CORRESPONDENCE.
EXPERIENCE IN IRELAND.—III.
[FRO)/ .6. CORRESPONDENT.]
THERE are two sides to every question, and it would be unjust to reserve all our sympathy for Irish tenants, and all our strictures for Irish landlords. The latter are all more or less the victims of a vicious system and inherited difficulties. Many, moreover, try to act justly, and are on the beat of terms with their tenants. We hear much of bad landlords, and little or nothing of good ones. A hereditary landlord (and hereditary landlords are often the best) who owns an estate in County Cork assured me that, save in one instance, he never had trouble with his tenants; and in the exception there was nothing peculiarly Irish. The case might have happened anywhere, for Ireland has no monopoly either of exacting landlords or litigious tenants. One of the largest landlords in the country, as I have heard, when he finds that a tenant is not making both ends meet, pays him at once a fair price for his rights, presents him with a free ticket to New York, and lets him go. I had no opportunity of verifying this statement, but as one never hears of this noble. man being at loggerheads with his tenants, it is probably true. But he has large means, and there are only too many Irish landlords who have neither the wherewithal to buy a tenant out. nor to pay his passage to America. Nothing is easier than to ascertain how a landlord stands in the popular estimation of his neighbourhood. People are very outspoken on the subject. " Whose land is this ?" I asked a small farmer, whom I met casually on the Kenmore road. " Mr. R—'s." "What sort of a landlord is he?" " Very good." "And Lord B—, what about him ?" "Middling." "And Mr. W—P" (the third considerable proprietor of the district). "Damned bad" (savagely). I wondered whether this proportion held good in the country generally,—if for every "damned bad" landlord there was one accounted "very good" and one " middling." In any event, we are likely to hear much more of the bad one than of the other two.
It may be profitable, and it will certainly be no more than fair, to give the landlords' ideas about the small eottier-tenants whose miserable condition has roused so much sympathy in England. " These people have no right to expect their holdings to keep them," said to me a landlord in his defence. " Their rents are absurdly low, say from SO& to £5 or £5 a year ; and for this they got a house, a bit of potato-ground, and the keep of a cow or two, perhaps more. In England, they would have to pay a higher rent for a very indifferent cottage. As a matter of fact, their holdings don't keep them. The women stay at home and look after the cow and the pig, the men go out and work—many to England and send money home. In a single week, I have known £50 to come through the post-office of this village. The people are not nearly so badly off as they seem and try to make you believe. They live here because it suits their purpose. They like the place; the air is pare and the climate mild, and you must admit that they are better off than many of the English poor. Observe the healthy look of the children. Don't be misled by the squalor of their dwellings. They like squalor. They would rather live in a hovel with a cow and a pig than in a cottage- ornee comfortably furnished, where they would have to pay some attention to order and cleanliness."
In this view of the matter there is doubtless a measure of truth. My friend, however, omitted one or two essential points. Most of these small tenants have both built their houses and reclaimed their land, and it is only by incessant industry that the land is prevented from relapsing into bog. In such cases, there- fore, the rent is paid for the privilege of turning bad land into good. Similar arrangements have often been made in England ; the proprietor furnishes the raw material, the tenant the in- dustry and skill ; and when the conditions are fair and the times normal, the result is generally satisfactory. In Ireland, however, the tenant seldom makes a bargain beforehand, and, too many landlords have raised the rent on their tenants' im- provements. But, thanks to recent legislation, this practice is now happily a thing of the past.
As for the squalor of the typical Irish cabin, I am disposed to think that my landlord friend was, in the main, right. It is more squalid than it need be. In districts where stone is to be had for nothing, and the men in winter have plenty of spare time on their hands, there is no excuse for herding cows, pigs, and children in the same room. The mud floors, moreover, might easily be raised above the surrounding ground, and if it were too costly to board or flag them, they could be paved; neither should it be beyond the capacity of an active man to build a serviceable chimney. At Glengariff I found a man and a woman sitting in darkness and smoke. Their cabin had neither chimney nor window. I inquired why they had not a window. The man said that he could not afford one. He could at least have afforded a hole to let in a little light. The reason generally assigned for this apathy is that, if the tenants im- proved their dwellings, the landlords would raise their rents ; but as landlords have no longer the power to raise rents, this excuse has ceased to obtain. Perhaps, however, the tenants are not as much to blame as might appear. They need both guidance and supervision, and they get little of either. I asked some of the Glengariff people whether their landlord ever came amongst them. They seemed as much surprised as if I had inquired whether the archangel Gabriel ever came amongst them. They had never seen their landlord.
