The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent Part 38

At that time two-thirds of the poor-rate was paid by the landlord. When the tenancy was over 4 a year, they had to allow each tenant half the rate he paid; when it was under this sum, they had to pay the whole of it, and, of course, all the rates for land in their own occupation.

Thus the Board of Guardians were utilising the money of the landlords in order to remunerate the men who were robbing them of their property.

If a tenant--who generally had some money--was evicted, a notice was served on the relieving officer to provide him with a conveyance, in which he was taken to the poorhouse; but if a farmer evicted a labourer--who had, perhaps, nothing but the suit of clothes in which he stood up--he was allowed to walk to the poorhouse as best he might, and, when he got there, he obtained no special relief.

It is true that the pa.s.sing of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act offered another opportunity to the Government for striking a severe blow, but it was frittered away, although, before it became law, many of the leaders of disorder left the country, dreading its provisions.

Instead, the isolated arrests revealed that the criminals were provided with special accommodation and superior fare.

A district officer, asked by Lord Spencer for his views on the Coercion Act, replied:--

'The only coercion I can perceive, your Excellency, is that people accustomed to live on potatoes and milk are forced to feed on salmon and wine.'

The last outrage I intend to mention in this chapter was a very remarkable one.

There was a contest for the chairmans.h.i.+p of the Tralee Board of Guardians. The Land League put forward a candidate who was at the time an inmate of Kilmainham gaol. The landlords, who at this earlier stage still had some power, conceived that the residence of the Home Ruler would not facilitate his control over the Board, and chose a candidate whose abode was not only more adjacent, but whose movements were unfettered.

The voting was even, until Mr. A.E. Herbert came into the room and gave his casting vote against the involuntary tenant of the Kilmainham hostelry. For this he was murdered three days later, and by the crime they hoped to ensure that on the next occasion the landlords would abstain from voting at all.

That murder of Mr. Arthur Herbert on his return from Petty Sessions at Castleisland was one of the worst, and as an exhibition of infernal hatred and vengeance it transcended the murders of Lord Mountmorres and Lord Leitrim. It cannot be denied that Mr. Herbert committed acts of a harsh and overbearing character. He was a turbulent, headstrong man, brave to rashness and foolhardiness, and too fond of proclaiming his contempt for the people by whom he was surrounded. As a magistrate, sitting at Brosna Petty Sessions, he expressed his regret that he was not in command of a force when a riot occurred in that village, when he would have 'skivered the people with buckshot,' language brought under the notice of the Lord Chancellor and the House of Commons.

He was the son of a clergyman, and lived at Killeentierna House with his mother, a venerable old lady over eighty, he being himself forty-five.

His income was estimated at about four hundred a year, and as his relations with tenantry were not harmonious, he never went out without a six-chambered revolver in his pocket. Physically he was very robust--over five feet ten in height, and very corpulent. In his own neighbourhood he always was known as 'Mr. Arthur.'

Leaving Castleisland about five in the afternoon, he was accompanied for about a mile by the head constable, who then turned back. Mr. Herbert had not proceeded a quarter of a mile further when he was felled by the a.s.sa.s.sins. The spot chosen was singularly open, no shelter being visible for some distance. Several shots were heard by a labourer at work in a quarry, and when he came up he found Mr. Herbert lying on his face in the road, quite dead, the earth about him being covered with pools of blood. The body was almost riddled with shot and bullets.

That night a further ill.u.s.tration of the vindictive ferocity of the outrage was given. The lawn in front of Killeentierna was patrolled regularly by some of the large body of police which at once occupied the house. On this lawn eleven lambs were grazing. At half-past two these were seen by the police to be all right. At daybreak the eleven were found stabbed with pitchforks--nine of them killed outright, and two wounded to death. This act, as wretched as it was daring, added a new horror to the crime.

Mr. Herbert's murder was received with such exuberant delight in Kerry that my steward said to me:--

'You would think, sir, that rent was abolished and the duty taken off whisky.'

Constabulary had for a long while to be told off to prevent his grave being desecrated.

