A peasant looking him carefully over at Cork whispered to a neighbour, “And is he really of the ould blood of the Irish kings now, indeed?”
“He is indeed!”
“Well, then, I don’t wonder the Saxons conquered the Island!”
Of the Home Rule movement one of the lawyers said to me, “The whole thing is a business opera tion mainly—a business operation with the people who see in it the hope of appeasing their land hunger—and a business operation for the agitators who live by it. Its main strength, outside of the priests, who for one reason or another countenance or foment it, is in the small country solicitors. The five hundred thousand odd Irish tenants are the most litigious creatures alive. They are always after the local lawyer with half-a-crown to fight this, that, or the other question with some neighbour or kinsman, usually a kinsman. So the solicitors know the whole country.”
“When the League has chosen a spot in which to work the ‘Plan of Campaign,’ the local attorney whips up the tenants to join it. The poorer tenants are the most easily pushed into the plan, having least to lose by it. But the lawyer takes the well-to-do tenants in hand, and promises them that if they yield to the patriotic pressure of the League, and come to grief by so doing, the landlord will at all events have to pay the costs of the proceedings. It is this promise which finally brings down most of them. To enjoy the luxury of a litigation without paying for it tempts them almost as strongly as the prospect of getting the land without paying for it. You will find that the League always insists, when things come to a settlement, that the landlord shall pay the costs. If the landlord through poverty of spirit or of purse succumbs to this demand, the League scores a victory. If the landlord resists, it is a bad job for the League. The local lawyer is discredited in the eyes of his clients, and if he is to get any fees he must come down upon his clients for them. Naturally his clients resent this. If Mr. Balfour keys up the landlords to stand out manfully against paying for all the trouble and loss they are continually put to, he will take the life of the League so far as Ireland is concerned. As things now stand, it is almost the only thriving industry in Ireland!”
Wednesday, Feb. 1.—This morning I called with Lord Ernest Hamilton upon Sir Bernard Burke, the Ulster King-at-Arms, and the editor or author of many other well-known publications, and especially of the “Peerage,” sometimes irreverently spoken of as the “British Bible.”
Sir Bernard’s offices are in the picturesque old “Bermingham” tower of the castle. There we found him wearing his years and his lore as lightly as a flower, and busy in an ancient chamber, converted by him into a most cosy modern study. He received us with the most cordial courtesy, and was good enough to conduct us personally through his domain.
Many of the State papers formerly kept here have been removed to the Four Courts building. But Sir Bernard’s tower is still filled with documents of the greatest historical interest, all admirably docketed and arranged on the system adopted at the Hôtel Soubise, now the Palace of the Archives in Paris.
These documents, like the tower itself, take us back to the early days when Dublin was the stronghold of the Englishry in Ireland, and its citizens went in constant peril of an attack from the wild and “mere Irish” in the hills. The masonry of the tower is most interesting. The circular stone floors made up of slabs held together without cement, like the courses in the towers of Sillustani, by their exact adjustment, are particularly noteworthy. High up in the tower Sir Bernard showed us a most uncomfortable sort of cupboard fashioned in the huge wall of the tower, and with a loophole for a window. In this cell the Red Hugh O’Donnell of Tyrconnel was kept as a prisoner for several years under Elizabeth. He was young and lithe, however, and after his friends had tried in vain to buy him out, a happy thought one day struck him. He squeezed himself through the loophole, and, dropping unhurt to the ground, escaped to the mountains. There for a long time he made head against the English power. In 1597 he drove Sir Conyers Clifford from before the castle of Ballyshannon, with great loss to the English, and when he could no longer keep the field, he sought refuge in Spain. He was with the Spanish, as Prince of Tyrconnel, at the crushing defeat of Kinsale in 1601. Escaping again, he died, poisoned, at Simancas the next year.
Sir Bernard showed us, among other curious manuscripts, a correspondence between one Higgins, a trained informer, and the Castle authorities in 1798. This correspondence shows that the revolutionary plans of the Nationalists of 1798 were systematically laid before the Government.