I left Dublin this morning at 7.40 A.M. The day was fine, and the railway journey most interesting. Before reaching Limerick we passed through so much really beautiful country that I could not help expressing my admiration of it to my only fellow-traveller, a most courteous and lively gentleman, who, but for a very positive brogue, might have been taken for an English guardsman.
“Yes, it is a beautiful country,” he said, “or would be if they would let it alone!”
I asked him what he specially objected to in the recent action of Parliament as respects Ireland?
“Object?” he responded; “I object to everything. The only thing that will do Ireland any good will be to shut up that talking-mill at Westminster for a good long while!”
This, I told him, was the remedy proposed by Earl Grey in his recent volume on Ireland.
“Is it indeed? I shall read the book. But what’s the use? ‘For judgment it is fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.’”
This he said most cheerily, as if it really didn’t matter much; and, bidding me good-bye, disappeared at Limerick, where several friends met him. In his place came a good-natured optimistic squire, who thinks “things are settling down.” There is a rise in the price of cattle. “Beasts I gave £8 for three mouths ago,” he said, “I have just sold for £12. I call that a healthy state of things.” And with this he also left me at Ardsollus, the station nearest the famous old monastery of Quin.
At Ennis I was met by Colonel Turner, to whom I had written, enclosing a note of introduction to him. With him were Mr. Roche, one of the local magistrates, and Mr. Richard Stacpoole, a gentleman of position and estate near Ennis, about whom, through no provocation of his, a great deal has been said and written of late years. Mr. Stacpoole at once insisted that I should let him take me out to stay at his house at Edenvale, which is, so to speak, at the gates of Ennis. Certainly the fame of Irish hospitality is well-founded! Meanwhile my traps were deposited at the County Club, and I went about the town. I walked up to the Court-house with. Mr. Roche, in the hope of hearing a case set down for trial to-day, in which a publican named Harding, at Ennis—an Englishman, by the way—is prosecuted for boycotting. The parties were in Court; and the defendant’s counsel, a keen-looking Irish lawyer, Mr. Leamy, once a Nationalist member, was ready for action; but for some technical reason the hearing was postponed. There were few people in Court, and little interest seemed to be felt in the matter. The Court-house is a good building, not unlike the White House at Washington in style. This is natural enough, the White House having been built, I believe, by an Irish architect, who must have had the Duke of Leinster’s house of Carton, in Kildare, in his mind when he planned it. Carton was thought a model mansion at the beginning of this century; and Mr. Whetstone, a local architect of repute, built the Ennis Court-house some fifty years ago. It is of white lime stone from quarries belonging to Mr. Stacpoole, and cost when built about £12,000. To build it now would cost nearly three times as much. In fact, a recent and smaller Court-house at Carlow has actually cost £36,000 within the last few years.
I was struck by the extraordinary number of public-houses in Ennis. A sergeant of police said to me, “It is so all over the country.” Mr. Roche sent for the statistics, from which it appears that Ennis, with a population of 6307, rejoices in no fewer than 100 “publics”; Ennistymon, with a population of 1331, has 25; and Milltown Malbay, with a population of 1400, has 36. At Castle Island the proportion is still more astounding—51 public-houses in a population of 800. In Kiltimagh every second house is a public-house! These houses are perhaps a legacy of the old days of political jobbery. [19] No matter when or why granted, the licence appears to be regarded as a hereditary “right” not lightly to be tampered with; and of course the publicans are persons of consequence in their neighbourhood, no matter how wretched it may be, or how trifling their legitimate business. Three police convictions are required to make the resident magistrates refuse the usual yearly renewal of a licence; and if an application is made against such a renewal, cause must be shown. The “publics” are naturally centres of local agitation, and the publicans are sharp enough to see the advantage to them of this. The sergeant told me of a publican here in Ennis, into whose public came three Nationalists, bent not upon drinking, but upon talking. The publican said nothing for a while, but finally, in a careless way, mentioned “a letter he had just received from Mr. Parnell on a very private matter.” Instantly the politicians were eager to see it. The publican hesitated. The politicians immediately called for drinks, which were served, and after this operation had been three times repeated, the publican produced the letter, began with a line or two, and then said, “Ah, no! it can’t be done. It would be a betrayal of confidence; and you know you wouldn’t have that! But it’s a very important letter you have seen!” So they went away tipsy and happy.
Only yesterday no fewer than twenty-three of these publicans from Milltown Malbay appeared at Ennis here to be tried for “boycotting” the police. One of them was acquitted; another, a woman, was discharged. Ten of them signed, in open court, a guarantee not further to conspire, and were thereupon discharged upon their own recognisances, after having been sentenced with their companions to a month’s imprisonment with hard labour. The magistrate tells me that when the ten who signed (and who were the most prosperous of the publicans) were preparing to sign, the only representative of the press who was present, a reporter for United Ireland, approached them in a threatening manner, with such an obvious purpose of intimidation, that he was ordered out of the court-room by the police. The eleven who refused to sign the guarantee (and who were the poorest of the publicans, with least to lose) were sent to gaol.