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

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In the quiet, neat chapel two or three of the inmates were kneeling at
prayers; and others whom we saw in the kitchen and about the offices had
nothing of the "workhouse" look which is so painful in the ordinary
inmates of an English or American almshouse.

"The trouble with the place," said Mr. Lavan, "is that they like it too
well. It takes an eviction almost to get them out of it."

We sat down with Mr. Lavan in his office, and had an interesting talk
with him.

He is the agent of Mr. Mathews, who lives between Woodford and Portumna.
Mr. Mathews is a resident landlord, he says, who has constantly employed
and has lived on friendly terms with his tenants, numbering twenty, who
hold now under judicial rents. On these judicial rents two years ago
they were allowed a further reduction of 15 per cent. Last year they
were allowed 20 per cent. This year he offered them a reduction of 25
per cent., which they rejected, demanding 35 per cent.

This demand Mr. Lavan considers to be unreasonable in the extreme, and
he attributes it to the influence of the National Leaguers here, whose
representatives among the local guardians constantly vote away the money
of the ratepayers in "relief to evicted tenants who have ample means and
can in no respect be called destitute." In his opinion the effect of the
Nationalist agitation here has been to upset all ideas of right and
wrong in the minds of the people where any question arises between
tenants and landlords. He told a story, confirmed by Mr. Tener, of a
bailiff, whom he named, on the Clanricarde property here, who was
compelled two years ago to resign his place in order to prevent the
"boycotting" of his mother who keeps a shop on the farm. He was
familiar, too, with the details of a story told me by one of the
Clanricarde tenants, a farmer near Loughrea who holds a farm at L90 a
year. This man was forced to subscribe to the Plan of Campaign. The
agent proceeded against him for the rent due, and he incurred costs of
L10. His sheep and crop were then seized.

He begged the local leaders to "permit" him to pay his rent, as he was
able to do it _without drawing out the funds in their hands_! They
refused, and so compelled him to allow his property to be publicly sold,
and to incur further costs of L10. "His farm lies so near the town that
he did not dare to risk the vengeance of the local ruffians."

Mr. Lavan gave me the name also of another man who is now actually under
a "boycott," because he has ventured to resist the modest demand made by
the son of a man whose tenant-right he bought, paying him L100 for it,
twenty years ago, that he shall give up his farm without being
reimbursed for his outlay made to purchase it! In other words, after
twenty years' peaceable possession of a piece of property, bought and
paid for, this tenant-farmer is treated as a "land-grabber" by the
self-installed "Nationalist" government of Ireland, because he will not
submit to be robbed both of the money which he paid for his
tenant-right, and of his tenant-right!

Obviously in such a case as this the "war against landlordism" is simply
a war against property and against private rights. Priests of the
Catholic Church who not only countenance but aid and abet such
proceedings certainly go even beyond Dr. M'Glynn. Dr. M'Glynn, so far as
I know, stops at the confiscation of all private property in rent by the
State for the State. But here is simply a confiscation of the property
of A for the benefit of B, such as might happen if B, being armed and
meeting A unarmed in a forest, should confiscate the watch and chain of
A, bought by A of B's lamented but unthrifty father twenty years before!

After dinner to-night Mr. Tener gave me some interesting and edifying
accounts of his experience in other parts of Ireland.

Some time ago, before the Plan of Campaign was adopted, one of his
tenants in Cavan came to him with a doleful story of the bad times and
the low prices, and wound up by saying he could pay no more than half a
year's rent.

"Now his rent had been reduced under the Land Act," said Mr, Tener, "and
I had voluntarily thrown off a lot of arrears, so I looked at him
quietly and said, 'Mickey, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You have
been very well treated, and you can perfectly well pay your rent. Your
wife would be ashamed of you if she knew you were trying to get out of
it.'"

"Ah no, your honour!" he briskly replied; "indade she would approve it.
If you won't discover on me, I'll tell you the truth. It was the wife
herself, she's a great schollard, and reads the papers, that tould me
not to pay you more than half the rent--for she says there's a new Act
coming to wipe it all out. Will you take the half-year?"

"No, I will not. Don't be afraid of your wife, but pay what you owe,
like a man. You've got the money there in your pocket."

This was a good shot. Mickey couldn't resist it, and his countenance
broke into a broad smile.