Should Irish tenants ever become occupying owners, and this appears to be the sole, and probably the best solution of the agrarian difficulty, it will behove them to increase and multiply with more regard to prudential considerations than they have
exercised hitherto. They marry young, and have portentous families. Nine seems to be the average number of children to a family among the poorer peasants. One gentleman whom I saw urged this fecundity—with a fine sense of humour—as a justification for evictions. If they were let alone, he said, they would overrun the country. The priests are said to encourage early marriages, and very likely they do. On the other hand, the fees they demand for making happy couples one, must act as a partial check on Paddy's matrimonial propensities. A strap- ping, well-fed, good-looking lass, whom I reproached for begging, urged, in extenuation of her offence, that she was saving up for the "marriage-money." "How much is that?" I asked. "Forty-five shillings." " Forty-five shillings ! That seems a great deal of money." "So it is, Sir ; but the priest won't do it for less, and a docent farmer has to pay ten pounds." The question of furnishing did not appear to trouble her, and had the fee been half-a-crown or five shillings, she would probably by that time have been the mother of two or three bouncing babies. Imagine a French or Swiss peasant either paying a priest £10 to marry him, or taking a wife before he had a few score pounds to the good and a fair prospect of maintain- ing a family !
I do not think the Nationalist movement is in any sense a religious movement. The great majority of Home-rulers are Catholic, simply because the great majority of the Irish people are Catholic. I was assured by a Canon of the Catholic Church that, in the first instance, the priests held aloof from the move- ment, and finally favoured it, in part because they would other- wise have lost touch with their people, in part because they found that the National League discountenanced secret societies, and that boycotting bad superseded murder.
I inquired of two Protestant rectors, both opposed to Home- rule, and both living in the midst of Catholic populations, what they thought would happen to them in the event of Home-rule coming to pass. One was of opinion that there would be much cutting of Protestant throats ; the other, however, did not think Protestants would be molested, or that he himself would be on any less cordial terms with hie Catholic neighbours.
An Englishman travelling in Ireland is naturally anxious to ascertain whether and how far Irishmen desire separation from the Kingdom. I put this question to pretty nearly everybody I met, and though one man can make so very few inquiries in a limited time that I would not ascribe too much importance to the answers I received, it is nevertheless a fact of some signifi- cance that I did not receive a single answer in the affirmative. One strong Nationalist whom I queried went so far as to say that if he thought Home-rule would lead to Separation, he would rather not have Home-rule. " What the deuce would become of us without England ?" he said. "We could not maintain a fleet, and without a fleet we should be at the mercy of every Power that possesses one. Besides, we have as much right to the Colonies and India as you have."
I took part in a conversation on the same subject at a Dublin club to which I had the pleasure of being invited—a social, not a political club—frequented by men of all shades of opinion. But as everybody's thoughts are just now full of politics, politics were naturally more talked about than anything else. Among the members present were several graduates of Dublin Univer- sity, several members of the National League and of the Pro- testant Home•rule Association, and a gentleman who had been sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude for participating in the Fenian movement,—all educated men, and, so far as I was able to judge, earnestly patriotic. The Protestants were decidedly the most uncompromising Hcme-rulers. One gentle- man, perhaps the best talker in the room, and intensely Irish in his sympathies, told me that he had not a drop of Irish blood in his veins. He was born and educated in the country, but his parents were English. He was not the only English-Irish Nationalist whom I met during my travels. All repudiated any desire for separation from England, or, more accurately, from the United Kingdom ; nevertheless, several of them said plainly that if the alternative were the maintenance of the state quo, they would prefer entire separa- tion and the conversion of Ireland into a Republic. They believe that it is impossible for an Imperial Legislature, how- ever well disposed, to legislate for a country which it does not understand, and which it is not in the nature of things that it should understand. I was curious to know how far the desire for Home-role is based on sentiment, how far on a belief that it would promote the prosperity of the country, and with this
object I asked some of the Nationalists present what were the arguments they used when they wanted to win to their way of thinking a shopkeeper or a farmer who might not quite see how it would profit him to "make Ireland a nation." They would try to convince him that if Ireland had the management of her own local affairs, trade and agriculture would improve, and both the country and himself be better off. One gentleman said that when he was arguing in favour of Home-rule, he always called attention to surrounding objects—the contents of a room, for instance—nearly all of which are imported, and hardly any of home manufacture, the inference being that with Home-rale a very different state of things would prevail, albeit he did not condescend to explain how this transformation would be effected. I presume, however, that he was thinking of Pro- tection, for the protectionist heresy is widely prevalent in Ireland, and one of the blessings expected from Home-rule is the develop- ment of Irish industries by the taxation of foreign, and probably of British manufactures.
I will conclude my letter with a delicious anecdote about boycotting. And here I may perhaps be allowed to observe that in my opinion, although I am aware it is not the opinion of the Spectator, the dissolution of the National League would be a remedy worse than the disease, and order lose more than it would gain. I believe the local branches would become secret societies, and that which is now done in the daylight would be done in the dark. The National League is an effect, not a cause. However, to my anecdote, the accuracy of which I can guarantee, for I saw the correspondence. A little while ago, there arose in a certain Municipal Council a violent dispute, in no way connected with politics. But it so happened that among the minority were several members of the League, and they wrote to head-quarters proposing to boycott their opponents. The reply was an emphatic negative, the matter in dispute being purely local and personal. On this, the minority wrote a second time, accepting the decision ; which, nevertheless, they greatly regretted, for they felt sure that if they were allowed to boycott the majority, it would promote a healthy national feeling.
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