It does not recognize manhood, womanhood or childhood. Its cold hand is upon every cradle in Ireland. Its victims are the five millions of people in Ireland who cannot get away, and the instruments used to hold them are bayonets and ball cartridges.
It is a ghoul that would invade grave-yards were there any profit to be gotten out of grave-yards. It is the coldest-blooded, cruelest infamy that the world has ever seen, and that any race of people was ever fated to groan under.
Irish landlordism is legal brigandage—it is an organized hell.
Wesley said that African slavery was the sum of all villainies. Irish landlordism comprises all the villainies that the devil ever invented, with African slavery thrown in. Irish landlordism makes African slavery a virtue by comparison. For when a negro slave got too old to work, he was given some place in which to live, and sufficient food to keep him in some sort of life, and clothes enough to shield him from the elements.
The Irish tenant, when he becomes old and cannot work, is thrown out upon the roadside, with his wife and his children, to die and rot. He has created lands with his own hands, which he is not allowed to occupy; he has grown crops which he is not allowed to eat; he has labored as no other man in the world has labored, without being permitted to enjoy the fruits of his labor. The virtue of his wife and daughter are in the keeping of the villain, who by virtue of bayonets, controls his land. In short, to sum it all up in one word, the Irishman is a serf, a slave.
In a country that makes a boast of its freedom, he is the suffering victim of men who claim to be Christians; he is the robbed, outraged sufferer of a few men who are as unfeeling as the bayonets that keep him down, as merciless and cruel as tigers.
From the above feeble utterances my readers will, I hope, get the idea that I do not like Irish landlordism. I hope some day to get sufficient command of words to make my meaning apparent. I really would like to make it understood just how I feel about it.
To see Ireland you must not do as the regular tourist always does, follow the regular routes of tourists’ travel. You may go all over Ireland, in one way, and you will not see a particle of suffering, or any discontent. At Glengariff, for instance, the most charming spot on the earth, you are lodged in as fine a hotel as there is anywhere; the people are all well dressed and well fed, and the visitor wonders why there should be any discontent.
This is a part of the English Government’s policy. On these lines of travel, which the tourist for pleasure always takes, the misery is kept out of sight, and the mouths of the people who serve you are sealed. The American lady traveling through that country don’t like to see naked women and squalid poverty, for it would make her uncomfortable. None of it is shown her, and she wonders at the discontent of the Irish.
But just take a boat at Glengariff, leave the splendid hotel, and be rowed two miles across the bay, and you begin to see Ireland, the real Ireland. You then know why Ireland is agitated; you then see the real reason why an Englishman is hated with an intensity that would find expression in a rifle shot, if rifles were permitted to be owned and used.