of the tenants that was doing good to himself. There
was more of them that was getting more than ever they made out of the
land."[24]

"Was the land so bad, then?" I asked.

"No, there was as good land at Luggacurren as any there was in all
Ireland; but," and here he pointed off to the crests of the hills in the
distance, "there was a deal of land there of the estate on the hills,
and it was very poor land, but the tenants had to pay as much for that
as for the good property of Dunne and Kilbride."

"Do you know Mr. Lynch, the magistrate?" I asked. "If you do, look out
for him, as he has promised to join me and show me the place."

"Oh no, sorr!" the jarvey exclaimed at once; "don't mind about him. Hell
have his own car, and your honour won't want to take him on ours."

"Why not?" I persisted, "there's plenty of room."

"Oh! but indeed, sir, if it wasn't that you were going to the priest's,
Father Maher, you wouldn't get a car at Athy--no, not under ten pounds!"

"Not under ten pounds," I replied. "Would I get one then for ten
pounds?"

"It's a deal of money, ten pounds, sorr, and you wouldn't have a poor
man throw away ten pounds?"

"Certainly not, nor ten shillings either. Is it a question of principle,
or a question of price?"

The man looked around at me with a droll glimmer in his eye: "Ah, to be
sure, your honour's a great lawyer; but he'll come pounding along with
his big horse in his own car, Mr. Lynch; and sure it'll be quicker for
your honour just driving to Father Maher's."

There was no resisting this, so I laughed and bade him drive on.

"Whose house is that?" I asked, as we passed a house surrounded with
trees.

"Oh! that's the priest, Father Keogh--a very good man, but not so much
for the people as Father Maher, who has everything to look after about
them."

We came presently within sight of a handsome residence, Lansdowne Lodge,
the headquarters of the estate. Many fine cattle were grazing in the
fields about it.

"They are Lord Lansdowne's beasts," said my jarvey; "and it's the
emergency men are looking after them."

Nearly opposite were the Land League huts erected on the holding of an
unevicted tenant--a small village of neat wooden "shanties." On the
roadway in front of these half-a-dozen men were lounging about. They
watched us with much curiosity as we drove up, and whispered eagerly
together.

"They're some of the evicted men, your honour," said my jarvey, with a
twinkle in his eye; and then under his breath, "They'll be thinking your
honour's came down to arrange it all. They think everybody that comes is
come about an arrangement."

"Oh, then, they all want it arranged!"

"No; not all, but many of them do. Some of them like it well enough
going about like gentlemen with nothing to do, only their hands in their
pockets."

We turned out of the highway here and passed some very pretty cottages.

"No, they're not for labourers, your honour," said my jarvey; "the
estate built them for mechanics. It's the tenants look after the
labourers, and little it is they do for them."

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 dispassionately. "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 L200 towards establishing creameries, and providing
high-class 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 L760, 10s. Mr. Dunne, who co-operated with
him, held four town lands comprising 1304 acres, at a yearly rent of
L1348, 15s. Upon this property Lord Lansdowne had expended in drainage
and works L1993, 11s. 9d., and in buildings L631, 15s. 4d., or in all
very nearly two years' rental. On Mr. Kilbride's holdings Lord Lansdowne
had expended in drainage works L1931, 6s. 3d., and in buildings L1247,
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
L3000, for which he added to the rent L130 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 grass, and Lord Lansdowne laid out
more than L2500 on them, borrowed at the same rate from the Board, for
which he added to the rent only L66 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 L300 higher than in 1862, though during the interval
the landlord had laid out L20,000 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 L10, 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.

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