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

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"And what would they be, the costs?" queried one of the tenants
anxiously.

"Oh, that I can't tell you, for I don't know," said Mr. Tener, "but they
shall not be anything beyond the strict necessary costs."

"And if we come back would we be protected?"

"Of course you will have protection. But why do you want protection?
Here you are, a couple of strong grown men, with men-folk of your
families. See here! why don't you go to such an one, and such an one,"
naming other tenants; "you know them well. Go to them quietly and sound
them to see if they will come back on the same terms with you; form a
combination to be honest and to stand by your rights, and defy and break
up the other dishonest combination you go in fear of! Is it not a shame
for men like you to lie down and let those fellows walk over you, and
drive you out of your livelihood and your homes?"

The tenants looked at each other, and at the rest of us. "I think," said
one of them at last, "I think ---- and ----," naming two men, "would come
with us. Of course," turning to Mr. Tener, "you wouldn't discover on us,
sir."

"Discover on you! Certainly not," said Mr. Tener. "But why don't you
make up your minds to be men, and 'discover' on yourselves, and defy
these fellows?"

"And the cattle, sir? would we get protection for the cattle? They'd be
murdered else entirely."

"Of course," said Mr. Tener, "the police would endeavour to protect the
cattle."

Then, turning to me, he said, "That is a very reasonable question. These
scoundrels, when they are afraid to tackle the men put under their ban,
go about at night, and mutilate and torture and kill the poor beasts. I
remember a case," he went on, "in Roscommon, where several head of
cattle mysteriously disappeared. They could be found nowhere. No trace
of them could be got. But long weeks after they vanished, some lads in a
field several miles away saw numbers of crows hovering over a particular
point. They went there, and there at the bottom of an abandoned
coal-shaft lay the shattered remains of these lost cattle. The poor
beasts had been driven blindfold over the fields and down into this pit,
where, with broken limbs, and maimed, they all miserably died of
hunger."

"Yes," said one of the tenants, "and our cattle'd be driven into the
Shannon, and drownded, and washed away."

"You must understand," interposed Mr. Tener "that when cattle are thus
maliciously destroyed the owners can recover nothing unless the remains
of the poor beasts are found and identified within three days."

The disgust which I felt and expressed at these revelations seemed to
encourage the tenants. One of them said that before the evictions came
off certain of the National Leaguers visited him, and told him he must
resist the officers. "I consulted my sister," he said, "and she said,
'Don't you be such a fool as to be doing that; we'll all be ruined
entirely by those rascals and rogues of the League.' And I didn't
resist. But only the other day I went to a priest in the trouble we are
in, and what do you think he said to me? He said, 'Why didn't you do as
you were bid? then you would be helped,' and he would do nothing for us!
Would you think that right, sir, in your country?"

"I should think in my country," I replied, "that a priest who behaved in
that way ought to be unfrocked."

"Did you pay over all your rent into the hands of the trustees of the
League?" I asked of one of these tenants.

"I paid over money to them, sir," he replied.

"Yes," I said, "but did you pay over all the amount of the rent, or how
much of it?"

"Oh! I paid as much as I thought they would think I ought to pay!" he
responded, with that sly twinkle of the peasant's eye one sees so often
in rural France.

"Oh! I understand," I said, laughing. "But if you come to terms now with
Mr. Tener here, will you get that money back again?"

"Divil a penny of it!" he replied, with much emphasis.

Finally they got up together to take their leave, after a long whispered
conversation together.

"And if we made it half the costs?"

"No!" said Mr. Tener good-naturedly but firmly; "not a penny off the
costs."

"Well, we'll see the men, sir, just quietly, and we'll let you know what
can be done"; and with that they wished us, most civilly, good-morning,
and went their way.

We walked in the park for some time, and a wild, beautiful park it is,
not the less beautiful for being given up, as it is, very much to the
Dryads to deal with it as they list. It is as unlike a trim English park
as possible; but it contains many very fine trees, and grand open sweeps
of landscape. In a tangled copse are the ruins of an ancient Franciscan
abbey, in one corner of which lie buried together, under a monumental
mound of brickwork, the late Marquis of Clanricarde and his wife. The
walls of the Castle, burned in 1826, are still standing, and so perfect
that the building might easily enough have been restored. A keen-eyed,
wiry old household servant, still here, told us the house was burned in
the afternoon of January 6, 1826. There were three women-servants in the
house--"Anna and Mary Meehan, and Mrs. Underwood, the housekeeper"; and
they were getting the Castle ready for his Lordship's arrival, so little
of an "absentee" was the late Lord Clanricarde, then only one year
married to the daughter of George Canning. The fires were laid on in the
upper rooms, and Mrs. Underwood went off upon an errand. When she came
back all was in flames.

