The current issue of Notes from Ireland reprints from the
-Daily Express a most amusing letter signed " Patrick Murphy," and dated from " Skuhanugh." The letter shows the sort of problems which would have arisen had that ill- -considered and iniquitous measure, the Evicted Tenants Bill, become law. The writer thus describes his position 4' Fourteen or fifteen years ago I held a little farm at kulhalaugh from Bob Brown. He was a middleman, and I was paying too much. I said I should hold at the same rent that he did ; but he would not listen to me, so I stopped payment. He injected me ; and I got him boycotted. He 'could not pay his rent, and Tom Smith, his landlord, injected him. Tom let the land to Pat Kavanagh ; but I kept it boycotted, and he could not make the rent out of it, so Tom injected him. Then Tom put his bailiff into it ; but we all say that he is not a rale planther, and must go. But when the Act is passed Bob Brown says he will come in as an ,evicted tenant, and so does Pat Kavanagh, and I say that I am the only rale evicted tenant in the case." The writer goes on to ask who is to have the laud. "Tom Smith is not entitled to anything. He never was my landlord, and I 'Owe him nothing, and why should I pay Bob Brown when he Is out of it nearly as long as I am myself ? Besides he held it tree gratis for nothing for two years after he injected me," We do not, of course, suppose that the letter is genuine, but it is a very shrewd piece of fooling, and there are doubtless plenty of cases in which it would be quite as difficult to tell who was " the rale evicted tenant."
Previous page
