The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent Part 42

You will observe that this is the same picture from two different points of view.

Almost the worst case in which I was personally interested, was that of the Cruickshank family.

The father, an industrious, respectable, elderly Scotsman, supported his family at Inch by the proceeds of a rabbit-warren which he rented. He had no farm, and therefore might expect to live in peace, even in Kerry, in those times; but, as he was a Scotch Protestant, and had arms, he was a marked man.

Having been threatened, he was partially guarded by the police who patrolled the district. However, in April 1885, when the Prince of Wales visited Ireland, and the constabulary from country districts were drafted into the towns through which he had to pa.s.s, a number of disguised Nationalists entered Cruickshank's house at night. They gave him a frightful beating, even breaking a gun on his head, which was seriously injured. This was done in the presence of his wife and daughters, and of a young son who, with one of his sisters, went off in the night to a police station four miles distant, to obtain a.s.sistance for his father.

Between the fight and the chill received that night, the boy fell into a decline of which he died in May 1886. One daughter, not strong at the time of the outrage, became a chronic invalid. The father, as soon as he was able to move after the perpetration, applied for compensation under the Crimes Act, but as it was then to expire in about a fortnight, the Lord-Lieutenant refused to consider the case. The poor fellow continued to suffer from the wounds on his head, and so affected was he by the shock of his son's death, that he became insensible and only survived him a few weeks, leaving his widow and three daughters without any means of support.

My wife and the former Archdeacon of Ardfert appealed for subscriptions and obtained 120, which enabled the unfortunate survivors to return to Scotland.

That was the settlement of the land question that suited the Nationalists, namely, to cause the death of the head of the family, and to get the rest out of the country. It did not say much for the civilisation of the nineteenth century, but after the brutalities of the spring of 1871 in Paris, there can be no doubt how thin is the veneer over the barbarity of even the most civilised; those deeds were perpetrated in the heart of the European capital specially devoted to amus.e.m.e.nt: what I describe took place in the most distant portion of Europe, where Nature is lovely and man, alas, the creature of impulse, the prey of those who lead him into the worst temptations.

Another settlement was suggested by an anonymous writer who concealed his ident.i.ty under the pseudonym of Saxon. He observed:--

'Two hundred millions of English money are now (1886) to be spent buying out Irish landlords, but would it not be surely better and more in accordance with reason and justice to buy out the tenants? At a very low calculation, two hundred millions would put a couple of hundred pounds in every Irishman's pocket, and there is not one of them that would refuse to leave his beloved country, and bless America or Australia on these terms. The island could be populated with Scotch and English settlers, and our difficulties be at an end. The Irish must not have their own loaf and ours too. I commend this scheme to Messrs. Gladstone and Morley. It is quite as just, quite as reasonable, and more forcible than their own.'

Hear, hear! say I, but our grandchildren's grandchildren when grey old men will still be trying to settle the Irish question, which can never be settled until there arises a big man strong enough to force his will on the Empire and fortunate enough to be able to hand over the reins of political dictators.h.i.+p to an equally enlightened and powerful successor.

It is hopeless to expect Irish matters to go well, when the balance of parties in the House of Commons is held by hirelings and traitors, men who debase patriotism and would to-day encourage outrage as much as they did in 1884, if it was worth their mercenary while.

I had a word to write myself a year later to Mr. T. Harrington, who thought he could tell as many lies about me as suited his own purpose, and I addressed my reply, published on August 29, 1887, to the Editor of the _Times_. It ran as follows:--

'Sir--I have just read the speech of Mr. T. Harrington in the debate on Mr. Gladstone's motive relating to the proclamation of the National League, in which he states that I invented and gave to Mr. Balfour the particulars of the boycotting of Justin M'Carthy. I beg you will allow me to state that I never wrote to Mr. Balfour, or to any member of the Government, on that or any subject. Had I supplied the information, I would have mentioned some facts which Mr. Balfour omitted, for instance, that a man named Andrew Griffin was nearly murdered because he brought provisions to Justin M'Carthy, that four men were put on their trial for the outrage, but notwithstanding a plain charge from the judge, the jury, fearing the vengeance of the League, acquitted the prisoners. I would also mention a fact that would seem almost incredible to your English Catholic readers, that the old man cannot attend his place of wors.h.i.+p without being hissed at in the church, and that his aged wife, while partaking of the sacrament of the Holy Communion, was hissed at and jeered. These things can be proved on oath, and are not to be set aside by frothy declamation. Neither can the fact be disproved that one of the offences for which Justin M'Carthy has suffered was that he purchased his farm from me under Lord Ashbourne's Act, a proceeding which (as it is likely to settle down the country) is considered a deadly crime; and for committing the same offence another man in the same barony had his cows stabbed.

