CHAPTER XIII.
DUBLIN, Thursday, March 8.—At eight o’clock this morning I left the Harcourt Street station for Inch, to take a look at the scene of the Coolgreany evictions of last summer. These evictions came of the adoption of the Plan of Campaign, under the direction of Mr. Dillon, M.P., on the Wexford property of Mr. George Brooke of Dublin. The agent of Mr. Brooke’s estate, Captain Hamilton, is the honorary director of the Property Defence Association, so that we have here obviously a grapple between the National League doing the work, consciously or unconsciously, of the agrarian revolutionists, and a combination of landed proprietors fighting for the rights of property as they understand them.
We ran through a beautiful country for the greater part of the way. At Bray, which is a favourite Irish watering-place, the sea broke upon us bright and full of life; and the station itself was more like a considerable English station than any I have seen. Thence we passed into a richly-wooded region, with neat, well-kept hedges, as far as Rathdrum and the “Sweet Vale of Avoca.” The hills about Shillelagh are particularly well forested, though, as the name suggests, they must have been cut for cudgels pretty extensively for now a great many years. We came again on the sea at the fishing port of Arklow, where the stone walls about the station were populous with small ragamuffins, and at the station of Inch I found a car waiting for me with Mr. Holmes, a young English Catholic officer, who had most obligingly offered to show me the place and the people. We had hardly got into the roadway when we overtook a most intelligent-looking, energetic young priest, walking briskly on in the direction of our course. This was Dr. Dillon, the curate of Arklow. We pulled up at once, and Mr. Holmes, introducing me to him, we begged him to take a seat with us. He excused himself as having to join another priest with whom he was going to a function at Inch; but he was good enough to walk a little way with us, and gave me an appointment for 2 P.M. at his own town of Arklow, where I could catch the train back to Dublin. We drove on rapidly and called on Father O’Neill, the parish priest. We found him in full canonicals, as he was to officiate at the function this morning, and with him were Father Dunphy, the parish priest of Arklow, and two or three more robed priests.
Father O’Neill, whose face and manner are those of the higher order of the continental clergy, briefly set forth to me his view of the transactions at Coolgreany. He said that before the Plan of Campaign was adopted by the tenants, Mr. William O’Brien, M.P., had written to him explaining what the effect of the Plan would be, and urging him to take whatever steps he could to obviate the necessity of adopting it, as it might eventually result to the disadvantage of the tenants. “To that end,” said Father O’Neill, “I called upon Captain Hamilton, the agent, with Dr. Dillon of Arklow, but he positively refused to listen to us, and in fact ordered us, not very civilly, to leave his office.”
It was after this he said that he felt bound to let the tenants take their own way. Eighty of them joined in the “Plan of Campaign” and paid the amount of the rent due, less a reduction of 30 per cent., which they demanded of the agent, into the hands of Sir Thomas Esmonde, M.P., Sir Thomas being a resident in the country, and Mr. Mayne, M.P. Writs of ejectment were obtained against them afterwards, and in July last sixty-seven of them were evicted, who are now living in “Laud League huts,” put up on the holdings of three small tenants who were exempted from the Plan of Campaign, and allowed to pay their rents subject to a smaller reduction made by the agent, in order that they might retain their land as a refuge for the rest.
All this Father O’Neill told us very quietly, in a gentle, undemonstrative way, but he was much interested when I told him I had recently come from Rome, where these proceedings, I was sure, were exciting a good deal of serious attention. “Yes,” he said, “and Father Dunphy who is here in the other room, has just got back from Rome, where he had two audiences of the Holy Father.”
“Doubtless, then,” I said, “he will have given his Holiness full particulars of all that took place here.”
“No doubt,” responded Father O’Neill, “and he tells me the Holy Father listened with great attention to all he had to say—though of course, he expressed no opinion about it to Father Dunphy.”
As the time fixed for the function was at hand, we were obliged to leave without seeing Father Dunphy.
From the Presbytery we drove to the scene of the evictions. These evictions were in July. Mr. Holmes witnessed them, and gave me a lively account of the affair. The “battle” was not a very tough one. Mr. Davitt, who was present, stood under a tree very quietly watching it all. “He looked very picturesque,” said Mr. Holmes, “in a light grey suit, with a broad white beaver shading his dark Spanish face; and smoked his cigar very composedly.” After it was over, Dr. Dillon brought up one of the tenants, and presented him to Mr. Davitt as “the man who had resisted this unjust eviction.” Mr. Davitt took his cigar from his lips, and in the hearing of all who stood about sarcastically said, “Well, if he couldn’t make a better resistance than that he ought to go up for six months!” The first house we came upon was derelict—all battered and despoiled, the people in the neighbourhood here, as elsewhere, regarding such houses as free spoil, and carrying off from time to time whatever they happen to fancy. Near this house we met an emergency man, named Bolton, an alert, energetic-looking native of Wicklow. He has four brothers; and is now at work on one of the “evicted” holdings.