That is a pretty tough outrage for optimistic philanthropists to consider when they are addicted to announcing how far our generations have progressed from barbarism.

The price of blood in Kerry was not high. For example, the men that murdered FitzMaurice were paid 5 for the job, and they had never seen him before. His family had to be under police protection for five years, and I managed to get 1000 subscribed for them in England, Mr. Froude taking an enthusiastic and generous interest in a very sad case. The victim left two daughters, who both married policemen.

One young and cheery Kerry landlord was very proud, about 1886, at the price of forty s.h.i.+llings being offered for his life by the Land League, whereas nearly all the others were only valued at half a sovereign apiece.

As a matter of fact, almost any one could have been shot at Castleisland if a sovereign were offered, for they cared no more for human life than for that of a rat. Parnell himself would have been shot by any one of a couple of dozen fellows willing to earn a dishonest living if a five-pound note had been locally put upon his head. A patriotic philanthropist, dest.i.tute of the bowels of compa.s.sion and of every dictate of humanity, might have saved a great deal of undeserved suffering if he had made this donation towards his 'removal'--a pretty euphemism of Land League coinage.

Most of that generation are dead, in gaol, or have emigrated. It would take the deuce of a big sum to tempt any Castleislander to-day to commit murder, except under provocation, and the same improvement is observable all over Ireland. I believe a hundred pounds might be put on the head of the least popular agent or landlord, and he might walk unscathed without police protection.

All that has been set forth in this chapter might be regarded as a heavy indictment of crime and disorder, but I cannot avoid adding one confirmatory piece of evidence, as eloquent as it is accurate. This is the fearful description of the state of Kerry which appears in Judge O'Brien's charge to the Grand Jury at the a.s.sizes, founded, of course, on the report of outrages submitted to him. It is impossible to guess in what stronger words his opinions would have been expressed if the total number of outrages committed had been laid before him; but it is well known that only a few of those committed were reported, as, if the criminals were taken up and identified, the victims would be likely to be shot in revenge, while the guilty persons, tried by a sympathising jury, would obtain acquittal and popular advertis.e.m.e.nt.

The charge was as follows:--

'COLONEL CROSBIE AND GENTLEMEN OF THE GRAND JURY OF KERRY--I requested your permission to defer any observations I was about to make to you, in order that I might have an opportunity of examining certain returns which had been made to me containing materials for forming a judgment upon the state of things in this county of which I was put in possession upon my arrival, and I was desirous of being afforded an opportunity of examining these materials to try if I could discern whether, in the considerable lapse of time that has happened since the last a.s.sizes, I could see any reason to conclude that an improvement had taken place in the state of things that has now so long existed in the County of Kerry, and other counties in the south of Ireland, to try if I could discern whether lapse of time itself, the weariness of that state of things, if the law and influences that lead persons to avoid violations of the law, or to follow the pursuits of industry, had led in the end to any favourable change in the state of things; but I grieve to say that it is not in my power, unfortunately, to announce that any change has taken place. On the contrary, all the means of information that I possess lead to the unhappy conclusion that there is no improvement, but that, on the contrary, there exists, even at this moment, a most extraordinary state of things--a state of things of an unprecedented description--nothing short, in fact, of a state of open war with all forms of authority, and even, I may say without exaggeration, with the necessary inst.i.tutions of civilised life.

'These returns present a picture of the County Kerry such as can hardly be found in any country that has pa.s.sed the confines of natural society and entered upon the duties and relations, and acknowledged the obligations, of civilised life. The law is defeated--perhaps I should rather say, has ceased to exist! Houses are attacked by night and day, even the midnight terror yielding to the noonday anxiety of crime!

Person and life are a.s.sailed! The terrified inmates are wholly unable to do anything to protect themselves, and a state of terror and lawlessness prevails everywhere. Even some persons who possess means of information that are not open to me, profess to discern in the signs of public feeling, in the views of some hope and some fear, the expectation of something about to happen, something reaching far beyond partial, or local, or even agrarian, disturbance, and calculated to create a greater degree of alarm than anything we have witnessed, or anything that has happened.

