Now the Government inherits all this hatred by proposing to be the sole landlord in Ireland. Therefore, England is reaping the whirlwind where Mr. Gladstone sowed the wind.
This does not appear to me to be sound statesmanship. An open hatred of the Government has been instilled into the brain of thousands of Irish children side by side with a more hypocritical hatred of the landlord. Now that these two are to be combined in one passion, and that directed against the receiver of rent, matters do not present a promising outlook.
If the Government sell up those tenants who do not pay rent in years to come, no Irish occupiers of the property will be obtainable.
If English tenants be imported, the latter had better insist on coats of mail for themselves, and on life insurance policies in favour of the nearest relatives they leave behind in England.
That reminds me of a story.
Sir Denis Fitzpatrick and his daughter were making a tour of the Kerry fjords some years ago, and the lady asked a boatman on Caragh Lake, what would happen to a tenant who took an evicted farm.
The reply was:—
'I don't think he'd do it again, Miss, leastways it's in the next world alone he'd have the chance of making such a fool of himself.'
This may be commended to any unsophisticated English who contemplate Hibernian immigration as a prospective way of cheaply obtaining that once popular bait of Mr. Jesse Collins, three acres and a cow.
Here is another aspect of not paying rent to Government, which would occur to no one unacquainted with Ireland, but is quite characteristic:—