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

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Mr. Kavanagh, after serving the office of High Sheriff thirty years ago,
first for Kilkenny, and then for Carlow, sat in Parliament for fourteen
years, from 1866 to 1880, as an Irish county member. He has a very large
property here in Carlow, and property also in Wexford, and in Kilkenny,
and was sworn into the Privy Council two years ago. If the personal
interests and the family traditions of any man alive can be said to be
rooted in the Irish soil, this is certainly true of his interests and
his traditions. How can the peace and prosperity of Ireland be served by
a state of things which condemns an Irishman of such ties and such
training to expend his energies and his ability in defending the
elementary right of Paddy O'Rourke to take stock and work a ten-acre
farm on terms that suit himself and his landlord?

In the afternoon we took a delightful walk through the woods, Mr.
Kavanagh going with us on horseback. Every hill and clump of trees on
this large domain he knows, and he led us like a master of woodcraft
through all manner of leafy byways to the finest points of view. The
Barrow flows past Borris, making pictures at every turn, and the banks
on both sides are densely and beautifully wooded. We came in one place
upon a sawmill at work in the forest, and Mr. Kavanagh showed us with
pride the piles of excellent timber which he turns out here. But he took
a greater pride in a group, sacred from the axe, of really magnificent
Scotch firs, such as I had certainly not expected to find in Ireland.
Nearer the mansion are some remarkable Irish yews. The gardens are of
all sorts and very extensive, but we found the head-gardener bitterly
lamenting the destruction by a fire in one of the conservatories of more
than six thousand plants just prepared for setting out.

There are many curious old books and papers here, and a student of early
Irish history might find matter to keep him well employed for a long
time in this region. It was from this region and the race which ruled
it, of which race Mr. Kavanagh is the actual representative, that the
initiative came of the first Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. Strongbow
made what, from the Anglo-Norman point of view, was a perfectly
legitimate bargain, with a dispossessed prince to help him to the
recovery of his rights on the understanding that these rights, when
recovered, should pass in succession to himself through the only
daughter of the prince, whom he proposed to marry. It does not appear
that Strongbow knew, or that Dermot MacMorrogh cared to tell him, how
utterly unlike the rights of an Anglo-Norman prince were those of the
elective life-tenant of an Irish principality. FitzStephen, the son by
her second marriage of Nesta, the Welsh royal mistress of Henry
Beauclerk, and his cousin, Maurice Fitzgerald, the leaders into Ireland
of the Geraldines, were no more clear in their minds about this than
Strongbow, and it is to the original muddle thus created that Professor
Richey doubtless rightly refers the worst and most troublesome
complications of the land question in Ireland. The distinction between
the King's lieges and the "mere Irish," for example, is unquestionably a
legal distinction, though it is continually and most mischievously used
as if it were a proof of the race-hatred borne by the Normans and Saxons
in Ireland from the first against the Celts. The O'Briens, the O'Neills,
the O'Mullaghlins, the O'Connors, and the M'Morroghs, "the five bloods,"
as they are called, were certainly Celts, but whether in virtue of their
being, or claiming to be, the royal races respectively of Minister, of
Ulster, of Meath, of Connaught, and of Leinster, or from whatever other
reason, these races were "within the king's law," and were never "mere
Irish" from the first planting of the Anglo-Norman power in Ireland. The
case of a priest, Shan O'Kerry, "an Irish enemy of the king," presented
"contrary to the form of statute" to the vicarage of Lusk, in the reign
of Edward IV. (1465), illustrates this. An Act of Parliament was passed
to declare the aforesaid "Shan O'Kerry," or "John of Kevernon," to be
"English born, and of English nation," and that he might "hold and enjoy
the said benefice."

There is a genealogy here of the M'Morroghs and Kavanaghs, most
gorgeously and elaborately gotten up many years ago for Mr. Kavanagh's
grandfather, which shows how soon the Norman and the native strains of
blood become commingled. When one remembers how much Norman blood must
have gone even into far-off Connaught when King John, in the early part
of the thirteenth century, coolly gave away that realm of the O'Connors
to the De Burgos, and how continually the English of the Pale fled from
the exactions inflicted upon them by their own people, and sought refuge
"among the savage and mere Irish," one cannot help thinking that the"
Race Question" has been "worked for at least all it is worth" by
philosophers bent on unravelling the 'snarl' of Irish affairs. If this
genealogy may be trusted, there was little to choose between the ages
which immediately preceded and the ages which followed the Anglo-Norman
invasion in the matter of respect for human life. Celtic chiefs and
Norman knights "died in their boots" as regularly as frontiersmen in
Texas. One personage is designated in the genealogy as "the murderer,"
for the truly Hibernian reason, so far as appears, that he was himself
murdered while quite a youth, and before he had had a chance to murder
more than three or four of his immediate relatives. It was as if the son
of Geoffrey Plantagenet and the Lady Constance should be branded in
history as "Arthur, the Assassin."

