Mr. Tottenham rules part of Kiltyclogher. This man has a very evil name among the tenants. Reclamation of land by very poor people is a very serious matter. Not only do the bogs require drains twenty-one feet apart and three deep (I have seen the people in the act of making such drains again and again); not only do the surface stones require to be gathered off, but great stones and immense boulders that obstruct the formation of the drains, have to be removed, and as they have no powder for blasting, they take the primitive method of kindling great fires over the rock and splitting it up that way, so that their husbandry is farming under difficulties. As the Fermanagh farmer said, they put their lives into it.
In the long ago the landlords of Ireland, though extravagant, were not, as a class, unkindly, but their waste involved the land, and their absenteeism prevented any thoughts for the benefit of the country ever occurring to them.
The commercial spirit has invaded the aristocracy and men have begun to see visions of redeeming their lands from encumbrances and to dream dreams of still greater aggrandizement, all to be realized by commercial tact in raising the rents and abolishing the long-suffering people who could not be squeezed any farther. It was then that the beginning of the present desperate state of things was inaugurated. I do not think the landlords deliberately meant to oppress. I think they looked to the one thing, raising their rental, increasing their income, and went over everything, through everything to the desired end. They have succeeded in making a wide separation between the land-holding and land-tilling classes. It will be a difficult matter to bring them together again.
XXVII.
A HARD LANDLORD INTERVIEWED—CONFLICTING STATEMENTS—COLD STEEL.
The morning after our return to Manor Hamilton, Mr. Corscadden called on me in response to my note asking for an interview. I had formed a mental picture of what this gentleman would be like from the description I had heard of his actions. I found him very different. An elderly man, tall, gray-haired, soft-spoken, with a certain hesitation of manner, dressed like a better class-farmer, eyes that looked you square in the face without flinching, and yet had a kindly expression. This was Mr. Corscadden. I need not say he was not the man I expected him to be.
He, very kindly indeed, entered into an explanation of his management of this property since it fell into his hands. He mentioned, by the way, that he was a man of the people; had risen to his present position by industry and stern thrift; what he had he owed, under the blessing of God, to his own exertions and economy. He declared that he ruled his conduct to his tenants by what he should wish to be done to himself if in their place.
He then took up the case of one tenant, James Gilray, who waited on him to enquire, "What are you going to do with me?" This man, according to Mr. Corscadden's statement, owed three years' rent, amounting to L30; owed L15 additional money paid into the bank for him; owed L6 for a field, "for which I used to get L11 to L12." "Now," said Mr. Corscadden to him, "what do you want?" "I want," said the man, "to have my place at the former rent." "Do you," said Mr. Corscadden, "want your land at what it was 118 years ago? Land has raised in value five times since then." There is here a wide discrepancy between this statement of Mr. Corscadden's and the statement of another gentleman—not a tenant—who professed himself well acquainted with the subject. He said that before Mr. Corscadden bought the land the tenants had voluntarily increased the rent on themselves twice, for fear of passing out of the hands of the man they knew into the hands of a stranger; so that it was under a rack rent when Mr. Corscadden bought it.
Another case referred to by Mr. Corscadden was that of a man to whom he had rented a farm of 20 acres at L16. He got one year's rent; two and a half years were due, when he served a writ of ejectment. Mr. Corscadden said to this man; "You are a bad farmer and you know it. You have about L150 worth of stock; I will give you L40; leave my place and go to America. He took the money," said the old gentleman pathetically, "and did not go to America, but rented another farm. The woman at Glenade whom you went to see I have kept—supported—for years. Her husband did not pay his rent, and I gave him L10 to pay his passage to America. He is a bad man. It is rumored that he has married another woman; his wife never hears from him."
"It is wonderful, Mr. Corscadden," I remarked, "when you are so kind that you have such a bad name as a landlord. Mr. Tottenham and you are the most unpopular landlords in Leitrim."