The tenant—the robbed farmer—for his own sake is compelled to go on and reclaim the land; he must raise something, for he has children who must be fed; and so he digs out the rocks, and cuts the bog, and makes good, arable land out of what was a barren and dreary waste.
What happens to him then? Why, My Lord in Paris has a subordinate watching his tenant. There is nothing so mean that there is not something meaner. Cruel as My Lord is, he has a crueller man under him. And that is My Lord’s agent. He comes to the miserable holding, and he notices that Pat has reclaimed an acre more this year. Immediately he says to Pat, “Your rent next year, my fine fellow, will be advanced.”
TENANT FARMER, COUNTY MEATH.
SOMETHING TO BE CONSIDERED.
What can Pat do? Nothing. He can’t get off the land, for the merciless exactions of My Lord, who is living in Paris and London, have left him nothing; he cannot get away; he has no title to possession a minute; he can be evicted from his holding at any time, for any one of a thousand causes; there are no courts he can appeal to, as in America, for the magistrates are all landlords. And so he bows his head, and meekly goes on and reclaims more land, only to have the rent raised for every acre made valuable by the labor of his own hands; until, finally, it comes to a point where he has reclaimed the entire holding, and My Lord’s agent comes to the conclusion that it is better for him and My Lord—their interests are identical—to convert the farm into a sheep-walk, and Pat is evicted—which is to say, he is thrown out upon the roadside to starve, with his wife and children; and the cabin he has built is torn down.