"Ah no! I've got it in two pockets. Begorra, it was the wife herself
made up the money in two parcels, and she put one into each pocket, to
be sure--and I wasn't to give your honour but one, if you would take it.
But there's the money, and I daresay it's all for the best."

On another occasion, when he was collecting the rents of a property in
the county of Longford, one tenant came forward as the spokesman of the
rest, admitted that the rents had been accepted fairly after a reduction
under the Land Act, expressed the general wish of the tenants to meet
their obligations, and wound up by asking a further abatement, "the
times were so bad, and the money couldn't be got, it couldn't indeed!"

Mr. Tener listened patiently--to listen patiently is the most essential
quality of an agent in Ireland--and finally said:--

"Very well, if you haven't got the money to pay in full, pay
three-quarters of it, and I'll give you time for the rest."

"Thank your honour!" said Pat, "and that'll be thirty pounds--and here
it is in one pound notes, and hard enough to get they are, these times!"

So Mr. Tener took the money, counted the notes twice over, and then,
writing out a receipt, handed it to the tenant.

"All right, Pat, there's your receipt for thirty-nine pounds, and I'm
glad to see ten-pound notes going about the country in these hard
times!"

By mistake the "distressful" orator had put one ten-pound note into his
parcel! He took his receipt, and went off without a word. But the
combination to get an "abatement" broke down then and there, and the
other tenants came forward and put down their money.

These incidents occurred to Mr. Tener himself. Not less amusing and
instructive was a similar mistake on a larger scale made by an
over-crafty tenant in dealing with one of Mr. Tener's friends a few
years ago in the county of Leitrim. This tenant, whom we will call
Denis, was the fugleman also of a combination. He was a cattle dealer as
well as a farmer, and having spent a couple of hours in idly eloquent
attempts to bring about a general abatement of the rents, he lost his
patience.

"Ah, well, your honour!" he said, "I can't stay here all day talking
like these men, I must go to the fair at Boyle. Will you take a
deposit-receipt of the bank for ten pounds and give me the pound change?
that'll just be the nine pounds for the half-year's rent. But all the
same, yer honour, those men are all farmers, and it's not out of the
farm at all I made the ten pounds, it's out of the dealing!"

"But you couldn't deal without a farm, Denis, for the stock," said the
agent, as he glanced at the receipt. He hastily turned it over, and went
on, "Just indorse the receipt, and I'll consider your proposition."

The receipt was indorsed, and at once taken off by the agent's clerk to
the bank to bring back pound-notes for it, while the agent quietly
proceeded to fill out the regular form of receipt for a full year's
rent, eighteen pounds. Denis noted what he supposed of course to be the
agent's blunder, but like an astute person held his peace. The clerk
came back with the notes. Denis took up his receipt, and the agent
quietly began handing him note after note across the table.

"But, your honour!" exclaimed Denis, "what on earth are ye giving me all
this money for?"

"It's your change," said the agent, quite imperturbably. "You gave me a
bank receipt for one hundred pounds. I have given you a receipt for your
full year's rent, and here are eighty-two pounds in notes, and with it
eighteen shillings in silver--that's five per cent. reduction. I would
have made it ten per cent., only you were so very sharp, first about not
having the money, and then about the full receipt!"

In an instant all eyes were fastened upon Denis. Ichabod! the glory had
departed. The chorus went up from his disenchanted followers:--

"Ah, glory be to God, you were not bright enough for the agent, Denis!"

And so that day the agent made a very full and handsome collection--and
there was a slight reduction in the deposit-accounts of the local bank!

In the evening Mr. Tener gave me the details of some cases of direct
intimidation with the names of the tenants concerned. One man, whose
farm he visited, told him he had paid his rent not long before to the
previous agent. "Well," said Mr. Tener, "show me your receipt!" On this
the tenant said that he dare not keep the receipt about him, nor even in
the house, lest it should be demanded by the emissaries of the League,
who went round to keep the tenants up to the "Plan of Campaign," and
that it was hidden in his stable. And he went out to the stable and
brought it in.

This, he had reason to believe, was not an uncommon case.[12] The same
man, wishing to take a grass farm which the people hoped the agent would
consent to have "cut up" was asked to give two names on a
promissory-note to pay the rent. He demurred to this, and after a parley
said, "Would a certificate do?" upon which he pulled out an old
tobacco-box, and carefully unfolded from it a bank certificate of
deposit for a hundred pounds sterling! This tenant held eleven Irish, or
more than seventeen English, acres, and his yearly rent was L11, 16s.
6d.

