“Now on nine-tenths of all Irish estates the annual charges and expenses exceed, and greatly exceed, one-fourth of the average income. Nine times out of ten, therefore, the indemnity for expropriation would not suffice to pay off the debts. Not a single penny would reach the unlucky proprietors. Frankly, now, can we wonder that they refuse to aid in their own ruin?”
Whilst he was speaking to me I was looking at the country we were passing through. An artist would find a certain charm in it, but in the eyes of an agriculturist its appearance is lamentable. On all sides are rocky, barren mountains; we have not seen a tree since we left Derrygariff. The streams daily wash a little more of the thin layer of vegetable mould from the great schistic blocks that are visible on all sides, carrying it down to the turf pits that fill the bottom of the valley. The destruction of the forests has been another great misfortune for this country, and I asked Mr. Trench if he had never tried to re-establish plantations.
“Replant!” said he. “In the first place, as I have already told you, wood has no value here because of the timber imported from Canada and Norway; and in the second, if I replanted the mountains, the farmers would hasten to complain to the Land League that I was depriving their cattle of pasturage, and my plantations would soon cease to exist. They all have goats; and you know how little time goats require to destroy young trees. If I wished to replant these mountains or simply to cultivate them on a new method, I must begin by sending the tenants away. Mr. Adair tried to do it, and you know how that business ended.”
I had heard Mr. Adair’s history. A few years ago it was much discussed both in Ireland and England. It is one of the most typical cases that I can quote. It shows that in this unhappy country the most elementary exercise of the rights of ownership may entail serious complications.
In 1859 Mr. Adair bought the estate of Derryveigh, in Donegal. It was a very mountainous and very poor district. There was scarcely any of the land under cultivation; the tenants only kept a few cows and goats.
Rightly or wrongly, Mr. Adair thought that sheep-breeding would be profitable. But to organise that undertaking he was obliged to make some alterations in the farms, and thereby produced great dissatisfaction amongst the population. One day the sheep disappeared as though by magic. The peasants declared that they had died of hunger on the mountains, and, in fact, a great many of them were found dead at the bottom of the precipices, but Mr. Adair’s shepherds asserted that the sheep had been stolen, and the strict search instituted by the police confirmed their statements, for undeniable proofs were found that a certain number of them had been eaten. The County Court accepted the facts, and condemned the parishes to pay rather heavy damages to Mr. Adair, and this naturally considerably envenomed their relations. At length one evening the chief shepherd did not return from an expedition he had made on the mountain. His body was found—he had been murdered; but the peasants assisted the police so badly that the murderers were never discovered.
Mr. Adair was exasperated to the last degree. The crime took place near the hamlet of Glenveigh, and it was also here that traces of the lost sheep had been found. He declared that he considered the tenants at Glenveigh morally responsible for all that had happened, and that he intended getting rid of them all.
When this decision was announced the priest and the Protestant minister sent him a joint letter, pointing out that the consequences of such a determination must weigh heavily upon the innocent, and begging him not to carry out his intentions.
Mr. Adair replied that his decision was irrevocable; all the tenants must leave Glenveigh. But, in recognition of the fact that there might be some foundation for his correspondents’ observations, he declared that he was ready to find new farms on another part of the estate, and for which he would grant leases, to all the old tenants who could bring letters of recommendation from either of the reverend gentlemen.
I cannot resist entering into the minutest details of this story, for it reveals a state of affairs that, to us Frenchmen, appears quite incomprehensible. I have taken all these details from New Ireland—a very interesting book by Mr. Sullivan, one of the most eminent members of the Irish Nationalist party. Mr. Gray, the editor of the Freeman’s Journal, advised me to read it, telling me that it is one of the best written books that have appeared on Ireland. I am convinced that the author fully intended to relate these events with the utmost impartiality. But, after all, if he shows a little partiality in his recitals, it is evidently not for Mr. Adair, whose conduct he stigmatises as frightful.