"The writer of the following pages has personally visited many of the towns and rural districts of Ireland; and, in obedience to those who instructed him to perform the task, has drawn up a plain statement of facts, for the benefit of persons interested in the welfare of Ireland, and who cannot visit that country personally to judge for themselves."
And right clumsily has he performed the duty assigned to him. Had his cunning been equal to his malignity, he would have acted with more prudence. He would not have recklessly asserted in one place what his own admissions refute in another. He would not have charged the most talented, distinguished, and impartial law-officers of the crown with having strained the law to protect a delinquent because he was a Protestant—and afterwards shown that the conduct of this man was condemned by those very persons accused of partiality towards him; and that his illegal acts were punished by those very tribunals to which (he asserts) no poor man need think of applying for redress. He, however, does his best to cover those glaring inconsistencies. He breaks the thread of his narrative, and intersperses his stories in such a manner, that a casual reader, who has not time or inclination to examine or compare them, may easily be deceived and misled. For the purpose of showing the reliance to be placed on Lord John Russell's authority, we shall take up one case, (that of Patrick Ring,) and follow it out to its conclusion.
"The first proceeding was against Patrick Ring, a tenant, who held on a lease of thirty-one years and a life, and who owed no arrears up to 1842; the proceedings against him began in March 1841, and have given rise to a complicated variety of actions at law, ending with his ejectment and utter beggary.
"As he owed no rent, and as no possible reason for getting rid of him as a tenant could be assigned, nor was ever offered until long after proceedings had begun, a bold stroke to make a beginning was absolutely requisite, and it was struck. The lease specified a certain day in May and in November, as that on which the half-yearly rent would fall due. Those days had been strictly adhered to, and no one knew this better than the landlord. But in 1841 he obtained a warrant of distraint,[39] and seized on Ring on the 26th of March, for rent alleged to be due on the 25th. It might have been a hard enough misfortune to be distrained on the day following that of the rent being due in any case, especially in spring, when the cattle and implements of labour, as also the seed-corn, and potatoes, the articles distrained, are required for the peculiar duties of that most important season, seed-time. But when such a distraint was made on such articles, so indispensable in their uses even for a day, to say nothing of weeks, and no rent nor debt of any kind owing, the case is peculiarly a hard one on the tenant.
"Patrick Ring caused a replevin to be entered with the sheriff—that is, he gave security that he would pay the rent, if rent was due, as soon as a trial at quarter-sessions or assizes could be had—that he might in the mean time get the use of the property upon which the distraint lay. He accordingly proved by his lease that he owed nothing—that no rent was due until May. But before that was done, May had come, and the rent was due. He paid it punctually, and proceeded against the landlord for damages, or rather for the costs to which he had been exposed. This being opposed, occupied much time; and before it was settled, the landlord once more distrained for rent alleged to be due on the 29th of September. Again Patrick Ring replevined, and proved his rent-days to be in November and May, and not in September and March. The case of costs and trespass came to trial in respect of both seizures, and was decided in Ring's favour. Thus a jury and a judge certified by their decision that the tenant was right, and the landlord wrong. The damages awarded were very moderate, only L12 and costs; but the tenant looked on the verdict as most important, in respect of its setting, as he thought, the validity of his lease and the period of his rent-days at rest. But that the damages were too moderate as regarded the landlord was manifest from the fact, that he again distrained in March for rent not due until May.
"He now, it being again seed-time, took a more effectual way of crippling the tenant than before. He seized on the farm implements and stock, of which the dunghill was in his eyes the most important. He had it, without a legal sale, carried away to his own farm-yard, even to the very rakings and sweepings of the road and the yard near which it lay. This he did that Ring might have no manure for his potato ground, knowing that crops so planted would not easily afford the rent; and that, when no rent was forthcoming, an ejectment would soon follow. Other things—a plough, and a horse, and some furniture—were sold, and Ring was once more involved in litigation. These things were bought in with his own money, save the dung-heap, which the landlord would not give him a chance of buying in; and thus Ring was obliged to pay his rent before it was due, with all the expenses of a distraint and sale—the most expensively conducted of any distraints and sales under the British crown. He thought to recover damages for all this loss; but he was not able to pay his rent in addition to all this, when it became due; and thus, by some hocus-pocus of the law, the two cases became so mingled together as to be inextricable."
From this statement it would appear that this Mr Shee distrained illegally, that the tenant sought the protection of the law, and that he obtained damages to the amount of £12. This may appear an inconsiderable sum; but when it is considered that an officer entitled a "replevinger," resides in almost every town, that the stock or implements were not removed from the premises, and that Ring, if he exerted himself, could not be deprived of their use for a second day—we must admit it was a fair remuneration for his trouble. Well—but this Mr Shee, with the knowledge of his former misconduct, and its punishment before him, again seizes: and this time he commits a felony, as well as an illegal act; for he carries off the tenant's manure, and appropriates it to his own use, without going through any legal form whatever. The tenant obtained justice before; but now (with a still stronger case) he refuses to bring his action, which, in the quarter-sessions court, would have cost him 2s. 6d. He is quite aware of his rights, for he defended them successfully before; yet for some reason or another, studiously concealed, he now remains inactive.[40]
Is every person so silly as to believe that this Mr Shee, who was more than once successfully prosecuted for assaults and illegal acts, would not again be brought to justice for such a serious breach of the law as that of forcibly carrying off another man's property. The criminal prosecution would only have cost one shilling; and can we believe he would a third time subject himself to an action for illegal distress, with the rent-days specified in the lease well known to him?