The people before this agitation began were generally quiet, thrifty,
and industrious. They were great sheep-raisers. An old law of the Irish
Parliament had exempted sheep, but not cattle or crops, from distraint,
with an eye to encouraging the woollen interest in Ireland.

As to the sale of tenant-right in Ireland, he told me a curious story.
One woman, a widow, whom he named, owed two year' rent on a holding in
Ulster at L4 a year. She was abundantly able to pay, but for her own
reasons preferred to be evicted, and, finally, by an understanding with
him, offered her tenant-right for sale. A man who had made money in
iron-mines in the County of Durham was a bidder, and finally offered
L240 for the holding. It was knocked down to him. He then saw the agent,
who told him he had paid too much. The woman was then appealed to, and
she admitted that the agent was right. But it was shown that others had
offered L200, and the woman finally agreed to take, and received, that
amount in gold, being fifty years' purchase!

CHAPTER X.

DUBLIN, _Thursday, March 1._--This has been a crowded day. I left
Portumna very early on a car with Mr. Tener, intending to visit the
scene of his latest collision with the "National" government of Ireland,
on my way to Loughrea. It was a bright spring morning, more like April
in Italy than like March in America, and the country is full of natural
beauty. We made our first halt at the derelict house of Martin Kenny,
one of the "victims" of the famous "Woodford evictions," so called, as I
have said, because Woodford is the nearest town.[13] The eviction here
took place October 21st, 1887. The house has been dismantled by the
neighbours since that time, each man carrying off a door, or a shutter,
or whatever best suited him. One of the constables who followed us as
Mr. Tener's body-guard had been present at the eviction. He came into
the house with us, and very graphically described the performance. The
house was still full of heavy stones taken into it, partly to block the
entrances, and partly as ammunition; and trunks of trees used as
_chevaux defrise_ still protruded through the door and the window. These
trees had been cut down by the garrison in the woodlands here and there
all over the property. I asked if the law in Ireland punished
depredations of this sort, and was informed that trees planted by
tenants, if registered by them within a certain time, are the property
of the tenants. This would astonish our landlords in America, where the
tenant who sticks so much as a sunflower into his garden-patch makes a
present of it to his landlord.[14]

I asked if the place made a long defence. Mr. Tener and the constable
both laughed, and the former told me that when the storming party
arrived shortly after daybreak, they found the house garrisoned only by
some small boys, who had been left there to keep watch. The men were
fast asleep at some other place. The small boys ran away as fast as
possible to give the alarm, but the police went in, and in a jiffey
pulled to pieces the elaborate defences prepared to repel them. Father
Coen, the constable said, got to Kenny's house an hour after it was all
over, with a mob of people howling and groaning. But the work had been
done, and other work also at the Castle of Cloondadauv, to which we next
drove.

This place takes its truly awe-inspiring name from a ruined Norman tower
standing on a picturesque promontory of no great height, which juts out
into the lovely lake here made by the Shannon. At no great expense this
tower might be so restored as to make an ideal fishing-box. It now
simply adorns the holding formerly occupied by Mr. John Stanislaus
Burke, a former tenant of Lord Clanricarde. The story of its capture on
the 17th of September is worth telling.

Some days before the evictions were to come off, a meeting was held at
Woodford or Loughrea, at which one of the speakers, the patriotic Dr.
Tully, rather incautiously and exultingly told his hearers that the
defence in 1886 of the tenant's house known as "Fort Saunders" had been
a grand and gallant affair indeed, but that next time "the exterminators
would have to storm a castle"!

This put Mr. Tener at once on the alert, and as Mr. Burke of Cloondadauv
was set down for eviction, it didn't require much cogitation to fix upon
the fortress destined to be "stormed." So he set about the campaign. The
County Inspector of the constabulary, who had made a secret
reconnaissance, reported that he found the place too strong to be taken
if defended, except "by artillery." So it was determined to take it by
surprise.

