XI.[ToC]
GOMBEEN.
Cork, December 2nd.
Among the many spectres which haunt the sadly-vexed West and South of Ireland, there is one far more grim and real than the spectre vert who is either buried for ever and aye, or has undergone gradual transformation since '98 into Repeal of the Union, Young Ireland, Fenianism, Nationalism, and finally perhaps into Anti-Landlordism; albeit this latter avatar of an ancient and familiar spirit is by no means imbued with the poetic attributes of the original spectre. During my stay in Ennis and Limerick I succeeded in holding somewhat protracted conversations with three landed proprietors, three of the largest land-agents in Ireland, two bank managers, an influential lawyer, three leaders of the people, and one probable assassin. Through the discourse of all of these—varied and contradictory as much of it necessarily was—I could see distinctly one ugly shadow, as of an old man filthy of aspect, hungry of eye, and greedy of claw, sitting in the rear of a gloomy store looking over papers by the light of a miserable tallow dip. From the papers the figure turned to a heap as of bank-notes, and there was in the air the chink of money. For the name of this grisly and terribly real spectre is gombeen; which, in the Irish tongue, signifies usury.
To Thackeray's truthful remark that there is never so poor an Irishman that he has not a still poorer countryman as a hanger-on, it may be added that when an Irishman is not a borrower he is almost certain to be a lender—the advice of Polonius being abhorrent to the spirit of a free-and-easy, happy-go-lucky people. When a man in these parts gets or keeps out of debt himself, he is mostly engaged in encouraging others to get into it. Often he has little or nothing himself, but acts after the Irish fashion as deputy gombeen man for the pleasure of the thing, and also for a commission well and duly paid. This determination towards borrowing and lending is not confined to any particular class, but is characteristic of all. As the peer, who would never have put his hand into his own pocket to pay for improving his property, suddenly awakes to the value of drainage when the Government offers a million and a half at one per cent., so did the gombeen man, who would never have dreamed of lending more than a pound at a time to a peasant, extend his credit four or five fold when the Land Act of 1870 gave him the first instalment of proprietary right in the land he occupied. The instalment was a very small one, but it was at once discounted by the gombeen man, whose rate of interest enabled him to run extraordinary risks. As the poor pay dearly for everything, so do they pay an extravagant interest for money. There was once a fashionable West-end usurer, who, pretending to know nothing about arithmetic, met his clients on the subject of percentage with "I don't understand figures, but my terms are a shilling per pound every month. It is easy to reckon up without going into sums on slates." This poor innocent was charging just 60 per cent., but his terms were lavishly liberal as compared with those of the gombeen man. Instead of a shilling per month the latter charges a shilling a week for every sovereign advanced, and then "Begorra, it's only the name of a sovereign," which being interpreted signifies that an advance of one pound, less charges, only amounts to 18s. 10d., and that upon this sum a shilling interest must be well and duly paid weekly. Any failure entails a fine, and a failure to pay off the original sovereign borrowed within six months is very heavily fined indeed. I am told that the gombeen man actually puts on cent. per cent. for this failure of redemption; but, on my principle of believing only a percentage of all I hear, and of taking a liberal discount off all I see, I doubt this enormity. Concerning the shilling interest per week on a pound there is, however, unhappily no room for doubt, and for small unsecured loans 260 per cent. per annum is still the ruling figure.