But all the assertions of this paid maligner sink into insignificance compared with what follows. We know not which to be most amazed at—the recklessness, or the stupid ignorance of the man.
"It would be too tedious to give a detailed account of every lawsuit that now followed; but from that time, the summer of 1842, up to the summer assizes of 1843, the landlord proceeded in the courts for a warrant of ejectment against Ring nine times. On the first eight cases he was defeated; but he succeeded on the ninth. He had thirteen other lawsuits of various kinds with the same defendant, during which he sold his furniture five times and his horse twice. In all, he had twenty auctions of sale previous to midsummer of this year. Part of the furniture was in several of these instances only bought back by the agent, Mr James Coyne, handing money privately to Ring to pay for it. This is the agent formerly spoken of, who at last gave up his situation out of sheer disgust at the odious work he was called on to perform. "The crop of 1842 was seized on and sold at seven different times. It was much more than sufficient to pay the rent, even though the manure was carried away in the spring by the landlord; but those seven different seizures, with seven different sales, with a number of men receiving at each of the seven seizures 2s. 4d. a-day, as keepers to watch the crop from the day of distraint to the day of sale—those seven seizures on a crop which might have been all seized and sold at one time, with only one set of expenses—resulted, as they were intended to do, in nearly doubling the rent. Moreover, the crop being distrained on while growing, was cut down by people whom the landlord employed, although the tenant and his family were standing unemployed; and to such work-people the landlord can give any wages he chooses, to be deducted from the tenant, up to 2s. 6d. a-day! even though the harvest wages of the district be 8d. or 10d. a-day![41]—even though the tenant, who is thus not allowed to give his own labour to his own farm, may, to avoid starvation, be compelled to work to another employer for the fourth part, to wit, 7½d. a-day, of what the law obliges him to pay for workmen on his own farm. "It will give some proof of the exertions made by the tenant to pay his way when I state, that, notwithstanding all the extraordinary expenses of the seizures, and of the protracted and complicated litigation, the rent was paid by the autumn of 1842. There as nothing owing by Ring save a sum of £1 and odds, connected with the expenses of a summons which had been decided against him on some technical point of law."
Here it is stated, in the first place, that from the summer assizes 1842, to the same period in 1843, Ring was nine times proceeded against by ejectment. Now the landlord could only proceed by ejectment in the quarter-sessions' court, or in the superior courts. The quarter-sessions' courts are held but four times in the year, namely, in January, April, July, and October. The sessions were only held three times within the period during which Ring is said to have been nine times sued by ejectment; and consequently, if Mr Shee were even inclined, it would be impossible for him to have proceeded more than three times against him in the sessions court. But if he instituted his suit in the superior courts, (if defence were taken, as clearly was the case,) he could only have proceeded twice, "for the ejectment served at November should be tried at the spring assizes, and the one served subsequently at the summer assizes;" and the production of any process from the superior courts, or the proof that such was had recourse to, would effectually bar the landlord from proceeding in the inferior courts. He could not proceed in both at the same time; and thus we see that it would be impossible for any landlord, however oppressive, to have proceeded by ejectment more than three times within the period in which this veracious compiler of grievances positively asserts Shee proceeded nine times. Next, he says, "the crop of 1842 was sold seven different times," and "altogether he had twenty auctions of sale before midsummer of 1843." Now, any proceeding by distress, pending the progress of the ejectment, would have vitiated it and upset it; for the law does not allow two different modes of proceeding for the same debt at the same time; and in no courts is such scrupulous regard paid to the rights of the tenant as in the quarter-sessions courts. But no decree can be granted in ejectment cases until a clear year's rent shall have been proved to be due; and yet we find this man, Patrick Ring, who, it is asserted, owed no arrears of rent up to 1842, and the sale of whose crops and stock paid his rent up to autumn 1842, evicted in summer 1843, when only half a year's rent could have accrued due; and this, too, by a Roman Catholic assistant barrister, (Mr O'Gorman,) a judge above any suspicion, and who, if we are to believe the statement contained in Ring's own letter, was not at all partial to his persecutor.
To show how tyrannically men may act with impunity, (if they be landlords,) he quotes the case of O'Driscoll, who struck a boy with his horsewhip; yet he is obliged to admit, that for doing so he was fined L3 by his brother magistrates, and dismissed from the commission of the peace by the lord-chancellor. To create the desired degree of prejudice against the Irish landlords, it is necessary to impugn the administration of justice; for people here would naturally enough say, when they read of such atrocities, "why don't those men so injured have recourse to the law?" Therefore it must be shown (at any risk) that the law is no impediment in the way of a tyrannical landlord. The falsehoods may not be immediately detected; and in the mean time the object may be achieved. Accordingly we find that a landlord can thus summarily dispose of an obnoxious tenant. This Mr Shee was fired at: our author has his doubts—although it appears, by his own account of the trial, that slugs were lodged in his hand, and that his hat was perforated—and he adds—