"As an Irish farmer, and an Irish farmer's son, living on Irish farms for more than sixty years, having an intimate acquaintance with the whole of Ireland, and almost every acre of England, I deliberately say that the Irish farmer is much better off than the English, Scotch, or Welsh farmer, not only in the matter of law, but in the matter of soil.
"In many parts of England the soil must be manured after every crop. Every time you take out you must put in. Not so in Ireland. Nature has been so bountiful to us that we can take three, and even six, crops off the land after a single dose of manure. Of course the farmer grumbles, and no wonder. The price of stock and general produce is so depressed that Irish farmers are pinched. But so they are in England. And yet you have no moonlighting. You don't shoot your landlords. If the land will not pay you give it up and take to something else. An Irishman goes on holding, simply refusing to pay rent. His neighbours, who are in the same fix, support him. When the landlord wishes to distrain, after waiting seven years or so, he has to get a decree. The tenants know of it as soon as he, and they set sentinels. When the police are signalled the cattle are driven away and mixed with those of other farmers—every difficulty that Irish cleverness can invent is placed in the way. Then the landlord, whether or not successful in distraining, is boycotted, and the people reckon it a virtue to shoot him down on sight. Conviction is almost, if not quite, impossible, for even if you found a willing witness—a very unlikely thing I can tell you—even then the witness knows himself marked for the same fate. If he went to America or Australia he would be traced, and someone would be found to settle him. Such things have happened over and over again, and people know the risk is great. But about rack-rents.
"I have told you of Irish avariciousness in the matter of land, and have explained the reason of it. Rents have been forced up by people going behind each other's backs and offering more and more, in their eagerness to acquire the holding outbidding each other. Landlords are human; agents, if possible, still more human. They handed over the land to the highest bidder. What more natural? The farmers are not business men. They offered more than the land could pay. You know the results. But why curse and blaspheme the landlords for what was in many cases their own deliberate act?"
On Friday last I had a small object-lesson in Irish affairs. Colonel O'Callaghan, of Bodyke, went to Limerick to buy cattle for grazing on his estate. The cattle were duly bought, but the gallant Colonel had to drive them through the city with his own right hand. I saw his martial form looming in the rear of a skittish column of cows, and even as the vulture scenteth the carcase afar off, even so, scenting interesting matter, did I swoop down on the unhappy Colonel, startling him severely with my sudden dash. He said, "I'm driving cows now," and, truth to tell, there was no denying it. Even as he spoke, a perverse beast of Nationalist tendencies effected a diversion to the right, plainly intending a charge down Denmark Street, en route for Irish Town, and the gallant Colonel waiving ceremony and a formidable shillelagh, hastened by a flank movement to cut off this retreat, and to guide the erring creature in the right way to fresh woods and pastures new. I fired a Parthian arrow after the parting pair. "Appointment?" I shouted, but the Colonel shook his head. It was no time for gentle assignations. The cursed crew in front of him absorbed his faculties, and then he half expected to be shot from any street abutting on his path. Perhaps I may nail him yet. He has been attempting to distrain. If the Colonel refuses to speak I will interview his tenants. I have said I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil—with the readers of the Gazette. Dixi. I have spoken! There is much shooting on the Bodyke estates, and in Ennis they say that sixty policemen are stationed there to pick up the game. Nobody has been bagged as yet, but the Clare folks are still hoping. To-morrow a trusty steed will bear me to the spot. Relying on a carefully-considered, carefully-studied Nationalist appearance, an anti-landlord look, and a decided No-Rent expression in my left eye, I feel that I could ride through the most dangerous districts with perfect impunity. "Base is the slave that pays," says Ancient Pistol. That is my present motto. One touch of No Rent makes the Irish kin.