When the previous evictions were made, the agent and the public forces
had marched from Portumna by the highway to Woodford, so that, of
course, their advent was announced by the scouts and sentinels of the
League from hill to hill long before they reached the scene of action,
and abundant time was given to the agitators for organising a
"reception." Mr. Tener profited by the experience of his predecessors.
He contrived to get his force of constabulary through the town of
Portumna without attracting any popular attention. And as early rising
is not a popular virtue here, he resolved to steal a march on the
defenders of Cloondadauv.

He had brought up certain large boats to Portumna, and put them on the
lake. Rousing his men before dawn, he soon had them all embarked, and on
their way swiftly and silently by the river and the lake to Cloondadauv.
They reached the promontory by daybreak, and as soon as the hour of
legal action had arrived they were landed, and surrounded the "castle."
The ancient portal was found to be blocked with heavy stones and trunks
of trees, nor did any adit appear to be available, till a young
gentleman who had accompanied the party as a volunteer, discovered in
one wall of the tower, at some little height from the ground, the vent
of one of those conduits not infrequently found running down through the
walls of old castles, which were used sometimes as waste-ways for
rubbish from above, and sometimes to receive water-pipes from below.
Looking up into this vent, he saw a rope hanging free within it. Upon
this he hauled resolutely, and finding it firmly attached above, came to
the conclusion that it must have been fixed there by the garrison as a
means of access to the interior.

Like an adventurous young tar, he bade his comrades stand by, and nimbly
"swarmed" up the rope, without thought or care of what might await him
at the top. In a few moments his shouts from above proclaimed the
capture of the stronghold. It was absolutely deserted; the garrison,
confident that no attack would that day be made, had gone off to the
nearest village. The interior of the castle was found filled with
munitions of war, in the shape of huge beams and piles of stones
laboriously carried up the winding stairs, and heaped on all the
landing-places in readiness for use. On the flat roof of the castle was
established a sort of furnace for heating water or oil, to be poured
down upon the besiegers; and crowbars lay there in readiness to loosen
out and dislodge the battlements, and topple them over upon the
assailants.

The officers soon made their way all over the building, and thence
proceeded to the residence of Mr. Burke near by, a large and very
commodious house. All the formalities were gone through with, a
detachment of policemen was put in charge, and the rest of the forces
set out on their return to Portumna, before the organised "defenders" of
Cloondadauv, hastily called out of their comfortable beds or from their
breakfast-tables had realised the situation, and got the populace into
motion. A mass meeting was held in the neighbourhood, and many speeches
were made. But the castle and the farm-house and the holding all remain
in the hands of a cool, quiet, determined-looking young Ulsterman, who
tells me that he is getting on very well, and feels quite able with his
police-guard to protect himself. "Once in a while," he said, "they come
here from Loughrea with English Parliament-men, and stand outside of the
gate, and call me 'Clanricarde's dog,' and make like speeches at me; but
I don't mind them, and they see it, and go away again."

Of Mr. Burke, the evicted tenant here, Mr. Crawford, the Protestant
clergyman at Portumna, told me that he was abundantly able to pay his
rent. The whole debt for which Burke was evicted was L115; and Mr.
Crawford said he had himself offered Burke L300 for the holding. Burke
would have gladly taken this, but "the League wouldn't let him." When
his right was put up for sale at Galway for L5, he did not dare to buy
it in, and he is now living with his wife and children on the League
funds. Lord Clanricarde's agent offered to take him back and restore his
right if he would pay what he owed; but he dared not accept. This farm
comprises over one hundred and ten English acres, which Burke held at a
rent--fixed by the Land Court--of L77, the valuation for taxes being
L83.

To call the eviction of such a tenant in such circumstances from such a
holding a "sentence of death," is making ducks and drakes of the English
language. Mr. Crawford's opinion, founded upon a thorough personal
knowledge of the region, is that there is no exceptional distress in
this part of Ireland, and that over-renting has nothing to do with such
distress as does exist here. The case of a man named Egan, one of the
"victims" of the Woodford evictions of 1886, certainly bears out this
view of the matter. Egan, who was a tenant, not at all of Lord
Clanricarde, but of a certain Mrs. Lewis, had occupied for twenty years
a holding of about sixteen Irish acres, or more than twenty English
acres. This he held at a yearly rental of L8, 15s., being 9d. over the
valuation.