The deer-park is full of deer, now become quite wild. We heard them
crashing through the undergrowth on all sides. There must be capital
fishing, too, in the lake, and in the river of which it is an expansion.

While they were getting the cars ready for a drive, came up another son
of the soil. This man I found had only a small interest in the battle on
the Clanricarde estates, holding his homestead of another landlord. But
he admitted he had gone in a manner into the "combination," in that he
had paid a certain, not very large, sum, which he named, to the
trustees, "just for peace and quiet." He considered it gone, past
recovery; and he named another man with a small holding, but doing a
considerable business in other ways, who had "paid L10 or more just not
to be bothered." Upon this Mr. Tener told me of a shopkeeper at Loughrea
in a large way of business, a man with seven or eight thousand pounds,
who, finding his goods about to be seized after the agent had turned a
sharp strategic corner on him, and unexpectedly got into his shop, was
about to own up to his defeat, and make a fair settlement, when the
secretary of the League appeared, and requested a private talk with him.
In a quarter of an hour the tradesman reappeared looking rather sullen
and crestfallen. He said he couldn't pay, and must let the goods be
taken. So taken they were, and duly put up under the process and sold.
He bought them in himself, paying all the costs.

Presently two cars appeared. We got upon one, Mr. Tener driving a
spirited nag, and taking on the seat with him a loaded carbine-rifle.
Two armed policeman followed us upon the other, keeping at such a
distance as would enable them easily to cover any one approaching from
either side of the roadway. It quite took me back to the delightful days
of 1866 in Mexico, when we used to ride out to picnics at the Rincon at
Orizaba armed to the teeth, and ready at a moment's notice to throw the
four-in-hand mule-wagons into a hollow square, and prepare to receive
cavalry. As it seems to be perfectly well understood that the regular
price paid for shooting a designated person (they call it "knocking" him
in these parts) is the ridiculously small sum of four pounds, and that
two persons who divide this sum are always detailed by the organisers of
outrage to "knock" an objectionable individual, it is obvious that too
much care can hardly be taken by prudent people in coming and going
through such a country. Fortunately for the people most directly
concerned to avoid these unpleasantnesses a systematic leakage seems to
exist in the machinery of mischief. The places where the oaths of this
local "Mafia" are administered, for instance, are well known. A roadside
near a chapel is frequently selected--and this for two or three obvious
reasons. The sanctity of the spot may be supposed to impress the
neophyte; and if the police or any other undesirable people should
suddenly come upon the officiating adepts and the expectant acolyte, a
group on the roadside is not necessarily a criminal gathering--though I
do not see why, in such times, our old American college definition of a
"group" as a gathering of "three or more persons" should not be adopted
by the authorities, and held to make such a gathering liable to
dispersion by the police, as our "groups" used to be subject to
proctorial punishment. Mills are another favourite resort of the
law-breakers. Mr. Tener tells me that a large mill between this place
and Loughrea is a great centre of trouble, not wholly to the
disadvantage of the astute miller, who finds it not only brings grist to
his mill, but takes away grist from another mill belonging to a couple
of worthy ladies, and once quite prosperous. It is no uncommon thing, it
appears, for the same person to be put through the ceremony of swearing
fidelity more than once, and at more than one place, with the not
unnatural result, however, of diminishing the pressure of the oath upon
his conscience or his fears, and also of alienating his affections, as
he is expected to pay down two shillings on each occasion. Once a
member, he contributes a penny a week to the general fund. It seems also
to be an open secret who the disbursing treasurers are of this fund,
from whom the members, detailed to do the dark bidding of the
"organisation," receive their wage. "A stout gentleman with sandy hair
and wearing glasses" was the description given to me of one such
functionary. When so much is known of the methods and the men, why is it
that so many crimes are committed with virtual impunity? For two
sufficient reasons. Witnesses cannot be got to testify, or trusted, if
they do testify, to speak the truth; and it is idle to expect juries of
the vicinage in nine cases out of ten will do their duty. Political
cowardice having made it impossible to transfer the venue in cases of
Irish crime, as to which all the authorities were agreed about these
points, from Ireland into Great Britain, it is found that even to
