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

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Lismore Cathedral was almost entirely rebuilt by the second Earl of Cork
three or four years after the Restoration, and has a handsome marble
spire, but there is little in it to recall the Catholic times in which
Lismore was a city of churches and a centre of Irish devotion.

The hostess of the "Devonshire Arms" gave me some excellent salmon,
fresh from the river, and a very good dinner. She bewailed the evil days
on which she has fallen, and the loss to Lismore of all that the Castle
used to mean to the people. Lady Edward Cavendish had spent a short time
here some little time ago, she said, and the people were delighted to
have her come there. "It would be a great thing for the country if all
the uproar and quarrelling could be put an end to. It did nobody any
good, least of all the poor people."

From Lismore I came back by the railway through Fermoy.

CHAPTER IX.

PORTUMNA, GALWAY, _Feb. 28._--I left Cork by an early train to-day, and
passing through the counties of Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Queen's, and
King's, reached this place after dark on a car from Parsonstown. The day
was delightfully cool and bright. I had the carriage to myself almost
all the way, and gave up all the time I could snatch from the constantly
varying and often very beautiful scenery to reading a curious pamphlet
which I picked up in Dublin entitled _Pour I'Irlande._ It purports to
have been written by a "Canadian priest" living at Lurgan in Ireland,
and to be a reply to M. de Mandat Grancey's volume, _Chez Paddy._ It is
adorned with a frontispiece representing a monster of the Cerberus type
on a monument, with three heads and three collars labelled respectively
"Flattery," "Famine," and "Coercion." On the pedestal is the
inscription--"1800 to 1887. Erected by the grateful Irish to the English
Government." The text is in keeping with the frontispiece. In a passage
devoted to the "atrocious evictions" of Glenbehy in 1887, the agent of
the property is represented as "setting fire with petroleum" to the
houses of two helpless men, and turning out "eighteen human beings into
the highway in the depth of winter." Not a word is said of the agent's
flat denial of these charges, nor a word of the advice given to the
agent by Sir Redvers Buller that the mortgagee ought to level the
cottages occupied by trespassers, nor a word about Father Quilter's
letter to Colonel Turner, branding his flock as "poor slaves" of the
League, and turning them over to "Mr. Roe or any other agent" to do as
he liked with them, since they could not, or would not, keep their
plighted faith given through their own priest.

This sort of ostrich fury is common enough among the regular drumbeaters
of the Irish agitation. But it is not creditable to a "Canadian priest."
Still less creditable is his direct arraignment of M. de Mandat
Grancey's good faith and veracity upon the strength of what he describes
as M. de Mandat Grancey's amplification and distortion of a story told
by himself. This was a tale of a priest called out to confess one of his
parishioners. The penitent accused himself of killing one man, and
trying to kill several others. The priest, as the dreadful tale went on,
made a tally on his sleeve, with chalk, of the crimes recited. "Good
heavens! my son," he cried at last, "what had all these men done to you
that you tried to send them all into eternity? Who were they?"

"Oh, Father, they were all bailiffs or tax-collectors!"

"You idiot!" exclaimed the confessor, angrily rubbing at his sleeve,
"why didn't ye tell me that before instead of letting me spoil my best
cassock?"

As I happened to have the book of M. de Mandat Grancey in my
despatch-box, I compared it with the attack made upon it. The results
were edifying. In the first place, M. de Mandat Grancey does not
indicate the Canadian priest as his authority. He says that he heard the
story, apparently at a dinner-table in France, from a _cure Irlandais_,
who was endeavouring to impress upon his hearers "the sympathy of the
clergy with the Land League." The "Canadian priest" now comes forward
and makes it a count in his indictment against M. de Mandat Grancey that
he is described as an "Irish curate," when he is in fact neither an
Irishman nor a curate. What was more natural than that an ecclesiastic,
claiming to live in Ireland, and telling stories in France about the
sympathy of the Irish clergy with the Land League, should be taken by
one of his auditors to be an Irish _cure_, particularly as the French
_cure_ is, I believe, the equivalent of the Irish "parish priest"?