In August 1886 he was evicted for refusing to pay one year's rent then
due. At that time the crops standing on the land were valued by him at
L60, 13s. He also owned six beasts. In other words, this man, when he
was called upon to pay a debt of L8, 15s. had in his own possession,
beside the valuable tenant-right of his holding, more than a hundred
pounds sterling of merchantable assets. He refused to pay, and he was
evicted.

This was in August 1886. But such are the ideas now current in Ireland
as to the relations of landlord and tenant, that immediately after his
eviction Egan sent his daughter to gather some cabbages off the farm as
if nothing had happened. The Emergency men in charge actually objected,
and sent the damsel away. Thereupon Egan, on the 6th of September,
served a legal notice on Mrs. Lewis, his landlady, requiring her either
to let him take all the crops on the farm, or to pay him their value,
estimated by him, as I have said, at L60, 13s. Two days after this, on
the 8th of September, more than a hundred men came to the place by night
and removed the greater portion of the crops. Not wishing a return of
these visitors, Mrs. Lewis, on the 16th of September, sent word to Egan
to come and take away what was left of the crops; one of the horses
employed in the nocturnal harvest of September 8th having been seized by
the police and identified as belonging to Egan. Egan did not respond;
but in July 1887 he brought an action against his landlady to recover
L100 sterling for her "detention of his goods," and her "conversion of
the same to her own use "!

The case was heard by the Recorder at Kilmainham, and the facts which I
have briefly recited were established by the evidence. The daughter of
this extraordinary "victim" Egan appeared as a witness, so "fashionably
dressed" as to attract a remark on the subject from the defendant's
counsel. To this she replied that "her brothers in America sent her
money."

"If your brothers in America sent you money for such purposes," not
unnaturally observed the Recorder, "why did they allow your father to
sacrifice crops worth L60 for the non-payment of L8, 15s.?"

"They were tired of that," said the young lady airily; "the land wasn't
worth the rent!"

That is to say, a farm which yielded a crop of L60, and pastured several
head of cattle, was not worth L8, 15s. a year. Certainly it was not
worth L8, 15s. a year if the tenant under the operation of the existing
or the impending laws of Great Britain in Ireland could get, or hope to
get it for the half of that rent, or for no rent at all.

But this being thus, on what grounds are the rest of mankind invited to
regard this excellent man as a "victim" worthy of sympathy and of
material aid? How had he come to be in arrears of a year in August 1886?
The proceedings at Kilmainham tell us this.

In November 1885 he had demanded, with other tenants of Mrs. Lewis, a
reduction of 50 per cent. This would have given him his holding at a
rental of L4, 7s. 6d. Mrs. Lewis refused the concession, and a month
afterwards an attempt was made to blow up her son's house with dynamite.
Between that time and August 1886, all the efforts of her son, who was
also her agent, to collect her dues by seizing beasts, were defeated by
the driving away of the cattle, so that no remedy but an eviction was
left to her. I take it for granted that Mrs. Lewis had a family to
maintain, and debts of one sort and another to pay, as well as Mr.
Egan--but I observe this material difference between her position and
his during the whole of this period of "strained relations" between
herself and her tenant, that whereas she lay completely out of the
enjoyment of the rent due her, being the interest on her capital,
represented in her title to the land, Mr. Egan remained in the complete
enjoyment and use of the land. Clearly the tenant was in a better
position than the landlord, and as we are dealing not with the history
of Ireland in the past, but with the condition of Ireland at present, it
appears to me to be quite beside the purpose to ask my sympathies for
Mr. Egan on the ground that a century or half a century ago the
ancestors of Mr. Egan may have been at the mercy of the ancestors of
Mrs. Lewis. However that may have been, Mr. Egan seems to me now to have
had legally much the advantage of Mrs. Lewis. Not only this. Both
legally and materially Mr. Egan, the tenant-farmer at Woodford, seems to
me to have had much the advantage of thousands of his countrymen living
and earning their livelihood by their daily labour in such a typical
American commonwealth, for example, as Massachusetts. I have here with
me the Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics of
Massachusetts. From this I learn that in 1876 the average yearly wages
earned by workmen in Massachusetts were $482.72, or in round numbers
something over L96. Out of this amount the Massachusetts workman had to
feed, clothe, and house himself, and those dependent on him.

His outlay for rent alone was on the average $109.07, or in round
numbers rather less than L22, making 22-1/2 per cent, of his earnings.

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