This enormous rate of interest, however, is now only exacted on the very smallest loans, for the old-fashioned gombeen man has lost his customers for larger sums. In old times he was the only means of obtaining such little sums as five and ten pounds on personal security; but since 1870 the banks have entered into competition with him, have undersold him, and, in fact, "run him out of the market," except for sums under four or five pounds. The unfortunates who are short of a sovereign or two must look up their old friend in the back shop smelling of bacon, tallow, pepper, tea, and whisky, just as their social superiors seek the intrepid sixty per cent. man of St. James's, whose snuggery is perfumed by the best Havannahs that other people's money can buy. But when the soul of Mike rises to the sublime conception of a loan of five pounds he dismisses the old-fashioned usurer, and hies him to one of the branch banks which abound in every petty townlet in Western and Southern Ireland. When I say "abound" I mean to be taken literally. What would be thought in England, I wonder, of four banks in a town like Ennis, or of two in pettifogging places like Kilrush or Ennistynon—mere hamlets of some two thousand inhabitants? Yet these three places have eight branch banking establishments among them. It must not, however, be supposed that Mike gets his paltry four or five pounds on his promissory note without further security. Nothing of the kind. Mike must go through as much artful financiering to raise his five pounds as the Hon. Algernon Deuceace to raise his "monkey." His bill must be well backed by his friends, Thady and Tim. Now, Thady's name on the back of a five-pound bill is not good for much. He is but a peasant, like Mike, not a farmer, properly so called, and even as two blacks will not make a white, so will the joint credit of Mike and Thady not rise to the height of five one-pound notes. But they have a potent ally in Tim, who married Thady's wife's cousin. Tim is a prudent man, has worked hard at his farm, and, as a rule, has a matter of twenty or thirty pounds on deposit note at the bank, receiving for the same interest at the rate of one per cent. per annum. His name at the back of a five-pound bill is therefore a tower of strength, and, in fact, floats the entire speculation. In commercial phrase, he "stands to be shot at" while his own deposit money, on which he receives one per cent., supplies the funds for the bank to lend Mike and Thady, at ten or twenty per cent., for there is no pretence made of doing very small bills at anything approaching ordinary rates. In fact, the peasant cultivator, having acquired under the Land Acts now in force a species of proprietory interest in the soil, has a sort of credit which, backed by a friendly and innocent depositor, can be made an engine for raising ready money in a small way. This help from the banks is so far good that it has relieved the decent peasant from his ancient bloodsucker, the gombeen man. Admitting that with charges and fine for renewal and so forth the loan ultimately costs Mike fifteen or twenty per cent, he is vastly better off than he was under the old system. He gets money to buy pigs to fatten for sale, or manure for his bit of arable land, and if the rate appears high, it is wondrously merciful as compared with that to which he was formerly accustomed.
But there is an awkward side even to the business which enables the principal Irish banks to pay large dividends. So long as care is taken that Mike and Thady do not overdo the accommodation bill system, perhaps no very great harm is done in extending the advantage of moderate credit to the humblest cultivator; but when competition is sharp in a petty townlet between two rival banks, the tendency towards a mischievous extension of credit is almost irresistible, and bank managers are at last driven to look sharply after their clients on market days, lest the ready money which is their due should be deflected to other purposes. The provision man, who has supplied bacon and other necessaries, is on the alert to secure something on account; and if, as is most probable, he has been giving credit somewhat recklessly, he is pinched for money, despite the high rate of profit he has been charging to cover his risk. For some time past the game of credit has been going on gaily; but since the commencement of the present agitation both banks and gombeen men have distinctly narrowed their operations, and the landlord is now the almost universal creditor. The harvest-money has either gone to pay advances or to settle accounts with tradesfolk, so that an awkward future is in preparation for all but the prosperous tenants, of whom there is no lack in counties Clare and Limerick. Whatever the details of the forthcoming Land Act may be when it has passed the ordeal of both Houses of Parliament, the work of passing it will take time, and at least another half-year's rent will accrue before it takes the shape of law. Now, with all the talk of Griffith's valuation, there has been, except in a few cases, no hint of paying that sum "without prejudice" into court or into any bank whatsoever; and the cash held by both farmers and peasants runs, in the opinion of many well qualified to judge, sore risk of diminution before any comprehensive measure can pass through Parliament. Even the well-to-do farmers will be called upon to expend their balance in hand in many ways which they will find difficult to resist. Not only the provision merchants, but the drapers and milliners of Limerick, Ennis, and Galway, will hold out allurements to those in possession of ready money. To put the case briefly, there is great danger that, without any intentional dishonesty on their part, the cultivators, great and small, of Western and South-Western Ireland will hardly be in as good a position for the discharge of their liabilities six months or a year hence as they are at present. The three "F's" will hardly wipe off existing debt, and the result of a division of the population into two sharply defined classes of debtors and creditors is viewed by many thoughtful people with considerable apprehension.