BORRIS, _March 4th._--This is a staunch Protestant house, and Mr.
Kavanagh himself reads a Protestant service every morning. But there is
little or nothing apparently in this part of Ireland of the bitter
feeling about and against the Catholics which exists in the North. A
very lively and pleasant Catholic gentleman came in to-day informally
and joined the house party at luncheon. We all walked out over the
property afterwards, visiting quite a different region from that which
we saw yesterday--different but equally beautiful and striking, and this
Catholic gentleman cited several cases which had fallen within his own
knowledge of priests who begin to feel their moral control of the people
slipping away from them through the operation of the "Plan of Campaign."
I told him what I had heard in regard to one such priest from my
ecclesiastical friend in Cork. "It does not surprise me at all," he
said, "and, indeed, I not very long ago read precisely such another
letter from a priest in a somewhat similar position. I read it with pain
and shame as a Catholic," he continued, "for it was simply a complete
admission that the priest, although entirely convinced that his
parishioners were making most unfair demands upon their landlord to whom
the letter was addressed, felt himself entirely powerless to bring them
to a sense of their misconduct." "Had this priest given in his adhesion
to the Plan of Campaign?" I asked. "Yes," was the reply, "and it was
this fact which had broken his hold on the people when he tried to bring
them to abandon their attitude under the Plan. His letter was really
nothing more nor less than an appeal to the landlord, and that landlord
a Protestant, to help him to get out of the hole into which he had put
himself."

Of the tenants and their relation to the village despots who administer
the Plan of Campaign, this gentleman had many stories also to tell of
the same tenor with all that I have hitherto heard on this subject.
Everywhere it is the same thing. The well-to-do and well-disposed
tenants are coerced by the thriftless and shiftless. "I have the
agencies of several properties," he said, "and in some of the best parts
of Ireland. I have had little or no trouble on any of them, for I have
one uniform method. I treat every tenant as if he were the only man I
had to deal with, study his personal ways and character, humour him, and
get him on my side against himself. You can always do this with an
Irishman if you will take the trouble to do it. Within the past years I
have had tenants come and tell me they were in fear the Plan of Campaign
would be brought upon them, just as if it were a kind of potato disease,
and beg me to agree to take the rent from them in that case, and just
not discover on them that they had paid it before it was due!"

This gentleman is a pessimist as to the future. "I am a youngish man
still," he said, "and a single man, and I am glad of it. I don't believe
the English will ever learn how to govern this country, and I am sure it
can never govern itself. Would your people make a State of it?"

To this I replied that with Cuba and Canada and Mexico, all still to be
digested and assimilated, I thought the deglutition of Ireland by the
great Republic must be remitted to a future much too remote to interest
either of us.

"I suppose so," he said in a humorously despondent tone; "and so I see
nothing for people who think as I do, but Australia or New Zealand!"

Mr. Kavanagh sees the future, I think, in colouring not quite so dark.
As a public man, familiar for years with the method and ways of British
Parliaments, he seems to regard the possible future legislation of
Westminster with more anxiety and alarm than the past or present
agitations in Ireland. The business of banishing political economy to
Jupiter and Saturn, however delightful it may be to the people who make
laws, is a dangerous one to the people for whom the laws are made. While
he has very positive opinions as to the wisdom of the concession made in
the successive Land Acts for Ireland, which have been passed since 1870,
he is much less disquieted, I think, by those concessions, than by the
spirit by which the legislation granting them has been guided. He thinks
great good has been already done by Mr. Balfour, and that much more good
will be done by him if the Irish people are made to feel that clamorous
resistance to the law will no longer be regarded at Westminster as a
sufficient reason for changing the law. That is as much as to say that
party spirit in Great Britain is the chief peril of Ireland to-day. And
how can any Irishman, no matter what his state in his own country may
be, or his knowledge of Irish affairs, or his patriotic earnestness and
desire for Irish prosperity, hope to control the tides of party spirit
in England or Scotland?

