Even when a farmer has a tidy sum of money on deposit with the bank at one per cent., if he wants to employ a sum for a short time, say for the purchase of cattle, he prefers to raise the money on a bill at six per cent.
That is to say, the bank is lending him his own money at five per cent.—a truly Hibernian trait, which it would be difficult to beat anywhere.
A bill for drink is not recoverable, but occasionally an insidious publican will take a man's I.O.U. and sue on that.
One applied to me to help him to get the money from a tenant.
'You must show me the account,' said I.
As I suspected, there was whisky in it, and I declined on the spot.
All drink in Ireland is on cash down terms only.
If they gave tick, they would never recover the money, and if every Irishman is a knowing scoundrel, the publican is a trifle more knowledgable than the customer, whose brains are besodden.
A man, who had been a servant of mine, started a public near Tralee, and thinking he would get customers from the other whisky stores, he gave tick. His popularity lasted just as long as the tick did, and a week later he was broke. I do not say so much about Tralee being able to support one hundred and sixty liquor shops, because there is a little shipping, but how Cahirciveen can enable fifty publicans to thrive is a melancholy mystery to me.
I was animadverting once, at Dingle, on the topic, when one of my labourers remarked:—