'When I come to compare the official returns of crime with those of the preceding period, I find that the total number of offences in this county since the last a.s.sizes is somewhat less in number, even considerably less in number, than in the corresponding or the preceding period of the former years. But the diminution of number affords no a.s.surance or ground of improvement at all, because I find that the diminution is accounted for entirely in the cla.s.s of offences that acknowledges to some extent the power and influence of the law, namely, in threatening letters and notices, while the amount of open and actual crime is greater than it was in the former period, showing that there is an increased confidence in impunity, and that menace has given place to the deed. Within not more than ten days from the time that I am now speaking, not less than four examples of midnight invasion of houses in this county have occurred, accompanied with all the usual incidents of disguises and arms, and the firing of shots, and violence threatened or committed; in one instance the outrage having been committed upon the residence of a magistrate of this county, a man living with his family in his home, in the supposed delusive security of domestic life, of law, and respect for social station; and in another instance committed upon a humble man, and encountered, I am glad to say, in that instance, with a brave resistance, giving an example of courage which, if it were widely imitated, many of the evils that this country suffers from would no longer exist.

'I need not dwell upon the most aggravated instance of all which this calendar of crime presents--one that is quite recent, and within the memory of you all--the murder of Cornelius Murphy, a humble man, but one enjoying apparently the confidence and respect of all his neighbours, who had done no harm to any person, who was not conscious of any offence, whose house was invaded at a still early hour of the evening, and before the daylight had departed, by a band of men that is shown to have traversed a considerable distance of country, giving opportunities of recognition to many, and with hardly the pretext of an offence on his part, and in reality with the object of private plunder or private hostility--one of those motives that always take advantage of a state of disturbance in order to gratify private ends--slain in his own house in the presence of his own family. Certain persons, it would appear, have been arrested on a charge of complicity with this crime, and it may be that this cruel and wicked crime may be the means of discovering other crimes, and of leading in the end to the detection, if not to the conviction, of persons who have been connected in them, and those who rest in the supposed confidence of impunity may find the spell broken, may find the light of information to reach them, and may find in the end that the law will be able to prevail; because it must be in the experience of many of you that it is unhappily in the power of a few persons who engage in this system of nightly invasion of houses to multiply themselves, apparently by means of terror and intimidation, although at the same time there can be no doubt that, on account of interval of distances, and for many such reasons, there must be many such combinations in this country, acting entirely independent of each other.

'No person can be at a loss to understand the misery and suffering that arises from a state of crime; but perhaps all persons in the community do not equally understand one form of consequence to material prosperity that results from it. I have before me a doc.u.ment that contains most terribly significant evidence of mischief, alike to all cla.s.ses of the community, that results from crime and a state of social disturbance. I have a return of malicious injuries which form the subject of presentment at these a.s.sizes, in number, I understand, exceeding all former precedent. There are no less than eighty-six presentments, representing all forms of wicked outrage upon property, a tempest--I might say without exaggeration, a tempest--of violence and crime that has swept over a considerable portion of this county. The claims amount to 2700, with the result that the Grand Jury had presented upon a certain part of this county 1250, exercising apparently the greatest care and discrimination in reducing the amount of the claims, and this 1250 was not put upon the whole county, but on certain parts of the county, and the amount at the very least aggravated in a most serious degree the weight of taxation that falls upon the ratepayers of the County Kerry, deepening the difficulties that all cla.s.ses alike must experience from the depression of the times, and from the other burdens they have to meet in providing against the demands that are made upon them.

'But, of course, you can easily understand that these things do not at all give you any idea of other forms of material injury that arise from crime and disturbance, in the loss of employment and the discouragement of capital, the injury to trade, and the multiplied consequences of all kinds detrimental to the community that arise from insecurity to personal property and life. And to all those evils we have to add another, and perhaps the worst of all--that of which you are all conscious, of which experience and observation reaches you every day in all the forms of social life--a system of unseen terrorism, a system of terror and tyranny that the well-disposed cla.s.s of the community ought to detest and abhor, and in reference to which, on all sides, I have heard, in this county and other counties, one universal expression of desire--that some means should be found to put an end to it.