Of the influence upon the people in Ireland of the spirit of recent
legislation for Ireland, the story of the troubles on the O'Grady
estate, as Mr. Kavanagh tells it to me, is a most striking illustration.
"The O'Grady of Kilballyowen," as his title shows, is the direct
representative, not of any Norman invader, but of an ancient Irish race.
The O'Gradys were the heads of a sept of the "mere Irish"; and if there
be such a thing--past, present, or future--as an "Irish nation," the
place of the O'Gradys in that nation ought to be assumed. Mr. Thomas De
Courcy O'Grady, who now wears the historic designation, owns and lives
on an estate of a little more than 1000 acres, in the Golden Vein of
Ireland, at Killmallock, in the county of Limerick. The land is
excellent, and for the last half-century certainly it has been let to
the tenants at rents which must be considered fair, since they have
never been raised. In 1845, two years before the great famine, the
rental was L2142. This rental was paid throughout the famine years
without difficulty; and in 1881 the rental stood at L2108.

There has never been an eviction on the estate until last year, when six
tenants were evicted. All of these lived in good comfortable houses, and
were prosperous dairy-farmers. Why were they evicted?

In October 1886, during the candidacy at New York of the Land Reformer,
Mr. George, Mr. Dillon, M.P., propounded the "Plan of Campaign" at
Portumna in Galway. The March rents being then due on the estate of The
O'Grady in Limerick, his agent, Mr. Shine, was directed to continue the
abatements of 15 per cent, on the judicial rents, and of 25 per cent, on
all other rents, which had been cheerfully accepted in 1885. But there
was a priest at Kilballyowen, Father Ryan, who wrought upon the tenants
until they demanded a general abatement of 40 per cent. This being
refused, they asked for 30 per cent. on the judicial rents, and 40 per
cent. on the others. This also being refused, Father Ryan had his way,
and the "Plan of Campaign" was adopted. The O'Grady's writs issued
against several of the tenants were met by a "Plan of Campaign" auction
of cattle at Herbertstown in December 1886, the returns of which were
paid into "the Fund." For this, one of the tenants, Thomas Moroney, who
held, besides a a farm of 37 Irish acres, a "public," and five small
houses, at Herbertstown, and the right to the tolls on cattle at the
Herbertstown farm, valued at from L50 to L60 a year, and who held all
these at a yearly rent of L85, was proceeded against. Judge Boyd
pronounced him a bankrupt.

In the spring of 1887, after The O'Grady had been put to great costs and
trouble, the tenants made a move. They offered to accept a general
abatement of 17-1/2 per cent., "The O'Grady to pay all the costs."

Here is the same story again of the small solicitors behind the "Plan of
Campaign" promoting the strife, and counting on the landlords to defray
the charges of battle!

The O'Grady responded with the following circular:--

KlLLBALLYOWEN, BRUFF, CO. LlMERICK,

_13th August 1877_.

To my Tenants on Kilballyowen and Herbertstown Estate, Co.
Limerick.

MY FRIENDS,--Pending the evictions by the Sheriff on my estate,
caused by your refusal to pay judicial rents on offers of liberal
abatements, I desire to remind you of the following facts:--

I am a resident landlord; my ancestors have dwelt amongst you for
over 400 years; every tenant is personally known to me, and the
most friendly relations have always existed between us.

I am not aware of there ever having been an eviction by the Sheriff
on my estate.

Farming myself over 400 acres, and my late agent (Mr. Shine), a
tenant farmer living within four miles of my property, I have every
opportunity of realising and knowing your wants.

On the passing of the Land Act of 1881, I desired you to have any
benefit it could afford you, and as you nearly all held under
lease--which precluded you from going into court--I intimated to
you my wish, and offered you to allow your lands to be valued at my
expense, or to let you go into court and get your rents fixed by
the sub-commissioners.

You elected to have a valuation made, and Mr. Edmond Moroney was
agreed on as a land-valuer, possessing the confidence of tenants
and landlord.

I may mention, up to then I had not known Mr. Moroney personally.

In 1883 Mr. Moroney valued your holdings, and, as a result, his
valuation was accepted (except in three or four cases), and
judicial agreements signed by you, at rents ascertained by Mr.
Moroney's valuation.

The late Patrick Hogan objected to Mr. Moroney's valuation of his
farm, and went into court, and had his rent fixed by the County
Court Judge.