transfer the trial of "Moonlighters" from Clare or Kerry into Wicklow,
for example, has a most instructive effect, opening the eyes of the
people of Wicklow to a state of things in their own island, of which
happily for themselves they were previously as ignorant as the people of
Surrey or of Middlesex. This explains the indignant wish expressed to me
some time ago in a letter from a priest in another part of Ireland, that
"martial law" might be proclaimed in Clare and Kerry to "stamp out the
Moonlighters, those pests of society." That in Clare and Kerry priests
should be found not only disposed to wink at and condone the proceedings
of these "pests of society," but openly to co-operate with them under
the pretext of a "national" movement, is surely a thing equally
intolerable by the Church and dangerous to the cause of Irish autonomy.
This I am glad to say is strongly felt, and has been on more than one
occasion very vigorously stated by one of the most eminent and estimable
of Irish ecclesiastics, the Bishop-Coadjutor of Clonfert, upon whom I
called this morning. Dr. Healy, who is a senator of the Royal University
of Ireland, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, presides over that
part of the diocese of Clonfort which includes Portumna and Woodford. He
lives in a handsome and commodious, but simple and unpretentious house,
set in ample grounds well-planted, and commanding a wide view of a most
agreeable country. We were ushered into a well-furnished study, and the
bishop came in at once to greet us with the most cordial courtesy. He is
a frank, dignified, unaffected man, and in his becoming episcopal
purple, with the gold chain and cross, looked every inch a bishop. I was
particularly anxious to see Dr. Healy, as a type of the high-minded and
courageous ecclesiastics who, in Ireland, have resolutely refused to
subordinate their duties and their authority as ecclesiastics to the
convenience and the policy of an organisation absolutely controlled by
Mr. Parnell, who not only is not a Catholic, but who is an open ally and
associate of the bitterest enemies of the Catholic Church in France and
in England. Protestant historians affirm that Pope Innocent was one of
the financial backers of William of Orange when he set sail from Holland
to crush the Catholic faith in Great Britain and Ireland, and drive the
Catholic house of Stuart into exile. But it was reserved for the
nineteenth century to witness the strange spectacle of men, calling
themselves Irishmen and Catholics, deliberately slandering and assailing
in concord with a non-Catholic political leader the consecrated pastors
and masters of the Church in Ireland. When in order to explain what they
themselves concede to be "the absence from the popular ranks of the best
of the priesthood," Nationalist writers find it necessary to denounce
Cardinal Cullen and Cardinal M'Cabe as "anti-Irish "; and to sneer at
men like Dr. Healy as "Castle Bishops," it is impossible not to be
reminded of the three "patriotic" tailors of Tooley Street.

Bishop Healy looks upon the systematic development of a substantial
peasant proprietary throughout Ireland as the economic hope of the
country, and he regards therefore the actual "campaigning" of the
self-styled "Nationalists" as essentially anti-national, inasmuch as its
methods are demoralising the people of Ireland, and destroying that
respect for law and for private rights which lies at the foundation of
civil order and of property. In his opinion, "Home Rule," to the people
in general, means simply ownership of the land which they are to live
on, and to live by. How that ownership shall be brought about peaceably,
fairly, and without wrong or outrage to any man or class of men is a
problem of politics to be worked out by politicians, and by public men.
That men, calling themselves Catholics, should be led on to attempt to
bring this or any other object about by immoral and criminal means is
quite another matter, and a matter falling within the domain, not of the
State primarily, but of the Church.

As to this, Bishop Healy, who was in Rome not very long ago, and who,
while in Rome, had more than one audience of His Holiness by command,
has no doubt whatever that the Vatican will insist upon the abandonment
and repudiation by Catholics of boycotting, and "plans of campaign," and
all such devices of evil. Nor has the Bishop any doubt that whenever the
Holy Father speaks the priests and the people of Ireland will obey.

To say this, of course, is only to say that the Bishop believes the
priests of Ireland to be honest priests, and the people of Ireland to be
good Catholics.

If he is mistaken in this it will be a doleful thing, not for the
Church, but for the Irish priests, and for the Irish people. No Irishman
who witnessed the magnificent display made at Rome this year, of the
scope and power of the Catholic Church, can labour under any delusions
on that point.

