It is the Land League’s misfortune to pursue two objects, and for the sake of one it often turns its back upon the other. The Land Leaguers are first filled with hatred against England; they wage desperate war against her by every means that they have at their disposal. We can understand a little of this feeling when we read the atrocities that the English have committed in this country even to a comparatively recent date.
“Vengeance is a divine pleasure,” says a poet; but he omitted to add that, as a rule, vengeance is a very expensive pleasure. The Irish are wrong in wishing and in endeavouring to avenge themselves and to improve their position at the same time; they must choose between the two ideas. In driving the owner of Bruree away they avenged themselves; but they have changed the situation of this little corner of Ireland very much for the worse; and the same thing that happened at Bruree has taken place in a hundred other localities.
Mr. Sanders left me at Mallow, which we reached about half-past one. He was obliged to go to a small village in the neighbourhood, where he had to carry out an eviction on the following morning. He had requisitioned a force of constabulary, of which one detachment came in our train. For a few minutes I walked alone on the platform, and then I noticed a man coming towards me, of middle height, thick-set, carefully shaved, his face quite sunburnt, under very short, quite white hair. He introduces himself as Mr. Townsend Trench, to whom some mutual friends living in Paris have given me letters of introduction, and he had been kind enough to come and meet me to take me to his usual residence, Lansdowne Lodge, at Kenmare, from which he had been absent some weeks, but he was now returning home on purpose to receive and welcome me.
Mr. Trench is one of the best known persons in Ireland; his agency is one of the most important; the estates that he manages certainly represent the superficial area of a whole county, and are situated in the most disturbed regions. Therefore, in the eyes of five or six thousand tenants and their families, he is the incarnation of landlordism; on him centres all the odium of the measures that he has been forced to take during the war that has now lasted four years, and he has never attempted to evade his responsibility. In all the Parliamentary inquiries when he has been called to give evidence, he has always spoken with unparalleled clearness. Moreover, he is not a Roman Catholic; he does not even belong to the Established Church, but is one of the most active members of a particular sect called the Plymouth Brotherhood. Nothing was therefore lacking to prevent his becoming the bête noire of the whole country side, yet it is a singular coincidence—and this proves the man’s real value—that of all the agents he is perhaps the least detested. No one has ever attempted to murder him—but this may possibly be a little due to the fact that he is credited with being one of the best shots in Ireland; he has never been formally boycotted—that is to say, the Land League has never laid him under an interdict; he has even retained personal and almost amicable relations with its principal chiefs. The other day at Dublin, Mr. Harrington, the general secretary of the League, when he heard that I was to be the guest of Mr. Trench, began to laugh.
“Oh,” said he, “you are going to Trench; you could not do better to hear the other side of the question. I knew him well formerly, and I have preserved a great esteem for him, although we have not two ideas in common. Tell him so from me. Have you heard the pun they have made about him?—’One Trench is enough to drain all Ireland!’”
Under the guidance of this man, whose personal worth is so great that he has won respect and even sympathy from his bitterest political enemies, I am now about to visit part of county Kerry, the most disturbed district in Ireland.
We took our tickets for Killarney, and from there we shall drive to Kenmare, passing through the most picturesque scenery in the country. Every year a number of tourists flock there, an excursion to Lake Killarney being an indispensable item in every tour round Ireland.
Shortly after our departure from Mallow we approached a mountainous region, and, although trees are rare in Ireland, where there are scarcely any forests, these mountains are covered with brushwood. The town of Killarney itself contains 6,000 inhabitants (again I quote Mr. Black), and it is built near to a lake. As we had nearly twenty-five miles to drive before we could reach Kenmare we went into the hotel to lunch. The landlord came forward to make a sad complaint to Mr. Trench. The poor man adjudged politics, the Land League, and above all, the newspaper reporters, to the infernal regions. There had been so many murders in the neighbourhood, so many outrages as they say here, and the journalists have painted the state of the country in such black colours, that the tourists have taken fright and have gone to quieter countries. His hotel is empty or nearly so. He appears so disconsolate that I feel I ought to say a few consoling words to him.
“Sir,” said I, “allow a stranger, who is quite disinterested in the matter, to give you a little advice. You must evidently take some steps. You must give up the timid tourist. But there exist, thank heaven, other varieties of tourists! Why do not you examine the position of affairs and find an attraction for romantic tourists—those who on their return home enjoy making their neighbours shudder while relating to them the dangers from which they have escaped during the holidays? The Neapolitan hotels are always so full when there is any chance of an eruption of Vesuvius that, if we can believe the newspapers, the innkeepers there have combined and have promised a large reward to Professor Palmieri, a man who has made the study of volcanoes his speciality, if he will organise artificial eruptions when the syndicates desire them. At Ajaccio an hotel-keeper of my acquaintance subsidises a brigand, the celebrated Ballacoscia—a wonderful man! Twice a week he leaves his house at Pentica to settle in a very picturesque grotto above Boccognano, near the railway station. He receives travellers there. I have known several old English ladies who have for five pounds bought the stiletto with which he avenged his sister’s honour. Another, to whom he gave a lock of his hair, sent to England for a capital waterproof for him to use in his professional excursions. All these small benefits or gains are amicably divided between the intelligent innkeeper and the brigand, and every one is content. Why do not you attempt something of the same kind? In your place I should ask Mr. Trench to arrange a small eviction in the neighbourhood every week. You may rest assured that amongst the evicted family you could always arrange to have a venerable looking old man and a few pretty girls who would wail together harmoniously. You could organise excursion trains. For two shillings there might be a simple eviction; for three shillings an old woman of ninety should be forcibly carried from the house by the police; and for four shillings the police should be received with volleys of stones. Take my advice, think over the idea. Perhaps it contains the solution of the Irish question. For I hope that you would give good fees to your company of performers.”
The Killarney innkeeper listened to me with great interest. I heard him mutter “Bedad! there is something in that.” And after vigorously shaking hands he accompanied us to the carriage, where I seated myself with Mr. Trench and his secretary, a tall young man, named Lewis.