Thomas Moroney would not allow Mr. Edmond Moroney to value his
holding, nor would he go into court, his reason no doubt being he
should disclose the receipts of the amount of the tolls of the
fairs.

The rents were subsequently paid on Mr. Moroney's valuation with
punctuality.

In 1885, recognising the fall in prices of stock and produce, and
at the request of my late agent, Mr. Shine, I directed him to allow
you 15 per cent. on all judicial rents, or rents abated on Mr.
Moroney's valuation, and 25 per cent. on all other rents, when you
paid punctually and with thanks.

In October last, when calling in the March 1886 rents, at the
instance of Mr. Shine, I agreed to continue the abatement of 15 per
cent, and 25 per cent., which, when intimated to you, were refused,
and a meeting held, demanding an all-round abatement of 40 per
cent.

This I considered unreasonable and unjust, and I refused to give
it.

The Plan of Campaign was then most unjustly adopted on the estate,
and you refused to pay your rents.

Thomas Moroney was elected as a test case to try the legality of
the sale and removal of your property to avoid payment of your
rent. His tenancy was a mixed holding of house property in the
village of Herbertstown, the tolls of the fairs, and 37 acres of
land, at a rent of L85, and a Poor-Law valuation of L73, 5s., made
as follows:--

Land valued at L42 5 0
Tolls of fair at 17 0 0
Public house and yard at 11 0 0
Five small houses and forge at 3 0 0
--------
L73 5 0

I always was led to believe the tolls of the fair averaged from L50
to L60 a year, there being four fairs in the year; and I believe
his reason for refusing to allow Mr. E. Moroney to value his
holding, or to go into court, was that he should disclose the
amount of the tolls, and in consequence I never considered he was
entitled to any abatement; but still I gave it to him, and was
prepared to do so. The result of his case was that his conduct in
making away with his property was unjustifiable, and his farm and
holding was sold out for the benefit of his creditors, and he is no
longer a tenant on the estate.

I subsequently took proceedings against six other tenants, who
refused payment of rent, and removed their cattle off the land to
avoid payment, and having got judgment against them, the Sheriff
sold out four of their farms, and writs of possession on the title
were taken out against them, and are now lodged with the Sheriff
for execution. I have also got judgments for possession against two
other tenants for non-payment of rent, also lodged with the
Sheriff. One the widow of Patrick Hogan, who got his rent fixed in
the County Court, and the other Mrs. Denis Ryan, whose farm on her
marriage I assented to be put in settlement for her protection, Mr.
Shine, my agent, consenting to act as one of her trustees, whose
name, with his co-trustee, Mr. Thomas FitzGerald, appear as
defendants, they having signed her judicial agreement.

The following are the names of the above tenants, the extent of
their holdings, the rent, the Poor-Law valuation, and the average
rent per Irish acre:--

+------------------+------------+-------------+---------+-----------+
| | Acreage in | Judicial | Rent | |
| TENANT. | Irish | Rent Less 20| per | Poor Law |
| | Measure. | per cent. | acre[A]| Valuation |
+------------------+------------+-------------+---------+-----------+
| | A. R. P. | L s. d. | | L s. d. |
|John Carroll, | 87 3 38 | 132 4 0 | 30/- | 127 10 0 |
|Honora Crimmins, | 35 0 27 | 64 5 6 | 36/6 | 52 15 0 |
|James Baggott, | 18 0 0 | 37 16 10 | 42/- | 22 5 0 |
|Margaret Moloney, | 23 2 9 | 46 2 8 | 39/2 | 44 15 0 |
|Mrs. Denis Ryan, | 66 2 3 | 93 2 5 | 28/- | 96 0 0 |
|Maryanne Hogan, | 53 2 33 | 112 0 0 | 41/8 | 117 15 0 |
| +------------+-------------+---------+-----------+
| | 294 3 30 | 485 11 5 | ... | 461 0 0 |
+------------------+------------+-------------+---------+-----------+

[A] Rent per Irish acre after abatement of 20 per cent.

This represents an average of 34s. the Irish acre, for some of the
best land in Ireland, and shows a difference of only L24, 11s. 5d.
between the rent, less 20 per cent. now offered, and Poor-Law
valuation.