'I possess no power myself to effect this state of things, and I cannot say that in the relation to the law which you fill as members of the Grand Jury, or in any other relation to the law, you possess the means to effect it. The duty of providing against so great an evil existing in the community--the duty and the obligation rests with others. My duty is simply confined to representing to you the state of things that exists, and, indeed, in that respect I know that I am doing what is entirely unnecessary, for the state of the County Kerry now, and for a period of five or six years, in all its essential features, is known far beyond the limits of the county, to every single person in the country. I will merely make use of one general observation--that I by no means share in the opinion that has been expressed as to the inability to deal with this state of things. On the contrary, I entertain the most perfect confidence that it is in the power of those who are intrusted with the duty of maintaining the public peace to re-establish order and law and peace in this county. And as my duty is confined to representing that state of things, that duty does not carry me to indicate to those on whom the responsibility rests the means to attain that object.'

CHAPTER XX

THE EDENBURN OUTRAGE

In the early part of the winter of 1884, so bad did the state of Kerry become, and so menacing was the att.i.tude of the Land Leaguers towards myself, that I felt I had no right to endanger the lives of my wife and daughters by any longer permitting them to reside at Edenburn.

In all those years, from 1878 to 1884, be it noted that I gave more employment in Kerry than any one man, a fact which has been testified to by different parish priests, but at the same time I was agent for a great many landlords, and tried my level best to get in rents for my employers.

For this cause my life had been repeatedly threatened, and now, in November 1884, dynamite was put to my house, the back of it being badly blown up. There were sixteen individuals in the house, mostly women and children, and an attempt was therefore made to murder them all in the effort to take the life of one individual they were afraid to meet in the open.

The house was repaired and I received compensation in due course from the County, but my family did not think after what had occurred that Edenburn was a desirable place of residence. So I henceforth resided much in London, and therefore spent a great deal less money in Kerry.

Perhaps, however, I had better be a little more diffuse about what was known all over the British Isles as the Edenburn Outrage, but the bulk of this chapter will be drawn from observations by members of my family and newspaper accounts, for the episode left considerably less impression on my mind than it did on that of my womenfolk, and indeed on the public, at the time.

To show how matters stood, one of my daughters reminds me that I gave her a very neat revolver as a present, and that whenever she came back from school she always slept with it under her pillow. Moreover, she recollects that the customary Sunday afternoon pursuit was to have revolver practice at the garden gate.

There had been several episodes of an ugly nature; for example, one of my sons competing in some sports at Tralee was advised to make an excuse and to go home separately from the womenfolk.

He took the hint, and my wife with the governess and several children went back without him in the waggonette. About a mile and a half from the town, just where the horses had to walk up a steep hill, a number of men with bludgeons and sticks came out of a ditch, peered into the trap, and seeing it contained nothing but women and children let it pa.s.s on with a grunt of disgust, whilst they trudged back to Tralee.

One of my daughters, years after, on being taken in to dinner in London, was asked by her companion if she was any relation of mine.

She having confessed the fact--one I hope in no way detrimental, though I say so, perhaps, who should not--he mentioned that he had been to a most cheery dance at Edenburn, which had made a great impression on his mind, because for seven miles along the road by which he and his friends drove there were pickets of constabulary, and the hall table was piled so full with the revolvers brought by the guests, that all the hats and coats had to be taken to the smoking-room.

It may be as well to again mention that my wife during the very worst periods had never any difficulty in keeping or obtaining domestic servants. No doubt the maids liked having two or three stalwart constables always hanging about the place, and capital odd job men they made.

A constable neatly humbugged a footman, and I may here mention the incident, though it is subsequent to the episode of this chapter.

One house we took in London was in Glendower Place, and when the servants arrived, my wife found that the footman's face was covered with sticking-plaster. He was a regular gossoon, though shaped like a fine specimen of the pampered menials who condescend to open the front door of large mansions to their betters.

A constable had hoaxed him into believing that he could never walk in the London streets without using firearms, and having advised him to learn to do so, the idiot put the weapon against his cheek, and the first kick had knocked away a voluminous portion of his countenance.