Your obedient servant, S.M. HUSSEY.'

There is yet another case I cannot forbear from handing on to a generation that knows no outrages nearer home than Macedonia. Six ruffians, having their faces covered with handkerchiefs, and armed with heavy cudgels, entered the house of a farmer named Lambe and began to beat him. To save his head from the blows, he ran the upper part of his body up the chimney and held on by the cross-bar. His wife, on coming to his a.s.sistance, was beaten so severely that her skull was fractured, while an aged female--stated to be in her ninety-seventh year--was not only roughly handled, but also beaten. A most discreditable episode indeed, in a land formerly renowned for respect for womanhood, and for the warm-hearted generosity of her sons.

In only one instance in Kerry was police protection being regarded as necessary up to the present summer, and all who know the contemporary condition of affairs will at once recollect that Mrs. Morrogh Bernard is the lady in question.

The late Mr. Edward Morrogh Bernard of Fahagh Court, Bullybrack, was a Roman Catholic, who had resided in Kerry all his life, and some five-and-twenty years ago he built on his property the residence in which he died in the spring of 1904. He and his wife, an English lady, who was justly beloved for her wide charity, were one night, after dinner, sitting in their drawing-room, when a party of masked moonlighters walked in. One of them held a pistol to her head, and told her not to scream or move, else he would shoot her. Another performed the same kindly office for Mr. Bernard, whilst the rest ransacked the house for arms and money.

Mrs. Bernard noticed that the hands of the man who was threatening her with violence were not those of an agricultural labourer, because they were small and white. On the strength of this clue, the police arrested a little tailor in the village, and she courageously identified him in court, though every possible pressure was brought on her not to do so.

He was sentenced to several years' imprisonment, and his friends vowed they would make it hot for Mrs. Bernard, and ever after she has been protected by two or three constables. The police did not live in Fahagh Court, but in a hut specially built for them a few yards off, and at night they always came into the house. To the very last days of Mr.

Bernard's life whenever he and she went to pay a call on a neighbour, two policemen followed them either on a car or on bicycles, and I have never heard any reasons advanced to show that these precautions were superfluous.

Meeting this little party on the highway was the only thing in the twentieth century which brought home to the British tourist the terrible deeds which blackened Kerry in the eighties.

I have always looked on the light side of life, even when it has seemed blackest, and so I will not close this chapter without a more cheery anecdote.

There was a good deal of friction among Land Leaguers over the amount of relief money and other remuneration doled out by the rebel authorities.

This seldom reached a more droll pitch than in the complaint of a girl at Rossbeigh, who wrote to a prominent member of Parliament--since deceased--that another girl had been awarded a pound for booing at a sergeant, 'while I, who broke a policeman's head, never got so much as would pay for a candle to the Blessed Virgin.'

Sometimes the crafty Paddy utilised the agitation for his own purposes, as the following example will prove.

A farmer's house was fired into, but no one could tell the reason why, for he had not paid any rent and was a good Land Leaguer. He was asked if he could account for it himself, and after some shuffling under promise of strict secrecy, made the following revelation.

'Well, it was this way, I married a dacent girl from the North, and all went well with us until her mother came along, and she had the divil's own tongue, and nothing could get her out of the house. I would say "the North has fine air, would not a change back there get you your health?"

'To which the old Biddy would reply:--

'"Where would I live except with my only daughter and her husband?"

'And this sort of thing made me desperate, and I promised the "bhoys"

five s.h.i.+llings if they would fire round the house on a certain night. On the evening that had been agreed upon, I began reading on the paper how farms in Castleisland were being fired into, and the old woman said that if these things were so, County Kerry was worse than County Cork, and I thought to myself "maybe you'll find it so, you ould divil."

'Well, they came and did their work in grand style after we had gone to bed, and there was the mother-in-law screeching and bawling, and every hour too long for her until daylight, when I put her in the cart and drove her to the station.'

The sequel is that the couple left to themselves lived happily ever after, a thing more likely to happen to people in England and Ireland, if it was no one's business to make bad blood between them.

CHAPTER XXII

COMMISSIONS

I have probably given evidence to as many Commissions as any living man, for I have been before seven, and never once was asked a question that posed me.

I enjoyed the experience of being asked about what I knew by those who knew nothing on the subject, and if the legal mind was a little more obtuse than the civil, well, it was only the choice between a grey donkey and a black.