From the Bishop's residence we went to call upon the Protestant rector
of Portumna, Mr. Crawford. The handsome Anglican church stands within an
angle of the park, and the parsonage is a very substantial mansion. Mr.
Crawford, the present rector, who is a man of substance, holds a fine
farm of the Clanricarde estate, at a peppercorn rent, and he is tenant
also of another holding at L118 a year, as to which he has brought the
agent into Court, with the object, as he avers, of setting an example to
the other tenants, and inducing them, like himself, to fight under the
law instead of against it. He is not, however, in arrears, and in that
respect sets a better example, I am sorry to say, than the Catholic
priest, Father Coen, who made himself so conspicuous here on the
occasion of the much bewritten Woodford evictions. The case of Father
Coen is most instructive, and most unpleasant. He occupies an excellent
house on a holding of twenty-three acres of good laud, with a garden--in
short, a handsome country residence, which was provided by the late Lord
Clanricarde, expressly for the accommodation of whoever might be the
Catholic priest in that part of his estate. For all this the rent is
fixed at the absurd and nominal sum of two guineas a year! Yet Father
Coen, who now enjoys the mansion, and has a substantial income from the
parish, is actually two years and a half in arrears with this rent! This
fact Mr. Tener mentioned to the Bishop, whose countenance naturally
darkened. "What am I to do in such a case, my lord?" asked Mr. Tener.
"Do?" said the Bishop, "do your plain duty, and proceed against him
according to law." But suppose he were proceeded against and evicted, as
in America he certainly would be, who can doubt that he would instantly
be paraded, before the world, on both sides of the Atlantic as a
"martyr," suffering for the holy cause of an oppressed and down-trodden
people, at the hands of a "most vile" Marquis, and of a remorse-less and
blood-thirsty agent?[11] Mr. Crawford, a tall, fine-looking man, talked
very fully and freely about the situation here. He came to Portumna
about eight years ago; one of his reasons for accepting the position
here offered him being that he wished to take over a piece of property
near Woodford from his brother-in-law, who found he could not manage it.
As a practical farmer, and a straightforward capable man of business, he
has gradually acquired the general confidence of the tenants here. That
they are, as a rule, quite able to pay the rents which they have been
"coerced" into refusing to pay, he fully believes. He told me of cases
in which Catholic tenants of Lord Clanricarde came to him when the
agitation began about the Plan of Campaign, and begged him privately to
take the money for their rents, and hold it for them till the time
should come for a settlement.

The reason for this was that they did not wish to be obliged to give
over the money into the "Trust" created by the Campaigners, and wanted
it to be safely put beyond the reach of these obliging "friends." One
very shrewd tenant came to him and begged him to buy some beasts, in
order that he might pay his rent out of the proceeds. The man owed L15
to the Clanricarde property. Mr. Crawford did not particularly want to
buy his beasts, but eventually agreed to do so, and gave him L50 for
them. The man went off with the money, but he never paid the rent! Mr.
Crawford discovering this called him to account, and refused to grant
him some further favour which he asked. The result is that the
"distressed tenant" now cuts Mr. Crawford when he meets him, and is the
prosperous owner of quite a small herd of cattle.

Mr. Crawford's opinion of the mischief done by the methods and spirit of
the National League in this place is quite in accord with the opinions
of the Bishop-Coadjutor. Power without responsibility, which made the
Caeesars madmen, easily turns the heads of village tyrants, and there is
something positively grotesque in the excesses of this subterranean
"Home Rule." Mr. Crawford told me of a case here, in which a tenant
farmer, whom he named, came to him in great wrath, not unmingled with
terror, to say that the League had ordered him, on pain of being
boycotted, to give up his holding to the heirs of a woman from whom,
twenty years ago, he had bought, for L100 in cash, the tenant-right of
her deceased husband! There was no question of refunding the L100. He
was merely to consider himself a "land-grabber," and evict himself for
the benefit of those heirs who had never done a stroke of work on the
property for twenty years, and who had no shadow of a legal or moral
claim on it, except that the oldest of them was an active member of the
local League!

Nor was this unique.