The English people should be told that nearly all Irishmen, whether Unionist or otherwise, are strong Protectionists. The moment Home Rule becomes law a tremendous attempt will be made to shut out English goods. "The very first thing we do," said to me an influential Dubliner I met here, "is to double the harbour dues; you can't prevent that, I suppose? The first good result will be the choking-off of all the Scotch and Manx fishermen who infest our seas. At present they bring their fish into Dublin, whence it is sent all over Ireland, competing against Irish fishermen. Then we'll tax all manufactured goods. We will admit the raw material duty-free, but we must be permitted to know what suits us best, and we must, and will, tax flour, but not wheat. We in Ireland, forsooth, must submit to having all our flour mills closed to suit the swarming populations of Manchester and Birmingham. They must have a cheap loaf. Dear me! and so flour comes here untaxed, having given employment to people in America, while our folks are walking about idle. Go down the river Boyne, from Trim to Drogheda. What do you see? Twelve mills, with machinery worth £100,000 or more, lying idle. One of those mills once employed fifty or sixty men. Now it employs none. Tax flour, I say, and so says everybody. We must have Protection, and very stringent Protection. Irish manufacturers must be sustained against English competition. Twenty years ago Dublin was a great place for cabinet work. Now nothing is done there, or next to nothing. Everything must come from London. At the same period we did a great trade in leather. The leather trade is gone to the devil. We did a big turnover in boots and shoes. Now every pair worn in the city comes from Northampton. Ireland and Irish goods for the Irish, and burn everything English but English coals. Give us Home Rule, and all these trades will be restored to us."
Thus spoke the great Home Ruler, who declined to permit his name to appear, as he said it might affect his business. His sentiments are universal, and, as I have said, his opinions are shared by the great majority of Irishmen, even though professedly Unionist.
A word of comment on the patriotic sentiments of my friend. I went to Delany, of George Street, Limerick, for a suit of Blarney tweed. He had not a yard in the place. He was indicated as the leading clothier and outfitter of the city, but the Mahony Mills were not represented amongst his patterns. He had Scotch tweeds, Yorkshire tweeds, West of England tweeds, but although the Blarney tweeds are said to be the best in the world as well as the handsomest, I had to seek them elsewhere. An English friend says, "The Irish politicians are rather inconsistent. They came into this hotel one evening, six of them, red-hot from a Nationalist meeting, cursing England up hill and down dale, till I really felt quite nervous. I hadn't got a Winchester like that. (I hope it won't go off.) They agreed that to boycott English goods was the correct thing, and of course they were for burning all but English coals, when the leader of the gang said, 'Now, boys, what will you drink,' and hang me! if they didn't every one take a bottle of Bass's bitter beer! Did you ever know such inconsistency?"
The quirks and quips of the Irish character would puzzle a Philadelphia lawyer. Spinning along the lane to Killaloe, with Mr. Beesley, of Leeds, and Mr. Abraham Keeley, of Mallow, balanced on opposite sides of a jaunting car, we came on a semi-savage specimen of the genuine Irish sort. Semi-savage! he was seven-eighths savage, and semi-lunatic, just clever enough to mind the cows and goats which, with a donkey or two, grazed by the way-side. He might be five-and-twenty, and looked strong and lusty. His naked feet were black with the dirt of his childhood, and not only black, but shining and gleaming in the sun. His tattered trousers were completely worn away to the knee, showing his muscular legs to perfection. The rags that clothed his body were confusing and indefinite. You could not tell where one garment ended and another began, or whether there were more than one at all. Cover a pump with boiling glue, shake over it a sack of rags, and you will get an approximate effect of his costume. His tawny, matted hair and beard had never known brush, comb, or steel. It was a virgin forest. He scratched his head with the air of the old woman who said "Forty years long have this generation troubled me;" and ran after the car with outstretched hand. I threw him a penny, upon which he threw himself at full length, his tongue hanging out, a greedy sparkle in his eye. My Irish friend instantly stopped the car.
"Now I'll show you something. This man is more than half an idiot, but watch him." Then he cried:
"Come here, now, I'll toss you for the penny."