In the next place, the "Canadian priest" declares that the story "is as
old as the Round Towers of Ireland," and that M. de Mandat Grancey
represents him as making himself the hero of the tale. As a matter of
fact, M. de Mandat Grancey does nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he
expressly says that the _cure Irlandais_, who told the story, gave it to
his hearers as having occurred not to himself at all, but "to one of his
colleagues." Furthermore he is at the pains to add (_Chez Paddy_, p. 43)
that the story, which was not to the taste of some of the French
ecclesiastics who heard it, was related "as a simple pleasantry."
"But," he adds, and this I suspect is the sting which has so exasperated
the "Canadian priest," "he gave us to understand at the same time that
this pleasantry struck the keynote of the state of mind of many Irish
priests, and, he said, that he was himself the President of the League
in his district."

In connection with Colonel Turner's statements as to the conduct of
Father White at Milltown Malbay, and with the accounts given me of the
conduct of Father Sheehan at Lixnaw, this side-light upon the relations
of a certain class of the Irish clergy with the most violent henchmen of
the League, is certainly noteworthy. I happen to have had some
correspondence with friends of mine in Paris, who are friends also of M.
de Mandat Grarncey, about his visit to Ireland before he made it, and I
am quite certain that he went there, to put the case mildly, with no
prejudices in favour of the English Government or against the
Nationalists. Perhaps the extreme bitterness shown in the pamphlet of
the "Canadian priest" may have been born of his disgust at finding that
the sympathy of French Catholics with Catholic Ireland draws the line at
priests who regard the assassination of "bailiffs and tax-collectors" as
a pardonable, if not positively amusing, excess of patriotic zeal.

It was late when I reached Parsonstown, known of old in Irish story as
Birr, from St. Brendan's Abbey of Biorra, and now a clean prosperous
place, carefully looked after by the chief landlord of the region, the
Earl of Rosse, who, while he inherits the astronomical tastes and the
mathematical ability of his father, is not so absorbed in star-gazing as
to be indifferent to his terrestrial duties and obligations. I have
heard nothing but good of him, and of his management of his estates,
from men of the most diverse political views. But I think it more
important to get a look at the Clanricarde property, about which I have
heard little but evil from anybody. The strongest point I have heard
made in favour of the owner is, that he is habitually described by that
dumb organ of a down-trodden people, _United Ireland_, as "the most vile
Clanricarde."

I found a good car at the railway station, and set off at once for
Portumna. Parsonstown was called by Sir William Petty, in his _Survey of
Ireland_, the _umbilicus Hiberniae_. It is the centre of Ireland, as a
point near Newnham Paddox is of England, and the famous or infamous "Bog
of Allan" stretches hence to Athlone. Our way fortunately took us
westward. A light railway was laid down some years ago from Parsonstown
to Portumna, but it did not pay, and it has now been abandoned.

"What has become of the road?" I asked my jarvey.

"Oh! they just take up the rails when they like, the people do."

"And what do they do with them?"

"Is it what they do with them? Oh; they make fences of them for the
beasts."

He was a dry, shrewd old fellow, not very amiably disposed, I was sorry
to find, towards my own country.

"Ah! it's America, sorr, that's been the ruin of us entirely."

"Pray, how is that?"

"It's the storms they send; and then the grain; and now they tell me
it's the American beasts that's spoiling the market altogether for
Ireland."

"Is that what your member tells you?"

"The member, sorr? which member?"

"The member of Parliament for your district, I mean. What is his name?"

"His name? Well, I'm not sure; and I don't know that I know the man at
all. But I believe his name is Mulloy."

"Does he live in Portumna?"

"Oh no, not at all. I don't know at all where he lives, but I believe
it's in Tullamore. But what would he know about America? Sure, any one
can see it's the storms and the grain that is the death of us in
Ireland."

"But I thought it was the landlords and the rents?"

"Oh, that's in Woodford and Loughrea; not here at all. There'll be no
good till we get a war."

"Get a war? with whom? What do you want a war for?"

"Ah! it was the good time when we had the Crimean war--with the wheat
all about Portumna. I'll show you the great store there was built. It's
no use now. But we'll have a war. My son, he's a soldier now. He went
out to America. But he didn't like it."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Oh, he didn't like it. He could get no work, but to be a porter, and it
was too hard. So he came back in three months' time, and then he 'listed
for a soldier. He's over in England now. He likes it very well. He's
getting very good pay. They pay the soldiers well. There's a troop of
Hussars here now. They bring a power of money to the place."

"What do they do with the wheat lands now?"