The earliest Commission I gave evidence before was one on Agriculture.

Professor Bohnamy Price was one of the Commissioners, and he knew what he was talking about, others being Lord Carlingford, the Duke of Buccleuch, and the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, who presided. The peers were all used to big parks, obsequious bailiffs, and huge demesnes. I think they metaphorically picked up their coat tails and stepped carefully away from the Irish potato patches and acres of turf.

It was alleged that prosperity of nations was a good deal owing to tenant-right.

'I do not think so,' said I, 'because Donegal and Kerry have approximately the same value and area, same number of miles of road and sea frontage. There is extreme tenant-right in Donegal and none in Kerry, yet the prosperity of the farmers in Kerry is extremely superior to those of Donegal.'

'There is too much tenant-right in Donegal,' said Mr. Chichester Fortescue, who was examining me.

'Not if it is a good thing,' I replied, 'for then you could not have too much.'

Mr. Shaw Lefevre's Commission on the housing of the working cla.s.ses in Ireland was very uninteresting. 'Oxen are stalled, pigs are styed or take possession of the cabin, but what is done for the Irish labourers?'

asked a pa.s.sionate mob-orator, and in many cases it might have been answered that a good deal more has been done for them than the idle ruffians deserve. I had no difficulty in showing that landlords were always willing to give a.s.sistance in housing labourers, and when an ex-mayor of Cork on the Commission seemed to doubt my a.s.sertions, I might have retorted that though he was used to factory hands, yet he had never bothered himself how they lived out of work time.

The Duke of Devons.h.i.+re was on this board. He has obtained his great and honourable reputation by conscientiously slumbering through many duties.

His tastes are for racing and shooting, but from sheer patriotism he has devoted himself to politics with all the energy of his lethargic manner, which successfully conceals abnormal common-sense. It was he, more than any other man, who saved Ireland from Home Rule, though as an Irish landlord he has not come much to the fore, because his vast English estates are immeasurably more important than those situated round Lismore. This picturesque town was once called the abode of saints, but only antiquarians remember that its university was once so important that Alfred the Great went there to study, and that in the old castle Henry II held a Parliament. The Cavendishs rebuilt the latter, and both in appearance and position it much resembles Warwick Castle. It has not very many bedrooms, and when the King was first expected, among various extensive alterations, a bathroom was put up. The Duke has generally visited Lismore twice a year, and has never stood unduly on his dignity, but been approachable by all, and reasonable about everything, which has also been characteristic of his political views.

Lord Bessborough presided over a Commission on Irish Land Laws. He was a very kind, very lean man, who was wont in old age to walk about London wrapped in a black cape, and was idolised at Harrow, where twenty generations of boys knew him and his brothers and valued their unabated interest in school cricket. Baron Dowse, a judge I have already mentioned, the O'Conor Don, and Mr. Shaw, were the members who put questions to me. I remember the O'Conor Don was much impressed when I mentioned I had made six tours in Scotland, and had been in Holland, in Belgium, in France, in Germany, in Italy, and just before in Spain, to inquire into the state of agriculture. I said that if a man persisted in farming badly I would serve him with notice to quit even if he paid his rent, and I pointed out that there were three hundred thousand occupiers of land in Ireland whose holdings were under 8 Poor Law valuation, and these occupiers, when their potatoes fail, have nothing to fall back upon but relief work, starvation, or emigration, and I further laid before the Commission a purchase scheme. There would be twenty years'

purchase-money to be lent by the State, two years' purchase to be found by the tenant and two years more at the end of ten years. Thus the landlord would get a price for his property that would induce him to sell (reductions had not then been wholesale) and the tenant would get a lease for ever with abolition of rent at the end of thirty-five years by paying a fine of two years' rent down and two more at the end of ten years.

They would not have it. Who ever expected that Justice would lift the bandage from her eyes for the sake of fair play to the landlord?

Lord Salisbury had a Commission on the working of the Land Act of 1881.

Lord Dunraven, Lord Pembroke, and Lord Cairns were on it, the latter being chairman. He was so austere that, when he was made Lord Chancellor, it was said he had swallowed the mace and could not digest it. His law may have been profound, but it was never relieved by a gleam of humour, and his ecclesiastical proclivities were of the lowest Church type. For some time he nominated Tory bishops, and it was declared he was so evangelical that he would have suggested any clergyman for a vacant bishopric who promised to forego the ecclesiastical gaiters. His horror of Anthony Trollope's novels was notorious, especially his dislike of Mrs. Proudie and her attendant divines.