After putting me to the cost of these proceedings, and giving me
every opposition and annoyance, amongst such, compelling my agent
(by threats of boycotting) to resign, boycotting myself and
household, preventing my servants from attending chapel, and
driving my labourers away, negotiations for a settlement were
opened, and you offered to accept an all-round abatement of 17-1/2
per cent. and to pay up one year's rent, provided I paid all costs,
including the costs in Moroney's case; this of course I refused,
but with a desire to aid you in coming to a settlement, and to
prevent the loss to the tenants of the farms under eviction on the
Title, I offered to allow the 17-1/2 per cent. all round on payment
of one year's rent and costs, and to give time for payment of the
costs as stated in my Solicitor's letter of the 2d June 1887 to
Canon Scully.

This offer was refused, and the writs for possession have been
lodged with the Sheriff.

I never commenced these proceedings in a vindictive spirit, or with
any desire to punish any of you for your ungracious conduct, but
simply to protect my property from unjust and unreasonable demands.

You will owe two years' rent next month (September), and I now
write you this circular letter to point out to each, individually,
the position of the tenants under eviction, and even at this late
hour to give them an opportunity of saving their holdings, to
enable them to do so, and with a view to settlement, I am now
prepared to allow 20 per cent. all round, on payment of a year's
rent and costs.

Under no circumstance will I forego payment of costs, as they must
be paid in full.

If this money be paid forthwith, I will arrange with my brother,
the purchaser, to restore the four holdings purchased by him at
sheriff's sale to the late tenants.

After this offer I disclaim any responsibility for the result of
the evictions, and the loss attendant thereon, as it now remains
with you to avert same.

All the evictions have since been carried out, and the Land Corporation
men are at work upon the estate! Whom has all this advantaged? The
tenants?--Certainly not. The O'Grady?--Certainly not. The peace and
order of Ireland?--Certainly not. But it has given the National League
another appeal to the intelligent "sympathies" of England and America.
It has strengthened the revolutionary element in Irish society. It has
"driven another nail into the coffin" of Irish landlordism and of the
private ownership of land throughout Great Britain.

Such at least is the opinion of Mr. Kavanagh. If I were an Englishman or
a Scotchman, I should be strongly inclined to take very serious account
of this opinion in forecasting the future of landed property in England
or Scotland.

CHAPTER XII.

GREENANE HOUSE, THOMASTOWN, _March 5th._--The breakfast-room at Borris
this morning was gay with pink coats. A meet was to come off at a place
between Borris and Thomastown, and bidding fare-well to my cordial host
and hostess, I set out at 11 o'clock for a flying visit to this quaint
and charming house of Mr. Seigne, one of the best known and most highly
esteemed agents in this part of Ireland.

My jarvey from Borris had an unusually neat and well-balanced car. When
I praised it he told me it was "built by an American," not an Irish
American, I understood him to say, but a genuine Yankee, who, for some
mysterious reason, has established himself in this region, where he has
prospered as a cart and car builder ever since. "Just the best cars in
all Ireland he builds, your honour!" Why don't he naturalise them in
America?

All the way was charming, the day very bright, and even warm, and the
hill scenery picturesque at every turn. We looked out sharply for the
hunt, but in vain. My jarvey, who knew the whole country, said they must
have broken cover somewhere on the upper road, and we should miss them
entirely. And so we did.

The silting up of the river Nore has reduced Thomastown or
Ballymacanton, which was its Irish name, from its former importance as
an emporium for the country about Kilkenny. The river now is not
navigable above Inistiogue. But two martial square towers, one at either
end of a fine bridge which spans the stream here, speak of the good old
times when the masters of Thomastown took toll and tribute of traders
and travellers. The lands about the place then belonged to the great
monastery of Jerpoint, the ruins of which are still the most interesting
of their kind in this part of Ireland. They have long made a part of the
estate of the Butlers. We rattled rapidly through the quiet little town,
and whisking out of a small public square into a sort of wynd between
two houses, suddenly found ourselves in the precincts of Grenane House.
The house takes its name from the old castle of Grenane, an Irish
fortress established here by some native despot long before Thomas
Fitz-Anthony the Norman came into the land. The ruins of this castle
still stand some half a mile away. "We call the place Candahar," said
Mr. Seigne, as he came up with two ladies from the meadows below the
house, "because you come into it so suddenly, just as you do into that
Oriental town." But what a charming occidental place it is! It stands
well above the river, the slope adorned with many fine old trees, some
of which grow, and grow prosperously, in the queerest and most
improbable forms, bent double, twisted, but still most green and
vigorous. They have no business under any known theory of arboriculture
to be beautiful, but beautiful they are. The views of the bridge, of the
towers, and of the river, from this slope would make the fortune of the
place in a land of peace and order.

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