XXII.
THE EARL OF ENNISKILLEN AND HIS TENANTS—CAUSES OF DISSATISFACTION— SPREAD OF THE LAND LEAGUE AMONGST ENNISKILLEN ORANGEMEN—A SAMPLE GRIEVANCE—THE AGENTS' COMMISSION—A LINK THAT NEEDS STRENGTHENING—THE LANDLORD'S SIDE.
It seems a great pity that the attachment between the Earl of Enniskillen and his tenants should suffer interruption or be in danger of passing away. The Earl, now an old man, was much loved by his people, until, in a day evil alike for him and for his tenants, he got a new agent from the County Sligo. Of course, I am telling the tale as it was told to me. Since this agent came on the property, re-valuation, rent raising, vexatious office rules, have been the order of things on the estate. The result of this new state of things, has been that the Land League has spread among the tenants like wildfire. I did not feel inclined to take these statements without a grain of salt. To hear of the Land League spreading among Enniskillen Orangemen, among the Earl's tenants, of dissatisfaction creeping in between these people historically loyal and attached to a family who had been their chiefs and landlords for centuries, was surprising to me.
To convince me that such was the case, I was requested to listen to one of the Earl's tenants reciting the story of his grievances at the hands of the Earl's agent. It was a sample case, I was told, and would explain why the people joined the Land League. It was pleasant enough to have an opportunity of going into the country and to have an opportunity of seeing the farms and the style of living of the Fermanagh farmers, as compared with the Donegal highlands.
The country out of Enniskillen is very pretty. May has now opened, the hedges have leafed out and the trees are beginning lazily to unfold their leaves. The roads are not near so good as the roads in Donegal, which are a legacy from the dreary famine time, being made then. The hedges are not by any means so trim and well kept as the hedges by the wayside in Down or Antrim. The roads up to the farm houses are lanes, such as I remember when I was a child. The nuisances of dunghills near the doors of the farmhouses have been utterly abolished for sanitary reasons, also whitewashing is an obligation imposed by the Government. For these improvements I have heard the authorities both praised and thanked. In these times of discontent, it is well to see the Government thanked for anything. The country is hilly and the hills have a uniform round topped appearance, marked off into fields that run up to the hill tops and over them and down the other side. There are, of course, mountains in the distance, wrapped in a thick veil of blue haze.
The house to which I was bound was, like most of the farm houses, long, narrow, whitewashed, a room at each end and the kitchen in the middle. I will now let the farmer tell his grievances in his own words. He is about sixty years of age, a professor of religion of the Methodist persuasion, an Orangeman, and a hereditary tenant of Lord Enniskillen, and now an enthusiastic adherent of the Land League. "In 1844 I bought this farm—two years before I was married. There is 17-1/2 acres. I paid L184 as tenant right—that is, for the goodwill of it. The rent was L19 7s 4d. I should have gone to America then; it would have been better for me. I have often rued that I did not go, but, you see, I was attached to the place. My forbears kindled the first fire that ever was kindled on the land I live on. I held my farm on a lease for three lives; two were gone when I bought it. I have been a hard-working man, and a sober man. There is not a man in the country has been a greater slave to work than I have been. I drained this place (fetches down a map of the little holding to show the drains). It is seamed with drains; 11 acres out of 17-1/2 acres are drained, the drains twenty-one feet apart and three feet deep. Drew stone for the drains two miles, L100 would not at all pay me for the drainage I have done. I built a parlor end to my house, and a kitchen; also, a dairy, barn, byre, stable and pig house. Every year I have bought and drawn in from Enniskillen from sixty to one hundred loads of manure for my farm; this calculation is inside of the amount. I have toiled here year after year, and raised a family in credit and decency. When the last life in my lease died, my rent was immediately raised to L27 10s. I paid this for a few years, and then the seasons were bad, and I fell behind. It was not a fair rent, that was the reason I was unable to pay it. I complained of the rent. I wanted it fixed by arbitration; that was refused. I asked for arbitration to decide what compensation I had a right to, and I would leave; that was refused too. I was served with a writ of ejectment. The rent was lowered a pound at two different times, but the law expenses connected with the writ came to more than the reduction given. I had the privilege, along with others, of cutting turf on a bog attached to the place at the time I held the lease; that was taken from us. We had then to pay a special rate for cutting turf, called turbary, in addition to our rent. So that really I am struggling under a higher rent than before, while I have the name of having my rent lowered: I once was able to lay by a little money during the good times; that is all gone now. I am getting up in years. If I am evicted for a rent I cannot pay, I cannot sell my tenant right; I will be set on the world at my age without anything. I joined the Land League. At the time of an election it was cast up to Lord Enniskillen about taking from us the bog. It was promised to us that we should have it back, in these words: 'If there is a turf there you will get it.' After the election we petitioned for the bog, and were refused. We were told our petition had a lie on the face of it. It is the present agent, Mr. Smith, that has done all this. He is the cause of all the ill- feeling between the Earl of Enniskillen and his tenants. He has raised the rents L3,000 on the estate, I am told. He gets one shilling in the pound off the rent; that is the way in which he is paid; so it is little wonder that he raises the rents; it is his interest to do so."
I listened to this man tell his story with many strong expressions of feeling, many a hand clench, and saw he was moved to tears; saw the hereditary Enniskillen blood rise, the heart that once throbbed responsive to the loyalty felt for the Enniskillen family now surging up against them passionately. I thought sadly that the loss was more than the gain. Gain L3,000—loss, the hearts that would have bucklered the Earl of Enniskillen, and followed him, as their fathers followed his fathers, to danger and to death. I decided in my own mind that Mr. Smith's agency had been a dear bargain to the Enniskillen family. "The beginning of strife is like the letting out of water; therefore, leave off contention before it be meddled with."
After I had listened to the farmer's wrongs and heard of others who also had a complaint to make, I was obliged to think that their case was not yet so hard as the case of those who suffered from the eccentricities of Lord Leitrim. Still, it is a hard case when we consider that the man's whole life and so much money also sunk in rent, purchase, improvements, and when unable to pay a rent raised beyond the possibility of paying, to lose all and begin life again without money or youth and hope, at sixty years of age. People with exasperated minds are driven to join the Land League, in hope that union will be strength, and that ears deaf to petition of right will grant concessions to agitation.
I began to feel afraid that I was hearing too much on one side and too little on the other, and I requested to be introduced to some who had ranged themselves on the side of the landlords. I was, as a consequence, introduced to several gentlemen at different times, but I got no light on the subject from any of them. They were so very sure that everything was just as it should be, and nothing short of treason would induce any one to find fault. Still when the question was asked squarely, "Are there no reasons for wishing for reform of the land laws?" the answer was, "We would not go quite so far as that?" There was a vague acknowledgment that, generally speaking, some reform was needed, and yet every particular thing was defended as all right on the whole, or not very far wrong.