"Oh, they're for sheep; they do very well. Were you ever in Australia,
sorr?" pointing to a place we were passing. "There was a man came here
from Australia with a pot of money, and he bought that place; but he
thought he was a bigger man than he was, and now he's found himself out.
I think he would have done as well to stay in Australia where he was."

In quite a different vein he spoke of the landlord of another large
seat, and of the way in which the people, some of them, had
misbehaved--breaking open the graves of the family on the place, "and
tossing the coffins and the bones about, and all for what?"

The view as we crossed the long and very fine bridge over the Shannon
after dusk was very striking. It was not too dark to make out the course
of the broad gleaming river, and the lights of the town made it seem
larger, I daresay, than it really is. As we drove up the main street I
told my jarvey to take me to the Castle.

"To the Castle, is it?" he replied, looking around at me with an
astonished air.

"Yes," I said, "I am going to see Mr. Tener, the agent, who lives there,
doesn't he?"

"Oh, the new agent? Oh yes; I believe he's a very good man."

"You don't expect to be 'boycotted' for going to the Castle, do you?"

"And why should I be? But I haven't been inside of the Castle gates for
twenty years. And--here they are!" he cried out suddenly, pulling up his
horse just in time to avoid driving him up against a pair of iron gates
inhospitably closed. It was by this time pitch dark. Not a light could
we see within the enclosure. But presently a couple of shadowy forms
appeared behind the iron gates; the iron gates creaked on their hinges,
a masculine voice bade us drive in, and a policeman with a lantern
advanced from a thicket of trees. All this had a fine martial and
adventurous aspect, and my jarvey seemed to enjoy it as much as I.

We got directions from the friendly policeman as to the roads and the
landmarks, and after once nearly running into a clump of trees found
ourselves at last in an open courtyard, where men appeared and took
charge of the car, the horse, and my luggage. We were in a quadrangle of
the out-buildings attached to the old residence of the Clanricardes,
which had escaped the fire of 1826. The late Marquis for a long time
hesitated whether to reconstruct the castle on the old site (the walls
are still standing), or to build an entirely new house on another site.
He finally chose the latter alternative, chiefly, I am told, under the
advice of his oldest son, the late Lord Dunkellin, one of the most
charming and deservedly popular men of his time. He was a great friend
and admirer of Father Burke, whom he used to claim as a Galway cousin,
and with whom I met him in Rome not long before his death in the summer
of 1867. His brother, the present Marquis, I have never met, but Mr.
Tener, his present agent here, who passed some time in America several
years ago, learning from him that I wished to see this place, very
courteously wrote to me asking me to make his house my headquarters. I
found my way through queer passages to a cheery little hall where my
host met me, and taking me into a pleasant little parlour, enlivened by
flowers, and a merrily blazing fire, presented me to Mrs. Tener.

Mr. Tener is an Ulster man from the County Cavan. He went with his wife
on their bridal trip to America, and what he there saw of the peremptory
fashion in which the authorities deal with conspiracies to resist the
law seems not unnaturally to have made him a little impatient of the
dilatory, not to say dawdling, processes of the law in his own country.
He gave me a very interesting account after dinner this evening of the
situation in which he found affairs on this property, an account very
different from those which I have seen in print. He is himself the owner
of a small landed property in Cavan, and he has had a good deal of
experience as an agent for other properties. "I have a very simple
rule," he said to me, "in dealing with Irish tenants, and that is
neither to do an injustice nor to submit to one." It was only, he said,
after convincing himself that the Clanricarde tenants had no legitimate
ground of complaint against the management of the estate, not removable
upon a fair and candid discussion of all the issues involved between
them and himself, that he consented to take charge of the property. That
to do this was to run a certain personal risk, in the present state of
the country, he was quite aware.

But he takes this part of the contract very coolly, telling me that the
only real danger, he thinks, is incurred when he makes a journey of
which he has to send a notice by telegraph--a remark which recalled to
me the curious advice given me in Dublin to seal my letters, as a
protection against "the Nationalist clerks in the post-offices." The
park of Portumua Castle, which is very extensive, is patrolled by armed
policemen, and whenever Mr. Tener drives out he is followed by a police
car carrying two armed men.

"Against whom are all these precautions necessary?" I asked. "Against
the evicted tenants, or against the local agents of the League?"

