IRELAND.
At the close of the Liverpool banquet on Saturday, Lord Derby, in proposing a complimentary toast, interpolated a manly vindication of his policy as an Irish landlord.
" A tenant of mine in Ireland for the last thirty-six years, who has been cognizant of all my principles, who has received many marks of favour from me, and who—to use his own expression—would walk through fire and water to serve me, has voted against my opinions on every election, and yet we never disagreed. This tenant-farmer in Ireland, named Michael Ryan, most nobly and honourably came forward to bear testimony to these facts in a letter published in the newspapers. But I have seen charges made against me as a general exterminator and oppressor of the people and a tyrant landlord, because I have used every means in my power to bring to justice the authors of a vile murder. Permit me to say on this subject that the eulogies passed on me on the one side and the calumnies with which on the other I have been assailed are equally void of foundation, because they rest on an entire misapprehension of the facts. I have never thought it worth my while to contradict them, but, adverted to as they have been on a public occasion like the present, I must state the simple circum- stances of the case. In a small outlying property in Limerick, worth 7001. a year, 1 have about eleven or twelve tenants, three of whom hold by lease, the remainder as tenants from year to year. The man who was murdered on that property was a Roman Catholic, the son of a very old tenant, who and whose family occupied the property long before I came into possession of it. He was the first man I ever met when I visited that property. He was in connexion with a number of very disorderly persons—he was, in fact, the leader of a club. Gradually I reclaimed that man, and reformed him into a respectable and useful tenant. His son succeeded to him, and became the tenant of another small farm. He was from earliest life an industrious, active, steady young man. He managed to a great extent his father's property, and also managed with great industry the small farm on which I placed him, when, on account of his father's marriage, there was a separation in the family. That man, from no fault of his own, but in con- sequence of his having by the order of my agent, ejected a sub-tenant under him, whom I had no means of ejecting without his consent, and who had rather deteriorated the little property than otherwise, was brutally mur- dered in noon-day in the presence, as I knew, of a number of the popula- tion. He was first shot through the heart, his body was then brutally mangled, and his head was knocked in with stones. I have never been able to obtain the legal evidence of the witnesses of this brutal murder, but I had and have reason to believe that more than one of the small number, some eight or nine persons, who held under me as tenants-at-will were parties to the conspiracy. I gave notice therefore at Michaelmas—the latest time I could—to all those persons who held on that tenure, in order that I might be enabled, if I should obtain satisfactory evidentie, if not sufficient to satisfy ajury, at least to satisfy me of the moral guilt of any person in concealing the murderer, to eject such person on Lady Day, for otherwise I should not have been able to remove him from the property until the fol- lowing Lady Day. The whole of the served notices have been on some eight or ten peraons, being all that held under the tenure I have mentioned, and the intention of serving the notices was to give me the power of carry- ing into execution the removal of persons with respect to whom I might find moral evidence justifying me in such a step. But it by no means follows, nor was it at any time my intention to be the wholesale and indiscrimi- nating exterminator of those eight or ten tenants, and yet this declaration and service of notice on eight or ten tenants holding some eight or ten saxes each, has been represented in the public papers as a wholesale extermma-
tion, the doom of Doon,' and the turning out on the wide world hundreds of families, the fact being that there is not one of these families under no- tice that has not received at my hands, and in one way or another, more than the full value of the fee-simple of the land they hold. I have never condescended before to reply to any of the anonymous attacks made on me, and I shall never condescend to do so again. I have stated the plain facts, and I say that in my judgment it is the duty of a landlord, if he has reason to believe that persons on his property are conniving at the suppression of evidence or the concealment of facts with respect to a brutal murder—not, indeed, to punish the innocent for the guilty—but to say to those persons, You and I—you standing under this grave suspicion, and I being respon- sible for the interests and happiness of this district—you and I shall not hereafter stand in the relation of landlord and tenant.''
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