In another case, the children of a tenant, who died forty years ago,
came forward and called upon the League to boycott an old man who had
been in possession of the holding during nearly half a century. In a
third case, a tenant-farmer, some ten years ago, had in his employ as
herd a man who fell ill and died. He put into the vacant place an
honest, capable young fellow, who still holds it, and has faithfully and
efficiently served him. Only the other day this tenant-farmer was warned
by the League to expect trouble, unless he dismissed this herd, and put
into his place the son, now grown to man's estate, of the herd who died
ten years ago!

It is amusing, if not instructive, to find the hereditary principle,
just now threatened in its application to the British Senate, cropping
out afresh as an element in the regeneration of Irish agriculture and
the land tenure of Ireland!

On our way back to the Castle we called on Mr. Place, the manager of the
Portumna Branch of the Hibernian Bank, who lives in the town. He was
amusing himself, after the labour of the day in the bank, with some
amateur work as a carpenter, but received us very cordially. He said
there was no doubt that the deposits in the bank had increased
considerably since the adoption of the Plan of Campaign on the
Clanricarde property. Money was paid into the bank continually by
persons who wished the fact of their payments kept secret; and he knew
of more than one case in which tenants, whose stock had been seized by
the agent for the rents, were much delighted at the seizure, since it
had paid off their rents, and so enabled them to retain their holdings
and keep out of the grasp of the League, even though to do this they had
undergone a forced sale and been muleted in costs.

It was his opinion that the tenants on the Clanricarde property, who are
not in arrears, would gladly accept a twenty-five per cent. reduction,
and do very well by accepting it. But they are constrained into a
hostile attitude by the tenants who are in arrears, some of them for
several years (as, for example, Father Coen), although I find, to my
astonishment, that in Ireland the landlord has no power to distrain for
more than a twelvemonth's rent, no matter how far back the arrears may
run.

Mr. Place seems to think it would be well to put all the creditors of
the tenants on one footing with the landlords. The shopkeepers and other
creditors, he thinks, in that event would see many things in quite a new
light.

What is called the new Castle of Portumna is a large and handsome
building of the Mansard type, standing on an eminence in the park, at
some distance from the original seat. The building was finished not long
before the death of his father, the late Marquis. It has never been
occupied, save by a large force of police quartered in it not very long
ago by Mr. Tener in readiness for an expedition against the Castle of
Cloondadauv, to the scene of which he promises to drive me to-morrow on
my way back to Dublin. It is thoroughly well built, and might easily be
made a most delightful residence. The views which it commands of the
Shannon are magnificent, and there are many fine trees about it.

The old man who has charge of it is a typical Galway retainer of the old
school. The "boys," he says, once tried to "boycott" him because he was
the pound-master; but he showed fight, and they let him alone. He
pointed out to me from the top of the house, in the distance, the
residences of Colonel Hickie, and of the young Lord Avonmore, who lately
succeeded on the death of his brother in the recent Egyptian expedition.
The place is now shut up, and the owners live in France.

We visited too the Portumna Union before driving home. The buildings of
this Union are extensive for the place, and well built, and it seems to
be well-ordered and neatly kept--thanks, in no small degree, I suspect,
to the influence of the Sisters who have charge of the hospital, but
whose benign spirit shows itself not only in the flower-garden which
they have called into being, but in many details of the administration
beyond their special control.

The contrast was very striking between the atmosphere of this
unpretending refuge of the helpless and that of certain of the
"laicised" hospitals of France, which I not long ago visited, from which
the devoted nuns have been expelled to make way for hired nurses. I made
a remark to this effect to the clerk of the Union, Mr. Lavan, whom we
found in his office.

"Oh, yes," he said, "I have no doubt of that. We owe more than I can say
to the Sisters, but I don't know how long we should have them here if
the local guardians could have their way."

In explanation of this, he went on to tell me that these local
guardians, who are elected, are hostile to the whole administration,
because of its relations with the Local Government Board at Dublin,
which controls their generous tendency to expend the money of the
ratepayers. By way of expressing their feelings, therefore, they have
been trying to cut down, not only the salary of the clerk, but that of
the Catholic chaplain of the Union; and as there is a good deal of
irreligious feeling among the agitators here, it is his impression that
they would make things disagreeable for the Sisters also were they in
any way to get the management into their own hands. That there cannot be
much real distress in this neighbourhood appears from two facts. There
are now but 130 inmates of this Union, out of a population of 12,900,
and the outlay for out-of-door relief averages between eight and ten
pounds a week.

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