"Not at all against the tenants," he replied, "as you can satisfy
yourself by talking with them. The trouble comes not from the tenants at
all, nor from the people here at Portumna, but from mischievous and
dangerous persons at Loughrea and Woodford. Woodford, mind you, not
being Lord Clanricarde's place at all, though all the country has been
roused about the cruel Clanricarde and his wicked Woodford evictions.
Woodford was simply the headquarters of the agitation against Lord
Clanricarde and my predecessor, Mr. Joyce, and it has got the name of
the 'cockpit of Ireland,' because it was there that Mr. Dillon, in
October 1886, opened the 'war against the landlords' with the 'Plan of
Campaign.' It is an odd circumstance, by the way, worth noting, that
when these apostles of Irish agitation went to Lord Clanricarde's
property nearer the city of Gralway, and tried to stir the people up,
they failed dismally, because the people there could understand no
English, and the Irish agitators could speak no Irish! Nobody has ever
had the face to pretend that the Clanricarde estates were 'rack-rented.'
There have been many personal attacks made upon Mr. Joyce and upon Lord
Clanricarde, and Mr. Joyce has brought that well-known action against
the Marquis for libel, and all this answers with the general public as
an argument to show that the tenants on the Clanricarde property must
have had great grievances, and must have been cruelly ground down and
unable to pay their way. I will introduce you, if you will allow me, to
the Catholic Bishop here, and to the resident Protestant clergyman, and
to the manager of the bank, and they can help you to form your own
judgment as to the state of the tenants. You will find that whatever
quarrels they may have had with their landlord or his agent, they are
now, and always have been, quite able to pay their rents, and I need not
tell you that it is no longer in the power of a landlord or an agent to
say what these rents shall be."[10]

"Mr. Dillon in that speech of his at Woodford (I have it here as
published in _United Ireland_), you will see, openly advised, or rather
ordered, the tenants here to club their rents, or, in plain English, the
money due to their landlord, with the deliberate intent to confiscate to
their own use, or, in their own jargon, 'grab,' the money of any one of
their number who, after going into this dishonest combination, might
find it working badly and wish to get out of it. Here is his own
language:"--

I took the speech as reported in the _United Ireland_ of October 23rd,
1886, and therein found Mr. Dillon, M.P., using these words:--"If you
mean to fight really, you must put the money aside for two
reasons--first of all because you want the means to support the men who
are hit first; and, secondly, because you want to prohibit traitors
going behind your back. There is no way to deal with a traitor except to
get his money under lock and key, and if you find that he pays his rent,
and betrays the organisation, what will you do with him? I will tell you
what to do with him. _Close upon his money, and use it for the
organisation_. I have always opposed outrages. _This is a legal plan,
and it is ten times more effective_."

Not a word here as to the morality of the proceeding thus recommended;
but almost in the same breath in which he bade his ignorant hearers
regard his plan as "legal," Mr. Dillon said to them, "_this must be done
privately, and you must not inform the public where the money is
placed_!"

Why not, if the plan was "legal"? Mr. Dillon, I believe, is not a
lawyer, but he can hardly have deluded himself into thinking his plan of
campaign "legal" in the face of the particular pains taken by his
leader, Mr. Parnell, to disclaim all participation in any such plans. A
year before Mr. Dillon made this curious speech, Mr. Parnell, I
remember, on the 11th of October 1885, speaking at Kildare, declared
that he had "in no case during the last few years advised any
combination among tenants against even rack-rents," and insisted that
any combination of the sort which might exist should be regarded as an
"isolated" combination, "confined to the tenants of individual estates,
who, of their own accord, without any incitement from us, on the
contrary, kept back by us, without any urging on our part, without any
advice on our part, but stung by necessity, and the terrible realities
of their position, may have formed such a combination among themselves
to secure such a reduction of rent as will enable them to live in their
own homes." From this language of Mr. Parnell in October 1885 to Mr.
Dillon's speech in October 1886, urging and advising the tenants to
organise, exact contributions from every member of the organisation, and
put these contributions under the control of third parties determined to
confiscate the money subscribed by any member who might not find the
organisation working to his advantage, is a rather long step! It covers
all the distance between a cunning defensive evasion of the law, and an
open aggressive violation of the law--not of the land only, but of
common honesty. One of two things is clear: either these combinations
are voluntary and "isolated," and intended, as Mr. Parnell asserts, to
secure such a reduction of rents as will enable the tenants, and each of
them, to live peacefully and comfortably at home, and in that case any
member of the combination who finds that he can attain his object better
by leaving it has an absolute right to do this, and to demand the return
of his money; or they are part of a system imposed upon the tenants by a
moral coercion inconsistent with the most elementary ideas of private
right and personal freedom. This makes the importance of Mr. Dillon's
speech, that by his denunciation of any member who wishes to withdraw
from this "voluntary" combination as a "traitor," and by his order to
"close upon the money" of any such member, "and use it for the
organisation," he brands the "organisation" as a subterranean despotism
of a very cheap and nasty kind. The Government which tolerates the
creation of such a Houndsditch tyranny as this within its dominions
richly deserves to be overthrown. As for the people who submit
themselves to it, I do not wonder that in his more lucid moments a
Catholic priest like Father Quilter feels himself moved to denounce them
as "poor slaves." Of course with a benevolent neutral like myself, the
question always recurs, Who trained them to submit to this sort of
thing? But I really am at a loss to see why a parcel of conspirators
should be encouraged in the nineteenth century to bully Irish farmers
out of their manhood and their money, because in the seventeenth century
it pleased the stupid rulers of England, as the great Duke of Ormond
indignantly said, to "put so general a discountenance upon the
improvement of Ireland, as if it were resolved that to keep it low is to
keep it safe."

On going back to the little drawing-room after dinner we found Mrs.
Tener among her flowers, busy with some literary work. It is not a gay
life here, she admits, her nearest visiting acquaintance living some
seven or eight miles away--but she takes long walks with a couple of
stalwart dogs in her company, and has little fear of being molested.
"The tenants are in more danger," she thinks, "than the landlords or the
agents"--nor do I see any reason to doubt this, remembering the Connells
whom I saw at Edenvale, and the story of the "boycotted" Fitzmaurice
brutally murdered in the presence of his daughter at Lixnaw on the 31st
of January, as if by way of welcome to Lord Ripon and Mr. Morley on
their arrival at Dublin.

PORTUMNA, _Feb. 29th._--Early this morning two of the "evicted" tenants,
and an ex-bailiff of the property here, came by appointment to discuss
the situation with Mr. Tener. He asked me to attend the conference, and
upon learning that I was an American, they expressed their perfect
willingness that I should do so. The tenants were quiet, sturdy,
intelligent-looking men. I asked one of them if he objected to telling
me whether he thought the rent he had refused to pay excessive, or
whether he was simply unable to pay it.

"I had the money, sir, to pay the rent," he replied, "and I wanted to
pay the rent--only I wouldn't be let."

"Who wouldn't let you?" I asked.

"The people that were in with the League."

"Was your holding worth anything to you?" I asked.

"It was indeed. Two or three years ago I could have sold my right for a
matter of three hundred pounds."

"Yes!" interrupted the other tenant, "and a bit before that for six
hundred pounds."

"Is it not worth three hundred pounds to you now?"

"No," said Mr. Tener, "for he has lost it by refusing the settlement I
offered to make, and driving us into proceedings against him, and
allowing his six months' equity of redemption to lapse."

"And sure, if we had it, no one would be let to buy it now, sir," said
the tenant. "But it's we that hope Mr. Tener here will let us come back
on the holdings--that is, if we'd be protected coming back."

"Now, do you see," said Mr. Tener, "what it is you ask me to do? You ask
me to make you a present outright of the property you chose foolishly to
throw away, and to do this after you have put the estate to endless
trouble and expense; don't you think that is asking me to do a good
deal?"

The tenants looked at one another, at Mr. Tener, and at me, and the
ex-bailiff smiled.

"You must see this," said Mr. Tener, "but I am perfectly willing now to
say to you, in the presence of this gentleman, that in spite of all, I
am quite willing to do what you ask, and to let you come back into the
titles you have forfeited, for I would rather have you back on the
property than strangers--"

"And, indeed, we're sure you would."

"But understand, you must pay down a year's rent and the costs you have
put us to."

"Ah! sure you wouldn't have us to pay the costs?"

"But indeed I will," responded Mr. Tener; "you mustn't for a moment
suppose I will have any question about that. You brought all this
trouble on yourselves, and on us; and while I am ready and willing to
deal more than fairly, to deal liberally with you about the arrears--and
to give you time--the costs you must pay."

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